Sarah's Secret (10 page)

‘We obviously haven’t made love enough yet,’ he said promptly, and Sarah laughed.

‘If you’re going to make love to me again, Jake—’

‘No if about it!’

‘Then I’d like a shower first.’

‘Brilliant idea.’ He slid out of bed and held out his hand.

In spite of sharing the ultimate intimacy with Jake only minutes before, Sarah felt irrationally shy as she slid naked from the bed. Colour flooded her face when her nipples hardened in response to his caressing gaze. His breathing suddenly rapid, Jake picked her up and carried her into the bathroom to set her on her feet in the shower stall. He turned on the spray and held her close against him, kissing her as he smoothed scented gel over her hot, wet body, and Sarah did the same for him in return, no longer shy at all. He groaned like a man in pain as her seeking hands brought him to full arousal, and he switched off the spray and parted her thighs with an invading knee. They clung together in hot, wet contact as they kissed with increasing wildness, until at last Jake tore his mouth away, snatched up a towel to dry her with unsteady, urgent hands, then carried her back to bed.

They surged together at once, all preliminaries swept aside. Mouth to mouth, hands entwined, their bodies fused together in a union Jake fought to keep slow and gradual. But soon Sarah was overwhelmed by the pulsing reality of her first climax, and, feeling her innermost muscles clenched round him, Jake released his control and collapsed on her, gasping endearments against her parted mouth.

It was a long time before either of them had the breath
or inclination to speak. At last Jake turned over on his back and pulled Sarah close.

‘This,’ he said gruffly, ‘is where one asks how was it for you?’

She smiled up at him, her gold-flecked eyes glittering in the lamplight. ‘Does one?’

‘I thought you might be unfamiliar with the protocol. In the circumstances,’ he added, pulling her higher so he could kiss her.

‘Because I’m new at it, you mean.’

‘Precisely. An extraordinary, glorious fact I’m still trying to take in.’ He let out a deep, unsteady breath. ‘I’m very grateful to the storm for making you seduce me.’

Sarah reared up in indignation. ‘Is that what I did?’

‘In a way.’ Jake smoothed her tumbled hair, his eyes suddenly sober. ‘I wouldn’t have initiated this myself, darling. Not tonight, anyway.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I was damned if I’d take advantage of the situation.’

‘Halo problems again,’ she chuckled, and rubbed her cheek against his bare shoulder. ‘You’re one of a kind, Jake Hogan.’

He glowered at her. ‘I’m not, you know.’

‘All right, all right. I won’t talk about halos again.’

‘Good. Because human failings are beginning to get the better of me right now.’

‘Curiosity?’

‘Absolutely.’ Jake sat up, rearranged the pillows and held out his arms.

Sarah slid into them with a sigh of pleasure as he drew the sheet over them. ‘At least you can now understand why I wouldn’t—couldn’t let myself respond to you,
Jake.’ She looked up at him with sombre eyes. ‘In college it was no problem to duck out of all the bed-hopping the others were involved in. Nor with anyone since. But with you, for the first time, I wanted this almost from the start. Even though it meant letting you into the secret I’ve never shared with anyone.’

‘I still can’t take it in,’ Jake said, equally grave, and kissed her gently. ‘Davy’s so like you I just can’t believe she’s not your child.’

Sarah’s eyes filled with unshed tears. ‘She is mine in every way that matters, Jake, just not my actual daughter. Davina Anne Tracy is my sister.’

‘Y
OUR
sister
?’ Jake stared at Sarah incredulously, then slid out of bed, shrugged on the robe and fetched the tissues, holding her in his arms while he blotted her eyes with such tender care the tears overflowed.

‘Sorry, sorry.’ She rubbed her wet face against his chest. ‘Tears twice in one night. Personal best for S. Tracy.’

Jake waited until she was calmer, then fetched a shot glass from the minibar. ‘Medicinal cognac. Down with it, darling.’

Sarah drank the mouthful of fiery spirit, and felt better as the warmth spread through her. She coughed a little as she handed Jake the glass. ‘Thank you. Though I hate the stuff—I hate to think of your hotel bill in the morning, too.’

