Second-Best Husband

by Penny Jordan

  ‘Well, I’d better be on my way, then. You’ve got a key for the house, have you? Only your parents left a spare with me…’

  ‘Yes, I’ve got my own key,’ Sara assured him, thinking again how deceptive appearances could be. From the look of him she would hardly have expected him to be concerned about her, or about anyone else for that matter. He looked too hard, too remote…not like Ian, who looked so much more human, so much more approachable. And yet, in the same circumstances, would Ian have concerned himself about the possible plight of a stranger?

  She started to turn away from him, aware that she was suddenly shockingly close to tears. To have come so far and then found that her parents weren’t here. Only now was she prepared to admit how much she had counted on their being at home…on the soothing balm of their love, their quiet, unfussy concern, their…their presence. Well, it was far too late now to turn her car round and drive back to London, even if she had wanted to do so, which she did not. But the prospect of spending the night in an empty house with nothing to do other than fight against dwelling morbidly on everything that had happened… She started to move towards the house, and then blinked as the gravel beneath her feet started to heave and roll in the most peculiar way, rather as though it were water and not gravel at all. She was feeling oddly light-headed as well, and an irritated male voice seemed to be calling her name, but it came from so far away that it was little more than a dull rumble, like hearing sound through a seashell. Even so, she tried to respond to it, to turn in its direction, but everything was going dark…black… Too late she recognised that it had perhaps not been sensible of her not to have eaten anything before she left London earlier in the day, but she had been in such a fret of anxiety to get home, and anyway her appetite had completely deserted her over these last few days.

  She tried to say something, to reassure the shadowy figure coming towards her that she was perfectly all right, but the words wouldn’t come and she was spinning wildly in a black vortex of darkness that refused to let her go.

  She was, she recognised in shocked surprise, despite all her claims to the contrary, about to faint.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ‘BUT I never faint!’

  Sara frowned, recognising her own voice. She opened her eyes and discovered that she was lying in the back of a Land Rover, and moreover that there was something hard and lumpy under her spine. She tried to move, but a pair of large male hands restrained her.

  ‘Not so fast, otherwise you’ll be off again. Keep still for a moment.’

  ‘Off again…’ What on earth did he think she was? she wondered indignantly. ‘I never faint,’ she repeated firmly. ‘And if you would just let go of me…’

  She tried to sit up, to struggle against him, and gasped in shock at the way her head started to swim the moment she lifted it from the floor.

  ‘Keep still. You’ll feel better if you do.’

  The deep voice, so calm, so authoritative, ought to have annoyed her, but for some reason it had exactly the opposite effect, relaxing her tense muscles, soothing both her body and her mind so that this time she stayed where she was, closing her eyes, conscious of the hard fingers circling her wrist, monitoring her pulse.

  ‘Now try breathing slowly and deeply. Not too deeply…’

  Again, half to her own astonishment, she did as she was instructed, finding it easy somehow to match her breathing to the even cadences of the voice instructing her.

  ‘Feeling any better?’

  This time, when she opened her eyes and nodded, the world didn’t spin round her but stayed stationary.

  ‘It’s my own fault,’ she announced as she sat up, a little more cautiously and far more successfully this time. She was, she realised, in the back of Stuart Delaney’s Land Rover. It smelled of fresh clean earth, of rain and growing things. ‘I didn’t have anything to eat before I left London.’

  No need to tell him that she had not in fact eaten properly for several days, not merely several hours.

  She winced a little as she had an unwanted mental vision of Anna’s soft femininity, her curves, the fluid contours of her flesh, so much a contrast to her own more angular slenderness. Thin and dried-up, that was how Anna had dismissively described her, making her feel somehow desiccated, withered, old almost, even though Anna was in actual fact two years her senior.

  Men didn’t like thin women; they liked curves, softness, the ripe promise of a female body that was alluringly shaped; and she tensed a little, waiting for Stuart Delaney to make some comment about her thinness, but instead to her relief he merely commented almost absently, ‘Well, we all do it at times, when we’ve more important things on our minds. Done it myself. In fact…’

  She was sitting up now, ruefully conscious of the fact that the dirty interior of the Land Rover wouldn’t have done her cream suit much good.

  ‘Look, I was just on my way home. I haven’t eaten myself yet. Since your parents aren’t here, why don’t you join me? Mrs Gibbons from the village will have been up today to give the place a clean. She normally leaves me something to eat, and in view of the hospitality I’ve received from your parents…’

  It would be foolish to refuse his offer. This wasn’t London, where a woman had to be wary of invitations and approaches from any man on such a short acquaintance. And besides, she already knew from her mother’s phone calls how much her parents liked their new neighbour.

  The alternative was remaining at home on her own, brooding, remembering…

  ‘Well, if you’re sure you don’t mind…’

  ‘If I minded, I wouldn’t have suggested it in the first place.’

  There was more than a touch of brusqueness in his comment, but instead of feeling rebuffed by it Sara found that it was refreshing almost. He was so very different from Ian. Ian, whose charm had masked a cruelty, a callousness that had left her feeling as though she had been mauled and left sore and bleeding when a harder, cleaner blow would have been kinder.

