'You don't have to have done to have been hurt in some way.' It was a statement, not a question, and as he spoke he rose to his feet and walked over to her, drawing her up by her hands.
'
You're trembling,' he murmured softly, drawing her against the hard wall of his chest as his hands began stroking her slender back, his touch slow and sensuous. 'Do I frighten you that much?'
If it had been fear that held her in its grip she could have coped, she thought helplessly. But it wasn't fear that was sending tiny little shivers flickering down every nerve and sinew and making her breathing shallow. He was wearing an expensively delicious aftershave, but beneath it was the scent of clean male skin, and pressed as she was into his shirt-front she could feel the primitive roughness of thick body hair beneath the silk, and it was driving what lucid thought remained clear away. He was so big, so male.
'I don't like secrets, Annie.' She couldn't see his face, folded as she was against his body, but his voice was flat and controlled. 'Put it down to the lawyer in me, or just that I'm an inquisitive so-and-so who doesn't know when to accept defeat, but I've never been able to let go until I've got to the bottom of anything I don't understand. And I don't understand this—or you. It would be simpler all round if you just spilled the beans now.'
'I… I can't.' She kept her face hidden. 'I can't'
'No—you won't he corrected her evenly. 'You won't win if you fight me—no one does,' he warned softly. 'You must realise that?'
'I don't want to fight you.' She took a deep breath and prayed for strength to appear composed and calm. 'I told you, I just want to put the past behind us and part as friends. We have separate lives now. You're happy. I'm… I'm happy.'
'And I told you, you are the last person on this earth I would consider a friend,' he said expressionlessly.
It hurt, crucifyingly, causing her to jerk away so suddenly he was surprised into letting her go, and she kept her eyes lowered as she took a step backwards away from him and said, 'I… I have been hurt in the past—threatened, manipulated—but I can't discuss it with you or anyone else. Please, can't we just leave it at that?'
'Was it this man you went back to when you left me?' he asked softly, standing absolutely still as he spoke.
'No.' It was the rat who told you I'd got someone else, who was part of an organisation that would take fiendish delight in breaking you and watching you crawl or worse, who was married to my mother—my mother… 'That's all I'm saying, Hudson.' She raised drowning eyes to his, her misery so visible it stopped his breath.
'Except that I'm sorry I hurt you and… and let you down. I didn't mean to, but I realised I couldn't marry you, that it was impossible—with you or anyone else. I… I was stupid to let you think otherwise.'
Impossible with you because it would destroy you—impossible with anyone else because I couldn't bear to let another man touch me, loving you as I do, she thought numbly.
'And that's it? That's as much as you are going to say?' he asked slowly after a long moment when his eyes searched each feature of her white face. 'You expect me to accept that and ask no more?'
If she tried to speak again she would break down completely—in an effort to keep control, she was already biting her lip so hard she could taste blood, and so she merely nodded, a short, sharp little bob of her head, which, along with her clenched hands and deathly pale face, spoke volumes to the big man who had spent most of his working life calculating just how far he could push another human being before they reached breaking point.
'Okay.' It was cool and calm and casual, and totally at odds with all that had gone on before.
'Okay?' she asked weakly, her mind refusing to accept his capitulation. 'What do you mean, "okay"?'
'Okay, fine, no problem… ' He smiled, and she was too nervous and keyed up—her nerves stretched tight and rigid—to notice that the narrowed grey eyes were as cold mid dark as deep water, and just as fathomless.
CHAPTER FOUR
Marianne hadn't expected to enjoy any part of the afternoon, but amazingly, once they had left the car and begun to wander around the massive enclosure the market was held in, she found the alien sights and smells too fascinating to resist.
The area was very busy—Hudson had told her on the way there that the weekly meeting place was as much a social occasion for visiting friends and catching up on the news, as the buying and selling of wares—and very colourful. It was clear the day was one which loomed large in the lives of the countrypeople, taking the place of cinemas, church fairs, and other entertainment the western world enjoyed as its right.
'A taste of the real Morocco.' Hudson's voice was soft and appreciative and mirrored her thoughts exactly, but then, as he took her hand, his flesh warm and firm, all her senses were tied up with the big male figure at her side.
They could have been an ordinary couple on holiday doing a bit of sightseeing, she thought with a touch of hysteria, and probably appeared so to anyone observing them. If nothing else, the last two years had taught her never to assume that what she could see and hear was necessarily as it seemed—that to accept people or situations at face value was a grave mistake. Some people spent their whole lives putting on a brave front—she understood that now in a way she could never have done before she had met Hudson, and before Michael had destroyed their happiness so cruelly.
'Home-made soap.' Hudson pointed to a large basket behind which a darkly bearded Moroccan man sat, his brown skin like leather. 'He'll have cooked it up by boiling ashes from his kitchen fire with fat cut from meat The old ways still flourish here once you're out of the big towns and cities.'
'I see.' He seemed to be doing a roaring trade, Marianne thought as she smiled into the bright beady eyes watching them, receiving a gap-toothed grin in return.
One farmer had several clusters of live chickens with their feet tied together and their heads hanging down. Another had vegetable produce, another baskets of eggs. At one spot a great pile of yellow melons stood, and next to them a wizened little old Arab was crouching beside a small charcoal fire burning in a brazier. He was cooking sizzling chunks of mutton on skewers and selling them to the waiting crowd, who then moved on to the water-carrier nearby, who was exchanging a cupful of water from his goatskin for a few small coins. Marianne was fascinated by the almost biblical scene.
It was vibrant and colourful, and so different from life in the city that Marianne had the strange feeling she had stepped back in time, that she had been transported to another age, another world.
Would that she had been… She glanced at Hudson from under her eyelashes as the thought took form. A world where no Michaels had ever existed—no past, no future, just… now. Here with Hudson, touching him, feeling him close, she could almost imagine it… almost. She looked away, her heart thudding. Careful, Marianne, careful, she told herself tightly. She had to be cautious, always keep her guard up and perpetuate the subterfuge that was as abhorrent as it was necessary. He was too intelligent for less.
'Have you thought of me once or twice over the last two years, Annie?'