Yesterday′s Echoes
Yesterday's Echoes
PENNY JORDAN
Secrets from the past emerge in the present and the consequences are unexpected for these two couples.YESTERDAY'S ECHOESTragedy had befallen Rosie when she was a vulnerable sixteen-year-old and Jake Lucas had witnessed the entire thing. Since then Rosie has built a successful career, not allowing anyone near the woman behind the cheerful face she shows to the world. But Jake has entered her life again, and he isn't about to let her forget the past.MASTER OF PLEASURESasha walked away from handsome millionaire Gabriel Calbrini to marry another and he's never forgiven her. Now widowed, Sasha is shocked when Gabriel is named heir to her late husband's wealth and guardian to her two sons. But Sasha won't surrender. There's far too much at stake especially the one thing that Gabriel must never know….
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.
This beautiful digital collection offers a chance to recapture the pleasure of all of Penny Jordan’s fabulous, glamorous and romantic novels for Mills & Boon.
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.
Yesterday’s Echoes
Penny Jordan
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CHAPTER ONE
‘I’M BEGINNING to dread christenings. In fact, I only have to hear the word “baby” these days and I come over all broody…and me a mother of two hulking great teenagers. I ought to know better.
‘I know what it is, of course…It’s the threat of empty nest syndrome looming, with nothing to look forward to but Greg’s mid-life crisis and hormone replacement therapy…Rosie…are you listening to me?’
Obediently Rosie turned towards her elder sister, and repeated obediently what she had just been told.
‘Of course, plenty of women are having babies at forty these days,’ Rosie heard her muse. ‘Although what the kids would have to say about it…and how on earth I’d even manage to get pregnant in the first place…You’ve no idea how inhibiting it is having almost-adult children in the house with you. It’s amazing how guilty and embarrassed they can make you feel. Mind you, talking of sex lives, how’s yours going at the moment?’
Rosie felt her stomach muscles tense and prayed that her facial muscles weren’t reacting equally betrayingly.
There was virtually a decade between her and her elder sister, and this had led to Chrissie’s adopting an almost parental attitude to her. Although Rosie knew that Chrissie would have been outraged had she been as inquisitive and critical of her most intimate personal life as Chrissie was of Rosie’s, she also knew that Chrissie would never be able to understand that there were times when she found her sister’s questions intrusive and over-personal. After all, she knew how much Chrissie loved her and that her questions, no matter how awkward, sprang from love and concern.
And of course today she was feeling extra-intensely sensitive, she admitted. Christenings always had that effect on her, and it was pointless expecting Chrissie to understand that, to know what she was going through, to know about the tearing, wrenching pain within her, the sense of loss and anguish.
It was all very well for Chrissie to talk glibly about feeling broody, about having another child, to assume that she, Rosie, as a single woman of thirty-one with a business to run—a woman who, as Chrissie was always reminding her, had chosen to keep any men who approached her at a wary distance—did not know what it meant to see another woman with a child, and to feel that aching sense of deprivation within her—that tight feeling of panic and pain, of loss and fear, of so many complex emotions that she herself could barely find the words to describe them.
And then for Chrissie to make that comment about her sex life!!
The Hopkinses’ lawn wasn’t very big; they were a very popular couple and had invited a large number of people to the christening party. Rosie winced as someone standing behind her stepped backwards, and she felt a sharp elbow accidentally striking against her, jolting her glass and causing the other woman to immediately apologise as Rosie automatically turned round.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she began, but Rosie wasn’t listening to her.
Her whole body frozen rigid with shock and rejection, she was staring past her at the man standing several yards away watching her.
Jake Lucas! What was he doing here? Watching her! She hadn’t realised that he knew the Hopkinses. If she had suspected for a moment that he was going to be here…
‘Rosie…’
She shivered, the rigidity leaving her body as she responded to the quick anxiety in her sister’s voice.
Across the space which divided them, Jake Lucas continued to watch her. She could feel the concentrated burn of that look. She knew exactly what he was thinking…how he viewed her…without having to look directly into his eyes.
‘Rosie…’
This time Chrissie wasn’t content with speaking to her; she was touching her as well—an elder-sisterly hand placed firmly on her arm, giving it an admonishing little shake.
‘What is it? What’s wrong?’
Wrong? Alarm bells clamoured violently inside her.
‘Nothing…Nothing’s wrong,’ she denied quickly, turning her head back towards her sister so quickly that her hair spun round her, fanning out of its neat, shoulder-length cut before falling silkily back into place, its thick russet sleekness concealing her expression as she lowered her head defensively.
Jake Lucas. Even now that she was no longer looking at him, his features remained burnt into her memory so that it wasn’t her sister’s firm but anxious face she saw, but his, with its hard, masculine features, his mouth curling disdainfully, his hard, flinty grey eyes watching her with distaste, everything about him, even down to the way he was standing, registering his contempt for her—that and the knowledge of her which they both shared.
‘Rosie, what is it? And don’t tell me nothing. You’ve gone as white as a sheet,’ Chrissie accused. ‘Is it the sun? You should have kept your hat on; you know how vulnerable you are to sunstroke. You’d better not drive home.’
Numbly Rosie let her sister’s bossy fussing wash over her, for once unable to summon the independence to remind her sister that she was an adult and not one of her children.
‘It’s time we left, anyway. I promised Greg I wouldn’t be late. We’ve got the Curtises coming round this evening, and I want to make sure that Allison and Paul aren’t thinking of going out tonight. I don’t like them going out on Sunday evenings, not with Paul’s A levels coming up and Allison’s GCSEs next year.’
Rosie stayed silent, letting her sister’s conversation wash over her. Jake Lucas…She tried to remember the last time she had seen him—was it four years ago or three?—but she felt too dizzy with shock to be able to concentrate.
He lived on the opposite side of town from her and their paths never crossed. He moved in different social circles, and the partnership he had in a marina on one of the less accessible Greek islands meant that he was out of the country a good deal.
He was closer to Chrissie’s age than her own, although even her redoubtable sister had always been a little in awe of him, despite the fact that she was a couple of years his senior.
He was that kind of man.
Awe didn’t describe her reaction to him, Rosie acknowledged. Fear…dread…pain…panic …anguish; he made her feel all of those, and other and even less bearable emotions as well.
The mere sound of his name was enough to make her go cold with fear and shame, and to see him so unexpectedly, when she was unprepared for it and in such a vulnerable situation, when she was already feeling so off balance, so emotionally open to the anguish of her past and the burden of the pain she had kept a secret from everyone else who knew her…
Silently, she let Chrissie take hold of her arm and firmly make her way through the tightly packed group of people around their host and hostess.
The baby, the Hopkinses’ third, was now contentedly asleep in her father’s arms. A wrenching jolt of pain stabbed through Rosie as she watched him deftly transfer his new daughter’s sleeping weight from one shoulder to the other while he ducked his head to kiss first Chrissie and then her on the cheek.
‘Isn’t it time we saw you holding one of these?’ he teased Rosie.
His teasing wasn’t malicious or unkind. Rosie and both Neil and Gemma Hopkins had all been at school together. Gemma was her own age. She herself was, Rosie reminded herself bleakly, the only one of her peers now who had not experienced a committed relationship of some kind. Some of her friends were even on their second marriages.
She knew how curious people were about her, and could guess at the questions they probably asked one another about her. Always sensitive and by nature an extremely private person, she was acutely aware of how different she was, how isolated from experiences which seemed commonplace to others.
It wasn’t as though she weren’t attractive, as though men weren’t drawn to her, Chrissie had exclaimed in exasperation four months ago on Rosie’s thirty-first birthday, when she had brought up her perennial complaint about Rosie’s dedication to her single state.
‘I’ve watched you,’ she had accused. ‘You freeze the poor things off as soon as they try to get close to you.’
Her mother had been more understanding, but equally concerned.
‘I don’t understand it,’ she had said sadly. ‘Rosie, you were always the one who loved playing with your dolls, who always, from being a small child, talked about getting married and having children. Of the two of you, I always thought it would be Chrissie who would be the career girl. I’m not trying to tell you how to run your life, darling. If being single is what you want…’
‘It is,’ Rosie had told her mother fiercely, but she suspected that her mother knew as well as she did that she was not telling the whole truth.
But how could she explain, reveal to her mother, to anyone, the thing that had made her like this, the guilt, the pain, the shock of self-discovery, the realisation that her degradation and humiliation, her stupidity, had been witnessed by someone else? These had proved so painful to her that the only way she could deal with them was to try to cut herself off from them, from the person she had been before it had happened, to try to create a different person—a safer, better, more responsible, more controlled person.
How could she tell anyone about what had happened? She was too afraid of them condemning her, looking at her, reacting to her in the same way that Jake Lucas had done.
Over the years she had gone over and over it so many times in her own mind, hating herself for having allowed it to happen, for not being more aware, for not realising what was going to happen.
She knew she was not guilty of ever having done anything to encourage him; she could acquit herself of that crime. She had never come anywhere near doing or saying anything to make him think that she might actually want him. How could she have done? She had not had the least conception of what sexual desire was.
She had been a very naı¨ve, protected sixteen, and still far too shy and immature to be sexually aware in any way.
No, she had done nothing to lead him on, but she had had that drink and she hadn’t been able to stop him, and she knew enough about the world now to realise that if she were ever to tell what had happened there would always be those who would wonder…doubt…especially if they were male.
And she could never allow herself to get involved with a man without telling him, without wanting to share with him that secret, shamed, still-hurting part of herself.
And since she was afraid of allowing herself to love a man, only to discover him turning away from her with the same disgust that Jake Lucas had manifested, she had chosen instead not to take the risk of becoming emotionally committed to anyone. It was safer that way, and safety, protecting herself from hurt—these were very important to Rosie. When people commented on her manless state, she told them coolly that she was content the way she was. Normally the coolness she exhibited, the control, was enough to deter them and to protect her, but today was different.
Today she was feeling too vulnerable…too raw inside, too achingly aware of that small, sleeping bundle held protectively against Neil’s shoulder and the man still standing somewhere among the crowd on the lawn, perhaps still watching her…
She shivered, feeling the perspiration break out against her skin, watching helplessly as Neil’s expression changed to one of concern.
‘It’s the heat,’ she heard Chrissie saying. ‘She’s always been vulnerable to it. It’s that red hair and Celtic skin. I told her not to take her hat off.’
There were, Rosie decided faintly as Chrissie led her firmly away, perhaps advantages to having Chrissie for a sister after all.
She quickly changed her mind, though, when Chrissie refused to allow her to drive home.
