Celebrate the legend that is bestselling author

PENNY JORDAN

Phenomenally successful author of more than two hundred books with sales of over a hundred million copies!

Penny Jordan’s novels are loved by millions of readers all around the word in many different languages. Mills & Boon are proud to have published one hundred and eighty-seven novels and novellas written by Penny Jordan, who was a reader favourite right from her very first novel through to her last.

This beautiful digital collection offers a chance to recapture the pleasure of all of Penny Jordan’s fabulous, glamorous and romantic novels for Mills & Boon.

About the Author

PENNY JORDAN is one of Mills & Boon’s most popular authors. Sadly, Penny died from cancer on 31st December 2011, aged sixty-five. She leaves an outstanding legacy, having sold over a hundred million books around the world. She wrote a total of one hundred and eighty-seven novels for Mills & Boon, including the phenomenally successful A Perfect Family, To Love, Honour & Betray, The Perfect Sinner and Power Play, which hit the Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller lists. Loved for her distinctive voice, her success was in part because she continually broke boundaries and evolved her writing to keep up with readers’ changing tastes. Publishers Weekly said about Jordan ‘Women everywhere will find pieces of themselves in Jordan’s characters’ and this perhaps explains her enduring appeal.

Although Penny was born in Preston, Lancashire and spent her childhood there, she moved to Cheshire as a teenager and continued to live there for the rest of her life. Following the death of her husband, she moved to the small traditional Cheshire market town on which she based her much-loved Crighton books.

Penny was a member and supporter of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and the Romance Writers of America—two organisations dedicated to providing support for both published and yet-to-be-published authors. Her significant contribution to women’s fiction was recognised in 2011, when the Romantic Novelists’ Association presented Penny with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

A Cure for Love
Penny Jordan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

‘ARE you ready yet, Mum? Honestly, I feel as nervous as though I were the one having to make the speech.’

‘I’m not making a speech, merely handing over the cheque to Dr Hanson,’ Lacey Robinson responded to her daughter’s excited chatter.

In point of fact she was guilty of evasion. She was nervous. Helping to raise the money for the research into the rare and devastating disease—which, while carried in the female genes only, manifested itself in physical symptoms in the male sex, like haemophilia and other similar disorders—had been one thing. Standing up in public to hand over to the hospital the cheque for the money they had raised was another.

She had already told herself very firmly that such self-consciousness was ridiculous in a woman of thirty-eight with a nineteen-year-old daughter, but that hadn’t stopped the butterflies at present crowding her stomach.

‘I’m so proud of you, Ma,’ Jessica told her, crossing the kitchen to come and put her arms round her and give her a hug. Of the two of them Jessica was easily the taller, topping her mother’s slender five-foot-two frame by a good four inches, but their colouring was the same. Both of them had the same silky fine dark hair and the same wide-spaced grey eyes, the same unexpectedly full lips, although in Lacey’s case there was a vulnerability about her features which was missing from those of her more ebullient daughter.

‘I haven’t done anything,’ Lacey protested now. ‘It’s the people who donated the money in response to our appeal who deserve recognition and praise.’

‘Yes, of course,’ Jessica agreed. ‘But you were the one who organised everything, who first started the appeal.’

‘Only after I’d heard about little Michael Sullivan at work. It was so heartbreaking. I still don’t know how on earth Declan and Cath have managed to come to terms with the tragedy of it. To have lost two children before little Michael, from the same inherited disorder…’

‘Can Michael ever be cured?’ Jessica asked her quietly.

‘No, not cured, but with the money we’ve raised further research can take place into ways of alleviating the effect of the deterioration of the central motor system, and of course, now that they’ve managed to isolate the gene which causes the disease, a…Well, with the new techniques they have for discovering the sex of an embryo at a very early stage in a pregnancy, the parents can opt to have only girls who, while they carry the disease, are not affected by it.’

‘You mean that now the Sullivans could choose to have only daughters?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I don’t care what you say, I’m still proud of you,’ Jessica told her warmly, adding, ‘I’m glad they decided to have the presentation now, while I’m at home.’

Jessica was in her first year at Oxford, taking a degree course which would one day equip her with excellent qualifications. If Jessica was proud of her, then how much more was she proud of her daughter? Lacey reflected lovingly.

Life had not been easy for Jessica, an only child, a fatherless child…A child without the financial advantages of many of her peers, she could so easily have grown up rebellious and resentful, unhappy and alone, but, almost right from the moment she was born, she had been a sunny-natured, happy child.

It was typical of Lacey that she herself took no credit for her daughter and, as she wryly told friends, she could certainly take no credit for her scholastic abilities, nor her excellence at sports. Those were qualities—gifts—Jessica had received from her father.

‘Come back, Ma. Where are you?’ Jessica teased her now, waving her hand in front of Lacey’s face and grinning at her.

‘You know what I think, don’t you?’ Jessica commented thoughtfully ten minutes later when they were both in Lacey’s small car, driving towards the civic hall where the presentation was to take place. ‘I think that our Dr Hanson rather fancies you, Ma.’

Lacey flushed. She couldn’t help it. That was the curse of her pale Celtic skin colouring.

Jessica saw this betraying reaction and laughed before asking semi-seriously, ‘Why have you never remarried, Ma? I mean, I know you loved him, but after he’d left you, when it was all over and you were divorced…didn’t you ever…haven’t there…?’

‘Been other men?’ Lacey invited wryly.

It was her policy and always had been to be as open and as honest with her daughter as she could, and, although this wasn’t a topic they had ever discussed before, she sensed that, now that Jessica was living away from home, she was beginning to look far more questioningly at her mother’s past, at her life, comparing it perhaps to the lives of other women of the same age.

‘Well at first I was too…too upset…too…’

‘Devastated,’ Jessica supplied for her. ‘I know he was my father, but how he could have done that to you…?’

‘It wasn’t really his fault, Jess. He fell out of love with me. It happens.’

‘And you were never tempted to tell him about me. I mean…’

‘Yes…yes, I was tempted,’ Lacey admitted honestly. ‘But he’d already made it clear to me that he didn’t love me any longer; that he wanted our marriage to end. I didn’t know until after he’d left that I was expecting you; perhaps I should have.’

