by Penny Jordan
‘Cathy did not get in touch with you. It was Stuart who interfered, who assumed he had the right—’
‘To what? To make Cathy happy?’ He gave her a derisive look. ‘But you don’t think that anyone has the right or the ability to make Cathy happy other than you, do you, Abbie? In fact, you don’t think that even Cathy has the right to say what makes her happy.’
‘That’s not true,’ Abbie denied angrily, her face flushing hotly at his accusation. ‘Cathy is twenty-two, an adult, and—’
‘And what?’ Sam pressed her.
Like her, he was dressed casually, but she was irritably conscious of the fact that, though a pair of black leggings topped off with a chunky oatmeal outsize sweater might feel comfortable and practical, they did not look anything like as good on her small frame as Sam’s faded and well-worn jeans and soft checked shirt looked on his lean, hard-muscled body.
It was ridiculous that a man of his age should still have such a formidably male-looking body—his stomach flat and taut, his rear, from the side view she had of it, enviably taut and muscular… Abbie hastily looked away from him. What on earth was the matter with her? Men’s backsides, taut and muscular or not, were of no interest whatsoever to her—especially this man’s, most especially this man’s—even if now…
‘And what?’ she asked tiredly, throwing the question back at Sam, her hands straying betrayingly to her neck and the aching muscles there which gave away her growing tension.
‘Cathy is a woman,’ Sam persisted. ‘You admit that, but you don’t treat her as one. You don’t allow her to have her own feelings, her own needs. You don’t allow her to even tell you that she would like to meet me…’
‘Did she?’ Abbie swallowed. ‘Did Cathy tell you that?’
‘No. Not in so many words. But she did tell me—’
‘You’ve spoken to her?’ Abbie interrupted him swiftly.
‘Yes, she and Stuart came to see me this morning. We had a long discussion, cleared up certain misconceptions…’
‘What misconceptions,’ Abbie demanded, a cold, warning sensation gripping her body unpleasantly.
‘Misconceptions such as the fact that I have supposedly spent the last twenty-two years refusing to accept the fact that I have a daughter, that I haven’t felt either guilt or pain about the fact that initially I couldn’t accept that she was my child. Misconceptions about the reasons why I felt unable to be the one to make contact with her, even though there were many, many times when I wanted to do so.’
‘You’re lying,’ Abbie told him fiercely. ‘You’re just saying that now because…’
‘Because what?’ he invited her.
‘Why have you come here? What do you want?’ Abbie demanded, changing tack.
‘I came here because I learned that someone from England was making enquiries about me,’ he told her promptly. ‘And as for what I want, I don’t think it would be a very good idea if I answered that question right now. You aren’t in the mood to hear what I want to say.’
‘I’ll never be in the right mood to listen to anything you have to say other than goodbye,’ Abbie told him bitterly. ‘And I’ve already heard you say that.’
‘No, Abbie, you haven’t,’ he corrected her. ‘You were the one who said goodbye to me—or rather the one who walked out on me.’
Abbie stared at him.
‘Because you’d accused me of trying to pass another man’s child off as yours… Because you’d deceived me by never even bothering to tell me that you’d had a vasectomy—and, by the way, men who have had vasectomies do still produce children.’
‘Yes, I know,’ Sam agreed. ‘And I also know that almost invariably they react to the initial news that they have done in the same way that I did. Most partners of such men find that they want to have medical proof that he is actually the father of their child before the man can accept it.
‘I’m not alone in reacting the way I did, Abbie. That doesn’t make it right, I know that, and it doesn’t lessen the pain and shock I know you must have felt. But I felt pain and shock as well, you know. The pain and shock of believing the woman I was deeply and helplessly in love with had betrayed me with another man. At twenty-six I might have seemed adult and mature to you, but I wasn’t—not inside. Men don’t mature as quickly as women and I was still immature enough to get infernally jealous, and to feel very, very insecure about the strength of your love for me. You were so young…’
‘But not too young to leave alone, expecting your baby,’ Abbie told him bitterly.
