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There was an ache within her that shocked her almost as much as Nick's kiss had done. Behind her closed eyelids images of their naked bodies tormented her. She could see just how he would look, how he would feel, how he would taste. Oh yes...yes...she wanted that...wanted him so much.
The words screamed silently through her head as Nick withdrew his mouth from hers. They were both breathing heavily she noticed, just as she noticed how immediately and shamelessly her gaze went to his crotch and then to his face.
'This isn't going to happen,' she told him shakily.
Nick's face looked oddly pale beneath his tan, the bones standing out sharply.
'It already has, ' he told her rawly.
'God help us both,' Sara thought she heard him saying as he turned and walked away from her.
It gave her no comfort to know that he was as disturbed and caught off balance by what had happened as she was herself. Fear and excitement—where did one begin and the other end? She started to walk back to the restaurant uncomfortably conscious of the heavy dragging sensation in her lower body and the ache in her breasts.
Lust! She had never imagined herself experiencing such a feeling but right now she was quite definitely lusting after Nick Crighton. Lusting after him; for him; to be with him, to have him within her.
Sara heard herself groaning out loud at the torment her own wanton thoughts were causing her.
JENNY GLANCED AT Queensmead's kitchen clock. Almost half past three, Max should be arriving back soon with the children. He had rung her earlier to say that he would pick them up from school on his way back from the hospital.
Jenny looked from the clock to the telephone.
Should she try to ring Livvy now?
All day long she had been thinking about her niece, worrying about her as well as about Maddy. She felt wretchedly guilty about what had happened that morning. She knew how sensitive Livvy was, how much at times she was still inclined to feel the pain of her growing-up years. Did Jon think of that, and of Livvy and Jack at all, now when he made such a fuss of David, Jenny couldn't help wondering a little bitterly.
She desperately wanted to speak to Olivia and to put things right between them. No one knew better than she did just how much the break-up of their marriage must be hurting Olivia, but she wanted to do so face to face and somewhere where she could give Livvy the time and attention Jenny knew she must be needing.
Sadly she remembered how happy and vibrant her niece had been when she and Caspar had first married.
They had seemed such a well-suited couple, ideal for one another. Jenny could remember visiting them; their home had seemed full of laughter and love, especially when Livvy had first been pregnant with Amelia. When had it all started to go wrong for her and why hadn't Olivia felt able to confide in her?
Had Livvy tried to? Had she—Jenny—been too involved with other things, other people, to notice?
These last few years had been increasingly busy ones for all of them—but she couldn't let Livvy go on thinking that she didn't matter to her.
The kitchen door was opening and Max and the children were coming in.
'How's Maddy?' Jenny asked anxiously as she went to relieve Leo and Emma of their school bags and coats and take Jason from her son's arms.
Max's terse, 'They're still battling to bring her blood pressure down,' warned Jenny that there had been no improvement as yet in Maddy's condition.
Conscious of the children and the need to maintain the security of their normal routine for them she hugged them and told them that their milk and biscuits would be ready just as soon as they had changed out of their school clothes and washed their hands.
'I'm not hungry,' Leo denied. His lower lip was trembling slightly and Jenny's heart sank as she saw the fear in his eyes. He had always been a very sensitive child, closer to his mother than his father in the earliest years of his life, although now he and Max had formed a very strong loving bond.
'When is Mummy coming home?' he demanded of Max now.
'Just as soon as she's well enough,' Max answered him.
'I want her to be here now, ' Leo told him tearfully.
'Oh, so do I, son,' Max agreed, swinging Leo up into his arms, his voice muffled against the little boy's hair as he hugged him fiercely and kissed him.
'Mummy isn't going to die, is she?' Leo pleaded.
'Of course she isn't, Leo,' Jenny denied chokily when she saw that Max was too overcome by his own emotions to answer him properly.
It tore at her heart-strings in a way that nothing else had ever done to see this man, her tall, strong, formidable son, who was so very dear to her show his emotions so openly and vulnerably.
