Penny Jordan Tribute Collection

Her body shaking with reaction, she started to ease herself free of Brad’s still constraining arm.

At some stage Brad must have switched off the lamp because the room was now almost in darkness. However, there was still enough light for Claire to be able to see that the fever which had originally brought her into Brad’s room, anxious for his health, had disappeared. Still trembling, she eased herself out of his bed, her eyes widening as she caught sight of her discarded robe lying on the floor.

As she shrugged herself into it, her hands were trembling so much that she couldn’t fasten the tie-belt.

Hot shame scorched her skin as she remembered how eagerly, how unbelievably provocatively she had silently encouraged Brad to remove it… As her mind relayed flickering, unwanted images of what had happened to her she shrank inwardly from what they were revealing to her. She didn’t recognise the image of herself they were giving her, the message about herself that they were giving her. She didn’t want to recognise them.

In her anxiety to get out of Brad’s room she almost stumbled, holding her breath as he moved in his sleep, his forehead furrowing as he reached out an arm across the bed as though searching for her. For her… or merely for a woman… any woman…?

Had he known it was her when… when he had behaved in that incredibly sensual way, or had he simply been in the grip of some fevered state of semi-consciousness? Claire fervently prayed that it was the latter as she hurried back to her own bedroom.

But then, as she climbed into her cold bed, she stiffened. Brad had called her by her name… He had opened his eyes and looked at her, recognised her. He had whispered to her, made it clear that he wanted her.

How on earth was she ever going to be able to face him again? she wondered miserably. For a man to make love to a woman without being committed to her, without loving her, was still, in the eyes of a too cynical world, socially acceptable. For a woman to do the same thing…

But she had not done the same thing, had she? She…

Claire sat up in bed, hugging her arms around her knees, forcing herself to confront the truth.

She was not permitted the merciful excuse of being able to blame her behaviour on male hormones or a deep fever, and she knew that underneath the sheer sensuality of what she had done, the fierce intensity of a physical desire so strong that it had caught her off guard like an unexpectedly strong current in a previously placid stretch of calm water, she was emotionally drawn to Brad—emotionally responsive to him.

Emotionally drawn… A bitter sound of smothered hysterical laughter rasped at the back of her throat.

Be honest with yourself, she jeered inwardly; you’re in love with him. You, a woman of your age, are making a fool of yourself with emotions more suited to a girl in her teens.

A woman of her age maybe, but she did not have the experience, the knowledge of herself as a sexual being, that other women of her age enjoyed, Claire admitted painfully. In that regard she was as naïve and unknowing as a girl in the throes of her first adolescent love affair. And her age made those feelings more painful, more hard to bear, not less.

‘Admit it,’ she whispered as she bent her aching head to her raised knees; ‘you were attracted to him right from the start but you pretended not to know it, and tonight when he touched you…’ She swallowed painfully.

She hadn’t tried very hard to resist, to stop him, had she? On the contrary…

Why was it so hard for her to face the truth about her feelings for Brad?

Did she really need to ask herself that question?

Claire’s mouth curled into a small, bitter expression of pain. No, of course she didn’t. It was hard because she knew already the pain that loving Brad was going to cause her.

To love a man who didn’t love you back when you were seventeen was bad enough, but at seventeen life still had the power to heal the hurts it inflicted. There would inevitably be another man, another love. But at thirty-four it was for ever, for life—a once-and-for-all love.

As Claire closed her eyes, willing the tears she could feel gathering at the back of her eyes not to fall, she reflected on how very little she actually seemed to have known about herself. All those years of believing that it would be impossible for her ever to share true physical intimacy with a man, all those years of believing that the trauma of her youth and the inhibitions, the doubts about her own sexuality… about herself…

Tonight had shown her just how wrong she had been. In Brad’s arms, beneath Brad’s touch, her body had flowered into the full bloom of its sensuality… of its sexuality.

What was going to happen when he woke up and remembered…? As Claire fought to suppress the pain that she could feel seeping relentlessly through her body she reflected that Irene was not going to be pleased when she learned that Brad had moved out, which she knew already was what was going to happen.

CHAPTER EIGHT

CLAIRE woke up with a start. She could hear the front doorbell ringing and the sun was streaming in through her uncurtained bedroom window. Groggily she lifted her head from her pillow and was appalled to discover that it was gone ten o’clock.

