by Penny Jordan
Telling herself that it was what she had, after all, planned to make, Claire cleared the table and started making pastry, carefully checking the enthusiastic assistance of her two ‘helpers’.
Baking was something she had always found therapeutic, and somehow one thing led to another. The mouthwatering aroma of cooking pastry and fruit mingled with that of the chicken, and Claire was just putting a final dollop of mixture in to some bun tins when she heard the sound of a car.
‘It’s Jay,’ shrieked Lucy eagerly, scrambling down from her stool, and rushing for the back door.
Jay reached it first, his eyebrows lifting slightly as he walked in.
‘You’re early?’ For some reason Claire felt oddly shaky. He looked so alien standing in the kitchen, in his immaculate business suit and his crisp white shirt.
‘Yes…and we’ve been making your very favourite—apple pie,’ Lucy announced.
A sudden awareness of pastry-sticky fingers and flour-smeared hands made Claire dart forward to pick Lucy up before she could inflict any damage on his immaculate suit, but Jay forestalled her, swinging Lucy up into his arms, so that she shrieked with delight.
‘Jay, your suit…’ She reached up automatically to brush off the floury marks left by Lucy’s hands and then realised to her mortification that her own were equally floury.
‘Stop fussing, it will clean.’
He put Lucy down and held out his arms to Heather. As always she clung to Claire’s side. Bending down, she gave her a little push. ‘Go and kiss Daddy hello.’
Over Heather’s dark head Jay gave her a wry look.
‘Odd, isn’t it? Your daughter can’t wait to fling herself into my arms, whereas mine…’
‘Give her time,’ Claire urged in a low voice. ‘She’s such a sensitive child, and she’s had too many upheavals in her life. She needs to learn that she can trust you always to be there. She needs stability…’
‘Yes, she does.’
The look he gave her was direct and determined, and ridiculously, Claire felt hot colour sting her face.
Luc’s impatient tug on her skirt caused a welcome diversion. ‘Mummy, what’s a woman?’
Claire was perplexed. She looked down at her daughter. ‘I’m not sure what you mean, Lucy.’
‘Well, when you were talking to Mrs Vickers after school yesterday and Heather and me went in the post office, Mrs Simmonds was there and she said that you were Lucy’s daddy’s woman.’
Over her daughter’s auburn curls Claire’s shocked eyes met the grim expression in Jay’s.
‘I…’
‘It means that your mummy and I are going to get married,’ Jay announced, ignoring the choked sound that emitted from Claire’s throat.
‘You mean like real mummies and daddies?’ Lucy was plainly ecstatic about the idea. ‘And we’ll live here for always?’
‘Something like that,’ he agreed urbanely. He was still watching her, Claire realised, a hard purposefulness in his eyes that warned her that he had made her decision for her, and he wasn’t going to let her back out of it.
She ought to have been furious with him for his high-handedness, but in reality it was a relief. Her decision had in fact already been made, but the knowledge that their relationship was the subject of village gossip and speculation wouldn’t have made it any easier for her to communicate it to Jay.
Feeling rather feeble, she said unsteadily, ‘Lucy, you’re covered in flour; why don’t you and Heather go upstairs and clean up?’
As Jay put her down, Heather put her hand on Claire’s arms and looked up at her. ‘Are you really going to be here for always?’
The expression in her eyes wasn’t something Claire had the strength to withstand. Going down on her heels so that her face was on a level with the little girl’s, she asked huskily, ‘Is that what you want, Heather, for me to be here for always?’
‘Yes…yes…’ A fierce hug accompanied the emphatic words.
‘Then I will be.’
Although she was speaking to Heather, Claire knew that her words were meant for Jay. As she stood up she looked at him and caught an expression on his face that puzzled her. He looked like a man who had been under almost unendurable pressure and who had now found it relaxed.
Claire waited until both girls were out of the kitchen before speaking to him.
‘You had no right to tell them that.’
He didn’t argue with her, simply flexed his body as though it ached. ‘It saves you from making any decision though, doesn’t it?’
