Marriage Make-Up & an Heir to Bind Them

by Penny Jordan

  He’d been a fool, he acknowledged in self-derision, and not for the first time either. Last night he might have rekindled Abbie’s desire for him, and her memories of how good their loving had once been, but this morning it was a very different set of memories he had evoked within her. This morning it was the pain he had caused her that was to the forefront of her mind, and not the pleasure they had once shared.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ‘WELL, you’re a dark horse, aren’t you?’ Abbie winced as she heard the teasing note in Fran’s voice. Her friend had telephoned a few seconds earlier, quite obviously having heard the news about Sam spending the night with her, and Abbie was glad that he had disappeared on business of his own and wasn’t here to witness her flushed face and tear-filled eyes as Fran continued.

  ‘Not that I’m totally surprised. Despite all your protests over the years I’ve always had a secret suspicion that a part of you still loved him. After all, the pair of you were so very, very much in love, and when you think about it it would have been impossible for those feelings to have been totally destroyed. It must have been so romantic, though, the two of you getting back together again… Just like being young again, only even better…

  ‘Not that I’d be much good at romance a second time around—not with my cellulite and stretch marks,’ Fran added ruefully. ‘But you’re more fortunate; you’ve still got a fabulous figure and—’

  ‘A good figure or the lack of it doesn’t have anything to do with having a good sex life,’ Abbie felt bound to point out to her.

  ‘No, maybe not, but it certainly helps banish a few of one’s unwanted inhibitions,’ Fran chuckled, adding forthrightly, ‘Let’s put it this way, I’d be far more interested in indulging in some playful bedroom gymnastics if I wasn’t so hung up about my fat, wobbly bits. If you want my opinion, that’s the advantage that a twenty-year-old really has over a forty-year-old. She can do it in any position she likes without worrying about her partner going into terminal shock at the sight of her unclothed body. Everything stays where it should, whereas at our age…’

  ‘We’re in our forties, not our eighties, Fran,’ Abbie reminded her dryly.

  ‘So it was good, then?’ Fran slipped in slyly. ‘Only, according to what I’ve heard, when Cathy discovered the pair of you in bed together, you looked so exhausted you could barely summon the energy to lift your head off the pillow, and Sam looked like he was the first man to walk on the moon—’

  ‘That wasn’t exhaustion; that was embarrassment,’ Abbie interrupted her forcefully, and then asked in a small voice, ‘Where did you hear that—about Sam, I mean…?’

  ‘In the supermarket,’ Fran confessed cheerfully. ‘You know that plump, pretty girl with the ponytail? Well, she told me…’

  ‘Lesley,’ Abbie supplied wrathfully. ‘She’s one of my temps. I’ll kill her…’

  ‘Why kill the messenger?’ Fran quipped, and then added teasingly, ‘And why feel embarrassed? I’ll bet Sam isn’t. I’ll bet he—’

  Quickly Abbie cut Fran off, fibbing untruthfully. ‘Look. I’ve got to go.’

  When she replaced the receiver Abbie was literally shaking, trembling physically with a mixture of anger and embarrassment—both emotions compounded by her feeling of the loss of any power to control what was happening to her, both internally and externally.

  Fran’s wasn’t the only telephone call Abbie received from people plainly curious to discover what was going on. By mid-afternoon she had had enough, and was just about to take the phone off the hook when Cathy rang.

  ‘Mum, at last—I’ve been trying to ring you for ages,’ Cathy complained, but before Abbie could inform her just why she had not been able to get through, or take issue with her about the fact that so many people now seemed to have heard about her and Sam’s ‘reconciliation’, Cathy continued excitedly, ‘Stuart and I are going to see the house again, and we want you to come with us.

  ‘The kitchen is a bit on the dark side,’ Cathy confided, ‘and I think it would look much better if we extended it and added on a small breakfast area-cum-conservatory, like you’ve done, but Stuart’s worried that it might be too expensive. I’ve been telling him how much it would add to the value of the house. Oh, Mum, I’m dying for you to see it,’ Cathy enthused. ‘It’s got so much potential.’

  Abbie felt her original anger melting away as she listened to the warm excitement in Cathy’s voice.

