For Revenge or Redemption? (15 page)

Changing gear, because the road was dangerously bendy, he said, ‘She didn’t want one. She said that modern places down there were for yuppies, and that she definitely isn’t young and most certainly not upwardly mobile.’

Grace laughed at the fond indulgence in his voice and wondered if he would ever speak about her in the same way.

‘Nowadays she prefers to live farther north—closer to Alicia.’

‘So you were right. Not everything works out the way we plan, does it?’ she conceded humbly.

‘One learns to compromise.’

As he had by marrying her? Or was she all part of the ‘plan’ he had referred to just now, as Corinne had suggested she was when she had spoken to her on their return from honeymoon? Either way, it wasn’t very complimentary.

‘Where are we going?’ she asked apprehensively when Seth turned the car off the main highway into a narrow lane. In fact, she already knew.

But why would he bring her here? she wondered desolately. A house that his family had had to move out of because they couldn’t afford to stay there. Because of her grandfather. Because of her.

‘All right. You’ve made your point,’ she breathed, unable to face seeing the little house—already boarded up that
summer she’d last come back here—now gone to rack and ruin. ‘I think you’ve handed out enough just deserts for one day without—’

She stopped in mid-sentence as he brought the car to a standstill in front of a small red saloon that was parked outside the old stone building: a homely looking, picture-book property with gleaming paintwork and shiny windows which were open to the May sunshine.

‘You bought it back,’ she whispered, tears swimming in her eyes. Not only that, but an extension had been added, in keeping with the rest of the property, providing a whole bank of new rooms along one side.

‘Come on.’ He was already getting out of the car.

A cacophony of deep barks met them as Seth opened the iron gate to the garden, and Grace caught her breath from a startling
déjà vu
as a chocolate-brown Labrador came bounding down the stony path towards them.

‘I don’t believe this!’ she laughed, surprised. It was like stepping back in time to the night he had brought her here and the Labrador had coming rushing out of the house ahead of Alicia. ‘Is it the same dog?’ she breathed, flabbergasted. Mocha, she remembered him saying it was called. Because of the chocolate connotations.

‘No, Mocha went to her happy hunting-ground some years ago.’

‘So what’s this one called?’ she challenged good-humouredly, petting the animal that was bouncing up and down with excitement, undecided which one of them to bestow the most affection on. ‘Crème Caramel?’

‘This one’s called Truffle,’ he corrected, his face alight with pleasure as he ruffled the huge, dark head, unperturbed by the massive paws that were almost on his shoulders with little respect for the casual designer shirt he wore with his jeans.

Grace laughed again, feeling the warmth of his personality,
the strength of his potent attraction as he laughed with her. ‘Naturally!’ She wasn’t imagining it; it struck her suddenly: he seemed more relaxed. Lighter. Different here.

‘Seth!’

Grace recognised the pretty copper-haired girl who had come running down the path and was now launching herself into her brother’s arms.

‘You’re obviously missed,’ Grace observed, still laughing as she watched him return Alicia’s bear-hug, while Truffle did some sort of doggy dance around them, eager not to miss out on his share of the attention.

‘Missed?’ Alicia wrinkled her nose in mock contradiction as she let her brother go now and treated Grace to a more or less similar greeting. ‘I just know which side my bread’s buttered!’

She shrieked, darting out of the way of that masculine hand before it could land on her tightly encased, denim-clad bottom.

‘Any more talk like that, and you’ll be doing without the jam as well,’ Seth promised playfully.

‘Isn’t he tyrannical?’ Alicia exhaled, rolling her eyes, seeking mock sympathy from Grace as they started along the path towards the house.

Pulling a face, Grace cast a glance up at Seth and met the sensual challenge in his eyes that dared her to side with his mischievous sister.

‘Very!’ she laughed without taking her eyes off him, and knew a throb of excitement from the pull of that masculine mouth, that promised that when they were alone together he would make her pay.

The cottage garden, ablaze with flowering shrubs, perennials and fruit trees, complemented the interior of the lovely house. Although retaining many characteristic features in its stone fireplaces, deep-set windows and the odd, strategically exposed beam, it managed to exude modern comfort and
convenience in the understated luxury of its furnishings, a blend of the classic and antique.

