`What's wrong with being sensible?' 'Nothing. It's just that sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I'd gone through a rebellious stage. I might have had more fun.' `Kicking the system? I did all that,' Luke said. `Oh, I-' Kate stopped. She had been about to say `I know'. `I can imagine,' she said after an infinitesimal pause.
Luke didn't seem to have noticed. `I thought I was having fun at the time, but, looking back, I think I was just unhappy.' He gave a careless shrug, but Kate felt suddenly ashamed.
It had never occurred to her before that the cold recklessness of Luke's youth had been due to unhappiness. It was well-known in the village that his mother had left years before, and since then he had lived alone with his father, an eccentric and rather reclusive man. No, his memories of Chittingdene would probably not be happy ones. She was glad she hadn't mentioned the past. Luke gave the impression of a man who had put it firmly behind him.
`How is your mother managing without you now?' he was asking.
`She got married again a few months ago.' Kate took a sip of wine. 'Thierry is far more capable than I am of looking after my mother, and he can afford to spoil her, but…'
`But you don't like him?'
`No. I've tried, but we just don't get on. Oh, it was all very polite, but somehow that made it even worse. When my sister sent Solange to school here it was an ideal excuse to leave without hurting my mother's feelings…' Kate trailed off. She hadn't meant to tell Luke all this, but somehow it had all come out. `They'll be far better off without me cramping their style,' she finished briskly. `My mother's a great party-goer, and always beautifully dressed. I'm afraid I didn't inherit any of her sense of style! She certainly looks far too young to have a daughter as old as me!'
'She sounds rather like someone I used to know, or at least know of. What was her name, now?' Luke's eyes narrowed in an effort of memory. `Well, it doesn't matter what her name was, but she was a Frenchwoman too-far too glamorous and racy for Chittingdene!'
Kate put her fork down on the plate rather unsteadily. 'Chittingdene?'
`The village where I grew up,' Luke explained. `It's a sleepy little place buried in Somerset. I haven't been there for years. Couldn't wait to leave.' He stared into his wine. `It's strange, I haven't thought of Chittingdene in years. I certainly haven't thought of Mrs… what was her name, now?'
`How did you get into project management?' Kate asked quickly, anxious to divert his mind from the past. She was surprised that he remembered her mother, who had always found village life much too staid and had spent as much time as possible in France.
Luke was talking, but her mind kept veering back to the past, comparing the rebellious youth she had known to the determined man who sat opposite her now, telling her about his struggle to succeed. They were so alike, and yet so different. Or was it just that she had been too young to see him properly before?
‘It must have been hard work,' she commented when he looked at her with raised brows, obviously wondering at her silence.
`It was,' Luke said. `But worth it in the end. I'm a rich man now.'
`I suppose you must be,' Kate said doubtfully, thinking of what a long, lonely slog it must have been.
`You don't sound very sure, Kate,' he said with some amusement. `No, don't tell me! Money isn't everything?'
`Well, it isn't, is it?'
'Kate, I'm disappointed in you! It's not like you to be trite. I suppose you think I should have acquired a wife and children and a dog to fetch my slippers along the way to make it all worthwhile?'
Kate met his eyes with her clear gaze. He was mocking, but there was an underlying edge of defensiveness in his voice. `I don't think you should have married. I'm just surprised you haven't.'
`I never wanted to get married,' he said shortly.
`I like my women as cynical as I am. That way no one expects anything and no one gets hurt.'
Don't they? Kate thought. What about the boy abandoned by his mother, shrugged aside by
Helen Slayne? What about the years of cynicism hardening slowly into bitterness?
`What about you?' Luke asked. `Why aren't you married? Are you holding out for Mr. Right? Or pining for a long-lost love?'
Unbidden, a memory of that long-distant summer's day washed over Kate. The smell of the long grass, the touch of his hands, the taste of his kiss. But that wasn't love, she reminded herself fiercely. That was just an initiation, a glimpse of how things might be.
`I'm not married because nobody has ever asked me to marry him.'
`Nobody's seen the way you look tonight.'
`No,' Kate agreed, hating his casual, meaningless words, her smile brittle. `You're the first.'
Luke was turning a spoon between his fingers as he watched her, but now he stopped and replaced it deliberately back by his plate. `I suppose I am,' he said slowly.
An uncomfortable silence fell. Kate gulped at her wine and searched her mind feverishly for a way to steer the conversation back to less personal waters. They were supposed to be talking business. How had they got on to love and marriage?
`Is Monsieur Robard-?'
'Do you know-?'
They both spoke at once, and broke off awkwardly.
`Go on,' Kate said, embarrassed.
`I was just going to ask if you knew Paris well,' Luke said in a stilted tone.
Kate seized on the innocuous topic, and for the rest of the meal kept the conversation cool and impersonal with an effort. Plates appeared and disappeared, glasses were refilled. Kate ate and drank and didn't taste any of it. She talked and talked about business, while her eyes kept sliding away from Luke's. She was agonisingly aware of him. She wished he would stop their determinedly polite conversation. She wished he would be rude, or make her angry, do anything to take her mind off the overwhelming desire to reach over and touch him. She was terrified to look at his face in case she couldn't drag her eyes away from his mouth, so she watched the other diners, and the gleam of cutlery, and his fingers curled around the stem of his glass.
At last it was over. Luke helped Kate into her coat and she shivered at the brush of his fingers.
`I'll get you a taxi,' he said as he opened the door for her. `I can walk from here.'
`I can easily get a bus,' Kate protested, but Luke ignored her, and they walked down to the corner of the road, not touching.
It had been raining. The pavement gleamed under the street-lights and cars passed them slowly, their tyres swishing on the wet road.
Kate dug her hands firmly into her pockets and stared down the road, willing a familiar yellow light to appear. Luke seemed content to wait in silence, but he was watching her so closely that Kate began to get more and more unnerved.
`Is something the matter?' she asked crossly at last.
`I keep getting this feeling I've met you before,' Luke admitted, almost reluctantly. `I haven't, have I?'
Kate's pulse leapt and she looked quickly away. `I think I'd remember you if we had met,' she said, unwilling to tell an outright lie now, but unable to face all the explanations if she admitted the truth.
`I suppose it's because you look so different tonight.' Luke sounded dissatisfied. He stepped up beside her on the kerb, and Kate had to make an effort not to flinch at his nearness. He was looking up and down the road, as if as anxious as she for a taxi.
`I can't get used to you like this,' he went on, glancing down at her. `I keep noticing things I never noticed about you before…' He trailed off, and Kate had the strangest feeling that he had surprised himself as much as her. `It really is amazing what a difference a haircut makes.'