Fire in the Blood

Quietly Nadine said, 'Sean, you're ruining my holiday—haven't you any decent instincts? Why don't you go away and leave me alone?'

'My instincts tell me to stay,' he said, a step nearer.

'Then your instincts are wrong. Our marriage is over, finished, dead!'

'We've been through all that before,' he said impatiently. 'But I'll say it a hundred times, if I have to. Our marriage is legally over, but we're not finished. You know that as well as I do.'

She couldn't deny it, and, anyway, they were past that game of flight and pretence. There was just the truth now.

'Sex was never the problem, though, was it?' She moved and the water swirling around her feet fell away in little silvery fragments. She watched as intently as if it mattered, trying to fight down her awareness of the man standing behind her, his breathing warm on her bare shoulders. It was going to be hard enough to talk to him without her own senses nagging at her. 'We were always good in bed together,' she said without hiding her anger. 'The fighting started when we got out of bed.'

'We can always try staying in bed all the time!' Sean said, and her temper hit the roof.

'Even now you're refusing to take me seriously, you have to make stupid jokes!' She turned on him and stopped dead. His face was a shock to her. It could be a trick of the moonlight, but it seemed bone-white, strained, drawn.

'God knows I don't find this funny,' he muttered. 'I just don't know any other way of handling how I feel. Have you any idea how hard it is for me to admit my own feelings? Men aren't allowed to cry. We learn that at our mother's knee. We're taught to be brave little boys, little soldiers. Big boys don't cry when they fall over or get knocked down. They never show pain or fear. But we feel it, for God's sake! We get scared, and lonely, and if we always have to hide those feelings they hurt far more because we can never let them out, never ask for comfort, never cry out loud.'

She watched him, startled, taken aback. 'I never heard you talk like that before.'

'Maybe that's our trouble,' he said wryly. 'We've never really talked before, just made love.'

'Maybe,' she said, then sighed. 'No, that wasn't our trouble, Sean,' she contradicted. 'Our real trouble was that we were two people each trying to have everything our own way. And from all I can see, you haven't changed, or learnt anything. You still react with stupid, pointless jealousy every time another man comes near me. Poor harmless Johnny Crewe, just now; even Luc Haines, who anyone can see is happily married!'

His eyes darkened. 'I can't help being jealous. It's that damned job of yours. You're a sort of public icon—your face, your body, on show for everyone to stare at, and I hate knowing men stare at you. I know how they feel, because I feel like that, too. They want you as much as I do—no man could look at you and not want you.'

Colour crept up her face. The huskiness in his voice made her feel dizzy.

'If you'd ever really loved me, you would have trusted me!'

'I trust you; I just don't trust other men!'

'But it's me you're angry with!'

That stopped him in his tracks. He stared at her, frowning.

She nodded insistently. 'Yes, you were always angry with me; you wanted me to give up my job.'

'Yes,' he admitted then, and laughed shortly. 'And the irony of it is that now, I suppose, you'll be giving up modelling to concentrate on your TV work.'

'I'll have to, and my modelling would have stopped soon, anyway, because I'm getting too old for close photo work.'

'Too old at twenty-six!' he mocked, and she made a face.

'Well, that's the rules of the game in my business. You only have a few good years at the top, if you even get to the top! That's why I jumped at this offer to work on TV. I wasn't sure I could do it, but I was excited by the chance to try.'

'You'll probably be a huge success, and earn even more money!' he said wryly, and she gave him a quick, searching look.

'Talking about money, what have you managed to do about the money you need for your company?'

'I'm probably selling out,' he said in a flat,

offhand tone.

'Sean!' Nadine turned pale, staring at him in shock. He stared over the moonlit water, his face blank, as if he was talking about someone entirely different.

'I had a very good offer from a guy I saw in Los Angeles while I was there the other day. I had hoped he would invest in us and leave the management intact but if he puts money in he wants control and I can't blame him.'

'But...your company...' she breathed, shattered by this news. 'You built it up, you and Larry and the others, and you had such high hopes, and everything seemed to go so well at first. I know how much it means to you, you can't sell it!'