‘So who does Truffle belong to?’ Grace asked Alicia a little while later.

The girl had insisted on giving her a tour of the ground floor and showing off the new wing, which comprised a bright and sprawling sitting room and large kitchen which were in total harmony with the rest of the old building.

Apparently, Alicia had only stopped off to stock the fridge on her way to visit her boyfriend in Plymouth, and it was Nadia who had instructed her to leave the dog with her brother.

‘I bought him for Seth,’ Alicia informed her, ready to leave as they came back into what nowadays served as a dining room in the older part of the house, where they found Seth standing, browsing through an open newspaper on the table. ‘I bought him because I thought he needed looking after.’

‘Who?’ Grace enquired impishly. ‘Seth or Truffle?’

‘Take your pick.’ Alicia giggled, seeming younger suddenly than her twenty years. ‘Mum looks after the dog most of the time, though, as Seth doesn’t have time to give him all the attention he needs when he’s in London. And, apart from that, he’s away a lot, so it was a bit of an impulsive move on my part, really.’ Something, Grace decided, that Alicia Purvis would be quite prone to.

‘You love having him when you’re down here, though, don’t you, bruv?’ she prompted, and was met with a distracted grunt from Seth. With one hand on the back of a chair, one foot on the rung, his dark head bent, idly turning a page, he looked utterly magnificent, Grace thought with her breath catching. ‘And having a dog around makes him less of a dynamo and more human like the rest of us,’ Alicia was saying. ‘Or could it be this house? Again, you’ll have to make your own mind up about that. Still, I don’t suppose he needs looking after now—now he’s got you.’

Propelled into action now, Seth grabbed the soft hat his sister was clutching and with a roguish grin dumped it unceremoniously onto her bright copper head. ‘Goodbye, Alicia.’

‘Don’t let him bully you,’ the young woman advised, pulling it straight, darting a glance at Grace from around her brother’s lithe and powerful physique. ‘If he does, tell Mum. She’s the only one he’s ever listened to.’ And with a shriek, as those keenly honed reflexes made to chase her out the door, his vibrant young sister was gone.

‘Is it true?’ Grace asked him over the sound of the small saloon starting up.

‘Is what true?’ He was still wearing that self-satisfied grin.

‘That the only person you’ve ever listened to is Nadia?’

He shrugged, closing the newspaper on the table. ‘If I hadn’t, I’d have been out of a home—and a good one at that,’ he admitted with no pretensions to the contrary. ‘At fifteen I was a tearaway with attitude. Someone had to put their foot down or I might well have gone off the rails.’

‘She did a very good job,’ Grace conceded honestly. ‘And your foster father, too.’ She remembered him telling her that Nadia had been widowed only a few years after Seth had moved in with them. She guessed, though, that it wasn’t only the Purvises’ influence that had turned Seth Mason into the self-disciplined, self-sufficient man he was today. He must have wanted to change, or at least to control whatever wild streak he had had. The grit and determination he employed in everything he did and everything he achieved were part of the enduring strength and calibre of his character.

‘They knew how to implement just the right balance of understanding, discipline and love,’ he told her candidly.

As he would himself with his own child, or children, Grace instinctively decided. With a sudden stab of anguish she prayed that their baby would continue to thrive and grow
normally and, when the time came, be delivered safely. She didn’t even want to think beyond that.

The upper floor of the house proved to be as full of character and charm as downstairs, although the best room was the master bedroom in the new wing. Spacious and airy, overlooking a private shingle beach, its creamy walls, reflecting the afternoon sun, gave the room a wonderfully golden light.

Behind the king-size bed, dark-rose curtains were tastefully draped from a thick brass pole, blending with the rose-and-cream and brass furnishings in the rest of the room. In the adjoining bathroom a free-standing Victorian bath stood in what seemed like acres of space, surrounded by every modern luxury and amenity for making bath-time pure pleasure.

Seth had gone down for their luggage, but when he returned it wasn’t with any of his own.

‘Aren’t you…?’

‘Sharing it with you?’ he supplied when she didn’t finish her tentatively posed question. His mouth twisted wryly as he set her suitcase down and opened it out for her on the bed. ‘I don’t think that would be a very good idea, do you?’

Because the doctors had told them that they should be careful?

