The Strength Of Desire

Cover Page

Excerpt

About the Author

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Copyright

“How long was it, that last time you and Jack were reunited?”

“Five weeks.” Hope prayed it would shut Guy up.

“Five weeks? Long enough to conceive, have a pregnancy confirmed and get the divorce papers drawn up….”

“That’s not the way it was! I never intended going back to Jack….”

Guy’s lips formed a thin, cruel smile. “Maybe you should have stuck with me…. But then you couldn’t be quite sure I could give you a baby, could you? Whereas my brother already had….”

ALISON FRASER was born and brought up in the far north of Scotland. She studied English literature at university and taught math for a while, then became a computer programmer. She took up writing as a hobby and it is still very much so, in that she doesn’t take it too seriously! Currently Alison still lives in Scotland, with her two young children, two dogs, but only one husband!

The Strength of Desire

Alison Fraser

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

TEARS streamed down Hope’s face as the radio played the song for which Jack was best known:

‘The sun in your hair,

Pure gold.

The sky in your eyes,

Cloudless blue.

How can I not love you?

The stars in——

She switched it off, and sank down on a chair. It was a shock. Not the song, but the announcement beforehand: ‘Jacques Delacroix died last night in a road accident.’

Why had no one told her? Why hadn’t Guy? The thought of Jack’s brother could still make her angry. Her mind quickly moved elsewhere.

Maxine. She needed to tell Maxine before anyone else did. How would she react? She was difficult at the best of times.

My fault, Hope acknowledged, all too aware of the way her daughter was going. At twelve she could pass for fourteen—a moody, resentful fourteen. My fault because I was too young.

Seventeen she had been when she’d met Jacques—or Jack, as he’d been called. Just turned eighteen when she’d married him. Pregnant shortly after. Ridiculous.

That’s what Guy had said, of course. Guy DelacroixJack’s little brother. Hope’s lips twisted at the term. That was what Jack had called him and that was what Hope had expected. A younger, paler version of Jack. But Guy had been in no one’s shadow.

She remembered their first meeting. It had been at a London restaurant. Jack had invited him to lunch to meet Jack’s future bride. He’d driven up from Cornwall where he lived and had arrived late. Jack and she had already been seated at the rear of the restaurant and had not noticed his approach.

He had appeared at their table and Hope had just stared in surprise. Jack’s little brother had turned out to be anything but little.

At six feet two, he was several inches taller and broader than Jack, and, on first glance, actually looked older, with his dark hair and steel-grey eyes and a slightly weathered complexion.

The brothers were totally unalike. At thirty-five Jack could have passed for twenty-five. Blond, boyish and handsome, he was a slim five feet ten. He had all the charm of an older man with the outlook of a much younger one. The age-gap between Hope and Jack-seventeen years—seemed nothing.

Nothing until Guy Delacroix pointed it out. He stared at her, long and hard, then spoke to Jacques, excluding her.

He said, ‘Es-tu fou, Jacques? Elle est une enfant.’

He did not look at Hope. If he had, he might have seen from her face that she wasn’t stupid. She could certainly translate basic French: ‘Are you mad, Jack? She is a child.’

She waited for Jacques to deny, to resent, to explode, but he just laughed. ‘Peut-être. Mais une très belle enfant, n’est-ce pas?’ He smiled at his brother.

Hope could translate that, too. O level French was one of the few she’d managed to acquire at the trendy boarding-school where her father had sent her.

‘Perhaps,’ Jack conceded. ‘But a very beautiful child, isn’t she?’

Guy’s eyes slid back to her. From the expression on his face, he didn’t agree.

Hope didn’t care what he thought of her looks. She responded, ‘Je ne suis pas une enfante ni stupide.’

‘I am not a child or stupid,’ she informed Guy Delacroix, blue eyes narrowing in temper.

Jack looked surprised, then laughed again. He had not known she could speak French, but was unembarrassed by it.

If anything, his brother looked even further down his long French nose, his thin lips twisting. Hope’s first impression of a powerfully handsome man was rapidly forgotten, as she thought him mean-eyed and cold.

‘Do you wish me to apologise?’ he directed at her, not one degree warmer.

‘Not if it’s going to kill you,’ she retorted in a careless tone.

