Читать книгу Reclaiming His Wife - Susan Fox P. - Страница 8

CHAPTER THREE

SHE looked at him quickly, her eyes dark and disbelieving, her heart beating so fast she felt faint.

‘Why?’ she whispered, that one syllable strung with all the pain and suspicion she had endured throughout her short marriage.

‘Because I think it’s what we both want,’ he answered.

‘And what about…your mistress?’ It was a soft accusation over the sound of a van pulling out of the car park. ‘What will she have to say about it?’

‘There isn’t any…mistress, as you call it. I told you—it was over between Alicia and me before we were ever married. But you refused to believe me.’

‘Because of the way you were—the way you looked!— every time her name was mentioned.’

‘That was in your mind.’

‘Was it?’ She regarded him obliquely, green eyes tortured and accusing. ‘And I suppose those late-night phone calls from her were all in my mind!’

His skin seemed to blanch, and if that wasn’t an admission of guilt, what was? she thought bitterly, seeing the disbelief in his eyes, the tightening line of his mouth.

‘Did she… speak to you?’ Caution marked his words and his slanted appraisal of her.

‘No, she obviously didn’t expect me to be there! Just like I didn’t expect you to be in Philadelphia with her when you said you were going to New York!’

‘I was in New York,’ he stated bluntly, having no difficulty remembering the time to which she had referred. ‘I had an unscheduled stopover in Philadelphia to visit a sick client who couldn’t get to the main meeting. I didn’t think it was worth mentioning—particularly as I knew what graphic pictures that imaginative little brain of yours could come up with. OK. Maybe I wasn’t being entirely open with you…’

‘Not open with me! That’s an understatement!’ she breathed, still raw from the memory of his deception.

‘Taylor…’

As he took a step towards her she shrank back, shaking her head. ‘No,’ she murmured, denying him the right to hurt her for a second time, denying them both a second chance, though it was excruciating when all she longed to do was accede to his suggestion, throw herself like the helpless fool she had been back into his arms.

‘And that’s it?’

‘That’s it.’

‘With not even a backward glance?’ Some emotion she could have mistaken for pain had she not known him better clouded those beautiful eyes. He shook his head. ‘Without any regret? Surely, I would have thought that even you—’

He broke off, hearing the sound that had also caught Taylor’s attention. It was the pitiable crying of a small child.

She couldn’t have been more than three or four, Taylor realised, horrified, as the little girl wandered out from between two parked cars. Bundled up in a small pink anorak, she was looking lost and terribly frightened.

‘What is it?’ Taylor called, hurrying over to her, glad of the diversion from a conversation that could only have caused her more grief. Stooping down, she caught the child’s sobbed, barely coherent response. It was obvious that the little girl had lost her mother.

‘She can’t be very far away,’ Taylor gently reassured her, unprepared, as she stood up to look around for a likely candidate, for the tiny hand that instantly reached up to clasp hers.

How vulnerable they were, she agonised, assailed by a sudden deluge of emotions that were suffocating—almost overwhelming. And how trusting!

Tense lines scored her face and it was all she could do to keep it averted, not to let her feelings show as Jared joined them.

‘What’s all this? What’s all the fuss about?’ The tone he used with the child was gentle and consoling. Anguished, Taylor tried not to remember how much he had wanted children of his own.

A young woman, looking very fraught, was hurrying from the direction of the nearby Pay and Display machine.

‘I told you not to run off!’

Reaching them, grabbing the errant child by the arm, she smiled apologetically at Taylor and Jared. But it was Jared for whom she spared a second glance before thanking them both profusely and pulling the now merely whimpering child back to her car.

‘Are you all right?’ Reaching Jared’s saloon, Taylor could feel those shrewd eyes studying her across the gleaming black roof.

‘Am I all right?’ She still couldn’t face him head on, risk his seeing the emotion that still misted her eyes. ‘Why shouldn’t I be?’

His mouth moved in a rather speculative way. ‘You look…upset,’ he remarked.

The car alarm system bleeped as he disengaged it. His eyes were still resting on her as he opened the driver’s door.

‘Why should I be upset? It’s this infernal wind,’ she prevaricated with her chin lifting in an unconscious gesture of defence against his probing. ‘It’s making my eyes water.’

