With the Headmaster's Approval (17 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

She
awoke to morning sunlight streaming through the bedroom window. As she floated towards full wakefulness she felt elated knowing that something good had happened.  She stretched luxuriously as memories of Adam’s lovemaking aroused her with a need for more.

But when she turned to
embrace him she found the bed was empty. Her heart sank. She’d asked him to make love to her, and he’d done that, oh how he’d done that - but now that he’d fulfilled her wishes did he have no further use for her? What if the love-making had meant nothing to him? Was she just a kid sister with benefits? Tears welled and slowly spilled down her cheeks. Now that she had known Adam she knew that no one else would ever be able to take his place, to thrill, excite and satisfy her in the way he had.

She
brushed away the tears and did what she’d been doing every morning for the past few weeks. She cupped her left breast in her hand and checked the lump hoping against hope that by some miracle it had disappeared, or at least shrunk overnight, that the sensations that had coursed through her body had somehow dissolved it. But it was still there. The operation was on Thursday and she was terrified. No amount of assurances and percentage chances in her favour would quell the fear of the impending possible loss of her breast. And then a new fear occurred - had Adam made love to her out of pity?

With a heavy heart she stepped out of bed.
His shirt was draped over the back of a chair. She slipped her arms into the sleeves and drew it round her. As she drank in the smell of him fresh tears flowed. To have loved and lost is better than to have never loved at all. Yes, she would always have the memories of last night, but would they haunt and ruin any future relationships?

She made her way along the short passage to the bathroom. There was a separate toilet and washbasin and she went in and rinsed her face and mouth. When she came out she heard the shower running. Her parents had made the bathroom into a wet room because of the children and there was no shower enclosure, just a tiled area with a shower head, and a washbasin housed in a cabinet, and a toilet. Should she go in? Would it be an intrusion?

She slowly opened the
door and stood in the doorway watching him, marvelling at his swimmer’s body, sleek and sculpted but without a body builder’s bulging muscles. When he saw her he grinned and held out his hand inviting her to join him. Her heart skipped a beat. He still wanted her. Shrugging off the shirt she stepped in beside him.

He took her face in his hands and gently kissed her lips.  “So sleeping beauty is finally awake. You were sleeping so peacefully I didn’t want to disturb you.”

His dark stubble rubbed against her face; it was a feeling she would always want to wake up to.

As the water cascaded over them he rubbed soap
unhurriedly and sensually over her breasts.

She slid her arms around his neck and nuzzled into him kissing his nipples and nipping
them with her teeth and felt him harden against her. “Wait, let me get some protection,” he said, turning the shower to a trickle.

“You won’t need
any,” she said, her mouth creeping slowly down to his belly that felt like the hard corrugations waves leave in the sand. She flicked her tongue into his navel, her hands moving over him sensually. “This time it’s for you.” She’d make him want and need her. Even if he didn’t love her she’d make him love what she could do for him. She didn’t mind being a sister with benefits, as long as she also had the benefits.

She wasn’t entirely inexperienced when it came to sex.  Afraid of being called a prick-teaser sh
e’d found ways to satisfy a man, skilful tricks she learned to do with her fingers and tongue.

He gasped as her mouth moved lower, his hands
buried in her hair. She was kneeling in front of him, her flicking tongue moving down to his inner thighs, her deft fingers between his legs, teasing, playing him like an instrument. As she took him in her mouth he moaned and his grip on her tightened. She knew how to pleasure a man and used her tongue with expert skill, watching the reactions on his face, her power over him complete, like reining in a stallion. She tortured him as he had tortured her, slowing, driving him wild with a need for completion.

Th
is time there was no need for him to use restraint and when finally he could hold back no longer there was no mistaking her name as he sank to his knees, “Oh God, Nicole.”

He
held her while his breathing returned to normal, his face buried in her neck. Then he turned off the shower and wrapped her in a fluffy white towel, like a precious package, kissing the top of her head. “There’s a new toothbrush in the cabinet,” he said. “And Polly left you some clean underwear and your tracksuit.”

