Penny Jordan (25 page)

She was standing like someone about to ward off a devastating blow and he ached to reach out and snatch her into the protection of his arms, to keep her there, holding her,
loving
her, but he couldn't...not now...not yet.

'I can't let you live like this, Honor. You deserve more...better. You need a man you can have openly by your side, a relationship that other people recognise. I've made up my mind.'

Honor held her breath, the ache of it... She couldn't bear to lose him, not now, but she couldn't keep him against his will, either.

'I'm going to ring Jon, tell him I've returned, ask if he'll see me...if we can talk.'

Honor stared at him, her eyes brilliant with feeling.

'Don't look at me like that,' David warned her thickly, groaning under his breath as he gave in to the temptation to reach out and hold her. 'Come here and let me...oh, God, Honor...Honor...'

He could feel the quivers of emotion running through her as he kissed her hungrily. They were almost clumsy in their mutual need for one another. His hand cupped her breast, warm and already belovedly familiar. Her hands touched him, stroking him, holding him, shaping him.

They made love greedily, desperately, almost as though in shared acknowledgement of the final burning of the bridges they had left as a safety measure between them. They were gone now in their mutual commitment to one another, their mutual recognition of the intensity and depth of what they felt.

'Would you really have done that for me...given up this house, this place?' David whispered against Honor's mouth as he kissed her.

'Everything...
anything...'
Honor promised recklessly.

'It won't be easy,' David warned her later as she lay curled against his side, the late-afternoon sunlight highlighting the warm curves of her body. She had a woman's body, not a girl's, and she was totally matter-of-fact about its warm ripe-ness, laughing at him tenderly when he had told her how beautiful he found her.

'Nature's very clever,' she had responded drily.

'As she increases the wrinkles, she decreases our ability to see them!'

'I'll have you know that my eyesight is perfect,' David had replied in mock outrage.

'Uh-huh,' Honor had teased back flippantly.

'So perfect that you were holding the newspaper two inches away from your nose to read the head-lines this morning,

'Are you sure you want to ring Jon?' she asked him more soberly now. 'I took the medication and the diet I prepared round for your father this morning when I went out to do the shopping. He seemed to be a little better.'

She paused and then looked at him briefly before starting to trace a complicated pattern on his bare chest with her fingertip;

'There were two other children there, two girls, not Maddy's. I think they might have been your grandchildren.' She winced a little as she felt his grip on her tighten.

'Livvy's children?'

Honor nodded. 'Yes.'

David closed his eyes. 'Livvy was so angry with me when she found out about her mother's bulimia, and with good reason. I should have done something about it, got professional help for her instead of just trying to pretend it wasn't happening. What do the children look like?'

Pausing a moment, Honor told him judiciously,

'Not a lot like you. They're both dark...but there's something...'

'Caspar's dark...if it's him she married.'

'Yes, I heard Maddy referring to him...

something about a wedding in America.'

'Yes, Caspar is American. Livvy brought him home with her just before—'

'You don't have to do this,' she repeated and meant it.

'Yes, I do,' David corrected her. 'It's what I came for after all. If Jon refuses to see me, then—'

'It won't make any difference to me,' Honor said quickly.

David shook his head and told her softly, 'Yes, it will. What if Jon and the rest of the family decide they've had enough of shielding and protecting me? What if they decide to go public about what I did? I can't put you through that, Honor, being branded the wife of a liar and a thief.'

The
wife!
Honor's heart thumped against her ribcage, but she didn't say anything other than a shaky 'Let's take one step at a time.'

HALF AN HOUR LATER
, they were back downstairs. As David walked into the sitting room and stared at the telephone, Honor paused in the doorway before saying quietly to him, 'I'll be in the kitchen if...if you need me.'

'No,' David said without hesitation. 'No. Please stay. I want you to be here with me.' When he held his hand out to her, she walked unsteadily towards him and took hold of it. He had no need to check the number. He knew it off by heart, but his hand still trembled as he punched the buttons.

