The Ultimate Betrayal

‘Take my advice, son,’ Jenny was saying, ‘and tread very carefully from now on. Because if Rachel ever…’

Rachel ran. She didn’t want to know what would happen if Rachel ever! What was happening right now to Rachel was more than enough to contend with with-out worrying about what would happen if Rachel ever…!

CHAPTER SIX

IF RACHEL ever—what? she found herself wondering later, while she hovered in Michael’s small bathroom waiting for Daniel to finish in their bedroom so that

she could sneak in there and get ready without having to come face to face with him again.

If Rachel ever found out about his other women? Well, Rachel had already done that.

If Rachel ever decided to grow up? she then pondered cynically, catching a glimpse of her new self in the bathroom mirror and almost doing a double-take because it was like looking at a total stranger!

And just look at you! she told that reflection. Hiding away in here when you don’t even need to use the bathroom! You daren’t bath in case the steam ruins your new hairstyle. You daren’t wash because you aren’t confident enough to re-do your clever make-up. Daniel is taking you out—but only because of some reason of his own which has to hinge on his guilty conscience! And he’s expecting to take out that other person he met downstairs—the same one you’re staring at right now— when really she’s just an illusion! A disguise the real Rachel is trying to hide behind!

She heard a door open and close, then Daniel’s distinctive tread as he made his way back down the stairs. With a deep breath and a harried glance at the woman in the mirror, she let herself out of her hiding place. Over her arm lay one of the new dresses she had bought that day, and she hung it on the wardrobe door, then stood back to harry herself over whether she dared wear it or not.

It was a rather disturbingly sexy thing, made of a dark ruby lace lined in fine black silk. It had a heart-shaped bodice held up by two rather flimsy-looking bootlace straps, and the delicate fabric clung almost lovingly in sensual lacy scollops across the creamy slope of her breasts. It left her arms and shoulders bare—and the best part of her back, she recalled, giving the dress a twitch with her hand to remind herself just how low it dipped at the back. The assistant had seen her uncertain expression when Rachel had realised just how much of her skin it revealed, and had rushed off to come back with a black velvet bolero with long fitted sleeves, a small stand-up collar and two curving front panels, which left the seductive dip of ruby lace between her breasts tantalisingly exposed.

So, did she wear it? she wondered pensively. Or did she revert to the black dress hanging in the wardrobe that she usually wore when she went out with Daniel?

Kate slipped into the bedroom, looking all rosy pink and smelling of talcum powder. She came to stand beside Rachel, her blue eyes widening on the new dress.

‘Is that what you’re going to wear?’ she asked in soft awe.

‘I don’t know,’ Rachel answered uncertainly. ‘Maybe—maybe I should just fall back on my black dress…’ Her hand went to draw the other dress from the wardrobe when Kate stopped her.

‘But you can’t wear that!’ she exclaimed, sounding horrified. ‘Daddy is all dressed up in his penguin suit and bow tie! He looks fantastic!’

Rachel’s lips twitched; obviously Kate’s fantastic’ daddy deserved something better than the black dress.

‘That old black thing is boring, anyway,’ her daughter added.

Boring, Rachel repeated to herself. Now there’s a word she had become very familiar with over the last few weeks. ‘Then the red it is,’ she drily agreed. The old Rachel was boring; this new one was determined not to be! ‘Now you go and help Grandma with Michael while I get myself ready.’ She dropped a kiss on her daughter’s cheek then watched her scamper off—eager, it seemed to Rachel, to be as much help as she could to see her parents go out and enjoy themselves.

Well…she thought a trifle breathlessly as she paused outside the sitting-room door. She had been suitably drooled over by all those in the kitchen playing snap. All she had to do now was steady her stuttering heart and go and face the real expert!

Kate was right, she observed as she slipped quietly into the room, Daniel did look fantastic in his black dinner-jacket. But it was more than just the superb cut of the cloth. It was the man inside it that made all the difference. There was an air of maturity and sophistication about him which only seemed to increase that innate sex-appeal he had always possessed. He was over by the drinks tray, his face turned away from her as he poured himself a simple tonic water. He hadn’t realised she’d come into the room yet, and Rachel was glad because it gave her a few moments to steady the effect he had on her senses. His thick dark hair was as neat and semi-casual as it always was, neither too short nor too long, fashionable or old-fashioned. But then, that spoke a lot about his character. Daniel had always stamped his impact on people with a clever balance between the conventional and the unconventional. A man of superconfidence—underplayed. And intimidating for it, because there was so much of the real person he liked to keep hidden.

He was intimidating her now as she stood there nervously fingering the lip of her black velvet bolero. He had never used to make her feel like this—in fact, she had never used to think of Daniel as anything but the man she loved. And it was yet another first she had to contend with, that she could actually feel overawed by a man she had lived and slept with for seven years of her life.

He was a stranger to her, she realised with a painful start. A stranger living beneath an umbrella of close intimacy. Had it always been like that? she wondered. Then she went cold inside as the answer came back to her, clear and cruel in its honesty. Yes, it had always been like that. Daniel was the stranger she had loved blindly, married blindly, and lived with blindly for seven whole years.

Was he aware that she didn’t know him, really know him, for the man he was out there beyond these cloistered walls? And if he did know, did it matter to him much? Or had he been quite content to live the dual life of family man and dynamic tycoon where one role did not intrude on the other?

He turned then and saw her standing there, and her heart gave another painful twist as she watched him narrow his eyes so that she could not read their expression as he ran them slowly over her.

He hides away from me, she realised. He does it all the time. Even now, as he ran his gaze from the top of her gleaming new hairstyle and her perfectly made-up face which did so much to enhance all those beautiful features even Rachel herself was not aware she possessed, he revealed nothing of himself. The dress was different, far more sophisticated than anything she had ever worn before. It accentuated her slender figure, the long graceful line of her legs. Daniel took it all in without showing a single hint of what he was thinking behind his urbane mask.

Then, without any warning, his lashes flickered, and there was a flash of emotion before he had severely dismissed it again.

Hurt. It startled her because she was sure she saw hurt in that expression then! But why should he be hurting because his wife was standing here dressed up to go out with him?

Or maybe it wasn’t hurt, but guilty conscience which caused that spasm. What was it his mother had said? ‘You’ve kept her so wrapped up in cotton wool.’ And that must have hit him on the raw, just as looking at her standing here like this, different, yet still the same Rachel inside, was hitting his conscience, because he must know she would never have gone to these extremes to make herself different if he had not made her feel so damned uncertain of the person she had always believed herself to be!

‘Drink before we go?’ he asked.

He wasn’t going to comment. She felt like a balloon slowly deflating from a central prick with a pin. ‘Nothank you,’ she refused, damning her voice for sounding husky. ‘Did…did you manage to reserve a table somewhere?’