  ‘I’d love to come with you,’ she accepted. ‘But I was just on my way to have a shower and get changed and I don’t want to hold you up. Would it be easier for you if I met you there?’

  ‘No, it’s not a problem,’ Cathy reassured her. ‘We’ve got to go to the agent first anyway, to collect the keys, so we can call for you on the way back if that’s okay.’

  ‘Perfect,’ Abbie confirmed.

  * * *

  All right, so Cathy had been rather thoughtless in the way she had broadcast the fact that she and Sam were supposedly back together again, but it was good to hear that special note of happiness in her daughter’s voice and to share that special mother-daughter closeness with her, Abbie admitted ten minutes later as she stood under the shower, washing the foamy soap from her skin.

  She had just stepped out of the shower and wrapped herself in a towel when she heard the kitchen door open.

  ‘You can come up,’ she called out. ‘I’m almost ready.’ Drying herself quickly, she discarded the towel and opened her dressing-table drawer to remove some clean underwear. She had just pulled on her briefs when she heard a tap on her bedroom door.

  The small sound startled her a little. Cathy never normally knocked—just another indication of the fact that her daughter was growing up, and away from her!

  ‘Come in, darling, there’s no need to knock,’ Abbie protested automatically.

  Only it wasn’t Cathy who pushed open the bedroom door and stood there surveying her seminude body and tangled hair. It was Sam.

  Instinctively and ridiculously Abbie found that she was crossing her arms protectively over her bare breasts, her face, her whole body flushing betrayingly as she demanded shakily, ‘What are you doing here? Where’s Cathy?’

  ‘She and Stuart have gone straight to the cottage; she asked me to come and pick you up. She was concerned that Stuart’s parents might be there ahead of them, and she didn’t want to keep them waiting.’

  All the pleasure she had initially felt at the prospect of seeing the cottage faded as Abbie realised that it wasn’t just Cathy, Stuart and herself who were going to see it.

  ‘What do you mean? Cathy never said anything about anyone else going to see the house,’ she protested. ‘I thought it was just going to be us… me…’ Even before she saw the unwanted compassion in Sam’s eyes, Abbie knew that her voice and her face had both betrayed her feelings.

  ‘I suspect that that was initially what Cathy intended,’ Sam told her tactfully. ‘But you know how these things escalate…’

  ‘Oh, yes, I know,’ Abbie agreed painfully. ‘Oh, there’s no need for you to look at me like that…I don’t need you to feel sorry for me, Sam,’ she told him angrily, adding abruptly, ‘I’ve changed my mind about…about seeing the house. Please tell Cathy that I’ll give her a ring and arrange to see it some other time.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’ As she repeated his calm, measured refusal to carry her message to Cathy, Abbie stared at him in angry confusion.

  ‘You can’t not go, Abbie,’ she heard Sam informing her gently. ‘Cathy wants you to be there; she’s longing for you to see the house. She might be an adult but she still needs your love and approval.’

  ‘Does she?’ Abbie said bitterly. ‘How do you know? Did Cathy say so to you?’

  ‘She didn’t need to,’ Sam told her quietly. ‘It’s obvious to me how much you mean to her.’

  ‘Is it? Well, it certainly isn’t obvious to me, but then I was forgetting that as Cathy’s father you no doubt have an insight into her thoughts and feeli
ngs denied to me.’

  Even before she saw the swiftly hidden shocked compassion in Sam’s eyes and heard his quiet, ‘Abbie, what is it? What’s wrong?’ Abbie was cursing her betraying tongue, but it was too late.

  Sam was already crossing the space between them, taking hold of her shoulders—her naked shoulders, Abbie realised as she tensed her body and dropped her hands to push him away. But her action came just seconds too late and she could already feel the warmth of his body through the cotton of the shirt he was wearing brushing against her naked breasts, sensitising her skin, which was already far, far too sensitive to the promise of the warm, male hardness of the body it could sense beneath the soft fabric of his shirt.

  Abbie froze, afraid to move away from him, knowing that doing so would reveal to Sam the betraying hardness of her nipples. What was happening to her? Why on earth was she reacting to him like this? Why was her body remembering the physical intimacy between them as though it had been something special, something magical, something rare and to be treasured, when her brain had already told it over and over again that all it had been was mere physical lust?

