Cruel Legacy (69 page)

What was wrong? Did he honestly not know?

Furiously she had opened her mouth to tell him and then the humour of the situation had struck her and instead she had started to laugh.

'Sal...'

Joel had got up and come towards her. Still laughing, she had held out her arms to him, the dressing-gown falling open to reveal her naked body.

They had ended up making love downstairs on the floor in front of the fire as quickly and as urgently as a couple of teenagers. And for once Joel was the one doing the protesting that the kids might come in and see them.

'Let them; I don't care,' Sally had lied recklessly.

'Oh, you don't, do you?' Joel had challenged her softly. 'Well, in that case...'

When he had started to lick his way slowly all over her body she had squirmed helplessly against him, torn between anxiety and delight.

Joel had laughed at her as she'd tried to wriggle away from him, but later, when she had given in, he had gathered up their scattered clothes and agreed that they would be far more comfortable in bed, and once there he had taken hold of her hands and asked her huskily, 'Make love to me, Sal—show me that I'm not the one doing all the wanting... all the needing... all the loving...'

Briefly she had hesitated, unsure if she really wanted what taking such a step would bring, half of her still wanting to cling to the passive safety of the familiar role she had created for herself; but then Joel had breathed out, his body pressing lightly against hers, and her skin had tingled where it touched his, and she'd given in to the lure of the deliriously wanton thoughts which had been tormenting her all evening.

Later she wasn't sure if it was shock or excitement that had brought that awed note of husky pleasure to Joel's voice as she'd touched him. Neither of them had ever been particularly vocal lovers, but suddenly, listening to him telling her how much she was arousing him, she'd discovered that she wanted to share with him her own excitement and need.

The extraordinary realisation that she was going to climax before he did, and that once she had she still wanted him, had been reflected in her eyes for Joel to see, and his pleasure in what she was feeling, the tears that had blurred his eyes as he'd kissed her and held her, had filled her with such a heady mixture of yielding sweetness and unfamiliar power that its strength had seemed physically to dissolve something inside her, some cold, hard, frightened barrier she had never known existed until she felt it melt away.

They had had other problems to adjust to. Joel still only worked part-time at the leisure centre and they had less money coming in now that she worked part-time as well, but somehow they managed and there were other compensations ... like the time they spent together, like the fact that they could talk to one another. ..share their problems... air grievances.

Thoughtfully she looked towards Philippa, and then she saw the way she was smiling at the man with her and the small cloud lifted from her eyes.

'No, don't tell me,' she had said quietly to Joel. 'I don't want to know any more than I already know... except... do you love her?' she had asked him painfully.

'No,' he had told her, and she had known it was the truth.

She couldn't pretend that it didn't hurt, or that she would ever totally forget, but then neither could she deny that their marriage was stronger for what they had experienced, and Joel in his turn had never cross-questioned her about Kenneth.

But when Joel had explained through their counsellor what he felt was missing in their relationship she had not been able to stop herself wondering how much of the intimacy and sexual pleasure that was plainly so important to him, and which he said he did not get from her, he had found with that other woman. As he, perhaps, had wondered how much of the non-sexual attention and affection she had said she needed she had got from Kenneth.

What had happened in the past no longer held any threat or worry for her—she knew Joel loved her—but it still touched her heart with a cold finger of fear to know how close she had come to losing him.

She saw that he had finished his conversation and was walking back towards her.

'What did Neil want?' she asked him curiously.

There was an odd expression in his eyes, a mixture of elation and uncertainty. 'Colin has decided to retire early and Neil wanted to know how I felt about taking his job.'

'As assistant manager of the whole leisure centre complex?' Sally asked in surprise. Ten months ago, when Joel had passed his professional exams, the leisure centre had appointed him formally as a coach, but it hadn't been the small increase in his salary that had pleased Sally so much as their official recognition of all Joel's hard work.

They had had a small party to celebrate, and even though Joel had protested that there was no need for her to make such a fuss she had been able to tell that he was pleased.

