Tug Of Love
PENNY JORDAN
Had He Returned for Her…Or Their Son?Life wasn't easy as a single mom, but somehow Win had managed to raise a son that any mother could be proud of. Now Charlie's father was back on the scene and demanding as share in his child. But was a share all James wanted? Could it be that her seductive ex-husband meant to take Charlie away from her?All Win knew was that in the space of a few days James had managed to turn her calm, self-assured world upside down. But was her concern more about Charlie's future or her own?
Celebrate the legend that is bestselling author
PENNY JORDAN
Phenomenally successful author of more than two hundred books with sales of over a hundred million copies!
Penny Jordan’s novels are loved by millions of readers all around the word in many different languages. Mills & Boon are proud to have published one hundred and eighty-seven novels and novellas written by Penny Jordan, who was a reader favourite right from her very first novel through to her last.
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About the Author
PENNY JORDAN is one of Mills & Boon’s most popular authors. Sadly, Penny died from cancer on 31st December 2011, aged sixty-five. She leaves an outstanding legacy, having sold over a hundred million books around the world. She wrote a total of one hundred and eighty-seven novels for Mills & Boon, including the phenomenally successful A Perfect Family, To Love, Honour & Betray, The Perfect Sinner and Power Play, which hit the Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller lists. Loved for her distinctive voice, her success was in part because she continually broke boundaries and evolved her writing to keep up with readers’ changing tastes. Publishers Weekly said about Jordan ‘Women everywhere will find pieces of themselves in Jordan’s characters’ and this perhaps explains her enduring appeal.
Although Penny was born in Preston, Lancashire and spent her childhood there, she moved to Cheshire as a teenager and continued to live there for the rest of her life. Following the death of her husband, she moved to the small traditional Cheshire market town on which she based her much-loved Crighton books.
Penny was a member and supporter of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and the Romance Writers of America—two organisations dedicated to providing support for both published and yet-to-be-published authors. Her significant contribution to women’s fiction was recognised in 2011, when the Romantic Novelists’ Association presented Penny with a Lifetime Achievement Award.
Tug of Love
Penny Jordan
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CHAPTER ONE
‘WIN, what’s wrong?’
Winter looked up guiltily from the mug of coffee she was nursing, well aware that she had not been concentrating on her friend’s chatter.
She and Heather had known each other for almost ten years now. They had met when they both started taking their toddler sons to the same playgroup, and it was this initial meeting which Heather was discussing now, suggesting that they make arrangements to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the day they had first met.
‘We’ll go somewhere really special,’ Heather had been saying. ‘Not the hotel—not with you working there.’
And Winter had known from the way Heather’s voice had changed that she had not only been thinking of Winter’s work at the hotel where she was in charge of the reception and office staff, but also of her relationship with Tom Longton, its owner.
This was confirmed when Heather asked her uncertainly, ‘It’s not Tom, is it? I thought you and he…’
‘No, it’s not Tom,’ Winter confirmed. There was no point in not telling Heather what had happened, she admitted. After all, she knew that her son Charlie wouldn’t lose any time in telling Heather’s son Danny about his wonderful news. Wonderful to Charlie, that was. She thought it was far from wonderful. In fact, she thought it was just about the worst possible news she had heard in a long time.
‘James is coming back,’ she said bleakly, then added when Heather looked questioningly at her, ‘Charlie’s father.’
Heather’s face registered her shock, and Winter smiled grimly to herself. Heather’s shock was nothing to that which she herself had experienced when Charlie had made his announcement at breakfast four days ago. The words had been delivered in the truculent-cum-defiant tone he seemed to adopt so often these days when he spoke to her.
Perhaps she should have expected this sudden sharp change in him. After all, he was thirteen years old now, not a child really any longer, but it still hurt her that the closeness they had shared when he was a baby and then when he was young was something he now seemed to want to reject.
It hadn’t been easy, bringing him up by herself after the divorce, but she had thought that he was happy with her; that she had more than compensated for his lack of a father, especially a father like James, who had shown more resentment and irritation to his baby son than love.
‘But I thought he was in Australia,’ Heather commented. ‘Charlie’s been the envy of every other child in his class since he spent that holiday over there with him the year before last.’
Winter sighed.
‘Yes…well, it seems he’s decided to leave. I’ve no idea why, nor do I know why he should choose to come back here.’ She gave a tiny shrug. ‘He always was ambitious, and he’s been very successful. The computer software business he started in Australia seems to have done very well, and I can’t deny that financially he’s certainly been very generous.’ She gave another tiny, unhappy shrug. ‘According to Charlie, he’s now decided to uproot himself completely from Sydney and to come back over here.’
‘Permanently?’ Heather asked her.
Win shrugged again.
‘I’ve really no idea,’ she admitted. ‘He and I… we don’t keep in touch on any personal level. After all, there’s no reason why we should.’
‘Apart from Charlie,’ Heather pointed out. ‘He worships his dad, doesn’t he?’
Win winced inwardly at her friend’s comment. Heather had never met James. Win had only started attending the mother and toddler group after the divorce, on the advice of her doctor, who was concerned that she was becoming too introverted, too isolated in her fiercely protective love of her little boy.
‘He seems to,’ she agreed, and then, perhaps because the bombshell of news that Charlie had dropped on her was still upsetting her so much, breaking through the normal constraints and self-control, she burst out angrily. ‘Although I’ve no idea why. After all, for the first six years of his life, James totally ignored the fact that Charlie existed.’
Heather gave her a sympathetic look. Although Winter was not the kind of woman to open her heart casually or easily, they had known one another for too long for Heather not to be aware of the circumstances surrounding Winter’s divorce, and slowly, over the long painful months when Winter had first been on her own, she had gradually disclosed to Heather the bare facts of her marriage and its subsequent breakdown.
