Love's Labyrinth by Jessica Hart

Author:Jessica Hart
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2011-06-10T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

THERE was a long, intense silence. Courtney could feel his eyes on her face as she twisted the glass between her fingers. She looked at her plate, at the battered cruet set, at the poster of Switzerland which someone had stuck on the wall for some reason, at anything except Lefteris.

‘You know about me now,’ he said at last. ‘What about you? You haven’t told me about your family.’

‘I’m a bit of a misfit.’ Courtney picked at her aubergine, wondering if he could ever understand what it was like to be surrounded by confident, capable people when you were neither. ‘My parents are both very clever, both successful in their own fields. They’re never muddled, like me. Things seem obvious to them. They’re always confident they know best, and they always do. It’s very hard to argue with people who are always right. They just...overwhelm you. I wanted to please them, but I always seemed to end up disappointing them instead. Sometimes I think they wonder where on earth I came from. My sister has always been a credit to them, but I’m like a cuckoo in the nest.’

‘Are you like your sister?’

‘Like Ginny?’ The idea was so absurd that Courtney almost laughed. She laid down her fork, remembering years of being urged to be more like her sister. ‘No, I’m not like her. She’s everything I’m not. Ginny’s beautiful and I’m ordinary. She’s clever and witty, and I’m quiet and shy. She’s sensible, I’m a dreamer. Everything she does, she does perfectly, whereas I just seem to make a mess of things. I grew up feeling hopelessly inadquate because I could never be like her. while Ginny was out winning scholarships and tennis championships, I was reading in my room. That’s where I learnt to love history so much. It always seemed so much easier than coping with my parents’ ambitions.’

‘Why didn’t you go on to study history, if that’s what you were so interested in?’ he asked.

‘I’d got so used to feeling hopeless that I just seized up as soon as the word exam was mentioned, and in the end my teachers despaired of me. After I left school, my parents decided that I might as well do a cookery course, as it was the only thing I wasn’t a complete dunce at. At the time, it was just easier to give in, and, to be fair, I’m glad I did it. I like cooking, and I can earn my living, but...’

‘But you wanted to study archaeology?’

She nodded. ‘I know it’s not a very sensible idea. I did mention it tentatively, but my parents produced all sorts of reasons for not trying: I wouldn’t get on the course, I wouldn’t be able to cope, and if I did I’d never get a decent job at the end of it all.’ She looked at Lefteris at last. ‘It’s different for you. You’re strong. You’d never let anyone bully you, but I haven’t got the confidence. I just cave in.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.