by Penny Jordan
‘I can only do that by offering them a lower rate of pay,’ Dennis warned her.
‘Rubbish,’ Abbie denounced, taking a mouthful of her starter. ‘Mmm, this is good,’ she told him, ‘and I’m glad to see that your chef realises that eye-appeal on its own isn’t enough. I must admit I’ve grown rather tired of a pretty plateful of artistically designed half-cold and semi-tasteless food, and I’m glad to see you’re including a good choice of vegetarian dishes, and not just the obligatory omelette.’
‘We’re getting more and more demand for them, and one of this guy’s specialities is his range of health-conscious dishes.
‘Have you made any plans for Christmas this year?’ Dennis asked.
Abbie shook her head.
‘How are the plans for the wedding coming along?’ Dennis questioned, after they had been served with their main courses.
‘They’re not,’ Abbie admitted ruefully.
‘Well, you know if you decide to hold the wedding breakfast here we’ll give you a good deal,’ he told her.
‘Yes,’ Abbie agreed.
Stuart’s mother had already suggested to her that it might be a nice idea to hold the wedding reception in a marquee in their large garden, and Abbie had been forced to acknowledge privately that she was probably quite right. The only thing was that she rather suspected that given half the chance Stuart’s mother—for entirely the best and most generous of reasons—might be rather inclined to take over the organisation of the whole wedding. Both of Stuart’s sisters were already married, and Abbie had to admit that Stuart’s mother had the expertise to organise a flawlessly perfect wedding. But Cathy was her daughter and she…
She what? she asked herself dryly. She felt jealous…pushed out…usurped.
By rights she knew she ought to be more than grateful to Stuart’s parents for their offer to take over not only the wedding arrangements but the financial cost as well. There was certainly no way she could afford to pay for an occasion as glittering and expensive as they could put on, despite the success of her business—which was modest in contrast to the financial resources of Stuart’s parents.
And she had seen the faint look of hesitation in Cathy’s eyes when she had tentatively suggested holding the reception for her at the hotel.
‘Wouldn’t it be rather anonymous?’ Cathy had asked uncertainly.
‘Perhaps,’ Abbie had agreed, her heart sinking a little. ‘Still, you’ve got plenty of time to think about it, darling. After all, you haven’t even set a proper date yet.’
‘No, I know, but Stuart’s mother says that all the very best places get booked up simply ages in advance, and that with Gina’s wedding they had to change the date twice because they couldn’t get the caterers they wanted, and then the florist only fitted them in because she had done Gina’s cousin’s wedding.
‘She had her reception at this fabulous hotel,’ Cathy had gone on wistfully. ‘It’s about half an hour’s drive from here, and from the way Gina described it it sounds heavenly. It’s a small, privately owned hotel that was once a house. It was built by this very rich aristocrat so that she could be with her lover…’
Abbie had felt her stomach start to churn with a mixture of shock and nausea as Cathy continued with her description.
She knew exactly where Cathy meant, of course, although she had not told her daughter that, saying curtly instead, ‘It’s far too far away, Cathy—over an hour’s drive, and—’
‘Only half an hour,’ Cathy had corrected her. ‘The new motorway extension runs within a few miles of it. But you’re right, of course, it is out of the question. It’s quite horrendously expensive.’
‘Don’t worry, darling,’ Abbie had reassured her, regretting her own reaction. ‘Your wedding will be equally special, I promise you.’
‘I know that, Mum,’ Cathy had agreed, hugging her. ‘After all, it’s the man you’re marrying that’s important, the way you feel about one another. It’s just…’ She’d wrinkled her nose slightly. ‘Well, I can’t help feeling sometimes that Stuart’s mother feels that Stuart could have done better. She never says anything, but…’
‘Rubbish. Stuart is a very, very fortunate young man,’ Abbie had informed her firmly.
‘You’re only saying that because you’re my mother,’ Cathy had laughed.
