Captive Loving. Кэрол Мортимер

       CHAPTER ONE

      THE arms of her young daughter strained about Jessica's neck, and she looked down at her affectionately. Corn-coloured hair, thick and straight like her own, pansy-blue eyes staring into other pansy-blue eyes, the small snub nose and wide smiling mouth all adding up to an almost mirror image. Except that there were twenty years’ difference in their ages, Penny was only five years old.

      ‘Do you have to go out, Mummy?’ Penny pouted beguilingly. ‘I don't want old Aunty Peg taking care of me.’

      ‘She isn't old, darling,’ Jessica chuckled, tweaking her daughter's nose. Peg Seabrook was in her early forties, and certainly wouldn't appreciate being described as ‘old'. And she knew her daughter's bad humour to be due to anger with her rather than dislike of Peg. Usually Penny and Peg got on well together, and she knew that once she and Andrew had left they would do so again. ‘And yes, I have to go out.’ She smoothed Penny's hair back from her scrupulously clean face; the bathtime of an hour ago had been as hiliarious as usual.

      Penny frowned petulantly. ‘But you don't usually go out with Daddy.’

      Jessica's face became shadowed. What was the saying ‘out of the mouths of babes …'? Penny was right, she didn't usually go out with Andrew, but then the way he spent his evenings didn't usually include a wife. She hadn't realised that Penny had been aware of her parents’ differing social activities – no, not parents', because she personally didn't have a social life. Andrew had enough for both of them.

      ‘Tonight's special, poppet.’ She stood up to tuck the sheets more firmly about her daughter. ‘It has to do with Daddy's work.’

      Penny looked up at her consideringly. ‘Will Aunt Lisa be there too?’

      Jessica stiffened, forcing herself to continue tidying the gold-coloured coverlet. ‘Aunt Lisa?’ she asked with as much casualness as she could summon up.

      Her young daughter wrinkled her nose up with dislike. ‘She came out with Daddy and me last week when we went shopping for your birthday present,’ she revealed innocently, seeing nothing unusual in her father going shopping with another woman.

      Damn Andrew! Jessica didn't need two guesses who ‘Aunt Lisa’ was, she would be the latest in the long line of women Andrew had had since their marriage seven years ago. But he had no right introducing his women to their daughter. Penny was the only good thing to come out of this disaster of a marriage, and she wouldn't have her own relationship with her spoilt by Andrew's carelessness.

      The fact that the other woman had probably helped Andrew choose the expensive bottle of perfume he gave her for her birthday didn't even touch her. Nothing Andrew did bothered her any more; it had ceased to very soon after Penny was born. But she would have to talk to him about involving Penny in his sordidness. The thought didn't please her. Andrew had been more unpleasant than usual the last few weeks, and she dreaded him flying into one of his uncontrollable tempers.

      ‘She could be,’ she answered Penny evasively, not sure how Andrew had met this woman Lisa. She never knew where he met any of them, she just knew when he had met them. After seven years she was an expert at telling the signs, the way he suddenly started spoiling Penny and ignoring her. Not that she minded the latter part of it, but the sporadic gift-buying and time spent with Penny only confused her when it came to an abrupt end. Jessica would say that this latest affair had been going on a little over two months.

      Penny pulled a face. ‘I didn't like her.’

      ‘Never mind, darling,’ she soothed. ‘Perhaps you won't see her again.’

      ‘I hope not.’

      ‘Sleep now, Penny,’ Jessica told her firmly. ‘And don't play up Aunty Peg, you know she can't resist you.’

      The little girl grinned, looking completely angelic with her golden hair spread out on the pillow beneath her, her blue eyes clear and untroubled.

      ‘ ’Night,’ Jessica laughed, estimating Penny joining Peg downstairs ten minutes after she and Andrew had departed.

      ‘ ’Night,’ Penny echoed. ‘You look lovely, Mummy.’

      ‘Thank you, darling.’ There was a catch in her voice. It was so long since she had received a compliment, a compliment of any sort, that tears came unbidden to her eyes.

      Damn! She had been all ready to go, and now she would have to recheck her make-up. If she were late Andrew wouldn't be pleased. This company dinner meant a lot to him. He would be downstairs charming Peg at the moment, despite the other woman's seventeen years’ seniority. Andrew couldn't be in the same room as a woman and not try and win her over. It had been