“You two really have been conspiring,” she said.

They returned to the bedroom and Nicole asked, “Are we having the usual brunch with Mum and Dad?” She dangled a bra in front of him and gave him a questioning look.

“You’d better wear it,’ he said
with a grin. “I don’t think I could be responsible for my actions sitting next to you knowing you’re braless.”

Polly had prepared everything for
the Sunday brunch, but wasn’t sure if Nicole and Adam would be joining them. She made her way up the stairs to call Jack, who was having a lie-in with the Sunday newspaper.

“Brunch is ready,” she said. “You’d better get dressed in case Adam and Nicole come over.”

She heard Romper whining in the kitchen and glanced out of the bedroom window. Adam and Nicole were strolling hand in hand along the path towards the house, laughing together. She saw them stop and kiss. Tears brimmed. It was bitter-sweet. She remembered fondly watching Adam and Michelle meandering their way through the garden; and then it had been a pregnant Michelle, and then Adam carrying baby Kirsty, and then the four of them.  Would the pattern repeat itself with Nicole, or would her heart be broken?

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

Nicole had grown increasingly nervous about her operation. The needle biopsies had not given a definitive diagnosis
and the oncologist had suggested the surgical biopsy. Polly and Jack admitted her to the hospital on Wednesday afternoon and she was due to have the operation the following morning. Adam accompanied them for the evening visiting hour. Although they laughed and joked trying to calm her fears there was an undercurrent of dread in all of them.

Adam sat on the bed and held
her hand while Polly and Jack sat in chairs alongside. It was a small hospital and she was in a four-bed ward in a bed next to the window that overlooked the car park and fields beyond. Jack had found parking where he knew Nicole would be able to see them arrive. Visiting time was nearly over. “Come on, Polly,” Jack said. “Let’s leave them alone for a few minutes.” They kissed and hugged Nicole and told her not to worry and then left, waving from the door.

A bustling nurse came in to check
Nicole’s blood pressure and gave Adam a friendly smile and then looked enquiringly at Nicole as if expecting an introduction. But how should she introduce him? He was sitting on the bed holding her hand. Could she still introduce him as her brother-in-law? They’d spent every night of the past week in the same bed – she couldn’t truthfully say they’d spent every night sleeping together because they hadn’t got much sleep, but he’d given no indication that she could call him her boyfriend. She had no right to assume any commitment on his part. “This is Adam,” she finally said.

“Don’t worry, Adam, we’ll take good care of her,” said the nurse, as Adam moved aside so
she could wrap the blood pressure sleeve snugly round Nicole’s arm. She waited while the machine bleeped and the figures shot up and down before settling on a final figure. “Slightly high,” she announced, unwrapping the sleeve, “But that’s to be expected if you’re nervous about tomorrow.” Then she bent and whispered in Nicole’s ear, “My blood pressure would also shoot up if he was holding my hand.”

Nicole laughed, “That’s probably it,” she said as the nurse winked and w
ent out of the door.

“What did she say?” said Adam.

“Never mind. Just girl talk,” said Nicole, grinning.

He took her hand
again. “Nicole,” he said, looking at her with such tenderness that her heart leapt.
No,
she thought,
please, not now. Don’t tell me you love me. Not out of pity or because you think that’s what I want to hear.

“I’m g
oing to miss waking up next to you in the morning.”

“At least you’ll be able to get to school on
time,” she said with a weak smile.

“There’s something I need to know
,” he said, but was interrupted by her phone ringing. It was in the cabinet drawer and he took it out and handed it to her. She looked at the caller ID and then at Adam.

“It’s Ruan,” she said.

The bell sounded for the end of visiting hour. He kissed her and gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. “I’d better go. I’ll phone you when I get back to the cottage.”

“Hello, Ruan,” she said, but she was watching Adam’s retreating back as he
walked out of the ward. What did he need to know?

