To Be the Best - Barbara Taylor Bradford

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surging through him he moved against her violently and she responded with unbridled ardour, matching his passion equally, and they quickly found their own rhythm as they had all through the years of their marriage. But for Shane, tonight was suddenly like the first time they had ever made love and in an instant the years fell away. He was back in Connecticut, in the barn he had once owned, taking her to him as he had yearned to take her during the years of her marriage to another man, loving her as he had never loved any other woman, as only he and she were meant to love.

      And then he was reaching up … reaching into the light … the light was surrounding him … she was at the centre of the light … waiting for him … his dreamlike child of his childhood dreams. And she was his now. Nothing, no one, could ever separate them again. They belonged together for all time, into eternity. He felt weightless … he was soaring higher and higher … rising up into that timeless light … floating into infinity. And he was carrying her with him, holding the world in his arms, calling her name, just as she called his.

      And together they crested on waves of ecstasy in the golden shimmering light … were blinded by it and then could see … and oh the blessed peace of it …

      Shane woke up abruptly.

      He moved his head to the right and looked at the bedside clock. In the dim light he could see that it was almost five.

      Paula slept soundlessly by his side.

      He braced himself on one elbow, bent over her, touched her face lovingly, but very lightly, so as not to awaken her from her exhausted sleep, and lifted a strand of hair away from her eyes. Then he settled down again, stretched out on his back and closed his eyes, but before many minutes had passed he decided he was not going to fall off again quite so easily, or as quickly as he had just imagined he would. He was suddenly wide awake. Still, he had slept very deeply for the past few hours, as he always did when he was with Paula, as if he were more content and at peace when she was in his bed. Well, of course he was.

      He turned over onto his side, made an arc of his body around hers. She was his whole life, and now, lying next to her in the darkness, adoring her in the silence of his heart, he wondered if he had made her pregnant? Weeks ago they had agreed she should stop taking the pill.

      Tonight he had planted his seed in her and he prayed that the seed had taken hold and would come to flower as a child … a true love child conceived at the height of passion and spiritual joining. He stifled a sigh, thinking of Patrick. He loved his little boy with a deeply tender and protective love, but he could not help being sad that their first born was not normal. He dare not let Paula perceive his feelings, for fear of underscoring her own pain, but they were never far from the surface and yet, somehow, he always managed to conceal his sorrow from her.

      Instinctively, Shane lifted his right arm, put it around her, drew closer, burrowed his face in her fragrant hair, overflowing with his love for her. He closed his eyes again, let himself drift into sleep. Yes, he thought, now is the time for our next child. And he wondered, as he finally dozed off, if that was the real reason he had side-tracked her to Paris.

      The Villa Faviola was situated in the town of Roquebrune-Cap Martin, approximately halfway between Monte Carlo and Menton.

      It stood in its own small park at the end of the little peninsula of Cap Martin, sheltered by pines at its back, with its many tall windows facing out towards the sea.

      Built in the 1920s, it was a lovely old house, sprawling, airy and gracious, with a curving driveway bordered by pines, spacious green lawns that swept down from the terrace past the swimming pool, up to the edge of the rocky promontory and the glittering Mediterranean Sea beyond.

      Its exterior walls were painted a soft melon, but in a tone so pale it was almost sand, and the canvas awnings shading the windows were of a deeper melon, were partnered with shutters of pristine white.

      A wide terrace stretched along the side of the house facing the sea and was made of white stone and marble, and it appeared to float gracefully above the verdant gardens where flowers grew in riotous colour and fountains sparkled in the shimmering sunlight. Scattered along the terrace were several round white-metal tables topped by melon-coloured parasols; matching white chairs, swing-sofas with sun-awnings, and chaises all had cushions of cream, and because only these soft integrated tones had been used nothing jarred the harmonious flow of pale colour across the lovely front façade.

      The Villa Faviola had been purchased by Emma Harte in the late 1940s, just after the end of the Second World War, and it was she who had originally created the gardens surrounding the house and intersecting the lawns. But in recent years, Paula had enlarged the flower beds and borders and had planted a wide variety of small flowering trees and shrubs and exotic plants, cultivating the entire park to its present beauty – and a magnificence that was renowned along the Côte d’Azur.

      Inside Faviola its cool, lofty rooms were filled with lovely filtered sunlight and furnished with a simple yet distinctive elegance. Charming old French Provincial pieces made of dark woods or bleached oak were mingled with vast sofas and comfortable chairs and there were chaises and ottomans, and occasional tables held small pots of African violets and pink and white cyclamen and the latest magazines and books.

      Floors of highly polished parquet and rose-veined cream marble were either bare or were covered here and there by old Aubussons and plain rugs of cream wool, and throughout the house colours were pale and cool. Cream, vanilla and white predominated, flowed over the walls, were repeated in the fabrics that fell at the windows and covered sofas and chairs, and accent colours were variations of melon and peach and sand, and there were touches of café-au-lait, that lovely milky brown that was so typically French.

      Spilling vivid colour into these monochromatic-toned rooms were romantic, lyrical paintings by such noted contemporary French artists as Epko, Taurelle and Bouyssou and huge Baccarat crystal urns overflowing with a great abundance of flowers and foliage from the gardens.

      But none of the rooms were so imposing or so grand that guests and children were intimidated and felt they were in a museum and therefore hardly dare breathe. On the contrary, Emma had designed the house as a vacation home, one to be lived in and enjoyed to the fullest, and it had a great deal of comfort and an easy grace that was all its own. It also happened to be one of those houses that had always had a warm, welcoming and happy atmosphere, and there was a lovely serenity about its calm, sun-drenched rooms and the inviting pine-shaded park with its glorious gardens.

      Alexander Barkstone owned Faviola, having inherited it from Emma along with its contents – with the exception of the Impressionist art, which his grandmother had bequeathed to Philip in Australia. But Sandy rarely came to the villa, preferring his country estate in Yorkshire, and it was mostly used by his sister Emily and her family, his cousins Paula O’Neill and Anthony Dunvale and their respective spouses and children, and occasionally his mother, Elizabeth, and her French husband, Marc Deboyne, who came down from Paris for long weekends, usually when the season was over.

      But of all of them, it was Emily who loved Faviola the most – and with an enduring passion.

      As a little girl some of the happiest times of her childhood had been spent at the villa with her beloved Gran, and she had always believed it to be an enchanted and magical place. She knew every cranny and every corner of every room on every floor, and every inch of the park and the garden and the beach below the rocky promontory. After she had married her cousin, Winston Harte, in June of 1970, they had flown down to the Riviera for their honeymoon and the first two weeks of their life as man and wife had been spent at the villa. The lovely carefree days and romantic evenings were so blissful, Emily’s deep feelings for Faviola were only intensified, and ever since then the villa had been her haven which she could escape to at odd times during the spring and winter, either alone or with Winston, and always in the summer months with their children, Toby, Gideon and Natalie. And she had never grown tired of it and she knew she never would, and she thought of the villa as the most perfect place in the world to be.

      But in contrast,

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