WRAPPED in a delicious, warm lethargy, Lacey came slowly awake. She was conscious of an unfamiliar weight across her waist, an unfamiliar presence in her bed. She opened her eyes and stared in confusion at Lewis.
He was still fast asleep, his jaw dark with an overnight growth of beard. His hair was tousled, one tanned shoulder exposed where the sheet had slipped away. He smelled musky and male, the scent of his skin sending small skittering sensations racing over her skin.
She felt too relaxed to move, too lazy to…She tensed abruptly as she heard a sound downstairs.
Someone was opening the kitchen door, and running lightly upstairs.
Before Lacey could do a single thing to react to this knowledge her bedroom door was thrown open and Jessica came rushing in, announcing, ‘Ma, I’m sorry about going to see Dad without telling you first, but I—’
She stopped abruptly, her eyes rounding with shock as she focused on the dark head on the pillow next to Lacey’s, immediately starting to back towards the door, her face faintly flushed.
‘Jess!’
Beside her Lacey felt Lewis move and stretch and then sit up.
‘Dad…’
Jessica stared at them both, her shock and embarrassment replaced by a wide grin.
‘Well, of all the…And just how long has this been going on?’ she demanded teasingly. ‘What a pair of dark horses you two are! There’s me, thinking…worrying that…and all the time the two of you…’ She came over to the bed, her face alight with happiness, flinging her arms around them both as she exclaimed, ‘Oh, this is wonderful…brilliant! I can’t believe it! The two of you together!’ She sat down on the bed, happiness radiating out from her, while Lacey stared at her in consternation, trying desperately to find a way to halt her excited chatter and put right her misconceptions.
She knew that, beside her, Lewis was now fully awake, but she couldn’t bring herself to look at him. She knew that he must be feeling as shocked and disconcerted as she was herself. After all, how on earth did one explain to their obviously deliriously delighted daughter that, far from having romantically come together, they…
‘So you approve, then, do you Jess?’
Lewis’s wry question broke into Lacey’s frantic thoughts, halting them.
‘Well, I must say, when I walked in here and realised that there was a strange man in bed with Ma I was a little taken aback,’ Jessica was replying mock severely to him. ‘But once I realised it was you…Oh, for goodness’ sake! How long has this been going on? And I knew nothing about it! It’s so romantic after all these years…the two of you getting back together. When’s the wedding?’ She laughed. ‘I hope you’re not expecting me to play bridesmaid.’
Lacey was too appalled to speak. She had gone through shock, embarrassment, disbelief, and now she felt she was incapable of registering any more emotions but someone had to say something…do something before the whole thing got completely out of hand, and, since Lewis didn’t seem to be going to do so, it was up to her…
She took a deep breath.
‘Jessica, this isn’t—’
Beneath the bedclothes, Lewis reached for her hand and gripped it warningly. ‘What your mother’s trying to say is that we haven’t got as far as making any formal plans yet.’
‘But you are definitely getting back together. Well, you must be,’Jessica said cheerfully. ‘I know Ma, and there’s just no way she’d be here in bed with you like this if that weren’t the case—’
‘Look, why don’t you go downstairs and put the kettle on? Give your mother and me a chance to make ourselves respectable,’ Lewis suggested, interrupting her.
‘OK, I’ll give you just ten minutes, and if you’re not both downstairs by then…’
As she walked towards the door, Jessica stopped and turned back to look at them, tears sparkling in her eyes.
‘Oh, I can’t tell you how much this means to me—both of you together. It’s…it’s…it’s brill…simply brill.’
She turned round and was gone, leaving Lacey looking helplessly at Lewis, her forehead creased with anxiety and concern, her own emotions, her own feelings of embarrassment and guilt forgotten as she worried about Jessica’s reaction when she learned the truth.
Before she could speak, Lewis said quietly, ‘Whether we like it or not, it seems that for the present at least you and I are going to have to play along with Jessica’s belief that we’re reunited and passionately in love.’
‘What do you suggest as an alternative?’ His mouth twisted cynically. ‘Telling her that, contrary to her romantic beliefs, we just went to bed together for sex?’