‘No…no, Ma. You did the right thing…the only thing,’ Jessica assured her quickly, putting her hand over her mother’s and giving her a warm smile. ‘Don’t you ever think you didn’t. I know people whose parents stuck it out supposedly for their sakes. It must be awful to be brought up in that kind of atmosphere, never really knowing if both your parents are going to be there when you get home from school, feeling they’re only together because of you. No, I might only have had you but I’ve never, never doubted that you loved me and wanted me.’

For a moment the two women exchanged looks of shared love and respect and then Jessica reminded her mother slyly, ‘But you still haven’t answered my original question.’

‘No. Well, as I said at first, it was the last thing on my mind, and then as you grew older…Well, to be honest with you, Jess, there just never seemed to be the time, or at least it’s probably more honest to say that there never was a man for whom I wanted to make the time.’

‘Perhaps you were afraid…afraid of allowing anyone to get too close to you in case they hurt you the way he…the way my father hurt you,’ Jessica suggested shrewdly.

‘Perhaps,’ Lacey agreed.

‘Well, it can’t have been because you didn’t have the opportunity,’ Jessica added forthrightly.

She laughed when Lacey flushed again.

‘Oh, Ma…sometimes you make me feel as though you’re the little girl. Look at you! I’ve seen the way men give you a second look, the way they watch you. And it’s not just because you look sexy.’

When Lacey started to object, she overruled her and went on firmly.

‘No, I don’t care how much you try to deny it, you are; but it’s not just that…it’s something else. Something to do with the fact that you’re so small and…and vulnerable-looking.’

‘Well I may be short on inches, but that does not make me vulnerable,’Lacey told her quickly.

It was a sensitive issue, this obvious vulnerability she knew she possessed and yet seemed unable to do anything about. Others had commented on it, women friends…men. She knew that it was, like Jessica herself, something that had come with her marriage, or rather with the ending of it. But the last thing she wanted to do this evening was to think about the past.

Even now there were still times when she dreamed about it…about him…and in those dreams still remembered. When she woke up her response to the remembered hand against her skin was so acute, so sharp that the realisation that it was just a dream seemed impossible to accept. And there were other dreams…dreams when she cried out her shock, her disbelief, her anguish, and woke up with her face wet with tears.

Oddly enough those dreams had intensified since Jessica had gone to university. It was almost as though her subconscious self had tried to restrain them while Jessica was there, knowing how much she would hate her daughter to be upset…to know how very intensely she still remembered events which were over months before her daughter’s birth.

At first she had put it down to the fact that she was missing Jess…the fact that she was, for the first time in twenty years, really alone; and yet her life was busy and fulfilled. She had a good job…good friends…and, since she had got herself involved in the fund-raising for little Michael, she scarcely seemed to have had a moment to call her own.

Tonight was the culmination of many months of hard work, bringing Michael’s plight to the attention of the country via the media, raising money through all manner of events for research into ways of alleviating the distressing physical and mental deterioration suffered by children like Michael, children who rarely survived to adulthood—although there were varying degrees of severity and admittedly there had been very rare instances in which male children born to female carriers of the gene seemed to have escaped unscathed but these instances were far too rare to form the basis for any kind of detailed research.

Their small country town was lucky in having a very good local hospital, and now, with the money they had raised, further research could be done. It couldn’t bring back the two sons the Sullivans had already lost, of course, Lacey acknowledged sadly as she parked her car outside the civic hall.

They were halfway across the car park when Jessica, who had been walking a couple of yards behind her, suddenly caught up with her, taking hold of her arm and giving her a small shake as she told her with a soft laugh, ‘There—see—it’s happened again: A man just getting out of the smoothest-looking car you’ve ever seen was really giving you the eye.’

‘Jessica!’ Lacey protested. ‘Honestly. I—’

‘OK, OK, but it seems so wrong that you should be on your own like this, Mum. You’re only thirty-eight. You should marry again…I hate the thought of you spending the rest of your life on your own. One of our tutors was saying the other day that there are women now, career women, who are marrying for the first time in their late thirties and having children…that the mature older woman with young children will soon be more the norm…that people won’t feel so isolated when they get older because they will still have children at home…and—’

‘Ah, I see where this is all leading: you’re worried that I’m going to become a burden to you in my old age. Well, I’ve got news for you, my darling daughter: I don’t need a husband to produce children.’

‘No, but you do need a man,’ Jessica told her bluntly. ‘And it isn’t that. You know that. It’s just that I’m beginning to realise how much you missed out on, and if you want the truth I feel guilty, Ma. If it hadn’t been for me, you could—’

‘Stop right there,’ Lacey told her firmly. ‘If it hadn’t been for you I’d probably have given up and…and done something very, very silly indeed,’ she said quietly and truthfully, watching the shock register in her daughter’s eyes. ‘You were my lifeline, Jess. You were my reason for going on living. Without you—’

‘You really loved him that much?’ Jessica shivered. ‘Oh, God, Ma, I’m never, ever going to let myself be vulnerable to a man like that.’

Lacey felt her heart sink. She had been afraid of this. Afraid that in her honesty she might have warped Jessica’s own attitude to love.

‘Loving someone always makes you vulnerable, Jess, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad.’ She pushed Jessica’s long hair off her face and smiled at her. ‘You will fall in love, you know,’ she told her softly. ‘And, when you do, you’ll wonder how you can ever have believed you wouldn’t, I promise you.’

She prayed that she was right, and that Jessica wouldn’t cut herself off from the happiness that loving someone would bring her just because of her experience.

After all, it was quite true. Lacey could have gone on to form another relationship, to have married a second time. The fact that she had chosen not to was…Well, as she had already told Jessica, there had simply never been a man who had made her feel that she wanted to.

Or was it that she had never allowed there to be a man who might have made her feel that way?

Uncomfortably she pushed away the thought. What was the matter with her? She had far more important things on her mind right now than dwelling on the past; on something she should have overcome years ago. It was twenty years since her marriage had broken up, for heaven’s sake. Twenty years. A lifetime, and yet sometimes…sometimes she would see a man in the distance, and something about the way he moved, the turn of his head…would set her heart racing, her stomach cramping, and it would all come sweeping over her again. The elation, the desolation, the joy…the grief…the pain, the anguish…the disbelief and the anger.

