Читать книгу Wedding Nights: Woman to Wed? - Пенни Джордан, PENNY JORDAN - Страница 11

IT WAS almost one o’clock when Brad finally arrived. Opening the boot of his car, he removed a couple of suitcases and carried them into the house.

‘Is it OK if I take these straight up?’ he asked Claire tersely.

A little taken aback by his abrupt manner, Claire nodded.

Was he, like her, having second thoughts about the wisdom of moving in with her? she wondered as she waited downstairs for him to return.

‘I’m sorry I didn’t make our original time,’ he apologised as he came back down again. ‘There was a slight problem at the office. They had a break-in last night and although no stock was stolen we lost an extremely expensive piece of computer equipment.’ His frown deepened.’ It looks very much like whoever broke in knew exactly what they were going for …’

‘But what about the on-site security guards?’ Claire asked him. ‘Surely they must—?’

‘What security guards?’ Brad queried with dry emphasis. ‘It seems that for reasons of economy the security guards had been cut down from the original four to just one, and he was in another part of the site when the break-in took place. False economy, as it turned out …’

Claire winced as she heard the irritation in his voice, her mind going anxiously and immediately to Tim. She sincerely hoped that the blame for what had happened wouldn’t fall onto his shoulders; technically he was not in charge of the site which housed the office and distribution centre …

‘At least no one was hurt,’ was the only comment Claire could think of to make.

‘Somebody, no,’ Brad agreed, ‘but something, yes.’ His voice had become a few degrees colder and very much harder as he told her, ‘Ultimately our overall profits and, through them, the feasibility of the British side of our business are bound to be hurt by the cost of replacing the stolen equipment—even if our insurers pay out it will result in an increase in our premium, plus the business lost through the loss of the equipment …’

He shook his head, his frown lifting slightly as he added, ‘However, none of this is your concern …’

‘Tim is very conscientious,’ Claire felt bound to point out to him in defence of her brother-in-law, her voice dropping huskily. ‘Irene’s concerned about him. We both are. He’s been working such long hours recently and the stress—’

‘You’re obviously very fond of him,’ Brad interrupted her.

‘Yes, very,’ Claire confirmed protectively, missing the quick, frowning glance he gave her.

Sally’s postcard lay face down on the table next to him and he read it without meaning to. Who was the man in whom Claire only had a share? Was it Tim? Claire was certainly very close to him and very protective of him.

He liked Tim well enough—he was obviously a kind-hearted man although a little on the weak side—but the thought of him being Claire’s lover filled him with such a surge of angry antagonism that he knew that if Tim had actually been there …

Hey … ease back, he warned himself. You’re not here to get involved. Just because she’s alone and vulnerable, just because it sounds like her marriage wasn’t much of a marriage at all … just because she makes you feel as horny as hell and when you touch her all you can think of is taking her to bed, that doesn’t mean …

‘I … I’m not sure exactly what arrangements you want to come to as regards meals and so on,’ he heard Claire saying. ‘We haven’t discussed … Irene did intimate that you wanted to live somewhere en famille …’

‘Yes. Yes, I do,’ Brad agreed, struggling to suppress an alluring vision of sharing breakfast with her, of watching her move about the kitchen, her hair still damp from her shower, her face free of make-up, her body tantalisingly naked beneath her robe.

When she stood next to him he would be able to smell the clean, fresh, feminine scent of her skin, the exposed V of the valley between her breasts headily close to him—so close that if he turned his head he would be able to reach up and pull her down onto his lap, burying his face … his mouth … in that deliciously fragranced, womanly secret place.

Was he experiencing some hormonal overload which resulted in thoughts more appropriate to one’s teenage years than to one’s present maturity? Brad wondered grimly.

‘You’ll want me to prepare dinner for you in the evening?’ Claire was persisting.

‘Ultimately, yes,’ Brad agreed, ‘but initially I’ll probably be working into the evening so I’ll grab something to eat myself …’

He was frowning again, remembering Tim’s defensiveness over the problems he was having in meeting their high standards. It was Brad’s view that Tim simply wasn’t assertive enough, but he didn’t want to make over-hasty judgements.