The brutality of it made her feel sick, filling her with anguished self-disgust. She had known all along that it was only desire, lust that had motivated him, but hearing him put it so clinically, so coldly made her want to weep with chagrin and despair.
‘Is that what you want?’ he demanded insistently.
Lacey shook her head, unable to look at him.
‘Look,’ his voice softened a little, ‘I know this isn’t easy for either of us, but we have to put our own feelings to one side and think of Jessica. It obviously means a great deal to her that we’ve—as she thinks—reconciled our differences and come together again. What harm can it really do to allow her to go on believing that for a little while? At the very least it will give us time to gently find a way of telling her that we don’t think it’s going to work out after all. But if you insist on telling her the truth…now…’
Lacey shook her head. How could she do that after the way she had seen Jessica react to the sight of them together? If she told her daughter now that they had just been indulging in cold, loveless sex…She swallowed hard. How could she do…? No, Lewis was right. They would have to wait.
‘Shall I get dressed first and go down and keep Jess occupied? It will give you time to come to terms with—’
‘With what?’ she demanded bitterly. ‘With lying to my own daughter…with pretending that you and I…?’ She couldn’t go on. Her throat was too thick with tears.
This was all her fault…hers and no one else’s. If she hadn’t made it so plain to Lewis that she wanted him…desired him…She felt sick with self-mortification, with guilt.
Lewis started to get out of bed. She turned her head away.
‘About last night,’ she heard him say, but she shook her head in denial.
‘No, please, Lewis. I can’t talk about it now. Dear God, why on earth did Jessica have to find us like this?’
IT WAS A question Lacey was forced to ask herself over and over again in the days that followed.
Far from containing the damage already done, the fact that they were allowing Jessica to believe that they had been reconciled and were making plans for the future only seemed to exacerbate it. Jessica, it seemed, couldn’t contain her delight in what she considered to be their good news.
Her original intention had been simply to come home for a couple of days, to apologise to Lacey for upsetting her and to explain why she had contacted her father without consulting Lacey first.
‘It’s incredible to have the two of you together like this,’she told them both over and over again.
Luckily Lewis had the excuse of needing to get back to his business to keep his stay with them mercifully brief, and so Lacey did not have the trauma of facing the possibility of having to share her bed with him for a second night.
She had had the whole day to spend with him and two more after that, when he had driven over to spend, as he put it, as much time has he could with the two most important women in his life.
The past was never mentioned. Jessica’s excited chatter was all about the future, and the more she listened to her daughter the more despairingly guilty Lacey felt. Sooner or later Jessica was going to have to be told the truth.
Initially when Lewis had talked of letting Jessica come to terms with the realisation that the relationship between them wasn’t working out, it had seemed a simple, easy solution; but now that Lacey had time to consider it and to realise that it wasn’t something that could be accomplished overnight, she was beginning to panic that she would do something to betray the strain she was under, the pain she was going through, the agony she was enduring. Because it was agony having to spend so much time with Lewis, having to accept the small physical gestures of intimacy he made towards her, the brief kiss on her forehead, his arm round her shoulders, the small, intimate touches that reaffirmed Jessica’s belief that they were deeply in love.
Deeply in love. Well, it was true of one of them, at least, and the problem was that that one was falling more and more deeply into that love with every day that passed.
No matter how much she tried to remind herself of the past and all that had happened, Lacey knew she was daily becoming more dependent on Lewis…more involved with him, so that she was torn between anguish and self-hatred at her own weakness and inability to face reality.
Fortunately Jessica was only able to spend a few days at home.
To Lacey’s consternation, on their last afternoon together Jessica suggested that Lewis took them both to see his home.
‘After all, I expect that you and Ma will be living there once you’ve finally set a date for the wedding,’ she continued blithely. ‘I mean, your business is there—’
‘Jessica,’ Lacey protested. ‘I don’t think—’
‘That’s all right,’ Lewis interrupted her, ‘and besides, Jess, is right, although I warn you that the house isn’t anything like as…as home-like as this.’