He phoned her when he got home, but never asked the question she was waiting for.

The girls were studying for the
May exams and Adam and Lisa were juggling the timetable to fit in extra lessons for the girls who were falling behind. She was sitting across the desk from him and had become sensitive to his moods and noticed that he seemed distracted; he kept looking at his watch and checking his phone that she knew had not signalled an incoming call or a text message.

He’d
been somehow different all week, smiling and jaunty, but with an undercurrent of something else. He’d come in later than usual on Monday morning, and yesterday during break he’d been in the kitchen foraging for something to eat, which had caused Barbara Crook to ask if he’d missed breakfast and then mutter out of his hearing, “Perhaps he had a morning quickie.”

“Adam, is something worrying you?”
Lisa finally asked.

“There is, actually,” he said, looking across at her with
a face tense with worry. “It’s Nicole. She’s in hospital. They’re operating this morning to remove a lump from her breast.”

“Oh,
dear,” said Lisa, cautioning herself from probing or offering the usual platitudes.

“
I’m waiting for Polly to phone. She said she’d let me know when Nicole comes out of surgery.”

“I can finish this if you want to go home to be with Polly,” said Lisa.

“Thanks, but I’d rather keep busy,” he said.

It was lunch time before Polly phoned
. Adam had just come back from the gym where he’d been doing yoga with Dee Taylor. He snatched the phone from his pocket. Lisa saw his face relax into a relieved smile. “Polly said everything went well. They’ve removed the lump and Nicole is recovering. But it’s going to be a few days until they get the lab results. She can come home tomorrow.”

When they brought Nicole home Polly suggested discreetly, but with a hint of earnestness, that Nicole should sleep in her own bed for the next few days until the wound had healed. Nicole, although anxious to be back in Adam’s bed, realised the wisdom of it. She could not lie next to Adam and not want to make love to him, but she knew it wouldn’t be easy with her wound still sore, and she didn’t want him to see her like that.

It was an anxious few days until the lab results
finally came back and they were told there was nothing to worry about and she would not need any further treatment.

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

Lisa
had arranged speakers for the career counselling, which would be done over a week. Nicole agreed to take part and was to speak for thirty minutes before the afternoon break on Thursday. She’d worked on her speech with Adam, and Ruan Botha had emailed pictures of her elephant project. There were also pictures of the rhino with their horns hacked off, together with photographs of the big five and the various camps in the Kruger Park. She’d prepared a PowerPoint presentation on her laptop and had pasted photographs on a board for the girls to look at after her speech.

Polly and Jack dropped her off St Mary’s in time for her to set up her display
. The screen for the PowerPoint was in place from the previous speaker. Adam helped her carry her things in to the hall. “I hope I’ve remembered everything,” she said worriedly.

“As long as you’ve got your notes you’ll be fine,” Adam reassured her.

There were tables in the foyer, each covered with pamphlets, and a small display showing a different career choice. Lisa directed her to the table that had been set aside for her.  As Adam helped Nicole to put everything out Lisa noticed a subtle change in their body language. They stood closer than previously, and she saw Nicole pick some non-existent lint off his jacket.

The lectern
and microphone were in position and set at the correct height for her tall figure.

The
girls filed into the hall and fixed Nicole with a dutiful gaze, some recognizing her as the girl who had accompanied Adam to the school play, which made her immediately more interesting.

Nicole looked out over the rows of heads and remembered what it was like having to sit and listen to a boring presentation
. She nervously took a sip of water and moistened her lips as she listened to Adam introducing her as a veterinary scientist and conservationist, adding that she was also a former pupil of the school. She was waiting for him to add
‘she’s also my kid sister’,
or at least
‘she’s also my sister-in-law,’
but she, and also the staff, were surprised that he never mentioned it. After the introduction he joined Lisa in the front row.

