‘What happened to her?’ She realised that she was holding her breath, that her heart was thumping in her chest. ‘She was involved in an accident when Mark was two. The small aircraft she was in went down in poor weather conditions.’
‘I’m very sorry. Poor Mark.’
‘Poor Mark has had a life full of everything money can buy.’
‘Oh, well, in that case, what a lucky child!’ she said sarcastically, and she was gratified to see his face darken with colour.
‘You should be a teacher,’ he said under his breath.
‘You certainly have a way of psychologically rapping over the knuckles.’
Jessica felt her eyes sting at that, even though it was hardly an outright insult. Some might even construe it as a backhanded compliment of sorts, but she didn’t. Recently, her self-confidence had been too precarious for her to nod enthusiastically at the remark.
Her running arguments with Lucy had forced her into the role of harpy, and his observation only seemed to confirm the opinion. ‘I’m going for a swim,’ she muttered, and before he could answer she walked towards the pool and slipped in, swimming under water for the length of it, and wishing that she could just carry on like that indefinitely.
It was cold, but not unpleasant. She got to the end of the pool, gasped as she breathed in a lungful of air, and then dived back under, swimming blindly, eyes closed against the chlorine and against her disproportionate reaction to his stupid, unfair remark.
She crashed into him without warning and rose, spluttering to the surface.
‘I apologise if I upset you,’ he said, which made her even angrier with him and with herself.
‘Forget it!’ She prepared to turn away and head back for the deep end, but he caught her by the shoulders and turned her to face him.
‘You’re quite probably right. I should be more enthusiastic about Mark, or at least do him the favour of feigning enthusiasm, but it’s a damn hard world out there, and painting pictures isn’t going to get him very far.’
‘You make it sound so trivial—’painting pictures’. Besides, I don’t think you have the faintest idea what your son intends to do. I don’t think he wants to pursue any kind of career in fine art. I think he’s more interested in commercial art, or graphic art.’ Yes, she was talking absolute sense. Yes, her mouth was doing precisely what it should be doing—giving voice to rational thought.
Everything else, though, was being churned up in some weird blender. She was so close to him that she could hardly breathe, for a start, and her skin was prickling all over. If she moved a muscle, she knew that she would somehow make a complete fool of herself.
‘Where’s the difference?’ he asked softly. His hands moved to cup her face, and really she didn’t know what to do. She knew what she should do. She should move away, firmly but politely, so that he was aware that he was invading her private space, but how could she do that when her limbs could hardly move? ‘The difference...’ she began bravely, but his eyes were boring into her.
‘Could we have this conversation somewhere else...?’ she finished lamely.
‘Where do you have in mind?’
Was he flirting? Just the possibility of it threw her into a state of renewed confusion.
‘I’m beginning to get cold.’
He turned away and headed out of the pool, and, heart thumping, Jessica followed.
No, he wasn’t flirting. That was her imagination playing tricks on her. Hardly surprising, was it? She had spent the past sixteen-odd years in an emotional and physical deep-freeze; her first and last experience with a man had been a disaster. Was it any wonder that Anthony Newman was having this effect on her? He was terrifyingly attractive, after all. And that way he had of looking, of talking... Well, it would go to any girl’s head, especially a girl who hadn’t known the feeling since she had been a teenager.
She sat at a distance from him and made herself concentrate on Fiona. And on Eric. A combination of the two would rescue her from the foolish, drowning sensation she had every time he looked at her.
‘I really don’t think that Mark intends to while away his time locked up in an attic somewhere painting pictures, as you call it. And, even if he did, why on earth shouldn’t you support him?’
‘I think we’ve covered this one already.’ He leaned back, arms loosely linked behind his head, and closed his eyes. It was infuriating. How could someone who was so obviously astute when it came to his dealings with other people fail to see what was as plain as the nose on his face? That his son needed him?
‘It would be a very boring place if we all tried to become company directors.’
‘I agree. Painting pictures is fine for anyone else.’
‘But not for your son.’
He turned and looked at her coolly and without flinching. ‘I don’t think that you can exactly lecture me on the subject.’
‘Meaning...?’
‘Meaning that leaving school is presumably fine, as far as you’re concerned, for anyone else. But not for your daughter.’
‘That’s not at all what I mean!’ Jessica glared at him crossly. ‘You’re so terrified at the thought that she might not want to go to university, that she might not want to forge a career for herself, that you’d lock her away in a tower until her exams were over.’
‘That’s ridiculous!’ Jessica muttered uncomfortably. She stuck on her sunglasses and resolutely looked away. ‘You’re as guilty of trying to live your life through your daughter as you claim that I am through my son.’
‘I just want what’s best for her.’
‘You just want what’s best for yourself.’
She found that she was clenching the arms of the chair. It was a good thing that they weren’t made of glass. They would have splintered into a thousand pieces.
‘You,’ she said fiercely, ‘are the most ... aggravating man I have ever, ever met in my life. Do you know what it’s like...? No, of course you don’t.’ She could hear the unpleasant note of bitterness creeping into her voice, her past catching up with her and tripping her up.
