A Reason for Being

by Penny Jordan

  She was not the girl she had been at seventeen: ready to absorb Marcus’s opinions as her own because they were his, ready to adore and worship.

  And yet, even so, she stared at him with hugely shadowed and pained eyes, asking, ‘But why didn’t you tell me? Why did you let me go on thinking..?’

  ‘How could I tell you? I haven’t seen you in ten years. You have always had the option to come to me, Maggie… I have never had that same option. You knew where I was, but you took damn good care to make sure I could never contact you, and because of that I assumed that whatever you had once felt for me had gone and was unregretted…that your life was happy and fulfilled. I waited…’

  ‘And then one day you decided you were tired of waiting and got engaged to Isobel,’ Maggie supplied wearily for him, but to her surprise he shook her almost fiercely and denied it.

  ‘No!’

  ‘No? But…’

  ‘Let me tell you about Isobel,’ he interrupted her grimly. ‘All her life she’s been spoiled rotten. Until very recently, she had been living in London with someone. They quarrelled and she came home. He followed her up here, but Isobel had decided she wanted to get married. He’s very wealthy, you see, and Isobel had realised she wasn’t getting any younger. He, I suspect, did not share her desire for married life. She attached herself to me…quite without encouragement, I assure you. I only know about her desire to get married because she threw out some pretty broad hints to me that a husband wouldn’t come amiss. She even pointed out to me that with two young sisters to bring up, I could probably do with a wife. Since there was only one woman I had envisaged in that role, I promptly disabused her of any notion she might have of being that wife, or at least I thought I had until I came round in hospital after the accident and discovered that Isobel and I were engaged, and that moreover, almost the whole county knew about it…’

  ‘So you never asked her to marry you.’

  Marcus gave her a grim look and said, ‘Do I really look that much of a fool?’ He paused and then looked directly at her. ‘And then, as though matters weren’t already complicated enough, you came back and soon made it very clear indeed that any dreams I had been cherishing that you might have missed me as much as I had done you were just exactly that. But ten years is a long time to go on loving someone, and those kind of dreams can’t be abandoned at will.’ He gave a rather mirthless smile.

  ‘Before you arrived I had been searching frantically for a way to get rid of Isobel. The only thing I would come up with was to insist that she would have to take charge of the girls. Selfish as she is, I knew she’d balk at the idea of being tied down to this house and two teenagers. And then you came along and bang went my one means of getting Isobel to break off the engagement, or so I thought. I knew there was no way I could allow Isobel to go on imagining we were going to get married. I decided to be honest with her and tell her the truth. You can imagine the shock I got when she barged into my study and announced that she was going back to Paul and that our engagement was off. She seemed to think for some reason that the news wouldn’t come as all that much of a shock. Something about you seeing her with him and rushing back here to tell tales…’

  ‘I did see them,’ Maggie agreed. ‘But I wasn’t going to tell you. I couldn’t, you see. I couldn’t bear the thought of being responsible for breaking a second engagement. I could only think of how much you hated me…’

  ‘Some hatred,’ Marcus broke in drily, and Maggie flushed at the look he gave her.

  ‘I thought it was sexual frustration because you and Isobel…your accident…’

  He threw back his head and laughed. ‘Dear heaven, you’ll never know how thankful I was for that accident! The thought of making love to Isobel was a total turn-off, and once you’d come back… Just to set the record straight, Isobel and I have never been lovers, but yes, I was frustrated. Frustrated by years of wanting someone I thought I could never have…frustrated by the sight of that someone here in my home and even more alluring and desirable to me in the flesh than she had been in my dreams…frustrated by my need to break through that wall she had built between us…and most of all, frustrated by the instincts that told me that, no matter what you said, there was something still there between us, some spark that, given the chance, I might possibly be able to turn into a flame that would burn as hotly inside you as my love for you burns within me. Was I right, Maggie? Is there a chance?’ he began softly, but she pulled away from him nervously, causing him to check and withdraw, his eyes shockingly bleak before he veiled them from her and looked the other way.

