Forgotten Passion

‘Rorke!’ How breathless her voice sounded. ‘What do you want?’

His eyebrows rose, the ice-cold blue eyes studying her bleakly.

‘It’s almost time to get changed for dinner,’ he pointed out, starting to unfasten his shirt. Robbie watched him curiously, and seeing the little boy’s gaze resting on Rorke’s hair-shadowed chest. Lisa anticipated the question hovering on Robbie’s open lips and bustled him quickly into his own room.

‘I want my daddy to read me a story,’ Robbie protested, punishing her promptly. ‘Daddy, I want you!’

‘This is my room!’ Lisa hissed at Rorke as she brushed past him. ‘I appreciate that you want to convince everyone that we’ve been reconciled, but getting undressed in here is taking things a bit far, especially when there’s only Robbie and I to see you.’

‘Not your room, Lisa,’ Rorke corrected flatly, ‘our room. Leigh had it specially decorated for us before we got married. It was to be a surprise. When I telephoned from St Lucia and warned Mama Case that we were bringing Robbie with us she got this room ready—for both of us.’

‘I don’t care,’ Lisa told him. ‘I’m not sharing it with you!’

‘Mummy, you sound cross, ‘Robbie murmured from the bed. ‘You’re not cross, are you?’

‘Of course she’s not—are you, Mummy?’ Rorke mocked from Robbie’s bed.

She spun round on her heel, closing the door to Robbie’s room behind her. She was not sharing this room with Rorke, and she was going to make that plain to him the moment he walked through the communicating door, and just to make things easy for him… She pulled open one of the wardrobes and found, as she had suspected, that it was full of Rorke’s clothes. Working feverishly, she started to pile them up on the bed. He could take them with him when he left. He was still reading to Robbie, she could hear the even rise and fall of his voice, and pain throbbed inside her as though her heartache was a new wound and not an old one. How often during Robbie’s childhood had she longed for the comfort of Rorke’s voice; of his presence.

The occasions had been too numerous to count. She could still remember Robbie’s birth—vividly. She had still been hoping against hope even then that some miracle would occur, that somehow Rorke and Leigh would be there. She remembered opening her eyes and finding herself back in a ward filled with flowers, with happiness and sunshine, young mothers proudly showing off their new babies to doting families. Well, she had been a new mother and she had been so proud of her baby son, but there had been no one to show him off to, no one to share the thrill of his birth with.

‘Shouldn’t you be getting ready?’ She hadn’t heard Rorke walk in. She watched him glance towards the bed, his mouth tightening in anger as she saw what she had done.

‘I’m not sharing this room with you, Rorke,’ she told him flatly. ‘I mean that.’

‘So I see. Why not, I wonder? You’re perfectly safe from me, Lisa.’

‘Am I? What about when we were down on the beach?’

He shrugged easily. ‘So I gave in to a momentary temptation, and you were tempting, but I’m over it now. I’ve reminded myself what you are.’

‘And what am I, Rorke?’ she demanded bitterly. ‘Apart from being your wife and the mother of your son.’ She couldn’t stop the taunt from rising to her lips.

‘Robbie isn’t my child. Why do you persist in that lie?’

‘Perhaps because it isn’t a lie.’ She shouldn’t have said that. Already she could see Rorke’s face beginning to darken.

