by Penny Jordan
‘Your late husband’s first wife?’
Claire paused as Brad stepped past her and picked up the photograph she had just moved.
‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘Sally, my stepdaughter, is very like her mother...just as pretty, although John would never have it. In his eyes no one could ever measure up to Paula...’
She missed the frowning look that Brad gave her as he heard the conviction and warmth in her voice.
Didn’t it bother her to know that her husband had loved her predecessor so much and, if not, why not? She was either an extraordinarily unusual woman or...
As he glanced around the beautiful, serenely immaculate room his eyes were caught by something that looked glaringly out of place—a very amateurishly stitched sampler which was framed and had pride of place on one of the walls.
Intrigued, he moved closer to study it.
‘Paula’s hobby was tapestry work,’ Claire told him quietly. ‘She stitched the cushions in here whilst she was pregnant with Sally. There were complications with her pregnancy which meant she had to rest.’
A small shadow touched her face. ‘Unfortunately it wasn’t enough and after Sally’s birth... John lost her when Sally was less than three days old. It was the most terrible tragedy...’
So tragic, Brad thought, that her husband had never got over it, even though, eventually, he had found and married her, and even though, from all that Irene and Tim had told him, and from what he could see with his own eyes, she was very obviously the kind of woman whom it would be easy for any man to love... Too easy...
Brad’s frown deepened. He didn’t like the direction his thoughts were taking—and kept taking, in fact, ever since that incident in the park when, for God alone knew what mad, impulsive reason, he had seized hold of her and kissed her. Kissed her and felt her mouth soften into the kind of quivering, softly feminine response that he couldn’t remember experiencing since he had left the heady days of his early teens behind...
‘We were all thoroughly’ relieved when he married Claire,’ Irene told him. ‘There was a time when we were beginning to worry that John was trying to turn Sally into a carbon copy of Paula.’
‘He was just trying to do his best for her,’ Claire protested. ‘He loved Paula so much...thought she was so perfect—’
She broke off as she saw the way that Brad was looking at her—the mingled pity and curiosity she thought were in his eyes. Pride and rejection of his unwanted compassion sparkled in her own eyes as she lifted her head and looked back at him.
Her upbringing had had its share of pain, like Sally’s. Orphaned whilst she was still a toddler, she had been brought up by a maiden aunt of her father’s—a retired schoolteacher who had had very strong views on the way that children and most especially girls should behave.
Under her tutelage Claire had developed into an intelligent but socially shy and uncertain girl with very little in common with her peers.
Her great-aunt had died unexpectedly from a fatal heart attack whilst Claire was coming to the end of her teacher training. She had first met John a few weeks later, just after...
Brad, who was still watching her, wondered what it was that had suddenly made her look so haunted.
Despite the obvious tension it was causing between them, he couldn’t bring himself to regret totally what had happened at their first meeting, but the passionately vibrant woman she had been then seemed curiously at odds with the woman she appeared to be now—a woman who seemed quite content passively to accept her role as a very poor second best to her husband’s first wife.
She was such an obviously sensual and loving woman that he couldn’t imagine how she could ever have been happy with a man who, from what he had heard about him, could not possibly have met and satisfied her emotional needs—or her physical ones either.
He frowned, angry with himself for the probing intimacy of his thoughts.
But he had seen for himself how warm and womanly she was, both with the children and with Tim, her gentle smile taking the edge off Irene’s almost acerbic comments to her husband.
It was, perhaps, no wonder that Tim should choose to spend so much of his free time helping Claire with her gardening.
His frown deepened as he wondered if the relationship between them was as innocent as it had first seemed.
There had been nothing so far in Irene’s manner towards either her husband or her sister-in-law to suggest that she suspected anything, but she was being remarkably insistent that Claire’s home was the perfect place for him to lodge. Why? Because she felt that a third party living there would put a stop to any untoward intimacy between her husband and Claire?
If Claire was having a relationship with Tim, that would explain her shocked reaction to her brief response to his kiss—and the anger he had sensed in her both at dinner and again now.
He frowned again, unwilling to delve too deeply into why he should feel almost a personal sense of disappointment and loss at the thought of her being involved with another man.
What was really bugging him? The thought that his own judgement was at fault, that his first impression of her as a warm, open and very loving woman was wrong, or was it something more than mere pique at the possibility of having misjudged her?
What was Brad thinking about? Claire wondered as she saw the way he frowned. Did he, perhaps, not care for the house, or was it her he didn’t like?
‘If you’d like to follow me...’ she told him, determined to sound businesslike and in control.
As he followed her up the stairs and along the landing Brad acknowledged that there was something about Claire that he found profoundly compelling; there was such a dramatic contrast between the warm, emotional woman who had flown at him with such fury to protect the feelings of her young charges and the cool, hostile person he was seeing now.
Claire had stopped outside one of the bedroom doors and was waiting for him to join her. Irene and Hannah had both come with them and Irene frowned as she saw which door Claire had opened.
‘But that’s your bedroom—yours and John’s,’ she protested. ‘I thought you were going to give Brad Sally’s bedroom.’
