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  She touched his arm and grimaced. ^You're all cold and wet!' She was standing so close to him that when she looked up she could see the dark irises of his eyes. As she looked his expression changed and she felt a strange tension grip her.

  *You're ... you*re back early...'

  Her voice sounded rusty, and she seemed to be having difficulty breathing.

  'I managed to get an earlier flight; Christmas is no time to be away from home. Girls in bed?'

  *Yes. Over an hour ago.'

  For some reason she felt oddly flat. She moved away from him, checking as he laid his hand on her arm.

  'Claire.'

  She turned towards him, her eyes widening as he bent his head and she felt the warm brush of his mouth against her own. It was an odd sensation, that soft touch of warm lips. It made her quiver inside, and realise on a searing wave of pain that

  never once in her life had she been kissed property.

  The sudden shocking hiss of boiling milk spilling on to the cooker jolted her back to reality, her body stiffening with rejection and fear. Immediately Jay released her.

  *rm sorry.' He sounded weary. Tor a moment I forgot....'

  What had he forgotten? That he wasn't coming home to Susie? 'It doesn't matter...'

  She just caught the expression of grimness tightening his mouth before he turned away.

  'I was just making myself a cup of chocolate. Would you like one ... or something to eat?' she asked hurriedlv.

  These smell good.'

  He had obviously recognised her conciliatory offer and was trying to respond to it, Claire realised as he picked up one of her mince pies and ate it

  'Chocolate will be fine, and then an early night, I think. I ate on the plane.'

  'Shall we drink it in the sitting-room?'

  Those few moments of strained intimacy might never have occurred. On the surface all was as it had always been, but beneath that surface Claire was just beginning to realise that there lurked some very treacherous waters indeed.

  What would have happened if the milk hadn't boiled over? Would he have gone on kissing her? Would she have let him ...? It was too uncomfortable an avenue of thought for her to pursue.

  'You go through; Til bring the chocolate in a minute.'

  The faintly sardonic look he gave her made her face bum. Did he realise how odd his proximity was making her feel? She felt that she needed to be alone

  to get herself back to normal. That brief pressure of his mouth against hers had unleashed a series of sensations she was still having diflSculty coming to terms with.

  It hadn't been dislike or fear she had felt in those few seconds before reality had intruded, far from it. So, what had she felt? Shock, grief for all that was missing from her life, and also a frisson of pleasure so delicate and new to her that even now she wasn't sure if she had experienced it or merely imagined it. But surely it was impossible to imagine something like that—something she had never known before in her life, or dreamed of knowing? Now she had known it.

  Shaking herself free of her confusing thoughts, she put the two mugs of chocolate on a tray and added a plate of mince pies, quickly making some sandwiches from the ham she had roasted that morning.

  Jay was sitting on the settee when she walked in, his head relaxed against the cushions. 'I like the tree,' he commented, getting up to pull up one of the small cofiTee-tables for her to put the tray on.

  The room had an open fireplace with an inmiense cream marble surround, part of the origind Victorian architecture. Susie had had the fireplace blocked off, and one of the first things Claire had done was to have it re-opened and an attractive coal effect gas fire installed. She switched it on, and paused for a moment to watch the flickering flames.

  *Mnmi... very cosy.' An expression of sadness seemed to cloud Jay's eyes.

  'The girls wanted to wait until you came home to decorate it, but I thought you might be too late.'

  There's nothing on the top.'

  *I couldn't reach,' Claire confessed. There's a fairy in the box that the girls chose.'

  *ril put it on for them tomorrow. Mmm, these are good.'

  He was eating one of the sandwiches she had made. Without his suit jacket and his shirt open at the throat he looked less formidable. He was tired, she reahsed.

  *How did it go in Dallas?' she asked.

  *Come and sit down here beside me and I'll tell you.'

  She sat next to him on the sofa.

  * What an excellent wife you are, Claire: caring, obedient...'