Scepticism showed in the arching of an eyebrow, but Taylor was glad when he let it go at that.

What was he thinking? she wondered, sitting beside him in silence while he drove the short journey to her dentist. Was he wondering perhaps if she was remembering their marriage—her accidental and short, ill-fated pregnancy? If she was harbouring any regrets about losing her baby? Or even—from the cruel insinuations he had made at the time—any remorse?

Her chest ached from the misery of those memories, from recalling those bitter rows and the insecurities, brought on by the suspicions of his disloyalty, which vetoed any suggestion of their getting back together. Fortunately, however, he didn’t seem to be pressing the point about trying again.

‘I’ll wait for you,’ he said suddenly, bringing her back to the present with a jolt to realise that he was pulling up outside the dental practice.

‘That won’t be necessary,’ she said in a flat voice, keen to get away from him. Seeing him again like this wasn’t doing her any good at all. ‘The station’s just around the corner and it’ll be easier and quicker for me to take the tube back to the studios.’

Fortunately he acknowledged this with a slight tilt of his head.

‘In that case I’ll call round next week.’

Why? she wanted to throw at him bitterly. Why are you doing this to me? But she held herself in check and was relieved at least to be able to tell him, ‘You can’t. I’m away on location next week.’ The crew were filming a short documentary drama just outside of Edinburgh. ‘After that I’m taking a week’s leave.’

Jared switched off the engine as though he needed total silence to digest this information.

So that told you! Taylor thought, not caring if she had messed up his carefully calculated plans.

‘Where are you going?’

She hadn’t planned to go anywhere. She had been hoping for a quiet time at home, baking, shopping and generally relaxing until her next pending assignment that promised to take her away again, abroad, for the best part of three weeks. But the last thing she wanted was to tell him that and so pulling a face she said, ‘Who knows? I’m taking it as it comes. Right now I’m thinking it might be a good idea to stay in Scotland.’

‘That’s where you’re filming, I take it?’ It didn’t require an answer. ‘OK.’ He exhaled heavily and, sounding suddenly bored, ‘I’ll see you when you get back. It’s possible I’ll be away myself the week after next. By the way, while you’re up that way you could look into the Borrowdale house,’ he went on to suggest rather wearily. ‘I let it to the odd friend now and again but no one’s using it at the moment. There are a few things of yours there, though—some you might consider to be of a sentimental nature. If you’ve no intention of going back there, you might prefer to have them with you,’ he concluded, the cool delivery of his statement and his obvious acceptance that it was over between them sending a swift dart of pain down through her heart.

The house in Cumbria had been his late grandmother’s and they had spent several long blissful weekends there between their return from Hawaii and that fateful party that had ruined all her illusions about her marriage.

‘Give me a ring if you decide to…’ with a hand as steady as his voice he was taking a card out of his wallet ‘… and I can arrange to have the place aired and heated for you.’

She looked at the small white card he handed her. As though she were one of his business associates, she thought achingly. It listed his office, email and fax numbers, which she already knew, plus the number of his new mobile phone.

‘Thanks,’ Taylor said, dropping it quickly into the open side compartment of her handbag because she would only have shown herself up by letting him see how much her own hands were shaking had she tried to undo the zip. ‘If I decide to, I’ll let you know.’

She was out of the car before he could detain her any longer but, as she turned towards the modern dental surgery, the sudden whirr of the passenger side window made her glance back.

‘And Taylor!’ He was leaning across the car’s plush interior, his arm across the back of her vacated seat as she came back to see what it was he wanted. ‘I just thought I ought to let you know. If you’re planning to divorce me,’ he said, ‘then I think it only fair to tell you. I’ll fight it every step of the way.’

The week’s filming was over. Everything had gone smoothly and the crew were preparing to return to London.

Normally Taylor would have accompanied them in one of the company vehicles. She had, however, driven her own small hatchback to Scotland so that, with a week’s leave ahead of her, she could make her way back to London at her own pace.

Now, watching Craig coiling up cables, and Paul loading lenses and other photographic equipment into the back of the wagon, reluctantly she considered Jared’s suggestion about visiting Borrowdale while she was in the north.

