by Penny Jordan
‘Oh quite easily.’ He was smiling at her in a way that told her that little though he might like her, he found the shape of her sexually desirable. Shock hit her on a tidal wave, swamping her. Joel desired her.
‘You see,’ he mocked her softly, ‘we could have a lot more in common than you think. There is no need for our marriage to be a sterile one Lissa. On the contrary …’
Lissa felt as though she were drowning in some whirlpool far too frenzied for her to fight. ‘But you’ve always avoided marriage,’ she whispered huskily, ‘I remember Amanda once saying that she thought you’d never marry.’
‘At one time I thought that myself,’ he agreed laconically, ‘but that was before John died.’
‘And if I refuse …?’ What did she mean ‘if’. Of course she was going to refuse … but a thought had taken possession of her brain … the seed of an idea, that at last she might have found a way to make Joel pay for all the agony and shame he had caused her.
‘Then I’ll have to look around for someone else,’ he told her calmly. ‘Make no mistake about it Lissa. For the girls’ sake I intend to marry. I should prefer that my wife is you, but if you refuse, then I shall simply marry someone else.’
‘And I’ll lose the girls.’ She breathed the words softly, but he heard them and shrugged.
‘The choice is yours. I’m not, after all, asking you to make any sacrifice I’m not prepared to make myself. We’ll both be giving up our freedom … and one thing more Lissa.’ He came towards her standing only feet away, but making no move to reach out and touch her. She felt almost suffocated by his proximity but refused to step back, making herself endure it. ‘Our marriage will not be an empty legal bond only, but very real, in every sense of the word.’
‘But I don’t want you.’ She said it through stiff lips forcing them to frame the words, half of her praying that he would take back his proposal; and the other half, the bitter, angry half hoping that he would not.
‘How can you know that,’ he taunted softly. ‘We haven’t been lovers yet.’
Nor ever will be, the bitter half of her exulted. Let him marry her … let him think he was going to have it all his own way, but when she lay in his bed and in his arms she would be as cold as ice; as devoid of the ability to give and take pleasure as she had always been, since he had destroyed the feminine core of her. Ignoring all the urgings of common sense Lissa faced him, praying that he wouldn’t see the bitterness in her eyes, and that he wouldn’t guess exactly why she was marrying him. He was using her affection for the girls to force her into this marriage … a marriage she was sure that would not stop him continuing with his many affairs, but what he did not know was that she was also going to use him … as the instrument of her revenge.
‘Very well Joel … I agree to marry you.’
She was surprised to see the heated flicker of triumph burn dark gold in his eyes. He took a step towards her and she backed away, but before either of them could speak the door burst open and the elder of their nieces came rushing in.
‘Auntie Lissa … Auntie Lissa … I heard you talking.’ The petite four year old ran up to Lissa, clinging tightly to her legs, the blonde head buried in her skirt. ‘Are you going to stay here for ever,’ Louise demanded when Lissa bent down to pick her up. ‘I want you to … so does Emma …’
‘Yes, Louise, she’s going to stay here for ever,’ Lissa heard Joel saying from a distance, and just for a moment she felt a twinge of apprehension at the deep note of triumph in his voice, but then she banished it, telling herself she was imagining things. She was the one who should be feeling triumphant. She had got her nieces, and she had also got the means of repaying Joel for all the years of anguish and pain he had caused her. He might think their marriage was going to be a ‘normal’ one, but she knew different.
CHAPTER THREE
LISSA WOKE UP the next morning feeling totally disorientated; initially by the strangeness of her room, and then by the huge weight of depression which seemed to have descended upon her out of nowhere. And then she remembered.
She had agreed to marry Joel! She closed her eyes and groaned, her head falling back against her pillow. How could she have been so stupid? She would have to tell him she had changed her mind. It was her own silly temper and pride that had led into folly; the old burning anger cum anguish she always experienced whenever she was with him. Why oh why after all these years, should Joel still be the one whose contempt and rejection of her hurt so badly? Was it because he had been the one to thrust open that bedroom door and see her? Was it because somehow in her innermost mind she had because of that confused him in some way with her father? They were questions Lissa could not answer; all she did know was that whenever she came in contact with him she was reminded of the way he had looked at her that night … and how for one weak minute she had longed to cry out to him to understand and forgive her … Shivering faintly despite the centrally heated warmth of her bedroom, she was just contemplating how best to tell him that she had changed her mind and that she was certainly not prepared to marry him; even for the sake of her nieces when the door burst open and the two little girls rushed in, both still in their nightdresses.
