‘You still remember that?’
James’s tone was carelessly light. ‘You amaze me. I should have thought my image had long ago been supplanted by the man you married so quickly afterwards—the twins’ father. What was he like?’ he asked unexpectedly, drawling the words in a coolly insulting fashion that suggested that he found it extraordinary that any man should want to marry her. Here was her chance, her opportunity to destroy him as he had once destroyed her by extolling the virtues of her supposed ‘husband’, but somehow the lies would not come. In her kitchen she saw Janice making
a pot of tea, such an ordinary homely task so far removed from her own state of mind and the vulnerability she experienced whenever James was near her.
‘Well?’
‘Our daddy was killed abroad,’ Mandy supplied eagerly. ‘Before we were born.’
‘And Mummy loved him very much,’ Simon piped up, obviously remembering what Tara had told him.
‘Did you? He seems a strangely disembodied character to me, far too much so to have generated this all-consuming “love”. Did you “love” him?’
She had every intention of saying ‘Yes’, every intention in the world, but somehow the words would not come, and James was looking at her with sharply narrowed eyes while the world seemed to rock to a standstill and she felt he was looking into her heart and reading the truth engraved on it.
‘I… I loved the twins’ father very much—and still do,’ she managed in a husky whisper, only realising when the words were spoken exactly what she had said. Hysterical laughter bubbled up inside her. She had just told James how much she loved him while he, all unknowing, continued to look down the length of his arrogant nose at her, his eyes as chilly as winter skies. How much more sardonic he would look if he knew the truth—that she had been foolish enough to love him then and that she had compounded that folly by loving him now.
He walked with them back to the house, and although every instinct screamed at her not to do so, politeness demanded that Tara ask him in. He wandered into the kitchen while she was preparing the twins’ supper, picking idly at the bowl of salad she was preparing, Mandy at his side, saying disapprovingly, ‘You shouldn’t do that, should he, Mummy?’
‘No, he shouldn’t,’ Tara agreed automatically.
‘Perhaps he’s hungry,’ Mandy added. ‘Can he stay for tea?’
‘I’m sure Uncle James has other things to do,’ Tara told her firmly. ‘Now be a good girl and go and wash your hands. We’re having strawberries for afters tonight.’
‘Really? My favourites,’ James admitted, to Mandy’s obvious delight.
‘Then you are going to stay?’ she demanded, all excitement.
James looked enquiringly at Tara. ‘If your mummy doesn’t mind,’ he assented. ‘Contrary to her supposition, there’s nothing I’d rather do than share supper with my very favourite twins.’
Supper was a hectic meal. Watching James with a twin either side of him in her small dining alcove, Tara couldn’t help contrasting their surroundings with those he must normally enjoy. The furniture was old—junk shop bought most of it, lovingly painted and refurbished, but with no pretences to being anything other than what it was. The curtains had been a lucky buy and home-made, she had painted the woodwork and papered the walls herself. She had also sanded the floorboards, stained them and made the multi-coloured rag rug lying on the floor. Up until now she had been perfectly content with her small home and its contents, but suddenly she was bitterly conscious of how shabby it was. Some of Simon’s paintings from school were pinned on the wall, a jar of flowers Mandy had picked for her adorning the bookcase. The meal itself was very plain—chicken salad and plenty of wholemeal bread and butter for the twins to fill up on before she gave them the strawberries she had bought as a treat and the icecream she made herself and which she knew they loved.
When it was time to get the sweet she brought in the three previously prepared dishes and a bowl of icecream, placing the dishes in front of James, Simon and Mandy.
‘Aren’t you having any?’ Simon questioned her innocently.
Avoiding James’s eyes, Tara shook her head. ‘I’m on a diet,’ she said lightly. The truth was that the strawberries had been an expensive luxury, barely large enough to stretch to the three of them, and her face flamed as she dwelt on what conclusions James would draw from the incident. There was scant chance of her deceiving him as easily as she had deceived Simon, she thought bitterly, and humiliation welled up inside her as she imagined his disdainful contempt. In the circles in which he moved, people thought nothing of ordering out-of-season strawberries for breakfast if they felt so inclined.
After supper she left him playing on the floor with the twins while she cleared the table. She was elbow-deep in hot sudsy water when he surprised her by strolling into the kitchen, taking up a stance against the fridge, reminding her unbearably of the circumstances of their very first meeting. If she had known then what the outcome of their relationship was to be, if she could turn back the clock, would she? She thought of the happiness the twins had brought her, and knew the answer.
‘I’m sorry—about the strawberries.’ The husky timbre of his voice shivered across raw nerves, anger snapping in her eyes as she turned towards him.
‘So am I,’ she agreed evenly. If he thought his comment would embarrass her then she would quickly disabuse him. ‘I was looking forward to them.’
Just for a second she thought she saw amusement and admiration, gleaming in his eyes, but it was gone too swiftly for her to be sure she had not imagined it.
His smooth, ‘Then perhaps you’ll allow me to make reparation,’ stung, underlining the huge social gulf between them. She was a single parent struggling to bring up two children on a slender salary; he was a wealthy man, he drove an expensive car, wore expensive clothes. And yet looking at him now, the tanned column of his throat exposed by the open-necked shirt, his folded arms unconsciously drawing attention to muscled forearms, she was conscious not of the differences between them, but the musky scent of his body, the fine tracing of hairs curling over his chest, and the trembling, weakening desire coursing through her to go to him and slide her fingers over his skin into the thick darkness of his hair, to press her lips against the warm column of his throat and feel his body clench in fierce need.
Angry with herself, she tried to stem the feelings growing inside her and said acidly,
‘How, by flaunting your wealth? By “buying” me, the way you’ve bought the twins?’
Scorn trembled through her voice and Tara knew that he was angry. Even so, she was caught off guard when he moved towards her, gripping her waist with fingers that punished her flesh, his grated, ‘What do you prefer? Payment in kind?’ sending trickles of tension coursing icily down her spine.
She tried to articulate; to demand that he release her, telling herself that this was a ridiculous, farcical situation, but when she raised her soapy hands to fend him off they clung damply to his shirt, his body tautly muscled and warm beneath her fingers, sending erotic messages flashing to her brain until she was drowning in the heady sensation of being close enough to him to breathe in the male scent of him and to be beguiled by memories of the past, rising up to swamp the present.
She must have made some involuntarily movement, some gesture of defeat, because she saw his response to it in the sudden narrowing of his eyes before they dropped to her mouth and his head bent slowly towards her.