Snowfire by Dana James

Author:Dana James
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Headline
Published: 2013-01-03T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

‘Because,’ Allan replied, ‘at that moment she believed she was. As she had a husband and four children, the idea was just as upsetting for her as it was for you. But of course you didn’t think about that. You simply took the word of a distraught woman at face value and didn’t even give her, or me, the chance to explain.’ His words flayed her like a whip.

Beth flinched, and from beneath her lashes she watched him make a visible effort to control his bitter anger. When he spoke again, his clipped tone was almost devoid of expression.

‘She had seen a notice in the personal column of the paper that morning requesting that Allan Bryce and Shalana Prakesh-Bryce contact a certain firm of solicitors immediately. Shani recognised the firm as the one that had handled the annulment.

‘As soon as her husband had gone to his surgery and she had taken her children to school, she began trying to contact me. We had lost touch and neither had the other’s new address. After trying several Bryces in the phone book and getting nowhere, she decided to go to the solicitors herself. It seems the partner who dealt with our case had for some time been embezzling clients’ money.

‘Soon after Shani and I had sworn our affidavits and I had paid him in advance for what he assured us was a simple rubber-stamp job, he had absconded to Spain, just one step ahead of the fraud squad. To cover his tracks he had left a very tangled web behind, and a lot of misfiled papers.

‘It had been the discovery, by one of the other partners, of our papers, apparently incomplete, which had prompted the advertisement. They had written to our last known addresses, but the letters had never been sent on.’

Beth hung on to his every word.

‘Shani had not told Akhil, her husband, about our arrangement. And if the annulment wasn’t legal, it meant her present marriage was bigamous and her children illegitimate. By the time she had managed to find out where I lived, and had arrived on the doorstep with a letter setting out the problem in case I wasn’t at home, she was frantic with worry and had already convinced herself of the worst.’

Beth’s eyes were wide and her hand shook as it crept up to cover her mouth. ‘God,’ she whispered, ‘I didn’t …’ Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined anything like this. ‘If only …’

If only she had made Shalana wait, asked her to explain, invited her in until Allan got back. The last two years need never have happened. If only she had battled her childhood fears, refused to let them overwhelm her, forcing her to run rather than face a repeat of her mother’s unhappiness. In the event, she had suffered far more than she would have believed possible. And it had all been totally unnecessary. If only she had trusted him.

‘If only,’ Allan repeated softly. ‘That is one of the saddest phrases in the English language.

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