For Better For Worse

For all his workouts at the gym, for all the obvious pride and self-satisfaction Nick took in his body and his sexuality, he had never, could never… She swallowed hard, forcing herself to ignore the taunting images filling her memory and to concentrate instead on the girl standing so shyly at Adam’s side.

She couldn’t have been a day over nineteen, Fern reflected, unable to stop herself from responding to the shy, hesitant smile she was giving her.

Enviably tall, with pretty dark hair, she had eyes which still held the doe-like innocence of extreme youth, her mouth its vulnerability and uncertainty.

The last time she had seen her, Fern remembered wryly, she had had a brace across those now perfect little white teeth and she had been wearing her school uniform.

‘Fern, you remember Lily James, don’t you?’ Adam queried, gently bringing the younger girl forward.

‘Yes… yes, of course I do. How are you, Lily? How are your parents?’

She sounded as though she was old enough to be Lily’s grandmother, Fern recognised ruefully, but there was not even a decade between them.

It was totally contrary to Fern’s own nature to be unkind to anyone, much less an obviously shy young girl like this, even if… when…

Even when what? Fern asked herself bitterly as she smiled warmly at the younger girl, gently trying to put her at her ease.

Even if Adam loved her…

Her heart seemed to jolt right up into her throat, its already nervous beating becoming a frantic distressed hammering.

The palms of her hands were damp with sweat, her nails curling painfully into their softness as she fought to suppress the cry of agony she could feel building in her throat.

What was wrong with her? She had always known that one day Adam would fall in love… that someone would eventually cause him to abandon the bachelor state which Nick had always claimed he would never voluntarily give up.

‘If you really want my stepbrother,’ he had told Fern once before they were married, ‘then the only way you’re likely to get him is by tricking him into getting you pregnant. Very keen on being seen to do the right thing, is our Adam. Do you want him, Fern?’ he had added slyly.

‘Adam is just a friend,’ she had responded tautly. After all, no nice, decent girl ever admitted even to herself that she could possibly want a man who did not want her… or at least that was the message she had picked up from her mother’s carefully protective teachings.

And she had believed it. And still believed it?

She could feel the pain stirring inside her again, tearing, wrenching, streaked with guilt and shame.

Adam was standing so close to her that she was actually conscious of the scent of him, not the faint cool hint of cologne he was wearing, but the basic personal male smell…

Despairingly she moved back from him, giving Lily a small apologetic smile as she started to excuse herself.

‘Fern.’

She could hear the tension in Adam’s voice and the anger, and her own stomach muscles clenched in response.

She couldn’t look at him. She dared not…

‘I think Venice wants us to go through into the dining-room,’ she told him distantly as she turned away and looked for Nick.

The meal they were served was superbly presented, an exotic combination of all that was luxurious and first rate, which must have cost Venice as much as she probably spent on food in a year, Fern reflected tiredly, unable to face the richness of her food, nor the smell that rose up from her plate.

They had almost finished their pudding when without warning Venice turned to John Parkinson and asked, ‘What do you think of this plan to bulldoze Broughton House and build shops and offices on the land?’

‘What plan?’ Roberta’s husband asked with some concern.

‘Oh, haven’t you heard?’ Venice queried. ‘It’s all over the town that someone local is planning to put in a bid for the place, ostensibly as a private home, but in reality because he… they have very different plans for it.

‘Of course it would have to be someone with the right kind of local contacts and influence so that they could get planning permission pushed through, wouldn’t you say so, Adam?’

Although she was smiling sweetly at Adam, no one could have been in any doubt that it was Adam to whom Venice was referring when she spoke of ‘someone local’ acquiring Broughton House. But surely Adam would never lend himself to that kind of scheme?

It was true that Adam, as an architect, was bound to be interested in anything which might lead to new commissions, and it was certainly no secret that he was part of a highly successful local conglomerate which had designed, built and now ran several small local shopping parades and housing schemes, but all of them had been completely above board and free from any taint of the kind of underhand usage of power and position which Venice was now none too subtly implying.

