SUSANNE MCCARTHY - Second Chance For Love

Cover Page

Excerpt Josey sensed thatpeople were covertlywatching her She could feel the curiosity of their eyes resting on her. So this was the woman who was living with Tom Quinn. However, she could hardly stand here and announce to the assembled company, “It’s not what you think.” And Tom wasn’t exactly helping matters, standing so close behind her like that, as possessive as a dog with a bone. No one looking at them would doubt that they were lovers…

About the Author SUSANNE McCARTHY grew up in South London, England, but she always wanted to live in the country, and shortly after her marriage she moved to Shropshire with her husband. They live in a house on a hill, with lots of dogs and cats. She loves to travel—but she loves to come home. As well as her writing, she still enjoys her career as a teacher in adult education, though she only works part-time now.

Title Page Second Chance for Love Susanne McCarthy www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Copyright

She could feel the curiosity of their eyes resting on her. So this was the woman who was living with Tom Quinn. However, she could hardly stand here and announce to the assembled company, “It’s not what you think.”

And Tom wasn’t exactly helping matters, standing so close behind her like that, as possessive as a dog with a bone. No one looking at them would doubt that they were lovers…

SUSANNE McCARTHYgrew up in South London, England, but she always wanted to live in the country, and shortly after her marriage she moved to Shropshire with her husband. They live in a house on a hill, with lots of dogs and cats. She loves to travel—but she loves to come home. As well as her writing, she still enjoys her career as a teacher in adult education, though she only works part-time now.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

‘MANIAC!’ The driver of the delivery-van almost had to stand on his brakes, swerving sharply to avoid a head-on collision as the white Porsche took the bend too wide, veering over towards the oncoming traffic. ‘Look where you’re damned well going,’ he advised fiercely, though the woman at the wheel would not have heard him.

In fact, Josey had barely even been aware of the near-accident. She had driven all the way from London in a kind of trance. All she had in the car were the few clothes she had thrown into a bag. Everything else she had left behind her, along with nine years of her life.

She had known for a long time that her marriage was over. But it had come as a bitter blow when Colin had announced, as coolly as you liked, that he wanted a divorce—so that he could marry his secretary. It wasn’t losing him that hurt. No, it was the fact that Paula was pregnant—and that he was delighted.

He had never wanted her to have children, she reminded herself, the bitterness welling up. A baby wouldn’t fit in with their lifestyle, he had said. He worked hard all day, he had said. He didn’t want to come home to a house full of toys and nappies, and be kept awake all night by a baby crying.

Maybe she should have left him years ago. But somehow there had never seemed to be quite enough reason to take such a serious step—vague suspicions that he was having affairs, which she had never quite been able to bring herself to confront him with. She was sure Paula wasn’t the first—he probably seduced all his secretaries. She ought to know—she had been his secretary herself once.

She had been just twenty-one when she had first gone to work for him—and he had been the stuff of every young girl’s dreams: good-looking, urbane and dynamic. Too dynamic for the respectable, well-established firm he was in—he was keen to branch out on his own. He had exercised all his considerable charm to persuade her to take the plunge, and go with him.

It had been fun, at first, watching the small company mushroom with success. But she had always kept their relationship strictly business—she had already had a very nice boyfriend, to whom she was unofficially engaged. Ironically, it was a row with Derek about the long hours she was working that had precipitated the change. Colin had been so incredibly kind and understanding. He had taken her out to dinner to cheer her up—and somehow she had found herself in his bed.

Why, out of all his conquests, had he chosen to marry her? Probably to secure her loyalty, at a time when she would have been indispensable to the business, she mused wryly. And he had probably seen her as a social asset, too—someone to organise the vitally important social side of his life, preside over his dinner parties with grace, making intelligent conversation with all his tedious guests.

And of course she had been beautiful then. She hardly recognised herself now in the thin, pallid creature she had become. Her hair was lank and lifeless, the russet glints it had once held dimmed, and her eyes were dull. She was only thirty-one, but she looked nearer forty. Maybe she couldn’t blame him for looking elsewhere.

It was hard to know when it had all started to go wrong. Maybe it was since she had given up her career. She had been overjoyed when Colin had first suggested that, since the company was prospering so well, she no longer needed to work; at last, she had believed, it was his intention that they should start a family. But she had been in for a bitter disappointment.

In the beginning she had tried to persuade him. But every time she had brought the subject up he had accused her of nagging, and eventually he had begun to get more and more annoyed. She had hated the rows, so gradually she had ceased to even try to discuss the issue.

