‘I don’t think it’s anything serious,’ Tara hastened to add, but Claudia could see from her expression, hear in her voice that, on the contrary, she thought it was extremely serious. Taking a deep breath, she turned her head to look smilingly at her daughter—their daughter—hers and Garth’s.
‘It’s all right, darling,’ she told her equably. ‘Your father is, after all, perfectly free to have a relationship with someone else. We are divorced and have been for ten years.’
‘I know.’
As she watched the expressions chase one another across Tara’s face, Claudia acknowledged that physically no one would ever guess that they were mother and daughter.
For a start, Tara was a good eight inches taller than she was herself, but then that seemed to be the usual way of things these days. She didn’t think she had a single friend whose daughter didn’t tower inches above them.
Tara also had completely different colouring from her mother’s. Where Claudia had a pale, delicate, English-rose complexion and the soft blonde hair to go with it, Tara’s skin tone was much, much warmer, her eyes darker and her hair a rich dark brown tumbling past her shoulders in heavy, lustrous curls. Her deep green eyes were Garth’s, and like her, his hair, too, was very dark, but unlike Tara’s, Garth’s was straight.
‘Dad said that you were going to be nominated for the Businesswoman of the Year award,’ Tara announced abruptly.
Now Claudia couldn’t conceal her reaction.
How on earth had Garth known that? She had only been told of the nomination a matter of days ago herself.
‘He’s very proud of you, Ma,’ Tara asserted. ‘We both are. Everyone thinks you’re wonderful,’ she added, ‘and you are.’
‘The last time you flattered me like this, I seem to remember it had something to do with the fact that you’d completely burned out one of my best pans,’ Claudia reminded her dryly.
‘Boiling eggs, which I forgot,’ Tara agreed laughing, and then suddenly the laughter died. ‘Ryland is going back to Boston at the end of the month,’ she told Claudia quietly. ‘He’s asked me to go with him.’
‘For a holiday?’ Claudia asked lightly even while she knew, guessed, sensed what was coming, felt it in every doom-laden wave of panic that struck her body.
‘No … well, at first, perhaps. Ry …’
Ryland Johnson was Tara’s American boyfriend, seven years her senior. Tara had brought him home to meet Claudia at Christmas, and she had liked him immediately and immensely. It was obvious to Claudia even then that the two of them were head over heels in love.
‘He only planned to stay over here for a year and … He wants me to meet his family and his friends. He wants …’
Tara bit her lip.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ she told her mother, adding pleadingly, ‘Please don’t be unhappy. America isn’t so very far away, not these days, and you … I love him so much, Ma,’ she confessed helplessly, flinging herself bodily into Claudia’s arms as the tears filled her eyes. ‘I know how you must be feeling and I wish, too, that I could have fallen in love with someone from home … that we could have lived here close to you and … I’m going to miss you so much.’
Claudia closed her eyes, not to suppress her own tears but to suppress the sick feeling of dread that was surging over her.
‘Does … have you told your father yet?’ she managed to ask through dry lips.
Tara shook her head.
‘No. I wanted to tell you first. Dad just thinks I’m going for a holiday. Well, officially, that’s all it is, but … I’m not, and it will be much easier for me to get a visa that way. I don’t know which I’m dreading the most,’ she added with a shaky smile, ‘the vetting I’m going to get from the US government or the one Ryland says I’ll get from his aunt. If anything, I suspect his aunt’s will be worse. Apparently, she’s fantastically wealthy and very WASP about whom Ryland marries. Ryland says she’s a terrifying combination of old New England blood and equally old New England money.’
Tara giggled as she released Claudia and stepped back. ‘I’m dreading having to meet her,’ she announced indifferently. ‘According to Ry, she’s going to want to know everything there is to know about my background. Not that I’ve any worries in that department. After all, your family and Dad’s go back for ever, don’t they?
‘Ma … what is it? Please don’t look like that,’ Tara begged shakily as she saw her mother’s expression.
Claudia had gone white, the bone structure of her pretty heart-shaped face suddenly standing out so sharply that Tara had an unnerving and distressing image of how her mother might look in twenty years’ time. Her normal warm and loving soft blue eyes looked so bleak and filled with despair that Tara had to fight to control her own emotions.
‘Ma, I know how you must feel,’ she repeated huskily, ‘but there’ll be visits, holidays … and who knows, perhaps Ryland will change his mind once he gets me over there and decide that he doesn’t want to marry me after all,’ she finished lightly. But Claudia knew that she didn’t mean it … didn’t want to mean it.
‘Have you applied for your visa yet?’ she managed to ask as she fought to control her reactions to the blow Tara had just unwittingly dealt her.
‘I’ve applied but I haven’t got it as yet,’ Tara told her cheerfully. ‘Not that there should be too much of a problem getting a visitor’s visa. It’s when Ry and I get married and I need to apply for citizenship that we might have some difficulties. Ryland keeps teasing me that if I can pass his aunt’s inspection of my antecedents, then I won’t have any problems with the US government and everyone knows how strict they are and how thoroughly they go into a person’s background.
‘Ma … what is it … what’s wrong?’ Tara demanded anxiously as her mother gave a small strangled gasp and then covered her mouth with her hand.
‘Nothing,’ Claudia lied. ‘I just don’t … I think I may have eaten something that disagreed with me. I just feel a little bit nauseous.’
‘If you feel sick, do you think you should be going out this evening, then?’ Tara cautioned with maternal solicitude that, at any other time, would have brought Claudia to touched laughter. In that respect, in her nature, her upbringing, her reactions and responses to others, Tara was totally and completely her child, even if her swift intelligence and her equally swift assimilation of information were her father’s inheritance to her.
‘I … I … I have to go out,’ Claudia told her truthfully. ‘I’m giving a talk to the Townswomen’s Guild and I can’t let them down.’
‘You could, but you won’t,’ Tara corrected her lovingly. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve given you a shock. I …’ She dipped her head in the same protectively defensive gesture Claudia herself had adopted earlier. ‘I … Ryland asked me to go back to Boston with him several weeks ago, but I couldn’t get down to see you before now and I didn’t want … I wanted to tell you myself … to be here. I love him so much, Ma. He’s everything I’ve ever wanted in a man. You do like him, don’t you?’
‘Yes. I do like him,’ Claudia agreed truthfully.
‘I know how you must be feeling,’ Tara had told her when she announced her plans. But could she? How could anyone?
Perhaps she ought to have been prepared … to have known … guessed … She had, after all, seen at Christmas how much Tara and Ryland were in love, but she had somehow assumed—because she had wanted, needed, to assume, no doubt—that Ryland had decided to make his future in Britain. Still, even if she had known, what could she have done? How could she have prevented