Starting Over (40 page)

His hand stayed her, sliding underneath the sheet to rest familiarly on her naked hip.

Quietly, bleak but unthreatening, he told her how enraged he’d been when she left. ‘I wrecked the house. The windows, the furniture, even your grandmother’s glasses and the pictures of McLaren and Lucasta.’

Fresh guilt humbled her. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered for the hundredth time.

He shushed her. ‘No excuses. It was self-indulgent lack of control. I regret that as much as what I let you think I was going to do a minute ago. Nothing like that will ever happen again, I promise you.

‘And then there’s Jason.’

The silence went on so long that she lifted her head and flicked a glance under spiky lashes. ‘Have you seen him?’ Her voice was throaty from tears. ‘Or doesn’t his mother want you to?’

‘I haven’t seen him.’ Something in his voice. Some ... regret? The hand on her hip moved upward and the thumb began absently to stroke her lower ribs. ‘He’s not my child.’

Thud. Then her heart began to race. ‘Not?’ she croaked.

‘No. DNA testing proved it.’

‘But she claimed you as the father?’

‘I was the most likely candidate. But she had a ding-dong with someone else at the same time, he’s not mine. I suppose she had to do the CSA thing again with whoever’s second on her list.’ He sighed. ‘Christ, the game’s weighted against the man. She tells me I’ve got a child, and she says, “Let’s wait for the result of the paternity tests before you see him”. Then he’s not mine, and she says, “Sorry if I caused you any trouble”!’ His fingers ceased to stroke, just rested on her ribs as they must’ve done a hundred times. She felt a fairy ring of goosebumps rise around his hand.

‘All for nothing.’ She shuffled to fit the lines of her leg more comfortably against his. Nothing. The whole, unbelievable mess had been for nothing. Love beyond anything, thrown away. For nothing. A nothing which had brought them to this hideous physical fight here in a motel room near the M25. Bedspread scratchy; half naked; relationship in shards.

And now she had to extricate herself. To do him the courtesy of leaving him to his justifiable brooding. To face a realistic future with him as a neighbour or, in time, maybe a friend, forgetting what could’ve been.

Tentatively, she crept her arms into the sleeves of the shirt ridged absurdly around her neck, to ease her underwear back to its proper place, ridiculous and undignified.

Just when she thought she’d achieved some haphazard semblance of decency and was rehearsing, ‘This was a mistake and I’ll go now,’ he turned his head.

‘Don’t go.’

Don’t go? Her heart tripped up.

He sighed and tightened his arms, claiming back the inches she’d withdrawn. ‘Shit, Princess, there’s no car to fetch from
Brighton
. I was on my way home when I saw you.’

Funny that her heartbeat should increase to deafening proportions when she seemed to have stopped breathing altogether. He levered himself up above her, the darkness of his hair bobbing in ringlets against thick eyebrows. A naked leg slid its way between hers and sent shock waves up the middle.

The expression in his eyes softened. ‘I want you,’ he whispered, dropping a tiny kiss on her face. ‘I always want you more than I’ve ever wanted anyone. Or will ever.’ His lips trailed along her jawline. ‘When you left I went mad. I wanted to kill you for your unfairness. I wanted bloody revenge for the pain. But through all that, even on my worst, spiteful, days’ – he let his fingertips drift over the sensitiveness of her belly, carrying the by now well-travelled fabric of her shirt up again – ‘I’d indulge myself with wild fantasies of making love to you again, Princess. You.’ His hand – iron, minutes ago – found her breast with velvet touch. His breath hissed in between his teeth.

She clutched him fiercely. He still wanted her! ‘I love you! I’ve never stopped. And I’ve missed you so much!’ In a moment she was wriggling smartly back out of her shirt, pressing eager breasts against the hot breadth of his chest.

With a groan and a compulsive movement, he finally reacted as she knew she could make him. ‘You gorgeous, sexy woman!’ His hard, scalding body weight pinned her, trapped her, felt delicious. ‘Christ, I want you!’

His head dropped to her breast and her heart hammered. His lips travelled the upward length of her throat, the ticklish crook of her neck,
that
place below her ear lobe. And she knew her hands were clasping his back frantically as her mouth awaited his soft and considerate lips, hips lifting in invitation. Never had she felt quite so heated, so sensitive, so ready for him.

‘Love me,’ she suggested, grinding her pelvis against him, abruptly aware of her own desperation to end the long months without his body, uncaring whether he thought her overwhelming or demanding or impatient. ‘Love me!’

