Painted the Other Woman

Before she cracked, broke

down, gave in—gave in to the desperate longing in her to throw herself into his arms, to pretend that nothing had come between them, to pretend that he’d never deliberately set out to seduce her and then denounce her the way he had. To pretend that what she’d thought was true was—he had never set her up, deceived her, lied to her …

But he had, and nothing could undo that

He wasn’t saying anything. He was just standing there, tall and dark and so heart-stoppingly handsome that she could feel the power of it radiating like a force field. His face was a mask.

She’d seen it like that before when he’d confronted her on their return from St Cecile. When he’d closed himself to her, shut and locked the door, thrown away the key.

‘I see,’ he said. His voice was terse. Clipped. ‘Well, you’ve made yourself very clear. So, yes, I’ll go.’

Yet for a moment—a moment that seemed to hang in the air like a weight—he remained motionless. She stood frozen, behind the table that divided her from him—behind everything that divided her from him and always would.

Always.

Then, ‘I wish you well, Marisa. It would be … ungenerous of me to do less,’ he said. His voice had no emotion, no depth. Nothing. Nothing at all.

His face still blank, still closed, he turned and walked out of the room.

She couldn’t move. Could only wait while she heard his footsteps in the narrow corridor to the front door, and then the creaking door open and close behind him. For a few moments longer she waited. Only the crackling of the logs in the range was audible. Then another sound penetrated. A car engine gunning. Louder, then fading.

Fading completely.

He had gone.

Marisa went on standing there, quite motionless. Her eyes started to blink. Slowly, and then faster, tears began to run down her cheeks.

Along the narrow lane Athan drove—dangerously, recklessly fast. He had to. Had to gain as much distance from her as possible. He had arrived here a bare hour ago, driven by a demon he could not shake off his back. By the fear that she had succumbed to Ian Randall’s forbidden blandishments, his begging to resume their affair. A demon had bitten him with the venom of savage jealousy.

Now a different demon drove him. Worse, much worse, than the first.

He wanted her—and she would not come to him.

I’ve lost her.

The words fell into his head like stones. Stones he could not shift. Stones that sat there crushing his thoughts, his emotions, everything.

All around him, pressing on the glass of the car windows, was darkness.

Darkness outside him.

Inside him.

He drove on into the winter’s night.

CHAPTER SIX

MARISA dug carefully with the trowel. The garden her mother had loved so much had become overgrown, and she was trying to clear away the weeds from the new shoots sprouting up all over the flowerbeds. Spring had finally arrived, and as she knelt she could feel the sun warm on her back. It seemed like a blessing.

She was in need of blessings. Working hard to count them. To keep them in the forefront of her mind. Keep buried in the depths of her mind all remembrances of Athan Teodarkis—buried deep, buried safe.

She was humming to herself intermittently—some tune she’d heard on the radio. She listened to the radio a lot these days. It was companionship. Comforting. The cottage was so isolated she could play the radio out here in the garden knowing no one would be disturbed by it.

A robin was hopping around at the back of the flowerbed, tilting its head sideways and eyeing her hopefully. A small worm coiled itself under a clod of earth and she kept it buried. Fond as she was of the robin, who was a cheery visitor to the garden, she didn’t feel up to deliberately feeding it a worm who was only trying to have a quiet life.

The way she was.

A quiet life. That was all she wanted right now. One that, like the tiny earthworm could be spent buried deeply and safely. Sheltered and out of the way.