Throwing back the bedcovers, she reached for her robe, pulling it on over her naked body, avoiding looking at her reflection in the dressing-table mirror, her skin flushing slightly as the slow, almost voluptuous movements of her body silently betrayed the events of the previous evening.

As she hurried along the landing she saw that the door to Brad’s bedroom stood open. The bed was empty and neatly made up. No need to ask herself why Brad had not woken her before he had left, she thought grimly.

Whoever was outside the front door was obviously getting impatient; a finger pressed the bell in a long, imperious ring.

As Claire went to open the door she could see through the glass panes a woman she didn’t recognise standing outside with two small children—a young girl at her side and a baby in one arm.

When she pulled open the door to her she could see that the young woman was frowning anxiously and that she looked tired and drawn. The baby had started to cry and the girl joined in, the young mother closing her eyes in exasperation as she tried to calm them.

‘Is Brad here?’ she asked Claire anxiously, her frown returning as she appealed urgently, ‘This is where he’s staying, isn’t it? He did give me the address but I wasn’t sure I’d written it down properly.

‘Yes… it’s all right,’ she soothed the baby, her soft, transatlantic accent so very similar to Brad’s that just to hear it made Claire’s susceptible heart turn over.

‘Yes. You’ve got the right address,’ she reassured the young woman, standing back to usher her inside and at the same time automatically offering to take the baby from her.

‘Oh, yes… Thanks… He’s very damp,’ she informed Claire ruefully, ‘and pretty hungry too…’

Claire wasn’t really listening; her heart was turning over painfully inside her too tight chest as she looked into the baby’s now fully opened eyes and saw just how like Brad’s they were.

A spasm of deep, wrenching pain like nothing she had ever known seared through her, her eyes too dry for the tears she ached to cry, the small sound of protest she could feel rising in her throat luckily suppressed.

‘I’m Brad’s sister, by the way—Mary-Beth,’ the young woman introduced herself as she ushered the little girl inside and then reached for their luggage.

His sister. As Claire focused on the other woman’s back she could feel herself starting to tremble with relief. Just for a moment, looking at the baby and seeing Brad’s eyes in his small and as yet not really fully formed face, she had thought… assumed.

‘He is here, isn’t he? I had to come. I had to see him,’ she told Claire emotionally, her eyes suddenly filling with tears.

‘No, I’m afraid he isn’t,’ Claire informed her. ‘He’ll probably be back soon, though,’ she added comfortingly. ‘I can give you the office number and you can ring him there,’ she offered helpfully, but the other woman shook her head.

‘No… no, I’d better wait until he gets back… You see, he… he doesn’t… he isn’t exactly expecting us…’ She paced the hall edgily, avoiding Claire’s eyes.

Something was very obviously wrong, Claire guessed. No one, however impetuous, came rushing across the Atlantic with two small children, one of them still too young to walk, just on a mere whim.

‘You must be hungry and tired,’ she said quietly. ‘Let’s go into the kitchen and see if we can find you something to eat, shall we?’ she suggested softly to the baby, who had stopped crying but was gnawing hungrily on his fingers as he focused wonderingly on her unfamiliar face.

‘I guess we are,’ her unexpected visitor agreed, but Claire sensed that food was the last thing on her mind, and now that she had had the opportunity to study her a little more closely she could see the tell-tale signs of strain and unhappiness etched into her face and eyes. The little girl too, clinging so closely to her mother’s side, had an expression in her eyes that had been caused by something more than the confusion of a long transatlantic journey.

Mary-Beth had said that she would wait for Brad to return, but Claire suspected that whatever had brought her rushing to find him meant that she needed to see her brother more urgently than that.

Her heart started to thud a little too fast at the thought of telephoning him. What would he think when he heard her voice? That because of last night she was making unfounded assumptions about him… about them…?

His sister’s obvious need was more important than her own pride, Claire told herself firmly as she led the way to the kitchen, settling Mary-Beth in one of the comfortable Windsor chairs and then going to retrieve from the laundry room the high chair she kept for emergencies, still holding the baby, who was now quite contentedly gurgling up at her.

‘You’re obviously very good with children,’ Mary-Beth told her ruefully, watching her. ‘He’s screamed practically the whole way here.’

‘And he was sick three times,’ a small voice piped up from Mary-Beth’s side, the little girl’s face stern with big-sisterly disapproval.

‘This is Tara.’ Mary-Beth introduced her daughter. ‘And that smelly, damp bundle you’re carrying is Abe junior…’