by Penny Jordan
‘You’re looking very flushed,’ he commented, completely misreading her vivid blush. ‘Not sickening for a cold, are you? Those boots you were wearing last night…’
The boots in question were old ones, but they were good enough for the snow.
‘I’m fine,’ she told him, watching him put the tray down on her bedside table, before he perched himself on the edge of the bed.
‘Mmm. You were looking very perky when I came in. You were grinning like a Cheshire Cat!’
‘I was thinking about those awful ponies we bought for the girls and wondering if I ever wanted something that appalled my parents.’
‘Well, I know I did,’ confessed Jay. ‘My parents were both members of CND, and one year I asked Father Christmas for a tank and submachine gun. It says a lot for their understanding that I got both—I also got twelve months’ worth of lectures from my mother, pointing out the savagery of war.’
He didn’t often talk about his family, possibly because the subject had never come up, and Claire had not liked to question him.
‘What happened to them?’ she asked now.
‘My mother was killed in a rail accident in France and my father died of a heart attack not long afterwards. I was the only one, and away at university at the time. I missed them, of course, but I think it’s only when one becomes a parent oneself that one realises the true depth of parental love.’
‘Yes. They say, don’t they, that it’s the mark of a successful parent to be able to send out one’s young to enjoy the world without them having to give you a backward glance. The security of a loving background—’
‘Helps to create a child who is healthily selfish in its attitude to its parents. Yes, I know. You’ve done wonders with Heather,’ Jay added quietly. ‘She’s a different child.’
‘She just needed more self-confidence. Heather knows I love her, and because of that…
‘She can love herself…’ He broke off and grimaced as two small bodies came hurtling into the room.
‘Downstairs, the pair of you,’ he told them. ‘We’re going to make breakfast for Mummy this morning.’
They were wearing their new tartan dresses, and Claire felt her throat lock with emotional tears as she saw the matching tartan bows tied in their hair. Both of them wanted to grow their hair, and for school she made them wear it plaited. This morning both of them sported rather drunken bows.
‘Heather put my ribbon in my hair for me,’ announced Lucy cheerfully, darting past Jay to climb on to the bed.
‘And Lucy did mine.’ Heather, not to be outdone, climbed on the other side, still clutching her stocking.
‘Look what Father Christmas brought me…’
‘And me…’
‘Something tells me if I want any breakfast, I’m going to have to make it on my own,’ smiled Jay.
‘I’ll be down in a minute,’ Claire assured him, shooing both girls off the bed.
‘Mummy, have you got a new dress to wear too?’
She was going to wear the pretty red one she had bought in Bath. The girls’ excitement was infectious, and Claire felt it bubble up inside her as she showered and dressed.
When she got down to the kitchen, Heather and Lucy were happily tucking into bowls of creamy porridge. Jay had made the coffee, and the rich smell of it floated aromatically on the air.
‘Can I leave you in charge while I go up and get dressed?’
‘Don’t be long, will you, Daddy?’ Heather demanded impatiently.
It was impossible to keep the girls at the table after they had finished eating. They had already seen the pile of brightly wrapped presents surrounding the tree, and Jay and Claire exchanged amused looks over their heads as they hurried Jay to finish his toast.
‘You’re looking very festive,’ he murmured to her as they followed the girls to the sitting-room. ‘Red suits you.’
He was wearing a pair of mid-blue trousers that clung to the hard muscles of his thighs. His checked woollen shirt was open at the throat, the softness of the cashmere sweater he was wearing over it touching Claire’s skin as the girls dashed past them and she was forced to move closer to his side.
If having one child at Christmas time was fun, having two was more than double the pleasure. As she remembered her pathetic attempts to make something special out of Christmas for Lucy when she was a baby, Claire thought wistfully of the delight it would be to be able to watch that wide-eyed joy and bewilderment now, in these warm protected surroundings.
