Daniel hadn't needed his warning. He had seen what the compulsion to devote too much time and energy to one's work had done to his father. For a long time he had battled against what he had known in his heart of hearts must be done ever since he had been approached by the large conglomerate who wanted to buyout the company. It had seemed so disloyal to his father to even contemplate selling out, and yet in this modern world it could be a very dangerous place for small businesses, especially ones as technically specialised as his father's.
In the end he had been forced to overcome his scruples, not for his own sake alone but also for the sake of his employees.
Their livelihoods would have so much more protection under the umbrella of their new parent company; he was to retain complete autonomy in the running of his father's company; he had been appointed chairman and managing director. He knew he had made the right decision, the only decision, and yet-and yet-he ached to be able to discuss his feelings, his guilt and anxiety over the fact that in many ways he felt he did not have the single-mindedness and purposefulness which had enabled his father to build the company out of nothing into the success it now was. He told himself that these were different times, that his skills were different from his father's; the guilt still remained. Angelica would understand them. He had picked up enough from their conversations to know that and he had wanted quite desperately to be able to unburden himself to her, to share with her the complexities of his feelings. He had envisaged returning to the cottage and initiating a gentle courtship, one that would not make her panic and flee from him, and yet what had he done virtually the moment he set eyes on her? He grimaced to himself as he turned to give one last reluctant glance towards the bed.
Tomorrow they would talk. Tomorrow ...
Angelica woke up abruptly some time before dawn. Outside it was still dark, and a glance at her watch confirmed that it was barely three o'clock.
She moved uneasily beneath the duvet, conscious of sand particles irritating her skin and wondering what on earth they were doing in bed with her, and then abruptly remembering ... everything.
She sat bolt upright in the bed, hugging her arms around her body until she realised that she was still wearing Daniel's shirt.
She tugged it off, shivering with a mixture of emotions, all of them so intense that cravenly she felt a desperate need to escape from them, to escape from herself, but most of all to escape from Daniel, and the questions he was bound to ask himself if not her in the cold light of day... questions he was perhaps already asking himself. Like why would a woman who by her own admission had never made love before, who had never particularly wanted to make love before, even with the man she professed to have fallen in love with, the man she was intending to marry, suddenly change so completely that, not only did she accept his lovemaking, but she had positively craved it, had wanted him with such an intensity that she had virtually begged him to make love to her, not cloaked by the softening privacy of the night's shadows, but in the full light of the sun, wanting him so intensely, loving him so intensely that she had never given a thought to the lack of protection their lovemaking involved, either outwardly or inwardly.
Her hands touched her stomach. She had told Daniel that she was sure she would not conceive, but she had lied to him. And in that her feelings had not changed. There was still a dangerously wanton ache inside her that told her how much she wanted to have conceived his child.
But she couldn't stay here in such close proximity to him. Not now.
It would be too dangerous, too potentially embarrassing for both of them. He was an intelligent man, a very intelligent man. It wouldn't be long before he guessed the truth. It wasn't so very hard to work out -after all, she must already have betrayed her love to him in a hundred or more small ways. Perhaps he had already realised how she felt about him, perhaps he had only made love to her out of pity and compassion knowing that he would never be able to return that love. Perhaps ...
Her car stood outside in the moonlight. She had a spare set of keys. It would be easy enough to pack her few belongings and be gone long before Daniel woke up. Easy and surely the most sensible and sane thing to do ... The best thing for both of them, she told herself firmly.
No matter how much she might love him, she had no intention of becoming a burden to him, of destroying what for her had been the most precious and wonderful moments of her life by seeing his kindness towards her change as he distanced himself from her. No, it was best to leave now while her memories were still intact, while she could still close her eyes and recall in perfect detail the look in his while he'd made love to her.
And besides, she dared not trust herself to stay without fearing that there would very soon come a time when it was no longer enough simply to be here with him, when she would want more ... much, much more, when she would want to be held in his arms so desperately that she was ready to destroy her self-respect and everything that went with it. She couldn't endure the thought of seeing herself virtually begging for his touch, his love. Her mouth had gone dry, her heart was pounding with a frantic sick fear that told her how much she really wanted to stay here close to him, living on the hope that what had happened between them meant as much to him as it did to her, that he loved her in the same way that she loved him, but she knew it was impossible. If he had had any kind of feelings for her he would have told her so surely. It was the utmost folly to allow herself to dream hopeless dreams. No, better to go now, even if it did mean stealing away in the night like a thief.
Perhaps she was a thief-perhaps she had stolen from him the most precious gift a man could give a woman. His child. She shivered at the thought, desperately hoping it might be so, and almost equally desperately hoping it might not.
Financially she could support both herself and her child, but emotionally. . . Did she have that kind of strength, and what would happen when she had to leave her child in someone else's care while she returned to work? Would she have that kind of strength, the strength to leave Daniel's child with someone else, a someone else who might become more important in his or her life than she was herself? Did she have the right to allow herself to conceive, knowing that her child would never be able to claim its father ...?
