by Penny Jordan
‘Sally, what is it… what’s happened?’
She could hear the concern, the alarm in Joel’s voice but instead of answering him she simply burrowed closer against him. The feel of him, his smell, his warmth, his familiarity were suddenly the only security she had.
Beneath the thinness of her dress Joel’s hand registered the presence of her suspender belt and stockings.
A cold shock of male knowledge numbed him. There could only be one reason for Sally to dress like that.
He had told Philippa that their marriage was over, their love dead, but now the thought of Sally, his wife, in the arms of another man made him realise the truth. It wasn’t just jealousy that seared and burned him, he recognised, it was fear for Sally as well; fear for her and a wild, fierce anger against the man responsible for her grief.
As he started to pull away from her, Sally clung to him. She didn’t want Joel to let her go… not now… not ever… She didn’t ever again want to be that woman whom Kenneth had stared at with such disgust and distaste. She wanted to be what she had always wanted to be; she wanted to be protected by Joel’s love, to be held safe by it and by him.
As he saw how distressed she was, Joel felt his jealousy turn to compassion and pity, his need to reassure her overwhelming his desire to know what had happened.
‘It’s all right…’ he told her soothingly. ‘It’s all right… Whatever happened…’
‘Nothing happened… nothing…’
Sally was shivering violently, her teeth chattering, but as Joel heard the agony in her voice he knew, without knowing how he knew it, that, whatever impulse had led to her dressing so obviously for sex, it had not been desire that had motivated her, and it was not from the arms of her lover or from his bed that she had come back home in such a state of distress.
Unfair and illogical of him to feel relieved that she had not been physically unfaithful to him, he knew…
‘Hold me, Joel… Make love to me… take me to bed… Make love to me…’
Sally was as shocked to hear her words as Joel looked, but when Joel hesitated, watching her, her shock gave way to panic. Kenneth had rejected her; what if Joel did too?
‘Joel… please…’
It hurt him hearing her beg him like this, looking at her and seeing the fear and panic in her eyes… he wanted to take hold of her and wipe it away, to tell her there was no need for her to punish herself like this, to pretend to want him when he could see from her eyes and her body that sex was the last thing she really wanted; but he wasn’t sure he was capable of finding the right words, words that would comfort and not hurt, and so instead he cupped her face in his hands, smoothing back her hair, damp and sticky from her tears, her skin hot and flushed beneath his hands, her eyes more terrified than they had been that very first time she had let him touch her intimately.
But then she had trusted him… and wanted him as well, even though shyness had made her loath to admit it…
‘It’s all right, Sally, everything’s going to be all right.’ He kissed her gently and without passion, stilling the trembling of her mouth with the slow, sure warmth of his own.
A kiss of peace and knowledge rather than one of desire.
‘How can everything be all right?’ Sally asked him wretchedly when he stopped kissing her. ‘How can anything ever be all right again…?’
Slowly trying to feel his way through her pain without adding to the distress she had already suffered, Joel told her, ‘It can if we want it to be. If that’s what we both want. What do you want, Sal…?’
‘I want everything to be the way it used to be,’ Sally told him brokenly. ‘Joel, I’m so frightened,’ she whispered to him. ‘Everything’s changed so much… No one wants me or needs me any more…’
‘I need you,’ Joel told her quietly, and as he said the words he knew, illuminatingly, that they were true. ‘You love her,’ Philippa had told him, and he had denied it… His heart ached with shame and guilt.
It hurt him seeing her like this, afraid and vulnerable, and it hurt him even more knowing that he was partly to blame; that he had punished her for his own sense of inadequacy in losing his job, letting her shoulder burdens he had had no right to expect her to carry, simply because his own ego could not accept the reversal of their traditional roles.
He had blamed her for turning away from him and making him seek sexual consolation with someone else. Did she similarly blame him?
Beneath his hands he could feel her body trembling still.
‘Make love to me… take me to bed…’ she had begged him, and perhaps after all it would be a good thing to do; the making of a new commitment to one another; the acknowledgement that there were things they were leaving behind, things too painful to discuss now but which would have to be dealt with ultimately.
Sally tensed as she felt Joel sliding free the buttons fastening her dress. It had been a long time since he had undressed her like this, she acknowledged, his mouth caressing her skin as he exposed it to his gaze and touch.
Her awareness of his arousal and desire were reassuringly familiar even though her relieved gratitude for them was not.
She tensed momentarily as he slid off her dress, holding her breath while she waited for him to make some comment about her choice of underwear, but all he did was gently remove it and then tell her softly, ‘That’s better—this is how I like you best… with nothing to come between us.’
Sally gazed uncertainly at him. Had he chosen those words deliberately? Had he after all guessed and was now trying to tell her…?
She trembled on the brink of guilt and anxiety, her eyes searching his as she began uncertainly, ‘Joel, there’s something I should tell you…’
‘There’s only one thing I need to hear you say,’ Joel told her softly. ‘Do you still love me?’ he prompted her when she stared at him in confusion. ‘Because that’s all that really matters, isn’t it, Sal… all that should matter? That we love one another… The rest… well, we can find a way of sorting that out later…’
She did love him, Sally recognised as her body trembled with relief and joy… Because this was the Joel she had originally fallen in love with, the Joel who had always loved and protected her.