‘But I need my car,’ she protested.
‘Not now, you don’t,’ Chrissie told her. ‘And if you have got heat or sunstroke, you won’t be needing it tomorrow either.’
‘I’ve got a meeting in Chester tomorrow morning,’ Rosie protested, but Chrissie wasn’t listening.
‘Honestly, Rosie, I should have thought at your age you’d know better,’ she was complaining as she opened her own car door. ‘At times you can be even worse than Paul and Allison…Now get in and I’ll take you home. If we didn’t have the Curtises coming round this evening, I’d take you home with me. I know you…’
Sickly, Rosie closed her eyes. She felt as weak and nauseous as if she were in fact physically ill, but she knew quite well whatever—or rather, whoever had caused those symptoms.
No matter how much logic she used, her senses, her reactions still continued to remind her of the trauma which lay buried in her past.
Jake Lucas. If only he had not been there…that night.
But he had been there…
She winced as Chrissie slammed her car door and started the engine. She was still feeling nauseatingly sick, her body clammy with shock. If only she hadn’t already been caught up in the aching pain that seeing the Hopkinses’ new baby had caused her, she might have been better able to control her reaction to Jake Lucas, she told herself miserably.
Her sister was still talking, still admonishing her for taking off her hat.
‘You left it upstairs on Gemma’s bed,’ she heard Chrissie reminding her. ‘You mustn’t forget to collect it when you go back for your car.’
Rosie lived several miles away from her sister and her family. She could well remember the fuss Chrissie had made when she had found out that Rosie was selling her neat, modern flat and buying a run-down, isolated farm worker’s cottage.
‘It will eat money,’ she had warned Rosie. ‘And wait until you have to spend a bad winter there. You’ll be completely cut off.’
She had frowned disapprovingly at Rosie’s sotto voce ‘Please God’ before going on to remonstrate again with her for her foolishness.
‘I don’t like leaving you here on your own like this,’ she said now as she stopped her car in the lane outside the cottage.
‘Chrissie, I’ll be fine,’ Rosie told her wearily. ‘Stop fussing. I’m an adult, not a child.’
‘You’re still my baby sister,’ Chrissie told her forthrightly, ‘and if you’re that grown-up, how come you didn’t remember to keep your hat on?’
As she got out of the car, Rosie sighed. Typical Chrissie. She always had to have the last word, but beneath her rather bossy manner Rosie knew that Chrissie was genuinely concerned for her and, as she saw that concern now reflected in Chrissie’s eyes, her irritation melted away.
‘I’ll be fine,’ she assured her. ‘A good night’s sleep and—’
‘Ring me in the morning,’ Chrissie demanded imperatively. ‘I’ll come over after I’ve taken Allison and Paul to school and drive you across to collect your car.’
Rosie felt the irritation bubbling up inside her again. She had a meeting in Chester at ten o’clock in the morning. She couldn’t afford to hang around waiting for Chrissie to come and collect her, and she certainly wasn’t going to cancel. It had taken her months of delicate negotiations to persuade Ian Davies to see her and she wasn’t going to throw away everything she had worked so hard for.
She knew that a lot of people had been surprised when she had taken over from her father when he had retired, especially Chrissie. It had been one thing for her to work for him in his insurance agency business, but quite another for her to take over that business and run it single-handedly, despite the fact that she was professionally qualified to do so and had had several years of practical experience, working first for a much larger concern and then, for three years before he retired, for her father.
It had been very hard for her at first, getting the clients to accept her, but then she had managed to deal with a particularly complicated case and get compensation for a client who had come to her after being unable to get satisfaction from his insurance company through another broker. He had been so impressed that he had recommended her to his friends, but breaking down the barriers of male reserve and lack of faith in her abilities was a constant battle.
It didn’t help of course that in her normal, everyday life she was so quiet and unassertive, and she had to acknowledge that at barely five feet two, with a very small body frame and a sometimes irritatingly delicate and feminine set of facial features, her physical appearance was perhaps not that of a woman who could withstand the occasionally slightly sneaky tricks adopted by her clients’ insurers. Not that they would consider it like that.
Gamesmanship was how they preferred to think of it, a justifiable use of their power, and if someone was weak enough to be browbeaten into giving up a claim or settling for less than they had initially expected then tough luck.
But Rosie had no time for such tactics. She could be surprisingly ruthless and determined when she had to be, but there was no getting away from the fact that in the two years since her father’s retirement the business had lost out to some of the much larger agencies.
She had refused to be downhearted; there was still a market…a need for someone like her who was prepared to give specialised time and attention to a client’s needs. The problem was persuading the clients, not convincing herself that her skills were superior to those of a large, faceless organisation.
Which was what she was hoping to do at tomorrow’s meeting with Ian Davies.
She had heard in a roundabout fashion that he was dissatisfied with his existing brokers since they had amalgamated with another firm. A fire at one of his rental premises, which had resulted in his full claim being turned down by his insurers, had increased that dissatisfaction, and Rosie had seen her chance and taken it.
He was a contemporary of her father’s and, she suspected, not wholly comfortable with women taking a leading role in business. She knew that persuading him to give her his business was not going to be easy, but she was determined to at least try.
To prove to others that she was just as proficient as the equivalent male, or to prove to herself that, just because she was a failure as a woman, it did not mean that she had failed as a human being, that just because she had lost her self-respect, her sense of self-worth, her belief that she was worthy of being loved, it did not mean that every pleasure in life was denied her.
No, not every pleasure, she reflected bitterly. Just the ones she had always taken for granted that she would one day enjoy.
Like being loved and being able to love in return…Like having a child…a family.
As she opened the door and stepped into her small dark hallway, she could feel the angry, impotent tears beginning to sting her eyes.
Damn Jake Lucas…Why had he had to be there this afternoon…? Why wouldn’t the past let her go? Why couldn’t she ever seem to fight free of its destructive tentacles?
CHAPTER TWO
ROSIE waited until she felt comfortably sure that the party would be over and that all the other guests, but most especially Jake Lucas, would have left, and then rang for a taxi. There would be no need for her to disturb the Hopkinses—her car was parked outside their house and not on their drive.
It was just gone nine o’clock when the taxi driver dropped her off, the summer sky still light and the air warm.
Gemma and Neil had been lucky with the weather, Rosie acknowledged as she delved in her handbag for her car keys.
‘Aha…caught you.’
She tensed automatically and then relaxed as she recognised Neil’s teasing voice.
‘Gemma saw you arrive,’ he told her. ‘Why don’t you come in for a few minutes?’
Rosie started to protest, but Neil overruled her. A quick search of the road and drive had confirmed that the only other cars there beside her own belonged to Gemma and Neil, and that all the party guests had gone home.
‘I didn’t want to disturb you,’ she started to protest, but Neil had already taken hold of her arm and was coaxing her towards the house.
‘There’s something we wanted to discuss with you anyway,’ he told her. ‘Abby has received quite a few gifts of money as christening presents and we were wondering about starting one of these baby bond things for her…What do you think?’
Ten minutes later she was sitting in the Hopkinses’ comfortable family kitchen, listening carefully as Gemma outlined their wish to provide some small lump sum for their new daughter when she was older.
The baby herself was fast asleep in Gemma’s arms. Neil had gone upstairs to discover what had caused the argument they could hear taking place between their two sons. The phone in the hall rang, causing the baby to stir and cry.
‘Here, hold her for me will you please, Rosie, while I go and answer the phone?’ Gemma asked her, thrusting the baby towards Rosie so that she had no option other than to take her from her.
She felt warm and solid, with that undefinable but instantly recognisable baby smell.
Tensely Rosie held her, her body rigid, her stomach churning, tremors convulsing her.
Unused to being held at such a distance, and missing the warmth of her mother, the baby’s cries increased.
She was still young enough to have that piercing, womb-aching cry of a new baby, and as she heard it Rosie reacted instinctively to it, cradling her against her shoulder, as she supported her small, soft head and soothed her rigid, tense body.
The baby turned her head, nuzzling into Rosie’s skin—an automatic reflex action that meant nothing, Rosie knew—and her own body’s reaction to it was so immediate and devastating that she could feel herself starting to shake.
Abby had stopped crying now, apparently content with her new surroundings, snuggling sleepily against Rosie’s shoulder, but for Rosie to overcome her emotions was not so easy.
She always deliberately avoided this kind of situation, making sure that she had as little physical contact with small babies as she could.
Once they were older it was different, the pain less devastating and primitive, the sense of loss, of deprivation, of agonising guilt, easier to deal with.
She heard Gemma coming back into the kitchen and immediately handed Abby back to her.
‘I must go,’ she told her quickly. ‘I’ve got an early start in the morning. I’ll do some work on some comparison tables for you and drop them around later in the week.’
It was only later, when she was on her way home, that she remembered that in her desperate anxiety to get away she had forgotten all about her hat.
Before going to collect her car she had meticulously gone over and over the proposals she planned to put before Ian Davies.
She was confident that they were at least as competitive as anything anyone could offer him; where she believed she had the advantage over much larger concerns was the personal touch.
It was almost eleven o’clock when she went upstairs to prepare for bed. She was just about to get undressed when the phone rang.
It was Chrissie, wanting to know how she was.
Firmly she assured her sister that she was feeling fine but, ten minutes later, when she had removed her make-up and was studying her face in her bathroom mirror, she had to admit that her appearance belied her words.
She had always been pale-skinned, and for that reason had always had to protect her sensitive skin from the sun, but tonight her pallor was sharpened by tension and pain.
Shakily she turned away from the mirror, not wanting to see…to remember.
Jake Lucas. He had remembered. She had seen it in his eyes when he looked at her across the Hopkinses’ crowded sun-dappled garden, had seen the coldness and the contempt, the distaste and dislike. It didn’t matter how hard she worked at burying the past, at shutting herself off from it, at trying to forget it—Jake Lucas would never forget; she could not wipe his memory clean, could not erase his knowledge of her.
But at least there was one thing he did not know, one secret that was hers alone.
Rosie winced as she bit down too hard on her bottom lip and broke the skin.
Now she would have a swollen bruise there in the morning. She grimaced crossly in the mirror. She would have to remember to wear a concealing matt lipstick tomorrow. Her mouth was on the over-full side as it was and she had no wish to arrive at Ian Davies’s office looking like some pouting little doll.
Before getting in to bed, she checked that she had everything ready for the morning. Her suit was hanging up outside the wardrobe, and so was the silk shirt she intended to wear with it.
Underwear, tights, plus a spare pair in case of accidents, were laid out ready in the bathroom.
