The Faithful Wife

Suddenly aware that she was rapidly losing her precious control, rattling cutlery like castanets, practically hurling the china onto the table, and that Jake was watching her with narrowed eyes, she did her best to calm down.

She dragged in a deep and wobbly breath, and Jake took the knives and forks from her shaky hands.

‘I’ll see to the table; you keep an eye on the food.’

She turned away jerkily. She couldn’t meet his eyes, not wanting to see cynical understanding or, even worse, lurking amusement.

Bacon was sizzling; eggs were popping and almost jumping around in the pan. She turned the heat down under them and rescued the bacon, making her movements smooth and contained now, forcing herself to keep calm because he was more than astute enough to read her mind, to laugh at her inside his head for being dumb enough to think that a couple of hours of mind-bending sex could alter anything.

He’d made the toast, and was dropping it into the rack when she slid the loaded plates down on the linen place-mats.

He held her chair out for her and she arranged herself in her seat, praying she looked relaxed enough to put him off the scent.

‘Happy Christmas, Bella.’ It sounded more like a question than a salutation. He joined her at the table. ‘I don’t have a gift for you, but you’ll understand why, given the circumstances.’

Last year he’d chosen diamonds in New York. The only stones he knew that could come anywhere near the brilliance of her eyes.

The velvet-lined box had been in his breast pocket when he’d walked in the door and found her wrapped around Guy Maclaine.

He?

??d handed the gems over to charity.

‘I could give you the perfume I’d brought along as a gift for Evie, only I don’t quite see you ever using it,’ she offered, the lightness of her tone achieved with enormous difficulty.

It was a silly, pointless conversation to be having, when the air they breathed was full of tension. Well, for her, at least. But she supposed the show had to go on—and all that stiff upper lip stuff. She picked up her cutlery and unconsciously emulated Jake, cutting her bacon into very small pieces and pushing them around her plate, unaware of his suddenly narrowed eyes focusing on her.

‘You said Evie had meddled in your life before?’ He gave up all pretence of eating and poured coffee for them both. Hot and strong and black, the way they both liked it. Could she have been telling the truth? Had she had nothing to do with this set-up at all?

Whoever had arranged it had done him a huge favour; he accepted that now. His hurt, the sense of bitter betrayal, had been too great to let him seek her out. Being forced into her company had allowed him to accept that he still loved her.

At first he’d disbelieved everything she’d said, colouring every word that came out of her mouth with the dark shades of that final betrayal. But he’d come to see that a lot of the blame for what had happened had been his, and he didn’t want to believe that most of what she’d said to him was lies.

If he could get to the bottom of what had happened here it would be a start. She hadn’t answered, was staring into space, apparently, cradling her cup in her long white hands. ‘So what happened? What did she do?’ He gave her a gentle verbal prod.

What did it matter? Bella gave an involuntary shrug and replaced her cup on its saucer. Still, she supposed the subject was unimportant enough—it certainly didn’t have any bearing on what had happened between them last night—a subject he wouldn’t want to have to discuss—and it would beat sitting around in silence.

And if last night hadn’t meant a damn thing to him, had been simply a way of assuaging lust, then she could pretend it had been the same for her. Couldn’t she?

‘She entered a photograph of me for a nationwide competition to find what they called “the face of La Donna”—to launch the then-new exclusive range of cosmetics and fragrances. I didn’t know a thing about it until I heard I’d won.’

She gave him a level look, hoping she was boring his socks off. The rags to riches storyline wouldn’t mean a thing to him. As far as she knew he took the privilege of wealth for granted. All he’d ever wanted, in her experience, was more of it.

‘At first I was embarrassed,’ she remembered, ‘then furious with her. A modelling career had never entered my head. But she was little more than a kid—only thirteen at the time—and we’d always been close, so I couldn’t stay mad with her for long.’

‘It must have changed your life.’ He had always assumed she’d gone out for fame and fortune herself, capitalising on her fantastic looks. A slight frown indented his brow as he replenished their cups from the pot.

Had he assumed too much? If he’d been wrong about one thing, could he be wrong about others? Why hadn’t he asked her more than the most basic questions about her earlier life? Because, to him, the past hadn’t mattered. Only the present. He had won the only woman he’d ever truly wanted, and the time he’d spent with her had been filled with the wonder of the achievement, the wonder of her.

And the rest of the time—me majority of it, as she’d reminded him—he’d been bent on achieving success on success in the world of high finance. So what did that make him?

An over-achiever with no room in his head for the little things, the things that mattered. His self-esteem reached rock bottom.

‘Dramatically,’ she agreed, oblivious to his mental turmoil, gone away from him into the past. ‘I was still in shock when I went for that first meeting with Guy. He was, and still is, of course, head of the agency which was running the launch campaign. I was painfully awkward, stiff and shy and terrified. He took me right under his wing,’ she recalled, her mouth softening fondly. ‘Guy made me see there was nothing to be frightened of and everything to go for. I honestly don’t think I could have gone through with it without him.’

‘Well, bully for him!’ Everything inside him froze at her repeated and doting mention of that hated name. His reaction was instinctive, the bitterness of a man for his enemy.

Bella gave him a look of shock which quickly turned to angry, defensive castigation.