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‘Helen!’ he muttered in alarm when she screwed up her body in despair. His grip tightened and he shook her slightly. ‘Please! What is it?’
‘You! Don’t you understand? I can’t bear to look at you!’ she yelled in misery.
Dimly she heard Dan thundering out of the room. To her confusion, she began to sob, because she’d wanted him to be there beside her, stroking, soothing… What a fool she was. It seemed she didn’t know what she wanted at all.
Weak and defeated, she slumped against the pillows. Perhaps he was leaving and she’d never see him again. Horrified, she began to wail in earnest, her whole body succumbing to the sense of terrible desolation she felt.
To be alone, without him. Never seeing his face, never hearing his breathing beside her as they lay in bed together, never lovingly and lingeringly smoothing out that dent in his pillow…
Oh, why hadn’t she seen the danger signs, noticed that they were neglecting one another, put her foot down and insisted that they had time together?
If only she could put the clock back! Then she’d never know he was really weak and flawed. But…was that so surprising? He’d had such a harsh and unloving upbringing… Maybe, she mused, he’d always covered up his faults, in a desperate attempt to make successive foster parents like him. And so he’d built his life on lies, on a mask that hid his true nature.
She almost felt sorry for him. And consequently was more muddled than ever. But she had to remember that he wasn’t the man she’d imagined. She’d married an illusion—and couldn’t live with the reality: someone who cheated and lied for his own selfish ends.
‘Helen.’ His voice was strangled, close to her ear. She put her hands up to shut him out but he hauled her up and roughly dabbed at her streaming eyes. ‘Don’t cry. Please don’t cry,’ he said rawly. ‘I’ve brought you some brandy. You must drink it—I insist. You’ll be so ill…’
She couldn’t be ill. She must be strong and organise her new life. See solicitors. Produce lists of things to do.
The jagged sobs came less frequently. She allowed him to hold the glass to her trembling lips, to enclose her feeble hands with his because they both knew she’d drop the glass otherwise.
The brandy silked a warm and beguiling path to her stomach and revived her. She kept her gaze fixed on the glass. On his hands. She’d always loved them. Big and capable but with long, slender fingers that had lain against her face while his mouth had slowly descended in a sweet or sometimes blistering kiss… She choked.
‘Just drink,’ he husked. ‘Don’t think about anything. Don’t torture yourself. It’s all right. Honestly.’
But it wasn’t. And the sooner she accepted that the better. Though she couldn’t help grieving.
‘How is it all right?’ she whispered mournfully, her voice cracking midway.
He swallowed, some unknown emotion overcoming him. ‘It is. Believe me. We’ll sort this out. I can’t bear to see you so upset,’ he husked.
‘You should have thought of that before you played hunt the dolly-bird,’ she muttered.
His mouth clammed up and he stalked over to shed the towel and grab his robe, turning around once he’d drawn it around his nakedness and had begun to yank the belt into an angrily tied knot.
‘You know how hard I’ve been working!’ he lashed. ‘I’m not Superman. I would never have had the energy for a dolly-bird!’
She fell silent. Energy could always be found for the things one wanted to do. And he’d proved a moment ago that his sex drive was still active.
He stood there, brooding, dark eyes narrowed and hostile.
‘I need you to be calm,’ he said flatly.
Her eyes silvered and she averted her head again. Calm? Yes, she was—but only because she felt numb with cold, as if the blood had stopped bothering to do the trip around her body.
She shivered and slid further under the bedclothes, suddenly scared of hearing some trumped-up explanation that had so many holes in it she’d be sieving out the lies for days to come.
‘Superficially I am,’ she replied in stilted tones. ‘But don’t let that fool you. Go on. Let’s have your explanation.’
Dan inhaled long and hard. ‘I can’t talk to the back of your head.’
Sullenly she turned over and glued her eyes to the ceiling, her body a taut mass of terror.
‘Get on with it,’ she whispered.
‘Give me a break!’ he protested.