Her shoes were downstairs, cleaned and polished, her neat leather handbag-cum-attache´ case filled with all the papers she would need.
Rosie did not believe in going for a high-powered female executive image. She felt it both theatrical and off-putting for some of her smaller clients. She preferred to dress neatly and unobtrusively, so that people paid attention to what she had to say, not the way she looked.
She flinched a little, remembering how Chrissie had commented not unkindly, some time ago, that men would never be oblivious to the way she looked.
‘They can’t help it,’ had been her half-indulgent remark. ‘It’s in their nature, poor dears, and let’s face it, Rosie, you are very attractive.’
She had eyed her younger sister judicially before adding, ‘In fact, you could be very sexy, if you wanted to be.’
‘Well, I don’t,’ had been Rosie’s fierce response.
And it was true. After all, what was the point in looking sexually attractive when she knew how impossible it was for her to follow through the promise of such looks, without at some stage having to reveal the truth.
‘Don’t think about it,’ she warned herself. ‘Just accept that that’s the way things are. You aren’t unhappy. You don’t lack for anything.’
Apart from a lover…someone to share her life on an intimate, one-to-one basis. A lover…And a child.
IT WAS THE crying that woke her up, bringing her bolt upright in her single, almost monastic little bed, her arms crossing protectively around her body as she tried to clear her brain.
There was the familiar oblong of light cast by the moon through her bedroom window, the familiar pale colours of her simply decorated bedroom with its white bed-linen, its plain, light-coloured walls and carpet, slightly stark against the darkness of the room’s oak beams.
She was not, after all, as she had been dreaming, there in that hospital ward, all around her the cries of the new-born babies, to remind her agonisingly of the child she had just lost…The child she had been so terrified she might have conceived, the child she had rejected with panic and shock, terrified of what its conception was going to mean of the way it would alter her life.
But now there was no child, and she was safe. She knew she ought to be glad…relieved. Only somehow she wasn’t, and the pain inside her wasn’t just caused by the physical shock of the haemorrhage which had preceded her miscarriage. And those piercing new-born cries scraped at her raw nerves like physical torture. No matter what she did, she couldn’t escape from him…or from what had happened.
She was shaking, Rosie recognised, her body icy-cold. Even though it was a softly mild night, and despite her shivers her body was drenched in sweat as she fought not to remember.
It was over fifteen years ago now, almost half her own lifetime. She had been sixteen, that was all—still a child in so many ways, and yet still woman enough to grieve tormentedly for the life that was lost, for the child she would never now hold, for the ache within her that came from the emptiness of what she had lost.
Sixteen…Sixteen, and a virgin. Innocent of any knowledge of male sexuality. And yet she should have known…should have recognised.
It had been all her own fault, as Jake Lucas had so contemptuously pointed out to her.
You didn’t go upstairs with someone, allow him to kiss and fondle you, without knowing where it was going to lead.
Her head had still been thick then with the cider she had had to drink. Only half a glass and she had not finished that, but she learned afterwards that it had been scrumpy, brought back from the south of England by one of the others, with heaven alone knew what added to it.
That still didn’t excuse her, though. She shouldn’t have drunk it, shouldn’t have even been at the party in the first place. If her parents had been at home instead of away at a conference, if her sister had not been staying in the north of England helping her mother-in-law to nurse the husband who was just beginning to recover from a stroke, she would never have been allowed to go.
But they hadn’t been there and, out of bravado and a fear of being laughed at by the others, she had given in to her friends’ cajoling and agreed to join them.
TIREDLY SHE got out of bed. There was no point in trying to get back to sleep again. Not now.
And no point in reliving the whole thing all over again, she reminded herself bitterly. What good had that ever done, other than to reinforce her feelings of guilt and shame, to conjure up in front of her the sharply vivid mental image of Jake Lucas’s cynical, condemnatory expression as he stared down at her half-naked body, the way she lay sprawled across his aunt and uncle’s bed?
Then, still in shock, her body still aching with pain, her mind still clouded with alcohol, she had not thought of pregnancy. That had come later in a sickening wave of panic and rejection, when she’d realised that she could have conceived.
She hadn’t told anyone; she had been too afraid, too aware by then of her own guilt and degradation.
A month went by and the panic became a certainty, but still she did nothing.
All around her life went on as normal, and she felt somehow that if she pretended it had simply not happened…if she said and did nothing, it would all magically go away. That the nausea she felt in the morning would stop, that her body’s rhythms would return to normal, that the mental pictures that filled her brain at night while she slept would disappear, and that she would once again be the girl she had been before.
No one said anything to her; no one seemed to be aware of what had happened.
Jake Lucas’s aunt and uncle had emigrated to Australia three weeks after the party, with their family.
Some days she almost managed to convince herself that it had never happened, and then something would remind her: she would see a woman pushing a pram on her way home from school…or see a small baby on television. Whenever she saw a heavily pregnant woman she found herself looking the other way, as the panic bubbled up inside her.
Her mother was concerned about her and feared that she had been studying too hard for her exams.
The guilt she felt when she heard this was the worst kind of punishment. Her parents loved and trusted her. How could she tell them the truth?
And then, while they were away visiting friends and Chrissie was still with her mother-in-law, it happened.
Rosie had gone in to Chester for the day. She had some books she wanted to buy which were not available in their small market town.
She had bought the books and had just been walking out of the shop when it happened—a pain so searing and sharp that she dropped the books, her hand instinctively going to her stomach as she collapsed.
When she came round it was all over and she was in hospital.
She had lost her baby, a harassed young doctor had told her briskly, and they wanted to keep her in overnight just to check that there were no complications.
After that everyone seemed to ignore her, and it was only later that she learned that there had been an emergency that evening, with a major road accident locally.
In the confusion of that, no one realised that Rosie’s family had not been advised of what had happened, and when Rosie was discharged from the hospital the next day with a clean bill of health she realised numbly that no one but her knew or needed to know what had happened.
At first she was overwhelmed with relief and gratitude for that fact, but later, when the sound of crying babies brought her out of her sleep, when the guilt over what she had done was replaced by the far greater guilt and anguish of having lost her child, she ached for someone to talk to, someone to confide in, someone with whom she could share her confused feelings.
Logically she knew that her miscarriage was probably the best thing that could have happened. She was sixteen years old, she had attended a party without her parents’ knowledge, had had too much to drink and as a result…She shuddered, still not able to contemplate what had actually happened, and yet, despite knowing all that, she had still grieved for her lost child.
And still did.
She went downstairs and filled the kettle so that she could make herself a drink of herbal tea. Perhaps that might help her to get back to sleep.
She knew now that she would never have another child. How could she risk another man looking at her the way Jake Lucas had looked at her, when she told him about her past? She was too proud to want a relationship in which it remained a secret—that was not her ideal of marriage, of commitment, of sharing.
Once she realised what was happening she had, of course, tried to stop him, but he had pinned her to the bed, leaving dark bruises on her arms as he forced his way into her body, making her cry out in shock, not just at his unwanted, forced physical possession of her, but also at the emotional humiliation and degradation she was being made to suffer.
It had all been over within seconds, but those seconds had been long enough to change her life irretrievably. Even now, remembering…thinking about what had happened, Rosie was filled with self-disgust and guilt.
She had withdrawn into herself afterwards, earning for herself a reputation as a swot, as someone who would rather stay at home with her family than go out with her friends.
Her sense of shame and guilt over what had happened was so strong that she could not bear anyone else to know what she had done.
Rather then endure a repeat of the humiliation and shame, the sense of anguished guilt she had already known, she decided that her life must have another focus, that for the sake of her own sanity and self-respect she must accept that that commitment—marriage, a relationship that included a lover and the children they might have together—was not for her.
And most of the time she managed to convince herself that she was content. Except when she saw a small baby or a pregnant woman, except when she woke in the night remembering the past, except when something or someone reminded her of what had happened.
Her tea had gone cold. She looked at it with distaste.
It was fortunate that she was not superstitious, she told herself bitterly, because there could be no worse omen to precede her meeting with Ian Davies than what had happened today.
Tiredly she went back to bed, promising herself that this time she was not going to allow Jake Lucas to disturb her much-needed rest. That this time she was not going to lie there in the darkness remembering the way he had looked at her, the way he had spoken to her, the contempt and dislike with which he had treated her.
THIS WOULD HAVE to happen to her today of all days, Rosie fumed anxiously, as she waited on the full garage forecourt for a petrol pump to become free.
After all the careful preparations she had made for this morning’s meeting with Ian Davies, how on earth had she come to overlook something as vital as making sure her petrol tank was full?
The pump in front of her became free and she pulled quickly into it, ignoring the attempts of the driver behind her to cut in ahead of her.
As she unlocked the petrol cap and pushed the nozzle of the hose into the tank, for some contrary reason, instead of gushing smoothly into the tank, the strong-smelling liquid flooded backwards, spilling out on to her shoes and tights…
It was only a few small splashes, but they left a dismaying strong smell, Rosie acknowledged as she queued to pay for her petrol.
She always left herself with a good extra margin of time when she was travelling to an appointment, but this morning everything seemed to be against her. She had lost at least fifteen minutes getting petrol, and once she was actually on the motorway there was an unexpected hold-up where a lorry had shed its load and the mess was being cleaned up. She eventually arrived in Chester with only five minutes in which to find a parking spot and to get to Ian Davies’s offices, and Chester was a notoriously difficult place to park.
Luckily she found a spot just when she was beginning to panic and fear that she was going to be late, and even more luckily she found in the glove compartment a long-forgotten bottle of body lotion which a friend had given her to pass on to Chrissie for one of her jumble collections.
As she used it to clean the petrol stains and smell off her legs and shoes, Rosie winced a little at its strong scent. It was a perfume designed to be worn in the evening, not during the day, and it was certainly far too strong for her taste, but at least it had removed the malodorous smell of petrol.
She reached the offices with a minute to spare, and self-consciously checked her appearance in the lift mirror, to see if she looked as flushed and untidy as her hurried rush through the centre of Chester had made her feel.
A little to her own surprise, the reflection that stared back at her from the small mirror looked cool and composed.
Idly, as she waited for the lift to carry her to the top floor, she wondered if anyone had ever thought of placing a hidden camera or watching device in a lift, and then, remembering some of the very odd things she had heard that people sometimes got up to inside them, she reflected wryly that it was probably just as well they did not.
The lift doors opened and she stepped out into the carpeted foyer, composing her features into a calm, professional smile.
THE MEETING PROVED every bit as tricky as she had expected. Ian Davies was a chauvinist who, Rosie suspected, did not entirely approve of the new role that women were playing in the business world.