It must, Heather had thought then and still thought now, be one of the most traumatic things a woman could ever have to deal with; to discover that your husband was being unfaithful to you was bad enough, but to discover it at a time when you were still recovering from a difficult birth, when you were exhausted from constantly nursing and worrying about a very frail and sickly baby, and when on top of that you were barely twenty years old and your parents had been totally opposed to your marrying so young in the first place, must have been very hard indeed.
Not that Winter had been sympathy-seeking or looking for other people’s pity. She wasn’t that sort. Fiercely independent, and in some ways almost too determined to stand on her own two feet without asking others for anything, she had given her confidences as painfully and reluctantly as a miser giving away his gold.
Winter was an extremely private person, a little remote, in some ways, her manner slightly guarded—but then after the way she had been hurt it was no wonder.
Knowing her so well, Heather was not really surprised she had not married again, despite the fact that she was so attractive. Plenty of men had been interested in her, but she had never reciprocated that interest, until she had taken that course at college and then got her present job with Tom Longton.
No one had been more surprised than Heather when Winter first started accepting Tom’s dates. She had been going out with him for several months now, almost a year, in fact.
At first when Tom had bought the dilapidated Georgian house on the outskirts of town and announced that he intended turning it into a first-class small country hotel, complete with leisure club facilities, everyone had laughed at him, claiming that there was simply not the call locally for that sort of thing.
But they had reckoned without Tom’s determination, and without the new spur of the motorway which brought so much traffic and so many potential and discerning clients within easy reach of the hotel, and now Tom was talking about expanding, adding on extra bedrooms and buying up land for the creation of a championship golf course.
Winter rarely discussed Tom’s plans, even with her, her closest friend, but Heather knew that she must be aware of them. Would she marry Tom? They made a good couple, and Tom, although inclined to be slightly aggressive and perhaps a little more volatile and enthusiastic and perhaps even a little thoughtlessly arrogant in the way he compared himself and his achievements with those who were less successful, did genuinely care about Winter.
But not Charlie?
Heather often wondered if Winter was aware of the resentment and dislike that existed between her son and her employer-cum-boyfriend. If she was, she never mentioned it, and Heather had hardly liked to raise the subject with her. At first when she had seen the worried, drawn look on her friend’s face and had realised that she wasn’t really concentrating on what she was saying, she had been afraid that some problem had developed between Tom and Charlie.
Sometimes Heather had wondered if any man could ever be as important to Winter as her son. Perhaps because she had only the one child as opposed to Heather’s three, or perhaps because Charlie had been so frail as a baby and then so dependent on her once James had gone, Win had always seemed to be much more emotionally close to Charlie than Heather had been able to be to her own three.
She had sometimes envied her that, but, as Win had once ruefully confessed to her, she worried that she might be smothering Charlie with too much love; that she might as a single parent become guilty of over-protecting him, or not allowing him the freedom he needed to develop properly as an individual, and it was for that reason that she had tried to step back a little once Charlie was properly at school and to allow him the space to form other relationships.
In Heather’s eyes, Win was a wonderful mother, but she knew Win had always felt guilty about the resentment she had felt when, totally out of the blue when Charlie was six years old, his father had got in touch with her and asked her permission to make contact with his son.
‘For Charlie’s sake, I suppose I shall have to agree,’ she had told Heather bitterly at the time.
‘At least, with James living in Australia, he’s hardly likely to have the opportunity to disrupt your and Charlie’s lives too much,’ Heather had consoled.
‘I suppose Charlie’s quite excited,’ Heather ventured sympathetically now.
Win flashed her a bitter look. She was smaller than Heather, barely five feet two and enviably slender, but because she carried herself so well she always looked taller. Her hair was a thick mane of tawny brown which she normally wore severely controlled, sleeked back and tied in her nape with a soft bow. Her eyes always reminded Heather of rich warm sherry, and very occasionally when she dropped her guard and allowed her real feelings to show, as she was doing now, they could burn with an intensity disconcertingly at odds with her outwardly calm demeanour.
‘Quite excited? He’s practically delirious,’ Win told her grimly.
‘I take it, then, that his father’s return is an event even more exciting than the home team winning the boys’ league,’ Heather joked.
It was a joke that fell flat. Win looked at her, her delicately shaped face fiercely set.
‘If James thinks he’s going to take Charlie away from me…dazzling him, bribing him…’
‘Take him away from you? But he can’t do that. You were given custody, surely?’
‘Legally, yes,’ Win agreed, her eyes suddenly dark and sad as she confided unsteadily. ‘Heather, Charlie worships James. Since he had that holiday in Sydney with him, I don’t think a single day’s gone past without him mentioning his father. If James settles here in this town, as it seems he intends to do…Well, I don’t suppose it’s any secret to you that Charlie and I are going through a bad patch at the moment. He doesn’t get on with Tom. That’s my fault, I suspect. After all, he’s used to being the only male in my life.’ Win smiled sadly and wryly. ‘And let’s face it, Tom isn’t exactly the conciliatory type. It’s a bit like watching two bulls lowering their heads and pawing the ground at one another.’
Heather couldn’t help laughing a little, even though she sympathised with and understood her friend’s very real distress.
‘You’re afraid that having James back in the area is going to make things even more difficult between Tom and Charlie, is that it?’ she asked softly.
