Partners in Love

by Saunders, Jean

  Partners in Love

  Jean Saunders

  Copyright © Jean Saunders 1984

  The right of Jean Saunders to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  First published in the United Kingdom in 1984 by Hodder and Stoughton.

  This edition published in 2014 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Extract from Second Time Around by Vanessa Graham

  Chapter One

  The blissful peace of the mellow autumn afternoon was suddenly shattered. Robin lay where she was on the fine, warm sand of the cove, her eyes determinedly closed. She didn’t exactly own the beach, she reminded herself, but she had always felt it to be her special place, one that the tourists seldom found because of its seclusion on the sheer-sided Cornish coast.

  The sound of muted male voices was an intrusion. She needed this solitude, and realising that the voices had momentarily paused, as if in surprise at finding anyone in the cove, she dug her pink fingernails into the soft sand by her sides. The very last thing she wanted right now was for some cheerful daytripper to wander into her preserves and try to chat her up.

  Robin was perfectly aware that she would be a target for a particular type of male tourist. With her delicate heart-shaped face and her unexpectedly green eyes, combined with silken corn-coloured hair and the honeyed tan she acquired each year from her native Cornish sun, Robin was used to male attention.

  There had been a time when she might have gathered up all her beach gear and made her way back up the steep hillside as she became aware that the voices were coming nearer. But why should she leave?

  Her green eyes remained tightly closed behind her huge sunglasses until she sensed a shadow falling across her body. Only then did she open them a fraction and see the large dark shape of a man standing beside her. Because the sun was behind him, Robin couldn’t discern his features, but even from her supine position she could see that he was tall. At that moment he almost blotted out the sun completely; almost ... except for the odd little effect of the sunlight glinting around his head, dazzling Robin’s eyes in the way of the diamond-ring phenomenon.

  “You’re standing in my space,” she said abruptly.

  “I apologise.” His voice was slightly mocking. His accent wasn’t local, Robin detected at once; neither was it unpleasing or particularly foreign — foreign being the way a true daughter of Cornwall referred to the “grockles,” the folk from up-country England.

  “I wasn’t aware you’d taken a lease on this particular patch of sand,” the man went on, “though you fill it to perfection, if I may say so.”

  Robin would rather he didn’t say so. As he still hadn’t moved away, she glared up at him, her temper, never slow to rise, beginning to make itself apparent. As if something of her mood got across to him, the stranger stepped slightly to one side, and the full heat of the afternoon sun warmed Robin’s body once more.

  Then she could see the man properly. To her surprise he didn’t look like the average tourist. For one thing, he wasn’t dressed casually enough: He wore a dark high-neck sweater, a tweed sports jacket and dark trousers. His face was craggy rather than good-looking, with keen eyes and a sardonic twist to the mouth. Because of her sunglasses, Robin couldn’t determine their colour.

  She didn’t care what colour they were, anyway, she thought angrily. The realisation that the man was allowing his gaze to wander lazily over her body was enough to make her sit up immediately.

  “Do you always stare like that at strangers?” she was nettled enough to say.

  “If they look as good as you, why not?” he shot back, his eyes lingering over the firmness of her breasts in the yellow bikini top and following the dipping curve of her waist and the feminine roundness of her hips to her long, shapely legs and small feet. It was a look that made Robin squirm, and it wasn’t only the heat of the sun that sent the blood coursing through her veins.

  He had a hell of a nerve, she thought furiously. She threw on her white mesh beach top with an angry gesture.

  “Excuse me, I was about to leave,” she said pointedly. “The cove loses its charm when it’s invaded —”

  To Robin’s surprise he bent down and put a restraining hand on her arm. She could feel the strength in his fingers, warm on her skin through the cotton mesh.

  “Please don’t go because of me. I’m sorry if I’ve interrupted your sunbathing. I hadn’t expected to find someone like you here, and you rather took me by surprise, that’s all. Just pretend I’m not here.”

  His words were odd enough to intrigue her. And Robin knew she couldn’t ignore him if he intended to stay. It was far better that she went back home. The evening ahead of her promised to be a disagreeable one as far as she was concerned, and for her father’s sake it was best that she didn’t work herself into a worse mood.

  “I was going anyway,” she said coolly, jerking her arm out of the man’s grasp.

  “That’s a pity,” he replied, looking into her eyes. Robin removed her sunglasses and her heart gave a little jolt. The stranger’s eyes were unusually blue and his nose very straight, and there were deep indentations at the sides of his strong mouth. He was a man who knew what he liked and usually got it, Robin guessed, though why it should interest her in the slightest, she couldn’t imagine.

  She looked around her with a strange feeling of desperation. The cove was so secluded that she never gave a thought to possible danger when she went down there alone. She had been going there all her life; it was her place ... but surely if she had heard male voices earlier, there should be more than one man around. Unless she had been having hallucinations.

