CATHY WILLIAMS - Shadows Of Yesterday

‘Congratulations,’ he said politely. ‘Well done. Where is it?’

She told him, taking a masochistic delight in dwelling on the attractive package that had been offered her, even though she knew that her voice sounded far removed from enthusiastic.

‘I suppose you’re relieved,’ she finished, looking at him defiantly.

‘Why should I be?’

‘Because,’ Claire continued relentlessly, ‘you won’t have to dodge my childish infatuation with you any longer.’ What did she have to lose by saying all this? she asked herself fiercely. It made her feel good getting it all off her chest, anyway.

‘Your childish infatuation was very flattering to an old man like myself,’ he said with a grim smile. ‘For the first time I began to understand why some older men can’t resist the lure of a much younger woman.’

Ah. He had called her a woman. That felt good. She stood with her hands behind her back and lifted her chin.

‘You act as though you’re a hundred. How old are you?’

‘Do you have to be so outspoken?’ he asked with the ghost of a smile.

‘You know it’s the way I am,’ Claire said very coolly, considering her throat felt like sandpaper.

‘I’m thirty-four.’

‘Is that all?’

‘You mean I look older?’ He laughed. ‘Watch it, I might start getting a complex.’

This was the first time since their uneasy pact of silence that they were speaking to each other without reservation, and she felt herself relax and open up. He was the only man she had ever met who could do that to her, make her feel confident enough to speak her mind without thinking too much about the consequences.

‘I mean,’ she explained, ‘that’s awfully young to own all this.’ She made a broad sweeping gesture. ‘Did you inherit it?’

‘Not exactly. Would you like a drink? Anything but gin and tonic.’

Claire shook her head, blushing at the glint that flitted through his eyes when he said that.

He turned and poured himself a drink from the bar and continued talking. ‘My uncle owned all this, and I suppose I had always loved the place ever since I had been a child. I expect I would have inherited it in due course—he was childless—but eight years ago he ran into some financial problems, coincidentally at a time when business was booming for me and I bought him out.’ He faced her and she could see pride in his expression when he looked around the room.

‘Where does he live now?’

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