He bit her neck, lifted himself above her. ‘Of course I love you!’

He parked the wrecker and strolled across his forecourt and into his garage, where Pete was busy at the back of yet another VW Beetle.

After the first flash of relief, Pete shook his head and complained, ‘You don’t know where I can get a good mechanic, do you? Short-handed today, I had to send Jos to pick up Graham’s Lotus.’ He selected one of the array of spanners arranged about his feet.

Ratty grinned. ‘I’ve been busy. Can you manage if I take a few days off?’

Pete raised his eyebrows as he worked. ‘Anyone I know?’

Ratty sank his chin on his fist and muttered, ‘Tess.’

Pete’s spanner clanged to the concrete floor. ‘Did you say
Tess
? How the hell did that happen?’

Ratty accepted a punch to his upper arm with a sheepish grin, wincing, and decided to pay Pete the compliment of the truth. ‘On my way back, yesterday, she was standing at the side of the road with the Freelander. She threw her keys into a ditch so I’d tow her home. I pretended I had a car to pick up from
Brighton
and that it was an overnighter, got rooms in a motel.

‘I gave her the cold shoulder. She came to my room in knickers and shirt and asked to sleep with me. I tried to beat her off, and we had a fight. She won me round.’

‘All right, all right!’ Pete pretended to be huffed. ‘You don’t have to make things up. I suppose some things are too private to be shared. So, now you’re going to spend the week in bed?’

‘That’s about it.’ Ratty laughed.

‘Angel will be tickled to death, anyway. Let us know when you’ve taken the
Do not disturb
sign off the door.’

‘I’ll be in touch. We will be, I mean.’

Back towards Pennybun in the last of the slanting sunshine, Ratty let his mind return to Tess and last night, as they’d rumbled back up the motorway, encased in the wrecker’s comfortable familiar road noise. ‘We won’t rush things this time,’ he’d suggested. ‘Maybe it’d be better if you stayed at Honeybun. I thought of it, after you’d gone. We can spend as much time together as we want, but keep separate bases, maybe you’d feel more secure.’ He’d felt for the warmth of her hand, as he drove. Wanting to reassure her. To be reasonable, adult, cautious. Sensible.

‘Oh, Rats!’ she’d complained. ‘I was going to ask you to marry me. Are you scared?’

He turned into the gate of Pennybun Cottage.

Tonight, they’d celebrate quietly. A restaurant, a bottle of bubbly, bed like a couple of rabbits.

He could show her again how much he loved her and tomorrow, he thought, they could fetch the rest of her boxes from Honeybun.

He could help her unpack.

**** Ends ****

Sue Moorcroft is an accomplished writer of novels, serials, short stories and articles, as well as a creative writing tutor and a competition judge.

Her other novels include
All That Mullarkey
,
Want to Know a Secret?
,
Love & Freedom
and prior to Choc Lit -
Uphill
 
All
 
the
 
Way
.
Her novel
Dream a Little Dream
will be published by Choc Lit in November 2012.

She is also the commissioning editor and a contributor to
Loves Me, Loves Me Not
, an anthology of short
 
stories celebrating the Romantic Novelists’ Association’s 50th
 
anniversary and the author of
Love Writing – How to Make Money Writing Romantic or Erotic Fiction
.

www.suemoorcroft.com

www.suemoorcroft.wordpress.com

www.twitter.com/suemoorcroft

All That Mullarkey

Revenge and love: it’s a thin line …

The writing’s on the wall for
Cleo
and
Gav
.
The bedroom wall, to be precise. And it says ‘This marriage is over.’

Wounded and furious, Cleo embarks on a night out with the girls, which turns into a glorious one night stand with …

Justin, centrefold material and irrepressibly irresponsible. He loves a little wildness in a woman – and he’s in the right place at the right time to enjoy Cleo’s.

But it’s Cleo who has to pick up the pieces – of a marriage based on a lie and the lasting repercussions of that night. Torn between laid-back Justin and control freak Gav, she’s a free spirit that life is trying to tie down. But the rewards are worth it!
 

Find out more and purchase in the kindle store:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Starting-Over-ebook/dp/B003Y8XQ74

Want to Know a Secret?

Money, love and family. Which matters most?

When Diane Jenner’s husband is hurt in a helicopter crash, she discovers a secret that changes her life. And it’s all about money, the kind of money the Jenners have never had.