  At first she thought he was mocking her and she flushed painfully and started to move away, his hand on her arm stopping her.

  *What's the matter?'

  'I know ... I'm not Susie,' she said painfully. *It can't be much ... fun for you coming home to me. Jay...'

  Tun?' His mouth twisted bitterly. *Is that what you think Susie and I had, Claire? There's nothing fun about coming home to find your wife's out enjoying herself with another man, while your child is left all alone. There's nothing fun about knowing she's being unfaithful, about knowing she doesn't give a damn. I never caught an early flight to come home to Susie, Claire, because I never knew what I was coming home to. If you want the truth, I dreaded coming home.'

  His mouth compressed, his eyes focusing on the leaping flames of the fire, as he looked back into the past.

  *Don't ever think I'm comparing you with

  Susie—^there is no comparison.*

  No, there wasn't, Claire realised. He had loved and desired Susie, while she was just someone whom he had chosen to marry because of Heather.

  'I have to go back to Dallas after the New Year, and I want you and the girls to come too. John and his wife want to meet you.'

  'Me—but...?'

  *It's the American way,' he told her laconically. 'They're throwing a big party to celebrate the signing of the contract and we're invited to be their house guests. It will be during the school holidays, so it shouldn't be too much of a problem.'

  Jay moved to pick up his mug of chocolate, the muscles down his back and arm tautening. His skin where it was exposed by the collar and cuff of his shirt was brown and firm, his wrist very sinewy in comparison to hers.

  This will be Heather's first real Christmas; Susie always preferred to go away somewhere.' He put down his empty mug and relaxed back against the cushions. Somehow he seemed to have moved closer to her, but she felt no compulsion to move away.

  'You look tired.'

  He turned his head and she saw the small darker flecks in his eyes. 'I am,' he admitted. He closed his eyes and sighed. 'It was quite a shock to come hcMne and find snow.'

  'My first white Christmas.'

  He made a sound in his throat that might have meant anything and Claire turned to look at him. His eyes were closed and she sensed that he was on the verge of falling asleep.

  She got up to take their cups to the kitchen, and

  when she came back he was fast asleep, sprawled out against the sofa. She leaned over him shaking him gently.

  *Jay...'

  'Mmm.'

  The shock of his arms coming round her and pulling her down against the relaxed warmth of his body was totally unexpected. Her knees had caught against the edge of the sofa so that she had collapsed on to him, and now he was burrowing his face into the curve of her neck, his breath triggering off tiny convulsive waves of sensation where it touched her skin.

  After her initial moment of panic, what she felt was nothing like the terror and disgust she had experienced before. Being held in Jay's arms was so totally different from that. She felt at once both safe and yet deliciously trembly, her body fitting softly against the hard planes of his.

  He was cuddling up to her in much the same way that Heather held on to her teddy, she thought with shaky amusement, and she had no doubt that he was totally oblivious to what he was doing. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to wake him up and break out of his hold of her, but for some reason she felt no comp
ulsion to do so. Instead she raised her hand tentatively and touched the stubbly line of his jaw, held deep in thrall to a curious need to know more of the alien maleness of him. He muttered something in his sleep, releasing her momentarily as he raised his hand to cover hers, his head turning so that he could caress the soft skin of her palm with his mouth. The sensation that shot through her was so totally unexpected, so thoroughly unnerving, that she jerked back instinctively.

  Instantly Jay was awake, his eyelids lifting, although he didn't move. His cheekbone pressed hard against her shoulder, and she was acutely conscious of him in a thousand previously unknown ways. As though some deep inner part of her was waking from a long sleep, she felt the first stirrings of what she sensed instinctively was her suppressed sexuality.

  Fear, joy, an exhilaration beyond anything she had previously known quivered through her; she felt as though she wanted to get up and dance, to burst out into a song of pleasure, to open her heart to him and tell him about the miracle his touch had somehow achieved. Because to her it was a miracle that for the fij^t time since she was attacked she had felt like a woman.

