Sweet Lies

The furious tone of his voice seared through her body till every nerve tingled with foreboding. She could hear the frantic hammering of her heart against her tightening rib cage.

“He’s my son,” she managed at last, though her voice was a thin whisper of despair. His grip on her arm tightened at her words, but he remained silent, his body rigid with tension.

“I didn’t know you had a child.” His voice was a harsh whisper, as if some sharp pain was trapped in his throat. Megan looked at him anxiously, her whole body trembling as she watched his gaze switch swiftly back to Luke, staring at him with an intensity that unnerved her.

“And the father?” Darrow drawled, his eyes darting back to hers and fixing on her with an icy intent.

CATHERINE O’CONNOR was born and has lived all her life in Manchester, England, where she is a happily married woman with five demanding children, a neurotic cat, an untrainable dog and a rabbit. She spends most of her time either writing or planning her next story, and without the support and encouragement of her long-suffering husband, this would be impossible. Though her heroes are always wonderfully handsome and incredibly rich, she still prefers her own loving husband.

Sweet Lies

Catherine O'Connor

MILLS & BOON

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CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

COPYRIGHT

CHAPTER ONE

THE Yorkshire hills rose majestically over the shimmering vast waters of Lake Rannaleigh, their towering peaks already lost in the cold grey mists that were rolling slowly down over the rugged russet-brown hills. Megan Parkinson released the pressure on the accelerator without even being aware of her action, her heart twisting with a sudden sharp pain at the sight of the well-remembered scene. The car slowed down to a virtual stop and Megan allowed herself a moment of uncharacteristic self-indulgence. A ghost of a smile flickered over her face as her expressive green eyes softened with sentimental tears.

Everything was just as she remembered it: the tiny square, the two small hotels, happily co-existing, sharing the steady flow of tourists, and Mrs Bain’s name was still painted in bold black capital letters across the top of the corner shop. It sold absolutely anything anyone could ever need, as well as being the only post office for miles around. Megan remembered it all affectionately, a gentle sigh escaping from her softly parted lips.

Her eyes clouded momentarily with sudden doubts as too many memories flooded into her mind, disturbing her snatched moment of tranquillity. She bit nervously, her teeth sinking tenderly into her full bottom lip as all her nerves tensed uneasily. She cast a quick, protective glance over her shoulder at the innocently sleeping form curled up on the rear seat. He looked surprisingly fragile in repose. His delicate features took on a fragile quality that denied his physical strength and determined character, which were only recently was becoming a problem for her.

An instinctive smile tugged at the corners of her mouth, curling her full lips as she looked at him. The metamorphosis had already started; he was beginning to look more and more like his father with each passing day. Megan wondered whether she was just over-sensitive to his looks, searching for resemblances, a part of her hoping that he would look like his father. Though the thought caused equal amounts of pain and pleasure to her, Megan knew she had no control over the situation. Her expression softened as she reached out and tucked the car-rug around her son’s unprotected shoulders.

At that moment the bright glare of headlights flashed at her, causing her to blink rapidly. She jumped as a car overtook her, its horn blaring at her obstruction. She caught a glimpse of the hard profile of the driver’s handsome face as he sped past. Her head spun round, drawn by the familiar visage, her heart contracting violently within her. Megan stared after the car, all the old pain resurfacing with a cruel vengeance. Her eyes remained fixed on the rear lights, as if trapped by their brightness, till they were tiny pin-pricks of red fading into the distance.

‘It couldn’t have been him,’ she said aloud to herself. ‘Not here, not now.’ She felt her teeth clamp against each other as she ground the words through her clenched mouth and struggled to contain the rise of panic that was surging through her trembling body. It was her mind playing tricks, she told herself, trying to remain calm as her heart began to thud painfully against her tight chest.

Just coming back here was enough to stir up so many hidden ghosts and bitter memories.

The frown deepened across Megan’s brow as she questioned the wisdom of returning, but circumstances beyond her control had forced her return, she remembered with a painful twist of her heart.

Much to her regret, Megan hadn’t been able to come back for her mother’s funeral. Her death had been so sudden—a traffic accident—and Luke had still been in hospital, undergoing a series of tests while doctors sought the cause of his illness, and she couldn’t leave him. He had been much too ill and frightened. She hoped her mother would have understood, but she doubted whether the rest of the community had. She could imagine the scandal her absence had caused and shook her head. She had been forced to leave Rannaleigh all those years ago to avoid scandal. She knew that the past would never stop haunting her but surely, she kept reassuring herself, that driver could not possibly have been him? Not Darrow Maine.

