Читать книгу An Inconvenient Husband - Karen Van Der Zee - Страница 6

PROLOGUE

NICKY’S hand trembled as she reached for the phone on her father’s desk, pushing aside the tiny cup of thick black coffee the servant had brought her a few moments ago. She had all the jitters she needed without the caffeine.

She dialed the number and heard the ringing of the phone on the other side of the world. Her heart was beating so frantically, it was frightening. She stared out the window as the phone kept ringing, at the view of palm trees and the tall minaret of the mosque silhouetted against the cobalt blue Moroccan sky.

Finally the ringing stopped and a female hotel employee answered the phone in English, her voice accented and cheerful. The line was clear, as if the voice came from the house next door rather than from Manilla in the Philippines.

Nicky closed her eyes and braced herself, her chest heavy with anxiety. “I’d like to speak to Mr. Blake Chandler, please. I don’t know the room number.”

“One moment, please.”

The phone rang again. In Blake’s room. Finally, his voice—short, clipped, deep. The voice she loved more than any other in the world. The voice of her husband.

Yet her heart was not racing with love and excitement. It was thundering with trepidation.

“Blake, it’s Nicky,” she said.

“Nicky?” He sounded surprised. “I’m glad you’re calling. I was about to call you. How are you?”

She swallowed. “I’m fine.”

I’m not fine, she corrected silently. I’m scared. Blake, I’m so scared.

“And your mother?”

“She’s doing much better.”

Nicky was in Morocco with her parents because her mother had become ill and she’d wanted to be with her. Her father worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development and he and her mother had lived in Marrakech for the past year.

Nicky tried to relax her hand gripping the receiver. “Why were you going to call me?” she asked. Please tell me you miss me. Please tell me you love me and can’t wait to be home together again.

“There’s a problem with the project,” Blake said instead. “It will take a couple of days to straighten out. I’ll be home two days late, on Saturday, same flight schedule.”

Disappointment tasted bitter in her mouth. He wasn’t telling her what she needed to hear. She swallowed. “It’s all right. As it turns out, I’ve changed my plans, as well.” She tried to sound matter-of-fact. “I’m going to see Sophie in Rome on my way back to the States. She’s having her baby and I... I think it’s nice for me to be there.”

“How long will you stay?” A businesslike question. His voice was expressionless.

She swallowed hard. Go ahead, do it, urged the little voice inside her.

Next week Blake would come home and the plan had been for her to be back in Washington, as well. She closed her eyes, steeling herself. “Three weeks,” she said, feeling her heart grow cold.

A slight pause. “We won’t see each other, then,” came his voice. “You won’t be back home until after I leave again for Guatemala.”

Her hands shook. She clenched her left one hard around the receiver. “Right.” She gulped in air. “Do you mind?”

They had not seen each other in almost three months and if she didn’t go straight home next week they wouldn’t see each other for another month or so until Blake came back from his next consulting trip to Guatemala. And she was asking him if he minded. “You have to be there for your friends,” Blake stated. There was no inflection in his voice. “I’ll manage. I’m a big boy.”

She felt as if she were suffocating. He doesn’t care! came the desperate thought. He didn’t care last time and he doesn’t care now. What was it he had said last time?

If your mother needs you, then of course you have to stay. That had been five weeks ago when she had called him and told him she wouldn’t be home when he came back from his business trip because her mother still wasn’t very well.

Which had been true enough, but the virus she’d caught had not been serious, just took its own sweet time to run its course, making her mother tired and cranky.

Nicky could have gone home to Washington and spent time with her husband while he was back in the country preparing for his next consulting job overseas. She could have been home cooking food for him, sleeping in his arms, making love, planning the future.

Instead she’d decided to stay at her parents’ house in Morocco and Blake had not objected. He had not said he minded, that he would miss her, that the house was lonely without her.

Now, after not having seen her for three months, he still didn’t say any of those things. He told her he could manage without her while she was in Rome to see her friend Sophie.

Of course he would manage. He’d managed without her for years and years. He was an independent, self-sufficient man with a career that took him all over the world. She had known that when she had married him eighteen months ago. It had not bothered her—her father’s job had taken her quite a few places, too, when she was a child. She understood her husband’s life-style, his work.

They’d married and made plans for the future. As soon as she had her journalism degree, she planned to go with him on his trips, write her articles about travel and food, maybe even a book. They’d be together most of the time. So many plans, so much to look forward to.

And now, her degree in her pocket, her dreams were crumbling like stale cake, dry and tasteless. Blake could do without her.

He doesn’t need me, she thought, tears hot behind her eyes. I’m convenient and comfortable, but I’m not essential to him. She saw him in her mind’s eye, the tall, confident man with calm gray eyes and unconapromising, square chin. The man whose strong arms fitted so perfectly around her, whose body made magic with hers. A heavy weight settled on her chest and she sucked in a painful breath. There hadn’t been magic for a long time.

“How’s the food over there?” she asked, and she could hear the odd wobble in her voice.

“I’ve got you some recipes—you’ll find them interesting.” She loved food and cooking, all kinds, simple and exotic. She loved looking at displays of fruit, spices, vegetables, loved the colors and shapes and fragrances. Her husband the world traveler brought her gifts of cookbooks and recipes from faraway places for her collection.

“Thank you” Again the wobble in her voice.

“Nicky? Are you all right? You sound strange.”

“I’m fine,” she lied. “The air is so dusty here, it makes my throat feel scratchy.” This was not a lie, but the fact was irrelevant.

They talked for a while. About his work, about the magazine article she was writing about Moroccan food, about how lucky they were to be missing the bad weather at home in Washington, D.C.

Later that night she lay in bed, her stomach churning with anxiety, praying she would just sink away into oblivion and not dream the dream that kept coming back time after time. A dream that made her cry when she awakened.

Here she was, in her parents’ home in one of the most exotic places on earth, a place of deserts and camels and Berber nomads, a place of veiled women, busy souks and ancient mosques, yet where she really wanted to be was in her own small town house in Washington, D.C., which at this very moment was battling the leftovers of a tropical storm. She wanted to be in her own bed in the arms of the man she loved. She wanted him to tell her he loved her, that he had missed her terribly. That those long absences were harder and harder to bear. That from now on he wanted her with him on his trips.

She knew it wasn’t going to happen.

She knew she was losing him.