Starting Over

by Penny Jordan

  'Well, I wouldn't call it luck exactly,' Saul confessed, 'but I certainly hit something.'

  'Do you think Bobbie's right and it's that girl who was working at the restaurant?'

  'Oh, I wasn't foolhardy enough to ask him that question,' Saul laughed. 'He's got a pretty mean right.'

  He rubbed his jaw reminiscently thinking of their fights as young boys as he spoke, and Tullah shook her head disapprovingly.

  IT RAINED unceasingly the whole drive down to Bournemouth and Nick arrived two hours later than he had expected and in a foul temper, cursing both his brother's and his own folly.

  It had been Olivia who had given him the name and address of Sara's grandfather, raising her eyebrows a little when he explained who he was trying to contact and raising them even higher when he was forced to admit why.

  'Tania's stepgranddaughter was here in Haslewich?'

  she had exclaimed, wrinkling her forehead. 'But...'

  'Livvy, please don't ask,' Nick had begged her.

  'And don't tell anyone else why I was here, either....

  Please...' he had demanded abruptly.

  Tania proved every bit as silly and selfish as Nick had expected, alternately pouting and flirting whilst she complained about her daughter and son.

  'Livvy hasn't been very well,' Nick couldn't resist informing her.

  'Not well?' Sara's grandfather had frowned. 'What exactly's been wrong?'

  'A very bad bout of flu,' Nick had told them.

  'Flu? Oh that's something that's catching,' Tania had protested. 'My poor chest is so weak. My doctor has warned me that I must take every precaution not to expose myself to that kind of virus.'

  Nick had smiled thinly without offering any comment. His feelings for Sara were making him feel savage with pain and he ached to tell Tania what he thought of her and the way she had poisoned Sara's mind against Crighton men.

  At first Sara's grandfather was reluctant to tell him where Sara was but, in the end, he relented.

  It wasn't long to Christmas and every available flight to the Caribbean was fully booked, but Nick was determined he was going to get there even if it meant disguising himself as luxury goods and flying out freight.

  In the end he didn't have to go to quite such lengths.

  An impassioned call to an old client calling in a favour bought him a grossly overpriced seat on a private jet belonging to a friend of the friend.

  To his surprise when he finally cleared customs at the airport, there was a man waiting for him carrying a card with his name on it.

  Frowning Nick approached him. He was tall and grey-haired, sharp-eyed and hostile as he refused to shake Nick's hand.

  He introduced himself tersely, 'Richard Lanyon, Sara's father.'

  Nick froze. Compared with this formidable-looking man in his immaculate tropical whites, he felt jet-lagged and grubby and at a decided disadvantage.

  'Sara's grandfather rang to warn us that you were on your way,' he explained. 'What do you want with my daughter, Crighton?'

  For a moment Nick was tempted not to reply but he had come too far—endured too much.

  'What does any man want with the woman he loves?' he responded equally brusquely.

  Richard Lanyon was frowning.

  'You love her? According to Sara...' He stopped.

  'According to Sara, what?' Nick challenged him grimly.

  'I think that's something you'd better ask Sara herself,' the older man was telling him. He was smiling at Nick now, placing his hand on Nick's arm as he guided him through the milling throng around the airport.

  'Sara's been spending the day with some friends of ours on their yacht. Her mother's got a room prepared for you. I hope you are ready for the questions she's going to ask you.' He was smiling broadly at Nick now, so that some of Nick's own tension began to evaporate—but only some!

  In the end, Sara's mother didn't ask him anything, simply smiling at him as she showed him to a blissfully cool room, insisting that he was to make„himself at home before saying softly, 'Ah, yes...now I understand....'

  SARA HAD REFUSED the offer of a lift home from the harbour. It was only a shortish walk through the town and along the beach and at this time of the evening the air was just beginning to feel pleasantly cool. Carrying her deck shoes she let the sand melt through her toes, her body felt physically tired but nothing could ease her ceaseless, constant mental agonising over Nick.

  Richard had told Nick that Sara would probably walk home along the beach but he had almost given her up when he finally saw her. She was walking lan-guidly towards him, her head bowed as she looked out to sea so that she hadn't seen him. Levering himself away from the bleached driftwood on which he had been sitting waiting, Nick set out towards her.

  Sara sensed rather than saw his presence, tensing as she saw the shape of a man coming towards her out of the gathering shadows, her heart leaping like a salmon making its final desperate bid to seek home as her brain accepted what her eyes were trying to tell her.

  'Nick...? Nick...!'

  She had barely finished saying his name before she was in his arms clinging ecstatically to him as he kissed her, returning his kiss with tiny keening noises of pleasure as her mouth opened beneath his. They kissed with the frantic desperation only known to lovers who had feared they had lost one another, stroking, touching, murmuring their joy and disbelief over and over again.

  'What are you doing here? Why...?' Sara began when she could finally speak coherently.

  'I couldn't bear to be without you,' Nick told her truthfully. 'Even if you didn't want my love I had to come.'

  'Your love? But it was just sex,' Sara whispered.

  Nick closed his eyes and shuddered.