Had she been a secretary, a personal assistant, someone’s wife or woman friend, she had no doubt that he would have been perfectly charming to her and perhaps even have flirted with her in a courtly, old-fashioned sort of way, but it was plain to her that he was antagonistic not so much to her, but to what she represented.
But, for all his prejudices, he was still very much a business man, and Rosie saw how quickly he assimilated the advantages of using her as his broker.
‘Are you saying that, had you had our business, you would have got us more compensation from our insurers?’ he asked her at one point.
Firmly Rosie shook her head. She was not going to be caught out like that.
‘Without knowing the full details of the arrangements your previous brokers had with your insurers, I can’t say that,’ she told him equably, but smiling, a little grimly, inwardly to herself as she saw that he had caught the small hint she had dropped about his brokers’ private arrangements with the insurers.
She had a very shrewd idea that the brokers he was presently using adopted a policy which she herself refused to consider, and that was an agreement to let some claims go through unhindered in return for the brokers advising other clients not to proceed with theirs, or suggesting to them they should accept lower compensations.
It was her view that her primary loyalty was to her clients and, if that meant a less easy passage with some of the insurance companies, well, so be it.
‘I’ve brought some comparison quotes with me,’ she told him as she stood up. ‘If I may, I’ll leave them with you.’
A little to her surprise, he accompanied her out into the foyer, but after she had thanked him crisply for his time and turned round to leave she realised why.
Jake Lucas was seated in the foyer, obviously waiting to see him, because he was now standing up, and beyond her she could hear Ian Davies saying something about taking him to lunch.
For a moment the shock of seeing him had paralysed her completely, and then Rosie turned quickly on her heel, her heart hammering furiously fast as it drove the blood through her veins, overheating her pale skin.
She felt hot and sick, filled with panic and a frantic desire to escape. It had been bad enough seeing him yesterday, but this was worse.
Frantically she tried to cling to her self-control and professionalism, but in her haste to escape she moved too quickly, and the papers she was carrying slid from her hot, tense grasp.
She bent immediately to pick them up, her face flushing with angry mortification, and then, to her horror, she realised that two pages of paper had drifted to where Jake Lucas was standing.
For a moment she was too panic-stricken to move, and could only crouch where she was, staring numbly at them, filled with sickness and terror at the thought of having to retrieve them.
When Jake himself bent down and picked them up she could only stare at him, unable to drag her gaze from the flat metallic hardness of his grey eyes—like a rabbit trapped by a car’s headlights, she thought mechanically, as he came towards her.
She struggled to stand up, and then completed her self-humiliation by half losing her balance.
The shock of Jake’s hand curling round her arm was like a jolt of electricity. He was so close to her that she could see the dark line along his jaw where he shaved, smell the crisp, clean scent of his soap, see the masculine curl of the dark hairs on his arm where his wrist protruded from his shirt sleeve.
He was still holding her, still watching her…Do something, her brain screamed frantically. Do something…
Somehow she managed to find the willpower to get to her feet, but, as she did so, either because of her tension or the heat it had generated, she was suddenly sharply conscious of the smell of the body lotion she had used to clean her legs, and, she realised, Jake Lucas was aware of it too…She saw the slight, and very betraying, fastidious twitch of his nose, the way his eyes narrowed, the brief, downward glance he gave the lower half of her body and, while she automatically thanked him for his help and turned quickly to make her escape, she was sickly aware of the contempt that faint curl of his mouth had carried.
The look he had given her as she dragged her arm away from his grip had underlined that contempt.
He had never made any attempt to hide from her what he thought of her: that he thought she was sexually promiscuous, that she used her body as a means of getting what she wanted out of life…out of men. And he had just let her know quite plainly that by scenting her legs with that strong, voluptuous perfume she was amply confirming his judgment of her.
What business woman who wanted to be taken seriously at a professional level did anything like that? A discreet touch of something light and cool, a subtle message that said that she was a woman and proud of that fact—that was permissible and acceptable. To wear something so heavy and voluptuous gave off a very different message indeed.
On her way down in the lift, Rosie studied her reflection again. This time it was very different. Her face was flushed, especially along her cheekbones, her eyes huge and dark with emotion, the pupils enormously dilated. Even her mouth looked different somehow, softer, fuller…as though…as though she had been kissed.
Shuddering with distaste, she turned away, and when she stepped out into the street she acknowledged that she felt so emotionally raw and on edge that she was on the verge of tears.
It was just disappointment because Ian Davies had not responded more enthusiastically to her approach, she told herself as she walked back to her car. It wasn’t anything to do with seeing Jake Lucas. That had upset her of course, but she wasn’t going to let the fact that he despised her, that he was contemptuous of her, reduce her to tears.
It wasn’t, after all, his judgment of her that hurt so much; it was the fact that seeing him always reminded him so unbearably of what she had done, of the way she had demeaned herself.
It was bad enough that she knew of her shame and degradation, without him having to know of it too.
But he did know, and nothing she could do could ever erase that knowledge. When he looked at her, she knew as surely as though he were saying the actual words that he was seeing her not as she was now, but as she had been then, half-naked, stupid with drink and shock, lying across his aunt and uncle’s bed, while her partner, the boy who had deliberately given her that spiked drink and who had then equally deliberately semi-coaxed and semi-dragged her upstairs to his parents’ bedroom, had left her, after telling her triumphantly that he had won his bet to seduce her and bring her down off her high horse.
He had not said that to his cousin, though. No, it was a very different story he had told Jake Lucas. According to him, she had been willing, and more than willing, to accompany him upstairs—she had been the one to suggest it, in fact, and Rosie, too shocked and distressed to defend herself, too humiliated physically and emotionally, had done nothing to defend herself.
Thank God that Ritchie Lucas and his family had emigrated to Australia so quickly afterwards.
And thank God also that Ritchie had apparently got so drunk that evening that it had appeared that he had no recollection of what had taken place and so had been unable to boast to anyone else about it.
No, only two people had remembered what had happened—herself and Jake Lucas—and Jake Lucas did not know the real truth.
He had assumed that she was a member of the rather wild crowd that Ritchie went around with, that she was one of those girls who was foolishly experimenting with sex and drink in the mistaken belief that she was showing everyone how grown-up she was and, beneath his anger at his cousin for taking advantage of his parents’ absence to throw an unauthorised party, and his obvious disgust that Ritchie had brought her upstairs to his parents’ room, Rosie had been sharply conscious of the contempt he had for her.
And yet his judgement of her couldn’t have been further off the mark. She had never even kissed a boy properly before that night, never mind done anything else, and, if it hadn’t been that for the previous few months a small group of girls in her class at school had been making her life a misery by taunting her about her ‘primness’ and her ‘goody-goodyness’ to the extent that she was slowly becoming alienated from all the other girls and treated as someone who was ‘different’…an outcast, she doubted that she would ever have allowed herself to be persuaded to even go to the party in the first place.
To discover later that she had been the subject of a cruel trick deliberately planned to hurt and humiliate her had been hard to bear, but not as hard as Jake Lucas’s contempt, and certainly not as hard as discovering that she was pregnant.
At least no one but her knew about that. She bit her lip as she bent to unlock her car door, hot tears stinging her eyes.
There had been no one to grieve with her over the loss of that baby, no one to share her complex and conflicting emotions, no one to tell that, while logically she knew that perhaps it was all for the best, a part of her ached with loss and pain for that unborn child.
No, that was something that no one else knew, and sometimes she wished they did…sometimes she ached inside to be able to talk about what she had experienced: her pain, her sense of loss…her sense of guilt.
Despite the fact that it was over fifteen years ago since it had happened, sometimes she felt as close to it as though it were less than fifteen weeks, as though the wound, the agony, was still so raw that she needed to be able to talk it through with someone…that she needed to be able to publicly and openly mourn the death of her child.
But someone like Jake Lucas would never be able to understand those kind of emotions. She could just imagine his reaction. No doubt he would have told her that she was lucky things had worked out as they had, that such luck was far in excess of what she actually deserved. He would have no pity, no compassion…no understanding…He would reject her pain and her need to express it in just the same contemptuous way as he had rejected her, turning away from her to talk to his cousin, ignoring her as though she simply did not exist.
But he had come to see her afterwards.
Yes, she told herself savagely, to make sure she wasn’t going to make any trouble for his precious cousin.
Angrily she put the car in gear and reversed out of her parking spot.
CHAPTER THREE
‘ANY luck with Ian Davies?’
Rosie looked wryly at her brother-in-law.
‘Well, I haven’t heard anything from him yet, but he didn’t give me the impression that he was interested. He’s one of those men who isn’t really comfortable with women holding positions of authority in business. If Dad had still been running things, it might have been different.’ She gave a small shrug. ‘Still, it’s his loss as much as ours. I suspect his existing brokers are using his business to get better terms for their other clients instead of reducing his premiums.’
‘Did you tell him that?’ Chrissie demanded.
Rosie shook her head.
‘I only suspect that that’s what they’re doing,’ she told her.
‘Well, I think it’s all wrong that men should still try to keep women down,’ Allison announced passionately with indignation. At fourteen she was just beginning to lay claim to her independence, and was staunchly pro women’s rights.
‘I wonder how Gran and Grandad are getting on. They’ll be in Japan now, won’t they?’ Paul chimed in.
‘Yes, they should have arrived there by now,’ Rosie agreed.
‘I never thought they’d actually do it,’ Chrissie marvelled. ‘Spending a whole year travelling round the world.’
‘It’s something they’ve been planning for and dreaming about for years,’ Rosie reminded her.
Chrissie had rung her earlier in the day to check that she was going round as usual to have supper with them, a regular Friday night ritual which Rosie always enjoyed.
‘Did you collect your hat from the Hopkinses?’ Chrissie asked her now.
‘No, not yet,’ Rosie told her.
‘There’s a car boot sale on tomorrow morning. Fancy coming?’
Rosie shook her head.
‘I can’t. I’ve promised to go over and see Mary Fuller to help her fill out some claim forms. Her garage was broken into on Wednesday and some things stolen.’
She stood up to leave and was surprised when Chrissie reached out to detain her.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/penny-jordan/yesterday-s-echoes/) на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
PENNY JORDAN
Secrets from the past emerge in the present and the consequences are unexpected for these two couples.YESTERDAY'S ECHOESTragedy had befallen Rosie when she was a vulnerable sixteen-year-old and Jake Lucas had witnessed the entire thing. Since then Rosie has built a successful career, not allowing anyone near the woman behind the cheerful face she shows to the world. But Jake has entered her life again, and he isn't about to let her forget the past.MASTER OF PLEASURESasha walked away from handsome millionaire Gabriel Calbrini to marry another and he's never forgiven her. Now widowed, Sasha is shocked when Gabriel is named heir to her late husband's wealth and guardian to her two sons. But Sasha won't surrender. There's far too much at stake especially the one thing that Gabriel must never know….