She hadn’t realised she had stopped walking until Jessica caught hold of her arm and said teasingly, ‘It’s no use, Ma. Too late to back out now. They’re all waiting for you in there.’ She eyed Lacey’s elegant navy dress with its white collar critically and added, ‘I still think the walking shorts and that snazzy little jacket with the gold stripes would have looked terrific on you…’

Recalling the eye-catching outfit Jessica was describing, Lacey grinned at her and retorted, ‘For someone your age with endless legs maybe; for me—never!’

The civic hall was packed, the sea of faces confronting her as people turned their heads to register her entrance, panicking her for a moment, even though she had thought she was prepared.

She had never liked crowds, preferring solitude, anonymity—a legacy from her childhood at the children’s home where she had grown up after the death of her parents—and she suspected that without Jessica standing behind her and blocking her exit she might almost have been tempted to turn, run and disappear.

Thank goodness for Jess. How humiliating it would have been if she were to give way to that silly juvenile impulse…and now Ian Hanson was coming towards her, smiling at her…

As Jessica had so sapiently remarked, had Lacey indicated that she would welcome it he would probably have been keen to take their relationship to a more personal level.

As it was she liked him, just as she liked her boss, Tony Aimes, but for neither of them did she feel the emotional, or sexual, desire that might have encouraged her to respond to their overtures. Both of them were divorced, both of them had children, both of them were kind, attractive men, but, much as she liked them as people, as men they left her completely cold, completely untouched…unaroused.

Because she deliberately chose to stay that way? Because she was afraid? Angry with her train of thought, she tried to remind herself why she was here. Tonight was most certainly not the night for that kind of immature and self-centred soul-searching.

Tonight was Michael’s night; Michael’s and the night of all those who had given so generously to their cause.

She had been very apprehensive at first when she had been nominated by the other members of their fund-raising committee to be the one to publicly hand over the cheque to the hospital, but rather than cause a fuss she had unwillingly agreed to do so.

Tony Aimes had suggested that after the presentation they might go out together somewhere for a celebratory meal, but she had gently refused, just as she had refused a similar invitation from Ian Hanson, explaining truthfully that, since she saw so little of Jessica now that her daughter was at Oxford, she intended to spend the evening with her.

The trouble was that, while she liked both men as friends, and while the last thing she wanted to do was to hurt anyone’s feelings, she knew enough of the anguish of loving someone and then finding out that the love they professed to feel in return was only a cruel sham to ever wish to inflict that kind of pain on anyone else, so she had no wish to have a more intimate relationship with either of them.

She had known Tony Aimes for many years. She had originally moved to this part of the world following the break-up of her marriage.

Housing here had been relatively cheap then, and as Lacey had been a divorcee with a baby on the way—and very little money—that had been an important consideration.

When Jessica’s father had announced that he didn’t love her any more and that he wanted a divorce, he had told her that she could keep the marital home, that all he wanted was his freedom; but her pride would not allow her to do that, and so after the divorce had become final she had sold the house and scrupulously forwarded to his solicitor half the proceeds of its sale.

She had never received any acknowledgement of his receipt of the money but then she had not expected to do so. From the day he had walked into their kitchen and announced that he no longer loved her he had also walked out of her life, and her only contact with him had been via their solicitors.

People started to clap as she walked towards the small stage. She could feel the hot burn of embarrassed colour sweeping her skin. At thirty-eight she ought to be long past the stage of blushing like a schoolgirl, she told herself ruefully; long, long past it.

It seemed she was the last to arrive—the others were already up on the stage, little Michael squirming excitedly in his chair as she went to join them.

She couldn’t help it; as she saw him smiling at her her eyes filled with tears, not of sadness, but of joy—joy in people’s generosity and warmth, and joy in Michael’s innocent love of life.

At the moment his illness was in remission; he had received a stay of execution, but for how long?

As she bent to hug and kiss him, she prayed that somehow a miracle could happen and that Michael could be saved; but there were so many other Michaels in the world, so many other children who…

She checked her thoughts, reminding herself that emotionalism did nothing to help Michael, that it wasn’t sitting in a corner crying which had raised the money to further research, but other people’s generosity and hard work.

As she took her place with the others she glanced down into the mass of people gathered in the hall. She could see Jessica sitting in the front row, not far from Tony Aimes.

Was it really almost twenty years ago that she had first started working for Tony as his secretary? Where on earth had the years gone?

During that time Tony had been married and then divorced; Jessica had grown from a baby to a woman; and she—what had she done with her life? What had she achieved on a personal level?

She had financial security, a very pleasant lifestyle, and she knew that many people would have envied her. There were others though, she knew, who looked at her and pitied her for her single, manless state.

That had never worried her. Better by far to live alone in contentment and peace than to suffer the kind of anguish which she knew all too well could come from loving another person. Especially when, like her, one had a propensity to love too well…too intensely, perhaps, and certainly too unwisely.

The chairman of their small committee was getting to his feet, explaining for the benefit of the audience the purpose of their fund-raising. Her stomach muscles knotted and tensed as she waited for her own cue, the moment when she would have to get up and hand over the cheque to Ian.

She had rehearsed her few lines over and over again and was surely word-perfect by now. All she really had to do was to add her thanks to those of the chairman, and then hand over the cheque to Ian.

At the back of the hall people from the local radio station and TV company were busily recording the event, and the movement of the camera, catching the light momentarily, distracted her so that she looked away from the stage and into the audience.

Quite how it happened she had no real idea; quite why she should so unerringly pick out one face among so many, and a face she had not seen in twenty years, moreover…Surely it should not have been possible for her to recognise him so instantly, to know with that gut-wrenching, heart-stopping surge of awareness that it was him, even from that one brief glance; but it was.

Lewis was here. Here in the civic hall…here in her home-town…here in the place, the life she had built so determinedly to exclude him…to exclude everything about him.

Everything bar the child he had given her; and the pain he had inflicted upon her.

Lewis Marsh…her husband…her lover. The only man she had ever loved…ever wanted. The man she had thought loved her in the same way…the man who had told her that he did love her, who had begged her to marry him, who had told her that they would always be together, throughout life and throughout eternity.

Eternity! Their marriage had lasted just over a year.

She started to tremble violently, her heart pounding with sick shock as her brain refused to take in what her eyes were telling her.

It must be a mistake; it couldn’t possibly be Lewis.