  ‘I’ve always had a secret suspicion that a part of you still loved him,’ Fran had told her.

  The panic she had felt on waking up in the morning and finding Sam in bed beside her returned. She remembered how it had felt to be back in his arms and knew that no matter how much she fought to deny it it was not just her body that had responded to him, and this time there was no avoiding the message it carried with it.

  How could she still love Sam after what he had done, after the way he had hurt her? Had she no sense of self-preservation? Was it truly possible to separate the man from his crime? To love him whilst loathing what he had done and out of that love to…to what…? To forgive him? To go on loving him?

  It was just sex. Just sex, that was all, Abbie told herself frantically. It wasn’t possible for her still to love Sam. She didn’t want to still love him, because if she did…if she did… Her body started to tremble, Sam’s gentle restraining hold on her forgotten as the depth and intensity of her anguished thoughts and emotions claimed her. She could not still love Sam, she denied wretchedly, her body trembling in agitation, because if she did he would hurt her again, and this time…this time…

  Before she’d had her youth and her need to protect her child on her side as her allies; now she had neither. Now she was too vulnerable.

  ‘Abbie…Abbie, it’s all right,’ she heard Sam saying softly to her as he gathered her closer to his body, wrapping his arms around her as though… as though he wanted to hold her…as though he wanted to protect her…as though he actually cared about her and for her—which was totally impossible, Abbie reminded herself dizzily as she gave in to the temptation to let him hold and comfort her.

  ‘I do understand how you feel…what you’re going through, believe me,’ she heard him telling her. ‘Of course you feel hurt, angry…resentful—wary of Stuart’s mother’s influence over Cathy; but you’re wrong to think that Cathy doesn’t need you…that she doesn’t value you.’

  It was Cathy who he thought was responsible for her physical weakness, her vulnerability, Abbie recognised. He hadn’t realised the effect that he was having on her, and she obviously couldn’t possibly be having the same effect on him, she acknowledged wryly, otherwise there was no way he could continue to hold her virtually nude body in his arms without…without…

  She gave a small swallow as she acknowledged the direction her thoughts, her desires were taking, knowing despairingly that if he were to close that small gap between their lower bodies and draw her even closer to him, if he were to slide his hands down over her naked back and kiss the exposed side of her throat, if he were to pick her up and carry her over to her bed, the bed they had shared only so very, very recently…

  Thoroughly shaken by what she was experiencing, Abbie took a firm hold of her thoughts.

  ‘Does she?’ she questioned Sam quietly, forcing herself to look directly at him. ‘Does she really value me, Sam? Would she continue to value me, do you think, if she knew the truth about what happened between us?’ she asked him bitterly.

  ‘You’re not being fair to yourself, or to me,’ Sam told her. ‘What we had…what we did…’ He frowned and looked away from her face. As she followed his sombre gaze Abbie saw him focusing briefly on her bare breasts and heard his indrawn breath, as though he hadn’t actually realised until now that she was virtually naked.

  ‘I can’t go to the cottage. I can’t go there knowing that she’ll have told Stuart’s parents, Stuart’s mother about us…knowing what they’ll be thinking.’ Abbie panicked.

  ‘Would you rather have them thinking about why we’re not there?’ Sam asked her throatily.

  Abbie stared at him, frowning slightly, not understanding. He was, she recognised, quite definitely looking at her body now, and he was aware of it as well. He didn’t, after all, need to close the gap between them for her to be aware of his arousal.

  Men were so different from women in that way—able to be physically aroused by women they neither liked nor really wanted. Sam’s physical arousal now was simply a male reaction to the sight of an unclad female body, she reminded herself; there was nothing personal about it. Nothing personal about the way his face was slightly flushed and his voice had dropped to a husky purr of male warmth.

  ‘If we don’t turn up at the cottage now they’re all going to think it’s because we can’t bear to tear ourselves away from our rediscovery of each other.’

  ‘You’re mad, they’ll think we’re…we’re…’

  ‘Making love,’ Sam supplied softly for her.

