The Ultimate Betrayal

Daniel became very busy—another take-over deal—and he had to spend nights away from home in negotiation with a small engineering company near Huddersfield. Rachel accepted his word with a tight-lipped refusal to comment, which sent him off tense-faced with angry frustration while she sat at home and tormented herself with suspicions she knew were unfair even while she allowed them free rein in her wretched aching soul. That Daniel in turn refused to comment on what he knew she was thinking told her that he had decided not to justify his every move to her. He was, in short, demanding that she trust him. But she couldn’t, which only helped to pile the strain on their marriage. And life became hardly bearable over the next few weeks.

Then one afternoon she happened to be glancing through the local paper that dropped through her letterbox once a week, and saw something there that set her pulses humming.

Zac Callum was giving a talk about his work at the local college of art that ev

ening, and anyone who was interested was invited to go along.

Daniel was away. But if she got his mother in to baby-sit, then it wouldn’t hurt anyone if she went along, would it?

But, deep down, she knew she was only going out of a rebellious need to hit Daniel on the raw.

His own fault, she defended her reasoning as she guided her white Escort into a vacant parking slot outside the centre. He shouldn’t have let her see that he could be jealous of someone like Zac Callum. It was only knowing that which had given her the incentive to come at all!

Slipping into the small assembly hall where the talk was going to be held, she took a seat close to the back, not expecting Zac to notice her or, even if he did, to recognise her. They had met only briefly, after all.

Yet he did notice her—and recognised her instantly. He walked on to the raised podium, glanced smilingly around the three-quarters-full room, saw her, paused, focused on her again, then made her blush by widening his smile so that everyone present turned to see whom he was personally acknowledging.

Her answering smile was shy and self-conscious, and she sank herself deeper into her pale blue duffle coat with a wish to fade away completely.

But once he began talking she started to relax again, finding herself caught up in the clever, quick, witty way he explained how he homed in on the weaknesses of his victims. He was relaxed and generous with his smiles, easy to laugh with, a clever entertainer as well as a good speaker.

Several times he caught her laughing with everyone else and winked at her, his familiarity giving a boost to an ego that had been sadly flagging over the last few weeks.

Afterwards he came straight to her, lightly fielding any remarks made to him as he made his way down the aisle to where she was standing preparing to leave.

‘Rachel—’ his warm fingers made a light clasp around her own ‘—how nice of you to come.’

‘I’m glad I did.’ She smiled, feeling stupidly shy and self-conscious again. ‘You made it all sound so interesting.’

‘Do you attend classes at this college?’

Her eyes widened. ‘No!’ she denied, flushing a little because it had never occurred to her that he would make such an assumption. But then she realised how she must look tonight in faded jeans and a casual duffle coat, her face completely free of make-up.

Nothing like the woman he had met as the wife of the dynamic Daniel Masterson, anyway. And probably more like a student.

‘We live not far from here,’ she explained. ‘I read about tonight in the local newspaper and decided to come along on impulse.’

‘By yourself?’

‘Yes.’ The flush deepened, why, she wasn’t sure, since this man could have no idea that this was an unusual diversion for the stay-at-home Rachel to make. ‘Daniel is away on business.’

‘Ah.’ As if that seemed to say it all, he sent her a strange look. ‘Interested in politics?’

She shook her pale head. ‘Art,’ she corrected. ‘Caricature, anyway. I used to have quite a flair for it myself, believe it or not,’ she shyly admitted, ‘before being a wife and mother took up most of my—time.’

Oh, damn. Her heart sank to her feet when she realised what she had just said. Zac Callum believed her and Daniel to be newly-weds; now he was frowning at her in confusion, and her teeth bit guiltily down on her full bottom lip at being caught out in the lie.

Luckily they were interrupted by someone who wanted to ask Zac questions. Deciding to take her chance and slip away while he was busy, and before she could drop herself and Daniel further in it, Rachel pushed her hands into her duffle coat pockets and turned to leave. But his hand coming out to catch her arm stopped her.

‘Don’t go,’ he said. ‘I need to say goodbye to the people who organised this, but if you’ll wait for me, I would love your company for a drink in the pub I saw over the road.’

She hesitated as something close to temptation fizzed up inside her. Having a drink, in a pub, with a man who wasn’t Daniel, constituted crossing that invisible line drawn by marriage. Or did it? she then asked herself defiantly. People did it all the time! Daniel did it all the time! The modern-day line was surely drawn much further down the page on morality. What harm could it do to anyone if she did accept? What business was it of anyone’s if she did accept?

Daniel’s business, she answered her own question. But ignored it. And ignored too the deep-seated knowledge that it was defiance making her ignore it. She liked Zac, she defended the temptation. She was interested in what he did.

‘Thank you,’ she heard herself accept. ‘That would be nice.’

Funnily enough, he hesitated now, that shrewd speculative look she remembered from the first time she met him entering his eyes again.