Now or Never

by Penny Jordan

  ‘Nicki, that’s not true,’ Kit protested.

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ Nicki told him flatly. ‘Maggie came round today,’ she added. ‘I wonder how she would feel if Oliver told her that he’d changed his mind; that he wants her to get rid of his baby…to destroy it, kill it…’

  Her voice had started to rise as her emotions threatened to get out of control, her eyes two dark burning pits of fury in her white face as she pushed back her chair and stood up, confronting him.

  ‘Nicki, stop it,’ Kit demanded. ‘I never said anything like that.’

  ‘Not in so many words, maybe, but you made it plain that you—’

  ‘I simply questioned whether or not we should be having a second child. You said yourself that you hadn’t believed that you were still fertile.’ Kit cut her off. ‘Joey is nine years old now, and to start again with a baby at our age, never mind the financial aspects of having another child…Yes, I was shocked when you told me that you suspected you were pregnant, but I never wanted…’

  ‘You never wanted what? You never wanted me to miscarry? You weren’t relieved when I did? Don’t lie to me, Kit. I saw your face. And don’t touch me either,’ Nicki told him savagely as he took a step towards her, reaching out for her.

  ‘Nicki, please don’t be like this.’ Kit groaned. ‘I can understand how it must make you feel, knowing that Maggie is having a baby, when it’s only a matter of weeks—’

  ‘Sixteen weeks,’ Nicki told him in a low voice. ‘Sixteen weeks and three days, that’s how long I would have been pregnant now, if…Not that you care.’

  As her voice became suspended Kit tried again to take hold of her, to comfort her, but immediately she pushed him away.

  ‘Nicki, Nicki. Of course I care.’

  ‘No, you don’t. You were relieved. Glad! And for all I know you probably wish the same thing had happened to Joey. That way you’d only have your precious daughter—Jennifer’s daughter…’

  Helplessly Kit watched her. He had been shocked when she had told him that she thought she was pregnant, but to accuse him as she was now doing!

  ‘Your daughter is back,’ Nicki informed him tightly as the BMW’s headlights swept the room. ‘Why don’t you take her out to dinner to celebrate with you? After all, no doubt she will benefit far more than either Joey or I will. Who knows, you might even be able to buy your own car for her to borrow.’

  After he had turned on his heel and left her, Nicki leaned her head against the cool wall of the bedroom and put her hand over her mouth to stifle the sound of grief racking her.

  She wasn’t crying. No, this sound she was trying to stifle in the same way she had tried to stifle her grief was the raw, savage sound of an animal in pain, the howl of a mother deprived of her young. It made no difference that she had conceived by accident, that she hadn’t had any plans to have a second child, not at her age. She hadn’t even had a chance—unlike Maggie—to tell anyone other than Kit, to boast about her impending motherhood. She had barely begun to accept that she was actually pregnant when she had lost her baby—the pain was still fiercely elemental.

  When she had realised that she might be starting to miscarry she had fought like a tigress to hold onto her baby—fought and lost. And now here was Maggie, who was incapable of conceiving a child of her own, who had refused to conceive Dan’s child, smugly bragging about the baby she was carrying. Nicki actually felt as though she hated Maggie, as though somehow Maggie’s pregnancy had been the cause of her loss.

  Nicki could feel the pain filling her head, the confusion, the panic, the sick hopelessness. Sometimes she felt that she just did not want to go on living any more. What was the point? But what would happen to Joey if, like Jennifer, she were to die…if anything were to happen to her? Who would look after him? Love and protect him? Maggie was his godmother, but Maggie was going to have her own child. In her mind’s eye Nicki could see Joey, alone, unloved, and it would all be her fault. There was so much danger out there in the world, so much pain, and there was only her here to love and protect him. Since losing her baby, she truly felt as though she could not bear to go on. She had even fantasised about how she might bring her life and her misery to an end. How she could block out for ever her pain—the pain that only she knew. After all Kit didn’t care, did he? Not for her. Not for Joey and certainly not for the poor helpless little life she had lost. But she couldn’t leave Joey behind to suffer, could she…? Which meant…

  ‘Sorry I’m late, Ma,’ Zoë apologised carelessly as Alice opened the door to her. As she smelled the alcohol on her daughter’s breath Alice’s heart sank. She had never been much of a drinker herself and she found it hard to understand this new modern culture that encouraged women to drink as heavily as their male peers.