He had known all along that the task his uncles had forced on him wasn’t going to be easy, but now … And getting involved with Claire, when she was Tim’s family and when she obviously felt so strongly about him … One thing he did know, though, he recognised, was that if she and Tim were lovers then it couldn’t be a very passionate relationship.

‘Is that everything?’ he heard Claire asking him. ‘Have you anything else to bring in from the car?’

‘Er … yes … as a matter of fact there is something. I’ll just go and get it …’

He was only gone a few moments, returning with what looked like a very expensive balled-up cashmere sweater, which he was carrying very carefully.

‘Er … we … I … we found this in the boiler room. Looks like it’s been abandoned by its mother, and I …’

The cashmere bundle started to move, a surprisingly strong mewing sound emerging from it.

‘It’s a cat,’ Claire protested.

‘A kitten,’ Brad corrected her, opening the cashmere to reveal its occupant. ‘Not even six weeks old yet, I guess … Too young to survive on her own, anyway, that’s for sure …’

‘Her?’ Claire questioned.

‘Well, I don’t know for certain, but she’s so pretty I guess I thought she had to be female,’ Brad confessed, both his face and his voice softening as he gently extracted the kitten from his sweater and showed her to Claire.

Her first thought was that the animal was so small that she was almost afraid to touch her; her second was that, as Brad had said, she was extraordinarily pretty—a little fluffy tabby with white socks and huge, brave eyes.

‘John didn’t like animals,’ she heard herself saying uncertainly. ‘He would never allow them in the house … He thought—’

‘He thought.’ Brad stopped her. ‘But what do you think, Claire?’

Claire could see the anger in his eyes although she couldn’t understand the cause of it.

‘This was John’s home,’ she reminded him with quiet dignity, ‘and I—’

‘And you what? You were just a visitor here? But it’s your home now, isn’t it? Your home, but perhaps not, after all, a home—the home for this little one. What she needs isn’t just somewhere where she’s permitted as a visitor; what she needs is somewhere where she’s wanted and loved …’

For some reason his words hurt her, uncovering a wound that she had not even acknowledged was there before, Claire realised.

Without being aware of what she was doing she had stretched out her hands and taken the kitten from him. The creature felt as light as thistledown but surprisingly warm, and as Claire held her she suddenly heard the most extraordinary noise. It took her several seconds to realise what it was and when she did she exclaimed, enchanted, ‘She’s purring!’

‘She obviously likes you,’ Brad told her.

‘I’ll have to keep her out of the drawing room,’ Claire heard herself saying crooningly as she held the kitten protectively.

‘She probably can’t lap properly yet,’ Brad was warning her. ‘You’ll have to feed her with an eye-dropper for a while. Cat formula will be best … We reared three of them that way. The kids found them in an old barn. Skin and bone, they were. I never thought they’d live …’ He smiled reminiscently to himself, remembering his sister Mary-Beth’s determination to save them.

He had been terrified that they weren’t going to survive. It had been the first time since their parents’ death that she had taken an interest in anything.

Claire started to put the kitten down and immediately she wailed in protest.

As he saw the soft, loving look in Claire’s eyes Brad mentally marvelled at the ability of the young of any species to ensure their own survival.

‘I’ve never had a cat before,’ Claire told him uncertainly. ‘I’m not sure what—’

‘It’s simple,’ Brad told her. ‘She’ll need her own bed, some food, plenty of love—oh, and a soil tray, and you’ll have to have her checked over by a good vet. Didn’t you ever have any pets as a child?’ he questioned her curiously.

Claire shook her head.

