by Penny Jordan
Congratulating herself on removing herself from any further embarrassment, Tara pulled on a casual denim jacket to match her jeans and opened the front door. Sue would think her behaviour odd, she knew, but she could always explain it away somehow later. If only fate would be kind and somehow make it imperative for James to leave the country without her ever having to set eyes on him again!
Tara was so engrossed in her thoughts that at first she didn’t notice the scarlet Porsche cruising slowly towards her. As she drew level with it it stopped, and her eyes widened as she recognised it and James. Footsteps faltering, Tara glanced wildly behind her, but it was too late. James was already slamming the car door and advancing purposefully on her, his mouth compressed in a grim line.
‘Running away won’t solve anything, Tara,’ he said curtly, grasping her arm. ‘You and I have to talk. I intended waiting until you showed up at the house, but something told me that you might prefer flight to fight.’
‘We’ve nothing to say to one another,’ Tara muttered, refusing to lift her head to meet his eyes. ‘Please let me go, you’re hurting me!’
‘I could hurt you one hell of a lot more if we don’t talk this thing through now,’ James interrupted brusquely, swearing suddenly as he saw her face, and hustling her into the car without ceremony. Tara felt too weak to object.
‘Tara.’ Through her tears she saw James push one hand wearily through his hair. He was frowning and she longed to smooth away the furrows with her fingertips. ‘Tara, there’s no need to feel bad about what happened last night, or to feel that you can’t face me again. No, don’t deny it,’ he said softly when she started to protest. ‘I’ve been there—a long time ago, perhaps, by your standards, but I can still remember. There’ll be other loves; other men,’ he told her softly, ‘and you can’t know how much I regret…’
‘My stupid crush on you?’ Tara broke in bitterly, reaching for the door handle and turning blindly away from him.
James’s fingers reached the lock before her and then curled warmly round her wrist, the pressure of his grip forcing her towards him.
‘For God’s sake, Tara, what the hell are you trying to do to me—to us?’ he muttered savagely. ‘You can’t be so innocent that you don’t know how much I want you; how I’m having to fight against my own desire for your protection.’ He grimaced suddenly, his mouth wry. ‘How do you think I could live with myself if I allowed what there is between us to reach its natural conclusion? A woman’s first sexual experience is something deeply important in her life, yours shouldn’t be with a married man who isn’t free to…’
‘Make love to me?’ Tara finished for him. ‘Don’t worry, it won’t be. I don’t care if I never see you again in my whole life,’ she announced dramatically. ‘I hate you!’
This time he made no attempt to stop her leaving the car, and Tara walked several miles before she calmed down enough to realise that her childish words stemmed more from pique than any genuine hatred. How could she hate him when she loved him so much? As she tried to untangle her muddled thoughts she knew that James had been right and that there was no future for them; that he was trying to protect her, and probably save himself the embarrassment of her crush on him. And then she remembered the look in his eyes when he had said that she must have known that he desired her, and her pulse quickened betrayingly, a dizzying image of how it would be to have James as her first lover, initiating her into the pleasures of lovemaking, sweeping aside common sense and logic.
It was late afternoon before she returned home, drained and exhausted, but not too tired to dream yearningly of James, crying his name over and over again until the sound of her own voice woke her.
It was lunchtime the following day before Tara saw Sue. The younger girl looked unhappy.
‘James has flown back to America,’ she announced miserably. ‘He had to leave suddenly yesterday.’
Tara’s heart plummeted. Had he really had to leave, or had it simply been a fabricated excuse to remove himself from her vicinity? She knew that logically she should be grateful and that he was only behaving as he should, but she felt bitterly hurt that he had gone without saying a word to her.
A month went by, and then two. Tara had expected that her feelings would diminish in the face of James’s absence, but to her consternation they seemed to flourish. The mere sound of his name on Sue’s lips was enough to set her heart pounding; the glimpse of a tall dark-haired man all that was needed to increase her pulse rate a hundred-fold.