It would probably be over a three-hour drive with the odd break, she calculated, depending on the road conditions, and the traffic, but that wasn’t the reason why she wasn’t keen to go. It was because the house held so many memories of a time when she had been so happy with Jared, and going there now would only emphasise how terribly wrong their marriage had gone; represent a finality she wasn’t sure she could face. It would, however, be totally foolish not to go and collect her belongings from the house while she was up this way, she argued with herself. And wouldn’t it be best to get things over and done with as soon as possible rather than prolong the inevitable?

‘I’m glad at least that you’ve decided not to stay in Scotland,’ Craig expressed when, having made up her mind, she told him of her plans. ‘Some pretty heavy weather’s forecast over the next few days. I’d come home as soon as you can.’

He himself couldn’t wait to get back, Taylor realised fondly, if the number of times she had heard him ringing Charity over the past week was anything to go by.

‘I will,’ she promised, having not gone into too much depth about why she was stopping off in Cumbria. The truth of the situation hurt too much for her to share even with Craig.

The light was almost fading when she brought the car uphill from the bleak and lonely valley, and turned into the little lane where Jared’s grandmother’s house stood.

Snow had been threatening for most of the journey south and now the Lakeland sky above the glowering peaks of the mountains was an ominous purple.

Having been on the road since lunchtime, Taylor was happy to leave her car exactly where it was in the lane and brave the minus zero wind-chill factor to the house.

A three gabled, grey stone building with bay windows and a sloping drive, it stood alone above a rambling garden with spectacular views across the valley, and was, she remembered from those previous visits, large enough to feel spacious, while still managing to retain a cosy atmosphere.

She hadn’t bothered telling Jared that she was coming. Speaking to him again would only have unsettled her, she had decided, and the task of clearing the house of her things was going to be painful enough without that. Besides, she still had a key.

Warmth was the first thing that struck her as soon as she let herself in, which, though surprising, was more than welcome after the bitter, late Cumbrian afternoon.

Jared had obviously instructed someone to heat the place, she thought, probably guessing that if she did decide to follow his suggestion and turn up here, she would be too proud to ring him.

A small shiver ran through her as she considered just how well he knew her.

It was a relief to shed her thick grey overcoat and boots, and make herself a sandwich and a cup of tea with some of the basic provisions she had bought on the journey down. Only then, with the aid of sustenance, did she feel able to cope with the task ahead of her.

Everywhere she looked there were memories, but particularly in the country ambience of the sitting room with its comfortable sagging sofa and its rug-strewn, flagstone floor.

There were the pen and ink drawings she had sketched of the fells, on their first visit, and for which Jared had made rustic frames during their stay using his late-grandfather’s tools, then hung them in the recesses either side of the huge stone fireplace. They belonged in this house. How could she take them down? Then there was the vast collection of books—mainly Jared’s—on various shelves around the room—bursting with so many diverse subjects. Like travel and history, the Lakeland poets, psychology. Books on different cultures, religions and philosophies, all which reminded her of how well-read and well- travelled Jared was, of his staunch opinion that everyone had a voice, and deserved to be heard.

It was one of the reasons she had fallen in love with him, she remembered painfully, that depth of understanding and fairness he had always seemed to display towards most things, if not, in the end, towards her. And she had been overawed by his experience and his wealth of knowledge.

Having led what she considered to be a rather mundane existence herself, his hard sophistication garnered from a shrewd determined brain and his twelve years seniority had excited her. How often had she lain on that old battered sofa with her head in his lap while he had talked about so many things and she had listened, rapt? And how willingly and wildly had she, on so many occasions afterwards, succumbed to that other kind of experience, the skilled mastery of his lovemaking?

How could things have gone so badly wrong? she wondered desolately, sliding her finger down the spine of a particularly large tome on world affairs. Because they had always made love. Even when they were breaking up they had still craved each other with a hunger that had bordered on desperation, the heat and bitterness of their rows somehow only seeming to kindle desire.

Perhaps if…

Her thoughts were brought up sharply by a sound outside in the hall. No, not in the hall, she thought. Outside the front door!

