Now or Never

by Penny Jordan

  She was halfway down the main street when she saw Dan walking towards her, and for a second the shocking sense of déjà vu that overwhelmed her rocked her to a standstill.

  ‘Dan!’ As she breathed his name she felt a fierce gust of intense happiness and excitement flood over her, and suddenly she was twenty again, and deep in the throes of her first sexual and emotional fantasy love.

  ‘Nicki!’ Dan’s face creased into a warm smile as he saw her. He had dated her a couple of times before he had met Maggie, more as a friend than a potential lover. He had enjoyed her company and her friendship, and he was delighted to see her now.

  ‘You’re back,’ Nicki whispered. She was trembling, dizzy…unable to stop looking at him.

  All those years ago she had considered him to be the sexiest, most dangerous man she knew, and there was still that unmistakable air of raw maleness about him now, she recognised, even though his once dark hair was now tinged attractively with grey. Tinged with grey, but still thick, she acknowledged.

  Kit was tall, but Dan was that little bit taller, that little bit broader, giving off a certain male something that said subtly that his body would be heavily muscled, powerfully male, that he was still very much a man in the prime of his life. No wonder the two young thirty-something women who had just walked past had paused to give him a quick once-over, Nicki decided jealously.

  ‘I certainly am,’ Dan agreed warmly. ‘Something happened after New York—I don’t know what. I just know that suddenly making money or rather making more money no longer seemed as important as it had done. I felt I wanted to come home. So here I am, looking for somewhere to live and something to do. Here, take my card so you know where to get hold of me.

  ‘Nothing seems to have changed. Looking round here today, it’s hard to believe I’ve been away for over ten years. Especially when I look at you, Nicki,’ he told her with another smile.

  He had meant the words as a semi-teasing compliment, but to his consternation Nicki’s eyes suddenly filled with tears, her face becoming pinched and pale.

  ‘Nicki!’ He felt both concerned and embarrassed, unsure of what to do or say, unsure of what was happening.

  ‘You’re wrong, Dan,’ Nicki told him passionately. ‘Things have changed. Everything has changed!’

  There was a look in her eyes that disturbed him, an inward-looking darkness that his instincts told him wasn’t good.

  ‘I…I have to go,’ Nicki told him. ‘I was just on my way to pick up my son, Joey.’

  ‘Your son?’

  ‘Yes. He was born not long after you left.’

  Dan felt as though she was waiting for him to make some comment, to compliment her perhaps, and tell her that motherhood suited her, but the words stuck in his throat because the truth was that it didn’t, or rather something didn’t. She looked pale and strained, haunted somehow.

  ‘How is everyone else?’ he asked her instead. ‘The others…Maggie?’ He said her name quickly, afraid to let the taste of it lie too long on his tongue, glad to have shaped and ejected it before he gave too much away.

  ‘Maggie?’ Nicki could almost taste her own bitterness and resentment. ‘She’s fine,’ she told him in a brittle voice. ‘In fact, she’s more than fine. She’s blooming, as they say.’

  ‘Blooming?’ Dan focused sharply on her.

  ‘Yes,’ Nicki told him flatly. ‘Maggie is pregnant! Not so much a miracle of nature as a miracle of modern science!’ she added bitterly, darkly. ‘Maggie has a younger lover, and she is desperate to give him a child. I must go, Dan.’ She broke off as she heard the church clock chiming. ‘I mustn’t be late to collect Joey.’

  The panic that thought caused swamped her bitterness about Maggie. Her heart jerked painfully against the string on which it was being jerked by her inner tormentor, the unseen enemy that had somehow taken up residence inside her.

  Silently Dan let her go. Maggie was pregnant. Maggie had a younger lover. Maggie…

  Laura frowned as she drove past Joey’s school and saw her young half-brother standing outside.

  Laura planned to use some of her savings to buy a car, but in the meantime Zoë had had Laura’s name added to her own car insurance, or rather her husband Ian’s PA had, and Laura had insisted on taking a solo drive in the car to make sure that she was familiar with its controls and felt confident driving it before she agreed to take the children as passengers. Now she was on her way back to the house, having called at the supermarket to pick up some shopping for Zoë.

