Her brother’s face darkened with anger. ‘What’s he been saying to you?’
‘Only what a lot of other people have undoubtedly been thinking,’ she sighed. ‘I only wish I could tell them the truth, but it’s impossible. There’s your mother. And we mustn’t forget our father’s reputation.’
James gave her a sympathetic look. ‘Don’t be bitter, Kate. If I thought it would do any good to announce to the world that you’re my sister, then I’d do it. I know that things like illegitimacy are accepted nowadays, but if people realised that Richard St Just had fathered such a child eighteen years ago there would be a terrible scandal. Besides, as you said, there’s my mother to think of. You must realise what it would do to her if it became public knowledge. It was a shock for her to learn of your existence at all, without that.’
‘No more of a shock to her than it was to me.’ Kate smiled wanly at Sheri. ‘I’m sorry you have had to witness this, but James and I can never agree on the subject.’
‘That’s because he isn’t the one that’s illegitimate. He’d probably feel differently if it were him. Now don’t scowl at me, James,’ she teased him. ‘I can see this from both sides. You obviously feel for your mother, but Kate is the one who has to put up with the innuendoes about the two of you. Perhaps it will stop once we’re married.’
‘I wouldn’t count on it,’ James said dryly. ‘I should think it will make matters worse.’
‘Not if I move out it won’t,’ Kate said quietly.
‘Oh, but you aren’t—’
‘I couldn’t allow—’
‘Neither of you will stop me,’ she interrupted. ‘I realise now that it’s been the mistake we’ve made all along. I should never have come to live with you, James, but had my own apartment. And that’s exactly what I intend doing.’
‘You will not!’ James looked furious. ‘How can I keep an eye on you if you don’t live with me?’
‘I’m over eighteen. I don’t need your permission to move out.’
‘That’s because you aren’t going to. You’re staying right here. Let the gossips say what they like, I don’t give a damn.’
‘Sheri?’ she looked at her future sister-in-law.
‘I agree with James. This is your home, you don’t have to be forced out by gossip.’
‘And if I want to move out? If I want to be free to choose my own friends, live my own life?’
James snorted his disgust. ‘Like that insipid Nigel Humphries, I suppose?’
Kate looked uncomfortable. ‘Maybe not like Nigel—I think you were right about him. He only wanted to be friends with me because he thought I might get you to help with his career.’
‘I won’t say I told you so,’ he said, instantly contradicting himself. ‘And you aren’t moving out. I forbid it.’
‘James!’ Now it was Sheri’s turn to look shocked. ‘I agree with you about Kate not moving out, but you have no right to order her about. You must consider her feelings in all this.’
‘Thank you, Sheri,’ Kate smiled at her before turning back to James. ‘I do want to move out. I think it would be for the best. It has nothing to do with your marriage, in fact I want to move out in the next few days.’
James’ grey eyes narrowed suspiciously. ‘Does this have anything to do with Damien Savage, with the fact that you went out with him yesterday evening and I wasn’t able to reach you either then or this morning?’
Kate looked away, her face fiery red. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
His stance was challenging. ‘I mean has your decision to leave anything to do with Damien Savage.’
‘Certainly not,’ she replied truthfully.
‘Where were you last night?’ he asked softly.
‘I was at the apartment, I already told you that.’ Her temper threatened to overflow at her guilt in lying to him. ‘Don’t keep questioning me, James!’
‘I keep questioning you because I think you’re lying to me,’ he sighed. ‘If I thought my persuading you to go out with Damien had led you to—to—’
‘It didn’t.’ But it nearly had! How near the truth he was. Damien Savage had a magnetism that was positively lethal, drugging to the senses.
Sheri reached up to kiss James fleetingly on the lips. ‘I’m not running out on you, honey, but I do have that plane to catch. I’ll go and get my things together. Be gentle with her, hmm?’
‘She’s my sister, Sheri. My kid sister.’
Sheri smiled encouragingly at her before turning back to her fiancé. ‘She looks quite grown up to me, James. Quite old enough to make her own decisions.’
‘Thank you once again, Sheri,’ Kate said gratefully.
‘That’s enough of that,’ her brother interrupted gruffly. ‘I won’t have the two of you ganging up on me already.’
Sheri laughed, flicking back her shoulder-length hair. ‘I’ll just go and get my things.’
‘All right,’ he kissed her lingeringly on the lips. ‘Don’t be long. We only have an hour and a half to get you to the airport, although why you can’t break that damned modelling contract and stay here with me I don’t know. We could get married almost immediately.’
‘My, you’re impulsive when you want to be! I have to honour that contract because I’m a professional model, I have my reputation to think of. Besides, you have three more months’ run in that play to go yet. I intend for us to have a proper honeymoon, not a few days snatched together between working.’
James grimaced. ‘You see how she’s beginning to nag me already.’
‘Shame!’ His fiancée laughingly left the room.
Kate smiled. ‘I am pleased for you, James. Sheri is exactly right for you.’
He looked at her closely. ‘You’re sure you don’t mind? I did intend talking to you about it before I did anything as serious as proposing to her, but I just seemed to go ahead before I could talk to you.’
She grinned. ‘She just swept you off your
