Second-Best Husband

by Penny Jordan

  Her face was burning with hot colour as she wondered what on earth had possessed her to unburden herself to him like that.

  What on earth must he be thinking of her, a woman who told him the most intimate details of her life on so short an acquaintanceship?

  As though he knew what she was thinking he said abruptly, ‘I admire you for telling me. It can’t have been easy. It’s very rare to find a woman who’s willing to be so honest.’

  His comment startled her into looking at him. Had she been deceitful, the woman who had hurt him; had she perhaps lied to him, cheated on him, or had she simply deceived him by allowing him to believe she loved him when she did not? What had she been like? Where was she now? Did he still love her…want her? Lie awake at night aching for her?

  Her eyes widened as she realised how intrusive her thoughts were. She looked away from him, half afraid he might see what she was thinking.

  ‘And, while you’re staying here, if there’s anything I can do to help…’

  She tensed, feeling such a deep emotional response to his kindness that she could feel the tears clogging her throat. Why was he being so kind to her? They were strangers… Fellow feeling? Because he too had suffered what she was suffering…or was he just by nature one of those human beings with the rare gift of wanting to reach out and help others?

  ‘I—that’s very kind of you. I feel such a fool, telling you all this.’

  ‘Please don’t. There’s no need.’

  His words comforted her, reassured her, banishing her embarrassment, making her feel more relaxed and at ease.

  Ten minutes later, as he drove her home, sitting silently beside her, she wondered where his thoughts were, and Sara wondered if he was thinking about the woman he loved, the one he would have preferred to have seated beside him.

  She discovered an hour later, when she was finally tucked up in her childhood bedroom, that she felt envious of that unknown woman. Hadn’t she realised how fortunate she was to be loved by a man like Stuart Delaney? A man who possessed such a quiet, supportive male strength, a man who, while he might not possess the charm of someone like Ian, nevertheless had many qualities which any sane woman would find very, very attractive. He would be a loyal and a loving husband, a good father…a true friend and partner. He would also, Sara recognised with a sudden and rather shocking pulse of sensation within her body, be a good lover…a very good lover: tender, considerate, passionate, giving…

  Strange that she should know that almost automatically about Stuart and yet when it came to Ian, whom she had known for so many years, whom she had loved for so many years, when it came to trying to imagine herself describing Ian as a good lover, she discovered that her brain would not allow her to formulate the lie. Ian… She closed her eyes, trying to blot out his image, trying not to relive the cruel things Anna had said to her…trying not to imagine the two of them together, laughing about her, about her stupidity, her inadequacy…her utter lack of desirability.

  CHAPTER THREE

  AMAZINGLY, Sara slept better than she had done in a long time, even before the trauma of the recent events in her life.

  When she woke up and discovered that it was gone eight o’clock, she thought at first that the alarm must be wrong, and then put her deep and refreshing sleep down to the change of air.

  It was only when she was downstairs, enjoying the mug of richly fragrant coffee that she had just made for herself, that she wondered if the evening she had spent with Stuart Delaney might have had some bearing on her deep and dreamless sleep.

  Stuart Delaney.

  She put down her mug and frowned a little. Last night he had been so kind, so compassionate, but she knew that if it hadn’t been for her idiocy in fainting she would never have allowed him to get close enough to her to reveal those characteristics. In fact, when she really thought about it, she was forced to admit that in the years when her love for Ian had obsessed and possessed her to the exclusion of anything else she had quite deliberately set up mental and emotional barriers within herself which had kept other people at bay. Other people. Not just other men… Because she had known deep down within herself that her true friends, those with her interests at heart, those who cared for her and were concerned for her, would have tried to persuade her not to focus her whole life on Ian—a man who quite patently did not return her feelings—but instead to try to make friendships, relationships with other people.

  Had she deliberately taken the line that the fewer people who knew about her feelings for Ian, the fewer people she admitted to her life, the less chance there was of anyone trying to dissuade her from what she was doing…wasting her life?

  Wasting her life? She worried at her bottom lip. Was that what she was doing? Had all those years of loving Ian, of waiting, wanting, hoping, been nothing more than a waste?

  Only if she was not prepared to learn from them, to acknowledge the self-destructiveness of what she had done and to prevent herself from ever repeating the same folly again.

  And that meant starting right now. From today, from this moment she was going to focus on the present…on the future…and not on the past.

  She had accepted now that Ian would never love her; that there would never have come a day, even without Anna, when he would have looked at her, when that special dazzling smile of his, the one that unfailingly made her heart turn over and her muscles go weak, would be tinged, deepened, with an extra-special warmth; an extra-special meaning.

  She felt her eyes beginning to burn, her heart starting to pound in the familiar onset of misery and grief.

  Crying wouldn’t help…giving way to her emotions, her pain; in the end they would do her no good whatsoever. She had come home to escape from Ian, from her memories, not to bring them with her…not to dwell on them…not to give in to the self-destructive urge of wallowing in self-pity and misery.

