More to Life Than This Read online

  Such a sobering thought that they both took a drink.

  Jeffrey stared fixedly at the television screen. It was ridiculous! Here he was, a happily married, allegedly contented man, yet he couldn’t get this slip of a girl out of his mind. Although he could hardly call her a slip of a girl—Nat looked as if she could drink most blokes under the table and was probably capable of a mean right hook if the occasion required it. His arms tingled with joy just thinking about her, and that was the least alarming of his bodily reactions.

  He settled down next to Tim on the sofa and tried to look suitably engrossed in the deliberations of some trailing underdog of a golfer who was having trouble with his misbehaving putter. That he could empathise with. What was going wrong in their previously ordered and tidy little lives? He didn’t seem to understand what Kate wanted any more, and now he couldn’t even understand what he wanted for himself. Why, when he was watching his favourite sport in the world, was his mind continually turning to the pouting fullness of Natalie Lambert’s lips? Before, the house could have burned down while Ernie Els was lining up a putt and he wouldn’t have noticed. He would watch the putter take aim, strike the ball and follow the curved contours of the green, willing it in all the way. Now his attention was distracted by another type of curved contour and the ball was in the hole without him even realising it had been struck. He had no control over his viewing strategy. And no control, it would seem, over his emotions. Natalie Lambert was just a normal sort of woman—two eyes, two legs, too young. Why were his brain and his body so steadfastly refusing to believe it?

  chapter 10

  ‘I didn’t think T’ai Chi would be so strenuous,’ Sonia groaned. It was Monday morning, the first full day of the course, and Kate was already aching. They were standing with their legs splayed, hands on the grass in front of them, bottoms to the sky and had been like that for some considerable time. ‘I must say our Sam seems very keen.’

  ‘As mustard,’ Kate agreed through clenched teeth.

  ‘It’s times like this when I’m glad I’ve got legs as sturdy as a kitchen table.’

  ‘And relax,’ Sam said to an accompanying chorus of relieved exhalations. ‘Massage the lower back, like this.’ He demonstrated, rubbing briskly. ‘Now legs apart again, but this time bend the knees and sink into the posture.’

  They all followed dutifully. ‘This is Riding Horse stance,’ he informed them cheerfully, clapping his hands on his thighs as Kate’s legs started to wobble.

  ‘Someone once told me horse riding was great for burning calories,’ Sonia muttered in her ear. ‘I went to the local stables and thrashed through the countryside for four solid hours.’

  ‘Did it work?’

  ‘Yes, the horse lost two stone.’

  They both burst into a fit of uncontrolled giggles.

  ‘Relax the breathing,’ Sam said with an indulgent smile over his shoulder. ‘Let go of the tension and sink further.’

  ‘If I sink any more, I’ll be like one of your blessed floating candles,’ Sonia hissed. ‘Sunk without a trace.’

  ‘Tuck your bottom under,’ Sam instructed.

  ‘I’ve got more bottom than him to tuck under.’

  ‘Sonia, shhh. Concentrate.’

  ‘You know the pencil test that you can do to see if your boobs are sagging? I can do that with my bum. There’s enough overhang to keep an HB happily wedged there for days.’

  ‘You’re putting me off,’ Kate giggled.

  ‘Just look at his bum,’ her friend continued undaunted. ‘Did you ever see a butt that was so biteable?’

  ‘I’m afraid it doesn’t entice me at all,’ Kate puffed, her efforts to hold the stance at maximum impact seriously hampered by Sonia’s ramblings.

  ‘Sink your Chi,’ Sam encouraged.

  Kate wasn’t quite sure where her Chi was, but she was pretty sure it shouldn’t be focused on her instructor’s rear end.

  ‘Yes, that’s the sort of bottom that just begs to have strawberry yoghurt licked off it,’ Sonia said wickedly.

  ‘And come up out of the stance.’ Sam turned round to face them and Kate grinned to herself as she watched Sonia go pink in case he had heard.

  It was true that she wasn’t the slightest bit interested in sexy Sam’s bottom, but her eyes had slid over in Ben’s direction more than once in the past hour. He appeared to be managing the exercises with consummate ease, cucumber cool, while she felt like a hot, sweaty mess. It had taken the others all morning to get used to her knees cracking every five minutes.