She had, out of shock and self-protection, already focused her gaze as far away from him as she possibly could, but now, like a child anxiously searching a darkened room for an imagined monster, she looked hesitantly back, searching the packed hall feverishly, praying that she had been mistaken.

Twenty years was, after all, a long time…long enough for mistakes to be made, for her memory to play tricks on her. The Lewis she remembered no longer existed. Like her, he would have changed, grown older.

The sickness returned. If she had recognised him, then had he…? She stopped searching. Her brain was trying to perform impossible acrobatics with far too many confusing thoughts.

What if by some impossible chance it was Lewis? Even if he had recognised her he was hardly likely to walk up on to the stage and announce to the world that she had once been his wife, was he? Why was she so afraid?

She wasn’t afraid, she told herself stoutly. She was just shocked…taken aback…and no doubt she had made a mistake anyway. It couldn’t possibly be Lewis. Why should it be? No; her belief that she had seen him was just a by-product of her nervousness about presenting the cheque.

Presenting the cheque! She tensed, appalled to realise that she had stopped following the chairman’s speech; that, in the space of half a dozen seconds or so, the purpose of her presence on the stage had been totally submerged by the shock of thinking she had seen her ex-husband, and now as she feverishly concentrated on what the chairman was saying she realised that it was almost time for her to stand up and make the presentation.

‘And so now I should like to hand you over to our chief fund-raiser, without whom this whole appeal would never have been launched—Lacey Robinson.’

Lacey stood up. She had reverted to her maiden name after the divorce, and now, for some reason, as she got to her feet her glance darted almost guiltily towards the packed hall, almost as though she expected Lewis to stand up and announce that she was masquerading under a false name; and yet, even if by some extraordinary mischance it was Lewis, why on earth should he object to her reversion to her maiden name? It was he after all, who had brought their marriage to an end…who had announced that it was over, that he no longer loved her…that there was someone else…

This time as she scanned the hall there was no familiar male face, no malely autocratic profile, no sleek, well-groomed dark head—no one in fact who remotely resembled the man she had married, the man who had fathered Jessica, the man she had loved to the point where without him her life had no purpose, no reason other than that somehow she must keep on going for the sake of their child, the child he hadn’t even known she had conceived; the child he had already told her he wouldn’t have wanted.

‘You want domesticity…children…I don’t,’he had told her flatly, ignoring her feeble attempt to interrupt him, to protest that when he had told her how much he had loved her, how much he had wanted her as his wife, he had said how much he wanted her to have his children, how much he shared with her a longing for the domestic family life neither of them had ever really known—she because of her parents’death, and he through the divorce which had split up his parents while he was still very young.

Somehow or other she managed to make her short speech and hand over the cheque, although her hands were trembling violently when Ian took it from her.

Afterwards, when it was all over, Jessica came hurrying anxiously towards her, asking her if she was all right.

‘You had such an odd look on your face when you were on the stage. I even thought for a moment you were just going to get up and walk out. I know you were nervous, but I hadn’t realised…Anyway, it’s over now,’ she comforted her.

Lacey gave a vague smile.

‘Never mind, Ma, you were brill, despite your nerves,’ Jessica told her, tucking her arm through her mother’s. ‘And now how about that meal you promised me, before one of your admirers pounces on you and persuades you to let him join us?’

Lacey gave her a wan look. In reality the last thing she felt like doing was going out to eat. Her stomach was still performing somersaults and her heart felt as though it had literally been squeezed in a vice.

She felt both sick and shaky, like someone suffering from the aftermath of a nerve-shattering shock. She told herself that she was being ridiculous; that she was a grown woman, and surely long past the stage of reacting like that simply because she thought she had seen a man whose memory she ought to have put behind her years ago.

‘Quickly,’ Jessica hissed. ‘Tony’s heading this way.’As they headed for the exit she added drily, ‘Honestly, Ma, I don’t know why you don’t marry poor Tony. He adores you, you know, and he always has. Think of the life you’d have—he’d spoil you to death.’

‘I like him, but I don’t love him,’ Lacey told her, surprising herself as much as her daughter, who stopped and turned to look at her. ‘Is that so very shocking,’ she asked Jessica defensively, ‘that at my age I should consider love a prerequisite for marriage? I suppose to someone of your age it probably is.’

‘No…you’ve got it all wrong. Of course I don’t think you’re too old to fall in love. I was just surprised that you should want to. I’ve always had the impression that because of what happened with…with my father that we…that you’d written sexual love out of your life so to speak. I thought that you’d actually prefer the kind of relationship you could have with Tony—him spoiling you…pampering you…’

‘That wouldn’t be fair to him,’ Lacey told her quietly.

‘No, I suppose not. But there must be times when you feel lonely…when you want—’

‘Sex,’ Lacey supplied bluntly for her, surprising herself a second time.

Jessica gave her a sideways look. ‘Well…yes…although I wouldn’t have put it quite as directly as that,’ she told her a little defensively.

Lacey shook her head, and then wondered if she was being entirely honest. Weren’t there times even now when she woke up tense and aching, her body reminding her that there had once been a time when she hadn’t slept alone, when she had known the caresses of a lover, when she…

‘What I want right now is my dinner,’ she fibbed, completely redirecting the conversation. ‘I’ve booked a table at that new Italian place. It’s supposed to be very good.’

IT WAS—at least to judge from the enjoyment Jessica was exhibiting. For her part, Lacey found that she just simply didn’t have any appetite.

‘Ma, what’s wrong?’Jessica started to ask her, and then broke off to say admiringly, ‘Mm…now that’s what I call a man! Pity he’s too old for me.’

Lacey turned her head in automatic response to Jessica’s comment.

Three men had just walked into the restaurant, but she only saw one of them. This time there was no possibility of a mistake…no doubt. It was like a massive blow to the heart, numbing her body into complete immobility.

Lewis. It was Lewis!

‘Ma, what is it…what’s wrong? You look as though you’ve just seen a ghost,’ Jessica told her worriedly.

A ghost. She gave a deep shudder, her mouth twisting painfully.

Behind her she could hear Lewis’s voice—deep, masculine, so agonisingly familiar, so shockingly clearly remembered.

‘Jess, I’m not feeling very well,’ she said shakily. ‘Would you mind if we left?’

The men had walked past them now, leaving Lacey free to stand up as she kept her back towards them. Small chance of Lewis’s recognising her; why should he? she reflected with an unfamiliar stab of sharp bitterness.

