The Return of Mrs. Jones by Jessica Gilmore Page A

grey eyes. Of course she knew more about his relationship with his parents than anyone else. He wasn’t used to that—to people seeing behind his flippant tone. He made damn sure that nobody did.
    ‘I can’t imagine it—your parents, of all people, taking it easy on cruise liners. How long since you bought them out?’
    ‘Coming up to four years.’ Jonas kept his answer short, terse.
    ‘Are they still involved?’
    ‘Now that , Lawrie dear, would mean them communicating with me.’ All this talk of his parents—his least favourite subject. It was time to turn the tables. ‘Talking about difficult relations,’ Jonas said, ‘how is your mother? Still in Spain?’
    Lawrie twisted in her seat and stared at him. ‘How did you know she was in Spain?’
    Jonas grinned to himself, allowing his fingers to beat out a tune on the leather of the steering wheel. Nice deflection, Jones. ‘I met her when she was over from Spain, introducing her new husband...John, isn’t it? He seemed like a nice bloke. Didn’t she come to London? She said she wanted to see you.’
    Lawrie’s mouth had thinned; the relaxed posture was gone. Any straighter and he could use her back as a ruler.
    ‘I was busy.’
    Jonas shrugged. ‘I think this one might be different. She seemed settled, happy.’
    Lawrie was radiating disapproval. ‘Maybe five is her lucky number.’
    ‘People make mistakes. Your mother certainly did. But she’s so proud of you.’
    ‘She has no right to be proud of me—she doesn’t know me. And if she was so keen to see me she should have come back for Gran’s funeral.’
    ‘Didn’t she?’
    He should have been at the funeral too. He’d said his own private goodbye to Gran on the day, alone at the cottage. But he should have gone.
    ‘She was on a retreat.’ It was Lawrie’s turn to be terse.
    Maybe it had been too successful a deflection. Jonas searched for a response but couldn’t find one. Lawrie had every right to be angry, but at least her mother wanted to make amends.
    His parents wouldn’t have known what they were expected to make amends for —as far as they were concerned any problems in their relationship were all down to him.
    He was their eternal disappointment.
    There was an awkward silence for a few long minutes, with Jonas concentrating on the narrow road, pulling over several times as tractors lumbered past, and Lawrie staring out of the window.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ she said suddenly. ‘I’m glad she’s happy—that five husbands and goodness knows how many boyfriends later she’s settled. But it’s thirty years too late for me.’
    ‘I know.’
    And he did. He knew it all. He knew how bitter Lawrie was about her mother’s desertion, how angry. He knew how vulnerable years of moving around, adapting to new homes, new schools, new stepfathers had made her.
    He knew how difficult it was for her to trust, to rely on anyone. It was something he couldn’t ever allow himself to forget.
    When it all got too much Lawrie Bennett ran away. Like mother, like daughter. Not caring who or what she left behind.
    This time he was not getting to get left in her destructive wake.
     

CHAPTER FOUR
    ‘W HAT HAVE YOU done with the helipad? And didn’t the ninth hole start over there? I’m not sure your father ever recovered from that lesson. Or your mother...although I did offer to pay for the window.’
    Lawrie would have bet everything she owned that a country house hotel catering for the rich was not Jonas’s style. But now she was here it was hard to pinpoint the changes she instinctively knew he must have made. Coombe End looked the same—a tranquil Queen Anne manor house set in stunning acres of managed woodland at the back, green meadows at the front, running into the vivid blue blur of sea on the horizon—and yet something was different. Something other than the change in owner and the apparent loss of a golf course and helipad.
    Maybe it was the car park? There were a few high-end cars