by Penny Jordan
‘There, it’s all over now,’ Mrs Hammond comforted her, and as a great wave of dizziness swept over her, Tara heard Mrs Hammond’s anxious voice appealing to James to catch her.
When she opened her eyes she was lying on a watered silk bedspread in a room decorated in palest eau-de-nil, Mrs Hammond hovering anxiously on one side while James stood, tall and saturnine, on the other.
‘The twins…’
‘They’re both fast asleep,’ James reassured her. ‘You can go and check for yourself if you like. It would be pointless waking them now,’ he added, glancing at his watch. ‘It’s gone ten now… You might as well stay the night and then I can run you all home in the morning.’
Tara wanted to protest, but Mrs Hammond was already agreeing, murmuring something about coming in a little earlier in the morning to cope with breakfast.
‘Mrs Hammond doesn’t sleep in,’ James told her, correctly reading her mind. ‘But you’re quite safe.’ Mrs Hammond had obviously not overheard the comment and James’s eyes were sardonic as he murmured the words.
On shaky legs, Tara followed him to the room the twins were sharing. The two of them were tucked up in a large double bed. Tara bent to kiss them unable to resist the urge to touch them. Mandy opened her eyes, happiness filling them as she smiled drowsily, her smothered ‘Mummy’ balm to Tara’s aching heart.
James made no attempt to ignore the tears pouring down her face as she left the bedroom, but Tara was beyond caring. Relief coursed through her, drowning out every other emotion, including the dragging tiredness she had experienced during the day.
James left her at the door of the eau-de-nil room. The bedroom had its own adjoining bathroom, tiled in the same soft green, the bath reflecting the colour like a huge mother-of-pearl shell. Perfumed bath oil and soft fluffy towels hinted that she wasn’t the first female to use this room, and Tara had to smother a swift stab of jealousy. She was being ridiculous, she told herself. Any woman James had staying in his home would surely share his room and not sleep alone. No wonder Mrs Hammond did not live in. It had been plain to Tara that she thought very highly of her employer, and no doubt James fostered that impression.
She was still wearing the old jeans she had put on that morning—a lifetime ago—and her tee-shirt was stained with oil from changing the car wheel. When she looked at her reflection in the mirror she was appalled at the dishevelled, untidy picture that met her eyes. Her hair curled wildly round her face, unusually pale, her eyes dark pools of pain, her mouth free of lipstick. Distastefully Tara removed her jeans and the grubby tee-shirt. Beneath them she was only wearing a pair of briefs and a flimsy lace bra. Faced with the prospect of donning worn clothes in the morning, she shuddered. At least she could rinse her underclothes through; being nylon they would dry overnight, and she had started on her self-imposed chore before she realised that she had nothing to sleep in.
Shrugging she started to run her bath, helping herself to a generous capful of the expensively perfumed oil, the warm water helped to soothe away some of her tension, but Tara did not linger in the bath. All at once she was swept by exhaustion and knew that if she didn’t make an effort to reach the bed she was likely to fall asleep where she was.
Drying herself on one of the luxuriously thick towels, she padded across to the bed and was just pulling back the bedclothes when, with only a brief knock, James came into the room. In one hand he was holding a pair of pyjamas, and Tara felt the blood rising betrayingly under her skin as he looked at her, his eyes lingering longest on the rounded swell of her breasts above the confining edge of her towel.
‘I realised you had nothing with you, and I brought you these,’ he told her, proffering the pyjamas. Tara reached forward to take them, keeping a tight grip of her towel, feeling herself tremble beneath his gaze.
‘What’s wrong?’ he jeered. ‘Surely you’re not shy. You’ve been married and widowed, had lovers…’
His words were designed to be insulting and some spark of defiance Tara hadn’t known she possessed stirred her into saying coolly, ‘What are you trying to do? Ease your conscience because you took my virginity?’
‘Took it?’ The dark eyebrows rose, his mouth tightening in a thin, cruel line. ‘I don’t recall that there was much taking involved—or is that the line you perfected for your husband? Work hard at it and you might even be able to convince yourself that it was rape. That’s the next step, isn’t it? But we both know that wasn’t the case, don’t we?’
