by Penny Jordan
‘Don’t you want to go with James?’ Simon enquired doubtfully when breakfast was over and she had taken the twins upstairs with her to put on their jackets. He was far too perceptive, she admitted to herself, too aware of adult undercurrents, and she was not sure it was good for him.
‘Not want to travel in a Rolls-Royce? Of course I do, silly!’ she said bracingly.
This time James made no demur when she slid into the back seat with the twins, and Tara ruthlessly suppressed what almost amounted to a stab of disappointment.
As they drew nearer to London, Mandy started to bombard James with questions, wanting to know where he lived and worked. He answered her patiently and yet his mouth was compressed. Tara could see it in the driving mirror. A hot wave of colour scalded her skin suddenly as she remembered how her mouth had touched it intimately—could it really only have been less than twenty-four hours ago?
Soon the familiarity of the London suburbs began to claim the twins’ excited attention. James remembered the street without needing directions and the Rolls came to a smooth halt outside their door.
Without a word he left his seat and came round to open their door, lifting Mandy from Tara’s side, the sleeve of his immaculately tailored business suit brushing against her bare arm, sending tiny frissons of awareness racing through her.
She wasn’t going to invite him in for a drink, she decided shakily as she slid towards the door. He was placing Mandy on her feet, but the little girl tugged on his sleeve as he released her, lifting her face trustingly as she demanded—and got—a kiss.
At her side Tara felt Simon wriggle impatiently. ‘Girls!’ he announced scornfully as James’s fingers curled warmly round Tara’s arm as he helped her out. ‘They’re soppy!’
‘Aren’t you going to kiss Mummy?’ Mandy demanded of James when they were all standing on the pavement, eyes rounding innocently as she looked from her mother’s flushed face to James’s set one.
‘You’re blushing,’ Simon accused Tara with mischievious glee. ‘Mandy, Mummy’s blushing!’
‘Stop it, you two,’ she commanded firmly. ‘Adults don’t go round kissing one another—both of you know that perfectly well.’
‘Uncle Chas kissed you,’ Mandy supplied trenchantly. ‘I saw him, when we were supposed to be in bed. I came down for a drink of water and he was kissing you.’
The look James gave her made her writhe in mortification. Tara could remember the incident quite vividly; Chas had come round unexpectedly one evening to discuss the following day’s shot—or so he had claimed. They had been sitting together on her shabby settee when he had abruptly taken her in his arms and started to kiss her. She had pushed him away almost immediately, but she had had no idea that Mandy had witnessed that brief, unwanted embrace.
‘God knows it’s none of my business,’ James said savagely to her in a low undertone, ‘but don’t you ever think of those kids instead of indulging in your own selfish pleasure, or do you want them to grow up knowing what you are and despising you for it? I’m not their father, but…’
Tara started to laugh hysterically. ‘That’s right,’ she told him in a high, almost unnatural voice. ‘You aren’t their father, and you aren’t my keeper!’ Before he could retaliate she pushed past him, shepherding the two curious children up the garden path. They hadn’t been near enough to catch the fiercely whispered exchange, but they were aware of some of the undercurrents flowing between the two adults. Not their father—God, if only he knew, Tara thought sickly when they were safely inside the house and the Rolls had moved smoothly away. And how dared he take that high moral tone with her when he was the one who had destroyed her innocence—no matter how freely she had given it—and who had then left her to the tender mercies of his wife; a woman who had derided and scorned her until she had stumbled from her presence weeping and humiliated, her pride torn to shreds and all her bright dreams for ever tarnished. And he had known, even encouraged Hilary to behave as she had—that was the thing she could never forgive. Lacking the courage to tell her that their brief affair was over, he had let Hilary do his dirty work for him, hiding behind the pretence of business affairs abroad, letting Hilary rip the bright fabric of her dreams into pitiful shreds. Tara writhed inwardly even now to remember how Hilary’s voice dripped venom as she told her how she and James had laughed about her pathetic adoration for him; how James had told her about their affair, deriding her innocence and inexperience.
