by Penny Jordan
Phil’s hotel! Suddenly Polly understood; Suzi had no doubt thought she had spent the night with Phil and not Marcus, and that was why…
At long last Suzi had finished delivering her list of requirements. As she swept towards the exit she turned round and told Polly patronisingly, ‘Oh, Phil did say to tell you that if he hears of anything coming up that might suit you he’d be in touch, but I really think you’d be better off staying here…I must go now, otherwise I’m going to be late. We’re flying to Paris for dinner. Phil is taking me shopping there.’
Once she had gone the foyer seemed blissfully quiet and empty. Marcus, who had gone with her to her car, came back just as Polly was mouthing the words ‘Suzi is going to marry Phil’.
‘Suzi is going to marry Phil,’ she repeated out loud.
‘Yes,’ Marcus agreed soberly, telling her quietly, ‘Look, Polly, I know you won’t thank me for saying this but…if you want my opinion he was never the right man for you.’
‘Because I’m too old for him?’ Polly asked him dryly.
‘No,’ Marcus responded fiercely. ‘No…Age has nothing to do with it…nothing at all.’
‘Oh? That wasn’t what you implied to me when—’
‘He isn’t good enough for you, Polly. No way. No way at all…I know how you feel about him, how hurt you must be, how hard this must be for you…God knows, I’ve been there myself…’
Abruptly Polly remembered that Marcus loved Suzi and that the heady relief she felt at knowing that Suzi was marrying Phil wasn’t something he was likely to share.
Impulsively she reached out and touched his arm, unable to hide the warmth in her eyes and her voice as she told him gently, ‘I could say the same thing to you, Marcus. She…Suzi isn’t good enough for you.’
‘What!’
‘I know that when you went to bed with me you were thinking about her,’ Polly continued quickly, wanting to say what she had to say before she lost her courage. ‘I…I should have stopped you but—’
‘But it was easier to pretend that I was Bernstein,’ Marcus supplied curtly.
Firmly Polly shook her head.
‘No. What I said to you about Phil was true, Marcus—he was never anything more than a prospective employer.’
‘But Suzi said—’
‘I don’t care what Suzi said,’ Polly interrupted him. ‘I never felt anything for Phil other than the most casual kind of friendship, and I certainly never contemplated having any kind of…of intimacy with him.’
Marcus looked blankly at her.
‘Then why…?’
‘Look, I think we should just forget the whole episode,’ Polly told him hurriedly.
‘Forget it? Forget the most important, the most precious hours of my life?’ Marcus groaned hoarsely. ‘Have you any idea just what you’re asking of me, Polly? I’ve waited years to have you look at me…want me…touch me the way you did, and if you think I’m going to forget even a single second of the pleasure you gave me…
‘I know you don’t love me, Polly; I’ve always known that. God knows I’ve tried hard enough over the years to provoke an emotional reaction from you, to break through that wall of indifference you’ve put up against me. Loving you has been so much a way of life for me for so long that…’
Loving her?
‘You love me…?’ Polly breathed shakily.
Broodingly Marcus looked at her.
‘Of course I damn well love you,’ he told her harshly. ‘I’ve loved you from the first time I saw you, and if I hadn’t fallen in love with you then, Polly…Being with you when you gave birth to Briony was the most intensely emotional experience I have ever had. Just as emotional in a different way as holding you in my arms in bed. You will never, ever know how much, how very, very much, I wanted Briony to be my child…how much I wanted you to have my child.’
‘Wanted?’ Polly asked him cautiously, holding her breath a little as she underlined, ‘Wanted as in did want, or…?’
‘Did want?’ Marcus repeated, frowning a little as he tried to puzzle out what she was saying.
And then, as he realised, he reached for her, pulling her bodily into his arms, causing her to tell him in a muffled voice, ‘No, Marcus, we can’t. Not here, where anyone can see us.’
‘I don’t care who sees us,’ Marcus retorted masterfully as he kissed her. And then, as he felt her lips soften under his and her body melt, he lifted his mouth from hers and agreed huskily, ‘Well, perhaps some privacy might be a good idea.’
‘A very good idea,’ Polly informed him mock severely as she put a discreet distance between them and then hesitated shyly before turning towards the stairs,
‘I’ve got a better idea.’ Marcus forestalled her firmly, taking hold of her hand and guiding her towards the door.
‘Where are you taking me?’ Polly demanded dizzily as he took her towards his parked car.
