Penny Jordan (22 page)

HONOR HAD
no other appointments. It had been her intention to stop off in the town on her way back from seeing Ben Crighton and collect some paint charts so that she and David could look at them. Now, though, paint charts were the last thing on her mind.

As she reached the entrance to the lane that led to the house, she stopped the car on the roadside.

Then coming to an abrupt decision, she restarted the engine and drove past. She couldn't go back yet. She had too much to think about.

'There's something I have to tell you,' David had said, but she had stopped him. Neither his past nor his future were any concern of hers, she had told herself. All she wanted, all she needed, was the here and now. When it was over, when the unexpectedly fierce fire of passion they had lit between them burned itself out, she would be quite happy to see him move on.

She owed him no loyalty, no compassion, no support. There was a lay-by ahead and Honor pulled into it, stopping the car again, her mind a mass of confused thoughts.

It wasn't David's 'crime' that concerned her.

Financial fraud, theft... It was dishonest, yes, deplorable, maybe, but there were worse offences, far, far worse.

'He won't come back,' Max Crighton had said, and Honor had seen in their eyes that they all shared his belief.

But he
had
come back. Why? Not for financial gain, Honor would stake her life on it. Then
why?

To see a daughter who, by all accounts, hated him? To see his son who apparently was much happier living with his uncle? To see his father...his brother...?

Why should she care? Why
did
she care?

Caring was the one thing she had resolved not to do. Caring led to complications and she didn't want complications.

This is ridiculous, she told herself crossly.

You've known the man hardly any time at all.

You're forty-four years old, too old to believe that falling in love is anything more than a trick of nature designed to ensure the continuation of the species. The problem was that mankind had decided to try to improve on nature and turn what was designed to be simply an urge to mate into something it was never intended to be. She was beyond the mating stage, way beyond it. Love, real love, had nothing to do with the urgency of sexual desire. It involved knowing someone, and knowing another person required time and dedi-cation. It also required a certain degree of self-lessness and commitment, neither of which she had any desire to give.

She didn't
have
to get involved, she reminded herself. She could turn the car round and drive back to Foxdean and just say nothing. The Crightons had no idea that David was here, living with her, and David didn't know who the patient was she had been going to see today.

But then, as she drove down the lane, she could hear Jon Crighton telling her almost in bewilderment, 'I just can't help thinking about him.'

'JUST BE CAREFUL
,' Annalise warned her brothers.

'We don't want that fish tank damaged. After all, it isn't ours.'

She had been out when Jack Crighton had come back with the tank. They had asked her to stay on at the restaurant and she had told herself that she had no reason to want to see him again. Why should she have?

When she eventually got home, the fish had already been installed in their new tank.

'Jack did it,' the boys had told her.

'Nice lad,' her father had commented gruffly.

Annalise had said nothing. She hadn't told them, either, that when she stepped out of the back door of the restaurant, Jack had been there waiting for her.

'What are you doing here?' she'd demanded sharply.

'I thought I'd walk you home,' Jack had told her.

Walk her home?

'I'm not a child,' she had begun belligerently.

As they crossed the town square, she'd seen a couple of girls from school walking in the opposite direction. When they spotted her with Jack, they had stared at them.

'What's wrong?' Jack had asked her as he noticed the anxious glance she gave them.

"They'll tell everyone at school they've seen me...us,' she had told him crossly.

'So...is that a problem?' Jack had asked her unperturbedly. His lack of concern fuelled her growing anger.

'Maybe not for you,' she said, 'but now they've seen us together, they're going to think...'

She stopped, compressing her lips, but he guessed what she had been about to say, grinning as he teased, 'You mean they're going to think that we're seeing one another?'

'Yes. I don't know why you're smiling,' she choked angrily at him.

'No. Perhaps it's because / rather like the idea,'

Jack told her.

He rather liked the idea!

She didn't know where to look, her anxiety increasing as she wondered just what it was he thought he was going to get from her. He was nineteen and heading off for university. He had probably slept with loads of girls. He probably thought she'd slept with Pete, too. Perhaps he did think it was true what they said about Cooke girls and he was just looking for some easy sex whilst he was at home. Well, if he thought
she
was about to give it to him...

And it was then she saw them...Patti and Pete.

They were just getting out of Pete's car and Patti was clinging possessively to his arm.

A hot tide of angry chagrin washed over her, and without weighing the consequences of what she was doing, she turned impetuously to Jack and told him, 'You can kiss me if you want to.'

Kiss her? Jack was bemused. What on earth had made her say that? Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the other couple. He didn't know whether to remonstrate with her or laugh. But as he looked at her and saw the aching despair in her eyes, he knew he wasn't going to do either.

As he leaned over her, shielding her from any onlookers, he slid his hand against her neck, stroking her throat like a lover and saying softly,

'When I kiss you, it won't be out in the street. It will be somewhere private,
very
private, and it will be very special.' His voice grew thicker and slower. 'When I kiss you...'

He stopped speaking and lifted his hand to brush away the tears brimming from her eyes.

'You're too young...you're much too young,'

he groaned, and then he was holding her tight.

Shocking quivers of sensation were running through Annalise, making her feel dizzy and making her want to stay pressed up against him for ever.

But he was already releasing her, and as she peeped over his shoulder, she saw the exhaust fumes from Pete's car as it raced noisily out of the square.

He had left her outside her front door without saying anything about seeing her again, but as her brothers talked excitedly about his visit, she wasn't really listening to what they were saying.

Instead, she was hearing Jack saying softly to her,

'When I kiss you...'

When he kissed her... She closed her eyes, swaying slightly.

HONOR DROVE SLOWLY
down the car track. For the first time since moving in, she was reluctant to return to the house.