‘Perhaps we ought to organise a committee to oppose it,’ Venice continued without giving Adam any chance to reply. ‘I have actually heard that what’s being proposed isn’t just a small parade of shops, but a huge hypermarket. Of course you have to admire whoever it is for his chutzpah. If he can pull it off, it will make him very, very wealthy, and I suppose to be fair there will be those who will say that the town does need that kind of facility. What do you think, Adam?’

‘Broughton House is in an area of “outstanding natural beauty”,’ Adam told her quietly. ‘I should imagine it would be impossible to get planning permission for that kind of venture.’

‘Oh, but surely not if one had the right connections… knew whom to approach and how,’ Venice persisted, smiling sweetly at him.

There was a small, uneasy silence which Nick broke by turning to Adam and saying silkily, ‘You don’t seem particularly surprised, Adam, but then perhaps you know more about what’s going on than the rest of us. After all, as a member of the town council…’

‘Like Venice, I have heard the rumours,’ Adam countered, ‘but that seems to be all they are… rumours.’

‘But the house is up for sale and unliveable-in in its present state,’ Venice persisted. ‘And surely you, Adam, both as an architect and a councillor, must know something…’

‘Mrs Broughton lived in it…’

Fern froze as she heard the unsteady huskiness in her own voice, her words cutting right across Venice’s deliberate probing, deflecting attention away from Adam and towards herself, drawing not just an irritated little frown from Venice at her intervention, but an angry glare from Nick as well.

‘Fern has always had a ridiculously sentimental attachment to the place,’ Nick announced tersely, giving her a cold look.

‘Well, I for one would be very surprised to hear that anyone would be foolish enough to imagine they could get planning permission for that kind of venture,’ Jennifer Bowers announced briskly. ‘And if anyone tried, I should certainly oppose it. After all, we haven’t spent all these years protecting the character and history of the town only to go and have hypermarkets built on its unspoilt land.’

‘Adam’s the expert on the town’s history and preservation,’ Venice persisted. ‘And I still have a sneaking suspicion that he knows more about what’s going on than he wants to tell us.’

Because Adam himself was involved in some scheme or other to destroy the house? That was what Venice was implying, and Adam himself had done and said nothing that really contradicted her subtle accusations. Because he couldn’t?

As she glanced round the table, Fern suspected that she wasn’t the only one wishing that Adam would make a more definite and unequivocal rebuttal of Venice’s hints.

‘Have you heard anything about this supermarket business?’ Roberta asked her later as they waited for Venice’s maid to bring down their coats.

Fern shook her head.

Was what Venice had been suggesting true? Was Adam involved in some plan to secretly circumvent the planning controls operating locally? And what about Nick’s earlier thoughts that Adam wanted the house to raise a family?

The maid came back downstairs, apparently unable to find Fern’s jacket. Quietly she went upstairs to look for it herself.

The coats were all placed on a bed in one of the spare rooms. She had to move several before she could find her own thin jacket, and as she lifted one of them, a heavy, plain wool man’s coat, she knew immediately that it was Adam’s. Her fingers tightened into the fabric. She could feel the hot salt burn of the tears clogging her throat and for a moment the impulse, the need to bury her face in the soft black fabric and breathe in the scent of Adam from it was so strong that she had the coat halfway to her face, the fabric gripped tightly in her fingers, before she fully realised what she was doing.

Appalled, she dropped it, turning round quickly, her face flushed with guilt as she mechanically reached for her own jacket.

As she pulled it on, she realised that in dropping Adam’s coat she had dislodged a heavy folded brochure from an inside pocket. She bent to pick it up and replace it and then stiffened as she realised what it was.

Through the tears which blurred her vision she could see the photograph of Broughton House on the front cover of the sale brochure.

