by Penny Jordan
She gave a small shiver of distress and guilt. Was she really so selfish, so shallow that she resented Sharon for inadvertently casting a shadow over their lives? By rights what she ought to be feeling was sympathy and concern, not wishing that Ben’s sister had not spoiled this special moment in their lives by inflicting her problems on her brother.
She picked up the envelope and then put it down again.
She was not normally given to self-analysis or questioning her feelings—her life was too busy, her responses too immediate and instinctive. It was Ben who measured his reactions, who monitored everything he said and felt, measuring them against some personal and, to her, bewildering measuring stick of personal standards.
But now, forced to deal with her own shock at what she was feeling, she had to question whether Ben might be right when he accused her of not being able to really comprehend or understand, of not wanting to accept the reality of his family’s lives.
How would she feel if she were in Sharon’s shoes, for instance?
She gave a small cold shiver. It could never have happened to her, of course.
There had been girls at school who had disappeared for a brief period of time and who it was rumoured had been discreetly hustled off by their parents to some expensive private clinic to remove the evidence of their unplanned and unwanted conception long before their bodies showed any signs of it, and rumours were all there had been.
Parenthood out of wedlock and children born to middle-aged fathers with almost grown-up families and second wives, often as young as their own daughters, were a familiar pattern of life to her, of course, but her friends’ unmarried parenthood was nothing like that so graphically described by Ben.
Her friends’ babies were always ‘desperately wanted’ or ‘an accident really, darling, but now both of us are thrilled and Mummy is simply over the moon’, or the product of serious committed relationships between couples who shuddered in distaste at the thought of their commitment to one another needing anything so proletarian as a marriage ceremony to cement it.
No, there were no Sharons in her world, or, if there were, no one talked about them.
Ben was her friend and her lover; the differences in their upbringing gave her no qualms at all. She was proud of him, fiercely proud… of the person he was and the things he had achieved. She felt no sense of being his superior, nor of being his inferior; they were equals, true partners.
And normally she did not allow herself to brood on the fact that there was a part of Ben’s life from which he seemed to want to exclude her.
Now she was angry with herself for the small-mindedness of her feelings, for her selfishness in her irritation at the way Sharon’s problems had overshadowed their own happiness. And angry with Ben for letting them?
What would she have preferred him to do—come back from Manchester pretending that everything was all right, keep the truth from her so that it need not spoil her pleasure, shield her from his own pain?
No, of course not. She loved him. She wanted to share his pain as well as his pleasure; the bad things as well as the good.
Before she left for work, Zoe propped the letter up against the kettle and scrawled a note, which she put beside it, saying, ‘I love you too,’ and then drew a heart which she filled with tiny kisses.
Poor Sharon. Did she lie awake in bed at night with her hands on her swollen belly, dreaming of a man who would love her—and her baby? She was so lucky, Zoe admitted. If she were in Sharon’s shoes…
Ben had made no secret of the fact that he felt that Sharon should have had her pregnancy terminated, and Zoe couldn’t help agreeing with him. It would surely have been the best solution for everyone. But Sharon had not taken that option and now it was too late.
Another mouth to feed, Ben had said bitterly, and Zoe had sensed his anger, his frustration, his refusal to see the coming baby as anything other than an extra financial burden he did not want to have to shoulder.
‘I don’t want children,’ he had told her, but then neither did she. Not at this stage in her life. Maybe later, much, much later, when she had done all the things she wanted to do.
* * *
Her shift started at two and finished officially at ten, but it was gone half-past eleven before she was finally able to leave the hotel and almost one before her battered but reliable Mini brought her back to the flat.
She had expected Ben to be in bed; after all, he had to be up at four. But as she searched for her key he surprised her by opening the door for her.
‘Ben!’ She smiled her happiness up at him.
‘I’m sorry… About last night,’ he told her gruffly as he opened his arms to her, kicking the door shut behind her.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she whispered back. ‘You were upset. Did you see the letter?’
‘What letter?’ he murmured, lazily nuzzling the delicate vulnerable flesh just behind her ear, but his casual tone did not deceive Zoe. She knew him too well.
‘You know which one,’ she told him. ‘Have you opened it?’
His tongue was slowly exploring the shape of her ear, sending small frissons of sensation racing down her spine, making her want to move her body against his, to stretch languorously and sensually against him like a cat being stroked.
‘Of course I haven’t.’ Ben smiled at her as he released her. ‘You didn’t really think I’d open it without you, did you? Come on, let’s open it now…’
‘No,’ Zoe told him, watching him frown. ‘Let’s open it in bed instead,’ she suggested, her eyes narrowing with laughter and warmth as she added, ‘Then we can really celebrate if it’s good news.’
‘And if it’s not?’ Ben cautioned.
She smiled lovingly at him.
‘If it’s not, then we’ll be in the right place to commiserate with each other, won’t we? But it won’t be bad news,’ she told him firmly.
She insisted that he should be the one to open it and then closed her eyes, urging him to hurry because she couldn’t bear the suspense any longer, crossing her fingers behind her back as she listened to the sounds of him tearing open the envelope.