  ‘You’re not just saying this because…because of this afternoon, are you?’ she blurted out awkwardly. ‘I mean, because you discovered that I hadn’t had any other lovers? That wasn’t just because of how I feel about you, Marcus,’ she told him earnestly, not realising what she was betraying, not seeing the sudden gleam that lightened the sombreness of his eyes. ‘There’s no need to feel you have to…to say that you care about me when you don’t.’

  ‘No need at all,’ he agreed coolly, and her heart sank. ‘In fact, I should have thought that at your age you’d be pretty glad for someone to come along and…’

  He turned round just as she was about to explode with angry indignation, and her breath caught in her throat as she saw the laughter and the love in his eyes.

  ‘Idiot,’ he told her fondly, pulling her gently towards him, and somehow it seemed quite natural that she should lean her head against him, so that he could hold her comfortably within the curve of his arm.

  ‘I’m sorry if I was rough with you, though. To be honest, by the time things got to the point where I should perhaps have been questioning the wisdom of what I was doing, I was way past any rational thinking.

  ‘As it was, I could scarcely believe that after so many years there you were at last, every bit as warm and welcoming as I’d dreamed…all the woman any man could ever want…and certainly all the woman…the only woman I’ve ever wanted. Twelve years is a long time for a man to go without a woman, and…’

  ‘Twelve years?’ Maggie shot upright in his arms. ‘Marcus…’

  ‘I love you,’ he told her simply. ‘It had to be either you or no one.’

  Tears blurred her eyes, and as though he knew what she was feeling he rocked her gently in his arms, his chin resting on top of her silky head.

  ‘Maggie, there’s still something you haven’t told me.’

  She moved and looked up at him and questioned, ‘What?’

  ‘How you feel about me. Whether what happened between us was simply a short trip down memory lane, or whether it was the first step forward into a future you want to share with me.’

  Maggie looked at him in wonderment. Never in any of her daydreams had she seen him like this: hesitant, uncertain, vulnerable; and her heart flowered with warmth and love.

  ‘I love you, Marcus,’ she told him honestly and simply. ‘I didn’t think I did, not any more, I wouldn’t have come home if I’d thought that, and yet perhaps deep down in my subconscious I did know. When I saw you again…that was when I realised that those old feelings had never really gone and that they were still there, a foundation for the love I feel for you today as a woman.’

  ‘My woman,’ Marcus told her fiercely, drawing her back into his arms and kissing her with a sharp hunger that made her shake a little with laughter as she acknowledged the vast gulf which had lain between her teenage imaginings and reality.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ he asked her as he slowly released her.

  When she told him, he too grinned. ‘I should think so, but if you’d like to make sure…’

  * * *

  THEY DECIDED TO break their news to Susie and Sara over dinner that night. They had agreed that in view of Marcus’s ‘engagement’ to Isobel they would wait three or four months and then get married very quietly, but there was no reason why the girls should not know of their plans.

  ‘There’ll probably be a certain degree of gossip,’ Marcus
warned her, ‘but nothing we can’t weather. Isobel’s never been particularly popular locally.’

  ‘Oh, I expect there’ll be quite a few people who’ll think you married me on the rebound,’ Maggie agreed, but Marcus shook his head and said with a wicked glint in his smile, ‘Not once they see how difficult I find it to keep my hands off you.’

  Marcus made the announcement after dinner, as he opened a bottle of vintage champagne.

  ‘There, I told you,’ Susie crowed, turning to her sister. ‘I told you they’d probably been in love years ago and that that was why Maggie ran away. I knew if we could get her up here, they’d probably fall in love with each other all over again.’

  Maggie stared at her, open-mouthed, while Marcus grinned and said to her sotto voce, ‘Sometimes the power of your sex terrifies me.’