‘That’s part of it. But what I’m really dreading is James asking Charlie if he wants to go and live with him.’ Win saw her friend’s face and grimaced. ‘Oh, don’t think it isn’t possible. I know that legally I have custody of Charlie, but if James did make such an offer and Charlie wanted to go…Right now he’s in the middle of a love-affair with his father, or with the man he believes his father to be,’ Win added bitterly. ‘He’s too young to remember how it was when he was born, how angry James was with me for getting pregnant in the first place. Charlie wasn’t planned—in fact he was the classic accident. I’d had flu, and was too naïve to realise that the tummy problems I’d had made my pill totally ineffective. We’d only been married four months, and, as you know, neither my parents nor James’s wanted us to marry.
‘James was twenty-six, barely out of university and qualified. I was only nineteen. With hindsight I can see why they wanted us to wait, but we were in love—or at least I was in love. I suppose with James it was just sex. I was the classic example of an only girl in a family of boys—the only experimenting with sex I ever got to try, with my four big brothers always standing guard, was a furtive kiss or two at the odd party I managed to get to unchaperoned.
‘I was so sexually naïve, and I’d had it dinned into me so much by the boys just what their peers thought of girls who were sexually promiscuous, that I honestly believed that the boys—men—really did only respect a girl who said “no”.
‘And that was despite the fact that, had I had the wit to do so, I could have seen for myself that none of my brothers exactly practised what he preached, but of course I’d grown up so much in their shadow, and so over-protected. The male of the species most definitely does have one rule for himself and another for those females he considers to be his responsibility.’
A fact which Charlie was now endorsing by his antagonism towards Tom Longton, Heather reflected as she laughed at Win’s rueful words.
‘But surely, once Charlie was born, James changed—?’
Win shook her head, cutting her off.
‘He was away when Charlie arrived. After we discovered I was pregnant, he got another job, one where he earned more money, but it meant him travelling into the city every day, setting off at seven in the morning and not getting back most evenings until gone eight or nine. He was at a conference when I was in labour.’ Win’s mouth twisted a little. ‘I tried to ring him, but she told me he was unobtainable.’
Heather had no need to ask who ‘she’ was. She knew the story of how Win had discovered that her husband was involved in an affair with his personal assistant.
‘No, James never really wanted anything to do with Charlie. He complained that his crying got on his nerves, and I could see from the look on his face when he came home at night how disgusted he was by the state of the house, and me.’
Win sighed again.
‘Perhaps if my parents hadn’t had to be away in Edinburgh with Gran…If there’d just been someone there to help me with Charlie when he was so ill. I felt so afraid, Heather. People tried to be kind, but the hospital staff made me feel so incompetent, as though I couldn’t really be trusted to look after Charlie. He was so small and so frail, and then having that dreadful gastro-enteritis…I—I thought he was going to die, and that it was all my fault. I suppose I could have told Mum, but she’d been so angry when I insisted on getting married and not going on to university as I’d planned. I can understand why now, but then—well, it caused a rift between us for a time, and I felt that I couldn’t admit that she was right and I was wrong and tell her how frightened I was for Charlie.’
‘And James’s mother?’ Heather pressed sympathetically.
‘They were in Canada visiting James’s elder sister, a trip they’d been saving for and planning for a long time. They’ve retired there now, although they still keep in touch.’
‘Poor Win. You did have a bad time, didn’t you?’ Heather told her, remembering the joy of the birth of her own first son. She had been in her late twenties and Paul’s birth had been carefully and hopefully planned, just as soon as she and Rick had felt able to afford to start their family. Her own mother had been alive then, and on hand to help and support her, as had Rick’s sisters and mother. Rick had been with her for the birth, and had taken a month off work afterwards, to be with her and their baby.
‘It was my own fault,’ Win insisted. ‘James and I should never have married. I was too young and I was certainly far too immature to have a child. Perhaps if I’d been married to a different kind of man, one who was less selfish…’ She bit her lip. ‘That’s what I’m so afraid of, Heather—that James is going to shatter all Charlie’s illusions. Charlie worships him, but he doesn’t really know him, and I’m so afraid that once he does…I know that Charlie needs a man in his life, the right kind of male influence and guidance, but for that influence to come from James…’
‘And you’re sure he’s coming back permanently and not just for a visit?’ Heather persisted.
‘So it seems. After all, he is the business, and I suppose he can produce these computer software packages just as easily here as he does in Australia. It’s very difficult for me to talk to Charlie about his father,’ Win admitted. ‘Charlie tends to get very defensive and sullen—my fault, I suppose. Sometimes I feel he almost wants me to criticise James so that he can immediately leap to his defence.’
‘Have you ever tried to discuss with Charlie the reasons why you divorced his father?’ Heather asked gently.
Win shook her head.
‘No. I know he blames me for the divorce, though. I hate myself for saying this, Heather, but sometimes—well, it’s almost as though I’m willing James to reveal himself to Charlie in his true colours, and yet really that’s the last thing I want, because I know how much it would hurt Charlie if he did.’
Heather’s face softened.
‘You judge yourself too harshly,’ she told her, hugging her. ‘You are only human, Win, and I know how hard it’s been for you. All right, so James left you with the house and never tried to claim his share, and financially he’s always been generous…’
‘I’ve never spent a penny of his money on myself,’ Win told her quickly, defensively almost.
‘I know you haven’t, and it can’t have been easy for you once James did start to take an interest in Charlie—all those expensive and inappropriate gift parcels from Sydney, and then that trip out there…’
‘I think it was that that spurred me into going to college and getting myself some proper qualifications, getting myself a job.’
‘But you’ve always worked,’ Heather protested.
