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‘Is he always like this?’ she asked Tara in an agonised whisper. ‘I remember last time I came here…’
‘It’s just his way,’ Tara soothed her. ‘He’s an artist with the camera and a perfectionist.’
The other girl grimaced. ‘It’s at times like these that I wish I’d done as my parents wanted me to and gone on to university!’
Chas’s brusque, ‘If you two have quite finished on the girl talk, perhaps we can get some work done,’ put an end to their conversation.
It was lunchtime before Tara even had time to draw breath. Chas was in the kind of mood where he seemed almost driven, and it was both mentally and physically exhausting trying to keep pace with him.
At two o’clock Chas finally announced irritably that he supposed they ought to break for lunch, and Tara went thankfully to buy them some sandwiches before he changed his mind. It wasn’t unusual for him to insist on working right through the day without stopping, and the hungry grumbling of her stomach had been distracting her attention for almost an hour.
When she got back to the studio the model had gone and the phone was ringing. The ‘Do not disturb’ sign on the darkroom door meant exactly what it said, as she knew from experience, and reaching for the phone she dumped her sandwiches on the table.
The crisp, cool tones of the twins’ headmistress sent tremors of fear jangling along her nerves.
‘The twins—–’ she began urgently, but Mrs Ledbetter was obviously used to dealing with anxious parents, because she said soothingly, ‘Nothing to worry about, Mrs Bellamy, it’s just that Simon has been complaining of stomach ache all morning. Our Matron has checked him over and we can’t find anything wrong. He probably just wants a bit of coddling.’
A thin flush of colour ran up under Tara’s fine skin as she tried to dissect the calming words to discover if they held an implied rebuke. One of her greatest burdens in bringing up the twins alone was that she couldn’t be at home with them. She had never tried to contact James after that first time when Susan’s mother had laughed in her face at her naïveté, and there was no one to support the twins apart from herself, so work was a basic necessity. But that didn’t stop the guilt, she thought shakily as she hung up, having assured Mrs Ledbetter that she was leaving immediately for the school.
Did every working mother experience this knife-sharp anguish every time her child cried for her and she couldn’t be there? Guilt was a burden women seemed fashioned by nature to bear.
Not daring to risk disturbing Chas, she wrote a brief note displaying it prominently on his desk, then hurried outside to her Mini.
Simon was waiting for her in the school’s sick bay, looking pale and lethargic. Mandy was with him, and she leaped off her chair and rushed towards Tara, crying importantly, ‘Simon’s been sick, and he was crying, but I’ve been looking after him’
Tara praised her warmly; for all her ebullience and apparent resilience Mandy was still vulnerable, as all children were vulnerable when they lacked the love of one parent.
‘I don’t think there’s really anything much Wrong,’ Mrs Staines, the Matron assured her with a kind smile. ‘A couple of days in bed and some spoiling will probably work wonders.’
A couple of days in bed! Tara groaned, fighting back her dismay. That meant taking two more precious days from her holiday allowance. Chas would be furious. Normally during school holidays she managed to come to an arrangement with a neighbour who lived close to her and who was willing to look after the twins for her, but she was away visiting her parents, and anyway Tara doubted that Simon in his present mood would accept anyone apart from herself.
‘Some country air, that will bring the roses back to his cheeks,’ Matron pronounced.
‘Can we go to the country, Mummy?’ Simon pleaded on the way home. He had perked up when he saw her, but he was still listless, and Tara’s heart smote her. Poor little scrap; his sickness was no less real for being caused by emotional rather than physical malaise.
‘All right,’ she gave in, ‘but remember, Susan might have changed her mind.’
‘She said we could,’ Mandy pointed out with irrefutable logic, ‘and people should always do things when they say they will.’
Tara suppressed another sigh. Right now she did not feel up to explaining to her daughter the ethics governing adult behaviour, and it sank still further when she reached home to discover Chas’s car parked outside.
He saw her drive up and came striding across to the Mini.
‘So, how’s the wounded soldier?’ he asked Simon affably but with narrowed eyes and a certain grimness that alerted Tara’s defence mechanisms.
His cool, ‘You fuss too much,’ as she unlocked the front door and bustled the twins into the kitchen, reinforced her feelings. ‘He looks as right as rain to me.’
‘Matron said I was to have two days at home,’ Simon told Chas informatively. ‘Mummy is going to stay with me, and then we’re going to spend the weekend in the country.’
‘Are you now? Is that true, “Mummy"?’ Chas demanded bitterly. ‘Funny, but I had the distinct impression that you and I had a date for this weekend.’
‘I never promised I would come, Chas,’ Tara reminded him. ‘As it happens, we’ve been invited away for the weekend,’ she crossed her fingers childishly behind her back, ‘and in view of Simon’s sickness I feel it would do them both good to get away from London.’