  Thank goodness she had accepted Stuart Delaney’s offer to visit, to spend some time looking over his new venture, she reflected as she finished her coffee. She knew next to nothing about growing trees, other than the fact that at one time investing in woodlands had been a popular tax shelter favoured by enterprising businessmen.

  Stuart Delaney’s venture, though, was not of that ilk. Last night, listening to him talking about the need to halt the spread of a form of reafforestation which he considered alien to a good many parts of Great Britain, and instead to replant with carefully selected, native broad-leaved varieties, she had realised that this venture was for him not simply a means of earning a living but something that meant a great deal to him in emotional terms as well.

  Her frown deepened slightly. She was surprised to discover how much she was looking forward to seeing Stuart Delaney again. He had been so easy to get on with. Time had passed so quickly.

  Should she simply drive up there, or should she telephone him first? They hadn’t specified a time for her to meet him last night.

  She would, she decided, simply have to drive over there, since she did not have his telephone number, but first there was something she had to do.

  As she picked up the telephone receiver and dialled the number of her sister’s home, she wondered anxiously how her sister, and her new baby, if it had now been born, were doing.

  Her mother answered the telephone, saying immediately, ‘Sara…I was just beginning to get worried about you. I rang you half a dozen times or so at home, and then I rang Ian’s office. When there was no reply from either number… Where are you? What—?’

  ‘I’m at home, Mum. I arrived last night. I should have rung you first, but… Anyway, luckily for me, your new neighbour just happened to be driving past and he explained to me that you’d had a call from David and that you’d had to drop everything and rush over there. How is Jacqui? The baby?’

  ‘Jacqui is fine; a bit shell-shocked, I think. After all, she still had over a month to go. The baby is fine as well. A little girl, so you can imagine how thrilled she and David are after the two boys.

  ‘Th
ey’ve decided to call her Jessica. The hospital are keeping them both in for a few days, just as a precaution, so your father and I will be staying on down here for at least another week.’

  Another week. Sara gnawed at her mouth, wincing a little as she realised how much she had been maltreating it recently. It felt swollen and sore, the flesh bruised and sensitive.

  ‘Do you mind if I stay on here until you get back?’

  ‘Of course not,’ her mother assured her. ‘It is still your home, darling, you know that. Have you some holidays to use up?’ She paused and then asked more worriedly, with maternal anxiety, ‘Sara, you aren’t ill?’

  ‘Everything’s fine,’ she fibbed firmly. There would be time enough to tell her parents about her decision to give up her job with Ian once they returned home. Although it was a subject they had never discussed, she suspected that her mother at least might have guessed how she felt about Ian, and she had an idea that she would be pleased she had made the decision to break away from him, especially once she had explained that he was getting married.

  Anna and her cruel revelations were not subjects she could or wanted to discuss with her family; that was after all one of the reasons she had come here in the first place, to escape from the curious questions of her friends, from their well-meaning but painful attempts to discover what had happened and why she had handed in her notice.

  She had barely replaced the receiver, having spoken to both her excited nephews about the birth of their new sister, and to her brother-in-law, who sounded almost as incoherent and thrilled as his sons, when the telephone rang.

  She answered it automatically, assuming it would be someone wanting her parents, but to her surprise it was Stuart Delaney on the other end of the line.

  ‘I just remembered,’ he told her, ‘that we didn’t arrange a time to meet last night. I have to go into the village, and I was going to suggest that I picked you up on the way back if that’s convenient.’

  About to protest that there was no reason for him to do that and that she could quite easily drive herself up to the manor, Sara recognised that it was silly to use two cars when he was passing the house anyway, swallowed her instinctive desire to prove that she was independent and quite capable of looking after herself, and said instead, ‘Well, if you’re sure you don’t mind…’

  ‘If I did, I wouldn’t have suggested it.’

  His response startled her a little. She still wasn’t used to such bluntness. Ian would never have been so forthright. Ian…Ian… She felt her throat start to close up and swallowed hard, clinging to the deep, slightly rough texture of Stuart Delaney’s voice as he told her what time he would be picking her up.

  ‘I’m looking forward to it,’ she told him politely when he had finished speaking.

  ‘So am I.’

  For some reason, the simple comment set off the most extraordinary reaction inside her.

  A fluttery, heady, expansive feeling of anticipation and excitement immediately followed by a sharper, warning sense of danger and fear.

  What was she frightened of, for heaven’s sake—what was there to fear? Not Stuart Delaney, surely? She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt so at ease with anyone. Perhaps that was it, she reflected a few minutes later as she replaced the receiver; perhaps it was the very fact that she did feel so at ease with him that made her feel apprehensive. In her present vulnerable state, the last thing she needed to do was to become emotionally involved with another man.

  Emotionally involved? With Stuart Delaney? A man who after all had been a stranger to her until last night? Ridiculous. Impossible. After all, how could she be in any danger of becoming emotionally involved, emotionally dependent on another man when she still loved Ian?

  She was being silly, over-cautious, looking for problems that could not possibly exist.

  No, she had nothing to fear from Stuart Delaney. He, like her, had suffered the agony of loving the wrong person, and just like her he would be anxious to avoid an emotional relationship. She wondered how long it had been since his romance had broken up. He was a very attractive man; not good-looking in the way that Ian was good-looking, of course, but very attractive none the less, if one liked the rugged outdoors type, and many women did.