Nicole stepped forward
to polite applause and placed her notes carefully on the lectern. Eleanor Stannard had given her some pointers on public speaking, and she’d practised using the microphone, but when she looked down to thank Adam for the introduction, she gave him a nervous smile and he returned it with an encouraging nod.

“As Adam – Mr Wild - has already told you,” she began, “I’m a former pupil of this school and even back then I had a love for animals and I knew I wanted to work with them.” She went on to explain the various options open to
the girls wanting to work with animals. But it was when she started talking about the work she was doing at the Kruger Park that her passion came through and she became more confident. She switched on the laptop and pictures of the Kruger Park flashed on the screen. She explained about the rhino poaching and showed them the pictures of the dying mother and her calf, which had some of the girls close to tears.

A girl in the front row asked who was buying the horns and Nicole explained that many
of the horns were shipped to Asia. She paused before telling them, “It’s a myth that ingesting powdered rhino horn enhances sexual experiences. They might just as well eat fingernails as both are made of keratin. I hope no one here bites their nails,” she added, amid a burst of laughter from the girls. “However, we are getting the message across to some of the influential Vietnamese who visited Kruger and they are going to spread the word, and hopefully demand will decrease. But I’m studying elephants and their importance in the eco system.”

Now confident enough to stray from her notes she asked them, “Do you know that elephants are one of the few animals that can recognise themselves in a mirror? It was proved by brushing paint on an elephant and putting it in front of a mirror and
watching as it tried to get rid of the paint.”

She then put up some pictures of an elephant path. A tall, tanned ranger in an olive green safari shirt, shorts, a bush hat and sunglasses was standing to one side with a rifle slung over his shoulder. “That’s Ruan Botha,” said Nicole. “He’s my mentor.” This immediately sparked the interest of the girls and there was a murmur of appreciation for the handsome romantic figure.

“Do you know that some elephant paths have been used for over 100 years?” Nicole continued, and warming to her subject she went on. “Elephants are dependent on water and never stray far from their well-trodden migration routes. In the dry season the elephant dung is often the only moisture available for insects, and the seed in the dung is eaten by the birds and guinea fowl.” She showed another picture, a close-up of herself and Ruan inspecting the insect life in the dung.”

“That must be a shit job,” whispered a giggling girl
in the back row to her neighbour.

“I wouldn’t mind it if I had him sharing
it,” replied her neighbour.

There were further
pictures of the staff village at Skukuza, and the rest camp with the visitors’ bungalows and cottages. There were coos of admiration for the thatched rondavels, and they were surprised to learn there were churches, schools, a gym, an internet cafe, restaurant, and even a nine-hole golf course.

But
the next picture was one she’d forgotten was there. It was of her and Ruan standing next to the swimming pool. She was in his arms and it was obvious to everyone that he was more than just a mentor. Lisa saw a momentary tightening of Adam’s jaw.

“Is he your boyfriend, Miss?” asked a cheeky girl in the front row, who
was asking for all of them.

Nicole’s mind whirled with the implications of her answer. As far as Ruan was concerned he was very much her boyfriend
. They’d been together for over a year and she knew it would take very little encouragement for him to ask her to marry him. If she said he was no longer her boyfriend it wouldn’t be fair to Ruan. She hadn’t broken off their relationship. It might also make Adam think that she’d assumed she was now his girlfriend and that would be presumptuous as he’d made no claims on her.

She took the coward’s way out and smiled and said nothing.

But a girl in the front row with an unfortunate outcrop of spots made more noticeable by concealer too thickly applied, insisted on asking, “Have you finished the elephant project, or are you going back to South Africa?”

She dare not look at Adam
knowing that it all depended on him. Would he ask her to stay? Was there any chance for them to have a future together? “I can carry on while I still have a grant, but circumstances will dictate how long I stay,” she finally answered.

The bell rang for the afternoon break while the girls were still asking questions and some of them stayed behind
to talk to Nicole, until Adam prised her away to join the teachers in the staffroom.