  She might only have been working for Zoë for a couple of days, and she might have taken the job on impulse rather than because she actually needed it, but already Laura could see that it was not going to be a sinecure.

  Her friends in London would no doubt be amused if they could see her. Laura, the high-flyer whose goal was to run her own business, working as a glorified au pair! But it was still preferable to her other options, which were either living with Nicki or going back to London and risking giving in to Ryan.

  Ryan! Just thinking about him turned her belly liquid and made her ache so much that she was grinding her teeth together.

  It appalled her that, despite the fact that they had barely touched, never mind actually had sex, she could want him as intensely as she did. And she did want him! God, but she wanted him…wanted him…wanted the strong, hot feel of him inside her, the sharp, savage, sexual bite of his teeth against her skin, the rough male touch of his hands against her body, the hot, urgent feel of him inside her, filling her, stretching her, making her…

  Laura groaned, glad that the car was an automatic as her body reacted fiercely to the sexuality of her thoughts. As she checked her rear-view mirror she realised that Joey was still standing on the footpath.

  Laura frowned. Nicki was ferociously protective of her son, and if, as Laura suspected, it was her own father who was responsible for picking him up and who had not made it in time, Nicki would make her displeasure very apparent.

  Laura felt almost as protective of her father as Nicki did of her son, especially since she had returned home and seen the way that Nicki was treating him. More as though he were an office junior she felt able to harry and bully than her husband, the man she was supposed to love. The man she had claimed she loved so much that she had crawled into his bed, in the house he shared with her own mother and…

  Laura grimaced as she brought the car to an abrupt halt and then reversed it a little too fast. Joey was not her responsibility, she reminded herself as she switched off the engine and got out.

  The relief in his eyes as he saw her gave her a tiny little ache. He was extraordinarily like her father to look at, and almost too sweet-natured, in that way that young boys had before life and their peers hardened them. For a moment Laura had a ridiculous urge to gather him up in her arms, this child brother who was, after all, related to her by blood, flesh of her own father’s flesh.

  He looked far too vulnerable standing there on his own, potential prey to heaven alone knew what kind of lunatics and perverts who might be around.

  ‘Laura.’ She could hear the tiny betraying crack of relief in his voice as he started to hurry towards her. ‘That’s not our car,’ he told her.

  ‘No,’ Laura agreed.

  Nicki saw the car—a strange car—as she drove up, parking hers awkwardly and getting out, frantic with anxiety as she saw the woman bending towards her precious son, and not realising that it was Laura until her stepdaughter suddenly straightened up and reached out as though…

  ‘Don’t you dare touch him!’ Nicki screamed as she flung herself between her son and her stepdaughter. ‘Don’t you dare, dare touch my son!’

  Laura recoiled with shock as she heard the high-pitched hysteria in Nicki’s voice and saw the vitriol in her eyes. She hadn’t heard Nicki arrive and had been trying to reassure Joey, who was obviously distressed, and Nicki’s furious outburst had caught her off guard.

  Joey had started to shiver, as though he, too, was shocked by his
mother’s behaviour, but Nicki predictably seemed to think that it was Laura who had upset him, dragging him even closer to her side as she hissed at Laura, ‘Keep away from Joey, Laura. Just leave him alone.’

  And then she was hurrying him away, without giving Laura the opportunity to point out that Nicki was the one who had left him alone and frightened outside his school.

  Nicki was behaving like a madwoman. A madwoman, a drunk or an adulterer—what a choice! Was there something she didn’t know about herself? Some baggage she was carrying with her from a previous karma perhaps? Laura wondered self-mockingly.

  She certainly wasn’t doing very well in the relationship stakes right now!

  13

  ‘Did you enjoy your yoga class, Julie?’ Stella asked brightly as she watched Julie pushing her early supper disinterestedly around her plate. Every instinct Stella possessed urged her to insist that Julie should be eating properly, if not for herself then for the baby she carried. She really was far, far too thin, and seemed to prefer snacking on chocolate bars and picking at the trays of fast food that Stella was continually finding congealing in her kitchen than eating a proper meal.

