by Penny Jordan
‘They’ve offered me the Senior Chair,’ Sam had told her abruptly three evenings ago, when he had called round unannounced, just as Abbie was preparing her supper. Naturally she had felt obliged to ask him to stay.
‘Are you going to accept it?’ she had challenged him.
She had tried to protest about the number of times he’d either called round or telephoned, but he had simply reminded her, ‘Cathy will think it off if I don’t.’
‘You might just as well be living here,’ she had exploded only two days ago, when he had arrived just after she had had a particularly stressful afternoon at work.
His soft, ‘Is that an invitation?’ had shocked her into silence, her mind screaming that, no, the last thing she needed now was the added strain of having him living under her roof whilst her emotions and her body…
She tensed, not wanting to acknowledge just how it had felt to let herself imagine how it would be if they were living together, how it would feel to share that very special intimacy with him again, to wake up in the morning curled up into his body, knowing that he was a permanent part of her life.
‘Do you want me to?’ he had asked her in answer to her tense challenge about his future plans.
He was standing far too close to her as he waited for her response, Abbie had acknowledged as she’d wetted her nervously dry lips with her tongue-tip, wishing that there were some way she could conceal her expression from him.
In the end all she could manage was a stiff, ‘Your future plans don’t have anything to do with me. Cathy’s the one you should be consulting.’
She had seen the way his eyes darkened as he took in that brief, betraying dampening touch of her tongue to her mouth, and her own body had responded dangerously to the sensual message of his awareness. Being close to him was like being physically drugged or drunk, she’d decided as she’d tried to fight off the effects of the way he made her feel.
‘After all,’ she hadn’t been able to resist adding recklessly, ‘she’s the one you’re doing all of this for, the one you’re doing all the pretending for, making this sacrifice for.’
Ridiculously she’d held her breath slightly, almost as though she was actually being foolish enough to hope that he would deny it and tell her… Tell her what?
‘It really doesn’t matter to me what decision you come to,’ she had finished carelessly, and untruthfully, finally managing to turn away from him as she delivered the words, reinforcing them with a small, dismissive shrug.
‘No… No, it doesn’t, does it?’ Sam had agreed quietly.
He had left shortly afterwards without finishing his supper—probably because he wanted to call round and tell Cathy his news, Abbie had decided. And she had refused to give in to the temptation to run to her sitting-room window and watch him drive away.
* * *
Sam arrived, as Abbie had known he would, on the dot of eight to pick her up. Since Anne, as she herself put it, ‘liked to do things properly’, dinner was to be a formal affair, and Abbie’s vulnerable heart missed a beat as she recognised how very malely attractive Sam looked in his dinner jacket.
She herself was wearing a softly tailored, fine wool crêpe trouser suit, and to her irritation she realised that she was actually blushing slightly as she saw the way that Sam was looking at her, and the approval in his eyes.
‘You always were a stunningly pretty girl, Abbie,’ he told her sincerely. ‘But now, as a woman—’
‘As a woman I do not either appreciate or need falsely flattering compliments,’ Abbie interrupted him curtly, but her pulse was beating far too fast and she could not quite bring herself to look directly into his eyes.
‘No, I don’t imagine you do,’ Sam agreed gravely. ‘Nor do I deceive myself that I’m the first and only man to recognise how beautifully and serenely you’ve grown into your womanhood, Abbie, nor how much, how very, very much, it becomes you…’
Before Abbie could take issue with him on his choice of the word ‘serene’ to describe her, Sam was continuing softly, ‘You wear it well, Abbie. You wear it very well indeed. The girl I married was heart-wrenchingly pretty, but the woman you’ve become…’
He gave a tiny shake of his head. ‘It’s quite true what they say about true beauty being much, much more than skin-deep. Yours shines out of you, Abbie; it illuminates you and everyone around.’
‘We…we’re going to be late,’ was all Abbie could manage to say. In another man she might almost have thought his words were dictated by cruel malice, in the knowledge of how she felt, but that was something she could never accuse Sam of. He would never deliberately, knowingly inflict pain on anyone and then stand back to observe their agony.