  'Please don't tell me that,' he begged her passionately. 'Sara, there's no way what we shared could ever be just sex. Take it from me. Let me show you, prove it to you. Let me...' He stopped as he felt her start to tremble.

  'I'm sorry,' he began to apologise hoarsely, 'I shouldn't—'

  'No. No...you mustn't stop,' Sara protested. 'Oh, Nick, don't you know how much I've longed to hear you say that? How often I've hated myself for fanta-sizing that you were saying it...for behaving like a besotted teenager? Oh, Nick, Nick...' she cried as she clung to him.

  'Your parents are waiting for us,' he protested as she unfastened his shirt and slid her hands inside it, splaying them across his naked chest, her own rising and falling with sharp excitement as she touched him.

  7 can't wait,' she told him boldly. 'I've already waited too long. Oh, Nick...' His name was wrenched from her lips as she moved enticingly against him and felt his immediate response. There were problems ahead of them that they would have to find a way to solve, especially with his work, but somehow they would find a way.

  'Your parents have invited me to stay with them,'

  Nick told her thickly. 'But right now I wish I'd booked a hotel room.'

  'Who needs a room?' Sara whispered wickedly to him, 'When there's a perfectly good boat empty right there.'

  Looking over his shoulder Nick saw the boat she meant tied up at a small jetty.

  'We can't,' he protested, but Sara's eyes were full of mischief and so very, very much more.

  'MMM...this is nice,' Sara murmured half an hour later as they lay naked in one another's arms enjoying the gentle movement of the boat as it rocked with the current.

  'As nice as this,' Nick teased her as he moved very deliberately against her.

  'No, not as nice as that,' Sara whispered back, her voice changing and becoming soft and husky with desire.

  'Oh, Nick, I can hardly bear to think of how awful it would have been if you hadn't come to find me.'

  'Don't think about it,' Nick commanded her masterfully. 'Don't think about anything apart from us,'

  he whispered sensually. 'And this...' As he kissed her mouth and then her naked breasts, Sara sighed her pleasure into the still, night air.

  IN THEIR APARTMENT Sara's father frowned as he g
lanced at his watch.

  'Surely Nick must have caught up with Sara by now?'

  'Yes, dear, I'm sure he has,' his wife agreed with a small rueful smile that caused him to check and then shake his head as she laughed tenderly at him.

  EPILOGUE

  'ARE YOU SURE this is what you want? There's still time to change your mind, you know,' Max told Maddy as they stood together.

  'I'm sure,' Maddy confirmed serenely as she smiled up at him and handed him the securely wrapped bundle that was their son of a few months and watched the love illuminate his face as he held him. She already knew there was a very strong tie between this baby and Max. Right from the moment of his birth he had bonded with Max and he, in turn, adored his son. It was as though the baby knew somehow just how much Max had needed the reassurance of his love.

  Behind them in the congregation David was sitting proudly with his own family, Honor and Olivia exchanging mutually understanding and rueful looks as David, Amelia and Alex fought over who was to hold Honor and David's ten-day-old daughter.

  It was too soon for Olivia to tell Honor that she hoped she would soon be announcing an addition to her own family, but as Caspar quietly reminded his daughters that it was their grandfather's turn to hold the baby, Olivia squeezed his hand. Tenderly Caspar turned to smile at her.

  So often these last few weeks he had felt as though he were seeing a completely new Olivia, an Olivia who had stepped so joyously out of the shadows of her own unhappiness that it caught at his heart sometimes to recognise just how sad she had been.

  It had been at her suggestion that they had made arrangements to spend the summer with Caspar's fam-fly.

  'You're definitely sure?' Max checked with Maddy again as the vicar came towards them.

  'Positive.' She laughed.

  As he took the baby from them and the service began Max held his breath only expelling it properly once the baby's name had been pronounced.

  'Benjamin Matthew Crighton.'

  Benjamin Matthew! Max's eyes had widened when Maddy had told him shortly after the birth what she wanted their son to be called.

  'Ben's name?' he had questioned uncertainly.

  'Ben's name and his brother's,' Maddy had agreed.

  And now as the vicar formally named their son she could almost feel the wave of peace and love that rip-pled through the old church. It had been Leo who had casually told her about the two little boys he had thought he had seen playing in Grandfather Ben's study.

  'They were wearing funny clothes,' Leo had told her, 'like in a photograph.'

  Maddy had simply said calmly that if he saw them again he must tell her.

  But when she mentioned the matter to Honor, Honor had sighed and she had asked her quietly,

  'Have you seen them, too?'

  Honor had shaken her head.

  'No. But I thought I heard them when you and I were clearing away Ben's things.'

  Without saying anything to Max, Maddy had carefully cleaned her way through the whole house, talking to Ben as she did so, reassuring him that his memory and his home were safe.

  'They've gone,' Honor had told her positively the next time she had visited.

  'Poor Ben,' Maddy had sighed sadly. 'He was always so very alone and so very sad.'

  'He isn't sad any more,' Honor had offered gently.

  Maddy smiled as she received her son back from the vicar. The names she had given him were her gift to Queensmead for all of its gifts to her...a gift of love for a gift of love.

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  EPILOGUE