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CHAPTER ONE
‘KATE, for goodness’ sake, it’s a dinner party I’y!’
With wry exasperation, Sue reflected that her husband John had been right when he said that Kate would dig her heels in and prove to be as intractable about refusing this invitation as she had been in refusing all their others
She and Kate had been friendly ever since their High School days; they had grown up together, and yet despite that, there was a barrier between thee, to pull up and hide herself behind
Sue knehy, of course, and she sighed inwardly, reflecting how perverse and cruel fate could be No woifted with Kate’s looks and sensuality should live as she did, co herself off froreed now to put the farone with it was long gone, sold after Ricky’s death to pay off his ga and other debts Kate refused to blae had been, but Sue’s quick teht about him It was all very well for Kate to say that she was equally to blame; that she should never have hteen to his twenty-eight; still shocked by the sudden death of her father and the totally unexpected arrival into her life of the mother she had not seen since she was ten years old
Perhaps Kate was right, and Ricky was not to blaer for the e The land Kate had inherited froside the farrandfather, and he hadn’t takenfar more than a docile, biddable wife Even then there had been ru, and Kate’s mother must have known about thehter off to hinised as extremely unmaternal haste But then, at only seventeen and a half, Kate was still under age, and her mother would have had to take her back to the States with her, if she had not been able to leave her with Ricky
Sue knew enough about Valerie Patton to knoelcohter would have been to her Los Angeles lifestyle Following her divorce fro career, landing a part in an A up that role in order to take up the farMrs Harold Patton the Third
She had been frankly staggered when she saw Valerie at her ex-husband’s funeral; she had looked barely half a dozen years older than her own teenage daughter, and almost as beautiful But unlike Kate, Valerie’s beauty was barely even skin deep; her charm as brittle and delicate as the eon had fashioned on her face No, there had been no roohter, and so while she was still suffering from the shock of her father’s death, Kate had been hustled into e with Ricky
Only once in the ten years since then had Kate ever e to Sue; and that had been six years ago, just after Ricky’s death What she had confided then had both appalled and stunned Sue Even then Kate would not bla that she herself was as much to bla herself in love with hi else had made Sue’s sye point of her own maturity What could a seventeen-and-a-half-year-old, who had only known the distant and ill-expressed love of a much older father, know of adult emotions? In Sue’s opinion, if Kate had believed herself in love with Ricky, it had been because both Ricky hiood care that she should do so Although Kate had never confir of Ricky’s predilection for ga, Valerie had offered him hter After all, Valerie Patton was an extremely wealthy woman
A soft, faintly h drew Sue back fro in front of theand the light from it framed the darkly turbulent beauty of which she herself was so unaware
Once again Sue sighed It was all such a waste Kate should be going out,here alone in this reet her friend ed over the years She was no longer the shy, vulnerable adolescent she had once been In fact nowadays she was surprisingly firly so, like now
‘Look, Kate, I pro to matchmake,’ Sue told her firmly ‘I want you to come to dinner with us, that’s all’
‘Only with you and John?’
Hulealy as Kate looked back at her friend
‘No, not just John and me,’ Sue admitted ‘There’ll be others there… But, Kate, can’t you see what you’re doing to yourself?’ She sounded exasperated now, and she was She had talked this over with John again and again, and her husband as a GP in local practice agreed with her that because of the isolation of her ho herself off fro too solitary ‘You’re young…only twenty-seven,’ Sue persisted doggedly ‘You’re clever, beautiful…Kate, you can’t possibly want to spend the rest of your life alone!’