‘Did you honestly think he meant any of it, you little fool?’ Hilary had mocked her. ‘My dear, James is a man, and like any other he’ll take what’s offered—especially when it’s offered as freely as your body was, but that’s all you were to him, my poor child—simply a body; a physical experience. Surely you must have realised that?’
And so Tara had left the house, her plea to James for counsel about the coming baby unspoken. It would have been hard enough to have confided in him believing he loved her, but knowing that she had been no more than a brief diversion; an amusement… Her pride had revolted, and even if James had been in England instead of America, and readily accessible, she knew that nothing would have dragged the truth from her.
CHAPTER SEVEN
FOR some reason Tara found it hard to settle back into her normal routine. Chas, as she had anticipated, was offhand and cutting with her on her first morning back at work, but she had learned to deal with his moods and for all his bouts of bad temper found him far easier to cope with than James. Perhaps because she was not emotionally involved, she admitted inwardly.
The twins too were taxing her patience. Both of them were now back at school, but Simon talked constantly of their weekend in the country while Mandy made constant references to James.
The situation came to a head one evening after they had been back for ten days. Tara had had to cope with a particularly aggravating Chas all day, his mood switching violently from sullen bitter silence to furious hectoring, coupled with an openly sexual harassment which had brought her own temper to boiling point,
Arriving late at school hadn’t helped. Over tea Simon was unusually withdrawn and quiet. Watching him push his food uneaten round his plate, Tara forced down her impatience, reminding herself that it wasn’t his fault that she had had a bad day.
‘Simon, what’s wrong?’ she asked him at last when Mandy had been excused from the table to go and watch a favourite television programme.
His stubbornly wooden, ‘Nothing’, accompanied by evasive eyes and pushed-out bottom lip, weren’t convincing, and real concern pierced her.
‘Come on,’ she said gently. ‘It can’t be that bad, can it? Have you had a quarrel with Davy?’
Davy was his closest friend at school, an angelic-looking blond youngster with a fearsomely deceptive smile and a highly developed magnetism towards mischief.
Simon’s brief, ‘No,’ wasn’t reassuring.
‘What is it, then?’ she probed.
‘Why haven’t we got a daddy?’
The unexpectedness of the question had her completely lost for words for a moment. The twins both knew the story of their ‘father’ and his death, and although he was rarely mentioned Tara had always answered any questions they had raised and had rather prided herself on her handling of the situation and their ready acceptance of it. Suddenly it seemed that she had been congratulating herself too soon.
‘Simon, you know why,’ she said as calmly as she could. ‘Your father was killed in an accident before you were born.’
‘So when we were born we didn’t have a daddy?’ Simon persisted.
Puzzled by his insistence, Tara went carefully over the story she had invented when she first came to London, pregnant and alone. She knew it off by heart and Simon listened impatiently. As soon as she had finished he burst out, ‘David Roberts says that children who don’t have fathers when they’re born are bastards.’
It was obvious that while Simon was unaware of the true meaning of the word he had just quoted, he knew that it conveyed some i
nsult, and worse, set him apart from his peers.
Tara was at a loss to handle the situation. On more than one occasion she had lain sleepless at night wrestling with her conscience and with the fairness of withholding from the twins the circumstances of their birth, especially as they grew older. She knew instinctively that they would want to seek a closer identity with their father when they were older—she would have done herself—but she had told herself that by lying to them she was saving them the inevitable heartbreak of being rejected by James, and the events of the weekend had only reinforced that decision. James had made it more than plain that he wished to remain aloof from them—and his attitude had hurt, which was ridiculous really—after all, he had no idea that they were his children. But even had he done so Tara could not envisage him acting any differently, there had been more than mere indifference in his behaviour, and she suspected his attitude sprang from the fact that they were her children.
Trying to sound as calm as possible, she gently reassured Simon, taking care to stress the fact that David Roberts had been wrong, without placing too much importance on the slur of illegitimacy.