‘No … I … I was brought up by my great-aunt. My … my parents were killed when I was very young …’ She saw his face and shook his head. ‘It’s all right … I can’t even remember them—at least, not clearly. Just …’ She hesitated, not wanting to remember how often as a child she had cried herself to sleep, clinging to the memory of her mother’s perfume, her father’s voice …

‘She … she didn’t approve of pets and then John …’

Brought up by a great-aunt; that explained the air of quiet attentiveness she had, that lack of modern restlessness that could be so wearying.

He wondered if she realised quite what an intriguing person she was, and then reminded himself grimly that the other man—whoever it was that she only had a part-share in—had no doubt already told her so.

Did her relationship with him predate her husband’s death? Somehow he doubted it. He could, however, well imagine her falling victim to someone in the aftermath of his death, needing someone to lean on and turn to … And who better, perhaps, than a man she already knew?

Surely she knew that it was a relationship that couldn’t go anywhere, that she was demeaning herself by accepting such a meagre offering—a plastic and unsatisfying imitation of what love, commitment … sex between a man and woman should really be about?

It angered him that she could have allowed herself to be dragged into such an unfulfilling relationship. Angered him and saddened him as well.

And as for the man involved, whoever he was—Tim or someone else—he wasn’t very much of a man, in Brad’s opinion, if he could take advantage of someone so obviously vulnerable. Irritably Brad caught himself up. Take advantage of her! She was an adult woman, for God’s sake, and just because she looked … and he felt …

She was still crooning softly to the cat and the thought crossed his mind that it was no wonder that her late husband had wanted her as a stepmother for his daughter. There was something about the soft, tender curve of her mouth as she held that impossibly small bundle of fluff and nothing that made his own guts ache and …

Hell, he didn’t have space in his life for something like this, for someone like her. He had plans … dreams … that boat to build and sail.

‘You’ll have to find a name for her,’ he told Claire gruffly. She flushed slightly as she acknowledged his comment. The kitten felt so soft and warm, its small body throbbing with purring pleasure as she held it.

‘What about dinner this evening?’ she remembered as Brad headed for the door. ‘Will you—?’

‘Yes, if that’s convenient,’ he confirmed.

He had a meeting with Tim at three and some paperwork to go through, but he guessed that he could do that later here, and he wanted to phone home, check that everything was OK, he admitted to himself. The fact that his siblings were all now adult didn’t do an awful lot to lessen his feelings of responsibility towards them.

He frowned as he looked down at the postcard again. Mary-Beth had been going through a bit of a difficult time with her marriage recently. She was inclined to be very hot-headed and impulsive, with very clear and uncompromising views, outwardly strong-willed but inwardly still vulnerable.

There was a girl at work who had been making a bit of a play for her husband, and although nothing had actually happened Brad knew that she felt hurt and angry at the fact that her husband had obviously been slightly flattered by the girl’s attention.

Brad could see both sides of the situation. His sister had been very wrapped up in the children recently, and her husband, Abe, whilst quite obviously loving her and their children, couldn’t understand what she was so angry about, especially when he had been the one to tell her about the girl’s interest in him.

Claire saw his frown deepen as he continued to stare down at the kitchen table and Sally’s postcard but the kitten had started to cry, distracting her.

‘Sounds like she’s hungry,’ Brad said. ‘You could try her with a few drops of milk from an eye-dropper if you’ve got one.

‘I’ll pick up some formula and the other stuff for you on my way back to the office if you like.’

Claire stared at him. John would never have offered to do anything like that. He had been a little old-fashioned in that way, preferring to keep what he saw as their roles very clearly separate.

He had been the man of the house, the breadwinner, and financially he had made sure that Claire never had anything to worry about.

It would never have occurred to him, though, to offer to do any shopping for her and she knew that he would have been horrified if she had suggested it to him. That had been her responsibility.

The kitten had taken to the dropper eagerly and hungrily, her small stomach filling, much to Claire’s relief.

She was going to be a real femme fatale, Claire decided, a natural flirt, and deserved to be named accordingly. As a temporary home for her, Claire had filled an old shoe-box with some soft cotton, and the kitten was now curled up asleep in it. As she watched her Claire tried not to think about how disapproving John would have been about her introduction to the household.