Just at that moment she didn’t care about what the doctors or anyone else had said.
I need you!
she ached to tell him, but kept it to herself.

‘If you need me,’ he was saying coolly, with no sign of the man who had promised some delightful retribution for teasing him earlier, ‘My room’s just a stone’s throw away.’

Grace nodded, wondering how easy it was for him simply to desert her bed, when inside she craved his love-making more than ever before.

‘What else could I need?’ she returned with enforced casualness.

O
VER
the next few weeks, Grace knew a kind of fragile happiness.

Seth did a lot of work from home, and sometimes when he had to go away he took her with him. She knew, though, from the way she was fussed over by Maisie, the elderly woman who came in to cook and clean on a regular basis, that the woman had been instructed to keep an eye on her whenever he couldn’t.

Sometimes he would take whole days off to be with her, and for Grace those were the most precious of all. But there were other times, like now, aching for him, when she would take long walks along the coast with only the sea, the overhead gulls and Truffle at her heels for company.

‘It’s all right for you,’ she told the Labrador as it came running up to her after giving up on a small crab that had disappeared beneath a rock. ‘You wouldn’t do anything so stupid as falling in love. But I have—and I’m having his baby—and he doesn’t even know how much I care about him. You’re a dog of the world. Perhaps you could advise me on what I should do?’

Wallowing in all this sudden eye-contact and conversation, the dog jumped up, his big brown nose almost level with her chest, anticipating some exciting treat as well. When a bout of petting was his only reward, he gave a deafening bark and
went haring off down the deserted beach, returning soaked to the skin to shake himself violently as soon as he was in drenching distance of Grace.

‘Charming!’ she laughed, shaking water off her hands. ‘What’s that supposed to mean? That I drown myself? If that’s all the advice you can give, I suggest you keep it to yourself!’

Fondly she stooped to caress the big soggy head before darting out of the way with a little shriek when the dog decided to treat her to another unwelcome shower.

Having just returned from two days of meetings, Seth stopped in his tracks, silencing his barefooted progress across the shingle. It was too evocative a scene to intrude upon, he thought, and stayed there, unnoticed for a few moments, watching Grace with his dog, hoping she wouldn’t turn around.

She was wearing a tangerine cotton skirt that floated around her calves like gossamer, and a gypsy-style cream top which she had embellished with a loose string necklace in amber and cream, and a wide matching wrist-band that emphasised her softly golden skin.

With a hand on the burgeoning mound of her midriff that even the loose top couldn’t hide now, and her hair—grown long again—blowing softly in the wind, he thought she had never looked so beautiful or so captivatingly maternal as she lifted her other arm to throw a stick for the dog.

Pride was the overriding emotion that rushed over him at the knowledge of this lovely woman being pregnant with his child. But then other emotions rushed in, the least disturbing the surge of hormones that stamped their mark on him as a man, dragging his mind away from those other more complex issues as he strove to bring his body back under control.

She still hadn’t seen him; she was still watching Truffle bounding over the shingle. But as the Labrador, stick retrieved,
suddenly changed course and raced towards him, she turned around and those precious moments were gone.

Seeing his dark, lean figure advancing along the beach, Grace felt her heart leap like a frisky gazelle.

He had changed before coming out to find her. A white T-shirt hugged the strong contours of his chest, leaving nothing of his magnificent torso to the imagination; his pale-blue denim jeans that encased his powerful legs were frayed at the hems, brushing over feet that were bare and tanned.

‘I hadn’t seen you as such an animal lover,’ he remarked when he was almost level with her, already on his haunches, petting the ecstatic Truffle.

Why was it, Grace wondered, breathless just from the sight of him, that even the sound of his voice should make her heart race?

‘You hadn’t seen me as a lot of things, including fat and shapeless and undesirable.’ Where had that come from? she thought, abashed, adding quickly as grimacing, she tugged at her billowing blouse. ‘And unable to get into any of my clothes any more.’

Her words gave him an excuse to visually examine her as he got to his feet.

‘There’s nothing undesirable about your body being heavy with my child,’ he told her dispassionately, with no hint of the need for her that had driven him in the past. ‘And your shape will soon come back after it’s born. If it doesn’t, then I shall take you out and buy you a whole new wardrobe—if it makes you happy. Suits. Dresses. Exotic underwear.’