‘And Stuart’s mother is only saying what she says because she’s his mother,’ Abbie had pointed out. ‘All mothers want the best—the very, very best—for their children, and that’s only natural,’ Abbie had told her. ‘But never forget that you are the best, Cathy. Never let anyone make you feel otherwise, and if Stuart doesn’t believe that, if he doesn’t believe that you are better than the best, then he isn’t worthy of you.’
‘Oh, Mum,’ had been Cathy’s slightly tearful response.
‘You know that comment I made earlier about you,’ Dennis murmured to her, breaking into her thoughts as he leaned across the table towards her. ‘Well, don’t look now, but there’s a man seated at a table to your left who obviously thinks exactly the same thing. He hasn’t taken his eyes off you all evening.’
‘I think that’s rather an exaggeration,’ Abbie told Dennis dryly, and she obeyed his admonition to turn her head and look slightly to her left feeling only mild curiosity.
The man seated at the table Dennis had indicated looked right back at her, his expression neither mild nor curious.
Abbie felt the room start to spin dangerously around her, her body ice-cold with shock as she found herself looking straight into the instantly recognisable eyes of her ex-husband: the man who, she had so recently sworn to her daughter, their daughter, would never come back.
The man who had stolen her love, broken her heart and come close to destroying her whole life.
Abbie stared at him, her face, her body, her thoughts turned to stone, unable to function on even the most basic level, unable to look away, to move, to do anything. From a distance she heard a vaguely familiar buzzing sound, and then Dennis was standing up, cursing faintly under his breath as he apologised.
‘I’m sorry, Abbie, someone’s buzzing me. I’d better go and find out what’s wrong. I’ll be as quick as I can. If you want the sweet trolley…’
Although Abbie heard him she was completely unable to make any kind of response. Shock had picked her up on a giant icy wave, flinging her down in a place that was totally unfamiliar and alien. She knew her surroundings and yet she didn’t know them, didn’t know how they had come to be invaded, taken over, possessed by this man who should have been on the other side of the world.
‘No…’
As she heard the feeble denial whisper past her numb lips Abbie saw Sam get slowly to his feet and, still holding her gaze, start to walk towards her.
She wanted to get up, to run away, to escape before it was too late, but for some reason she just couldn’t move.
‘Abbie…’ His voice sounded gravelly and heart-sickeningly familiar. She could feel herself starting to tremble from head to foot, as though every single physical part of her was responding to the husky resonance of his voice. But where once she had trembled with passion and love, now she trembled with shock and fury.
How dared he do this to her? How dared he be here? How dared he simply appear in the middle of her world…her life? And most of all how dared he simply walk towards her as though…as though…?
‘Abbie…’
He had hardly changed at all, she recognised. If anything, he looked even better, even more devastatingly and sensually male than he had done before. His hair was still as thick, and almost as dark as ever, the small touches of silver just beginning to show in its darkness more an added attraction rather than a detraction from his magnetic good looks.
His skin looked tanned, his body beneath its sophisticated and expensive suiting moved just as easily, just as malely as she remembered, and his eyes were just as brilliantly blue, his mouth…
Please, God, don’t let me faint, Abbie prayed despairingly. Not here,
not now…
He was coming closer to her, Abbie recognised as she fought down the mingled feeling of panic and anger roaring through her. Too close. She mustn’t let him see the effect he was having on her, or how much he was disturbing her, distressing her. She must, at all costs, appear calm and unmoved by his presence. She must.
He lifted his hand as though he was going to touch her, and without realising what she was doing Abbie was on her feet, backing away from him as she protested frantically. ‘No…don’t come any closer. Don’t come near me…don’t touch me…’
She knew that people were watching them, and that the restaurant had become oddly silent, but it hardly seemed to matter.
She didn’t care what other people saw or thought; all she cared about was stopping Sam from closing the distance between them.
She felt her right hip come into painful contact with the edge of the table as she backed away from him; she could hear the cutlery and the glasses rattling.
