Two-Week Wife

Pummelling on the door didn’t seem like a good idea, so she decided to wait patiently for his return. Meanwhile she picked up the clothes he’d strewn around the room in his anger.

Bianca shook her head in disbelief as she hung up his shirt and trousers. Messiness was as unlike him as his outburst of anger. The adult Adam was a quiet, coolly controlled individual—a highly intelligent but rather reserved man who liked order and tidiness. He was a maths lecturer at Sydney University, and his chief hobby was working out mathematically based systems for winning money at the races.

With some success apparently, since he was now driving a new BMW. His salary alone would not have provided that, and his family had no more money than hers.

She was tucking a sock into each shoe when the bathroom door was wrenched open. A cloud of steam emerged first, through which strode Adam, swathed from neck to ankle in his favourite red towelling robe which was as huge as it was thick.

Amazingly cold grey eyes settled on her as he sashed it tightly around his waist. ‘That won’t work either,’ he said brusquely.

‘What?’

‘Picking up after me. Sweet-talking’s a waste of time too. You’ve overstepped the mark, Bianca, and I’m not going to save your butt this time. Your mother will probably live for donkey’s years and I’m not going to be permanently saddled with the ridiculous role of pretending to be your long-suffering husband.’

‘R-ridiculous!’ she spluttered. ‘Long-suffering?’

A coating of dry amusement brought a gleam to his steely gaze. ‘You don’t honestly think any sane man would want to be your real husband, do you? Only a fool or a masochist would volunteer for that job.’

Bianca blinked her shock. This was her sweet Adam talking to her like this? And looking at her like that?

‘You look surprised, darling,’ he went on with chilling indifference as he casually raked his hands through his wet dark hair. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve believed all that rubbish my sister’s been feeding you all these years about my still being in love with you?’

Bianca’s mouth fell inelegantly open. Adam’s laugh scraped down her spine like chalk on a blackboard.

‘Michelle’s such a romantic,’ he said, his voice as cynically amused as his eyes. ‘I admit I had the most awful crush on you all through school. I even clung to my warped passion through our university days. But I finally outgrew it—for which I have you to thank, Bianca.

‘You really made me see the truth that night you turned twenty-one. I was wasting my time wanting you. So I turned my futile fantasies from fiction to fact with another female later that evening, and frankly I haven’t looked back since.’

Bianca was stung to the quick by his words. And by the images they evoked. ‘You mean I wasted my guilt on you that night?’ she burst out angrily. ‘There I was, thinking I’d broken your heart, when in truth you were off...you were off...’ She huffed and puffed to stop herself saying the crudity which had sprung onto the tip of her tongue.

‘I was off making some other more grateful girl happy?’ he suggested sarcastically.

‘Who was it?’ she demanded to know, her mind racing along with her heart. ‘Not that awful Tracy. My God, she’d sleep with anyone, that trollop!’

‘Thank you for the compliment, darling. But, no, it wasn’t Tracy. It was Laura.’

Laura!

Bianca was speechless. Laura had not been one of their group. She’d been a friend of a friend of a friend, who’d somehow been at her party by accident. Thirty if she was a day, but an absolutely stunning blonde with an absolutely stunning figure.

‘I don’t believe you!’ she choked out, hurt beyond belief by this almost ancient betrayal of his so-called love for her.

‘Don’t you? Poor Bianca.’ His smile was not at all sweet. ‘Has someone stolen your lollipop, darling? Won’t naughty Adam play the game any more?’

Her mouth returned to its earlier goldfish imitation.

Adam reached out and flicked her chin upwards, so her teeth snapped together. His eyes were narrowed and cruel-looking. He was nothing at all like the Adam she knew and loved.

‘I suggest you toddle off now, sweetheart, and make up a new story to tell your mother. I’m sure you can come up with one, being such an inventive and imaginative little minx. If you’re really stuck, you could always try the truth!’

Bianca’s startled tongue-tiedness didn’t last for long, and was quickly replaced by indignant and sceptical outrage. ‘I don’t believe any of this! Have you been drinking? Did you lose all your money at the races? This isn’t like you at all, Adam.’