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.
This beautiful digital collection offers a chance to recapture the pleasure of all of Penny Jordan’s fabulous, glamorous and romantic novels for Mills & Boon.
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.
Yesterday’s Echoes
Penny Jordan
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CHAPTER ONE
‘I’M BEGINNING to dread christenings. In fact, I only have to hear the word “baby” these days and I come over all broody…and me a mother of two hulking great teenagers. I ought to know better.
‘I know what it is, of course…It’s the threat of empty nest syndrome looming, with nothing to look forward to but Greg’s mid-life crisis and hormone replacement therapy…Rosie…are you listening to me?’
Obediently Rosie turned towards her elder sister, and repeated obediently what she had just been told.
‘Of course, plenty of women are having babies at forty these days,’ Rosie heard her muse. ‘Although what the kids would have to say about it…and how on earth I’d even manage to get pregnant in the first place…You’ve no idea how inhibiting it is having almost-adult children in the house with you. It’s amazing how guilty and embarrassed they can make you feel. Mind you, talking of sex lives, how’s yours going at the moment?’
Rosie felt her stomach muscles tense and prayed that her facial muscles weren’t reacting equally betrayingly.
There was virtually a decade between her and her elder sister, and this had led to Chrissie’s adopting an almost parental attitude to her. Although Rosie knew that Chrissie would have been outraged had she been as inquisitive and critical of her most intimate personal life as Chrissie was of Rosie’s, she also knew that Chrissie would never be able to understand that there were times when she found her sister’s questions intrusive and over-personal. After all, she knew how much Chrissie loved her and that her questions, no matter how awkward, sprang from love and concern.
And of course today she was feeling extra-intensely sensitive, she admitted. Christenings always had that effect on her, and it was pointless expecting Chrissie to understand that, to know what she was going through, to know about the tearing, wrenching pain within her, the sense of loss and anguish.
It was all very well for Chrissie to talk glibly about feeling broody, about having another child, to assume that she, Rosie, as a single woman of thirty-one with a business to run—a woman who, as Chrissie was always reminding her, had chosen to keep any men who approached her at a wary distance—did not know what it meant to see another woman with a child, and to feel that aching sense of deprivation within her—that tight feeling of panic and pain, of loss and fear, of so many complex emotions that she herself could barely find the words to describe them.
And then for Chrissie to make that comment about her sex life!!
The Hopkinses’ lawn wasn’t very big; they were a very popular couple and had invited a large number of people to the christening party. Rosie winced as someone standing behind her stepped backwards, and she felt a sharp elbow accidentally striking against her, jolting her glass and causing the other woman to immediately apologise as Rosie automatically turned round.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she began, but Rosie wasn’t listening to her.
Her whole body frozen rigid with shock and rejection, she was staring past her at the man standing several yards away watching her.
Jake Lucas! What was he doing here? Watching her! She hadn’t realised that he knew the Hopkinses. If she had suspected for a moment that he was going to be here…
‘Rosie…’
She shivered, the rigidity leaving her body as she responded to the quick anxiety in her sister’s voice.
Across the space which divided them, Jake Lucas continued to watch her. She could feel the concentrated burn of that look. She knew exactly what he was thinking…how he viewed her…without having to look directly into his eyes.
‘Rosie…’
This time Chrissie wasn’t content with speaking to her; she was touching her as well—an elder-sisterly hand placed firmly on her arm, giving it an admonishing little shake.
‘What is it? What’s wrong?’
Wrong? Alarm bells clamoured violently inside her.
‘Nothing…Nothing’s wrong,’ she denied quickly, turning her head back towards her sister so quickly that her hair spun round her, fanning out of its neat, shoulder-length cut before falling silkily back into place, its thick russet sleekness concealing her expression as she lowered her head defensively.
Jake Lucas. Even now that she was no longer looking at him, his features remained burnt into her memory so that it wasn’t her sister’s firm but anxious face she saw, but his, with its hard, masculine features, his mouth curling disdainfully, his hard, flinty grey eyes watching her with distaste, everything about him, even down to the way he was standing, registering his contempt for her—that and the knowledge of her which they both shared.
‘Rosie, what is it? And don’t tell me nothing. You’ve gone as white as a sheet,’ Chrissie accused. ‘Is it the sun? You should have kept your hat on; you know how vulnerable you are to sunstroke. You’d better not drive home.’
Numbly Rosie let her sister’s bossy fussing wash over her, for once unable to summon the independence to remind her sister that she was an adult and not one of her children.
‘It’s time we left, anyway. I promised Greg I wouldn’t be late. We’ve got the Curtises coming round this evening, and I want to make sure that Allison and Paul aren’t thinking of going out tonight. I don’t like them going out on Sunday evenings, not with Paul’s A levels coming up and Allison’s GCSEs next year.’
Rosie stayed silent, letting her sister’s conversation wash over her. Jake Lucas…She tried to remember the last time she had seen him—was it four years ago or three?—but she felt too dizzy with shock to be able to concentrate.
He lived on the opposite side of town from her and their paths never crossed. He moved in different social circles, and the partnership he had in a marina on one of the less accessible Greek islands meant that he was out of the country a good deal.
He was closer to Chrissie’s age than her own, although even her redoubtable sister had always been a little in awe of him, despite the fact that she was a couple of years his senior.
He was that kind of man.
Awe didn’t describe her reaction to him, Rosie acknowledged. Fear…dread…pain…panic …anguish; he made her feel all of those, and other and even less bearable emotions as well.
The mere sound of his name was enough to make her go cold with fear and shame, and to see him so unexpectedly, when she was unprepared for it and in such a vulnerable situation, when she was already feeling so off balance, so emotionally open to the anguish of her past and the burden of the pain she had kept a secret from everyone else who knew her…
Silently, she let Chrissie take hold of her arm and firmly make her way through the tightly packed group of people around their host and hostess.
The baby, the Hopkinses’ third, was now contentedly asleep in her father’s arms. A wrenching jolt of pain stabbed through Rosie as she watched him deftly transfer his new daughter’s sleeping weight from one shoulder to the other while he ducked his head to kiss first Chrissie and then her on the cheek.
‘Isn’t it time we saw you holding one of these?’ he teased Rosie.
His teasing wasn’t malicious or unkind. Rosie and both Neil and Gemma Hopkins had all been at school together. Gemma was her own age. She herself was, Rosie reminded herself bleakly, the only one of her peers now who had not experienced a committed relationship of some kind. Some of her friends were even on their second marriages.
She knew how curious people were about her, and could guess at the questions they probably asked one another about her. Always sensitive and by nature an extremely private person, she was acutely aware of how different she was, how isolated from experiences which seemed commonplace to others.
It wasn’t as though she weren’t attractive, as though men weren’t drawn to her, Chrissie had exclaimed in exasperation four months ago on Rosie’s thirty-first birthday, when she had brought up her perennial complaint about Rosie’s dedication to her single state.
‘I’ve watched you,’ she had accused. ‘You freeze the poor things off as soon as they try to get close to you.’
Her mother had been more understanding, but equally concerned.
‘I don’t understand it,’ she had said sadly. ‘Rosie, you were always the one who loved playing with your dolls, who always, from being a small child, talked about getting married and having children. Of the two of you, I always thought it would be Chrissie who would be the career girl. I’m not trying to tell you how to run your life, darling. If being single is what you want…’
‘It is,’ Rosie had told her mother fiercely, but she suspected that her mother knew as well as she did that she was not telling the whole truth.
But how could she explain, reveal to her mother, to anyone, the thing that had made her like this, the guilt, the pain, the shock of self-discovery, the realisation that her degradation and humiliation, her stupidity, had been witnessed by someone else? These had proved so painful to her that the only way she could deal with them was to try to cut herself off from them, from the person she had been before it had happened, to try to create a different person—a safer, better, more responsible, more controlled person.
How could she tell anyone about what had happened? She was too afraid of them condemning her, looking at her, reacting to her in the same way that Jake Lucas had done.
Over the years she had gone over and over it so many times in her own mind, hating herself for having allowed it to happen, for not being more aware, for not realising what was going to happen.
She knew she was not guilty of ever having done anything to encourage him; she could acquit herself of that crime. She had never come anywhere near doing or saying anything to make him think that she might actually want him. How could she have done? She had not had the least conception of what sexual desire was.
She had been a very naı¨ve, protected sixteen, and still far too shy and immature to be sexually aware in any way.
No, she had done nothing to lead him on, but she had had that drink and she hadn’t been able to stop him, and she knew enough about the world now to realise that if she were ever to tell what had happened there would always be those who would wonder…doubt…especially if they were male.
And she could never allow herself to get involved with a man without telling him, without wanting to share with him that secret, shamed, still-hurting part of herself.
And since she was afraid of allowing herself to love a man, only to discover him turning away from her with the same disgust that Jake Lucas had manifested, she had chosen instead not to take the risk of becoming emotionally committed to anyone. It was safer that way, and safety, protecting herself from hurt—these were very important to Rosie. When people commented on her manless state, she told them coolly that she was content the way she was. Normally the coolness she exhibited, the control, was enough to deter them and to protect her, but today was different.
Today she was feeling too vulnerable…too raw inside, too achingly aware of that small, sleeping bundle held protectively against Neil’s shoulder and the man still standing somewhere among the crowd on the lawn, perhaps still watching her…
She shivered, feeling the perspiration break out against her skin, watching helplessly as Neil’s expression changed to one of concern.
‘It’s the heat,’ she heard Chrissie saying. ‘She’s always been vulnerable to it. It’s that red hair and Celtic skin. I told her not to take her hat off.’
There were, Rosie decided faintly as Chrissie led her firmly away, perhaps advantages to having Chrissie for a sister after all.
She quickly changed her mind, though, when Chrissie refused to allow her to drive home.
‘But I need my car,’ she protested.
‘Not now, you don’t,’ Chrissie told her. ‘And if you have got heat or sunstroke, you won’t be needing it tomorrow either.’
‘I’ve got a meeting in Chester tomorrow morning,’ Rosie protested, but Chrissie wasn’t listening.