Win pulled a face. ‘Part-time jobs without any real status—the kind of low-paid jobs that women like me have to take. I suddenly realised how poor an image I was giving Charlie of our sex. I wanted him to see that women could achieve and be successful.’ She bit her lip and flushed. ‘I suppose, if I’m honest, I was jealous of constantly hearing him saying how successful James was, and, let’s face it, working at the hotel can hardly compare with owning and running a successful company.’
‘I know you better than that,’ Heather told her stalwartly. ‘And I also know that the last thing you want for Charlie is that he should judge and measure people by their commercial achievements. You’ve worked so hard to encourage him to grow in every direction, Win. All those cold wet afternoons watching him play football! I used to get quite furious with you when Danny came back and complained that I never watched him play. And then there’s his chess, and his swimming, not to mention the drama group…’
She stopped as Win pulled another face. ‘You make it sound as though I’m force-feeding him on “suitable” activities. I just didn’t want him to grow up being isolated. You feel you have to try so much harder when there’s only you.’ Her mouth trembled suddenly, and Heather realised how very genuinely disturbed her friend was by the fears aroused by her ex-husband’s projected return.
‘Oh, God,’ she muttered thickly, reaching for a tissue and firmly blowing her nose, ‘I loathe people who wallow in self-pity. Now,’ she asked firmly, ‘what was all this about a celebration? Your wedding anniversary is still six weeks away, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, but what I was thinking of celebrating was our anniversary.’
When Win frowned Heather explained.
‘Ten years…of course, it must be. So what did you have in mind?’
‘Oh, I don’t know—a weekend with Tom Cruise; a fairy godmother to instantly transform me into Julia Roberts,’ Heather sighed, while Win laughed. ‘No, what I’d really got in mind was a day at a health hydro,’ Heather told her. ‘It’s something I’ve always fancied,’ she added yearningly. ‘All that pampering and spoiling—mm. And—’
‘Mm, sounds good,’ Win agreed. ‘But pricey.’
‘We deserve it,’ Heather told her positively.
Win looked doubtful. ‘Charlie’s been on at me for a new pair of trainers, and—’
‘No,’ Heather interrupted her firmly, then added a little more gently, ‘You spoil him sometimes, Win. It won’t do him any harm to wait a little longer for his trainers. It’s time you indulged yourself a little bit.’
‘Perhaps,’ Win agreed, glancing at her watch and getting up. ‘Heavens, I should have been at work five minutes ago.’
Heather walked out to her car with her.
When Tom Longton had given her the job, he had also given her a brand new car, a pretty sporty hatchback model which Heather suspected he had chosen especially for Win rather than for purely commercial reasons. Charlie, of course, disliked it, and said so.
‘When exactly is he—James—due back?’ she asked Win as the latter got into the car.
Win frowned.
‘I don’t know. Charlie went all cagey on me when I asked him, so I didn’t press him. As far as I’m concerned, whenever he comes back it’ll be too soon.’
As she started the engine, she gave Heather a brief unhappy smile.
‘Why is it, Heather, that just when you think that things are picking up, that life looks good, something like this happens?’
Heather’s heart ached for her as she watched her drive away, and then as she went inside she wondered soberly if Win had told Tom yet about her ex-husband’s imminent return.
CHAPTER TWO
THANKFULLY Win got into her car and started the engine. It had been a particularly hectic and fraught afternoon, with some Japanese guests arriving unexpectedly a whole day earlier than their reservations allowed for. Luckily they had been able to fit them in, but she had had one or two anxious moments.
Normally she loved her job, loved the challenges it brought, loved the people she met, the sense of self-worth and achievement she got from using the skills she had learned. She was proud of what she had achieved, all the more so perhaps because of the way Charlie had so unwittingly drawn a contrast between her achievements and those of his father.
She remembered how she had laughed when her parents had tried to tell her that one day she might regret having given up the opportunity to go to university. How could she, she had demanded fiercely, when doing so would mean she would be parted from James?
She also remembered how later, when they were alone, James had whispered to her that he wished she were a little older; that he was not really surprised at her parents’ attitude. But then she had reached up and put her arms around him, kissing him in the way he had taught her, and with a small groan he had taken hold of her, kissing her back, pushing her down against the cushions of the settee.
He had made love to her properly for the first time that night, and Win had been shocked and distressed to learn that sex was not necessarily instantly blissful.
James had blamed himself, assuring her that next time things would be different…better. She had been doubtful, still upset by what she had seen as her inability to fully please him, but he had been right. The next time it had been better—better than better, blissfully, satisfyingly better—Quickly she suppressed her truant thoughts.
Tom’s hotel was several miles outside the town. It was midsummer and the grass verges alongside the road were bright with orange poppies. Fitful sunshine dappled the fields, clouds casting racing shadows over the distant hills.
Feeling the tension gripping her muscles, knowing how reluctant she felt to go home and face Charlie’s stubborn accusing face, on an impulse Win turned off the main road and pulled into a quiet lane, where she stopped her car and wound down the window. Her head ached slightly from the pressures of her day, or from the fear caused by the news of James’s return.
She leaned back against the seat head-rest, closing her eyes and letting her thoughts drift, a luxury she seldom had time for these days, an indulgence she felt she ought to have put behind her anyway. Daydreams were for adolescents, not adult women. As a girl she had often been accused of being a daydreamer.
She smiled painfully to herself. As she had told Heather this morning, until she met James, her life had been a very protected one indeed—over-protected in many ways.
She had been coming out of a shop the first time she met him, and had literally walked straight into him, going over on her ankle and yelping with the unexpected pain. All thoughts of that pain had been driven right out of her mind, though, when he had crouched down at her side and taken hold of her ankle, running his fingers thoroughly and clinically over it, asking her anxiously how she felt. But she had been in too much of a state of delirious shock to respond.
