Starting Over

'You're not going to like this.'

'There isn't anything you could do I couldn't like,'

David told her truthfully. 'You've given me so much, Honor. First and most importantly your sweet, delicious, wonderful self, but as well as that you've given me back my self-respect by accepting me, loving me as I am.... You've helped me grow, too, into a new better self. Because of you I've begun to build bridges between myself and my family. You've given me two wonderful stepdaughters...'

'Ah...' Honor intervened, her voice trembling slightly, 'Not just two stepdaughters, David.' She paused whilst he waited, puzzled.

'I think I'm pregnant,' she told him shakily. 'Well, not so much think,' she amended, talking quickly and slightly nervously. 'The symptoms are exactly the same as those I had when I was carrying both girls and I've done a test. I know how shocked you must be. I was myself and...'

'Not shocked,' David denied, walking over to her and taking her in his arms. His voice was muffled as he held her against his body. Honor wasn't sure which of them was trembling most—David or herself.

'Are you annoyed with me?' he asked her gruffly.

'You have every right to be, I know. I should have taken more care.'

'Me—cross with you?' Honor checked him. 'You mean you don't mind?'

'Mind...? I can only think of one thing that could make me happier than I feel right now,' David told her emotionally.

As she looked at him Honor knew that he was thinking of Olivia, but before she could say anything David was wrapping his arms gently around her and holding her tenderly as he told her softly, 'For you to have my child is surely far, far more than I could possibly deserve. He or she may not have been planned,' he continued as he raised one hand and gently stroked her face, 'But I can assure you that he or she will be very much loved. Oh, Honor...' His control broke and tears filled his eyes. 'For you to give me a child when you have already given me so much...'

'I still can't properly take it in myself,' Honor admitted, happy tears of her own filling her eyes. 'I thought I'd be too old and I know that the girls will certainly think so! We're going to have to make some sort of an official announcement, I suppose. Perhaps the best thing to do would be to invite everyone round.... I just wish...' She stopped, not wanting to upset David by saying that she was concerned that Olivia's refusal to have anything to do with them was going to make it difficult for them to give her any advance warning of what was going to happen. By rights, as David's daughter, she should be one of the first people to know, Honor believed.

She stopped speaking as David started to kiss her with passionate tenderness.

'I love you so much,' he whispered huskily to her, but as his eyes started to cloud a little Honor guessed what he was thinking.

'This is going to be very difficult for Olivia, isn't it?'

'I hate knowing how much she's hurting and not being able to do anything to help her,' David admitted as he released her. 'I can't blame her for feeling the way she does and I don't, but I just wish she'd let me talk to her.

'Just thinking about how much I want this baby, our baby, makes me feel like hell knowing how little either Tiggy or I wanted Olivia. Her conception was an accident and then somehow or other I convinced myself that she was going to be a boy. Dad wanted her to be a boy, of course, and...

'I can remember taking her to Dad's once. She wasn't feeling very well. She was screaming and feverish. I suppose she'd have been about ten months old. Tiggy and I had had a fight about who would go to her and whilst we were arguing Jon went and picked her up and took her over to Jenny. The moment Jenny held her she stopped crying.... I've never forgotten the look Jon gave me—a look I thoroughly deserved. Poor Livvy.'

'Yes,' Honor agreed. She hadn't expected to conceive and the timing couldn't have been worse but she could see in David's eyes that already, like her, he loved the child they had both created, even though their shared joy was shadowed by their knowledge of Olivia's pain.

'No, DON'T you dare move,' Max warned Maddy as he brought the car to a halt outside the front door to Queensmead. He had picked her up from the hospital half an hour earlier and of the two of them, the doctor had remarked sardonically that Max looked more trau-matised by the experience they had just been through than Maddy.

'You know what the doctor said,' Max reminded her as he opened the passenger door of his car for her.

'Totally, absolutely, no way are you to do anything other than rest....'

'That doesn't mean that I can't walk,' Maddy protested laughing as Max insisted on lifting her out of the car and carrying her into the house.

She had never seen him so emotionally affected by anything, not even when they had both thought their marriage had to end and it made her ache with love for him to know how much he cared.

The children and Jenny were waiting to welcome her home and tears filled Maddy's eyes as she saw the way her sitting room had been rearranged to provide room for a pretty day bed.