‘It wasn’t rape, perhaps, but it was deliberate seduction,’ Tara countered, too angry to care what she was saying, ‘and in my book that’s nearly as bad.’
‘Time seems to have affected your memory,’ James drawled, only the dark line of colour along his cheekbones warning her that he was fighting to control his temper. ‘As I recall it, we were both equal partners.’ His eyes dropped again to her breasts, his soft, ‘Perhaps I ought to refresh your memory as it’s so badly at fault,’ freezing the blood in Tara’s veins. She moved backwards instinctively, wincing as she felt the hard frame of the bed behind her knees, one hand going up instinctively to ward off the implacable male frame, but James ignored her. Unwilling to bear the contempt in his eyes, she closed her own, tensing as she waited for those hard hands to wrench away her frail protection, but the assault never came. Instead she felt James’s hands on her shoulders, stroking and massaging away the tension of the day, encouraging her head to fall forward heavily on to his chest as one arm slid round her back to support her. The rhythmic stroking continued, lulling her into a false sense of security, no protest escaping her lips as James’s hands moved gently over her back relaxing taut muscles.
At first the sure touch of his fingers was simply relaxing, but then, gradually, other feelings sprang to life inside her. Beneath the towel Tara felt her breasts swell and tauten, her arms automatically encircling James’s neck, her fingers burrowing into the soft thickness of his hair.
She felt him lift her on to the bed but was beyond making any form of protest. She wanted this sense of closeness, this union of flesh against flesh, this sense of desiring and being desired, and she refused to let any other emotion intrude.
Somehow her hands found their way inside the opening of his shirt, clinging to the moist warmth of his skin, exploring the maleness of his body with a sensuality she had never possessed at seventeen. Then she had merely gloried in her love; simply accepting the physical perfection of their coming together, but now, with experience on her side, Tara was well aware of the intense male virility of James’s body, of the strength in the broad shoulders and tapering chest, of the sensual pleasure to be had from pressing her palms against the fine dark hair shadowing his chest and feeling its slight rasp against her skin.
Now it was his mouth that stroked erotically against her skin, probing the hollow at the base of her throat, moving upwards to investigate the perfect delicacy of her ear before tracing the shape of her cheekbone while his thumb probed the half parted softness of her mouth, sending waves of pleasure shuddering through her body.
Her fingers tugged at the buttons denying her access to the contact she craved with his skin, a small moan of pleasure stifled in her throat as James possessed her mouth, obliterating everything but the driving need to respond to the male pressure of his body, the tautly muscled potency of his thighs as he moulded her body to his, her impatient fingers at last able to push aside his shirt and explore the vital maleness of his skin.
The fear she had experienced during the day seemed to have released her from normal convention and restraints. Husky moans breathed against the tanned column of his throat as her lips explored its warm contours only incited James to increase his subtle torture of her aching body. Her towel was tugged firmly away, her breath catching in her throat as James bent his head to stroke softly over the aroused pink tips of her breasts, with lips that teased and tormented before giving an exquisite pleasure that tied her stomach muscles in knots and sent a wild desire burning along her veins, he
r fingernails scoring the smooth flesh of his back as her body responded to his touch.
When it came to lovemaking, James was a master of the art, Tara acknowledged hazily, as he caressed the slender length of her thighs, inciting her to writhe wantonly against him, her fingers trembling as they followed the downward path of dark body hair to the belt fastened snugly above his hips. In James’s face, Tara could see the desire she knew must be in her own. As he reached for his belt, he muttered something, a tide of darkly red colour running up under his skin as he demanded hoarsely, ‘You do it for me,’ his hand guiding hers to the metal buckle.
