Starting Over (18 page)

'What do
you
think we should do?' Tullah asked him.

'What do
you
think we should do?' Saul retorted.

Tullah took a deep breath.

'Well, in her situation
I'd
want to know and...and before the news became public knowledge. I couldn't tell her. We get on well enough together but we aren't close. Not like...'

'Are you trying to say that you think I should tell her?' Saul asked her.

'Yes,' Tullah confirmed, 'And soon, Saul...like tonight....'

OLIVIA HAD SEEN
the message light on her telephone bleeping when she walked into the house. For one idiotic moment she had actually thought that Caspar might have rung her and when, instead she had heard her father's voice, anger had overwhelmed her unwanted and very betraying disappointment.

'Olivia. I need to talk to you,' he had said. 'There's something—'

Olivia had cancelled the message without listening to any more.

Had Jon perhaps spoken to him suggesting that this might be a good time for him to get in touch with her...a time when she felt weak and vulnerable? Well, she had meant what she had said to Jenny. Her father was someone she would
never,
ever ask for help.

She had just given the girls their final good-night kisses and switched off their lights when Saul rang the front doorbell. Her pleasure at seeing him brought a happy sparkle to her eyes, lifting her mood. She wasn't foolish enough to really think that Saul wanted to resurrect their long-ago relationship, but she
was
woman enough and all too vulnerable enough to need to boost her ego with the attention of a handsome sexy man.

'Come in,' she invited him. 'I was just about to make some coffee.'

Saul wasn't looking forward to what he had to do and Olivia's uninhibited pleasure at seeing him made him feel even worse.

He waited until she had made them both a drink before starting to speak.

'Livvy, there isn't any easy way to do this,' he began quietly whilst Olivia's heart turned over at the ominous tone of his voice.

'What is it? What's happened? Caspar...' she demanded and then stopped, her face flushing as she realised from Saul's surprised expression just how wrong and revealing her reaction was.

'No. This doesn't have anything to do with Caspar,'

Saul denied.

He took a deep breath.

'It's David—your father...'

For a moment it felt as though everything stood still.

The shock and pain that then rushed over her were confusing and unexpected.

'He's had another heart attack,' she guessed.

'No. No, it's nothing like that.' Saul cursed inwardly. He was making a complete mess of this.

Putting down his coffee he reached across the table and took both of Olivia's hands in his. His grasp felt warm and reassuring. Comforting... The touch of a friend, Olivia recognised ruefully but quite definitely not that of a would-be lover.

'He and Honor are expecting a child.'

There, it was out. He had said it.

'What?'

The shocked look of white-faced disbelief Olivia was giving him was every bit as bad as the reaction Saul had dreaded.

'Honor is pregnant.... I can't believe it....' Olivia protested, wrenching her hands out of Saul's grip and standing up to pace the kitchen angrily. 'I
can't
believe she would be
stupid
enough to have a child with him knowing the way he treated me and Jack.'

'People change, Livvy,' Saul told her as gently as he could even though his heart was going out to her for the pain he could see in her eyes.

'People change.' The blank look on Olivia's face worried him. 'You mean my father's
pleased
about
this
baby.... Is
that
what you're trying to tell me?'

Saul wished he was anywhere but where he was.

'From what Tullah overheard him telling Jon—yes, he is,' he was forced to admit.

'He couldn't have cared less about me and Jack. He couldn't be bothered with us. We meant
nothing
to him—nothing at all,' Olivia raged.

So
that
was why her father had wanted to speak to her.... Not to try to persuade her to allow him into her life and the lives of her daughters, but no doubt to tell her that he didn't need them now...now that he was going to have
another
child of his own...a child he
wanted...a
child he would love.

'Honor's planning to announce her pregnancy to the family at the weekend. She's inviting everyone round.

Tullah happened to overhear David telling Jon about it at work and she felt...we
both
felt...'