Hurriedly she stuffed her belongings-into her cases, her fingers as urgent and frantic as her thoughts. She must not be here when Daniel woke up in the morning. She must not allow herself to weaken, to stay and perhaps break down in front of him and confess the truth.
What good would it do? He didn't love her, but he was a compassionate, caring man. Once she had admitted the truth, one of them would have to leave anyway, and it wasn't fair that it should be Daniel ... No, it was better this way, and yet all the time she was carrying her bags downstairs, checking that she had left nothing behind, a part of her was desperately praying that Daniel would wake up, would see her and stop her.
It wasn't until she was finally sitting in the driver's seat of her car, the engine running quietly and smoothly, the cottages a dark blur against the lightening sky behind her, that she acknowledged that it was not going to happen, that even if he had heard her, Daniel was going to let her go, perhaps even wanted her to go.
When she finally emerged and reached the junction with the main road, she had to stop her car to wipe the tears from her eyes, her vision was so blurred.
Dawn was finally breaking. The worst dawn of her life, for all its translucent summer glory, with its promise of another hot, sunny day.
For her the dawn was grey with misery and pain, grey and shadowed like her thoughts, grey with that dull, miserable greyness of emptiness and defeat. The day stretched promisingly ahead, but not for her...for her the whole of her future was one bleak mass of grey emptiness, splintered here and there by those times of pain she would be unable to control, when she remembered a golden summer's afternoon, and the man who had shared it with her for the space of a handful of hours, who had taught her the true meaning of fulfilment, who had loved her physically with tenderness and passi
on, who had, please God, given her the precious gift of his child.
'But, darling, you said you were going to spend the whole of the summer in Wales ... Your doctor--'
'I know, Mother, but I've changed my mind. If you can't put me up-'
'Angelica, of course I can, you know that. I'm only too pleased to have you here.'
She had come to Brighton on impulse, knowing instinctively that the less time she spent on her own, the better. They weren't expecting her back in her office for another month yet. Tom was away on holiday with his new love. There was nothing to draw her back to London, only the emptiness of her small house and the arid heat of a city summer.
At least here in Brighton she would have company. She had been feeling guilty about how little time she had spent with her mother; here was her opportunity to rectify matters.
'You're still looking very peaky, darling. Are you eating properly? You're so thin .. .'
Repressing a sigh, Angelica assured her mother that she was fine, although in all honesty she had to admit that, of the two of them, despite the fact that she was twenty-five years her senior, her mother looked the happier and healthier.
In fact, she had seldom seen her parent looking so well, she recognised later on that day when they both sat down for lunch. There was a sparkle in her mother's eyes, a lilt to her voice, something in the way she laughed and moved that made her suddenly seem much younger than her fifty-odd years. She had even had her hair tinted, Angelica recognised, surveying the subtle highlights in her mother's hair.
'I'm afraid you'll find Brighton rather dull after London,' her mother told her as she urged Angelica to help herself to more food.
'You forget, I've been living in Pembroke for the last few days.'
'Yes, I know, darling. I must say I'm not totally surprised you've come back. We visited that coast once, your father and I, and it's very isolated. I have to admit that I was worried when you told me you were going to stay alone in some cottage miles away from anywhere. I mean, what if anything had happened to you-an accident?'
Angelica felt her body start to tremble. She put down her forkful of food untouched. 'I ... I wasn't completely alone. There was someone, a man living in the cottage next door. Just as well, really,' she added, ducking her head over her plate, as she added as casually as she could, 'I was unfortunate enough to pick up some kind of salmonella bug on my way out there and came down with a pretty bad bout of food poisoning ... He-Daniel-was marvellous, a true Good Samaritan.'
She was no longer even pretending to eat, giving in completely to her need just to talk about Daniel, as though in doing so somehow she was bringing him closer to her, as though somehow she was forging an invisible bond with him that nothing could ever break.
'Daniel-that's a good name,' her mother approved gently, watching her with eyes that saw more than Angelica realised. 'A strong-sounding name. Tell me about him.'
Angelica needed no further urging. The luxury, the need to do just that kept her speaking in brief, flurried, sometimes confusing sentences long after her mother had cleared her own plate, and explained a good deal that had puzzled Mrs Barnes when her daughter had first turned up on her doorstep so unexpectedly.
Angelica had always been such a private, contained child, never offering confidences, nor seeming to have any need to share her thoughts and feelings. Mrs Barnes had always thought of her as being closer to her father than to herself, and while she had regretted this she had accepted it. Now suddenly she was beginning to realise that she had perhaps been wrong ... that it was insecurity and uncertainty that had made her daughter so reticent, and her heart ached compassionately for all that she sensed Angelica was not telling her.