Claire’s mouth compressed as she caught the tinge of contempt in his voice. Did he really think she was incapable of deciding for herself? On the verge of telling him that she had already decided to marry him for herself, she caught the words back, and said instead, ‘I shouldn’t have thought a little bit of village gossip would worry you to that extent.’
‘It doesn’t,’ he agreed flatly. ‘At least, not on my own behalf, and especially when there are no grounds for it—but I don’t want either of the girls to be subjected to the sort of sniggered whispers that go the rounds of every school playground. Okay, right now they’re too innocent to understand what’s being said, but for how long?’ He looked at her, and for the first time Claire saw the exhaustion in his face. ‘Before we go any further, can I take it that since you didn’t contradict what I said to the girls about our plans for the future, you are going to marry me?’
‘It doesn’t seem that I have much choice now, does it?’ Claire responded tartly.
Almost instantly his face closed up, his mouth going hard. ‘No, it doesn’t, does it?’ he agreed with more than a hint of acerbic grimness. ‘And since that’s settled, if you don’t mind, I’d like to go upstairs and have a shower.’
Seeing the weariness in his tense back, Claire wished her own part in their exchange unsaid. The problem was that she had been so shocked by Lucy’s innocent revelations that things had got out of hand. She had had everything carefully planned—a family meal over which she and Jay could relax in one another’s company, and then a quiet evening with the girls, followed perhaps by a chat together in front of the sitting-room fire, when she would have felt relaxed enough to convey her intentions to him. Now, abruptly, all her plans had been swept away, and far from being relaxing, the evening looked like being extremely tense indeed.
Still, looking at it from Jay’s point of view, it had hardly been a good homecoming. She could remember how tired and tense her father used to be after dealing with a difficult business meeting, and Jay had had a whole series of them. It could hardly have helped his frame of mind to be greeted by the artless announcement, the moment he stepped through the door, that the whole village was gossiping about them.
She was just about to clear the kitchen table when she suddenly remembered that she had forgotten to put clean towels in Jay’s room.
The airing cupboard was full of clean towels, and she selected a pile at random, pausing outside his bedroom door to knock.
She heard him call out, ‘Come in,’ and pushed open the door with her hip.
‘I just remembered that you don’t have any towels…’ She froze, her voice locking in her throat as she realised that she had interrupted him while he was getting undressed.
He had discarded his suit jacket and his shirt. The latter lay on the floor, a puddle of white cloth. She stared at it for what seemed like a long time, as she fought to control the rapid rise and fall of her chest.
She couldn’t look at him again. One brief glance at that tough, muscle-hardened torso with its rough shadowing of hair had been enough to freeze her where she stood.
Obliquely she was somehow aware of her own body as though she had stepped outside it. She could feel the rapid pulse of her blood along her veins; she could hear the frightened thud of her heart. She knew that her eyes had dilated with the shock and that her breathing sounded raspy and painful.
The room was warm, and yet somehow she could feel the soft movement of air against
her skin like an icy embrace, as Jay moved.
‘It’s all right, Claire, it’s all right…’ She knew that he was aware of what had happened to her and that logically there was nothing for her to fear, but while her mind could comprehend it, her body could not. She saw him reach past her for his shirt and tug it on. All the time he was talking soothingly to her, but she barely heard him. She couldn’t comprehend anything other than the maleness of his body; that blocked everything else out. She shuddered as he fastened the buttons, remembering that dark arrowing of hair disappearing beneath his belt.
‘Claire, it’s all right.’
He stepped towards her, taking the towels from her numb arms and putting them down on the bed. ‘It’s all right.’ His hands gripped her arms, and felt their clenched muscles. He started to massage them, easing the frozen tension out of her.
‘I…’ Somehow she managed to unlock her tongue, a tide of fierce heat enveloping her as she realised how stupidly she had behaved. She was shaking violently now, perspiration breaking out all over her skin. Where she had been cold, now she was hot.
‘It’s all right…don’t try to say anything. Come and sit down for a moment.’