A fine eyebrow arched dubiously. ‘If it makes
me
happy, did you say?’

‘All right.’ A contorted smile was tugging at his exciting mouth. ‘We’ll forget the dresses.’

Seeing the mischief twinkling in his eyes, Grace thumped him playfully on the arm. It felt warm and solid, a wall of pure muscle.

‘Right!’

She let out a squeal as he made a grab for her, trying to twist away.

‘Attack me, would you?’

‘No, don’t!’ she shrieked as she was lifted off her feet, while Truffle, joining in the fun, ran around them, barking hysterically. ‘What will the neighbours think?’ she protested, clinging to him. Her senses sharpened to the warm softness of his T-shirt, the way his hard body moved beneath it, while his aftershave lotion—still discernible on that darkly shadowed jaw—was sending arrows of want right down through what she thought of as her hippo-proportioned body.

‘There aren’t any.’ Purposefully, Seth carried her over to a small niche between the shallow rocks where he set her on her feet before gently pulling her down beside him on the fine shingle. ‘You don’t need props to make you excruciatingly desirable to a man. You’re too alluring by half—even with the weight of my unborn baby inside you.’

Only not alluring enough for you to love, or make love to
, Grace agonised, realising that it had been weeks since he had shown her how much he wanted her—if only sexually, she thought, her pulses suddenly quickening as he leaned over and touched her mouth with his.

It was a mere whisper of a kiss, over too soon when Truffle made his presence felt by clambering all over them.

Grace laughed as a soggy piece of driftwood landed in Seth’s lap.

‘That dog’s going to have to go!’ he pretended to threaten. ‘I swear the two of you have got some conspiracy going between you.’ With enviable strength he hurled the piece of wood farther seawards than Grace ever could have, even from a standing position. ‘Go get it, Truffle! See if you can meet the tide!’

‘You don’t mean that,’ Grace chided, laughing again. She
couldn’t bring herself to tell him, but she was ecstatic to have him home.

‘If it means having my wife to myself for a few minutes, I do,’ he said laconically, but the laughter in his face told her he was only teasing. ‘Now…where were we?’

‘You really think you’ll have the chance to find out before he comes back?’

‘Is that an evasive answer, Mrs Mason?’

Slipping a hand under her hair, Grace leaned back against the rock with her eyes closed. ‘It could be the shortest kiss in the history of the universe.’

‘True.’

‘It would probably make the Guinness Book of Records.’

‘No, that’s just the thoughts I’ve got going through my head right now.’

He hadn’t been like this with her since things had started going wrong between them just after their honeymoon: teasing. Tantalising. Playing with her.

‘You…!’ She couldn’t think of an appropriate noun to describe him, and anyway he was leaning over her, his lips tantalisingly close to hers, his breath surprisingly laboured as though he was having some sort of inner battle with himself. One that said he wanted her physically, even while mentally and emotionally she was the last person on earth he would have considered creating a child with, had he but had any choice. ‘Ouch!’

‘What’s wrong?’ He drew back sharply on hearing her wince. ‘Did I hurt you?’

The concern in his voice made her throat ache, made her realise how lucky the woman would be who he really loved.

‘Not you. Your baby,’ she admitted, with an inner glow to her face from the beautiful miracle that was unfolding each day inside her. ‘It gave one of its stronger than average kicks. It’s definitely a boy.’

‘You’ve made up your mind about that, haven’t you?’ he said, smiling; they had both decided that they would wait until the baby arrived to find out its gender. ‘And what’s all this unnecessary prejudice I’m sensing against my sex? Can’t girl babies do their share of kicking?’

‘Of course they can,’ she chuckled, her gaze following Truffle who had picked up a scent on the far side of the beach and had happily abandoned his game of throw-and-retrieve. ‘But this one’s got the boot of a centre forward. Obviously a dominant child who wants to make an impact,’ she decided. ‘Now, where does he get that from, I…Ouch!’

As another sharp prod had her massaging her swollen middle, the hand that came to rest beside hers was warm and so heart-wrenchingly gentle.

‘Can you feel it?’ Her mouth was so dry it was difficult getting the words out.

He nodded, those familiar strands of hair moving against his forehead. The pleasure that warmed his features made Grace’s heart swell with love for him.