Lucy’s first Christmas had been in the cold damp of their flat, her first Christmas tree one Claire had salvaged at a jumble sale. Expensive presents didn’t make Christmas, she knew that, but warmth, comfort, security; these all added an indefinable lustre of pleasure to this special time of year.
For a few seconds there was pandemonium as sheet after sheet of wrapping paper was shredded in their wild attempts to discover what was inside, but Claire had deliberately given them the much desired ponies first, and once they had assured themselves that Father Christmas had not been remiss in this regard, they settled down quite contentedly to savour the rest of their booty.
Claire, who had not been expecting any presents at all, was surprised to discover that she had quite a pile, two of them very inexpertly wrapped, and decorated with stick-on homemade Christmas trees.
‘We made those for you,’ Heather told her importantly. ‘Daddy helped us.’
It brought a lump to her throat to think of Jay finding precious time to assist with the choosing and wrapping of her presents. Another man could quite easily have carelessly ignored the sensitive feelings of two very feminine six-year-olds and had them gift-wrapped instead. Even though she prided herself on being practical, Claire knew quite well that those lovingly made wrappings would find their way into the large cardboard box in which she hoarded all her sentimental treasures.
This was the first year Lucy had had someone to assist her with such a task, and as she looked into her daughter’s shining eyes as she unwrapped the soap and bath oil she had chosen, she felt a tremendous surge of gratitude and joy.
This marriage was right; right for Heather and Lucy and right for her. But was it right for Jay? a tiny inner voice asked her. Would he come to regret his selflessness in putting Heather’s needs before his own?
‘Smell it, Mummy,’ urged Lucy. ‘I chose it specially, because it reminded me of you.’
Rather cautiously Claire took the top off the bath oil, and was surprised to discover that despite its rather virulent colour it smelled pleasantly of roses.
‘Now mine,’ Heather instructed, watching her with anxious eyes as she carefully unwrapped her second untidy parcel.
‘We saved up with our spending money,’ Lucy explained importantly. ‘Daddy saved it for us, didn’t you?’
Although Heather had been calling her ‘Mummy’ for some time, and had indeed anxiously asked to be allowed to do so, this was the first time Lucy had referred to Jay as ‘Daddy’.
Wondering if Jay was as aware of this completely natural acceptance of him as she was herself, Claire glanced across at him, and saw that he shared her feelings.
In a moment of shared intimacy and awareness they continued to look at one another, and Claire experienced a closeness to him that made her feel both exalted and humble.
‘Look at mine,’ Heather urged her impatiently, tugging on her sleeve. ‘Look at mine!’
The moment was gone, but Claire knew that she would remember and savour it later.
Heather had bought her body lotion and talc to go with Lucy’s soap and bath oil. Overcome with emotion, Claire held out her arms to both of them, hugging them tightly. Lucy, as always, was the first to break free.
‘Daddy hasn’t opened his present yet,’ she said severely.
‘Something tells me that Father Christmas has been extremely active on my behalf this year,’ drawled Jay, looking at Claire. It was true that she had found several small things to add to her original present, and then of c
ourse there was the girls’ contribution. They had bought him a leather wallet from their combined savings, and on impulse Claire had taken them both to have their photographs taken wearing their new velvet dresses.
In addition to the large photograph which she had had framed and which was now waiting to be unwrapped amongst his other presents, were two individual small ones, just the right size to go in his wallet.
She held her breath as he opened their present, but she needn’t have worried; his reaction was everything that was necessary to delight both girls.
It took another hour for them to fight the way through the rest of their presents, while Claire tidied up and collected the discarded wrappings.
She had kept back the filing system she had bought for Jay until last. He had already opened the Roger and Gallet toilet water she had bought him and unwrapped the navy jacquard sweater with its design in olive and maroon, and she held her breath as he now unwrapped her last gift.
For a moment the expression on his face confused her. He looked so strange that she wondered if she had somehow angered him.
‘If you don’t like it…’ she began, tentatively, but he shook his head.
‘I love it,’ he said simply. ‘Come here.’