She resumed her journey, but that fleeting glimpse only served to remind her of the gamble she had taken in coming back. A bitter smile twisted her mouth. Maybe nothing here had changed but she had. She had left here a broken-hearted young girl, but she was returning a fully mature woman, with a rapidly growing son. But had her heart ever really mended? a taunting whisper mocked her. Wasn’t part of her still a young girl, longing for her past, so that she imagined that Darrow Maine had just driven past her? Megan shook her head in an attempt to shake the doubts that niggled in the back of her mind.

Dusk was falling as she parked the car outside the reception area. The sky was a water-colour grey and a cold moon was already hanging in the sky like a huge silver coin. Megan closed the car door quietly, so as not to wake her precious child. She shivered. There was an icy nip in the evening air and her warm breath made clouds in the dusky light. She pulled her cashmere coat closer around her, its thick collar reaching up to her ears as she strode over the car park, her feet crunching on the gravel path. A smile of satisfaction touched her lips at the unstated elegance of the interior. At least she had returned home in style, she mused, wondering how long it would take for word to get round that she was back.

Megan smiled warmly as she reached out for the keys to her lakeside lodge, eager to settle in, but her smile froze, her breath stolen painfully from her as the searing shock of recognition swept over her. It was Darrow.

She was barely aware of the weight of the keys as the receptionist dropped them heavily into her outstretched palm, though instinctively her fingers closed tightly around the cold metal, glad of the feel of something solid as her whole world seemed to come crashing down around her. She was no longer listening to the hotel receptionist; all her senses were trained on the silent, menacing figure that had suddenly appeared behind her.

She stiffened in absolute dread as his cold, dark eyes fixed on her with an electrifying intensity. She felt her breath catch in her tightening chest as she faced him. His hard, icy gaze sent a shiver of apprehension through her body. It was so unlike him. He was a completely changed man, cold and aloof.

Had she fooled herself for all these years? she questioned herself silently. Had she held on to an image that had been self-created, a dream of a man who had only ever existed in her foolish young mind? She had clearly remembered those eyes as soft and gentle, holding a shining light of loving warmth touched with a wicked gleam that mirrored his zest for life. Now they were like freezing shards of ice, cruel and ruthless. Megan shut her eyes momentarily, to block out the image she now saw, a mockery of the man she had known.

She dragged her eyes from his hard, hypnotic gaze and concentrated on the receptionist, forcing herself to appear calm though her mind was a riot of emotions and thoughts. She never would have come back if she had known he was here. It was painful enough having to return, to rake up all the old memories, without the added problem of him being here. She smiled politely as she took the sheaf of papers being handed to her, nodding in agreement as she moved back, eager to be away from him. She could still feel his icy blue eyes searing into the very depths of her soul, as if searching for some trace of the girl he had known. Megan’s eyes darted quickly back to his but she could detect no glimmer of recognition, and, despite everything, that hurt.

‘Megan.’ His low voice was unmistakable, its deep and resonant tone instantly recognisable. She felt the panic rise in her chest as a fleeting shiver of expectation. Yet gone was the familiar intimacy she remembered; there was only a trace of bitter humour in his tone. She turned, her expression questioning, though her blood had chilled to freezing within her. Her agitation was growing with every passing minute as she met the cool appraisal of his eyes.

‘Yes?’ she said politely, her voice betraying none of her inner turmoil as she caught the familiar scent of his aftershave that teased half-forgotten secrets back into her mind. His eyebrows rose swiftly, as if he was amused by her cool fa

There was a strain to his expression, a sharpness to his handsome features that had not been there before, but his mouth was as sensuous as ever, still full of the heady promise of love—love that she had given so willingly and foolishly. Megan tried to suffocate the growing resentment she felt at his presence and the threat it posed. It had been difficult enough to come back, especially under the circumstances, without him being here to exacerbate the situation.

‘It’s been a long time, Megan,’ he commented drily, ignoring her question as his eyes travelled quickly over her body with an intensity that heated her blood. She stiffened slightly under his deliberate scrutiny, hating the effect that his close proximity was having on her, and she forced her body to relax, casually flicking her red hair from her face.

‘Thirteen years is a long time, Darrow,’ she agreed, her voice unexpectedly composed, carefully hiding the confusion that raged beneath her cool exterior.

He nodded slowly in agreement, a frown creasing his brow. ‘You’ve changed,’ he noted, nodding appreciatively.

Megan allowed herself a secret smile. She certainly carried the veneer of confidence well. The skilfully applied make-up and expensive clothes all helped to create the image of a confident, outgoing woman, but inside she was still the little girl searching for the love and security that she had never really known, and which she was determined to give her own son. A sudden wave of panic surged through her body as she thought of the damage Darrow’s presence could have on Luke.

‘I’ll take that as a compliment,’ she said serenely, pushing her fears to the back of her mind. ‘Shall I?’ she added, her veneer slipping under his intense scrutiny.

‘Yes,’ he replied, his eyes never leaving her face, and she felt a touch of heat colour her cheeks.

