Starting Over

‘It’s the girls I feel sorry for,’ she continued.

‘It’s so hard for children when their parents split up.’

Saul had three children from his first marriage and Tullah could still remember how fragile and lost they had seemed when she had first met him and them.

Saul’s first wife had abandoned not only her husband but her three children as well, claiming that there was no place for her son and daughters in her second marriage to a man who was not family oriented.

It had not been easy for any of them when she and Saul had first fallen in love and married, Tullah acknowledged, even though now the children totally accepted her. A child of their own had completed their family but Tullah knew she felt a fierce extra protective love for Saul’s eldest three children, especially his daughter Meg, and her heart went out to Amelia and Alex.

‘If you ask me, men and women should be kept strictly apart except for purposes which are purely recreational,’ Nick told them both tongue-in-cheek, his eyes dancing with wicked amusement.

Like all the Crighton men he was outstandingly good-looking, but Nick had an added air of excitement and danger, an added aura, a certain very challenging maleness about him Tullah recognised as she gave a small admonishing shake of her head and told him, ‘You’re incorrigible, Nick, you really are.’

‘Nope, I’m just determined never to fall into the trap of allowing my emotions to ruin my life,’ Nick told her firmly.

Saul said nothing. He was thoroughly familiar with his younger brother’s antipathy towards marriage and commitment.

‘One day you’ll change your mind,’ Tullah warned him. ‘You’ll see someone and fall in love with her….’

‘What is it?’ she asked anxiously as Nick suddenly yelped in pain. A girl was standing next to his chair, her face flushed and pink as she started to apologise. She had obviously bumped into him accidentally as she crossed the dimly lit room. She was extremely pretty, Tullah recognised, amused to realise that Nick was receiving her apology with something less than his normal savoir faire. He might spurn marriage and commitment but that did not mean that her brother-in-law was averse to female company—far from it. Although to be fair to him, so far as Tullah knew his ‘relationships’ were limited to women who shared his views on the advantages of their short shelf life.

Her face crimson with mortification, Sara stammered an apology to the man she had inadvertently bumped into, but her embarrassment was replaced by indignation as he gave her a look of biting scorn instead of accepting her apology in the spirit in which she had given it.

She was still trying to find Frances and having seen her on the other side of the room had been attempting to make her way through the packed restaurant, her eyes on her quarry instead of what was in front of her.

Was it really her fault anyway, she asked herself indignantly as she returned Nick’s angry glare with one of her own. He had been sitting at the table at an odd angle with the chair pulled out more than was surely necessary.

‘You look cross. Is everything all right?’ Frances asked in concern when Sara eventually caught up with her.

‘I’ve just had a bit of a run-in with one of your diners,’ Sara admitted ruefully. ‘I bumped into him but when I tried to apologise—’

‘Which one?’ Frances interrupted her.

‘That table over there,’ Sara replied, showing her.

‘Oh, Tullah and Saul Crighton’s table.’

Crightons!

Immediately Sara twisted round to stare at the trio. As luck would have it the couple, obviously Tullah and Saul, were seated with their backs towards her. But the man she’d bumped into …

Sara’s breath rattled in her throat as he lifted his head and glared at her.

‘Oh, poor Nick,’ Frances was saying. ‘He’s not been very well.’

‘You mean like a bear with a sore head not well,’ Sara responded pseudo sweetly.

Frances’s eyebrows rose.

‘Oh, dear, he really has upset you, hasn’t he?’ she sympathised before continuing briskly, ‘No, actually he was involved in a very unpleasant incident. Like nearly all the Crightons he’s a qualified solicitor but the work he does is extremely specialised and often rather dangerous. Although in this case …’ Quickly she explained just how Nick had come to be hurt, but stubbornly Sara refused to be impressed.

‘Perhaps it might help if he carried a sign warning people not to get too close to him,’ she suggested through gritted teeth.

Frances forbore to comment. Sara was a gorgeous-looking girl and Nick was a singularly handsome man. Therefore, it seemed logical to Frances that the two of them should be attracted to one another. As the mother of young adults she was also well aware that sometimes such attraction presented itself disguised as hostility.

