For Better for Worse

by Penny Jordan

  ‘I suspect he feels he rather needs an ally at times,’ Eleanor added slyly, watching silently as Vanessa digested her comment.

  Nothing more was said, no response made by Vanessa. Not then. But the new bedroom and bathroom furniture had been duly chosen and before she left for New York she had mentioned casually that it seemed a pity for Marcus to waste so much money paying for her to board at school when she could just as easily live with them.

  And now she was coming home. And Marcus was going alone to meet her and welcome her back.

  Eleanor nibbled anxiously at her bottom lip. It wasn’t just for Marcus that she wanted things to go well, or for herself, it was for all of them. Vanessa’s resentment and unhappiness of her merely reflected her inner unhappiness with herself.

  Perhaps she was too sentimental, too idealistic, but she wished no child to grow up with that kind of burden, Eleanor reflected—no child, but especially not one close to her.

  She walked into the hall and looked nervously at the clock. Vanessa’s flight should be in by now.

  * * *

  Marcus almost missed her; she had grown taller, developed the beginnings of curves, changed her hairstyle; she looked, alarmingly, more young woman than child—and then she saw him, and hesitated, anxiety, longing, hesitation and vulnerability flitting across her face, making her once again a child… his child.

  ‘Vanessa…’

  He moved quickly towards her, not waiting for her to come to him, taking hold of her and hugging her, surprising himself by his reaction to the slender, fragile feel of her in his arms.

  His child… his daughter, his flesh.

  ‘Dad…’

  There was a small husky choke in the girl’s voice as she buried her head against him, and her voice shook a little as she told him, ‘So uncool… Jade would have a fit. Where are the others?’ she asked him, lifting her hair from his shoulder.

  ‘Waiting at the house. I wanted to come and meet you on my own.’

  It was the truth, he recognised, even if he hadn’t known it until Eleanor told him, suggested it.

  ‘I’ll bet Gavin was pleased,’ Vanessa commented. ‘I thought he’d probably bring his precious fish with him.’

  Marcus laughed. ‘Oh, you’ve heard all about them, have you? I like the hairstyle, by the way. It suits you.’

  He watched as she flushed with pleasure, acknowledging that the old Marcus, the Marcus who couldn’t allow himself to express even to himself how much he loved her, would never have said as much.

  ‘Do you really like it?’ Vanessa asked him eagerly, and when he nodded she giggled and told him, ‘It was Jade’s idea. She said that Nell would have forty fits and that she’d probably prefer me to have my hair in nice neat braids like an old-fashioned schoolgirl.’

  As he listened to her, noting the way she clung naturally to his arm, pressing close against him as they battled their way through the bustle, he recorded that easy, unselfconscious ‘Nell’, and the lack of malice which had accompanied her comment, and mentally thanked Jade.

  ‘Has Jade decided to stay on in New York, did she say?’

  ‘She said that Sam wanted to marry her, but that she’s not sure. She will marry him, though,’ Vanessa told him with new wisdom. ‘She loves him really.

  ‘How’s the new house? Are you all settled in? Is Nell making you work hard in the garden?’

  ‘Fine, yes, and no,’ Marcus told her teasingly, adding with a grin, ‘I think Nell’s saving the heavy digging for you. She thinks you’ve been spoiled enough. I ought to warn you, by the way, that Tom has bought himself a metal detector and he seems to have got hold of the strange idea that you’ll be as thrilled with the potential of it as he is, so prepare yourself…’

  ‘Well, it’s a fairly old house… Victorian, Nell said, so there might be something…’ Vanessa told him enthusiastically, a child once more, the emergent woman disappearing.

  ‘Yes, probably a lot of rusting nails and rubbish,’ Marcus agreed.

  ‘Well, I suppose so, but it wouldn’t be fair to put him off, would it?’ Vanessa asked him seriously. ‘Not if Tom’s spent all his pocket money on it.’

  Marcus glanced at her, his heart suddenly filled with an almost bitter-sweet pang of love.

  She was growing so fast, maturing so quickly, giving him in one second a terrifying glimpse of the woman she would soon become and with it his awareness of how soon she would leave him to begin her own life, and at the same time the equally heartrending knowledge of how young she still was, how vulnerable… how precious.

