The Loving Gift

by Carole Mortimer

  ‘Only slightly?’ David derided drily.

  Cathy gave him an affectionate punch on the arm. ‘It may be years since I last saw you, but you’re still a dreadful tease!’

  ‘And you’re still as impulsive as ever,’ he mocked. ‘You must have wanted to join Penny and Simon very much to have driven down in that storm last night.’ There was a question in his tone, his gaze piercing.

  ‘Or else I wanted to get away very badly,’ Cathy lightly avoided, not committing herself either way. ‘Now we had better go so that at least Jade can get dressed in peace and quiet.’

  ‘Hm,’ David accepted reluctantly, obviously not satisfied with the arrangement at all. But what else could he do in the circumstances? Jade, by her own behaviour, had made it obvious she had no intention of telling Cathy about their relationship, and he simply wasn’t the type of man to openly claim that relationship without the woman’s permission; especially when in the past Jade had made it so apparent that she would rather there wasn’t a relationship. And her attitude towards him today had given him little encouragement to believe there was a relationship between them!

  “Bye, love.’ Cathy came over to hug her. ‘I’ll see you soon. And don’t you dare leave!’ The last was added in a fierce whisper. ‘We still have so much catching up to do,’ she added loudly as she stepped back.

  Jade searched her friend’s face for any hidden meaning behind those words, wondering if Cathy had picked up on that tangible ‘something’ that there was between David and herself, after all. But Cathy just looked very stern, daring her to go before they had spoken again.

  ‘I’ll call for you at about eight this evening,’ David told her quietly but firmly.

  ‘The party may be cancelled if the weather doesn’t improve,’ she dismissed.

  He shook his head. ‘Even if it’s only the five of us there, plus the children, Penny will want to throw a party for the arrival of her little sister.’

  ‘Not so little,’ Cathy grinned.

  ‘I can see that,’ he teased, receiving another punch on the arm for his trouble.

  Jade sighed, more or less sure in her own mind that she wouldn’t be here by this evening. But she nodded non-committally. ‘I’ll give Penny and Simon a ring as soon as my telephone has been reconnected.’

  She stood at the door as the other couple left, coming back inside as the icy cold wind pierced her brief clothing. But mainly she just didn’t want to watch David drive away from her, probably out of her life completely.

  She turned around sharply as the cottage door opened quietly behind her, unable to stop her cry of joy as she saw it was David returned. Just as she was unable to stop herself running into his waiting arms…

  ‘I know you didn’t want to see me today,’ he spoke warmly into the thickness of her hair. ‘But when I discovered your telephone was out of action I was worried about you. Don’t be angry with me for being concerned, Jade,’ he groaned.

  How could she be angry with him? She loved him, knew it beyond a single doubt.

  ‘Jade?’ He looked down at her pleadingly, his eyes dark with the same emotion as was in her heart.

  ‘I’m not angry with you.’ She shook her head, gazing up at him. ‘Kiss me. And then you’ll have to go, before Cathy becomes curious about your delay and decides to investigate.’

  His mouth twisted. ‘I told her I’d forgotten to relate some message from Penny. God, I missed being with you last night!’ he added raggedly. ‘Jade—oh God, Jade, I—’

  Her fingertips over his lips stopped further talk; she couldn’t bear to actually hear his emotions put into words. Because they too closely resembled her own. And there was no future for them together.

  Only now. This moment. And she put all of the depth of her feelings into the kiss they shared, clinging to him unashamedly as their lips parted and they just held each other, neither needing anything else but that closeness for the moment.

  ‘If only Cathy weren’t outside,’ David shakily murmured his longing.

  ‘But she is,’ Jade smiled gently. ‘Drive back carefully.’ My darling, she didn’t add, but wished she dared. For he was. Her darling. In a matter of days he had become the most important part of her life. In a matter of days? More like a matter of minutes! For that was all the time it had taken, she felt sure, for David to find his way into her heart.

  He looked down at her darkly. ‘Let me stay with you when I bring you back tonight?’

  Tonight…

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed breathlessly, knowing it was a promise she would never keep. Because by tonight she would have gone.

  The apartment looked more unwelcoming than usual, just four walls that succeeded in assuring her privacy, with no fire burning warmly in the hearth, because there wasn’t a fireplace. Oh, the flat was comfortable enough, with its central heating, but it lacked any real warmth.

  Wellington definitely wasn’t impressed with it, just as he wasn’t impressed with the fact that he couldn’t go outside to investigate his surroundings, totally disgusted with the cat-tray she had managed to provide for him.

  ‘It won’t be for long, boy,’ Jade assured him distractedly. ‘Just until I can find somewhere more comfortable.’

  His expression of disgust didn’t change, and Jade knew she was going to have more than a little trouble with him in the near future.

  Not that any of today had been easy, least of all finding a hire-car company that could provide her with a four-wheel-drive vehicle at such short notice. She had only managed to do so in the end because the company had received a cancellation from someone who had considered the road conditions too unsafe to drive on even in such a heavy vehicle. She had had to leave poor Cleo at a local garage, promising to collect her when the weather cleared if they would service her for her. Not that the car needed servicing, but it had given her a legitimate excuse to ask them to hold on to it for her.

