Now or Never Read online

  ‘I don’t know who you are or how you got in here, but you’ve got five minutes to get yourself out again before I call Security,’ he told her curtly, before walking past her and into the bathroom, firmly closing the door behind him.

  Zoë had left her own clothes in the bathroom but that was not why she got up off the bed and pushed open the bathroom door, her face red with disbelief.

  He was just finishing urinating when she walked in, and she could see that either he was semi-aroused or he was considerably larger than any other man she had known, and that was enough to give her confidence the boost it needed.

  Ignoring her, he turned to the basin and proceeded to wash both his hands and his penis.

  Their eyes met in the mirror.

  ‘You’ve got two minutes left,’ he told her flatly.

  Zoë discovered that she was holding her breath. ‘Otherwise what?’ she challenged him.

  ‘Otherwise I call Security,’ he responded.

  She knew that he wouldn’t, not when she could see with her own eyes…but as she moved towards him he reached for a towel and dried his hands and his body, and then zipped up his trousers.

  ‘Time’s up,’ he told her laconically, without looking at her as he reached for the telephone receiver.

  She was so sure that he was bluffing that she had to pull her top and jeans on without her underwear when she heard the doorbell to the suite ring.

  Her face burned with humiliation as she saw the look the security man was giving her, but somehow she managed to keep her head held high as she left.

  She didn’t sleep that night for plotting just how she was going to get her revenge—and her man, because now she wanted him even more. And she didn’t sleep the next night either, or the one after that, but she still wasn’t prepared for it when, a week later, just as she was leaving her digs a Porsche drew up alongside her and Ian leaned across from the driver’s seat and told her through the open window, ‘Get in.’

  She had no idea what she had expected, but it certainly wasn’t that he would drive her at breakneck speed to a country park on the outskirts of the town, where he pulled up in the deserted car park and reached for her almost before he had switched off the engine.

  He kissed her so hard that he bruised her lips. In return she bit his mouth in a frantic orgy of need and hunger. She was tugging his shirt out of his trousers before he pushed up her top and bared her breasts.

  They came together, took one another with a ferocity that left Zoë, elated and exhausted, convinced that she had finally met the man who was her sexual match, her mate…convinced that she was finally in love.

  ‘Satisfied now that you’ve got your own way and had what you wanted?’ he taunted her, before admitting, ‘I’ve been wanting that all week.’

  ‘So have I,’ Zoë responded, adding provocatively, ‘And now that I’ve had it, I want it again…’

  She licked her fingertip and ran it over his lips, followed by her tongue, and then she licked her finger again and ran it round the head of his penis.

  She could still remember the exact way he had groaned and shuddered, just as she could still remember the scent and feel of him…the heat…everything. He was imprinted on her for ever.

  After that she pursued him shamelessly, ringing him up, turning up at his office, perching on his desk and threatening to strip off and do it there, if he didn’t take her out.

  ‘My God, but you’re reckless,’ he said to her. ‘Reckless and dangerous…Too dangerous for me.’

  Then she thought that he was praising her and not warning her. The realisation that he considered his sexuality was something he thought should be controlled as strongly as she felt that hers was something that should be enjoyed came later…at the same time as she realised that it was not passionate longing and hunger she could see in his eyes when she came on to him openly in public, but, rather, disapproval and wariness.

  Automatically she reached for a drink. To blur the sharpness of that look…And that was when Ian told her about his mother and how much he disliked women drinking.

  She cried and told him how much she loved him; how he was the only man she could ever love. She told him about her family and her upbringing and her mother—her mother who never drank more than the occasional glass of wine and whom she could match and outdo in any way she chose.

  ‘All I want is to be your wife and the mother of your children, Ian,’ she declared passionately, and she meant it!

  ‘You’re too young,’ he told her firmly. ‘And I’m not looking for a wife!’

  ‘No, I’m not,’ she denied, adding provocatively, ‘I could even be pregnant now…I want to be.’

  ‘I thought you were on the pill?’ he challenged her, plainly not pleased.

  ‘I am,’ she agreed. ‘But accidents can happen. And anyway…’ she tossed her head and gave him a long, hungry look ‘…I wouldn’t mind if I did get pregnant. In fact…’

  ‘You mustn’t,’ Ian insisted tersely.

  She told her friends that they were in love and about to get engaged, in an attempt to force his hand, and when Ian found out he was furiously angry with her. She thought then she was going to lose him and that she had overreached herself, but now he was hers. She had his name. She had his children…But she didn’t have his love, did she?

  And neither did she have the close support group of her own special coterie of friends. She knew people, of course, masses of them, but there was a deeply secretive part of Zoë’s nature, a prickly defensiveness that refused to allow her to let her guard down with others. Everyone thought she was so lucky in having Alice as her mother. But Laura seemed to understand.

  Of course, it went without saying, her mother would be mortified that Laura, Nicki’s loathed stepdaughter, was going to be taking care of her grandchildren!

  She could hear the doorbell ringing. Laura had arrived. Smiling triumphantly, Zoë went to let her in.

  ‘I went to see Julie’s parents today.’

  Stella waited as Richard lowered his paper.

  ‘And?’

