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She’d sell the Porsche, too, and buy something a little more modest and practical. She grinned to herself. It was wonderful to feel in charge of your own life, to feel so in control.
She had Marc to thank for it all. He had helped her become the person she was now. She closed her eyes for a moment as a wave of guilt washed over her. With an effort she pushed the feeling away and opened her eyes.
Aidan, entering the room from the terrace.
Her heart slammed against her ribs. Oh, God, why was he always showing up when she wasn’t expecting him? What was he doing here now? She didn’t want him here, in her house. She drew in a long breath of air, fighting for control. He’s not going to ruin the evening for me, she thought grimly. I won’t allow it.
He was coming toward her, moving with lazy grace, wearing casual trousers and an open-necked shirt. His chin was smoothly shaven, different than it had been when he had kissed her. She could feel again the roughness against her face, feel again his mouth on hers. Her heart turned over and a sense of humiliation flooded her again. Get out of my house! she wanted to call out, but the words stayed frozen in her head as she watched him approach, feeling again the old, familiar pull on her senses, and the frightening sense of having no control over them at all.
Don’t let him see how you feel! said a little voice inside her. Be cool. She straightened her spine, pulled back her shoulders, gathering strength.
“Happy birthday,” he said when he reached her. As if nothing had happened. As if he were a friendly neighbor just dropping by.
She cocked a cool brow. “How did you know?” Her voice was steady. She took a careful sip from her sangria and tried to look relaxed. It took a ter-rible effort.
He shrugged lightly. “It’s the last day of June. I happened to remember, so I thought I’d stop by to congratulate you. After all, thirty years is a milestone. Are you depressed?”
“Heavens, no,” she said breezily. “As a matter of fact, I’m delighted.”
He surveyed her face for a moment, as if to verify the truth of what she said. “My sister had a nervous breakdown,” he said then. “Thought her life was over.” A hint of humor, barely perceptible, colored his voice. His eyes did not leave her face.
“Mine’s just beginning.” She smiled brightly.
His brows rose in question. “How’s that?”
“Well, let’s say I’ve finally come into my own. I feel good about myself.” She felt a surge of new courage and looked at him squarely. She knew a yearning for him to understand, to know. “I’m standing on my own two feet and I like the feeling.” She twirled on her toes as if to demonstrate, her long silky skirt swirling around her ankles. She would not let him spoil her mood. She felt happy surrounded by friends and good cheer.
“Admirable,” he said evenly.
“Have a drink,” she offered. “We have sangria. The genuine article, straight from Spain. The recipe, that is.”
He put his hands in his pockets. “No thanks, too sweet for me.”
She gestured at the terrace outside. “The bar is over there, get what you want.”
“An impressive spread,” he commented, looking at the tableful of food—marinated shrimp, French country pate, a selection of exotic cheeses.
“I have lots of friends.” She smiled brightly. “They did most of it.”
Surprise flitted across his features. Gwen knew what he was thinking. Lots of friends. She hadn’t had lots of friends when she was younger. She’d been a loner then, shy and insecure, living with her mother in a ramshackle little house at the edge of town. All of that had changed.
He glanced around. “Quite a place,” he com-mented. “You did well for yourself.” Just a comment, a simple statement of fact, yet she sensed more than heard the contempt behind the words. Was she imagining it?
There was no reason to feel on the defensive, yet she felt herself tense, she couldn’t help it. “Yes, I did,” she said flatly, forcing herself to look straight into his eyes. There was nothing there. Nothing but cool, impersonal gray.
The silence throbbed, and suddenly, deep inside that still gray of his eyes she glimpsed something deeper—a dark shadow trying to hide—not anger, not contempt, something else.
He took one of his hands out of his pocket and absently stroked the back of the leather sofa. “I’ve wondered at times,” he said casually, “if you had what you wanted.”
Pain. Deep and sharp. She fought not to show him, taking a slow drink from her glass. Her eyes met with his as if drawn together like magnets. Her tongue wouldn’t move.
“Did you?” he insisted. “Did you have what you wanted?”
“I was very lucky,” she managed, her voice husky. “And I understand you did very well for yourself, too, according to what I’ve read,” she added in a desperate attempt to get away from his line of questioning. “You’re doing wonderful work, important work. It’s what you always wanted to do, isn’t it?”
“Right.” His tone was cool, clipped, businesslike.
Something else had changed about him, she realized. There was a stillness about him—in the way he spoke, in the way he moved. Once there had been a restless energy in him, an enthusiasm that caused bright silver sparks in his eyes when he spoke.
From the corner of her eye, she noticed Joe sauntering up to them, his sleek black hair tied back in its usual ponytail. Smiling his warm smile, he draped a protective arm around her. Joe to the rescue, she thought, feeling warm with gratitude and relief. She glanced back at Aidan, seeing his eyes narrowing a fraction.