It was some small consolation, she supposed, that he had no idea of how she actually felt—a swab to staunch any wound to her pride. But what was the point in attending to any small lacerations in that whilst emotionally she was haemorrhaging to death?
‘We’re going to be late,’ she repeated.
They weren’t late, of course, but Cathy and Stuart had arrived ahead of them, and as Stuart’s father opened the front door to them Abbie could see her daughter deep in conversation with her future mother-in-law, her face flushed as she refuted something the older woman was saying to her, causing Anne to purse her lips and shake her head. Both of them broke off their conversation as they saw that Abbie and Sam had arrived.
What, Abbie wondered uneasily, had their discussion—or argument—been about?
It was impossible for her to question Cathy on the subject as Anne was insisting on introducing both her and Sam to the evening’s apparent guests of honour, a couple who were old friends of Stuart’s parents but who had, it seemed, moved away from the area some years previously.
It was obvious that this couple—slightly older than Stuart’s parents—had been very successful, and although privately Abbie found them almost unbearably smug she did her best to answer the volley of questions that Mary Chadwick fired at her.
Out of the corner of her eye she was aware of being watched by a solitary male guest whom she recognised as Anne’s divorced cousin. She had been introduced to him at an earlier family gathering, although then he had had to leave early.
He was, Anne had been rather at pains to let her know later, something of the black sheep of the family, although she had not specified exactly what it was he had done to merit this title. Perhaps simply the fact that he was divorced was sufficient, Abbie had reflected cynically.
Now, as she managed to bring to an end Mary Chadwick’s inquisitive questions and started to walk away from her and back to Sam, who was deep in conversation with Stuart’s father, Anne’s cousin intercepted her.
‘We meet again. I hoped we would,’ he told her, the humour in his eyes belying the triteness of his words.
‘It must be fate,’ Abbie quipped back drolly, welcoming the respite of a little light-heartedness after being cross-questioned by Anne’s dearest and oldest friend.
‘Fate giving a helping hand—or rather a hefty shove,’ he agreed, adding ruefully, ‘You wouldn’t believe how hard I’ve had to work on Cousin Anne to wangle an invite to this incredibly boring affair. She doesn’t approve of me, you know. And I see she’s already warned you against me—has she?’ he queried, the amusement deepening in his eyes as Abbie inclined her head.
He was a very good-looking man, Abbie acknowledged, perhaps a year or so younger than her. Tall… although not quite so tall as Sam, nor quite so tautly muscled either. His expensive clothes cloaked what she suspected was the beginning of a slight paunch, although she also suspected that his vanity would never allow him to admit as much.
He was a man who quite obviously enjoyed flirting. A man who considered himself to be very much at home with and welcomed by her sex. But Abbie had met his type before, in several different guises. His insouciance amused her, and it was flattering to be singled out by him, but he was certainly not the type of man she could ever take seriously.
‘Anne
tells me that you and Cathy’s father have recently been reconciled and are about to be remarried. Tell me it isn’t true,’ he demanded theatrically. ‘Or let me persuade you that life might hold certain other interesting options,’ he added outrageously.
‘It isn’t true,’ Abbie told him judiciously, but although her voice was calm her eyes returned the flirtatious amusement she could see in his.
‘I see…so there’s hope for me, then, after all? Anne’s a wonderful cook, you know,’ he told her, his apparent change of subject causing Abbie to give him a puzzled look until he continued, ‘Everyone says so, so it must be true. Can you cook?’
‘Well enough,’ Abbie agreed humorously, privately reflecting on the cordon bleu diploma stuffed away in the deepest recesses of her desk.
‘Wonderful. I’ll let you prove it to me if you like—in the morning. I prefer a simple continental breakfast: fresh fruit juice, fresh fruit, warm fresh croissants, and a huge pot of real coffee. Breakfast in bed is such a sensual experience, don’t you think? All those opportunities; all those deliciously warm, flaky crumbs of croissant; all those…’
Abbie couldn’t help it; she burst out laughing and then stopped as she realised that those close enough to them had stopped talking whilst they eavesdropped on her and Anne’s cousin’s conversation.
