Starting Over

by Penny Jordan

  He had been approached to take a potentially fascinating case just before his accident. A young woman was threatening to sue her family for snatching her away from the cult with which she had become involved. Nick had been approached by a friend of the family for his advice.

  But it wasn't his work that was on his mind right now. It was Sara!

  He was fully aware that his behaviour in the restaurant and more specifically in the restaurant office had been far from exemplary or gentlemanly. It didn't matter that he had been provoked. He still should not have allowed things, matters, to get so out of hand. An apology was quite plainly in order, or so he had reasoned.

  IT WAS EARLY afternoon and Frances was just seeing the last lunch-time diner off the premises when he walked in.

  'I wonder if I could have a word with Sara?' Nick asked once they had exchanged greetings.

  'Oh, I'm sorry, she isn't here at the moment,' Frances told him. 'She's taking a late lunch hour. I insisted that she ought to get out and enjoy this unseasonal sunshine we're having whilst she could. Do you want me to pass on a message?'

  Shaking his head Nick left the restaurant. It was true that the weather was mild, sunny and warm. From where he stood he could see the bright light glinting on the river. He paused to study it. Nick had always loved water. His farmhouse was on a hill overlooking the sea off the Pembrokeshire coast.

  He didn't own a boat himself but he sometimes crewed for a friend who did. Automatically he started to head for the river.

  Sara paused to laugh at the antics of some ducks as they dived into the water for unseen food. Further downstream she had seen some swans, their stately elegant progress so at odds with the frantic paddling that must be going on beneath their gently floating bodies. Like galleons in full sail they seemed to glide effortlessly over the water. Hers was the only human presence here on the river path and Frances had urged her not to rush back.

  'I can't believe how much work you've done already. You really are a marvel...I'm so grateful to you,' she had praised Sara. Sara reflected on the telephone call she had taken earlier from the frantically apologetic employment agency explaining they had been let down by the girl they had intended to send to the restaurant. It didn't matter now Sara had told them—the job had been filled. Why had she decided to stay on? She liked Frances yes, but... Unbidden a mental picture of Nick Crighton came into her head.

  She was not staying because of him! She loathed him.

  He was arrogant, humourless, contemptible—and worse! Angrily she sucked in her breath.

  NICK SAW SARA before she saw him. She had her head thrown back as she laughed at the ducks she was watching and her hair was ruffled by the breeze, the sunlight burnishing its rich warmth. She was wearing a soft woollen jumper which the wind had flattened lovingly against the curves of her breasts and Nick felt the immediate primaeval reaction of his body to her femaleness.

  She had seen him now, her body stiffening defensively, her expression hostile.

  As he reached her she moved to one side of the path, deliberately leaving as much space as she could between them before starting to walk past him.

  'Sara...'

  As she heard Nick say her name Sara tensed. She wasn't idiotic enough to pretend that she was in shock because a man had kissed her and neither was she going to throw a histrionic fit about it, but she knew that her reaction to him, her awareness of him, was far stronger than anything she had experienced before.

  She had guessed from putting two and two together from Frances's comments about him that even by male Crighton standards Nick was something of a rogue card in the family pack. Sara had made no comment when Frances had said that for all that Nick prized his freedom and avoided any kind of permanent involve-ment, once he fell in love all that would change.

  'The Crightons are one-woman men,' she had informed Sara, grinning when the younger woman raised a doubting eyebrow and adding, 'Well, at least they are once they've found the right woman....'

  'But they enjoy trying out several wrong ones before they do find her,' Sara suggested cynically.

  She considered that her own sexual experience was about average for a woman of her age and her background but she was forced to admit that what she had felt when Nick had kissed her was something way outside that experience. It was also something that made her feel extremely wary about allowing it to happen again.

  Nick was 'man trouble' with a capital T, and man trouble was the last thing she wanted in her life. She was enjoying her freedom and enjoying, too, the lim-itless possibilities that lay ahead of her. She did not want to become involved with any man, but most especially a Crighton man.