He said it almost bleakly, his face suddenly shuttered, causing Lacey to worry at her bottom lip. He never spoke of her, the woman he had left her for, or of their time together. She knew now that he had never married her, but presumably they must have lived together, shared a home…plans…and she shrank from the thought of even visiting the house he had shared with another woman; a woman he had loved more than he had loved her.
‘I bought the house five years ago,’ he was telling Jessica. ‘In all honesty, it’s too large for one person. Much too large. I don’t know why I bought it really.’
‘Wishful thinking,’ Jessica suggested, smiling at him.
‘Perhaps,’ Lewis agreed. ‘Although I had no idea then that your mother…that you existed.’
‘It’s not too late, you know,’ Jessica told him softly. ‘You and Ma can still have another child…more children. After all, these days a vasectomy can be reversed, and Ma isn’t even forty yet—’
‘Jessica,’ Lacey interrupted her quickly, but Jessica refused to be quelled, telling her firmly,
‘Come on, Ma, you know you’d love another child…and I certainly wouldn’t object to a little sister.’
The knowledge which all three of them shared was mirrored in those words, and, despite the grim look in Lewis’s eyes, Lacey felt the familiar pang inside her, the familiar ache in her womb, reinforcing the knowledge that Jessica was right: that she would like another child, just as long as that child was Lewis’s.
‘If my tests prove positive I shan’t let it stop me from having children,’ Jessica told them both quietly. ‘Not boys—I couldn’t take that risk—but girls.’
Lacey tensed as she saw Lewis walk over to the french windows and step through them into the garden, his back rigid with tension.
‘What is it…what did I say?’ Jessica asked her bewilderedly.
‘He’s worried about you,’ Lacey told her gently. ‘Give him time, Jess. He feels guilty…responsible…for the fact that you will probably never be able to choose to have sons, at least not without the risk of passing on to them his defective gene—’
‘But at least I can choose,’ Jessica interrupted her. ‘What would you have done, Ma, if he’d told you about…about the risk after you knew you were carrying me?’
‘I don’t know,’ Lacey told her honestly. ‘I think I would probably have continued with the pregnancy.’
‘But Dad wouldn’t have wanted you to, would he? He’d have tried to persuade you to have an abortion.’
Lacey bit her lip. ‘Jessica, you’ve seen what’s happening to little Michael. You know what his family has gone through. I’m not trying to say that I agree with Lewis’s attitude, but I do understand it.’
‘Yes. Yes, I know. I just suddenly realised that if you hadn’t…if he hadn’t divorced you when he did, I might never have been born.’
‘But you were born,’Lacey told her, ‘and, thanks to modern technology, you will have the choice of knowing that you can opt to have only girls.’
Jessica went to stand by the window. ‘Dad looks so alone. I think he’s missed you dreadfully. It’s obvious how he feels about you, and I know that you love him…that you’ve always loved him. I’m so glad that you’ve come together again.’
‘Jess, it isn’t as clear-cut as that. Things may not work out,’ Lacey began, but Jessica wasn’t listening to her.
‘I’m looking forward to seeing his house, aren’t you? I wonder what it’s like.’
Lewis was staring towards the house. Jessica opened the french window and ran up to him, hugging him with a love that made Lacey’s eyes sting with tears.
Soon she would have to tell her daughter the truth. Soon, but not yet; not while her relationship with Lewis was still so new and vulnerable.
DRIVING through the once familiar environs of the town where she had once lived with Lewis made Lacey feel increasingly tense and on edge.
The town had changed over the years, had grown and spread out, but its centre was the same.
Lewis now had a much larger office in the town square. He pointed it out to them as they drove through it, responding to Jessica’s excited questions by admitting that he now owned the handsome three-storey Georgian building in which his offices were housed.
He had, he explained to them, bought out his original partner some years previously, and had expanded the business so that he now had several fully qualified staff working for him, as well as an office manager and several clerks.
‘Hear that, Ma? You’re marrying a wealthy man, so hang on to him,’ Jessica teased, but Lacey suspected that it was probably true and that Lewis was indeed very well off.