He gripped her shoulders and pushed her down into a sitting position on the end of the bed. ‘Yes, I’ve been drinking,’ he agreed in a steely tone. ‘And, yes, I did lose a good deal at the races today, which didn’t please me at all. But you’re quite wrong when you think this isn’t like me. It is. It’s the new me.’

‘The new you?’ she repeated blankly.

‘I’ve been too soft with you for too long, Bianca. It’s done your character no good. No good at all. You think you can do as you please where I’m concerned. You think you can run rings around me. Well, you can’t anymore, sweetness. I’m awake to you now. Actually, I have been for ages, but it didn’t suit me to make a stand. It does now.’

‘Why now?’ she threw back up at him, feeling suddenly angry. How dared he let her think he loved her all this time when he didn’t?

‘Because I’ve met someone,’ he said. ‘Someone I intend asking to marry me. Hard to do that when I’m pretending to be married to someone else, don’t you think?’

Bianca felt her world go slightly out of kilter for a moment. Adam had fallen in love? He was going to get married?

Her heart squeezed tight. Her stomach flipped over. ‘I don’t believe you!’

He straightened, laughing. ‘You do seem to be having trouble with believing me today. Tell me what you don’t believe.’

She levered herself to her feet, shaken to find that her legs felt like jelly. ‘I don’t believe you’ve met someone. You haven’t brought a girl home here once this last month. You’re just making her up.’

But at the back of her mind Bianca was remembering all those nights Adam hadn’t come home lately. She’d presumed he was sleeping over in his room at the university, which he sometimes did. Now she saw there could be a very different explanation for his many absences.

He laughed again. ‘You’re really grasping at straws, you know that? The reason I didn’t bring Sophie here was because I wanted our relationship to last. What chance did I have with any of my other girlfriends after they’d met you as my flatmate?

‘They always took one look at you and were instantly jealous and suspicious. Nothing I could ever say would convince them our friendship was purely platonic. They were all convinced we were secret lovers. An impression you deliberately seemed to foster, I might add.’

‘I did not!’ she denied hotly. But underneath she knew she had. She’d never felt any of those bimbos were good enough for Adam. She’d only been protecting him by getting rid of them.

‘You never wanted me, Bianca,’ he swept on, a cold rage settling into his eyes. ‘But you didn’t want anyone else to have me either. You’ve been a very greedy little girl. And very selfish. It’s time you stopped thinking of no one but yourself.’

‘But that’s not true,’ she wailed, hating this new Adam and the way he was making her feel. ‘I was thinking of my mother when I told her...what I told her.’ Tears filled her eyes, tears of temper more than distress. ‘You have no right to say these rotten things to me. You’re being so hateful!’

‘The truth often hurts.’

The truth, she thought savagely. The truth was that her Adam was going to marry someone else! Just the thought of it was like a dagger in her heart. God knows why. She didn’t want to marry him herself. She didn’t want to marry any man.

Marriage, in Bianca’s opinion, would be a living death for someone like her. She was just like her father in that respect, craving change and excitement all the time. She didn’t like the idea of settling down and having children any more than he had.

Her dad had married in the throes of a whirlwind passion, then spent the next twenty years finding satisfaction outside of the marital bed. Bianca suspected she might be just as fickle. There hadn’t been a male yet to hold her sexual interest beyond six months. She suspected none ever would.

‘So who is this Sophie you’re going to marry?’ she demanded to know.

‘Oh, no, you don’t,’ Adam retorted with a dry chuckle. ‘I’m going to keep her well away from you, Madam Mischief-Maker.’

‘Where do you sleep with her?’

‘None of your business. Do I ask you where you copulate with your latest boyfriend?’

‘You can, if you like. But Derek and I have parted company. He was beginning to bore me.’

‘Gee whiz, what happened? Didn’t you fall asleep straight afterwards one night? Were you actually forced to make conversation with Mr Macho-Man?’

Bianca could feel a smile begin to tug at her lips. It was a good description for Derek, who was a professional weight-lifter with more muscles than mental capacity. ‘Something like that,’ she said.

Their eyes met, and that old camaraderie which had sustained their friendship all these years struggled to the surface. She’d always been able to tell Adam pretty much anything. And she’d never been able to shock him. He’d always listened and always given her sound advice, but never condemned. He was still her best friend, she realised, her heart squeezing tight as a wry smile began to play around his mouth.

