by Penny Jordan
On the mornings she took Louise to playschool, Lissa normally also did whatever shopping was needed and then picked up the little girl in time to take her home for lunch. This particular Tuesday they were running a little late, as she had got involved in conversation with another mother.
As she walked into the house Lissa heard the telephone ringing, its sharp sound cut off as Mrs Fuller obviously answered it. As Lissa opened the kitchen door she heard Mrs Fuller saying, ‘Mrs … Oh I’m afraid she’s out at the moment.’ She caught sight of Lissa and then corrected herself, ‘No … she’s just walked in.’
‘Who is it?’ Lissa mouthed as she took the receiver.
‘A Mrs Andrews.’
The shock was so great that Lissa almost dropped the receiver. Since the night of the dinner party she had had no contact at all with Marisa. A cold finger of dread touched her heart. Had Joel told Marisa that she was pregnant? It was something she hadn’t been able to bring herself to ask him.
Forcing herself to appear calm, she smiled into the receiver. ‘Marisa?’
‘Ah, Lissa. Good. Is Joel there?’
Lissa’s fear grew. ‘No, I’m afraid he’s not.’
‘Oh dear. I need to speak to him rather urgently. I’ve left Peter … It’s been on the cards for quite some time of course. I should never have married him … never. But then one does such foolish things when one is young … Joel has always understood.’
A feeling of sick dismay was spreading through Lissa’s body. Marisa had left Peter … and she was making it clear that she now wanted Joel … Shivering with reaction and sick misery, Lissa managed to say that she would pass her message on to Joel when he came in. The soft satisfaction purring through Marisa’s voice tormented her, even when she had replaced the receiver.
‘Lissa, are you all right?’ Mrs Fuller’s voice cut through her pain.
She managed to shake off the terrible feeling of pain consuming her, long enough to smile and fib, ‘Yes … yes … fine … Just a little bit tired, I think I’ll go upstairs and lie down for a while. If Joel comes in could you ask him to ring Mrs Andrews. She wants to speak to him.’
Sleep was impossible, her thoughts a plunging chaos of pain and misery. She had little doubt in her heart that Joel would want to go to Marisa. How could he not do? But he was tied to her. She would have to let him go. How could she keep him married to her when she knew he loved and wanted someone else? While Marisa had been married their relationship might have stood some chance, but now … How could she face herself when she knew that she was the only thing standing between Joel and happiness?
But she was having his child. Her hand cupped her gently curved stomach protectively and deep shudders of anguish racked through her.
She heard Joel’s car drive up and forced herself into the bathroom to wash the tear stains off her skin and make herself look presentable. Sooner or later she would have to face Joel, and it might just as well be sooner.
When she went downstairs the study door was open. Joel was standing behind his desk, just replacing his telephone receiver.
‘Did you get the message from Marisa?’
How empty and toneless her voice sounded, completely in contrast with the wild fever of emotions inside her.
‘Yes, I’ve just rung her. I’m going to see her this afternoon.’ He was frowning, and in the midst of her own anguish Lissa could still feel pain for him. How much he must be regretting now that he had ever married her … ever made love to her.
‘Mrs Fuller said you weren’t feeling well?’
‘Just a little tired.’ She smiled, hoping he wouldn’t notice how plastic a gesture it was. Her face felt as stiff as a mask, her skin drawn too tightly over her bones.
She spent the afternoon with the girls. Emma was growing up quickly and both of them now called her ‘Mummy’ quite naturally. How would they react to another upheaval in their lives? How would she feel if Joel took them away from her? Tears stung her eyes, and she blinked them away, but not before Louise’s sharp eyes had spotted them. ‘You’re crying,’ she accused, and watching the apprehension dawn in the childishly rounded eyes, Lissa sought to reassure her. ‘No, I’ve just got something in my eye,’ she fibbed, distracting her attention, but reaching for one of their colourful nursery books and offering to read to them.