‘Lisa, you know me better than that. Do you honestly think you can convince me that I could forget a thing like making love to you? I thought then you were too young and innocent to see how I felt—how badly I wanted you. I kept away from you deliberately, not wanting to subject you to my desire. I was half ashamed of the way I felt about you,’ he muttered, more to himself than her. ‘You were so young, almost a child still, and yet very time you looked at me you turned my bones to water. When you touched me I went up in flames. My desire for you was a constant ache that nothing could appease. Now tell me again that I could forget something like making love to you—fully enough to impregnate you with my child. God Lisa!’ he swore suddenly, the dark glitter of his eyes frightening her. ‘Don’t you think I wanted to believe it was my child you were carrying? Don’t you think I wanted to believe I was the one who had possessed you, that my kisses had been the ones to stifle your cries of pleasure; that my body had been the one to bring yours to womanhood? But we both know it wasn’t. We both know that Mike Peters was your lover, and that he left here to join you shortly after you ran out on me. What I still can’t understand is why you bothered marrying me. You must have known that I’d discover the truth, or did you simply hope that my love for Leigh would prevent me from betraying you? That I would uphold the farce of our marriage to protect him? Don’t you know yet what your going did to him?’

There was no pity in the dark eyes watching her so mercilessly, wanting to cause her pain.

‘Twenty-four hours after I got back here without you, having spent a full day searching St Lucia for you, my father collapsed,’ he snarled at her, ‘and that’s something I can never forgive you for, Lisa. You hurt my father, who loved you as though you were his own child. Perhaps now that you’re a mother yourself you can understand just what sort of pain I’m talking about? And you still have the gall to think I want you?’ He laughed shortly. ‘I brought you here for one reason and one reason alone, Lisa, and it wasn’t to share my bed!’

She wasn’t going to give in to the pain threatening to storm her frail defences. She wasn’t going to plead again for trust and faith from a man who was far too hard and cold to recognise anything other than his own bitter determination to believe the worst of her, who put his faith in his own willpower before anything else.

‘I still want you to remove your things from this room,’ she managed to enunciate clearly, ‘and if you don’t, I’ll simply call Mama Case and ask her to find someone else to do it.’

She picked up the clothes she had laid out on the bed and marched into the bathroom, locking the door behind her. Once there the frail courage which had kept her from disintegrating in the bedroom drained away completely, leaving her limp and shaking with reaction.

Listening to Rorke, she had almost been able to taste his frustration; his fury that she had eluded him and given herself to someone else—or at least so he thought. Had he ever loved her, really loved her, or was it just as she had feared? He had wanted her, and because of her relationship with Leigh he had married her, only to cast her aside once he discovered what he continued to insist was the truth.

She felt raw with pain, the spirit which had buoyed her up for so long completely disintegrating under the weight of the pain she now suffered. She showered mechanically, salt tears mingling with the cool spray of the water. She had felt she had endured everything there was to endure but she had been wrong. And despite what he said Rorke still wanted her physically. She wasn’t seventeen any longer and she had sensed it on the beach this afternoon. He wanted her, no matter how much he might deny it, but it was an ice-cold desire fuelled by a need to punish her for the past—she was sure of that. How long would she have to stay on St Martins? If what Rorke had said about Leigh was true, she daren’t risk telling him the truth; the shock might bring on another collapse. Feverishly she towelled herself dry, a momentary glimpse of her pearly flesh in the full length mirrors shocking her into brief stillness. Was it only that afternoon that Rorke had seen her like this? Had touched her?

Unwittingly her hand crept towards her breast as she stifled the cry of pain that knifed through her. She still loved him. It had been sheer madness to think she had ever stopped. Why else had she remained alone all these years, spurning any other male attempts to get closer to her? She loved Rorke. Her shocked, white reflection stared back at her. He must never learn the truth. He would destroy her. She dressed quickly; she had brought only one evening dress with her—she only owned one. She had bought it the previous winter for a party given by the publisher for whom she worked. It was a matt black fabric with shoestring straps and a neckline that hugged the curves of her breasts. The colour suited her, giving her skin a fragile translucence. She pulled it on quickly, checking her reflection in the mirror. She was wearing black silk stockings which might prove uncomfortable in St Martins’ tropical climate, but the air-conditioning would help and she had no wish to expose her still pale legs without any covering at all.

She was struggling with her zipper when she heard Rorke rap on the door. ‘Hurry up, Lisa,’ he demanded. ‘I want to shower.’

She opened the door angrily,