Starting Over (24 page)

'I had to do it, Mummy,' Amelia told her unwillingly. 'Alex said that she would go without me if I didn't....'

The look she gave first her younger sister and then Olivia herself tore at Olivia's emotions. How well she herself could remember that feeling of being responsible for the welfare and safety of a younger sibling, the anxiety, the fear, the anger and resentment against the world that forced on her a responsibility that was too heavy for her combined with a stoical determination to carry that burden somehow.

Oh, Amelia.... What was she
doing
to her children she asked herself sorrowfully. What was she inflicting on them?

'I wanted to know about my grandpa,' Alex was telling her firmly. 'You wouldn't tell us so I wanted to ask Uncle Jon about him.'

Every word she uttered was adding to Olivia's despair and guilt. How could she possibly continue with her work now? How could she bear to allow them out of her sight for a single second?

Serpent-like the thought slipped into her mind that none of this would have happened if Caspar had been here.

Caspar...

She had dreamed about him last night—again—

waking up, her face wet with tears to find her arms outstretched yearningly to the empty side of their bed.

But it had been the Caspar she had fallen in love with she had dreamed of, she reminded herself fiercely, not the Caspar her husband had become.

'Amelia and Alex, you must both promise me that you will never, ever, do anything like this again,' Olivia told them. 'That road is very dangerous... and you...

'You're both so precious, so vulnerable,' she wanted to tell them, but of course they were far too young to understand.

She was, Olivia knew, facing the dilemma that faced so many single working mothers. She needed to work to support her children financially, to give them the lifestyle enjoyed by their peers within their family group and at school. The house was mortgaged and Caspar would do his bit she knew, but she had always been the main breadwinner. Yes, they could down-scale. She could sell the house and buy something smaller in Haslewich itself, perhaps, and she was fully prepared to do so; but no matter what economies they made she would still have to earn a living...and she could not do that unless she had the kind of back-up and help that meant she need never have a single second's anxiety about the safety and welfare of her daughters.

There had been another message left from the nanny agency to say that they were unable to find anyone to meet her needs. Jenny, who she had hoped would help her, could not do so. All the other women in the family had very full busy lives of their own with their own responsibilities; and besides, there was no way she wanted her precious children to feel they were always on the fringes of other people's lives, always second best, always having to stand aside and watch others receive the love and hugs of loving parents and grandparents whilst they...

Olivia closed her eyes. There was no other course open to her now. For her children's sake she had to put aside her own pride and bitterness.

She had seen the look in her father's eyes as he tended Alex's cut leg. Tears filled her own. For the sake of her daughters there was nothing else she could do.

SARA GLANCED
at her watch. It was well gone eight o'clock in the evening and her desk was virtually clear. She could have left hours ago and been curled up comfortably in her fiat watching her favourite TV

programme. So what was she doing sitting here...

waiting...?

She was working, that was what she told herself, ignoring the fact that she had been achieving little for the last fifteen minutes. Anyway, what had she expected? That just because she had indicated to Nick that she had changed her mind and that she wanted to go ahead with...with the ultimate cure for the afflic-tion she was suffering from, that he would drop everything and come speeding over to sweep her off to his bed!

No, of course she hadn't.

Liar, she scorned herself with silent derision. That was
exactly
what she had expected him to do. Was he deliberately trying to torment her, to humiliate her or was he more mundanely perhaps the kind of man who lost interest in his prey once it had stopped running?

Unable to dwell logically or unemotionally on such unpalatable and unwanted thoughts, Sara got off her chair and paced her office agitatedly.

If he didn't want her, well that was fine by her. He, after all, was the one who had come on to her and not the other way around. She had noticed how sexually compelling he was of course, but... She tensed as the telephone on her desk rang. There was no telephone in the flat which was why she had remained down here in the office, finding herself work to do just in case...

She made an angry grab for the telephone receiver grimacing when she discovered that the caller was someone who had dialled the office number in error and who really wanted to make a booking in the restaurant.

