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'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 t
hem....'
'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.'