  A great flood of joy filled her. She wanted to reach out and touch him to conmiunicate to him in all the ways there were her sense of release and freedom, but already he was withdrawing from her, his expression shuttered, as he said curtly,

  *Sorry about that, Claire. I didn't mean to touch you.'

  It was hke someone cruelly puncturing a gaily coloured balloon. One moment it was a thing of joy and beauty floating free; the next it was gone. She came down to earth with his curt words ringing in her head, and she shivered violently, suddenly realising her own folly.

  Jay had married her because she wasn't a sexual woman, and she must not let herself forget that. He didn't want the complications of any sort of emotional relationship with her, and for her a relationship in the physical sense would have to

  contain an element of emotional commitment as well.

  A physical relationship? What on earth was she thinking? Her face went white with the shock of the realisation that hit her. She licked her lips nervously, unaware of her state of frozen tension or of the interpretation Jay was putting on her stiff silence.

  *Look, Claire, it won't happen again. It was a momentary aberration, nothing more.' He got up and paced the floor tensely. Try and put it out of your mind.'

  What was he saying to her? Her confused mind tried to sort out the meaning of the words, and failed.

  *I ... I think I ought to go to bed.'

  She got up, still trembling wildly, retreating from him when he reached out to help her.

  Jay watched her as she fled from the room, and then walked over to the fireplace, to stare moodily out of the darkened window. In front of it the tree glimmered softly in all its finery, but he didn't see it.

  A frustrated oittemess glittered in his eyes as he turned to face his own reflection in the giltwood mirror above the fireplace.

  'Damn!' he swore savagely, bringing his fist down on to the marble with a force that threatened to crack the bones. 'Damn... and damn again ...'

  On Christmas morning they were up early, despite the fact that Claire and Jay had attended Midnight Mass the night before.

  Both girls had had small stockings filled with little presents left at the bottom of their beds the night before, but Claire had already stipulated that the rest of the presents, which were piled beneath

  the tree, were not to be opened until after breakfast. She suspected that was the only way of making sure that Heather and Lucy got something inside them.

  There had been another fall of snow, and there had been a magical quahty to their walk through the village to the pretty Norman church the night before. Jay, in a fit of impulsive extravagance, had insisted on buying a huge red wooden sledge for the girls on Christmas Eve, and that too was now wrapped up beneath the tree alongside the dolls' pram Heather had asked for, and Lucy's bike.

  Claire had spent almost every evening in December knitting small woolly garments for the golden-haired doll who was to occupy the pram, and against her better judgment both girls were to receive the much desired, and to Claire's mind, quite revolting pastel-haired plastic ponies they had both ecstatically requested.

  Tastes change, she reminded herself, as she heard the squeals of pleasure coming from their room, and no doubt she had pleaded for things that her parents had found equally incomprehensible.

  She was still smiling about this when her bedroom door opened, but it wasn't the girls who came in, it was Jay, a towelling robe belted over his pyjama bottoms, a cup of tea and some digestive biscuits on the tray he was carrying.

  The awkwardness she had anticipated having to cope with after the evening of his return had never materialised. In the morning Jay had been as casually relaxed as he had always been, and she had been too busy to give more than a passing thought to her own reaction to him. In fact she had begun to think she had imagined it, but the way her heart jerked like a stranded fish just because he walked

  into her room told her better.

  'You're looking very flushed,' he commented, completely misreading her vivid blush, 'Not sickening for a cold, are you? Those boots you were wearing last night...'

  The boots in question were old ones, but they were good enough for the snow.

  Tm fine,' she told him, watching him put the tray down on her bedside table, before he perched himself on the edge of the bed.

  *Mmm. You were looking very perky when I came in. You were grinning like a Cheshire Cat!'

  'I was thinking about those awful ponies we bought for the girls and wondering if I ever wanted something that appalled my parents.'