Immediately Sam’s eyes darkened, his jaw hardening in betrayal of his emotions.
‘I did not leave you alone,’ he denied harshly. ‘I was the one who wanted to try for a reconciliation—remember? I wasn’t the one who refused to accept a penny, who said that they’d rather die than have an allowance from me…’
‘I didn’t want your money,’ Abbie stormed, infuriated by his apparent inability, even after all these years, to see what an insult she had felt it was to her that he should calmly offer to support her and a baby he refused to admit was his—as though she was some…some cast-off bit on the side, some…some… ‘I wanted—’ She stopped abruptly, blinking hard to dissipate the angry tears she could feel building at the back of her eyes.
‘You wanted what?’ Sam pressed her.
‘I wanted nothing. Nothing…’ Abbie bit out venomously at him. ‘Just to have you out of my life…our lives. You might have decided to accept now that you are Cathy’s father, but so far as I am concerned—’
‘You’ll never forgive me?’ Sam supplied grimly for her.
There was an expression in his eyes that caused Abbie a small twinge of alarm, a warning that she was pushing him to the limits of his patience and temper. But she chose to ignore it. Why should she care about his feelings? After all, when had he ever cared about hers?
‘Never,’ she agreed vehemently, adding for good measure, ‘You might have managed to convince, to deceive Cathy into believing that you regret what happened, but you can’t deceive me—not a second time. When did it happen, this change of heart, this discovery that you might have been wrong?’ she jeered tauntingly. ‘Last week…last month…? Did you open your eyes one morning and after years of never even giving her a second thought suddenly decide you wanted to see her?’
‘No,’ Sam denied quietly.
There was a small pulse beating under the taut flesh of his throat and Abbie found that she couldn’t drag her gaze away from it. Apart from the ominous tightening of his jaw, and a certain look in his eyes, it was the only sign he had given that he was not totally, calmly and completely in control of his emotions and the situation.
It pleased her to know that she had the power to anger him, to get under his skin.
‘Whether you choose to believe it or not, Abbie, the truth is that there has never been a day, never been a night when I have not thought about… her. When I have not wished that things could have been different. Initially, that wish was quite simply that there could have been some way in which I could have believed that she was my child, and then later, when I discovered that there was a chance that she could be…’
Abbie saw his chest expand as he took a deep breath.
‘I’m not going to indulge your desire for revenge by detailing the guilt and anguish that I suffered, the regret…’
‘No,’ Abbie agreed dryly. ‘I shouldn’t if I were you. Save it for someone stupid enough to believe you, Sam, because I certainly don’t. If you genuinely did feel any of those emotions, why didn’t you try to contact us…Cathy…then?’
‘Because I didn’t think it was fair…I didn’t feel I had the right,’ he told her simply. ‘And besides…’
‘Besides what?’ Abbie scoffed. For some reason his quiet, sad words were hurting her, making her feel…making her wish… ‘Besides, you were too involved in your own life, your own relationships? Did you ever marry again, Sam?’
‘No,’ he told her curtly, turning his head
away from her. And then, looking straight at her, he added slowly, ‘And I haven’t fathered any more children either, which is why—’
‘You’ve now decided you want to take up your fifty per cent option on Cathy?’ Abbie taunted him.
‘No,’ he told her quietly. ‘The reason I came back, virtually the only reason I came back, is because Cathy wanted to meet me. I have no rights where she is concerned. My emotions, my needs must always come second to hers. Had she never made any move to contact me I would have left matters as they stood, but since she has—’
‘Since Stuart has,’ Abbie interrupted fiercely. ‘It was Stuart who wanted to find you, Sam, not Cathy.’
‘What is it you’re afraid of, Abbie?’ he challenged her quietly. ‘Letting Cathy discover that I’m not perhaps the villain you’ve always painted me? That my mistake, my error, was one of vulnerability and humanity rather than deliberate cruelty, as she seems to have been told?’