She could feel his tension and stillness as he read whatever was inside and then, unable to bear it any longer, she opened her eyes and begged.
‘What does it say?’
Silently Ben handed her the contents of the envelope. She scanned the letter quickly before dropping it on to the bed to scrutinise the thick glossy brochure which it had been attached to.
‘Oh, Ben! Look… it’s perfect!’
‘You haven’t read it properly yet,’ he derided her, but he was smiling and she could tell, although he was struggling hard to conceal it, that he was almost as excited as she was herself.
* * *
‘Don’t start getting your hopes too high,’ Ben warned her later when the brochure had been read and re-read at least a dozen times. ‘As Clive points out in his letter, there’s a long way to go. We’ll need planning permission to convert the stable block for one thing, and then…’
‘But it’s so perfect,’ Zoe interrupted him excitedly. ‘All that land…’
‘Which will have to be maintained. Gardens are all very well, but they don’t look after themselves, you know.’
‘No. No, of course not, but that walled vegetable garden… You said yourself that with people becoming more aware of the importance of how their food is grown as well as prepared…’ she began impatiently, but Ben shook his head.
‘We’re a long way from growing our own produce, Zoe. That’s something that will be way, way ahead in the future.’
‘But with a house like this at least we’ll have the potential for that kind of future development, won’t we?’
‘We don’t know that Clive will be able to buy the place yet,’ Ben reminded her. ‘He only says in his letter that the property is suitable and that, because of its situation, it won’t be overpriced.’
‘No, but he says that the surrounding area is reasonably prosper
ous, and that he believes that there will be a demand for a first-class restaurant, and then there’ll be weddings and other functions. Oh, Ben… it’s perfect. We’ll be able to use the gardens for marquees, and it says here that there’s a large pond…’
‘Which we’ll probably have to fill in, if we don’t want to spend half our time fishing drunken wedding guests out of it,’ Ben supplied drily.
Zoe made a small moue and flung her pillow at him.
‘You don’t fool me,’ she told him. ‘I know that you’re just as excited about it all as I am. When shall we go and see it? Clive says he’ll make arrangements for us to view it with him, if we can give him a date. Ben… Ben, what are you doing?’ she protested as he took hold of her and started kissing her.
‘Didn’t you say something about us celebrating?’ he asked her, his voice muffled as he kissed the soft curve of her breast.
‘It’s two o’clock in the morning and you’ve got to be up at four.’
‘Who needs to wait until four?’ he told her. ‘I’m “up” right now; come and feel for yourself.’
Zoe laughed, enjoying his unusual mock-macho display. It wasn’t like him to either talk or behave so playfully, and she felt her own spirits lift as she responded to his ebullience.
She repaid him for it later though, laughing as he protested at the delicate friction of her teeth against his skin.
‘What are you doing?’ he demanded as she released him, craning his head over his shoulder suspiciously as he saw her face.
‘Nothing,’ she fibbed innocently, her eyes full of laughter as she surveyed the results of her handiwork, the small neat heart-shaped outline of lovebites she had drawn quite deliberately across his buttocks.
‘Will you be playing rugby on Sunday?’ she asked him sleepily as she curled up next to him.
Whenever he could, he played in a small team made up in the main of fellow chefs, and when she could Zoe went along with him to cheer him on. This Sunday, though, she would be working. Which was probably just as well, she reflected, smiling to herself as she visualised the results of her ardent handiwork.
‘Have you any days’ holiday left?’
Sleepily Zoe opened her eyes, lifting her head off the pillow to stare through the darkness at Ben. She had thought he was already asleep.
‘Yes, I think so. Why?’
‘I was just thinking. When we go down to see the house, it might be a good idea to take a few days off, have a good look round and weigh up the competition.’
‘A holiday?’ Zoe was sitting bolt upright now, her eyes bright with enthusiasm. ‘Oh, Ben, could we?’
She knew how careful he was with his budget. Careful but not mean—never that. She earned more than he did, and she also had her parents to turn to should she need to do so. Because of that she was careful not to offend his pride by offering to pay for too many extra ‘treats’. She also knew how much he would be worrying about Sharon’s coming baby—the extra mouth he would insist on helping to feed, no matter how much he might rail now against the child’s conception.
‘I don’t see why not. We could always put it down to business expenses,’ he added drily. ‘Isn’t that the way it’s done? Mind you, why should I knock it? It will be all those executives with their hefty expense accounts that we’ll need to attract if we’re going to make this thing pay. Running a hotel isn’t like running a restaurant.’
Zoe caught the underlying note of tension in his voice and frowned. She was fully awake now and so obviously was he.
This was something they had talked about when Clive had first offered to back them.
Ben had always wanted to open his own restaurant; he was after all virtually running the restaurant where he now worked, although Aldo, the Italian who owned it, would never have admitted it. He was a sour-tempered, mean-natured man, whose chefs didn’t normally last very long, even though the restaurant itself was a popular one.
