The Morning After

‘But you feel better now?’

‘Yes.’ She flexed one of her hands and watched the colour seep back into the bloodless skin. ‘Odd—to have such a reaction to something that is, after all, only a sham.’

He didn’t answer, something vaguely disturbing in his still, quiet stance. Then, before she could try to work out what was troubling him, he made a move that was rather like a gesture of contempt.

‘You’re right,’ he agreed. ‘The whole thing was an absolute farce. With hindsight I cannot think of a more flippant way to make such solemn vows.’ He sounded harsh and bitter. Annie glanced at him in surprise, but he was already turning away. ‘Take your time. Enjoy your tea,’ he invited as he strode tightly towards his own room. ‘Then get changed and we will get out of here. The quicker we can be alone, the quicker we can put all of this from our minds!’

‘Regretting it already, César?’ she drawled.

He stopped. ‘Maybe,’ he said grimly without turning around. ‘Maybe I am regretting the whole damned thing!’

So, what did you expect? she mocked herself starkly as he shut himself away. Protests? Reassurance? Avowals of undying love? Tears spread across her vision but she blinked them angrily away.

You’re beginning to believe your own press, she told herself angrily. Annie Lacey gets married so therefore she must be in love.

But you’re not in love with him, are you? Are you?

And he is certainly not in love with you!

They had another row before leaving the bungalow, this particular one ending up with them both shouting because this time Annie was determined to win—no matter how scathing he became.

‘Will you take them back?’ she insisted, thrusting the velvet case into the rigid wall of his chest. They were both safely in the case—the necklace and the beautiful sapphire ring. ‘I don’t want them!’

‘Well, neither do I,’ he countered, refusing to take hold of it. ‘They’re yours. I gave them to you, and if there was an ounce of good manners in you you would accept them graciously as most women would do!’

‘I am not most women,’ she snapped, taking offence at even that basically innocent remark. ‘I do not accept ridiculously expensive gifts—even from the man who was my first lover!’ she flashed at him before he could flash the remark at her, and she was sure that he would have done—she could see the threat of it glinting in his angry green eyes. ‘Or because he happens to be my first husband, come to that,’ she added for good measure.

‘And your last if you don’t stop this!’ he countered impatiently.

‘But why do you want me to have them?’ she cried in honest, angry bewilderment. ‘Why—why—why?’

To her absolute surprise dark colour spread across his high cheeks, a sudden discomfited look forcing him to hood his eyes. ‘I made them for you,’ he muttered, so gruffly that she barely caught the words.

‘What?’ she prompted doubtfully. ‘What did you say? You made them—for me? Is that what you said?’

‘Yes,’ he hissed, as though the confirmation were wrenched forcibly from him. ‘They were designed for you—made—made exclusively for you, OK?’

For the first time he sounded truly American. Usually he sounded a rather attractive mix of two cultures, but that forced admission, with its accompanying flail of one angry, defensive, very threatening hand that was warning her not to push the subject further, had been pure American bullishness all the way through.

She blinked, silenced. And with a harsh sigh he thrust his fists into the pockets of his casual camel-coloured trousers. ‘If you don’t want them,’ he gritted, ‘then sell them, chuck them—give them away. But don’t try giving them back to me because I just don’t want them.’

‘But this is crazy!’ she whispered when eventually she found her voice again, unable to leave the subject even with the threat he had issued still pulsing in the air between them. ‘Why should you design something as beautiful as these for someone like me?’

Another sigh. His shoulders hunched, and for a long, tense moment Annie thought that he was going to refuse to answer. ‘They match the colour of your eyes,’ he said at last, in a tight dismissive tone that was supposed to make her say, Oh! That’s why! with relief, when he had to know that that excuse had to be the most laughable he could have offered. These beautiful pieces had been conceived and made long before he’d ever met her, at a time when he’d despised her for everything she was.

‘No,’ she said. ‘It isn’t enough that the sapphires happen to match my eyes. Half the world’s population has blue eyes! So you’re either trying to fob me off with just about the weakest excuse you’ve come up with for anything to date or this is what I suspected it to be from the beginning—a gift of conscience. And, as such, I refuse to accept it—unequivocally.’

Their eyes locked on each other’s, hers in challenge, his in a kind of defiance that she found strangely exhilarating. But as they continued to stand there warring silently other elements began to join in the battle. Her senses began to stir, tiny muscles deep down inside her beginning to pump to a rhythm that set her whole body pulsing.

He had to be feeling it too, because she watched his green eyes darken, his mouth slacken from angry tension into a heart-contracting sensuality.

No. She denied it as the air around them seemed to grow hot and heavy, the ability to breathe it in more difficult with each shallow breath. No. But she couldn’t seem to find the will to break the disturbing contact.

Sex—she named it contemptuously as the whole cacophony of sensation grew into a pounding throb. He wants me, and, God help me, I’m responding! Fingers tingled with the need to touch; breasts stung with a need to feel his mouth closed around them. Warmth flooded the sweet, burning liquid of desire into her shaking limbs.

No. She denied it again. No! And in an act of sheer desperation she broke the mood by stretching out an arm and with a defiant sideways flick sent the velvet case slewing onto a nearby table.

It landed with a thud and a slither. César did not so much as bat an eyelid, but at least the hunger died out of his eyes.