‘No, that’s not true,’ Abbie denied. ‘I just wanted to protect her, to stop her from being hurt.’
‘By telling her that I didn’t want her…? Did you ever tell her how much I wanted you, Abbie,’ he asked her softly, sliding the question under her guard and aiming at her heart with all the dexterity of a surgeon with a knife.
As the pain pierced her Abbie gave a small, instinctive cry of protest, closing her eyes against the expression she could see in his face.
‘Did you tell her how much I loved you? How much you loved me, how you wanted me?’ he pressed, refusing to release her from her agony. ‘Did you tell her how she was conceived—how, when we made love, you cried out to me in pleasure and ecstasy? How you begged me to fill and possess you completely, to take you and make you for ever my own? Did you tell her any of these things, Abbie, to balance the rest of what you felt it necessary to tell her?’
‘I told her everything she needed to know,’ Abbie said harshly.
She was breathing too fast and too shallowly; her heart was thumping and her legs felt shakily weak. She desperately wanted to sit down, but Sam was standing between her and the chairs. Even so, she made an instinctive move towards one of them, terrified that if she stayed where she was the weakness she could feel threatening her would totally overcome her. But her movements were slow and clumsy, and instead of stepping past Sam she somehow collided with him.
The unexpected impact of his body against her own drove the air from her lungs, leaving her breathing in quick panic, her hands pushing frantically at his chest to distance herself from him even though all he had done was to put out an arm to steady her.
Abbie could see him frowning as he looked down at her. Panic started to explode inside her as her body began to recognise and react to the familiarity of his.
To her horror, Abbie could feel her breasts swelling and hardening as they made contact with the warmth of his body. Beneath the hand she had put out to ward him off she could feel the springy thickness of his body hair underneath his shirt.
Appalled by what was happening to her, Abbie froze. She could feel his heart beating, smell the unforgettably male scent of him, see the shadow on his jaw where he’d shaved, the small mole tucked just inside his collar, which she had once teased and kissed and…
Despairingly she closed her eyes, trying to blot him out, but instantly so many shocking images and memories danced beneath her shuttered eyelids that she immediately opened them again, her mouth forming a small protesting denial.
‘Let me go,’ she demanded. ‘Let me…’
‘You’re the one holding onto me, Abbie,’ Sam informed her, and as she looked down at where her fingers were locked in the fabric of his shirt Abbie realised that it was true. She could feel the hot blood burning up under her skin, covering her whole body in a scarlet tide of mortification.
‘I’m still a man,’ he added warningly as he looked down at her, ‘even if I am older, and I’m still liable to react exactly the same way as I always did to the feel of your breasts pressing against my body, and the look in your eyes that means that you want me to kiss you…and more…’
‘No,’ Abbie denied, furious. ‘No. Never. I hate you. I…’ She gave a small yelp of protest as Sam secured her against his body with one arm and then slid his free hand along her jaw and into her hair, tilting her face up towards his own, not giving her time to renew her verbal assault on him as he lowered his head and covered her half-open mouth with his own.
It shouldn’t have been possible for him to get any response out of her. There wasn’t any way she had the remotest scrap of feeling left for him other than loathing. She was a woman now, not an inexperienced, easily impressed girl whose emotions and sexuality could be aroused at will by a man who had managed to convince her that he loved and wanted her.
No. It shouldn’t have been possible at all. So why…why, instead of instantly repudiating him, did her mouth, her body soften so immediately against his? Why did her lips cling almost beseechingly to his? Why did her heart start to pound in frantic excitement at the familiar delicate stroke of his tongue against her lips? Why? Why? Why was she pressing herself closer and closer to him, straining, aching, yearning for the feel of his skin against her own?
In the distance Abbie could hear someone moaning softly as Sam’s tongue stroked rhythmically in and out of her mouth. His hand slid down her back to press her hips into his body, and as the movement of his pelvis imitated the sensual thrust of his tongue her body melted, yielded to the sensual mastery of his.