Politely she asked him to hold on whilst she went into the restaurant for the reservation book.

Having taken the booking, she was on her way back to the restaurant with it when she saw him. He was just about to push open the outside door. It was a wet night and as she watched him in avid absorbed intensity she saw him shake the raindrops off himself.

He hadn't seen her as yet and so she was able to watch him, virtually rooted to the spot by the urgency and strength of what she was feeling.

NICK HADN'T
intended to go to the restaurant—or indeed to make any attempt to contact Sara. He wanted, no,
needed,
time to come to terms with what she had said to him. But then he had discovered that he needed some cash and the nearest cash dispenser was only a few seconds' walk away from the restaurant and...

As he pushed open the door he saw her. She was standing looking at him. A huge swell of feeling so strong that it shocked him surged through him. He wanted to swoop down and pick her up there and then, take her away somewhere where he could be totally and completely on his own with her...then they would see just how easy she would actually find it to separate sex from emotion.

As he reached her side some dangerous impulse within her drove Sara to say in soft challenge, 'Goodness me, I'd begun to wonder if you'd changed your mind and to think that perhaps you were one of those men who was all talk but no action!'

Aghast she wondered what on earth had prompted her to say something so foolhardy. But it was too late to take back her challenging words now. She could see from the angry glint in Nick's eyes just what
he
thought of them.

'Changed my mind? No way. And as for the rest of your statement...' His voice had become as smooth as cream but Sara was very sharply aware of the acid sting that lurked beneath his soft words.

'It will be my pleasure to prove otherwise.'

His pleasure! A tiny dart of fear and insecurity stabbed through Sara's body. Unwittingly her glance lifted to his to search his eyes, her own widening and darkening with an unexpected vulnerability that made Nick catch his breath. Just what kind of a game was she playing with him? One moment the sophisticated sexually experienced woman of the world, the next a vulnerable-looking novice who trembled at the mere thought of having sex.

But, after a remark like the one she had just made to him, there was no way she could be that!

Helplessly Sara wondered how on earth she could have been so idiotic. No man liked having his sexuality challenged—she knew that.

Nick took a deep breath. What was he waiting for?

She had made it plain to him just what she wanted.

'I have to return home for a few days....'

'Home?' Sara questioned numbly. What was he trying to tell her? That he had, after all, changed his mind? That he needed more time to decide? Either way...

'Yes. I live in Pembrokeshire,' he told her tersely.

'I want you to come with me.'

Go with him?

Sara wasn't sure if the weakness that filled her was caused by shock or relief.

'We could be alone there,' Nick told her quietly, forcing her to meet and hold his gaze. 'I don't think either of us want to have our private lives played out under the interested eyes of either Frances and her family or my brother and his...'

'No,' Sara agreed. 'But Pembrokeshire...'

She hadn't got as far as thinking where they would expiate their mutually unwanted desire but had hazily assumed they would go to some hotel. Certainly, she agreed with him that she didn't want anyone else to know what was happening. After all, it wasn't as though they were going to have a proper relationship or become a 'couple,' but to go away alone with him to his home...

'If you can't trust me enough to come to my home then you certainly can't trust me and if you can't trust me enough to enter my home then you certainly can't trust me enough to enter your body,' he told her trenchantly and with such open sexual meaning that Sara flushed.

'I... When... There's Frances and my work... I'd have to take time off,' she began disjointedly.

'The weekend after next,' Nick told her immediately. 'Oh, and you'll need warm clothes. The cottage is fairly remote.'

Warm clothes! Sara gave him a startled look but wished she hadn't as he returned it with amusement, bending his head to whisper wickedly in her ear,

'What's wrong? Granted I want you like hell and I can promise you it's going to give us both very great pleasure when I prove it to you, but we shan't be spending the
entire
weekend in bed. Pembroke has one of the most famous and beautiful coastline walks in the country. If the weather's good enough we could even sail.