As she turned her head to meet the disapproving glare of Mary Chadwick, to Abbie’s own shock she heard herself saying, quite clearly, ‘Breakfast in bed is a wonderful idea, but to thoroughly enjoy it the bed has to be properly dressed and the people in it must be…thoroughly undressed…’
It was a stupid, idiotic, totally senseless thing to have said, of course, and she thoroughly deserved Cathy’s angry denunciation of her, Abbie admitted to herself later in the evening.
After ignoring her all through the meal, once it was finally over Cathy followed her upstairs when Abbie went to collect the wrap she had worn over her suit, closing the bedroom door firmly as she followed Abbie inside, before demanding to know in a trembling voice just what her mother had thought she was doing.
‘How could you embarrass me like that?’ she asked bitterly. ‘Behaving like that…flirting like that. Not just in front of Stuart’s family but in front of Dad as well. I thought I knew you, Mum, but I’m beginning to think that I don’t know you at all. Maybe, after all, Dad did have good reason to suspect that I wasn’t his child,’ she added unforgivably.
Abbie simply stood and stared at her. That Cathy was upset because she felt that Abbie had embarrassed her in front of Stuart and his family she could understand—even if she did think that Cathy was overreacting to what had, after all, been a relatively harmless piece of flirting—but to accuse her on the basis of that of having been unfaithful to Sam…
Neither of them heard the bedroom door open or realised that Sam had walked in until they both heard him saying roughly, ‘Cathy, that’s enough. I know you’re upset, but that’s no excuse for talking to your mother like that. What you just said to her was unforgivable.’
Both of them listened to him in mutual shock, Cathy recovering first to appeal to him, her voice trembling with anger and indignation, ‘You saw her, Dad. You saw the way she behaved, the way she…made such a spectacle of herself, encouraging Anne’s cousin to…to flirt with her like that.’
Over Cathy’s head Sam’s eyes met Abbie’s, but she looked away quickly, unable to bear seeing the same angry contempt in his as she could see in Cathy’s.
‘How could you do it?’ Cathy demanded, turning back to Abbie. ‘How could you show me up, humiliate me like that, and in front of Stuart’s parents…?’
Angry tears filled Cathy’s eyes, but as Abbie stepped forward automatically to comfort her and apologise Cathy stepped quickly back from her, turning instead to Sam.
‘I don’t think I can ever forgive you for this,’ she cried out theatrically.
It was Sam who stopped things going any further, saying quietly, ‘That’s enough, Cathy. I know you’re upset but this isn’t the time or the place.’
‘But you must have felt the same as I did,’ Cathy insisted passionately to Sam. ‘You must have been just as embarrassed. After all, you and Mum are supposed to be reconciled, and yet she was openly flirting with another man—and in front of Stuart’s parents as well—’
‘No, Cathy, I did not feel embarrassed,’ Sam interrupted her firmly.
And then, to Abbie’s astonishment, he crossed the room and took hold of her hand, lifting it to his lips and kissing her fingers gently, looking right into her eyes as he softly told her…told her, Abbie acknowledged, and not Cathy, who was now standing watching them both in open-mouthed disbelief, ‘You see, I have learned from my mistakes, and the worst mistake I have ever made in my whole life was not to trust your mother, not to trust her love, our love. That mistake brought us both unbearable pain. It cost you a father and it cost me the woman I loved and the daughter I would have loved. It hurt your mother unbearably, unforgivably, and it caused the kind of misery and destruction I can never forgive myself for.
‘I know better now. If your mother chooses to enliven a rather dull dinner party with a little bit of harmless verbal flirtation, then she has every right to do so, and neither you nor I, nor indeed anyone else, has the right to criticise her for it. Loving someone, really loving them, means trusting them as well. I know that the fact that your mother might choose to spend a harmless few minutes talking or even flirting with someone else cannot have the slightest effect on her relationship with me. Nor could it ever change my love for her. Nothing can change that. Nothing ever could and nothing ever will.’