The wind was increasing in strength, playing with the metal disc over the keyhole. At least she tried reassuring herself that was all it was, until she realised the front door was being thrust forcibly open.

One of Jared’s tenants!

Remembering he had said he sometimes let the place to friends, for a moment Taylor wondered if, as he hadn’t heard from her, he had gone ahead and let someone else have the house this week. But no, he wouldn’t do that, she thought, certain of it. Not when there was the slimmest chance of her coming here!

The door banged rather loudly, as though someone had kicked it closed, and quickly, snatching up the brass poker from the hearth, Taylor raced out into the hall.

‘Are you going to hit me with that?’ Stopping dead, Jared was grimacing down at the potential weapon Taylor was holding. ‘Or is this some new type of fell-walking aid?’ He was carrying two bags of groceries, balancing one on each arm, and sleet was glistening on his jet-black hair.

‘It’s you.’ Heart still thumping, Taylor’s shoulders sagged with relief.

‘I’m sorry.’ Casually dressed in dark trousers and a black anorak, he was shouldering his way past her. ‘I didn’t mean to alarm you.’

Didn’t mean…? Flabbergasted, Taylor demanded, ‘What are you doing here?’

Ignoring her question, he carried the bags into the square, old-fashioned kitchen, dumped them down on the table and started to unpack them.

‘What are you doing?’ Taylor breathed, following, not frightened or shocked any more, just angry. ‘Why are you here?’

‘I spent an awful lot of my childhood in this house,’ he told her. ‘I also happen to own it.’ His long hands were dealing with tins and cartons and packages. ‘I think that gives me the right to come here whenever I get the chance.’

‘Not while I’m here,’ she returned uncompromisingly. Standing in her thin socks, she could feel the cold striking up from the hard stone floor.

‘Really?’ For a moment he stopped what he was doing, while his gaze moved over her jean and sweater-clad slenderness with disconcerting intensity. ‘I can’t think of a better reason to come.’

‘Jared!’ How could he do this to her? A justifiable hurt anger lined her fine features and with it increasing puzzlement. ‘You said you’d be away…’ She remembered him saying that in the car when he had dropped her outside the dental surgery.

‘I am away,’ he said calmly. ‘And put down that poker. You’re making me feel at a distinct disadvantage.’

Him—at a disadvantage! ‘You lied to me,’ she accused, ignoring him.

‘No I didn’t.’

‘Tricked me then.’ Tensely her fingers tightened on the cold brass rod. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Because, one,’ he said, as though he needed to emphasise his point, ‘I wasn’t sure whether I’d be able to get here or not. And two, if I had said I was coming, you wouldn’t have.’

Resentfully she watched him moving around the kitchen, unable to drag her reluctant gaze from his long lean frame as he reached up to open a wall cupboard. ‘Whatever gave you that idea?’

‘And put on some shoes or slippers before you catch your death of cold,’ he advised without looking at her, taking no heed of her little burst of sarcasm.

She stayed right where she was, however, even though her feet were freezing, simply because he had instructed otherwise. ‘Don’t change the subject.’

‘All right. I wanted to be with you. Is that direct enough for you?’

He turned to face her, his eyes glittering with a cold and feral anger.

For a moment his declaration seemed to tear the breath out of her lungs, as powerfully as the wind was tearing at the eaves and chimneys of the old house.

‘Why?’ she said at length, struggling for composure under the influence of his formidable masculinity. ‘So you can take advantage of my weakness and failure ever to resist you?’

The carrier bags rustled as he screwed them up, opened a drawer and stuffed them inside. He sent a wry, sidelong glance down over his shoulder. ‘Not while you’re holding that poker.’

She slung it down, making a point, drawing herself up to her full height. ‘I’m not afraid of you.’

‘Good!’ He thrust the drawer closed, swung away from it. ‘Because I’m sure as hell afraid of you!’

Taylor eyed him with some surprise, a pained query darkening her eyes. ‘Am I so much of a harridan?’

‘A harridan?’ Coming back across the kitchen, he laughed rather harshly. ‘God! I wish you were. At least I’d know how to deal with that. It wouldn’t be any hardship to me to tame a shrew.’

