His first words literally paralysed her. A confrontation that frankly petrified her had sprung up out of nowhere. Dane was inviting her to leave. ‘Dane, you … you misunderstood.’
He stared at her with unholy contempt. ‘Oh, I haven’t misunderstood anything,’ he contradicted savagely. ‘Until Max showed today I actually thought things were good between us. But what the hell, you can lie back and think about another guy in anybody’s bed as long as it’s not mine. The little j
erk wasn’t even faithful to you. Whereas I was goddamned crazy enough to subject myself to a year of celibacy! Well, that’s at an end. You can do whatever the blue blazes you like, Claire, but I’m getting laid tonight by a warm, willing woman!’
His candid promise sent her off the bed like an electrified eel. ‘You do that and you needn’t bother coming home! Do you …?’ Her lips worked convulsively, her brain working on reverse mode. ‘A year of celibacy,’ she whispered dazedly. ‘Dane, I don’t love Max!’
But she was talking to thin air. She heard Thompson at his most expressionless, saying, ‘Shall I contact a joiner in the morning, sir?’
Where he got the nerve to rebuke Dane in the mood he was in, she could not begin to guess and Dane’s reply was masked by the sob of her own tortured breathing. In the space of an evening their carefully rebuilt relationship had fallen apart at the seams. She had let her emotions overpower her judgement. She had hugged her pride zealously to herself and called it self-respect. What kind of marriage had she expected to have when she had let Dane believe that she still loved Max? It didn’t matter that he didn’t love her. He had always been honest. She hadn’t been. She had been hiding behind the truth as if it was something to be ashamed of, and in doing so she had driven Dane away.
It took her thirty seconds to reach the front door, but the lift had already gone. By the time it got back and she got down to the underground car park there was only a curious security guard in view and Dane’s Ferrari was gone. Distraught she hurried back into the lift.
He had actually heard her telling Max that she loved him and he hadn’t believed it. In dismay she saw the barrier she herself had raised between them. Dane had been very unlikely to make love to her while he imgained she was dreaming of another man … only in anger had he turned to express his dissatisfaction, his frustration. Yet to credit that there had been no other women for him all these months in addition, demanded, to her mind, a degree of certifiable insanity. Dane had thought she was living with Max.
If Dane went to someone else tonight, she had only herself to thank. Her stupid pride had ruined everything. In her room she got ready for bed. Whatever he did tonight was her fault. She wouldn’t hold it against him. It was time she practised honesty with him even if it hurt. After driving herself half-way to distraction imagining where he might be, she went in to look at the twins.
In the dim glow of the nightlight it was Dane’s tall, lean figure she focused on first. He was tucking Matthew back into his cot. Her breath snarled up in her throat in a tide of aching relief. ‘When did you get back?’ she asked prosaically.
‘I got to the end of the block and I came back just in time to see our nanny packed and departing.’ He shot her a curiously evasive glance. ‘Seems she told Thompson she wasn’t staying in a household lacking in moral tone. It must have been the door and the fight that riled her. You can blame me. I started it all.’
‘I didn’t like her very much anyway,’ Claire answered without a moment’s hesitation. ‘I’d prefer someone younger and not so regimented.’
‘Thompson’s already mentioned a niece. He was mortally offended by the suggestion that we lacked moral tone.’ Dane’s dark-timbred drawl trembled revealingly, and then steadied when he gazed down at her anxious face. His hand curved over her shoulder, inexorably guiding her towards the door. ‘You know, I was talking to Matthew before you came in. He makes a great uncritical audience but he couldn’t seem to think of a face-saving excuse for me only getting to the end of the block, either.’ He thrust open his own bedroom door. ‘We’ve got to talk and Thompson’s still rustling about the lounge.’
She lodged awkwardly in the centre of the carpet and gave up on the eye-to-eye contact, recognising its inhibiting effect on her ability to articulate. ‘I should have told you ages ago …’ she began.
‘If you’re about to apologise for something, I may just strangle you,’ he interrupted ruefully. ‘I came on to you like a sex starved adolescent tonight. I just lost my head when I saw you with him. I couldn’t stomach the idea that you wanted to be with him instead of me. It sounds pretty damned childish.’ He gave a ragged sigh. ‘But it didn’t feel childish at the time. I didn’t feel at all grateful for the fact you were lying to him because that was the right thing to do. Mind you, if you’d encouraged him I’d have thrown him down the lift shaft. What I’m trying to say, not very well … is that I’m sorry.’
He was eyeing her levelly when she looked up, still reeling from the apology. ‘I didn’t encourage him because …’
‘Because you wouldn’t behave that way,’ Dane cut in on her again, his mouth sardonically set. ‘You’re too loyal.’
And dull as ditchwater, she almost added. He was being so logical in explaining exactly why he had behaved as he had, and he wouldn’t let her get a word in edgeways because he was presupposing her replies in that maddening fashion of his.
‘You’re not thinking of going anywhere, are you?’
Claire shook her head in dismay.
Dane actually smiled. ‘If I’d gone for him, you’d have been all over him like a rash. I’m not that dumb,’ he reflected cheerfully. ‘He won’t be here again, will he?’
Again she shook her head, rather flummoxed by his calm. ‘I love you.’ It came out as a mutter rather than a dignified announcement.
Dane was surveying her almost absently. ‘Do you know what hit me at the end of the block? That you might go. I haven’t given you enough time, but it’s a hell of a strain living with you and not touching you. Maybe I should have made that clearer sooner, but when I got you back I didn’t much care how I did it,’ he admitted, studying a point to the left of her. It sank into her then that not only had he not heard what she had said but that he wasn’t demonstrating calm but uncertainty of her response.
She took a deep breath. ‘I love you, so I don’t know what you’re worrying about me leaving for. I love you quite obsessively really. I can’t bear you out of my sight.’ A rueful little giggle escaped her dried lips. ‘I should have told you a long time ago and then you wouldn’t have misunderstood about Max, but I didn’t want you feeling sorry for me and then … later, well, it was pride,’ she completed simply.
She had got through this time. Although he hadn’t moved he was looking directly at her. ‘Well, you could say something,’ she continued in a stiff little voice that concealed her hurt. ‘I don’t expect you to love me back, but we have other things …’ The jerky flow of her words came to a halt under the shockingly uncool onslaught of Dane’s heated scrutiny.
‘How long have you been in love with me?’ he demanded as he yanked her bodily into his arms, crushing her breasts against the hard wall of his chest.
‘Probably most of my life!’ She attempted a watery smile. ‘Only I didn’t realise I hadn’t got over you until we were on Dominica. I think I was fond of Max, and of course I was lonely.’
‘You were telling him the truth tonight when you said you loved me?’ he prompted, not quite levelly. His long fingers framed her cheekbones fiercely, painfully.
‘Yes.’
‘You crazy woman!’ There was a laugh and a twisted agony in his hoarsened voice as he gave her a little shake. ‘Don’t you know how I feel about you? Do I have to hire the Red Arrows to blaze it in the sky? God knows, everybody else knows! I love you. If I hadn’t loved you I wouldn’t have bullied you into coming back,’ he breathed roughly. ‘Your pregnancy gave me all the ammunition I needed. I had a line of tearjerking arguments I didn’t even get to use because you agreed. If you’d forced me to the last ditch, I’d have told you I loved you then.’