She was twenty-seven years old, still a relatively young woman, but suddenly she wished with almost savage intensity that she were older, her life closer to its end, and with it the end of all the pain, the misery, the guilt which daily became an even greater burden to her.

She was Nick’s wife, she reminded herself; she had no right to…

To what? To love another man?

‘Stay with me, Fern,’ Nick had begged her. And then later when she had told him about Adam he had said it again.

He must genuinely want and need her to overlook what she had done, mustn’t he? And surely in view of that she owed it to him to stay.

And besides, what was the point in her leaving? she had recognised numbly. Where else was there for her to go—now that she had been all the way to hell and back again? And to heaven as well?

Shakily she turned away, almost running towards the door and down the stairs.

CHAPTER THREE

‘MMM… nice,’ Zoe murmured teasingly against Ben’s mouth as she wrapped herself around him, curling her body into the sleepy morning warmth of his.

It hadn’t been easy getting their precious time off to coincide; Monday was the one morning of the week when neither of them had to get up early for work, the restaurant where Ben was currently working closed on Mondays and Zoe having begged, cajoled and bribed the others at the London airport hotel where she was working so that she could have Mondays off as well.

She loved it when they were together like this, she thought drowsily as she snuggled deeper into Ben’s naked warmth, rubbing her face against his skin and nuzzling him with lazy, appreciative sensuality.

Once, in their early days together, Ben had told her that she was just like a little cat with her soft fluid body and her habit of rubbing herself affectionately against him.

In truth there was something prettily feline about her small triangular face and the soft sinuous grace of her body.

But Zoe had an energy that had nothing catlike about it, an electric buzzing force that made her grey eyes sparkle with enthusiasm, and which seemed to crackle around her like a live force-field.

There was nothing kittenish about her either; she scorned such ploys and affectations. It was, Ben reflected wryly as he slid his fingers into the thick dark mass of curls haloing her face, only now, in these their most intimate moments, that her normal exuberance was calmed and tamed, to reveal her vulnerability and sensuality.

‘Oh, no, you don’t,’ he told her as he felt her hand slide downwards over his body.

Zoe laughed, turning her face into the curve of his throat and kissing him lovingly.

She laughed again as she heard him groan and felt him turn his body in towards her, his actions running directly counter to his words.

It had always been like this between them right from the very start, Ben, cautious, concerned, wanting to hold back; take time and to be sure; she…

She made a voluptuous sound of appreciation against his skin as her fingers closed gently round him.

…She impatient, impulsive, knowing almost from the first moment they had met that she wanted him.

She felt him move against her, his body aroused, hard; she caressed him slowly, enjoying her own body’s response to him, the taut, heavy feeling in her breasts; the sensitivity of her nipples especially when she rubbed herself rhythmically against his chest, the small betraying, knowing pulse that grew insistently urgent as she let herself absorb the hot silky texture of his skin, anticipating the pleasure that lay ahead, the pleasures they had already known.

Ben wrapped his arms around her, kissing the top of her head and then, when she lifted her face to look at him, her mouth.

His skin smelled of warmth and sleep and the faintly acrid scent of his sweat, and that special unmistakable scent that was his alone and which as always she found unbearably erotic. She wondered if her scent affected him in the same way. Ben didn’t like talking about sex. In the northern city in which he had grown up, boys… men grew up with an attitude towards sex which was very different from the ones she had absorbed from her own middle-class parents.

And yet Ben was an unbelievably tender and caring lover, almost as though, if he was unable to talk to her about this most intimate side of their lives together, then at least he could make up for his inhibitions by showing her all he felt.

They knew each other well enough now, had been together long enough to recognise without words each other’s signs of arousal, each other’s sexual needs, and yet each time they made love it was different… special… familiar and yet still, for Zoe, achingly pleasurable.

Now, when Ben kissed her, he did so lingeringly, slowly, taking his time, as though the intimate caresses of their mouths were a total act of physical communication and satisfaction on their own, and not merely a preliminary act to his physical possession of her.