Daphne, of course, had sniffed disdainfully, and Sally had refrained from reminding her how scathing she had been about Joel's ability to get any professional qualifications. Besides, Daphne had her own problems: Edward had apparently got in with a bad crowd at school and was not studying as hard as he should have been doing.

'Mmm...' Joel confirmed.

'What did you tell him?' Sally asked him.

'I said that I'd like some time to think about it and discuss it with you,' Joel told her.

'I'd have thought you'd jump at it... don't you want it?'

'Yes... It would be a bit of a challenge for me, but it would mean going back to full-time working... sometimes in the evening and at weekends.'

He reached for her hand and turned round slightly so that no one else could hear them as he told her softly, 'I don't want to lose what you and I have built up together, Sal... I don't want to go back to the way we were... I want the job, yes, but I want what I have with you more...'

Fiercely Sally blinked away her emotional tears, laughter dancing in her eyes in their place as she teased him, 'What you mean is you don't want to miss out on our afternoons in bed...'

'Who said I was going to miss out on them?' Joel teased back. 'There's always my lunch-hour... I like it when we have the house to ourselves and we don't have to worry about the kids overhearing us.... I like it when you make those soft little noises when I touch you and I love it when...'

'You love it, full stop,' Sally told him forthrightly, giving him a little push, but she was still laughing and she didn't move away when he pulled her closer to Mm.

'I'll tell you what,' she murmured, teasing him provocatively. 'Get them to write a two-hour lunch-break into your contract and...'

'Two hours... Mmm... what a wonderful idea..

"The second hour is so that you can catch up on the chores you won't have time to do if you're working full-time,' Sally told him severely.

Sharing their domestic responsibilities as well as their leisure time had become part of the new way they lived their lives, the new intimacy they had carefully and sometimes very painfully built for themselves.

'What will you do about coming here, though?' she asked him thoughtfully. Joel had become involved in the fund-raising for the new children's ward and had agreed that he would help with the children's water therapy.

'Colin isn't retiring until the end of the year, which would give me time to sort something out.' She heard him groan as he told her, 'Here come Daphne and Clifford.'

As she glanced over his shoulder Sally could see her sister, resplendent in a far too fussy and frilly silk floral dress. Daphne had started to put on weight recently and the dress strained slightly at the seams.

Sally's own linen-mix chocolate-brown chainstore jacket, worn with a white T-shirt and a pair of tailored shorts, had been bought under Cathy's sternly critical eye. Sally had balked a little at first at the shorts, until she had seen the look in Joel's eyes when she'd modelled the outfit for him. 'You've got the figure for it, Mum,' Cathy had told her. 'Hasn't she, Dad?' The look in Joel's eyes had made Sally laugh and flush a little.

'She hasn't seen us yet... We've still got time to escape...' Joel whispered, grinning.

Sally looked over at Daphne, her face flushed with irritation and heat, and then she looked back at Joel. Daphne was her sister.. .but Joel was her husband.

'You're on,' she told him softly. 'Let's go...'

'Thanks.'

The photographer from the local paper grinned his appreciation as Stephanie and Deborah broke their pose. It would make a good front-cover print for their headline story: the local female businesswoman who had donated to the hospital the new children's water-therapy pool, standing side by side with her assistant, both of them attractive women.. .very attractive women. He turned his head to watch as they walked away from him, deep in conversation.

'That should get us some good free publicity,' Stephanie commented.

Deborah laughed. 'Which of course was why you decided to give Mark a fit and donate the money in the first place...'

Her boss grinned back at her. 'Well...'

'You could have bought full-page space in all the glossies for less,' Deborah pointed out to her, still smiling.

'Mmm...'

Both of them looked towards the pool.

'Andre says I'm getting soft in my old age,' Stephanie said.

She and her French supplier, much to everyone's surprise, but most especially to Stephanie's, had married the previous year.

'I don't want to get married,' she had wailed to Deborah on the morning of her wedding. 'Why am I doing this.. .why are you letting me do this...?'

'Because you love Andre and he's told you that unless you make an honest man out of him he's going to leave,' Deborah had told her forthrightly.