  ‘Like yin and yang,’ Sam said when they had got their breath back, ‘all the forces of nature are comprised of five elements—earth, wood, water, metal and fire. As we work through the week, we’ll be focusing on each of these elements in turn and what their essential essence means to us. By doing that, it will help you to get in touch with what’s happening inside you.’

  Sounds wonderful! I haven’t a clue what’s going on inside. Even the outside is a mystery sometimes.

  ‘Today we’re going to concentrate on the earth element, which is at the hub of all things. Its associations are nurturing, nourishing, being rooted, loving yourself.’ His face softened. ‘How can you love others, if you don’t learn to love yourself first?’

  Hot tears suddenly prickled behind Kate’s eyes. Do I love myself? Do I love Jeffrey?

  ‘We’re going to practise this in a stance called Standing Firmly,’ Sam said. ‘Imagine that you’re a tree, rooted deeply in the ground. Stand tall and straight, but with no tension in the body. Allow your Chi, your energy, to sink. Now visualise a silken thread coming from the top of your head to connect you with the heavens. This is the balance you’re looking for.’ His voice was hypnotic. ‘Keep the breathing relaxed and focus on the earth, on caring and loving yourself.’

  Kate’s Chi was fluttering wildly inside her, battering against her ribs like a bird against the bars of a cage. All sorts of unwanted, unbidden thoughts flashed through her mind. She had neglected herself over the years, not physically, but emotionally. She had given so much to caring for her family, there had been nothing left for her. Now she was a dry vacuum, like a sucked-in milk carton devoid of contents. Sink, sink, sink! she told her Chi. No, no, not yet! it said back.

  ‘Let go of the effort,’ Sam encouraged.

  But the turmoil continued to whizz dangerously out of control in her brain, like a liquidiser left on full power without a lid.

  ‘Ease out the body.’ Sam’s voice eventually drifted into her consciousness. ‘Move gently from side to side.’

  Her body was so heavy it felt like she was stuck in a hole. She looked round her as she swayed; no one else appeared to be having this inner battle. Was it only she who shared a body with the demon Doubt?

  ‘You’ve worked very hard for your first day,’ Sam said soothingly. ‘This sort of stuff isn’t easy to grasp straight away. It has to be worked at. The most important thing is to learn to love yourself.’

  He seemed to be looking directly at her again.

  ‘There’s just one more thing I need to show you before we break for tea,’ he continued. He put his right fist to his left palm and held it in front of his body. ‘This is a martial arts sign which shows that you aren’t concealing any weapons or have any ulterior motives. It says I mean you no harm. We use it as a sign of respect at the end of each session.’ With a certain amount of ham-fistedness, the group eventually copied him. Sam bowed and the class responded accordingly. ‘We’ll meet back in front of the priory in half an hour to do some relaxing work to finish.’

  They wandered back to the house collecting bags, suntan cream and shoes on the way. It was wonderful working out of doors in the blistering sunshine, barefoot on the grass, and Kate wondered how long it had been since her toes had been in contact with the earth rather than shoved into battered old trainers or squashed into court shoes rushing at full tilt from one place to the next. They were clearly appreciating their new-found freedom and she in turn began
to feel lighter and faintly invigorated as she moved across the lawn.

  Sonia flopped into a deck-chair. ‘You get the tea today, Katie,’ she begged. ‘I’ll do it tomorrow. Not too much milk—I’m slimming.’

  ‘How many biscuits?’

  ‘Three,’ Sonia said. ‘Or four, if they’re chocolate.’

  Kate joined the queue indoors for the teapot. Her eyes scanned the room, looking for Ben, but he wasn’t there. She hadn’t had a chance to speak to him today, primarily because they had been late for breakfast. Foolishly, she had agreed to wait for Sonia to get ready, which took several changes of clothes and subsequent hair restyling. All that was left when they finally arrived in the breakfast room was cold sausage and greasy bacon, which Sonia demolished with relish and without a thought for the ensuing depression at the end of the week when her bathroom scales would go haywire.

  She took two cups of tea and a pile of biscuits back to Sonia, who had managed to find some shade under one of the white linen parasols that now graced the terrace, fluttering gently like a line of clean washing in the breeze.

  ‘Thanks.’ Sonia gasped with pleasure as the tea hit the spot. ‘I needed that,’ she said, and tucked into the custard creams and chocolate digestives Kate had brought. She frowned at one before biting it in half. ‘I can’t for the life of me understand what five elephants have got to do with anything.’