  He felt as tongue-tied, as shy and inarticulate as a boy, and just as unable to tell her how he felt about her; how much she meant to him.

  As he collected her luggage and they headed for his car, he thought inwardly, Oh, Nell, how right you were to warn me not to let myself have regrets, not to turn my back on the pleasure of loving her.

  ‘It’s good to have you home,’ he told her gruffly as he unlocked the car. And then as she looked at him he put down her case and went towards her, giving her a fiercely protective hug.

  Ignoring the lump of emotion aching in his throat, he added teasingly, ‘Jade was right, though, I’m not sure what Nell is going to make of your hair. It makes you look terrifyingly grown-up.’

  When she flushed pink with pleasure, he knew he had said the right thing and knew as well that fierce dizzying surge of triumph that every father experienced when his teenage daughter, that beautiful, wayward, illogical and terrifying creature who had taken the place of his adoring little girl, smiled on him with approval.

  * * *

  ‘I can hear them. I can hear the car!’ Tom announced excitedly, running downstairs and rushing towards the front door, flinging it open just as Marcus stopped the car outside.

  As she watched the boy race towards them with uninhibited enthusiasm, Eleanor felt her tension ease slightly.

  The passenger door of the car opened and she discovered she was holding her breath slightly.

  The girl standing watching her was not the same one who had gone away, she recognised, as she searched Vanessa’s eyes for the old antagonism and saw instead only hesitation and a slight wariness.

  It was up to her now. ‘Treat her as you would your own daughter,’ Jade had said.

  Suppressing the flutter of anxiety tensing her stomach, Eleanor smiled and hurried forward, pausing when Vanessa turned her head to say something to Tom.

  The protest, ‘Oh, Vanessa, your lovely hair!’ couldn’t quite be stilled, but to her relief all her stepdaughter did was laugh and look at Marcus.

  ‘Jade said you wouldn’t like it,’ she told Eleanor as she came towards her.

  ‘It’s not that I don’t like it,’ Eleanor told her. ‘It looks lovely and it suits you… It’s just that it… it makes you look so grown-up.’

  ‘She’s just saying that because she’s a mother,’ Gavin told Vanessa. ‘Mothers always say things like that. She wouldn’t let me have a new pair of trainers…’

  Mothers always say things like that…

  Across the three bent male heads, Vanessa and Eleanor looked at one another.

  ‘Your room’s all finished,’ Eleanor said quietly. ‘You were right about the furniture—the aqua finish looks much better than the peach. Do you… ?’

  ‘I want you to come and see the fish,’ Gavin announced firmly.

  ‘What, before you’ve seen your present?’ Vanessa teased him.

  Half an hour later they were all sitting in the small sitting-room which was officially Nell’s office, but to which all the family seemed to gravitate, despite the fact that she had banned a television set from it.

  ‘This is for you,’ Vanessa told Eleanor almost hesitantly, handing her a flat, beautifully gift-wrapped package. ‘Jade helped me choose it. We got it in SoHo… from a craft shop.’

  She looked so nervous that Eleanor longed to put her arm round her and tell her that no matter what it was she would love it because it came from her; but
she didn’t. Instead she started to open it, slowly, ignoring the boys’ exhortations to hurry up.

  They had already had their presents: a baseball jacket and cap for Gavin, and a beautiful leather-covered photograph album for Tom, who had recently taken up photography as a hobby, another piece of news Vanessa must have learned via one of Tom’s letters, Eleanor reflected as she carefully smoothed the wrapping back from her own gift.

  Her breath caught in her throat as she stared down at it, tears blurring her eyes.

  ‘What is it… what have you got?’ Gavin was demanding noisily at her side.

  ‘Do you like it? I thought… Well, I know you like things like that. Jade thought it was too sentimental. There were others…’

  Eleanor shook her head. ‘Vanessa, it’s perfect… I love it.’ Too sentimental! Her mouth quivered slightly as she looked down at the pretty antique sampler in its cherrywood frame.