  When she had tried to express her concern about Zoë to Stuart he had merely shrugged tiredly, telling her, ‘It’s perfectly normal for a woman to drink more than your single glass of dinner wine on special occasions.’

  Maybe it was, but where did one draw the line between drinking that was normal and drinking that was potentially something far more dangerous and destructive?

  When Zoë bent down to pick up George he wriggled in her arms, pulling a face as she tried to kiss him, wrinkling his nose in distaste.

  Irritably Zoë put him down. ‘For God’s sake! All I’ve done is have one drink. Why the hell does everyone have to react as though that’s a major crime? Anyway, for your information,’ she told Alice angrily, ‘it wasn’t my idea to call at the wine bar. I bumped into Laura, and she suggested it,’ she fibbed.

  ‘Laura?’ Alice questioned, frowning. ‘You mean Nicki’s stepdaughter?’

  ‘That’s right. It sounds as though Nicki is giving her a really hard time. Of course she’s always been jealous of the fact that Kit was married to Jennifer and had Laura with her.’

  ‘Zoë, that’s not fair,’ Alice protested.

  ‘Oh, come on, Ma.’ Zoë sighed, rolling her eyes. ‘Mind you, I suppose I might have known you’d rush to defend her. Your precious little circle of girl friends.’ She grimaced. ‘The most important people in your life.’

  ‘Zoë, that’s not true,’ Alice told her sharply. Just how much had Zoë had to drink? she wondered worriedly. Certainly more than the one glass of wine she had claimed to have had.

  Alice was convinced that it was Ian’s influence, Ian’s lifestyle that encouraged her daughter to drink as much as she did.

  ‘No, of course it’s not,’ Zoë agreed cynically. ‘And that’s why you found it more important to go out to dinner with them than to be with your grandsons. Well, you needn’t worry about having to look after them any more, Ma. Laura is going to come and work for me as a live-in child-minder.’

  ‘What?’

  Zoë couldn’t help feeling pleased as she saw the look of shock on her mother’s face.

  ‘Come on, you two,’ Zoë told her sons. ‘Time to go home.’

  ‘Zoë,’ Alice protested.

  ‘Sorry, Ma. I have to go. Laura will be coming round soon. Just for a trial at first, but I’m sure it’s going to work out perfectly. She’s exactly what the boys need. Someone young and energetic to play with them who understands today’s culture. Someone who doesn’t act like the world’s about to come to an end because their mother enjoys a glass of wine!’ she informed Alice smugly.

  As she finished tucking the boys in bed Zoë couldn’t resist giving them both an extra cuddle. She knew Alice believed that Ian had rushed her into marriage and motherhood, but the truth was that she had been the one to plead with him that they should get married, and to overrule him when he had suggested that they should wait a few years before starting their family.

  ‘You’re very young, Zoë, and if you tie yourself down with children now…’

  ‘I want to be tied down,’ Zoë argued, meaning that she wanted to make sure that she had him tied down, to make sure that he would never leave her, that he would be hers for ever. She knew that Ian, for all
his faults, all his egotistical selfishness, would find it hard to desert his children. His own father had walked out on his mother, unable to cope with her behaviour, and Ian had never forgiven him for that.

  ‘We have to get married. I love you too much not to,’ she declared passionately when Ian protested that it was too soon.

  ‘How do you know it’s love?’ He laughed at her.

  ‘I just do,’ she replied, warning him, ‘You’ll regret it if you don’t marry me, Ian.’

  ‘If you’re trying to threaten me—’ he began angrily, but she refused to give in, taunting him with deliberate sexuality.

  ‘You’ll do what? Punish me? Spank me? Tie me to my bed and torture me? Mmm…yes, please,’ she breathed with an exaggerated sigh of pleasure.

