Starting Over. PENNY JORDAN

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СКАЧАТЬ so hard for children when their parents split up.’

      Saul had three children from his first marriage and Tullah could still remember how fragile and lost they had seemed when she had first met him and them.

      Saul’s first wife had abandoned not only her husband but her three children as well, claiming that there was no place for her son and daughters in her second marriage to a man who was not family oriented.

      It had not been easy for any of them when she and Saul had first fallen in love and married, Tullah acknowledged, even though now the children totally accepted her. A child of their own had completed their family but Tullah knew she felt a fierce extra protective love for Saul’s eldest three children, especially his daughter Meg, and her heart went out to Amelia and Alex.

      ‘If you ask me, men and women should be kept strictly apart except for purposes which are purely recreational,’ Nick told them both tongue-in-cheek, his eyes dancing with wicked amusement.

      Like all the Crighton men he was outstandingly good-looking, but Nick had an added air of excitement and danger, an added aura, a certain very challenging maleness about him Tullah recognised as she gave a small admonishing shake of her head and told him, ‘You’re incorrigible, Nick, you really are.’

      ‘Nope, I’m just determined never to fall into the trap of allowing my emotions to ruin my life,’ Nick told her firmly.

      Saul said nothing. He was thoroughly familiar with his younger brother’s antipathy towards marriage and commitment.

      ‘One day you’ll change your mind,’ Tullah warned him. ‘You’ll see someone and fall in love with her….’

      ‘What is it?’ she asked anxiously as Nick suddenly yelped in pain. A girl was standing next to his chair, her face flushed and pink as she started to apologise. She had obviously bumped into him accidentally as she crossed the dimly lit room. She was extremely pretty, Tullah recognised, amused to realise that Nick was receiving her apology with something less than his normal savoir faire. He might spurn marriage and commitment but that did not mean that her brother-in-law was averse to female company—far from it. Although to be fair to him, so far as Tullah knew his ‘relationships’ were limited to women who shared his views on the advantages of their short shelf life.

      Her face crimson with mortification, Sara stammered an apology to the man she had inadvertently bumped into, but her embarrassment was replaced by indignation as he gave her a look of biting scorn instead of accepting her apology in the spirit in which she had given it.

      She was still trying to find Frances and having seen her on the other side of the room had been attempting to make her way through the packed restaurant, her eyes on her quarry instead of what was in front of her.

      Was it really her fault anyway, she asked herself indignantly as she returned Nick’s angry glare with one of her own. He had been sitting at the table at an odd angle with the chair pulled out more than was surely necessary.

      ‘You look cross. Is everything all right?’ Frances asked in concern when Sara eventually caught up with her.

      ‘I’ve just had a bit of a run-in with one of your diners,’ Sara admitted ruefully. ‘I bumped into him but when I tried to apologise—’

      ‘Which one?’ Frances interrupted her.

      ‘That table over there,’ Sara replied, showing her.

      ‘Oh, Tullah and Saul Crighton’s table.’

      Crightons!

      Immediately Sara twisted round to stare at the trio. As luck would have it the couple, obviously Tullah and Saul, were seated with their backs towards her. But the man she’d bumped into …

      Sara’s breath rattled in her throat as he lifted his head and glared at her.

      ‘Oh, poor Nick,’ Frances was saying. ‘He’s not been very well.’

      ‘You mean like a bear with a sore head not well,’ Sara responded pseudo sweetly.

      Frances’s eyebrows rose.

      ‘Oh, dear, he really has upset you, hasn’t he?’ she sympathised before continuing briskly, ‘No, actually he was involved in a very unpleasant incident. Like nearly all the Crightons he’s a qualified solicitor but the work he does is extremely specialised and often rather dangerous. Although in this case …’ Quickly she explained just how Nick had come to be hurt, but stubbornly Sara refused to be impressed.

      ‘Perhaps it might help if he carried a sign warning people not to get too close to him,’ she suggested through gritted teeth.

      Frances forbore to comment. Sara was a gorgeous-looking girl and Nick was a singularly handsome man. Therefore, it seemed logical to Frances that the two of them should be attracted to one another. As the mother of young adults she was also well aware that sometimes such attraction presented itself disguised as hostility.

      ‘It’s nine o’clock. You’ve been working all evening,’ she told Sara with a smile. ‘Why don’t you call it a day.’

      ‘Not yet,’ Sara refused determinedly. Armed with the information Frances had given her she was sure she could solve her problem with the recalcitrant computer.

      Frances smiled ruefully as she watched Sara walk away, this time giving the Crighton table a wide berth.

      She had liked Sara on sight, sensing within her a gutsy determination allied to a warm sense of humour. Her stunning good looks would cause havoc, of course!

      ‘Nick,’ Tullah expostulated as she saw the grim way her brother-in-law was watching the woman’s determined circumnavigation of their table.

      ‘Little madam,’ Nick seethed without taking his eyes off her departing back. ‘Did you see the look she gave me?’

      ‘Well, I certainly saw the one you gave her,’ Tullah told him dryly.

      ‘Yes,’ Saul corroborated. ‘You were hardly your normal charming smooth self with her, Nick,’ he pointed out. ‘Pretty girl,’ he added appreciatively, laughing when Tullah gave him a mock glare whilst saying with wifely warning, ‘Saul …’

      ‘Very pretty,’ Nick agreed sourly. He wasn’t even sure himself just why he had reacted so badly to her. Common sense told him that the painful jolt she had given his still aching wound had been completely accidental and he knew that normally he would not only have accepted her embarrassed apology gracefully but that he would probably have done everything he could to create a good impression and set her at her ease.

      So why hadn’t he?

      Not surely because of that sharp little jolt of male sensual electricity, that more than a mere frisson of sensation that had seized him at their accidental bodily contact. After all, he had experienced physical desire for plenty of other women before her.

      Physical desire, yes, but not that swift pang of dangerous knowledge, that unwanted awareness, that instinct that … that what?

      That nothing, he told himself firmly.

      ‘You’re right,’ he announced, even though СКАЧАТЬ