‘One day at a time, Jenna. That’s all I’m asking. Discovering you have Maisie was a shock, I have to be honest—not least because although I’m sure I will like her, she may not like me, or the idea of sharing you with a man she’s never met. I don’t know where this is leading, sweetheart,’ he admitted softly. ‘If anyone had told me a couple of months ago that I would be besotted with a single mother with the uncanny knack of turning my life upside down I would have laughed. But here I am, asking for the chance to have a place in your life and Maisie’s.’
‘Jenna, I’ve put a DVD on for Maisie to watch,’ Chris called from the hall. ‘I’m shooting off down the pub now, with the lads. You okay?’ he enquired as he stuck his head round the kitchen door and saw her standing in Alex’s arms. ‘I could stay if you need me?’
‘I’m fine,’ Jenna assured him, amused to see the way her brother and Alex were eyeing each other up. ‘Alex is going to stay for lunch,’ she added, glancing at him in silent query, and was rewarded with a smile that turned her legs to jelly.
She placed a couple of pizzas in the oven, made a salad and added a light dressing, all the while listening to the voices from the living room—one deep-toned, the other high-pitched and full of laughter as her daughter chattered to Alex. He had been honest when he admitted he didn’t know where a relationship between them would lead, but he would not deliberately hurt Maisie, she was certain of it. She could only pray that her own emotions would remain intact.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘HAVE you ever thought about sending these to a publisher?’ Alex asked as he sprawled on the sofa, flicking through the pages of the fairy stories Jenna had written and illustrated for Maisie.
‘Don’t look at them,’ she pleaded as she finished clearing the floor of toys and reached out to take the ribbon-bound pages. ‘They’re just silly stories. But Maisie loves fairies, as you may have noticed,’ she added with a wry smile, recalling Alex’s stunned expression when he had studied the murals she had painted on her daughter’s bedroom walls. ‘No one else would be interested in them.’
‘You have an incredible talent,’ Alex said seriously, and she flushed with pleasure. ‘Why did you never finish your degree?’
‘Debt,’ she answered bluntly. ‘Lee, my ex-husband, liked to live beyond our means. When he left he took the car, the expensive stereo, and anything else that wasn’t nailed down. He allowed me to keep the credit card bills he had run up in our joint names. I trusted him,’ she confessed wryly. ‘I was so blinded by love, or rather what I believed was love, that I went along with whatever he wanted. At the back of my mind I suppose I always knew he didn’t love me—the only person Lee has ever loved is himself—but I was alone and pregnant, my parents had worries of their own, and I was just grateful that he agreed to stand by me.’
‘Even so, it must have been tough,’ Alex murmured, glancing at the photographs on the mantelpiece that depicted a younger-looking Jenna, a woman barely out of her teenage years, who looked swamped by the responsibility of her new baby.
‘I got by,’ Jenna replied, with a shrug that denounced any hint of self-pity. ‘In many ways it was easier after Lee left—at least then I could control my outgoings.’
She thought back to the days when she had tried to care for Maisie while at the same time struggling to finish a poorly paid home job of wiring plugs by the hundred. In the evenings Nora had babysat, so that she could work an evening shift in a supermarket, and the memory of the mind-numbing monotony of shelf-stacking still made her shudder. Determined to create a better life for her and her daughter, she had signed up for a home study course in business and secretarial duties, and the early hours before Maisie awoke had seen her hunched over the computer, sleep deprivation a small price to pay for the chance to improve their lives.
‘You should be very proud,’ Alex said sincerely. ‘Maisie is a beautiful little girl.’
A child who had in one day already stirred his protective instincts, he thought ruefully. In all honesty he had taken little more than a cursory interest in his sister’s two boys. He enjoyed their company when he visited, and was happy in his role as uncle for a few hours, but children were an unknown entity he vaguely imagined for his future. If he hoped for any kind of relationship with Jenna he would have to accept that she would always put the welfare of her daughter before any other consideration.
‘Does Lee see much of Maisie?’ he asked curiously.