The look in her eyes made him ache with sadness for her. What she was feeling had to be compounded by the breakdown of her marriage but Saul knew there was no real comfort he could give her.

'If we've done the wrong thing...' he told her gently.

Olivia shook her head.

'No. No you haven't...I'm grateful to Tullah for sending you to tell me, Saul. It's just...I never thought... When I was a little girl, I wanted so much for him to love me,' she told him, her voice empty of expression. 'I wanted that
so much,
almost as much as I wanted him and Ma to be happy together, to be
normal
parents like Jon and Jenny... I wanted that
so
badly...and
I used to feel that I was to blame in some way because they weren't...that it was
my
fault...'

'Livvy...' Saul protested, his own voice thickening with emotion.

'I'm sorry,' Olivia apologised. 'You can't want to hear any of this.'

'You can talk to me any time, but I can't stay any longer just at the moment,' Saul told her regretfully.

'Will you be okay?'

The brittle smile she gave him tore at his heart.

'Yes. Yes, of course I will,' Olivia told him.

As he went to hug her she stepped back. For a moment Saul hesitated and then turned and headed for the door.

Olivia waited until she was sure he had gone before allowing the emotion racking her to have its head, her whole body convulsed by uncontrollable shudders of anguish.

Honor was expecting her father's child.
Her
father was going to be a father to someone else. Well she just hoped for the baby's sake that she wasn't a girl, Olivia reflected bitterly.

Once the baby arrived Honor would soon see David in his true colours and so would everyone else. Her father had no right to subject yet another child to the misery and lack of love she and Jack had experienced.

But what if this time things
were
to be different...?

What if her father
were
to follow in the path of so many second time around fathers and absolutely adore the progeny of his middle age?

A cold shudder shook Olivia's body. What was the matter with her? Why should
she
care
how
her father behaved? He was
nothing
to her any more.
Nothing!

Panic. Pain. Fear, abhorrence of her own emotions as well as a furious anger against her father consumed her, refusing to allow her to concentrate on anything else. If Caspar had been here... Caspar... Why on earth was she thinking about
him?

CASPAR GRIMACED
as he answered the sharp summons of his mobile phone. Just for a second he had hoped...thought...that perhaps it might be Olivia. He had lost count of the number of times he had been tempted to call her. He ached for the sound of the girls' voices...and for Olivia's.... Grimly he reminded himself of all the reasons their marriage had started to fall apart, the most destructive of which was the fact that Olivia was totally and completely hooked up in her memories of her childhood and that she refused to either let them go or acknowledge how destructive they were.

Sure, he understood that she had had a bad time.

He hadn't had the best of childhoods himself, but they were adults now and hell, he had hated and resented the way Olivia had picked on everything she considered he was doing wrong and made a link between it and her father's behaviour as though somehow they were one and the same.

"Scuse me, are you going to be staying in this parking space long? It
is
reserved for medical staff at the centre and I
do
happen to have clients waiting to see me....' The sharp crispening of the soft female voice as its owner reached the end of her sentence alerted Caspar to his transgression.

'I'm sorry,' he apologised adding truthfully, 'I didn't realise I was in a reserved space. In fact, I only stopped because my mobile was ringing.'

As he turned to look properly at the woman whose battered station wagon was now blocking his own exit his eyes widened appreciatively. She was every red-blooded male's dream of perfect American woman-hood and then some. Tall, slim but with all the right kind of curves in the right kind of places. Honey-blonde hair, widely spaced dark-blue eyes, a voluptuously full soft pink mouth.

Dressed casually in jeans and a check shirt she looked about eighteen at first glance but Caspar guessed from her demeanour that she had to be quite a lot older.

'I'll be out of your way just as soon as you can reverse to let me pass,' he told her.

'Okay... I can tell from your accent that you're a stranger in town and I guess that the reserved markings aren't too clear, but that doesn't let you off the hook altogether,' she told him severely. 'It says as plain as day over there that this is a medical centre....'

Ruefully Caspar saw that she was right.

