Sweet Betrayal

“You can’t deny what’s between us—” About the Author Title Page CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE Copyright

“You can’t deny what’s between us—”

“There’s nothing between us, Cameron,” Candy hissed savagely. “Nothing except years of betrayal and hate and misery. Do you really think I would be so insanely foolish as to let myself be persuaded to be another Michelle?”

“By that you mean...?” Cameron asked slowly, his voice expressionless.

“Pregnant and abandoned.”

“Was that Michelle’s version of the story?”

“You used her, Cameron, and then walked away when things got too hot. I shall never forgive you. Never.”

Helen Brooks lives in Northamptonshire, England, and is married with three children. As she is a committed Christian, busy housewife and mother, her spare time is at a premium but her hobbies include reading and walking her two energetic and very endearing young dogs. Her long-cherished aspiration to write became a reality when she put pen to paper on reaching the age of forty, and sent the result off to Harlequin Mills & Boon.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

‘IF THAT crazy animal isn’t off my property in the next thirty seconds I’ll shoot it!’

Candy couldn’t stop a startled gasp escaping her lips as she swung round so sharply that she almost overbalanced off the crumbling stone wall where she had been sitting in the weak March sunshine that had no warmth. The man behind her matched the voice: big, hard and uncompromisingly severe.

‘I beg your pardon?’ Indignation swamped the fear and her brown eyes narrowed furiously. ‘I have every right to be here! Just who do you think——?’

‘I am?’ The tall figure clicked his fingers to his own two black Labradors, who sat immediately by his side like two well trained statues. ‘I know who I am; the point is—who are you? And the statement stands: you have exactly four seconds left to call that thing to order.’

She looked from the dark brown, bearded face to the heavy shotgun in his gloved hands and her stomach turned over. He meant it! He really would shoot Jasper.

‘Jasper!’ Her voice held a note of terror, and immediately Jasper stopped his gambolling to look towards his beloved mistress, leaping up the grassy slope in two bounds and jumping effortlessly over the wall to land by her side, his brown eyes enquiring and his long tongue lolling in its usual ridiculous manner. The two black Labradors didn’t even flick an eyelid as he sniffed interestedly in their direction.

She bent to fasten the lead round his neck and he looked up reproachfully as the heavy chain slipped over his golden head. It had been years since he had suffered such an indignity, and in front of two other dogs too!

‘Don’t you realise that there are sheep about to lamb in that pasture?’ The deep, gravelly voice was familiar somehow, but she couldn’t place it, and now was not the time to reflect. ‘I suppose you’re a townie out for the day?’ The last was said with such contempt that she reared up furiously with a muttered oath, causing Jasper to growl deep in his throat. He wasn’t sure what was happening, but, if there was any defending to do, those two black sentinels had better know he meant business! No one was touching his mistress while he was around.

‘I have lived in Downdale all my life, as it happens.’ Her voice was shaking with suppressed anger and hurt. ‘I know exactly what is in that field and all the others round here. Jasper has been brought up with farm animals and would no more chase a sheep than...’ She couldn’t think of an appropriate simile and floundered helplessly. ‘And we have permission to be on this land!’ The last was said with such conviction that the icy blue eyes watching her so coldly narrowed into two chips of glittering glass.

‘Really?’ His voice was mockingly arrogant. ‘I think not. I would have known if I had given permission for someone so obviously irresponsible to walk my fields.’

‘They aren’t your fields!’ She pushed back the hood of the heavy, thick duffel coat that was protection against the biting wind that scoured the hillside and immediately her hair was whipped into a mad scramble of tangled red silk. ‘They belong to Colonel Strythe and he——’

‘Colonel Strythe is dead.’ The statement was completely without feeling.

‘I know that,’ she snapped back abruptly, furious that this obnoxious stranger could talk about her father’s old friend, who had been like a member of her own family, so coldly. ‘I was at the funeral last Wednesday, but until they can contact the son the Colonel’s old rules apply...’ Her voice trailed off in horrified realisation as she stared into the only recognisable feature in that dark, bearded face. His eyes. She should have recognised his eyes! Only Cameron Strythe had eyes that were as piercing as a razor-sharp sword and as cold as ice. She remembered those eyes! How could she have forgotten? And the voice, distinct with its strange, gravelly texture that in the throes of adolescence she had thought so attractive.