‘It’s nine o’clock. You’ve been working all evening,’ she told Sara with a smile. ‘Why don’t you call it a day.’

‘Not yet,’ Sara refused determinedly. Armed with the information Frances had given her she was sure she could solve her problem with the recalcitrant computer.

Frances smiled ruefully as she watched Sara walk away, this time giving the Crighton table a wide berth.

She had liked Sara on sight, sensing within her a gutsy determination allied to a warm sense of humour. Her stunning good looks would cause havoc, of course!

‘Nick,’ Tullah expostulated as she saw the grim way her brother-in-law was watching the woman’s determined circumnavigation of their table.

‘Little madam,’ Nick seethed without taking his eyes off her departing back. ‘Did you see the look she gave me?’

‘Well, I certainly saw the one you gave her,’ Tullah told him dryly.

‘Yes,’ Saul corroborated. ‘You were hardly your normal charming smooth self with her, Nick,’ he pointed out. ‘Pretty girl,’ he added appreciatively, laughing when Tullah gave him a mock glare whilst saying with wifely warning, ‘Saul …’

‘Very pretty,’ Nick agreed sourly. He wasn’t even sure himself just why he had reacted so badly to her. Common sense told him that the painful jolt she had given his still aching wound had been completely accidental and he knew that normally he would not only have accepted her embarrassed apology gracefully but that he would probably have done everything he could to create a good impression and set her at her ease.

So why hadn’t he?

Not surely because of that sharp little jolt of male sensual electricity, that more than a mere frisson of sensation that had seized him at their accidental bodily contact. After all, he had experienced physical desire for plenty of other women before her.

Physical desire, yes, but not that swift pang of dangerous knowledge, that unwanted awareness, that instinct that … that what?

That nothing, he told himself firmly.

‘You’re right,’ he announced, even though neither Saul nor Tullah had said anything. ‘I behaved very boorishly … and by rights I should apologise. I wonder where she’s gone.’

‘Frances will probably know,’ Tullah informed him. ‘She was talking to her.’

Ruefully Nick pushed back his chair and got up.

‘Sara?’ Frances responded in answer to his question. ‘Oh, she’ll be in the office. She’s standing in for our office manager….’

Thoughtfully she watched as Nick made his way through the tables.

Sara gave a small crow of satisfaction as she finally got the computer to do as she wished. Nick heard it as he pushed open the door of the office. Sara was standing looking at the computer screen, her eyes alight with triumph and pleasure. She was more than just pretty Nick acknowledged as he felt his heart jolt fiercely against his ribs.

Sensing someone’s presence Sara turned her head away from the screen, the breath rushing out of her lungs on a shocked whoosh as she realised who the intruder was.

‘Frances said I’d find you in here,’ Nick told her. Her body had stiffened and the look in her eyes was both wary and hostile.

Immediately his own body—and emotions—reacted.

‘I owe you an apology,’ he began tersely.

‘Yes, you do,’ Sara agreed spiritedly, ‘But you’re a Crighton and of course Crightons never apologise, especially to women….’

Nick stared at her. Her reaction was so unexpected and so extraordinary that it had taken him completely by surprise.

‘What on earth …’ he began, but to his fury he saw that Sara was ignoring him, concentrating instead on the screen in front of her, blanking him so totally and completely that he might just as well not have existed. Women never blanked Nick. Never! Whilst a part of him was distantly relishing his shock the rest of him was sharply and furiously angry that she could dare to both speak and act as she had.

‘Now look here,’ he said grimly, ‘there’s no way you can make that kind of statement without explaining just what it’s supposed to mean.’

As he spoke he moved closer to the desk, so close in fact that Sara could feel the angry heat coming off his body. This close he was overpoweringly male. Tall, broad, his eyes so dark that they could almost have been black, not the navy-blue she knew they were. Excitement and fear raced through her veins like rocket fuel. Caution told her that she had gone too far, but the voice of caution wasn’t one Sara wanted to listen to. No, she would much rather listen to the siren lure of the exultation egging her on, telling her she was giving Nick what he deserved.

Ignoring him she continued to work.