'I'm sorry,' he apologised to Jenny five minutes later when she had taken over from him, soothing and calming Leo with a lifetime's experience of maternal-ism and then sending the children upstairs to follow their normal after-school routine.
'I didn't handle that well,' he continued bleakly.
'Oh God...if anything happens to Maddy...'
Jenny could hear the anguish in his voice. Instinctively she reached out to him.
'I know how worried you must be,' she told him.
'But she's in the very best hands, Max....'
Max looked away from her. He had seen the consultant earlier in the day when he had gone to visit Maddy. No. I'm afraid that as yet there hasn't been any real change, the consultant had responded in answer to Max's anxious question.
Every day was taking them closer to the twenty-week deadline and closer, too, to the danger of him losing Maddy.
After he had spoken with the consultant he had sat in Maddy's room next to her bed, listening to her telling him how guilty she felt about 'being so lazy lying here.' His gaze was drawn against his will to her stomach, a small mound beneath the hospital bedcovers.
Within her body lay the new life that he was responsible for, its heart beating, its body forming, growing. A new life whose existence threatened that of its mother. If there were to be a natural spontaneous end to Maddy's pregnancy now—it did happen after all—Maddy would be grief-stricken, he knew; but in time she would accept what had happened as an act of nature in a way that she would never ever accept a man-made termination of her pregnancy.
Please, God, let her blood pressure come down, Max prayed as he reached for her hand and held it tightly, but still his gaze returned to her stomach.
'Are you thinking like me how lucky we are?'
Maddy whispered to him as she lifted their clasped hands onto her belly. 'I tell the baby every day how much we love it.' A softly sweet smile curled her mouth. 'They say that it's impossible for a baby to be aware of emotions at this stage, but I don't agree. I think that a baby can sense when it's loved and wanted.'
Every word she said increased Max's guilt and fear.
Even if he hadn't already known how Maddy would react to the suggestion of a termination of her pregnancy just listening to her now would have told him.
He could feel his fingers tensing against hers. It wasn't love he felt for this baby
, it was...
He could see Maddy looking at him in concern as he pulled his hand away.
'MAX?' he could hear his mother saying worriedly.
'Maddy's blood pressure isn't coming down properly. If it doesn't...' Max felt as though he were trying to speak with a throat full of splintered glass.
'If things don't improve the only way to guarantee her safety would be to terminate her pregnancy.' He heard his mother's indrawn shocked gasp.
'Does Maddy know...?' Jenny began, but Max shook his head.
'No, the consultant's thinking up to now has been that to tell her would make the situation with her blood pressure even worse than it already is. What the hell kind of sense can it be to let a woman like Maddy die,' Max cried out in anguish. 'I'm going back to the hospital,' he told Jenny when he had himself back under control. I'll probably be there all evening. God knows what we'd have done without you, Ma....' he told her gruffly.
Jenny had been intending to suggest that Max stay with the children for a couple of hours that evening so that she could go and see Olivia but now she could see how much he needed to be with Maddy. She would have to ring home instead and ask Jon to come over she decided when the children came back into the kitchen.
As Max went across to the table and kissed each child Jenny's heart ached for him. Maddy was the most maternal woman Jenny knew. She would rather die than destroy the life of her own child. A small icy shudder ran through Jenny's body as that thought formed. Please, God, let Maddy get well. Spare them that! She prayed mentally as Max drove away. Oh, please, please God.
FOR THE UMPTEENTH TIME Annalise Cooke removed Jack's now crumpled letter from her school bag and started to re-read it. Not that she needed to, she knew every word of it off by heart, but still she had to read it, to touch the paper Jack had written it on, just for the reassurance and comfort it gave her.
School was over for the day now and she was on her way to the station to meet Jack's train.
'I'm going to come home. We can talk properly then,' he had written to her in response to her own frantic tear-stained letter to him. 'I'll be arriving at half past four so try to meet me at the station if you can.'