‘Really?’ Anger kindled in his eyes. ‘Now isn’t that just a dandy get-out? Well, let me lay it on the line for you, Tara. I want you and you damn well know it. I’m not prepared to play games either.’
Tara felt sick. Here came the crunch; the inevitable catastrophe she had been trying to avoid for weeks.
‘Meaning?’ she forced herself to say.
‘You know what I mean,’ Chas replied in a low voice.
‘And if I don’t agree?’
His answer was simply to glower at her before flinging the door open and striding angrily through it.
She had known it had to come, and Chas’s attitude had only reinforced all her own doubts about the feasibility of her continuing to work for him, but she could not deny that giving up her job at this particular minute in time was something she simply could not afford to do.
‘Why are you looking like that, Mummy?’ Simon demanded suddenly. ‘Does your tummy feel funny too?’
‘Sort of,’ she agreed wryly. ‘Now come on, you’d better go and lie down if you aren’t feeling well.’
It was early evening when she finally decided to ring Susan to accept her invitation for the weekend. They had nothing to lose by going, Tara decided, and besides, she felt totally unable to cope with the twins’ disappointment were she to refuse.
Susan sounded ecstatic when she thanked her for the invitation and accepted it.
‘You’ll have to give me directions on how to find the place, though,’ Tara warned her. ‘Where did you say it was?’
‘In the Cotswolds,’ Susan told her airily. ‘But don’t worry about getting there. I’ll send someone to pick you up if you just tell me what time would be convenient, and give me your address.’
On the point of refusing, Tara remembered the luxurious BMW she had seen outside the school, and contemplated the luxury of being driven in such a vehicle. Susan had mentioned her chauffeur and doubtless this task would be given to him.
They chatted for several minutes, and when Tara mentioned her job Susan was obviously impressed. ‘Chas Saunders?’ she exclaimed in tones of awe. ‘You lucky thing! He’s incredibly sexy, isn’t he? I’ve never met him myself, but I’ve heard about him.’
‘Who hasn’t?’ Tara agreed drily. Chas and his female companion of the moment were popular gossip column fodder.
‘You’re not involved there yourself, are you?’ Susan asked, obviously picking up the undertone in her voice.
Tara’s wry, ‘Chas is strictly a one-night-stand man,’ was an evasive answer, but it seemed to satisfy her friend, who laughed and said teasingly, ‘Yeah, but what a night!’ before announcing that she had to go as she could hear Piers crying.
With the mercurial resilience of children the world over, Simon declared in the morning that he felt well enough to return to school and Tara was able to go back to the studio.
She drove there with mounting dread. Chas was alone in the huge room when she opened the door. He looked up, scowled, and then ignored her as she removed her jacket and hung it on the coat-stand. They were supposed to be doing some outdoor shots, so she had dressed comfortably in jeans, and a checked shirt worn underneath a thick, sleveless sheepskin waistcoat.
When she had removed her coat she turned round to find Chas assessing her slim jean-clad body thoughtfully. Despite her resolve colour rose in her cheeks. She turned away, intending to put the kettle on, but Chas’s ‘Tara,’ halted her in her tracks.
‘Look,’ he began irately, ‘I’m sorry about yesterday. I lost my cool, a fatal tactical error.’ He grimaced wryly, running lean fingers through his sun-streaked fair hair. ‘God, I thought I’d learned years ago not to stampede my prey, but it seems I was wrong. You’re determined to spend this weekend with your friend?’
Dry-mouthed, Tara nodded her head. What was he going to do? Fire her?
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he surprised her by saying in a harsh voice. ‘I thought you knew me better than that. I’ve never had to apply pressure to get a woman into bed with me in the past, and I’m damned well not starting now. I want you, Tara,’ he said frankly, ‘but I want you willingly. Sex should be a mutual pleasure, not something to be endured. Why?’ he asked helplessly. ‘Is it just me who revolts you, or is it men in general? You’ve been married, had kids—hell…’
‘I’m sorry, Chas,’ Tara broke in quietly. ‘And no, it isn’t you.’ A small smile tugged at her mouth as she remembered how Sue had described him. ‘You know better than that,’ she teased lightly. ‘It’s just that you’re a one-night-stand man, and I’m a woman with two children dependent on her who…’
‘Wants the opposite sex to keep its distance from her,’ Chas finished astutely for her. ‘Even if I offered permanency, it wouldn’t make any difference, would it?’ he pressed. ‘You’re still too involved with the guy you married—the twins’ father, that’s the straight up and down of it, isn’t it? For God’s sake,’ he muttered with suppressed violence, ‘when are you going to come out of mourning and realise that life is passing you by? Okay,’ he said wearily when he saw the stubborn set of her lips, ‘I can see I’m battering my head against a brick wall, but if you ever change your mind…’
‘You still want me to keep on working with you?’ Tara asked shakily.