They exchanged looks again, registering their true feelings. Hate at first sight.

Jack seemed amused as he suggested, ‘Shall we start again? In English, this time, I think…Hope Gardener, meet Guy Delacroix. My fiancée. My brother.’ He nodded from one to the other.

After a moment’s hesitation, Guy Delacroix muttered a scrupulously polite, ‘Pleased to meet you,’ as he extended his hand towards her.

His personality seemed to change with his language. From Gallic temper to English dispassion in one easy move. At any rate, it was the first and last time he ever spoke French in front of her.

Hope wondered which was real as she reluctantly returned his brief handshake and he sat down. She recalled what Jack had told her about the Delacroix family. Their mother was English, from Cornwall. She had married a Frenchman and they had spent their early years in Paris. When their father, Armand Delacroix, had died, Jack had been twelve, Guy seven. A couple of years later they had returned to live in Cornwall.

On first impression, Guy had seemed the more French, but, as she listened to his ensuing conversation with Jack, she revised that opinion. He was a lawyer who talked in dry, lawyer terms. Jack allowed him to handle his business affairs. With Guy based in Cornwall, inconveniently far from London, Hope assumed Jack did this as a favour.

Not that Guy Delacroix appeared particularly grateful. If anything, his tone to Jack was one of reproof as they talked of contracts and percentages. Jack, in contrast, was his usual affable self, uninterested in money or the business matters behind his work as a performer.

Hope was on his side. Jack was an artist. He sang in a gravelly voice that was adored by millions of women, and wrote love-songs that wrenched the heart. Who could blame him if he didn’t want to discuss the boring mechanics behind the brilliant concert performances he gave?

‘Come on, Guy,’ he eventually said to his brother, ‘lighten up. Hope doesn’t want to listen to the niceties of contractual law. Do you, chérie?’ He smiled sexily at her, and she smiled back, the look in her eyes sharing secrets.

‘She might, if it stops you ending up bankrupt,’ Guy Delacroix’s voice intruded gratingly.

Hope’s eyes switched to him, questioning. What was he implying? That she was just interested in Jack’s wealth?

That was the way Jack took it, laughing a little as he said, ‘My little brother is a cynic. He thinks you just love me for my money…Why don’t we convince him otherwise?’ he suggested silkily, and leaned across the table to kiss her.

Hope wasn’t really given a chance to respond. She gasped a little in surprise and Jack slid his tongue into her mouth with an intimacy that quite shocked her. Before she could sort out her feelings, he broke off the kiss and grinned at his brother.

Hope’s face suffused with colour. Because they were in a booth at the rear of the restaurant, only Guy Delacroix had witnessed the kiss, but that was enough. Though his face was rigid, there was disgust in his eyes.

Jack seemed unaware of it as he laughed, ‘I’m a lucky man,’ then started relaying plans for their wedding.

He explained that Hope didn’t want a big ceremony, and they had decided on a register office. Jack asked Guy to be a witness. Hope knew instantly that Guy would refuse, even before he went through the motions of asking the date and discovering he had court commitments he couldn’t break.

Jack was clearly disappointed. He had no suspicion that his brother might be lying. Hope caught Guy Delacroix’s eye again, and was certain of it. He had no intention of giving support to a marriage he considered disastrous from the outset.

No, Guy wasn’t a hypocrite. He never pretended to be anything but displeased. When Jack excused himself during the meal, his brother didn’t hang about. He went on the attack within seconds.

‘How old are you? Sixteen?’ he guessed, lips thinning.

‘Nearly eighteen,’ Hope snapped back, immediately on the defensive.

‘That old,’ he muttered, drily sarcastic. ‘I assume you’ve asked for the day off school—for the wedding, I mean,’ he added in the same vein.

‘I left school last year,’ Hope relayed, quite unnecessarily, she was sure.

A black brow was raised in disapproval. ‘At sixteen.’ ‘Yes. Right.’ Hope gave up trying to win her future brother-in-law’s approval. Temper made her run on, ‘Uneducated as well as young and stupid. Why don’t I just give you a list of all my faults, then you won’t have to bother grubbing around for them yourself?’

He looked taken aback for a moment, having underestimated her ability to fight back, but it didn’t discourage him.