No, if anything she was the one who was the more impatient.

Not that there was any doubt that Ben wanted her, she acknowledged in satisfaction as she stroked her thumb along the underside of the rigid shaft of his penis and felt him shudder against her, his muscles tensing as his teeth tugged on her bottom lip.

She felt his hand touch her breast, cupping it, and she moved against him, enjoying the delicate friction of his palm against her nipple. Soon he would bend his head and kiss her throat, her shoulder and then her breast itself, taking his time, lingering over each caress, while she felt the urgent thud of his heartbeat against her body and savoured the delicious tension of her own growing need to feel his mouth against her nipple, tugging on the small hard peak of flesh.

Languorously she stroked her hands over his stomach and hips, sliding them down over his buttocks, caressing him lazily until she felt the sharp pins and needles of pleasure exploding inside her as his tongue rubbed over her nipple. Her fingers tightened on his skin, his mouth opened over her nipple. She shuddered in pleasure as the hot fierce surge of her own arousal overwhelmed her.

‘Now, Ben,’ she told him thickly. ‘Now… now… now. I want you now…’

Half an hour later, when the sharp summons of the telephone broke into the luxurious pleasure of their shared post-coital relaxation, Zoe told Ben lazily, ‘It’s your turn.’

‘Why on earth can’t we get a telephone by the bed?’ Ben grumbled as he pushed back the duvet and reached for and pulled on a clean pair of underpants.

‘Because you said we couldn’t afford one,’ Zoe reminded him, watching him with unashamed pleasure.

He had a wonderful body, lean and powerfully male without being over-muscled. His arms and chest were taut with sinewy strength, his stomach flat and hard. She gave a small convulsive movement of sheer sensuality, remembering the sensation of the soft dark hair that grew on his body against her fingertips; fine and silky over his chest and stomach, it darkened and thickened into a heavier stomach-tensing line of more intense growth along the centre of his body, spreading wider and thicker above the base of his penis.

Idly she wondered if he derived as much pleasure in looking at her body, in thinking about it, in contrasting its femininity with his own masculinity, as she did his.

She was lucky in that, despite the exuberant thickness and wildness of the brunette curls that more than one envious friend had not been able to believe were actually natural and not the result of some expensive and enviable perm, the hair on her body was confined to a neatly demure triangle of soft hair that started just below the pretty mole where her body started to swell into sensual womanhood.

Thanks to her parents, she had no hang-ups about either her body or her sexuality. Unlike Ben.

She remembered how surprised she had been the first time they had made love and he had insisted on undressing in the dark, and even then on leaving on his underpants until they were actually in bed.

It had been many weeks before she had persuaded him to allow her to see him naked and in the daylight, and even more before she had ventured to tease him gently for his shyness.

What he had said in response to her then had for the first time in her life left her unable to make any verbal reply, unable to do anything other than smother back the anguish aching in her throat.

With five children, boys and girls, sharing one bedroom and two beds, such modesty was essential and necessary, especially when you were the eldest, especially when you were a particularly well developed teenage boy, especially when you had a gut-deep protective instinct towards your younger siblings which you had never been able to put into words but which led you to be fiercely protective, not so much of your own privacy, but of their innocence.

She had never teased him about his need for modesty again, just as she had never retaliated on those occasions when she’d grimaced in disgust over the tacky grubbiness of their rented flat with its damp patches on the walls, its bath which no matter how often she cleaned it never really seemed to her as though it was clean, and he turned on her and told her grimly that where he came from and to his family the privacy of the flat they shared would be considered a real luxury.

Most of the time, because there was just the two of them, because Ben had done his early training under one of the best chefs in the world and because that training had encompassed far, far more than the art of buying, preparing and serving good food, she was not conscious of any social differences between them and she was certainly not concerned about them. But Ben was.

She heard him pick up the receiver and say their number, and then, when he didn’t call out to her, she snuggled back under the duvet.