He said something rude about the bill, then got back into bed beside her. ‘Sarah,’ he said firmly, as she curled up against him, ‘if it makes you unhappy, don’t tell me any more.’

She touched a hand to his cheek in gratitude, but shook her head. ‘I want you to know everything, Jake. And I won’t cry again. Promise.’

The story began one bleak January day with a funeral. David Tracy had just gone back from leave to the work he was doing on a hotel construction in Malaysia, and because Sarah had been back in school after the Christmas holidays, and working hard for exams, Anne
had left her in Campden Road with her grandmother and made the long journey to Cumbria alone.

‘When she was doing her teacher training,’ Sarah told Jake, ‘my mother had a friend called Tony Barrett. They were very close, rather like Nick and me. Best of friends. They went to each other’s weddings, and the two couples got on well together. For years Tony brought his wife Lisa to visit us, and we went up to Cumbria to visit them.’

Anne Tracy had gone to see Lisa Barrett twice during her long, protracted illness, and the moment Tony rang to say his wife had finally died Anne had set off for Cumbria again. After the funeral, when all the guests and relatives had gone, Tony had begged Anne to stay on for a day or so to help him sort through his wife’s belongings. The first night alone in the house together, when he’d gone to her room in desperate distress, her only thought had been to comfort him.

‘My mother was small, and Tony Barrett was a big man,’ said Sarah without inflection. ‘And due to his wife’s illness he’d been celibate for a very long time.’

‘So the inevitable happened,’ said Jake quietly.

Tony Barrett had been wild with remorse afterwards, and Anne Tracy, sick with misery and guilt over the entire episode, had driven home at first light, determined to block it out and never think of it again.

‘I was shaping up for A-levels, and too taken up with my own concerns for a while to notice that my mother was quieter than usual after she came back,’ Sarah said remorsefully.

But eventually Sarah had noticed, and grown worried. Anne had looked haggard from loss of sleep, and tried so hard to be bright and animated Sarah had known that underneath something was terribly wrong.

‘So I demanded to know if she had cancer, like Lisa Barrett.’ Sarah heaved a sigh. ‘It shocked her into telling me she was pregnant. At first I was so relieved to know she wasn’t terminally ill I couldn’t understand why she was in such a state about being pregnant. She was only thirty-nine. Finally she broke down, and told me that not only was Tony Barrett to blame, but that she’d had such a bad time when I was born that my father insisted on a vasectomy. It was the thought of telling him which was killing her.’

‘God,’ said Jake, wincing. ‘What a situation.’

Margaret Parker had been appalled when Anne finally confessed the truth, and in her frantic desire to avoid scandal had instantly advised abortion. But Anne, who’d had strong beliefs on the subject, hadn’t been able to bear the thought of that. But she hadn’t been able to bear the thought of causing her husband so much hurt, either, and had become so distraught that the entire subject had had to be dropped for a while.

‘Grandma insisted on moving in with us during that awful time,’ said Sarah. ‘She told me she was afraid to leave Mother alone while I was in school, but, looking back, I’m sure she used the time to keep hammering at her to get rid of the baby.’

‘Your father wasn’t told?’ asked Jake.

‘No. In spite of my grandmother’s attitude, Mother was looking and feeling much better by the time he came home on leave. Grandma went back to Campden Road, and my parents were so happy just to be together again Mother couldn’t bear to spoil things for Dad. Before he went back to Malaysia he told her he intended to see the job out before he came home again, which meant autumn at the earliest. Normally Mother would have been
in despair at the long parting, but for once she was relieved.’

‘Did she see a doctor?’ asked Jake.

Sarah shook her head. ‘We lived in a small village where everyone knew everyone else. My father was born and brought up there, and the doctor was his personal friend.’

Jake was silent for a moment, frowning. ‘All this was a heavy load for a teenager to cope with, Sarah.’

‘Even heavier for my mother, Jake.’

The unwanted baby had been due to arrive some time in early autumn, and the moment Sarah finished her exams that June Margaret Parker had insisted the three of them went off to Cornwall for the rest of the summer.