‘Well, if we did have a daddy, why don’t we have any photographs of him?’ Mandy asked, having wandered in from the other room, and fixing her mother with accusing eyes so like her father’s that for a moment Tara felt almost flustered.
Her story had always been that hers had been a whirlwind courtship and marriage with her husband departing overseas almost immediately after the honeymoon, and so she was able to say quickly, ‘There just wasn’t time.’ Her mythical husband had supposedly been an orphan, a move which Tara had felt would satisfactorily explain away the lack of paternal family as the children grew, but coupled with the twins’ grudging acceptance of her story was guilt because she was lying to them, and not for the first time she questioned the wisdom of her decision to conceal from them the existence of their father.
‘I wish we did have a daddy,’ Mandy continued, obviously loath to let the subject drop, warming to her theme as she added innocently, driving the breath from Tara’s lungs, ‘One like Uncle James.’
Tara’s heart sank as she approached the school gates and saw Sue talking to the twins. Fond as she was of her friend she was not in the mood , for idle conversation. Chas’s mood had worsened with the week, and all she could do was say a heartfelt mental, ‘Thank God it’s Friday!’
Sue beamed when she saw her, her smile turning to a worried frown as she saw the tiredness and strain in her eyes.
‘Why, Tara,’ she exclaimed, ‘Aren’t you feeling well?’
‘I’m fine,’ Tara lied. ‘Just a little tired. Come on, you two,’ she instructed the twins, hoping that Sue would take the hint and not press the subject, ‘get in the car.’
‘We’ve been talking to Uncle James,’ Mandy announced blithely, unaware of the consternation her words caused her mother. ‘He came in his big car…’
‘And was outrageously flattered by your daughter,’ Sue informed Tara with a chuckle. ‘It seems he’s her number one candidate for a father.’
Fear and pain tightened a stranglehold on her throat, but somehow she managed to force a shaken smile.
‘I came a little early because I wanted to ask Mrs Ledbetter if I could take Piers out of school for two weeks next month. We’re going to the States to see Mother.’ Sue pulled a face. ‘A duty visit, I’m afraid—anyway, James was kind enough to drive me down. He’ll be here to pick me up shortly… Ah…’ her face broke into a smile, ‘here he is now.’
Tara froze as she turned and saw James advancing on them. He was dressed formally in a dark navy and wine business suit, oddly incongruous among the mothers and children in brightly coloured dungarees, tee-shirts and jeans. Mandy, who had been holding her hand, pulled away and before Tara could stop her she had launched herself on James, who, much to Tara’s astonishment, lifted her daughter from the ground and swung her up in his arms. Some sixth sense drew her attention to Simon, unnaturally still at her side, and her heart dropped as she saw the wistful, almost tremulous expression on his face as he watched James with Mandy. As though he too was aware of the little boy’s reaction, James put Mandy down and, totally ignoring Tara, and the possible damage to his clothes, dropped to his haunches in front of Simon so that they were on the same level, and asked him how he felt about a visit to the Zoo.
Simon’s face was radiant, and Tara had to stifle a swift stab of resentment that James should so easily charm her children.
‘You’ll have to blame me,’ Sue told her, obviously reading the annoyance in her eyes. ‘Alec and I have to go shopping before we leave for New York—you know Mother, I daren’t appear in anything but the very latest fashion or she’ll disown me, and James has very kindly agreed to play nursemaid for an afternoon tomorrow. We’d already decided that his best bet was probably the Zoo. Piers adores the penguins.’
Tara wanted to protest that James should have asked her before including the twins in the outing, but now the damage was done and she could not refuse without disappointing Simon.
‘You know why he’s doing this, don’t you?’ said Sue with another chuckle. ‘He wants reinforcements.’
For a moment Tara looked blank, and then enlightenment dawned. Sue was intimating that she too was included in the invitation. Anger, and something else she wasn’t prepared to acknowledge, sprang to life inside her and speaking without thinking Tara said coolly. ‘Then I’m afraid he’s going to be disappointed—I’ve got something else on tomorrow.’