He was the most physically compelling man she had ever seen: tall, with thick dark brown hair and tanned skin. The hands that held her ankle were long-fingered, the nails clean and neatly cut. He was wearing a heavy-duty workmanlike watch and his leather blouson jacket had a softness about it that despite its battered appearance made her want to run her fingertips over it in appreciation of its butter-soft sensuality.
When she didn’t speak, he looked gravely at her. His eyes, she discovered, were pure gold like a tiger’s. Her breath caught in her throat, the most powerful emotional and physical sensation she had ever experienced in her life gripping her, and she knew instantly that she was in love.
In a daze she allowed him to pick up the shopping she had dropped and to guide her to his car. He would take her home, he told her, and she, knowing that if he had told her he was taking her to the moon she would have simply gone with him, nodded and allowed him to take her by the arm and guide her through the other shoppers to the car park.
As he drove, she learned that he had just returned home after completing his Master’s at Harvard, and that he intended to start up his own business in computer software, but that in the meantime he had taken a job locally because he wanted to take some time out to be with his parents before he did so.
He asked her her name and she told him, breathlessly, blushing a little as he repeated it thoughtfully.
‘Winter—unusual.’
‘I was born on the day of the winter solstice,’ she told him awkwardly. Her unusual name had always embarrassed her, and she preferred to be called the more conventional Win.
‘Winter by name, but not by nature,’ he had said then. ‘Not with that warm colouring.’ And as he spoke he leaned forward and touched her hair. She had worn it loose in those days, falling thickly below her shoulders and kept off her face with an Alice band. She’d thought the style childish and longed for something shorter and more sophisticated, but her brothers had derided her, telling her she was far too young to pretend to be sophisticated, and out of habit she had deferred to them.
By some quirk of fate that summer they were all away from home. Gareth, the eldest, was in New Zealand getting to know his fiancée’s family, the twins, Simon and Philip, were backpacking in the States, and Jonathan, who was in his last year at university, had gone on an archaeological dig with some fellow students, and so for once Win was without her protective guard dogs.
Initially her parents were quite happy for her to see James. He was older, mature…sensible, aware of her innocence and youth—or so her mother later told her they had believed.
Win might have been innocent, but she was also in love, and she had made no attempt to hide her feelings from James. The first time he’d kissed her she had clung fervently to him, winding her arms around him, opening her mouth experimentally beneath his and then feeling her heart thunder in excitement as his grip on her tightened and she felt the hot eager thrust of his tongue inside her mouth.
Afterwards she watched him with luminous dazed eyes that betrayed the effect he had had on her. Beneath her thin cotton T-shirt her breasts ached and pulsed, the nipples hard, pushing out the fine cloth. James touched one lightly with his fingertip, gently rimming it, dark colour surging up under his skin as he told her thickly, ‘Next time I shall kiss you there, and then you’ll really know what getting excited’s all about.’
She had been so desperately in love with him, so completely without any defence against her own feelings, or against the sudden powerful surge of her own sexuality. And there was no escaping from the truth. It was the discovery of that sexuality as much as what she had believed was her love for James that had carried her so passionately into such an intense relationship with him.
She had wanted him so much that quite simply everything else had ceased to be of any importance, and because she had no past experience to guide her she had naïvely assumed that because she wanted him she must love him.
No one had ever allowed her to discover that the sexual urge could be just as powerful in women as it was in men. Just thinking about James made her body ache in ways she had never before even known existed. Of course she loved him, she cried passionately when her mother tried to suggest that it might just be a crush; that being in love was not the same as loving someone; that she was too young to think of committing her life to someone she had only known a matter of a handful of months.
She was over eighteen, and her parents could not stop them from marrying, she had pointed out defiantly.
What about university? her parents had countered. What about her future?
James was her future, she had told them.
Even James himself suggested tentatively that it might be better if they were to wait, but she immediately burst into tears, accusing him of not wanting her. He had taken hold of her to comfort her, and within seconds she was clinging eagerly to him.
It had been after the first time they had made love and she had confessed to him that, despite her promise to do so, she had still not asked her doctor for a prescription for the contraceptive pill that James had insisted on not just making her an appointment at the family planning clinic, but on going there with her. A baby at this stage in their relationship, or indeed for several years after they were married, was simply not feasible, he had told her.
‘You’re so very young,’ he had groaned when he saw her face. ‘Sometimes I think your parents are right and that we should wait, but I want you so much…’
They had been married two months later, much against the wishes of her parents, a quiet church ceremony because she hadn’t wanted to wait any longer to be James’s wife.
They had bought a small sturdy stone-built cottage on the outskirts of the town, and for a while, for a very short while, Win had been blissfully happy. James was a tender, considerate lover, gradually allowing her to discover her sexuality, and it was only years later, long after their divorce, that she actually realised how much he himself must have been holding himself back.
He had been unselfish and loving to her then, cherishing her, loving her, laughing when she burned his meals and he had to iron his own shirts. When flushed with mortification and shame, she had asked him if he regretted marrying her, he had taken her in his arms and told her that it wasn’t her housewifely skills he had married her for.
‘Besides,’ he had whispered against her mouth, ‘after Christmas you’ll be starting college, and you won’t have time for ironing and cooking then.’
That had been a bone of contention between them. Win had been quite content to be his wife, wanting nothing more, but he had insisted that, while she might have given up her chance to go to university, that did not mean she could not take a degree course here at home.
‘What do I need a degree for now?’ she had asked him. ‘I don’t want a career. Just you and our children.’
James had looked at her seriously.
