on the edge of her life during the years of her marriage to Garth, moving a little closer, making their intentions, their desires, a little bit plainer, some of them married, some of them not. No, she certainly needn’t have gone short of sex and perhaps even love if she had wanted it … them. But she had been too busy with other and more important concerns. Tara for one … and then there had been her business, her charity work, her friends.
‘Don’t you miss it?’ someone had asked her curiously in the early years after the divorce. ‘The sex. The having someone to snuggle up to in bed, the comfort of having someone there to hold you. You must get—’
‘Frustrated,’ Claudia had supplied calmly for her before shaking her head and denying, ‘No, not really … I don’t have the time.’
And it had been true, and besides … besides … Her sex drive had always been inextricably linked to her emotions, driven by them almost; love for her was even more important, more driving, than lust.
And after Garth—well, after Garth it wasn’t just that she couldn’t ever imagine wanting another man, loving another man the way she had loved and wanted him, she had actively not wanted to become so emotionally involved with anyone else again.
The devastation upon discovering that Garth had been unfaithful to her had quite simply been so complete, so overwhelming, that she had never wanted to allow anyone else close enough to risk it again. Her love for Garth might have died, been destroyed, annihilated, by her discovery of his infidelity and the fact that, for so many years, she had been living a lie, a myth—believing in their marriage, in him—but her fear of the pain it had caused her had certainly not died.
She did have men friends, yes, and she went out on dates with them; but she had certainly never come anywhere near close to wanting to share anything more than friendship with them. Or at least she hadn’t until she met Luke Palliser.
Was that further confirmation of the fact that she had reached the treacherous choppy waters of middle age, the fact that she was physically attracted to a younger man?
As she left the drawing room and turned to go upstairs, Claudia paused by Tara’s picture of her parents. Neither of them was, of course, remotely recognisable if you discounted the colour of their hair—hers yellow, Garth’s black and straight.
Tara!
Claudia bit her lip as she felt the familiar surge of love thinking about Tara always brought flooding through her, but this time it wasn’t just love she felt. This time there was fear and dread, as well. And guilt, too. Oh, yes, there was guilt.
2
‘I thought I heard the phone ring,’ Garth Wallace commented as he walked into the sitting room of his London apartment carrying the papers he had been to retrieve from the briefcase in his bedroom.
‘You did,’ Estelle Frensham agreed. She had been working for the firm as a temp, filling in for Garth’s personal assistant who was on maternity leave. ‘But whoever it was rang off without speaking. I did a check on the number, though. This is it.’ Silently, Garth studied the piece of paper she had given him. Apart from his eyebrows snapping together in a frown, his expression gave nothing away to Estelle as she watched him. He had recognised the number right away. How could he not do when for over ten years it had been his own? There was only one person who was likely to ring him from Ivy House, and so far as he knew, Tara, his daughter, was presently in London.
Tara. His daughter. Their daughter, his and Claudia’s. Despite the fact that physically she resembled him much more than she did Claudia, Tara was in every other imaginable way so much more Claudia’s child. Every mannerism, every mere inflection of her voice to him were copies of Claudia’s, and sometimes watching her, he wasn’t sure if those similarities made him hate himself more or loathe himself less. One thing was sure; they certainly didn’t alter his love for Tara herself, nor change the way he felt about her mother.
If Tara was in London and Claudia had rung him, it could only be because her need to talk to him was desperately important. Claudia would never ring otherwise.
He glanced at his watch and then announced, ‘Look, Estelle, I’ve changed my mind. We’ll leave it for this evening, I think. I want to spend a little more time on this one. I’ll ring the client in the morning and put off my meeting until later in the week.’
Estelle gave him an assessing look. They had been working all out at the agency to get some kind of campaign down on paper for the new client who had approached them to take on his business, which was why she was working here this evening instead of working out at the gym. Not that she minded—Garth’s company was preferable any day of the week, any time of the day or night, to going to the gym, even if all he had in mind was work. At least for now.
From the moment he had first interviewed her for the temporary vacancy at the agency eight weeks ago, Estelle had decided that just as soon as she could arrange it, she and Garth were going to be lovers. Just the thought of it, of the pleasure she had promised herself that lay in store for her, made her start to ache deep down inside, the kind of ache she knew from long experience could only be soothed by the release of a full orgasm.
She wondered what Garth’s reaction would be if she came right out with it now and told him how she felt, what she needed. Some men liked women who were totally up front and unashamed of admitting their sexual needs, but Garth, she suspected, was not one of them. And so far he had certainly neither said nor done anything to suggest that he was sexually attracted to her. Still, there was no other permanent woman in his life, apart from occasional dates with one of the agency’s account executives—a woman in her thirties who Estelle knew would be no competition for her! She had managed to ascertain that much and she had checked, as well, that he was as heterosexual as he looked—no doubts there, either.
So far, it appeared he hadn’t recognised her deliberate sexual come-ons to him or he had recognised them but was ignoring them—and of the two Estelle knew which one she preferred. And tonight she had hoped … but obviously tonight was not going to be the night. Estelle was no fool and she calmly gathered up the papers she had spread out on the workmanlike desk-cum-table that dominated his large square sitting room. All right, so things might not be ending as she had hoped and planned, but if she couldn’t have Garth then there was always Blade. Oh, yes, there was always Blade. Blade who would happily provide her with whatever kind of sex she wanted, Blade with whom her relationship was not so much one of love and hate, as mutual dislike and contempt and mutual need and lust, as well. As she collected her belongings, she was already planning how she would spend the rest of the evening.
Watching her, Garth wondered what she was thinking. She had made it clear right from their first interview that she found him sexually attractive, but Garth was used to women coming on to him, and if necessary he could always tell the agency who had supplied her to find the firm an alternative.
She wouldn’t be the first young and not-so-young female employee they had taken on who had made it plain she was attracted to him, but over the years he had learned to recognise all the warning signs and to deflect potential pitfalls in plenty of time to negotiate a way around them.
‘I’ll call you a cab,’ he told her crisply, reaching out to pick up the phone.
That was one thing about Garth, Estelle recognised. He was quite definitely very much the old-fashioned sort when it came to the way he took what he saw as his responsibility towards his female employees. Very protective, very gentlemanly, in the very best senses of both words. Unfortunately.
As she bent down to retrieve