His car, his clothes and now his offices certainly seemed to bear out that impression. She moved nervously in her seat. Jessica had insisted that her mother sit in the front passenger-seat of the car, next to Lewis, although Lacey would much rather have sat in the back.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw the way he flinched a little as he had to brake unexpectedly for someone crossing the road. The removal of the bone marrow he had given for research in addition to temporarily weakening his limb had left a small scar on his upper thigh. Her skin suddenly coloured hotly as she remembered how she had smoothed it, kissed it, tenderly caressing the small wound. She started to tremble inside and hated herself for her weakness. Every time she thought about the way they had made love it affected her like this, making her body start to ache and her senses swim.
Lewis was saying something about its not being far now. She looked at him, focusing briefly on his mouth, her heart turning over inside her as she remembered its delicate friction against her body.
They were clear of the town now, driving through the suburbs and out into the open country, and they were, she recognised with relief—on the opposite side of the town from the area where they had originally set up home.
They turned off the main road into a quiet country lane. Lacey could see a drive ahead of them. Lewis turned into it and she caught her breath in shock as she saw the house.
It was a low white-painted farmhouse with red tiled roofs and lead-paned windows, surrounded by large mature gardens and protected by an encircling ring of trees.
‘Is this it? It’s brilliant!’ Jessica announced. ‘What do you think, Ma?’
Lewis had brought the car to a halt. Both he and Jessica were, she realised, looking at her.
Shakily she told them both, ‘It’s…it’s…very nice.’
‘Very nice!’ Jessica scoffed. ‘Oh, come on, Ma, you can do better than that.’
Lacey gave her a wan smile.
Once long, long ago, on a hot summer afternoon, lying with Lewis on their bed, the heat pressing down on the small, narrow row of houses, she had dreamily described to Lewis the sort of house she dreamed of owning…the sort of house just right for the family she longed to have.
From its exterior this house might have been designed to fit that description, and she was unbearably conscious of the cruel irony that Lewis should own it.
Five years ago, he said he had bought it, plenty of time for him to have forgotten the house she had described to him all those years ago. She reached for the door-handle of the car, suddenly desperate for some fresh air, forgetting that her seatbelt was still fastened.
Jessica was already opening her door and getting out, and Lacey and Lewis were alone in the car.
‘I bought it because of you,’ he told her quietly. ‘I was driving past one day and I saw it.’
‘And it just happened to be for sale…and you thought, Oh, there’s a house like the one Lacey wanted.’ Her voice was choked with tears, bitterness thickening the words.
He was looking towards her, but she couldn’t bear to look at him…couldn’t endure him seeing the misery and unhappiness in her eyes.
‘No, as a matter of fact it wasn’t for sale…but the owners were an elderly couple and thinking about retiring to somewhere more convenient. I told them if they ever did decide to sell to get in touch with me.’
‘You wanted it that much?’ She was puzzled now.
‘I needed it that much,’ he corrected her, bending over her to release her seatbelt.
She could smell the scent of his shampoo, his soap; she could see the male graining of his skin. His head was so close to her that if she moved only slightly she would feel the warmth of his breath against her breast.
A deep shudder ran through her. Beneath her clothes her nipples peaked and hardened.
‘Lacey, I…’
His hand was on her shoulder, his voice low and urgent. She had the oddest feeling that if she looked at him now she wouldn’t be able to stop herself from begging him to kiss her.
‘Come on, you two,’ Jessica urged them from outside. ‘I want to see inside.’
INSIDE, THE HOUSE was perfectly proportioned, a real family home. It should have radiated warmth and welcome but instead it felt empty…cold…unlived in…its rooms bare and austere.
Lacey was appalled. It was like a hotel. No, it was far, far worse than a hotel. It had a lonely, almost institutionalised air about it, a lack of warmth, of life, of love. There were no pictures, no flowers, no small personal belongings. It was sterile…empty.
‘How many bedrooms does it have?’ she heard Jessica asking Lewis.
‘Five,’ he responded as he led the way upstairs. ‘And three bathrooms.’
A large house for a single man. Why had he bought it?
Upstairs the bedrooms were just as barren of any signs of homeliness as those downstairs. Outside the last door Lewis paused, and then said briefly, ‘This last one is my room. I don’t think there’s any need to show you in there.’
