A Stranger's Kiss

embarrassment if Aunt Jenny found out.’
    ‘Home? I don’t understand.’
    She lay in his arms and tried to think how to start to explain her life. At the beginning. With her birth. Her mother had suffered dreadfully from depression afterwards she had been told, but she was recovering slowly. Jenny Lambert was a neighbour and friend and she suggested to her father they go away for a weekend, have a break. She would look after the baby.
    They had never returned and she had never left the Lambert’s house. Whether from a misplaced sense of guilt, or just a good heart, Jenny had taken on the responsibility of bringing her up alongside her own child.
    ‘She adopted you?’ Adam asked.
    Tara shook her head. ‘No. She was always just Aunt Jenny.’
    ‘But then why is your name Lambert?’
    ‘She had a son. Nigel. We grew up together. I’d always loved him, I suppose, like a big brother. But more than that. He was always protective. Always kind. Not like real brothers.’ The memory was warm now. No pain. ‘When he was eighteen he went away to art college. Each time he went back it was harder. I missed him so much. Then one day he phoned and asked me to go up to a college dance. I just thought he hadn’t got another girl to go with, but I didn’t care, I was over the moon. It was my dream come true. And apparently his too. As soon as he came home he asked me to marry him.’
    Adam shifted slightly at her side and frowned. ‘Didn’t people think it a bit odd?’
    ‘Why should they? Everyone knew that we weren’t brother and sister. Aunt Jenny was delighted.’
    ‘So what happened, Tara?’
    She took a deep breath. ‘He was specialising in jewellery design by then and he had been making a wedding present for me, a brooch—’
    ‘Is that the one you wear all the time? Like a little lopsided vee.’
    ‘It’s my name in shorthand,’ she explained. ‘I always signed my name like that when I wrote to him. I know it was silly—’
    He stopped the words with his finger to her lips. ‘No, not silly.’
    ‘It had taken longer to finish than he thought. It was the tiny diamonds for the vowels that caused the problem and he wanted it to be perfect.’ She hesitated, not sure if she could go on. He didn’t press her, waited patiently until she was in control once more, stroking her hair, reassuring her. ‘But he had to be home for the wedding rehearsal, Aunt Jenny had made such a fuss that everything should be perfect, and he was driving much too fast because he was late. He came off his motorbike and broke his leg.’
    ‘So why didn’t you cancel the wedding?’
    ‘Aunt Jenny and Lamby were going to New Zealand for six months. They had family out there and they had already put off the visit until after the wedding.’
    ‘Well that explains the very strange wedding photograph.’
    ‘It was all good fun. We popped a bottle of champagne and the nurses joined in, then his parents went off to the airport and in the evening I went home. An odd sort of wedding night all on my own.’ She had never since been able to stand the sound of the telephone ringing in the night. It brought it back, like a recurring nightmare to haunt her. ‘He collapsed in the night. They tried to revive him, but it was a thrombosis. No one had expected... he was young... fit...’
    ‘Oh, God.’ His arms tightened about her. ‘I’m so sorry.’
    ‘I went to the hospital—’
    ‘Don’t distress yourself. There’s no need to go on.’
    ‘I have to finish now. Tell you everything.’ She blinked back the tears. ‘He had been carrying a donor card you see and they wanted me to agree—’
    ‘You were alone? There was no one with you?’ His voice was fiercely angry. ‘How could they do that?’
    The horror of that night would never leave her. ‘I don’t suppose it was easy for them. And it seemed a way of keeping him alive, of making his life mean something. But Aunt Jenny... when they flew back for the funeral... she was horrified. She thought I’d desecrated her son’s body, taken something precious from her. She looked at me as if she hated me.’ Adam gently brushed away tears that were flowing freely now. ‘They went back to New Zealand afterwards and I’ve never seen them, or heard from them since.’
     

 
    CHAPTER TEN
     
    HE let her weep, holding her, cradling her. It was a long time before he spoke. ‘The Lamberts — did you try to keep in touch with them?’
    ‘I wrote to them. Four or five times. My