Twenty-four hours ago she could never have imagined herself in such a situation, and the girl she had once been would have shied away from such a request. But she was not a girl any more, she was a woman, and while James had been her only lover the instinct she had been taught to subdue as a teenager now came to the fore, guiding her now. She heard James’s stifled gasp of pleasure and felt the shudder that ran through his body when her fingertips brushed the vulnerable flesh of his stomach, with a tiny thrill of pleasure, bending her head to place light kisses where her fingers had touched, glorying in his unmistakable response, although she wasn’t given long to exult in her brief ascendancy.
With a swiftness that left her breathless she was jerked against the pulsating male body, her mouth captured and subjected to the burning pressure of male lips that seemed determined to imprint their texture and desire against hers in a way that she could never forget, the hardened thrust of James’s body as he parted her thighs and slid between them driving every sensation but the need for his possession completely from her mind.
The silken brush of flesh against flesh was unbearably arousing. Her stomach clenched instinctively, her body aching for the pleasure it knew instinctively James would give. They kissed and clung, stroking feverishly, feeding the furnace of desire they were both feeling. James’s control was the greater. Feeling she could stand it no more, Tara pressed herself wantonly against him, murmuring her need against his mouth, her fingers twining in the silky darkness of his hair. They were wrenched rudely away, and icy shivers’ coursed through her body as the mantle of passion dropped from James like a borrowed cloak.
Cupping her face between his hands so that she was forced to meet the scorn in his eyes, he glanced slowly along the slender paleness of her body. By the time his gaze returned to her face, it was awash with colour.
‘Now,’ he said softly, no vestige of passion or desire left, ‘now tell me again how it was between us. Tell me the way you told the man you married. Tell me that you never really wanted me.’
CHAPTER TEN
THANK goodness, even now she was not sure how she had managed to pack it in, Tara reflected, studying the bulging boot to the car. A quick glance over her shoulder assured her that the twins were playing happily in the garden. Since the day they had run away she had to fight against a tendency to be too over-protective with them.
She had been too keyed up and anxious that morning at James’s house to talk to them, but afterwards when they were all home she had spoken to them both carefully, warning them of some of the risks they had run and reassuring them that the loss of her teapot meant nothing.
Mrs Hammond had been all sympathy. She had brought Tara breakfast in bed, telling her a brief anecdote about her own daughter. ‘And it’s always the silliest little things that lead to upsets,’ she told Tara, plainly aware of the accident to the teapot.
There had been the ordeal of thanking James for his care of the twins to endure, her eyes never moving from the third button of his shirt, her whole body tensed in shame and self-loathing as she tried to blot out memories of the previous night.
‘I suppose it’s no good my warning you that the twins will never accept Saunders as their father?’ was all James said when he had listened to her stumbling speech.
‘Who says they’re going to be asked to?’ Tara fired back, misery giving way to choking anger. ‘The twins have a father,’ she reminded him, ‘and my relationship with Chas is purely my affair.’
‘So you don’t intend to marry him?’
‘Shocked?’ The taunt slipped off her tongue. ‘How very hypocritical of you! At least Chas and I are free to enter into a relationship with one another.’
‘You’ve changed, Tara,’ came the acid response. ‘The Tara I knew would never have settled for anything second-rate—or is it simply that your ability to love completely died with your husband?’ he demanded with a harshness that shocked her.
Tara laughed mirthlessly. How close he was to the truth, but not in the way he imagined.
‘Well?’ he probed bitingly.
‘When I lost the twins’ father I lost almost everything worth having in life,’ Tara told him truthfully. ‘Now, can I go?’
* * *
‘Is it time yet?’
Simon was standing on one leg surveying the car hopefully. Both he and Mandy had been thrilled when Tara told them they were going away on holiday. Too young yet to draw comparisons between the holiday they were having and those enjoyed by their schoolmates, they had talked of nothing else for the last three weeks, and Tara had encouraged them, hoping that in their excitement they could all forget the trauma of the afternoon they had run away. Even now she could not come to terms with the pain of it—they had run away to James! She had explained to them both that Chas was her employer and friend, but nothing more, and there had been a noticeable improvement in Mandy’s manner towards him ever since. In fact the only cloud on the little girl’s horizon was the absence of her beloved ‘Uncle James’. On several occasions she had begged Tara to telephone him, worried because he had not been round to see them, and Tara had explained as gently as she could that James had his own life to live. But now they were off to Dartmoor for a fortnight, and Tara was determined that nothing was going to spoil what amounted to the first proper holiday she and the twins had ever had.
