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A sudden fury shot Helen to her feet. Brimming over with outrage, she took in Celine’s triumphant and excited air, the carelessly draped blue towel over a stunning body—her towel, she thought furiously!—and slowly advanced across the wide landing, knowing she must look like a drowned rat from a sewer but far too mad to care that she shed rainwater and muddy clay all over the cream carpet.
‘I’m wearing huge clumping, mucky boots that can do a lot of damage to bare toes!’ she choked as Celine backed fastidiously away. And hoarse with anger and misery, she grated, ‘Now explain your novel outfit, Celine!’
‘Helen!’ came Dan’s horrified tones.
Her head jerked back to the open bedroom door where he stood. She closed her eyes tightly and swayed, her energy spent.
All hard masculine jaw and blazing black eyes, he was naked but for the small towel draped around lean hips, steam rising from his fantastic body, his hair wet and appealingly tousled from the shower. A post-sex shower, she thought, with a sharp intake of breath.
It was true then. He’d been unfaithful. Oh, sweet heaven…
‘You swine!’ she yelled furiously as her world crashed about her ears.
‘Oh, my God!’ Dan groaned.
Wounded beyond belief, she looked into his shadowed eyes and saw embarrassment and sick dismay written clearly for her to see. He was white-lipped, his honeyed skin drawn tautly over his incredible cheekbones. A guilty man if ever there was. Her stomach rolled dizzyingly.
‘Dan!’ was all she could croak in reproach before her voice shattered into tiny pieces of misery.
A spasm of pain jerked at his features.
‘Sweetheart!’
Dark brows drawn together in a frown, he stretched out a conciliatory hand of concern. Helen recoiled with disgust.
‘No! Don’t touch me!’
He flinched, his glittering eyes narrowed in hurt annoyance.
‘You don’t understand,’ he said sternly. ‘It’s not what you think—’
‘Isn’t it? Don’t lie to me! Don’t take me for a fool!’ Helen jerked in near hysteria.
He’d even come up with the classic male response. It’s not what you think. But it always was.
‘I’m not lying!’ Grimly he folded his arms over his bare chest and she realised that, despite his defiant stance, he was having trouble with his breathing. She didn’t want to consider why that might be. ‘You’re jumping to conclusions—’
‘You bet I am!’ she wailed. ‘Look at you! Look at her!’ Violently she stabbed an accusing finger at the siren in the blue towel. ‘Wouldn’t you jump to conclusions, too?’
Dan glared ferociously at Celine as if it was all her fault he’d been found out.
‘Celine!’ he growled. ‘I told you—’
‘I don’t believe this! You can’t hold her responsible!’ Helen burst in, appalled that he was trying to wriggle out of this.
‘Why not?’ he flashed. ‘She is!’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Dan!’ she stormed. ‘Don’t you have any shame, any sense of responsibility?’
‘Celine—’
‘No!’ she shouted. ‘Stop pretending it’s not your fault at all. It takes two to get to this stage of nudity! I thought better of you. It seems I was mistaken. I can’t believe you can be such a worm as to put the blame on her!’ She put icy fingertips to her hot forehead to stem the ache. ‘How could you do this?’ she cried, smoke-dark eyes awash with misery. ‘If you cared about me you wouldn’t have—’
‘Helen!’ He was frowning at her, his expression shocked.
‘What? What is it?’ she demanded brokenly.
‘You look terrible!’ he stated with cruel candour.
She winced. ‘Thanks a bunch,’ she muttered. ‘That’s all I need, right at this moment.’
Her sullen glance shot to the delectable Celine, who beamed at her and let the towel slip artfully to offer further revelations of her smoothly swelling breasts.
Celine wasn’t red-faced and blotchy from weeping. Her hair hadn’t been flattened by the rain, nor had the ends been sluiced by mud into rat’s tails.
Helen didn’t need Celine’s scathing scrutiny to make her aware of the contrast between them. Instead of being sophisticated and irresistible, Helen thought miserably, she was covered in mud and looking terminally ill. A drowned waif in wellies couldn’t compete with sex on legs.
Just when she needed to look fabulous, she had to impersonate a rugby scrum-half after extra time.
‘Well, you do look rough,’ Dan stated, frowning.
‘I reckon Cleopatra herself wouldn’t look so hot under the circumstances!’ she grumped in resentment. Her head flung up in defiance. ‘When did the Queen of the Nile ever come home to find her husband had ripped the clothes off another woman and flung them any-old-how on the stair carpet?’
‘Ripped what? Just what are you talking about?’ he demanded, a picture of righteous indignation.