'From now until the baby arrives I'm going to be working quite a lot from home,' Max informed her firmly after Jenny had swept the children back to the kitchen for something to eat. 'Ma will be on hand as well if we should need her. Between us we'll sort out the school runs and everything else. All you have to do is to make sure that you follow the doctor's instructions and rest!'

Maddy waited until he had finished before saying softly, 'Max, I'm not so fragile that you can't kiss me, you know.'

Emotionally she could see how much he loved her but physically he had been oddly and unfamiliarly distant with her and she had noticed, too, how much he was avoiding even looking at, never mind touching the bump that was their child.

She had wanted to ask him if anything was wrong but the journey home had tired her more than she wanted to admit. For their baby's sake she had to do as the consultant had instructed.

As he watched her and listened to her Max knew that their lives together could never be the same. The burden of the guilt he felt lay too heavily against him for that. Maddy would hate him if she were ever to know what he had thought, wished for, when he had feared that he might lose her.

Anxiously Maddy studied him. She had never known him so remote and withdrawn. Even in the early years of their marriage when she had felt he hated her, his reactions had still been blazingly passionate. Was he perhaps angry about the disruption her condition was causing? Things had not been entirely easy for him since David had returned. Did he perhaps secretly wish that this fourth child had not been conceived?

'Max,' she began huskily.

But he shook his head telling her firmly, 'You stay here and rest. I've got to go and help Ma get the kids ready for bed.'

JACK TRIED to focus on what his uncle Jon was saying to him. They were eating supper together, just the two of them because Aunt Jenny was still at Queensmead and Jack was heavy-heartedly aware of just how little progress he had made with his plans during the day.

Annalise had insisted on going to school. He had met her afterwards, not from school but on the river path because she didn't want anyone to see them together.

'Annalise, we can't keep what's happening a secret for much longer,' he had warned her gently, hating himself when she had burst into tears. It seemed unbelievable that they were going to be parents.

Sympathetically Jon watched Jack. It was obvious that the lad had his mind on other things. Teenage love could be traumatically painful, especially when it went wrong.

THE PAIN WAS SO strong that it brought Annalise out of her deep sleep of emotional exhaustion. At first her mind blurred; she simply lay in her bed suffering the waves of sharp cramping discomfort then, as the fog-giness of her sleep cleared she realised what they were and what was happening.

Hardly daring to believe what her body was telling her, she hurried to the bathroom. The proof that she was right and that her period had started made her feel giddy with joyous relief. She wasn't pregnant...she wasn't going to have a baby.

Automatically she did the things that

were necessary whilst all the time the relief inside her expanded like a bubble. Once she was back in bed she didn't want to sleep. Hugging her arms around her body she savoured the pain washing through her, welcoming it.

She had prayed so desperately for this to happen and now that it had... Now that it had, she was never, ever going to have sex again she told herself fervently.

At least not unless she was one hundred percent sure that she was properly protected from any risk of pregnancy. A cold shudder ran through her as she allowed herself to acknowledge properly for the first time just what it would have meant if she had been pregnant.

Jack might have said that they would get married and that everything would be all right, but she knew it wouldn't have been so easy.

Jack... She would telephone him first thing in the morning to give him their good news, she decided tiredly as the painful cramps slowly started to ease and she drifted back to sleep.

JACK HAD JUST woken up when his mobile rang.

Reaching for it he answered the call, his heart pounding heavily as he heard Annalise's voice.

'What is it? What's wrong?' he demanded anxiously.

'Nothing,' Annalise responded, the happiness bubbling through her voice as she told him, 'nothing's wrong at all. In fact, everything is wonderfully, fab-ulously all right. I'm not going to have a baby, Jack...I'm not pregnant...we're safe....'

It took several seconds for her excited words to reach his brain.

'What?' he demanded. 'When...? How...?'

Quickly Annalise explained.

'Look, I've got to go,' she told him.

'I'll meet you after school,' Jack began. 'We can talk properly then....'

'I've got to go,' Annalise repeated. 'Jack...you won't tell anyone about any of this will you?' she begged him. 'I couldn't bear anyone else to know.'

Jack frowned. His first thought when he realised what Annalise was telling him had been one of relief that he could now honestly explain to his aunt and uncle just why he had come home, why he had no option other than to come home.

'Promise me, Jack,' Annalise was insisting. Jack could hear the tension in her voice and the anxiety.

Reluctantly he gave in.