  'Sara...wait!' Nick insisted.

  Warily Sara did so.

  'I feel I owe you an apology....'

  'Another one?' Sara queried coolly.

  Immediately she realised that she had said the wrong thing. The dark tide of colour beneath his skin wasn't embarrassment; it was anger she recognised.

  'Oh, for God's sake,' he ground out. 'This is ridiculous. Look, let's not beat about the bush, shall we?

  Both of us are adults, both of us know what's happening... what's happened, but right now, right now I'm not in the market for a relationship—of any kind.'

  Sara stared at him. His directness stunned her and for a minute she was tempted to retreat into convention and pretend that she didn't know what he meant. But she was too busy trying to ignore that small sharp stab of disappointment his words had brought her.

  To counteract it she took a deep breath and told him quickly, 'Well, that's just as well because I'm not in a position to have one,' she lied. 'In fact...' She looked expressively at her ring finger whilst a part of her brain looked on in shocked disapproval at what she was doing and saying. Recklessly she ignored it; the fierce flood of danger and excitement pouring through her veins was fuelling an unfamiliar rebellion.

  'You're married,' Nick demanded, obviously shocked.

  'No...' Sara admitted. 'Not yet...'

  What on earth was she doing? But it was too late to recall her words. Nick was already insisting, 'But there is someone...'

  'Yes,' she fibbed, crossing her fingers supersti-tiously behind her back.

  'I see.' Furiously Nick fought against his own feelings. The anger, the sharp sense of possessiveness, the desire to remove whatever man there was already in her life with force if necessary. His feelings were totally ridiculous, he knew, totally irrational.

  He paused and then frowned, remembering something.

  'Tell me, what did you mean by that remark you made about Crighton men never apologising?'

  Sara shrugged. There was no point in lying or concealing the truth. Why should she?

  'My grandfather is married to the ex-wife of David Crighton.'

  'What?' Nick looked puzzled for a moment but then his frown lifted.

  'You mean Olivia and Jack's mother...Tiggy...

  Tania...' He groped for the vaguely remembered name.

  'Tania. That's right,' Sara confirmed coolly.

  'But she...' Nick began, remembering what he had heard on the family grapevine.

  'She what?' Sara demanded sharply.

  Nick shook his head. He had no way of knowing just how much Sara knew about Tania's past.

  When she realised that he wasn't going to say any more Sara started to walk away from him. She had only taken a couple of steps when she heard him saying from behind her, 'What's his name?'

  'Whose name?' she asked in bewilderment, turning round.

  'The man,' Nick told her softly.

  'The man?' The penny dropped and frantically Sara searched for a suitably impressive macho type male name whilst Nick watched her. A sudden suspicion had come to him.

  'There isn't any man, is there?' he challenged her softly.

  Sara stared at him for once lost for words. She could feel the hot betraying colour staining her skin.

  'Why did you lie about him, Sara?' Nick asked her even more softly.
/>   Sara shook her head. His perception had totally unnerved her.

  'I—I don't know....'

  'Oh, yes, you do,' Nick corrected her. 'It was because of this, wasn't it?'

  Before she could stop him he had taken her in his arms and was kissing her with the same relendess sensuality she had felt before.

  She fought not to react to him but every tissue in her body was swamped with the intensity of her response. She could feel his arousal against her body and knew that her own flesh was just as sexually eager as his. It was as though he held an awesome fascination for her which she had no way of controlling or resisting.

  Her body burned with heat and excitement and a wild reckless urgency that was totally unfamiliar and totally insane. Without the control of her mind she knew her body would have been perfectly willing for Nick to lie her down right here where they were and complete what he had started in the most intimate and intense way there was.

  There was an ache within her that shocked her almost as much as Nick's kiss had done. Behind her closed eyelids images of their naked bodies tormented her. She could see just how he would look, how he would feel, how he would taste. Oh yes...yes...she wanted that...wanted him so much.