The sea off the coast can be a little bit rough, though.'

Sara was almost beginning to get the impression that he was subtly trying to put her off—either that or intimidate her.

Dryly she told him, 'My father's a keen sailor and I used to crew for him.'

Giving him an old-fashioned look she added in an even dryer tone, 'The year I was fourteen we both did the Round Britain race crewing for a client of my father's.'

'Did you win?' Nick asked her mock innocently.

Sara gave him a sharply incisive look but he held her gaze.

'No. We were placed tenth,' she replied calmly and then couldn't resist adding, 'But we came out with the best time for a purely amateur crewed boat.'

'I spent a couple of summers sailing off Cape Cod when I was at university,' Nick told her casually, but Sara wasn't deceived. Well, if he wanted to play 'anything you can do I can do better' games that was fine by her.
She
certainly wasn't going to back down.

FOURTEEN AND
crewing in something as dangerous as the Round Britain race—Nick frowned as he left her.

Her father must have been mad to allow it. She was such a slender scrap of a thing. She could quite easily have been swept overboard. Just thinking of the danger she would have been in made his whole body tense.

WHAT ON EARTH
had she committed herself to, Sara wondered anxiously as she watched Nick walk away.

She tried to comfort herself by thinking that she could always change her mind and refuse to go but she knew already that her pride just wouldn't allow her to take that escape route.

Of course, there was always the chance that Frances would not want her to take the weekend off; but, predictably, when Sara mentioned it to her later Frances agreed immediately to her request.

Sara thanked her hollowly. Now there was nothing to stop her from going to Pembrokeshire with Nick.

'Thank you very much!' she silently mentally cursed fate.

'YOU'RE GOING HOME
?' Saul frowned. 'Now look, Nick...'

'It's only for the weekend,' Nick assured him. 'I need to check the state of the house—that sort of thing.'

'Mmm... Well, if you've made up your mind I don't suppose I can stop you,' Saul acknowledged.

'No, you can't,' Nick agreed dryly.

'I can't stop you, Nick,' Saul continued quietly but with firm elder brother authority, 'but I can and must remind you of how foolhardy it would be of you to prejudice your own recovery by doing anything stupid or dangerous.'

Foolhardy and dangerous—well, that just about ac-curately summed up his plans for his time in Pembrokeshire, Nick acknowledged, albeit not the way that Saul meant. On this occasion it would be his emotions that would be in danger and the risks he was taking with
them
that was foolhardy rather than with his physical safety.

Still, there was always the chance that Sara would back out. A woman who as a girl had taken part in one of the most gruelling sailing races there was—

back away from
any
challenge—who was he kidding?

HONOR LOOKED AT
the silent telephone. She had just had the strangest feeling. Living as she did so close to and in harmony with nature, Honor had long ago ceased to question or doubt these occasional darts of

'intuition' she experienced. She and Father Ignatius had discussed this phenomenon in great detail without either of them being able to come up with a rational explanation for it other than to acknowledge, as the priest had said, that there were both historical and bib-lical anecdotes and written confirmation to prove its existence.

Thoughtfully she walked over to the telephone. David, touchingly, had already added Olivia's number to their personal directory.

Her hand was reaching out for the receiver when the telephone started to ring. After a look at the caller's number she cried urgently, 'David, come quickly, it's for you.'

As
SHE HEARD
the familiar male voice responding to her telephone call, Olivia took a deep breath. This was the hardest and the most humiliating thing she had ever had to do.

'Hello...it's me—Olivia,' she announced herself abruptly.

On the other end of the line David closed his eyes and willed his own voice not to falter or betray what he was feeling as he prayed that somehow she would sense and accept the love he was sending to her.

LESS THAN FIVE
minutes later it was all arranged. Olivia would drop the children off every morning with David and Honor on her way to work. David would take them to school and collect them again in the afternoon and she would pick them up from David and Honor's on her way home from work.