AllFreeNovel
Share Us
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.
'Haslewich,' he had commented, asking doubtfully,
'Are you sure that's a good idea. Oh, I know your father thinks I'm a silly overprotective old fool,' he had continued whilst Sara had remained silent.
Although on the surface her father and grandfather got on well, Sara knew from what her mother had told her that Gramps had been something of an overprotective parent to her and that there had been arguments and discord when she had first met Richard Lanyon.
'That's why someone like Tania is the ideal person for him,' Sara's mother had confided. 'Dad needs someone he can cosset and cherish, someone who won't feel overwhelmed and constrained by that kind of love as I'm afraid I did. I once accused him of always wanting to keep me as his little girl, which was both unfair and untrue, but my mother, your grandmother, was very similar to Tania.'
After that conversation Sara had been even more grateful to her own father for his robust parenting which had involved encouraging her to both act and, even more importantly, think independently.
Even so she still had a soft spot for her grandfather who had been the donor of many very enjoyable childhood treats and a shoulder to cry on when she had felt the need.
Perhaps she had inherited from him a watered-down version of his own desire to protect because she, too, felt very sympathetic to and protective of her stepgrandmamma.
'Have you told Tania where I've ended up?' she had asked her grandfather.
'No, and I don't intend to,' had been his prompt response. 'It would only upset her, arouse unhappy memories for her.'
'Tania has a son and daughter living in Haslewich,'
her father had reminded Sara during their own telephone conversation. 'If you were to meet them you could find yourself in a potentially difficult position.
No child enjoys being deserted by its parent.'
'Tania didn't desert them,' Sara had defended fiercely. 'You know that, Dad. She wanted to see them but her ex's family made it too difficult for her and she felt, especially with her son, that he was at an age when it wasn't fair to him to disrupt him and cause him any conflict of loyalties...'
'Mmm...' had been her father's brief but telling response.
The Crightons. She had sworn before she met them that it would be impossible for her to like them—and now...
And now what...? She liked Nick Crighton. Sara made a taunting face at her reflection as she walked past a mirror. Like was hardly the word to describe the maelstrom of emotions Nick aroused within her.
No, maybe not, but a lot of them began with L
didn't they? Longing... lusting... loving...
Loving! No. No way did she feel that. Admitting to the lusting bit was bad enough!
A short, sharp, sexual fling. A hot, sweet, mad, self-indulgence. A wild, wanton abandonment of her old teenage fantasies and beliefs that loving someone and wanting them could only go hand in hand. No it was unthinkable, impossible and yet, she only had to close her eyes to see Nick in her mind's eye: strongly muscled arms, broad shoulders, a very male torso—and he would look even better undressed than he did dressed, she suspected.
A soft little groan that was almost akin to an aroused-female growl escaped her lips. Guiltily she looked over her shoulder and then derided herself. She was alone in the flat, wasn't she, and Nick Crighton, whatever other skills of legerdemains he might possess did not have the power to simply materialise in front of her.
Not in person, perhaps, but he was quite definitely exerting a very strong pull on her senses and he certainly had the ability to 'materialise' to devastating physical effect in her imagination.
A short sexual fling! She must be mad to even contemplate such a thing. But she wasn't contemplating it. No. Not for one minute, even though she strongly believed that women were as entitled to acknowledge the sexual side of their natures as any man, even if she herself had never previously in
dulged in such a freedom.
She knew girls who had, though. Girls who quite openly and unashamedly stated that they had slept with a man simply because they had desired him physically, and so far as Sara had been able to judge, they had emerged from the experience not just totally emotionally unscathed but shockingly and almost enviably glowing with pleasure and self-satisfaction.
No, it was often the girls who swore that for them sex could only go hand in hand with love who were the ones who seemed to suffer the most traumas, investing so many hopes and dreams in their relationships that the discovery that their partner did not share them was a humiliating and devastating experience.
At least a sex-only fling could be ended cleanly and tidily with a 'Thank you, I've had enough now and goodbye.'
And she would be glad to say goodbye to Nick Crighton, glad to say that she had totally burned out any desire for him. But, of course, it wasn't going to happen. She wasn't going to get any more involved with Nick Crighton than she already was—was she?
CHAPTER EIGHT
'YOU'RE VERY preoccupied,' David commented lovingly to Honor as he brought her the cup of herbal tea he had just made for them both. 'Is something wrong?'
'Not wrong exactly,' Honor said slowly.
Frowning David put down his own tea untouched.
Honor had not been her normal self for several days and now his concern showed in his voice and face as he insisted, 'But something is bothering you? What is it, Hon? Are you having second thoughts about Father Ignatius being with us?'
'No, no...' Honor smiled immediately. 'I love having him here. He was telling me a fascinating story the other day about some of the remedies people use in Jamaica—and as for him being here... He's spending more time up at Fitzburgh Place than here. He and Freddy have really hit it off together.' She gave an amused smile. 'It's obvious they've got an awful lot in common.'
'An agnostic and a Jesuit. Yes. I suppose they must have,' David agreed wryly before adding, 'Stop trying to change the subject. What's wrong?'
Honor gave him a rueful look before warning him,