The door was slightly open, and as they walked past a current of air caught it, opening it still further, so that Lacey automatically glanced inside.
On the cabinet beside the bed she could see a silver photograph frame. It was turned towards the bed so that she could not see the photograph inside it, but immediately jealousy tore savagely at her. Now she knew why he hadn’t wanted them to see inside his room: it was because he still kept a photograph of her there—the woman he had left her for. His bedroom was obviously still a shrine to her…to his love for her.
As they walked downstairs, Lacey discovered that she was trembling, barely able to contain the intensity of her emotions.
She was a woman, for heaven’s sake, not a girl. It was ridiculous, humiliating…idiotic that she should still feel like this
It was bad enough that Lewis was still able to arouse her sexually, but this jealousy…this despair…this aching, yearning envy of another woman because she possessed his love—surely they did not belong to maturity, to wisdom, to common-sense or all the other things she felt went hand in hand with her age?
The kitchen, though large and well-equipped, was as sterile as the rest of the house. While Lewis made them tea, Lacey tried to exercise her imagination by exchanging the streamlined formica units for something a little less severe and more homely, wooden perhaps with tiled worktops; an Aga replacing the modern split-level cooker; gentle, worn tiles on the floor, covered perhaps by a couple of rugs; a chair in front of the Aga; a large scrubbed table in the middle of the room, so that the whole family could…
She tensed abruptly. What family? she demanded bitterly of herself. The family Lewis had told her he would never have? This was, after all, Lewis’s home and not hers.
And what about her, the other woman? Had she left him when he had told her that he did not intend to have any children? Had he told Lacey that, how would she have reacted? She had always wanted a family—three, hopefully four children. Had Lewis told her in the early days of their marriage that that would not be possible, what would she have done?
Would she have left him to find a man who shared her dream of a family…a man who could give her healthy children? Or would her love for Lewis have been more important to her? Would it have kept her by his side…would she have been prepared to give up her desire to have a family to stay with him? Would her love have been strong enough for that?
She gave a tiny shiver. She thought she knew the answer, but then when she looked at her daughter she wondered…chewing on her bottom lip, worrying at it, as she wondered if over the years her self-denial might not have become corrosive and bitter, eating into the fabric of her love.
Perhaps it was just as well she had never had to make that choice…that Lewis had in effect made it for her, by rejecting her before either of them knew the truth.
‘You’re very quiet.’
Lacey tensed at the soft sound of Lewis’s voice. She hadn’t even realised he was watching her, and she flushed uncomfortably, wondering how long he had been studying her and what he might have read in her unguarded face.
Even now she found it difficult to appear composed when he focused his attention on her, terrified of what she might inadvertently betray.
It was bad enough that sexually he knew how vulnerable she was to him; if he should discover that she loved him as well…
She gave a tiny shiver. Even now, days later, she still woke up in the night, vividly aware of how she had felt when he touched her, aching for him…wanting him, and acutely, bitterly conscious of the fact that she had practically encouraged, if not invited him to make love to her, but making that idiotic admission that there had been no one else since him.
‘She’s probably redecorating everywhere,’ Jessica told him mischievously, adding, ‘Which room have you chosen for the nursery, Ma?’
‘The house does need a woman’s touch,’ Lewis commented, ignoring the latter part of Jessica’s comment. ‘After I bought it, I…’ He stopped. ‘You still haven’t seen the gardens, and we won’t want to leave it too late getting back. I’ve booked a table for us at eight.’
Since it was Jessica’s last evening at home, Lewis had insisted on taking them out to dinner. Lacey had protested that there was no need, but Jessica had overruled her, assuring her that she would enjoy the treat.
The gardens were well laid out, mainly lawned, with flower beds which were a little too formal for Lacey’s personal taste, although she loved the maturity of the large trees which framed the garden and protected it from view.
While Lewis and Jessica discussed the plausibility of dredging the weed-covered pond and restocking it with koi carp, she walked across the lawn towards the small summer-house at the other side of the garden.
The wisteria which grew over it had finished flowering, but the rose entwined with it had a profusion of pink buds, some of them half-open, the sweet scent surrounding her.
