Penny Jordan's Crighton Family Series

She could hear the warmth in his voice and a huge wave of desolation and loneliness swept over her. ‘What … what are you doing up here?’ she asked him chokily. ‘I thought—’

‘Business. I’ve got a meeting in Chester in the morning. I’m staying at the Grosvenor. I could drive over and collect you and—’

‘No … no … I’ll drive to Chester,’ Olivia countered. It would do her good to get out. She had spent far too many nights worrying and brooding over problems for which she knew there were no solutions.

‘Good girl,’ Saul said quietly before asking, ‘How soon can you get here?’

The Grosvenor was right in the centre of Chester. The doorman welcomed her with a well-trained smile and a brief admiring glance as she walked past him and to the foyer, where Saul was waiting for her.

He looked dangerously handsome in his elegantly cut dark suit and Olivia noticed the way his glance fell appreciatively on her body as he greeted her, her pulse rate picking up betrayingly as her body registered the interest and responded to it.

‘Mmm … you look good enough to eat,’ Saul told her as he ignored her attempt to hold him at a distance and bent his head to kiss her very firmly and lingeringly on the mouth. ‘So good in fact,’ he murmured wickedly as he lifted his mouth from hers, ‘that I—’

‘Saul,’ Olivia warned him reprovingly.

‘All right,’ he said, laughing, ‘but you can’t blame me for trying. I like the dress, by the way,’ he remarked. ‘Black suits you. Have you heard anything from Caspar?’

Olivia shook her head. ‘What about you? Has Hillary …?’

‘She’s been in touch via her lawyers,’ he replied dryly. ‘Looks like she’s very eager to get the divorce through. I wonder why. Perhaps she’s already lined up her next victim.’

Olivia could feel her heart starting to thump unevenly. Did Saul know about Hillary and Caspar?

‘Saul …’ she began, but before she could ask him, he was leaning forward and whispering to her.

‘Your lipstick’s all smudged.’

‘And whose fault is that?’ Olivia challenged him indignantly. ‘Now I’ll have to go and repair it.’

‘I’ve got a better idea….’ As his thumb pressed gently against her lower lip and his eyes looked deeply into her own, she saw there the unmistakable message of desire; Olivia took a steadying breath and determinedly stepped back from him.

She felt as though she had just drunk a large glass of champagne much, much too quickly and, as a result, had become deliciously light-headed and slightly dizzy. Anticipation delicately threaded with sensual and sexual arousal curled headily through her body and she was tempted to cast aside her cares and behave illogically and, yes, even irresponsibly, to allow herself to imagine what it would be like to feel the warmth of Saul’s arms around her, the heat of his mouth on hers, the hard male pressure of his body.

Be careful, she tried to warn herself. Saul is family, a relative … a friend … and not a potential lover. She had come to Chester simply to have dinner with him and to talk. That was all, she reminded herself firmly, that was all.

‘You’ve hardly touched your meal. Would you prefer to order something else?’

Jenny shook her head and looked apologetically at their waiter as he came to remove their plates, hers barely touched, and Guy’s empty.

‘I’m just not very hungry,’ she admitted and then added untruthfully, ‘I ate with the children before I came out.’

She still wasn’t quite sure exactly what she was doing here in Knutsford’s premier bistro with Guy when she should have been at home doing the ironing and when, after all, she saw him almost every day at the shop as it was. She just knew that when he had telephoned out of the blue and suggested they go out together for a meal, for some reason without really allowing herself time to think, she had agreed.

For some reason … Now she was trying to ignore the truth. She knew perfectly well what had prompted her to accept Guy’s invitation. It had been Olivia who had informed her quite innocently that Jon had taken her mother to Chester with him. Hot tears burned the back of her eyes. There had been many times during the years they had been married when she had ached with the pain, the almost unbearable weight of her love for Jon, knowing that loyal, caring, compassionate though he was, he couldn’t possibly return it, but there had never been a time when she had felt like this, when her whole body seemed to be reflecting the emotional agony of not just her loss, but even more hurtfully, her searing jealousy of Tiggy.

Knowing Jon the way she did, she knew how painful it must be for him to have fallen in love with his brother’s wife. Jon, predictably, denied that his decision to leave had had anything to do with Tiggy but Jenny knew better.

Oh yes, she had seen the covert, pitying looks of other people when they saw her in the street and somehow, most shaming and hurtful of all, the way some women, women whom if anyone had asked her beforehand, she would immediately and confidently have claimed as friends, now seemed to avoid her, almost as though being deserted by one’s husband was akin to having a contagious disease that she might inadvertently pass on to them.

‘I just need some time to myself … some space to think,’ Jon had told her angrily when she tried to persuade him to stay, but he had not told her the whole truth, and not even to Ruth had she been able to admit her sense of failure and hopelessness, her feeling that somehow she had always known this would happen, that one day Jon would suddenly realise all that he had missed out on, all that he had given up for her. No, not for her, she corrected herself tiredly, but for David. It was for David’s sake that he had married her in the first place, not her own. For David’s sake and the sake of the baby she had been carrying. David’s baby …

Jon stared unseeingly out of the large picture window of the house he was renting and into the darkness of the garden beyond it. The house was quiet, too quiet, almost oppressively so, empty of the bustle and clamour he was used to. It was odd how it was the thing he had taken the most for granted; the thing he would, if asked, have said he would miss least of all. He actually found himself yearning for the din of children banging noisily up and down stairs, slamming doors, calling out to one another, playing loud music and having even louder quarrels. And through it all, that never-ending, irritating cacophony, came the gentle, warm, soothing sound of Jenny’s voice.