Love me
, she ached to say, but she didn’t have the nerve.

This wasn’t a conventional marriage where they had met and fallen in love, had been desperate to spend the rest of their lives together. This, for Seth, was a partnership he had got himself into out of duty to the mother of his child, and it was just unfortunate that she had been crazy enough to fall in love with him along the way.

‘I can’t believe how you went through a pregnancy—or halfway through one,’ he breathed, ‘Before, and I didn’t have a clue. Do you know how that makes me feel?’

Grace glanced away, fixing her gaze at some point in the distance where the rocks were turning to gold in the summer-evening sunshine. ‘What was the point in letting you know? I scarcely knew you,’ she murmured ruefully. ‘Anyway, you weren’t here.’

‘You tried to find me?’

‘No.’ She sat up quickly, realising she had said too much.

‘Then how did you know I wasn’t here?’

‘My grandfather told me. I didn’t know then that the reason he knew about you leaving was that he had got you sacked. But it was the only way I could come back here after my miscarriage.’

‘So you did come back?’ His face was a contortion of disbelief and something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Horror? she wondered painfully. Was he, in spite of all he had said, wondering what he would have done if she had turned up on his doorstep like a bad penny—not just a stuck-up socialite, as he’d believed she was, but a pregnant one? Putting paid to all his aspirations. His dreams.

‘To convalesce,’ she enlightened him now. ‘My grandparents insisted upon it. I must have been a real pain and a worry to them. I couldn’t seem to pick myself up.’ She grimaced and, not wanting to sound as though she were courting any sympathy, added with a self-deprecating little laugh, ‘Feeling sorry for myself, probably.’

What she didn’t tell him, though, was how she had spent those lonely days and nights wandering along the coast, mourning those glorious hours with a man she had found herself wanting more than anything else she had ever wanted in her life, while all the time knowing she had killed all hope of his even liking her—even if she did ever see him again—because of her shameful behaviour.

Caught in the direct line of that steely gaze, she looked quickly away, though not quickly enough not to miss noticing how those thick eyebrows pleated speculatively.

Watching the private emotions that chased across her face, Seth considered what else she wasn’t telling him.

‘My father sketched me standing next to that rock.’ She was pointing to a high ridge where an area of grass clothed the timeless cliffs. She seemed desperate to change the subject.

‘Your father?’ It came as a surprise to him to hear her mention the man who had deserted her while she’d still been a baby. She seldom did, and he guessed she had only done so now to break the tension between them.

‘He came to see me when I was convalescing down here—under sufferance, no doubt, because my grandfather probably demanded it.’ She made a cynical little sound down her nostrils. ‘It couldn’t have been more than a handful of times that he’d been to see me in my life. And you know, he actually asked me to go and live with him that last time. He said he gave me up because he felt it was the right thing to do, but that now I was old enough to make up my own mind. He said he’d come back for me, but then he left and I never saw him again.’

‘Did you never think to seek him out? Ask him why?’

The blue eyes that clashed with his were clear and candid. ‘Did you, with your mother?’

‘Yes. Or at least I tried as soon as I was old enough.’

‘What happened?’

‘She’d died of a drug overdose the year before.’

Within their frame of gold her flawless features clouded with sympathy. ‘I’m sorry.’

There was such intensity of emotion in those two words that he wanted to clasp her to him, bury his lips against her scented hair and lose himself in her tender femininity, in her beautiful body. Not for himself—the man who could scale mountains, remove all obstacles in his path—but for the lost and betrayed young adolescent he had been. But he held back. He wasn’t ready to expose himself to such vulnerability.

‘Don’t be,’ he said, getting a grip on himself. ‘At least, not on my account. My life turned out well because of Nadia, my foster father, Cory, the twins, and the wonderful family circle I was accepted into. I owe them everything. I couldn’t have asked for more. Not for myself.’

‘It was pretty much the same for me. It didn’t really matter
that my father decided to go his own way. My grandparents were great. I didn’t need anyone else.’ But that wistful note in her voice drew a covert glance from Seth from beneath the heavy fringes of his lashes. She didn’t mean that, he was shrewd enough to realise. She might be all bravado up front, but deep down, he suspected, she had felt Matthew Tyler’s absence from her life more acutely then she would ever allow anyone to know.