Louise reached her first, flinging herself on to the bed and cuddling up next to her. Emma, still very much a toddler needed a helping hand, but there was no mistaking the enthusiasm in her hug when she was finally on the bed with Lissa and her sister.
‘You’re going to marry Uncle Joel and then you’ll be our new mummy and daddy,’ Louise announced importantly.
Lissa’s heart sank. She felt trapped and desperate. How could she have been so crazy as to allow those old hurts to trap her into her present position. It seemed mediaeval and archaic now, in the cold clear light of a February morning that she should actually have contemplated marrying Joel, simply to even punish him for the pain he had once caused her. That was all over and done with now. But Joel … why did he want to marry her?
That was simple Lissa told herself; he wanted someone to look after the children who was not going to walk out on him. If she backed out she would lose the girls, Lissa reminded herself, looking at the two blonde heads, nestled together against her warmth. As she watched them, a melting, aching wave of love for them suffused her. If she didn’t marry Joel, he would find someone who would and the girls would be lost to her for ever. Could she endure that? Looking at them Lissa knew she could not. This deeply maternal feeling she felt towards them was something she had always kept well hidden from others. Only Amanda had been aware of it, wryly amused by her sister’s passionate love for her daughters, warning Lissa that when she married she would soon discover the drawbacks to being a mother. ‘You want them because this way you can satisfy your mothering instincts without having to endure someone’s lovemaking’, an inner voice warned her, but Lissa refused to listen, her fingers curling slightly into the bedclothes as she tried to deny the thoughts. Whose fault was it that she froze every time a man touched her she asked herself, trying to whip up some of the anger she had that had consumed her last night. Not hers!
Her bedroom door opened again, and she blinked in stunned disbelief as Joel strolled in carrying a breakfast tray, which he put down on the table by the bed.
‘Who said you two could come in here?’ he demanded of the girls, ruffling the blonde curls and drawing stifled giggles form Louise.
‘You and Lissa are going to be our new mummy and daddy, aren’t you?’ Louise demanded importantly of him, and yet Lissa could see that beyond the child’s self-importance was a shadow of uncertainty and fear, and all her inner arguments against what they were doing melted. If for no other reason surely the sacrifice demanded of her was not too great when she thought of what it would mean to the girls. Joel was right; they needed the security and stability of a proper family unit, and if she didn’t marry him, Joel would stand by his threat to find someone who would. She loved them too much to let someone else take her place with them, Lissa knew, and as she raised stormy haze
l eyes to meet the mocking gold of Joel’s, she knew that he had faithfully monitored each and every single thought that had passed through her head since he walked in the room.
‘Too late for second thoughts,’ he mouthed softly. There were two cups on the tray, Lissa noticed for the first time, and she gaped a little as Joel promptly started to fill them both with aromatic freshly brewed coffee. No doubt he was used to providing breakfast in bed for his legion of girlfriends, she thought waspishly, but he had no right to look so at ease and relaxed as he did so. He was dressed casually in jeans and a soft woollen checked shirt.
‘Mrs Johnson’s day off,’ he explained laconically, handing her a cup.
‘Very impressive,’ Lissa responded tautly. ‘But then I expect you’ve had plenty of practice.’
She saw his mouth tighten, the good humour that had lightened his eyes going, and a certain hard coldness taking its place. ‘I thought we’d agreed to bury our differences and start afresh,’ he said curtly. ‘Two adults who spend all their time together back-biting at one another aren’t going to help these two.’
Lissa knew he was right, and she bit her lower lip in mortification, hating him for putting her in the wrong and for making her appear selfish. She ought to be thinking of the girls and not herself. Joel obviously had. There were two beakers on the tray and he poured orange juice into each of them, handing them to his nieces. He was rewarded with a beaming smile from Emma, and a small frown from Louise, who confided artlessly, ‘When Daddy makes Mummy’s breakfast for her, he always gets back into bed with her. Sometimes he tells Nanny to come and take us away,’ she added importantly.
Lissa could feel the colour stealing up under her skin, but it was impossible for her to drag her eyes away from the amusement sparkling in Joel’s.
