Bittersweet Passion

‘This isn’t a marriage,’ she countered fiercely. ‘You don’t respect me. I don’t feel married and neither do you. If you did, you wouldn’t be so determined to use me.’

When the front door thudded shut the tears rolled down her cheeks. Sniffing, she fumbled for her hanky. She did not hate Dane. Not yet she didn’t. This situation bore a close resemblance to a nightmare but she was still logical enough to see why he was so determined to humiliate her. The simple conviction that she had smilingly tricked him into marriage was sufficient to bring out the devil in Dane. Had she been ravishingly beautiful and an unbearable temptation to his masculinity, she might have understood his behaviour. Only she wasn’t beautiful or witty or … anything … She hiccuped into silence again after staunchly blowing her small nose.

Did Dane really think it so simple for her to abandon her principles and make hay while the sun shone? That was what he was advocating. She doubted if his ego had ever been threatened by such bitter hostility from a woman. And it might have been amusing had not his unswerving confidence been based on the belief that she loved him to distraction.

She wasn’t going to find even a modicum of peace until she had straightened things out with Max. He ought to be back at his flat now, and she prayed he hadn’t seen the papers yet. The very least she owed him was a private explanation of her marriage. She couldn’t lie to him. She would have to tell him the truth … whatever that was. That she loved him but couldn’t control herself when Dane touched her? She shrank from such a scene.

In the hard daylight, the estate looked gloomy rather than threatening. It was busy, children playing and mothers walking with prams and laden shopping bags. Averting her eyes from the rough ground where she had been attacked, she hurried into the tower block towards the lift. What explanation was she to give Max? He wouldn’t be very interested in the finer details when he realised she had been living with Dane, sharing with another man the intimacies they had once expected to share together.

After her first loud knock on the flat door, she heard a burst of voices within, but it was a couple of minutes before the door opened.

‘Oh, it’s you again!’

Claire gaped in surprise at the curvaceous blonde staring angrily out at her and for a moment she believed she had come to the wrong door. ‘Max …’ she began. ‘I thought …’

‘Well, sweetie, I’d say one of us oughtn’t to be here.’ She tossed her tousled blonde head. ‘Max, it’s for you.’

Taking in the significance of the flimsy short nightdress the older girl wore, the fact that she had so clearly just got out of bed, Claire swallowed. ‘Are you Max’s sister?’

The woman flung back her head and laughed uproariously. ‘God, that’s a good one!’

Behind her a more familiar face appeared. ‘Who is it, Sue?’ Max demanded irritably and then he saw her. He frowned, scrutinising her slim, rigid figure. ‘Claire …? Lord, I wouldn’t have known you!’ he burst out almost accusingly. ‘What are you doing here?’

Sue cast Claire a self-satisfied smile. ‘I’ll leave you to it, darling,’ and she flounced out of sight.

‘Oh, God!’ Shock absorbed, Max was now tasting the full horror of her arrival unannounced upon the scene. ‘I don’t know what to say,’ he muttered, his bleary dark eyes swerving from hers.

‘Your ladyfriend said it for you.’ Her voice was low-pitched and intense, a loud thrumming in her ears that left her light-headed and clouded her brain. She lifted her chin. ‘I hope you’ll be happy … you and … Sue. Really, you should’ve just written and said there was someone else,’ she managed jerkily.

He looked mysteriously different, as if time had dealt imperfection to her memory of him. In her high heels she was eye to eye with him, or would have been had he had the guts to meet her scrutiny. Instead he was hanging his head, dark colour creeping down his neck in a tide because he didn’t know what to say. Caught in flagrante delicto, Max of the sterling character and steadfast promises!

‘I’m entitled to freedom,’ he snapped out suddenly. ‘You don’t understand. It’s different for a man, and we’re not married. What was I supposed to do? Wait the next twenty years for you? Claire? Claire!’

