by Penny Jordan
'God forbid that anything should, of course,' he had hastened to say. 'But one never knows, and as a single parent you will not have the comfort of knowing there is a partner to share the responsibility.'
His cautionary advice had raised all manner of questions she would need to answer, and these taxed her mind during the return journey to the exclusion of everything else.
Her parents were her next of kin of course, but they were in Australia and intended to remain there. What if she was killed in a car accident or…?
Her baby would have no one—no one at all. He or she would be completely alone in the world—apart from Marcus Simons. The thought slid into her mind as seductively as the serpent tempting Eve. Marcus was her baby's father. Marcus was a compassionate, caring man; a man who was held in high esteem by all who knew him. A man who took his responsibilities seriously.
Angrily she refused to dwell on the subject. Her baby was her own concern and no one else's. She didn't want to share it with anyone else. She wasn't going to die… nothing was going to happen to her.
She got off the train in an emotionally rebellious mood, resenting the solicitor for disturbing her with his cautionary warnings.
The scents of newly mown lawns and fresh air mingled with those from the cattle market, strong and not as sweet perhaps, but a definite improvement on the hot petrol-laden air of London.
It had been market-day, and several traders were still busy clearing their stalls as she walked past.
The sound of a car horn behind her as she crossed the market square made her turn and look over her shoulder. She didn't recognise the gleaming Daimler saloon car, and frowned slightly as it drew level with her.
The window came down and Marcus's familiar voice called out, 'Want a lift? I'm going past the pub.'
'No, I don't.'
She knew that her refusal was curt and even aggressive, and she felt herself flush guiltily. One dark eyebrow rose, the cool grey eyes hardening just a fraction as he studied her.
She waited tensely for him to close the window and drive off, but instead he said softly, 'Get in, Diana, and we can argue about it on the way.'
She wanted to refuse; she intended to refuse, but she was conscious of being watched, and that made her feel more uneasy. This was a small town and people liked to gossip. The last thing she wanted was for her name to be connected with his, in any context at all—his, or any man's; so she stepped forward and climbed into the car.
'Madge tells me you've been up to London.'
Madge was Mrs Davies of the pub, and Diana felt a fresh stab of resentment. Why couldn't he leave her alone, why must he always be there? She wanted to forget him, to forget that one night of delight they had shared had ever existed. But it had existed, she acknowledged shakenly, as her eyes were drawn against her will to the hard length of his thigh as he changed gear and the car moved off down the road.
He was dressed formally, in a similar sort of suit to the one he had worn in London. Looking at him, no one would ever take him for a farmer; he looked far more like a successful business man—an empire builder—a traveller, rather than a man of the earth.
Only his hands, calloused and brown, betrayed the fact that he did not sit at an office desk all day.
She looked at them, and against her will remembered the sensation of them moving over her skin. Embarrassed colour crawled over her skin as she felt the intensive response of her body to those memories. She could feel her nipples hardening and thrusting against the confinement of her clothes. There was an ache low down inside her, a feeling of mingled anguish and need alien to anything she had previously known.
The road was deserted, and if he decided to stop the car now and take her in his arms… She felt the shudder of reaction grip and convulse her; it was like being torn apart by conflicting needs.
She wanted to escape from him, to forget that she had ever known him; to build for herself and her child a secure bubble which excluded the rest of the world, and yet she also suddenly, almost savagely, wanted to reach out and touch him, and more, she wanted him to touch her.
The car slowed down, and for one moment she thought that he was actually going to put her thoughts into words. She looked at him, her eyes wide with the shock of her feelings, the golden blaze dimmed by vulnerability. She heard him catch his breath, and then swear beneath it.
'Diana—' His voice sounded rough as though his throat was full of gravel. He reached out to touch her, and then she realised that he had only slowed down to turn into the pub car park.
Relief and embarrassment filled her to equal degrees. She was opening the car door and clambering out almost before he had brought it to a standstill, gabbling inane thanks, desperate to escape from the folly of what she had almost done.
'Diana…'
She heard him call her name, but she refused to stop and turn round. Her heart was pounding as she went inside, but he didn't follow her. Somehow she managed to answer Madge Davies' questions about her day, as she waited for her key, and then at last she was free to escape to the sanctuary of her own rooms.
Dear God, what had happened to her? She had looked at him and she had… What? Wanted him? She shook with reaction, almost collapsing on to her bed. Yes, she had wanted him; wanted and needed him.
It had just been some sort of emotional reaction to the solicitor's stern warnings, she reassured herself. She was bound to experience these odd emotional outbursts while she was pregnant. It was her hormones that were responsible, not her emotions! She felt nothing for Marcus Simons. How could she?
For some reason it seemed to amuse him to pretend that he wanted her, but he was an experienced man in his early thirties, there would have been many women in his life; the way he had made love to her had surely been proof of that, and Ann had more or less implied that her brother liked to play the romantic field, and that he had no intention of settling down.