His eyebrows rose, mockery in the brown eyes. ‘Sure I do,’ he confirmed. ‘It’s good for my ego having such a sexy lady about the place, and besides,’ he paused and grinned, ‘you’re the best assistant I’ve ever had.’
It was with a much lighter heart that Tara went about her work, and she accepted with pleasure when Chas suggested that she take the Friday afternoon off in order to prepare for the weekend away.
‘This doesn’t mean I’ve given up,’ he warned her, ‘simply that I’m declaring a cease-fire, okay?’
She was still smiling when she reached home, even though she was now entertaining grave doubts about the wisdom of agreeing to Sue’s invitation. As the Monday was a Bank Holiday Susan had insisted that the three of them stay over for the extra day, and knowing the twins’ propensity for getting themselves and their clothes grubby, Tara was kept busy washing and ironing prior to their visit.
Neither of the twins would have much in common with Sue’s toddler, she reflected as she packed their cases, but as they prepared for bed on the Friday night, both of them were so excited about the weekend ahead that Tara’s heart smote her.
They got so few treats of this nature, it would have been grossly unfair of her to deprive them of it simply because she couldn’t face up to the past.
Her mother and James were now divorced, or so Sue had said. What had happened to him? Tara wondered. She had learned from her own mother after the twins’ birth that Sue’s mother had had a considerable shareholding in the company James had inherited from his father. He had rarely discussed business with her; their time together had been too precious, too highly emotionally charged for Tara to want to waste any of it discussing business.
Forget James, forget the past, she told herself sternly, unwilling to acknowledge the small ache which threatened to flare into agonising pain if she let it. Why had she never been able to free herself from the spell of the past? Other girls suffered similar mishaps and went on to make successful marriages elsewhere; to forge loving relationships with other men—why hadn’t she been able to? Was it because she had felt guilty about what had happened? Guilty and besmirched. The attitudes of the small village in which they lived were very narrow, and as well as the burden of James’s rejection she had also had to bear the bitter anger of her mother.
If she had not woven such romantic daydreams around James none of it would have happened; but she had refused to see the truth, that he was simply a man trapped in an unhappy marriage who had turned to her for sexual solace and had never for one moment felt a tithe of the love for her that burned within her for him.
CHAPTER THREE (#ue8248a1c-1b20-5cbe-ba22-61d952be1d58)
SHE woke up with a headache; a heavy unrelenting pressure behind her eyes and a lethargic disinclination to do anything, much less spend an entire weekend having to be polite to virtual strangers. But she couldn’t disappoint the twins, neither could she run the risk of Chas catching her out in a lie. She wished desperately that he would cease his pursuit of her. In other circumstances she would simply have given him a cool rebuff, but he was her employer and she could not afford to lose her job.
The twins were wildly excited, making her feel guilty about her own dread of the weekend ahead. For some perverse reason Mandy, who normally disdained feminine frills in favour of jeans and sweat-shirts, decided that she wanted to wear a pretty cotton pinafore Tara had bought for her several weeks previously, and by the time the requisite underskirt and spotless white blouse had been found to wear with it Tara’s head was thumping nauseously.
Susan had arranged for her chauffuer to pick them up at ten o’clock, and by a miracle by ten to the packing was done and the twins ready, which was more than could be said for her, Tara decided feverishly, tugging a comb through her hair and applying lipstick deftly to the soft curves of her mouth.
The unexpected sunshine had prompted her into a new outfit she had bought for work and not yet worn She had seen it in a small boutique off South Moulton Street, reduced because of its small size, and had bought it knowing that it would be just right for the receptions Chas sometimes held in the evening as a publicity exercise.
A rich, vivid blue, it was a three-piece in pure silk with a camisole top which just skimmed the curves of her breasts, and a softly shaped skirt gathered into a deep waistband and topped with a matching jacket, whose sleeves she rolled back in the fashion she had seen adopted by the models who came to the studio.
Working in such an environment meant that she had developed a keen eye for adapting prevalent trends to her own personality. The silk brushed sensuously against her skin; she had left her hair in a soft cloud against her shoulders, and the sample of the new Armarni scent the Vogue Beauty Editor had given her had been used to good effect. Such samples were her one and only perk. At Christmas she had been presented with what amounted to almost a full trousseau of luxurious Italian underwear by the manufacturer; a gesture of his gratitude for the effect of advertisements Chas had photographed, although such munificence was relatively rare.
Today she was wearing some of it; the briefest of satin bras trimmed with handmade lace to match the dainty suspender belt and briefs that were part of the set.
Vanity was largely responsible for today’s primping, she decided, giving herself a last brief look in her mirror. Even though at one time she and Susan had once been as close as sisters a wide gulf yawned between them now.