'PHONE,' JENNY CALLED OUT
automatically as she finished cutting away the edge of the pastry from the pie she was making. 'Phone, Jon,' she repeated a little more loudly, then, dusting her floury hands against her apron, she sighed and started to move towards the kitchen telephone.

'I'll get it,' Jon told her, reaching it first.

'Grr...' As he picked it up, Jenny made a mock angry face at him and went back to her pie.

Maddy and Max had called in unexpectedly ten minutes earlier on the way home from Chester and, in the way of such things, their arrival had been quickly followed by that of Katie and her husband Seb and their twin sons who were dropping their house keys off with them before driving north for a few days' holiday in Yorkshire.

Absently, Jenny registered Jon's conversation as she opened the oven door and placed the pie inside.

'Yes, it is,' she heard him saying quietly, followed by a raw, husky 'Yes, I know—God, I'd recognise your voice anywhere!' Which, for some reason, made Jenny stand stock-still.

On the other end of the line, David's hand gripping the receiver was damp with sweat. 'Is that Jon?' he had asked even though he had recognised his twin's voice immediately, and when Jon had answered yes, he had told him, 'It's David....'

Jon's acknowledgement had brought a lump of emotion to his throat and for a few seconds he was unable to say anything else. At his side, Honor squeezed his arm reassuringly.

'I'd like to see you Jon...talk to you.'

As he waited for his brother's response, he was shaking so much that he could hardly hold the receiver.

There was a long pause, long enough for him to wish he hadn't made the call, long enough for him to guess that Jon was going to turn him down.

As
THOUGH BY
some mystical force, the other members of their family who had been in the sitting room suddenly seemed drawn to the kitchen, walking in chattering and then falling silent as they sensed, like Jenny, the import of what was happening.

'Where are you?' they all heard Jon ask. Although none of them, bar Jenny, had heard the earlier part of his conversation, all of them tensed and waited in silence, watching Jon being gripped by emotion.

'I'm...I'm not very far away,' David responded huskily.

'Could you...could you come here?' Jon asked.

Honor, who had heard his question, nodded her head vigorously.

'Yes. Yes, I could,' David agreed. 'When—'

'Now,' Jon told him fiercely, 'now!' and put down the receiver.

He turned to look at Jenny.

'That was David,' he said quietly. 'He's...he's coming round. Right now!'

His face was white, but the emotion Jenny could see burning in his eyes disturbed and dismayed her far more than his shock.

'David!' the others were repeating with varying degrees of disbelief.

'Uncle
David?' Katie asked.

'Dad...?' Jack demanded sharply.

'Yes,' Jon answered them all before saying to Jenny, 'I think I need a drink.'

'Where...what...why...?' everyone was asking-

'I don't know,' Jon told them, shaking his head.

He was feeling oddly light-headed and perhaps drinking alcohol wasn't the sensible thing to do.

He was suffering from shock, of course, and no wonder, and yet should he really be so surprised?

After all, hadn't he...? But no.
That
wasn't the reason David had come back. It
couldn't
possibly be.

'Jon, did David give any indication of when he would be here?' Jenny was asking him, and his heightened sensitivity told him that she was apprehensive and on edge.

'No. He didn't...I didn't... Oh, God, I don't believe this is actually happening after all this time,' he cried out through his tears. 'He's here at last. David...David! What if he should change his mind?' He paced the room anxiously. 'I should have gone to him. He'll be anxious, nervous, afraid—I should have told him.'

As she listened, Jenny found it hard to control her immediate instinct to protect her man, her Jon!

David had hurt him very badly in the past and yet here he was almost transmuted with joy at the thought of seeing him again.

A T FOXDEAN
, Honor was telling David encouragingly, 'It will be all right. He wouldn't have agreed to see you if... I'll drive you there,' she insisted firmly.

'No. I can manage,' David protested uncon-vincingly.

'No, you can't,' Honor corrected him.

'TURN LEFT HERE
,' David directed. Obligingly, Honor did so. Ahead of her she could see the outline of a house.

'I'll drop you off at the gate and then I'll drive back here to wait for you,' she told him.