She meant nothing to him. He probably didn’t even remember that she had ever existed. She wondered if he was still with her, the woman he had left her for, or if she too had suffered her fate; if he had gone on to fall out of love with her as well.

She pushed herself free of the table, shivering sickly, glad of Jessica’s warm protective arm around her shoulders as her daughter came to her side and said anxiously, ‘Ma, something’s wrong. Look, let’s get you home, and then I’m going to call Ian Hanson.’

Behind her she was aware of movement, of someone tensing, turning, but she couldn’t look back, couldn’t do anything other than freeze and shiver, aching to escape, knowing it was impossible to explain to Jessica just what was wrong, hating herself for causing her daughter this anxiety and for spoiling their last evening together…but how could she turn to Jessica now and say ‘You know that man you were just admiring? Well, he’s your father’?

She had always been honest with Jessica about her marriage, and told her when she was in her teens that she would never stand in her way if she ever felt she wanted to contact her father, but Jessica had remained adamant that she didn’t, that she wanted nothing to do with the man who had treated her mother so cruelly, even though Lacey had painstakingly explained to her that Lewis had known nothing of her pregnancy…had not realised that she was already carrying his child when he’d announced that he wanted a divorce.

‘You’d better let me drive,’ Jessica announced when they got to the car. ‘You went so white in there. Is something wrong, Ma?’ she asked anxiously. ‘I know you and how you hate me to worry about anything.’

‘Nothing’s wrong,’ Lacey fibbed firmly. ‘I think I’m just suffering a bit of over-reaction to this evening. I was dreading giving that speech. You know what a baby I am about public events. I’m sorry I let it spoil our meal, though.’

‘Well, you certainly look a lot better now. Are you sure you don’t want me to call Ian?’

‘Stop fussing! I’m fine. A good night’s sleep and tomorrow morning I’ll be back to normal.’

She knew that it wasn’t true, but thankfully tomorrow morning Jessica was going back to Oxford. For the first time since her daughter had left home, Lacey actually wanted to see her go. Her mouth twisted bitterly.

CHAPTER TWO

TEN o’clock on a fine sunny morning. Lacey had the whole day ahead of her with a hundred and one things she could do, and yet all she felt like doing was crawling back to bed, like an animal seeking protection, oblivion almost, if not from life, then at least from her own thoughts…her tormenting memories.

Half an hour ago she had watched Jessica drive off, having assured her anxious daughter over and over again that she was fine.

She couldn’t blame Jessica for being anxious: one look in her mirror confirmed her daughter’s worried comments.

Her face looked bloodless, even with her make-up, her eyes huge and shadowed, her mouth…She shivered a little, rubbing the goose-flesh on her arms. Her mouth, always a good indicator of her feelings, looked, even to her own eyes, vulnerable, unhappy…shocked.

Dear God, if only she had been wrong. If only it hadn’t been Lewis last night. She knew that she wasn’t wrong. It was Lewis, although what he was doing here in town she had no idea—if he was still here; perhaps he had already gone. Her tension started to ease. She pictured him, driving away from the town, his wife, her successor, at his side. She pictured the back of his head, saw the speeding car, visualised its driving through the town towards the motorway network, felt her tense muscles starting to relax, told herself that she was panicking over nothing, that, horrible though the coincidence of his turning up at the restaurant had been, it meant nothing. He had obviously not recognised her. Why should he, after all? And even if he had…even if he had…

There was something wet on her face. She touched it with her hands and discovered that she was crying.

This simply would not do. She was a supposedly mature woman of thirty-eight with a daughter of nineteen to prove it; what right, what purpose did Lewis have to suddenly appear out of the blue to destroy her contentment?

Stop being so paranoid, she chided herself firmly. How could Lewis’s presence in town have anything to do with her? It was pure chance, that was all; an unfortunate chance, it was true, the sight of him stirring up, as it had done, memories; images; emotions which ought to have stopped hurting her years ago.

She had, after all, only been eighteen when she’d first met him. He had been twenty-one, almost twenty-two. They had both been invited to the same birthday party, he had looked across the room, and she had known then.

What? she asked herself tiredly; that he would break her heart…destroy her life? That he would claim to love her and then turn round and tell her that love no longer existed? That their marriage was a mistake?

It was just as well that she had arranged several days’leave from work to coincide with Jessica’s visit home: the last thing she felt capable of doing right now was dealing with the complexities of her job as Tony’s secretary-cum-PA.

She had a meeting later on in the day at the hospital with Ian; a final sorting out of some paperwork connected with the appeal. Ian had tentatively suggested taking her out for lunch but she had gently refused.

What was wrong with her? she wondered ruefully now. Why couldn’t she abandon the past, let go of her fears and inhibitions and allow herself to grow more intimately involved with another man?

She already knew the answer to that. Lewis had hurt her far too badly for her ever to want to risk suffering that kind of pain again.

Or was it more because no man whom she had met in the years since he had left her had ever come close to arousing within her the emotions which he had so easily touched than because she was afraid of allowing herself to love another man?

There was no room in her life for such immature introspection, she told herself sharply. That kind of self-indulgence was for teenagers, for young women of her daughter’s age. Women of her maturity were far too sensible and far too busy to waste time dwelling on their emotions.

Or were they? Was it more that she had never allowed herself to dwell on hers because she was too frightened of what she might have to confront?

Jessica’s probing questions last night about the way she lived her life, plus the shock of seeing Lewis, were having a most unwelcome effect on her—one that could surely be best banished by some hard work and a much firmer control on her treacherous thoughts.

She was meeting Ian at the hospital at two o’clock. It was eleven now and she had promised herself that this morning she would attack the greenfly on her precious roses.

Her small house did not have a large garden, but it was blessed by an enclosing brick wall, against which over the years she had lovingly trained a variety of scented old-fashioned roses.

Beneath them were borders of mixed traditional cottage garden plants—peonies, hollyhocks, delphiniums, forget-me-nots, which seeded themselves and ran half-wild, aquileas, which did the same thing, producing their pretty pink and white flowers, and catmint, which was invariably flattened by next door’s fat ginger tom-cat whom she hadn’t the heart to evict from his favourite patch of the scented plant.