‘Honestly, Rosie, I should have thought at your age you’d know better,’ she was complaining as she opened her own car door. ‘At times you can be even worse than Paul and Allison…Now get in and I’ll take you home. If we didn’t have the Curtises coming round this evening, I’d take you home with me. I know you…’
Sickly, Rosie closed her eyes. She felt as weak and nauseous as if she were in fact physically ill, but she knew quite well whatever—or rather, whoever had caused those symptoms.
No matter how much logic she used, her senses, her reactions still continued to remind her of the trauma which lay buried in her past.
Jake Lucas. If only he had not been there…that night.
But he had been there…
She winced as Chrissie slammed her car door and started the engine. She was still feeling nauseatingly sick, her body clammy with shock. If only she hadn’t already been caught up in the aching pain that seeing the Hopkinses’ new baby had caused her, she might have been better able to control her reaction to Jake Lucas, she told herself miserably.
Her sister was still talking, still admonishing her for taking off her hat.
‘You left it upstairs on Gemma’s bed,’ she heard Chrissie reminding her. ‘You mustn’t forget to collect it when you go back for your car.’
Rosie lived several miles away from her sister and her family. She could well remember the fuss Chrissie had made when she had found out that Rosie was selling her neat, modern flat and buying a run-down, isolated farm worker’s cottage.
‘It will eat money,’ she had warned Rosie. ‘And wait until you have to spend a bad winter there. You’ll be completely cut off.’
She had frowned disapprovingly at Rosie’s sotto voce ‘Please God’ before going on to remonstrate again with her for her foolishness.
‘I don’t like leaving you here on your own like this,’ she said now as she stopped her car in the lane outside the cottage.
‘Chrissie, I’ll be fine,’ Rosie told her wearily. ‘Stop fussing. I’m an adult, not a child.’
‘You’re still my baby sister,’ Chrissie told her forthrightly, ‘and if you’re that grown-up, how come you didn’t remember to keep your hat on?’
As she got out of the car, Rosie sighed. Typical Chrissie. She always had to have the last word, but beneath her rather bossy manner Rosie knew that Chrissie was genuinely concerned for her and, as she saw that concern now reflected in Chrissie’s eyes, her irritation melted away.
‘I’ll be fine,’ she assured her. ‘A good night’s sleep and—’
‘Ring me in the morning,’ Chrissie demanded imperatively. ‘I’ll come over after I’ve taken Allison and Paul to school and drive you across to collect your car.’
Rosie felt the irritation bubbling up inside her again. She had a meeting in Chester at ten o’clock in the morning. She couldn’t afford to hang around waiting for Chrissie to come and collect her, and she certainly wasn’t going to cancel. It had taken her months of delicate negotiations to persuade Ian Davies to see her and she wasn’t going to throw away everything she had worked so hard for.
She knew that a lot of people had been surprised when she had taken over from her father when he had retired, especially Chrissie. It had been one thing for her to work for him in his insurance agency business, but quite another for her to take over that business and run it single-handedly, despite the fact that she was professionally qualified to do so and had had several years of practical experience, working first for a much larger concern and then, for three years before he retired, for her father.
It had been very hard for her at first, getting the clients to accept her, but then she had managed to deal with a particularly complicated case and get compensation for a client who had come to her after being unable to get satisfaction from his insurance company through another broker. He had been so impressed that he had recommended her to his friends, but breaking down the barriers of male reserve and lack of faith in her abilities was a constant battle.
It didn’t help of course that in her normal, everyday life she was so quiet and unassertive, and she had to acknowledge that at barely five feet two, with a very small body frame and a sometimes irritatingly delicate and feminine set of facial features, her physical appearance was perhaps not that of a woman who could withstand the occasionally slightly sneaky tricks adopted by her clients’ insurers. Not that they would consider it like that.
Gamesmanship was how they preferred to think of it, a justifiable use of their power, and if someone was weak enough to be browbeaten into giving up a claim or settling for less than they had initially expected then tough luck.
But Rosie had no time for such tactics. She could be surprisingly ruthless and determined when she had to be, but there was no getting away from the fact that in the two years since her father’s retirement the business had lost out to some of the much larger agencies.
She had refused to be downhearted; there was still a market…a need for someone like her who was prepared to give specialised time and attention to a client’s needs. The problem was persuading the clients, not convincing herself that her skills were superior to those of a large, faceless organisation.
Which was what she was hoping to do at tomorrow’s meeting with Ian Davies.
She had heard in a roundabout fashion that he was dissatisfied with his existing brokers since they had amalgamated with another firm. A fire at one of his rental premises, which had resulted in his full claim being turned down by his insurers, had increased that dissatisfaction, and Rosie had seen her chance and taken it.
He was a contemporary of her father’s and, she suspected, not wholly comfortable with women taking a leading role in business. She knew that persuading him to give her his business was not going to be easy, but she was determined to at least try.
To prove to others that she was just as proficient as the equivalent male, or to prove to herself that, just because she was a failure as a woman, it did not mean that she had failed as a human being, that just because she had lost her self-respect, her sense of self-worth, her belief that she was worthy of being loved, it did not mean that every pleasure in life was denied her.
No, not every pleasure, she reflected bitterly. Just the ones she had always taken for granted that she would one day enjoy.
Like being loved and being able to love in return…Like having a child…a family.
As she opened the door and stepped into her small dark hallway, she could feel the angry, impotent tears beginning to sting her eyes.
Damn Jake Lucas…Why had he had to be there this afternoon…? Why wouldn’t the past let her go? Why couldn’t she ever seem to fight free of its destructive tentacles?
CHAPTER TWO
ROSIE waited until she felt comfortably sure that the party would be over and that all the other guests, but most especially Jake Lucas, would have left, and then rang for a taxi. There would be no need for her to disturb the Hopkinses—her car was parked outside their house and not on their drive.
It was just gone nine o’clock when the taxi driver dropped her off, the summer sky still light and the air warm.
Gemma and Neil had been lucky with the weather, Rosie acknowledged as she delved in her handbag for her car keys.
‘Aha…caught you.’
She tensed automatically and then relaxed as she recognised Neil’s teasing voice.
‘Gemma saw you arrive,’ he told her. ‘Why don’t you come in for a few minutes?’
Rosie started to protest, but Neil overruled her. A quick search of the road and drive had confirmed that the only other cars there beside her own belonged to Gemma and Neil, and that all the party guests had gone home.
‘I didn’t want to disturb you,’ she started to protest, but Neil had already taken hold of her arm and was coaxing her towards the house.
‘There’s something we wanted to discuss with you anyway,’ he told her. ‘Abby has received quite a few gifts of money as christening presents and we were wondering about starting one of these baby bond things for her…What do you think?’
Ten minutes later she was sitting in the Hopkinses’ comfortable family kitchen, listening carefully as Gemma outlined their wish to provide some small lump sum for their new daughter when she was older.
The baby herself was fast asleep in Gemma’s arms. Neil had gone upstairs to discover what had caused the argument they could hear taking place between their two sons. The phone in the hall rang, causing the baby to stir and cry.
‘Here, hold her for me will you please, Rosie, while I go and answer the phone?’ Gemma asked her, thrusting the baby towards Rosie so that she had no option other than to take her from her.
She felt warm and solid, with that undefinable but instantly recognisable baby smell.
Tensely Rosie held her, her body rigid, her stomach churning, tremors convulsing her.
Unused to being held at such a distance, and missing the warmth of her mother, the baby’s cries increased.
She was still young enough to have that piercing, womb-aching cry of a new baby, and as she heard it Rosie reacted instinctively to it, cradling her against her shoulder, as she supported her small, soft head and soothed her rigid, tense body.
The baby turned her head, nuzzling into Rosie’s skin—an automatic reflex action that meant nothing, Rosie knew—and her own body’s reaction to it was so immediate and devastating that she could feel herself starting to shake.
Abby had stopped crying now, apparently content with her new surroundings, snuggling sleepily against Rosie’s shoulder, but for Rosie to overcome her emotions was not so easy.
She always deliberately avoided this kind of situation, making sure that she had as little physical contact with small babies as she could.
Once they were older it was different, the pain less devastating and primitive, the sense of loss, of deprivation, of agonising guilt, easier to deal with.
She heard Gemma coming back into the kitchen and immediately handed Abby back to her.
‘I must go,’ she told her quickly. ‘I’ve got an early start in the morning. I’ll do some work on some comparison tables for you and drop them around later in the week.’
It was only later, when she was on her way home, that she remembered that in her desperate anxiety to get away she had forgotten all about her hat.
Before going to collect her car she had meticulously gone over and over the proposals she planned to put before Ian Davies.
She was confident that they were at least as competitive as anything anyone could offer him; where she believed she had the advantage over much larger concerns was the personal touch.
It was almost eleven o’clock when she went upstairs to prepare for bed. She was just about to get undressed when the phone rang.
It was Chrissie, wanting to know how she was.
Firmly she assured her sister that she was feeling fine but, ten minutes later, when she had removed her make-up and was studying her face in her bathroom mirror, she had to admit that her appearance belied her words.
She had always been pale-skinned, and for that reason had always had to protect her sensitive skin from the sun, but tonight her pallor was sharpened by tension and pain.
Shakily she turned away from the mirror, not wanting to see…to remember.
Jake Lucas. He had remembered. She had seen it in his eyes when he looked at her across the Hopkinses’ crowded sun-dappled garden, had seen the coldness and the contempt, the distaste and dislike. It didn’t matter how hard she worked at burying the past, at shutting herself off from it, at trying to forget it—Jake Lucas would never forget; she could not wipe his memory clean, could not erase his knowledge of her.
But at least there was one thing he did not know, one secret that was hers alone.
Rosie winced as she bit down too hard on her bottom lip and broke the skin.
Now she would have a swollen bruise there in the morning. She grimaced crossly in the mirror. She would have to remember to wear a concealing matt lipstick tomorrow. Her mouth was on the over-full side as it was and she had no wish to arrive at Ian Davies’s office looking like some pouting little doll.
Before getting in to bed, she checked that she had everything ready for the morning. Her suit was hanging up outside the wardrobe, and so was the silk shirt she intended to wear with it.
Underwear, tights, plus a spare pair in case of accidents, were laid out ready in the bathroom.
Her shoes were downstairs, cleaned and polished, her neat leather handbag-cum-attache´ case filled with all the papers she would need.
Rosie did not believe in going for a high-powered female executive image. She felt it both theatrical and off-putting for some of her smaller clients. She preferred to dress neatly and unobtrusively, so that people paid attention to what she had to say, not the way she looked.
She flinched a little, remembering how Chrissie had commented not unkindly, some time ago, that men would never be oblivious to the way she looked.