  The words screamed silently through her head as Nick withdrew his mouth from hers. They were both breathing heavily she noticed, just as she noticed how immediately and shamelessly her gaze went to his crotch and then to his face.

  'This isn't going to happen,' she told him shakily.

  Nick's face looked oddly pale beneath his tan, the bones standing out sharply.

  'It already has, ' he told her rawly.

  'God help us both,' Sara thought she heard him saying as he turned and walked away from her.

  It gave her no comfort to know that he was as disturbed and caught off balance by what had happened as she was herself. Fear and excitement—where did one begin and the other end? She started to walk back to the restaurant uncomfortably conscious of the heavy dragging sensation in her lower body and the ache in her breasts.

  Lust! She had never imagined herself experiencing such a feeling but right now she was quite definitely lusting after Nick Crighton. Lusting after him; for him; to be with him, to have him within her.

  Sara heard herself groaning out loud at the torment her own wanton thoughts were causing her.

  JENNY GLANCED AT Queensmead's kitchen clock. Almost half past three, Max should be arriving back soon with the children. He had rung her earlier to say that he would pick them up from school on his way back from the hospital.

  Jenny looked from the clock to the telephone.

  Should she try to ring Livvy now?

  All day long she had been thinking about her niece, worrying about her as well as about Maddy. She felt wretchedly guilty about what had happened that morning. She knew how sensitive Livvy was, how much at times she was still inclined to feel the pain of her growing-up years. Did Jon think of that, and of Livvy and Jack at all, now when he made such a fuss of David, Jenny couldn't help wondering a little bitterly.

  She desperately wanted to speak to Olivia and to put things right between them. No one knew better than she did just how much the break-up of their marriage must be hurting Olivia, but she wanted to do so face to face and somewhere where she could give Livvy the time and attention Jenny knew she must be needing.

  Sadly she remembered how happy and vibrant her niece had been when she and Caspar had first married.

  They had seemed such a well-suited couple, ideal for one another. Jenny could remember visiting them; their home had seemed full of laughter and love, especially when Livvy had first been pregnant with Amelia. When had it all started to go wrong for her and why hadn't Olivia felt able to confide in her?

  Had Livvy tried to? Had she—Jenny—been too involved with other things, other people, to notice?

  These last few years had been increasingly busy ones for all of them—but she couldn't let Livvy go on thinking that she didn't matter to her.

  The kitchen door was opening and Max and the children were coming in.

  'How's Maddy?' Jenny asked anxiously as she went to relieve Leo and Emma of their school bags and coats and take Jason from her son's arms.

  Max's terse, 'They're still battling to bring her blood pressure down,' warned Jenny that there had been no improvement as yet in Maddy's condition.

  Conscious of the children and the need to maintain the security of their normal routine for them she hugged them and told them that their milk and biscuits would be ready just as soon as they had changed out of their school clothes and washed their hands.

  'I'm not hungry,' Leo denied. His lower lip was trembling slightly and Jenny's heart sank as she saw the fear in his eyes. He had always been a very sensitive child, closer to his mother than his father in the earliest years of his life, although now he and Max had formed a very strong loving bond.

  'When is Mummy coming home?' he demanded of Max now.

  'Just as soon as she's well enough,' Max answered him.

  'I want her to be here now, ' Leo told him tearfully.

  'Oh, so do I, son,' Max agreed, swinging Leo up into his arms, his voice muffled against the little boy's hair as he hugged him fiercely and kissed him.

  'Mummy isn't going to die, is she?' Leo pleaded.

  'Of course she isn't, Leo,' Jenny denied chokily when she saw that Max was too overcome by his own emotions to answer him properly.

  It tore at her heart-strings in a way that nothing else had ever done to see this man, her tall, strong, formidable son, who was so very dear to her show his emotions so openly and vulnerably.