It was Mrs Fuller’s evening off, and suspecting that it would be some time before Joel returned—after all he and Marisa would have a good deal to talk about—Lissa ate with the girls.
Once they were in bed she wandered restlessly round the sitting room switching on the television but too tense to really watch it.
It was just gone eight when Joel walked in. He looked tired … almost to the point of exhaustion, she thought as he sank down into a chair.
When she asked him what he wanted to eat he shook his head. ‘I ate with Marisa.’ He was curt and withdrawn, and although she longed to reach out to him … to help him, Lissa admitted with a surge of bitterness that comfort from her was not what he wanted.
His silent, withdrawn mood lasted for several days and then one night just as Lissa was preparing for bed, he walked into their room and said abruptly, ‘Lissa, I have to talk to you.’
This was it! The moment she had been dreading ever since Marisa told her she had left her husband. If she was any sort of woman at all Lissa thought bitterly, she herself would have already faced Joel and had the pride to tell him that she was leaving, but she had just not been able to do it.
She had already showered and was in her nightdress, and at the cold shiver of apprehension that ran through her body Joel frowned, reaching for his own robe which he handed to her, with a curt, ‘You’re cold, put this on.’
The scent of him clung to the fine silk, making her shiver more.
She hadn’t missed the way he had recoiled from her when their hands had accidentally made contact.
‘Lissa, we can’t go on as we are doing at present.’ He had his back to her, and she was bitterly conscious of the tension inside him. One half of her, because she loved him, sympathised with the agony he was going through the other half, again because she loved him urged her to cover her ears, to shut out whatever painful truths he was now going to tell her.
‘It isn’t fair on you and it isn’t fair on the girls …’ His words made her mouth tighten bitterly. Whatever she had thought him she had never considered him the sort of man who would make excuses … avoid the truth. What he should be saying was that he could no longer endure living with her and not with Marisa, but she didn’t interrupt him.
‘I know we said we’d make a fresh start—but then I didn’t realise …’ He turned towards her and the white torment of his face shocked her. Instinctively she stepped towards him intent only on comforting him, immediately falling back as she saw the shutters come down, blocking her out, warning her against going to him.
‘Well that doesn’t matter … what I’m trying to say to you is that for all our sakes, I’ve decided it would be best if we lived apart. I want you and the girls to stay here. I’ll move out … and of course I’ll continue to see the girls … and … and our child …’
‘Just as long as you don’t have to see me as well,’ Lissa managed huskily, turning away from him so that he wouldn’t see her tears.
‘For God’s sake don’t make this harder for me than it already is!’ She could feel the anguish within him, see it as his body literally shook with tension. His face was white and drawn, his eyes glittering febrilely.
What could she say? How could she plead with him to stay when she knew that he didn’t love her.
‘I know this whole situation is my fault,’ he said bitterly. ‘I’m the one who carries all the blame. I forced you into marriage with me. I was arrogant and stupid enough then to think I could make it work. I was even arrogant enough to believe that I could—’ He broke off and stared into space for several seconds before demanding huskily, ‘Just tell me one thing Lissa, that first time I made love to you … I
…’
‘You were acting on purely humane grounds?’ Lissa supplied for him emotionlessly. ‘You were trying to make me feel like a woman and not a child because you felt you had some sort of responsibility towards me? Yes, Joel I realise all that.’
For a moment there was silence and then he asked jerkily, as though unable to suppress the question, ‘And did I Lissa … did I make you feel like a woman?’
She could see that he was suffering and all her love for him welled up inside her. ‘Yes,’ she admitted softly. ‘Yes, Joel you did.’
She moved towards him again and he stepped back awkwardly, the first movement she had ever seen him make that wasn’t completely coordinated. ‘For God’s sake don’t touch me.’ The harsh demand splintered her self-control, wiping her face clean of the mask of calmness she had assumed; pain registering in her eyes, her fingers curling closed as she cringed back from him and stumbled towards the door.
