Jake Lucas. If only he had not been there…that night.
But he had been there…
She winced as Chrissie slammed her car door and started the engine. She was still feeling nauseatingly sick, her body clammy with shock. If only she hadn’t already been caught up in the aching pain that seeing the Hopkinses’ new baby had caused her, she might have been better able to control her reaction to Jake Lucas, she told herself miserably.
Her sister was still talking, still admonishing her for taking off her hat.
‘You left it upstairs on Gemma’s bed,’ she heard Chrissie reminding her. ‘You mustn’t forget to collect it when you go back for your car.’
Rosie lived several miles away from her sister and her family. She could well remember the fuss Chrissie had made when she had found out that Rosie was selling her neat, modern flat and buying a run-down, isolated farm worker’s cottage.
‘It will eat money,’ she had warned Rosie. ‘And wait until you have to spend a bad winter there. You’ll be completely cut off.’
She had frowned disapprovingly at Rosie’s sotto voce ‘Please God’ before going on to remonstrate again with her for her foolishness.
‘I don’t like leaving you here on your own like this,’ she said now as she stopped her car in the lane outside the cottage.
‘Chrissie, I’ll be fine,’ Rosie told her wearily. ‘Stop fussing. I’m an adult, not a child.’
‘You’re still my baby sister,’ Chrissie told her forthrightly, ‘and if you’re that grown-up, how come you didn’t remember to keep your hat on?’
As she got out of the car, Rosie sighed. Typical Chrissie. She always had to have the last word, but beneath her rather bossy manner Rosie knew that Chrissie was genuinely concerned for her and, as she saw that concern now reflected in Chrissie’s eyes, her irritation melted away.
‘I’ll be fine,’ she assured her. ‘A good night’s sleep and—’
‘Ring me in the morning,’ Chrissie demanded imperatively. ‘I’ll come over after I’ve taken Allison and Paul to school and drive you across to collect your car.’
Rosie felt the irritation bubbling up inside her again. She had a meeting in Chester at ten o’clock in the morning. She couldn’t afford to hang around waiting for Chrissie to come and collect her, and she certainly wasn’t going to cancel. It had taken her months of delicate negotiations to persuade Ian Davies to see her and she wasn’t going to throw away everything she had worked so hard for.
She knew that a lot of people had been surprised when she had taken over from her father when he had retired, especially Chrissie. It had been one thing for her to work for him in his insurance agency business, but quite another for her to take over that business and run it single-handedly, despite the fact that she was professionally qualified to do so and had had several years of practical experience, working first for a much larger concern and then, for three years before he retired, for her father.
It had been very hard for her at first, getting the clients to accept her, but then she had managed to deal with a particularly complicated case and get compensation for a client who had come to her after being unable to get satisfaction from his insurance company through another broker. He had been so impressed that he had recommended her to his friends, but breaking down the barriers of male reserve and lack of faith in her abilities was a constant battle.
It didn’t help of course that in her normal, everyday life she was so quiet and unassertive, and she had to acknowledge that at barely five feet two, with a very small body frame and a sometimes irritatingly delicate and feminine set of facial features, her physical appearance was perhaps not that of a woman who could withstand the occasionally slightly sneaky tricks adopted by her clients’ insurers. Not that they would consider it like that.
Gamesmanship was how they preferred to think of it, a justifiable use of their power, and if someone was weak enough to be browbeaten into giving up a claim or settling for less than they had initially expected then tough luck.
But Rosie had no time for such tactics. She could be surprisingly ruthless and determined when she had to be, but there was no getting away from the fact that in the two years since her father’s retirement the business had lost out to some of the much larger agencies.
She had refused to be downhearted; there was still a market…a need for someone like her who was prepared to give specialised time and attention to a client’s needs. The problem was persuading the clients, not convincing herself that her skills were superior to those of a large, faceless organisation.
Which was what she was hoping to do at tomorrow’s meeting with Ian Davies.
She had heard in a roundabout fashion that he was dissatisfied with his existing brokers since they had amalgamated with another firm. A fire at one of his rental premises, which had resulted in his full claim being turned down by his insurers, had increased that dissatisfaction, and Rosie had seen her chance and taken it.
He was a contemporary of her father’s and, she suspected, not wholly comfortable with women taking a leading role in business. She knew that persuading him to give her his business was not going to be easy, but she was determined to at least try.
To prove to others that she was just as proficient as the equivalent male, or to prove to herself that, just because she was a failure as a woman, it did not mean that she had failed as a human being, that just because she had lost her self-respect, her sense of self-worth, her belief that she was worthy of being loved, it did not mean that every pleasure in life was denied her.
No, not every pleasure, she reflected bitterly. Just the ones she had always taken for granted that she would one day enjoy.
Like being loved and being able to love in return…Like having a child…a family.
As she opened the door and stepped into her small dark hallway, she could feel the angry, impotent tears beginning to sting her eyes.
Damn Jake Lucas…Why had he had to be there this afternoon…? Why wouldn’t the past let her go? Why couldn’t she ever seem to fight free of its destructive tentacles?
CHAPTER TWO
ROSIE waited until she felt comfortably sure that the party would be over and that all the other guests, but most especially Jake Lucas, would have left, and then rang for a taxi. There would be no need for her to disturb the Hopkinses—her car was parked outside their house and not on their drive.
It was just gone nine o’clock when the taxi driver dropped her off, the summer sky still light and the air warm.
Gemma and Neil had been lucky with the weather, Rosie acknowledged as she delved in her handbag for her car keys.
‘Aha…caught you.’
She tensed automatically and then relaxed as she recognised Neil’s teasing voice.
‘Gemma saw you arrive,’ he told her. ‘Why don’t you come in for a few minutes?’
Rosie started to protest, but Neil overruled her. A quick search of the road and drive had confirmed that the only other cars there beside her own belonged to Gemma and Neil, and that all the party guests had gone home.
‘I didn’t want to disturb you,’ she started to protest, but Neil had already taken hold of her arm and was coaxing her towards the house.
‘There’s something we wanted to discuss with you anyway,’ he told her. ‘Abby has received quite a few gifts of money as christening presents and we were wondering about starting one of these baby bond things for her…What do you think?’
Ten minutes later she was sitting in the Hopkinses’ comfortable family kitchen, listening carefully