  ‘Fine. I’ll follow you up to the house in my own car, shall I?’ she suggested, but Stuart Delaney shook his head.

  ‘No, better not… I doubt that you’re likely to faint again, but it’s best not to take the chance.’

  ‘Oh, but that means you’ll have to bring me back,’ she began to protest, but he had apparently stopped listening to her, and was walking to the rear of the Land Rover, jumping out and heading for the driver’s door.

  Sara started to follow him. She was no stranger to travelling in the back of beaten-up old Land Rovers, and had done so on many occasions during her teens, and so she knew from experience just how uncomfortable a ride she was likely to have if she stayed where she was. No, she would be far more comfortable in the passenger seat.

  As she reached the rear of the vehicle, she slipped off her high heels and prepared to struggle down to the ground with the handicap of her straight skirt, but to her amazement Stuart, who she thought had left her to make her own way out of the Land Rover, was waiting for her, calmly scooping her up in his arms.

  ‘Please…there’s no need for you to do this,’ she protested breathlessly, clutching her shoes with one hand and discovering very quickly that it was necessary to cling to the front of his shirt with the other.

  It was very difficult to sound cool and businesslike with her head tucked into his shoulder and her fingertips inadvertently brushing the warm bare flesh of his throat.

  It disconcerted her to realise how oddly aware of him she was, how very quickly and unexpectedly her breathing had altered to become shallow and quick as her body registered the proximity of his.

  A look of startled bewilderment darkened her eyes, causing her to immediately close them as her body tensed against the sensations she was experiencing.

  It was just the total unexpectedness of being held like this, she told herself. How long had it been since a man had picked her up and held her in his arms?

  How long had it been since she had experienced this kind of male-to-female intimacy in a
ny form at all, no matter how non-sexual?

  She tried to remember, to conjure up some corresponding mental image to offset the peculiar and unwanted sensations that were causing her such discomfort and embarrassment, and could not do so.

  Oh, there had been occasions in her teens…boys…clumsy, awkward kisses and embraces; but she had always been on the shy side…and then since she had met Ian…

  As he felt her tension, Stuart stopped moving, and told her equably, ‘It’s OK, I’m not going to drop you. Don’t forget I’m used to carrying half-grown trees about, and if you’re thinking they don’t need to be treated as fragile and easily damaged, then you’re wrong. There is nothing more vulnerable and open to damage than a young tree removed from its habitat.

  ‘A moment’s carelessness, and the bruising and root damage which can be caused can prove fatal.’

  Sara found she was battling against a half-hysterical desire to start giggling. Here she was, worrying about that startling frisson of physical sensation being in Stuart’s arms had aroused within her, tensing herself against his answering awareness of it, only to discover that in her rescuer’s eyes she was simply a sapling he was carrying from one place to another; that he was neither aware of nor concerned about the physical intimacy of their bodies in any sexual way at all and that he was totally oblivious to that tiny shudder of sensation that had run through her, coiling the muscles of her stomach, making her aware of the disconcerting hardening of her nipples.

  It had been a long time since her body had reacted like that, she recognised, as he balanced her against him and eased her into the passenger seat of the Land Rover. Once, all it had needed to set her body on fire with aching need had been for Ian to walk into the same room; simply to hear his voice, to register his presence had been sufficient. But just lately… She frowned, trying to remember just when it had last been that her body had reacted physically to his presence, to his sexuality, and acknowledged that she could not do so. Which was strange, surely, when she loved him…

  She was still frowning when Stuart got into the driver’s seat of the vehicle and put it in motion.

  ‘Sexless’ was how Anna had tauntingly described her, and in her heart of hearts Sara had admitted the accuracy of the taunt. She loved Ian, and of course she desired him, but over the years that desire had become muted, tamed. So much so that she had virtually forgotten what it was like to feel that sharp, biting ache within her body, that overwhelming physical feminine responsiveness to a man’s maleness; that she had honestly believed herself to have passed beyond the excitement of sexuality into more mature waters.

  And yet here she was reacting in exactly the way she had thought impossible—and not to Ian…Ian, whom she loved…but to another man, a stranger—a man, moreover, who had given her no encouragement whatsoever to think of him in any sexual terms.

  As he drove down the lane, she wondered uneasily what was happening to her, why her body had seen fit to rebel in such an unexpected and disconcerting fashion. She even began to wonder uneasily if she might have been wiser to have refused Stuart’s invitation to share his supper. And then common sense reasserted itself and she reminded herself mockingly that it was hardly likely that she was going to spend the evening locked in Stuart Delaney’s arms, and that, since that odd and totally unwanted sensual frisson of pleasure had only occurred when he had held her, she was perfectly safe from experiencing it again.

  In fact, she told herself firmly, she would be better advised to put the whole incident right out of her mind. After all, her emotions had been through so many traumas recently that it was hardly surprising if she experienced the odd unexpected reaction.

  As she saw the shadowy bulk of the manor house taking shape in the darkness ahead of them, she tried not to listen to the small, sharp voice that told her that her reaction to Stuart had been physical and not emotional.