‘Just remember,’ she told the sleeping creature firmly, ‘the drawing room is out of bounds.’

She could have sworn that in her sleep the kitten smiled a knowing, naughty feline smile.

John might not have approved of pets but she had always wanted one, Claire admitted to herself. Already just watching the small sleeping creature made her feel happy.

Happy … that was it. She was going to call her Felicity, she decided. Felicity. She said the name out loud, her smile turning into a small bubble of laughter as the kitten opened her eyes and stretched out her small body as though in approval of her new name.

A telephone call to a friend who had cats of her own had provided her with the name of a vet, and she now walked over to the calendar hanging on the wall to make a note of the appointment she had made for Felicity, plus a note of her follow-up appointment six weeks later, and as she did her attention was caught by the red cross she had placed on the calendar to mark her lunch-date with Poppy and Star.

Well, she certainly wasn’t going to have any difficulty in keeping to their agreement to resist the supposed power of their contact with the bride’s bouquet.

It would, of course, be different for the other two, or at least she hoped it would be. Poppy would eventually get over her teenage infatuation for her cousin and be able to put it aside and recognise it for what it was, leaving her free to give her adult love to a man who loved her in return.

Star’s past history meant that it would not be easy for her to allow herself to trust anyone enough to form a commitment to them … Difficult, but not impossible, and Claire sincerely hoped that she would one day be able to do so.

Beneath that determined front of independence that Star wore so challengingly and fiercely, Claire suspected that there was still a part of her that was very much the lonely, unhappy little girl who had seen her parents destroy one relationship after another and, with them, her security and her belief in the capability of adults to genuinely love one another.

Claire had gone along with their vow to remain unmarried because she had sensed that they needed her support, but her sincerest hope for both of them was that there would come a day when, out of the security of loving and being loved, they could look back and laugh at the vulnerability and pain which had led them to be so afraid of love.

She was just on the point of returning Felicity to her temporary ‘basket’, having fed her again, when Brad returned. He was earlier than she had expected and had obviously not forgotten his promise to her—or rather to Felicity—because he came in carrying several packages.

‘Found a name for her yet?’ he asked as Claire went to let him in, still holding the kitten.

‘Felicity,’ she informed him, ‘because her arrival in my home is most felicitous.’

Unlike mine, Brad reflected wryly. He was not oblivious to the fact that she was not entirely at ease with him and silently cursed Irene for having—he was sure—put pressure on her to have him to stay.

If the arrival in her life of something as small and waiflike as the kitten could make her mouth soften and her eyes warm with so much happiness, it didn’t say much for the ability of the man in her life to make her happy, he decided critically. If he were in his shoes …

But he wasn’t, he reminded himself, and the shoes he was in at the moment—his own shoes—were pinching just a mite too much for comfort.

His interview with Tim had been every bit as difficult as he had envisaged, with Tim being defensive and pessimistic. He preferred a situation where he could praise rather than blame; it got better results faster and, even more important, it helped to keep the sick-pay down. In his opinion, good self-esteem was the best incentive scheme that any workforce—any man—could have.

‘Something smells good,’ he commented to Claire as he put his packages down on the kitchen table and watched her replace the now sated kitten back in its box.

‘It’s beef-steak pie,’ she told him, lifting her chin, the words almost a challenge. ‘I suppose you’d have probably preferred a pot-roast or some pumpkin pie,’ she added.

Ah … Brad thought; he now understood the reason for the challenge and the firm determination of that tilted chin.

Hiding a grin, he told her gravely, ‘Well, now … that would depend … The kinda pumpkin pie and pot-roast I’m used to, I guess it would be pretty hard for you to serve …’

Claire glared at him in indignation. What was he trying to say? That she wasn’t a competent enough cook to make his precious national food?

She opened her mouth to refute his claim firmly and then saw the laughter warming his eyes and paused.

‘Go on,’ she invited him grimly, letting him know that she wanted to be let in on the joke.

