Bittersweet Passion

Between the vibrant wings of her hair the pale triangle of her face froze. ‘No!’

‘I didn’t ask a question, and if you’re not there when I come home I’ll put you there. A scene in the middle of the night isn’t likely to leave you much dignity. One scene a day exhausts my patience.’

‘You … bastard,’ she whispered furiously.

He viewed her with hard mockery. ‘Was it worth it? Was it like your fantasy or was it too real? I don’t deal in illusions so don’t expect me to apologise for smashing yours.’

She wanted to look on Dane as unemotionally as he looked on her. But it wasn’t in her not to feel, and his lovemaking had forged ties within her that she didn’t want to examine but couldn’t suppress. Even though her mind told her she owed him nothing, something much more female and old as time was currently bound up in wondering where he was heading and who he might be going to and did he really need to humiliate her any further by disappearing tonight of all nights?

She relived Zelda’s bitter response to Dane’s marriage and shuddered. All these years and she still wasn’t clear of him. She must have been crazy about Dane once and had he even known, had he even cared? His affairs never lasted very long. He bored very easily, very quickly. So how long could this marriage he couldn’t quickly repudiate last? A week, two weeks? How long would it take him to admit that he was bored? But this wasn’t an affair, it was an act of revenge. To keep her here when he didn’t want her, when that elemental, purely physical oblivion had been nothing to him but a retaliation for the trickery he believed her capable of. If she had ever dreamt of Dane making love to her, it had not been the entire menu in one raw, indescribable sitting …

And the terrible irony was that he thought he had given her what she wanted. His last words had made it so humiliatingly clear that he believed she loved him. Now that he had calmed down he had selected the most obvious explanation. He knew her too well to continue to suspect that she had deceived him for financical gain. After all, she had been obsessed by him as a teenager, and so many women had fallen in love with Dane. Why should he think it odd that a female he considered repressed, naïve and introverted could still be in love with him at twenty-three? The answer was that he didn’t. And if he had thought love a likely motive before he took her to bed, her response there must surely have confirmed the suspicion. She raised cool fingers to burning cheeks.

It tore her pride—what remained of it—to ribbons to understand what Dane must now be thinking. No wonder his temper had cooled! A mercenary motive he could never have forgiven, but undying love had a certain pathos, even if it hadn’t eased his contempt.

It was true, she had taken a long time to get over that infatuation. But hardly surprising when she had been marooned at Ranbury, denied both a social life and an opportunity to fix her fantasies on a more available quarry. Pride and common sense had finally forced her to rationalise her own emotions and Dane hadn’t known her in the past three years. He was still mixing her up with silly little Claire who used to blush like a beetroot every time he spoke to her and do stupid things like rush out of the front door to greet him whenever he arrived, pitifully innocent of her own transparency to a male of Dane’s experience. No wonder he’d always been so kind to her. He must have felt incredibly sorry for her!

Thompson was bustling about her room, stripping the bed. He gave her a small smile when he saw her in the doorway. ‘Will there be anything else, madam?’

Like a lamb to the slaughter she continued on down to Dane’s room at the foot of the corridor. A négligé lay like a statement on the bed. She yanked open a cupboard door and stilled, a hand reaching out in surprise at the rainbow colours of female apparel that most certainly didn’t belong to her. Tight-mouthed, she slammed it shut again. Well, the last occupant really had left in a hurry! It must have been some size of a cheque she took with her. The bathroom had a jacuzzi and a lot of mirrors. Her toothbrush was already installed. After switching out the lights she crept into bed.

It rolled and lurched. A water bed … well, what did you expect? People don’t have fun on a bed of nails. Tears seeped out from beneath her lowered lashes. Damn … damn … damn, what earthly use was it to think of Max now? It was too late for regrets. Max had expected to be her first lover and somewhere deep in her muddled head she could just hear Dane saying cynically. ‘Why, are you going to be his?’ She closed off that thought train angrily. What

was she trying to do? Ease her own laden conscience? Max was going to be so very angry and hurt, and he wasn’t within reach any more. There was a vast difference between explaining about Dane in absentia when the deed was done and her present position when the newspapers had published the marriage and she now lay in Dane’s bed. Her hands curled into impotent fists and the wretched bed quivered beneath her.

The only option she had was to find a job and start trying to pay back the money she owed Dane. He couldn’t taunt her if she was self-sufficient and out of his precious private life.

‘And when Thompson’s gone to such trouble, too,’ Dane gibed as she pushed her plate away practically untouched.

Claire studied the rosewood table surface. He had actually had the audacity to wake her up when he strolled home in the early hours and … well, it wasn’t any wonder that even her healthy appetite was dissipated. ‘I’ll never forgive you for this,’ she muttered tautly. ‘Do you hear me, Dane? As long as I live, I’ll never forgive you for what you’ve done to me.’

He rested back in his chair, remarkably alert and vital for someone who had had barely any sleep. ‘There’s an astonishing amount of spirit beneath that prim little surface of yours,’ he murmured. ‘I like it. Except when it leads you to droop over the coffee cups on the brink of tears. When I think of the times I’ve longed for a breakfast partner who doesn’t chatter incessantly …’

‘Shut up!’ Something fierce and positively primal flared through her at his reminder of the other women who had graced this same table.

‘I didn’t rape you.’ He raised a satiric brow, demolishing her with a tide of X-rated imagery. It flashed across her mind that if he had, she could have lived with being a martyr. It was with being an active partner that she could not live. And that weakness shamed her too. In the space of twenty-four hours she had made a wealth of new and unwelcome discoveries about herself. That Dane had both forced and witnessed those with her redoubled her mortification. Last night he had told her he had gone for a long drive. He had been away long enough to get to Lands End and back! He must think she was stupid. She didn’t believe him and wouldn’t have lowered herself to the admission in case it added fuel to his egotistical conviction that she loved him.

‘I don’t like the outfit,’ he said softly. ‘You know, when Cinderella got her Prince, she didn’t put on a pair of jeans and turn into everybody’s idea of the dewy-eyed girl next door.’

‘If she’d got you she’d probably have hanged herself!’ Claire spat.

His husky laughter filled the dining-room.

Her small face stiffened. ‘I’m not going to apologise for not meeting your standards of perfection.’

‘You’re going to. In the heat of yesterday I didn’t get around to showing you the new wardrobe I got for you. Originally I planned it as a surprise,’ he delivered equably.

She was dumbfounded. Her downbent head flew up as she belatedly realised that those clothes in the bedroom were for her. ‘You bought me clothes? I don’t want them!’

Cool purpose gleamed in the intense blueness of his eyes. She made a performance out of sugaring her coffee. Unused to rejection of any kind, that was Dane. And she didn’t care how angry she might be making him. She didn’t care either that he’d probably been with another woman last night. It was just her disgust that was making her feel sick, her fury that he should believe a trunkful of fancy clothes would sweeten her humour.

‘While you’re living with me as my wife, Claire, you’ll dress for the part, and I like feminine clothes on a woman.’

It was the last straw. She had meant to greet him with wooden disdain over breakfast but even a block of wood couldn’t have remained cool in the face of such downright, shameless provocation. Thrusting her chair back, she got up.’ Then find another actress,’ she suggested. ‘I’m not a very good one.’

‘If that was acting last night,’ Dane savoured lazily, ‘I reckon you’d win an Emmy!’ As he spoke he stood and his arms closed round her, denying her a quick exit.

‘Let me go, Dane!’ she gasped heatedly.