“Aidan, this is Joe Martinez. Joe, Aidan Carmichael.” They shook hands, Aidan’s face pol-itely bland, Joe’s brown eyes darkly suspicious. He wore his standard garb of jeans and a loose, torrid silk shirt. His cowboy boots were well-worn and well-polished. Next to Aidan in his conservatively casual clothes, he looked rather eccentric.
She slipped out from under Joe’s arm. “Excuse me,” she murmured, and escaped to her other guests. It was getting late and they were beginning to leave, giving her hugs and smiles and thank-yous which she returned with warmth.
Half an hour later, Joe came up to her. “He’s still here. Do you want me to stay?”
She’d been watching Aidan as he’d moved around, exploring the room, not mingling much. He’d studied the Mexican paintings in the living room, stared at the sky outside and he’d perused the books on the shelves.
“He’s been looking bored. He’ll leave soon.” She smiled. “You worry too much about me, Joe.” Joe had been Marc’s best friend and he was looking after her.
“I don’t like the looks of the guy.” He frowned. “Who is he?”
She waved her hand casually. “Somebody I knew, a long time ago.”
He looked at her searchingly. “I think there’s more to it than that.”
She bit her lip. “He wanted to marry me, before I met Marc.”
“And you didn’t want to marry him?”
She hesitated. Her light, frothy mood was de-serting her. “I was scared.” Just the memory of that primitive, ancient fear made her hands clammy even now, twelve years later. She remembered the nightmares, felt again the dark sense of foreboding she had not been able to shake. I can’t go. Some-thing terrible is going to happen.
Something terrible had.
Joe frowned at her. “Scared? Were you scared of him?”
“No, no. Please, Joe, I can’t go into this now.”
He took her hand. “You know, Gwen, I’m here for you. If you need me, let me know, will you?”
She felt a lump in her throat. “I will, Joe. You know I will.”
A while later she found herself alone in the silent house. Everyone had gone home and there was no sign of Aidan. He’d left without saying goodnight. She shrugged, feeling relieved that he was gone.
Kicking off her shoes, she sank down on the large Italian sofa and gave a deep, contented sigh. She didn’t even have to clean up—it had all been done. All she needed to do was lock up, peek in on Churi, and crawl into bed. She closed her eyes, feeling for the first time how tired she was.
She heard the wind rustle in the trees outside, the cacophony of insects thrilling in the cool night air. Very peaceful. Then she heard footsteps out on the terrace and she froze.
“Gwen?” Aidan’s voice.
She bolted upright. “What are you doing here?” Her voice was sharp, out of control.
He shrugged, hands in his pockets. He advanced into the room. “I took a walk—it was a little longer than I intended. Everybody gone?”
She came to her feet. “Yes.”
“Your bodyguard, too?” A faint note of amusement. She didn’t like it, but she couldn’t think of a good retort, so she said nothing and just gave him a cool look.
He glanced down at the small table at the end of the sofa and studied the grouping of photographs arranged on it. She and Marc on a sailing boat, laughing, the wind in their hair. She and Marc sitting on a picnic bench, heads together conspir-atorially, his arm around her shoulders. Their wedding picture, both of them smiling. Joe had taken every one of them—beautiful photos, catching just the right expressions, just the right moods.
The air throbbed with tension. Her stomach churned with anxiety as she looked at Aidan’s rigid posture.
“You were happy,” he stated, a harsh edge to his voice, as if it were an accusation.
She swallowed painfully, her eyes on the photos, fighting a confusion of feelings—a struggle that knotted her stomach and made her chest hurt. The photos blurred in front of her and she clenched her hands into fists. She blinked her eyes, trying to focus on Marc’s face, but it was useless. Then she lifted her face to Aidan and met his eyes.
“Yes,” she said.
He studied her for a tense moment, taking in the red party dress, his eyes coolly disdainful. “You don’t look like a grieving widow to me.”
The words hit her like a fist in her chest, then fury flooded her. How dare he? How dare he judge her? She wanted to say something back, something sharp and damaging, but words failed her. The silence echoed with his voice, and the fury mixed itself with guilt, a toxic mixture that lodged itself in her throat, making her wild with a need to lash out.
Then a cry, a frightened cry coming from up-stairs. All thought of Aidan, of anger and revenge evaporated. Her body moved instantly, racing up the curving stairs to Churi’s room. She lifted the baby out of her crib and hugged her. “It’s all right,” she whispered. “It’s all right, sweetheart. Let’s go have some milk.”
Holding the whimpering baby against her shoulder, she went down the stairs, stepping more carefully now, afraid to trip over the long skirt of her dress.
Hands in his pockets, Aidan was standing in the middle of the living room, his face expressionless, his eyes the color of old pewter. He said nothing, and there was a curious stillness about him as he gazed at her holding the baby.