She got up unsteadily, wondering what it was he wanted. Was he perhaps going to kiss her, the way he had done the girls? Her heart thudded shakily at the prospect, but when she reached him, although he took hold of her hand, it was just to tug her down beside him.
‘Here’s my present to you,’ he said softly, handing her a long rectangular parcel.
Claire frowned. She had already received several presents from him, including one of perfume, and an American cookery book, that a brief glance had told her she was going to enjoy. There had also been a much coveted decorators’ directory she had glimpsed in the window of an exclusive book shop in Bath, and, rather surprisingly, a silky camisole in softest peach, lavishly trimmed with lace.
‘Open it!’ demanded Lucy impatiently.
All they had left to open were their large presents, hidden behind the tree, and so, bemusedly, Claire started to unwrap her gift. Inside the paper was a dark leather-covered jewellers’ box edged in gold. Claire felt her stomach clench in shock as she fumbled with the fastening and got it open. On the bed of dark velvet lay a necklet of milky pearls, supporting a heart-shaped emerald surrounded by diamonds. It was the most exquisite thing she had ever seen, and she touched it tentatively, too stunned for words.
‘Jay…it’s…’ She looked up at him and swallowed. ‘You shouldn’t have bought me this! It must have cost a fortune!’
‘The emerald reminded me of you,’ he said quietly. ‘Cool, and as clear and honest as a mountain spring that refreshes and revives. Beautiful and rare.’ He saw she was abut to interrupt and said softly, ‘You are all those things to me, Claire, and if it had cost ten times what it did, it still wouldn’t be adequate recompense for all that you’ve done.’
Recompense. She tasted the word and found it bitter. She didn’t want to be recompensed. She wanted…she wanted to be loved, she realised shockingly, unaware that her face had lost all its colour, or that her eyes had a blind terror in their depths.
She heard Jay’s sharply indrawn breath, but didn’t connect it with her own reaction to his gift, and then Lucy was saying excitedly, ‘Aren’t you going to kiss him, Mummy?’ And somehow, reacting automatically, she was touching her cold lips to his warm skin, and feeling his sharp recoil with a pain that hurt so much, she couldn’t believe she had ever thought she had known pain before.
It was a relief to escape to the kitchen to see to the lunch. Jay took the girls outside on their new sledge, while she worked like an automaton, wondering why it was that she should be condemned to loving a man who could give her only gratitude. And he wouldn’t even want to give her that, if he knew the truth. In that moment she knew that she must conceal for ever how she felt about him. If she didn’t…if she didn’t their marriage would be a nightmare. He wouldn’t divorce her for the girls’ sake, but if she told him how she felt she would lose his friendship, lose those precious confidences he gave her, those evenings together when he talked to her about his work, when she felt as though they met as equals. She would lose all that, without any hope of ever gaining what she really wanted. And what did she want? For him to love her, yes, but how—in the way that he loved the girls, or in the way that he had loved his first wife?
Did she want his tenderness or his passion? She didn’t know, she had only known in that blinding moment of revelation that she loved him totally.
CHAPTER NINE
‘WELL, HERE WE ARE, LADIES—Dallas!’
The faint air of constraint that had sprung up between them after Christmas Day still lingered, despite her forcedly cheerful attempts to dispel it and appear normal, and Claire couldn’t help noticing how careful Jay was not to touch her as they disembarked from the plane that had brought them from Heathrow.
She didn’t think Jay had actually guessed how she felt about him, but she knew that he sensed something. She often found him watching her in an assessing, almost withdrawn way. Assessing and finding wanting, perhaps? A cold fear dug icy fingers into the pit of her stomach.
‘Are you all right?’ he queried.
‘Just getting used to feeling firm ground underneath my feet again.’
The Goldbergs had sent a chauffeur-driven car to pick them up, and as they drove from the airport and through the city itself Jay pointed out several landmarks to them. It was the flatness of the countryside and the expected and yet awesome vastness of everything that she noticed most, Claire thought as she listened to the girls’ excited chatter.