  'I'm sorry,' he apologised to Jenny five minutes later when she had taken over from him, soothing and calming Leo with a lifetime's experience of maternal-ism and then sending the children upstairs to follow their normal after-school routine.

  'I didn't handle that well,' he continued bleakly.

  'Oh God...if anything happens to Maddy...'

  Jenny could hear the anguish in his voice. Instinctively she reached out to him.

  'I know how worried you must be,' she told him.

  'But she's in the very best hands, Max....'

  Max looked away from her. He had seen the consultant earlier in the day when he had gone to visit Maddy. No. I'm afraid that as yet there hasn't been any real change, the consultant had responded in answer to Max's anxious question.

  Every day was taking them closer to the twenty-week deadline and closer, too, to the danger of him losing Maddy.

  After he had spoken with the consultant he had sat in Maddy's room next to her bed, listening to her telling him how guilty she felt about 'being so lazy lying here.' His gaze was drawn against his will to her stomach, a small mound beneath the hospital bedcovers.

  Within her body lay the new life that he was responsible for, its heart beating, its body forming, growing. A new life whose existence threatened that of its mother. If there were to be a natural spontaneous end to Maddy's pregnancy now—it did happen after all—Maddy would be grief-stricken, he knew; but in time she would accept what had happened as an act of nature in a way that she would never ever accept a man-made termination of her pregnancy.

  Please, God, let her blood pressure come down, Max prayed as he reached for her hand and held it tightly, but still his gaze returned to her stomach.

  'Are you thinking like me how lucky we are?'

  Maddy whispered to him as she lifted their clasped hands onto her belly. 'I tell the baby every day how much we love it.' A softly sweet smile curled her mouth. 'They say that it's impossible for a baby to be aware of emotions at this stage, but I don't agree. I think that a baby can sense when it's loved and wanted.'

  Every word she said increased Max's guilt and fear.

  Even if he hadn't already known how Maddy would react to the suggestion of a termination of her pregnancy just listening to her now would have told him.

  He could feel his fingers tensing against hers. It wasn't love he felt for this baby
, it was...

  He could see Maddy looking at him in concern as he pulled his hand away.

  'MAX?' he could hear his mother saying worriedly.

  'Maddy's blood pressure isn't coming down properly. If it doesn't...' Max felt as though he were trying to speak with a throat full of splintered glass.

  'If things don't improve the only way to guarantee her safety would be to terminate her pregnancy.' He heard his mother's indrawn shocked gasp.

  'Does Maddy know...?' Jenny began, but Max shook his head.

  'No, the consultant's thinking up to now has been that to tell her would make the situation with her blood pressure even worse than it already is. What the hell kind of sense can it be to let a woman like Maddy die,' Max cried out in anguish. 'I'm going back to the hospital,' he told Jenny when he had himself back under control. I'll probably be there all evening. God knows what we'd have done without you, Ma....' he told her gruffly.

  Jenny had been intending to suggest that Max stay with the children for a couple of hours that evening so that she could go and see Olivia but now she could see how much he needed to be with Maddy. She would have to ring home instead and ask Jon to come over she decided when the children came back into the kitchen.

  As Max went across to the table and kissed each child Jenny's heart ached for him. Maddy was the most maternal woman Jenny knew. She would rather die than destroy the life of her own child. A small icy shudder ran through Jenny's body as that thought formed. Please, God, let Maddy get well. Spare them that! She prayed mentally as Max drove away. Oh, please, please God.

  FOR THE UMPTEENTH TIME Annalise Cooke removed Jack's now crumpled letter from her school bag and started to re-read it. Not that she needed to, she knew every word of it off by heart, but still she had to read it, to touch the paper Jack had written it on, just for the reassurance and comfort it gave her.

  School was over for the day now and she was on her way to the station to meet Jack's train.

  'I'm going to come home. We can talk properly then,' he had written to her in response to her own frantic tear-stained letter to him. 'I'll be arriving at half past four so try to meet me at the station if you can.'