  ‘Five elements,’ Kate corrected. ‘You’re not listening properly.’

  ‘How am I supposed to listen with sex on legs standing right in front of me wiggling his butt?’

  ‘You’re supposed to tune into the elephants,’ she teased. ‘Then everything else ceases to exist.’

  ‘Oh.’ Sonia shrugged, her expression suggesting that the point had missed her by a mile. She selected another custard cream. ‘Is line-dancing this difficult?’

  Kate settled back in the bleached teak chair and lifted her hair from her neck, enjoying what little breeze there was cooling against her skin. Ben was sitting in the shade under a majestic towering pine; his tall frame looked tiny against its huge girth. He was talking animatedly into a mobile phone and she watched him, glad that her gaze was shaded by her sunglasses, wondering who he was ringing that could make him laugh so readily.

  Sonia licked the crumbs from her lips. ‘He seems nice,’ she said. ‘In a quiet sort of way.’

  ‘Ben? He’s okay, I suppose.’

  ‘You were staring at him very dreamily, just now,’ Sonia observed shrewdly.

  ‘I was not.’ Kate blushed. ‘I was wondering whether Miss World had remembered to get the Bolognese sauce out of the freezer for tonight’s dinner.’

  ‘If you say so.’ Sonia drained her cup. ‘Anyway, I thought you were here to get away from all that domestic crap.’

  ‘I am. But it’s not that easy to give up the habits of a lifetime.’

  ‘And it’s not that easy to forget about home when you’ve got Ken and Barbie’s love-child looking after your husband’ s every whim.’ Sonia glanced knowingly at her.

  ‘Jeffrey doesn’t have whims,’ Kate said calmly. ‘He has schedules and timetables and boundaries. Boundaries that he never oversteps.’

  ‘You’re both so uptight these days, Kate. You need to let go a bit. Perhaps Jeffrey needs to find himself, too.’

  ‘I don’t think Jeffrey’s ever been lost,’ she said wearily.

  Her eyes strayed to the handsome man still chatting away under the tree. Snapping the phone shut, Ben stood up and strode towards their table, still without his shoes, cup and phone clutched in his hand. ‘May I join you?’ he asked.

  Sonia stood up. ‘Here, have my chair, Ben. I’m going to get some more tea and biscuits. Anyone else?’ She clattered her cup.

  ‘I’m fine, thanks.’ Ben slid into Sonia’s chair and tossed his phone on the table with the casual air of a man easily able to afford the latest in technology.

  ‘Do something to take her mind off her domestic crisis, if you possibly can,’ Sonia advised, patting his shoulder. ‘I’ve failed miserably.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ Ben promised.

  Sonia peered into his cup and sniffed. ‘What on earth are you drinking anyway?’

  Ben peered, too. ‘Blackberry and ginseng herbal tea.’

  Sonia grimaced. ‘Nice.’

  As she walked past Kate’s chair, she bent to whisper in her ear. ‘Never trust a man who drinks herbal tea—he’s bound to be crap in bed!’

  She looked even more lovely when she blushed, Ben thought as he studied Kate over the rim of his cup. Not many women did blush these days. Not the women he mixed with, certainly. They were all hard and brash, keen to prove themselves better than men. Blushing would have been eschewed as a sign of feminine weakness. Perhaps it was. But it looked bloody attractive.

  He’d noticed her the minute he’d arrived at the priory, struggling with two huge suitcases, and he’d wanted to rush over like some latter-day knight in shining armour and rescue her. But he hadn’t been able to find a parking space quickly enough, and by the time he was ready to do his good deed for the day, she’d gone.

  Kate was a gorgeous creature, dramatically beautiful, but in an understated way, if that wasn’t a contradiction in terms. Her eyes were wide, almost staring, and the most vibrant shade of cornflower-blue. She was wearing make-up, but wasn’t all glammed up to the eyeballs like the women he normally dated. Her hair was dark, raven, worn loose to her shoulders where it flicked up naturally and wasn’t glued there with the aid of styling gel or ten cans of hair spray. Her smile was warm and wide, her lips a deep dark natural red. She was tall, but slender, like a gazelle, slightly skittish in her movements. Her gentle manner made him want to crush her to his chest and hold her there until she was breathless with the power of his protection. He’d never experienced feelings like this before.