And gradually they had grown further and further apart. She had already grown disillusioned with their shallow lifestyle, with friends who seemed as disposable as last year’s fashions. If they could even have had a proper house with a garden to tend, and maybe room for a dog, she might have been a little happier. But their ultra-smart City apartment had begun to seem like a prison: she had been bored, with nothing to do but shop and go the hairdressers—and that hollow, aching longing for a baby had never gone away.

With a hand that shook slightly she reached out to the dashboard, and found the half-empty pack of cigarettes. That was something else, she mused bitterly as she fumbled for her lighter. She had only begun smoking a couple of years ago, to calm her nerves. She had tried countless times to give them up—it was a habit she hated—but she couldn’t do without them.

Colin had caught her by surprise, coming home in the middle of the afternoon like that. She had been slopping around the apartment in a pair of old jeans and a faded T-shirt. Somehow that made it all so much worse—he liked a woman to be elegant, and the look of faintly veiled contempt in his eyes had undermined any hope she might have had of dealing with the situation with any kind of dignity.

If Paula hadn’t been pregnant…She hadn’t been able to handle that. She had cried, making her eyes ugly and red, and he had become exasperated. In the end she had fled to the bedroom, packed a bag, and told him he could have his divorce, have the apartment, have anything he wanted. Then she had just climbed into her car and driven off.

She had had no clear idea of where she was going. It wasn’t until she had found herself driving around the M25, the orbital motorway around London, for the second time, that she had given that problem any consideration. And then she had thought of the cottage out in the wilds of Norfolk, left to her by her great-aunt Floss a couple of years before.

She hadn’t been there since she was a child, but she remembered that it was remote, on the edge of a tiny village, miles from anywhere. Suddenly that had seemed enormously appealing, and she had set off, with only a vague idea of how far it was to Cottisham.

Through the fine Norfolk drizzle misting the windscreen, a road-sign showed her that the next turn was to her destination, and she took it. The road was dark, but even if it had been daylight she doubted that she would have recognised it—she would have been no more than about ten years old the last time she was here.

What sort of state would the cottage be in? Aunt Floss had died…oh, it must have been three years ago. For the first time, she began to consider that the place would probably be in a bit of a mess. The electricity would probably have been turned off, and maybe even the water too. But at least she was nearly there—she could just go straight to bed tonight, and sort out any problems in the morning.

Her hand found the cigarette-lighter at last, and she flicked it into flame, bending her head to draw deeply on the tobacco…

The headlights came out of nowhere, straight towards her, and too late she realised that the road bent away sharply to the left. In an instinct of panic she snatched at the wheel, braking hard, and the tyres lost their grip on the damp road, sliding into a lazy treacherous skid. In front of her, the beam of her own headlights stabbed out into nothingness…

She wasn’t dead, then—it couldn’t have been as bad as she had thought it was going to be. She had had an image, fleetingly, of the car tipping over some steep incline and rolling over and over, crushing her. But she seemed to be the right way up, though the car was tipped up at an odd angle, and the windscreen was shattered…And someone was asking her if she was all right.

Damn—how was she going to get to the cottage now? And that was blood trickling down her cheek…Suddenly she realised that she was hurt, and started to scream.

‘All right—steady. You can’t be too badly injured if you can make that sort of noise.’ The voice was calm and competent, and he had reached into the car, unfastening her seatbelt, and was running what felt like an expert hand over her body.

‘Are you a doctor?’ she whispered, looking up to find a pair of intriguing hazel eyes just a few inches above her own.

He laughed drily. ‘No, I’m a vet. You don’t seem to have done yourself too much harm—which is more than can be said for your car. Do you think you can move?’

‘I think so. But my wrist hurts.’

‘Show me.’

She held it out to him gingerly, but his examination was so gentle that she hardly felt it. Some part of her mind was incongruously registering the thought that he was one of the most attractive men she had ever seen: thick dark hair, shaggily cut, fell over a high, intelligent forehead, and his face was starkly masculine, with a strong aquiline nose, and a lean, hard jaw.

‘Are you really a vet?’ she asked curiously.

‘Yes—but the principle’s pretty much the same,’ he reassured her. ‘I think you’ve broken this. If you can get to my car, I’ll take you to the hospital.’

‘Your car’s all right?’

‘You didn’t hit me—I managed to brake and get out of your way,’ he told her, a faintly sardonic inflexion in his voice. ‘What happened? Didn’t you see the sign for the bend?’

She tried to shake her head, but found it a jarring experience.

‘Steady,’ he advised. ‘You’ve been pretty badly shaken up. Take it slowly.’

Supporting her with one strong arm around her shoulders, the other holding her injured arm steady, he eased her very gradually from the car. It was crazy, but she found herself leaning on him just a little more than was strictly necessary; it just felt so good to have a man treating her with a little tenderness, a little kindness, after so many years of Colin’s indifference.