  ‘What on earth made you think that?’ Maggie asked Susie.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. I suppose it was the way Marcus looked whenever I asked him about you…and then when you arrived and I saw the way you looked at him, it was easy-peasy after that.’ She looked at them thoughtfully, put down her glass of champagne and asked conversationally, ‘Marcus, when you and Maggie get married and have children, they’ll be our nieces and nephews and our cousins as well, won’t they? I hope you have girls, though; I don’t like boys…’

  Over her head, Marcus looked at Maggie and said drily, ‘You will, little sister, you will—and when you do, heaven help them!’

  * * *

  THREE MONTHS LATER Marcus and Maggie married very quietly at the local village church. There was a small reception at the vicarage afterwards, and, watching Susie preening herself in her bridesmaid’s outfit in front of the bemused eyes of Marcus’s partner’s eldest son, Marcus looked at his new wife and said under his breath, ‘Does Mrs Simmonds really know what she’s doing, offering to take charge of those two while we’re away? No, don’t go and warn her,’ he added as Maggie instinctively looked over her shoulder in the direction of the vicar’s wife. ‘I’ve waited twelve years to have you all to myself, and the way I feel right now that’s twelve years too long.’

  * * * * *

  Now, read on for a tantalizing excerpt of USA Today bestselling author Carol Marinelli’s next book,

  SICILIAN’S BABY OF SHAME

  The third and final book in her Billionaires & One-Night Heirs trilogy!

  When chambermaid Sophie encounters Bastiano Conti, his raw sexuality tempts her untouched body! Bastiano’s conscience flickers when he discovers that after that unforgettable indiscretion, Sophie was left destitute and pregnant. He must claim his child…by seducing Sophie into wearing his ring!

  Keep reading to get a glimpse of

  SICILIAN’S BABY OF SHAME

  PROLOGUE

  BASTIANO CONTI HAD been born hungry.

  And born a problem.

  His mother had died giving birth to him and had never disclosed who his father was. All she had owned had been left to him—a ring.

  It was Italian gold with a small emerald in its centre and some seed pearls dotted around it.

  Bastiano’s uncle, who had four children of his own, had first suggested that the nuns raise the orphaned baby who’d lain crying in the small maternity ward in the Valley of Casta. There was a convent that overlooked the Sicilian Strait and orphans had usually been sent there.

  But the convent was on its last legs.

  The nurses were busy but occasionally one would take pity and hold Bastiano a little longer than it took to feed him.

  Occasionally.

  ‘Familia,’ the priest had said to his uncle. ‘Everyone knows that the Contis look after their own.’

  The Contis ruled the valley to the west and the Di Savos held the east.

  Loyalty to their own was paramount, the priest told him.

  And so, after a stern talk from the priest, Bastiano’s zio and his reluctant wife had taken the little bastard to their house but it had never, for Bastiano, been a home.

  Always Bastiano had been considered an outsider. If something had gone wrong, then he’d been the first to be blamed and the last to be forgiven.

  If there had been four brioches for lunch, they had not been split to make five.

  Bastiano had done without.

  Sitting in school next to Raul Di Savo, Bastiano had started to understand why.

  ‘What would your parents save in a fire?’ Sister Francesca had asked her class. ‘Raul?’

  Raul had shrugged.

  ‘Your father,’ she prompted, ‘what would be the first thing that Gino reached for?’

  ‘His wine.’

  The class had laughed and Sister Francesca, growing more exasperated with each passing moment, had turned her attention from Raul.

  ‘Bastiano,’ she snapped. ‘Who would your zia save?’

  His serious grey eyes had lifted to hers and Bastiano had frowned even as he’d given his response. ‘Her children.’

  ‘Correct.’

  She had turned back to the board and Bastiano had sat there, still frowning, for indeed it was the correct answer—his zia would save her children. But not him.

  He would never be first.

  However, aged seven, Bastiano was sent to collect the brioches and the baker’s wife ruffled his hair and so unused to affection was he that his face lit up and she said that he had a cute smile.