'I really am sorry,' he apologised again. She wasn't wearing any kind of uniform and he wondered just what she did.

'You work here, right?' he asked encouragingly.

'Right,' she told him, giving him a cool look. 'I
do
work here but I
don't
pick up strange men, even if they do ride Harley-Davidson motorbikes....'

Caspar couldn't resist it, a wide grin illuminated his face as he teased her, 'No, but surely that's your job if you work here...picking up strangers, nursing them, doctoring them....'

'I'm a counsellor...a psychiatrist...not a medic,'

she responded crisply. 'And since it looks as though you could do with a bit of free advice, let me tell you that that kind of line just doesn't cut it with today's woman.'

'No? Then what does?' Caspar asked her softly. He couldn't remember when he had last enjoyed himself so much, when he had last felt so alive, so much a man...so challenged and yes, downright excited in a very basic and totally male way by a woman who wasn't Olivia. Appreciatively he watched the delicious sway of her hips as she walked determinedly away from him and towards her car without dignifying his comment with a response.

Well, what had he expected? She was right not to respond to him. The world was full of potentially very dangerous men and it made good sense for her to be cautious.

She was in her car now and trying to start it.
Trying
to start it... Caspar frowned as he recognised from the dull whine he could hear that there was no way the station wagon was going to start without the aid of a mechanic and a new starter motor.

He watched as the station wagon door opened and she got back out. It was hard for him to repress his totally male smile as she clasped her hands together and told him with obvious irritation and embarrassment, 'It won't start. I'm going to have to call the garage and arrange for a tow.'

'How long is that going to take?' Caspar demanded, trying to look severe. 'I'm only just passing through here and I need to find myself a room for the night and get something to eat.'

'It isn't my fault,' the woman told him recovering her equilibrium a little. 'Like I said,
you
shouldn't have parked here in the first place.

'Where are you passing through to?' she asked him curiously and then looked self-conscious as though her own interest in him was a betrayal she regretted.

'Wherever the road takes me,' Caspar told her, promptly adding, 'I'm trying to fulfil a teenage ambition I had to ride from coast to coast.'

'On a Harley-Davidson?'

'Yup,' he agreed, giving her a mischievous smile as he added, 'It's a pity you aren't a medic, I'd forgotten that a certain area of my body was a good deal more resilient at sixteen than it is now at close on forty!'

'Doesn't your wife mind you taking off without her? I can see that you're wearing a wedding ring,'

she told him, nodding in the direction of his hand.

'It's over... We... She's gone back to the UK with our daughters. She's a lawyer...a solicitor they call it over there and her parting words to me were that she wanted everything to be "legal." That's how we met...through the law. I lecture in it now and...' Caspar stopped, shaking his head. 'I'm sorry...I guess this is what happens when you've been riding the road solo for too long, you start boring every stranger you meet with your life story.'

'I'm a psychiatrist. We don't
get
bored,' she told him. 'I'll have to wait here for the garage but if you like, once they've been I could show you a really great place in town to eat—Italian...they have rooms as well.'

Caspar took a deep breath. His instincts warned him that he could be stepping into very deep water indeed but then why shouldn't he? He was a free man now, wasn't he? Olivia didn't want him....

'Sounds good to me,' he responded. 'I'm Caspar Johnson, by the way,' he introduced himself.

'Molly Reilly.'

Reilly, so that explained those wonderful Celtic eyes, the flawless skin, though the perfect teeth were pure American, Caspar acknowledged as he went to shake the hand she had extended towards him.

One of the worst rows he and Olivia had had, had ridiculously been over the girls' teeth. He had wanted them to have orthodontic work done on them and Olivia, he remembered, had been horrified.

'Why?' he had objected when she had refused.

'Look,
all
American kids get their teeth fixed.'

'Amelia and Alex are
not
American,' she had responded, 'And / do not want them growing up with a set of teeth that appear so perfect that they look...like they belong to...to a film star.'