‘We did that every year anyway,’ said Sarah. ‘Polruan Cottage stood on its own, a fair way out of the nearest village, and although even by that stage Mother didn’t look pregnant, she refused to go a step farther than the garden. I’m convinced she’d persuaded herself that because she didn’t want the baby she’d miscarry and Dad would never have to know.’

‘But surely she was in need of medical attention?’

Sarah nodded. ‘That was part of Grandma’s reason for moving us down there once abortion was no longer a possibility. It was her home turf, and her oldest friend had once been a midwife. Mrs Treharne was let in on the secret, sworn to silence, and checked on Mother regularly. Life got easier after that.’

The advent of Jenna Treharne had been very necessary one evening in July, when, right in the middle of a violent thunderstorm, it had seemed that Anne’s wish was about to be granted and she’d gone into premature labour. Deaf to her patient’s protests, Jenna had called am ambulance and accompanied Anne and Margaret in
it to the hospital in Truro, leaving Sarah, who had not long passed her driving test, to follow them alone in her grandmother’s car, not only rigid with terror when lightning forked around her as she drove through the rain, but desperately afraid her mother would be dead before she got to the hospital. But it had been hours later when Anne Tracy, exhausted and in need of a blood transfusion, gave birth to her daughter. And though baby Davina had been a couple of pounds lighter than she would have weighed full-term, she’d been in remarkably good shape otherwise.

‘Mother was kept in hospital while Davy had a stay in an incubator before they were discharged,’ said Sarah. ‘And after they got back to Polruan Cottage the baby was fine. Mother was the problem.’

Because her closest friends knew about the vasectomy Anne had been in despair about returning to her own home with a baby. She’d been in a poor state physically after the birth, and mentally at such a low ebb that Jenna had given dire warnings of clinical depression, and worse. So Margaret had taken complete charge of Anne while Sarah looked after the baby right from the first, taking the hard work involved in her stride. Because she’d been young and fit Sarah had soon got used to broken nights, and nappy changes, and the endless round of sterilising and making up bottle feeds. It had been the arguments with her grandmother which were hardest to bear, because Margaret Parker had kept urging Anne to have the baby adopted.

‘By that time,’ said Sarah, ‘I felt that Davina belonged to me. My baby. I couldn’t bear the idea of adoption. Nor could my mother. Then my grandmother said something that made it all so simple.’

‘What was that, sweetheart?’ asked Jake, holding her closer.

‘In one of her outbursts she said it would have been far better if the baby had been mine. There would have been tongue-wagging, but because I was so young it would have been accepted more easily—by my father as well as everyone else.’ Sarah breathed in deeply. ‘Afterwards, when my mother was asleep, Grandma persuaded me to claim Davy as mine. Somehow she’d got it into her head that I was to blame for everything. That if I had gone to Cumbria with Mother, instead of insisting on staying home to study, none of it would have happened.’

‘How on earth did she work that one out?’ said Jake, incensed.

‘She wasn’t very rational at the time. But once I’d thought it over I decided for myself that it was the best thing to do. Not,’ added Sarah fiercely, ‘for my grandmother’s sake, but for my mother and father and their marriage. So next day I went to register Davy’s birth, and the registrar took it for granted I was the mother anyway. Which means the birth certificate reads: “Mother—Sarah Anne Tracy. Father—blank.”’

‘What a crazily brave thing to do.’ Jake looked down at her in wonder. ‘You do know that giving false information like that is illegal?’

‘My mother’s name was Sarah Anne, like me. She called herself Anne. So it seemed almost right…’

Jake shook his head. ‘And no one ever questioned it?’

‘My mother went up like a rocket. For a while I was terrified I’d sent her over the edge. But after endless arguments I hit below the belt and pointed out the grief it would save my father. And because of my grandmother’s desperate urging Mother, who was in no fit
state to put up a fight, finally capitulated. Though not without a long list of conditions, mainly about my education. As for my reception back home—’ Sarah shrugged. ‘I’d had a struggle with my weight as a teenager. So when I returned from Cornwall with a baby, weighing a stone less due to stress and sheer hard work, it caused the expected stir, but no one ever doubted that Davy was mine.’