‘Why don’t you?’ he echoed, bland in the face of her temper.

‘Let’s see,’ Hope muttered tightly. ‘Well, I have no job or prospects of one. I have no money and, very soon, no home. I get hay fever in the summer, and chest complaints in the winter…Oh, and the women in my family tend to develop thick ankles by thirty,’ she added, the most ridiculous thing she could think of saying.

Just for a moment she glimpsed the merest hint of amusement on his mouth, but it quickly disappeared. Guy Delacroix had decided to disapprove of her on sight, and nothing was going to change his opinion.

‘Your family…’ He picked out another line of attack. ‘How do they feel about your marrying someone seventeen years older?’

“They feel nothing,’ she retorted, and told him bluntly, ‘My mother died when I was born, my father a couple of months ago.’

His eyes narrowed, as if he acknowledged the pain of the last, but he expressed no sympathy. Instead he asked, ‘Did you meet Jack before or after he died?’

‘I’ve known Jack for years,’ she could claim quite truthfully. ‘My father produced a couple of his early albums.’

‘Gardener…’ He mused over her name, then worked out, ‘Max Gardener was your father?’

She nodded, surprised that Jack hadn’t told him that.

He read her mind, saying, ‘Jack doesn’t believe in giving much detail. I heard you were young, blonde and beautiful…and, of course, the love of his life. That was all.’

But he hadn’t believed it, Hope realised from Guy’s tone. He thought she was just another of Jack’s conquests.

‘Have you slept with him yet?’ he added, almost offhandedly.

‘What?’ Hope stared at him incredulously.

‘Have you slept with him?’ he repeated, as if it were a quite normal question to ask a complete stranger.

‘I…We…It’s none of your business!’ she finally exploded.

He watched as colour suffused her face. ‘You haven’t,’ he concluded. ‘Well, perhaps you should. I can recommend it as one of the quickest ways of discovering incompatibility.’

‘How do you know we’re incompatible?’ Hope retorted angrily.

‘Apart from the seventeen-year age-gap, you mean?’ His tone was heavily ironic.

‘You’re just jealous!’ she accused in return.

He smiled thinly. ‘Don’t flatter yourself. You might be beautiful, but schoolgirls aren’t my thing.’

Hope glared, sure he’d deliberately misunderstood. ‘Jealous of Jack, I meant. His talent. His fame. His—-’

‘Money?’ he suggested wryly.

Hope went from glaring to fuming. Guy Delacroix obviously had her written off as a gold-digger and wasn’t about to change his mind.

He continued at her furious silence, ‘No, I can’t say I’ve ever been jealous of Jack. I have sufficient money for my own needs. Talent…Well, admittedly writing love-songs is hardly my forte.’ He made a slight face, dismissing such a skill as unimportant. ‘And fame, well, that’s a dubious privilege at the best of times…But I suppose it all seems very glamorous to you.’

‘I’m not that naive.’ Hope was well aware of the price of fame. Her father had once been famous as a record producer—and rich. But he’d paid for it. When the popularity of his music had waned he’d felt a failure, and sought solace in a whisky bottle.

‘No, I suppose not,’ Guy Delacroix conceded. ‘You must have met many famous people through your father.’

‘When I was little,’ Hope replied, ‘but not lately…People in show business don’t like to associate with failures. They think it’s catching,’ she commented cynically.

He raised a brow, surprised by her astuteness. ‘What did he die from?’ he asked bluntly.

‘Cancer—not catching either,’ she said on a bitter note, ‘but it still kept them away…Apart from his funeral-they returned in droves for that. It’s a pity he missed it. He would have appreciated seeing his ex-wives sobbing their little hearts out at the loss of their alimony.’

‘How many?’ he enquired.

‘Ex-wives? Three, but only two attended the funeral,’ Hope recounted.

He pulled a wry face at the number. ‘Does that total include your mother?’

‘No, she was never an ex,’ Hope declared stiffly, but didn’t expand on it.

She knew, for her father had told her often enough, that her mother had been the great love in his life. It had sounded sentimental, but it had also been true. It was a fact that each wife, in turn, had come to face.