  Then away to the right of her she saw another man with his back to the soft, slow, glassy swell of the tide, gazing towards the hillside through binoculars. Robin felt anger replace her feeling of alarm. Were they snoopers or just voyeurs? How long had she been in their sights through the binoculars before they made their way down the steps on the hillside? She felt suddenly exposed, as if, unknown to her, the two of them had been observing her for hours. By now the man standing with insolent ease at her side might know every curve and line of her body as intimately as a lover, and Robin felt a surge of colour stain her cheeks at the thought. She stood up, shaking the sand from her hair with an angry swing of her head, not missing the way the man’s eyes strayed to the glorious mane of golden hair.

  “I don’t know what you’re doing here, but I think I prefer the honest-to-goodness beach wolf to someone who creeps up on me when I’m enjoying the peace and quiet,” Robin snapped.

  Now that she was standing up, she realised the man was a good head and shoulders taller than she was. She slipped her feet into her beach shoes, wishing she had high heels on so that she didn’t feel at such a psychological disadvantage. She raised her chin and glared angrily into the man’s eyes.

  To her sudden fury, the glint of a smile appeared around the man’s mouth, and the somewhat ruthless hardness of his face softened a little. Around the blue eyes Robin saw the crease of laughter lines, but she was in no mood to be patronised. All she saw was the condescension of the superior male.

  “If it’s a beach wolf you want, I’m sure I’d be more than willing to oblige ...”

  “I don’t want anything, except to be left alone.”
>
  Robin snatched up her canvas beach bag and started to walk away. A soft breeze from the sea blew a salt tang into her nostrils, mingled with the unmistakable scent of pine, which Robin realised came from the man himself. He leaned towards her, the smile vanishing from his face as quickly as it came.

  “I’m sure you’ll have no trouble getting your wish,” he said frostily. “If this is an example of Cornish hospitality, I’m almost sorry I came.”

  “So am I!” Robin tossed back as she made her way to the foot of the rough steps. “You’re obviously not cut out for the ways of simple folk like us!”

  She felt his eyes on her retreating figure as she climbed the wide grass steps more swiftly than usual. By the time she reached the top she had a pain in her side and her breathing was more rapid than usual. At this rate she’d have a heart attack like Mrs. Fowler. Robin swallowed, remembering briefly the shock of discovering her charming employer had died in her sleep six weeks earlier, leaving Robin feeling as bereft as if she’d lost a close relative — and sending her limping back to Cornwall, metaphorically speaking, the way an injured animal seeks refuge in places dear and familiar ...

  She paused for breath on the headland where the wild moorland grasses and bracken sighed in the warm breeze. The whisper of bracken and the scent of yarrow and clover had always had a relaxing effect on her, but this afternoon she barely noticed them.

  Robin was appalled at herself for the way she had reacted to a complete stranger. Her father had always said she should curb her fiery temper, and at twenty-three she thought she had managed to do so. But the man had riled her, and she had reacted with typical rashness.

  From her high vantage point above the silvery-grey shimmer of the sea and the golden sand of the cove, Robin could see the two men standing close together now. Of the stranger’s companion she had seen little, except that he was a mite younger and less interesting a personality.

  She was shocked even to consider that the man had a personality worth noting —but, undeniably he did. In fact, if she had met him under different circumstances, Robin knew she would have found him more than intriguing. He was the kind of man whom women did notice. There was a raw sensuality about him that reached out to a woman. Robin gave an involuntary shiver as the object of her thoughts suddenly lifted his head and seemed to look directly into her eyes.

  From that distance it was impossible to see his expression, but remembering how he had looked at her in the cove, Robin felt her heartbeat quicken. The man lifted his hand as if in mock salute and she turned away furiously, angry with herself for letting him see that she had been watching him. A man of his arrogance would never believe she had been doing anything else, Robin thought with disgust, even more annoyed with herself for acknowledging he would be right.

  She made her way across the wide stretch of moorland with the sun still beating down with pleasant heat on her back and shoulders. Autumn came late in Cornwall, and it often seemed as if summer were reluctant to go. This particular sheltered part of the Helford River valley, where the river met the sea, was blessed, Robin thought. It had warm winds and soft, mellow days with none of the Atlantic gales that ravaged some of the more exposed coasts, except on rare occasions.

  It was all so beautifully unspoiled, she thought, with a small sigh of pleasure. At least, it always had been, and Robin had thought it would continue to be so. But two weeks before, when she had finally come back home, she had found her father in an unusually keyed-up frame of mind. Naturally glad to see his daughter home, he nevertheless treated her a little warily, the way he used to when she was a rather rebellious teenager and he’d said that dealing with her moods was like treading over broken glass. Exasperated after several days of hedging about, Robin demanded to know what was wrong.

  He had looked at her uneasily.

  “Come on, Dad, I know you well enough to know when you’ve got something on your mind. If you’re worried about my being out of a job and still pining over Mrs. Fowler, you needn’t be. I’ll find something else ...”

  “You know I’d never worry about that, Robin. You know you’re welcome to stay here and look after me in my old age, but I can’t imagine the soft life being enough for you.”

  “You’re not old, and stop trying to soft-soap me,” she said affectionately. “But you can’t fool me, either, so let’s have it.”

  James Pollard had smiled faintly.

  “I see that caring for Mrs. Fowler did nothing to stem your impatience, and I might have known you’d soon wheedle it out of me ...”