  ‘You do too,’ Bastiano told her, and she laughed.

  ‘Here.’ She gave him a sweet cannoli just for brightening her morning and Bastiano and Raul sat on the hill and ate the gooey treat.

  The boys should have been sworn enemies—for generations the Contis and the Di Savos had fought over the vines and properties in the valley—yet Bastiano and Raul became firm friends.

  The small encounter at the baker’s was enough for Bastiano to learn that he could get by better on charm.

  Oh, a smile worked wonders, and later he learnt to flirt with his eyes and was rewarded with something far sweeter than cannoli.

  Despite their families’ protests, Bastiano and Raul remained friends. They would often sit high on the hill near the now vacant convent and drink cheap wine. As they looked out over the valley, Raul told him of the beatings his mother endured and admitted that he was reluctant to leave for university in Rome.

  ‘Stay, then.’

  It was that simple to Bastiano. If he’d had a mother, or someone who cared for him, he would not leave.

  And he did not want Raul to go, though of course Bastiano did not admit that.

  Raul left.

  One morning, walking down the street, he saw Gino storm out of Raul’s house, shouting and leaving the front door open.

  Raul was gone and, given what his friend had told him, Bastiano thought he ought to check that his mother was okay.

  ‘Signora Di Savo…’ He knocked on the open door but she did not answer.

  He could hear that she was crying.

  His zia and zio called her unhinged but Maria Di Savo had always been kind to Bastiano.

  Concerned, he walked inside and she was kneeling on the floor of the kitchen, crying.

  ‘Hey.’ He poured her a drink and then he got a cloth and ran it under the water and pressed it to the bruise on her eye.

  ‘Do you want me to call someone?’ he offered.

  ‘No.’

  He helped her to stand and she leant on him and cried and Bastiano did not know what to do.

  ‘Why don’t you leave him?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve tried many times.’

  Bastiano frowned because Raul had always said that he’d pleaded with her to leave yet she’d always refused.

  ‘Could you go and stay with Raul in Rome?’ Bastiano suggested.

  ‘He doesn’t want me there. He left me,’ Maria sobbed. ‘No one wants me.’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘You mean it?’

  She looked up then and he went to correct her to say that what he had meant was that he was sure there were
people who wanted her…

  Not him.

  She put a hand up to his face and held his cheek. ‘You’re so handsome.’

  Maria ran a hand through his thick black hair and it did not feel like when the baker’s wife had; this felt more than an affectionate ruffle and, confused, Bastiano removed her hand and stepped back. ‘I have to go,’ he told her.

  ‘Not yet.’

  She wore just a slip and her breast was a little exposed; he did not want Maria to be embarrassed when she realised that she was on display, so he turned to leave.

  ‘Please don’t go,’ she called out to him.

  ‘I have to go to work.’

  He had left school and worked now in the bar that was a front for the seedier dealings of his zio.

  ‘Please, Bastiano…’ Maria begged. She reached for his arm and when he stopped she came around so that she stood in front of him. ‘Oh,’ she apologised as she looked down and saw that her breast was exposed to him, but Bastiano did not look. He was still pretending that he had not noticed.

  And she would cover herself now, Bastiano thought, yet she did not. In fact, she took his hand and placed it on her plump, ripe skin.

  He was good with the girls but in those cases he was the seducer. Maria was around forty, he guessed, and, for heaven’s sake, she was the mother of his best friend.

  ‘Signora Di Savo…’ Her hand pressed his as he went to remove it.

  ‘Maria,’ she said, and her voice was low and husky. He could feel and hear her deep breathing and when she removed her hand, Bastiano’s remained on her breast.

  ‘You’re hard,’ Maria said, feeling him.

  ‘Gino might—’

  ‘He won’t be back till dinner.’

  Bastiano was usually the leader and instigator, but not on this hot morning. Maria was back on her knees but this time by her own doing. It was over within minutes.