  Long, long ago some young female fingers had stitched that slightly crooked ‘Home is where the heart is’, but the mother who had received it from her daughter could not have taken more pleasure and emotion in it than she was doing.

  ‘It will be just right for over the fireplace,’ Eleanor said quietly. ‘Thank you, Vanessa.’

  She didn’t attempt to touch or kiss her. To have done so at this stage would have jarred, struck a false note, but neither did she attempt to hide from her stepdaughter the tears which shone in her eyes.

  ‘Oh, and I’ve brought you two both back a poster as well,’ Vanessa was telling her stepbrothers.

  As she watched her handing them to them, Eleanor wondered if Vanessa was remembering as she was the ones she had torn up.

  ‘And to think I was actually looking forward to coming home,’ Vanessa protested ten minutes later as Tom and Gavin quarrelled over who was going to show her all the work which had been done on the house.

  Registering that very natural and heartwarming use of the word ‘home’, Eleanor turned to them and told them equally, ‘I’m sure Vanessa would prefer her father to show her, not you two. Haven’t you both got homework to do anyway?’

  ‘No, it’s OK,’ Vanessa interrupted easily. ‘They can show me tomorrow. I mean, Dad might forget about the fish, mightn’t he?’

  * * *

  ‘I can’t believe how much she’s changed,’ Marcus said quietly to Eleanor later.

  ‘She’s growing up. She’s not really a little girl any more.’

  ‘No, she isn’t,’ Marcus agreed sombrely.

  ‘She still needs you, though, Marcus…’

  He reached out for her, drawing her gently to his side and wrapping her tenderly in his arms, dropping a kiss on the end of her nose before telling her softly, ‘She still needs us, Nell.

  ‘You are my home, just as you’re Tom and Gavin’s—and Vanessa’s as well… and I think she knows it.

  ‘One day when she’s older I hope she’ll recognise as I do how lucky we’ve both been to find someone whose heart is big enough for both of us.’

  * * *

  Upstairs in her room, Vanessa unpacked her things. The first thing to come out of her suitcase, the last thing she had put in in New York, was her photograph wallet. She scanned her new bedroom quickly for a moment and then smiled as she found what she wanted.

  Eleanor had protested when she had insisted on bringing it with her, but she had stood firm, and now, as she walked over to the noticeboard Tom had made for her, she tossed her hair back off her face, concentrating as she extracted the photographs from the wallet one by one and pinned them in place.

  Her father; her mother all made up and dressed for her film role; the boys; a group of friends from school; some new ones of Jade and finally the last one… one she had filched from Eleanor’s photograph album five minutes before she had left for the airport.

  Carefully she pinned it up in the middle of the board. In it, Eleanor was standing next to her father, looking up at him, her love for him shining in her eyes.

  ‘Who’s this, then?’ one of the boys she had met in New York had asked her, studying the photograph.

  ‘It’s my father and—–’ she had begun, but he had cut her short, giving her a would-be louche leer and exclaiming,

  ‘Yeah, your mom’s a good-looking woman. You look a lot like her.’

  It hadn’t seemed necessary or important to tell him that Eleanor wasn’t her mother; instead she had treated him to the very female and old-fashioned look she had just perfected.

  There was no need for him to think she was taken in by his flattery. She bet he said that kind of thing to every girl he met.

  She might tell Nell about him later, she decided, when they were on their own.

  Humming under her breath, she opened her bedroom door and ran downstairs.

  ‘Nell, I’m hungry,’ she complained as she opened the kitchen door. ‘Is there anything to eat…?’

  Grown-up! Not really. Not yet, Eleanor reflected as she informed her that she could eat whatever she could find in the fridge, pointing out that she wasn’t running a twenty-four-hour canteen service.

  It wasn’t too late. There was still time for them to get to know one another, to learn to love one another. After all, they already had the best start they could have: they already shared their love for Marcus.

  For better or for worse; they were a family and somehow she had a very, very strong and hopeful feeling that it was going to be for better.

  * * * * *

  Now, read on for a tantalizing excerpt of Abby Green’s new release,

  A DIAMOND FOR THE SHEIKH’S MISTRESS

  The first book in her Rulers of the Desert duet!