  'Well, I know I did,' confessed Jay. 'My parents were both members of CND, and one year I asked Father Christmas for a tank and sub-machine gun. It says a lot for their understanding that I got both— I also got twelve months' worth of lectures from my mother, pointing out the savagery of war.'

  He didn't often talk about his family, possibly because the subject had never come up, and Claire had not liked to question him.

  'What happened to them?' she asked now.

  'My mother was killed in a rail accident in France and my father died of a heart attack not long afterwards. I was the only one, and away at university at the time. I missed them, of course, but I think it's only when one becomes a parent oneself that one realises the true depth of parental love.'

  'Yes. They say, don't they, that it's the mark of a successful parent to be able to send out one's young to enjoy the world without them having to give you

  a backward glance. The security of a loving background '

  * Helps to create a child who is healthily selfish in its attitude to its parents. Yes, I know. You've done wonders with Heather,' Jay added quietly. 'She's a different child.'

  *She just needed more self-confidence. Heather knows I love her, and because of that...'

  'She can love herself...' He broke off and grimaced as two small bodies came hurthng into the room.

  'Downstairs, the pair of you,' he told them. 'We're going to make breakfast for Mummy this morning.'

  They were wearing their new tartan dresses, and Claire felt her throat lock with emotional tears as she saw the matching tartan bows tied in their hair. Both of them wanted to grow their hair, and for school she made them wear it plaited. This morning both of them sported rather drunken bows.

  'Heather put my ribbon in my hair for me,' announced Lucy cheerfully, darting past Jay to climb on to the bed.

  'And Lucy did mine.' Heather, not to be outdone, climbed on the other side, still clutching her stocking.

  'Look what Father Christmas brought me ...'

  'And me ...'

  'Something tells me if I want any breakfast, I'm going to have to make it on my own,' smiled Jay.

  Til be down in a minute,' Claire assured him, shooing both girls off the bed.

  'Mummy, have you got a new dress to wear too?'

  She was going to wea
r the pretty red one she had bought in Bath. The girls' excitement was infec-

  tious, and Claire felt it bubble up inside her as she showered and dressed.

  When she got down to the kitchen. Heather and Lucy were happily tucking into bowls of creamy porridge. Jay had made the coffee, and the rich smell of it floated aromatically on the air.

  'Can I leave you in charge while I go up and get dressed?'

  'Don't be long, will you. Daddy?' Heather demanded impatiently.

  It was impossible to keep the girls at the table after they had finished eating. They had abreadv seen the pile of brightly wrapped presents surrounding the tree, and Jay and Claire exchanged amused looks over their heads as they hurried Jay to finish his toast.

  'You're looking very festive,' he murmured to her as they followed the girls to the sitting-room. 'Red suits you.'

  He was wearing a pair of mid-blue trousers that clung to the hard muscles of his thighs. His checked woollen shirt was open at the throat, the softness of the cashmere sweater he was wearing over it touching Claire's skin as the girls dashed past them and she was forced to move closer to his side.

  If having one child at Christmas time was fun, having two was more than double the pleasure. As she remembered her pathetic attempts to make something special out of Christmas for Lucy when she was a baby, Claire thought wistfully of the delight it would be to be able to watch that wide-eyed joy and bewilderment now, in these warm protected surroundings.

  Lucy's first Christmas had been in the cold damp of their flat, her first Christmas tree one Claire had

  salvaged at a jumble sale. Expensive presents didn't make Christmas, she knew that, but warmth, comfort, security; these all added an indefinable lustre of pleasure to this special time of year.

  For a few seconds there was pandemonium as sheet after sheet of wrapping paper was shredded in their wild attempts to discover what was inside, but Claire had deliberately given them the much desired ponies first, and once they had assured themselves that Father Christmas had not been remiss in this regard, they settled down quite contentedly to savour the rest of their booty.