Starting Over (14 page)

As he walked towards the door, Max had to fight not to turn back and tell her how afraid he was of losing her and how haunted he now felt by his feelings towards their coming child. He felt as though his guilt would never leave him.

'I'M SORRY,' Sara apologised automatically as she pushed open the bookshop door, realising too late that someone was about to walk in, her expression changing as she recognised that that 'someone' was Nick.

'Oh,' she began stiffly, immediately starting to turn away, her body registering both her shock and her determination to distance herself from him.

She hadn't seen him since their meeting on the river path. Not that she had wanted to see him. She hadn't wanted to think about him, either, or to continually almost obsessively dwell on the way he was making her feel, she reminded herself ironically, but that hadn't stopped her from doing so.

'Sara.'

An outside observer, hearing that charged, almost passionate, note in Nick's voice could quite easily have got totally the wrong idea, Sara decided grimly as she fought not to allow herself to react to it. Behind her someone tot-tutted as they had to circle round them to get into the shop but neither Sara nor Nick were aware of their disgruntlement.

She had the most beautiful skin Nick had ever seen.

He ached to reach out and touch it, to touch
her.
Her hair, thick and vibrant, hung sleekly to her shoulders.

She was wearing a long camel-coloured coat; cash-mere he suspected, over plain black trousers and a fitted black top. She smelled of fresh air and a subtle delicate perfume that made him want to move closer to her.

'Come and have a coffee with me.'

His abrupt invitation startled him as much as it did Sara. He could see the shock registering in her eyes along with the rejection. What the hell had possessed him? He knew there was no place in
his
life for what she represented.

'I...' Sara paused, the refused she was about to utter somehow impossible to say. A chilly little breeze had sprung up making her shiver.

'Come on,' Nick announced firmly, slipping his hand beneath her arm. 'It's too cold to stand here and argue. My car's parked round the corner right outside the coffee shop.'

Somehow Sara found she was walking alongside him. What on earth was she
doing?
She
loathed
him,
detested
him and the last thing she wanted to do was to have coffee with him. But somehow that was exactly what she
was
doing, breathing in a rich heavenly scent of the freshly ground beans as they walked into the coffee shop, virtually empty apart from a very obvious pair of lovers seated in one corner and holding hands across their table.

'I don't know why I'm doing this,' Sara protested faintly as they were led to a table by one of the waitresses.

'Perhaps we're more alike than you think,' Nick suggested wryly as they sat down, enlarging when she looked sharply at him, 'Maybe we
both
like living dangerously.'

Living dangerously! Sara's stomach clenched betrayingly. What she was doing
was
dangerous, she acknowledged. Dangerous and downright reckless.

Scanning the menu Sara ordered hot chocolate, braving the look the stick-thin waitress gave her curves as she asked disapprovingly, 'With marshmallows or without?'

'With please,' Sara told her defiantly.

She could see Nick grinning at her as he gave his own order of espresso.

'Hot chocolate
and
marshmallows...somehow I thought you were going to be a cafe latte girl.'

'Really? Well I'm sorry to disappoint you,' Sara began challengingly, stopping when Nick asked her softly, 'Who said I was disappointed?'

Sara moved restlessly in her chair. Just in her line of vision the lovers were leaning closer to one another.

Curiously Nick turned his head towards the lovers and then looked back at her.

'Poor souls, they're obviously aching for something more intimate and we both know how
that
feels, don't we?'

'You're absolutely crazy,' Sara hissed at him furiously as the waitress brought their order.

'No,' Nick corrected her when the girl left, 'I'm,
honest.
You want me as much as I do you, Sara. No, don't bother to perjure yourself, there's no point.'

'Perjure myself. This isn't a court case. I'm not on trial. Oh, this is ridiculous. I...'

'You know the best thing you and I could do don't you?' Nick interrupted her.

'Yes, move to opposite ends of the country, or better still the universe....' Sara answered him flippantly.

