I've changed my mind.'
Nick stared at her. He knew exactly what 'proposition' Sara meant. She was referring to that idiotic throw-away comment he had made about them having a short, sharp sexual fling.
It took him several seconds to believe what he had heard. Sara was agreeing that they should have sex....
Just like that...without any...without them...
'I have to go now.' Awkwardly she edged away.
Sara couldn't believe what she had done...what she had said. She felt as though a totally alien life form had somehow taken her over, made her behave in a way that was totally out of character.
Amused Bobbie watched the by-play between them in silence. She could feel the heat and sexual tension they were both generating.
'Sara,' Nick protested, but it was too late, she was already hurrying away.
'Mmm... Now you have whetted my curiosity,'
Bobbie teased Nick. 'Are you going to enlighten me?'
'There isn't anything to enlighten you about,' Nick told her forbiddingly. Bobbie laughed.
'Oh, no? And what about a certain proposition?'
'It was just a small business matter,' Nick fibbed dismissively.
'If you say so,' Bobbie accepted dulcetly, but Nick could see that she was still smiling.
Sara had agreed to have sex with him—so why wasn't he feeling more triumphant? Why this cold feeling of shock and dismay in the pit of his stomach?
Because she had totally misunderstood his comment—
that was why. Yes—he wanted to take her to bed, but he was an old-fashioned kind of man who preferred to do his own hunting rather than have his quarry offer herself to him. Rubbish! So why then this feeling of disappointment, of disillusionment almost?
So he had been wrong to assume that Sara was the kind of woman for whom sexual desire and emotional love went hand in hand. Why should that arouse so many negative feelings for him?
SARA WAS TREMBLING uncontrollably by the time she reached her car. There was no way she could stay at the spa now. She couldn't understand what had driven her to act in such a way but she knew her pride would never allow her to recall her reckless words.
What was going to happen now, she wondered. At the very least Nick was going to have some explaining and appeasing to do to his companion and yet she had looked more amused than shocked or hurt by Sara's challenge. And she had certainly not displayed any of the agonising jealousy that she herself had felt. Jealousy that had motivated her, driven her, invaded her personality and taken it over.
DAVID COULD HEAR the noise as he opened his car door on Olivia's drive. A child was crying, screaming.
Instinctively he hurried towards the source of the noise, checking when he saw his two granddaughters, the elder leaning protectively towards the younger who was holding her knee, her hand covered in blood.
As he crouched down beside them, Amelia told him shakily, 'Alex has hurt herself.'
'Yes, I know,' David agreed steadily. 'Look, why don't I stay here with her whilst you go and get your mummy?'
Obediently Amelia left her younger sibling's side and started to run towards the house.
Carefully David smiled at Alex. 'Why don't you let me have a look?' he suggested gently.
'It hurts,' Alex sobbed.
'I know,' David sympathised. He could see a piece of glass on the path smeared with blood and he went cold. She had obviously cut herself, but how badly, how deeply?
Very gently David reached for her, soothing and calming her as he persuaded her to let him look at her injured leg. When he saw that the cut was relatively minor, he expelled his pent-up breath in relief.
'You! What are you doing here?'
David tensed as he heard the antagonism in Olivia's voice but Livvy wasn't looking at him. Her face had gone white as she hurried anxiously towards her younger daughter.
'Alex... Oh, Alex...'
'It's all right,' David assured her. 'It looks much worse than it is. It's just a flesh cut....'
'...and you're an expert, of course,' Olivia stormed bitingly at him.
'Not an expert, no,' David responded with quiet dignity, 'But I do know enough to recognise a relatively minor wound when I see one. However, it will still have to be cleaned. Shall I carry her to the house for you?'
'No!' Olivia denied immediately, but to her chagrin as she reached for Alex the girl shook her head and told her, 'No, I want him to carry me.'
Angrily Olivia gave way, preceding David up the path towards the house as he carried Alex in his arms.
As SHE WATCHED her father dealing deftly with Alex's cut leg whilst Amelia looked on in almost doting hero-worship, Olivia felt as though somehow she had been transported back in time and that she was the one in her father's arms.
She would have been about Alex's age—perhaps a little older. She had, she remembered, been playing in the garden at Queensmead with Max out of sight of the adults. They had been arguing about something and Max had pushed her over. She could still remember how hard she had fought not to cry whilst Max taunted her saying that she was a soppy cry-baby girl.
It had been Jenny who had found them, exclaiming in concern as she saw Olivia's scraped and bleeding knees, picking her up and carrying her back towards the party of grown-ups on the other side of the garden.
'Tania, Livvy's fallen and hurt her knees,' Jenny had told Olivia's mother.
But as Jenny had held the girl out towards her sister-in-law, Olivia could still see the look of irritation and distaste in her mother's eyes as she had recoiled from her exclaiming, 'Oh, no. Don't give her to me, Jenny, my clothes will be covered in blood and this dress is new. Give her to David. He can deal with her. David...' she had called, and Olivia could remember how her father who had been talking with Ben and Jon had turned impatiently to look at them.
'Olivia's cut her knees. You'll have to take her inside and clean her up,' Tania had announced.
And as her father's frown had deepened her grandfather had complained, 'Wretched child. Let one of the women deal with her, David.'
Olivia had shrunk away from her father as he had taken her from Jenny, carrying her indoors without saying a word to her and upstairs to the bathroom where he had sat her down whilst he cleaned her knees of the grit embedded in them, frowning whilst he did so.
'How did this happen?' he had asked her whilst tears welled in her eyes from the sting of the antiseptic he was using.
When she made no response, unwilling to tell him that Max had pushed her in case he refused to believe her, he had shaken his head and told her with a sigh,
'Well, try not to be so clumsy in future.' He had picked her up then, giving another sigh whilst Olivia had fought back her tears.
It had been Jenny who had comforted her later, giving her a cuddle and asking if she was feeling all right, but Olivia had still ached for it to be her father who was holding her.
And now, here he was carrying her daughter with every evidence of that tenderness and concern she had once so much longed to get from him and had felt was withheld from her. He looked every inch the loving caring grandfather, but it was an image Olivia flatly refused to believe in.
How could she? He had never been a loving caring father to her—not in her eyes and yet now, here he was preparing to become a father again, but this time... But this time the child he had helped to create would be loved by him in a way that she never had been.
The intensity of her emotions frightened her. She was an adult now, a parent herself, surely way beyond caring about the traumas of her childhood.
Protectively she reached out to take Alex from him but to her consternation her daughter insisted, 'No,'
clinging to David and turning her face away from her mother.
'Let me take her upstairs for you,' David offered gently.
Olivia looked so shocked, so stricken that his heart went out to her. He ached to be able to gather her into his arms along with her daughters. He could see so clearly in her expression
that she was hurting and angry and, he recognised with the maturity he had lacked when she had been a child, the pride and hurt were warring inside her.
Other than physically wresting Alex from his arms, Olivia recognised she had no alternative but to agree.
Giving David a curt nod she led the way upstairs leaving him to follow her.
It was a good half an hour before the girls allowed David to leave. He had to be shown their computer and their homework before Olivia could settle them in their room and take David back downstairs with her.