Treating the roses for greenfly was a laborious business, especially in these ecology-conscious days, and there wasn’t going to be time to complete the task before she had to leave for the hospital, which meant she would have to tackle the housework instead.

With a wistful glance at the sunny garden, she headed for the stairs to strip Jessica’s bed.

The first thing she saw when she walked into the room was Jessica’s old teddy bear sitting on top of the chest of drawers.

She had bought the bear for Jessica before she was born. She went over to the chest and picked up the bear, absently smoothing its worn fur, her eyes dark with shadows.

It had been a cold wet day, she remembered, her mouth twisting a little bitterly at the ease with which she recalled every detail of that particular day.

It had been the day the letter had arrived from Lewis’s solicitors, setting out the formal terms of their divorce. The divorce that even then she had desperately hoped would never happen; that letter with its cold, formal prose, its heavy underlining of Lewis’s desire to cut himself completely free of her. He was giving her the house, the car, the entire contents of their savings account; Lewis, unlike her, had had a moneyed background; his maternal grandparents had left him money, and it had been with this money that he had bought their pretty house and set up a business in partnership with a colleague as independent insurance brokers.

There would be money coming to her from the business…she need not fear she would suffer financially from the divorce—that was what he had told her that shocking day when he had walked in and told her that he wanted their marriage brought to an end.

With hindsight she recognised that there had been something wrong for some time; that he had been quiet, withdrawn from her at times; but she had assumed that it was just the pressure of setting up the new business, and she had been so young, so much still a very new wife, that she had resolutely told herself that she was being over-sensitive, that marriage could not forever be one long honeymoon, that of course there were bound to be times when all might not seem perfect; and then had come the bombshell…the discovery that Lewis didn’t love her any more…didn’t want her any more…that there was someone else and that he wanted his freedom.

She could have fought the divorce, could have made him wait out the statutory period, but her pride would never have allowed her to do that…and as for his money…

She had allowed her solicitor to accept half the value of the house and no more, and then she had told him that she intended to move right away from the area and make a fresh start somewhere else.

It had been on her first trip here that she had bought the bear.

She had had to change trains at Birmingham. There had been a two-hour wait for her connection. She had walked out of the station into the busy, wet city streets, feeling as though her whole life had come to an end, as though there were no point in even thinking about going on.

Coming towards her down the wet road she had seen a bus, lumbering slowly closer as it picked up speed.

She could recall with complete clarity even now the sharp clearness of her brain and its processes—of assessing the speed of the bus, of knowing that all she had to do was to step out into the street in front of it and there would be no more pain, no more anguish, no more loneliness…no more anything.

She had walked to the edge of the kerb; she had stepped forward; she had even taken a step out into the street, when suddenly for the first time she had felt her baby kick.

She had covered her stomach with both hands, an immediate, instinctively protective, wondering gesture, shock, joy and the most bitter-sweet sharp pain she had ever known coalescing inside her.

Someone had touched her arm then, another woman, chiding her warningly, ‘Better watch the traffic duck. These bus drivers…’

And the moment of crisis was over; she was safely back on the pavement, shaking, feeling sick, tears pricking her eyes, but alive…and, more important, her baby was alive as well.

It had been then that she had bought the bear.

She realised suddenly that its worn fur was damp, coming abruptly out of the past to the angry realisation that she was crying again.

Mid-life blues, she taunted herself, ignoring the evidence of Jessica’s full-length mirror which denied that her still very youthful and slender figure showed any signs of becoming middle-aged.

She had come up here to strip the bed, not to dwell with maudlin self-pity on the past, she reminded herself as she pulled back the duvet and very firmly put the bear back where he belonged.

At one o’clock she started to get ready for her meeting with Ian, dressing carefully in a plain navy dress enlivened with a pretty white shawlcollar, and pair of plain, elegant navy blue pumps.

It was all very well for Jessica to complain that her mother’s wardrobe needed jazzing up and that she was far too young and pretty to wear such consistently dull colours: she liked classic clothes made in classic styles.

A final check of her make-up confirmed that the elegant and discreet toffees and peaches of her eyeshadow added just the right degree of emphasis to her eyes; her mouth as always caused her to pause and wince a little. Not even the most discreet and pale lipstick could disguise its fullness…its—

‘You really have the most wonderful mouth. Just made for kissing. Just made for this…’

She swallowed hard. Lewis had said those words to her the night he’d proposed, whispering the compliments in between light decorous kisses which had very quickly become less light and far from decorous. She shuddered deeply, only just managing to restrain herself from actually touching her mouth, the taste of him, the memory of him so very, very sharp and clear. She had been almost totally sexually inexperienced when she and Lewis had met.

He had been her first lover…her only lover, she reminded herself drily. The general mood of the sixties seemed to have passed her by. She had certainly never experienced the urge of those of her peers who had thrown themselves into sampling all the pleasures of the so-called sexual revolution, but then more recently in conversations with her women friends she had learned that the majority of them had also married their first lover, giving rise, in some cases, to the good-humoured complaint that there had been times—especially when their families were young and their husbands busy—when they had wondered if they had somehow missed out on life.

A different, more health-conscious approach to life had brought a different set of attitudes and values, and, as Jessica had already told her with the seriousness and confidence of extreme youth, when she eventually made love it would only be with someone whose sexual history allowed her to feel safe with him.

Jessica was one of a new breed of young women who considered a career and financial independence to be the main goals of their life: marriage and a family were things that could be put on hold until these goals were achieved. Certainly with the soaring divorce rate it seemed a sensible plan. But love…emotions—could these really be summoned at will when one had decided that the time was right to admit them into one’s life? Lacey was not so sure. Or was it simply that she lacked will-power…that there was something missing in her make-up that had made it impossible for her to ever really forget Lewis…to ever really forget the pain he had caused her?

It might have helped her had she been able to hate him, to direct the corrosive power of bitterness and hatred into destroying her love, but that weapon had been denied her and the terrible anguish of all her pain had been turned against herself rather than against him.

