Starting Over

by Penny Jordan

  I've changed my mind.'

  Nick stared at her. He knew exactly what 'proposition' Sara meant. She was referring to that idiotic throw-away comment he had made about them having a short, sharp sexual fling.

  It took him several seconds to believe what he had heard. Sara was agreeing that they should have sex....

  Just like that...without any...without them...

  'I have to go now.' Awkwardly she edged away.

  Sara couldn't believe what she had done...what she had said. She felt as though a totally alien life form had somehow taken her over, made her behave in a way that was totally out of character.

  Amused Bobbie watched the by-play between them in silence. She could feel the heat and sexual tension they were both generating.

  'Sara,' Nick protested, but it was too late, she was already hurrying away.

  'Mmm... Now you have whetted my curiosity,'

  Bobbie teased Nick. 'Are you going to enlighten me?'

  'There isn't anything to enlighten you about,' Nick told her forbiddingly. Bobbie laughed.

  'Oh, no? And what about a certain proposition?'

  'It was just a small business matter,' Nick fibbed dismissively.

  'If you say so,' Bobbie accepted dulcetly, but Nick could see that she was still smiling.

  Sara had agreed to have sex with him—so why wasn't he feeling more triumphant? Why this cold feeling of shock and dismay in the pit of his stomach?

  Because she had totally misunderstood his comment—

  that was why. Yes—he wanted to take her to bed, but he was an old-fashioned kind of man who preferred to do his own hunting rather than have his quarry offer herself to him. Rubbish! So why then this feeling of disappointment, of disillusionment almost?

  So he had been wrong to assume that Sara was the kind of woman for whom sexual desire and emotional love went hand in hand. Why should that arouse so many negative feelings for him?

  SARA WAS TREMBLING uncontrollably by the time she reached her car. There was no way she could stay at the spa now. She couldn't understand what had driven her to act in such a way but she knew her pride would never allow her to recall her reckless words.

  What was going to happen now, she wondered. At the very least Nick was going to have some explaining and appeasing to do to his companion and yet she had looked more amused than shocked or hurt by Sara's challenge. And she had certainly not displayed any of the agonising jealousy that she herself had felt. Jealousy that had motivated her, driven her, invaded her personality and taken it over.

  DAVID COULD HEAR the noise as he opened his car door on Olivia's drive. A child was crying, screaming.

  Instinctively he hurried towards the source of the noise, checking when he saw his two granddaughters, the elder leaning protectively towards the younger who was holding her knee, her hand covered in blood.

  As he crouched down beside them, Amelia told him shakily, 'Alex has hurt herself.'

  'Yes, I know,' David agreed steadily. 'Look, why don't I stay here with her whilst you go and get your mummy?'

  Obediently Amelia left her younger sibling's side and started to run towards the house.

  Carefully David smiled at Alex. 'Why don't you let me have a look?' he suggested gently.

  'It hurts,' Alex sobbed.

  'I know,' David sympathised. He could see a piece of glass on the path smeared with blood and he went cold. She had obviously cut herself, but how badly, how deeply?

  Very gently David reached for her, soothing and calming her as he persuaded her to let him look at her injured leg. When he saw that the cut was relatively minor, he expelled his pent-up breath in relief.

  'You! What are you doing here?'

  David tensed as he heard the antagonism in Olivia's voice but Livvy wasn't looking at him. Her face had gone white as she hurried anxiously towards her younger daughter.

  'Alex... Oh, Alex...'

  'It's all right,' David assured her. 'It looks much worse than it is. It's just a flesh cut....'

  '...and you're an expert, of course,' Olivia stormed bitingly at him.

  'Not an expert, no,' David responded with quiet dignity, 'But I do know enough to recognise a relatively minor wound when I see one. However, it will still have to be cleaned. Shall I carry her to the house for you?'

  'No!' Olivia denied immediately, but to her chagrin as she reached for Alex the girl shook her head and told her, 'No, I want him to carry me.'

  Angrily Olivia gave way, preceding David up the path towards the house as he carried Alex in his arms.

  As SHE WATCHED her father dealing deftly with Alex's cut leg whilst Amelia looked on in almost doting hero-worship, Olivia felt as though somehow she had been transported back in time and that she was the one in her father's arms.

  She would have been about Alex's age—perhaps a little older. She had, she remembered, been playing in the garden at Queensmead with Max out of sight of the adults. They had been arguing about something and Max had pushed her over. She could still remember how hard she had fought not to cry whilst Max taunted her saying that she was a soppy cry-baby girl.

  It had been Jenny who had found them, exclaiming in concern as she saw Olivia's scraped and bleeding knees, picking her up and carrying her back towards the party of grown-ups on the other side of the garden.

  'Tania, Livvy's fallen and hurt her knees,' Jenny had told Olivia's mother.

  But as Jenny had held the girl out towards her sister-in-law, Olivia could still see the look of irritation and distaste in her mother's eyes as she had recoiled from her exclaiming, 'Oh, no. Don't give her to me, Jenny, my clothes will be covered in blood and this dress is new. Give her to David. He can deal with her. David...' she had called, and Olivia could remember how her father who had been talking with Ben and Jon had turned impatiently to look at them.

