The Ultimate Betrayal

‘Why not?’ he persisted ruthlessly. ‘How do you stand having me living in the same house with you—sleeping in the same bed as you—touching you—holding you— how do you stand it, Rachel? How—how—how?’

Because I love you, you rotten bastard! she thought, and let the tears break free on a helpless sob.

Daniel sighed, the sound coming from some deeply wretched part of him, and the next thing she knew he had freed her captured wrists to wrap his arms around her and he was falling back, taking her with him, his body covering her, curling around her and holding her, holding her so tight and so close she could barely breathe.

‘Does this feel as though we’ve grown apart?’ he demanded sensually.

‘No.’ This felt wonderful, the only place in the world she wanted to be.

‘Then shut up about us growing apart,’ he said thickly, then kissed her, long and fiercely, giving her no chance to think, no chance to recover, but just governing her every thought and feeling until she began to sink languidly into the warm morass of his loving.

‘Did you let that bastard touch you, Rachel?’ The rough-voiced enquiry brought her swimming protestingly up from the wonderful place she had sunk to.

Her eyes flicked open, furious blue staring into tortured grey, searching, half refusing to believe that he had actually asked her that question.

But he had. ‘Did you?’ he persisted when she said nothing. ‘I want to know—I need to know! God,’ he choked, ‘I have to know!’

She stared at him for a moment longer, then bared her angry teeth to say, ‘Go to hell.’

He did, it seemed, she realised later, go straight to hell, but he made sure he took her with him. It happened with an angry passion that had him wrenching open her robe then releasing himself from his own clothes so he could thrust inside her with such appalling ruthlessness that she didn’t think she took a single breath until it was all over.

Then she rolled away on to her own side of the bed and Daniel went into the bathroom and shut the door.

He stayed in there a long time. Long enough to let her crawl beneath the duvet and be asleep by the time he came back.

The next evening, the telephone began ringing just as she was clearing away the children’s evening meal. She walked towards the hall extension and picked it up, frowning in annoyance because the children had the TV on too loud.

‘Rachel Masterson,’ she murmured absently into the receiver, stretching the telephone cable to its limits in her effort to reach the sitting-room door so that she could pull it to.

There was a pause on the other end of the line, then a cool voice asked to speak to Daniel.

‘I’m afraid he isn’t home yet,’ she answered. ‘Can I take a message or get him to call you back?’

Another pause while the caller deliberated with herself, and Rachel looked distractedly at the time. She had a pair of steaks under the grill; if the woman didn’t hurry up, she—

‘This is Lydia Marsden,’ the cool voice explained, and Rachel went absolutely still.

CHAPTER NINE

RACHEL was still staring at the telephone where she had placed it very carefully back on its rest when Daniel came home a few moments later. He saw her as soon as he got in the door—and stopped dead in his tracks.

‘What is it?’ he asked sharply, seeing at a glance that she was suffering some kind of shock.

Her hand lifted to her cheek, ice-cold fingers resting on equally cold flesh. ‘Lydia just called,’ she told him blankly. ‘She wants you to call her back.’

As she continued to stare at him, wondering if she was just going to faint quietly away or go the whole hog and fall apart at the very seams, she saw Daniel’s face suffuse with hot colour, watched his chest lift and fall on a single throbbing breath as emotion, the like of which she had never seen him display before, threatened to explode right over her bemused head.

His mouth tightened and lost all vestige of colour, his nostrils flaring like a wild animal threatening attack. He dropped his briefcase to the floor, sucking in another breath through teeth so tightly clenched that the air whistled as it was pulled into his heaving lungs.

Then he moved to a paralysed Rachel, taking hold of her to move her bodily out of the way so that he could get to his study. The door slammed shut behind him. Rachel stood staring at it, wondering just what had taken place here in her hallway—besides the holocaust happening inside herself, that was.

The mere mention of Lydia’s name could bring on a reaction like that? Have him bodily shifting her aside like that?

She choked on a strangled sob, then quite ruthlessly controlled herself, refusing to give in to what was going on inside her.

Lydia had called, and Daniel had run like a man possessed!

She was nursing Michael in the sitting-room when Daniel came looking for her. He looked pale, and, although most of that terrible emotion had diminished, she could still see the residue glimmering in his eyes. Kate ran to him for her customary hug but only received a token stroke of her golden head. Sam waved a leghe was stretched out in front of the TV, engrossed in an old black and white movie. Michael was tired, and only fit to give his father a concessionary glance before sinking himself back into the pleasure of being held in his mother’s arms.