An affair to forget by Rachel Lindsay

Author:Rachel Lindsay
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Romance: Regency, Contemporary, Fiction, Romance, Adult, Romance - General, Romance - Contemporary, General, Non-Classifiable, Fiction - Romance
ISBN: 9780373707652
Publisher: Harlequin Books
Published: 1978-08-15T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

All night Valerie tried to court sleep, and when she eventually gave up the attempt and rose, it was not yet seven o'clock. Slipping on her dressing gown, she went down to make some tea, then carried the tray upstairs. Passing her aunt's room, she quietly peeked in, and the alacrity with which Mrs. Pafford sat up told Valerie she too had long since been awake.

"So you couldn't sleep either," she smiled, handing her aunt a cup of tea.

"I'm afraid so. I kept thinking of you and your silly quarrel with Nicky."

"He phoned me at one o'clock this morning," Valerie said, "and told me he's going to America."

"Because of you?"

"Of course not! To record a new album of songs. It was all arranged very suddenly."

"How long will he be away?"

"A month."

"Did he ask you to go with him?"

Valerie shook her head. "It would be very expensive."

"Peanuts!" Aunt Alice said inelegantly. "If newspaper reports are anything to go by, he's a millionaire. I hope it isn't your silly pride that's preventing you going with him?"

"It has nothing to do with pride. It's just that he hasn't asked me to go!"

The older woman digested this remark. "Then you must suggest it yourself," she said slowly.

"I wouldn't dream of it!"

"Don’t be so stiff-necked, my dear. If Nicky were my fiancé I wouldn't let him out of my sight."

"You mean you wouldn't trust him!"

"He's a virile young man, Valerie, and he's surrounded by beautiful girls and other young men who have very loose morals. He needs someone like you to be with him. If he didn't, he wouldn't have fallen in love with you."

Valerie did not know what to say. More and more she was doubtful whether she and Nicky had a future. There was something about his attitude toward her that puzzled her. At times he seemed eager to have her with him and at others he acted as if she were a hair shirt. But when she tried to question him to ask why she irritated him, he always laughed and said that he was the one at fault.

"You're too nice for me," he had said only a few days ago. "That's the whole trouble, Val. I’m not sure I can live up to you."

No sooner were the words out and he had seen her stricken face, than he had withdrawn them, and their tiff had ended—as it always had done until last night— in kisses and reassertions of his love for her. Yet alone—as now—her doubts returned.

"I'm seeing him before he leaves," she murmured. "He may say something about my coming with him then."

As always it gave her a thrill to enter the hotel and see the admiring glances that followed her as she crossed the foyer and made her way to Nicky's suite— the only girl who had the right to do so unannounced. And how many thousands of them would give their eyeteeth to be in her position? Reminding herself of this, she entered the sitting room.

"Is that

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