She didn't want to get involved in thinking about the situation. It was too complicated, too demanding, and she had had enough of inner emotional warfare, of being pulled one way by her heart and another by her head.

Not even to herself did she like admitting how much her realisation of what Rourke really was, or how foolish she had been to love him, had hurt her. It had taken her a long time to make herself see Rourke as he really was and to accept that the man she believed she loved was simply a figment of her imagination.

If she had learned one thing from that experience it was not to trust her emotions, and yet, here she was, already letting her heart try to wheedle her round over David Lawrence. No, not David Lawrence, she corrected herself. His name was David...Crighton. A stranger's name...and he was that stranger.

She had reached the cottage. She stopped the car and got out slowly. She might be wrong, she told herself. His resemblance to Jon Crighton might simply be a fluke. There
could
be other members of the family she knew nothing about.

When she opened the kitchen door, he was standing with his back to her, examining a piece of wood.

'Hello, David Crighton,' she said quietly, and watched as he froze, then very slowly put down the wood and turned to face her.

'You know who I am,' he said, and she could hear the tremor in his voice, see the shock in his eyes.

'Yes,' she replied quietly. 'You have a twin brother named Jon, a nephew named Max, a grumpy father named Ben. Oh, and you have a daughter and a son...and two grandchildren.'

David let her finish in silence and then sat down at the table, his head in his hands.

'You know everything,' he said thickly.

'Most of it,' Honor agreed quietly.

'I
was
going to tell you. I
should
have told you.' He stood up and turned away from her.

'You won't want me here now,' he said determinedly. 'I'll get my things....'

Silently, Honor watched him. He was right. It would be better for them both if he left. He wasn't gone very long and when he walked back into the kitchen she gestured downwards to the table without looking at him.

'There's the money I owe you for the time you've been here.'

'But I haven't done anything,' she heard him protest.

'Take it.' She paused and then asked, 'Why have you come back? Your family...' She stopped.

'I don't know,' David admitted. 'Father Ignatius said that I should.'

'Father Ignatius?' Honor questioned.

'It's a long story,' David told her, 'and I won't bore you with it. I'm sorry for—'

'Taking me to bed?' Honor supplied with a small twisted smile.

'No,
never
for that,' David denied. 'I could never be sorry for experiencing something so...

No, I'm not sorry for that,' he repeated as he headed towards the door.

Honor didn't turn round as she heard him go.

Her throat ached and her eyes were dry even though the tears were there. Foolish, stupid tears, the kind of tears that might have been permitted in a girl but which were surely ludicrous in a mature woman.

He would be out of the garden and in the lane by now. Which way would he go? Towards Haslewich or...

Suddenly, she was running towards the door, flinging it open, flying breathlessly into the lane and down it.

He had gone a lot farther than she had expected and she had to call his name twice before he stopped walking and turned to look at her.

'You're going the wrong way,' she told him huskily. 'Haslewich—'

Immediately, he shook his head. 'There isn't anything there for me. I shouldn't have come back.'

There was no bitterness in his voice, only an aching pain that made her own heart tighten.

'Don't go,' she said softly, reaching out to touch his arm.

'You don't mean that,' he insisted flatly.

'Yes, I do,' she contradicted.

And then she reached up on tiptoe and kissed him fiercely.

'You shouldn't be doing this,' David groaned against her mouth. 'And I shouldn't be letting you.'

'Come home,' Honor urged.

'Home'
He gave her a crooked smile.

'Yes. Home...' Honor repeated.

For a moment she thought he was going to refuse. She held her breath and then to her relief he turned round.

HONOR YAWNED
and looked at the clock. It was gone three in the morning. She couldn't believe that she and David Laurence Crighton—he had told her his full name—had been talking for so long.

He had told her everything, sparing nothing, and more than once her eyes had been wet with tears, not just for him but for the other players in his story, as well. Poor unhappy Tiggy with her eating disorder and her fractured life, his brother Jon, his children Olivia and Jack.

'I would like to meet him,' she had said when he told her about Father Ignatius.

'I would like you to, as well,' he had answered, wrapping his arms round her and holding her tightly against his body. 'He's taught me so much, given me so much, helped me discover a true sense of my real self. I have so much I want to say to them all, so many wounds I need to heal.

'I saw Jack today,' he had revealed to her unexpectedly. 'He was up at your cousin's, working there, I think. Jon's done a fine job.'

'He's your son, David,' Honor told him gently.

He shook his head. 'No. I fathered him, but that's all. Him and Olivia. Poor girl. My father was very unkind to her and I made matters worse.'

'Your father has a lot to answer for,' Honor said.

'No. Blaming him is too easy. I could have, should have, been stronger. I've hurt so many people, Honor, and I don't know.. It might suit my own needs to blame my faults on my father—'

he paused and looked at her '—but there comes a point in people's lives when they have the free-dom to make a choice, to acknowledge the influ-ences that have shaped them and to either accept or correct them. It's called growing up, becoming mature,' David continued drily. 'I knew what my father was doing, but I liked the boost it gave to my ego. I looked upon it as my right to do and have everything I wanted. Are you sure you know what you're doing, asking me to stay here?' he finished softly.

'I think so,' Honor responded with confidence.

'Your family won't like it,' he warned her.

'Your daughters...' He paused and searched her face, his own gaze stark and bleak. 'Or are you anticipating that what's between us will be short-lived and over—that you'll have dismissed me from your life before—'

'No!' Honor interrupted quietly but with such vehemence that the intensity of her own denial shocked
her
a little. She hadn't been thinking about her family or the future when she had run after David and persuaded him to come back. She hadn't even known until just now why it had been so vitally necessary to stop him leaving, but suddenly and gloriously, she did.

'Don't look at me like that,' she heard David groaning as he reached out to hold her. 'I don't deserve it, Honor. I don't deserve
you.'