The Ultimate Betrayal

CHAPTER FOUR

DANIEL was sprawled out on the sitting-room sofa when she entered the room. He had a book thrust in front of his face and was giving a good impression of someone who had not shifted his position in hours. He made no effort to acknowledge her, and after a short pause while she waited in defiance for the expected explosion which never came, she shut the door and went into the kitchen. She was smiling to herself as she went though, because he hadn’t fooled her for a moment with that air of indifference—she had seen the sitting-room curtain twitch as she paid the cabby. For some reason his need to hide his concern put a lighter step in her walk.

The coffee dripped through its filter into the jug and Rachel watched it absently. Her coat was thrown across the back of one of the kitchen chairs, her boots standing neatly by the door.

He entered like a cat stalking its prey on silent tread, shoeless, his casual trousers a snug fit to his flat hips, his dark green fleeced cotton shirt tucked loosely into them.

‘You’d better call Mandy,’ he muttered, kicking out a chair and dropping into it.

‘Why?’ Rachel glanced at him and then away again, her tone lacking a single spark of interest in his reply.

‘Because I’ve been giving her hell all day, believing you were there and she wasn’t telling me.’

‘And how do you know for sure it wasn’t exactly like that?’

There was a pause before he said reluctantly, ‘Because I got my mother to watch the children and went round to her flat to see for myself.’

‘So now both your mother and Mandy know I escaped for the day,’ she noted drily. The coffee was ready, and she lifted a pretty painted mug down from the rack.

‘You can’t blame me for worrying about you when you went off half-cocked like that,’ he grunted, looking uncomfortable.

Good! she thought. That should teach him not to treat me like a child. I might be one, but it doesn’t mean I want to be treated like one. And, anyway, it might do him some good to realise that his predictable little wife is not so predictable after all.

She sat down opposite him, hugging the hot mug in her hands because they still felt cold. Daniel slouched in his chair, his forearms resting on the table and his fingers twining tensely as though he was struggling with something uncomfortable inside. His head was bent, his hair untidy—as though he had spent the day raking his fingers through the thick black mass.

She had never seen him like this before, lacking his usual poise.

‘Your parents know too,’ he said suddenly. ‘I rang them when I couldn’t think of anywhere else you could have gone. They’ve been expecting you to turn up in Altrincham all afternoon. You’d better give them a ring to let them know you’re OK.’

So, it needed just three places to check before he ran out of ideas where to look for her. What did that tell her about herself? Having done enough self-analysis for one day, she decided to put that one in abeyance for the time being.

‘I’ll tell you what, Daniel,’ she suggested instead. ‘Why don’t you call them back, since it was you who worried them all in the first place? Call your mother—and Mandy too while you’re at it. I have no wish to speak to her personally,’ she added coolly.

‘Who—my mother?’ He sounded startled.

‘Mandy,’ she drawled sarcastically, surprised, because he had to be feeling knocked off balance a bit to make that kind of mistake. Daniel was not usually stupid. ‘You brought her back into this mess after making much of her learning to mind her own business, so you call her back, if you think she’s that bothered.’

‘We were all bothered!’ he snapped, sweeping her an angry glance.

‘I’m not suicidal, you know,’ she informed him levelly, sipping at her coffee and feeling more at ease the more tense he became. ‘I might have been a dumb-brained fool where you’re concerned, but I won’t be forfeiting the rest of my life because of it.’

‘I never so much as considered you were!’ he grunted, adding gruffly, ‘I never considered you dumb-brained either.’

‘Of course you did,’ she argued. ‘When you bothered wasting valuable time considering me at all, that is,’ she added witheringly.

He sucked in a short breath, fighting not to rise to the bait. ‘Where did you go?’ he asked.

‘To London,’ she told him, bringing his head up sharply.

‘Where in London?’ he demanded. ‘Doing what? You’ve been out since ten o’clock this morning. That’s almost twelve hours! What the hell did you find to do in London with all the stores closed that could take twelve bloody hours?’

‘Maybe I found myself a man!’ she taunted, watching with a mild

fascination as his face drained of all colour. ‘It isn’t that difficult to pick one up, you know.’ She twisted the knife while he was still off balance from her first stab at him. ‘Maybe I decided to take a leaf out of your book and go in search of some—comfort, because the going at home suddenly got tough!’

He shot to his feet, knocking the chair to the ground with a clatter. ‘Stop it!’ he rasped, raking a hand through his tousled hair. ‘Stop trying to score points off me, Rachel! It isn’t like you to take pleasure in hurting others.’

No, it wasn’t, she agreed. Funny really, how one’s nature could alter virtually overnight. Whereas once she would never have dreamed of striking out at anyone, she was suddenly consumed with the desire to cut to the raw! She didn’t even care that her parents would be worrying about her. Or that Daniel’s mother was probably sitting in her flat not a mile away from here on tenterhooks, waiting to hear that her darling Rachel had returned safely to the fold.