  So here she was, back in London, in a flat that seemed more lonely than it usually did, and even this was only a temporary stop, any further escape limited because of Wellington’s presence. But, as Cathy had pointed out, she couldn’t even think about not bringing the cat with her. As soon as she could find somewhere else, out of London preferably, for them to stay, they would be moving on.

  When the knock first sounded on the door she thought there had to be some sort of mistake; she had been away from the flat for months, so who on earth could be calling on her tonight of all nights? She knew very few people in London anyway, certainly no one who could know she was back here—

  ‘Open this door, Jade, I know damn well you’re in there,’ Cathy suddenly called angrily through the door.

  Cathy. She should have known her friend wouldn’t let the situation rest with her departure. What did she do now? If she refused to acknowledge her, she didn’t doubt for a moment that Cathy would persist until she did. But she simply wasn’t sure she was up to the verbal chastisement if she did open the door.

  ‘Wellington’s pleased to hear me, even if you aren’t,’ Cathy pointed out drily.

  The silly cat was meowing at the door as if he had found a long-lost friend! And maybe he thought he had; Cathy had certainly been present when he was in that other, more comfortable world, at the cottage. A life he obviously wanted to return to.

  Cathy marched straight by her into the flat once Jade had unlocked the door for her, her grey eyes blazing. ‘How could you?’ she attacked furiously. ‘How could you just up and leave like that? Poor David is devastated. And don’t try to deny that the poor man’s in love with you, because we both know that he is. God, I must have been so blind not to have seen that this morning,’ she said self-disgustedly. ‘But little old innocent me accepted completely that he had driven over because Pen and Simon were worried about you—until David fell apart when he got to the cottage and found you had packed up and left! That was cruel, Jade, so damned cruel.’ She shook her head disappointedly.

  ‘That was cruel?’ she echoed shakily, knowing how de
vastated she had been by having to pack up and leave, feeling that wrenching pain again as she heard about David’s heartache. ‘How much crueller would it have been to have stayed and involved him in the mess I’ve made of my life?’

  ‘You didn’t make it—’

  ‘Does it really matter who made it so?’ Jade said wearily. ‘The facts are that it is.’

  ‘You could try telling David the truth,’ Cathy challenged. ‘He would have understood, I’m sure of it. Penny says he’s in love with you—if I needed any additional proof after he got back from the cottage,’ she said raggedly.

  Yes, she knew David was in love with her now, as she was in love with him, but how long would that love survive, how long after he was told the truth would he begin to have doubts and believe what the police, her family, and almost everyone else in the country had believed so easily eighteen months ago—that she had been involved with Peter in the Marshall kidnapping, in the abduction of a defenceless five-year-old girl for the money they would receive in exchange for her release… ?

  CHAPTER NINE

  IT HADN’T been true, of course, none of it. But, despite the fact that she had never been officially charged with the crime, she had always felt guilty. The evidence against her had been so great…

  She was Selina Marshall’s form teacher, one of the five teachers in charge of the pupils that day they went to the beach on a trip, she was engaged to marry the man who had eventually been proven to have planned the crime, had even, unwittingly though it may have been, provided Peter with all the details of their movements that day, having believed he was taking an interest for her sake.

  She had been a fool ever to believe Peter’s interest in her was genuine, had often wondered at her luck in attracting such a handsome man when she was so obviously overweight, wore heavy-rimmed glasses, and had hair such a deep shade of red that she tried to keep it hidden as much as possible by pulling it back in a bun at her nape. It had even been summer when they’d met, and she had been covered in freckles! But Peter had assured her he found everything about her delightful, even the freckles.

  She still cringed at how gullible she had been: an overripe plum ripe for the picking—or in this case, fooling!

  With hindsight, she was able to see that even that very first meeting between them had been engineered by Peter when he ‘accidentally’ gave Cleo a gentle knock on the bumper which necessitated an exchange of addresses. Even then Peter hadn’t rushed things, simply making sure the minor damage to Cleo was repaired. Then they had met in town one day, another ‘accident’, Jade had thought, as they fell easily into conversation, shyly accepting when he had offered to buy her a cup of coffee. That had been the beginning of the relationship that had shattered her life.

  She had been a fool, and that was the only crime she had really been guilty of, and Peter, with his handsome, blond-haired, blue-eyed good looks, had known exactly how to flatter her and convince her that he found her utterly irresistible.

  How could she have guessed that he had an ulterior motive for becoming close to her, that it was imperative to his plans that he gain the confidence of Selina Marshall’s teacher? God, she could have been a sixty-year-old spinster, and his plans would still have been the same!

  As it was, Jade had been flattered by Peter’s interest, had accepted when the coffee together led to a dinner invitation.

  It had been the first of many dates they had had, and for over two months Jade had lived in a euphoria of believing her love was returned. They had even become engaged, her ring of tiny diamonds surrounding an emerald that Peter claimed matched the colour of her eyes.

  How could she have known, how could she have even guessed, that it was all because Peter was looking for a chink in the security that always surrounded all of the Marshall family, but their only child in particular?