He’d taken a
n extra chair through and was straddling it while Nicole sat in the chair next to him. Lisa wondered if it was intentional that their feet were touching. She also wondered if she was the only one who’d noticed that he was no longer wearing his wedding ring – and if it had anything to do with Nicole.

“Congratulations,” said Eleanor Stannard. “I think you’re a natural. I’m sure the animal lovers appreciate that there is a wide variety of options
to working with animals and not just dogs, cats and rabbits.”

“Thank you,” said Nicole, on a high of relief that it was over and had apparently gone down well.

After the break she strolled through the foyer while she waited for school to finish, looking at the other career choices and recalling the years she’d spent at the school with Michelle. It was ironic that she had often stood outside the head’s office trembling in fear at the punishment that might be meted out for the minor misdemeanour of forgetting a homework book, and now the head made her tremble in other, more welcoming ways. 

She still felt on a high when he drove into the garage and switched off the engine and she was brave enough to ask the question that had been on her mind.

“Adam, remember the night before my operation?”

“Yes,”

“You said there was something you had to know. What was it?”

He sighed and turned to look into her eyes for a long moment. “If you hadn’t come home for the operation and we hadn’t slept together, would you have married Ruan?”

It wasn’t the question she was expecting and s
he stalled for time to think, “Why do you need to know?”

“It’s important to me.”

She returned his gaze and thought carefully before replying. He deserved a truthful answer.

“Honestly -
I’m not sure. The Kruger Park is Ruan’s life and he wants to make a career of it. I can’t see him living anywhere else. I enjoy being in the bush and working with the animals, but even with its vastness it sometimes feels strangely claustrophobic. I need the openness of the sea, to hear the crashing waves. Even if I rarely go into the surf, or sail on it, I have to know it’s close by.” She took his hand. “Adam, I’ve spent my whole adult life comparing boyfriends with you, even when I knew you were impossibly out of my reach. Ruan came the closest, but I’m not sure that I could spend the rest of my life in the bush.”

“Y
ou remember those romance books you used to enjoy so much as a teenager?”

“Yes, and you used to laugh at me.”

He gave her that teasing lop-sided grin, but then became serious. “You’ve built up a romanticised image of me, but I’m not a hero from a romance novel. Sooner or later you’re going to realise that.”

“B
elieve me, the sex is a hundred times better than anything my imagination conjured up.”

“But what happens when the passion dies?”

“You forget that I loved you long before we slept together.”

“But you don’t really know me.”

She laughed. “If you recall, I have seen you at your worst.  Remember when I was staying with you and Michelle and she was pregnant with Sean and you had a bad dose of ‘flu and didn’t want her near you in case she caught it? Who was it who nursed you and brought you chicken soup and put up with your bad-tempered complaining? Who changed the sweaty sheets when you had a fever? Michelle said the most testing time of your marriage was when you had ‘flu!”

He looked crestfallen. “Was I really that bad?”

“Yes, but I did it willingly - and I’d do it again in a heartbeat,” she said, searching his face for a clue to his true feelings for her.

But all he said was, “It seems that you’ve got a lot of unfinished business in South Africa. When do you think you’ll go back?”

All the elation she’d been feeling suddenly evaporated. Had the past few weeks meant nothing to him? Had his lovemaking simply been for her benefit, to buoy her up when she was going through a troubling experience? But she couldn’t blame Adam, she was the one who had instigated it – and now she had no right to anything further. It was obvious she was not in his plans for the future. Had he been hinting at that by asking her about Ruan? Was he trying to let her down gently and intimating that she should marry him? “Soon, I expect,” she said, trying to keep the misery out of her voice.

“We’d better go in,
” he said. “Polly and Jack will be anxious to know how your presentation went.”

She followed him in, setting her face in
to a cheerful smile for her parents. She couldn’t let anyone know her heart was breaking – they’d warned her, and now she was paying the price, a price heavier than she’d ever expected.