Instinctively she reached out to place an intimate hand on his arm. ‘Sophie doesn’t have to know, Adam,’ she said pleadingly. ‘Mum will soon be gone, back to Scotland. Please...I don’t want to spoil her trip by telling her the truth just yet. I promise I’ll write to her after she’s gone back and make up something to get you permanently off the hook.’

She held her breath as he simply stared at her.

Please say yes, she was silently willing him. Please...

His sigh was weary as he removed her hand from his arm. ‘You never know when to give up, do you? Now let me make this quite clear. I am not going to play happy husband for you and your mother. I am not going to let you sleep in my bed while she’s here, unless I’m not in it. I am not going to be at your beck and call, or dance to any tune you might choose to play.’

Bianca’s dismay was only exceeded by her. panic. ‘But whatever am I going to tell her?’

‘Tell her whatever story you fancy, Bianca, only make it convincing. You have a choice: either telling the truth, or inventing a temporary separation or impending divorce. Believe me when I tell you I have somewhere I can lay my head for the duration of that fortnight, so you don’t have to worry your pretty little head about where I’ll sleep.’

Bianca glared at him while he shepherded her out of his bedroom. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get dressed. I’m going out.’ And he firmly closed and locked his door.

CHAPTER THREE

ADAM closed his eyes as he leant against the door.

God damn Bianca for making him lie like that!

He had no intention of asking Sophie to marry him. Hell, he’d only just met the girl the previous week.

He also hadn’t been going to go out tonight. He was tired after his unsuccessful foray at the races. He would have liked nothing better than to settle down in front of the TV with his feet up and have Bianca dish him up one of her interesting meals.

She was a fantastic cook, and spoiled him whenever he was at home in that regard. It was one of the plusses among the many negatives in having her around.

But he’d be blowed if he’d stay at home tonight now! He’d have to sleep over at the penthouse, he supposed, even though it would still smell of paint. He didn’t have a date with Sophie, as Bianca would undoubtedly conclude. But he wished he had.

A night in bed with Sophie would blot Bianca out of his mind for a few hours at least. Sophie was everything Bianca wasn’t. Tall and curvy, with long blonde hair, wide hips and breasts like melons. He’d learnt from Laura many years ago never to date a girl who reminded him in any way of the heartless creature who’d told him she felt nothing when she looked at him. Generally he confined himself to bedding busty blondes, with the occasional redhead thrown in for variety. Brunettes never stood a chance.

Sophie was a minor actress, sleeping her way up in the world with gay abandon. He’d met her last Saturday night at the new Darling Harbour Casino, where she was working as a croupier between bit roles in movies. No doubt she’d thought he was a real high-roller, laying thousand-dollar bets. Which he was, he supposed.

Gambling had always paid off for Adam, because he approached it with a cool head and mathematical skill. Bianca would be stunned at how much money it had brought him over the years...if he ever chose to tell her. She thought he confined his gambling to the races. She also thought he lost more than he won.

Racing was all very well, in small doses, but the really big money was to be made in the casinos. Unfortunately, he had to keep changing venues, because management soon spotted professional gamblers, and had a dim view of clients capable of counting cards or who used other systems which could regularly beat the house.

Bianca had no idea of his weekend trips interstate, to the casinos in Melbourne, Hobart, Adelaide and even Pert, nor of the elegant, sophisticated and very accommodating women who threw themselves at him on those occasions. It stroked his ego to note that they had no trouble with ‘spark’ when they looked at him, as Bianca did. Hell, they fairly went up in flames when he touched them.

Fortunately, the opening of a new casino in Sydney had brought him a much closer venue—for gambling and otherwise. The night he’d met Sophie, he’d been trying one of his newer systems on the blackjack table, though his concentration had been shot to pieces. He’d been thinking about Bianca spending the weekend up the coast at some sleazy motel with darling Derek. She hadn’t been bored with him seven days ago. Far from it!

Sophie had given him the eye as she’d dealt him the cards, so his bruised ego had taken her home to her place after she finished up. He hadn’t given Bianca a single thought till he’d woken the next morning to brown eyes instead of blue, and blonde hair instead of black.