  Blank-eyed, Julie played with the piece of chicken that Stella had cooked and chargrilled especially for her because she had said it was what she wanted. Stella’s muscles bunched as she watched whilst Julie focused all her concentration on slowly and methodically scraping off the blackened outer layer of the meat before cutting it up into minute pieces, and then cutting it up again.

  ‘It’s not fair!’ she suddenly burst out, pushing the plate away, ignoring Stella’s tension. ‘I hate being like this. Having this horrid baby. All my friends are going out enjoying themselves, going out clubbing, having a good time. I never wanted this to happen. It isn’t my fault. It’s Hughie’s!’

  To Stella’s dismay, she pushed her uneaten food away and stood up. ‘I hate being like this. And I hate being here…’ Sobbing noisily, she headed for the kitchen door.

  Automatically Stella made to follow her, but to her surprise Richard shook his head.

  ‘Let her go,’ he told her. ‘Poor kid, it’s a natural reaction.’

  ‘But you heard what she said about Hughie,’ Stella fumed. ‘Blaming him…’

  ‘What do you expect?’ Richard asked her. ‘After all, he is to blame, isn’t he? And in her eyes—’

  ‘Oh, yes, you would say that,’ Stella exploded. ‘That’s typical of you, Richard. You’re always so ready to criticise Hughie, instead of praise him.’

  ‘I’m not criticising him, Stella, I’m simply stating facts. Hughie is the baby’s father. We all know that. And as for not praising him—well, if you want my opinion, you do enough of that for both of us. You always have done.’

  Whilst Stella stared at him, Richard opened his paper and started to read it. About to challenge him, Stella frowned as her mobile rang, and saw that the caller had withheld their number.

  She answered a little tersely, and was shocked to hear Todd’s voice asking softly, ‘It’s Todd, Stella. Can you talk?’

  Maggie gave a small sigh of relief as she sank down into a chair in the bar of the restaurant. A shopping trip on top of her yoga class had perhaps not been a good idea, she acknowledged as she surreptitiously removed one of her shoes and massaged her aching foot.

  It had been Oliver’s idea that they should eat out instead of going straight home. She had so much to look forward to, Maggie reflected. And so much to regret?

  As Oliver headed back to their table with their drinks, the door to the restaurant opened and Marcus walked in. Recognising him, Maggie slipped her shoe back on and smiled warmly at him.

  Marcus hesitated before going over in response to Maggie’s friendly smile, acknowledging that not to do so would be bad manners. Quickly introducing the two men, Maggie was pleased when Oliver immediately asked Marcus if he would care for a drink.

  ‘Well, I don’t want to intrude.’ Marcus hesitated.

  The truth was that, absorbing though his work was, socially he still felt something of an outsider. The other partners in the practice were all older than he was, and married with families and well-established lives. At thirty he considered himself a little too old for the local wine bar scene, but after a full week of eating on his own he had been desperate for some company, even if it was only at second hand.

  The restaurant had been well recommended by his partners and so he had decided on impulse to eat there. It hadn’t occurred to him that he might meet one of his patients, but, as though she knew what he was thinking, Maggie was making it discreetly plain that her conversation was going to be strictly social. Marcus started to relax a little.

  He had already known from the extremely comprehensive records the private clinic had provided that Maggie’s partner was younger than she was, so meeting Oliver didn’t disconcert him in any way, even though his obvious love for Maggie intrigued him a little. He did not consider that he had any prejudices against an older woman-younger man relationship, but there was no doubt that it was one that statistically seemed doomed to be short-lived.

  ‘Yes!’ Alice gave a small crow of pleasure as she finally managed to get the computer to do what she wanted it to do.

  The only problem was there was no one with her to share her pleasure in her small triumph.

  She looked at the phone. Maggie would understand, although no doubt she would laugh at her. Grinning to herself, she dialled Maggie’s number.

  The sound of the answering machine deflated her excitement. The house suddenly felt empty and lonely.