  ‘Well, it isn’t looking too good. You were right about her father! He has flatly refused to have her back home until after the baby. I felt very sorry for her mother. She’s such a cowed little thing. He’s obviously a bit of a bully. He was ranting on about his own sister getting pregnant as a girl and it ruined her life and how he didn’t want Julie’s life to be ruined in the same way. He’s furious with her because she concealed her pregnancy from him until it was too late for a termination.’

  ‘Well, I can see his point. At best, even if you take the baby and the emotional angst its birth will cause, not just immediately but for the future as well, out of the equation, she is still going to put herself behind with her schoolwork by at least a year.’

  ‘I called at the school with her, earlier. They’re going to arrange for her to have special lessons—there are classes for young pregnant girls she can attend, and then, after the baby, the situation can be reassessed. She still seems determined to go to university, which is a good thing.’ Stella shook her head in exasperation.

  ‘You know, she amazes me, she’s still so very young in many ways. On the way back from the school I had some shopping to do, and so we agreed to meet up in the shopping centre. When I got there she was staring into this shop window, and at first I thought—well, it had a display of baby paraphernalia, but no, what she was all excited about was the computer next to it. Apparently someone had told her that it might not be safe to use her mobile too much because of the baby and she was worried that she wouldn’t be able to keep in touch with her friends.’ Stella pulled a face. ‘You know what these modern girls are like. They can’t go more than five minutes without speaking to one another. And at least I suppose she’d thought about the baby…’

  ‘So you bought her the computer,’ Richard guessed dryly.

  ‘Well, when she’s gone we can use it ourselves. You know we’ve been talking about getting a second one. With al
l my committee work it would be useful. She can email her friends now, and play her music, as well as making use of it for educational purposes. She’s upstairs in her room using it now.’

  ‘Her room?’ Richard enquired.

  ‘Rich, what else can we do?’ Stella asked him matter-of-factly. ‘This baby is after all as much our responsibility—’

  Angrily Richard folded his newspaper.

  ‘No, it is not our responsibility.’ He checked her. ‘It is our son’s responsibility—a responsibility which so far as I can see he is as happy to hand over to you as you are to let him. He’s not a boy any more, Stella. He’s a man and it’s time he started behaving like one. And before you say anything, being a man takes more than fathering a child. In my day—’

  ‘Rich, I know what you’re saying, but—heavens, is that the time?’ Stella exclaimed in relief. ‘I’ve got to go, otherwise I’m going to be late. We’re going to see if there’s any way we can possibly raise some more money for the Shelter. It’s appalling to realise how many people are homeless. I just wish…’

  Stella stopped. Richard had already reopened his paper and his only response to what she had said was one of his customary grunts. There had been a time when she had complained to him that they no longer seemed to talk to one another.

  ‘We’ve been married for twenty-odd years, Stella,’ he had answered. ‘We don’t need to talk to one another any more.’

  She had understood what he had been saying and it was true that they knew one another so well that she knew how he thought and felt. But sometimes…

  In her bag she had a list of all the arrangements that would have to be made for Julie’s health care and her schooling. In the morning she was taking her to their local surgery for a check-up and then there would be hospital appointments, pre-birth classes, plus all the practical aspects of dealing with the baby’s arrival and adoption.

  The doorbell rang just as she walked into the hall. Answering it, she found a trio of giggling girls on the doorstep. Before she could say anything Julie came hurrying downstairs.

  ‘They’re my friends; it’s okay if I take them up to my room, isn’t it?’ she asked Stella.

  ‘Of course,’ Stella agreed, wincing a little as she saw the neat little bare stomachs exposed by their cropped tops and low-slung jeans—and not just because it was cool outside! Their flatness, like their giggles, emphasised just how young Julie was.

  Although she was fiercely determined to have her baby, so far as Stella could see she had not actually thought beyond that birth. The baby would be adopted, she had told Stella confidently, and she would get her A levels and go to university, her life back to normal.

  ‘Sorry I’m a bit late,’ Stella apologised to the other members of their fund-raising group as she hurried into the basement room of their chair’s home.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ Paul Howard reassured her as they exchanged hugs. They had worked in the same social services department together, which was how they had originally met, and it was Paul who had recruited Stella to their group, knowing what an asset she would be.

  ‘Come and let me introduce you to someone I want you to meet, Stella,’ he instructed. ‘A new recruit. He’s just moved into the area. You’ll like him. As you do, he believes that good administration is a vitally important core base for any organisation. Todd!’ he called out, reaching out to tap the shoulder of a man standing with his back to them, talking to their treasurer.

  Only mildly curious, Stella waited, absently wondering why it was that some middle-aged men could still get away with wearing jeans and look terrific in them whilst others could not. This man certainly fell into the former group. His jeans revealed an enviably taut male rear view, a soft cotton checked shirt tucked into their waist, well-groomed thick dark hair liberally streaked with grey, worn at just the right length, brushing his collar.

  Richard looked terrible in jeans. He had begun to develop a slight stoop, which he had defensively told her was due to the demands of their large garden, and whilst, unlike many of his contemporaries, he had not developed a paunch, no woman looking at him would ever feel drawn to give him a second look. Unlike the man who was now turning round and smiling at Paul.