Jenna shrugged, her smile fading as old worries resurfaced. ‘Sporadic visits every few months,’ she admitted. ‘He hoped for a boy—someone he could take to foot-ball—but instead Maisie was a small, colicky baby, who screamed constantly for the first three months. He once said she cramped his style, but the truth is I think we both did. The novelty of having a wife and child soon wore off, he accused me of being frigid, and to be honest sex was the last thing on my mind when I crawled into bed. It didn’t take him long to seek pleasure elsewhere.’
She hesitated, compelled to confide in Alex about Lee’s newfound interest in his daughter, and more importantly his plan to use Maisie as a pawn in his plan to marry his rich girlfriend. But it was too much, too soon, she decided. Alex had only just learned that she had a child. To involve him in her legal wrangles with her ex-husband would be unfair, and secretly she was afraid that he would lose interest in her. He had accused her once before of having too much baggage. Now was not the time to reveal that she had a cargo plane full.
Her ex-husband sounded an utter bastard, Alex brooded as he shifted his position on the sofa to make room for Jenna next to him. Until now he had held the opinion that couples often divorced too hastily, to the detriment of their children, but who could possibly blame Jenna for leaving a man who had been at best uninterested and at worst violent towards her? She was a devoted mother, who had sacrificed her youth and her undoubted artistic talent to care for her daughter, but the years had changed her, he realised as he glanced again at the photo of her as a young girl and compared it with the woman she was today. The innocent optimism of youth had been replaced with a determined air that was almost tangible. She was a survivor, and more than that, she was a fighter—no weak victim of her circumstances, but a woman determined to provide the best for her child. Along the way she had learned to be wary, to believe that mistrust protected her from hurt, and somehow he would have to prove that he was nothing like Lee and that she would be safe, in every sense of the word, with him.
‘Are you tired now?’ he asked lightly, and she shook her head, puzzled by the question.
Was he looking for a reason to leave? She had invited him to lunch and he had stayed for the rest of the day, accompanying her and Maisie to the park and taking it in his stride when the little girl had bestowed on him the honour of carrying her favourite teddy home. Maybe he had overdosed on domesticity? she thought dismally, her breath catching in her throat when he bent his head and brushed his lips over hers.
Instantly her senses clamoured for more. He had kissed her a couple of times during the afternoon, brief caresses after he had first ensured that Maisie wasn’t watching, and Jenna had appreciated his sensitivity. But it hadn’t allayed the almost desperate urge to have him kiss her properly. Now they were alone, and suddenly she felt ridiculously shy and unsure. It was all so frighteningly new, this sudden intimacy. She couldn’t look at him without recalling the beauty of his naked body, the burning intensity in his eyes when he had come inside her.
‘Why did you ask if I was tired?’ she murmured, and his mouth curved into a slow, sensual smile.
‘Because you’re as sure as hell not frigid. I think we demonstrated that fact in Yorkshire. I asked because I thought you might need a lie-down.’
‘That was very thoughtful of you,’ she agreed, her eyes sparkling with humour—and something deeper.
‘My motives are completely altruistic,’ he assured her gravely as he lay back on the cushions and pulled her on top of him.
His jeans were old and faded, the denim
stretched taut over his thighs, and as Jenna settled her weight on him she couldn’t hide her shock at the hard proof of his arousal.
‘Mmm, that’s good,’ he muttered thickly as she wriggled against him, and he moved so that their thighs were locked in an erotic simulation of lovemaking. ‘You don’t know how desperately I’ve wanted to do this all day,’ he added, his hand sliding into her hair to cup her nape and draw her mouth down to his.
From the first stroke of his tongue she was on fire, and only eased away a fraction to enable him to pull her tee shirt over her head. He dispensed with her bra with similar speed and she sat astride him, her hair falling over her shoulders while his hands skimmed her ribcage to settle over each breast, his fingers moving in ever decreasing circles until they hovered over her nipples.
‘Please,’ she whimpered, liquid heat pooling between her thighs as he stroked each sensitive peak and then slowly drew her down so that he could repeat the action with his tongue. When at last he released her and gently pushed her up again she was trembling with need, and saw her hunger mirrored in the fierce glitter of his eyes.