‘They can’t help it,’ had been her half-indulgent remark. ‘It’s in their nature, poor dears, and let’s face it, Rosie, you are very attractive.’
She had eyed her younger sister judicially before adding, ‘In fact, you could be very sexy, if you wanted to be.’
‘Well, I don’t,’ had been Rosie’s fierce response.
And it was true. After all, what was the point in looking sexually attractive when she knew how impossible it was for her to follow through the promise of such looks, without at some stage having to reveal the truth.
‘Don’t think about it,’ she warned herself. ‘Just accept that that’s the way things are. You aren’t unhappy. You don’t lack for anything.’
Apart from a lover…someone to share her life on an intimate, one-to-one basis. A lover…And a child.
IT WAS THE crying that woke her up, bringing her bolt upright in her single, almost monastic little bed, her arms crossing protectively around her body as she tried to clear her brain.
There was the familiar oblong of light cast by the moon through her bedroom window, the familiar pale colours of her simply decorated bedroom with its white bed-linen, its plain, light-coloured walls and carpet, slightly stark against the darkness of the room’s oak beams.
She was not, after all, as she had been dreaming, there in that hospital ward, all around her the cries of the new-born babies, to remind her agonisingly of the child she had just lost…The child she had been so terrified she might have conceived, the child she had rejected with panic and shock, terrified of what its conception was going to mean of the way it would alter her life.
But now there was no child, and she was safe. She knew she ought to be glad…relieved. Only somehow she wasn’t, and the pain inside her wasn’t just caused by the physical shock of the haemorrhage which had preceded her miscarriage. And those piercing new-born cries scraped at her raw nerves like physical torture. No matter what she did, she couldn’t escape from him…or from what had happened.
She was shaking, Rosie recognised, her body icy-cold. Even though it was a softly mild night, and despite her shivers her body was drenched in sweat as she fought not to remember.
It was over fifteen years ago now, almost half her own lifetime. She had been sixteen, that was all—still a child in so many ways, and yet still woman enough to grieve tormentedly for the life that was lost, for the child she would never now hold, for the ache within her that came from the emptiness of what she had lost.
Sixteen…Sixteen, and a virgin. Innocent of any knowledge of male sexuality. And yet she should have known…should have recognised.
It had been all her own fault, as Jake Lucas had so contemptuously pointed out to her.
You didn’t go upstairs with someone, allow him to kiss and fondle you, without knowing where it was going to lead.
Her head had still been thick then with the cider she had had to drink. Only half a glass and she had not finished that, but she learned afterwards that it had been scrumpy, brought back from the south of England by one of the others, with heaven alone knew what added to it.
That still didn’t excuse her, though. She shouldn’t have drunk it, shouldn’t have even been at the party in the first place. If her parents had been at home instead of away at a conference, if her sister had not been staying in the north of England helping her mother-in-law to nurse the husband who was just beginning to recover from a stroke, she would never have been allowed to go.
But they hadn’t been there and, out of bravado and a fear of being laughed at by the others, she had given in to her friends’ cajoling and agreed to join them.
TIREDLY SHE got out of bed. There was no point in trying to get back to sleep again. Not now.
And no point in reliving the whole thing all over again, she reminded herself bitterly. What good had that ever done, other than to reinforce her feelings of guilt and shame, to conjure up in front of her the sharply vivid mental image of Jake Lucas’s cynical, condemnatory expression as he stared down at her half-naked body, the way she lay sprawled across his aunt and uncle’s bed?
Then, still in shock, her body still aching with pain, her mind still clouded with alcohol, she had not thought of pregnancy. That had come later in a sickening wave of panic and rejection, when she’d realised that she could have conceived.
She hadn’t told anyone; she had been too afraid, too aware by then of her own guilt and degradation.
A month went by and the panic became a certainty, but still she did nothing.
All around her life went on as normal, and she felt somehow that if she pretended it had simply not happened…if she said and did nothing, it would all magically go away. That the nausea she felt in the morning would stop, that her body’s rhythms would return to normal, that the mental pictures that filled her brain at night while she slept would disappear, and that she would once again be the girl she had been before.
No one said anything to her; no one seemed to be aware of what had happened.
Jake Lucas’s aunt and uncle had emigrated to Australia three weeks after the party, with their family.
Some days she almost managed to convince herself that it had never happened, and then something would remind her: she would see a woman pushing a pram on her way home from school…or see a small baby on television. Whenever she saw a heavily pregnant woman she found herself looking the other way, as the panic bubbled up inside her.
Her mother was concerned about her and feared that she had been studying too hard for her exams.
The guilt she felt when she heard this was the worst kind of punishment. Her parents loved and trusted her. How could she tell them the truth?
And then, while they were away visiting friends and Chrissie was still with her mother-in-law, it happened.
Rosie had gone in to Chester for the day. She had some books she wanted to buy which were not available in their small market town.
She had bought the books and had just been walking out of the shop when it happened—a pain so searing and sharp that she dropped the books, her hand instinctively going to her stomach as she collapsed.
When she came round it was all over and she was in hospital.
She had lost her baby, a harassed young doctor had told her briskly, and they wanted to keep her in overnight just to check that there were no complications.
After that everyone seemed to ignore her, and it was only later that she learned that there had been an emergency that evening, with a major road accident locally.
In the confusion of that, no one realised that Rosie’s family had not been advised of what had happened, and when Rosie was discharged from the hospital the next day with a clean bill of health she realised numbly that no one but her knew or needed to know what had happened.
At first she was overwhelmed with relief and gratitude for that fact, but later, when the sound of crying babies brought her out of her sleep, when the guilt over what she had done was replaced by the far greater guilt and anguish of having lost her child, she ached for someone to talk to, someone to confide in, someone with whom she could share her confused feelings.
Logically she knew that her miscarriage was probably the best thing that could have happened. She was sixteen years old, she had attended a party without her parents’ knowledge, had had too much to drink and as a result…She shuddered, still not able to contemplate what had actually happened, and yet, despite knowing all that, she had still grieved for her lost child.
And still did.
She went downstairs and filled the kettle so that she could make herself a drink of herbal tea. Perhaps that might help her to get back to sleep.
She knew now that she would never have another child. How could she risk another man looking at her the way Jake Lucas had looked at her, when she told him about her past? She was too proud to want a relationship in which it remained a secret—that was not her ideal of marriage, of commitment, of sharing.
Once she realised what was happening she had, of course, tried to stop him, but he had pinned her to the bed, leaving dark bruises on her arms as he forced his way into her body, making her cry out in shock, not just at his unwanted, forced physical possession of her, but also at the emotional humiliation and degradation she was being made to suffer.
It had all been over within seconds, but those seconds had been long enough to change her life irretrievably. Even now, remembering…thinking about what had happened, Rosie was filled with self-disgust and guilt.
She had withdrawn into herself afterwards, earning for herself a reputation as a swot, as someone who would rather stay at home with her family than go out with her friends.
Her sense of shame and guilt over what had happened was so strong that she could not bear anyone else to know what she had done.
Rather then endure a repeat of the humiliation and shame, the sense of anguished guilt she had already known, she decided that her life must have another focus, that for the sake of her own sanity and self-respect she must accept that that commitment—marriage, a relationship that included a lover and the children they might have together—was not for her.
And most of the time she managed to convince herself that she was content. Except when she saw a small baby or a pregnant woman, except when she woke in the night remembering the past, except when something or someone reminded her of what had happened.
Her tea had gone cold. She looked at it with distaste.
It was fortunate that she was not superstitious, she told herself bitterly, because there could be no worse omen to precede her meeting with Ian Davies than what had happened today.
Tiredly she went back to bed, promising herself that this time she was not going to allow Jake Lucas to disturb her much-needed rest. That this time she was not going to lie there in the darkness remembering the way he had looked at her, the way he had spoken to her, the contempt and dislike with which he had treated her.
THIS WOULD HAVE to happen to her today of all days, Rosie fumed anxiously, as she waited on the full garage forecourt for a petrol pump to become free.
After all the careful preparations she had made for this morning’s meeting with Ian Davies, how on earth had she come to overlook something as vital as making sure her petrol tank was full?
The pump in front of her became free and she pulled quickly into it, ignoring the attempts of the driver behind her to cut in ahead of her.
As she unlocked the petrol cap and pushed the nozzle of the hose into the tank, for some contrary reason, instead of gushing smoothly into the tank, the strong-smelling liquid flooded backwards, spilling out on to her shoes and tights…
It was only a few small splashes, but they left a dismaying strong smell, Rosie acknowledged as she queued to pay for her petrol.
She always left herself with a good extra margin of time when she was travelling to an appointment, but this morning everything seemed to be against her. She had lost at least fifteen minutes getting petrol, and once she was actually on the motorway there was an unexpected hold-up where a lorry had shed its load and the mess was being cleaned up. She eventually arrived in Chester with only five minutes in which to find a parking spot and to get to Ian Davies’s offices, and Chester was a notoriously difficult place to park.
Luckily she found a spot just when she was beginning to panic and fear that she was going to be late, and even more luckily she found in the glove compartment a long-forgotten bottle of body lotion which a friend had given her to pass on to Chrissie for one of her jumble collections.
As she used it to clean the petrol stains and smell off her legs and shoes, Rosie winced a little at its strong scent. It was a perfume designed to be worn in the evening, not during the day, and it was certainly far too strong for her taste, but at least it had removed the malodorous smell of petrol.
She reached the offices with a minute to spare, and self-consciously checked her appearance in the lift mirror, to see if she looked as flushed and untidy as her hurried rush through the centre of Chester had made her feel.
A little to her own surprise, the reflection that stared back at her from the small mirror looked cool and composed.
Idly, as she waited for the lift to carry her to the top floor, she wondered if anyone had ever thought of placing a hidden camera or watching device in a lift, and then, remembering some of the very odd things she had heard that people sometimes got up to inside them, she reflected wryly that it was probably just as well they did not.
The lift doors opened and she stepped out into the carpeted foyer, composing her features into a calm, professional smile.
THE MEETING PROVED every bit as tricky as she had expected. Ian Davies was a chauvinist who, Rosie suspected, did not entirely approve of the new role that women were playing in the business world.
Had she been a secretary, a personal assistant, someone’s wife or woman friend, she had no doubt that he would have been perfectly charming to her and perhaps even have flirted with her in a courtly, old-fashioned sort of way, but it was plain to her that he was antagonistic not so much to her, but to what she represented.
But, for all his prejudices, he was still very much a business man, and Rosie saw how quickly he assimilated the advantages of using her as his broker.
