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  Substitute Lover

  Penny Jordan

  All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the Author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the Author, and all the incidents are pure invention.

  All rights reserved The text of this publication or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, storage in an information retrieval system, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, byway of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the prior consent of the publisher in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  First published in Great Britain in 1987 Reprinted in Great Britain in 1993 by Worldwide Books, Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR

  © Penny Jordan 1987 ISBN 0 373 58952 2

  99-9305

  Made and printed in Great Britain

  CHAPTER ONE

  ahead of her loomed the motorway exit sign for the village. Stephanie sighed faintly, the soft sound whispering past vulnerably curved lips. The late afternoon sunlight burnished her long hair into a shining copper cloak. Normally she wore it up in a neat chignon, but today she had left it loose.

  Only the inward clenching of her stomach muscles betrayed her growing tension. She hated coming back so much. Fear and pain mingled inside her, making her fingers grip harder on the steering-wheel.

  If it wasn't for Gray ... She shuddered visibly, aching to close her eyes and blot out the terrible images blocking out the gentle, rolling countryside and the wide span of the motorway.

  Never, ever, no matter how long she lived, would she forget that terrible night when they had come to tell her that Paul was dead. The shock of it, coming so quickly on the heels of that last bitter quarrel, had produced a burden of guilt she carried with her still.

  Even now, ten years later, she often woke in the night re-living that last fatal evening they had spent together. The quarrel had blown up over nothing— and it had not been the first time. After only three months of marriage Paul had become a stranger—a frighteningly violent stranger, too, at times—who called her frigid and sexless, and complained that he

  wished he had never married her.

  He had stormed out of the cottage and she had let him, too confused and miserable to try and coax him back.

  It had been a bad summer, with constant gales and dangerous seas. She had never dreamed that he intended to take out his boat, but he had. Who knew what thoughts had been in his mind in those last few hours of his life? The seas had been far too dangerous for a lone yachtsman, so the coastguard had told them, and Paul, reckless as always, had omitted to wear his buoyancy jacket and safety harness.

  He had been swept overboard by one of the giant waves, or so the authorities surmised, because his body had been found on a beach by an early morning stroller.

  His grief-stricken parents had demanded to know why she hadn't alerted the coastguard earlier, when he had not come home, and Stephanie had been forced to lie, unwilling to add to their pain by telling them that there had been other nights during their brief marriage when he hadn't come home, when she had slept alone in the wide double bed she had grown to hate. But John and Elise Chalmers had worshipped their only child, and she had not had the heart to destroy their image of him.

  She knew that they blamed her for his death, and in her heart of hearts she felt equally guilty. If she had been a different type of woman ... if she had had the sexuality to keep Paul at her side, he would not have grown bored with her company . . . would not have been driven by the relentless devil that possessed him, unleashing a streak of violence in him that she had never suspected existed.

  They had married too young and on too short an acquaintance; she knew that now. Neither of them had really known the other, and by the time they realised how intrinsically different they were it was too late— they were married.

  Tears stung her eyes briefly, her guilt momentarily overlaid by sorrow. Paul had been so alive .. .so good- looking and arrogantly male. She had stopped loving him within weeks of their marriage—the first time he had hit her he had destroyed her image of him and with it her almost childish adoration; but that did not stop her regretting his death and the waste of such a very young life.

  Only Gray had stood up for her and said in that quiet, slow voice of his that she was not to blame for Paul's death. But Gray didn't know the truth. Even now he still didn't know the truth, but his defence of her, the way his arms had held her, comforting and protecting her in the shocking aftermath of the news, had formed a bond between them that nothing could ever break.

  Automatically she turned off the motorway, taking the pretty country road that dipped between the gentle hills and then meandered through the New Forest down to the coast. Her bright yellow VW preferred the gentle pace of country driving, the engine almost purring as the motorway was completely lost from sight and they were swallowed up by golden fields, ripely heavy with their summer crop.

  Her friends in London teased her about her devotion to her little car. She earned a good living from her work as an illustration artist, and then additionally there was the income she derived from her share in the boat-yard that had been in Paul's family for several generations.

  She always felt uncomfortable about that inheritance, but Gray had urged her not to dispose of it, and she had agreed. Now that Paul's parents were dead, she and Gray were joint owners of the yard.

  Pauls and Gray's grandfather had started it, passing it on to his two sons.

  Gray's parents had been killed in a sailing accident when he was fourteen years old, and he had virtually been brought up alongside his cousin. But Paul had never really liked Gray. She had known that from the first and had put the animosity between them down to the seven-year age-gap. As a teenager, newly arrived in the area, she had found Gray both distant and rather formidable.