  ‘We can’t let them think that,’ Abbie protested, panicking. ‘I must get dressed…’

  As she looked wildly towards the bed, and the bra and dress laid out on it, Sam followed her gaze.

  ‘Don’t bother with the bra,’ he told her softly. ‘Just put on the dress; it will be quicker.’

  ‘Quicker?’ Abbie stared at him. She couldn’t remember the last time she had neglected to wear her underwear. Her face suddenly flushed betrayingly. Yes, she could, and it had been at Sam’s suggestion then, as it was now—although for far different reasons. Then her breasts had been firm and pert enough to get away with such behaviour, even if she had felt self-conscious. Now…

  ‘I…I couldn’t,’ she started to protest, but Sam had released her and was walking over to the bed, picking up her dress. It was calf-length, a very respectable polished cotton frock in black, with a small cream motif and a row of tiny buttons all the way down the front. It was a dress she frequently wore for less formal business meetings—smart enough for her to look professional without appearing too intimidating. And she had certainly never ever—until she saw the way Sam was holding it, looking at those tiny buttons—envisaged it as being an outfit which possessed the least degree of sexual provocativeness.

  ‘Everyone will know,’ she protested, but her voice was a mere whisper of sound and she was already walking towards Sam, taking the dress from him and putting it on, instinctively turning her back to him as she tried to fasten the tiny buttons.

  ‘No, they won’t,’ Sam reassured her, coming round to stand in front of her and pushing her shaking fingers out of the way whilst he completed the task for her.

  Was it her imagination or did his fingers really linger over those few buttons whilst he closed the dress over her breasts?

  ‘But you’ll know,’ Abbie protested, her voice registering her bewilderment that she could behave in such a way, that she could so tamely and easily give in to what he was suggesting.

  ‘Oh, yes, I’ll know,’ Sam agreed, and this time she was certainly not imagining it as he gently ran the pad of his thumb over one erect nipple and then bent to kiss the bared valley between her breasts before he finished closing all the buttons.

  At least the cream jacket she habitually wore over the dress gave her some degree of additional protection and concealment, Abbie
reflected as she slipped on her shoes and hurried out of the bedroom. And with any luck Cathy and the others might have got so tired of waiting for them that they would have gone!

  Only of course they had not. They were still there. And Stuart’s mother, frowning over the blowsy untidiness of the cottage’s garden, was predictably the first to see them as they arrived. The smile with which she welcomed Sam was markedly warmer than the smile with which she welcomed her, Abbie noticed as she resolutely tried to hide her own feelings and display a warmth towards the other woman which she found it hard to genuinely feel.

  At the most there couldn’t be more than twelve or so years between them, Abbie reflected, but Stuart’s mother always made her feel more like a naughty schoolgirl than a responsible fellow adult.

  ‘I was so glad to hear Cathy’s news—that you and her father have managed to resolve your… problems,’ she told Abbie in a confidential whisper as Sam turned aside to talk with Stuart’s father. ‘I know, of course, that separation and even divorce are quite the norm these days, but when it comes to an occasion such as a wedding one is always conscious of the problems they can give rise to.

  ‘Are you actually planning to remarry before Stuart and Catherine?’ she asked. ‘I expect you will be going together anyway,’ she went on, whilst Abbie stared at her in a speechless mixture of anger and shock. ‘It will look so much better on the invitations, won’t it?’ she was continuing, apparently oblivious of the pink flags of temper flying warningly in Abbie’s otherwise pale face.

  ‘Catherine tells me that she’s considering having the wedding breakfast at Ladybower. It is a delightful venue, although personally I always think there’s something so much more personal about a wedding breakfast held in one’s own grounds.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ Abbie managed to grate out between gritted teeth. ‘But unfortunately the “grounds” surrounding my home—’ Out of the corner of her eye Abbie could see Cathy, who had come to join Sam and Stuart’s father, biting down hard on her lip and looking anxious, and so, instead of completing the defensively sardonic comment she had started to utter, Abbie reminded herself that her daughter’s happiness was a far more important thing than her own pride and said quietly instead, ‘The cottage garden is far too small to hold a marquee, unfortunately. Have you seen round the house yet?’ she asked, making a heroic effort to be pleasant and avoid any contentious issues.