A Whirlwind Marriage

‘This is crazy, Marianne. You know that, don’t you?’

‘Here’s the wine bar,’ she said hurriedly, ignoring the fact that he had stopped to face her as she all but ran the few feet to the steps that led down to the cellar bar.

She thought she heard him swear but she wasn’t sure, and then she had negotiated the steps and was aware of Zeke just behind her as she entered the arched doorway into warmth and light and noise.

They found a small table for two in a corner of the bustling bar, and Marianne watched Zeke as he walked across to get their drinks. He looked every inch the assured man about town, she thought, aware—with a kind of painful pride that was terribly misplaced in the circumstances—of more than one pair of female eyes following his progress. Assured and vital and strong, with a sort of dark power about him that was dangerously attractive. It had certainly attracted Liliana de Giraud anyway, she reminded herself tensely.

He got served immediately, despite the others already waiting—he was that sort of man—and returned to her with a bottle of red wine and two large glasses. ‘I’ve ordered a table for two in their bistro upstairs,’ he said shortly as he sat down beside her. ‘In about half an hour.’

‘I don’t want anything to eat,’ she protested quickly.

‘Then you can watch me eat, can’t you?’ He raised his eyes from the wine he was pouring and she was shocked at the piercingly cold light in the grey orbs.

‘Look, Zeke, I agreed to have a talk with you, that’s all.’ Marianne frowned at him, refusing to be intimidated.

He shrugged lazily as he handed her the glass of wine. ‘A talk, a glass of wine, a meal—what’s the odds?’ he drawled with irritating insolence.

‘A wife, a mistress on the side? Yes, I get your drift,’ Marianne said cuttingly.

‘For crying out loud!’ The calm contemptuousness vanished and he sat up straight, almost knocking over his glass of wine. ‘Liliana is not my mistress. She’s temporarily employed by me, that’s all, whatever you call it.’

‘I call it adultery,’ Marianne said as calmly as she could through the swirling of her stomach. ‘And so did her ex when he called me the other night.’

‘Her ex?’ Zeke stared at her, his dark brows drawn together in a ferocious scowl and his mouth one bitter line. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘I’m talking about the man who phoned me the night you and Liliana were staying at the hotel and told me he’d been dumped,’ Marianne shot back angrily. ‘He didn’t sound too upset by it, but then perhaps he’s used to Liliana’s little ways. Whatever, he was most informative a

bout her affair with you.’

‘There is no affair.’ Each word was bit out through clenched teeth.

‘I don’t believe you.’

The words hung in the air for a moment, stark and naked, and Zeke’s face whitened. ‘So I’m a liar as well as an adulterer?’ he said with deadly softness.

‘It would appear so.’ She was frightened, terrified, but determined not to show it.

She watched him take a hard deep breath, and then another one, his eyes fixed on hers and a muscle working in his taut jaw, and then he swirled the wine round in his glass, taking a long swallow before he said, his mild voice at odds with the content of the words, ‘It’s a good job you’re a woman, Marianne, because if a man had just accused me of what you have he wouldn’t know what had hit him.’

‘It wouldn’t make it any less a reality,’ she said tightly.

‘So, you don’t trust me.’ He settled back in his seat as he spoke, crossing one leg over the other knee as his grey eyes narrowed to pinpoints of charcoal brilliance. ‘Do you still love me?’

‘What?’ She stared at him, utterly taken aback.

‘It’s a simple enough question, Marianne,’ he said evenly. ‘I asked you if you loved me.’

‘After what you’ve done?’ she said numbly.

‘After what you think I’ve done,’ he corrected silkily.

‘I don’t know how you can ask that! I don’t know how you’ve got the bare-faced cheek to even think of asking that!’

‘Cut the splutterings of outrage and affronted virtue,’ he said with hateful equanimity, ‘and just answer the question. Do you love me?’

‘I hate you,’ she spat back hotly.

The pinpoints were unblinking as they bored with laser-brightness into her soul, searching, probing. For a long moment she really felt as though her innermost self was being stripped bare. And then he blinked, breaking the spell as he said coolly, ‘Drink your wine, Marianne.’