‘That. There!’ she cried bitterly, her trembling finger pointing in the direction of the clothing on the stairs.
He dug up a puzzled expression and wore it convincingly, his long legs covering the ground between them in seconds, impatience in every stride.
‘Good grief!’ he said slowly, staring at the discarded items as if he hadn’t seen them before.
It was a brilliant performance. No wonder he’d successfully hidden his philandering from her, she thought waspishly. Stand back Hollywood. Make way for Dan Shaw and his impersonation of an innocent man wrongly accused.
‘Remember now?’ she snapped, glaring up at him. ‘Or were you in such a haze of lust that you never noticed at the time?’
She thought he’d explode with anger. A terrifying rage had taken hold of him, his fury directed at Celine, who put a hand to her mouth in a ‘weren’t we naughty?’ gesture.
‘You stupid woman!’ he growled savagely.
When Celine shrugged and batted her lashes, Helen feared for the woman’s safety. Dan seemed to be visibly swelling with rage, his expression black and thunderous as he sucked in a harsh breath, clearly in preparation for a stream of abuse.
‘Don’t you take it out on her!’ Helen spat, consumed by fury. ‘Look to your own failings! You caused this situation! You—’
‘No!’ he yelled, rounding on Helen. ‘How many times do I have to say it? I know nothing about this!’
Intimidated by six feet two of muscled fury looming over her, she hastily moved back. He was going to deny the undeniable, she thought in astonishment. Be offended. Make out she was doing him an injustice!
‘Really. Were you drugged? Date raped? I can’t believe you’re denying this!’ she muttered.
‘It’s true!’ he protested, but she could see from the widening of his eyes that he was beginning to panic. A nerve was quivering manically in his strong jaw and his nostrils had narrowed with an even sharper intake of breath.
‘Please!’ Helen jerked, her hand pressing her aching forehead again. ‘Save yourself the effort of protesting your innocence. I don’t want lies.’
Icy cold with hopeless despair, she lifted pained eyes to his and she almost wept when she saw his answering pity. She did not want pity, either. She wanted rock-solid fidelity.
‘I’m not lying,’ he repeated more quietly. ‘And I’ll deal with that in a moment. You need sorting out first, Helen. You’re wet through and covered in mud—’
‘As if I didn’t know!’ she flung miserably.
His mouth lost all its sensual curves and flattened into a forbidding line as he grunted with irritation.
‘Cut the sarcasm. What happened? Did you fall over?’ he demanded, in a taking-charge voice.
‘Yes, I flaming did!’ Huge tears of self-pity welled up, obliterating her vision. ‘I s-saw the bedroom curtains were d-drawn,’ she stammered, scrubbing crossly at her eyes. ‘I saw your car. I-I thought you were ill and I was…worried. Worried!’ she flung accusingly. ‘Huh! If I’d known… But like an idiot I wanted to look after you so I ran and—and slipped in the mud—’
‘Oh, my darling—’
All loving concern, he took a step towards her, his arms outstretched to embrace her.
‘Don’t come near me!’ she sobbed, cringing in horror. ‘Don’t touch me! And don’t you darling me!’
He bit his lip and swallowed, the hard-packed muscles of his torso tense with angry apprehension.
‘But, sweetheart,’ he insisted, ‘I swear, you’re getting the wrong idea—’
‘I’m not, but I wish I was!’ she cried desperately. ‘OK! Go ahead! Give me the right idea. This should be good! I can’t wait to know why you’re both virtually naked and—and—’ her voice wobbled ‘—and why Celine looks so darn pleased with herself!’
‘Celine,’ Dan said, suddenly icy quiet and remote, ‘collect your clothes and…get…dressed…’
Alerted by his halting speech, Helen shot a fierce glance at Celine. The towel around the woman’s body had dipped a fraction. Dan was blinking rapidly at the sleepy nipple that had appeared. He seemed stunned, as if his brain had been overcome by lust, and Helen felt her heart sink to her boots.
‘Of course,’ Celine purred accommodatingly, making sure that her cover-up involved a lot of jiggling around. Helen gritted her teeth, wanting to slap the woman for being so obvious. ‘Don’t forget, though,’ she fluttered, ‘the meeting’s in an hour—’
‘No!’ Dan threaded his fingers through his thick hair, causing small black curls to tumble haphazardly onto his forehead. He was clearly having difficulty getting his mind into gear, Helen thought angrily. ‘I… Oh, hell. Cancel the meeting,’ he said, suddenly decisive. ‘Call a taxi and get out of here. Be in my office tonight—’
‘Your office! I understand,’ his PA gurgled sexily.
