Campaign For Loving

Campaign For Loving
PENNY JORDAN

Penny Jordan needs no introduction as arguably the most recognisable name writing for Mills & Boon. We have celebrated her wonderful writing with a special collection, many of which for the first time in eBook format and all available right now.She desperately wanted to believe in his love.Secretly Jaime still regretted having walked out on Blake. But his four-year silence had confirmed her fears–that Blake didn't love her or their child.So naturally Jaime was suspicious when Blake turned up and began campaigning to win back his rights–both as father and husband. And she was hurt and confused when he appeared to be involved in an even more sinister campaign to silence Jaime's opposition to the sale of the local abbey.Jaime had never been able to interpret Blake's motives. And she still didn't trust him to return her love.

Campaign for Loving

Penny Jordan

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

Table of Contents

Cover (#u649ab84f-8fa7-5131-accf-524972589701)

Title Page (#u098251ab-f72a-5498-a95a-c4707ad2d8f7)

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER ONE (#uce995a19-b83d-5dfd-a6f5-4056c5d37c6a)

AS she unlocked the door of her Mini, Jaime glanced quickly at her watch, expelling a faint sigh of relief. Three o’clock. She still had plenty of time to pick up her three-year old-daughter, Fern, from playschool.

At first, when her mother had suggested she move back to Dorset, she had been dubious. She and Blake had lived in London during the brief eighteen months of their marriage and she had been reluctant to move away. Now she could acknowledge that her reluctance had stemmed from her hope that Blake would come looking for her and beg her to go back to him. For a girl of twenty-three she had been extremely naive, she thought sardonically. The unflattering alacrity with which Blake had accepted the challenge she had flung at him in the heat of her tempestuous outburst ought to have warned her, but it hadn’t. It had taken Suzy Monteith to do that. Suzy had worked with Blake on the Globe’s Foreign Affairs team for several years and Blake had never made any secret of the fact that they had at one time been lovers. Suzy had never liked her Jaime realised with the benefit of hindsight, and no doubt she had thoroughly enjoyed telling her of her husband’s request to his editor that he be sent abroad to cover the war in El Salvador, only twenty-four hours after she had accused him of putting his job before his marriage, more or less giving him an ultimatum to choose between her and working for the Globe.

Suzy had called round on the pretext of inviting them both to a party she was giving. But Jaime hadn’t even waited for Blake to come home that evening, she had simply packed her things and gone round to a friend’s flat where she had stayed for two weeks, willing Blake to appear and beg her to come back to him.

Of course he hadn’t done and by then she had known that the possibility that she might be pregnant was a certainty. She had written to him then, an angry bitter letter to which he didn’t reply, making it obvious that he didn’t want her or their child—she had offered him a choice and he had made one—excluding her completely from his life. Her pregnancy had wrapped her in an anaesthetising shawl which numbed all pain. Blake’s letters she returned unopened, accepting her mother’s suggestion that she return home simply because she had no means of supporting herself, and was was determined not to accept any money from Blake. He hadn’t wanted a child—he had made that more than clear to her. His lifestyle could barely accommodate a wife, never mind the responsibility of children, and that had been another subject for contention between them.

The truth was that they should never have married, Jaime thought as she manoeuvred her car down the bumpy lane that led from the old school hall she used for her dance and exercise studio to the village. And it was her fault that they had married. All Blake had wanted was an affair—but she had been naive and very much in love. When he discovered that she was still a virgin he had given in to the subtle pressure she had put on him and, within six months of meeting, they had been married.

Right from the start she had known that she wasn’t really equipped to enter Blake’s world. Shy and rather retiring by nature, she had gone to London at the urgings of a schoolfriend and her mother, and although she quite enjoyed her job as a secretary in a busy advertising agency, she had never really lost her longing for the peace and relative simplicity of the village she had grown up in. She had met Blake at a party, flattered and slightly bemused that he should single her out for attention. She knew she wasn’t exactly unattractive but she had lived in London long enough by then to realise that London males expected more than a heart-shaped face, deep blue eyes, black hair and a willow-slim body. They wanted women who could converse with them on their own level, sharp witty women who didn’t blush and fumble awkwardly; women who were as sophisticated and worldly as they were themselves.

She had recognised Blake instantly from a current affairs television programme he had participated in, but the effect of his lean, suntanned features and his air of cool cynicism were far more devastating in real life man they were on the television screen. She had had the impression that his green eyes were laughing at her, but when, seconds later, they roved her body with a sensual appraisal that was almost a physical caress, she hadn’t been able to hide her response from him. Blake! Even now, just thinking about him made her pulses race and her mouth go dry. He had been, at first, a patient and then a very passionate lover, drawing her out of her shell of shy reserve, teaching her to please him and find joy in her own pleasure. As befitted a man who lived on the edge of danger, he brought excitement and challenge into her life, but she was constantly worried that she would never be enough for him; that after a while her inability to meet him as an equal would lead him to grow bored with her. Before their marriage he had dated sophisticated, glamorous women, and Jaime had always secretly compared herself to them and found herself wanting. If she hadn’t blurted out to him that she loved him and that he would be her first lover, would he still have wanted to marry her?

