Starting Over

Jenny saw the look in his eyes and her own heart softened.

'Jack, I do understand. I know how hard it must be for you.' She gave a small sigh. 'You and Annalise are so young and I know you won't believe me when I say this but...' She stopped. He wouldn't believe her and she wasn't sure that she believed herself that the pains of one's youth faded into insignificance with age and experience. Look how long it had taken her and Jon to come to terms with their youthful traumas.

'I know how much things can hurt,' she told him gently. 'But, Jack, you really do have to put your studies first at this stage in your life.' She broke off and picked up one of his large hands in her own smaller ones.

'Come downstairs and have some supper. We're probably better talking about all of this tomorrow when we've all had some time to sleep on it.'

Jack blinked hard. What would she say if he were to tell her that he didn't want to sleep on what he had to tell her and his uncle Jon.... No, he didn't want to but for Annalise's sake he must.

SAUL EXPELLED an irritable breath as Tullah walked into their bedroom from their en suite bathroom, deliberately refusing to look at him. She had been giving him the cold shoulder treatment all evening and he was becoming increasingly fed up with it.

'Look, Tullah, you're over-reacting,' he told her.

'Am I?' she challenged him. 'You go to see a woman, a woman you were once desperate to take to bed—without saying a word to me about your visit and you've got the gall to say I'm over-reacting.'

'I went to see Olivia, my cousin,' Saul corrected her firmly, 'and I went to see her because I thought...

because I felt...'

'Yes?' Tullah pressed him acid sweetly. 'You felt...'

'Oh, for God's sake, Tullah,' Saul exploded.

'You're making an unnecessary melodrama out of the whole thing.'

He had shaved and showered ready for bed and ludicrously almost, Tullah who never ever wore anything to conceal her body from him in the privacy of their bedroom, was wrapped from her neck to her ankles in a thick fluffy towel.

To his own chagrin he discovered that there was something about the sight of his beautiful wife so clad that was having a disconcertingly distracting effect on him.

'Yes, with hindsight, I should have rung and told you...discussed with you,' he corrected himself as he saw her expression, 'what I was planning to do. Yes, I acted on impulse, but impulse is exactly what it was, Tullah, and not some latent desire to resurrect a relationship with Olivia that never existed in the first place. I thought she might want someone to talk to, a shoulder to lean on if you like. I felt sorry for her, concerned for her. I like her....' He stopped.

'Then why didn't you tell me you'd been to see her when you came in?' Tullah asked him reasonably.

'Because I wanted to wait until we were on our own and the reason for that was...' Briefly he related to her what Livvy had told him about Jenny.

'Livvy did what?' Tullah demanded. 'No wonder she feels reluctant to get in touch with Jenny.'

When she saw Saul's expression Tullah relented.

'It's okay,' she conceded, 'I'm being unfair. Livvy is going through a bad time. I saw how shocked she was today, too, when I told her about Maddy.'

She started to walk across the room whilst Saul gazed distractedly and hungrily at her towel-clad body.

He could hear in her voice that the crisis was over.

'Friends?' he asked wryly.

She smiled as she came towards him, reaching out to trace a small circle on his bare chest with her fin-gernail.

'Maybe...' she allowed.

'You can't really be jealous of Livvy,' Saul murmured thickly as he tugged at her towel.

'You should be flattered that I still feel so passionate about you that I get jealous,' Tullah teased him.

The towel gave way to the pressure of his fingers and dropped to the floor. Saul drew in his breath.

'Mmm...so you feel passionately about me, do you?' He could hear his own voice thickening and feel his body hardening.

'Sometimes,' Tullah agreed dulcetly.

'Would now be one of those times?'

He was reacting like a boy, all hungry heat and intensity, letting her run circles round him, Saul acknowledged humorously as Tullah leaned closer to him and murmured judiciously, 'It could be...'

'Could...' Saul groaned hoarsely against the lips she had placed against his.

'How will I know...' he began, but she stopped him, one hand on his chest as she firmly held him just far enough off her body so that she leaned forward to brush her hps against his skin, the hard tight points of her nipples brushed tantalisingly against his flesh, her other hand... Saul closed his eyes and groaned as he felt what her other hand was doing.

'Oh, you'll know,' she was breathing in a soft whis-pery little voice between her kisses and as he felt his body responding to the silky stroke of her fingertips Saul decided that he had had enough of being teased and swept her up into his arms carrying her over to their bed.

'Don't forget Nick's here,' Tullah warned him as she saw the look in his eyes.

'Three bedrooms away.' Saul grinned.

One of the first things they had had to learn to do as lovers had been to make love without waking his sleeping children.

'So you don't really want Livvy, then,' Tullah asked him sensually as Saul's body settled down over hers.

'Who's Livvy?' Saul responded huskily, before capturing one of the nipples that had been taunting him so provocatively earlier with his lips, lapping it with his tongue as he fought to hold off his own rioting desire, wanting to build Tullah's desire to match his own, but as she reached for his hand and guided it between her legs he recognised that she was as aroused as he was himself. As he entered her he told her thickly, 'I'll never love or want anyone the way I do you, Tullah... Never...'

'You'd better not,' Tullah responded as she felt her body begin to shudder with the first strong contraction of her orgasm.

MAX WAS DREAMING.

He was running, or rather trying to run, along a vast white sandy beach but his feet kept being sucked down into the sand impeding his progress. Behind him he could feel the dark malevolent shadow that was pursuing him gaining on him. He could see on the sand the shadow of his unknown assailant and the knife he was holding in his upraised hand.

Frantically Max tried to avoid the downward plunge of the knife, turning as he did so to fend off his attacker, but as he turned round he saw to his horror that Maddy was behind him and that the knife was aimed at her.

In his sleep he cried out, a tortured sound, ripped from his throat at his own inability to protect her as the knife slashed down towards the unprotected mound of her pregnant body.

Abruptly Max woke up reaching out to switch on the bedside lamp. His body was drenched in sweat and he was shuddering as viciously as though he were gripped by a life-threatening fever. The normally warm private cocoon of this bedroom Maddy had created for them was filled with the acrid scent of his own agonising fear.

He looked at his watch. Two o'clock in the morning. The death hour. His body felt icy cold now but was still drenched in sweat. He had no need to question where the horror of his nightmare had come from.

The setting had been that of his own vicious attack in Jamaica when he had travelled there in search of David, but with the substitution of Maddy and their baby as its victim rather than himself. Max buried his head in his hands.

How well he could understand right now the feelings and needs that drove those who believed that they could bargain with fate. There was no way he could go back to sleep now. Getting out of bed he pulled on his robe. He might as well go downstairs and do some work. But as he headed for the bedroom door he knew the shockingly brutal images conjured up in his nightmare would haunt him for the rest of his life.

As he reached for the door handle he closed his eyes and sent a silent plea to Maddy to get well.

CHAPTER SEVEN