‘This is larger and more...more suitable,’ Claire told Irene quietly.
‘But where will you sleep...?’ Irene demanded.
‘I—’
‘Look, the last thing I want is to deprive you of your bedroom...’ Brad began.
But Claire shook her head quickly, her face flushing slightly as she told him, ‘I...I had already decided to...to move to another bedroom. This one...John’s...John’s and mine,’ she amended quickly, ‘is too... The decor is much more suitable for a man. It has an ensuite bathroom and there’s already a desk in the dressing room. John sometimes worked in there himself... I—’
‘You’ve moved out of your own bedroom?’ Irene was persisting, apparently oblivious to Claire’s lack of enthusiasm for pursuing the subject. She looked, Brad decided, rather like a guilty schoolgirl caught out in some forbidden act.
Why? Why shouldn’t she change bedroom if she wished? It was, after all, her home...er house. He remembered the look in her eyes as she had talked about her late husband’s love for his first wife, the woman whose “home” it had actually been.
‘I was thinking of having it redecorated. It’s never been my favourite room, and—’
‘But it’s the master bedroom,’ Irene protested.
‘Yes,’ Claire agreed with a quiet irony in her voice which was obviously lost on Irene but which Brad picked up on. So she was passionate and quick-witted too—a dangerously alluring combination in a woman—or so he had always felt.
The room was a good size, he acknowledged as he stepped into it, with what looked like plenty of solidly built dark wood closet space and a generously proportioned, sensibly constructed bed. As he studied it Brad let out a small sigh of relief. British standard-sized double beds did not easily accommodate a man used to the luxury of an American king-size, as he had already discovered. This b
ed was the only one he had seen in Britain so far that came anywhere near the spacious comfort of his own at home, even if it was a little on the high side.
As he cast his eye appreciatively and approvingly over the immaculate percale bedlinen, he acknowledged that it would be hard for him to find anything to surpass the comfort that such a bed promised. From behind him he could hear Irene saying almost accusingly to Claire, ‘You’ve changed the bedding...’
He could sense from Claire’s response that Irene’s comment had embarrassed her and guessed that the new bedlinen had been bought specifically for him. She really was the most extraordinarily sensitive woman, he thought as she showed him through to the well-planned bathroom with its large bath and separate shower.
The dressing room was small, but plenty large enough for the desk and chair already installed in it, and as she waited for him to rejoin her on the landing he admitted, to himself that in terms of comfort and convenience it wouldn’t be easy to match the facilities of this house.
From the bedroom window he could see out into the garden. Long and wide, it was split into a series of areas by a variety of cleverly intermingled structures and plantings, and a rueful smile curled his mouth as he espied the smallest of the enclosed gardens with its swing and scuffed grass.
There was an area of equally stubborn baldness on his own lawn back home. When he had threatened to have the swing removed and the area reseeded the previous fall, the whole family had been up in arms, protesting against the removal of one of their sacred childhood haunts. The house was far too large for him now, of course. He really ought to sell it...
Outside on the landing Claire could feel her face start to flush defensively as Irene reiterated, ‘Claire, I thought you were going to give him Sally’s old room...’
‘I...I didn’t think it would be very suitable. The decor is so very feminine,’ Claire told her, unwilling to admit that she had not wanted her stepdaughter to return from her honeymoon to find that someone else had taken over her old bedroom.
Sensitively she wanted Sally to be able to feel that the house was still her home, that her room was still her own and that she could return to it whenever she wished. Not that she anticipated that Sally would ever do so—nor did she want her to: her place, her home now was with her new husband.
‘But to move out of your own bedroom...’ Irene protested.
‘It isn’t my room,’ Claire told her. ‘It was John’s room—our room,’ she amended hurriedly as she saw Brad walking towards them. How could she explain to Irene—to anyone—how, after John had died, instead of finding comfort in remaining in the room—the bed—that they had shared during their marriage she had found it... empty and that she much preferred the smaller, prettier, warmer guest room that she had now appropriated as her own?
It hadn’t been totally unfamiliar to her, after all; there had been nights during her marriage when she had woken up and, unable to get back to sleep, afraid of waking John, had crept quietly into the solitude of the guest bedroom.
‘So, Brad, what do you think?’ Irene demanded with the confidence of one who already knew the answer she was going to get.
‘I’m sure I shall be very comfortable here,’ he declared, before turning to Claire and saying, ‘We haven’t had an opportunity to discuss the financial details yet, I know. Would it be OK with you if I called back later...say, this evening...to do so?’
‘This evening? Oh, no, I’m afraid I can’t; I’m going out.’
‘You’re going out?’ Irene frowned. ‘Where...who with?’
Claire had started to walk down the stairs, and as they reached the bottom Hannah appeared in the hall just in time to catch Irene’s question and to comment, with a sly smile in Claire’s direction, ‘Well, it can’t be with a man—not unless you’re cheating already...’
Cheating? Brad frowned. Did that mean that there was someone in her life? It must be a man whom she didn’t want Irene to know anything about, to judge from Claire’s uncomfortable and slightly hunted expression.