‘You have no right to be here,’ she heard herself whisper harshly. ‘No right at all…’
‘Abbie, we need to talk…’
How calm and controlled his voice sounded in contrast to her own. Her brain registered these facts but her emotions couldn’t react to them. The fact that almost everybody in the restaurant was watching them—her—a fact which normally would have been more than enough to make her grit her teeth and refuse to show any kind of emotion at all—just didn’t seem to matter.
She had heard of people having panic attacks but had never really understood what that entailed. Now, suddenly, she did. Whilst her brain recognised that she was overreacting, that she was out of control, it was impossible for her to do anything about it, to hide what she was feeling.
‘Don’t come near me. I hate you,’ she heard herself whisper dryly as she edged past him and turned towards the door. But it wasn’t hatred that was making her heart pound so frantically, nor her body tremble so much. She had never known such fear, such shock, such panic.
As she stumbled into the reception area she saw Dennis coming towards her, his expression alert and anxious.
‘Abbie, what is it? What’s wrong?’ she heard him asking in concern.
But she ignored the hand he put out to restrain her, shaking her head and telling him disjointedly, ‘I…I don’t feel well. I have to go home…I…’
‘Let me drive you. Wait here and I’ll get my car…’
‘No,’ she denied sharply. ‘No, please…just… I’ll be all right once I get home. I just need to be by myself,’ she told him shakily. ‘I’m sorry, Dennis…’
Unable to say any more, she turned on her heel and hurried towards the exit.
Her car was in the car park but she was in no fit state to drive. Fortunately it was still quite light, light enough at least for her to be able to take the footpath which ran through the fields and came out halfway down the lane to her small cottage.
The cottage was one of a pair which had originally been farmworkers’ homes.
When Abbie had bought it her friends had thought she was mad to buy somewhere so far out of town and in such a run-down state. Now those same friends talked enviously of her foresight. The cottage had a very large garden, which Abbie had spent years and an awful lot of her spare time turning into a dream of a cottage garden. The house itself had been skilfully extended—the most recent addition being the pretty conservatory Abbie had added the previous summer.
She could almost hear the sound of her own frantic heartbeat as she hurried along the footpath. Every now and then she turned to look back over her shoulder, half afraid that he…that Sam might have followed her.
What was he doing here? What did he want? How long had he been sitting in the restaurant watching her? There was nothing for him here. Nothing…and no one.
No one…except…
She stopped moving, her body going very still.
‘I think I saw Dad today,’ Cathy had told her. She could almost hear the words now, see the expression on her daughter’s face.
‘No,’ she whispered, unaware that the word sounded like a keening cry of despair as the wind took it and tossed it towards the empty sky. ‘No. She’s mine… You didn’t want her. She’s mine…’
As Abbie opened her front door she could hear her telephone ringing, but she couldn’t bear to answer it. What if it was him—Sam? But why should he ring her? How could he have her number? He couldn’t have come back because of anything to do with her or Cathy, she tried to reassure herself. It was just some horrible coincidence, that was all. He had probably been as shocked to see her in the restaurant as she had him.
But he hadn’t looked shocked. He had looked… Abbie closed her eyes, not wanting to remember the way he had studied her, his gaze lingering on her eyes, her mouth, her body.
What had he thought when he’d seen her, a woman now and not a young girl any more? Had he looked at her and wondered why on earth he had ever desired her? Could he even remember that he had desired her, or had there been so many women in his life since then that he could no longer remember what it had felt like to hold her…to touch her…to…?
‘No,’ Abbie protested, her voice a rusty, unfamiliar sound of anguish in the empty room as she gripped hold of the worktop, willing the memories…the pain to subside.
It had been years since she had last thought about how it had felt to want Sam and to be wanted by him in return, and yet now, in the space of half a dozen hours, she had relived just how it had felt—not once but twice. And on both occasions her memories had been so sharp, so vivid, so devastating that she was still in shock from her defencelessness against them.