‘You’re so young, Win,’ he had told her. ‘You think that now, but one day…’
They had argued about it, but he had been insistent, and then had come her flu and Charlie’s conception.
Had it been because she had known how he would feel that she had deliberately kept back the news for as long as she could?
When she had finally broken the news to him, at first he had been shocked and angry. Through her tears she had watched him pacing their sit-ting-room as he told her, ‘It’s too soon, Win. We still hardly know one another.’
And she had discovered over the months that followed how little she knew him.
He had changed his job, getting one that paid far more money in the city, so that consequently she hardly ever saw him.
Her family, to whom she turned for sympathy and company, seemed to share James’s view that her pregnancy was something that should simply not have happened so early on in their marriage.
‘Of course I shan’t be able to go to college now,’ she had said to James, and had winced as she saw the look in his eyes. It was almost as though he had thought she had deliberately got pregnant so that she wouldn’t have to go to college.
The first rifts in their relationship had begun.
And then had come the evening James had told her they had to attend a company function. She had been seven months pregnant at the time and feeling acutely uncomfortable; perhaps because she was so small, with her pregnancy, she had become very large, the slowing down of her body irritating and hampering her.
They had ceased making love. Win had been so angry with James when he had not welcomed the news of her pregnancy that when he attempted to touch her she had pushed him away, and now he no longer tried to touch her. She ached for him to do so, but pride wouldn’t allow her to find the words to tell him, and a small festering worm of misery suggested to her that perhaps he no longer wanted to make love to her now that she was pregnant and so enormous.
And then, at his new firm’s annual dinner dance, she had seen the way Tara Simons was looking at him, the way she stood far too close to him, angling her body, her slim, supple, unpregnant body against his; the way she deliberately excluded Win from the conversation, the way she subtly put Win down by mentioning her qualifications, talking enthusiastically to James about their work, a subject which excluded Win completely. She knew little or nothing about computer software.
Win’s woman’s instinct had told her immediately that Tara wanted James, and just as immediately she had suspected that despite his disclaimers James did find her attractive. How could he not do so? Tara was tall, a redhead, with long catlike-green eyes and a sensuality that even Win could see.
The rifts between them widened and hardened. James took to sleeping in the spare room—so as not to disturb her, he told her when she managed to force herself to question him about it.
Her mother had called round unexpectedly one day when Win was on her own. It was a Saturday morning, and James had announced that he had to go into the office. Win had rung him there when she realised he hadn’t said what time he would be back, and had dropped the receiver as though it burned when Tara answered the call.
‘Win! My dear, are you all right?’ her mother had asked her anxiously as Win opened the door to her.
Win had suddenly seen herself, from her mother’s expression, as her mother had been seeing her—her hair unwashed and untidy, the smock she was wearing grubby and unironed, her face unmade-up and puffy from her pregnancy.
Her mother’s frown had deepened when she saw the untidy state of the sitting-room, and the washing up piled in the kitchen.
She knew how untidy and unappealing everything looked, including her, Win admitted to herself, but she was so tired all the time, and besides, what was the point? James was never there, and when he was…When he was, it seemed to her that he didn’t want to be with her. She saw the way he looked at her sometimes, frowning as he studied her, no doubt wondering why on earth he had married her, she thought miserably.
No doubt he would have preferred to be married to someone like Tara—someone who was far too clever to become accidentally pregnant, someone who, like him, had been to university, who had a career. Well, she could have gone to university as well if she hadn’t met him.
She had seen two of her old schoolfriends in town the other day, and they had been astonished to see that she was pregnant—astonished and pitying.
With her mother’s help, she got the house tidy and washed her hair. Her back ached so much that she was tempted to have it cut short, but James had once told her that he loved its thick length, as he wound it around her throat and kissed her through it.
Tears blurred her eyes. What had happened to them, to their love?
It had been gone four o’clock in the afternoon when James came home. Win had seen the relief, the pleasure almost in his eyes when he took in the tidy house and her cleanly washed hair. He had come towards her, putting his arms around her, nuzzling her ear, and that had been when she had smelled the strong perfume on him. She had become acutely conscious of different smells during her pregnancy, and there was no mistaking this one. It was Tara’s.
She had pushed him away from her immediately, her face red with anguish as she yelled at him, ‘Don’t touch me! Just don’t touch me!’
It had been less than a month after that that she had gone into early labour and Charlie had been born, while James was away—with Tara.
He hadn’t even seen Charlie until he was over a day old. Win remembered how he had frowned at the baby, almost reluctant to look at him, never mind pick him up, and how he had turned away when she had started to feed him.
She had ached for him to show her some affection, to reassure her that he still loved her and that he loved their child, but none had been forthcoming.
She had wanted to have Charlie’s cot in their room next to their bed, but James had insisted on banishing him to his nursery. When Charlie developed gastro-enteritis she had screamed furiously at James that it was his fault, that if she had been allowed to have Charlie next to her, as she had wanted, he wouldn’t have become ill.
She had known the moment she said it that she was being unfair, but it was too late to call back the words, and besides, what difference would it have made? James no longer loved her; she was sure of that.
Confirmation that she was right came six months later, when James did not come home at all one night.
Halfway through the morning the phone rang. Win recognised Tara’s smooth-as-cream voice immediately.
‘If you’ve been worrying about James, there’s no need,’ she told Win smoothly. ‘He spent last night with me…’ She paused delicately and then added, ‘you do understand what I’m saying, don’t you, Win?’
Win had replaced the receiver without answering. Sickness filled her body, her head pounded with pain, while her heart ached with the most acute anguish she had ever experienced. She had put Charlie in his pram and walked him for miles, the tears running down her face, and then when James came home she had told him she wanted a divorce.
