“Don’t you dare come that prophet-of-doom stuff on me again!” she warned wrathfully. “I’m not one of the family yes-women you’re used to. I’ve got brains and I’ve got just as much need for a life outside the home as you have! Do you hear me, Alex?”
“I should imagine the whole block can hear you,” he said drily.
“Well, you were the one who taught me that a higher octave is the only way that you stop and listen! I nearly died of boredom the last time we were married…”
“Not in the bedroom…”
“You see?” she interrupted in a burst of anger. “You wouldn’t talk to a man like that. You wouldn’t humiliate a man by telling him that you had been bolstering up his business, either!”
He caught her fingers tightly. “I told you because I wanted no more secrets between us, not because I wanted to belittle your achievements. Can’t you be grateful for the feeling behind the interference?”
“I’ve got nothing to be grateful for after last night. You can stamp the account paid in full,” she retorted bitterly.
“You wanted me.”
“Not in cold blood,” she muttered in deep chagrin. “Any respect I had for you died last night. Oh, don’t tell me you didn’t force me. You just pushed me to the edge and said jump. There’s very little difference.”
She spun away into the bedroom. He had not been with her when she awoke. Strangely enough, that circumstance had added to her sense of having been demeaned beyond the bounds of acceptance. She was in tumultuous conflict with herself. Yes, she had wanted him, madly, desperately. In the light of the day, the heated passage of the night only made her cringe. She had once expressed love sharing Alex’s bed. What had she been doing last night? Submitting with pleasure? Reliving the past? Seeking redemption for her sins? Whatever she had believed she was doing, she had humiliated herself.
All through breakfast she had hardly been able to take her eyes off him. Habit was there, a terrible dangerous familiarity was there. But Alex was not the same man he had been four years ago. At one stage she could actually remember pretending to herself that he still cared about her. How pathetic could you get? While she had been pitifully deluding herself, Alex had been making her beg for his final possession. Alex had brought his bitterness into the bedroom, and her own wantonness had sunk her beneath reproach.
In less than four crazy days Alex had turned her inside out. She didn’t know herself any more. Or perhaps she was afraid to probe too deep. Perhaps she preferred to believe that physical desire alone had betrayed her. Behind that lurked a bigger apprehension. She stared strickenly at her overbright eyes in the mirror. Suppose some of that old love still lingered…? Oh, lord, she mustn’t even think this way. Alex would never love her again. To love him would be to sign her own death warrant, the final seal on his revenge.
A knock sounded on the door. She knew it was Alex. The knock was a positive joke after the fashion in which he had entered this same room last night. He was framed by the doorway, dark and devilishly controlled. “We can’t continue to fight like this. It won’t benefit our son to see us clawing at each other.”
“Did you think of that last night?”
The golden eyes glinted. “Am I to hear of that for ever? We are not children. We were married once. In a few days’ time we will be married again.”
“You took advantage.”
“I wanted you and I had the right,” Alex stated with unequivocal arrogance.
She bent her head. “You didn’t. We’re divorced.”
“I have never felt divorced, I have never felt truly free!” Alex sizzled back in a condemnation that suggested it was her fault. “I did not think of us as divorced from the moment I saw you again.”
It made little difference to Kerry’s feelings. As her hands laced tightly together, another fear occurred to her, and she went pale and then pink. She couldn’t bear it if he had made her pregnant. It was no melodramatic fear. Her previous pregnancy she recalled as a ghastly ordeal. Once she had lost Alex she had had no pleasure from her condition. She had been sick almost continuously, and more depressed than any woman ought to be. Bitterly, miserably, she threw him a glance. “If last night has any…repercussions, I’m not having it. I’m telling you that now. I will never go through what I went through again…not for you…not for anybody,” she swore.
Stark pallor slowly stretched beneath his golden skin. His facial muscles tautened. She assumed that he had not even thought along such mundane lines. A male bent on slaking his lust did not think of consequences.
“Then we must hope that there will be no repercussions,” he replied harshly. “I don’t expect you to undergo something you found so objectionable a second time. Now, the lawyer will be arriving soon with the contract I mentioned. When it is signed, the car will take you home.”
She had the weirdest suspicion that she had cut Alex to the bone. Dazedly, she squashed the idea. He had his son. He didn’t need any more children. Nor could he want another tie to her when he had already made it clear that he did not expect them to remain together indefinitely.
The lawyer was elderly. He opened his mouth to explain the thick document to her. Alex cut him off after one word. “Just slash an X where we have to sign,” he instructed drily. “I have naturally explained the meaning of the contract to my wife.”
“But as an interested party…” The older man flushed, probably thinking on the danger of offending so wealthy a client. He dutifully penned in the X. They signed. Alex then beamed with positive benevolence upon him. Kerry presumed that the contract tied her up in knots. Why else would Alex smile?
Umberto packed her new clothes. She put on a fine turquoise wool suit with a high-necked white silk blouse. Once more she was Kerry Veranchetti. Kerry Taylor had vanished. If Alex had chosen the clothes, he had fantastic taste. Her own had not been half so elegant in the past. She had pursued fashion with teenage extremity. Her avant-garde appearance must have embarrassed him at least once, but a word of criticism had never passed his lips. With hindsight, she marvelled at his restraint.
* * *
VICKIE SWUNG OPEN her door and simply stared. Her eyes roamed in astonishment over the designer suit. “What was that I said about nothing untoward happening between last night and today?” she gibed with a contemptuously curled lip. “Funny, I did think you had more pride. Alex develops some crazy notion to marry you again, and already you’re trotting about
in fancy feathers. Anybody would think you can’t wait to get back there!”
Kerry reddened as she followed her tall sister into the lounge. “I did try to phone you before I came to London.”
“What happened?”
Kerry chewed her lower lip. When it came to the point, she couldn’t tell Vickie everything. Somehow she felt that that would be stabbing Alex in the back. He had employed blackmail because he was desperate to gain custody of his son. And last night? She was equally to blame. She hadn’t screamed the place down, had she? She hadn’t thrown a chair through his triple glazing and threatened to embrace death before dishonour either, had she? No, far from it. Only afterwards had she had the decency to regret her behaviour.
“Why the beetroot-red blush?” Vickie straightened, slinging her lighter down and blowing a faint smoke-ring as she exhaled. “Did he use sex? My God, he must have been desperate to get you any way he could!”
The high-pitched, venomous tone grated on Kerry’s nerves. “It was I who broke the marriage up,” she said defensively.
“And you’re going back out of guilt? Alex wants Nicky,” Vickie guessed shrewdly. “You don’t still love him, surely?”
“Of course I don’t.”
“He’s about as lovable as a sabre-toothed tiger, and about as dated.” Her laugh was harsh, her blue eyes intent on Kerry’s perplexed face. “Well, I can release you from the weight of your conscience. Would you like a drink?”
“Too early for me.” She was uncomfortable with the strangeness of her sister’s mood. In her opinion Vickie had already had a couple of drinks.
Vickie jerked a slim shoulder. “You might change your mind in a minute or two. The…the night of the party…or maybe I ought to begin before that.” Her strained gaze was oddly pleading. “I hope that you remember that I didn’t have to tell you this.”
“Tell me what?”
Vickie took a deep breath. “When we were younger, I used to resent you…”