She was already walking back to the lift, deaf to his frantic repetition of her name. Tears marked her cheeks but her face was icily controlled. Everything she had dreamt of throughout the long months of Adam’s illness seemed somehow shoddy. How long had Max had his flat to himself? Had his family ever shared it with him? He couldn’t have told her without risking his cosy set-up with Sue being disturbed. There was a hateful irony in the fact that Sue was the kind of sexy, brash woman Max had always purported not to like.

How dared he try to make out that the blame was somehow hers! Passing the buck with a vengeance. She trembled. It hurt to misjudge someone so badly. He was weak and she had thought him strong. He was a hypocrite too, a liar when she had believed him innately truthful. Possibly she had seemed an excellent matrimonial prospect at Ranbury. Maybe Dane—and Adam Fletcher—hadn’t been so wrong. Max could have proposed with part of an eye on the main chance. Why else had he kept on writing to her, retaining his hold on her affections when he was practically living with another woman down here?

Max, of all people. If it had been Dane … She blundered out into the fresh air. People were never predictable. She might have married Max. She might never have known that he was capable of such deception. And there was Dane, whom no sane woman would trust out of her sight. He wouldn’t have done this to her. Oh, good lord, no! Dane would be cruelly candid when the sun went down on their relationship.

When Dane finally realised that Max existed, he’d go through the roof to learn simultaneously that Max had replaced her. She’d sooner crawl over broken glass than face Dane’s derision … worse still, his pity. Even her jobless, unremarkable boyfriend had found better fish to fry. Her savaged pride burned hotter than a furnace. No, she didn’t owe such painful truth to Dane. Before he had swept her into his bed, yes. But not now.

Back at the apartment she looked at the beautiful clothes in the built-in units. Mounds of them. Leisure wear, evening wear, lingerie she blushed to look at. All the props necessary to turn an ugly duckling into an almost swan. It was a typical Dane gesture of almost offensive largesse. Easily given and in this case grudgingly and ungratefully received; but reality was beginning to creep into her thoughts now again. She had got Dane into this marriage. She owed him the outward show.

Without really thinking beyond her need to hear a friendly voice, she tried Randy’s number again. Her friend answered breathlessly. ‘Claire? Gosh, you’re the last person I expected to hear from. There I was, reading the morning paper under the effect of the most hideous hangover … Lord, I dropped it in my muesli! You and Dane Visconti? You might have dropped a teeny hint,’ she complained. ‘I know we haven’t seen each other in ages, but really, Claire! I thought you were in love with some wholesome country character called Max and then I find I’m not just a chapter behind, I’m a whole book behind!’

Claire had forgotten just how hard it was to get a word in edgeways with her garrulous friend. ‘I’ll bring you up to date some time.’

‘Where are you? You sound very clear. I imagined you’d be abroad. Are you?’

Suddenly she saw the complete impossibility

of dredging out the story behind her amazing marriage. Dane had put up a front for his friends. She had no right to spill all to Randy. ‘We’re still in London. I just thought I’d ring and say hello.’ Claire fiddled with the phone cord, stuck for light conversation. ‘How’s your career going? The most evidence of its vitality I receive are postcards from foreign parts,’ she teased.

‘I could reach down this line and strangle you!’ Randy groaned. ‘How dare you sound calm! You’ve married one of the most divine-looking and sexy men I’ve ever seen and you’re asking about my latest assignment? Oh hell, there’s the bell. I’ve got a date. I suppose it’ll be ages before I hear from you again.’

Claire swallowed ruefully. ‘No, it won’t be. I’ll see you soon.’ And before Randy could comment in surprise, she rang off.

Dear God, if one more misinformed person told her how lucky she was to have got Dane to the altar, she’d end up in an asylum! She wandered aimlessly about the apartment and then, as the idiocy of inactivity struck her, she conceived sudden purpose, stepping briefly into the kitchen to tell Thompson she would be back in time for dinner.