Fire in the Blood

She hung up a moment later and lay back on the bed, her arms behind her head. She didn't really want to go to Miami, but it was a heaven-sent opportunity to get away from Sean for a while. She wasn't even sure she would come back here. She might fly to London instead. The whole idea of this holiday had been to get away from her problems back home, but Sean had brought them here with him, and she knew she wouldn't be able to concentrate on her painting lessons while Sean was prowling around, disturbing her with his talk of affairs and trying again.

She had been tempted. Why try to deny it? She closed her eyes, shivering convulsively. Oh, yes, she had been tempted; the suggestion had sent a wave of desire crashing through her. But she mustn't be so weak; she had to remember all the reasons why she must not let Sean talk her into anything so disastrous.

She couldn't face getting hurt again, and theirs had always been an explosive relationship; what chance was there that either of them had changed in the time apart?

Their careers had kept them apart so much, and even when they were together there had been constant friction. Sean was jealous of every man she ever met, especially Jamie Colbert, of course. He couldn't believe that Jamie didn't want to be her lover, wasn't in love with her.

She sighed, her hazel eyes wry. And it was true, in a way. Jamie was in love with her. But only in the same sense that he loved every girl he photographed. Jamie loved what he saw in his camera's lens: he used his camera to freeze time, catch a woman like a flower, at her most lovely, preserve her for eternity. It was a drive for power, in a way; he wanted to control what the camera looked at, arrange the woman, her clothes, her background, and then fix it for ever.

Jamie's love for her was not personal, not particular, but Sean would never believe that. He wanted her himself, so he assumed that Jamie must. His jealousy had not been rational, and neither had her own.

Because she had been jealous, too; she didn't deny it. How could she help being jealous of all those lovely women in the film business who pursued him night and day in the hope of getting a big part in one of his films? She hadn't had to descend to those tactics to get on in her career, but she knew plenty of girls who had, who were eager to offer themselves to any man who could be useful to them, and Sean himself had told her often enough about passes which had been made at him by ambitious girls. Before they'd met he had had a whole string of girlfriends, although none of them had lasted for long. Sean had once had a very wild reputation. Nadine knew that she had had far better reasons for being jealous over him than he had ever had for being jealous over her.

And, even if their relationship had survived the long partings, the jealousy and suspicion that kept poisoning their love, they would still have been torn apart by Sean's angry demands that she give up her career to have a baby. She could never forget the way he had refused to listen to her, refused to try to understand her point of view.

He would not have given up his entire career in order to have a baby, she had kept saying. Why should she?

'Oh, don't be ridiculous, it's not the same at all,' he'd growled. 'I'm a man, I can't have babies. You're a woman; having babies is what nature intended you for!'

'And nothing else, I suppose!' she had flared, hardly believing he had said such a thing, sounding as if he meant every word of it, too.

'Well, you do have other uses,' Sean had said, and actually laughed, looking at her through his lashes with deliberate sensuality.

'Don't treat me like this, Sean!' she had burst out, so angry her voice had shaken. 'You sound like Valentino! Well, you're no desert sheikh and I don't have the harem mentality. How dare you say I have my uses?'

'Oh, don't be ridiculous, it was a joke!' he had snapped back, scowling.

'Some joke! It doesn't make me laugh.'

'You never have had a sense of humour!' he had growled, looking at her as if he didn't even like her, let alone love her. 'What's the matter with you these days? We used to be able to talk to each other, we laughed at the same jokes once, but lately every time I say a word you bite my head off!'

She had been taken aback by that accusation and looked at him uncertainly, wondering, Was that true? A sense of desolation had swept over her, a sense of helplessness. They were being pulled apart remorselessly and she didn't know how to stop it. She only knew she loved him and she didn't want to lose him, yet at the same time she was not prepared to let him dictate what she did with her life.

A little more gently she had tried to explain herself to him. 'Look, Sean, I know you want to have a baby, and I want one too, some day, but I have my own agenda, and it doesn't involve having a baby for some years yet. I want to go on modelling while I still can, and then start a new career, with a future. Only after that will I be ready to take some years out to have a baby or two, see them through the first few years, and then go back to work after they've started school.'

'You don't have to stop work for years. You can get a nanny; most career women do!'

'Maybe, but I can't see the point. Why have a baby at all if I'm going to hand it over to some other woman to look after while I go back to work? I might have help with the baby on a part-time basis, to give myself a break, I might even do some part-time work once the baby is two or three, but until I'm ready to be a full-time mother I'm not having a baby at all.'

'You just don't want to have a baby, full stop!' Sean had accused.

'I told you.. .1 do want one, one day, but I'm not ready to do it yet!'

He had given her a grim look. 'If we follow your agenda I'll be in my forties by the time you have a baby! I don't want to wait that long.'

'Well, I'm sorry, but maybe we could work out a compromise...' she had begun, and he had exploded.

'I know your idea of compromise! You mean you get your own way and I accept it!'

'No, that's your idea, not mine. You're the one who's determined to have his own way.'

'When we got married I thought we would be starting a family right away.'

'You didn't tell me that when you asked me to marry you! You didn't tell me you expected me to have a baby right away.'

'I assumed you would want one! We used to talk about having children and you seemed as keen as I was...'

She had remembered then those weekends when they had cuddled up together on the couch in his country cottage, in front of a roaring log fire, and talked dreamily about what they wanted from life. A family had always been part of their dreams.