‘Yes… yes. I love you,’ she told him.
It might not have been the most passionate and intensely sexual lovemaking he had ever known, Joel reflected an hour later as he lay on his side, Sally’s sleeping body curled up back against his as though even in sleep she needed to know he was close to her, but there had been a special quality about it nevertheless, a sense of shared intimacy and awareness of the significance of what they were doing, an acknowledgement of what still lay ahead of them.
Perhaps neither of them would ever discuss fully with the other exactly what had happened, not out of deceit but out of love and the need to protect one another. Some things were far more hurtful to hear than to say. It was enough for him now that he knew Sally was here with him through her own choice, that for whatever reason she had held back from making a sexual or emotional commitment to the man she had dressed so sensually for, and if it hurt him to know that she would never have chosen willingly to dress like that for him, then perhaps he ought to look at his own responsibility for that, instead of assuming that all the responsibility was hers.
Perhaps he had been guilty of focusing too much on the sexual aspects of their relationship in the past, expecting her to know that for him sex and love were two different faces of the same coin.
‘I need to know that you want, need me… that you love me,’ she had whispered to him as he held her. ‘I need it to be more than just a physical thing, just a body for you to use to satisfy yourself, Joel.’
‘You’ve never been that,’ he had assured her. ‘Never… It’s just that sex has sometimes been the only way I could get your attention… I need to feel needed as well,’ he had told her gruffly. ‘I need to feel that I’m loved and not just a useless waste of space who can’t even look after you financ
ially any more… Have you any idea how much that hurts me… how bad it makes me feel?’ he had asked her softly, and he had seen from her expression that she hadn’t.
‘It hurts like hell, Sally… It makes me feel that I’m a failure—that I’ve failed you.’
‘No, you haven’t,’ she’d assured him. ‘It’s not your fault the factory closed, and you never know—this work you’re doing at the leisure centre could lead to something,’ she had added gently.
‘Maybe… but don’t count on it,’ Joel had warned her. ‘We could manage on less, you know,’ he added. ‘I hate seeing you looking so tired all the time… knowing… We don’t need two cars. We could get rid of mine… I could buy a bike and become a real environmentalist,’ he had teased her when she had started to protest. ‘I could advertise and maybe get some more private pupils. A couple of the guys who go down to the leisure centre who are out of work are talking about setting up a sort of self-help group… a sort of trade and barter system with everyone pitching in with what they can do. It won’t bring in much money, but if we’re careful we could manage on less and——’
‘I could go back to working part-time,’ Sally had interrupted him.
‘Not unless it’s what you want,’ Joel had told her quietly after a small pause. ‘I’m not trying to dictate to you what you should and shouldn’t do, Sal. I’ve already made that mistake once. You have as much right to what you want from life as the rest of us. I’ve realised while I’ve been at home with the kids how much of yourself you’ve sacrificed for them… for us. All I want now is for you to have a choice… If you want to work full-time, fine; if you don’t…’
‘Oh, Joel…’
‘Now what have I said?’ he had demanded as she’d collapsed in tears against him, soaking his chest with them as she’d hugged him with fierce joy and genuine emotion.
Some time she would have to tell him about Kenneth, to try to explain, and perhaps, if she was brave enough, to ask him where he had learned that new sexual gentleness and patience that was so unfamiliar to her.
She had shivered a little before curling up in his arms.
She had come far too close to losing what she now recognised was so important to her to want to risk spoiling this new harmony between them before it had had time to grow into something a little bit stronger.
In her sleep, Sally gave a small, sharp, frightened cry. Instantly Joel’s arms tightened around her.
‘It’s all right, Sal… everything’s all right,’ he whispered to her.
‘Joel.’ She turned her head to look at him, her voice trembling slightly as she told him, ‘I dreamed that you weren’t here…’
‘Of course I’m here,’ he reassured her. ‘Where else would I be… where else would either of us be? We belong together, you and I, Sal… here with each other… with the kids…’
‘Joel!’ Sally sat bolt upright in the bed. ‘Cathy… Paul—where are they…?’
‘Come back here and kiss me,’ Joel demanded, grinning at her. ‘Otherwise I’m not going to tell you…’
‘Joel,’ Sally threatened.
‘No kiss… no kids…’ Joel threatened back, straight-faced, laughing as Sally picked up her pillow and hit him with it.
‘Things are going to be all right, aren’t they, Joel?’ Sally asked him, her face suddenly grave and anxious.
‘Of course they are,’ he told her, pushing aside the pillow. ‘Of course they are.’
And he prayed that his words would prove true.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
‘NOT too close to the house,’ Philippa called out warningly through the kitchen window as she watched Rory and Anya setting up their tennis net.
It was just over two months now since she had moved into Blake’s large, comfortable house to take charge of Anya. Two months… in some ways it felt as though she and the boys had lived here forever; in others…
Outside, Rory was patiently demonstrating to Anya how to hold her racket. It had been an unexpected bonus, this rapport which had developed between her elder son and Anya.