  ‘Todd, I’d like you to meet Stella,’ Paul was saying. ‘Like you, she’s an administration junkie. It’s thanks to her that our subscriptions and our paperwork are so well organised.’

  Stella made a face.

  ‘It sounds incredibly boring, I know.’

  ‘Not at all.’ The newcomer smiled. ‘In my view orderliness is an under-appreciated virtue. My sons ridicule me because I never end up with odd socks, but that doesn’t stop them raiding my sock drawer because they can’t find a matching pair of their own. Whenever I go over to the States to see them I always know I’m going to come back minus a good few pairs.’

  ‘They’re studying over there?’ Stella guessed, assuming from his appearance that he must be in his early fifties, but to her embarrassment he shook his head and told her easily, ‘No. Actually they moved there with my ex-wife and her new partner. It’s all right,’ he added when he saw Stella’s mortified expression. ‘We’ve been divorced for nearly ten years now. Things were tricky at first and my elder son in particular was very, very angry with me and refused to have anything to do with me. So much so, in fact, that when he and his wife married, I was banned from attending the wedding, and my grandson was three years old before I got to see him. Now, that was hard.’

  ‘Yes, it must have been,’ Stella acknowledged.

  Paul had moved away after introducing them, and somehow it seemed that they had become isolated from everyone else. Todd had discreetly but deliberately moved them so this could be the case, she realised on a sudden spurt of excited disbelief as she recognised belatedly that Todd was actually flirting with her.

  For a moment she was tempted to show him that she was just not the kind of woman with whom men flirted, to take refuge from her own unwanted insecurity and react in the way she knew her friends would have expected her to, with a stern look and a cool, dismissive comment, but then a sudden surge of rebellion seized her. Why should she always be the one who was pushed into the background, the sensible one? Why shouldn’t she flirt back with Todd?

  Recklessly she smiled at him and watched him smile warmly at her in return, a sense of giddy exhilaration dizzying her.

  Perhaps it was because he spent time in America that Todd was standing so much closer to her than his British counterpart would have done, his gaze fixing warmly on hers and holding it.

  And then, unbelievably, he did something to her that she could never, ever remember any man doing, not even Richard. He reached out and tucked a stray strand of her hair neatly behind her ear, his fingers resting lightly, caressingly, she recognised in delighted bemusement, against her skin for just a second too long as he told her softly, ‘Now I can see your eyes properly. What colour are they exactly? Blue…grey…’

  ‘Er, yes. They’re blue…’

  Stella discovered that she could hardly breathe.

  ‘Do you have children?’ he asked her.

  Children? Bemused, Stella had to think for a second before responding. ‘Yes, one son, Hughie, he’s at university at the moment…and his girlfriend’s living with us. She’s having his baby—an accident.’

  Stella was aghast. What on earth had possessed her to tell him that? Julie’s pregnancy wasn’t going to be kept a secret, of course. But…but she prided herself on her businesslike attitude to her committee work, Stella acknowledged, and, whilst she was quite happy to exchange pleasantries with her fellow committee workers, intimate confidences were something she kept for her close friends.

  ‘They happen,’ he responded dryly. ‘As I should know! My wife and I became parents whilst we were still at university ourselves—very accidentally. In those days—we are talking the very early sixties—it was the done thing, the decent thing to get married and so we did. We both tried to make the best of it, especi
ally my ex-wife, but…’

  The early sixties; that meant he must be older than she had thought—closer to sixty than fifty. Stella shot him a surreptitiously assessing look. He certainly didn’t look it! Somehow she doubted too that he would be a candidate for Viagra or that he would spend his evenings in front of the television too tired or bored to make conversation, she decided boldly as her heart bounded around inside her chest.

  ‘Have you just the one grandchild?’ she asked him forcing herself to behave more appropriately, whilst inwardly her thoughts flung themselves giddily into avenues that led to a wild and totally unfamiliar surge of hectic excitement that she recognised with shock could just possibly be lust. Possibly? Didn’t she mean probably?

  ‘No, I’ve got three, two boys and a girl. It’s amazing the way you feel about them; there’s a tug, a gut-deep feeling; a bond that I have to admit is totally different from what I felt for my sons. To say that I’m besotted with my grandchildren is probably a gross understatement. When I’m away from them I email them virtually every day, and I’m working on getting Lainey, my daughter-in-law, to let them spend some time over here with me during school recess next summer. They’ve become, if not the biggest, then certainly the best part of my life, and yet to be honest I’m not particularly child-orientated. I wasn’t a good father—for one thing I was too busy building my own career and my own ego.

  ‘My ex used to say it was contemptible the way I competed with the boys when they were kids, but of course I refused to admit that she was right. With grandchildren it’s different. Those three kids…Just you wait!’ he warned Stella with a smile.

  ‘Oh, it’s not going to be like that for us,’ Stella felt obliged to tell him. ‘Julie, the baby’s mother, has already decided that she wants to have the baby adopted.’

  The look of pity she could see in his eyes shocked her, as did his quiet but sincere, ‘I am so sorry to hear that. It must be very painful for you.’