‘Blushing.’ He ran a teasing finger along the curve of her cheek as he sat down on the edge of her bed. ‘How novel, and why I wonder should the thought of married sex embarrass you when you yourself must surely be no stranger to the early morning rituals between lovers.’
Lissa wanted to vigorously deny what he was saying, but how could she without betraying the truth?
‘I must go back to London today,’ she mumbled, desperately anxious to change the subject. She was going hot and cold all over with the onset of a familiar fear. It seemed incredible and she knew that Joel would never have believed it, but the closest she had come to real intimacy with any man in the years since her fifteenth summer was what she was sharing with him right now. Suddenly she became intensely aware of the weight of his body on her mattress; the warm male scent of him as he leaned forward to tickle Louise. The little girl giggled and moved closer to her, grabbing the soft fabric of her nightdress. It was a fine lawn cotton, and covered her quite adequately, but as Louise grabbed the fabric she was suddenly intensely conscious of the way it was tightening across her breasts. She could feel Joel watching her as thought his glance were burning into her skin.
‘London?’
The sharpness in his voice made her tense, and when she managed to compose herself sufficiently to meet his eyes they were cold and angry.
‘Joel, I’ll have to arrange something about my house … and then there’s Simon and my job. I’ll have to explain that …’
‘I’ll do all the explaining necessary,’ he told her curtly. ‘I want you to stay here with the girls.’
‘But Simon …’ Lissa expostulated. ‘I must tell him myself that …’
‘That you won’t be sharing his bed any longer?’ Joel bit out grimly. ‘That he’ll be losing a lover as well as a secretary. No Lissa, I’ll tell him for you. I don’t want you seeing him again, now that you’ve agreed to marry me. I suppose it hasn’t occurred to you that if he’d really thought anything of you, he’d have proposed marriage … knowing how you feel about the girls.’
It was on the tip of Lissa’s tongue to tell him that Simon had, but for some reason she suppressed the words. ‘What are you so afraid of Joel?’ she lashed out instead. ‘That if I see Simon I won’t be able to resist jumping straight into bed with him. You always did have a high opinion of me didn’t you?’ she finished sarcastically, watching the way his mouth twisted with bitter derision as he looked at her, and wondering why she should feel this knife twist of pain so deep inside herself; why she should lash herself so unmercifully, when she knew … oh how she knew exactly how much he despised her. Why should she seek further confirmation of that knowledge so determinedly?
‘You’ve certainly never gone out of your way to show yourself to me in a good light have you?’ Joel countered. ‘In fact I sometimes think you deliberately want me to think the worst of you Lissa. I’ve often wondered why?’
He got up before she could make any retort, dropping light kisses on the two small blonde heads of his nieces as he did so.
‘Aren’t you going to kiss Lissa too?’ Louise piped up instantly. ‘Daddy always kissed Mummy before he went to work.’
‘But I’m not going to work,’ Joel explained, ruffling her curls. ‘I’m going downstairs to make some telephone calls. However, poppet, just to please you.’ He bent his head, and although Lissa cringed back as far as she could, until the back of her head was pressed against the unyielding brass of the Victorian bedstead, it didn’t stop Joel from kissing her, the torment of the warmth of his mouth moving softly against her own making her shiver with shock and fear. When he released her he was frowning and Lissa held her breath, wondering if she had betrayed herself, and if he was now having second thoughts about marrying her. He was a virile man; even she could see that and when he discovered that … that she was neither prepared nor able to be a true wife to him. Tell him, tell him the truth now an inner voice cautioned … but she couldn’t … she couldn’t lay herself open to the male mockery and contempt she would see in his eyes if she did. And besides she would lose the girls. No, after they were married … after they were married she would tell him that she had changed her mind and that she could not accept him as her lover. After all he would still have what he wanted from her; the children and her service as a stand-in mother. For the rest … well she doubted that he had had any thoughts of being faithful to her in any case … Feeling a little uncomfortable because she knew she was deceiving him, Lissa was glad when he turned his back on her and walked towards the door. Once he was through it and had closed it behind him she let out a shaky breath. Emma took her thumb out of her mouth and stared up at her with golden brown eyes. A huge smile split her solemn little face and she said firmly, ‘Mummy.’
Lissa had to dash away tears. Amanda had complained that Emma was slow to speak because she had Louise to translate for her, and it seemed prophetic that she should choose now of all times to start.
