Marriage on the Rebound

Her hands came up, touching his lapels as she murmured something urgent to him that made him bring his own hands up to cover hers while he made some equally urgent reply.

The golden head shook as she murmured something else, and, on a sigh that seemed to rasp from the very depth of his soul, he muttered something tightly—then lowered his dark head to kiss her.

‘No,’ Shaan whispered, still trying for denial.

Yes, insisted fate. This is it. Truth time. Look at it.

Look at it.

And to make sure that she did the veil of self-delusion was ripped cleanly from her eyes so that she was seeing—seeing it all—in a wild, wretched kaleidoscope of cruel images. All of them revolving around Rafe.

Rafe, the man she’d married. Rafe, the man she had given herself to night after night after night. Rafe, the man she had come to trust and believe in.

The man she had fallen madly, blindly—stupidly—in love with while he still loved Madeleine. Had never stopped loving Madeleine.

She must have staggered, though she wasn’t aware of it, but something alerted Jemma. ‘Shaan?’ she questioned sharply. ‘What the hell—?’ Then, ‘My God,’ she gasped out rashly. ‘Isn’t that Rafe over there with that woman…?’

Shaan heard no more, because she was suddenly running—running madly, blindly, in an effort to get away before she fell apart inside.

‘Shaan!’

She ignored Jemma’s sharp call of alarm, ignored the muttered complaints from people she bumped into, ignored everything as she ran, swerving around comers and crossing busy roads without looking, running away from herself as much as she was running away from Rafe.

‘Shaan!’ It was Jemma’s hand closing around her arm and yanking fiercely on it that stopped her from running out beneath the wheels of a car. ‘For goodness’ sake!’ she gasped in shaken fury. ‘What are you trying to do—kill yourself?’

‘I have to—get away,’ Shaan panted, beginning to shake—shake violently.

‘You have to calm down,’ Jemma countered sternly. And, keeping a firm hold on Shaan’s arm, she glanced impatiently around her. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘We’re only a step away from the wine bar. Let’s go and get you a stiff drink, then you can tell me what the hell all of this is about…’

Grimly she guided Shaan along the street and in through the wine bar doors. ‘Now,’ she said once she had secured them a table over in the comer of the room and set a stiff brandy in front of Shaan. ‘Who was that woman? Did you know her?’

‘That was M-Madeleine,’ Shaan whispered shakily.

‘You mean the same Madeleine Piers married?’ Jemma said frowningly. ‘But what’s so wrong with that? She is Rafe’s sister-in-law, after all.’

‘He’s in love with her. He always has been.’ Always will be, she added silently, and closed her eyes as she began to shake again, so badly that Jemma picked up the brandy glass and put it to her lips.

‘Drink,’ she commanded. ‘You need it. Drink.’

Almost desperately, Shaan drank, felt the burning vapours permeate through her system, and at last began to get a hold on herself. The terrible shaking slowed and the colour in her face returned, easing into something a little less corpse-like.

‘Now explain what you mean,’ Jemma insisted grimly after watching all of this happen.

Explain. Shaan’s long lashes fluttered open to reveal dark brown irises gone utterly bottomless with a shock and horror Rafe would have instantly recognised if he had been there to see it happen.

But as it was Rafe was with Madeleine.

‘Rafe is in love with M-Madeleine,’ Shaan repeated threadily. ‘I th-think they even got together for a time,’ she added. ‘Until M-Madeleine became confused as to which brother sh-she really loved and ended up running away f-from both of them to her mother in the States.’

‘And how do you know all of this?’

‘Rafe told me.’ And, if it was possible, her eyes went even blacker. ‘I—overheard s-something he said on the telephone and—and faced him with it.’ She swallowed thickly. ‘So he told m-me…’

Jemma stared at her, shocked—yet not shocked, because she had always suspected that there was some hidden reason why Rafe Danvers had taken his brother’s place.

But because he loved his brother’s wife?

‘And you’ve stayed with him?’ she muttered as anger began to burn up inside her. ‘After finding this out?’