by Lynne Graham
Molly smiled, the last of her tension evaporating. ‘Oh, yes…and thank you for the invitation.’
‘About the only thing we have in common is Sholto,’ the beautiful blonde mused with complete candour. ‘But for his sake I’d like us to try to be friends. He’s the only family I’ve got left.’
‘I don’t see a problem with that now,’ Molly murmured gently.
‘Great…then it was worth me coming down here to sort things out.’ Pandora smiled. ‘It also means I get to drive Sholto’s Ferrari back to town. I don’t think he can have thought of that.’
Sholto walked into the room a few minutes later. Outside the engine of the Ferrari ignited with a loud, almost taunting roar. But neither Molly nor Sholto had eyes or ears for anything but each other.
Sholto looked incredibly anxious, intense dark eyes pinned to her face, his strong face taut. ‘Pandora insisted on seeing you personally.’
‘That was incredibly kind of her…she’s so changed, too,’ Molly muttered, looking back at him, trying to read what was going on behind those vibrantly handsome features of his. ‘If only I’d known. She’s had such an appalling time of it.’
‘I really don’t want to talk about Pandora any more,’ Sholto breathed tensely. ‘And I must’ve been out of my mind this morning to react the way I did.’
‘I did give you quite a shock with my ability to add two and two and come up with a distinctly embarrassing five.’
‘Did you mean it when you said you loved me?’ Sholto bit out tautly.
‘Oh, yes…very much,’ Molly assured him cheerfully, knowing that this was not the time to stand on injured pride.
His sizzling tension gave and he reached for her with two possessive hands, snatching her up against him and holding her so tightly she could barely breathe. ‘I suppose you’ve already worked out how much I love you.’
‘Well, I could do with hearing it firsthand.’ Molly said apologetically.
With an unsteady laugh, Sholto lifted his dark head. ‘I was knocked for six when I saw you again at Freddy’s…and then I was outraged when I saw that ring on your finger. I didn’t know what was happening to me and I didn’t enjoy losing control in bed with you…but after you’d gone I read all the letters you ever wrote to Freddy.’
Molly stiffened. ‘You did what?’
‘He left them for me in a file marked “Molly’s letters”. And up until you arrived I had successfully resisted temptation but you hadn’t gone ten minutes before I caved in and started to read them,’ Sholto confided shamefacedly. ‘And when I realised that you had been as utterly miserably unhappy after we broke up as I had been a sort of process of healing began and I stopped feeling so bitter and began wondering how I could persuade you to give me another chance so that we could try again.’
‘And I didn’t want to listen,’ Molly groaned.
‘I knew you wanted me…and I suspected and hoped that there might be more to it than that, cara,’ Sholto admitted, tactfully removing his eyes from her blushing face.
‘There was. I never got over you.’
‘Good,’ Sholto said squarely. ‘But I was really furious that you wouldn’t just admit that you wanted me too and then Nigel’s problems got involved and muddied the water.’
‘I’m sorry about that. He had made the most awful mess and it wasn’t your responsibility to—’
‘Molly,’ Sholto broke in, cupping her cheekbones with two soothing hands, dark eyes guilty, ‘when I went down and saw Nigel and Lena, I felt like I had been taking a hatchet to the babes in the wood,’ he confided with a sardonic twist of his mouth. ‘You did the right thing when you made me listen to you. I would’ve kept an eye on your brother if we’d stayed married. He would never have got into a fix as bad as that if I’d been around.’
Her eyes filled with tears. ‘It’s very decent of you to say that.’
‘Dio, cara…’ Sholto groaned, sweeping her up into his arms and carrying her out of the drawing room. ‘Don’t cry. Don’t you know that even if I’d hated your brother, which I most certainly don’t, I would’ve ended up helping him just to make you happy?’
Linking her hands round his neck as he carried her upstairs, she blinked back tears. ‘If you love me, why were you so appalled when you first suspected I might be pregnant?’
A winged brow climbed. ‘I’m amazed you have to ask me that. You were already bursting at the seams with resentment. Impregnating you with my child outside the bonds of holy matrimony was extremely unlikely to advance my cause with you…in fact, it couldn’t have happened at a worse time. I hadn’t even had a chance to show you how happy we could be together.’
‘Do you still feel like that about the baby?’ Molly looked anxious.
‘Don’t be an idiot,’ Sholto told her as they entered his bedroom, and he bestowed her upon his bed as if she was a very precious cargo. ‘By the time you had finished shouting at me, calling me a selfish, irresponsible toad and letting me know that I had wrecked your life, I was damned grateful that you were pregnant…because I could see that that was the only hold on you I had left!’
‘Serves you right,’ Molly dared, but she smoothed a loving hand over one high cheekbone as she said it. ‘All that talk about being constructive and wanting the baby and never a word about wanting me for my own sake!’
‘It’s a challenge to be so brave when the woman you love looks suicidal because she’s carrying your child,’ Sholto spelt out heavily. ‘And when you said you couldn’t even bear to think of that night at Freddy’s it cut me off at the knees because I know I may have hurt your feelings but it wasn’t as bad as you made it sound.’