  Stuart was due home tonight. He had been evasive and short with her when she had finally managed to speak with him, telling her which train he would be catching, then ending the call quickly, as though he’d been reluctant to talk to her.

  Maggie knew what it was like to have an unfaithful husband; to go through the trauma of her partner having an affair.

  At the time Alice had believed that she had understood what Maggie had been going through, but did one ever truly understand someone else’s situation unless one had experienced it personally?

  Her small triumph with the computer had gone, leaving her feeling not merely deflated but actively on edge. What if Stuart was having an affair? What if…? Bleakly she stared at the computer screen.

  Instinctively Stella moved out of earshot before speaking to Todd, closing the door between herself and Richard as she walked into the hall. How easy it was to adopt the ways of self-protection and camouflage, of intrigue and deceit!

  ‘Todd…’ she began shakily. Just the act of saying his name gave her a sharply illicit thrill of pleasure! Illicit? Her grip on her mobile tightened.

  ‘Can you meet me? Tonight? I’ve got to see you, Stella…Please…’

  His voice was urgent, its unspoken message of desire dizzying her.

  ‘Tonight? I…I…’

  ‘Eight o’clock? In town?’

  ‘I…Yes,’ Stella heard herself agreeing weakly.

  Her hand was shaking so much when she cancelled the call she could barely press the button. Her face felt hot. Inside she was shaking so badly she was surprised that she could still stand.

  ‘Stella?’

  Richard had opened the door and was looking at her.

  ‘I…I almost forgot,’ she began, but to her relief, before she was forced to lie, Julie came downstairs.

  It was not as though she was doing anything wrong in agreeing to meet Todd, she reassured herself. He was simply a friend, that was all. A friend? When he made her feel…She and Richard had never had an intensely passionate relationship, but until recently, Stella had never particularly minded that, preferring it to be smooth and calm.

  So when had she begun to suspect that smooth calmness was merely a self-deluding garment to hide the paucity of their relationship, to cloak its dullness and boredom? Since she had met Todd?

  Uncomfortably she pushed the thought away.

  ‘I’ve got some good news for you, Julie,’
she announced, trying to make herself concentrate on something else. ‘I bumped into a friend of mine today whilst I was out, and she was saying that she was sure that her daughter had finished with her baby stuff and that she wouldn’t mind passing it on to you.’

  ‘No!’

  The vehemence with which Julie made her denial flummoxed Stella.

  ‘Julie!’ she protested, aghast.

  ‘No,’ Julie repeated angrily. ‘No, no, no! No way is my baby having grotty second-hand stuff! I want a running stroller like you see the pop stars with and…and a sheepskin baby carrier, they’re cool.’

  ‘Julie, we’re talking about a baby you’ve already decided to give up for adoption, not a fashion accessory,’ Stella reminded her tartly.

  Thank goodness she had had a son and not a daughter.

  ‘Oh, that’s typical,’ Julie exploded. ‘You…my dad…you’re just the same, you think you know everything. Well, you don’t!’

  Stella winced as Julie stormed out of the room, slamming the door so hard behind her that it rattled in its frame.

  ‘Did you hear that?’ she asked Richard in exasperation. ‘You’d think that she would be grateful! A stroller like a pop star. Whatever next!’

  ‘She’s a child, Stella, and she’s frightened,’ Richard told her quietly. ‘Surely you can see that?’

  Stella frowned. It was unlike Richard to comment on any kind of emotional situation, never mind question her understanding of it! But he’d done it several times now.

  ‘I can certainly see that she’s behaving like a spoiled brat!’ she responded tartly. ‘You’d think that she’d realise just how lucky she is!’

  ‘Lucky? To be pregnant at seventeen? Oh, come on, Stella! How many times do you suppose she’s asked herself what her stubborn bravado is going to cost her? She’s a bright kid. Do you honestly want me to believe that in her shoes you wouldn’t be having moments when you panicked, when you questioned whether or not you’d made the right decision? And, poor kid, no matter whether you’re for or against termination no doubt there must be times when she probably wishes she had gone for that option! I’ve got to go out,’ Richard told her. ‘There’s a meeting of the bowls club finance committee.’