With time she had learned to tell herself that it was not her fault that he had ceased to love her; that it was not through some lack in her that he had turned to another woman; that these things happened; that they were an everyday occurrence and not something that marked her out as a pariah, a leper, a person who had failed at one of life’s most important relationships. So Lewis had stopped loving her and she had been hurt…very badly hurt. Life had to go on, and somehow she had made it go on, but the scars were still there. Her fault, not his, as she had told herself over and over again down the years. Perhaps it was because she had been so young, so alone, so idealistic, so dependent almost on his love and approval that she had suffered so desperately when they were removed. Had she had more self-worth, more sense of her own special individuality, more awareness and selfrespect, things might have been different, she might have been different. Looking back, she saw herself as weak and destructive as a clinging vine, looking to Lewis to provide every motivation within her life, slowly choking him with the intensity of her love. Was it really any wonder that he had turned away from her?

She had been determined not to swamp her daughter in the same way, scrupulously ensuring that Jessica grew up without the hindrance of a clinging, obsessive mother. No matter how much it had hurt her at times, she had always actively encouraged her daughter to be independent, to be her own person. She valued the love that existed between them, but she did not delude herself. Jessica was slowly growing away from her, slowly beginning to take her own place in the adult world.

Perhaps Jessica was right…perhaps it was time for her to think about her own future.

And to do what? To marry someone like Tony or Ian…a man she might like but whom she could never love, simply to avoid the loneliness of old age? Wasn’t that just as pathetic and selfish as her absorbed, intensive love for Lewis? No, she was better on her own. Safer.

She checked, uncomfortable with the word which had slipped so betrayingly into her mind. What need had she for safety these days? The pain of the past was a long time behind her now. She wasn’t that same girl any more. She was a woman now…a woman who was firmly in control of her own life, her own destiny. So what if Lewis had by some unfortunate coincidence appeared in her part of the world? He obviously hadn’t recognised her; there was very little chance of her running into him a second time.

Perhaps not, but she knew it was that brief, shocking sight of him which was responsible for today’s introspective mood, for the shadows that showed in her eyes and skin, for the pain that lurked within her, waiting for her to relax her guard.

She gave a tiny shiver as she let herself out of the house. She had things to do, a life to live, and she had promised little Michael that she would call round to see him later on this afternoon.

If she had one secret regret it was that she had not had more children. There was something so special, so magical and humbling about the knowledge that the physical expression of one’s love had led to the creation of a child…

She got into her car and started the engine. It was high time she put those kinds of thoughts very firmly behind her, and yet, as Jessica had reminded her, at thirty-eight she was still young enough to have another child.

Another child…Her hands gripped the steering-wheel. First she would have to find herself a lover…a lover, not a potential father for her unborn child. A lover—the very last thing she wanted or needed in her life. What on earth was the matter with her? Was it just her conversation with Jessica which was having such an unsettling effect on her, or was it something more than that…something to do with that disturbing sighting of Lewis…with her dreams…the emotions…the needs that continued to haunt her, no matter how much she tried to deny them?

She knew it was only because Lewis had been her only lover that those embarrassing and erotic dreams that sometimes tormented her sleep should always portray him as her partner, and that in all reality their lovemaking had probably never really been quite as intense, as passionate, as fulfilling as her dreams suggested, and yet she also knew that it was those same dreams that strengthened her unwillingness to allow another man into her life; that it was those dreams, those memories that prevented her from allowing herself to find a quieter, gentler, safer happiness with another man.

It was only when she reached the roundabout close to the hospital that she recognised with a guilty start that she had driven right across town so wrapped up in her thoughts that she wasn’t really aware of having done so.

It was exactly two o’clock as she walked into the hospital and told the smiling receptionist that she had an appointment with Dr Hanson.

‘Yes, of course, Mrs Robinson. I’ll just let him know that you’re here.’

Over the years Lacey had grown accustomed to people mistakenly addressing her as Mrs Robinson. Her reversion to her maiden name had been an instinctive gesture of revulsion against retaining anything given to her by Lewis, and, although at first she had been quick to correct people and tell them that it was Miss Robinson, these days she had ceased to bother. Correction tended to disconcert or confuse them more than their mistake concerned her.

She turned away while the girl used the intercom, and then turned back to the desk when she heard her saying, ‘If you’d just like to go down to Dr Hanson’s office…’

Having thanked her and confirmed that she knew the way, Lacey set off down the corridor.

She had to pass the maternity ward on the way to Ian’s office, and through the open doors she heard the mewling cry of the new born. Her insides clenched on that familiar, never forgotten mixture of anxiety and love. It didn’t seem possible that it was over nineteen years since Jessica’s birth. She remembered how thrilled she had been when they had told her that she had a daughter, how proud…how…how elated almost, and then later had come the panic, the depression, the tears, and the miserable desolation of knowing that she was alone in her joy, that for her there was no partner to share in the happiness of their child’s birth.

The nurses had been wonderful, and luckily she had overcome her depression.

She realised that she had stopped outside the ward. Sighing to herself, she shook her head and forced herself to continue down the corridor.

The door to Ian’s office was closed. She knocked briefly on it out of politeness and then opened it and walked in.

She had expected to find Ian on his own, but it wasn’t the shock of realisation that someone else was with him that stopped her in her tracks; it was the discovery that the other man in his office was none other than Lewis.

Lewis…here in Ian’s office. Her whole body felt heavy and cumbersome, unable to respond to the sluggish commands of her brain, and yet at the same time her stomach was churning, her metabolism racing so frantically out of control that she was afraid she might literally be sick where she stood.

Ian, apparently oblivious to her shocked distress, was smiling at her, coming over to stand beside her and put a friendly arm around her shoulders as he said warmly, ‘Lewis, I’d like you to meet a very good friend of mine: Lacey Robinson. Lacey has been the main motivator behind the appeal. She’s worked far harder than the rest of us put together.’

Ian gave her a fond smile.

‘Did Jessica get off all right this morning? A pity that she couldn’t stay on a bit longer. Still, it’s her first year and she won’t want to miss out on any of her tutorials. Jessica is Lacey’s daughter,’ Lacey heard him explaining to Lewis. ‘I must admit I still find it hart to believe that Lacey is the mother of a university student.’