  And she had unknowingly provided him with that chink, had blithely told him of the visit of the lower three classes at the school to the beach for the day, giving him the opening he had so patiently waited for.

  Even once Peter and his associates had Selina he hadn’t left Jade’s life, had even been the one to comfort her during the next two days while the kidnappers made their demands and waited for them to be met. He wasn’t taking any chances on not being completely informed, and he knew, because of her love for him, that Jade had every reason to confide in him!

  The only thing she could say to his credit was that Selina had been returned to her parents once the ransom money had been paid over, physically unharmed, at least. Mentally it was another matter, the little girl suffering with nightmares, giving every reason to suppose that she would suffer the mental torment of what had happened to her for the rest of her life.

  And still Peter had stayed on. To do anything else would have looked too suspicious. His idea had been to break their engagement and disappear from her life after a decent interval had elapsed since the kidnapping.

  So he had stayed on, helping Jade through the trauma of what had happened to one of her pupils, discussing wedding plans with her just as if he actually intended to go through with the spring wedding.

  She had received the shock of her life when the police began to requestion her before moving on to Peter. They had claimed it was ‘routine’, but they kept coming back again and again, until finally Peter had cracked under the strain and tried to get away from the country with the ransom money.

  In the midst of the pained shock of realising the man she loved had committed such a heinous crime, Jade had had to stand by while he told her—and the rest of the world!—that she had merely been a means to an end, a gullible convenience he hadn’t hesitated in exploiting.

  In the eyes of the law his testimony had cleared her of any guilt, but in the eyes of the general public it had been something else entirely. The fact that Peter had stood in a court of law and denounced her for the simple fool she had been didn’t mean anything to them, and Jade had had to face their stares and speculation. No one had asked for her resignation, but she had tendered it just the same, knowing she had become an embarrassment to all concerned.

  Her family had stood by her through it all, and she had turned to them as her salvation once she didn’t even have a job, moving back home with her parents. Until she realised that her parents had stopped going out to see friends, and that no one came to see them at the house either. When her father had his heart attack she had known she had to leave, that she was as responsible for that as much as she was for Peter’s success in kidnapping Selina. And so she had left her parents’ house, and she hadn’t told them where she was going, either, sure they would be able to put their lives back together if they no longer had her for a daughter. Maybe it was self-pity that made her do such a thing, but she just hadn’t known what else to do.

  For over a year she had lived alone in London, surviving off the money she had managed to save in the years before she left her job, Cathy her only visitor; she had not even bothered to look for other employment, even though there was nothing except her own guilty feelings to stop her from doing so. She felt too sickened with herself, with her stupidity, to face the outside world again.

  It had been Cathy who had finally pushed her out to face that world, arranging for the temporary job at Simon and Penny’s school, the other couple also of the opinion that she didn’t have to suffer for the rest of her life when she was completely innocent of doing anything wrong except for falling in love with the wrong man.

  And now she was in love with the right man, a gentle, beautiful man, who she wouldn’t drag back down with her. Because she was about to go down again, would never be free of Peter and the guilt he had brought into her life.

  ‘Yes, perhaps you’re right and he would understand,’ she answered Cathy bitterly. ‘But he’s already known so much unhappiness in his life; I have no intention of adding to it.’

  ‘You make him happy,’ her friend protested. ‘Penny told me all about the way you first met, about his claim that he’s going to marry
you—’

  ‘None of that matters now, Cathy.’ She shook her head, doing all that she could to block the memories from her mind. ‘David loves children, would make a wonderful father himself; how could he ever accept the pain I unwittingly caused an innocent child?’

  ‘The key word in that statement is “unwittingly”,’ Cathy pointed out firmly. ‘You had no idea what was going on. Anyone who really knows you would realise that.’

  Her parents had ‘really known her’, and yet, before she left, before her father had his heart attack, she had sensed them watching her whenever they thought she wasn’t aware of it, had felt their doubts. And they had known and loved her all her life, so what chance did David have of coming through what had happened in her past with his feelings unscathed? She couldn’t bear to see that disillusionment in his eyes.

  ‘Possibly,’ she answered non-committally. ‘But the doubt would always be there, festering, growing, until it utterly destroyed the love.’ She knew; hadn’t she watched it happen with her own parents? They loved her, she had never doubted that, but even they couldn’t help the doubt that had crept in unwanted… ‘How happy would I make him then, Cathy?’ she said harshly, knowing she had to be strong now for both David’s and her own sake. She just had to!

  ‘You’re underestimating him, Jade—’

  ‘No, I’m trying to protect him!’ she defended fiercely, her eyes dark.

  ‘Oh, Jade.’ Cathy’s face was full of compassion. ‘You love him so much, too.’

  ‘I—’ She broke off, shaking her head against the denial she had been about to make. ‘Yes, I love him,’ she admitted in a controlled voice. ‘And no one can take that away from me.’

  ‘Oh, love.’ Cathy’s arms came about her to hug her tightly.

  Jade’s control shattered, the tight hold she had maintained over her emotions since leaving Devon this morning completely gone as she sobbed out her utter despair.