Why, when she had not thought about him like that in years, when she had deliberately refused to allow herself to remember those things about him which had once brought her such intense physical pleasure—because they were, after all, a fiction, a stupid self-delusion—should she so suddenly and so clearly be able to remember not just what it had felt like to have his mouth caressing hers, but also how he had smelt, how he had tasted, how the roughness of his jaw had felt beneath her fingertips, how he had…?
Her chest felt tight and full of pain, constricting her breathing, and her eyes burned and ached. She lifted her hand to rub them and realised to her horror that her face was wet and that she was crying.
What was happening to her? Why was she overreacting like this? Was it the shock of seeing him coming so quickly on top of finding her wedding dress and remembering?
She tensed as she heard a car drawing up outside. What if it was him? What if he had followed her? But it was Cathy’s feet she could hear tapping on the stones outside, Cathy’s voice tense with anxiety she could hear calling out to her.
She reached quickly for some kitchen towel to dry her wet face and tried to compose herself, but it was already too late. Cathy was hurrying into the kitchen, her face shadowed with pain and apprehension.
‘You’ve seen him, haven’t you?’ she asked Abbie. ‘You’ve seen Dad at the hotel.’
Abbie stared at her daughter, noting her heightened colour and guilty expression.
‘You knew he would be there,’ she whispered in disbelief. ‘You knew and yet you said nothing. But how, why…?’
Abbie had started to cry again.
‘Oh, Mum, I’m so sorry. I didn’t… I never…’
Stuart had followed Cathy into the room and now he came over to her, putting his arm protectively around his fiancée as he told Abbie quietly, ‘None of this has anything to do with Cathy, Abbie. At least not directly. She’s not the one who is responsible for your ex-husband’s return. I am.’
‘You?’ Abbie stared at him in confusion.
‘Stuart only told me what he’d done today, when I happened to mention that I thought I’d seen Dad,’ Cathy burst out. ‘He wanted it to be a surprise.’
‘Darling, why don’t you let me explain?’ Stuart suggested, kissing Cathy gently before turning back to Abbie.
‘I know that Cathy wo
uld never tell you this herself—she loves you too much and she’d be too afraid of hurting you—but I know how much she has always wanted to meet her father—which, as my own parents have both said, is only natural.
‘Cathy told me that she felt it was impossible for her to try to get in touch with him because she was afraid of hurting you, but it’s over twenty years now since you divorced him, and I knew how much it would mean to Cathy to meet her father…to perhaps even have him here when we get married…and so I’ve been making a few discreet enquiries, trying to locate him.
‘I had planned to fly out to Australia myself—meet him, talk with him. But…’ Stuart gave a small shrug. ‘Well, it seems he had ideas of his own. Believe me, the last thing I wanted to happen was for him just to turn up here.’
‘You mean you’re the one responsible for bringing him back?’ Abbie demanded through semi-numb lips as she stared at Stuart.
‘Yes,’ he agreed.
‘Having no doubt first fully discussed this plan of yours with your parents?’ Abbie demanded cuttingly.
At her side she could see Cathy wince and smother a small protest, and it hurt her to see the way her daughter turned not to her but to Stuart for support, almost as though she was actually afraid of her mother, almost as though they were on opposing sides.
‘Yes, as a matter of fact I did,’ Stuart agreed woodenly.
‘And they doubtless thought it was an excellent idea. Your mother fully approved of this plan, I imagine. You rely a great deal on your mother’s approval, don’t you, Stuart?’ she asked with acid sweetness.
She could see that the tips of his ears were burning a dark, angry red, and an inner voice was warning her not to go any further, not to alienate her daughter completely by humiliating the man she loved, but Abbie refused to listen to it.
‘Well, I am Cathy’s mother, and if I thought it would benefit Cathy to meet her father you can be sure that I would have ensured that she did so.’