‘I see I need not introduce myself, but, nevertheless, Cameron Strythe at your service . . . Miss . . . ?’

She ignored the implied question and stared at him as though he were the devil himself. He was so different! She remembered a tall, smiling young man with the charm of a thousand Irish tongues and fair, cleanshaven skin. This man’s face was as dark as an Arab’s with long hair bleached almost blond at the ends. He resembled a wild gypsy rather than the cool, university-educated young man she recalled.

‘When did you get back?’ Her voice was a horrified whisper and immediately lost in the wind as it swirled round them with increasing force, the sunlight racing dark shadows across the valley below. She repeated the question more loudly and he looked at her intently, searching her face with those deadly eyes.

‘Do I know you?’ Did he know her? She could have laughed if the circumstances had been different. She remembered the last time he had visited the house to see Michelle, her sister. They had been engaged to be married and the wedding date was only weeks away. Candy already had her bridesmaid’s dress, a frothy pink creation in tulle and taffeta. The dress was suddenly there before her, clear in detail to the last tiny rosebud on the hem. Her twelve-year-old heart had been thrilled with such finery, but then there had been a terrible scene that night and Cameron had gone away. And later, a few weeks later, Michelle’s shape had begun to change too drastically to disguise any more, and six months later Jamie was born. The whole affair had broken Michelle’s heart and made her parents old before their time... and this man was responsible for all the misery!

‘What’s the matter?’ The perpetrator of all the heartbreak, which had dulled over the passage of time, but was awakened as new as if it had all happened yesterday, took a step towards her, alarmed at the pallor of her face and the wide, staring eyes.

‘Get away from me!’ It was a snarl of hate and he recognised it as such, stopping in his tracks with an expression of almost comical amazement stretching his chiselled features. ‘You aren’t fit to be called your father’s son.’

As the words registered his expression froze, but she was gone before he could form a reply, running down the hillside on legs that flew over the rough, coarse grass, her long hair streaming behind her like dancing red ribbons, and Jasper bounding by her side, enthralled by the new game.

She didn’t stop till she reached home, bursting into the drawing-room, where her parents were sitting in front of a roaring log fire, enjoying a Sunday afternoon snooze with just the cat for company.

‘Candy!’ Her mother had almost leapt from the chair in her fright. ‘What on earth is the matter? You’ve frightened me half to death!’

‘Sorry.’ She stood panting in the middle of the room with such a hunted expression on her face that her parents both rose as one and reached her side in the same instant.

‘What’s the matter?’ It was her father speaking now, his voice worried. ‘Has there been an accident? Are you all right?’

‘I saw him.’ She wouldn’t have believed she could feel like this about something that had happened so long ago. It must be ten years since that terrible time, and Michelle was happily married now, with two more children to keep Jamie company and a husband who was crazy about her, but every so often she caught a glimpse of that old haunted expression in her sister’s eyes and knew she was thinking about Cameron Strythe, the man who had taken her innocence and then let her down so badly. She didn’t know if Michelle still hated him, but she knew she did, more than ever!

‘Him?’ Her father shook her slightly in his concern. ‘Who, for crying out loud?’

‘Cameron Strythe.’ Her voice was flat now and she felt the rage seep out of her as the urge to cry became paramount. ‘And he was so awful about Uncle Charles, Dad; he spoke as though he didn’t care.’

‘Perhaps he doesn’t.’ Her mother sighed deeply and shook her grey head slowly. ‘Ten years is a long time to be away, Candy; people change. But it’s no concern of ours one way or the other, is it?’

‘How can you say that?’ She stared into her mother’s gentle blue eyes in horrified denial. ‘After what he did to Michelle?’