The drive down to the cottage was relatively uneventful. They stopped to eat the packed lunch Tara had prepared, just off the motorway, before resuming their journey, and it was just gone six when at last they turned on to the rutted track leading to the cottage.
It was just as Tara had visualised, one of a pair crouched beneath overhanging eaves, its grey stone walls grizzled with age and smothered in pale cream roses.
A smiling, plump woman in her thirties emerged from the adjoining cottage as Tara followed the twins out of the car.
‘Hi,’ she greeted them, ‘I’m Margaret Burton, your new temporary neighbour. Fancy a cup of tea, or would you prefer to be left alone to settle in?’
Seeing that the twins were already eyeing the large and friendly-looking mongrel dog that had followed Margaret out of her “cottage with interest, Tara accepted.
Over tea she learned that the Burtons had been coming to Dartmoor for several years.
‘Of course now that the kids are growing up they’re beginning to show an interest in more exotic venues—we took them to Paris at Easter and we’re spending a week in Holland later in the year; they’re just reaching that stage where they’re beginning to tire of the beach, so we’re force-feeding them with a little culture.’ She chuckled as she spoke and glanced at the twins before saying warmly, ‘Your two will love it here, I’m sure. It isn’t far to the coast, and there are some wonderful beaches. My husband will be back with our three shortly. They’ve gone into Dartmouth on a shopping spree—we’re here for a month this time and needed to re-provision. Once you’ve settled in we must go out for a drink together one evening. Gill, my eldest, is fourteen and well trained as a baby-sitter, if you fancy the idea.’
By the time Tara got up to leave she felt as though she had made a friend, as had the twins with the Burtons’ family pet, Robot, as the large mongrel was somewhat improbably named.
By the time she had prepared a light meal, discovered how the Calor gas cooker and other equipment worked, and unpacked the car, it was almost time for bed. A quick shower
in the minute but attractive bathroom still damp from the twins’ baths, and her eyes closed the moment her head touched the pillow.
It must be something to do with the country air, Tara decided drowsily the following morning when she opened her eyes to sunshine and bird song. She couldn’t remember when she had last enjoyed such a deep and untroubled sleep. The morning was warm and languorous, and she experienced a feeling of letting go, of relaxing in a way she had not done in years; not since the twins’ birth, she admitted to herself, a little disconcerted to realise how tense she had actually become without knowing it, unaware of each further winding of her already over-stretched nerves until her tension was something she had learned to live with.
The first two days of their holiday were spent exploring their environs. There were plenty of attractive walks close at hand, the twins’ favourite being to the farm, where they went every morning with the Burton children to collect milk and eggs. The farmer who owned the cottages called to check that they had everything they wanted, and warned Tara in a very friendly way about the danger of allowing the children to run free on the moor—something she had no intention of doing, and when he discovered how fascinated Simon was by the farm and its animals he invited them all to spend a morning there.
Simon returned starry-eyed and ecstatic. He had actually been allowed to touch a week-old calf, all wobbly-legged and big-eyed; Mandy had preferred the ponies, sturdy moorland creatures which ran free on the moorland pastures.
On the third day of their holiday Tara packed the twins and their swimming gear into the car and on the Burtons’ suggestion drove to a beach they had recommended as being ideally suited for children.
They saw the sea long before they reached it, unbelievably blue, tiny waves shimmering silver under the clear sky.
The tiny bay—it was really nothing more—was reached by descending steep steps cut into the cliffside, but once reached it more than repaid the effort involved. The cliffs sheltered the bay from the light breeze, heat bouncing off the pale golden sand. Only a dozen or so other families had braved the steps, and Tara was glad to see that the beach was completely free of icecream sellers and the like and completely uncommercialised.