She knew that the Goldbergs owned a house on the outskirts of Dallas and that it was here that Jay’s firm had done the work which had won them the contract for John Goldberg’s prestigious building developments.
The Goldberg house was built in what Jay had described as a Neo-Colonial style, and featured a large enclosed patio in the manner of the French Creole houses of St Louis. Claire was looking forward to seeing it, but the ten-foot-high brick wall and the security guard on the gates came as rather an unpleasant shock. The man was cordiality itself as he let them through, but Claire couldn’t repress a small shiver as she noticed the gun he was wearing.
‘John’s a millionaire,’ Jay told her quietly, ‘and these days I’m afraid that means taking certain security precautions.’
Claire knew that the Goldbergs had two almost grown-up children: a son at Yale and a daughter at Vassar.
The long drive curved through immaculately kept gardens, with sprinkler systems to keep the lawns green and fresh, and the house stood at the end of the drive, its long, symmetrical windows gazing out over the grounds.
A double flight of marble steps led up to the colonnaded Palladian-style entrance. The car stopped, and the chauffeur opened the doors. Claire noticed how subdued the girls were as the four of them climbed the steps.
‘I had no idea it would be so big!’ she whispered to Jay as they approached the front door.
She just had time to catch his grin, and to hear him whisper in a mock American drawl, ‘Honey, this is Texas,’ before the massive double doors were opened.
The couple who came out to greet them could have starred in any glamorous American soap opera. John Goldberg was tall, his face tanned, his hair just touched with distinguished wings of silver. Celeste Goldberg was petite and blonde. Her silk pants and top shrieked Milan, and there could be no doubting that those pearl and diamond earrings she was wearing were real. Even so, her smile of welcome was warm and genuine, her manner towards the girls, instantly putting them at ease.
They were ushered into a rectangular hallway; a flight of marble steps at the far end rose to a galleried landing. The soft, green-washed walls were embellished with gilded plasterwork, which Claire instantly recognised.
‘It looks wonderful!’ she told Jay impulsively.
‘We certainly think
so,’ said Celeste. ‘And so do all our friends. We’ve given you a suite of rooms overlooking the patio; I’ll show you to them now. I know you must be tired.’
Claire was. In fact, she was finding it hard to understand why sitting still for so long should be able to induce such numbing exhaustion.
‘It’s this way.’
Claire and the girls followed their hostess upstairs, while Jay lingered to talk to John Goldberg. At the top of the stairs a pair of double doors in white and gold opened out on to a galleried walkway that went all the way round an unroofed quadrangle.
‘All the bedrooms have access to the pool and patio area from this gallery,’ Celeste told Claire, indicating a flight of steps that went down to the ground below.
As she gazed over the iron railings, Claire could see the rich blue shimmer of the pool. Built in a traditional shape, it was ornamented with a piece of marble statuary, and the patio itself was flagged in white marble diamond-shaped tiles, interspersed with smaller dark blue ones to match the tiles in the pool. White marble columns supported the walkway and a wide variety of exotic climbing plants curled green tendrils around them. The whole effect was one of cool richness, right down to the birds Claire could not see, but could hear singing.
‘It’s a recording,’ Celeste told her, laughing when Claire commented on it. ‘John wanted to create the old St Louis-style family patio, but I drew the line at caged birds, so this was a compromise. We do have a much larger pool and barbecue area in the grounds, of course; but we only use it when we’re having large parties. John had a tented pavilion area made next to it where we can put down a dance floor and serve a buffet. Ah—this is your suite here.’
She was way, way out of her depth here, realised Claire, marvelling at her hostess’s casual acceptance of her possessions and life-style.
Celeste opened a door. ‘I’ve given you two rooms, and a small sitting-room.’
All three rooms were decorated with French Empire-style furnishings and fitments; all three were luxurious and glamorous, as were the two en suite bathrooms, but it was not the luxury of her surroundings that made Claire go tense with shock; it was the realisation that Celeste had given her and Jay a bedroom that possessed an enormous king-sized bed.