He was, of course, a highly sexual man. Perhaps that was her answer. He had no regular woman friend at the moment; he was sexually frustrated and he simply wanted to renew the sexual relationship they had had in London. There was nothing threatening in that. After all, he wasn't to know that what for him was possibly a regular occurrence, had for her been a 'one and only'.
It was silly to feel threatened by him. Once he realised that she wasn't going to jump back into bed with him, he would stop pursuing her, she felt sure.
CHAPTER FOUR
Only he didn't. And worse, he seemed to possess something almost akin to second sight where her movements were concerned. It seemed that whenever she went to check up on the builders' progress, or bumped into someone in the street, Marcus was there as well. She told herself that she was getting paranoid, and that it was all simply coincidence, but when Bill Hobbs commented with a grin one morning when she went to inspect their work that he hadn't seen Marcus that day, she knew that she wasn't, and that other people were beginning to notice as well.
It was Ann, though, who confirmed her suspicions. Diana bumped into her one morning as she was coming out of the Post Office.
She had two of her four children with her; a pair of twin boys about ten years old, who looked disturbingly like their uncle.
'It's the Simons genes,' she told Diana with a grin when she saw her looking at them. 'They're disastrously strong. Michael, my husband, is slim and fair, and not one of my brood takes after him physically.'
Diana couldn't help wondering what her child would look like. She was due at the hospital for a check-up that afternoon and instinctively she touched her stomach with gently protective fingers. Because of all the weight she had lost when Leslie was ill, her pregnancy still barely showed. The fashion for drop-waisted dresses and voluminous clothes helped as well, but it wouldn't be much longer now before her condition started to show.
She could feel the tightening of her nerve-endings as she contemplated Marcus's reaction. She felt sick with fear at the thought of it already. He was an intelligent man… he was bound to suspect�
� to question her. But she would be ready for him. There was no way he was going to get the truth out of her.
'I hear my brother has a bad case of heart trouble,' Ann teased Diana forthrightly, adding with sisterly candour, 'Serve him right. I'm glad to see him on the receiving end of Cupid's dart for once.'
Diana couldn't pretend not to know what she meant. She could feel herself flushing.
'I'm sorry,' Ann offered contritely, pulling a wry face as she added, 'I seem to be constantly apologising to you for putting my foot in it, don't I?'
'Marcus and I are only acquaintances,' Diana told her. 'I hardly know him.'
'Not for want of trying on his part,' Ann shot back shrewdly. 'Even Ma's noticed. She asked me the other day if I knew what was making him so unlike his normal clear-headed self, and Bill Hobbs was telling me that he practically haunts your new place.'
'Oh, hardly, he's merely popped in once or twice to see how the work's going,' Diana felt moved to protest, not knowing really why she was defending Marcus. For some reason she didn't like the thought of him being exposed to sisterly teasing and ridicule, no matter how affectionately meant. Ann took her hint and changed tack.
'I'm glad I've caught up with you. I've been meaning to track you down and ask you to come and have lunch with us on Sunday. Oh, it isn't exclusively a family thing,' she hastened to assure her, as she saw her dubious expression. 'Michael is the local vet, and Sundays are often busy days for him, so to compensate for his absence, I tend to hold open house, with a buffet lunch, and friends dropping in, as and when they can… you know the sort of thing.'
With it put like that, Diana felt she could hardly refuse, and before Ann let her go she had extracted a promise from her that she would join them the following Sunday.
The restoration work on her property was well advanced now. The new beams were in place, and the ceilings and walls had been freshly plastered. Carpenters were busy at work installing bookshelves in the shop, and her kitchen and bathroom were taking shape nicely.
She had opted for a traditional kitchen with oak units and tiled tops. It was a well proportioned sunny room, overlooking the back garden, and with a flight of stairs that gave her direct access to the ground, thus avoiding having to go through the shop.
The internal stairs had been incorporated into her living-room, there was a small entrance hall with a cloakroom and a large built-in cupboard, and then on the second floor were the two bedrooms and the bathroom. Eventually she could if she wished make some use of the loft space, and she was already contemplating opening it up in years to come to provide a play-room for her child.
She liked the town, and its people, despite their love of gossip. In her saner moments she felt that it would be impossible for anyone ever to guess that Marcus was her child's father. Everyone she met seemed quite happy to accept her as a widow, and when it eventually became impossible to conceal her pregnancy any longer she planned to say that the death of her husband and her subsequent discovery of her condition had made her anxious about losing his child, which was why she had kept the news to herself.
While she was in London she had managed to find the time to go into an exclusive baby shop in Knightsbridge, and had come away brimming with plans for her nursery.
Her home cried out for all the traditional prettiness of wooden cribs with pastel drapes, and she had managed to fit in a visit to the firm who had decorated the London flat, who had advised her to wait until the baby was several months old before adding a mural to the room.
Before she started worrying about furnishing a nursery, though, she needed to furnish the rest of the house. Now, with all the major reconstruction work out of the way, the interior was rapidly beginning to take shape, reminding her that it was time she started choosing things like carpets and curtains, not to mention buying herself a new bed.
