Penny Jordan Tribute Collection

‘Not right now,’ he told her grimly, walking away from her and heading towards the house, leaving her to follow him—an act which in itself was so out of character for him that it caught her off guard. One of the first things she had noticed about him and reluctantly liked had been his quietly considerate good manners, his way of treating a woman with the kind of old-fashioned courtesy which seemed to have gone out of fashion.

‘In fact, right now, I think it would be just as well if I didn’t speak to him,’ he threw at her over his shoulder as he reached the back door.

‘You’re… you’re angry with him…’ Claire guessed hesitantly.

‘Angry with him! That’s one way of putting it,’ Brad agreed bitingly as he waited for her to precede him into the kitchen.

‘I know… he is very anxious about his job…’ Claire revealed, stumbling slightly over the words, wondering if she was doing the wrong thing in saying them. ‘Tim may not be a particularly… ambitious or aggressive man,’ Claire told him, feeling that she ought to do something to defend her brother-in-law and draw attention to his good points, ‘but he is very conscientious, very—’

‘You obviously hold him in high esteem,’ Brad interrupted her.

The sarcasm in his voice made Claire feel uncomfortable.

‘You obviously think I’m trying to interfere in something that is none of my business,’ she felt bound to say, ‘but—’

‘But you’d like to know anyway what my plans are for the future of the British side of our distribution network and, of course, Tim’s future with it. Is that it?’ Brad asked her, and grimly continued before she could make any denial.

‘Very well, I’ll tell you. Some changes will very definitely have to be made. As you yourself have just said, Tim is not the most confident of men and his lack of assertiveness comes across to potential customers as a lack of confidence, not just in himself but in our product as well. Couple that with his apparent inability to recruit the kind of highly motivated and even more highly skilled technicians and fitters we pride ourselves on using back home and it’s no wonder we’re having the problems over here that we are having.’

‘So, you do mean to cancel your contract with him and find a new distributor?’ Claire challenged him.

To her surprise, instead of immediately conceding that she was right, Brad frowned slightly and then said slowly, ‘No, not necessarily.’

When Claire looked questioningly at him, he explained, ‘It occurs to me that Tim might benefit from an intensive course on self-assertion techniques plus some input from a more positive role model to show him—’

‘How the job should be done,’ Claire supplied wryly.

‘No,’ Brad corrected her quietly. ‘To show him what can be achieved with a more positive approach… a different outlook if you like. We have someone working for us on the distribution side back home who would be perfect for the job, although it won’t be easy persuading him to come over here. But that’s my problem and you aren’t interested in my problems, are you? Only Tim’s. But then, after all, you are lovers.’

‘Lovers?’ Claire repeated in astonishment.

But before she could continue Brad was demanding angrily, ‘When did it start? After your husband’s death…? Before it?’

An affair! Brad thought she was having an affair with Tim.

‘OK, I can understand that your… marriage may not have… satisfied you, but hell… surely a woman like you could have found a man who was free to have a relationship and not one…’

Claire stared at him in shocked disbelief. ‘You have no right to make those kinds of assumptions about me,’ she told him stiffly. ‘You know nothing about me… or about my marriage.’

Even though she would rather have died than admit it to him, his comment about her marriage had hit a painful nerve, but not for the reason that he imagined.

‘I would never have an affair,’ she told him with passionate sincerity. ‘Never… I couldn’t.’

The vehemence in her voice fuelled Brad’s fury. How could she deny it when he had seen the evidence with his own eyes, heard it with his own ears? And if she had to have an affair with someone, surely she could have found someone more… more worthy than her poor, downtrodden brother-in-law?

‘“Couldn’t”?’ he challenged her contemptuously. ‘Oh, come on. You’re an adult, mature woman; you’ve been married… Your body knows how it feels to experience sexual desire, sexual fulfilment… sexual need; you must—’

‘No,’ Claire protested frantically. ‘No, that’s impossible; I could never… I have never…’

Something in her voice, in her face made Brad pause and look searchingly at her. She looked haunted, her eyes shadowed, her voice shamed… bruised.