Numbly she let him lead her to the bed, and gently push her down on to it. Now, with the raw evidence of his maleness concealed from her, she was able to get herself back under control.
‘Is it always like this…?’
‘Always?’ She looked blankly at him.
‘Mine can’t be the first naked male chest you’ve seen, Claire,’ he reasoned, catching the train of her thoughts.
That was true, but the others had been sanitised by their surroundings: on television, on the beach… Never, ever in the intimate confines of a bedroom; never, ever so close to her that she had seen the faint stickiness of sweat dampening the silky chest hair, or been aware of the musky male scent of a man’s body.
‘I…’
‘Mummy, I’m hungry…when are we going to eat…?’
‘I’m hungry too.’
Lucy and Heather stood in the open doorway.
‘Will you and Daddy both be sleeping in here when you’re married?’ Heather enquired innocently.
Above her Claire heard Jay catch his breath. ‘No,’ he said roughly.
‘You and Mummy didn’t sleep in the same bed either, did you?’
‘No,’ he agreed. ‘Claire’s like your mother. She wants her own bedroom.’
‘Why do you want your own room?’ Heather asked her.
Claire got up and walked towards the door.
‘Because she likes her privacy,’ Jay answered for her. His voice sounded unfamiliarly harsh, as though something had hurt his throat. It couldn’t be anything to do with her. A reaction perhaps to the memories Heather had unwittingly stirred up by mentioning her mother?
* * *
IN SPITE OF EVERYTHING, supper was a convivially relaxed meal, any conversation gaps left by the two adults more than compensated for by the excited chatter of the two girls.
‘Can we tell everyone at school about you and Mummy getting married?’ Lucy asked Jay.
‘If you think they’d be interested.’
An announcement like that was bound to cause more gossip than it squashed, at least until they were actually married, Claire reflected as she cleared away their plates and got out the pie.
‘Claire’s made apple pie for you ‘cos it’s your favourite, Daddy,’ Heather told her father with a beam. ‘She made it specially because you were coming home.’
‘Did she? That’s very kind of her.’
Against her will Claire found herself turning to look at him. In a low voice that neither of the girls could hear, he said softly, ‘I think I’m going to like coming home to a wife who makes apple pies especially for me.’
For some extraordinary reason Claire felt herself tremble. To compensate for it she said sharply, ‘Didn’t Heather’s mother…’
‘No… No, Susie wasn’t much of a cook,’ said Jay sardonically. ‘Her talents lay in other directions.’
Yes, and she knew what those were, despite those separate bedrooms. Her face grew hot as she thought about the likely outcome had his ex-wife happened to walk into his bedroom when he was half naked.
‘What’s wrong?’ asked Jay.
‘Nothing.’ How on earth had he come to have such long thick lashes? She wondered absently, fighting to disentangle her glance from his. They looked so soft, so at odds with the harsh angles of his face.
‘Mummy, may I have some pie?’
Hurriedly Claire turned towards her daughter.
Much to her surprise, Jay joined in the girls’ bedtime preparations. Heather was much more relaxed with him now, she noticed as she briskly handed both girls clean nightdresses.
‘Clean your teeth and then straight into bed.’
‘And then will you come and read to us?’
That was Heather, the dreamer. Claire was reading The Secret Garden to them, reliving her own childhood pleasure in the magic of the book. Out of the corner of her eye she caught the expression on Jay’s face.
‘Not tonight, it’s Daddy’s turn,’ she said firmly, not letting herself respond to Heather’s agonised expression.
That brief awareness between them when she had sensed Jay’s feeling of rejection had gone, but she had been aware of it, just as she was aware of his pain whenever Heather turned from him to her.
He was upstairs for a long time. Claire busied herself in the kitchen, knowing that when he came down they would have to talk, but reluctant to do so.
He came in quietly, but she was still aware of him. She turned to look at him and was struck by the air of exhaustion that clung to him.
‘You look tired.’