He had tried to argue with her, but she refused to listen to him, or to mention his affair with Tara. She had too much pride for that—too much pride and too much pain.
She had realised when she’d listened to Tara’s revelations just how much she actually did love him. Too much, she acknowledged as she kept her back to him and repeated her demand for a divorce.
Oddly, her family counselled her against her decision, pointing out that she had Charlie to consider now, but she had been adamant, demanding that James move out of the house immediately and then refusing to see him.
The sound of a plane overhead brought her sharply out of her thoughts. She moved uncomfortably in her seat, frowning a little. It had been a long time since she had allowed herself to recall so much of the past, to think about it so deeply. Normally the moment any old memories of her brief marriage surfaced she pushed them aside, suppressing them, and now with adult hindsight she was uncomfortably aware of how very immature she had been, how very selfish and spoiled in some ways.
Her frown deepened as she dwelt on this new image of her younger self, surveying it with the maturity and knowledge she had gained in the years that had passed.
Her family had been right; she had been too young for marriage and for motherhood. Now, for instance, there was no way she would not immediately question the kind of hours James had claimed he had to work; no way she would behave with such childish petulance and such short-sightedness, no way she would allow her pride and self-respect to become so diminished that she neglected herself or her home, no way she would not leap at the opportunity to broaden her horizons.
No way, either, that she would become so totally engrossed in her child that she didn’t merely neglect its father, but virtually abandoned him as well.
Win moved uncomfortably in her seat. It was odd how plainly she could see now how her own actions must have contributed to the rifts that had developed between them.
James hadn’t been ready for the commitment of children. He hadn’t wanted Charlie. In fact, she suspected with hindsight that all he had wanted was simply a sexual relationship with her, and that because of this he had convinced himself that he loved her.
Whatever the original reasons for their marriage, it was over now, and had in fact never really existed. The kind of relationship she and James had shared was certainly not what she now considered to be the kind of relationship she wanted with a man.
She had been so subservient, so clinging, so pathetic in many ways. She would never be like that now. Motherhood had changed her, forcing her to put someone else’s needs before her own.
As the youngest of the family, she had been indulged. Her brothers had sometimes treated her more like a pet dog than a fellow human being, she reflected wryly, and that was as much her fault as theirs.
They didn’t do so now.
Win smiled to recall how surprised they had been by the way she had changed, by her new authority, her new awareness of herself and others, her calm claiming of her right to their respect as well as their love. No, she would never make the mistakes again that she had made with James the next time.
The next time…Win’s heart thumped heavily. She still hadn’t been able to bring herself to tell Charlie that Tom had proposed to her. She hadn’t even made her own mind up whether or not she intended to accept him.
She liked him; she admired his drive and what he had achieved, even if sometimes his aggression and occasional lack of sensitivity made her wince. What she had no doubts about at all was the fact that he loved her.
Did she love him?
She stared at the skyline. Three months ago, while Charlie was away on a school trip—finding time to be alone together with a sharp-eyed thirteen-year-old about was, she had discovered, virtually impossible—she and Tom had made love.
For her it had been the first time since James. Perhaps it was because she was older, wiser, less inclined to see things through rose-coloured glasses that the experience had somehow not really lived up to her expectations.
Tom had been considerate and caring enough. He had taken time and care, and he was certainly far from inexperienced. She had not expected, as she had with James, that there would be immediate fireworks, but she had certainly expected to feel rather more than she had—a lot more, given her knowledge of how easily James had aroused her.
Neither of them had said anything about it, of course, but she had sensed that Tom was disappointed, and if she was honest with herself it was almost a relief that Charlie’s antipathy towards him and constant presence meant that they had not had any opportunity to repeat the exercise.
But then, as she had remarked quite recently to Heather, there were far more important things in a relationship than sex—or at least there were in the kind of relationship she wanted—and Tom, fortunately, had not pushed her.
Perhaps things would get better with practice and custom. But then when did they get the opportunity? Win was well past the age when she welcomed the idea of making love impetuously in a car on the way home from a date.
She winced a little, suddenly remembering doing exactly that with James. They had been out to dinner, and on the way back she had touched his thigh, tensing as his muscles clenched, staring at him wide-eyed, her heart pounding when he abruptly stopped the car and turned towards her.
Perhaps she was just past the age of being capable of that kind of sexual intensity, she reflected as she restarted her car. And if she did agree to marry Tom, would that have the effect of driving Charlie closer to his father? If only Tom could learn to be a little less hard on Charlie, a little more understanding, and if only Charlie wouldn’t always be so belligerent, and if only he would not constantly bring James’s name into the conversation whenever Tom was there.
She winced as she remembered Tom’s angry comment that he was thankful James was living in Australia. ‘If he’s as wonderful as Charlie seems to think, I’m surprised you’re still not married to him,’ he had told her sourly.
‘He is Charlie’s father,’ Win had felt obliged to point out in defence of her son.
And when she had tried to suggest to Charlie that it might not be a good idea to mention James quite so often when Tom was there, Charlie had demanded, ‘Why shouldn’t I? He is my dad.’
The problem was that Charlie was starting to grow up and that he seemed to be getting as over-protective of her as her brothers had once been.
Well, she had learned her lesson, and no matter how much she loved her son he must accept that she had a right to her own private life and to her own friends, even if he himself could not always like them. That was a lesson he must learn for his own sake, and for the sake of the woman who would eventually share his life, as well as for hers.
However, it was one thing to get him to accept her right to have Tom as a friend. To get him to accept him as her husband and his own stepfather was quite a different matter.