He was over fifty, married to an Englishwoman, and it was the marriage which was the root cause of his bad temper and general antagonism towards his employees, Ben believed.
He made no secret of the fact that had he not been stupid enough to believe himself in love with an English girl he would now be running the family’s prestigious restaurants in Rome and not living here in London.
His parents had never approved of his marriage; elderly now, they were still alive, his mother very much the matriarch of the family. Aldo’s half-British children were still treated with disdain and suspicion by Aldo’s family.
Zoe felt sorry for the man’s wife, but Ben was not as sympathetic.
‘She could always leave him,’ he had told her. ‘In fact she should do, but she stays with him because she enjoys making him suffer… and he takes it out on us.’
‘You could always change your job,’ Zoe had suggested.
‘It’s not that easy at the moment,’ Ben had told her. ‘You might not have noticed it yet, not with the hotel being so close to the airport and still busy, but we have. We’re not getting as many midweek bookings as we used to.’
She knew he was worrying about how the recession might affect their hotel—about his own ability to take on so much increased responsibility.
She had done her best to coax him out of it, reminding him that he was the only one who seemed to lack faith in himself and that he should perhaps follow the example of others like Clive and herself who felt very differently.
‘I know you can do it,’ she had assured him. ‘And so does Clive.’
It had been Clive who had been convinced that they should look beyond the mere owning of their own restaurant to a small top-flight country hotel.
Initially Ben had been uncertain, unsure if they were ready for that kind of responsibility, and it had been Zoe who had convinced him, pointing out that the hotel gave them a chance to pool their abilities in a way that a restaurant would not.
With a restaurant there would be no real role for her, she had told him, other than that of part-time bookkeeper and accountant. She would still need to keep on her own job, otherwise she would lose the momentum of her own career, and if she did continue to work, given the shiftwork involved and the long hours, they would scarcely have any time together at all.
As she had known he would, Ben had soon seen the validity of her arguments, and now he was every bit as keen and excited about their future as she was herself, even if he did sometimes lapse into the cautious wariness which was so much a part of his personality.
Not that she would want him to be any other way, Zoe told herself sunnily now. She quite cheerfully admitted that she was sometimes inclined to be so over-optimistic, that she neglected to see genuine potential pitfalls.
She had no need to fear them, though, not with Ben standing patiently and protectively by, ready to keep her safe from them.
‘I can’t wait to see the house, can you?’ she asked him eagerly. ‘When can we go? When?’
‘Don’t get too excited,’ Ben interrupted her warningly. ‘There’s a long way to go yet, Zoe.’
‘Cautious, careful Ben… Always looking for problems,’ she teased him light-heartedly.
‘Well, one of us has to,’ he pointed out. ‘And since it certainly isn’t going to be you…’
He paused and Zoe’s smile changed to a small frown.
Did he resent the fact that he had to be cautious for both of them? Did he sometimes find her optimism a burden?
Did he sometimes find her a burden, a responsibility? Like his family.
Her frown deepened, her excitement evaporating.
‘Ben…’ she began uncertainly.
‘Mmm…’ he said sleepily. ‘Leave it with me… I’ll give Clive a ring and sort something out.’
He was already virtually asleep and it wouldn’t be fair to wake him up just so that she could ask for his reassurance, Zoe admitted honestly, but it was a long, long time before she herself finally managed to fall asleep too.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘
MARCUS, I think I might have found us a house.’
Eleanor had had the details of the Wiltshire property for three days now, but she had deliberately waited until she and Marcus were alone before broaching the subject with him, conscious of the fact not only that he was irritated by the disruption caused by Julia’s announcement that he would have to provide a home for their daughter while she was in America, but also that the complexities of a new case he had recently taken on were demanding most of his time and attention.
She had known before she married him that he was the type of man to whom his work was not just a means of earning a living but something he genuinely enjoyed, and that once he became involved in a case it absorbed him to an extent which demanded a partner’s patience and understanding.
It had been Julia’s inability to accept that there were times when, on the surface at least, his work would appear to receive more of his time and attention than she did which had originally led to a rift developing between them. Marcus had made no secret of this aspect of his personality before their marriage and Eleanor had wisely forced herself to detach herself from the magnetic delirium caused by her enjoyment of the physical side of their relationship to ask herself if she could accept the importance of his work, and live with the consequences of it; not just immediately in the dizzying rose-coloured flush of so unexpectedly falling in love and being loved in return, but in the more mundane years ahead when that flush had retreated, leaving a world shaded in more prosaic colours.
She had decided that she could; after all, she was a woman in her thirties who had discovered for herself not just the importance of being financially independent, but also the thrill which came from self-achievement. Hadn’t there, after all, especially in the initial days of establishing her own business, been times when she had worked long into the night, so totally absorbed by what she was doing that she forgot everything else?
In an ideal world it might be possible for a man and a woman to find a way of synchronising their affairs so that they could harmonise those periods when their need for one another totally eclipsed everything else, a world where with a look, a word, both were able to put aside all other matters and reach out to one another.