Swearing at the memory, Adam levered himself away from the door, throwing off his robe as he strode over to his built-in wardrobe.

He began to agonise, as he dragged on some clothes, about whether he’d ever marry.

Probably not, came the savagely rueful acceptance. He’d only ever wanted one girl as his wife and the mother of his children. How could he settle for second-best?

No, he’d be having one-night stands with blonde bimbos when he was eighty—paid for, by then— and dreaming of what might have been, if only he hadn’t been such a useless schmuck at eighteen!

He glanced down at the old jeans he’d automatically pulled on and thought of all the swanky clothes he’d recently installed in the penthouse instead of the boot of his car—the ones he wore in his secret life as gambler and lover extraordinaire. The Italian suits. The tuxedos. The black silk pyjamas and dressing gowns.

He shook his head at himself, for he knew that that life wasn’t real. It would one day come to an end. It was a game. Thankfully a prosperous game, while his wits and courage were up to it, but still essentially a game—to be played as a boost to his ego and bank balance as well as a much needed diversion from the distress real life kept bringing him.

Real life was outside this door, waiting for him, waiting to try to change his mind about being her pretend husband.

He would have to be strong. Already he was feeling guilty. Already he was weakening. Tempting thoughts began infiltrating his brain. Maybe he would enjoy the pretence? Maybe he could lie there at night beside her and fantasise? Maybe she’d be so grateful to him that she’d let him...?

His teeth clenched down hard in his jaw. He didn’t want her bloody gratitude. He wanted what she willingly gave those other guys. He wanted her passion and her desire. He wanted her sexy little body, naked and panting beneath him, begging him to go on, desperate for him...

Adam swore as he became hotly aware that his fantasy had swiftly transferred to a hard, aching reality. He dragged a sloppy Joe down over his thudding heart and vowed not to weaken one iota.

Even if she got down on her hands and knees before him, he would not budge an inch.

A darkly ironic smile creased his mouth as he shoved his feet into battered trainers.

Let’s not go too far, Adam, came the wicked thought. Bianca on her hands and knees was a perverse and powerfully persuasive prospect. Too bad it would never come about. He would give anything to have her at his mercy. Anything!

Bianca spun round from the kitchen sink when she heard Adam’s bedroom door bang. Oh, dear. He still sounded very angry. What to do? How best to approach him?

Appeal to his sense of compassion, she decided, and raced out to head him off before he could leave. The sight of him dressed in old clothes distracted her for a second.

‘Oh!’ she exclaimed. ‘So you’re not taking the soon-to-be fiancée out tonight?’ she asked tartly, and immediately bit her bottom lip. Wrong tack, you fool.

‘We’re staying in,’ he drawled. ‘Watching videos and searching for the meaning of life.’

Bianca was taken aback by his sarcasm. He really was in a filthy mood. Perhaps she should leave appealing to his compassion till tomorrow.

But what if he didn’t come home tomorrow? He was staying away from the flat more and more these days—obviously at this Sophie’s place.

‘Adam, when can we talk about this further?’ she asked, in her most apologetic and reasonable tone. ‘I know you’re angry with me, and I’m sorry. I should have told you before this.’

‘You shouldn’t have done it at all!’

‘Yes, you’re right. I’m sorry.’

‘Bianca, saying sorry is not always enough.’

Bianca could feel mutiny brewing inside her heart. Why was he being so damned difficult about this? Was she asking so much? Two miserable weeks of pretending to be her husband and then he was off the hook to marry this...this Sophie creature.

‘You always said I could count on you,’ she pointed out rather sulkily.

‘You can. In things that count.’

She pouted her displeasure. ‘I would do it for you.’

‘Do what?’

‘Pretend to be your wife.’

‘Really? That’s an interesting thought. But I don’t need a pretend wife. I’m going to have a real one.’

Bianca still hadn’t come to terms with that. Still, there was a many a slip twixt the engagement and the altar. If this Sophie was anything like his previous girlfriends he’d soon be bored to death with her. None of those bimbos had had enough brains to boil water.

‘So what do you expect me to tell Mum?’ she asked defiantly.