  “You aren’t ill, are you, Dad?” It was something Robin hadn’t considered. She looked at him swiftly, but he looked the same as ever, a robust grey-haired man in his middle fifties, for whom early retirement from a businessman’s life seven years earlier upon inheriting the lovely old manor house in Truro in which he now lived had been a delight to both him and his daughter. No, Robin thought with some relief, he certainly didn’t look ill. He shook his head quickly, confirming it.

  “All right, then. I can’t hide it from you forever anyway,” he had said briskly. Robin had tensed, a sixth sense telling her she was about to hear something of importance. But whatever she had expected, it was nothing like the shock she received.

  “I’ve decided to lease some of the land belonging to the estate, Robin. It’s little more than wild moor now, and of no use for anything unless someone wanted to build there, and I can’t imagine a person wanting a house half buried in the lee of the hillside with all that rough woodland behind it to the north. I’d never even considered selling or leasing any part of the estate, but a property developer got in touch with me and made me an offer too good to refuse. Of course, I never really thought it would come off.” James shrugged, avoiding his daughter’s horrified eyes, and blundered on. “There was planning permission to obtain — the plans to be approved by me as well as the town and country planners — but this fellow could charm the birds off the trees, I reckon, because it’s all gone through.”

  Robin found her voice at last.

  “You don’t mean the land above my cove!” she’d spluttered furiously. “Dad, you can’t! That’s my special place —”

  “I know you always used to call it that, darling, but that was when you were a child and used to go down there for holidays with your great-aunt.” Knowing just what her reaction would be, James was sharper than he’d intended. “You’re too old to indulge in childish fantasies now, Robin. I’m still a businessman at heart, and when a golden opportunity comes my way, I’m still capable of seeing the potential and grasping it. It’s not as if I’m selling outright. I’m only leasing the land, so I shall be a kind of partner in the development. In time the interest in it will revert to you.”

  Robin had been too recently involved with the harrowing details of Mrs. Fowler’s bequests to want to linger on any future prospects from her father’s business deal. One phrase stuck in her mind as he spoke and she seized on it now.

  “What development?” she demanded to know, her green eyes blazing like emeralds in her flushed face. Her father sighed.

  “It’s to be a tourist development.” He confirmed her worst fears. “A series of one-storey self-catering apartments that will be unseen from the surrounding areas so as not to detract from the rural environment.”

  “Oh, how could you! Whether we see them or not, they’ll be there, won’t they? Dozens of tourists will be infiltrating every summer and moving in with their rotten ice creams and blaring transistors,” she raged.

  “You’re being very stupid, Robin, and also very selfish,” her father had said coldly. “How often will you be here to see any of them? You’ve said yourself that you’ll be looking for a new job soon, and if you enjoy the peace and tranquility of our Cornish beaches, why shouldn’t we let other people enjoy them?”

  “That’s just the point! They won’t be peaceful any longer, once you let hordes of tourists in.”

  “If you’d take the trouble to look at the plans, you’d see
there won’t be hordes of them. The development is only for six apartments. There simply isn’t space for more.”

  “Thank God!”

  “And anyway, it isn’t directly above your cove, as you call it. The ground is too steep there. It’s along to the right, above the wider bay, where the ground levels out a little. The apartments will be stepped to give maximum privacy —”

  “I don’t want to hear about it,” Robin had snapped. She knew that she was being unreasonable and that her father was probably looking forward to being involved in this project. The role of gentleman land-owner didn’t sit altogether comfortably on him, and the fact that he was disappointed in her violent reaction to his news made her feel ashamed but unable to stop herself from lashing out at him verbally.

  James could be as stubborn as his daughter. “Very well. But you will at least be civil when Mr. Burgess and his surveyor arrive in a couple of weeks to take some preliminary assessments. I’ve asked them to dinner, since they’ll be staying in Helston overnight. I would have asked them to stay here, but I anticipated some kind of childish flouncing about.”

  She’d glared at him speechlessly, knowing his words held too much truth in them to be denied. Was it childish to want to cling to one’s heritage, to a little bit of Cornwall that was very dear to her? Hot quick tears had sprung to her eyes. Knowing how much her reaction hurt her father, because it was his heritage, too, she had run to his arms, much as she had done when she was a child, and mumbled that she’d try to be polite for his sake, but that she was never going to like the unknown Mr. Burgess for destroying her dreamworld.

  *

  Robin’s footsteps faltered a little as she walked on that lovely autumn day towards the stone-built manor house that had known several generations of Pollards before her. Solid and with the windows glinting in the sunlight, it was the refuge she’d run to after her employer’s sad demise. But now, after several weeks’ recuperation, Robin was aware of a growing restlessness within her. Pollard Manor was marvellous to come home to — and her cove would always hold a special place in her heart — but she was no longer a child. Maybe Mrs. Fowler’s death had shown her that too. She had had to cope with a lot in the past weeks; there had been no relatives nearer than Australia, and Robin had been left to sort out the estate with the solicitor. But she was a woman now, and she needed to work. Her father was right in one thing: She couldn’t stay there idly forever ...