‘What happened between your sister and Cameron Strythe was a long time ago and only they know the real facts,’ her father said stiffly as he left her side and returned to his chair by the fire. ‘It hurt us all, especially Charles, but the past is the past and I don’t want old wounds reopened now. Michelle is happy—you know that for yourself—and if Cameron chooses to come back here to live that is his prerogative. He has inherited a vast estate, you know—Uncle Charles was very wealthy.’

‘I’m surprised he left it all to him,’ Candy said bitterly as she flung her heavy duffel coat, scarf and mittens on a nearby chair, emerging as a slender, tall young woman with a cascade of wavy, silky hair almost to her waist.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ her father said sharply. ‘Charles loved his son; he was all he had. Don’t let old memories sour you, puss; you’re too sweet for that.’

‘Huh!’ She eyed her father balefully as she bent down to remove some tiny sticky balls that had got embedded in Jasper’s coat from the dense undergrowth on the hillside. ‘That was said tongue in cheek.’

‘Maybe.’ Her father allowed himself a small smile as he surveyed his volatile younger daughter. ‘But Cameron may well be here to stay, and, in a small village like this, open war will make life very difficult for a number of people. You must let the past stay in the past, Candy. I mean it.’

‘Dad, I’m a matronly schoolteacher of twenty-two,’ she answered drily. ‘I think I can decide for myself how I treat Cameron Strythe if I happen to see him again.’

‘Oh, you’ll see him again.’ Her mother’s voice was resigned. ‘We all will. You might as well get used to the idea. He now owns most of the village, remember, and, like it or not, both your father’s job and this house are under his control.’

‘Oh, Dad.’ She stared, stricken-faced, at her father. As manager of Charles’s huge farm, her father had always enjoyed a close friendship with his employer, the two having grown up together, and it had never occurred to her before that their very livelihood was tied up with their relationship with the Strythes. Even her job, as village schoolteacher, could be said to rely on ‘the big house’, as the farm was called in the village. She knew Uncle Charles had kept the school going for years after the council had wanted to close it and transfer the thirty or so pupils to a bigger school a bus ride away.

Her stomach turned over. This was something she had never foreseen, never imagined in her wildest dreams. How could she have been so naive? Cameron’s name had never been mentioned for years, by unspoken consent on the part of all concerned, but she should have realised he would inherit, being the only child of his father. It was an impossible situation to be reliant on him for their very existence, unimaginable!

‘I’m going to get changed. Don’t forget David is picking us up at six,’ she said miserably as she walked slowly from the warm, cheerful room into the colder hall. That was another thing that was grating on her nerves these days. She had known David since she could toddle—all the village children enjoyed close friendships, being such a small community—but lately his feelings for her seemed to have undergone a subtle change which was becoming more obvious each time they met. She liked him—of course she did; everyone liked David—but anything romantic... She grimaced as she sat down at her dressing-table in her small bedroom, her eyes moving unconsciously to the window and the panoramic view over the Devon countryside outside that never ceased to thrill her. When Michelle had left to get married her parents had offered her the bigger room, but she had preferred to stay in her own, where every morning the first sight that met her eyes was rolling meadows dotted with grazing cattle, and the faint outline of gently undulating hills beyond.

Unlike her sister, who had revelled in the bright lights and longed to escape from what she considered ‘a dead world’, Candy had ached for the sound of ancient church bells pealing out on a warm summer evening when she was in London at university, pining for the atmosphere of serenity and the timelessness that the sixteenth-century village offered. Most of the buildings were buff-washed, nestling beneath the traditional covering of heavy thatch, from which quaint little semi-dormer leaded windows emerged. Now, when she visited Michelle in her smart town house with all mod cons and the best that money could buy, the only emotion she felt was one of faint depression and a sense of confirmation that she had made the right decision in her own life. She had been offered a couple of prime career moves on leaving university with a first-class degree, but had preferred to come home and take over the village school, enabling the current schoolteacher, Mrs Jacobs, to take a longdelayed world cruise with her husband. Mrs Jacobs had made no secret of her desire for Candy to step into her shoes for years.

Altogether life had been good, apart from the irritation of David’s growing affection. Until today. When she had met him. She gazed vacantly into the dressing-table mirror, blind to the heart-shaped face with its huge, beautiful, heavily lashed eyes and delicately shaped mouth that gazed back at her from the misty reflection.