‘Lissa. No … no …!’ Joel reached the door before her, his arm barring her flight. ‘I’m sorry …’ He leaned against the door and dropped his head into his hands. ‘I didn’t mean … don’t look at me like that. I’m sorry … It’s all my fault, but I genuinely did think we could make it work. I knew when I married you that you didn’t love me, but I felt sure there was some spark of desire … something we could build on, and then when I discovered the truth … It was arrogant and unforgivable of me to believe that because I was your first lover I could use that to tie you to me. Look …’ He straightened up and looked at her. ‘I can’t take any more right now. These last weeks … living with you, sleeping next to you at night …’ A slow shudder tore through his body. ‘I just can’t do it any more. If I stay there’s no way I’m going to be able to stop myself from making love to you … no way at all.’
Lissa stared at him unable to believe her ears. Joel was saying he wanted her? But he loved Marisa, an inner voice warned her. She ignored it, filled with sudden feminine power, moving towards him until she was close enough to touch him, placing her palms against his chest, feeling the uneven drum-beat of his heart.
‘Lissa.’ He groaned her name, burying his face in her hair, his arms coming round her, imprisoning her against his body. His mouth found her throat and explored the satin soft skin roughly, passion bringing a hectic throb to his pulse. He raised his head reluctantly and looked at her, his eyes glittering fiercely. ‘I want you Lissa,’ he told her rawly, ‘and if you don’t stop me now … If you don’t send me away, there’s no way I’m going to be able to stop myself from touching you. For years I’ve wanted you … alternated between desire and dislike for you. Did you know that?’
Lissa shook her head, quivering as his mouth feathered across her cheek and touched the corner of her own.
‘We hardly ever saw one another,’ she managed to croak, unable to believe what she was hearing.
Joel laughed harshly. ‘Because I took great care that we should not. It appalled me that I should be attracted to you, especially knowing what I did about you. Me … a man of going on twenty-three had fallen head over heels in love with a promiscuous child of fifteen.’
‘What?’ Lissa pulled away from him to look at him. ‘But Joel.’
‘Ridiculous I know, and I soon managed to convince myself that I was imagining it. I pushed you out of my mind … told myself I was suffering from some sort of delayed adolescent crush, but when John and Amanda died and I was faced with the prospect of seeing you marry someone else I knew I couldn’t let it happen. I wanted you for myself, and so I used the threat of taking the children away from you …’
She was quivering with a strange sensation of everything being totally unreal. Joel in love with her? She couldn’t believe it … and besides …
‘But Marisa,’ she managed to demand. “What about Marisa?’
He frowned down at her. “What about her?’
‘I thought … you … she … I thought you were lovers,’ Lissa told him quietly, ‘I also thought tonight you were trying to tell me you wanted to leave me so that you could be with her.’
His stunned incredulity might have been almost funny in other circumstances, but when Lissa thought of the agony she had put herself through believing him in love with the other woman she felt closer to tears than laughter.
‘Marisa is the wife of a friend of mine and that’s all,’ he told her firmly. ‘Okay, once I went out with her, and I agree she might sometimes have given the impression that there was more between us than there genuinely was, but that’s all there is to it.’
‘But you went to see her …’
‘To help her sort out somewhere to live and give her some financial advice. I also suggested that she think again about leaving Peter.’
‘But all those evenings when you went out …’
‘I drove around in the car because it was the only thing I could think of to do to keep my hands off you. Lissa after I’d made love to you it suddenly struck me how selfish I’d been. You said I’d acted humanely. Well maybe you see it that way, I don’t. I wanted to free you from the trauma of the past yes, but do you honestly think for one moment that if I hadn’t loved you as much as I do that I would have done that by making love to you? Couldn’t you tell when I touched you how I felt about you?’ His hands cupped her face, his expression so tender, so revealing that her heart seemed to stop beating. ‘I had to leave you alone after that night. I had to give you at least a chance to re-assess our relationship without the additional pressure of any sexual demands from me. I had to give you the opportunity to do at least some of the experimenting you never had the opportunity to do as a teenager. When I saw you with Greaves I feared the worst … and then when you didn’t tell me you’d seen him.’