‘Is that where you met Jack again? At the funeral?’ ‘No, he came before, in the last week or two when Dad became really ill. Then later he offered to help with the arrangements.’ Hope’s voice revealed how grateful she’d been to Jack. He’d been a true friend to them both, and her love for him had developed even as she’d struggled with the pain of grief.

“That was good of him.’ Guy’s tone was flat, but there was a look of scepticism in his eye.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Hope demanded in return.

‘Nothing, just…’ He hesitated for the first time, then switched to saying, ‘Look, we got off on the wrong foot. My fault, I admit. I misunderstood the situation.’

‘That’s all right.’ Hope was ready to forgive him. She didn’t want to be enemies with Jack’s family.

‘However,’ he continued in a serious vein, ‘I still feel you really should consider what you’re doing. You’re only seventeen. You’ve just lost your father. You’re vulnerable…’

‘I can take care of myself,’ Hope claimed, but not quite convincingly, as her fingers plucked agitatedly at the tablecloth.

‘Fine, take care of yourself,’ he echoed, stilling her hand with his. ‘Just don’t let Jack do it for you.’

He spoke with such force that Hope’s eyes flew to his. She met their steady grey gaze and for a moment saw the man behind the dispassionate mask. She sensed his strength, and was scared by his certainty. For a moment she almost listened to him, then Jack suddenly returned to the table.

‘Holding hands?’ Jack enquired, not quite casually, as he tried to assess the situation.

Hope flushed although she had nothing to feel guilty about. Not then. She hastily pulled her fingers from Guy’s grip.

He was unflustered, drawling to his brother, ‘Not exactly. I was just trying to persuade Hope that she was about to make the biggest mistake of her young life.’

‘By marrying me?’ Jack concluded, and laughed out loud when his brother nodded. ‘That’s what I love about my little brother. You can always trust him to be totally up front about things…Well, you’re wrong this time, Guy. Hope and I are going to make the distance. Just watch…’

‘Just watch.’ Hope shut her eyes as she recalled Jack’s words all those years ago. Guy had watched all right. He’d watched his words come true. He’d watched their marriage disintegrate. He’d…more than watched.

Hope caught the direction of her thoughts and put a brake on them. She wasn’t going down that road again.

She looked at her watch, and, realising she’d lost almost an hour, got up quickly to fix her face.

She’d just finished washing when Maxine announced her presence with the usual banging doors. She hadn’t time to put on make-up before her daughter tracked her down to the bathroom. For once Hope wished she’d taken a less liberal attitude on privacy.

Maxine walked in, took one look at her face and demanded, ‘What’s wrong? You’ve been crying.’

It sounded like an accusation, but then everything did at the moment with Maxine.

‘No…Well, actually, yes.’ Hope wished she’d rehearsed this speech. ‘It’s…it’s your father.’

‘My father? Don’t tell me—he’s dead,’ Maxine said, but purely for dramatic effect.

While Hope searched futilely for the right words, her face gave away the truth.

Maxine shook her head as if denying it, then started to back away from her.

‘I’m sorry, darling.’ Hope made to reach out a hand but her daughter kept backing away. ‘A car accident. I don’t know the details. It was on the radio. I’m sorry—-’

‘Well, I’m not!’ Maxine almost shouted at her. ‘And don’t expect me to cry! Just don’t…’

With that, Maxine turned and ran from the room.

Hope followed her daughter to her room. She found her face down on the bed, crying like a baby.

Hope sat down beside her and put a comforting hand on her shoulder.

Maxine stiffened, then, turning on her back, sobbed out, ‘I don’t care. I hate him! I hate him!’

‘I know. I know. It’s all right,’ Hope said in comforting tones, and stroked strands of hair from her daughter’s tear-soaked face.

Maxine looked at her in utter misery, then accused, ‘It was your fault, all your fault!’

It hurt. Of course it hurt, but Hope did not retaliate. Maxine was right. The whole mess was her fault.

Hope contained her own feelings, but Maxine read the pain in her mother’s eyes, and hesitated between attack and remorse. In the end she sat up and threw her arms round Hope’s neck, and began crying again.

‘I didn’t mean it! I didn’t mean it!’ she cried into her mother’s neck.

‘No, I know.’ Hope held her daughter and rocked her gently, as she had when Maxine was a baby.