Nick had had enough. Irritably he reached out towards her, merely intending to cover her hand to stop her working the keyboard, but the moment his fingers brushed her skin a surge of such powerful sexual immediacy coursed through his veins that the original cause of his physical contact with her was forgotten.

‘Just let go of me,’ Sara snapped at him, her face as white now as it had been flushed when she had bumped into him earlier in the restaurant, her eyes brilliant with the intensity of what she was feeling. And what she was feeling was … Instinctively Nick knew that she was as aware of the sexual chemistry between them as he was himself.

For a man who was used to being totally in control of himself and his emotions, what he was experiencing was totally unwanted, so incomprehensible.

‘I came in here to apologise,’ he reminded Sara sharply.

Angrily Sara raised her head to look at him but the sarcastic response she had been about to make died on her lips unspoken, as for some inconceivable reason her gaze was drawn to his mouth and then his eyes and then back to his mouth again.

Almost as though he were standing outside of himself watching what he was doing Nick was aware of his own actions and his inability to stop them. It seemed to take an aeon of time for him to lean forward closing the gap between Sara and himself and then to cover her mouth with his, but in reality he knew it could only have been seconds. Her mouth tasted velvety warm, sweet salt sexy and the pressure of his own against it intensified.

Beneath the hot crushing sexuality of Nick’s kiss Sara’s senses reeled. This was the kind of kiss she had dreamed of as a young awkward girl … the kind of man … the kind of sensual immediacy that could not be contained or controlled. Instinctively her mouth softened beneath Nick’s and then outside in the corridor she heard someone laughing.

Immediately reality intruded, breaking the spell she was under. In the same second that she pulled back from him Nick released her. Wordlessly they glared at one another. Two pairs of eyes both reflecting the same furious resentment, both reflecting the same hot aching desire.

‘Everything all right now?’ Tullah asked Nick when he rejoined them. Saul had gone to pay the bill so only she was there to see the shattered, shocked expression in Nick’s eyes.

‘Everything’s fine,’ he lied as he guided her towards the exit where Saul was waiting for them both.

Crighton men! Sara seethed, her emotions in chaotic turmoil, her body equally disturbed. Tania had been so right about them.

CHAPTER FOUR

‘GOOD LORD, IS that really the time?’ Frederick de Voysey exclaimed as he glanced at his watch. ‘I had no idea. Can’t remember when I last enjoyed m’self so much … excellent dinner, m’dear,’ he praised Honor.

‘I’ll drive you back to Fitzburgh Place.’ David smiled. He had deliberately not had any wine with his meal, knowing that he would be driving Honor’s cousin home afterwards.

He had been a little bit uncertain about the wisdom of inviting Freddy round for dinner the same day that the priest was arriving, but as always Honor’s judgement had proved better than his and the two men both in their seventies had got on famously together. So much so that Lord Astlegh had already invited the priest to join him in a game of chess later in the week.

‘In terms of religion they may be poles apart,’ Honor had agreed when David had raised that issue. ‘But in terms of their desire to help their fellow man they are very similar and surely that matters more.’

And so it had proved to be. From the tone of Freddy’s conversation David suspected that it wouldn’t be too long before the priest found himself involved in one or other of the peer’s ‘good works,’ but right now he could see that the older man was looking tired. He had, after all, only arrived from Ireland a few hours earlier.

‘I think I’m ready to call it a night as well,’ Father Ignatius agreed.

At the front door Honor kissed her elderly cousin fondly.

‘I’ve had the plans back for the orangery,’ he reminded her. ‘You’d better come up and see them.’

‘I shall,’ Honor assured him affectionately.

Closing the front door behind him she smiled at the priest. ‘Would you like to wait here until David comes back or would you prefer to go straight to your bed?’

‘Straight to bed if you don’t mind,’ he confirmed.

It had been a tiring journey from Ireland but it was a peaceful kind of tiredness. He had gone there for a purpose, back to the place where his ministry had begun. Now he could settle to a life in the Cheshire countryside. Father Ignatius was at the place that he knew would be his final home on earth.

He allowed Honor to walk with him to the small self-contained apartment they had prepared for him. Its rooms had a stark almost cell-like bareness that he knew was deliberate. David’s decision or Honor’s? It didn’t really matter. He felt comfortable here. At home … and was appreciative of whichever of them it was that had had the sensitivity to know that this would be what he wanted.