‘He married you because that was the only way he could get you into bed,’ Suzy had told her tauntingly, ‘but you’ll never keep him—he’s bored already. You see, Blake’s like that. When he wants something, he goes after it single-mindedly, that’s what makes him such a good reporter. He wanted you because you were a challenge.…’

And she, instead of trying to understand him, had begged him to give up his job and find another one that would mean less travel. That had been the cause of their final row.… Perhaps, because her own father had died when she was so young, she had always cherished in her mind a clear picture of what she wanted her life to be, and that picture contained herself, her husband and their two children, living cosily in a village very like the one she had been brought up in; a safe, secure little world, a universe away from Blake’s lifestyle.

People thought she had got over him and her marriage to him. She talked openly to Fern about her father; she answered whatever questions people asked her, but only she knew the truth. She still loved Blake as desperately now as she had done the day she left him. But at least in the intervening four years she had achieved some maturity, she reflected as she brought her Mini to a halt outside the playschool building. At least she had finally accepted that Blake had the right to make his own decisions about his career and his life, but that didn’t stop her regretting her folly in leaving him. If she had stayed, perhaps they could have worked something out… perhaps.… Angrily, she dragged her mind away from the past. Blake had made it more than clear how much he regretted their marriage. He had never even asked to see Fern. He hadn’t wanted a child and, although he had offered to support them financially, he had made no attempt to get to know his daughter.

Charles had told her she ought to get a divorce. She had known Charles Thomson since her schooldays, and she knew, without any conceit, that he would marry her tomorrow if she gave him any encouragement. It was ironic that Charles was tailormade to fit her childhood image of the perfect husband and father, but he was as exciting as cold rice pudding, and her body, which had been awakened and tutored by Blake’s, instinctively repudiated him as a lover.

She knew why she had never bothered to get a divorce. She had no wish to marry again, but what about Blake? Was it just that he had never had the time between assignments to bring their marriage to a formal end, or was it simply that, having married once, he had no intention of repeating his mistake? Unlike her, Blake did not seem to lack congenial companions of the opposite sex. Over the years, she had seen him featured in several newspaper photographs as the escort of glamorous women.

‘Mummy… Mummy.…’

The impatient and reproving voice of her daughter checked her thoughts. Fern was all Blake’s child. She had her father’s unruly, dark brown hair and his green eyes. And her personality held echoes of Blake’s as well. A pragmatic, intelligent child, she sometimes gave Jaime the uncomfortable feeling that their roles were reversed and that she was the child. She even seemed to accept her own lack of a father. She had seen his photograph and knew that he lived and worked in London, but seemed to accept that his life lay apart from theirs.

‘… and Mrs Childs told us a story… but I knew it wasn’t real. Frogs can’t turn into princes, not really.…’

Jaime glanced into her daughter’s scornful green eyes and sighed. She herself had been at least ten before she had finally and reluctantly abandoned fairy stories.

‘You’re daydreaming again…’ the small firm voice accused. ‘Granny says you’ve always got your head up in the clouds.…’

When Jaime repeated this comment to her mother later in the evening when Fern was in bed, Sarah Cummings laughed. Married at eighteen, a mother at nineteen, she was, in Jaime’s view, far too young-looking and vigorous to be anyone’s grandmother. A partner in a thriving antique business in the local market town her mother had the knack of drawing people to her, Jaime reflected watching her. Her once fair hair was tinged with grey now, but she still had the same youthful figure she had always had, and she still seemed to radiate that special sort of energy that Jaime always associated with her.

‘Fern’s like me,’ her mother commented pragmatically, ‘a down-to-earth Taurean.…’

‘Umm, I was thinking today how like Blake she is.…’

‘Don’t tell me you’re worrying about her lack of father again,’ Sarah said drily, correctly interpreting her remark. ‘Well, if you’re thinking of marrying Charles to provide her with one, I shouldn’t bother. She’s already running rings round him.’

That Charles found it difficult to talk to her young daughter Jaime already knew. An only child himself, he was always uneasy in Fern’s presence and she seemed to know it and take advantage of his awkwardness.

‘You’re not worrying about the studio, are you?’ Sara asked her daughter, noticing the frown pleating her fair skin. ‘I thought it was just about beginning to pay its way.’

‘Yes, it is.’ At first on her return to her home Jaime had been wholly dependent on her mother, but once Fern had started playschool, she had trained in exercise and dance, and then, when she was qualified, she had opened her own school which was beginning to get an excellent reputation locally. She was fortunate in being able to rent a now-empty school hall at a very reasonable cost, and the knowledge that she had achieved something for herself through her effort and skill had boosted her self-confidence. Because she always looked so calm and self-possessed, few people guessed at the deep sense of inadequacy she suffered from. Indeed, it was only since she had left Blake that she had come to terms with it herself.

‘So, what’s worrying you?’ her mother probed.

‘Charles came to see me today. He’s heard that Caroline means to sell the Abbey to a property developer and that it’s going to be knocked down and a housing estate built.’

‘Mmm… I shouldn’t think she’ll be able to go ahead with the sale. The Abbey is a listed building, you know.’

‘And Caroline can be very determined.’

Jaime had gone to school with Caroline Travers, although they had never been good friends. Caroline’s father had made a fortune in industry and had bought the Abbey and retired there. Caroline had inherited quite a substantial sum from him on his death, but she was a lady with very expensive tastes and she had never liked the Abbey.

‘Charles wants me to go round and have a word with her—try to persuade her to reconsider.…’