It amused her to watch the protective fraternal manner he had adopted towards her and to observe Anya’s very determined insistence that he should treat her as an equal.
After an initial three weeks on her own with Anya, gently and compassionately trying to help her to adjust to her new life, she had been very anxious about how her sons, who had after all never had to share her time or attention with another child, especially a female one, would react to Anya’s presence.
‘Stop worrying,’ Blake had instructed her quietly when they’d gone to collect the boys from school. ‘You can’t protect them from all of life’s hazards, you know, and it wouldn’t be good for them if you could. They’ll find a way of co-existing…’
‘I was thinking of Anya just as much as the boys,’ Philippa had defended herself.
‘I know you were,’ Blake had told her.
When she’d shot him a surprised look he had turned his head and smiled at her.
‘You ruffle up like a protective mother hen the moment you feel that anything threatens her…’
‘It’s my job,’ Philippa had protested, unconvincingly, she knew.
Looking after Anya, helping her to make the adjustment from her old life to her new one, could never be just a job to her, and hadn’t been from the first moment she had set eyes on her.
Temperamentally and in almost every other way as well they were poles apart, and yet she had sensed in Anya a loss of personal identity similar to her own as a girl; she was determined that Anya, unlike her, would never be forced into a mould of someone else’s making.
The look in Blake’s eyes had shown her that he knew the truth just as well as she did herself.
‘Your job?’ he had repeated, his eyebrows lifting. ‘Who are you trying to convince, Philippa, me or yourself? If it’s me you’re wasting your time. Do you know what I see when I watch you with Anya?’
She had shaken her head.
‘I see love… love in its purest, most selfless and giving form, and I see Anya growing in the warmth of that love like a starved plant.’
‘She has grown, hasn’t she?’ Philippa had agreed quickly, anxious to change the subject. His compliments warmed her heart in much the same way that his presence warmed her life, and that knowledge, that admission was something far too dangerous for her to dwell on…
‘I think she’s put on weight as well,’ she had continued, speaking, she knew, far too quickly. ‘I was going to ask you if it would be all right to buy some new clothes. I expect I’ll have to buy the boys some things anyway…’
But the boys’ clothes would be second-hand, while the allowance Blake had set aside for her to use for Anya’s needs was so generous that she could buy an entire new wardrobe without making much of a dent in it.
Blake had already told her that he was perfectly happy to leave it to her discretion how much she spent and on what, but she was scrupulously careful about checking with him first before she bought anything, something which she felt sometimes irritated him for some reason.
‘Fine,’ he said now. ‘Why don’t you leave it a few days, though, until they’ve all settled down, and then I’ll take a day off and we’ll have a proper shopping trip?’
Philippa glanced across at him, digesting his suggestion in silence. Blake had revealed several unexpected traits over these last few weeks, not the least his desire to be involved not just with Anya’s day-to-day life, but, it seemed, with her sons’ lives as well.
He had already mentioned taking time off to take them all out on various day trips to enliven the long summer holiday, and when Philippa had demurred that there was no need for him to feel he had to include her sons in his plans he had reminded her of his original conversation with her. ‘It will be good for Anya to mix with her peers in a family situation.’
‘We don’t know how well they get on with one another yet,’ she had reminded him.
‘Probably not very well
at first,’ he had surprised her by saying. ‘Learning to interact with others in a close family unit isn’t easy even when you’ve been doing it from birth.’
When she had moved into Blake’s large rambling house he had made over one of the downstairs rooms to her as her own private sitting-room, an act which Philippa had assumed was more to protect his privacy than hers.
But in the evening after supper, when she and the boys had retreated to this sitting-room, Anya had wanted to come too, and of course Philippa hadn’t felt it was fair to exclude her, so that the room, instead of being somewhere where she spent the evening alone as befitted Blake’s employee, had become instead the focal point of their joint lives.
And not just for Anya but for Blake too.
Of course it was only natural that he would want to spend time with Anya and develop his relationship with her, but some evenings it was her sons who gravitated towards Blake, bombarding him with questions about some apparently wholly masculine pursuit, while Anya curled up on the sofa with her.
It had amazed her to hear Rory talking quite openly and easily to Blake about his relationship with his father, amazed her and humbled her a little as well as she’d recognised the man already growing in her elder son in that he had quite obviously felt he had to protect her from the concerns she’d overheard him expressing to Blake.
Perhaps it was only natural that her sons should relate more easily to another male—they were, after all, used to being at an all-male school and used to relating to their male teachers—but she didn’t want them to grow up isolated from contact and familiarity with her own sex. Perhaps now that she was going to send them to a local mixed school for their next school year, that would help redress the balance.
Although she had tried to insist on Blake’s reducing her salary to cover the cost of the boys’ food and board, he had been so grimly sarcastic about it that she had had no option but to give in.
‘Oh, yes, feeding a couple of half-grown boys is going to make me bankrupt, is that what you think?’ he had asked her, and then she had heard him curse as he saw her wince, and immediately apologise for his unfortunate choice of words.