‘Home,’ Marcus responded promptly, adding softly, ‘I’m taking both of you home.’
‘Oh.’ Polly gave him a pink-cheeked look as he unlocked the door of his car for her.
‘Or did I misinterpret that cryptic remark you just made?’
‘No,’ Polly admitted, shaking her head. ‘At least, I’m not totally sure yet, but…’
But she had been very unwell every morning for the past week, and she was so certain herself of what had happened that she had telephoned the surgery just to make sure the pills she had been prescribed couldn’t harm the new life she felt sure was growing inside her.
Her doctor had been immediately and thankfully reassuring, but as yet Polly had not been able to bring herself to do any kind of formal test. The symptoms were all there, but knowing or rather believing that another woman was also carrying Marcus’s child—a woman whom she had thought he loved—had made her reluctant to take the final step that would confirm her suspicions. Was she destined to deprive her children of their fathers? she had wondered despairingly only last night as she had lain, sleepless, in bed.
‘Heaven knows what Briony is going to have to say about all of this,’ she told Marcus breathlessly a couple of hours later as he smoothed her hair off her face and kissed her gently. He had been a little reluctant at first to make love with her—because of the baby—but Polly had assured him robustly that there was no danger, adding with innocent persuasiveness, ‘And I want you so much, Marcus. All this is so new to me…I never knew before…Richard and I…I was just a girl and he was a boy.’
She had told him simply, ‘What we shared was good and loving, but it wasn’t love. It wasn’t a tenth of what I feel for you. I can’t believe how foolish we’ve both been, wasting so many years. I thought you didn’t like me. You always seemed to be so critical of me.’
‘So critical that I could hardly bear to let you out of my sight, never mind my life,’ Marcus groaned self-critically.
‘I thought that was because of Briony.’
‘I do love Briony,’ Marcus told her. ‘And I always will. I hope this new baby is a boy, Polly, but not because I share Bernstein’s desire to found a dynasty. It’s just that Briony has always been so special to me, I’d be worried that another girl couldn’t, wouldn’t…’
‘That you might love your own child more?’ Polly suggested softly for him, but immediately Marcus shook his head.
‘I couldn’t love any child more than I love Briony. No, I was thinking that another daughter, a second daughter,’ he emphasised with a small smile, ‘might feel that she is second best, whereas a boy…a son…’
‘Oh, Marcus, I can’t believe we’ve been so lucky…and to think it’s all because of Suzi and Phil. How could you think I could possibly want Phil?’ she reproached him.
‘How could you think I wanted Suzi?’ Marcus retorted.
‘But surely you guessed how I felt when…’
‘When we made love?’ Marcus supplied for her. ‘I know you were responsive to me. My God, how I knew that, and you’ll never know how much I wanted to capitalise on that, Polly…how much I want
ed to steal you away somewhere and keep you there in my bed until you were forced to capitulate and admit that you loved me.’
‘You actually contemplated doing something like that?’ Polly asked him, round-eyed.
‘Well, not exactly,’ Marcus admitted, ‘But I certainly fantasised about living in a world where I could have done so, although in all honesty there was no way I could ever compel you to do or give anything you didn’t want me to have willingly.’
‘Briony is going to be dreadfully shocked. She wanted you to marry Suzi,’ Polly told him.
‘Mmm…She did rather get it wrong, didn’t she?’ Marcus agreed. ‘She warned me that you were in danger of making a fool of yourself over Bernstein and asked me to keep an eye on the situation because she was afraid his intentions towards you weren’t entirely honourable…’
‘She did what?’ Polly protested indignantly. ‘So that was where you got the idea that I was going through some sort of mid-life crisis, was it? Just wait until I speak to her…’
‘Briony, darling, how nice. We…I wasn’t expecting you to come home this weekend,’ Polly told her daughter as she went to hug her, hoping as she did so that Briony hadn’t noticed how flustered she sounded.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want to see Briony, it was just that she and Marcus had planned to spend the day shopping for things for the nursery, and then they were going to have dinner out to celebrate their future together, Marcus had told her. They had already decided on a very quiet family wedding and Polly had a sneaking suspicion that tonight Marcus intended to present her with an engagement ring, an old-fashioned courtesy which wasn’t perhaps necessary in their circumstances but which she found touching nonetheless.
They had had official confirmation that she was pregnant now. Marcus was over the moon, and so protective of her health that Polly couldn’t help but be tenderly amused.
She—they—had every intention of telling Briony, of course, but she wanted time to find the right words, the right way.