‘Are you saying that, had you had our business, you would have got us more compensation from our insurers?’ he asked her at one point.
Firmly Rosie shook her head. She was not going to be caught out like that.
‘Without knowing the full details of the arrangements your previous brokers had with your insurers, I can’t say that,’ she told him equably, but smiling, a little grimly, inwardly to herself as she saw that he had caught the small hint she had dropped about his brokers’ private arrangements with the insurers.
She had a very shrewd idea that the brokers he was presently using adopted a policy which she herself refused to consider, and that was an agreement to let some claims go through unhindered in return for the brokers advising other clients not to proceed with theirs, or suggesting to them they should accept lower compensations.
It was her view that her primary loyalty was to her clients and, if that meant a less easy passage with some of the insurance companies, well, so be it.
‘I’ve brought some comparison quotes with me,’ she told him as she stood up. ‘If I may, I’ll leave them with you.’
A little to her surprise, he accompanied her out into the foyer, but after she had thanked him crisply for his time and turned round to leave she realised why.
Jake Lucas was seated in the foyer, obviously waiting to see him, because he was now standing up, and beyond her she could hear Ian Davies saying something about taking him to lunch.
For a moment the shock of seeing him had paralysed her completely, and then Rosie turned quickly on her heel, her heart hammering furiously fast as it drove the blood through her veins, overheating her pale skin.
She felt hot and sick, filled with panic and a frantic desire to escape. It had been bad enough seeing him yesterday, but this was worse.
Frantically she tried to cling to her self-control and professionalism, but in her haste to escape she moved too quickly, and the papers she was carrying slid from her hot, tense grasp.
She bent immediately to pick them up, her face flushing with angry mortification, and then, to her horror, she realised that two pages of paper had drifted to where Jake Lucas was standing.
For a moment she was too panic-stricken to move, and could only crouch where she was, staring numbly at them, filled with sickness and terror at the thought of having to retrieve them.
When Jake himself bent down and picked them up she could only stare at him, unable to drag her gaze from the flat metallic hardness of his grey eyes—like a rabbit trapped by a car’s headlights, she thought mechanically, as he came towards her.
She struggled to stand up, and then completed her self-humiliation by half losing her balance.
The shock of Jake’s hand curling round her arm was like a jolt of electricity. He was so close to her that she could see the dark line along his jaw where he shaved, smell the crisp, clean scent of his soap, see the masculine curl of the dark hairs on his arm where his wrist protruded from his shirt sleeve.
He was still holding her, still watching her…Do something, her brain screamed frantically. Do something…
Somehow she managed to find the willpower to get to her feet, but, as she did so, either because of her tension or the heat it had generated, she was suddenly sharply conscious of the smell of the body lotion she had used to clean her legs, and, she realised, Jake Lucas was aware of it too…She saw the slight, and very betraying, fastidious twitch of his nose, the way his eyes narrowed, the brief, downward glance he gave the lower half of her body and, while she automatically thanked him for his help and turned quickly to make her escape, she was sickly aware of the contempt that faint curl of his mouth had carried.
The look he had given her as she dragged her arm away from his grip had underlined that contempt.
He had never made any attempt to hide from her what he thought of her: that he thought she was sexually promiscuous, that she used her body as a means of getting what she wanted out of life…out of men. And he had just let her know quite plainly that by scenting her legs with that strong, voluptuous perfume she was amply confirming his judgment of her.
What business woman who wanted to be taken seriously at a professional level did anything like that? A discreet touch of something light and cool, a subtle message that said that she was a woman and proud of that fact—that was permissible and acceptable. To wear something so heavy and voluptuous gave off a very different message indeed.
On her way down in the lift, Rosie studied her reflection again. This time it was very different. Her face was flushed, especially along her cheekbones, her eyes huge and dark with emotion, the pupils enormously dilated. Even her mouth looked different somehow, softer, fuller…as though…as though she had been kissed.
Shuddering with distaste, she turned away, and when she stepped out into the street she acknowledged that she felt so emotionally raw and on edge that she was on the verge of tears.
It was just disappointment because Ian Davies had not responded more enthusiastically to her approach, she told herself as she walked back to her car. It wasn’t anything to do with seeing Jake Lucas. That had upset her of course, but she wasn’t going to let the fact that he despised her, that he was contemptuous of her, reduce her to tears.
It wasn’t, after all, his judgment of her that hurt so much; it was the fact that seeing him always reminded him so unbearably of what she had done, of the way she had demeaned herself.
It was bad enough that she knew of her shame and degradation, without him having to know of it too.
But he did know, and nothing she could do could ever erase that knowledge. When he looked at her, she knew as surely as though he were saying the actual words that he was seeing her not as she was now, but as she had been then, half-naked, stupid with drink and shock, lying across his aunt and uncle’s bed, while her partner, the boy who had deliberately given her that spiked drink and who had then equally deliberately semi-coaxed and semi-dragged her upstairs to his parents’ bedroom, had left her, after telling her triumphantly that he had won his bet to seduce her and bring her down off her high horse.
He had not said that to his cousin, though. No, it was a very different story he had told Jake Lucas. According to him, she had been willing, and more than willing, to accompany him upstairs—she had been the one to suggest it, in fact, and Rosie, too shocked and distressed to defend herself, too humiliated physically and emotionally, had done nothing to defend herself.
Thank God that Ritchie Lucas and his family had emigrated to Australia so quickly afterwards.
And thank God also that Ritchie had apparently got so drunk that evening that it had appeared that he had no recollection of what had taken place and so had been unable to boast to anyone else about it.
No, only two people had remembered what had happened—herself and Jake Lucas—and Jake Lucas did not know the real truth.
He had assumed that she was a member of the rather wild crowd that Ritchie went around with, that she was one of those girls who was foolishly experimenting with sex and drink in the mistaken belief that she was showing everyone how grown-up she was and, beneath his anger at his cousin for taking advantage of his parents’ absence to throw an unauthorised party, and his obvious disgust that Ritchie had brought her upstairs to his parents’ room, Rosie had been sharply conscious of the contempt he had for her.
And yet his judgement of her couldn’t have been further off the mark. She had never even kissed a boy properly before that night, never mind done anything else, and, if it hadn’t been that for the previous few months a small group of girls in her class at school had been making her life a misery by taunting her about her ‘primness’ and her ‘goody-goodyness’ to the extent that she was slowly becoming alienated from all the other girls and treated as someone who was ‘different’…an outcast, she doubted that she would ever have allowed herself to be persuaded to even go to the party in the first place.
To discover later that she had been the subject of a cruel trick deliberately planned to hurt and humiliate her had been hard to bear, but not as hard as Jake Lucas’s contempt, and certainly not as hard as discovering that she was pregnant.
At least no one but her knew about that. She bit her lip as she bent to unlock her car door, hot tears stinging her eyes.
There had been no one to grieve with her over the loss of that baby, no one to share her complex and conflicting emotions, no one to tell that, while logically she knew that perhaps it was all for the best, a part of her ached with loss and pain for that unborn child.
No, that was something that no one else knew, and sometimes she wished they did…sometimes she ached inside to be able to talk about what she had experienced: her pain, her sense of loss…her sense of guilt.
Despite the fact that it was over fifteen years ago since it had happened, sometimes she felt as close to it as though it were less than fifteen weeks, as though the wound, the agony, was still so raw that she needed to be able to talk it through with someone…that she needed to be able to publicly and openly mourn the death of her child.
But someone like Jake Lucas would never be able to understand those kind of emotions. She could just imagine his reaction. No doubt he would have told her that she was lucky things had worked out as they had, that such luck was far in excess of what she actually deserved. He would have no pity, no compassion…no understanding…He would reject her pain and her need to express it in just the same contemptuous way as he had rejected her, turning away from her to talk to his cousin, ignoring her as though she simply did not exist.
But he had come to see her afterwards.
Yes, she told herself savagely, to make sure she wasn’t going to make any trouble for his precious cousin.
Angrily she put the car in gear and reversed out of her parking spot.
CHAPTER THREE
‘ANY luck with Ian Davies?’
Rosie looked wryly at her brother-in-law.
‘Well, I haven’t heard anything from him yet, but he didn’t give me the impression that he was interested. He’s one of those men who isn’t really comfortable with women holding positions of authority in business. If Dad had still been running things, it might have been different.’ She gave a small shrug. ‘Still, it’s his loss as much as ours. I suspect his existing brokers are using his business to get better terms for their other clients instead of reducing his premiums.’
‘Did you tell him that?’ Chrissie demanded.
Rosie shook her head.
‘I only suspect that that’s what they’re doing,’ she told her.
‘Well, I think it’s all wrong that men should still try to keep women down,’ Allison announced passionately with indignation. At fourteen she was just beginning to lay claim to her independence, and was staunchly pro women’s rights.
‘I wonder how Gran and Grandad are getting on. They’ll be in Japan now, won’t they?’ Paul chimed in.
‘Yes, they should have arrived there by now,’ Rosie agreed.
‘I never thought they’d actually do it,’ Chrissie marvelled. ‘Spending a whole year travelling round the world.’
‘It’s something they’ve been planning for and dreaming about for years,’ Rosie reminded her.
Chrissie had rung her earlier in the day to check that she was going round as usual to have supper with them, a regular Friday night ritual which Rosie always enjoyed.
‘Did you collect your hat from the Hopkinses?’ Chrissie asked her now.
‘No, not yet,’ Rosie told her.
‘There’s a car boot sale on tomorrow morning. Fancy coming?’
Rosie shook her head.
‘I can’t. I’ve promised to go over and see Mary Fuller to help her fill out some claim forms. Her garage was broken into on Wednesday and some things stolen.’
She stood up to leave and was surprised when Chrissie reached out to detain her.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/penny-jordan/yesterday-s-echoes/) на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
Пенни Джордан
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
Отзывы: Пока нет Добавить отзыв
О книге: Secrets from the past emerge in the present and the consequences are unexpected for these two couples.YESTERDAY′S ECHOESTragedy had befallen Rosie when she was a vulnerable sixteen-year-old and Jake Lucas had witnessed the entire thing. Since then Rosie has built a successful career, not allowing anyone near the woman behind the cheerful face she shows to the world. But Jake has entered her life again, and he isn′t about to let her forget the past.MASTER OF PLEASURESasha walked away from handsome millionaire Gabriel Calbrini to marry another and he′s never forgiven her. Now widowed, Sasha is shocked when Gabriel is named heir to her late husband′s wealth and guardian to her two sons. But Sasha won′t surrender. There′s far too much at stake especially the one thing that Gabriel must never know….