As she drove through the town, she heard the church clock striking, and grimaced. She hadn’t realised how late it was. Charlie had been spending the afternoon with a friend. They had been planning to watch a football match on television together. The friend’s father was apparently bringing them home.
When she had queried this, he had been quite cross with her, reminding her of how old he now was.
The cottage James had bought when they were first married was still her home. Together with half a dozen others, it looked out on to open fields at the back and had a good-sized garden. Last year she and Charlie had painted the outside, a task neither of them had really enjoyed but which Win had felt had done them both good.
Tom had been horrified. He would have got one of his own handymen to do that for her, he had told her, but she had shaken her head. One thing she had learned was how important it was to her to be independent—a change from the days when she had helplessly leaned on others and docilely allowed them to make her decisions for her.
There was a car parked outside the cottage, an expensive Daimler saloon with new numberplates. Guiltily she parked behind it.
Charlie had his own key for the cottage. Obviously his friend’s father had brought him home and Charlie must have invited him inside. She would have to apologise for being late. She only hoped the father would not judge her as a bad mother for allowing her son to return to an empty house.
It had been difficult for her to assuage the guilt she had felt at first, going to work, but Heather had chided her for it.
‘Charlie can always come to us for a couple of hours if necessary,’ she had told her. ‘You know that. You need this job, Win—not just for the money. You need it for yourself. You’ve devoted yourself exclusively to Charlie when he’s needed you most. Just remember, another handful of years and he’ll be gone.’
Even though she had acknowledged the truth of Heather’s comments and even though she felt that both Charlie and herself had benefited from the independence her job gave them both, Win still had these sharp attacks of guilt.
She could hear the television as she walked into the hall. The sitting-room door was open, and through it she could hear Charlie yelling excitedly.
‘That’s it! Did you see it, Dad? Did you see the way he kicked that goal?
Dad!
Win froze, her nerve-endings screaming a rejection of all that that one simple word conveyed.
‘He certainly has some real power there.’
She hadn’t heard him speak in over ten years, but she would have recognised his voice in a hundred…in a thousand. Deep, reflective, the words measured and firm, no trace of any Australian accent, the same voice which had once slurred like honey with desire when he had told her how much he wanted her, how much he loved her. The same voice which had been raw with need when he’d leaned over her in the dark, entering her body.
The same voice which had been hard and cold when he’d condemned her for conceiving their child.
Forcing down the feeling of icy shock threatening her, Win took a deep breath and then, straightening her shoulders, she pushed open the sitting-room door and walked in.
CHAPTER THREE
WIN had learned her lessons and knew now how vitally important it was to seize control and hold on to it.
Without looking at Charlie, she demanded icily, ‘What are you doing here, James?’
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the way Charlie had flushed, how anxious and distressed he looked, but she forced herself to ignore him, instead focusing all her attention on the man who was uncurling himself from the settee and standing up in front of her.
She would have preferred him to remain seated, she acknowledged, just about managing not to give in to the instinctive desire to step back a little from him. That betraying piece of body language would mean her giving far more away to him than a couple of feet of floor space. So instead she stood her ground, angling her head so that she could look directly at him, her eyes flashing, her mouth indenting with the hostility she made no attempt to conceal.
She could see the way James looked briefly at Charlie, and her hostility increased. How dared he try to use their son as a pawn between them? How dared he be here in her home in the first place? Why had he come here? He could not have known she wouldn’t be here. Unless…
Win stiffened immediately and only just resisted the desire to turn round and look fully at Charlie. What she had interpreted as confusion could just as easily have been guilt.
Had Charlie lied to her about his arrangements for the afternoon? Had he known—arranged with James that he would come round? she wondered in disbelief.
Before James could say anything, Charlie had come to stand beside her.
‘I said he could come here,’ he told her. ‘After all, it’s my home too, and he is my father.’ His chin jutted out as he spoke, and helplessly Win recognised that, for all his bravado, he was very close to tears. She forced back her own shock, habit enabling her to control and dismiss her own emotions.
Later, she would have to point out to him that, his home or not, it was still wrong for him to have done what he had, but she couldn’t humiliate him by doing so in front of James, so she simply said quietly, ‘Yes, it is your home as well, Charlie.’
As she looked away from him, she realised that James was studying her with a frown. Probably wondering what on earth he had ever seen in her, she reflected acidly. She certainly wasn’t in the same class as the Taras of this world. She wondered what had happened to the other woman. James had never remarried, and if there was a woman in his life he hadn’t introduced her to Charlie while their son had been staying with him.
‘I’m sorry,’ James apologised briefly. ‘I had no idea you weren’t aware that I was coming.’
‘I knew you were returning to the area,’ she countered coolly, ‘but no, I did not expect to come home and find you sitting in my living-room.’
She stressed the ‘my’, and was pleased to see the faint darkening of colour touching his cheekbones. So he wasn’t totally impervious to his own guilt in taking advantage of an offer he must have known she would never have countenanced. Good.
‘Well, we won’t delay you,’ she continued smoothly. ‘I’m sure you’ve got things to do.’
She tensed as she saw the look that passed between father and son, and felt the tiny hairs standing up on the back of her neck.
‘Dad’s moving in here with us,’ Charlie informed her, then added rebelliously, ‘I told him it was all right.’
For a moment Win thought she might actually faint. This time Charlie had quite definitely gone too far.
Above the painful buzzing in her head and ears, she heard James saying, ‘I’m sorry, I thought you knew. In fact…’ He stopped speaking abruptly while Win stared at her son in angry disbelief.
Charlie knew quite well that the last thing she would want was to have James living under their roof, and for him to have implied anything different to his father had to have been a deliberate deception.
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