Susan was a rich man’s wife, and it showed, and although she would never be guilty of patronising a less fortunate friend, Tara had no wish to earn her pity by arriving in inexpensive chain-store casuals.
First impressions always counted, Tara reminded herself and when she and the twins stepped out of Susan’s Rolls she didn’t want them to look like the poor relations.
Susan had explained to her that she and her husband would be driving down to the country ahead of them, which was why the Rolls was free to transport Tara, but despite the knowledge that her appearance was both chic and sophisticated she couldn’t stop the tiny bubbles of anxiety forming in the pit of her stomach when the twins’ joint shrieks announced the arrival of their transport.
Not wanting to keep the chauffeur waiting, Tara sped downstairs, picking up their case with one hand and ushering the twins through the front door with the other. Outside she told them to wait while she checked her handbag for keys and money, and carefully locked the door.
The sight of the immaculate Rolls seemed to have a subduing effect upon the twins, because they clung uncertainly to Tara’s side as she hustled them towards the waiting car.
As they approached it the driver’s door opened and a man emerged. Her first thought was that he wasn’t wearing a uniform, but this was quickly submerged by a sickening wave of recognition mingled with stunned disbelief.
‘Tara!’
He said her name evenly, the inflection which in the past had sent her weak-kneed with pleasure totally banished. He had changed; or was it simply that her perception of him had changed from that of a bemused teenager to that of a disillusioned woman?
‘James.’ Somehow she managed to force a stiff smile from features as tautly fragile as eggshells. Now she was the one clinging to the twins, filled by an overwhelming impulse to turn on her heel and seek the sanctuary of her home.
James barely glanced at his children, and watching his cool disregard of them, Tara forced back an hysterical impulse to laugh. So much for all those daydreams she had woven during the long lonely months of her pregnancy when she had fantasised about James appearing to discover that she was the mother of his child and being overcome by love for both of them.
‘Quite a surprise,’ she managed to say calmly. ‘Susan never mentioned that you would be picking us up.’
‘A last minute arrangement,’ James told her briefly Without looking at her. ‘I’ve just returned from the States and when I invited myself down to Dovecote for the weekend they suggested that I give you a lift so that they could give their chauffeur a weekend off.’
‘Susan should have telephoned, I could have used my own car.’
Tara flushed when his eyes suddenly fastened on her face; no longer the warm, teasing dark blue she remembered but as hard and flat as river pebbles and totally without expression as they surveyed her heightened-colour and defensive grip on the twins.
‘Mummy, you’re hurting me!’ Mandy protested, casting an upward glance at the tall, dark-haired man watching them; a glance which Tara noticed was full of coquettishly innocent appeal.
‘Why don’t we all get in the car!’ James suggested, bending to relieve Tara of the weight of the case. Their fingers touched accidentally, and Tara withdrew as though she had been burned by live coals.
‘Explicit but unnecessary,’ James told her crisply, stowing her case away, ‘I got the message the first time round.’
Tara assumed that he was referring to the shock which must have been apparent when she saw him step out of the car. This meeting must be as unwelcome to him as it was to her, she reflected miserably as she followed the children to the waiting car, but at least he had had the advantage of being forearmed.
The first ten minutes of their journey passed easily enough as the twins exclaimed over the luxury of their transport; Tara couldn’t help wishing that James had not ushered her into the front passenger seat, but it seemed gauche to make a fuss about it. After all, he could scarcely have any more desire for her company than she had for his!
He was both the same and yet different, she decided, stealing a brief glance at his impassive profile. There was a total and unrelenting male hardness about him now that she did not remember; when she was seventeen he had seemed the epitome of all her adolescent dreams; gentle, understanding, tender. No one would ever dream of attributing those virtues to the man now seated next to her.
His dark hair was still untouched by grey; and although he was wearing a discreetly expensive suit she suspected that physically he had changed little in the seven years they had been apart. There had been a supple arrogance about the way he had walked towards her which suggested that he was a man at the peak of physical perfection. She remembered the cataclysmic night he had returned from California; then his skin had had the silky sheen of a sun tan, his body a rich bronze. Her palms tingled as though she could still feel the soft suppleness of his flesh against them, and she shuddered deeply, wrenching her thoughts away from the past.
In the back seat the twins were playing a game, vying with one another in their attempts to count as many cars of a particular type as they could.
‘Susan tells me you’re a widow.’
He hadn’t taken his eyes off the road. Tara felt as though a huge boulder were stuck in her throat.
‘Yes,’ she agreed, forcing out the lie.
‘I’m sorry.’ The words were a formality. ‘What happened?’
‘John was killed abroad,’ Tara said huskily, repeating the fabrication which had become familiar to her over the years. ‘Before the twins were born. They never knew him, nor he them.’
‘A mutual loss,’ James said quietly. ‘You’ve never thought of remarrying?’