  Hiring model Kat is the perfect opportunity for Sheikh Zafir Al-Noury to resume their burning hot nights. Once again, Zafir tempts Kat to sensual surrender. Even if that means exposing every part of herself to the man who once ruled her soul…

  Keep reading to get a glimpse of

  A DIAMOND FOR THE SHEIKH’S MISTRESS

  CHAPTER ONE

  SHEIKH ZAFIR IBN HAFIZ AL-NOURY, King of Jandor, was oblivious to the exquisite mosaics on the path under his feet as he paced restlessly, and he was equally oblivious to the water burbling from the ornate central fountain. The tiny multi-coloured birds darting between the lush exotic blooms also went unnoticed in this, just one of the many stunning courtyards of his royal palace in Jahor, the imposing capital city of his kingdom, which ran from snow-capped mountains in the east, across a vast desert to the sea in the west.

  Zafir was oblivious to it all because all he could think about was her. It was getting worse. He’d had to call an important meeting to a premature end because he’d felt constricted and claustrophobic, aware of the heat in his blood and the ache in his core. An ache he’d largely managed to ignore for the last eighteen months.

  Liar, whispered a voice, those first three months were hell.

  Zafir scowled in remembrance. But then his father had died, and all his time and attention since then had been taken up with his accession to the throne and taking control of his country.

  But now it was as if he finally had time to breathe again, and she was back. Infiltrating his thoughts and dreams. Haunting him.

  Zafir loosened his robe at his neck with jerky movements. Sexual frustration, he told himself, momentarily coming to a halt on the path. It was just sexual frustration. After all, he hadn’t taken a woman to bed since…her, and that incensed him even more now.

  It wasn’t due to lack of interest from women. It was due to Zafir’s single-minded focus on his job and his commitment to his people. But he was aware of the growing pressure from his council and his people to find a suitable Queen and provide heirs, so they would have faith and feel secure in their King and future.

  Zafir issued a loud curse, scattering the birds around him in a flurry. Enough. He whirled around and strode back out of the courtyard, determined to set in motion the search for an appropriate match and put her out of his head once and for all.

  He stop
ped in his tracks, though, as he passed the overgrown entrance to the high-walled garden nearby. None of the gardeners had touched it in years, and Zafir hadn’t had the heart to enforce its clean-up since taking power. He knew that his staff viewed it almost superstitiously; some believed it was haunted.

  Maybe it was, he thought bleakly, his thoughts momentarily diverted.

  He went and stood at the entrance and looked at the wildly overgrown space and realised with a jolt that today was the anniversary. The anniversary of his sister’s death. Nineteen years ago. He’d been thirteen and she’d been just eleven. He stepped in, almost without realising what he was doing.

  Unlike the rest of the pristinely manicured grounds, there was no water trickling into the circular pool that could barely be seen under greedy weeds. There were no lush flowers or exotic birds. It was dormant. Still. Dead.

  He could still remember hearing the almost otherworldly scream of his brother Salim, Sara’s twin. When Zafir had burst into the garden he’d found his brother cradling Sara’s limp body, her head dangling over his arm at an unnatural angle. Her face had been whiter than white, her long black hair matted with the blood which had been dripping into the fountain’s pool behind them, staining the water.

  Salim had screamed at him to do something…save her… But Zafir had known instinctively that she was gone. He’d tried to take Sara out of Salim’s arms to carry her into the palace, to find help, see if there was any chance, but Salim, sensing Zafir’s grim assessment had only tightened his hold on his twin sister’s body and shouted hoarsely, ‘If you can’t help then don’t touch her…leave us alone!’

  Sara had died from a massive head and neck injury after falling from the high wall around this garden where they’d used to play and climb, in spite of Zafir’s protests. Salim hadn’t spoken for weeks afterwards…

  To Zafir’s shame, the dominating thing he now recalled was the awfully familiar disconnect between him and his siblings. The sense of isolation that had pervaded his whole life. He’d always been envious of Salim and Sara’s very special and close bond, which had been to the exclusion of everyone else. But right then he would have gladly given up his own life to see his sister’s brought back…