She shuddered, thinking how lethal his brand of taming might be. What woman would stand a chance against his dark and dangerous sensuality? She might feign to put up a fight against it for a while but, in the end, all but the most indifferent would succumb.

‘Oh, no.’ His breath seemed to shiver through him as he stood there now, contemplating, regarding her. ‘You’re quite the opposite, Taylor. Reticent. Uncommunicative. Almost frighteningly aloof. Like a deep, mysterious lake. I used to think it was an admirable quality. In fact, my dear, I must confess, it turned me on—like hell! But there’s a limit to how much unmelted butter a man can get through, even if it’s the loveliest mouth he’s being tempted by. Tell me, Taylor, are you really as cold as you seem? Or is there a real warm woman in there somewhere trying desperately hard to get out? Begging to be rescued from her own worst enemy—herself!’

Is that how he saw her? As a cold, unfeeling human being? With a heart of ice, as other men had accused her of having? Was that why he had been so ready to believe she could hurt her unborn child? Care for nothing but herself? Her independence? Her job?

Pain clouded her eyes and swiftly her lashes came down to hide it. ‘And you think one night trapping me here with you,’ she uttered, cultivating even more of the apparent coolness he had ridiculed, ‘will loosen all my inhibitions— bring out the real warm woman—’ her tone was bitterly emphatic ‘—you seem so sure is there?’

‘Believe me, a man would have to be a genius and it would take more than one night and a diamond cutter to chip through that glacial shell of yours, Taylor. If it is a shell. And I’m hardly trapping you,’ he reminded her brusquely before she could say anything. ‘You came voluntarily.’

‘And I’ll be leaving voluntarily. First thing in the morning!’ she retorted, swinging away.

‘Of course.’ She heard a cupboard being opened, heard it bang forcefully closed again. ‘I’ve got to hand it to you, Taylor. You’re beautiful. Talented. Self-sufficient. But where relationships are concerned, it’s what you do best, isn’t it?’

‘What?’ she queried pointedly. Her eyes were dark and questioning as she turned around.

‘Running away.’

Because she had done exactly that. You’ll run away. Because it was inherent in her. You’ll always run away.

Her breath catching in her throat, she brought her cupped hands up to her nose and mouth, her eyes closing for a few moments while she steeled herself against retaliating.

‘Are you all right?’

He’d asked her that in the car park, she remembered, last Friday after that tense, disconcerting lunch she had shared with him.

He was standing right next to her now. Her body was absorbing his dangerous warmth like a soothing balm through her skin and his scent impinged on her nostrils like an intoxicating musk.

‘Taylor?’

When his fingers touched her arm, however, panicking she jerked away.

‘Of course I am! Why shouldn’t I be?’ she protested and, for the sake of her cold feet and her equilibrium, moved away from him, towards the hall.

He had discarded his anorak when he joined her in the sitting room and the thick black casual shirt he was wearing with his dark trousers was unbuttoned at the throat.

Standing, sorting through some books, Taylor glanced up, her senses leaping as her interest fell too willingly on the hint of crisp dark body hair peeping out over the top of his shirt, emphasising the corded strength of his throat.

‘I see you’ve eaten.’ His gaze was resting on the mug and the plate, which contained the remains of her sandwich. ‘Or put up some show of eating.’

Taylor snapped closed the poetry book she had been looking at. A book of love poems. A book he had bought for her to celebrate their being married for two weeks.

There was dark emotion behind the challenge in the green eyes that clashed with his. ‘Did you come here to start criticising my diet?’

‘No.’ His mouth tugged down on one side. ‘But it’s a darned good idea. Somebody needs to.’

‘Why? Worried about me?’ A little hint of sarcasm slipped out, unheeded, unchecked.

‘Of course.’

‘Well, don’t be. I can take care of myself.’

‘Can you?’ His gaze was tugging over the creamy polo-necked sweater she had been wearing when he had first turned up at Charity’s over a week ago, moving down over her small breasts and waistline and the barest suggestion of curved hips beneath her fitted jeans. ‘You could have fooled me.’

Why? she wanted to throw at him. Because I haven’t been able to eat properly since I saw you again? Because I can’t get you out of my mind and because when you’re around you dominate everything I think, say and do?