‘What is it?’ he asked her. ‘What is it you’re trying to say?’

‘Nothing,’ Claire denied rigidly, starting to turn away from him.

But he reached out and caught hold of her arm, preventing her, telling her, ‘No, you can’t leave it like that. You could never… have never… what?’ he pressed.

He could feel the slight tremor that she tried to suppress run down her arm as she refused to look at him.

It was no use, Claire acknowledged fatalistically. Brad wasn’t going to give up until she had told him the truth. She closed her eyes, fighting back the engulfing wave of panic that threatened her. How on earth had this happened? How on earth had she got herself in such a situation, betrayed herself to such an extent?

As a child she had learned that the easiest way to deal with her aunt’s displeasure whenever she provoked it was simply to take a deep breath and submit to it, rather like taking a nasty dose of medicine all in one big swallow, so that she could get the whole thing over and done with.

‘I could never take a lover, have never had a lover,’ she emphasised with quiet dignity, fiercely ignoring her voice’s struggle not to wobble and the fact that she knew that her face, her whole body in fact, was burning with humiliated colour as she made herself admit the shameful truth to him—not that he had any right to demand it or any right to make her reveal it…

‘John… our marriage… John married me because he wanted a stepmother for Sally. I knew… he told me… that he could never love anyone the way he had loved Paula, but that for Sally’s sake he felt that he ought to provide her with a substitute mother.’

‘And you were happy with that… you accepted that?’ Brad persisted. There was something here that he didn’t understand. Had she, perhaps, been so desperately in love with her husband that she had hoped that he would change his mind… that he would fall in love with her? His heart ached with pity for her, and anger as well.

‘Yes,’ Claire confirmed.

‘But why?’ Brad probed. ‘Why? Why marry a man who you knew did not love you? A man who could never be a proper husband to you… never give you children… never share with you the pleasure of sexual fulfilment and commitment, the emotional…’ He paused as he saw the way she shuddered at his mention of her lack of sexual fulfilment.

‘What is it?’ he asked her curiously. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘I didn’t mind the fact that John only wanted me as a stepmother for Sally because I didn’t want to have a sexual relationship with him… or with anyone,’ she told him doggedly.

For a long moment they looked at one another.

‘You didn’t want a sexual relationship… with anyone,’ Brad repeated.

Something here was eluding him. There had been no sexual revulsion or rejection in her reaction to him when… Shock, yes… anger too. Shock, anger and arousal. He listed them carefully in his mind a second and then a third time just to be sure that he was not making a mistake and letting his own emotions and responses obscure hers.

He looked away from her and started to release her arm, too stunned by what she had said to know what to say or do, and then he looked briefly back at her and saw that her eyes were brimming with huge tears which she was struggling desperately to control.

‘Oh, hell, come here,’ he muttered roughly under his breath, reacting instinctively to her distress, reaching for her and wrapping her in his arms in a fiercely protective hug, rocking her against his body as he held her tight with one arm and smoothed the silky fineness of her hair with the other and tried to comfort her.

‘It’s OK… It’s OK,’ he told her gruffly. ‘I’m sorry as hell that I upset you. I didn’t… What I said was out of line.

‘Talk to me, Claire,’ he groaned as he felt her body tensing under her attempts to stifle her sobs. ‘Talk to me… Let it all out… Tell me what it’s all about.’

‘I can’t,’ Claire sobbed. ‘I can’t…’

‘Yes, you can… Of course you can… Whatever it is you can tell me…’ Brad crooned the words in much the same way as he had once crooned similar reassurances to his brothers and sisters, comforting them through their childhood woes. Only Claire wasn’t a child, and she certainly wasn’t one of his siblings; his body was telling him that much.

Claire, thank the Lord, was too caught up in her own emotions to be aware of his arousal.

‘Tell me,’ he insisted, and then added with a smile, ‘I shan’t let you go until you do.’