‘Lacey, are you feeling all right?’
She hadn’t heard Lewis approach and she swung round, her face shadowed and pale, her eyes unwittingly revealing the strain she was under.
‘Of course I’m not all right,’ she told him shortly. ‘How could I be? This whole charade…and we don’t seem to be any closer to telling Jessica. Where is she, by the way?’
‘She thought she saw a fish in the pond. She’s still over there looking for it. What would you have preferred? That we told her that we’d simply gone to bed together for old times’ sake?’ He sounded grimly bitter. ‘Is that really the kind of example you want to set her…the impression you want to give her of our relationship?’
‘What relationship? We don’t have a relationship.’
‘We did once,’ Lewis told her. ‘I thought of you when I bought this house. It was so like the one you said you wanted.’
She went white with the shock of it, the looked-for cruelty of his casual comment turning her head away with a quick defensive movement that caused her hair to slide silkily across her face, tears blurring her eyes so that she had to blink furiously to stop them from falling.
‘Lacey, what is it…what…?’
He was standing far too close to her, bending towards her, his hand resting on the wall of the summer-house, so that she was virtually imprisoned between it and him.
‘Look, I know how much of a strain this whole thing is for you…for both of us…but for Jessica’s sake…She’s going back to university tomorrow. I do understand how you must feel about the whole thing…but if—’
‘But if what?’ she demanded raggedly, interrupting him. ‘If I hadn’t practically begged you to go to bed with me none of this would ever have happened. Do you think I don’t know that—?’
‘That wasn’t actually what I was going to say.’ His quiet words cut through her own nervously angry outburst. ‘And as for begging me…Look at me, Lacey.’
She darted him a quick glance, her heart suddenly starting to beat far too fast.
‘The way I remember it, it wasn’t…’
He was standing far far too close to her. She felt dizzy from her awareness of him, from her wretched over-responsiveness to him, and it galled her that even now she seemed completely unable to control her body’s physical compulsion for intimacy with him. She could feel herself edging closer to him, feel the soft melting sensation within her, urging her to turn towards him, to…
She must have moved, she realised with sickening disbelief, because suddenly there was no distance between them at all, and the hand which Lewis had been resting against the wall behind her was now touching her shoulder, turning her, holding her.
‘Lacey.’
As he whispered her name the warmth of his breath feathered across her mouth, so that immediately her lips softened and parted, her throat tight with tension and need.
As his mouth settled gently on hers she closed her eyes, her whole body melting yearningly into his, her arms wrapping round him as he drew her closer to him.
He kissed her slowly and lingeringly as though he were savouring the taste and feel of her, his lips caressing hers as though his only purpose in life was to cherish and pleasure her.
She tried to resist, to remind herself that in return for this pleasure now she would pay over and over again in time to come in terms of anguish and loss, but her senses were too overwhelmed to listen to reason.
Beneath his mouth she made a soft little sound of appreciation and need, and immediately he responded to it, his arms tightening around her, his body hardening with arousal, his tongue probing the warm depths of her mouth as she clung to him, holding him, wanting him, her breasts aching for the touch of his hands, her body—
‘Hey, come on, break it up, you two!’
Lacey wasn’t sure which of them was the more shocked by the sound of Jessica’s laughter, but when she tried to pull away from him Lewis held on to her, and muttered in her ear, ‘No, not yet. I can’t.’
She was starting to tremble as reaction set in, but the urgency in his voice made her look at him.
His eyes were very dark, the pupils huge and almost black. There was a thin film of colour under his skin, sharpening the angle of his cheekbones. She could feel the tension in his muscles.
‘Just stand here for a minute until…’
Lacey frowned, confused by the blend of irritation and wryness in his voice until he explained bluntly, ‘I’m still aroused, Lacey, and, while Jessica obviously knows that we are lovers, I’m still old-fashioned enough to feel a little uncomfortable as her father, for her…’
He broke off as Lacey started to blush, a small smile touching his mouth. He lifted his hand to her face, his fingertips cool against her hot skin.
‘So you can still do that. Amazing. Do you remember the first time we made love? How you refused to look at me, and how embarrassed you were when…?’