‘I want you,’ he told her bluntly. ‘Now. I can’t wait.’
He swung his legs over the side of the sofa, taking her with him so that she was standing before him, and she could only watch as he wrenched open the button on her jeans, drew down the zip and tugged the material over her hips. Her knickers swiftly followed, but when she would have joined him again on the sofa he stayed her, his fingers pressing into her hips while his mouth trailed a line of fire from her navel to the junction between her thighs. Even when she guessed his intentions she couldn’t quite warrant that he would do it, but as his lips moved lower and his tongue probed with gentle insistence at the entrance to her vagina she gripped his hair, at first to pull him away and then, as pleasure overwhelmed her, to hold him against her.
The sweet torment of his tongue took her higher and higher; she could feel the first spasms of pleasure and gasped. ‘I want you, Alex, I want you to… Oh!’
The rest of her words were lost as a tidal wave ripped through her, her whole body clenching and shaking so that he had to support her legs. Only then did he draw her down onto the sofa and stand himself, quickly dispensing with jeans and boxers and coming down on top of her to enter her with one powerful thrust.
Having already climaxed, Jenna’s only thought was to aid him in reaching the same heights, but as he set a rhythm and drove into her with steady, deepening strokes she felt the waves of pleasure build again, gradual at first, but growing, clamouring, until she sobbed his name. She clamped around him and he paused, fought for control, and lost it spectacularly, his body shuddering with the power of his release until he lay, sated and replete within her.
‘Definitely not frigid,’ he teased as he smoothed her damp hair from her face, and she smiled shyly.
‘It was never like that with Lee,’ she admitted huskily. ‘And I’ve never slept with anyone else.’
‘Let’s keep it that way, shall we?’ His voice was light as he stood up, but there was something in his voice, a look in his eyes, that caused her heart to thump in her chest.
One day at a time, he had said. But the possessive gleam in his expression told her that he wasn’t just looking for a brief affair. What did he want? she wondered. It was too soon for both of them to hope for any degree of permanency, yet Maisie had taken an instant liking to him. Wariness cautioned her to keep Maisie’s contact with Alex to a minimum, to protect the little girl from hurt should the affair end, but if she hoped to develop a long-term relationship with him she would have to have some faith in him.
Her stomach grumbled complainingly, and a glance at the clock revealed that it was hours since they had eaten lunch.
‘Hungry?’ Alex queried, and she ignored the gleam in his eyes and nodded.
‘My kitchen is not the most exciting place on earth, but you’re welcome to stay for dinner.’
‘It’s too late to cook. Do you like Chinese food? I noticed a take-away on the way here.’ At her enthusiastic nod he shrugged into his jacket and dropped a brief, hard kiss on her lips. ‘I won’t be long—don’t go away.’
Twenty minutes later Jenna smiled as she answered the phone, fully expecting to hear Alex on the line, checking her order. But the muffled voice uttering a string of expletives sent fear coiling through her.
‘I’m watching you, whore. Your lover may have gone, but I’m still here.’
It had to be Lee, she reassured herself as she slammed the phone down. He had attempted to disguise his voice, but he was the only person she knew with a sick enough mind to want to scare her. Brian from across the road must have tipped Lee off about her visitor, and he was probably nowhere near, but the idea that he knew of her movements made her feel ill.
A light tap on the front door heralded Alex’s return, and he frowned as he studied her pale, drawn face, and the way she folded her arms tightly across her body.
It hadn’t taken long for her doubts to surface, he thought grimly. He shouldn’t have left her alone even for half an hour. He should have followed his gut instinct and taken her again, made love to her until he had imprinted himself indelibly on her mind as well as her body. He was using sexual chemistry quite deliberately: the one thing he was certain of was that their passion was mutual and equal in its intensity, and if sex was the only way he could bind her to him, then for now it would have to suffice.