They were all ready and waiting when David called promptly at six, and the short journey to his parents’ home took no more than two minutes in his lovingly nurtured old banger. He seemed a trifle subdued, but that suited Candy, lost as she was in her own thoughts, and her parents were more than capable of keeping the conversation chugging along.

‘Mother has invited an old friend of yours, apparently.’ David’s voice was sheepish as he helped them off with their coats in the hall preparatory to going through to the spacious oak-beamed sitting-room at the back of the house.

‘Oh, yes?’ Candy was instantly suspicious. Mrs Clarke was the biggest gossip in the village, besides being the most unhappy, restless woman Candy had ever met. She adored intrigue, embroidering the most innocent of happenings in a way that could only be described as malicious, and inventing what was lacking. Her parents knew David’s parents on a social level, exchanging dinner invitations like the one tonight now and again, but she could never have termed them friends of the family.

As she stepped through the living-room door and the unmistakable deep, throaty voice met her ears she had the insane impulse to turn and run for a shaming, fleeting moment, before her chin came up and her face set in what her father often called the ‘battle zone’. That woman! She had invited Cameron Strythe here. Just to see the reaction of them all.

‘Vivien, Ernest and dear Candice.’ Mrs Clarke moved forward in a theatrical pose like an actress in a third-rate movie, her pointed, narrow face alive with hard curiosity. ‘How lovely to see you, and I think you know dear Cameron.’ She indicated the tall, silent figure behind her with an affected wave of her hand. Candy spared him a fleeting glance and, catching the stunned expression in those blue eyes, assumed correctly that he had had no idea who the dinner guests were either. She also noticed the beard had gone, leaving a faintly paler skin underneath to the rest of the hard, tanned face, and that some time in the afternoon he had had a haircut. The smart, indolent man standing to one side of their little throng was more recognisable as the old Cameron. It made it even easier to hate him.

‘He only got back last night,’ Mrs Clarke continued into the growing silence, her small black eyes flashing from one to the other in satisfied spite, ‘and we couldn’t leave him to eat alone on his first day back on English soil, could we?’ She gave the tinkling false laugh that always caused Candy’s teeth to grate. ‘I don’t suppose you realised he was home.’ The last was said to her mother, who was rooted to the spot just inside the door, and Candy came immediately to her rescue, forcing a light laugh as she took her mother’s arm and guided her to an easy-seat near by.

‘I met Cameron this afternoon, as it happens.’

‘You did?’ The harsh voice was quizzical, and as Candy turned to meet his eyes she saw there was a frankly appreciative gleam on his face as he took in her slim, full-breasted figure and heavy fall of silky red hair. ‘I obviously was too far away to see you.’

‘Not at all.’ Her big brown eyes were tight on his face now and no one present could fail to read their expression of cold, unmitigated dislike. ‘You threatened to shoot my dog, if you remember.’

The words hung for a moment in the breathless silence that had fallen on the assembled company, and then Mrs Clarke trilled her false laugh into the tense stillness. ‘Oh, Candice, you have such a strange sense of humour, always so contrary.’

‘You don’t believe me?’ She shot round on the unfortunate Mrs Clarke as though she had jetpropelled heels. ‘Ask him, then. Ask him what he did with his afternoon.’

‘That was you?’ He stared at the tall, beautifully groomed woman in front of him with something like disbelief on his face. ‘But you looked so different...’

‘I was muffled from head to foot in a duffel coat, scarf and Wellington boots, if you remember,’ she said icily, ‘but yes, it was me. And yes, that was my dog you threatened to destroy.’ Her eyes raked him slowly from head to foot and she allowed a small, contemptuous smile to play round her mouth for a moment. ‘You seem to have smartened up a little too.’

He stared at her for a long moment as his face took on the texture of cold granite and his eyes became glacial. ‘Well, well.’ There was savage derision in the grim voice now. ‘So this is little carrot-tops. You sure have changed, sweetheart.’