‘No, not Mummy,’ Louise corrected her sister, ‘Auntie Lissa … but you can call her Mummy I s’pose,’ she said kindly. ‘Shall I call you Mummy too … and Uncle Joel, Daddy?’ she asked Lissa.
‘You must call us whatever you like Louise,’ Lissa told her. She suspected that by the time she reached school age Emma would not be able to remember her parents, but Louise was old enough to do so and the last thing Lissa wanted to do was to try to erase from her memory the reality of her parents. The best thing to do was to let Louise feel free to decide for herself and see what happened, she decided, trying to occupy her mind with the girls’ problems and not her own.
She left them playing together on the bed while she showered and dressed, and then wearing comfortable jeans and a soft russet silk shirt that toned with her hair, she shepherded them back to their own room.
Joel had put them in his own and John’s old nursery, and while the bedroom with its bathroom and study-sitting room was large and airy the decor was more suited to two teenage boys rather than two small girls. Making a mental note to talk to him about it, and to ask him about the girls’ toys and clothes, Lissa helped them to get dressed and took them downstairs.
The sooner a proper routine was established, the sooner they would ov
ercome the trauma of their parents’ death. Making another mental note to enquire locally about play groups, Lissa headed for the kitchen, suddenly conscious that Louise was hanging back, a worried frown puckering her forehead.
‘Come on darling, you want some breakfast, don’t you?’ Lissa asked gently.
‘Mrs Johnson doesn’t like us going in the kitchen,’ was Louise’s quavery response. ‘She says we’re pests and that it’s time Uncle Joel make some proper arrangements for us.’
Listening to this artless confirmation that little pitchers did indeed have long ears, Lissa repressed a quiver of anger against the housekeeper. Surely the older woman could have made allowances, knowing the circumstances surrounding the girls.
‘Uncle Joel got us a new nanny,’ Louise continued confidingly, ‘because Nanny Jo’s boyfriend didn’t want her to come and live here with us, but we didn’t like our new nanny …’
Lissa was not surprised that ‘Nanny’ Jo’s boyfriend was reluctant to allow his girlfriend to live virtually alone with a man of Joel’s calibre, even she was aware of his powerful, vibrant brand of masculinity, but while other women were attracted by it, she was repelled, she told herself, witness her revulsion when Joel had kissed her. And yet there had been no violence, no domination in his kiss … If anything the first touch of his mouth against her own had been almost tender, coaxing … Shutting such dangerous thoughts away Lissa turned her attention to the task of getting the girls’ breakfast, secretly appalled to discover how little there was in the way of food in the kitchen cupboards. She was going to have to speak to Joel about his housekeeper and she grimaced faintly at the thought.
She had just settled the girls at the comfortable farmhouse table with plates of toast and honey, when Joel walked in.
‘Any chance of a cup of coffee?’ he enquired of Lissa, lifting one eyebrow interrogatively. When she nodded assent, he sat down between the two girls, deftly preventing Emma from dropping her toast sticky side down on to her lap. Watching his easy confidence with the girls, Lissa realised she was seeing a new side of him. In her mind he was and always had been the sardonic contemptuous enemy of her youth; the man who had torn from her all her romantic yearnings and dreams and tossed them back to her blemished and made sordid by his totally unexpected intrusion into the bedroom where she had been experiencing her first tentative and innocent forays into the land of sensual pleasure. Had they been left alone she knew that nothing more than a few fumbling kisses and caresses would have been exchanged between Gordon and herself. For all his image as the school pin-up, his worldly experience had not been more than hers, and with the wisdom of age she realised that both of them would have drawn back before they had gone much further, but the reaction of her father and the disapproval of Joel, the stranger he had brought with him to witness her shame and degradation, had made it seem as though she were more of a nymphomaniac than a shy and rather naïve fifteen year old experiencing virtually her first kiss. Now she could accept that her parents had been over-strict with her, much more so than they had been with Amanda, but Amanda had been the image of her mother while she apparently, or so Amanda had once confided, was very much like their father’s sister … someone who was never mentioned at home, and who apparently as a teenager during the War had led a rather promiscuous life, eventually leaving home and disappearing. This explained some of her parents’ strictness and even possibly her father’s dislike of her, Lissa acknowledged, but surely if they had loved her as they undoubtedly loved Amanda they would have seen—known—that she was not the wanton creature they themselves had branded her.