He shrugged. ‘That’s your problem.’

‘I’m not going to tell her I lied, Adam.’

‘Heaven forbid. Tell you what, though. I’ll stay away the whole fortnight. You tell your mum we’re having a trial separation. Then, later, you can write and say that it didn’t work out and we’re divorced.’

‘She’ll be very upset.’

‘Only if you are. Tell her that it was an amicable parting and that we’re still good friends. That’s the best I can do.’

Bianca pressed her lips tightly together to stop herself from saying what she thought of him and his so-called friendship. When the chips were down, it had proved about as strong as his so-called love! ‘Is that your final word on the matter?’

‘It is.’

‘Then to hell with you, Adam Marsden. You’re not the man I thought you were. As soon as Mum goes home to Scotland, I’ll be finding somewhere else to live.’

His sudden stillness raised one last grain of hope in her breast. She could have sworn regret flashed momentarily in his eyes. But then they cooled perceptively and her heart sank.

‘I think that would be best for all concerned, Bianca,’ he said, with casual indifference.

All of a sudden she wanted to cry. Or to scream. Or both. Instead, she gave him an icy glare. ‘I will never ask you for another thing. Not as long as I live. I will have trouble even speaking to you!’

His face hardened. ‘Good.’

‘I had no idea you were such a bastard! To think I once believed you loved me!’

The cruellest little smile pulled at his mouth. ‘The things we have to live with,’ came his sarcastic remark.

Bianca could only stare at him. ‘I don’t know you at all, do I? You’ve become a stranger!’

‘A stranger?’ he repeated idly. ‘Yes, you could be right.’

And, with that devil’s smile still playing on his lips, he picked up his car keys from where he always left them in the ashtray on the coffee-table and walked out on her.

CHAPTER FOUR

BIANCA was as good as her word. She didn’t ask Adam for another thing all week. Neither did she speak to him.

Hard to, when he wasn’t these.

He’d come back briefly on the Sunday evening, collected some clothes, told her curtly he’d be staying elsewhere for the following three weeks and departed again.

It turned out to be the loneliest, most wretched week Bianca had ever spent in her life. She missed Adam terribly. OK, so they hadn’t been living in each other’s pockets lately, but he was usually there a few nights a week, and always on a Sunday afternoon. She liked having him around to talk to and cook for. He gave her life purpose, especially now she’d given Derek the flick.

Truly, she didn’t know what she’d ever seen in that big lug. He had a great body to look at and touch, but this time—amazingly—she’d wanted more. She’d wanted a boyfriend with brains as well as brawn.

Adam had been so right about dear Derek’s lack of grey matter. This had come home to her during their drive up to Foster last Saturday. Four hours had never seemed so long. She’d been bored to tears before they’d even arrived at the beachside town.

Derek had not been pleased when she’d told him she wanted separate rooms. She hadn’t actually been to bed with him as yet, and he’d no doubt been expecting a real orgy that weekend. Still, it hadn’t been long before he’d started talking about some other girl he’d met down at the gym that week. Clearly, his girlfriends were just interchangeable sex objects.

A bit like your boyfriends, darling, came that horrid voice which had seemed to keep popping into her head ever since her fight with Adam. It told her all sorts of things she didn’t want to hear about herself. Like how shallow she was. And how selfish.

Which she obviously was! Otherwise she would have been happy that Adam had fallen in love and was going to get married. Instead, she resented the thought. She certainly resented this Sophie. More than resented her. She hated her. And she didn’t even know the girl.

Depression began to set in as each day dragged by. November was a fairly slow month in the section of the accountancy firm where she was currently employed. Her job description as ‘taxation consultant’ sounded far grander than the actual work she did—giving tax advice to clients and preparing their tax returns.

She’d have to find herself a new job soon. This one paid well, but it was as boring as anything. She’d only stuck at it because she owed Adam money. There were far too many moments during each day when her mind was not occupied, and then she would begin thinking of what she was going to tell her mother about her supposed marriage to Adam.

Night-times were worse. It took her ages to fall asleep, her thoughts going round and round. She started taking extra aerobics classes at the gym every evening, working herself so hard she should have slept like a log every night.