‘You’re looking well,’ she returned, hating this banal conversation, but she was at a complete loss as to what to say under the circumstances. He did look well, too, she mused. The years had only added to his strength of character. His body was as firm and lean as ever, but he had always enjoyed sports of all kinds—a real outdoor man, she remembered with painful clarity. ‘Older, perhaps,’ she finally acknowledged, fixing a smile on her face.

‘None of us is getting any younger,’ he agreed with a smile, then added seriously, ‘And yet there was a time when we couldn’t wait to be older, remember?’

Remember? How could she ever forget, when she carried with her the constant symbol of their love? It had been love—at least then. Until he had gone to America and fallen in love with someone else, all in a matter of a few months. They had loved each other deeply and that was the reason why she had never told him. She had not wanted to stand in his way.

A grey veil of unshed tears filmed her eyes as her mind drifted back to that fateful day. It hadn’t been a deliberate ploy, but once she had found herself pregnant, Megan had thought that no one would stop them marrying. She had longed to tell Darrow, to see the pleasure on his face when she told him the wonderful news.

But he had had news of his own, she remembered with pain. A chance of a lifetime. He had won a writing scholarship—a year in America. She couldn’t have told him, robbed him of his chance to become a writer, stood in the way of his ambition. She had known how much that meant to him, and besides, he’d be back, so she had foolishly thought.

‘Some of us grew up very quickly anyway,’ she said with sudden bitterness as she recalled how he had betrayed her.

At first he had kept in touch. Letters had arrived three or four times a week, and Carrie had been mentioned in every one. Then nothing for one whole month, not a line, and she had known. She had understood what had happened.

He had mentioned Carrie, a girl he had met, in all his previous letters and they had obviously been seeing a lot of each other. Megan had known that she couldn’t compete with an attractive American who had wealth and position while she had nothing to offer to him—and how that had hurt. The pain of separation had been almost unbearable, but the realisation that she had lost him forever had seared her very soul.

She watched him stiffen now at the sharpness of her voice and it gave her a grim pleasure. ‘I was glad to get away,’ she added, throwing at him a final insult, reminding him that she too had found someone else even if her relationship with Karl had only been a fiction to save her pride. She was delighted when she saw that it irritated him.

‘So why come back now?’ he questioned. There was a trace of hidden anger in his tone, an unspoken accusation that he was unable to make. Megan felt a sudden surge of anger through her body but she quickly masked it. She had to remain as cool and as distant as he. She would never, ever give him the satisfaction of seeing her respond to him, no matter how difficult that might be.

‘My mother—’ she began simply, but he cut in, embarrassed by his own insensitivity.

‘I forgot, I’m sorry, Megan,’ he reassured her, for a fleeting moment looking like the young man she had known, so that the ice around her heart melted a little, warmed by his sympathy. He pushed his thick dark hair from his face, revealing an attractive touch of grey to his temples, a sad reminder that time had indeed travelled on, forcing an unbridgeable chasm between them.

She remembered that hair, falling gently between her eager fingers, soft and warm, and a faint tint of colour rose to her face at the memory which sprang so easily to mind. She promptly tried to dismiss it, struggling to return her thoughts to more neutral ground. She smiled briefly as their eyes met and held with the strong tie of the past. She dropped her head, turning away, knowing that he had seen the misting of her eyes in memory of what might have been. They had been so young, so in love…

The years they had been apart seemed to vanish as Megan’s mind drifted back to those heady, magical days when everything had seemed so perfect.

Darrow, despite everyone else’s doubts, had kept in touch with Megan the whole time he was at university, but the separation caused by his year in America had proved his love for her was not strong enough. He had found someone else and abandoned her—not that she would ever have let him know that. Her pride wouldn’t have let her. She had played him at his own game. She had exaggerated her friendship with Karl, the attractive German hitch-hiker who had been taking a walking holiday in the Yorkshire dales and had stayed for the rest of the summer, doing casual work at the local boat-yard.

‘Megan,’ he said huskily, moving closer, taking full advantage of her momentary lapse. A shudder of anguish tore through her body and she raised her hands before her, to prevent him from touching her. Megan knew her barriers would never be strong enough to cope with his touch.

She was already too vulnerable, weakened by the flood of emotions that were sweeping over her. It had been such a difficult year. Luke had been stricken by a general malaise that had baffled doctors for a time before their diagnosis of glandular fever. Then there had been her mother’s sudden death, and now her return home, after all those years of being away.

‘Don’t,’ she ordered, but her voice was weak and it sounded more like a desperate plea, whispered in hope. ‘Darrow, my mother’s death…coming back here…’ Her voice trailed off as his strong fingers curled around her wrists, drawing her hands down. His impetuous action caught her off guard, and the impact of the sudden warm touch on her skin riveted her to the spot.

