A Suitable Husband. Jessica Steele

a sweet, totally feminine voice.

      ‘Thanks for pinching Ash. How’s your back?’ Jermaine opened with sisterly candour.

      ‘He rang you?’ Edwina was clearly outraged, her sweet tone swiftly departing, sounding not the slightest abashed that Jermaine knew about her and Ash. ‘He had no right…’

      Edwina could talk of right! ‘Why wouldn’t he ring—with you “suffering” the way you are.’

      ‘Stuff that—you should see his brother!’

      Click. In that one sentence Jermaine, who knew her sister so well, had it all worked out. The wealthy elder brother, bachelor brother, had returned home unexpectedly and Edwina—never one to miss a chance and already established at Highfield—had no intention of removing herself from his orbit. Due to leave Highfield the next day, Edwina must have had her greedy little brain working furiously in her endeavour to find some way of lingering on at Highfield. Jermaine saw it all. Lukas Tavinor would be a much better catch than his brother. Poor Ash; like the proverbial hot coal, he would be dropped.

      ‘You’re a better rider than Ash?’

      ‘He’d barely settled in his saddle when I took off,’ Edwina boasted.

      ‘He wants me to come down and “look after” you.’

      ‘Don’t you dare!’ Edwina shrieked.

      ‘Don’t worry, I wasn’t going to,’ Jermaine retorted, and hung up.

      Well, she had no need to feel guilty any more, Jermaine fumed. All too plainly there was nothing wrong with Edwina’s back. Her ‘accident’ had merely been a means to an end. By the sound of it, the globe-trotting Lukas Tavinor was back in England for a short while—Edwina wanted to be ‘on the spot’ while he was still around, and before he went away again. And what Edwina wanted, she invariably got.

      Jermaine was familiar with her sister’s tactics, yet even so it still shook her that there had not been a scrap of remorse from Edwina, or apology, for ‘holidaying’ with her younger sister’s boyfriend. Edwina had cared not a bit, nor felt any need to pretend when they’d been on the phone just now. She had not hurt her back, but took Jermaine’s loyalty for granted, assuming without question that she would not tell anyone what a humbug Edwina really was.

      And the devil of it was, Jermaine fumed, Edwina was right. Edwina had done nothing to earn her loyalty, but she had it. She knew Jermaine wouldn’t be telling Ash what a fraud she was. But he had enough to learn. Jermaine went to bed wondering if he knew yet that he and Edwina were history.

      By morning Jermaine was coming to terms with her ex-boyfriend’s duplicity and was starting to feel a little incredulous that she had ever given more than a passing thought to the sort of commitment Ash had wanted. Good grief, he was as fickle as the rest of them! She had been so sure about him too. So sure that he wasn’t remotely interested in Edwina.

      Well, it was doubly certain now that the next man who dated Jermaine Hargreaves had better not try the ‘commitment’ angle. She positively was not interested. Come to that, she wasn’t interested in dating again either. She had a good job; she’d concentrate on that.

      Thinking of which, Jermaine left her flat and drove to her place of work, aware as ever that something seemed to cut off in her when her boyfriends strayed in her sister’s direction—Jermaine was no longer attracted to them and Edwina was welcome to the spoils. One or two had come back, pleading for a second chance, but Jermaine just hadn’t wanted to know.

      It was the same with Ash—she had lost interest in him. She had enjoyed his company but should he ever again ask her to go out with him then she would tell him, quite truthfully, thanks, but no thanks.

      And, having moved on, Ash Tavinor would become someone she once knew, and would be no more than that—Jermaine got on with her work.

      ‘Coming for a swift half?’ Stuart Evans invited when they were clearing their desks for the day.

      She had nothing else pressing, and Stuart was more a friend than anything else. No way could his invitation be construed as a date. ‘Since you ask,’ she accepted, and the ‘swift half’ turned out to be a bar meal. Jermaine arrived home around nine to hear her phone ringing.

      ‘It’s Ash,’ he said as soon as she answered.

      Ash who? or Hi? Since she knew full well that there was nothing whatsoever the matter with Edwina, Jermaine simply couldn’t bring herself to enquire how she was. ‘How’s Ash?’ she enquired instead.

      ‘Look, Jermaine, couldn’t you come and look after Edwina? Not that there’s a lot to do,’ he added quickly. ‘The poor darling’s talking of going back to her place—she doesn’t want to be a nuisance. But I can’t let her do that and…’

      ‘In case you didn’t hear me last night—I have a job to go to.’ Jermaine cut him off, with no intention at all of going down to Highfield to hold her sister’s hand.

      ‘I never knew you were so hard!’ Ash complained.

      Hard! ‘Let me put it this way. Edwina’s your holiday companion—take an extended vacation.’ There was a brief silence, but if Ash was drumming up some kind of an argument, Jermaine didn’t want to know. ‘Goodbye, Ash,’ she bade him, and had barely put the phone down before it rang again.

      ‘Have you no concern at all about your sister?’ enquired a harsh voice she had never heard before—though her mind was working overtime as to whom her caller might be.

      Jermaine only just managed to bite back a snappy retort. She swallowed hard. ‘Good evening,’ she managed pleasantly.

      ‘Your place is here, looking after your sister, not staying out half the night.’

      It was only a little after nine o’clock! Which monastery had he sprung from? Jermaine strove hard for control. ‘Have we been introduced?’ she tossed in shortly.

      ‘Lukas Tavinor!’ he barked—as she’d surmised, Ash’s brother. ‘Ash has an important meeting he can’t miss tomorrow. You’d better come now and…’

      At which point Jermaine lost the small control she had over her annoyance with the whole lot of them. ‘ I’ve got an important meeting tomorrow!’ snapped she who hadn’t, not caring at all for his tone, much less his orders. ‘Edwina’s your guest—you look after her.’

      A tense silence was her immediate answer. Followed by a clipped, ‘Ash was wrong to suggest I should try ringing you. You are as hard as he said you were.’

      Jermaine’s breath caught. She didn’t even know this man, yet here he was ready to brand her—when all she’d done was to go out with his brother. This, and his brother’s duplicity, was what she received for her trouble!

      ‘That’s right,’ she agreed.

      ‘You won’t…?’

      ‘I won’t.’

      ‘My…’ He seemed to find her insensitivity beyond words.

      ‘Oh—go and play with your train set!’ she erupted, and abruptly terminated his call.

      Suddenly she was the bad lot in all of this! Jermaine felt like throwing something. She didn’t even know the man. He didn’t know her. Yet, even so, he was ready to believe her to be heartless!

      Well, on reflection she supposed it did look bad. But it wouldn’t look half so bad if Lukas Tavinor knew the truth—that all time she’d believed his brother was her boyfriend he had been dallying with her sister. Not that Jermaine was likely to tell him. And it certainly didn’t sound as if Ash had. But she could sit back with a feeling of relief; at least her parting remark had ended any odd chance that Lukas Tavinor Esquire might telephone her again.

      Strangely, when the day before Jermaine had thought frequently of how when she had been cosily imagining Ash slaving away in Scotland he had been cosily having a fine old holiday