The gleam of amusement became open, rueful laughter as he recongised that she had realised that he was teasing her. That was something he had missed when the kids had been growing up—someone to share his own more mature amusement … his laughter and sometimes his tears at their learning mistakes … Someone to share … Someone just to share his life, he acknowledged—someone like Claire who could recognise when he was deliberately baiting her … Someone like Claire …

Hastily he dragged his thoughts back under control.

‘Well, you see, back home the girls kinda cut their milk teeth, in the cooking sense, on pot-roast and pumpkin pie, although, to be fair to my four sisters, mostly they’ve already had some experience of watching their moms cooking it before they’re let loose on the real thing. Have you ever actually eaten charred pot-roast?’ he asked her, adding feelingly, ‘Four times … and that was just for starters …’

Claire started to laugh. She could well remember her own early attempts at cooking, and Sally’s.

‘Oh, no, poor you,’ she said, her own mirth overcoming her instinctive sympathy as she started to laugh again.

‘You can laugh,’ Brad complained. ‘I sure as hell feel I’m lucky to still have my own teeth … That’s my side of the story,’ he told her, and then asked softly, ‘So, what’s yours? What is it you’ve got against pot-roast?’

He had caught her off guard with no easy excuse at hand, and after an agitated hesitation she admitted reluctantly, ‘Irene wanted me to cook it for you. She brought me this book of American recipes she had borrowed from someone. She thought it would make you feel … more at home …’

Aware of Claire’s small, tell-tale pause before completing her explanation, Brad guessed that it was her husband’s job which Irene had been concerned with rather than his stomach. But he couldn’t blame her for that. There was nothing wrong in being a loyal wife.

Brad glanced round the kitchen. In every room of the house bar this one he had been immediately and intensely aware that this was another man’s home, and if he felt conscious of that fact then how much more conscious must Claire be that this was, in reality, still another woman’s home? How had she lived with that knowledge? he wondered. How had she managed to endure knowing that her husband was still in love with his first wife?

Was that why she had become involved with someone else …? If so, he could scarcely blame her, although …

‘I … I thought we’d eat in here rather than in the dining room,’ he heard Claire saying uncertainly. ‘Sally and I always did and—’

‘Sure. It’s more homely in here,’ he agreed calmly. ‘But I’ll need to shower first; is that OK? I’ll only be about ten minutes, but if you give me a shout when you want me …’

Claire could hear him going upstairs as she started to lay the table. She and John had never really laughed together, never shared a sense of humour. John simply hadn’t been that kind of man. He had taken life seriously, probably because of Paula’s death, Claire acknowledged.

Laughter was supposed to be good for you but it had made her feel rather odd, she decided. She felt slightly dizzy, light-headed almost—’giddy’, her great-aunt would have called it disapprovingly. Her mouth curled again and again into a reminiscent smile, an unfamiliar sense of pleasure and light-heartedness filling her.

‘I wish Dad would lighten up a bit,’ Sally had often complained during her teenage years, and Claire had sympathised with her because her stepdaughter had a wonderful sense of fun.

It must be nice to share that kind of intimacy with someone, Claire decided wistfully as she removed the pie from the oven and put the vegetables into the serving dishes. And they did say, didn’t they, that laughter was the best aphrodisiac? Her heart gave a tiny little flutter, the heat from the oven making her face flush.

How much longer would Brad be …? It was over fifteen minutes since he had gone upstairs; perhaps she’d better go and give him that call.

As she walked along the landing she saw that the door to the master bedroom was open. Without thinking she stepped up to it and then paused. Brad’s shirt lay on the bed, his shoes beside it on the floor, his trousers over the back of a chair, which meant that Brad, wherever he was, must be minus those articles.

She swallowed a small gulp of panic as the bathroom door opened and Brad walked into the bedroom before she had time to escape.

‘Sorry. I’m running late, I know,’ he apologised, apparently as oblivious to her flushed face as he was to the fact that all he was wearing was a short—a very short—towelling robe, secured so loosely around his waist that Claire was terrified when he lifted his hands to towel-dry his damp hair that it was going to come unfastened.