‘Why not? Why have you come back?’ he demanded hoarsely. ‘You knew I was here. Didn’t you…?’ His tone had taken on a steely edge and his grip had intensified, forcing an immediate denial from Megan. Her eyes darted to his, searching his face for compassion but finding none, and his question troubled her; what did he think she had come back for? She struggled fruitlessly against his stubborn strength.

‘No, you’re wrong; I had no idea,’ Megan protested, alarmed by the thunderous clouds that swirled in the darkest depths of his eyes. She tried to pull away but her actions were futile; he was far too strong for her and her reaction only served to fuel his temper.

‘Then why now?’ he derided with a cruel sneer, the contempt etched clearly on his ruthless face, pulling her closer till their bodies almost touched. Megan tensed every fibre of her body as the haunting aroma of his aftershave teased her nostrils, flooding her with agonising memories.

‘I’ve told you—I’m here to sort out my mother’s estate,’ protested Megan, confronting his anger with complete candour, and she saw the flickering realisation in his eyes as he released her, his anger suddenly appeased. For a split-second she had seen the cool mask of indifference fall away and she stepped back in confusion.

‘Of course. I’m so sorry about your mother.’ His voice was now smooth and good-tempered, as if his outburst had never happened, which increased Megan’s confusion still further.

‘Don’t be,’ Megan replied quickly, as eager as him to put the strange incident behind her. ‘We never really got on, were never that close,’ she confessed, without a trace of remorse. She had come to accept their differences a long time ago.

It had been partly her mother’s fault that she had had to leave Rannaleigh; they would have never agreed about the situation. She had always been far too conventional for her mother, a disappointment in so many ways, yet they had kept in contact, grown closer over the years. Her mother, who had doted on her grandson, had made numerous visits to London, but Megan had never felt comfortable with the idea of going back to Rannaleigh, and by then her mother had understood her reasons and supported them. It was one of the few things they had come to agree on. Megan’s mother had respected her daughter’s independence. It had been the one thing they had in common besides their love for Luke.

Darrow remained silent, his expression fathomless, his dark eyes brooding.

‘I couldn’t make the funeral,’ she explained painfully, filling in the silence that only seemed to increase the tension between them. ‘But I’ve come now,’ she added lightly, her features impassive, displaying none of her inner hurt. But he caught the note of tension in her voice and his lips parted into an understanding smile. Megan dropped her own gaze, unable to bear the compassion in the shining eyes.

‘She was a strong individual, your mother,’ he said graciously. ‘Unfortunately she expected the same from everyone else,’ he concluded, a grimness entering his tone, and Megan knew he was remembering the painful scenes between herself and her mother which he had been an unwilling spectator to.

She felt her cheeks grow hot as a vivid flash of those adolescent arguments flashed through her mind. Yet, despite everything, in the end her mother had been right. Darrow was not to be trusted. Megan had been forced to admit it. They had been too young to be truly in love and when Darrow’s love had been tested he had failed her so spectacularly that she still remembered the twist of the knife searing her heart.

‘Are you planning on staying?’ His eyes narrowed on her face and she wondered where his source of annoyance was coming from. Surely she was the injured party, not him, and she felt a justifiable anger niggle inside her, deep down in the hidden well of emotions that she knew would belong forever to her first love.

‘I don’t know,’ she answered truthfully. Until that moment she had thought of it only as a passing visit; now her heart seemed to be aching to stay. ‘I don’t think so.’

She desperately scanned his face, but found nothing to encourage her to change her mind. She swallowed the painful lump that caught in her throat at the realisation that she had hoped to find some trace of affection. ‘There’s nothing for me here. There never was,’ she added, a trace of bitterness entering her tone, and her eyes met his in silent confirmation.

‘Wasn’t there?’ he snapped tautly. His anger was now well under control, but Megan could see the signs of its brittleness. His eyes had darkened into swirling inky pools of molten fierceness that betrayed his growing fury.

‘It was all such a long time ago, Darrow.’ She looked away as she shook her head, hating the sense of betrayal that was resurfacing after all this time. ‘I have to go. Excuse me.’ She flicked an anxious glance towards the door, suddenly agitated.

‘Wait,’ he ordered, his arm outstretched to prevent her moving. ‘I want to talk to you.’ His look was hard and demanding, his tone honed with the sharp steel edge of command.

Megan froze, responding instinctively to the authority in his tone, then hated herself for her weakness. She was no longer the silly girl he had known, susceptible to his overpowering strength.

‘There’s nothing to say,’ Megan snapped back, suddenly fearful. She couldn’t afford to be alone with him. How long could she trust herself in his company without the past coming back to haunt them? They were strangers now, she inwardly argued, despite the disturbing effect he was having on her. What do I know of him? He must have changed. Have I? she mused desperately.