  It had been her father's interest in boats that had led to her introduction to Paul. The boat-yard was one of his accounts at the branch of the bank he had just been transferred to as manager, and he had taken Stephanie with him, on a visit to inspect the yard.

  Paul had been working in the yard, a slim, golden- haired young god with a deep tan and a self-assured smile.

  She had thought their love was mutual, but she realised now that to Paul she had only been a new challenge. He had a reputation locally as something of a playboy, but she hadn't known that then.

  She had been a rather shy teenager, a product of an all-girls' school, studious and not as knowledgeable about sex as most of her peers.

  She had just left school, and had been looking forward to going to art school after the long summer break. And then she had met Paul.

  Within days they were virtually inseparable. When Paul discovered her reservations about allowing him to make love to her, and the fact that she was still a virgin, he had announced that they would get married.

  That had been typical of his impulsiveness and his determination to have his own way, Stephanie had recognised later, but at the time she had been too bemused to do anything but follow where he led. Of course they had encountered massive parental objections, from both families; but the more their parents urged them to wait, the more determined Paul became that they would not.

  Even Gray had suggested that they get to know one another a little better before making such an important commitment, but Paul had laughed
at him, she remembered, sneering that since Gray was not married himself he was not qualified to speak.

  In the end their parents had given way, perhaps in the fear that if they did not, they might do something even more reckless ... and who knew . . . perhaps they would have done. Paul had whispered on more than one occasion that if it was the only way, they could start a baby. 'Then they'll have to let us get married,' he had coaxed.

  Whether or not she would have gone that far she didn't know. Certainly she had been bemused enough by her feelings for him to do almost anything he suggested. Her parents had tried to tell her that she was suffering from a classic case of infatuation but she hadn't wanted to know ... she hadn't wanted to believe them.

  In the end, Paul had got his way. They had had a small family wedding, she had worn a white dress; and they had moved into a pretty cottage down near the harbour that Paul's parents had bought for them. Mr and Mrs Chalmers had a large house just outside the village, and Gray lived in what had been his grandfather's cottage quite close to the boat-yard.

  Their honeymoon had been a bitter disappointment—for both of them. Paul did not have the patience or the experience to arouse her to the point where she could enjoy his lovemaking, and he had swiftly grown impatient and then angry with her for her lack of response.

  The first time he had hit her had been after a quarrel, and she had been too shocked to do anything other than stare at him. Her father had never raised a hand to her in all her life, and the cruelty of Paul's blow hurt her emotions more than her flesh.

  Of course, he had immediately been contrite; they had made up their quarrel and he had sworn never to touch her in anger again.

  Within days he had broken that promise and, by the time their honeymoon was over, Stephanie had learned to fear her new husband's sudden surges of temper.

  She returned to her new home and her new life sick at heart and cowed in spirit.

  People noticed of course, especially her parents, but she had too much pride to tell them the truth. Inwardly she felt, as Paul claimed, that she was to blame for his violence, that she invited it in some way, and deserved it for her inability to respond to him as a woman.

  His violence towards her quickly escalated to the point where she cringed every time he came near her.

  They stopped making love within days of returning to their new home, and quite soon after that Paul started staying out later and later at night, and then not coming home at all.

  He had made no secret of the fact that there were other girls, but whenever she suggested that they end the marriage he had flown into one of his almost maniacal tempers, and she soon learned not to bring the subject up.

  His death might have freed her from the physical violence of their marriage, but emotionally she was still trapped, both in her own guilt for failing him as a woman, and her fear that she was somehow not like other members of her sex—not capable of responding sexually to anyone's embrace.

  Her memories of the unhappiness of the few short months of her marriage, and the guilt feelings that had come afterwards, were so strong, that she hated returning to the village.

  Paul's parents no longer lived there—they had moved away shortly after his death, when Paul's father had sold out his share of the boat-yard to Gray. Now th ey were both dead, increasing h er sense of guilt. They had both adored Paul, worshipped him almost, seeing no fault in him.

  Stephanie's own pride had made it impossible for her to discuss with anyone the cruelty of Paul's treatment of her, and so it remained locked inside her, a dark, unhappy secret that still had the power to destroy her sleep.

  There had been no man in her life since Paul. What would have been the point? She would only have incited them to violence once they discovered her lack of sexuality. Gray was the only man in her life, and their relationship was a sexless, friendly one that could quite easily have existed between two members of the same sex.

  The road crested a hill. To her left she could see the bright glitter of the river, slow and majestic in its steady progress towards the sea.

  Soon she would be there. A quiver of apprehension ran through her, all her doubts and dreads about the wisdom of obeying Gray's request that she come down here betrayed in the cloudy darkness of her eyes.