Instead, taking another book out of the bookcase, turning it over in her hands, she said, ‘When did you get here anyway?’

He slipped his hands into his pockets. ‘This afternoon. I switched on the heating and went into town to stock up on some things while the house was warming up,’ he told her.

Broodingly she watched him cross the room, pick up the plate and the used mug she had left on the side of the hearth.

‘This place always did bring out the best in you, didn’t it, Taylor?’ He gestured with the mug he was dangling from one finger, his mouth moving wryly. ‘Back in London this would have been in the dishwasher before it was even cold.’

She looked up from the book she was making a performance of studying. ‘Meaning?’

‘Your penchant for order is commendable but sometimes it can be bloody infuriating. It would do you good to be slovenly occasionally. Mess up your hair. Rough it for a while.’

She gritted her teeth against what she considered was yet another of his totally unjust analyses of her.

‘Don’t you have business to attend to?’ Pushing back a strand of the expertly cut hair to which he had metaphorically referred, she watched him move over to the door. ‘Something important you’ve left that can’t possibly proceed without you being around?’ It was one of the reasons for their arguments, she remembered; his always having to work late—something that hadn’t helped lessen her suspicions about him having an affair—and his going away so much, especially when he’d had the gall to accuse her of only being interested in her career!

‘No.’ He sounded remarkably decisive. ‘I meant it when I said that I think we should get back together. When two people have what we had, I think it’s no less than stupidity to throw it all away.’

‘What you had you mean,’ she said softly, hurting. Hadn’t he had a mistress—and the luxury of a convenient wife?

He moved back into the room, setting the mug and plate down on the low table that filled the space on the rug between the long comfortable sofa and a deeply cushioned chair.

‘Are you saying you didn’t get anything out of it too? Because, my pretty wife, it wouldn’t be too much punishment to me to have to remind you.’

‘No!’ She took a step back, seeing the steely resolve burning in his eyes, relaxing a little when he stopped, clearly thinking twice about carrying out his threat.

‘I thought you’d accepted my decision,’ she expressed, uncomfortably conscious of the tremor in her voice. ‘I thought that was the reason why I’m here…’ a toss of her chin indicated the books she was holding ‘… doing all this.’ Puzzled green eyes searched those that were as dark and impenetrable as midnight. ‘It was the last thing you said— about me not divorcing you…’

His black brows came together while he inclined his head in the way he always did when something puzzled him, a gesture that was so poignantly familiar to her that she found herself battling with a host of treacherous emotions.

‘I said that there were things of yours here that you might want to have with you. Things I thought you might be missing or might even have forgotten you had. It wasn’t my intention for you to start clearing them out. You accused me of assuming too much, Taylor. Well I’m not the only one who’s been guilty of that. And what I said was, that if you tried to divorce me, I’d fight it all the way, and I will—until you come to your senses and realise that it was only your petty jealousies and suspicions that broke us up in the first place.’

How could he say that?

Taylor gritted her teeth, decided not to challenge that statement. Instead she said in a much steadier voice, ‘So I just jump back into your bed and everything will be all right?’

A nerve tugged in his jaw for a few silent seconds, the only life in a face that might have been chiselled out of rock.

‘If that’s all I thought it would take, we wouldn’t be standing here now,’ he answered her softly, his arrogance, with what his words conjured up, sending a menacing excitement licking through her veins.

He knew her intimately; from every small fantasy to every last sensitive part of her body, and he had recognised that dangerous attraction that still existed between them. OK. Perhaps he hadn’t come here to capitalise on it, she accepted, but he knew, as well as she did, that if he tried to seduce her back into his bed, she wouldn’t stand a chance against his lethal skill and charisma. And if she stayed here, who knew what sort of fool she could wind up making of herself over him—and at what cost to her self-respect?

Pain warred with anger over his audacity and the knowledge that he had, indeed, tricked her. Without a thought for what she wanted. Without a care about how it might affect her in the end!

‘I’m sorry for misconstruing all your motives,’ she uttered tightly. ‘But there’s one thing I’m not leaving either of us under any misconceptions about.’ Nimbly she stooped to scoop up the plate and mug he had put down on the table. ‘I’m still leaving here first thing tomorrow morning.’