As she heard the sincerity in his voice Abbie looked deep into Sam’s eyes, searching for some sign that his words were simply another part of the pretence he was enacting to preserve Cathy’s happiness. But no matter how hard she searched all she could see in the grave gaze steadily meeting her fiercely defensive scrutiny was a warmth, a surety, a message that made her forget not just Cathy’s furious anger with her but also the very fact of Cathy’s presence in the room with them.
‘Sam…’ she began uncertainly.
But Cathy had started speaking as well, and as Abbie focused unhappily on her she said shamefacedly, ‘I’m sorry, Mum. Dad’s quite right…I overreacted. It’s just, well, I suppose I wanted you to make a good impression on Stuart’s family, and—’
‘Your mother doesn’t need to worry about the impression she makes on others and neither do you,’ Sam butted in firmly. ‘Stuart loves you as you are, Cathy…’
‘Oh, yes, I know that,’ Cathy agreed, and then looked uncomfortable as she explained, ‘It’s just that with Stuart and Mum falling out over…over me wanting to know you… It matters to me, Mum, that the two of you get on,’ she appealed to Abbie. ‘I love you and Stuart so much, I don’t want there to be… I want you both to love and appreciate one another as I do…’
Abbie couldn’t quite conceal her confusion or her relief. ‘Is that what this is all about?’ she demanded, shaking her head slightly. ‘I thought you were cross with me because I wasn’t more like Stuart’s mother. I thought you felt I’d let you down by not being like her.’
‘What?’ Now it was Cathy’s turn to look astonished. ‘How on earth could you think that?’ she protested. ‘You must know that you are the most wonderful, precious mother anyone could ever have,’ Cathy told her emotionally. ‘It just hurt me so much that you and Stuart couldn’t seem to get along, especially when I know how special both of you really are. I just wanted Stuart to see you as you really are, and for you to understand that when he got in touch with Dad he wasn’t doing it to get at you. He just wanted to do it for me… because he thought it would make me happy.’
‘Oh, Cathy,’ Abbie choked, hugging her and then releasing her to tell her firmly, ‘You’re right, he is a very special person, and I haven’t appreciated him properly—but I promise you that from now on I shall do, and I promise you as well that I won’t embarrass you by flirting any more,’
she added generously.
‘Well, you can flirt,’ Cathy laughed, ‘but only if it’s with Dad—and I’d better go,’ she added. ‘Stuart will be wondering where on earth I am…’
‘Well, we’re leaving now too,’ Sam told her as she went towards the door and opened it. ‘We’ll see you tomorrow.’
Abbie barely waited for Cathy to close the door behind her before turning back to Sam and demanding, ‘Sam…?’
But once again she wasn’t allowed to finish what she wanted to say, because Sam had taken hold of both her hands and had placed them gently against his chest, where he held them prisoner, covered by the warmth of his, and looked down into her eyes.
‘I meant what I said, you know, about loving you…’ he told her huskily.
‘That… that can’t be true,’ Abbie protested shakily.
‘But it is,’ Sam assured her. ‘Maybe this isn’t the time to tell you this, but it has always been and it always will be true. I loved you all those years ago, when we were young, all the empty years in between, when we were apart—and I love you now. Why do you think I came back?’
‘To see Cathy,’ Abbie told him huskily.
‘To see Cathy,’ he agreed, ‘and because of you. Surely you must have known?’ he challenged her softly. ‘Guessed how I felt when I touched you, when we made love…?’
‘I thought it was just sex,’ Abbie admitted painfully.
‘Just sex?’ Sam demanded self-mockingly. ‘Oh, Abbie…’
‘You said you would make sacrifices…for Cathy, and I thought…’
‘You thought that taking you to bed was one of them. Was that the way it was for you?’ Sam asked her softly.
His hands were no longer imprisoning hers, but now, for some odd reason, they seemed quite happy to cling possessively to his chest, whilst his were cupping her face, smoothing her skin, drawing her nearer so that the small tremors his earlier touch had evoked, and which she had thought she had fully under control, had become openly visible, sensual shudders of response to his nearness.