Unlike her, he was clearly no stranger to the intimacy of sharing his bedroom with a member of the opposite sex. She and John had very early in the days of their marriage established a routine which ensured that they went to bed at separate times, after allowing one another a decent amount of time and privacy in which to prepare for bed.

Claire suspected that it had been simply for the sake of convention and Sally that John had allowed her to share his room and his bed, and she had sensed his relief when, at the onset of his serious illness, she had suggested that she move into the spare room.

She was still standing just inside the door of Brad’s room, transfixed, dizzied almost by the greedy fervour with which she was drinking in the sight of his barely clad body. A hot rush of shame flooded through her as she realised what she was doing. Quickly she turned away, stumbling back out on to the landing.

As a teenager, partially because of her upbringing and partially, she always assumed, because of her own nature, she had been rather naïve and slow to reach sexual awareness, but even when she had her daydreams had been more of the idealised, romantic variety—of meeting someone with whom she would fall in love and marry.

The actual physical details of her lover-to-be had never been something she had dwelt specially upon, and, unlike other girls she had known, she had certainly never drooled over bare male torsos or compared the rival attractions of a pair of well-muscled, strong male arms with an equally well-muscled and strong pair of male buttocks.

Nor had she ever thought about men—or even one specific man—in any sexual sense in the years since, so it was all the more of a shock now to realise that, when she had been standing there watching Brad as he moved lazily and easily around the room, in her mind’s eye he had somehow or other disposed of his towelling robe and the Brad she had been watching had been totally and magnificently—very magnificently, she blushed to recall—male.

‘That was wonderful,’ Brad said when he had finished eating. ‘Irene mentioned that you’d be able to introduce me as a temporary member at your local health club. I’m certainly going to need to go if you keep feeding me like this.’

He didn’t look as though he needed to work out to her, Claire reflected, but then she had no idea what kind of lifestyle he normally lived; perhaps he exercised regularly at home.

‘I must admit I’ve been a bit lax about developing a proper exercise programme,’ he told her, answering her unspoken question. ‘But when the kids were younger we lived a pretty outdoors lifestyle, especially in the summer. We’d be out on the lake most summer evenings and weekends, swimming or sailing …’

‘The lake?’ Claire asked him enviously. She had always had a secret dream of living close to water. As a child it had fascinated her, and a boating holiday—any kind of boating holiday—was her idea of heaven, although the only time she had persuaded John to hire a boat their holiday hadn’t been too successful. John had preferred luxury hotels but she and Sally had had a wonderful time.

‘Mmm … the town is close by the edge of a lake and most folks locally spend a lot of their recreation time either in it or on it. We had a sailing dinghy and—’

‘I’ve always longed to be able to sail,’ Claire told him impulsively, and then flushed slightly. It was unlike her to be so forthcoming with someone.

‘Well, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t learn,’ Brad told her.

Claire shook her head. ‘Not at my age,’ she told him quietly.

‘Your age?’ Brad scoffed. ‘You can’t be a day over twenty-seven, if that.’

‘Well, I’m thirty-four in actual fact,’ Claire informed him quietly, but inwardly she acknowledged that it was flattering that he had mistakenly thought her so much younger.

‘Just because we’re not under twenty-one any more, it doesn’t mean that we can’t still have dreams,’ Brad told her softly. ‘In fact sometimes the older we get, the more we need them.’

He paused, and Claire knew instinctively that he was thinking about a dream of his own. What was it? she wondered curiously.

‘I’ve got this boat out on the lake; four years I’ve been working on her, stripping down the engines, making her seaworthy. I had this plan that once all the kids were off my hands I’d have some space in my life to do the things I want to do. I had this idea that I’d get the boat ready and that I’d then take off, sail wherever the tide and mood took me …’

‘Why haven’t you?’ Claire asked him quietly.

