Meaning, what else could you ask for? Miriam thought now. An ordinary, unremarkable girl bagging the sort of guy who only comes along once in a blue moon, she ought to be down on her knees thanking God he’d looked her way.
‘Well?’ Jay’s voice was lazy and relaxed but the amber eyes were piercingly intent. ‘Decision time. On the one hand we date for a little while and see how things sort out, on the other I make your life…uncomfortable.’
‘You’d do that?’ she asked, white-faced.
‘In these circumstances? Yes, I would,’ he replied without a shred of remorse.
‘How can you say you love me and behave like that?’
‘It’s because I love you I’d behave like that, Miriam.’
‘I don’t see love the way you do obviously.’
‘Considering this is from the woman who clearly kept more from me than she told me and who didn’t care enough for me to stay and talk things out, not to mention trust me, forgive me if I’m not too perturbed by that,’ he murmured, one eyebrow slanting mockingly.
Miriam glared at him. How dared he criticise her and act holier-than-thou? Out of marks of ten for sheer nerve, Jay scored twenty. ‘If you’re that concerned about us, why didn’t you make more effort to see me months ago?’ she said from the heart, regretting it the moment the words were out.
‘Because it wasn’t working, me trying to put things right,’ he answered immediately, his cool tone belying the glitter of anger in his eyes her words had caused. ‘You weren’t prepared to listen and I was blowed if I was going to keep on banging my head against a brick wall.’
‘So what’s changed?’ she said icily.
Before she could stop him he had leant forward and taken her small, slender hand in his, lacing her fingers through his and holding them tight. ‘I realised one person in this relationship has to start behaving like a grown-up, and it sure as hell isn’t going to be you, my love,’ he said softly. ‘That and the fact that you want me.’
She wanted to tell him that she most certainly did not want him. That he was the last man on earth she wanted, in fact. That she’d rather walk through London stark naked than have anything to do with him in the future. She wanted to, but her mouth failed to form the words. All she could manage was a somewhat feeble, ‘Huh.’
‘When you look at me you look at me with hungry eyes, Miriam. You remember what it was like, don’t you…?’ He let the words trickle like warm honey over her taut nerves. ‘The things we did, the way I made you feel. I was your first lover and I did more than have sex with you, I loved you, but you only opened your body to me. Your mind, that inner self, you gave me no access to. I gave you your first taste of sexual ecstasy, your first climax, but I fooled myself when I thought I had you. I shan’t make that mistake again.’
He turned her hand over in his, bending his head and caressing the wildly beating pulse in her wrist with his warm lips.
Miriam shivered, she couldn’t help it. His touch had always invoked a tumult of feeling in every nerve and sinew and she was as helpless before it now as she had been in the very beginning.
He raised his head, the tawny gaze watching the effect he had on her. ‘You see?’ he said softly. ‘You can’t escape the truth—you’re part of me. We’re husband and wife.’
‘Not any more.’ She wanted to snatch her hand away but was aware she couldn’t cause a scene. ‘Only on paper.’
‘What we have doesn’t begin or end with a piece of paper. You’re mine, Miriam. You’ll always be mine, but I realise now it’s not enough that you’re my wife. I want to know you inside out; how you think and feel and why you’re like you are. I haven’t even begun to touch the inner core, have I? That private self that trusts and believes in the beloved.’
Finally she managed to retrieve her hand and with some distance between them she found she could think again. ‘We’re in the position we’re in because you had an affair with your secretary,’ she said flatly.
Jay expelled a quiet breath. ‘No I didn’t,’ he said very quietly, ‘but that’s nothing to do with the position we’re in. Sooner or later we would have been here; it was just a fact waiting to happen. At some point you would have convinced yourself I was like your father because you weren’t prepared to let yourself believe anything else. If you did it might make you vulnerable.’
‘That’s rubbish.’ She lifted her chin in angry defiance, prepared to fight tooth and nail for what she saw as her integrity.
‘I don’t think so. And everything you’ve said tonight confirms it. It would have been the most natural thing in the world for you to tell me you didn’t want to live in the apartment, so why didn’t you? I’ll tell you why. Because you didn’t want to risk displeasing me. You told me your mother lived like that with your father, falling in with everything he wanted in order to keep his love.’
‘That’s not why I didn’t tell you.’
He refused to accept her self-denial. ‘Think about it, Miriam. Tonight, when you’re alone. Think about what I’ve said because sooner or later you’ve got to start facing your gremlins.’
He glanced over her shoulder as she glared at him, his voice suddenly casual as he murmured, ‘Here’s our main course. Smile, Miriam. You don’t want to frighten the nice waiter, now, do you?’
She waited until the waiter had left again before she said, ‘Anyone else in your position would do the decent thing.’
‘Really?’ Jay smiled but it didn’t reach his eyes. ‘And what’s that?’
‘Make the divorce as painless as possible.’
‘Not even an option,’ he said cheerfully. ‘My meal’s great by the way. How’s yours?’