‘I really think the sooner you two set a date and get married the better,’ Jessica told them both mock severely as she reached them. ‘You’re right, Dad,’ she added to Lewis. ‘It wasn’t a fish after all…’
Lewis was still standing next to Lacey one arm draped casually around her shoulders, her body turned in towards his own.After what he had said to her, she did not dare to move away; her embarrassment would be even greater than his if he was still as obviously aroused as he had indicated.
A tiny frisson of sensation coiled through her, a sweet ache of mingled pride and loss that she could actually have that kind of effect on him.
Don’t be ridiculous, she chided herself bitingly. It’s a physical reaction to sexual stimulation, that’s all. Any woman could have done it. It means nothing in any personal sense…nothing at all.
It was almost ten minutes before Lewis let her go, and even then, as the three of them walked back to the house together, he kept her by his side, his arm still around her shoulders. No doubt such pretend intimacy was for Jessica’s benefit, but, since they had already agreed that the sooner they could start to intimate to Jessica that things were not after all working out between them the better, it seemed illogical of him to be promoting this image of intimacy between them.
The afternoon had tired her. She told herself as Lewis drove them back home that it was the effect of the fresh air that was making her feel so drained and sleepy, but she knew in reality that it was the emotional strain that was exhausting her, draining her to the point where she felt that all she wanted to do was to go to bed and stay there, waking up only when it was all over and her life was back to normal. When Lewis had disappeared from it.
But if that was what she really wanted, why did the mere thought of a life without him make her feel so miserably bleak and full of despair?
She had got over loving and losing him once, she reminded herself grittily later on when she was changing for the evening. She would get over it again. Or would she? She had been younger then, stronger…with a very definite purpose in life. She had had to think of Jessica, her child. She still had to think of Jessica, of course, but not in the same way. Jessica was an adult herself now.
Her small house only had two bedrooms, fortunately, so Lewis was staying at a local hotel instead of driving home after their meal. Jessica had teased them both about it, remarking that, since she had already caught them in bed together, there seemed little point in Lewis’s returning to his hotel.
‘I’m going to miss you both once I’m back at university,’ Jessica commented as she walked into Lacey’s bedroom. ‘Still, it won’t be long. We’ll all be together again at half-term, and Ian has arranged for me to have my tests then as well…which reminds me, I must ring him and check on exactly when my appointment is.’ Her face shadowed a little. ‘I was thinking only the other night how lucky I am. Not just in being born, but in living now, when I will have a choice, when I don’t have to make the kind of decision Dad had to face. I was wondering, Ma. The other woman…the one he left you for—’
‘Jess…please, I don’t want to discuss it.’ Her hand shook as she tried to fasten her earring. ‘Jess, don’t get too…too excited about the thought of Lewis and me getting back together. I mean, it’s early days yet…it may not…it may not work out.’
‘What?’ Jessica stared at her and then laughed. ‘Don’t be an idiot, Ma. It’s plain to see that the pair of you are madly in love. The way Dad looks at you when he thinks no one can see him reminds me of a hungry dog eyeing up a very, very delectable bone.’
‘Thanks a lot,’ Lacey responded drily, dipping her head so that Jessica couldn’t see the betraying emotion in her eyes.
Lewis was an excellent actor, she had to give him that, but she wasn’t sure that his acting was doing either of them any good. Sooner or later Jessica would have to know the truth. But not until after they knew the results of her tests. As Lewis had pointed out, she would need them both then, especially if the tests proved positive.
‘Why don’t you go back with Dad tomorrow when he goes home?’ Jessica suggested. ‘After all, there’s nothing to stop you, is there?’
‘No? I do have a job, remember.’
‘Yes, but you’ll be giving that up once the two of you remarry, won’t you?’ Jessica told her confidently. ‘I know you’ll want to continue with your fund-raising work, and, from what Dad’s been saying to me about his involvement in the research into the effects of the disorder, he’ll more than support you in that, but if you do have a baby…or two…’
Sighing to herself, Lacey stood up.
‘We’d better go downstairs,’ she told her daughter. ‘Lewis will be here soon.’