‘I’m not hungry any more,’ she informed him brightly, fighting to keep the tremor from her voice. ‘I’m really sorry, but I’m exhausted—you’ve worn me out. If you don’t mind, I’d really like to go to bed. On my own.’
The last was on a note of sheer panic and Alex studied her quietly. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing.’
The phone rang, its strident peal making her jump like a startled doe, but as she reached to answer it he plucked the receiver from her fingers. He waited impassively until the string of foul insults came to an end and then spoke, his voice dangerously calm, hiding the fact that he was ready to commit murder.
‘Presumably you’re unaware that this line is being monitored by the phone company,’ he lied, ‘and that your call has been recorded? As Jenna’s barrister, I look forward to seeing you in court.’ He had been unable to stop the fury in his voice; it was a miracle he had restrained himself at all, and his face darkened as he stared at Jenna. ‘That wasn’t the first malicious call you’ve received—don’t even try to deny it. Do you have any idea who’s behind them? Lee?’ he suggested, when she remained silent.
‘I don’t know… Yes, I would guess Lee. The voice is muffled, but there’s no one else that warped. But, Alex, you’ve made things worse. I know you’re trying to help, but now he’ll be angry—’ She broke off, her face tight with fear and misery.
‘First thing tomorrow I’ll call the phone company and have your number changed to an ex-directory one. Then I’ll inform the police that you’re being hounded. Sweetheart, there are laws to prevent jerks like your ex-husband from frightening you,’ he continued, but she shook her head, her eyes wide with panic.
‘You don’t understand. Lee’s clever. He’d probably tell the police that I’m mad, and a bad mother to Maisie. He’d do anything to take her away from me.’
‘Are you saying that he wants custody of Maisie? I thought he wasn’t interested in her?’
‘He wasn’t until a few weeks ago.’ Realising that Alex wouldn’t rest until he had dragged the whole story from her, she explained about Lee’s wealthy girlfriend and the reason behind his renewed interest in his daughter.
‘He really doesn’t stand a chance of winning sole custody,’ Alex sought to reassure her, after persuading her to eat some dinner. ‘Call his bluff. Let the courts decide. I have friends who specialise in family law; I can ensure that you’re represented by the best lawyers.’
Perhaps Alex was right, Jenna thought wearily as she went upstairs to bed. She had eventually persuaded him to
return to his flat for the night, assuring him that she would be fine and that Chris would soon be home. Alex had made it plain that he would be happier spending the night, even promising to sleep on the sofa, but she was desperate not to rush their relationship. She didn’t want Maisie to wake up and find him at the breakfast table; it was too soon.
The phone rang, and she let it ring and ring until she could bear it no longer. But when she snatched up the receiver it was Chris at the other end of the line.
‘I’m in the pub,’ he said, his voice barely audible above the background hum. ‘We’re going on to a club and I’ll stay over at Nick’s tonight. Will you be okay?’
‘Of course,’ she told him firmly. ‘I lived on my own for three years. Have a good time.’
No way was she going to spoil Chris’s evening, she decided as she fell into bed. Alex was right. Lee couldn’t hurt her, and his chances of gaining custody of Maisie were remote. For some reason she had allowed him to frighten her, as he had done during their marriage, but she was no longer a timid young girl, struggling with the demands of a new baby, she was an independent woman and she could stand up to Lee.
She slept surprisingly well, and woke just as it was getting light, a small sound from outside her bedroom door warning her that Maisie must be awake.
‘Maisie!’ Usually the little girl liked to snuggle down in her bed for an early-morning cuddle, and she frowned when there was no reply.
The sound came again, and she recognised it as the loose floorboard at the top of the stairs. Her heartbeat slowed again as she berated herself for being over-imaginative. It must be Chris trying to creep up to bed without waking her, she decided, and she knotted the belt of her robe around her waist and opened her bedroom door—her scream echoing throughout the house as she came face to face with her ex-husband.
‘You frightened me, Lee. What are you doing here? How did you get in?’ She was shaking so hard that she had to lean against the wall, acute shock making her feel so sick that her brow was clammy with beads of sweat.
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