  ‘I’d like to apologise for my friend,’ Kate said, breaking into his reverie. ‘She loves to embarrass me.’

  He laughed. ‘Her heart’s in the right place, I’m sure.’

  ‘Oh, her heart is,’ Kate agreed. ‘I’m just not sure about the rest of her vital organs.’

  They both giggled.

  ‘That’s better,’ Ben said. ‘You look pretty when you smile.’

  Kate turned pink again and studied her fingernails.

  ‘So what’s the domestic crisis?’ he asked. ‘If you want to share it, that is. Otherwise tell me to get lost.’

  Kate folded her arms across her body and hugged her shoulders. ‘It’s nothing really,’ she said, but he noticed the little dark flash in her eyes. ‘I’ve left my home in the hands of a beautiful young woman with a body like Elle MacPherson.’

  ‘Don’t you trust your husband?’

  ‘I trust my husband implicitly,’ she replied. ‘I’m just not sure about her.’ Her mouth turned down at the corners.

  ‘Your husband would be mad to look at another woman,’ Ben told her sincerely.

  ‘If there’s one thing Jeffrey isn’t, it’s mad,’ she said quietly. ‘He’s the most sane person on the planet.’

  ‘You make that sound like a bad thing.’

  Nursing her cup, she sighed heavily. ‘Then I’m being very unfair to him,’ she said. ‘My husband is a lovely man. He’s kind, he’s gentle, he’s neat.’

  ‘Neat?’

  ‘Neat.’

  ‘I’m glad this isn’t a job reference,’ Ben observed. ‘I’m not sure if I’d employ him.’

  He noticed her close her eyes behind her sunglasses and lift her throat to the solitary waft of breeze. Goodness, she was lovely.

  ‘I’m not sure I would either,’ she said softly.

  ‘What does he do?’

  ‘He’s an accountant.’

  Ben felt his smile widen.

  ‘Chartered,’ she added tartly. ‘Don’t laugh. Jeffrey loves his work. It suits him down to the ground. It’s ordered, precise…’

  ‘Neat,’ Ben supplied.

  ‘Neat.’

  T
here was a sadness deep inside her, and it came to him that he would like to find it, touch it and unfurl it like the tight bud of a delicate rose.

  ‘I hope I haven’t bored you,’ she said.

  ‘Not at all.’ The truth was that Ben would have gladly talked to her all day; he just wanted to watch the movement of her mouth, the way her eyes flickered as she spoke, the flutter of her long, dark lashes, the expression in her graceful hands. He knew nothing about her, but every fibre of his being wanted to. Desperately. Sam and Guy had resumed their positions on the lawn now and were swaying gracefully from side to side. The rest of the class were finishing their tea and starting to stroll back, keen to get on with learning the mysteries of the East.

  ‘We’d better go,’ Kate said, and stood up.

  ‘I’ll catch you up,’ Ben said. He wanted to watch her walking away, enjoy her long loose-limbed stride.

  Ben Mahler had everything that money could buy. A car that was the envy of the agency, membership of an exclusive health club, a penthouse flat overlooking Tower Bridge, a tiny tumbledown thatched cottage in the country. What he couldn’t buy was something that could only be given freely—true love. He had dated some very beautiful women, enjoyed brief relationships that brought fleeting pleasure for a while. Why had this particular woman turned him inside out, upside down and left him gasping for breath? Out of all the women in the world, why her? She wasn’t even available!

  Ben watched Kate walk across the grass, kicking at it with her bare toes. His soul seemed to be crying out for her. They’d only just met, and yet he could feel himself falling—and falling deeply. It was how he’d imagine being hit with a Class A narcotic would be like. He wanted her body. He wanted her love. He wanted her heart. She was married and she wasn’t free to give it. The sooner he accepted that the better.

  Ben put his right fist to his left hand and banged it firmly against the palm. A reminder. I have no weapons. I am defenceless. I have no ulterior motive. I mean you no harm.

  chapter 11

  Jeffrey stared out of the office window. His desk overlooked the staff car-park, and it always annoyed him that the gravel was thin in patches and scraggy weeds pushed through the rock-hard ground underneath, making the whole area look tatty. Not very suitable for a thrusting dynamic firm of cutthroat accountants! He was tempted to bring in his own hoe and give it a tickle about, except that it was sure to render him a figure of ridicule.