As they reached the house, the security lights came on and illuminated the interior of the car and David's taut face. The sharpness of the light bleached the colour from his skin, oddly leaving him looking not older but younger.

'It
will
be all right,' she repeated, and kissed him on the mouth almost maternally.

THEY ALL HEARD
the front doorbell ring, but none of them moved.

'Jon...' Jenny urged.

'I'll go,' Max offered, but Jon shook his head.

'No...no...' he said shakily.

Maddy touched Max's arm and told him gently,

'It's your father David wants to see.'

'Yes, because he knows that Dad's always been a soft touch. If he asks for money, Dad...' Jenny saw from Jon's expression just how unwelcome and how unpalatable he found Max's suggestion.

Jon started to move towards the door. Jenny looked round her kitchen. Joss and Jack were standing together, Katie was with her husband and sons, and Maddy was beside Max, his hand resting protectively over her stomach. They had broken the news of Maddy's pregnancy to Jon and Jenny the previous day.

Jenny had felt immensely pleased, but now all the anticipatory pleasure and excitement she had been experiencing had been swamped by shock and dread. She didn't want David to be back. She didn't want Jon to retreat into the person he had been before David's disappearance. She couldn't bear to see him suffer again as he had done before, when his father was constantly ridiculing him and decrying everything he did whilst prais-ing David to the sky. Most of all, she didn't want to acknowledge what the look she had seen in Jon's eyes meant.

She heard the front door open and her body stiffened. Wasn't
she
enough for Jon? Wasn't
her
love,
their
family enough? Was there always going to be a part of him that didn't belong to her, a part of him that belonged exclusively to David and their twinship? It hurt and frightened her to think that he had never once told her that he was truly missing David, that she had not known how much he wanted his brother back.

Jon took a deep breath as he opened the door.

'David...'

'Jon...'

'Come...come in.'

Somehow, as he stepped back into the hall, Jon managed to prevent himself from holding out his arms to his twin—from letting him know how important this meeting between them was to him.

Slowly, he told himself as he held back. Don't swamp him, panic him, alienate him. Don't burden him with your love—your need. Had David seen how much his changed appearance had caught him off guard? He had been expecting to see the David who had disappeared years ago, but the man whom he was ushering towards his study, whilst physically his own double, somehow just wasn't the David he had visualised.

Could he really be taller or was that simply a trick of the light? Certainly he was slimmer, fitter, more muscular. His skin was tanned, making his teeth look impossibly white and his eyes intensely blue.

'I wasn't sure you would agree to see me,' David was saying huskily to him as they walked into his study. 'In your shoes—'

'No. I'm glad you're here. Dad...' Jon cleared his throat as his emotions threatened to get the better of him. After all, why should he mind now that David had always been their father's favourite? 'He hasn't been very well.'

'Yes. I know,' David acknowledged.

'You know?'

'Yes. Er...there's someone...a friend...' David hesitated. 'I don't want to talk about Dad, Jon.

Not yet. There are things I need to say to you first, important things, the first of which is...' David took a deep breath. 'I haven't come here to ask for your forgiveness or even your understanding. Why should you give either to me? I don't deserve them. I haven't done anything to warrant them. Far from it. But what I
do
want to do is tell you how much, how very much, I regret all the ways I've let you down. All the ways I've been so shamefully weak and self-serving, all the times I put my own needs before yours, all the times I stood back and let our father...'

He paused as Jon made a dismissive, anguished gesture with his hand.

'No, it isn't easy to talk about,' he agreed as though Jon had actually spoken. 'And like I've said, I'm not asking or expecting you to forgive me for my greed or the destruction of the bond I should have valued and cherished.'

'Our father...' Jon began thickly, but David shook his head.

'Our father may have been a victim of his own childhood, but that's no excuse for me. Just as soon as I was old enough to realise, I knew that everything he gave me came with a price and that you were the one who was paying that price. You were the whipping boy, Jon, and I let you be. I can never ask you to forgive me for that...nor can I forgive myself.'