A Whirlwind Marriage

The return of the wine waiter delayed Marianne’s answer somewhat, but once they were sitting with an enormous glass of red wine and an embossed menu in front of each of them, Marianne said without any preamble, ‘It’s all such a mess, Pat—me, Zeke, everything. I thought…I thought it was going to be so different. I knew his work was a big part of his life, and that’s all right, it is really, but he doesn’t seem to understand that I need something to do. I can’t just be content with keeping house and lunches with the wives of his friends and shopping afternoons and organising dinner parties and so on. I’m not made like that.’

‘Nor me,’ Pat said with a shudder.

‘He’s expected all the compromise to be on my side. I’ve had to fit completely into his world, and he hasn’t made the slightest attempt to fit into mine. He doesn’t want me to work, says I don’t need to, and even when I tried to set up some voluntary work at the local hospital he made it so difficult I finished up letting it go. The apartment…I feel it’s a prison, I hate it, and he promised before we got married that we’d leave there as soon as we found somewhere more suitable for bringing up a family.’

‘A family?’ Pat queried carefully.

Marianne stared at her miserably. ‘It just hasn’t happened,’ she said quietly. ‘The first twelve months it didn’t matter, but then I started to worry, so we went for tests and everything’s fine, apparently, but still no baby. And this constant city life, it’s stifling me, Pat. Choking me.’

‘Have you told him all this?’ said Pat, watching her closely.

Marianne nodded. ‘But he has an answer for everything, he’s that sort of man, and I always end up feeling in the wrong. The doctor at the hospital…he thought I wasn’t getting pregnant because I was stressed, and when he said that it was more reason for Zeke to say he doesn’t want me to do anything outside the home. I tried to tell him it was because I was being locked away from the outside I was stressed, but he wouldn’t accept it.’

‘Because he didn’t want to,’ Pat said astutely. She’d had a taste of Zeke Buchanan’s single-mindedness when he had all but shut her out of Marianne’s life once they were married.

‘I still love him, Pat.’ Marianne was staring down into her glass as she spoke and missed Pat’s green eyes narrowing shrewdly on her unhappy face. ‘But then last night we had a terrible row.’

She raised her head then, and the stark misery in the azure blue eyes took Pat’s breath away. But before she could say anything the waiter was at their side for their lunch order, and once he had gone Marianne changed the subject, insisting on hearing all Pat’s news, and how she was progressing in her job as surgery nurse at the local veterinary practice in Bridgeton.

It was as they finished their first course it happened. Pat had just eaten the last mouthful of her avocado and prawn cocktail—one of Rochelle’s specialities—and had leant forward across the table, saying quietly, ‘Annie, have you told your father how things are?’ when she became aware her friend’s eyes were transfixed at a point over her shoulder.

‘Oh, Pat.’ It was the merest thread of a whisper, but as Pat made to turn in her chair Marianne said urgently, ‘No, don’t turn round, whatever you do, and talk—talk about anything, quickly.’

Pat had always been the person you could most depend on to rise to any emergency, and as she obediently began to prattle about one of the veterinary surgery’s most amusing patients, Marianne forced her eyes away from the little party who had just come into the restaurant and on to the perplexed face of her friend. But on the perimeter of her vision she saw a tall, dark figure stop abruptly and then, as an obliging waiter showed the party to their seats, leave the others and start to make his way across towards them. He had seen her.

‘Marianne?’ Pat’s voice was cut off as though by a knife as Zeke’s deep drawl sounded just behind her. ‘You didn’t tell me you had a luncheon date.’

‘Hallo, Zeke.’ Marianne was amazed to find her voice was perfectly calm and composed. ‘Pat only phoned me this morning to tell me she was in town so I didn’t know.’

Pat had turned in her seat by this time, and as cool grey eyes met bright green Zeke smiled coldly, before he said, ‘Pat, I didn’t know it was you. How are you?’

‘I’m fine, Zeke.’ Pat had never been one for flowery effusion, but even so it was succinct in the extreme.

‘I’m sure you are.’ It was neither condemnatory or approving, and Zeke’s grey eyes took on all the warmth of cold granite as he nodded in abrupt dismissal of the other woman before turning to Marianne again. ‘I’ll see you later,’ he said smoothly. ‘Did you get my message before you left?’

‘Your…?’ And then she remembered. Gerald Morton’s pâté! ‘Yes, Zeke,’ she said steadily. ‘I got your message.’

He looked impossibly handsome as he stood there, his ebony hair sleek and shining and immaculate and the big, lean body clothed in a beautifully cut suit that couldn’t disguise the leashed strength of the hard, masculine frame. Deep grooves splayed out from either side of his straight nose to his mouth, a mouth which very rarely smiled except with mocking amusement, and the uncompromisingly severe quality of his dark good looks was tantalisingly at odds with the sensual knowledge in the darkly lashed grey eyes.

And he was a sensuous lover, lustful and imaginative, but with a sensitivity and tenderness to his lovemaking that made her—even with all that was wrong between them—ache to be in his arms whenever they were alone.

‘Excuse me. This is a business lunch and there’s plenty to get through.’ There was a message in the cool, even tone that was for Marianne alone, but she merely stared back at him, her eyes steady and her small chin uplifted.

And then he turned, walking back to his table without another word and without glancing their way again.

This time Marianne didn’t stop Pat when her friend turned round and made a swift, but thorough assessment of Zeke’s companions. The two men Pat glanced over, but the green eyes stopped on the fourth figure at the table, who was engaging Zeke in animated conversation a

nd totally ignoring their colleagues, and remained there for a full thirty seconds before Pat settled herself back in her seat.

Marianne answered the question Pat was too tactful to ask. ‘She’s Liliana de Giraud,’ she said flatly. ‘You might have heard of her? She’s the hottest interior designer around.’

Why, oh, why hadn’t she considered the possibility that Zeke might come here for lunch? She knew it was his favourite eating place in the lunch hour when he was entertaining clients and such, but he had said he was going to fly to Stoke and wouldn’t be back until mid-afternoon. Had that been a lie? Had he been intending to take Liliana out for lunch all along?

‘She’s full of herself.’ Pat’s down-to-earth evaluation was spoken scathingly.

‘That’s because she’s very pleased with life at the moment,’ Marianne said painfully. ‘Zeke has just acquired her services for a massive development deal that will provide luxury homes for the élite in one of the best parts of London. Apparently he was very fortunate to get her.’

‘Oh, yes?’