‘It’s parents’ evening at school,’ she explained.
‘But they can’t expect you to be there,’ Irene said. ‘You only work on a voluntary basis.’
‘No, they don’t expect it,’ Claire agreed, her voice and her manner suddenly a good deal firmer. She could be firm and indeed almost aggressive in her defence of those whom she deemed vulnerable and in need of her protection, Brad guessed—be it a child or an adult. ‘However, I want to be there. I’m sorry I can’t see you tonight,’ she apologised to Brad. ‘Perhaps tomorrow evening.’
The effects of his long flight were beginning to catch up on him and he still had to go out to the warehouse to see Tim, although he didn’t intend to start any in-depth investigations into the difficulties of the British distribution and sales side of the business as yet.
He was already aware of how on edge Tim was in his presence and he could guess why; the spectre of redundancy haunted them all these days. Just as it no doubt would have haunted him were he married with a not quite fully adult and independent family.
‘You should get married,’ Laura, one of his sisters, had scolded him the previous Thanksgiving. She and the rest of them had certainly done their best to find him a suitable wife. He found himself wondering for a moment what they would make of Claire and then quickly caught himself up, warily aware of how unusual it was for him to have such a thought.
It was her differentness that intrigued him so much, he reassured himself—the complexity and contrast of what he bad so far witnessed of her personality.
‘Wow. Now that’s what I call a real man,’ Hannah commented, greedily munching another purloined biscuit when she and Claire had the kitchen to themselves once again. ‘He’s not at all what I expected. I thought he’d be all crew-cut and loud checked suit.
‘He’s got the teeth, though,’ she added thoughtfully. ‘Americans always have good, strong teeth...all the better to eat you with, my dear,’ she added mischievously, grinning widely when Claire gave her a suspicious look. ‘And he does look as though he’d be rather good at that sort of thing...’
‘If you’re suggesting what I think you’re suggesting—’ Claire began primly, but then gave up, shaking her head as Hannah interrupted her.
‘I’m not suggesting anything. I’m simply saying that he’s a very...sexy man. Perhaps there is something in that old myth about catching the bride’s bouquet, after all,’ she murmured thoughtfully.
‘Hannah!’ Claire warned her direfully.
‘All right, all right, I know—you’ve taken a vow of celibacy and I shan’t say another word; it just seems such a pity that it’s all such a waste...’
After Hannah had gone, taking the rest of the biscuits with her, Claire walked slowly upstairs and then paused outside the door to the master bedroom, pushing it open slowly, with reluctance almost, pausing on the threshold before eventually walking inside.
This was the room she had shared with John throughout their marriage—as a bride and a young wife—but when she stood still in its centre there were no echoes of those years to ruffle its almost sterile blankness.
There was no sense, no awareness, no feeling in this room of people having lived intimately within the protection of its walls, of having laughed and cried, fought and made up, of having shared intimacies...of having loved. She had seen the way that Brad had frowned as he had studied the room and had worried anxiously that he too might have picked up on the room’s lack of those intimate vibrations.
It was strange how one became accustomed to things, adapted to them, accepted them and eventually came to think of them as the norm. It took something—someone different to make one see things from a different perspective—to make one realise.
As she smoothed down the already smooth cover on the bed Claire realised that her hand was trembling. Her marriage...her life...her...her privacy...they belonged to her and to no one else. There was no need for her to worry that someone else—that anyone else�
�would ever discover them, she reassured herself firmly.
The only way he...they could ever do so would be if she chose to tell them, and since she was certainly not going to do that...
Brad was halfway through his meeting with Tim when he realised that his wallet was missing. Mentally reviewing the events of the day, rerunning them through his mind’s eye, he pinned down its possible loss to the moment when he had leaned forward and then bent down to inspect the workings on the shower on his tour of Claire’s house. Glancing at his watch, he decided that it would probably be quicker and simpler to drive straight over than to waste time telephoning to announce his arrival.
Breaking gently into Tim’s long-winded description of the vagaries of the British weather and its effect on the sales of air-conditioning systems, he explained that there was an urgent task he needed to perform.
As Brad parked his car in the drive he saw that Claire’s back door was slightly open in the homely way he remembered from his own childhood, and without thinking he pushed it wider and walked in.
He found Claire in the drawing room, gently dusting the face of one of the silver-framed photographs. When she saw him she put it down quickly, guiltily almost, and for some reason the defensiveness of her action angered him, making him demand brusquely as he gestured towards the photograph, ‘Wasn’t there ever a time when you were jealous of her, when you resented her and wished that you came first, instead of always having to stand in her shadow?’
Claire’s flush, initially caused by a mixture of shock at the unexpected arrival and embarrassment at the way he had caught her behaving in her own home almost as though she felt that she had no real right to be there, darkened to one of outraged anger.
‘In your country it might be perfectly acceptable to make personal criticisms and to ask intimate questions, to pry into people’s personal thoughts and lives, but in this country it isn’t,’ she reprimanded him sharply. ‘My marriage—’