She was trembling from head to foot, unable to control her reactions to him, and she recognised in shock that the moaning she could hear was her own. Sam’s hand moved up her body, gently stroking the outside of her breast. Once that had been a signal between them that he wanted to touch her more intimately, to remove her clothing and stroke and caress her breasts, to suckle gently on their small pink tips until she twisted frantically beneath his hands and breathlessly begged him for more.
She could feel the flat pad of his thumb rubbing against her nipple, and she could feel, as well, its instant aching response to him.
Abruptly she froze. What on earth was she doing?
‘Let go of me,’ she demanded furiously, wrenching her mouth and her body away from him and then almost childishly wiping her hand across her mouth, as though she was trying to wipe away the taste and feel of him, before saying huskily, ‘I detest you so much that…’
‘That you want me to take you to bed just so that you can prove it to me?’ Sam suggested harshly.
Abbie stared at him in shock, her body slowly filling with pain.
‘You had no right to touch me like that,’ she told him sickly, all the fight suddenly leaving her. ‘No right at all.’
She turned away from him and started to walk back to the table, stiffening as she heard him saying her name.
‘Cathy had no right to give you her keys, either,’ she added shakily. ‘This is my home and I don’t want you in it.’
‘She gave them to me because she felt it was the only way you’d ever agree to talk to me,’ Sam told her.
‘Talk?’ Abbie turned to face him, her eyes brilliant with the angry shamed tears she couldn’t hide. ‘What is there for us to talk about? We’ve already said it all, every damaging, destructive, hurting word we could possibly have to say. You’re right. I can’t stop Cathy from seeing you if she wants to. That’s her choice and her right. But I have rights and choices too,’ she told him, lifting her chin. ‘And my right…my choice is that whatever there once was between us is over and finished, and I never want to see you again. Now, please go.’
For a moment she thought he was going to argue with her, and she prayed that her strength, her self-control would somehow hold out long enough for her to make him leave, but to her relief, after a brief pause, he turned towards the door, pausing to look at her for a long moment before actually going through it.
It was only after he had gone that she realised he still had her keys.
Never mind, s
he consoled herself, she could always have the locks changed.
The locks to her house, maybe, but the locks to her heart… Leaning her head on the table, she gave way to the tears she couldn’t hold back any more.
CHAPTER SIX
‘AND you’ll never guess what.’ Cathy’s face was pink with excitement as she came rushing into the kitchen, giving her mother an absent hug before continuing, ‘We think we’ve found a house, and Dad has offered to pay for the wedding breakfast. We were talking about it last night when we went back to the hotel with him.’
She pulled a small face. ‘He still hasn’t found anywhere to rent, although he did say that if he accepts this Chair they’ve offered him at the university—which he thinks he will—’
‘What Chair?’ Abbie demanded tightly as she fought to control her shock. Sam had said nothing to her about being offered a job at the university. ‘I thought his visit was only going to be a temporary thing…’
‘Well, it was,’ Cathy agreed, suddenly looking slightly uncomfortable. ‘But…well, it seems that he’s been wanting to come home…to come back,’ she amended hastily, ‘for ages, and now that he and I…well… Well, I’m all the family he’s got, and—’
‘All the family he’s got?’ Abbie interrupted her indignantly. Cathy was her daughter.
‘He is my father,’ Cathy told her defensively, her eyes avoiding Abbie’s, the sparkling look of excitement dying out of her eyes as she moved edgily around the kitchen.
It was a week now since Abbie had first seen Sam at the hotel, and she had had all the locks changed and pointedly told Cathy that she was not to give a new set of keys to her father.
She had told herself that she would simply have to grit her teeth and ignore Sam’s presence for the hopefully brief duration of his visit, and now, to discover that not only was he involving himself in the arrangements for Cathy’s wedding but that he was also making plans to move back permanently, she was thrown into a state of confused emotions. The chief of which, or so she told herself, was anger—a wholly justifiable anger, too, in the circumstances.