Phantom Marriage. PENNY JORDAN

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СКАЧАТЬ months of her pregnancy when she had fantasised about James appearing to discover that she was the mother of his child and being overcome by love for both of them.

      ‘Quite a surprise,’ she managed to say calmly. ‘Susan never mentioned that you would be picking us up.’

      ‘A last minute arrangement,’ James told her briefly Without looking at her. ‘I’ve just returned from the States and when I invited myself down to Dovecote for the weekend they suggested that I give you a lift so that they could give their chauffeur a weekend off.’

      ‘Susan should have telephoned, I could have used my own car.’

      Tara flushed when his eyes suddenly fastened on her face; no longer the warm, teasing dark blue she remembered but as hard and flat as river pebbles and totally without expression as they surveyed her heightened-colour and defensive grip on the twins.

      ‘Mummy, you’re hurting me!’ Mandy protested, casting an upward glance at the tall, dark-haired man watching them; a glance which Tara noticed was full of coquettishly innocent appeal.

      ‘Why don’t we all get in the car!’ James suggested, bending to relieve Tara of the weight of the case. Their fingers touched accidentally, and Tara withdrew as though she had been burned by live coals.

      ‘Explicit but unnecessary,’ James told her crisply, stowing her case away, ‘I got the message the first time round.’

      Tara assumed that he was referring to the shock which must have been apparent when she saw him step out of the car. This meeting must be as unwelcome to him as it was to her, she reflected miserably as she followed the children to the waiting car, but at least he had had the advantage of being forearmed.

      The first ten minutes of their journey passed easily enough as the twins exclaimed over the luxury of their transport; Tara couldn’t help wishing that James had not ushered her into the front passenger seat, but it seemed gauche to make a fuss about it. After all, he could scarcely have any more desire for her company than she had for his!

      He was both the same and yet different, she decided, stealing a brief glance at his impassive profile. There was a total and unrelenting male hardness about him now that she did not remember; when she was seventeen he had seemed the epitome of all her adolescent dreams; gentle, understanding, tender. No one would ever dream of attributing those virtues to the man now seated next to her.

      His dark hair was still untouched by grey; and although he was wearing a discreetly expensive suit she suspected that physically he had changed little in the seven years they had been apart. There had been a supple arrogance about the way he had walked towards her which suggested that he was a man at the peak of physical perfection. She remembered the cataclysmic night he had returned from California; then his skin had had the silky sheen of a sun tan, his body a rich bronze. Her palms tingled as though she could still feel the soft suppleness of his flesh against them, and she shuddered deeply, wrenching her thoughts away from the past.

      In the back seat the twins were playing a game, vying with one another in their attempts to count as many cars of a particular type as they could.

      ‘Susan tells me you’re a widow.’

      He hadn’t taken his eyes off the road. Tara felt as though a huge boulder were stuck in her throat.

      ‘Yes,’ she agreed, forcing out the lie.

      ‘I’m sorry.’ The words were a formality. ‘What happened?’

      ‘John was killed abroad,’ Tara said huskily, repeating the fabrication which had become familiar to her over the years. ‘Before the twins were born. They never knew him, nor he them.’

      ‘A mutual loss,’ James said quietly. ‘You’ve never thought of remarrying?’

      ‘One has to be asked,’ Tara heard herself saying drily, to her own surprise. ‘Besides,’ she moved restlessly in her deep hide-covered seat, ‘I believe one parent who really cares is more important than two who quarrel.’

      ‘You yourself lost your father, if I remember rightly,’ James commented. ‘At least with your own experience to call upon you’ll be able to ensure that your own daughter doesn’t fall into the same traps.’

      ‘People normally make their own mistakes,’ Tara said tiredly. Although the comment had been delivered in a perfectly flat emotionless voice she had been vividly reminded of one occasion when they had been together and he had accused her of trying to turn him into a father-substitute. She had been furious, reminding him that it was eight years that separated them, not eighteen.

      ‘You’ve been working in America?’ she asked him, deliberately trying to change the subject.

      ‘I have various business interests there, some jointly with Susan’s mother. Susan will have told you that she’s married again?’

      ‘Yes. Actually I didn’t realise…’ Tara broke off and moistened her suddenly dry lips. She had been going to say that the had not realised they were divorced, but the remark had provocative undertones she wanted to avoid.

      ‘That Hilary would venture into marriage again?’ He shrugged. ‘Like many women of her wealth and generation she tends to make a career of it. This one’s number four.’

      ‘Four!’ It was too late for her to hide her surprise. As far as she knew James had been Hilary’s second husband.

      ‘You sound surprised?’

      ‘I hadn’t realised you’d been divorced long enough for her to have remarried twice. I…’

      ‘You didn’t stay around long enough to find out.’ The cool comment nonplussed her. It was almost an accusation, but what did James possibly have to accuse her about? He had been the one who had rejected her; who had laughed with Hilary about her foolish love for him, and who had coldly turned his back on her, leaving her to face the trauma of the twins’ birth alone.

      ‘What was I supposed to do?’ she asked in a bitter, low voice. ‘I couldn’t put the clock back, I…’

      ‘So you scuttled off into a nice, safe marriage?’

      Colour burned along her cheekbones, her fingernails digging into the palms of her hands. She would never, never have agreed to this weekend if she had had the slightest suspicion that James was going to be there. How on earth was she going to endure it? Especially if he was going to keep taunting her with these barbed remarks.

      Simon distracted her attention excitedly, pointing out some sheep grazing in a field. They had turned on to the M4 and were travelling west.

      To Tara’s surprise, just after twelve James pulled off the motorway and took a minor road which wound its way down a narrow B-road bordered by high hedges laced with early summer flowers.

      ‘I told Sue that I’d give you lunch,’ he explained, answering Tara’s unspoken question. ‘The house is a large one and although she does have some help she and Alec go down there primarily to relax.’

      Before Tara could object he turned into an immaculate drive, marked ‘Country Club—members only.’

      ‘Relax,’ she was instructed. ‘I’m a member and they’ve been warned to expect us. I own a house locally myself, although at the moment it’s occupied by СКАЧАТЬ