The books on the simple bookshelves were David’s choice—he knew that—and would have known it even if Honor had not whispered to him that David had spent days combing antiquarian booksellers lists for them.

They were books they had talked of in Jamaica. He reached for one, smoothing the aged leather cover, opening it and breathing in the familiar smell of its pages. There had been books like this at the Jesuit college where he had been educated. How long ago that seemed now.

‘Do you think Father Ignatius is all right?’ David asked Honor an hour later. They were in bed lovingly curled up together like two spoons. Whilst he waited for her response David started to nibble tenderly at the exposed curve of Honor’s neck. There was something uniquely adorable and almost absurdly youthful about the back of her neck. Closing his eyes he breathed in the unmatchable Honor scent of her. He was lucky, so undeservably blessed.

‘He’s tired after his journey, that’s all,’ Honor reassured him. ‘He certainly enjoyed Freddy’s company.’

‘Okay, I concede, you were right about them getting on well together,’ David laughed.

‘Olivia and Caspar were due back today, weren’t they?’ Honor said quietly.

‘Yes,’ David agreed. There was no laughter in his voice now.

Immediately Honor turned round to look at him.

‘Give her time, David,’ she counselled him. ‘I know how much you want to show her what she means to you, but—’

‘She hates me, Honor,’ David interrupted her sadly. ‘I can feel it….’

‘No, it isn’t you she hates,’ Honor told him wisely. ‘It’s herself. Poor Olivia …’

‘It’s my fault that she is suffering so much,’ David told her.

‘In part, yes,’ Honor agreed steadily.

‘I was a bad father,’ he said heavily.

‘Yes,’ Honor acknowledged. ‘You were a bad father, David,’ she told him truthfully.

‘I just want to make it up to her but she won’t let me get near her….’

‘Give her time,’ Honor repeated.

She could hear the pain and frustration in his voice and see it in his eyes.

‘Somehow it’s easier with Jack,’ David continued. ‘He’s—’

‘… male?’ Honor supplied.

‘No,’ David denied immediately.

Honor shook her head and told him truthfully, ‘That’s what Olivia’s going to think, David. The blame doesn’t all lie with you, though. Your father …’ She stopped.

‘Olivia is my daughter. I should have protected her from my father’s prejudices.’ David closed his eyes. ‘I shouldn’t burden you with all this.’

‘Of course you should,’ Honor told him immediately. ‘That’s part of what loving someone is all about … sharing … the bad as well as the good.’

Smiling she reached out and cupped his face and then very gently and slowly started to kiss him.

‘Mmm … more,’ David coaxed hopefully as he gathered her into his arms and started to kiss her back.

Jenny frowned over her shopping list. It seemed pathetically brief, but now, after all, she was only shopping for two. Joss had flown out to America to visit Jon’s aunt Ruth who was living there with her American husband, his last chance to do so before he started focussing on his school exams.

Joss and Ruth had always been particularly close and Jenny smiled as she thought about her aunt-in-law and her youngest son. Both of them were blessed with a special temperament, a serenity and wisdom that had a gentling effect on everyone they came in contact with.

The telephone started to ring and she went to answer it.

‘Jen, it’s me,’ she heard Jon saying. ‘Look, don’t wait for me for dinner tonight. David’s asked me to go up to Fitzburgh Place to see Lord Freddy. He’s got some business he wants to discuss with me.’

‘Is David going to be there as well?’ Jenny couldn’t stop herself from asking tersely.

‘David?’ She could hear the confusion in Jon’s voice. ‘I don’t know. He could be. Why?’

‘Nothing,’ Jenny fibbed. She could imagine how Jon was likely to react if she gave in to the childish desire to complain that just lately he seemed to be spending more time with his brother than he was with her. He had gone out earlier to play golf and she had been expecting him to return within the hour.

On her way back from her shopping she would call and see Olivia, she decided, to see if there was anything she could do to help.

‘Mumee … Mumee … Wake up. I’m hungry.’

