Lovers Not Friends

‘Thanks.’ As he studied the menu she stood at his side, her eyes drawn to his bent head and a feeling of inexpressible emotion causing shivers of fear to flit down her spine in ever-increasing rhythm. His tawny brown hair gleamed richly with virile health in the May sunlight, his coal-black eyes with their thick, almost feminine lashes in impressive contrast. How often had she run her fingers through that mass of strong, coarse hair after a night of passion when she had felt as though even her toes were alive with sensual delight? He had been a magnificent lover. She forced her gaze up to stare blindly out of the window. Sensuous, erotic, but with a tender sensitivity to her own feelings that had caused the bond between them to strengthen and grow night by night. No wonder he didn’t understand why she had left. If only she hadn’t followed through on the impulse to visit Sandra that day …

‘I’ll have the soup, followed by an omelette, please.’ She jumped visibly as he spoke and a dark frown creased his forehead. ‘Daydreaming, Amy? I won’t ask who’s featured in them but for the moment would you concentrate on doing your job?’ The tone was biting.

‘You don’t have to be so thoroughly unpleasant,’ she said tightly as she wrote his order on the small notepad attached to her belt.

‘You call this unpleasant?’ he asked with a mocking, frosty amazement. ‘You don’t know the half, girl. But you will.’ The dark eyes were pure granite. ‘Oh, yes, you will.’

As she walked through to the kitchen a feeling of incredible weariness had her hands shaking. Was all this worth it? Perhaps it would be better to tell him? To let him share in the agony with her rather than bear it all alone? But then she remembered Sandra’s drawn, lined face, the sunken features and the still young body already twisted into a caricature of an old woman. Could she bear those eyes that had always blazed with love and passion dulling with pity and wretched, helpless misery? To have him look at her each day as she slowly got worse, to see— She stopped her thoughts from the destructive path they were following and straightened her back as hot rage against the unfairness of it all flooded her system with adrenalin.

Stop your whining, girl, she told herself fiercely as the doorbell in the outer room signified more customers. One day, one hour at a time. She had realised weeks ago that was the only way she was going to bear the months and years ahead. If she looked into the future she lost all her courage.

She took Blade’s bowl of soup to his table before she turned to the family that had seated themselves in a corner across the other side of the room. All the time she chatted with the two children and took the parents’ order she was aware of his gaze trained on the back of her head even though she was turned from him, but when she swung around and made her way to the kitchen he was quietly eating a bread roll, his dark eyes lazily surveying the peaceful scene outside the window.

‘What time do you finish work?’ His tone was brusque and his face expressionless as she served him the freshly cooked Spanish omelette and baked potato with a side salad.

‘What?’ Startled, she looked him straight in the eyes and then wished she hadn’t as the force of his gaze pierced her to the spot.

‘You heard what I said, Amy.’ His voice was quiet but with an undertone of iron that she knew from old. How often she had heard him use that tone in the past when he intended to get his own way. ‘We need to tie up a few loose ends so that the formalities can progress smoothly. That’s what you want, isn’t it? To be rid of me at the earliest opportunity?’

She dropped her eyes quickly, her face bleak. If he only knew … She had never wanted or loved him as much as she did now, when she was frightened and lonely and desolately aware of what the future held. To be able to lean on his strength, to rest in the knowledge of his love, to be cushioned, at least in part, by the comfort and support of his wealth … ‘I finish at eleven,’ she said quietly. ‘But I can meet you tomorrow morning, if you like?’

‘I’ll be outside at eleven.’ His tone brooked no argument and she nodded, still without looking at him, before turning on her heel and seeking the sanctuary of the steaming kitchen and Arthur’s blunt normality.

All the rest of the afternoon and evening she functioned on automatic, taking orders, smiling, engaging in conversation while her mind ticked away on a completely different plane altogether.

When she had married Blade Forbes she had never considered for a moment that it wouldn’t be forever. Her own parents had died in a car accident when she was four years old and her sister, Sandra and herself had been dispatched to different homes of distant relatives, Sandra to the wilds of Scotland and herself into the heart of London. The two sisters hadn’t been close, the eight-year age-gap proving insurmountable in view of Sandra’s raging jealousy of her beautiful baby sister, but Amy remembered crying as much for her big sister as for her parents in the early days.