  She knew, of course, about his previous track record, the girls he had dated and then broken up with, and Zoë was determined to make sure that that did not happen to her.

  She had wanted Ian the moment she’d set eyes on him; wanted him, desired him, hungered for him with an intensity that she had sensed had made him wary.

  ‘My mother married young. It’s in my genes,’ she told him, adding provocatively, ‘My father was the sexiest man around, just like you. It would be impossible for me not to love you, Ian. I’m pre-programmed to, and there’s nothing you can do about it! Everything my mother did I’ll do, only better! I intend to be everything that she is and more…’

  ‘You make it sound as though you’re in some kind of competition with her,’ Ian mocked her.

  ‘Isn’t every daughter in competition with her mother?’ Zoë countered. For a while she thought she might lose him and that her intensity—something she did not get from Alice—had scared him off!

  Even so, she suspected she would never have been able to persuade him to marry her if it hadn’t been for the sudden spate of marriages amongst his contemporaries, suggesting that he could be in danger of being marooned high and dry in some now totally uncool, lonely bachelor backwater—that and the threat of his unwanted speeding ticket! She knew how vital it was to his continued business success that he was able to drive—his Porsche was his favourite ‘boy toy’ and there was no way he would ever relinquish it and accept being driven by anyone else.

  Even so, she didn’t really expect him to agree. When he did, she went public with the news of their engagement immediately.

  ‘Don’t ever forget that you forced me into this marriage, Zoë,’ he told her on the day of their wedding. ‘Because I certainly won’t!’

  She didn’t take him seriously—not then!

  She looked at her mother, so secure in her father’s love, and decided that the best way to keep Ian was to emulate her. To emulate her and to outdo her. After all, it was a familiar mind-set for her, comfortable and comforting!

  So, like her mother, she ran a perfect home, and was always on hand to entertain Ian’s business associates when he needed her to be. Like her mother, too, although, admittedly, with her mother’s help, she was virtually single-handedly raising their children, but unlike her mother Zoë suspected, she had a deep, hungry craving for her husband, her mate, both emotionally and physically, that never seemed to be appeased.

  It kept her awake at night, gnawing hungrily at her as she lay in bed wondering where he was and who he was with, aching physically for him and yet knowing that even if he was with her, she would still feel hungry and in need, still be consumed by the nagging fear that he did not really love her as much as she loved him, that someone else could come and take his love away from her, usurp her, just as her brothers had taken her mother’s love away from her.

  That was why, unlike her mother, she sometimes liked a drink. It made her feel better, more relaxed, more…more the person she really wanted to be. More laid-back and less needy.

  The phone rang as she closed the door to the boys’ bedroom. The house she had persuaded Ian to buy was in a prestigious setting, larger than her parents’. She was currently trying to convince Ian that it would be a good idea to add an indoor swimming pool. She worked out at an exclusive local country club, but it would be fun to see her mother’s face when she told her that they were going to have their own pool.

  Hurrying into the bedroom downstairs, she picked up the receiver, her heart missing a beat as she recognised the number of Ian’s mobile.

  ‘I was just putting the boys to bed,’ she told him, adding in a husky whisper, ‘I wish you were here to do the same to me…Mmm…I miss you, Ian.’ She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. ‘If I was with you now, do you know what I’d be doing…?’

  ‘Zoë. Cut it out,’ Ian demanded, his curt voice slicing across her carefully rehearsed words. ‘I haven’t got much time. I’m meeting a client for dinner. And what do you mean you’re just putting the boys to bed? Isn’t it a bit late?’

  ‘I was at Ma’s,’ Zoë told him immediately. ‘She was in a bit of a flap, I suppose it must be her age. I think that having the boys is getting a bit much for her. She gives in to them far too much. When I think of how strict she was with me…’

  ‘She gives in to them! Come off it, Zoë! She isn’t the one who sits them in front of the television because she can’t be bothered to spend time with them!’