Exams had come and gone, and Tara alternately longed for and yet dreaded the results.
One sultry afternoon in August, bored with her own company, she set out for Sue’s house. Sue’s mother was due to return at the end of the month. She was spending several weeks in Hillingdon before returning to New York. Would James be with her? Tara daren’t ask.
It was too hot for cycling and by the time she reached the house she was exhausted. The sun had disappeared and the air was full of the sullen electricity that presaged a thunderstorm. Tara shivered despite the heat. Thunder was something which had always terrified her.
The storm broke just as she turned into the drive, vivid streaks of lightning splitting the sky accompanied by fierce rolls of thunder so loud and close together that Tara was convinced the storm was almost overhead. She abandoned her bike in her terror and raced for the house at the same time as the heavens opened. On the short sprint to the back door she got soaked, but to her relief the handle turned easily beneath her shaking fingers, although there was no sign of Sue in the kitchen.
Calling her name, Tara waited, trying to block out the sound of the storm. Moisture dripped from her hair and her jeans were soaked at the hem and waistband.
It was ten minutes before she finally admitted that the house was empty. Sue often left the back door unlocked because she had a horror of losing her key and being locked out, and Tara guessed that she had probably cycled into Hillingdon to change her library books or do some shopping.
The sky had turned from brassy gold to dark pewter, the thunder increasing in volume with every passing second. Tara tried to turn on the radio in an effort to distract herself, but there was so much interference she abandoned the idea. A vivid flash of lightning lanced the sky, striking one of the oaks in the park beyond the house. A small terrified scream broke past her trembling lips. There was no way she could find the courage to leave the house while the storm was still in progress, and held rigid with terror, Tara simply stood in the middle of the kitchen, ears and eyes straining to detect some lessening in the fury outside.
She was concentrating so much on the storm that she never heard anything else until the kitchen door jerked inwards suddenly and she swung round at the sound, eyes dilated with fear, her skin stretched tightly over the delicate bones of her face.
James stood there, dressed in a formal business suit, briefcase in one hand. She registered the fact that he looked tired, and then everything else was forgotten as another clap of thunder sounded almost overhead. She screamed and ran instinctively for the protection of his arms, his rough, ‘Tara, what the hell…’ muffled against her hair as his arms tightened round her instinctively, the sudden impetus of her flight rocking him back on his heels.
‘Stop it, stop it!’ Tara whimpered, covering her ears with her hands to try and blot out the sound of the thunder, terror pouring through her veins like a floodtide.
‘Hush! It’s all right, nothing to be afraid of,’ James soothed. ‘Are you here on your own?’
She nodded. ‘I came to see Sue, but she was out.’ She flinched as another jagged flash of lightning split the sky.
‘You’re soaked!’ James exclaimed. ‘I’ll get a towel for your hair.’ He started to move away, but Tara clung desperately to his shoulders, her eyes begging him not to leave her.
‘It’s all right,’ he soothed. ‘Now just wait here and I’ll be back in a second.’
He disentangled her fingers from his jacket and walked back into the hall.
A fresh roll of thunder had Tara clenching her teeth and digging her fingernails into the soft skin of her palms. He wouldn’t be long, she told herself. What a fool he must think her! She must try not to panic. She was just congratulating herself on succeeding when an almighty clap of thunder seemed to shake the house to the foundations, lightning zigzagging electrifyingly just outside the window. Tara’s control broke, on a terrified scream she flung open the kitchen door and raced up the stairs, her feet taking her automatically to the room she knew belonged to James. She pushed open the door without pausing, barely aware of James’s smothered curse or the fact that he was just emerging from his bathroom with only a towel draped round his hips, until his hands gripped the soft flesh of her upper arms as he caught hold of her.
His ‘God, Tara, what am I going to do about you?’ was lost as she flung herself into his arms, shivering with a terror that obliterated everything else.