  Had he remained celibate since the end of his relationship? Such things were harder for men, so one was led to believe. Of course she and Ian had never been lovers. No man had ever been her lover, she reflected a little savagely.

  She had not minded that, not while she was still forcing herself to believe her delusion that one day Ian was going to look at her and want her…love her. But now that she had been forced to face up to the truth…

  She was twenty-nine years old…a twenty-nine-year-old virgin. She smiled wryly to herself. What was she saying? That she regretted the fact that she had not at some period of her life experienced the intimacy of sharing her body with a lover? If so, was that so very wrong? She was forced to accept that mentally and emotionally it would be harder for her now at twenty-nine, with the added maturity that a decade brought, to actively contemplate a purely physical affair; that her awareness, not just of the changing social climate, which had led to a far less promiscuous and more cautious outlook on casual sex, but also of herself as a woman, of her inhibition and reserve, which told her that she could never be the kind of woman who would find it easy to share an intimate relationship with a man to whom she was not deeply emotionally, and mentally committed would make it impossible.

  Harder? She smiled grimly to herself. Why not face the truth? It would be impossible. Which meant…which meant that unless she was prepared to take Margaret’s advice and look for a pleasant, like-minded man, with whom she could settle down, she was unlikely to have the opportunity to have the family, the children she knew she wanted.

  Not for her the brief casual affair, resulting in a pregnancy and a child that would be hers and hers alone. And as for falling in love… Well, that wasn’t going to happen either, was it? She had fallen in love with Ian and look what that had led to.

  Even if she could ever manage to stop loving him…

  She sighed faintly to herself. These were morbid, unwise thoughts. She would be better employed in turning her mind to other, less emotive topics.

  She wondered if Stuart Delaney had found a way of coming to terms with his emotional pain and, if so, if he perhaps had any tips he could pass on to her.

  Surprisingly, for someone who had always guarded her privacy so intensely, and who had never easily made friends with members of the opposite sex, she found that she could contemplate the idea of discussing her situation with Stuart Delaney with astonishing ease.

  Perhaps because so many of her barriers had already been down at the moment of their initial meeting, she felt as though she had known him far longer and far more intimately than a mere handful of hours.

  She was, she discovered, as she glanced at her watch to check the time, actually looking forward to seeing him, actually aware of a quite distinct tremor of excitement and anticipation running through her body as she listened for the sound of his arrival.

  When Stuart arrived a few minutes earlier than he had said she was taken a little by surprise. Ian was never early for anything, and was in fact invariably late, salving the offence with one of his charming, apologetic smiles, and yet somehow always leaving one with the feeling of being not quite important enough to have merited the compliment of his arriving on time. As she picked up her jacket and bag, she wondered a little bitterly if he ever kept Anna waiting.

  Somehow she doubted it. Anna had not struck her as the type of woman who would wait for any man.

  It was only as she was locking the door behind her that she realised that she was actually thinking how well suited the pair of them were in their selfishness. The thought was enough to make her stand still where she was, her body frozen in shock as she contemplated the almost heretical nature of her own thoughts. Never in all the years she had worked for him and loved him had she
ever allowed herself to criticise Ian even in the deepest privacy of her own thoughts, her own often very sore heart, and yet now here she was doing so, and finding it shockingly easy.

  Uneasily she realised that had she not loved Ian so deeply she might almost have disliked him…despised him. Take away the blinkering effect of his intense good looks, take away the charm—which she was beginning to realise was no more than surface deep—and what were you left with? A very selfish self-absorbed man with a nature, a personality that repelled rather than attracted her.

  It was an unpleasant discovery. She had never considered herself to be silly enough to place any undue importance on a person’s looks. Their personality, their warmth, their responsiveness to others—these were what mattered, and yet here she was admitting that had Ian not been so good-looking… And it was no excuse reminding herself that she had only been a very impressionable nineteen when she met him. She wasn’t nineteen any longer.

  ‘Something wrong?’

  The concern in Stuart’s voice as he opened the gate and came up the path made her shake her head.

  ‘Thank goodness. I thought for a moment there might have been bad news.’

  Bad news? From Ian, did he mean?

  When she looked puzzled, he explained, ‘From your mother…your sister.’

  Instantly Sara’s face flooded with guilty colour. ‘Oh, no. Mother and baby—a little girl—are both doing fine, although Mum and Dad will be staying on for a little while. Actually I must drive into Ludlow tomorrow and get a card, and something for the baby. They’re going to call her Jessica.’

  ‘Nice,’ Stuart approved. ‘Is David pleased?’

  ‘Over the moon. He’s been longing for a daughter.’

  ‘A wise man. I must admit I’ve always had a yen for a couple of pigtailed serious-eyed daughters myself. Not that I’ve anything against sons. In fact…’ He gave her a wry glance. ‘It doesn’t just seem to be your sex that suffer the urge to reproduce the species once they get to their thirties. Men suffer a similar syndrome.’