  Zoë could feel her tension increasing as she tightened her grip on the telephone cable. It was always like this. All she wanted to do was to talk to Ian about them, but whenever she tried to do so he insisted on talking about other things, other people. It reminded her of how she had felt as a child, wanting her father to notice her and pay attention to her, for her to be the first he fussed with and kissed when he came home, and not her mother.

  ‘Oh, by the way, I saw your father today,’ she heard Ian telling her. ‘I took Philip Rowle to lunch at the Blueprint Café, and your father was lunching there at the same time.’

  ‘Ma said that he’d got a meeting in the city,’ Zoë told him uninterestedly.

  ‘A meeting? This looked as though it was something much more intimate than that! In fact he was so engrossed in whatever he was talking about to the woman he was lunching with that he never even noticed me,’ Ian told her derisively.

  ‘Dad was lunching with a woman? How old was she? What did she look like? Who was she?’

  ‘Thirty-something. Stunningly attractive, and I don’t know,’ Ian replied laconically. ‘Look, I must go, otherwise I’m going to be late. Kiss the boys for me…’

  ‘Never mind them. Who’s going to kiss me for you?’ Zoë demanded. She loved the boys, of course she did, but sometimes she couldn’t help wishing that it were just her and Ian, that she were the only person he wanted and needed. ‘Ian…’ she whispered. ‘I wish I was there with you…’

  ‘I’ve got to go.’

  He had hung up before she could say any more. Reluctantly she replaced her own receiver.

  She had still been a student when she had first met him. He had come to the university to address the students’ union, a graduate who was now a high profile and very successful businessman, but it hadn’t been his business skills that had interested Zoë. She had logged the designer suit, of course, and the confidently masculine air that had gone with it, but it had been what she had instinctively known had lain beneath the suit that had interested her.

  Zoë had discovered sex at an age that she knew would have shocked her mother, just as she suspected that her enjoyment of it would have also shocked her, but Zoë did not share that shock. Instead she felt proud of her sexual expertise and the intensity of her sexual appetite.

  After the first excitement of discovering how pleasurable sex could be, she had been choosy about her lovers, and protective of her own sexual health. It had been lust and not love that had driven her until she’d met Ian.

  It was part of her family folklore, the story of how her father had fallen head over heels in love with her mother at first sight, told and retold by Stuart himself as well as Alice’s friends, sending out a subtle message to Zoë’s immature beliefs. In order to vali
date herself as a woman, to be as much of a woman as her mother, she too had needed to receive that gift of a mature, sexy, powerful man’s instant adoration and adulation, and the moment she’d set eyes on Ian she had decided that he was that man.

  During her own school days, her mother had been one of the leading lights of her school’s prestigious debating club, and predictably Zoë had been determined to outdo her. She had become a member of her university’s most prominent club—not a debating club, however, but a notorious all-girl drinking club who had given themselves the name ‘Allez Katz’. It had been considered the height of cool by its members to challenge one another to perform outrageous public displays, their execution normally fuelled by copious amounts of courage-giving and inhibition-weakening alcohol. But Zoë hadn’t needed the taunting dares of her peers to encourage her to make a play for Ian.

  At first all she had known was that she had to have him, that he was exactly the kind of man she’d needed to take home and flaunt in front of her mother: rich, sexy, and with a sexual reputation even more dangerous and far more publicly known than that of her airline pilot father! Ian had been the perfect man to flaunt in front of her mother.

  Then, she had assumed that she would become bored with him as quickly as she had done with the other men she had desired.

  How could she have been so blind—and so wrong?

  It had been easy enough to find out where Ian had been staying, and to get herself into his room so that she’d been waiting there when he’d returned to it, lying naked on his bed, her eyes huge and dark with self-given passion.

  He hadn’t seemed fazed at all to find her there, but neither had he seemed remotely excited by the fact that she’d been lying naked on the bed, her fingers stroking the wet warmth of her sex with lazy insouciance whilst she’d watched him.

  Chillingly it had struck her that he might be gay, but somehow she had known that he was not, which had left her with the shocking and unpalatable discovery that he had simply not been interested in her; that she’d actually not been exciting or arousing him. It had been a situation she had never been in before.