‘It wasn’t my meeting with Simon I was trying to hide from you,’ Lissa admitted with a rueful smile, ‘it was the fact that I’d gone especially to London to buy a new dress, purely because I wanted you to admire me in it. When I thought that Marisa was your mistress—the true love of your life, I couldn’t bear to admit the truth to you in case you guessed …’ She broke off, and Joel prodded softly.
‘In case I guessed what?’
‘That I love you.’
He studied her face silently for so long that she began to think she had imagined it all … that he didn’t love her at all … that it was all a cruel trick but then he bent his head, his mouth gentle on hers, and then less gentle as he felt her response.
‘I couldn’t believe it when I found out you were carrying my child,’ he told her huskily when he released her. ‘I thought you must hate me because of it … because it would prevent you leaving me for Simon.’
‘And I thought you would hate me because it would prevent you from going to Marisa,’ Lissa admitted. ‘You were so different from the ogre I’d always imagined you to be,’ she told him dreamily. ‘So tender and caring that how could I avoid falling in love with you? Then you changed, and reverted to the man I’d always thought you were. I thought it was your way of telling me that you did not want any emotional commitment from me. I thought you’d guessed how I felt about you, and that your coldness towards me was because you didn’t want to encourage my feelings.’
‘Whereas in reality it was directed at myself. The fact that I’d made love to you, quite deliberately … in the hope of making you want me physically and then emotionally, destroyed all the previously conceived notions I held about myself. In any other man I would have ruthlessly condemned what I had done.’
‘You mean seducing me with champagne and kisses,’ Lissa laughed softly and gave him a coquettish smile. ‘Oh I don’t know …’ Happiness bubbled up inside her. ‘I rather enjoyed it!’
‘Oh did you indeed?’
There was nothing in the soft way he murmured the words to cause her heart to jolt into an accelerated beat, but Lissa wasn’t really listening to what he was saying, she was too busy looking into his eyes and reading the very private and explicit message they were holding for her.
Joel glanced at his watch and then smiled teasingly at her. ‘It’s just gone nine. Too early to go to bed, do you suppose?’
‘Oh definitely!’
‘Umm. Well then I shall just have to insist that we finish our fascinating discussion in the privacy of our own room. What do you say to that?’
‘I say that it sounds like an extremely good idea,’ Lissa confirmed innocently, teasing amusement gleaming in her eyes.
As he slipped his arm round her and propelled her towards the stairs she paused, watching the quick frown touch his forehead.
‘Something wrong?’
“Nothing at all,’ she assured him. ‘I was just wondering if we had a bottle of champagne anywhere.’
* * * * *
Loving
PENNY JORDAN
CHAPTER ONE
‘MUMMY, CAN HEATHER come home and play with me and then stay for tea?’
Looking down into the pleading blue eyes of her six-year-old daughter, Claire once again blessed the totally unexpected inheritance from her unknown great-aunt that had made possible her move away from the centre of London to the small village of Chadbury St John.
Lucy had blossomed out unbelievably in the short month they had been here. Already she seemed plumper, healthier, and now she had made her first ‘best friend’. The huge block of council flats they had lived in before had not led to any friendships for either mother or daughter. They had been living an existence that had virtually been hand to mouth, and with no way out of the dull misery of such poverty.
And then, miraculously, almost overnight everything had changed. How on earth her great-aunt’s solicitors had been able to track her down was a miracle in itself, but to learn that she had inherited her cottage, and with it a small but very, very precious private income, had been such a miraculous event that even now Claire sometimes thought she was dreaming.