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The urge to let herself reach the climax of her pleasure was almost unbearably strong, but something made her delay it; something made her urge him to thrust even deeper inside her, as deep inside her as it was possible for him to reach, because that way...
Unable to control her longing any more, Dee cried out in abandonment. Deep within her body she could feel the hot pulse of Hugo’s release, so deep within her body that she could feel her womb physically contract. A strange feeling filled her, an unfamiliar sense of giving in to fate, to a power stronger than her own.
‘Hugo.’
Lovingly she traced the shape of his mouth with her fingertip.
‘I never really stopped loving you, you know. I had to send you away, though, because of Dad.’ Fresh tears filled her eyes.
‘Dee, you can’t really believe that your father took his own life,’ Hugo protested as he kissed her and brushed them away. ‘I know that he and I didn’t see eye to eye, but there is no way, in my opinion, that he would ever have done something like that, no matter what kind of pressure he came under.’
‘Is that what you really think?’ Dee asked him uncertainly.
‘Yes, I do,’ Hugo confirmed. ‘Your father was a strong man Dee, a good man. He loved you far too much to do something that would hurt you.’
‘Julian Cox’s deceit humbled him, Hugo. Humiliated him. He had trusted him, believed in him. For him to have discovered that Julian had been using his patronage to steal money... Dad paid it all back, of course, but...’
Dee yawned deeply.
‘I feel so tired,’ she complained. ‘I still can’t totally believe that Julian Cox is dead, or that...’
She yawned again, more deeply this time.
‘Go to sleep,’ Hugo told her gently, leaning over to kiss her mouth.
Obediently Dee closed her eyes.
* * *
Hugo waited until her breathing told him that she was fast asleep before easing himself out o
f bed. Peter was due to see the heart specialist whom the doctor had called in this evening, and Hugo had promised he would be there with him.
There hadn’t been time for him to say to Dee all the things he had wanted to say. Her disclosures about her father had filled him with pain and pity. They had always been close, and he could understand how it must have hurt her to think of her father taking his own life, but despite what she had told him Hugo felt sure that his death had been a genuine accident.
It was strange how things worked out. He had come here today, driven by an impulse, a need so strong that no amount of logic had been able to prevent him from responding to it. Even though every bit of common sense he possessed had told him that he was a fool to even think of approaching Dee and telling her how he felt, asking her if there was any way she was prepared to give the love they had once shared a second chance, he had still felt compelled to do so.
What had actually happened between them was nothing short of miraculous. Dee still loved him. He was older now, and wiser too, and he could recognise that, much as he had loved Dee as a young man, there had been a certain selfishness in him, a certain single-mindedness which had driven him to pursue his own goals, his own dreams, and to expect Dee to make them hers.
Things were different now. It hadn’t taken him very long to discover that without Dee his ambitions, his dreams had become curiously unfulfilling. There had been the satisfaction of knowing that what he was doing was for the benefit of others, but there had also been the loneliness of living his life on his own. Not that he hadn’t had plenty of discreet and sometimes not so discreet offers of female companionship and love, but no other woman could possibly measure up to Dee.
He had told himself that, in choosing to put her love for her father above her love for him, Dee had been the one who was the loser, but when he had received the news that she was married and expecting a child he had known just which of them was the one to suffer the most.
If he hadn’t been given that mistaken bit of gossip would he have acted differently? he mused as he dressed and quietly went downstairs, letting himself out of the house.
He would let Dee sleep off the trauma of the day and then, once Peter had seen the specialist, he would ring her, invite her out for dinner, take her somewhere discreet and romantic where he could...
Humming to himself, he unlocked his car.
Oh, yes, if he hadn’t thought she was married and out of reach, he suspected that he would have come back sooner. Much sooner. And if he had...
Immediately his imagination conjured up an image of two children: a boy with his mother’s eyes and a girl.
Oh, yes, he still loved her...had never stopped loving her...and right now—before he reversed his car out of her drive he glanced up towards Dee’s bedroom window—right now the temptation to go back into the house and stay with her was so strong that... But he owed it to Peter to be with him.
Peter.
He grimaced ruefully to himself. Peter had rather misled him with his anxiety over Dee’s proposals, and he could see that he was going to have to have a talk with him.