Olivia opened her eyes as she heard Alex’s voice, her heart pounding as she saw the time. Ten o’clock. She was always up at six. She could feel the now familiar ice-cold nausea rising up inside her as fear flooded her veins. Her skin felt clammy but icy cold.

More than anything else she wanted to stay where she was, here in bed, to pull the duvet over her head and shut out the world and her problems but she couldn’t. She had responsibilities … duties … two children … a job…. Mentally she started to list the day’s tasks. There was the washing, the girls’ school uniforms for tomorrow, her own case notes to read … food to buy … meals to cook … the house needed cleaning. Her heart was thudding even more frantically now as anxiety-induced adrenaline shot through her veins.

‘Mummee …’ Alex persisted. ‘I’m hungry … I’m starving.’

Olivia could feel the scream building up inside her but she knew she must not give voice to it. It wasn’t Alex’s fault she was feeling like this. She had no right to be feeling like this. She was a woman … a mother … a wife … No, not a wife any more … not now …

Caspar … Suddenly her whole body started to tremble.

‘Mummy,’ Alex had started to cry and Olivia could see the fear in her eyes. More than anything else children needed security and love. No one knew that better than Olivia herself.

‘It’s all right darling,’ she reassured her. ‘I’m going to get up now. You go downstairs and wait for me.’

Caspar … Caspar … Why hadn’t he understood …? Why hadn’t he helped her …? Why hadn’t he loved her …? No one had ever loved her….

As she walked into her bathroom Olivia raised an unsteady hand to her face to wipe away her tears. Her—crying? But she never cried …

It was five o’clock in the morning and still dark outside. Caspar lifted his head from his pillow. Next to him lay a small toy, one of Alex’s. He had found it after she had gone. Gently he touched it with his fingertips. He ached with the pain of missing his daughters—and his wife? His mouth compressed grimly. Olivia might be his wife but she wasn’t the woman he had married, the woman he had fallen in love with and who he had believed loved him.

Ultimately they were going to have to sit down and talk. There was no way he intended to be merely a weekend father to his kids, but right now … right now, locked up in the garage of his half-brother’s house where he was spending the night was the gleaming Harley-Davidson motorbike he had bought the previous day and tomorrow he was going to start out on the journey he had first promised himself he would make when he was still in high school, right across America from coast to coast.

‘You’re going to do what?’ his father had asked in disbelief, adding, ‘Hell, Caspar, a man of your age can’t ride something like that. It’s for kids.’

He shifted uncomfortably in the too soft, too big bed that felt even bigger and emptier without Olivia’s presence at his side, her body tucked close to his.

Tucked close to his. It was one hell of a long time since they had shared that kind of night-time intimacy.

Closing his eyes he tried to think back to exactly when it had been, certainly before Alex’s birth. She had been a colicky, light-sleeping baby causing Olivia to get up so many times during the night to her in the first weeks after her birth that eventually Olivia had started sleeping in the nursery with her. They had both agreed that it would be unfair to Amelia to bring Alex’s cot into their room. And after that? After that Olivia had spent so much time working that when she did go to bed it was purely and simply to sleep.

Was that when sex had ceased to become a shared pleasure between them, turning instead into a reluctant exchange on Olivia’s part which he had had to barter for?

Caspar started to frown. Loving someone wasn’t just about sex. But Olivia didn’t want his love any more than she wanted his body. Bleakly he closed his eyes.

‘Jon …’

Jon smiled as he saw his twin waiting for him when he got out of his car at Fitzburgh Place.

‘I had to come up to collect some plants from the greenhouses for Honor so I thought I might as well hang around and wait for you,’ David explained as they exchanged affectionate hugs.

‘Olivia and Caspar were due back yesterday, weren’t they?’ David asked with such deliberate studied carelessness that Jon’s heart went out to him. ‘I expect she’s already been round to see Jenny to tell her all about their trip….’

Jon frowned.

‘No … she hasn’t.’ There was no easy way for him to tell David what had happened.

‘Livvy’s come back David, but Caspar hasn’t. They’ve separated,’ he told his twin bluntly.

‘What …?’

Jon could see the shocked disbelief in David’s eyes. ‘But I thought they were so happy together.’

‘They were,’ Jon agreed heavily, ‘But … look, I don’t know the full details.’