Jake rubbed his cheek over her hair. ‘But you’d been born and brought up in your village, too, darling. Didn’t you mind?’

‘Of course I did. But I didn’t have a boyfriend, so I knew no blame could be attached to anyone. And I’d already left school. But I admit it hurt badly when my so-called best friend took off in a huff because I refused to tell her about Davy’s father.’ Sarah shrugged. ‘But none of that was important against saving my parents’ marriage. I cancelled my gap year
au pair
job in France, and because my mother was still so fragile I looked after Davy myself. So from the day she was born she was all mine.’

The worst part for Sarah, once Davy had safely arrived, had been writing to her father to give him news which, however well-intentioned, was nevertheless a lie. But David Tracy had rung the moment he had her letter, accepted Sarah’s refusal to name the father, and assured his daughter of his love and support, and his willingness to help Anne with the baby as long as Sarah agreed to take up her college place, as planned. By the time he’d eventually come home for good Anne had fully recovered physically, and was so happy to be reunited with her husband that, all too aware of the alternative, she’d finally achieved total acceptance of Sarah’s quixotic gesture.

‘And, seeing them so happy together, I never regretted it for a minute,’ said Sarah. ‘For that first year I insisted on looking after Davy full-time, but Mother took over when I went to university, and with Dad’s help looked after her baby herself—as she’d wanted to all along. It was a terrible wrench for me to leave Davy, but I was normal teenager enough to enjoy the usual student scene once I was part of it. Though I went home a lot more often than the friends I made because I couldn’t bear to be parted long from Davy.’ She smiled up at Jake. ‘She adored my parents, but
I
was Mummy.’

Sarah had eventually achieved her English degree, and returned to live at home while she followed it up with a computer course. Eventually she’d got a job in a software firm, and shared Davy with her parents.

‘Then when she was five they went on holiday and never came back. They were killed when the coach transferring them from hotel to airport crashed. And my life changed completely. Left with full responsibility for Davy, I had to sell the family home, which had been mortgaged to put me through college and pay Davy’s school fees, so it didn’t fetch as much as expected. It just gave me a bit of a cushion in the bank, so I could take a part-time job, but we had to move in with my grandmother. Which wasn’t an ideal situation for either of us, but it won her no end of brownie points with her friends. The rest you know.’ Sarah gave a sudden, inelegant yawn. ‘Sorry, Jake! Confession may be good for the soul, but it’s jolly tiring.’

‘It’s been a long, eventful day,’ said Jake, settling her close against him. ‘It’s an amazing story, Sarah. But just one more thing. Was this Tony Barrett ever told about Davy?’

Sarah shook her head. ‘No. It was one of the condi
tions Mother made when I wouldn’t let her tell Dad the truth. But because she refused to have anything to do with him afterwards I always felt sorry for him, so maybe one day, when Davy’s old enough to cope with the truth herself, I’ll leave it to her to decide whether she wants to get in touch with Tony.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘He doesn’t have any children, so there’s no gothic-novel possibility of Davy falling in love with her brother one day.’

When Sarah woke the sky was just getting light, and she was still held fast in Jake’s arms. She moved a little, his lashes flew up and his eyes, vividly blue in the morning light, lit up as they met hers.

‘Good morning,’ she whispered.

‘A fantastic morning,’ he agreed, kissing her nose. ‘Did you sleep well?’

‘I must have done. I’ve only just surfaced. So you obviously don’t snore.’

‘Of course I don’t. You don’t, either.’

‘That’s a relief.’ She stretched luxuriously, and felt him tense against her.

‘If you do that,’ he warned in a constricted tone, ‘there could be consequences.’

Sarah looked up into the darkening blue eyes, and smiled into them as she deliberately stretched again.

Jake gave a stifled laugh and held her closer. ‘Tell me, Miss Tracy, what are your views on making love by dawn’s early light?’