Lacey could feel her face beginning to burn with a mixture of shock and anxiety. She couldn’t bring herself to look at her exhusband…couldn’t endure the contempt and disinterest she knew would be in his eyes. She knew that Ian was only meaning to flatter her, that he genuinely did believe she looked much younger than her thirty-eight years; that he genuinely did find it difficult to believe that she was Jessica’s mother; but that didn’t stop her from feeling hideously embarrassed as though she were one of those women who made a point of telling everyone within earshot that she had been a child bride, and that they and their daughters were more like sisters really. That kind of thing had always made her squirm and feel acutely sorry for the poor unfortunate daughters, who in some way were almost never allowed to grow up to maturity, who always seemed to be held back by their mothers’ determinedly clutching on to ‘youth’, who were never quite as pretty or as popular as their mothers had been at their age—and yet stubbornly she refused to open her mouth and make any disclaimer. After all, why should she feel any need to justify herself in any way to Lewis?

She could see him just within the periphery of her vision. He was standing in the shadows of the room, his head slightly averted, as though he didn’t want to look at her, to acknowledge her.

His hair, she realised, was still as dark as it had always been, untouched by grey and apparently as thick and vibrant as ever. She remembered how she had loved to touch it, to feel the soft springiness of its curl beneath her fingertips, envying him that natural characteristic which had been denied her. And yet he, it seemed, had been equally fascinated by the soft sleek fall of her own straight locks, praising their silkiness, saying her hair was fluid and warm like sun-stroked water. When they made love he had liked the sensation of her hair against his skin…against his body. He had coaxed her to rub herself against him like a small sleek cat, and the sound he had made in his throat when she did so had not been unlike the rusty purr of some jungle animal.

He had taught her so many things about both his sexuality and her own; not just in terms of the physical act of union, but also of the wide variety of small intimate pleasures that could arise from the lightest, most delicate, and sometimes often unexpected kind of touch. He had been both gentle and passionate, demanding and patient. He had been the best of lovers, and the worst of husbands.

She started to shiver suddenly as her body caved in under the pressure of her shock. Lewis still hadn’t looked at her properly nor she at him and yet she had recalled faultlessly and unwantedly the sensation of his hands against her skin, coaxing, stroking, loving…hands which she now saw were bunched into hard, tense fists.

He moved abruptly, flexing his fingers, a gesture unfamiliar to her and which, being unfamiliar, should have released her from her bondage to her unwanted memories; but instead it eroded her self-discipline, and anguish and desolation rose up inside her. She had changed and so of course must he, and it was foolish beyond all measure of her to mourn her own lack of knowledge of something so slight as an added mannerism.

He was tense; that involuntary flexing of his fingers proved that. He had been tense the night he’d told her he didn’t want her or their marriage any more, but tense in a different way: then he had used his tension as a barrier between them…a barrier which had told her, ‘Don’t come any nearer. Don’t even think about trying to touch me,’ and yet she had done so…foolishly, and his recoil from her had been instant and shocking, betraying his physical revulsion for her.

Alongside her, Ian was still talking.

‘Lacey almost single-handedly organised the appeal for Michael Sullivan; that was why I wanted the two of you to meet. Lacey, Lewis is—’

She couldn’t endure any more. The initial shock had faded now, but what was left in its place was even worse: a kind of sick anxiety, coupled with pain and something more…something she could not bear to analyse.

‘Ian, I’m sorry,’ she interrupted shakily. ‘I’m afraid I can’t stay…’

As her dazed brain sought frantically for some excuse for her unscheduled departure, she saw out of the corner of her eye that Lewis had turned his head, and was looking at her.

Their glances met, meshed; blue eyes blazing into grey. Every never-ending in her body burst into painful life. It had been like that all those years ago. He had looked at her then with those amazing blue eyes, and then…

But then the look in his eyes had been one of admiration; or arousal and eagerness. Now it was one of…

Of what? she asked herself dizzily as she tried to look away. Absently she wondered why—when his body had so obviously matured from the slight thinness of his early twenties as though now he had finally grown into the height and breadth of the bone-structure nature had given him—his face seemed so much more sharply sculptured, so much harder, so much more shockingly masculine. He had never been good-looking in the almost too handsome fashion of a film star, but he had always had a potent, very unnerving almost—at least to her—aura of male sexuality which time seemed to have enhanced rather than lessened; and yet there was nothing overtly sexual about him. He was wearing a well-tailored plain navy suit, a crisp white shirt and a suitably discreet tie, his clothes very similar in fact to those worn by both Ian and Tony, and yet on him…

The slight movement of his body re-attracted her attention, her glance flicking helplessly towards it so that she was gut-wrenchingly conscious of the power of the muscles that lay beneath his skin, achingly aware of his body, his maleness, in a way she hadn’t been aware of a man’s physical masculinity in years.

‘I…I must go,’ she reiterated huskily. ‘I promised I’d go round and see Michael.’

‘But I thought we were going to finalise the formal winding down of the appeal,’ Ian protested. ‘I—’

‘I’m sorry, Ian. I…I can’t stay. Not now!’

She was almost gabbling now as she headed for the door, desperately conscious of the way Lewis was watching her, and desperately anxious to escape from the room before she panicked completely. She knew that her behaviour must, to Ian at least, seem totally out of character, totally immature and illogical, and that as such it must be completely bewildering him. Later she would have to apologise to him…to make some kind of amends for what she was doing, but if she stayed in this room with Lewis even one second longer…

She shuddered, acknowledging how, for one heartbeat, she had been horrendously tempted to close the gap between them; to walk up to him and be at his side as though it was her right to be there.

That had shocked and frightened her even more than her sexual awareness of him. He had hurt her so badly that she had believed that nothing would ever make her forget that pain, and yet in the space of a handful of heartbeats she had found herself recklessly, dangerously ignoring reality and allowing herself to pretend that they were still together…a couple…a pair…that they were still…still what? she asked herself sickly as she pulled open the door and walked through it. Still lovers?

The wave of heat that suffused her told its own betraying story.

Ian, who had followed her through the door and who was now reaching out to delay her, asked anxiously, ‘Is everything all right? You seem…different, somehow. I…’

‘I’m fine, Ian. It’s just that I feel so guilty about forgetting I had promised to see Michael today. I only remembered when I was halfway here, so it seemed simpler to explain in person.’

She had never known she possessed such a facility for fiction…for lying.

‘I’ll ring you tomorrow about the appeal. I…I am sorry.’

He was smiling at her, still quite obviously concerned, but, being the man he was, he made no attempt to restrain or question her, and it was only once she had reached the sanctuary of her car that she realised that she still had no idea what on earth Lewis was doing in town, nor, more importantly, how long he intended to stay.

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