  Her body—too slim and fragile, perhaps, for a woman of twenty-eight—tensed, ready to absorb the shock of pain and guilt that waited for her with her first glimpse of the estuary and the sea.

  It was a small place, the village, where everyone knew everyone else. They all knew about her loss; about Paul's death, but none of them knew about her deeper anguish. Perhaps fearing his parents' discovering the truth, Paul had gone into Southampton on those nights when he didn't return home, and had found there, or so he had told her, the sexual satisfaction he could not get from her, his wife.

  Cold ... frigid. The accusations, so well remem bered, hammered against her skull, turning her skin pale with anguish.

  If only Gray had come up to London to discuss the business of the boat-yard with her, as he had done in the past, but this time he had been insistent that she return here. He had even threatened to come and get her if she refused and, knowing he meant it, she had eventually, reluctantly, given way.

  Perhaps in her shoes another woman might have tried to prove Paul's accusations wrong by taking one lover after another, but Stephanie couldn't do that. She was too afraid that Paul had been right. She had failed with him, and she would fail with anyone else.

  Instead, she had locked herself away behind the barrier of her guilt, using Paul as an excuse for not forming any new relationships. No other man was going to get an opportunity to abuse her physically, or hurt and betray her because she couldn't satisfy him; no other man was going to turn from her to someone else, as Paul had done.

  Not even Gray had known, as she wept in his arms, that she cried not just for Paul himself but for the betrayal of their love and her own failure to prove herself a woman. And he would never know it.

  The village was in sight now, and she automatically tensed her muscles, glancing at her watch. Gone six o'clock, but Gray would probably still be at the boat yard. She would go there first, rather than the cottage.

  Gray lived there alone now and had done for several years. The shock of losing her son had led to Paul's mother's death, and Paul's father, Gray's uncle, had died two years later from a heart attack. Now only Gray was left.

  The boat-yard was on the far side of the village, right down on the bank of the estuary. It had been in Gray's family for about a hundred years.

  As she parked her VW and climbed out of it, Gray emerged from his office and came towards her. Tall, with forbiddingly broad shoulders and a shock of night-black hair, he was a commandingly masculine man. Densely blue eyes studied her and, shockingly, Stephanie momentarily recognised in them the age-old appraisal of a man looking at a woman.

  Gray moved and the appraisal was gone, leaving her to suspect that she must have imagined it.

  The late afternoon breeze coming off the estuary flattened the silky curve of her skirt against her hip and the long line of her legs. She lifted a hand to push her hair back off her face and heard Gray growl, 'You're getting too thin. What have you been doing to yourself?'

  'I'm not thin, just fashionably slim!' she protested.

  He was wearing an old pair of jeans that clung to his body like a second skin. Hastily averting her eyes from the powerful muscles of his thighs, she was tensely aware of his eyes narrowing.

  'What's wrong? You're as skittish as a dinghy without a tiller.'

  His fingers closed over her arm, drawing her towards him. She could smell the familiar male scent of his body, and felt an almost uncontrollable urge to cling to him and let him stand between her and her pain.

  'You know coming down here always affects me like this.'

  Instead of comforting her as he normally did, he released her almost abruptly.

  After ten years?' There was something almost sardonic about the way
he said it. 'That's one hell of a long time to grieve, Steph.'

  Before she could comment, the office door opened and a stunning blonde came out. Dressed in tight white jeans and a brief silky top, she swayed provocatively towards them.

  'I 've still got a few things to do down here.' Gray glanced towards the blonde. 'I'll take you up to the cottage and join you there later.'

  Stephanie always stayed at the cottage when she visited Gray. The village had no hotel, and besides, where else should she stay ? But now some contrariness made her glance across at the blonde walking towards them, her mouth curling slightly as she asked, 'Are you sure you want me to stay with you, Gray ? I don't want to be in the way.'

  She saw his mouth tighten. 'Well now, that's quite a question. What made you ask it, I wonder?'

  For some reason she had annoyed him. Conscious of the blonde watching them, Stephanie took a deep breath.

  'Nothing at all. I just wondered if your girlfriend might object?'

  'Girlfriend?' His dark head swivelled to look at the blonde. She smiled back, teasingly. She was older than Stephanie had first imagined, and she was wearing a wedding ring, but that meant nothing these days.

  'Carla won't mind. She knows that we're old friends.'

  As though to prove the point he called over casually to the blonde, 'I 'm just taking Stephanie back to the cottage. I won't be long.'

  Stephanie had to run to keep up with his long-legged stride as he walked towards her VW. Watching him fold himself inside reminded her of how tall and broad he was, the play of hard muscles beneath his skin alienly male.

  She just wasn't used to being this close to a man ... any man, she told herself as she drove the car towards the cottage; that was why she was so conscious of Gray's masculinity.