Bittersweet Passion

‘Well, what do you expect me to call it?’ he rasped impatiently.

‘I’m sorry. Three weeks.’ She stuck her feet into a pair of low-heeled leather mules, after several attempts.

‘What do you want?’

‘God doesn’t take orders.’

He burst out laughing and then bent down to encircle one of her ankles with cool fingers. ‘That’s swollen like your fingers. Is that normal?’

She reddened. Her pacing last night wouldn’t have helped. ‘It’s the heat, that’s all.’

He didn’t look quite convinced, but she basked in his ignorance of such matters. ‘You won’t be doing anything strenuous today,’ he said after an awkward pause.

He had bought three dresses, each of them the last word in maternity chic, and all aimed at the current hot spell. True to his word he had the car pulled into a lay-by an hour later and with great amusement he climbed out, followed by his now poker-faced chauffeur. His sense of humour had awakened her own. She slid into the silky French knickers with a grin, ignoring the tights. Pulling the coolest looking of the dresses over her head, a crisp navy and white sundress, she stowed her nightie in one of the carriers and buzzed down the window to signal the all clear.

She borrowed his comb to tidy her hair. ‘Your driver must think we’re mad,’ she muttered.

‘I don’t know. Wifenapping’s fun.’ Dane treated her to a lazy, even-tempered smile. ‘Feel better?’

She nodded dutifully. Having achieved his objective, he could afford to smile. She stole a glance at his perfect profile, becoming a little greedy as she let her starved gaze slowly plot a course down over his superbly male physique, accepting the insidiously sweet stirrings of her own body in response.

‘I got Thompson to fix a picnic,’ he announced.

‘A picnic?’

‘Why not?’ His tone was curt. ‘I’ve never been on a picnic in my life, do you know that?’

She could have guessed, and the admission didn’t imply to her that he was dying to fill the gap in experience. It was about noon when the car filtered off to minor roads, into a wooded area where it eventually stopped. The chauffeur solemnly produced a hamper and a rug from the boot.

It’s part of the Wytchwood estate,’ Dane informed her with a slanting grin. ‘That’s how I know about this place.’

He was so obviously set on his picnic plan that she smiled. Just being in the presence of all that vitality of his brightened her. Vibrations of sheer sensual enjoyment emanated from him and touched that cold spot in her heart. He was quite, quite irreplaceable, and she wished unhappily that she had been able to retain him as a friend. Only then she wouldn’t have had the baby and, selfish or not, she was still gloriously happy about the child she carried. It was a part of him he couldn’t deny her.

They only had to walk a couple of hundred yards before they reached a sunny spot by the edge of the stream. ?

?Very pretty,’ she pronounced. ‘Is the house far from here?’

He spread the rug. ‘About a mile.’

She lowered herself down and kicked off her mules with relief, while Dane stretched sensuously in the sunlight, making her smile again. Opened, the hamper revealed a wealth of sophisticated picnic fare.

‘Thompson must have been very busy,’ she whispered, in awe of such delights in an outdoor setting.

‘He’s been hell to live with since I came back from the Caribbean without you. He approved of you.’ He uncorked the bottle of champagne and extracted two glasses. ‘If he could have got candles in here, I dare say he would have,’ he mocked. ‘He’s a real romantic at heart. I know damned fine that he thinks the split was over something I did. And here you are, my wife, who left me for another man. A midget, no less.’

‘Dane,’ she whispered.

He passed her a fluted crystal glass. ‘To live in abject poverty with her lover. I mean, no one would believe that without thinking what a monster of depravity I must have been,’ he intoned sardonically. ‘Still, one mustn’t repine.’

‘It wouldn’t work, Dane,’ she said very quietly. Tears clogged her throat as the champagne bubbles tickled her nose. ‘And you don’t owe me anything.’

Please, please, please make him stop trying to persuade me! She wasn’t a plaster saint. Every second she spent in his company made denial all the more painful. It made her wonder if it could really do so much harm to say yes … and that was dangerous.

‘Meaning that I’m not necessary now that you’ve attained motherhood?’

Seared by his contempt, she paled and drank deep before half whispering, ‘Why can’t you be honest?’

‘Too much honesty can be risky.’ His slow drawl carried a perceptible chill of warning as he leant back on one elbow to watch her.