‘I got outsmarted by two wily old men—my uncles,’ he told her drily. ‘I was just on the point of telling them that I wanted out of the company when they beat me to it by announcing that they were both planning to retire—You don’t want to hear all this,’ he told Claire abruptly.

Yes, I do. I want to hear all about you … know all about you. Claire felt herself going rigid with shock as the words formed silently in her head but thankfully remained un-uttered.

‘What about you? What are your plans for your future?’ Brad asked her, obviously wanting to change the subject.

‘I … I … don’t really have any,’ Claire admitted reluctantly. ‘I’ve got my work at the school, although …’

‘Although what?’ Brad pressed her as she paused and frowned.

‘There’s a strong chance that it may have to close. Lack of funding,’ Claire explained.

‘Then what will you do?’ Brad asked.

Claire shook her head. ‘I’m not sure, although it is always possible to find some kind of voluntary work even if …’

‘Even if it’s not exactly what you might want to choose,’ Brad supplied for her. ‘What would you prefer to do?’

‘I like working with children,’ Claire confessed. ‘There’s something about their hope and optimism, even those …’

‘You obviously love them,’ Brad told her.

‘Because they are easy to love,’ Claire responded. ‘And they have so much love to give …’

She should have had children of her own, Brad decided; she was that kind of woman—intensely loving and maternal in the very best sense of the word, and if he could recognise that then surely her late husband must have done too, so why …?

Their conversation was getting too intimate, too close to subjects that she didn’t want to discuss, Claire recognised, quickly getting up from the table, saying that it was getting late, that they still hadn’t discussed the terms of his stay with her.

Ruefully Brad took the hint and started to do so, outlining his requirements. They were less demanding than Claire had anticipated and the amount that he proposed paying her was so generous that it took her breath away. When she tried to tell him that it was too much he overruled her, pointing out things that she had overlooked, such as wear and tear, and reluctantly Claire found herself giving in.

In its box the kitten stirred and complained that it was hungry; Claire laughed as she went to pick her up. Oh, yes, she had the mothering instinct—in full strength, Brad acknowledged as he studied the tender way she held the small animal.

The phone rang just as he was on the point of going upstairs. Claire went to answer it and he could hear the wondering joy in her voice as she exclaimed, ‘Oh, darling … it’s wonderful to hear your voice! I didn’t know you were going to ring …’

Quietly he left her alone to enjoy her conversation with her lover, all his pleasure in the evening draining out of him. As he went upstairs he wondered savagely what the matter with him was. The last thing he wanted or needed was to get emotionally involved with any woman, but especially with one who was not free to return his feelings.

‘You’ve reached a very dangerous—a very vulnerable—age,’ his sister Mary-Beth had teased him at Thanksgiving. He had laughed then, but now he wasn’t so sure that she might not have had a point.

Downstairs Claire clung happily to the telephone receiver as she told her stepdaughter, ‘I never imagined that you would ring. It must be costing you the earth …’

She could almost feel the warmth of Sally’s laughter as it filled her ear.

‘You’re worth it,’ Sally assured her, adding teasingly, ‘Besides, I know I can always get you to sub me from my next allowance.’

John had left certain monies in trust for Sally, from which she received a small quarterly income and of which Claire was one of the trustees, and Sally’s impulsive habit of spending this money before she actually received it was a standing joke between them.

‘Don’t be so sure,’ Claire warned her, laughing. ‘The FT index has fallen several points.’

‘Look, I must go,’ Sally told her. ‘Chris is waiting for me.’ She blew a string of kisses into the phone before hanging up, leaving Claire to replace her own receiver with a warm smile curling her mouth. Darling Sally. How empty and joyless her life would have been without her—her life and her marriage. A small finger of pain poked mercilessly at the secret sore place within her heart that she kept so carefully guarded.

Hurriedly she ignored it, going to attend to the increasingly noisy demands for food from Felicity, blocking out the emotional pain with physical activity. It was, after all, a tried and true formula and one she had perfected over the years.