Dan’s eyes blackened with fury as his breath hissed in. ‘I doubt it. You’ll be picking up your things and never coming back,’ he snapped.
Celine’s green eyes widened with astonishment and then her face tightened into malicious lines. ‘After all we’ve meant to one another?’ she objected. ‘Consider what you’ll be missing, Dan, shackled to this… boring jumble sale of a woman. We’ve had such fun. You’re one hell of a guy. We’re great together, you said so.’
Celine’s waggling eyebrows left no doubt in Helen’s mind that the woman was referring to Dan’s performance in bed. He was spluttering incoherently at Celine’s frankness, his fists clenched as if he might hit her because she’d ruined his hopes of lying his way out of this. A wild fury exploded inside Helen.
‘You trollop! Get out of my house!’ she shrieked. ‘Out! Now—or you’ll end up needing a wig!’
Celine backed further down the landing and Helen’s eyes squeezed shut. Sweet heaven, beside Celine she was dull and dreary! Dan’s affair had been inevitable. He’d needed more than a stranger who passed in the night, thrust foil dinners at him and ironed his shirts.
That must be why he and Celine had become close. Worse, they had meant something to one another. And whatever he’d said, Dan wouldn’t sack his PA—she was too valuable an employee. He’d only been making an empty gesture, hoping it would pacify his irate wife and avert a row—because he was an abject coward.
A sob lurched into her throat. She’d thought him to be strong and brave and noble. Mr Reliable-but-sexy-with-it. In a few brief moments his pedestal had come crashing to the ground. Her respect for him had hit the dust and rolled out into the gutter to disappear down the sewers.
She wanted to scream in despair and disappointment. Ever since she could remember, her whole world had been wrapped around Dan. And now she knew there’d never really been anything there.
Dimly she was aware of his low, urgent voice as he spoke to Celine. Helen wouldn’t open her eyes. He sounded as if he was close to the woman, perhaps touching her, from the gravelly whispering.
Her marriage was over, she thought dully. Their love in tatters. And suddenly she felt horribly alone and vulnerable.
Hurriedly she clapped a hand to her mouth as her stomach heaved and a wave of heat rushed up her entire body. With a despairing cry, she blundered into the bedroom and headed for the en suite, leaving a trail of sticky clay to embed itself firmly in the fibres of the expensive carpet.
Dan had barked something at Celine and then he must have followed Helen into the bathroom because his hands were on her shoulders, ice-cold, heavy, imprisoning, the pressure of his half-naked chest against her back somehow intimate and shocking.
‘Darling…’ he coaxed, low-voiced and soothing.
Hysterically she shook them off with an impassioned, ‘I’m not your darling! Don’t pretend you care!’
‘Of course I do,’ he said sternly. ‘I’m worried about you. I think you’re ill—’
‘I am ill! And you’re making me feel worse! I came home because I’ve got flu!’ she cried miserably, hanging onto the basin as if her life depended on it. Her stomach churned horribly but she couldn’t be sick even though she felt as if she might.
‘Then you must get to bed—’
‘Bed!’
Her eyes met his in the mirror and he flinched from her scything glare.
‘What? What did I say?’ he demanded thinly.
‘Do you intend to change the sheets first?’ she hurled in anguish.
He gasped as if she’d lashed him with a whip. She saw his tight stomach muscles contract and recognised the pain that had rocketed through him. He looks ghastly, she thought. And tried not to care.
‘I don’t need to change the sheets!’ he grated.
Her eyes widened. Passion had struck somewhere else, then!
‘So you didn’t make it to the bedroom!’ she cried wildly, unable to bear the thought of Dan being so crazy for another woman. ‘You couldn’t wait, I suppose! Where, then? Tell me so I can avoid that place! Tell me! In the hall? The stairs? I’ll burn the carpet,’ she threatened. ‘Rip up the floorboards. Have them replaced—!’
‘Helen! Stop this! You’re being irrational—’
‘I know!’ she cried in distress. He’d made love to Celine. How could she ever get over that? ‘And with good reason!’ she sobbed. ‘You brute! I hate you for doing this to me!’
Unable to control herself, she whirled around and hammered her fists into his naked chest. He let her, taking the blows—presumably because he knew he deserved every one of them. And she was exhausted by her outburst.
‘Stop it, Helen. Calm down,’ he urged.
‘Then tell me what happened! I have a right to know!’ she moaned, suddenly going limp in his arms.
‘I will,’ he said gruffly, holding her up. ‘Don’t upset yourself, please. Just trust me—’
