Marriage on the Rebound

RAFE was standing in the middle of the room, jacket pushed back, clenched hands resting on his hips in a posture that could only be read as aggressive.

‘Now you’d better explain to me what this is all about,’ he said. ‘And it had better be good, Shaan,’ he tagged on warningly. ‘Because I am tired and I’m jet lagged and I’m in no mood for any of this.’

She could see that. She wasn’t a fool. She could see that he was angry—pulsing with it, actually. Throbbing. ‘I told you—in my note,’ she s

aid. And looked down and away from him—simply because it hurt too much to look upon that big, lean body and that hard, handsome face, look upon the man who, somewhere along the line, she had allowed herself to imagine really did belong to her.

And that had been her biggest mistake, she realised now—forgetting how they’d begun all of this and believing the illusion.

‘About living a lie? Is that what you think we’ve being doing, living one big lie?’

‘Yes.’ It was that honest, that simple. She didn’t even need to expand on it.

But neither could she continue to just stand here, loving him—hating him. Wishing she had never seen him with Madeleine.

Because all she could see now was him holding Madeleine. And it hurt—hurt so damned much that she had to do something, anything, to override that vision.

It was then that she noticed the television set talking away to its lost audience, and she used that as her excuse, moving stiffly across the room to reach down and switch it off—then almost immediately wished she hadn’t when a new kind of silence began throbbing in the laden atmosphere.

‘So you leave me, just like that,’ Rafe pressed into that thickened silence. ‘No discussion. Without even the slightest hint that you may feel like this. You just wake up this morning deciding that we’ve been living a lie and calmly walk out on me?’

His anger and contempt and derision cut into her like a knife, and she responded instinctively. ‘What would you have preferred me to do?’ she turned to flash back at him. ‘Continue pretending until you’d had enough?’

That shocked him, the real bitterness in her tone hitting him on a raw spot that expanded his wide chest in a sharp intake of air.

But it also made him look at her—really look at her—which in turn made her wish she had held her tongue. Because she knew he was now seeing the strain in her face, the pallor, the black orbs of pain that would remind him of another time when he had witnessed her hurting as badly as this.

Sure enough, his eyes narrowed shrewdly. ‘There’s something else going on here,’ he decided. ‘I’ve done something, haven’t I?’ His perception stunned her. ‘I’ve unwittingly done something that offended you so badly you just walked out on me!’

Shaan’s heart contracted. ‘Isn’t it enough that we’ve spent the last two months living out a lie together?’ she shot back defensively.

‘No, it isn’t,’ he grimly denied, starting towards her. And she had o steel herself not to back off, there was so much latent anger in his manner. ‘Because what we share every night in our bed is no lie, Shaan, and you know it!’

‘There’s more to a marriage than basic sex, you know,’ she denounced as he reached her.

‘Yes,’ he nodded. ‘There’s a thing called sharing—the good and the bad things. And another called talking.’ His hand came up, cupping her pale cheek. ‘As in discussing our problems and trying to resolve them.’

‘I’ve already resolved mine,’ she snapped. ‘By leaving.’

‘Why?’

‘I’ve told you why!’ Angrily she slapped his hand away from her cheek before she did something stupid like turning her hungry mouth into it.

He simply put it back again. ‘Then try again,’ he suggested. ‘And keep on trying until you come up with something I can accept as the truth. Because if yon expect me to believe, Shaan, that you can’t stand me touching you, then you’re a fool, and, worse, must think me a damned fool!’

And to prove his point his other hand snaked round her waist to pull her against the solid heat of his body. It was awful. She couldn’t even control the sharp intake of air into her lungs as the sweet, hot sting of awareness shivered through her.

‘It was wrong, Rafe!’ she burst out in sheer desperation. ‘I did tell you from the beginning that what we were doing felt wrong to me!’

“‘Wrong.’” His eyes began to burn. ‘Four nights ago you lay in my arms with your legs wrapped around me and your eyes drowning in my eyes while we shared the most—perfect experience we have ever shared. And you dare to tell me it was wrong now?’

Oh, God. She closed her eyes, swallowing as a dry lump of pain lodged itself in her aching throat because she was suddenly seeing him lying with Madeleine like that, and she couldn’t bear it—she couldn’t!

‘I never said the sex wasn’t good!’ she responded wretchedly.

‘Then what are you saying?’ he persisted relentlessly. That it isn’t enough any more?’

‘It was never enough!’