'Actually I was thinking of something more radical than that,' Nick told her grimly.

Sara stared at him. She wished she hadn't ordered the chocolate. It tasted too sweet and sickly, clogging her already tight throat.

'The best way for us to get this whole thing out of our systems might not be for us to fight it but to go along with it—a quick, short, sharp fling a no-holds-barred sex thing, intense enough to burn itself out...'

Sara focused on him, her drink forgotten. 'You've got to be joking,' she interrupted him sharply. 'That's the oldest line in the book and if you think for one minute
I'm
going to fall for it...'

'Calm down. It wasn't a serious proposition,' Nick reassured her wryly. 'You've got to understand this situation is as unfamiliar to me as it obviously is to you....'

'You mean women actually still exist who
have
fallen for it,' Sara derided him.

'No,' Nick checked her instantly. 'I mean that I have
never
experienced what I am experiencing right now... I don't like what's happening any more than you do, Sara.'

'Nothing
is happening,' Sara denied immediately.

'Prove it,' Nick challenged her. 'We can go back to your place now and I can take you in my arms and kiss you and you can show me just how much ' 'nothing" is happening between us....'

'No,' Sara told him forcefully.

A short, sharp fling...a swift sexual liaison based on lust. It was alien to everything she believed in, everything she had felt she could ever want and yet, the images Nick's words had conjured up were tormenting; alluring and enticing; a hot body-drenching fantasy of sex and desire that teased her with dangerously illicit images of the two of them together and which had a devastating physical effect on her. Tom between shame and longing she tried to control her unruly thoughts. If Nick should even begin to guess what they were!

'I have to go,' she told him, feverishly getting up and almost bolting for the door knowing that Nick wouldn't be able to follow her until he had paid the bill.

Ruefully Nick watched as Sara made her escape.

That comment he had made to her about them having a sexual fling had been said more as a challenge to his own feelings than as an option he had intended to promote
seriously,
but the expression on Sara's face, the brief betrayal he had seen in her eyes had been like adding petrol to the fire he himself had already started.

The resulting conflagration was still making itself felt within his body. Feelings so intense had
surely
to burn themselves out. Oblivious to the waitress's pouting disappointment at his total lack of interest in her, Nick made his way back to his car. If it wasn't for this wretched ridiculous ban that his doctor had placed on him returning to work he could have found some relief from what he was experiencing first by putting a safe distance between Sara and himself by returning home, and second by immersing himself in the most complex and demanding case he could find. But with big brother Saul watching his every move, he knew he wasn't going to be allowed to leave until the medics had given him the all clear.

OLIVIA STARED frowningly at the half-eaten sandwich on her desk. She couldn't remember buying it, never mind starting to eat it. What was she going to do about Jenny? She ached to have someone to confide in, but who was there now?

Her mobile rang. Frantically she dived in her bag to answer it, the colour leaving her face as she heard the headmistress of the girls' school telling her crisply,

'Mrs Johnson, it's Briony Howard here. You were due to pick your daughters up at six. That's when our after-school creche closes. It's now six-fifteen....'

Stammering an apology Olivia assured her that she would pick the girls up within fifteen minutes.

How
could
she have let that happen? What kind of mother
was
she, she asked herself guiltily as she stuffed the mobile back into her bag and grabbed the papers she had been working on.

It was just gone six-thirty when she pulled up outside the school. Amelia's and Alex's pale anxious faces told their own story. Olivia apologised to the grim-faced headmistress.

'Places at the creche are limited,' she told Olivia warningly, 'and I'm afraid that when we have parents who abuse our time limits we have to ask them to make alternative arrangements. On
this
occasion I'm prepared to make allowances, but in future...'

Scarlet-cheeked, Olivia bowed her head as she accepted the other woman's justified rebuke.

As she hurried them towards the car she could see that both girls were close to tears as indeed she was herself. A memory of her own childhood came back to her. She had been meant to be going to Brownies but her mother had been out shopping all day returning too late to take her and her father had flatly refused when Tania had complained that she was too tired, saying that he had an appointment.

