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‘My car should be ready. I’ll come down with you.’
‘No need!’ Heather said brightly. ‘We sisters just want to catch up on our own now!’
Claire surrendered grudgingly to this suggestion, but rounded on her sister as soon as they were in the lift and heading down.
‘God, Heather, you never told me he was drop-dead gorgeous!’
‘If you like that sort of look…’
‘Well, yes. I know you go for the more boring type, but he’s definitely my kind of guy—and if I’d had any idea what he looked like I’d have worn something a bit better!’
Heather was still dwelling on the assumption that she could only ever be interested in boring men. Since when had she let her sister get away with thoughts like that? Had she always accepted Claire’s sweeping assumptions that she was someone prepared to let life slip by her while she toiled away in the background, doing nothing in particular?
‘Wait a minute,’ she objected belatedly, as they stepped into the waiting car—Claire’s oohs and ahhs leaving Heather in no doubt that Theo’s already magnificent standing had now flown off the scale—‘since when did you think that I only go for boring men?’ It took a lot of courage to stand up for herself, and she could feel her neck begin to prickle uncomfortably.
She waited for Claire’s famous temper to become evident, and was surprised when her sister stared at her, red-faced and open-mouthed. ‘I didn’t mean that you just go for boring guys,’ she stuttered. ‘It’s just that…you know…well…’
‘That the only kind of men who would be attracted to me would be the boring type…?’
‘You have to admit that dynamic, sexy men would never have given you a second glance in the old days!’ Claire burst out, and Heather stared at the stranger sitting next to her coldly. With everything in her she wanted to tell Claire about her fling with Theo, wanted to throw it in her face as proof that she wasn’t the eternal no-hoper her sister seemed to think she was. But that would have been a terrible breach of confidence, and since it was apparent that Theo hadn’t said a word about it there was no way that she was about to.
‘Not that you don’t look fantastic now,’ Claire conceded. ‘In fact I was a little shocked.’
If that was an olive branch, then Heather decided there and then that she would take it. Claire was the only close family member left to her in the world—and anyway, what was the point of bearing a grudge? With her natural inclination to forgive, she told herself that, whatever impression Claire had of her, it had been gained with Heather’s assistance. She had meekly lived down to her sister’s sweeping generalisations. Even her e-mails had played down her plans for her career. No wonder Claire thought that she had no dreams.
‘But getting back to Theo…’
‘Must we?’
‘Did anything happen between the two of you while you were living in that apartment and working for him?’
Heather frantically tried to come up with a lie that wouldn’t be a lie. Eventually she said, with a little self-deprecating laugh, ‘I’d be a fool if it had…’
‘In which case you wouldn’t have a problem if I got in touch with him? You know, just to say thanks for lending me the use of his shower and being so courteous when I showed up at his place out of the blue? Men can be such pigs. Honestly. Your hair would stand on end if I told you some of the things that have happened to me!’
‘Well, no…’
Claire regarded her sister narrowly. ‘Good. Because you’re way out of his league—and I’m not saying that to be insulting, Heath. Okay, I admit I was out of order to pigeonhole you into the type that old dullards would be attracted to, but…face it…Theo’s a sex god, and sex gods just don’t look at…well, girls like you…’
‘No. No, they don’t. They look at girls like you.’ And maybe Claire was right. After all, Theo hadn’t wanted her in the end, had he? So she had grown in self-confidence. Reality was still a bucket of cold water she couldn’t avoid. And, sure, Claire was blunt to the point of rude, but truth was truth, however nicely it was packaged.
For the duration of the trip back Heather was aware from a distance that she was mouthing the right answers as her sister rattled on speculatively about her chances with Theo.
America had taken Claire’s arrogance and honed it into a lethal weapon. Heather had visions of Claire gradually dismantling all the confidence she had slowly gathered for herself over time and had to tell herself not to be over-imaginative. But she was finding it difficult to remember the reasons she had once admired her stunning sister, and to put her finger on the loyalty she had always shown to someone who now seemed shallow and just a little cruel.