But her thoughts were elsewhere. With another baby. A baby held briefly in her arms, all those years ago.

She remembered how much she’d wanted children, how she’d imagined being a mother would make her complete. She hadn’t questioned why she’d felt incomplete.

She’d also imagined Jack would be happy, too, but, of course, she’d been quite wrong…

‘You’re what?’ he had almost shouted at her when she’d told him.

The joy had drained from her face as she’d repeated, ‘I’m pregnant. Three months.’

She’d waited and waited. For a smile. A flicker of happiness. A gesture of concern. Anything other than Jack’s expression of utter dismay.

He’d recovered himself eventually, saying, ‘It’s a shock. I thought we’d have some time together. We agreed…’

‘I know.’ Hope nodded. They had agreed to take precautions, but something had gone wrong. ‘I didn’t plan it. I didn’t realise you’d mind so much.

‘It’s not that,’ Jack denied, although his lack of enthusiasm was almost palpable. He strode across to the drinks cabinet and fixed himself a stiff drink, before running on, ‘It just doesn’t fit in very well with our plans. My world tour starts in three months and won’t finish before the baby would be born…Perhaps we should wait.’

‘Wait?’ Hope echoed, confused. ‘Wait before you go on tour, you mean?’

‘No, that’s impossible. The tour can’t be cancelled,’ he told her firmly. ‘I just thought…Well, if you’re only three months along…’ He left the idea hanging there.

Hope caught it and her heart sank. ‘You think we should cancel the baby.’ She finally said the words aloud. They were like stones in her heart.

‘I’d hardly term it that,’ Jack said, ‘but, yes, I feel we should consider the alternatives…’

Perhaps Maxine was right. It really was her fault. If she’d listened to Jack, terminated that baby and waited for another, their marriage might have survived. But that baby had been real to her, a person even in the early stages of pregnancy. To terminate on a matter of convenience had been abhorrent to her.

‘Look, Maxine.’ She spoke quietly to her daughter now. ‘I realise you haven’t seen much of your father over the years, but, as I’ve explained before, it was never personal to you.’

‘I know—he didn’t like children.’ Maxine grossly simplified what Hope had actually told her over the years. “Then why did he come those times? Why did he bother?’

Hope had asked herself the same question many times. After ten years’ silence, Jack had turned up on impulse on her doorstep one afternoon, and been all charm to a daughter who, at ten, was already promising to be beautiful. With Hope’s blue eyes and wide, smiling mouth, Maxine still managed to look quite different, her features more defined and her hair a mass of thick black waves.

‘It would have been better if he’d never come,’ Maxine said now, her tears turned to anger as she scrambled off the bed and went to wash in the basin in her room.

Hope agreed with her, but at the time she’d been unable to control the situation. Jack had wanted a daughter, for a while at least, and Maxine had wanted a father. But Jack’s interest hadn’t, of course, lasted.

‘I’m sorry about the way things turned out, Maxine,’ Hope said gently, when her daughter finished drying her face.

She realised the inadequacy of her words even before Maxine looked at her with accusing eyes. ‘Are you? You never wanted me to go places with him.’

Hope remained silent. It was true enough. In fact, after a year of Jack letting Maxine down with a string of broken promises, Hope had deliberately put an end to the relationship.

‘That’s Katie,’ Maxine added as the doorbell downstairs rang. ‘We’re going to do our homework together. I’d better let her in.’

‘Yes, OK.’ Hope blinked a little as her daughter disappeared downstairs to greet her best friend. She heard them laughing in the hallway. From utter misery to girlish giggles in one short move.

How wonderful it would be to be twelve again. To forget so easily. To live in the present. To be free of the past.

Hope had never quite managed it. She was thirty-two next birthday, and had spent twelve years on her own, yet she was still haunted by the past, still tortured by a sense of failure…

She was six months pregnant and miserable. She had read that women bloomed in similar circumstances but she seemed to have wilted. Jack was fed up with her. She didn’t blame him. She was fed up with herself.

“There’s no choice,’ Jack said for the hundredth time as they drove down to Cornwall. ‘It would have been different if your pregnancy was straightforward, but, with your iron-levels, you’d be fainting all over the place. You can’t come on tour with me and you can’t stay at home.’