  'Olivia's cut her knees. You'll have to take her inside and clean her up,' Tania had announced.

  And as her father's frown had deepened her grandfather had complained, 'Wretched child. Let one of the women deal with her, David.'

  Olivia had shrunk away from her father as he had taken her from Jenny, carrying her indoors without saying a word to her and upstairs to the bathroom where he had sat her down whilst he cleaned her knees of the grit embedded in them, frowning whilst he did so.

  'How did this happen?' he had asked her whilst tears welled in her eyes from the sting of the antiseptic he was using.

  When she made no response, unwilling to tell him that Max had pushed her in case he refused to believe her, he had shaken his head and told her with a sigh,

  'Well, try not to be so clumsy in future.' He had picked her up then, giving another sigh whilst Olivia had fought back her tears.

  It had been Jenny who had comforted her later, giving her a cuddle and asking if she was feeling all right, but Olivia had still ached for it to be her father who was holding her.

  And now, here he was carrying her daughter with every evidence of that tenderness and concern she had once so much longed to get from him and had felt was withheld from her. He looked every inch the loving caring grandfather, but it was an image Olivia flatly refused to believe in.

  How could she? He had never been a loving caring father to her—not in her eyes and yet now, here he was preparing to become a father again, but this time... But this time the child he had helped to create would be loved by him in a way that she never had been.

  The intensity of her emotions frightened her. She was an adult now, a parent herself, surely way beyond caring about the traumas of her childhood.

  Protectively she reached out to take Alex from him but to her consternation her daughter insisted, 'No,'

  clinging to David and turning her face away from her mother.

  'Let me take her upstairs for you,' David offered gently.

  Olivia looked so shocked, so stricken that his heart went out to her. He ached to be able to gather her into his arms along with her daughters. He could see so clearly in her expression
that she was hurting and angry and, he recognised with the maturity he had lacked when she had been a child, the pride and hurt were warring inside her.

  Other than physically wresting Alex from his arms, Olivia recognised she had no alternative but to agree.

  Giving David a curt nod she led the way upstairs leaving him to follow her.

  It was a good half an hour before the girls allowed David to leave. He had to be shown their computer and their homework before Olivia could settle them in their room and take David back downstairs with her.

  She was on her way to the front door when he asked her quietly, 'Olivia, why didn't you return my phone call?'

  Olivia tensed. She had her back to him and she refused to turn round as she responded sharply, 'Why should I? After all, what could you possibly have to say to me that I would want to hear— Father?'

  David winced as he heard the bitterness in her voice. She already knew what he had to tell her; he could see, not just from her challenging response to his question, but from the angry rejection of her body language as well.

  'Maybe you didn't want to hear what I had to say Olivia but I wanted...' He stopped.

  'Look, I know that I wasn't the best of fathers to either you or Jack and I can understand how you must feel....'

  Olivia swung round, her face pale with angry disbelief.

  'No you can't,' she denied. 'How could you. Your father loved you.... He practically worshipped you and he still does. At best you treated me as though I were... an... an inconvenience... at worst...'

  'Olivia.' David couldn't help himself, instinctively he went towards her but immediately she retreated.

  Olivia couldn't believe what was happening—that he had actually dared to come here to her home.

  'Livvy,' David groaned. 'You have no idea how guilty I feel...how much I wish—'

  'Guilty! Why, because you're afraid that I might tell Honor what an uncaring father you are? Yes, I know about the baby.' She practically spat the words at him.

  'Honor already knows about all the sins and failings of my past,' David interrupted her quietly, but with such gentle strength that Olivia felt the tide of anger sweeping over her momentarily still. As a child she had known and seen her father in every kind of mood, euphoric when things were going well for him, sulky and uncommunicative when they weren't, demanding, insensitive, callous almost when dealing with anyone's emotions other than his own, a man who, as an adult, she had judged as vain, selfish and weak. But the man facing her now was none of those things. She could feel the quiet resolution of his own inner strength reaching out to hold her. She took a deep confused breath whilst David held his.

  He wanted so desperately to reach out to her, to begin to build a bridge between them which eventually would give them both an easy passage over the chasm of the pain of her childhood.

  'Honor and I are expecting a baby,' he continued,

  'Your half-brother or -sister, Olivia.'

  The unexpectedness of the pain his words brought her cut through and broke the spell she had been under.

  'I don't want to know,' she began furiously, 'and if you only came to tell me something I already knew anyway...'

  'Telling you about the baby wasn't the sole purpose of my visit,' David denied.

  He took a deep breath.

  'When I mentioned to Jenny that Honor and I were disappointed that you couldn't make it at the weekend, Jenny told me about the problems you've been having finding someone to help out with the girls. Honor and I could help, Olivia. I could pick the girls up for you from school. I thought...'

  Olivia clung to the worktop as shock and fury poured through her.

  'You thought what? Do you really believe I would ever, ever allow my daughters anywhere near you?'

  Olivia realised that she was practically screaming the words at him, her self-control slipping away so fast that she felt sick, but somehow she couldn't stop herself.

  'You need help Olivia,' David pressed on as calmly as he could.

