A Whirlwind Marriage

He nodded dismissively and then turned to Josh and Marianne. ‘Another cocktail?’ he enquired pleasantly. ‘And I think we’ll have a bottle of Bollinger with our meal…to celebrate.’

There was a moment’s silence as Liliana continued to stand there, unable to believe she had been dismissed in such a cursory fashion, and then she swept out of the restaurant with a muttered oath, Claude trailing behind her.

‘Whew.’ Josh leant back in his seat on a long sigh. ‘You sure know how to keep an evening buzzing, Zeke.’

&n

bsp; ‘Are you all right?’ Zeke ignored Josh, reaching across to touch Marianne’s arm.

She was trying hard to conceal her emotions—she wasn’t even sure what half of them were. Relief, overwhelming, blinding relief was there, along with stunned amazement, incredulity, confusion, wonder, shock, and a certain puzzling panic that at the moment was vague and indeterminate. ‘Yes, I’m all right,’ she said slowly, ‘although it’s hard to imagine someone that can be so devious.’

‘Devious, manipulative, selfish, downright evil…’ Zeke included Josh in the turn of his head. ‘You’re right, Josh. Not one of my best decisions.’

‘I’m…I’m sorry, Zeke.’ Marianne raised her head and looked directly into the smoky grey eyes as she spoke. ‘I should have known you weren’t having an affair with her.’

But how should she have known? she asked herself in the next instant, barely aware of Zeke murmuring some soothing reply before Josh engaged him in conversation. Their whirlwind courtship and swift marriage had meant she’d barely been familiar with even the basics of what made Zeke tick when she’d married him. Those few golden weeks had been a haze of romantic dinners and thrilling excursions into London for shows and parties. They had talked of a big house in the country and of filling it with children and cats and dogs, of holidays abroad, the wedding, their honeymoon. But when had they talked about themselves, bared their souls and got to know each other? They hadn’t.

She sat sipping at her frothy pink cocktail, more disturbed than she had ever been.

And when they had come home from their honeymoon—a time spent almost exclusively in bed as the sensuous hunger of their love had obliterated everything else—Zeke had picked up his old life again almost as though he didn’t have a wife, and she had found herself imprisoned in a beautiful, cold, empty shell of a home.

The babies hadn’t happened and so the house hadn’t happened; he hadn’t made time for something that wasn’t necessary just because she kept asking for it, needing it. When she had talked of finding a job he had been gently dismissive at first—‘You don’t need to work, darling, and I want to look after you. It’s so wonderful to know you’re here waiting for me when I come home.’ And then the gentleness had faded and he’d become curt, cold, if she expressed a wish to work outside the home. And she, mindful of his childhood and all he’d never had, had fallen in with his demands, wanting to remove all memory of past hurts and slights.

Not that she had been actively unhappy, not at first. They had had a busy social life—all Zeke’s friends and business contacts, of course—and had enjoyed their evenings at home together, which had always finished in one way. They were perfectly suited in bed, desire flaming between them if they so much as touched one another.

But after a few months she had become frustrated, bored and restless, and it was then she had felt the pressure from Zeke to change, to conform to what he wanted in a wife. And because she loved him so much she had done just that—which had been bad for both of them, she thought now.

He had changed from the Zeke she had first loved and she had become someone she didn’t recognise, losing her confidence, her belief in herself, everything that made her her. Zeke hadn’t wanted a real wife—he’d demanded a pretty little doll he could dress up and keep in an elegant doll’s house. And she’d fallen in line.

‘Marianne?’ The waiter was in front of her, holding out an embossed menu as Zeke’s voice carefully prodded her back into the present. ‘How about caviare to begin with? You enjoy the way they do it here.’

She glanced at him, seeing the dark good looks, the quiet, controlled arrogance and the devastatingly magnetic sexual attraction, and her stomach turned right over. She loved this man, and she was probably going to lose him altogether, but she couldn’t go back to the way things had been. She couldn’t follow him mindlessly through life; she had her own goals to aim for and dreams to realise. She was a person as well as a wife, and if she had to choose between Zeke or losing her identity…

‘No, I don’t really like caviare, Zeke,’ she said clearly. ‘I don’t think I ever have. I just tried to, for you.’

‘For me?’ He stared at her, puzzled but still smiling, and she nearly chickened out. Nearly.

‘Yes, for you,’ she said quietly. ‘But it’s probably just as well I don’t care for it because I certainly won’t be able to afford it in the future, on a student’s budget.’ Then she raised her eyes to the young waiter as she said, ‘I’ll have the Parmesan and bacon salad, please, followed by the salmon in lemon and white wine.’ And as the ponytail dipped and dived about her hot cheeks she finished the last of the pink cocktail.

CHAPTER FIVE

WHEN Marianne awoke the next morning the room was filled with a strange light hue and it was quiet, very quiet. Unusually quiet. She glanced at the monstrous plastic wall clock some previous occupant had fixed on the wall over the fire. Six o’clock. Early, but not so early that the hum of London traffic shouldn’t be making itself known in the background.

She stuck her nose out of the covers and took a deep breath before diving for her dressing gown. Having lived with central heating all her life she couldn’t believe how cold the room got during the night.

‘Oh, gorgeous…’ When she pulled back the curtains the thick, white, starry flakes of snow falling from a laden sky brought her eyes opening wide. It had been ages since it snowed; the last two years they hadn’t seen any in London, and it was so beautiful.

For a moment she forgot all her troubles and remained staring out of the window like a child spying its presents on Christmas morning.

The dismal street had been transformed into a winter wonderland, ethereal and pure and white, and the snow was already several inches thick. She could see parked cars, like huge rectangular snowballs, completely covered by the feathery mass, and halfway down the street someone was already beginning to clear their vehicle preparatory to beginning the day.

As she watched, a family saloon came down the street, very slowly, before disappearing round the far corner and leaving deep indentations in the snow.

Thank goodness she hadn’t got to rely on a car or public transport to get to work. It was going to be chaotic on the roads this morning. She felt a brief glow of pleasure at her autonomy before she shivered convulsively and set to work restoring the bed back into a sofa. Soon the gas fire was blazing away, she had a steaming cup of coffee at her elbow, and she was snuggled on the sofa with her duvet wrapped around her as she sipped at the drink.

Would Zeke be awake yet? Suddenly all the brief magic was gone. He had been angry last night, furiously angry, and when he had seen her home, after they had taken her father to pick up his car from the apartment car park where he’d left it, the atmosphere had been tense and electric.

She had thought, once they were alone, that he would allude to her comment about becoming a student, but he hadn’t, and when she had tried to broach the matter he had been curt and hostile in his refusal to discuss it.