She drew in a steadying breath of air. “Get out of my house,” she heard herself say. Her voice was not her own. It was hard and frigid and she could not remember ever having spoken that way.
For a moment longer he just stared at the baby, then he turned sharply on his heel and marched out of the French doors into the garden.
How dare he? How dare he? For the next few days, the words echoed in her mind fueling her outrage. Anger was so much easier to deal with than the other emotions-—the pain, the longing, the fear. Easier than the devastating hunger she felt every time she looked at him. She could not allow herself to feel this way. It was wrong and dangerous.
On Wednesday she took Churi to the doctor for her scheduled checkup. She’d gained a pound. “Excellent,” the doctor said, smiling at her. “She’s doing great.”
Afterward they went to the small town’s only supermarket, crowded now with summer tourists who came to the beaches and the mountains. The store was full of the scents of suntan lotion brought in by the people and the fragrance of fresh bread baked on the premises.
With Churi propped up in the baby seat, Gwen pushed the shopping cart through the aisles, picking up bread and vegetables, diapers and baby food, all the while keeping up a conversation with Churi, who looked serious and drooled. A new tooth was coming through.
She met a friend and chatted for a while, dis-cussing babies and baby food brands, then headed for aisle nine to find a can of coffee.
She wasn’t the only one looking for coffee, but by the time she realized that one of the three people in the aisle was Aidan, it was too late to turn back; he’d already seen her.
Her heart skipped a beat and started a nervous gallop. Her legs felt oddly weak. Oh, God, she thought, this is so stupid, so stupid. Why does this happen to me? Why can’t I just stay calm? She clenched her hands tightly around the cart handle as she forced her gaze to pass over him casually, then return to the shelves.
“Hello, Gwen,” he said. So calm, so polite.
She looked back at him. “Hi,” she said coolly.
He studied the baby, who gazed back at him with dark, solemn eyes. Gwen glanced at the contents of his cart, seeing a big steak, jumbo shrimp, a bag of rice and assorted other groceries. Perhaps he and his wife took turns doing the shopping.
“How old is she?” he asked, and Gwen’s heart slammed against her ribs.
“Almost eight months. Excuse me.” She pushed the cart past his and kept on walking.
You should have told him. You should have explained.
I don’t owe him any explanations.
As she turned out of the aisle, Aidan’s wife turned in, a plastic bag of green grapes in her hand. Gwen kept on moving, pretending she hadn’t noticed her, her legs wooden, her chest aching.
At home, she made herself a cup of coffee and a sandwich and fed Churi her lunch. After a nice long cuddle, she tucked her in bed for her afternoon nap.
She had to try not to think about Aidan. She had work to do. She wanted to sell the house. Which meant she’d have to find another place to buy. What place? Where? A little closer to the beach, but not too far from school. Something simple and comfortable and not too big. She’d have to do some looking around, check with a real estate agent. Which one? Joe would know.
“You want what?” he said after she told him of her intentions.
“A real estate agent, to help me sell the house,” she repeated. “It’s too big, too fancy for me, Joe.”
Joe was silent. Joe had been Marc’s best friend and she knew what was going through his head. Marc had designed that house for them. They’d lived there almost all their married life.
“I have to move on, Joe,” she said quietly.
“Yes, yes, of course.” He was all business sud-denly, giving her the name and phone number of an agent he knew personally.
“Have you thought about my idea for the next book?” he asked then.
She hadn’t thought about anything but Aidan and the baby in the last few days. “I’m sorry, I haven’t,” she admitted. “Maybe we should see first how well this one sells. It’s only a couple of weeks before it’s out.”
“Yes, of course. I was just thinking of the possibilities.”
After they’d hung up she glanced around the house. She’d have to sell or give away a lot of the furniture when she moved to a smaller place.
A place of my own. All my own. Guilt swamped her suddenly, settling like wet cement in her heart. Marc had given her a home, love, security, stab-ility. All the things the scared little girl inside her had needed and craved. All the things her mother had said to look for. No, that was not true.
Her mother had not believed in love.
Love was an overrated, dangerous emotion that existed only in people’s fantasies. Love invariably caused grief and disillusionment. Love did not keep food on the table or a roof over your head.
Her mother had been a very disillusioned person.
That night she dreamed of her mother. She looked very old and gray, lying in a white hospital bed, her skin sallow. Her mother was crying. Her mother never cried.
“And what about me?” she was saying over and over again. “What about me?”
“I’m not leaving, Mom. I’m here.” Gwen searched for her mother’s hand. It wasn’t there. She broke out in a cold sweat, searching every-where under the covers. She couldn’t find it any-where. “I’m not leaving, Mom. Give me your hand. Please, Mom, give me your hand.”