  'Yes, but not from you, never from you. What is it you really want? To practise your parenting skills on my children so that you can perfect them in time for the birth of your new child?'

  She gave a bitter laugh.

  'My God. How dare you, of all men, bring another life into the world? Haven't you done enough damage to Jack and me?'

  'Livvy.' There was pain and guilt as well as protest in David's voice as he listened to her. He had known...expected...that she would object to his suggestion, but the raw agonising hostility and anger she was expressing made his throat ache with pain for her.

  He had done this to her...caused her to feel like this.

  'Livvy, I know how you must feel.'

  'What?' Olivia stared at him. 'No, you don't....

  How could you? How could you know what it feels like to be rejected by your parents...to be unwanted by your father, to be despised and disparaged because of your sex? The unwanted female child. Grandfather always used to say that Max should have been your child and I could see in your eyes that you thought so, too.'

  'No, Livvy, that isn't true,' David denied. 'I...I was weak and...and immature enough to agree with my father when he said that Max should have been my son—yes—he always did seem closer in nature to me than to his real father, Jon. I'm not using that as an excuse but as an explanation. But I certainly never hated you. Never!'

  'Yes, you did,' Olivia contradicted him flatly. 'Not that I care. Who would want the love of a father who's a thief and a liar?' She gave a small dismissive shrug.

  'No matter how much you might have wished Max was your son it can't have been as much as I wished that Jon and Jenny were my parents.'

  If she had meant to hurt him then she had succeeded, David acknowledged. Not because of what she had said, but because of the mental picture she had unwittingly drawn for him of a defenceless hurting child who had given her love to her aunt and uncle because she felt her own parents had rejected it. What he was hurting for was her.

  'Livvy, listen,' he begged her tenderly. 'We all know what a wonderful mother you are, but we know, too, that without Caspar... You have a full-time job.'

  'You've been talking about me...behind my back.'

  She gave David a bitter hostile look. 'Oh, yes, I can just imagine what must have been said. Poor Olivia...her parents didn't want her and now it looks like her husband doesn't, either. Well, for your information, I was the one who decided to end our marriage.'

  She held her head up proudly. 'They say, don't they, that a child is programmed by the relationships it experiences as a child...driven to replicate them in adult-hood, no matter how damaging or destructive they may have been. If that's true, I suppose it's no wonder that my marriage didn't work out.'

  'Livvy,' David protested in shocked concern.

  'Don't call me Livvy,' Olivia told him sharply, her voice starting to rise with the tension and pain she was experiencing. 'You don't have the right.... You don't have any rights where I'm concerned. How dare you come here, patronising me, pretending to be concerned for me? Trying to whitewash over the past. Don't think I can't guess why. The new perfect David Crighton you've somehow managed to convince the rest of the world you've become—but can't possibly be—just has to do the right thing, doesn't he? The perfect son.

  The perfect brother. The perfect husband and now, the perfect father. Well, maybe that's what you'll be to Honor's baby, but you certainly never were to me or Jack.'

  Just the thought of her father being a parent again, starting a brand-new life...a brand-new family...

  caused her such an intensity of savage, dark, self-destructive emotion that Olivia felt as though she were drowning in her own pain and grief.

  Quietly David listened, wanting to give her time to express her anger and pain before he tried to comfort and reassure her, but before he could do so she took a deep breath and told him sharply and fiercely, 'I want you to leave. Now. This is my home. Just as the children are my children.'

  'And
my grandchildren,' David reminded her quietly.

  He could see from her expression that he had said the wrong thing.

  'You need help, Livvy,' he insisted. 'Please let me do something.'

  'The only thing I want you to do is to keep out of my life,' Olivia cried. 'I hate you...I hate you....'

  WEARILY DAVID massaged his temple as he drove back to Honor. He had failed at many things in his life but no other failure had made him ache with guilt and remorse like this one did.

  More than ever now he knew just how much Olivia was hurting, how alone she was, how abandoned she felt. And he had sensed, too, for all her pride and defiance, that she still had some very strong feelings for Caspar.

  And it wasn't just Livvy's pain that was making him long to gather her up in his arms and comfort her with all the tender fatherly love he had never shown her as a child. There were her daughters, as well...his grandchildren, especially Amelia the elder one with her wary eyes and anxiety for her mother. He didn't blame Olivia for not being aware that her elder daughter was taking on the role she herself had found so onerous, the role of a child having to protect an adult. But he would certainly blame himself if he didn't protect Amelia...if he turned his back on her as he had done on Livvy.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  DESPAIRINGLY, Olivia watched as both her daughters played with their food. They had been subdued ever since David had left and she knew that they were as aware of the atmosphere of heavy tension filling the kitchen as she was herself.

  'Will Daddy be home for Christmas?' Alex suddenly asked her in a loud voice, ignoring the look Amelia was giving her.

  Olivia took a deep breath. She had by now carefully explained to both girls that she and Caspar were going to be living separately from now on and assured them that once Caspar had found somewhere permanent to live they would be going to see him. Whatever her private feelings, there was no way she was going to stop them from seeing their father.

  'Darling, we've already discussed Daddy is going to be living separately from us.'