Bittersweet Passion

After a brief but refreshing wash, she slipped on the caftan Randy had brought her from Tunisia a few months earlier. She felt immeditately more comfortable in its concealing folds. While she was dressing she heard Randy come in, and when she left her room her friend’s throaty laughter carried from the lounge. Tight-mouthed, Claire retreated from the door. Clearly Randy had succumbed to curiosity and joined Dane. By the sound of it, her view of him was already changing.

‘Need a hand?’ Randy put her head round the kitchen door a half-hour later, her face still alight with a smile. ‘I didn’t realise how late it was getting and I still have to get changed. Gil’s taking me somewhere special tonight,’ she confided, watching Claire remove a pair of steaks from beneath the grill. ‘I do understand, all of a sudden,’ she threw in abruptly.

‘Understand?’

Randy looked defensive. ‘He has extraordinary charm. I didn’t expect to like him. You should forgive him, Claire. What’s one …’ she faltered, ‘slip to a guy like that?’

‘What indeed?’ Claire concealed her annoyance over Randy’s quick conversion.

‘He’s gorgeous.’

‘I noticed.’

‘Sarcasm doesn’t become you,’ Randy giggled then. ‘I gave him a drink and told him how quietly you’d been living. He’s very easy to talk to, isn’t he?’

And with that damning remark Randy skipped off to her room where she could be heard frantically slamming through drawers. Claire seethed. Why hadn’t she broken that twosome up? Dane was incredibly good at getting information out of people.

He strolled through to the small dining annexe as soon as she called him. It shook her how much pleasure she earned from his simple presence, shook her that she had been childishly jealous of Randy’s response to him. She wished so many impossible things: that this had just been a visit she could enjoy rather than the prelude to an argument. Sometimes Dane needed protecting from himself and this was one of those times.

He took a seat with a provocative smile. ‘Did you really have a photo of me tacked inside your locker at school?’

She thrust the salad bowl at him with unnecessary force. ‘It was fashionable to have a pin-up.’

‘You were fifteen,’ he said ruefully.

She flushed. ‘There was no one else to compete.’

‘Nasty,’ he reproved.

‘Well, it’s true!’ Warming to the subejct in self-defence, she persisted, ‘You were the only person who paid me a blind bit of attention at Ranbury.’

‘Carter should have been looking ahead.’

Against her volition she giggled and then asked, ‘Did Zelda go and see you?’

‘Phoned.’ He shrugged. ‘Matt and she have separated. Did you know that?’

She shook her head.

‘It was a mutual decision, and probably the best thing,’ he allowed carelessly.

When they’d finished eating, he got up, staying her hands when she would have begun to clear the table. ‘Can we talk about us now? I’ll take you down to Wytchwood. That’s my house in Kent. You’ll like it there. It’s quiet.’

Claire went to shut the curtains, eager to put some space between them. She found it quite impossible to look at him and refuse him when every traitorous sense urged her to capitulate. To be with him on any terms at any cost. Oh, it would be so easy to give in after the long, empty months she’d laboured through, but if she did there would be a different agony to live with daily: Dane’s essential indifference. Eventually he would begin to hate her for the situation. He was human, too. She couldn’t bear to think of Dane hating her, but that was what happened when one partner felt trapped out of a sense of duty alone. He didn’t want the baby and he didn’t want her. For how long could he pretend otherwise?

Valiantly she breathed in. ‘I’m not going anywhere with you, Dane. I thought I’d made that clear. You get on with your life and I’ll get on with mine,’ she delineated. ‘As you can see, I’ve managed fine so far.’

‘Like hell you have!’ he countered harshly.

Wytchwood, she was thinking bitterly. His country estate. He probably had a woman in residence in the penthouse. They had broken the mould when Dane was made. That keen, analytical brain of his was matched by a frightening degree of ruthlessness.

He continued, unaffected by her rigidly turned back. ‘Think of it as a fresh start. By the grace of God we’re still married and you’ve got no one else in your life. Still, I guess hugging a ghost at night is much more your style. You’ll never get a hairshirt that way.’

His taunt spun her round again. ‘You think you just have to snap your fingers and people obey, don’t you?’

A winged sable brow climbed. ‘I think my wife does,’ he murmured warningly.

‘I’m not your wife!’ she argued shakily. ‘We were separated. You’re only still here because I’m pregnant. Why can’t you at least be honest about that? I’m not so fragile. You feel responsible again.’