She was in love with the man, of course, otherwise why this compulsive need to talk about him, why the incandescent look of pleasure-cum-pain that lit up her whole face every time she spoke his name? But what did he feel about Angelica? Her mother's instincts made her want to protect her child, to rescue her from potential pain, and yet she had to acknowledge that Angelica was an adult, and that it was not for her to interfere, nor to pass any comment on what she was being told. That all she could do was listen and only offer advice if it was requested.
Indeed she could sense as Angelica fell silent that already she was half regretting her confidences, half wondering if she had said too much, half wondering perhaps if she ought now to run away from her in the same way she had obviously run away from him, Mrs Barnes recognised wryly.
'Why don't I make us some coffee'?' she suggested practically. 'And then afterwards, if you like, we could go and browse through a couple of antique shops. I need to find something for a friend's birthday. I know he's been looking for a fire screen for ages, and I thought I spotted just the thing the other day.'
In reality the last thing Angelica felt like was shopping, but she accepted her mother's suggestion, telling herself that the sooner she forced herself to accept that her time with Daniel was over and in the past, the better.
In the end Angelica spent more than three weeks with her mother, while she was there meeting not only her mother's friends, but also the man she suspected was going to become her stepfather. She liked him, and she liked the way he so obviously adored her mother, even if seeing them together was sometimes so unbearably painful that she ached to be completely alone.
She told herself that she had the rest of her life to live and that she could either wallow in self-pity or she could find a way of living that allowed her to accept that her life must go on without Daniel in it.
But it was a bitter blow to wake up one morning and discover that she was not after all going to have his child. Until that moment she hadn't realised how much she had been clinging to the frail hope that she would at least have his child to live her life for.
Now not only her present but her future as well had become aching voids of pain and loneliness. She had wanted so much to have conceived, and yet in reality wasn't it better that she had not done so?
No matter how logically she tried to reason she was still left with the feeling that fate had not considered her worthy of having Daniel's child, that it had found her wanting in performing this most basic and instinctive of all feminine functions, and that somehow in refusing to allow her to have Daniel's child fate had earmarked her as being flawed, not a complete woman. For the first time in her life she began to understand the torment suffered by women who for one reason or another could not conceive, something she had never imagined she would experience. Motherhood for her had always been something of an abstract state-fine for other people, but not something she had ever really wanted, and yet now suddenly, sharply, she did want it, ached for it, pined for loathed and resented the barren emptiness of the womb she had already mentally prepared for the nurturing of Daniel's baby.
Now even that dream, that hope had been snatched from her.
She had everything, and yet she had nothing, she thought emptily as she said her good byes to her mother and headed for London.
Tom would be back from France. Paul, her deputy, would be getting ready to hand back to her control of the company. It amazed her how little she was concerned with that. The business which had been the driving force in her life for so long now meant nothing to her. She was concerned for her employees, of course, concerned to maintain her father's good name and high standards, but for the first time she was forced to recognise that, given free will, running the company would never have been something she would have chosen to do. She had done it because she had felt it her duty, because she had felt if she did not do so she would be failing her father, and, while it was true that she would not envisage a way of life that would not in some way stretch and exercise her brain, she would have been quite happy to turn control of the company over to Paul on a full-time basis, taking only an advisory interest in it herself.
It was a sign of how little interest she had in what might be going on that, apart from a couple of duty telephone calls, she had made no attempt to check on w
hat was happening in her absence, something unheard of at one time. She had driven herself so hard for so long that she had exhausted that part of her which had been responsible for creating that drive, she recognised tiredly, when she parked her car outside her small mews house and headed for the entrance.
Tom had laughed at her when she had first bought this house, but it had proved a wise investment, more than doubling in value. The trouble was though that it wasn't really a home, and she shivered as she unlocked her door and walked into the small hallway.
Even the air smelled over-clean and unused, arid and empty, tasting of sterility. She could never have brought up a child here. A child needed a garden, freedom, a home, not a collection of designer colour cued rooms, glossy enough to have featured in a high-profile modern magazine, and yet so empty of everything that made a home a home that Angelica almost felt as though she ought not to sit down on one of the pale cream coloured sofas.
Her apartment was cold and unwelcoming, she recognised critically, so pristine neat that it didn't look as though anyone could possibly live in it.
But then no one did. Not really. True, she slept here, but she rarely entertained friends here, preferring to dine out. She certainly never invited people round for lazy Sunday lunches ... for casual get-togethers. The small garden had never even been used, and certainly not for the relaxed, easygoing kind of Sunday brunches the builders had undoubtedly envisaged.
Disliking her own thoughts, she reached for her answering machine and flicked it on.
As she had expected there were a dozen or so messages from those friends who did not realise she was away, plus a call from Tom letting her know he had returned, and asking her to get in touch with him. He was going to Yorkshire with his love for the weekend, he told her, adding that he would be back on Monday morning and that he wanted to speak to her urgently.
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