‘It’s been a long week. Heather still seems to see me in the guise of some sort of ogre. I can’t believe that Mrs Roberts alone is responsible.’
Claire didn’t either, but she had to choose her words carefully. ‘She’s a very sensitive child; she hardly knows you. You’ve been away such a lot. From what she tells me she hasn’t spent much time with either you or her mother…’
‘No. And if you’re trying to tell me that in those circumstances it’s hardly surprising that she wants to reject me, I know it, but that still doesn’t stop me from… Every time I reach out to her she retreats from me, but with you…’
‘Some little girls do respond better to their own sex, especially at that age,’ she soothed. ‘I know how you feel, though,’ she added in a low voice. ‘I feel equally guilty when I see how enthusiastically Lucy goes to you. It had never even occurred to me that she might miss having a father, even though I was very close to mine.’
She heard Jay sigh.
‘I’m sorry I forced your hand earlier on.’ He leaned back against the wall tiredly, hands pushed into his pockets. The material strained across his thighs and her attention was concentrated like a fly trapped in honey on the strong play of muscles there. Desperately she wrenched it away.
‘I had already decided to accept your proposal,’ she told him huskily. ‘I’ve been trying all week to convince myself that you’re right and that we’d each be contributing equally to the marriage, but…’
‘But you still haven’t managed to do it?’ He made a small explosive sound in the back of his throat as he levered himself off the wall and came towards her.
‘You know what your trouble is, don’t you, Claire? You’re too damned proud! Do you honestly think that money can actually compensate for all the things you can give Heather that I can’t? No! When I walked in here tonight she actually smiled at me. Do you know how long it’s been since she did that? Since I came back to this house and found anything like a welcome, in fact? To walk in here tonight after a week spent arguing over the final details of the contract…’ He made a brief gesture that encompassed without words what he was trying to say. ‘Susie wasn’t much of a homemaker. She never wanted to get married. She was a model when I met her, and she bitterly resented bei
ng dragged down here and buried alive in the country, as she called it. If I hadn’t stopped her, she’d have had Heather aborted. Sometimes I wondered if…’
‘No… No, you mustn’t think that!’ Claire’s voice shook with anguish for him. Without even thinking about it she reached out and touched his arm lightly.
It was strange to feel his living flesh beneath the fabric of his shirt and her fingertips lingered briefly before she realised what he was and hurriedly withdrew.
‘Let’s go and sit down,’ he suggested. ‘We’ve got a lot to talk about.’
In the sitting-room he poured them both a drink. Claire sat on the edge of her chair, nursing hers tensely. Jay shivered slightly as he sat down.
‘It feels cold in here.’
‘The central heating’s on, but I suppose it was much hotter in Dallas.’
‘Mmm..I suppose it was, although I never got beyond my air-conditioned hotel room, or an equally air-conditioned suite of offices.’
‘But you got the contract. I wish I’d known; I could have made a special celebratory meal.’
There was a moment’s odd silence that for some reason made her skin prickle warningly, and then Jay said in a husky voice, ‘I wish you’d known too. I think I could quite easily get used to being spoiled by you, Claire… This room is cold,’ he added abruptly. ‘I’ve never liked it. It’s too cold and sterile. So is the whole house, come to think of it, but I was desperate to find somewhere at the time, and Susie was no help, complaining that she hated everything we saw.’
Claire longed to tell him that there was nothing wrong with the house and that it was the decor that was at fault, but instead she said tactfully, ‘I was wondering if you would mind if I changed things a little after we’re married, Jay. Oh, nothing too expensive. It’s just…’
‘Make whatever changes you wish. And Claire…’ She looked at him. ‘Don’t worry about what it costs, provided you aren’t intending a wholesale refurnishing exercise with antiques.’
‘I was wondering about using some of the company’s products,’ Claire suggested cautiously. An idea had taken root in her mind, but she wasn’t sure what Jay’s reaction would be. ‘You did say that we might have to entertain American executives from the Dallas company, and I was thinking some of the rooms here could be redecorated using some of your products, as a sort of…’