‘How are the plans coming along for the wedding?’ Briony asked conversationally after she had hugged her mother.
‘The wedding…? Oh, we’ve…’ Guiltily Polly bit her lip. Briony meant Suzi and Phil’s wedding, of course. ‘Oh well, Marcus has decided that we really can’t accommodate all Suzi’s requirements and I think they’ve decided to get married in the Caribbean now after all…’
‘And the job—your job with Phil?’ Briony probed.
‘Oh, that…Well…er…I’ve decided to stay here.’ Polly took a deep breath. ‘Briony, darling, there’s something I have to tell you.’
‘Marcus, I couldn’t believe it,’ Polly told him in a pained voice as she related the incident to him later. ‘There I was, expecting Briony to be so disappointed because her plans to marry you off to Suzi had come to nothing, but when I told her about us she positively beamed from ear to ear. It seems that she’d wanted us to be together all the time but that she’d begun to despair that we ever would be, and so she decided to try to make us both jealous…
‘I can’t believe she could be so devious. But she told me that it had been obvious to her “for ever” that we loved one another, even if we were too blind to see it…’
‘I know; she rang me a couple of hours ago to tell me how thrilled she was—about both our pieces of news.’
‘Yes. I thought she might be a little bit shocked about…about the baby, but she was thrilled.’
‘Will you please stop looking at me like that?’ Marcus murmured softly to Polly as she smiled luminously into his eyes. ‘This is a public restaurant, and what I want to do with you right now is a very, very private matter indeed.’
‘Marcus,’ Polly protested, pink-cheeked.
‘Polly,’ Marcus teased her back.
He had given her the engagement ring he had bought her earlier, and then he had undressed and made love to her, kissing every inch of her naked body before clasping her ring hand and lifting it to his mouth. Tenderly kissing her ring finger, he’d whispered to her, ‘My ring…my baby—’ he had kissed her tummy ‘—and my love…’ And then he had kissed her mouth, and Polly had felt as though all the love inside her had turned into the softest and most delicious liquid heat, as if every bit of her was melting with desire and happiness.
‘What’s wrong?’ Marcus asked in some alarm as she suddenly pushed her meal away from her almost untouched.
‘Nothing,’ Polly told him simply, taking a small breath before she told him huskily, ‘I just want to be alone with you, Marcus…now…please…’
EPILOGUE
‘HAVE you heard the news? Suzi has had a little girl,’ Briony informed her mother breathlessly as she came hurrying into the nursery, pausing to give her mother the briefest of kisses before turning to the crib and cooing with tenderness, bending down to extract her small half-brother from his wrappings of blue-edged white cotton.
‘She was so convinced it was going to be a boy. Apparently Phil isn’t too pleased at all, because the tests they’d had done all predicted that she was carrying a boy.
‘Not that we care, do we, my darling baby brother,’ Briony crooned as she cuddled him. ‘Mum, I’m sure he’s grown since yesterday. He feels heavier.’
Polly smiled tenderly. The baby had been born prematurely, and they had all been concerned about how quickly he would grow and put on weight. But their fears had all been allayed as Alistair proved to be a healthy baby with a keen appeite.
Briony was even more besotted with baby Alistair than Marcus was, and that was saying something.
As with Briony’s birth, Marcus had been there with her to share Alistair’s, and even to Polly’s protective maternal eyes there had been no difference whatsoever in the degree of tenderness with which he had held his own blood child and that which he had shown the newly born Briony.
‘I’ll always be his favourite,’ Briony had told her mother smugly the day Alistair was born. ‘Fathers always have a softer spot for their daughters, whilst mothers spoil their sons…’
Their daughters…? But, after all, that was exactly what Briony was to Marcus—his precious and much loved daughter.
Half an hour later, after Briony had left, Marcus came into the nursery just as Polly was putting Alistair back into his crib. She smiled up at him and told him softly as she went to kiss him, ‘Thank you.’
‘What’s that for?’ Marcus asked in bemusement as he returned her kiss—with interest.
‘For being you,’ Polly told him truthfully, ‘and for giving me…everything.’
‘Mmm…Well, if you really want to thank me…’ Marcus teased her, drawing her towards the door that led to their own bedroom…
ISBN: 978-1-4268-4742-4
THE ULTIMATE SURRENDER
First North American Publication 2001.
Copyright © 2000 by Penny Jordan.
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
® and TM are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.
Visit us at www.eHarlequin.com