They had started to argue and Olivia could remember how upset and close to tears she had felt, but when her father slammed out of the house Tania herself had started to cry and somehow Olivia had found that
she
was the one comforting her mother instead of the other way around. Later her father had come back grimly bowling her into the car without a word and then driving to the church hall far too fast but miraculously on time for the Brownie meeting.

He had even given her one of his terse hugs before driving off again. If she closed her eyes she could still capture the warm, secure feeling that had given her—

the sense of belonging and of being loved; but such instances had been very rare and she was convinced her father had never really loved her.

There was no way she ever wanted one of her own daughters to think that!

'I'm sorry,' she apologised to them both as she unlocked the car door.

'It's all right, Mummy,' Amelia told her quietly.

'We told Mrs Howard that you would be busy working....'

Busy working!
Too
busy to remember that her daughters were waiting for her. What kind of person was she? What kind of mother was she?

Who knew, once she and Caspar were actually di-vorced perhaps he would remarry and provide them with a far better mother, one that the girls deserved.

Angrily she shook herself and her thoughts returned to her father. Why had he come back into their lives?

She hated him for being here...hated him, hated him, hated him....

'I'm hungry,' Alex complained as they drew up outside the house.

Olivia glanced at the car clock. It was just gone seven. Normally Caspar gave the girls their tea at around five.

Caspar...

Olivia closed her eyes. She didn't want to think about her husband right now—so why was she doing so? Why was she sitting here in the car, reluctant to open the door and go into a house which she knew was going to feel cold and empty?

Cold.. .with the kind of central heating bills she was paying? And as for being empty... As she hustled her daughters towards the house, Olivia reminded herself that she had been the one to make the decision to separate from Caspar and it was a decision she was very glad she
had
made.

Once she had sorted out her child-care arrangements she would feel better. Right now she felt so guilty about the anxious expressions she had seen on her daughters' faces when she had arrived to pick them up.

'I'm sorry I was late coming for you,' she apologised huskily to them again.

'It's all right, Mummy,' was Amelia's same immediate response.

Olivia closed her eyes as guilt smote her. Amelia was a child still, a little girl, yet the tone of her voice, the look in her eyes, were those almost of an adult.

Fiercely Olivia refused to let herself cry in front of them.

'I wish Daddy was here,' Alex piped up, 'then he could have picked us up from school....'

She gave a small indignant gasp as Amelia nudged her and sent her a warning look.

'You hurt me,' she protested indignantly and then stopped, her face going bright-red, tears filling her eyes.

Olivia could feel her head starting to pulse with sickening tension.

'Girls, please don't fight,' she begged them. 'I'll make us something special for supper, shall I? What would you like?'

'A hamburger,' Alex clamoured with relish, her tears forgotten as she danced up and down.

A hamburger? Olivia's tension increased. That meant driving back into town and Caspar, who had virtually grown up on fast food courtesy of the complicated and haphazard child-care arrangements of his spectacularly involved mish-mash of stepparents, had always been very firm about making sure the girls ate what he termed 'proper food,' allowing them only one fast-food chain meal per month.

However, before she could say anything Amelia was telling her younger sister sharply, 'You know Daddy never let us have hamburgers during the week.'

'No...that's right,' Olivia agreed quickly, bustling both girls inside whilst she tried to ignore both Amelia's victorious told-you-so smirk at her younger sibling and Alex's sullenly angry complaints.

In most households Olivia knew it was the mother who dealt with these particular areas of negotiation and discipline, but because Caspar's work as a lecturer had enabled him to spend more time at home than she could herself, he had taken on that role in their family.

But
she
was the girls' mother she reminded herself stubbornly.

'BYE, GRAMPS.' Sara smiled fondly into her mobile telephone. Her grandfather had rung her, having learned from her parents where she was.