'You realise that Mark was threatening to get you to sack me for letting you do this, don't you?' Deborah pointed out severely to her now.

'Sack you? No way. Taking you on was the best decision I ever made... correction—the best decision Mark ever made... Where is he, by the way...?'

'The last time I saw him he was making eyes at another woman,' Deborah told her mock mournfully. 'And Andre was helping him,' she added mischievously. 'Babies,' she explained when Stephanie raised her eyebrows questioningly. 'A pair of them... twins...'

'Ah, yes, Blake Hamilton's children. Mark's still eager to become a father, then?' she asked Deborah.

'Very,' Deborah admitted, her smile dying away.

'But you don't want children?'

'Yes... yes, I do,' Deborah admitted, surprising herself a little by her admission. Seeing Mark enthusiastically if rather amateurishly clutching one or other of their friends' present crop of babies had given her a funny little feeling inside, a mixture of pain and pleasure, an odd, bittersweet twisting sensation which, although she had not told him so, had lent a new depth and intensity to her sexual responsiveness to him.

'But it's just not feasible, not at the moment, what with the way we're expanding and the fact that you and I are away so much...'

'Mmm. But Mark's at home and since you live right next door to his office...'

Deborah and Mark had bought the pretty stone town house next to Mark's office eighteen months ago, and, since Mark had been the one to urge its purchase, Deborah had remained firmly unsympathetic with his complaints that she had deliberately arranged for the builders to carry out the majority of their work while she was away...

The house was virtually finished now, its furnishings an eclectic mixture of things she had bought on her many trips abroad with Stephanie—silks and damasks from Florence, sturdy, simple cherrywood furniture from France which mingled easily with the antiques she and Mark had bargained for together at antique fairs and country markets...

'Yes, I know. Mark has said the same thing, but...'

'But you don't feel you'd want to leave him in sole charge...'

'Oh, it's not that. Mark will make a far better parent than I shall. But my career means so much to me. I do want children as well but I'm not sure if I'm ready yet, if it would be fair to the company, the baby or myself...'

'Mmm, that's a pity... I was thinking only the other night what a good thing it would be if we could manage things so that we were both pregnant at the same time.. .give or take a month or two, of course...'

'Both pregnant?' Deborah stared at her. 'You're not...?'

'Not yet,' Stephanie told her. 'But soon, I hope. What's wrong? I'm forty-four now, and if Andre and I are going to have children it will have to be soon...or don't you approve?'

'Of course I approve; it's just that I never imagined...' Deborah paused, struggling for the right words. It had been hard enough getting Stephanie to admit how much she loved Andre and how little she wanted to lose him, so to hear her say now that they were planning to have a child...

'I've warned Andre that we'll have to time things so that he or she arrives during our quiet season,' she added. 'And I thought that if things worked out that way and if we could find the right kind of nanny, she and the babies could travel with us... If they don't, I suspect we're going to have two over-besotted fathers on our hands.'

'You're really serious about this, aren't you?' Deborah asked the older woman incredulously.

'Uh-huh... Think how good it will look in our PR handouts,' Stephanie told her mischievously, 'the two of us heavily pregnant, photographed in a field full of flowers... us and them blooming!'

'There is no way that I'm going...' Deborah began, and then stopped and laughed. 'OK, I know when I'm being wound up. You said we'd time it so that we had these babies out of season...'

'Mamma Nature sometimes chooses her own season for these things,' Stephanie told her slyly.

'Not if I have anything to say about if, she doesn't.' Deborah objected. 'You really think it would work...?'

'Yes, if we wanted it to. I'm not going to pretend I'm an advocate of anyone, man or woman, being able to have it all—that's a PR myth that reality has well and truly exploded. I told myself I'd never marry again, that I was too old and too cynical to be foolish enough to fall in love, and yet I've done both and been happier for having done so than I've ever been or imagined being. I can't pretend, though, that the business doesn't mean one hell of a lot to me, or that I'd ever want to give it up, for anyone or anything. But I'm not going to pretend either that I don't want Andre's child, that some tiny idealistic, idiotic part of me doesn't want that very specific kind of female fulfilment.