Marriage on the Rebound

Oh, my God! Shaan stood up, unable—just unable—to cope with the obvious answer to that one. ‘I h-have to go,’ she murmured shakily.

‘No, Shaan!’ Jemma’s hand, grabbing hold of hers, stopped her from moving, her eyes full of a pained remorse because she knew she had just cruelly hit Shaan below the belt ‘I’m sorry I said that. Please!’ she pleaded. ‘Sit down again while we discuss this! You’re in no fit state to go anywhere just yet!’

No fit state.

She was still in no fit state by the time she let herself into Rafe’s house over an hour later.

She should have gone back to work, but she hadn’t been able to. What was the use when she could barely think, barely walk, barely do anything with any intelligence, she felt so utterly frozen inside.

But neither did she want to be alone in this house, she realised from the very moment she entered it. It had begun to feel like home over the last few blissful weeks; now it was back to being the most alien place this earth had to offer her.

And as she stood there in the middle of all its polished wood luxury her mind flicked towards another home, a real home—not a place built around an illusion.

The only home she wanted to be in at this precise moment in her life…

* * *

When the doorbell started ringing around eight o’clock that night, Shaan was expecting it, but still found it took a concerted effort to make herself get out of the chair she had been sitting on the edge of while supposedly watching television. But she had really been waiting for this.

A showdown with Rafe.

Dry-mouthed, her face composed but very pale, she made herself leave the sitting room and walk down the hall towards the front door. She could see his tall, dark bulk superimposed against the leaded glass in the door, felt his anger reach through the barrier as he gave another impatient stab at the doorbell, and she ran decidedly shaky hands down the sides of her faded jeans.

She hadn’t worn these jeans since she’d left here—her aunt and uncle’s house—almost two months ago—or the simply knitted waist-cut blue top she had on. Both were part of the hodgepodge of personal items she had left behind here and never quite got around to coming to collect.

Now it was Rafe’s house where clothes of hers had been left hanging. In fact, she hadn’t brought anything with her, had not been able to bear the thought of walking into the bedroom they’d always shared to go and pack them.

So all she had done was go into his study so she could write him a note which she had sealed in an envelope along with her beautiful engagement ring. Not her wedding ring—she felt her official status as his wife compelled her to continue wearing that—but as for the rest…

She had taken nothing from that house—nothing—leaving her set of house keys and the envelope on the hall table so he would see them the moment he came home.

The note was short and to the point—by necessity—because she needed to finish this with at least some semblance of pride left intact, and the only way she could do that was by not telling him that she had decided to leave him only because she had discovered that he had betrayed her first.

So, ‘I can’t go on living a lie like this. I’m sorry’, was all she had written.

And now here he was, as she had expected, come to make her face him with the whys that she had no real answers to if she wanted to conceal the truth.

The truth. My God, she groaned inwardly as the full, wretched truth of it all went washing through her on a wave of utter misery.

You’re a fool, Shaan, she told herself grimly as her shaky fingers fumbled with the door lock and slowly drew the door open. You stupid, gullible fool.

Then her heart quivered, the morass of pained emotions all tying themselves into knots just as they had always done from the moment she had ever set eyes on this man.

He was standing there in the same clothes he had been wearing when she saw him with Madeleine. The same iron-grey suit he had crushed the other woman against when he’d bent down to kiss her. Same bright white shirt, same striped blue tie—only the fine silk had been yanked loose about his tense, tanned throat and the top few buttons on his shirt had been impatiently tugged free.

His face wore the grim, tight mask she recognised from somewhere, but at the moment she was just too strung out to want to recall where. His grey eyes were flat as they searched her set pale face for a sign that this was all just some kind of very bad joke.

But it wasn’t, and he seemed to accept that it wasn’t. ‘May I come in?’ he requested quietly.

With her long dark lashes flickering downwards to cover her too-revealing eyes, she took a small step sideways in silent permission for him to enter.

He did so, making her heart stop beating altogether when he came to a halt directly beside her. Her fingers tightened into a white-knuckled clutch on the solid brass door lock. And for a moment they continued to stand there like that, locked into a circle of unbelievable tension, while the full power of his magnetic presence bombarded her with all the weak reasons why she should not be doing this.

Then his hand came up, making her stiffen in silent rejection because she thought he was going to touch her and she couldn’t bear him to touch her. Because she knew that the whole roller coaster of emotion would spring free from the tight band of control she had it trapped in. And if that happened she would fall apart—she was sure of it!

But all he did was carefully take the door from her clutching fingers and quietly close it before moving off towards the sitting room. Leaving her standing there trembling and shaken, needing to take a few more moments to pull herself together again before she found the courage to go and join him.

CHAPTER TEN