A Forbidden Seduction. SARA WOOD

      CHAPTER ONE

      SABOTAGE! thought Debbie immediately. Another nail in the coffin! Anger narrowed her big, soulful grey eyes beneath her sooty lashes to nothing more than a hint of gleaming charcoal. Why did trouble come when they were least able to handle it?

      ‘I can’t believe it! Both Penny and Judy have left us in the lurch?’ she asked incredulously.

      She stalked across the kitchen floor with such vehemence that her curvaceous figure quivered with indignation and her flaxen braid swung like a bell-rope. With quick, deft movements she shed her jacket, washed her hands, and poured herself a reassuring cup of tea.

      ‘Without the common decency to face us,’ complained her mother bitterly, waving a piece of blue notepaper. “This was stuffed in the letter-box. They’ve had a better offer. I ask you!’

      Fuming, Debbie read the brief apology. ‘It must have come after seven-thirty, when I left to take Stefano to nursery school,’ she decided after a moment. ‘What a blow.’

      Her mother sniffed her disapproval of such disloyalty in their delivery girls and picked up the telephone receiver decisively. ‘I’ve been ringing round for replacements. No luck so far but I’ll have another go. I must say, those girls might have given us more notice.’

      Debbie saw that the sniff covered up a secret despair and she wanted to throw her arms around her mother and hug away that tight, haunted look. Instead, she reached for an apron and tied it around her waist. Her mother would want the situation to be played down. East Enders were brought up to be tough, not to whine in a corner when things went wrong.

      ‘Pen and Jude are hard up, like us, Mum,’ she said with resignation. ‘Who can blame them if they’ve had a lucrative bribe to work elsewhere?’

      ‘I do!’ grumbled her mother, dialling the next number on the list of agencies in front of her. ‘It’s going to be hell today!’

      That could be an understatement, thought Debbie as she collected the basket of freshly baked bread. Even if they did find someone else to deliver the lunch boxes, it would take twice as long as usual. ‘Try for a couple of kitchen-hands,’ she suggested. ‘One of us can do the deliveries.’

      They were teetering on the brink again, trying not to topple into the abyss. Putting the loaves through the slicer, she reflected moodily that they couldn’t keep on coping with one crisis after another. They’d met so many obstacles lately: false orders, wild-goose chases to phantom addresses, customers lost to competitors and mystifying complaints about the freshness of the foodsomething they prided themselves on.

      ‘They’ll ring back if they find anyone,’ said her mother, replacing the receiver and sounding grim. ‘In the meantime, it’s action stations!’

      Debbie frowned. ‘I wish I hadn’t hung around the nursery chatting to the mothers.’ She lifted boxes of fillings from the fridge and lined them up on the counter. ‘Sorry, Mum. I just like to stay till Stefano is settled.’

      ‘Course you do, love.’ Her mother picked up a large chef’s knife, briskly sliced up a heap of tomatoes and slid them into a dish. ‘Steffy’s your priority, I’ve told you before.’ The blade hovered uncertainly over a sweet-smelling tomato and Debbie suddenly noticed how pinched her mother’s face looked. She was dreadfully worried, she thought with a sudden pang. More than the other times when they’d been in trouble. The knife resumed a fiercely concentrated bout of slicing as her mother muttered, ‘He needs one of his parents to make him feel special.’

      Debbie flushed at the dig. ‘Gio adores Stefano!’ she protested, struggling with her conscience and defending her ever absent husband. Gio had never hit it off with her mother. There had been a lot of rows. And his being a travelling salesman meant that he spent long, long periods away with little to show for it. Times were bad, he said. But her mother often berated him because he didn’t contribute much to the family kitty.

      ‘Steffy is a symbol of his virility and someone to play with when you’re too busy,’ said her mother bluntly. ‘And you? Does he adore you?’

      She couldn’t answer that, because although her marriage was a sham she’d felt she had to keep it going for Steffy’s sake. So to everyone in the family she always pretended that there was nothing wrong between herself and Gio. Despite the fact that it had virtually ended less than a year after their wedding-day. And by that time she had been pregnant and desperate to make a stable background for her child. It had been a mistake, she knew that now. And when Gio came home they’d have to talk about ending the farce.

      ‘It’s not Gio’s fault that he has to work away from home so much,’ she reasoned, ducking the question. But a little voice inside her said, Yes, it is. He could come home more often—he just didn’t want to. And to be honest she preferred it that way. Her marriage had to be ended. They couldn’t go on like this.

      Her mother’s mouth tightened. ‘Your uncle offered him that job down the market. Better money, better hours. And he could have set you and Steffy up in a nice little flat instead of the one room upstairs.’

      ‘Not now, Mum,’ she begged uncomfortably. ‘Don’t let’s quarrel over him. There’s too much to do.’

      The phone rang and she waited expectantly. But it was clear from her mother’s gloomy expression that the agency had no