‘You bet your sweet life!’ She came back with the retort like a pistol shot, and for a moment their eyes clashed and held in a bitter battle of wills, with neither giving an inch. It was her father who defused the situation, taking Cameron’s arm in a light hold as he turned the younger man to face him.

‘It’s been a long time, Cam.’ He spoke the nickname with no false friendliness, merely the unaffected respect he showed to all his fellow human beings, and Candy saw Cameron take a long, deep breath before his body relaxed and a careful smile touched the firm mouth.

‘Too long.’ He included her mother in his glance, but Candy noticed the cold blue eyes didn’t rest on her for a second. ‘I was going to give you a call early tomorrow morning. I shall need your help in picking up some of the strings.’

‘No problem,’ her father returned easily. She stared at him in a mixture of anger and disappointment. Don’t talk to him, Dad, she wanted to scream. Hit him and walk out. Her father did neither of these things and there was obvious annoyance on Mrs Clarke’s face a few minutes later as she ushered them to the table. She had clearly been hoping for fireworks, Candy reflected bitterly, glancing at David as she sat down and noticing he studiously avoided catching her eye. Why hadn’t he warned them that Cameron was here? He must have known how painful the first meeting would be, especially with a crowd of onlookers. It was a stupid question; she knew the answer. Mummy’s little boy would do as he was told. She suddenly realised why his amorous attentions had irritated her so badly. There had been something almost apologetic in their content, holding the same meekness he displayed with his mother. Her decisive, forceful nature had rebelled instinctively.

‘And where have you been hiding yourself for the last ten years, Cameron?’ Mrs Clarke asked with artificial sweetness as they all began on their prawn cocktails.

‘I never hide, Mrs Clarke.’ He looked his hostess full in the face as he spoke and there was something in the dark, harsh voice that must have warned her he would stand no nonsense. She flushed hotly and bent to retrieve her napkin, which had fallen on the floor, her thin mouth tight with irritated annoyance.

‘Your father told me you worked on the oil-rigs for some time and then bought a farm in Australia.’ Again it was her father who stepped into the breach. ‘I understand you were on the way to making your fortune out there?’

‘Things went well,’ Cameron answered shortly. ‘I had some good men working for me.’ He obviously had no intention of discussing his private affairs at the dinner table, and Candy had to admit she didn’t blame him. She was trying to assimilate the knowledge that her father and Uncle Charles had discussed Cameron now and again, apparently with no animosity. She was beginning to feel she didn’t know her father at all.

‘What are your plans for the future?’ her mother asked quietly, and as Cameron turned to her he smiled his first genuine smile of the evening. Candy felt her heart give a strange little lurch as the cold blue eyes softened and the years seemed to fall away from him. She recalled how often he had taken the time to talk to her when he was courting her sister, often letting her tag along, much to Michelle’s disgust, and always referring to her affectionately as ‘carrot-tops’. Her hair had been more ginger than red then and she had worn it, much to her parents’ horror, in a spiky, short tomboy cut. He had been the only one who had said it suited her and she had never known his eyes be anything but soft when they looked at her, although there had been several occasions, even before the split, when they had been as cold as ice with Michelle. She shook herself mentally. He was a swine and a heartless seducer and all the rest had been a sham. The passage of time had borne that out.

‘I’m not sure yet, Vivien.’ He let his gaze roam over them all now and Candy fancied it turned glacial as it passed over her red head. ‘I shall make some changes; apart from that I haven’t had time to consider.’

‘Changes?’ Her mother sounded anxious, and Candy could have killed him for putting that frown of worry on her mother’s face.

‘My father was a good man, but too easily persuaded at times.’ There was iron in the voice now. ‘The school, for instance. From what I’ve seen of the business accounts a good deal of money seemed to find its way in that direction and with Chitten School a few miles away it seems ridiculous to continue to subsidise what is essentially a decaying building. The council won’t spend a penny on it; they obviously want it closed.’

He knew! He knew she was the schoolmistress; she could feel it in her bones. He was playing with her, like a cat with a mouse. Losing her job was going to be payment for the way she had treated him today.