He moved swiftly. It didn’t help that she had refocused her gaze mutinously on the pool. If she had been looking at him, seen him coming towards her, she would have taken defensive measures. As it was, one minute he was in his chair, the next minute he was in front of her, leaning over her, his hands on either side of her chair.
‘Do I know what what’s like?’ he asked. ‘And take these damned things off. I want to see your eyes when you’re talking to me.’ He reached and pulled off her sunglasses, and without them she felt horribly unprotected, like a fish out of water gasping in the air.
‘Nothing!’
‘You imagine that I don’t have the same sort of ambition for Mark as you have for Lucy simply because he has a cushion of money to fall back on.’
‘That’s not what I meant at all.’
‘Of course it is.’
The atmosphere between them was so thick that she felt as if she could reach out and cup a handful of it. ‘You have to admit that he is protected.’
‘I admit nothing of the sort. In some respects it’s worse, because he has to fight his way out of wealth. He has to learn how to stand on his own two feet and make his own mark in life without assuming that he can depend on me to bail him out whenever he needs it.’
‘You just don’t understand,’ Jessica muttered stubbornly. She didn’t dare look at him. She dreaded that he might read the undercurrent of awareness lying beneath the anger. He reached out and grasped her hair in his fingers, brushing the side of her face, drawing her to face him. ‘I find you as aggravating as you find me,’ he said in a barely audible voice. ‘And I understand more than you think. You’re desperate for your daughter not to fall into the same trap as you think you’ve fallen into—but you can’t go on protecting her for ever, and you certainly can’t go on living your life through her.’
‘That’s third-rate psychoanalysis, Anthony Newman, and you know it.’
/> ‘It’s third-rate psychoanalysis because you don’t happen to agree with it.’
That, she thought resentfully, made her sound narrow-minded and she wasn’t narrow-minded. She knew that. In fact, she had always made a point of adopting a liberal, ‘live and let live’ view about things, about life in general. She stood on the sidelines and was quite content to let the rest of the human race get on with doing whatever they saw fit to do. Except, she thought uncomfortably, when she reasoned things out that way, she hardly came out any better, did she? Perhaps not narrow-minded, but, in a way, worse—she saw herself as uninvolved with the whole business of living, just concerned with the business of existing.
Had Eric done that to her’! Had he shut her away? She had never thought about it before, but now she wondered how much she could continue to blame that brief, disastrous relationship for the rest of her life.
Anthony Newman made her ask these questions, she thought suddenly; he kept shoving his little insights down her throat. Couldn’t he see that she was much happier paddling about undisturbed in her little murky pond?
‘Think what you want, then,’ she muttered, with a stubborn refusal to enter into the conversation.
‘Why, for instance, isn’t there a man in your life now, if not because you want to protect Lucy from what you would see as an intruder? An intruder into the little world you’ve concocted for yourself and your daughter?’
‘That’s utterly unfair!’ She shot him an angry look.
‘Is it?’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about!’ And anyway, she thought, you’re a fine one to launch into a monologue on someone else’s faults. It was hardly as though he could be entered for the Father of the Year contest. ‘Would you admit it if I did?’
Jessica stared at him in mute silence. No, she thought, she
wouldn’t. And why should she? It was her life, wasn’t it? She could lead it any way she wanted to, and she wasn’t accountable to anyone for her decision. Not that long ago, she would have been proud of that stance, would have seen it as the spirit of independence. She wondered—and the thought skimmed the surface of her mind so fleetingly that it was gone before she could capture it— whether she hadn’t rooted herself in independence after all, but in an isolation that would come back to haunt her. Lucy wouldn’t be around for ever. Those days of being physically needed were over. The nest was being vacated, and then what?
She felt a chill wind blow over her.
‘You’re damned stubborn,’ he murmured, but his tone had altered, become softer, less accusatory. ‘If you say so.’
‘Yes, I do. And it’s very childish to take refuge behind sulks.’
‘I’m not sulking.’
‘Not that you don’t look quite captivating with that pout.’ Had she been pouting? She tried not to now; she tried to rearrange her features into some semblance of calm, sensible maturity. I’m still damned furious with you, she thought. I still resent it that you feel you have the right to lecture me on my abilities as a mother, even if some of what you say is true. But when she looked down all she could see were his hands, gripping the sides of the chair, the sprinkling of dark hair on his arms. When she breathed, she breathed in the aroma of his maleness, and it was like incense. Powerful, disorientating. ‘I think I’ll go in now,’ she said, shuffling in the chair but not moving too much because she didn’t want to physically touch him. What if she got burnt? She had the strangest feeling that she might. ‘Already?’
‘It’s very hot out here.’
‘And you’re furious with me for barging into your privacy.’ Jessica tried to ignore the effect he was having on her by recapturing some of the anger she had felt only minutes before.
‘Let’s just say that we agree to differ. I’m a guest here,’ she said, looking up at him and catching his eyes full on. ‘So I’m not prepared to launch into some kind of counter-attack on you.’