‘Then we’ll just have to manage on our own, won’t we?’ said James smoothly, getting to his feet with lithe grace. He towered over her and Tara was forced to tilt back her head to look up at him as he asked, ‘What time shall I collect the twins? I thought we’d make an afternoon of it and include tea in the curriculum.’
Tara managed to stammer out a time, too mesmerised by the cobalt depths of his eyes to register anything else. No man had any right to possess such eyes, she thought despairingly; they saw too much, probed too deeply.
The sun suddenly broke through the clouds, dazzling her so much that she swayed. The hard warmth of the arm round her waist, the tangy smell of male aftershave as James steadied her, sent awareness of him rocketing through her, the brush of his jacket against the bare skin of her arm causing her to shiver with a heightened sensitivity that alarmed her.
Sue’s sudden spurt of laughter brought her back to earth. ‘Do look at Simon!’ she urged them. He was studying a small girl on the opposite side of the road, tiny blonde bunches of hair framing a pert little face. ‘Children are the most fantastic mimics,’ she whispered. ‘When he stands like that he’s the image of James. He must have picked it up over the weekend.’
An icy shiver turned Tara cold with fear. She couldn’t look at James; and she didn’t need to look at Simon. She was well aware of how like his father he was.
She must have managed to make an adequate response, because there was no visible reaction from either James or Sue. Calling the children to her, Tara hustled them towards her Mini, Simon still chattering excitedly about the unexpected treat to come. As she unlocked the small car something wholly outside her own control made her turn. Across the few yards that separated them her eyes met James’s hard stare. Shaken, Tara dragged her gaze away, trying not to give in to the waves of anxiety sweeping her.
She must be going mad, she decided as she drove home; she must be to think that there had been something even vaguely threatening in James’s expression. What possible reason could he have to threaten her? If anything the boot should be on the other foot.
The twins’ excitement mounted through the morning to fever pitch, so much so that Tara admitted to a faint feeling of relief when James finally arrived, Piers safely ensconced in the back seat of the Rolls.
She saw him walking up the path through the small front garden; heart thudding heavily against her ribs as she opened the door to him. Dressed in narrow black cord jeans, a matching shirt and a
pale lemon blouson jacket in soft, expensive leather he looked years younger and less austere and yet somehow far more lethally sensual. His smile for the twins was warm and genuine, slashing virilely attractive grooves from nose to mouth. A treacherous weakness invaded her stomach as she watched him. What was the matter with her? Surely she wasn’t regretting refusing to go with them?
‘Ready?’
While the twins clamoured a noisy assent Tara enquired in stilted tones what time she should expect them back.
The look James gave her made her long to hurl something heavy and preferably dangerous at his head. Cynicism burned in the dark blue eyes, disdain etched in the sardonic curl of his mouth. Without a word being spoken he somehow managed to convey the impression that she had some ulterior reason for wanting to know the times of the twins’ return. Seething, she tried to control her anger as he told her coolly that it would be early evening before they returned, his mocking, ‘Long enough for whatever you might have in mind,’ striking sparks of anger in her own eyes.
The twins had been gone half an hour when Tara heard the knock on the door. She had been upstairs cleaning the windows, and groaned at the interruption, suspecting that it was more than likely to be the neighbour who kept an eye on the twins for her and whose husband, she knew, was an avid Saturday armchair sportsman.
Grimacing to herself, she hurried downstairs, flinging open the door, as she apologised for her ancient jeans and tee-shirt, her apologies coming to an abrupt halt as she saw Chas leaning laconically against the door frame, a huge bunch of hothouse roses in one hand and a bottle of champagne in the other.
Her feeble, ‘Chas… What on earth…’ was silenced as he pushed her gently inside, following her in and closing the door behind him.
‘Where’s the terrible twosome?’ he enquired mock seriously, depositing the champagne on the hall table and following Tara through into the sitting room, with the roses.