CHAPTER TEN
HEATHER was standing in the middle of her small sitting area and surveying the sight that now greeted her with dismay.
They had arrived back at the flat the evening before, and after a quick cup of coffee she had retired to bed. That in itself had been a further cause for stress. Claire had objected to being planted on the sofa in the sitting room, claiming that she was so exhausted after her long haul flight that surely she could have the bed for one night.
The old Heather would have easily obliged. The new Heather had seen the start of a precedent from which it would be difficult to backtrack. In the complicated world of family dynamics Claire had always been allowed to get her own way, whatever the cost to everyone around her. The bed for ‘one night’ only would become a permanent state of affairs, and Heather was just not going to let that happen. So she had stuck to her guns and had even refused to make up the sofa, instead handing her disgruntled sister a bundle of linen and, as politely as she could, telling her to get on with it.
Obviously she had got on with more than just making up the sofa and going to sleep. Rudimentary unpacking had begun, and the effects of it were a glaring reminder of why she had to make sure her sister moved out as quickly as possible.
Clothes trailed out of unzipped cases. Some had been stacked on one of the chairs but the rest randomly covered the ground, seemingly in an attempt to stage a complete takeover of all available free space. The towel she had given her sister the night before had been dumped over the coffee table, and the clothes Claire had worn were a rumpled heap at the bottom of the sofa on which she now lay, sleeping like a baby.
Heather’s first impulse was to scream. Then to begin tidying up. She did neither. Instead, she marched across to the sofa and gave her sister a brief but very firm shake.
‘Come on, Claire. Time to get up.’
‘Uh.’ Covers were pulled up over her head as Claire squirmed into retreat from the intrusion.
Heather took a deep breath and did the unthinkable. She yanked the covers right off her sister and watched as the very scantily clad body writhed in protest and then Claire finally sat up and glared.
‘It’s nine,’ Heather said calmly. ‘And you can’t carry on sleeping in here. This place needs to be tidied up, for a start.’ She looked around her with irritation. ‘I told you last night, Claire, my flat is very small, and I’m not going to live in a state of chaos, cleaning up behind you…’
‘I never asked you to!’
‘Because you assume that I will…!’A flood of unfortunate memories took a stranglehold and Heather had to calm herself by taking deep breaths. Then she perched on the edge of the sofa—the lovely pale sofa she had bought, after much indecision, only a few days previously. ‘I’m not tidying up after you, Claire. And I’m not allowing you stay here indefinitely, doing whatever you want to do, bringing back whatever friends you decide to bring back, until such time as something better comes along. This is my flat, and you’re not going to move in and wreak havoc with it.’
Claire was wide awake now and glaring. ‘Mum would have a fit if she could hear you now!’
‘That’s as maybe…’ Heather thought that their mother might have been quite proud. ‘But I’m just laying down a few rules and regulations…’
‘Oh, you and your rules and regulations!’ Claire leapt out of her bed, lean brown body barely clothed in a clinging vest and a pair of stretch pyjama shorts.
Heather noted that her sister was positively bristling with anger, and worked out that for once in her life she was having to deal with the harsh reality of not being treated as special. Claire had done a great deal of bristling in the past, and had always succeeded in getting her own way. Heather thought with some regret of the extent to which she had aided and abetted her sister’s selfishness by tiptoeing around her, backing off rather than facing an unpleasant confrontation.
Feeling very serene, she watched as Claire stormed out of the room. There was the sound of the tap being run and things being slammed down in the bathroom, then she was back, scooping up her clothes with the ill grace of a child who had thrown a temper tantrum but lost the battle.
‘There,’ she announced finally. ‘Happy?’
‘No. You’ll have to clear the lot into your suitcases and then put the suitcases behind the sofa. It’s no good piling them into bundles on the ground. There’s not enough floor space and it looks horrible.’