Now that she was looking at him, she couldn’t unfasten her eyes from his face. It was like being hypnotised. Her mouth parted, though not because she had anything further to add on the subject, but simply because her mind was so fuddled that she no longer seemed to have the will-power to direct her thoughts.
And she knew, before he kissed her, exactly what he was going to do. She could read the subliminal message in his eyes, though she would have sworn that the feeling took him as much by surprise as it did her. He lowered his head, and his mouth was on hers, the persuasive feel of lips against hers, his tongue meeting hers. Jessica moaned weakly as the intensity of the kiss deepened, pushing her against the chair, forcing her head back so that her hair hung over the back of it.
The heat from the sun on her body was nothing compared to the molten heat raging inside her. She didn’t pull his head towards her, but neither did she push him away. It was the first time she had been kissed in years. Oh, she had had the odd peck on the mouth at Christmas parties, by a work colleague. She had had a casual embrace and had willingly returned it in the same casual, friendly spirit in which it had been given.
But nothing like this. She didn’t think that she had ever been kissed like this before. She felt as though she was losing touch with reality. His mouth left hers to trail hungrily along her cheekbones and along her neck, and Jessica closed her eyes. She could barely breathe properly. It was more a case of panting rather than breathing, and his breathing was uneven as well, as though he had initiated something that had caught him as unawares as it had caught her. He caught her hair in his hands, tilting her head to accommodate his exploring mouth, which found the sensitive spot behind her ear. He licked it. He blew into it, and she groaned and twisted against him.
Her breasts ached. She wanted him to touch them. Her body felt so good with what he was doing to it that she could hardly believe herself to be the same woman who had felt no stirrings of temptation at all over the countless, untouched years. It was completely noiseless by the pool. A slight breeze halfheartedly rustled the leaves on the trees and the bushes bordering the patio. In contrast, every sound they made seemed to be amplified a thousand times. Her own breathing was deafening, and her tiny moans seemed crashingly exaggerated against the silence.
His hands left her hair and one finger now moved in a light, stroking motion along her cleavage, then along the outside of the bikini top, up along the fine straps, then back down to her cleavage, and over the top of the material so that it circled her breasts, touching the nipple which hardened in excitement. Jessica arched back a little further, hardly daring to breathe as he lifted both straps of the bikini down. With one teenaged daughter and a life which she had always thought had inured her against surprises, she was stunned to find herself feeling like a virgin. But, of course, in a way, she very nearly was, wasn’t she’? Lucy was the product of fifteen minutes with Eric Dean, and after him there had been no one. Her body, asleep for years, was being awakened and was responding with all the savage, frightening force of a woman being touched for the first time.
He didn’t try to unclasp the back of the bathing-suit top. Instead he eased it down over her breasts, and although she wasn’t looking at him she was aware that he was no longer bending over her, but somehow kneeling in front of her so that his head was on a level with her breasts. He took them in his hands, and Jessica lay back with a soaring feeling of complete desire. It washed over her in a wave, soaking every part of her body, moistening between her thighs. Her nipples were erect and throbbing and it was sweet release when his tongue circled one, lapping against the hard, projecting bud, then his mouth closed over it, and for the first time she coiled her fingers in his hair and pushed his mouth ever harder against her. Wild craving surged through her, making her dizzy. She wanted him to continue sucking her breasts for ever; the feeling seemed just too good to stop. While his mouth devoured her breasts, his hands found the waistband of the bikini, and he eased it down without removing it, pulling it low enough to part her legs, and Jessica slid a little down the chair. She no longer had to think a
bout what she was doing. Her body was running on automatic now, doing what needed to be done to satisfy this suffocating need inside her. He caressed the inside of her thighs, then she felt a warm breeze blow against her breasts, and he transferred his attentions to her stomach, lower and lower, until his tongue was moving between her legs, arousing her in a way she had never before experienced. She squirmed against his mouth, and as he explored deeper within her she felt her muscles tense and everything seemed to explode in a wonderful release.
With release came awareness, and with awareness came a wave of embarrassment. Jessica half opened her eyes and they looked at one another in silence.
She didn’t have to say a word, though, because there was the sound of a car, and she sprang into frenzied action. From a mind drained of all thought, she now possessed a mind so full of thoughts that she couldn’t move quickly enough. ‘Oh, my God,’ she said, standing up and getting herself into some kind of order.
‘Calm down!’
Anthony grasped her forearms, and she hissed fiercely, ‘Let me go! What was I thinking of? I must have been mad!’
‘Whys?’
‘I don’t want to discuss this!’ And she really didn’t. Even if Lucy weren’t about to appear on the scene, she still would not have wanted to discuss it. In a way, she could thank her daughter because she knew well enough what would have happened if they hadn’t been disturbed. There would have been nothing to pull her back from the brink. Mad, mad, mad! She raked her fingers through her hair and walked unsteadily towards the side of the pool just as Lucy bounded onto the patio, the usual noise preceding her appearance. Jessica swung around and pretended to be surprised. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Anthony back in his chair, as cool and collected as though nothing had happened. ‘Luce! You’re back ...early!’
The Unmarried Husband Page 10