As though he sensed that words alone would not be enough to soothe her, James drew her slowly towards the window. ‘Look,’ he said quietly, ‘the storm’s dying away. It’s passed over us now, we’re quite safe, Tara.’
The quiet confidence in his voice reached out to the wild panic shivering inside her and had a calming effect. Her terror started to die down and all at once she became intensely conscious of the hard warmth of his thighs against her own and the smoothly satin feel of his skin beneath her fingertips.
‘Tara…’
She knew from the tone of his voice that in another minute she would be released and pushed gently outside his door, and the knowledge was almost unbearable. She wanted to stay with him; to revel in the heady pleasure of touching him, of exploring the sculptured male contours of his body, to feel it respond to her own.
A tiny inner voice pleaded caution, but she ignored it.
‘Tara…’
‘Don’t send me away, James,’ she pleaded huskily. ‘Please… I’ve been thinking about… about what you said before you left, and…’ Head bowed, she studied the dark criss-cross of hairs curling against his chest, a weak, yielding sensation turning her stomach to jelly.
‘And,’ James prompted harshly, ‘I seem to remember that the last time you saw me you told me you hated me. If you merely want to repeat the sentiment, don’t bother, it’s one I can easily do without.’
He had changed during the last two months, Tara acknowledged, studying him properly. His face seemed leaner, the bones harder, and there was a smouldering intensity in the way his eyes lingered on her body that she had not seen before.
‘I don’t hate you, James,’ she said steadily, taking a deep breath. ‘I love you, and even though…’ Even though you don’t love me, she had been about to say, but somehow she couldn’t bring herself to frame the words. ‘And… I want you to be my first lover. I…’
She got no further. Her body was crushed against the bronzed male flesh, James’s mouth plundering the soft hollow at the base of her throat, sending flickering tongues of fire licking through her veins.
‘You don’t know what you’re saying,’ James muttered hoarsely. ‘Nothing’s changed… nothing at all,’ he added thickly. ‘I still want you so much it’s like a gut pain, even though I know I must be half out of my mind. Stop me, Tara,’ he warned huskily, nibbling seductively at her throat. ‘Stop me now, for God’s sake, because I’m warning you, there’s no way I can stop myself.’
‘I don’t want to stop you,’ Tara whispered back breathlessly. ‘Make love to me, James.’
The hours that followed were something she had never forgotten; a time of magic and delight.
James had been a considerate lover, drawing from her untutored body a response that shook her to her soul, drawing her gradually into a melting frenzy of need so that the pain of his possession was quickly swamped by the urgent tide of her own desire. It had been then that he had told her that he loved her; at the same time cursing himself for what had happened. Tara had merely smiled lazily, supine and relaxed, her body still awash with pleasure. For her the regret and remorse had come later—six weeks later to be precise—when she had discovered that she was to have his baby, and she had gone to him to seek his help and advice. But he hadn’t been there, and it had been Hilary she had had to face; Hilary who had laughed in her face when she asked uncertainly for James. Hilary who had told her cruelly that she had been merely one of his many brief diversions and that they had laughed about it together; laughed about her.
She had left without telling Hilary the truth. Later from Sue she had learned that James had flown to New York several days before Hilary had been due to leave for Hillingdon. They had met there briefly but not returned together. Tara knew why: Hilary had told her. ‘Can’t you understand, you silly little girl,’ she had said mockingly, ‘he’s had what he wanted from you—it’s over, and this is his way of telling you so. He doesn’t want you, my dear; you would bore him silly, all he wanted was a little divertissement—you poor little fool,’ she added, ‘Did you really think he cared? My dear, if I hadn’t been neglecting him so shamefully he would never even have looked at you. My God, it’s almost pathetic! What do you, a gauche inexperienced girl, have to offer a man like James; a man who enjoys the best that life has to offer and the women who can provide him with it?’