Jenny … He closed his eyes, leaning his forehead against the glass. He could still see the look of shock and bewilderment in Jenny’s eyes when he told her that he wanted to leave; could still hear the pain in her voice. She had tried to put up a bold front, even asking him practical questions about his plans. But although he knew he had hurt her terribly, he had been intent only on what he perceived was his own right to satisfy his own needs.

Jenny … He could still see in his mind’s eye the way she had looked when he had guessed that she was pregnant with David’s child, the fear she had tried so bravely to hide, her determination to take sole responsibility for what had happened, her clear-sighted resolution.

He had seen Louise earlier this evening in Haslewich, but when she had seen him she had deliberately crossed the road to avoid him, turning her head away from him. That had been after he had got back from Chester.

Chester. He let out a small groan, inwardly cringing as he relived what had happened there earlier in the day.

It had been his suggestion that he take Tiggy to the Grosvenor’s bistro for lunch and he felt ashamed now to admit that he had enjoyed the envious looks of other men as Tiggy clung to his arm and flirted coquettishly with him. Being with her made him feel like a different person, the person he decided he had always meant to be but whom no one had ever allowed him to be—a different Jon, not good old staid, dependable, reliable, self-effacing Jon, but the kind of Jon who’d quite naturally be with the kind of woman whom other men would watch with appreciative envy, the kind of Jon who would quite naturally lunch in places like the Grosvenor’s bistro instead of snatching a sandwich at his desk.

What a fool he had been creating a fantasy ego for himself, which in the end he simply had not been able to live up to—and worse.

Tiggy hadn’t eaten much lunch, claiming that she wasn’t very hungry, but she had drunk several glasses of wine, which was no doubt why she had whispered to him afterwards that instead of going their separate ways—him to court and her to do her shopping—they should spend the rest of the day together.

At first Jon hadn’t suspected what she had really meant, which just made the whole farcical thing more appalling. It was only when Tiggy had laughed about the fact that they need not even sign the register with a fictitious name since they were in actuality a Mr & Mrs Crighton, that the full impact of what she intended them to do had struck him. And what had he done after all these weeks of behaving like a lovesick adolescent, all these weeks of determinedly denying that his decision to leave Jenny had anything whatsoever to do with Tiggy whilst at the same time secretly revelling in the knowledge of his desire for her?

Had he leaped at the chance she was offering him, his mind, his emotions, his body ablaze with the desire to consummate his love for her?

No, he had not. He groaned again. Even now, he still couldn’t wholly believe how crassly, how cravenly he had behaved, how humiliatingly, how faintheartedly and cowardly.

His body, far from being inflamed with passion, had instead been flooded with terrified fear, and even worse, that part of it that should at the very least have started to stir with rampant sexual excitement had chosen to beat a rather hasty retreat. His mind, instead of encouraging him to seize the opportunity Tiggy had given him, had commanded his tongue to start babbling inanities about the impossibility of their doing any such thing; had produced excuse after excuse whilst Tiggy simply stood and listened, watching him in disbelieving silence. And as for his emotions!

Jon opened his eyes and moved away from the window. That had been the worst blow of all, because instead of feeling the surge of pleasure and excitement, of love and delight that he should have experienced at Tiggy’s suggestion, what he had actually felt was a tidal wave of shocked distaste, acutely aware that the very last thing he wanted to do was to take Tiggy to bed and, equally strongly, that the only body he wanted curled up next to his own in bed was that of his wife.

In the illuminating half-dozen or so seconds it had taken him to absorb all these self-revelations, he had been so stunned and distracted that it hadn’t even occurred to him how Tiggy might be feeling.

He couldn’t really blame her for the hysterical scene that had followed or for her accusations against him, or indeed for her refusal to travel back to Haslewich with him. He winced, remembering some of the things she had said and winced even more as he tried to understand why on earth he had ever imagined himself even remotely attracted to her.

What on earth had he done, and why? It was all so clear now.

Because for years he had been jealous of David, secretly resenting him and having to play a subordinate role. He had been a fool, Jon decided bleakly, a complete and utter fool, and he would give anything…anything to be able to simply wipe out the past few weeks, climb in his car and go home…. Home to Jenny and his children, their children … Home … to Jenny. He looked at the telephone and then frowned as it suddenly started to ring.

‘Uncle Jon?’

‘Yes, Jack,’ he greeted David and Tiggy’s son.

‘It’s Mum. Can you come round? She’s … she’s not very well.’

‘Jack, what is it, what’s wrong with her?’ he demanded urgently, his heart sinking with foreboding, but his nephew had already replaced the receiver.

Quickly reaching for his car keys, Jon headed for the door.

Guy was just on the point of asking Jenny if she wanted a liqueur when she stood up, abruptly pushing her chair back, and said, ‘Guy, I’m sorry … but … I want to go home.’

At first he thought that she mustn’t be feeling well and he immediately called the waiter over and got to his own feet. Once they were outside, Jenny couldn’t bring herself to look at him as she hurried to where he had parked the car. She felt so guilty, but nowhere near as guilty as she knew she would have felt if she had stayed.