The beamed and plastered walls made it impossible to think in terms of rag-rolled or wallpapered finishes; to do anything other than leave them in their natural state would be a crime.
The hospital she was attending was in Hereford, fifteen miles away, and after lunch she set off in that direction. It was her first visit to the hospital since leaving London but she found it easily enough, and parked the car.
There was the usual frustrating wait before she was seen by anyone, but after a cautionary word about her weight, a warning that she should try to put a little more on, she was free to leave.
It was almost four o'clock, and the pleasant warmth of the sunny day tempted her to stroll round the shops. An array of pastel-coloured samples of carpets in one window tempted her inside, and before she left she had made arrangements for someone to come out and measure up for her.
For practical as well as aesthetic reasons she had already decided to have the same carpet running through the entire house, apart from the ground floor shop area, and she had virtually decided on a soft mid-grey, which would allow her plenty of scope with a variety of colour schemes.
A deeply cushioned comfortable-looking settee, covered in a mixture of yellow, blue and grey floral chintz in another window, made her hesitate outside, and then on impulse walk in.
The information that their furniture was made to order, and their order list was over four months, was distinctly disheartening, but it appeared that the settee and another one like it had been ordered by a customer who had then changed her mind and, ignoring the feeling that she was being recklessly extravagant, Diana purchased them both. The covers were removable, and underneath the settees were covered in plain dark blue cotton, so they would be practical as well as attractive, and she would not need to be overly concerned about sticky little fingers touching them.
It was almost six o'clock before she left Hereford. The sky was overcast, and before she had gone more than a mile or so it started to rain.
She was five miles short of home when it happened.
One moment she was driving along quite happily, the next there was a muffled explosion and the car lurched warningly. She had had a puncture.
Diana drew up at the roadside and got out, inspecting the sagging tyre in despair. She had removed the spare and the tool kit when she was moving all her stuff down from London and she had forgotten to put them back.
She looked up and down the empty road, and back at the immobile car. From memory she suspected that there wasn't so much as a phone box between here and the outskirts of the town, which meant she had a long walk ahead of her in what was fast becoming a positive downpour.
She had no coat with her, of course, and her thin cotton shirt was already clinging clammily to her skin. The last thing she felt like doing was walking anywhere, but she had no alternative.
Getting back in the car she removed the ignition keys and slammed the door. Just as she started to move away she heard the sound of tyres hissing on wet tarmac.
Another car. She moved eagerly into the road and then stopped as she recognised the long steel-blue bonnet of Marcus's Daimler. Of all the people to be driving towards her, it would have to be him!
He stopped alongside her and opened his window, frowning as he took in her soaked state.
'What's wrong?'
'Flat tyre, and I don't have my spare with me.'
'Hmm…' She was everlastingly grateful for his reticence on the subject of women and their folly. She didn't think she could have borne any male-orientated humour about taking the wheel out to make room for her shopping.
'I'll give you a lift, and we can stop at my garage on the way, and get them to come out and take it in for you.'
She would have given anything to be able to refuse his offer, but how could she? It would be madness to insist on walking into town in the state she was in now. She was already feeling cold and shivery; the temperature had dropped with the onset of the rain, and the last thing she wanted to do was to walk five miles, even to avoid Marcus Simons.
If she was less prosaically minded she might be inclined to think that fate was not so much taking a hand in her affairs, as po
king in several exceedingly meddling fingers and giving them a good stir.
The inside of the Daimler was every bit as luxurious as its exterior promised. The rich scent of leather mingled with the cold rainy air she brought in with her, and there was something else, something comfortingly familiar.
It wasn't until she had settled herself comfortably in her seat and fastened her seat belt that she recognised it for what it was—Marcus's personal and cologne-tinged male scent.
She jolted upright, wincing as the constraining belt cut into her.
'Something wrong?' Marcus paused in the act of starting the engine to look at her.
'No… I'm just chilly, that's all.' As though to confirm her words a tremor shivered through her, bringing up a rash of goosebumps on her arms.
She thought she saw a frown gather in his eyes before he turned away, and once again she marvelled at his fortitude in not giving in to what must be a temptation to remind her that she had no one to blame but herself. The thought made a small wry smile curl her mouth.
'What's so amusing, the fact that I have once again appeared in your life at an opportune moment? I suppose it does make one of us lucky, although I'm damn sure it isn't me.'
Diana stared at him. This was the first time he had said anything even mildly acidic to her for weeks, and she had forgotten her initial impression of him as a man who had his own decisive views on everything and didn't like them being challenged.
'As a matter of fact I was mentally praising your fortitude in not throwing in my face the fact that only a woman would be stupid enough to forget to carry a spare wheel.'
'Oh, you'd be surprised. I was once caught out the same way myself. Only I was a hundred miles from anywhere and driving a Cherokee. It's an American four-wheel drive vehicle, similar in principle to our Land Rover.'
Although Diana had heard snippets of information about him from a variety of sources relating to his time in America, it was the first time he himself had brought up the subject.