Tara remembered how she had been sick on the way home, humiliatingly and thoroughly. That had been the night her mother had taxed her with the truth and she had been forced to admit it, and life had never been the same again. She had thought herself grown up the afternoon James made love to her, but she hadn’t been. She finally grew up in the small living room of her home when her mother told her that she would have to have her illegitimate child adopted and she had refused.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE sound of footsteps approaching her bedroom door alerted Tara to the fact that she was no longer alone. Dragging her thoughts away from the past, she shivered slightly as she opened the door.
‘Feeling better?’ Sue questioned sympathetically, adding when she nodded her head, ‘You still look dreadfully pale. Your Mandy is a delight,’ she added, smiling. ‘You should see her with Piers—she’s so motherly. Simon’s a darling as well.’
‘He’s very sensitive,’ Tara told her. ‘Too much so, I sometimes think.’
‘At the risk of voicing a cliché, do you think perhaps he needs a father?’
‘A man to pattern himself on?’ Tara grimaced. ‘Despite what the psychologists would have us believe I still think the security of one parent is better than two who quarrel.’
‘I couldn’t agree more, and I’m glad you’re still as romantic as you always were. I’d have been bitterly disappointed if you’d been prosaic enough to say you might marry some pleasant, unexciting man merely to provide the twins with a father. Which reminds me, I came up here to tell you that Mrs Barnes is giving them their tea.’
‘I’ll go down and collect them,’ Tara murmured, following her friend to the door.
‘Tara—’ She paused, turning to glance at Sue’s faintly clouded face. ‘Do you find James much changed?’ Sue asked her hesitantly. ‘Alec says I’m imagining things, but there seems to be something different about him.’
‘It’s so long since I last saw him that I’m bound to find him changed,’ Tara told her in a clipped voice.
‘He never married again after Mother, you know, and yet I distinctly remember overhearing Mother tell him in the middle of a row that she’d never divorce him to let him go and marry someone else, so he must have thought about it.’
‘And changed his mind when he realised what he was giving up,’ Tara suggested sardonically, immediately wishing the words unsaid when Sue stared at her reproachfully.
‘Tara!’ There was shock and disbelief in her voice. ‘I know some people thought that James married Mother for her money, but I never expected you’d be one of them. You always seemed to get on so well. You know,’ she added thoughtfully, ‘I always had the impression that there was some mystery about their
marriage. One moment Mother had gone to the States on business—something to do with the death of one of her partners—and the next she was back, married to James, and yet I can never remember them actually seeming happy together.’
It was natural that Sue should want to make excuses for James, Tara thought tiredly—hadn’t she once done exactly the same? His marriage had been the one thing they had never talked about. The young possessed a wonderful facility for seeing only what they wanted to see, she thought cynically, but James hadn’t been a young teenager; how had he managed to blinker himself to the reality of his marriage? Or hadn’t it been necessary? Why fool herself, she had never been anything more than a simple entertaining interlude, a momentary diversion, the piquant sensation of being the subject of a young girl’s love.
‘Oh, I know James and Mother couldn’t have married for love,’ Sue was saying, ‘but I can’t believe that he married her purely for financial gain.’
‘No indeed,’ Tara agreed blandly. ‘I doubt that purity had much to do with his motives at all!’
Sue pulled a face as she opened the kitchen door. All three children were seated round a large well scrubbed table. The kitchen was decorated in an attractive farmhouse style, and Mrs Barnes, the housekeeper, smiled warmly as Sue and Tara walked in.
‘Mummy, I’ve eaten all my tea,’ Mandy announced importantly, ‘and helped to feed Piers. Simon has been playing…’
‘No, I haven’t,’ Simon interrupted, scowling horribly at his sister.
‘Then why haven’t you eaten that?’ Mandy demanded triumphantly, pointing to several small pieces of carrot still on Simon’s plate.
‘Because I’m not hungry,’ Simon countered, while Tara hid a sympathetic smile. Simon wasn’t over-fond of carrots, and she was forced to hide another smile when Mandy announced, ‘Simon can’t have any icecream if he doesn’t eat his carrots, can he, Mummy?’