  After all, she knew herself well enough to feel completely secure and confident that she was not the type of woman who would ever need to seek reassurance and comfort, or even a confirmation of her desirability and femininity, in any compulsion to experience an intimacy with a man which was purely physical. After all, she reminded herself bitterly, hadn’t Anna and Ian already made it devastatingly plain to her that she was not the kind of woman whom men desired or found physically attractive? She would be a fool even to think of putting that denunciation to the test…of trying to prove them wrong by…

  The direction of her thoughts brought her to an abrupt and shocked halt. A physical relationship with a man who wasn’t Ian? A man she did not love? Was she out of her mind? Had the shock of recent events virtually unbalanced her mentally as well as emotionally?

  Stop it, she warned herself angrily. You’ve got enough problems to deal with without looking for more.

  It had been several years since Sara had last visited the manor house—a duty visit with her mother one Christmas to the old man who used to live there—but as a child she had always found the place fascinating, and now, as Stuart brought the Land Rover to a halt at the rear of the building in what had originally been the stable yard, she turned to him and asked him impulsively, ‘What made you decide to buy this place?’

  He gave her a brief smile. He had a nice smile, she noticed, and an unexpected dimple on the left-hand side of his mouth. She had to subdue an odd urge to reach out and touch it. It gave him a vulnerability totally opposed to her initial impression of him as a man as tough as granite.

  He might not have Ian’s golden good looks, but he was a very attractive man none the less, she recognised, on a small spurt of surprise, a man a woman would feel she could depend on, trust…a man who would make a good father.

  She was startled by the waywardness of her own thoughts. Where on earth were they coming from? A good father… What a ridiculous thought to have about a man she barely knew.

  ‘It was the woodland,’ she heard him saying to her, and frowned until she realised he was answering her own question. ‘Not because of the quality of the trees in it. In all honesty they’re pretty poor. Most of the oaks have had to come down, although I’ve been hoping to be able to use the wood once it’s matured. No, it was because the soil here…the land, is perfect, or as near perfect as I’m likely to get for my purposes. The acreage that goes with the house is sufficient for my needs, and the land is sheltered by the Welsh hills. It’s well watered but not marshy. I must admit I was worried at first about the risk of transplanting our stock up here, but so far our losses have been minimal and the new trees we’ve planted are doing very well. It’s always risky transplanting mature trees; that’s why, before we sell one, I like to check on where it’s going and to make sure the buyer is aware of the maintenance programme that’s necessary until it’s securely rooted. Of course, with all the recent storm damage, we’ve done very well on the sales side, but that also puts pressure on us to produce more stock, which takes time.’

  Sara was both fascinated and confused.

  ‘I didn’t think it was possible to transplant mature trees.’

  ‘It isn’t unless they’ve been specially grown for that purpose. My uncle started the business, seeing a gap in the market, and in the main supplying councils. When he died I inherited it from him. I was already working for the Forestry Commission. In fact I was on secondment in Canada at the time. At first I intended to sell the business, but then we had the storms of ‘87 which put pressure on all suppliers of mature trees—and there aren’t many of us—and somehow or other I found I was hooked and that the business had grown on me, so to speak, but we needed to expand, and so I started looking for somewhere to relocate.’

  ‘It sounds fascinating,’ Sara commented, and genuinely meant it, but she could see from the sudden tightening of his mouth that he thought she was being sarcastic.

  Impulsively she touched him, and said quickly, ‘No, I meant it. It does sound fascinating. I had no idea that it was possible to transplant large trees.’

  There was a small pause and the
n he replied, ‘If you really are interested, while you’re up here, I could show you round…show you what we’re doing.’

  ‘I’d like that.’

  She was surprised to discover that she genuinely meant it, and not just because it would be a means of keeping Ian out of her thoughts if only for a short space of time.

  ‘Are you feeling OK now?’ he was asking her. ‘Or—’

  ‘No. No, I’m fine,’ she assured him quickly. It was one thing to tell herself that that momentary and discomfiting sexual response to him meant nothing and was hardly likely to happen again. It was quite another to put that belief to the test, especially so soon after that first uncomfortably enlightening occurrence.

  ‘So far I haven’t been able to do much to the house,’ he warned her as they crossed the yard, and security lights came on, illuminating the cobbles and the empty stables as well as the jumble of windows and doors that studded the weathered stone of the building.

  ‘As I said, Mrs Gibbons comes up from the village a couple of times a week. I’ve managed to make the kitchen habitable, plus one of the bedrooms, but as for the rest…’

  ‘It’s a very large house for one man,’ Sara ventured.

  They had almost reached the back door and he paused now, turning to look at her.

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed bleakly. ‘When I bought it, I hadn’t actually visualised living here alone.’

  Immediately Sara guessed what must have happened. Like her, he had obviously been rejected by the person he loved. Perhaps she had not wanted to live in such an isolated spot. Perhaps she had been someone he had met in Canada who had not wanted to come and live in England, who had not loved him enough. No one knew better than she how much that kind of rejection hurt…how it scarred and wounded. She wanted to reach out to him, to touch him, to offer him her sympathy, her understanding, but he was already turning away from her, extracting some keys from his pocket and unlocking the kitchen door.