They still had the whole day ahead of them and it would be fun to coax him into coming back to bed. She rolled over on to her stomach, smiling in reminiscent pleasure as she felt the soft pulsing echo of her orgasm.

It was five minutes before Ben came back. When he did and she saw his face, all thoughts of teasing him back into bed vanished. She sat up immediately, the duvet sliding unregarded off her body.

‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

‘I don’t know. That was Ma on the phone. She wants me to go up there.’

‘To Manchester?’

‘There’s a train every hour.’ He paused and looked at her. Immediately Zoe shook her head and told him quickly,

‘No, it’s all right. You go. I owe Mum and Dad a visit anyway.’ She pulled a face. ‘I haven’t really seen them since Christmas… I haven’t even told them our good news yet. I wonder when we’re going to hear something definite about the hotel.

‘Don’t worry,’ she told him softly, reaching out and taking hold of his hand. ‘It can’t be anything too catastrophic. Your mother would have told you over the phone if it had been.’

She didn’t question his decision to go north. She knew him well enough by now to realise how seriously he took his role as the eldest in the family; substitute father-figure to his younger siblings in many ways since his parents’ divorce. She had observed the way not just they but also his mother depended on him and, although her heart ached protectively for him when she saw how much he worried about them, she couldn’t blame them for their dependence on him.

She had only met his family once. He hadn’t really wanted her to… had argued angrily against her decision to accompany him on one of his visits home; but she had insisted, knowing intuitively that, if she gave in, his family and his openly ambivalent feelings towards them and the life he had left behind would act as a barrier between them.

He might have prepared her for their poverty, for the vast gulf that lay between him, with his energy for life, his ambition, his determination, his awareness and control over his life, and their poverty and apathy; but what he had not prepared her for, obviously because it had not occurred to him to do so, had been the shock of discovering that his mother could more easily have passed for his older sister.

He had been nearly twenty then and had looked older. His mother, who had given birth to him days after her sixteenth birthday, was still, amazingly after having five children, small and almost fragilely slender, her anxious eyes turning to her eldest son not just for his support, but for his approval as well, Zoe had recognised on a welling tide of her own emotion.

Ben had only told her the bare facts of his early upbringing, and then half reluctantly. His parents had divorced when he was in his early teens, his father disappearing, leaving the family completely without his emotional and financial support.

Reading between the lines, she had guessed that Ben had taken on to his own shoulders the role abandoned by his father, and then, without knowing her, she had resented Ben’s mother on Ben’s own behalf for her selfishness in allowing such a young child to take such an appalling burden.

Now that resentment had gone, but in its place had been born a determination never to treat Ben as his family did, using him as an emotional and financial support, taking from him instead of giving.

And with that in mind she smiled generously at him now and swallowed her own disappointment at the disruption of their precious shared time.

‘You can have the bathroom first,’ she told him. ‘I’ll go and make the coffee.’

On their days off breakfast together was normally a special leisurely ritual. She made the coffee while Ben went down to the small bakery a couple of streets away to buy fresh croissants still warm and buttery from the ovens.

Zoe acknowledged that she was lucky in never seeming to put on any extra weight no matter what she ate, but then her job was very physically demanding, with long hours and missed mealtimes.

She hadn’t said anything at work yet about their plans. It had been hard enough getting her job as it was. Like everyone else, the large hotel chains were cutting back on expenses and staff. Only the fact that she had among the best exam results in her year had secured her a coveted job as a very junior trainee.

She had been with the company several years now, had completed their training scheme and had been lucky enough to be offered her present job as junior undermanager of their Heathrow hotel.

A plum job with a minute salary and the ferocious expense of travelling by car to work from the flat she and Ben shared. Silly perhaps, when she could have lived in or even at home with her parents, but it was worth all the hassle… all the time, all the travelling… all the hours she spent alone while Ben was still working… worth it for the precious wonderful time they did get to spend together.