‘It was wonderful until you got out of bed,’ Molly confided, green eyes filled with love. ‘And then you had to ruin it.’
‘You weren’t the only one who was shaken up by what happened between us…’ He met the warmth in her eyes and, drawn like a magnet, came down beside her. ‘I love you so much but I was shattered when you walked out four years ago. When Pandora called in at the office this afternoon and was really frank about how she had behaved then, I realised that I’d made a lot of mistakes too. I didn’t give you enough support and I should’ve noticed the way she was behaving—’
‘It’s not important; it’s all in the past, forgotten…’ Molly cut in unsteadily, tugging him down to her with his tie, only one motive in view as she angled her eager mouth up blissfully to the descending charge of his.
Passion surged up and concluded conversation for a long time after that. Not until they lay wrapped in each other’s arms in a blissful haze of contentment did Molly recall something that had niggled at her earlier. ‘Can’t Pandora have children?’
‘Her father’s violence caused internal damage.’ Sholto grimaced in disgust as he made the admission. ‘She had an operation but the doctors really don’t know if it’s possible for her to have a child of her own.’
Molly rubbed her cheek ruefully against his shoulder. ‘I’ll never, ever be Jealous of her again, Sholto. I just hope it all works out for her’
A year later, Molly received a warm embrace from the woman she had come to regard as a sister-in-law. Pandora and Armando had flown over to Templebrooke to attend the important occasion of little Jasper Cristaldi’s christening. Pandora’s blue eyes had a deep inner glow of excitement and happiness.
‘Guess what?’ Pandora began when they were standing at the font.
The Reverend Donald Seaton gave her a gently reproving look as he baptised the baby in Molly’s arms. Jasper set up a screech that would have wakened the dead and everybody burst out laughing. Molly’s eyes met Pandora’s and she understood and instantly she started to smile too.
Pandora was four months pregnant and wanted to shout it to the world but it was some time before the youngest and newest member of the Cristaldi family allowed her to share her feelings in any depth.
After a celebratory lunch, Molly and Sholto saw off Donald and his wife, a friendly and attractive young woman
he had met and fallen in love with while he was in New Zealand. Armando and Pandora departed next, hand in hand and like a pair of teenagers with a secret that made them smile a lot and rather reluctant to spend too much time around other people. Nigel and Lena herded together their children They were never very comfortable at Templebrooke, no matter how hard Sholto worked at making them relax, and usually departed as soon as they decently could.
‘So you don’t think he’d mind…?’ Nigel whispered urgently on the front steps. ‘And you’ll discuss it with him?’
‘You should do it yourself,’ Molly groaned, irritated that her brother was still so intimidated by her husband and cuddling Jasper close in consolation.
‘What was all that about?’ Sholto enquired darkly as he closed a possessive arm round his wife’s rather tense shoulders and walked her back into the house. ‘What wouldn’t I mind?’
‘Nigel doesn’t feel he’s really cut out for the business world. And he has been working for that company of yours for a whole year now…’
‘He wants to take over the garden centre again, doesn’t he?’ Sholto closed his eyes in barely concealed horror at the prospect.
‘He hasn’t done very well on this training course idea, has he?’
Sholto angled an anxiously assessing eye at Molly’s concerned face. ‘He tries; he tries very, very hard.’
‘He doesn’t want the responsibility of running the garden centre again,’ Molly said worriedly. ‘He gets on well with that manager you put in and now that the centre has been expanded again he was wondering if he could sort of… well, take over the horticultural end and leave the rest to that manager…’
Sholto’s tension evaporated and he burst out laughing. ‘Molly…why do you think I expanded the place? It was important that Nigel gained some understanding of how a business should operate but I am more than happy for him to concentrate his considerable knowledge where it will be most profitably employed.’
In perfect harmony, they climbed the stairs. Sholto laid Jasper down in his cot with exaggerated care, tucked him in and smiled down into the drowsy dark eyes so like his own. ‘He’s just perfect, isn’t he?’
‘You could not produce anything less than a perfect child,’ Molly teased, but she was touched as she always was by the unashamed love and affection which Sholto made no attempt to hide around their son.
‘But then I have a perfect wife…’ Sholto curved her into his arms with a deep sigh of satisfaction.
Molly leant back into the embrace of his long, hard body and with a slight flush on her cheeks registered his masculine response to that proximity. She gave a sinuous shiver and turned round in the circle of his arms, heart beating as fast as it ever had as she looked up into loving and amused dark golden eyes.
‘Early night?’
‘It’s only five o’clock.’
Molly knew that look of mock disapproval, recognised the pleasure in his gaze as she propositioned him. ‘I want you now…’
Sholto claimed her mouth in an electrifying kiss and backed her out of the room, across the landing and into their bedroom.
‘I’ll never stop wanting you, cara…’ And with blissful contentment Molly melted into his arms.
ISBN : 978-1-4592-6194-5
MISTRESS AND MOTHER
First North American Publication 1998.
Copyright © 1997 by Lynne Graham.
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