‘Why?’ she blurted out.
His hands clawed into fists. ‘If you see no reason, then there isn’t much hope for us, is there?’
After that bitter statement, there was a long and painful pause. A sickening atmosphere of hate and suspicion thickened the air between them. She could feel Dan mentally leaving her, the bonds being severed. Despair entered every corner of her heart.
It was incomprehensible to her that he was angry. Surely he realised she was all but dying inside?
‘Tell me,’ she said in a flat monotone.
He was silent for a few seconds. ‘To my mind, it’s perfectly simple,’ he began eventually, so quietly that she had to strain her utmost to hear. ‘I’ve worked it out. I think that Celine had been planning this for a while.’
‘Sex in our home?’ she shot miserably before she could stop herself. ‘It’s the crowning triumph, isn’t it?’ she cried, more unhappy than she could ever have imagined. She glared at him. ‘Like a dog marking a tree on another dog’s territory!’
Oh, God! she thought. What awful things was she coming out with?
Dan winced. ‘You’re overwrought. Don’t say things you’ll regret—’
‘I’m not going to make this easy for you!’ she cried, her eyes huge in their hopelessness.
Dan muttered under his breath and bowed his head. Buried his face in his hands. He who had always been invincible. Her rock. She was still finding that she couldn’t cope with his distress. It was worse than her own.
What did that mean? she wondered. That she still loved him enough to forgive him? Would she have him back if he begged? Could she ever let him come near her again without thinking of that woman?
‘I can’t cope with your hatred,’ he whispered rawly.
An incredible agony ripped through her flesh, tearing her nerves into ragged strings. And she could not stop shaking, misery and sickness forcing their way up till she had to repeatedly swallow them back down.
He’d been rejected all his life. In his own mind he must see this as yet another rejection. But what did he expect, when he’d behaved so badly? She was hurting. She’d been wronged.
‘Cut out the emotional appeal,’ she said jaggedly. ‘Give the facts.’
He drew himself up and his hands fell away from his eyes, which he kept lowered to the ground. Helen stared. His dark lashes were wet and glistening. Her gaze flicked to his hands where they lay loosely on his knees and she saw that there was moisture on his fingertips.
But sorrow didn’t equal innocence. She steeled herself. And in a halting rasp, he began.
‘I had an appointment in Brighton. Celine came, too. Unusually, she brought a flask of coffee.’ His mouth took on a harsh line. ‘I thought it was an accident, but I can see it wasn’t—’
‘What was an accident?’ she asked in confusion, unnerved by his uncharacteristic rambling. He was always incisive and clear-headed. Or was it her brain that was woolly?
‘What? Oh, the coffee. I was driving along and she suddenly poured it out and somehow it spilled all over my shirt and trousers. Black coffee, four sugars, she said. You can’t go to the meeting like that, she said. We’re near your house. Better go home and change.’ He grunted. ‘What an idiot I was! Oldest trick in the book.’
Helen waited. He looked sour, as if it had truly happened that way. And she could almost believe that it had…
Except for the abandoned clothes on the stairs, and Celine’s implication that this wasn’t the first time they’d had ‘fun’ together. Her head drummed with the questions he wasn’t answering.
‘And?’ she prompted dully.
‘We were running late. It was an important meeting and I was annoyed,’ Dan growled, his hands doubled into tight fists again. ‘I left Celine in the drawing room with a pile of magazines, stormed up the stairs, got out of my ruined clothes—’
‘Where are they?’ Helen asked suspiciously.
Dan frowned, his eyes flicking up to meet hers. ‘What?’
She felt her stomach loop the loop.
‘They weren’t in the bathroom or I’d have noticed—’
‘I left them on top of the laundry basket,’ he answered with convincing confidence.
They both looked. The basket sat in pristine solitude in the corner of the bedroom. Dan muttered something rude and strode over to lift the lid but his movements were already uncertain.
‘Well?’
Helen could hardly breathe. She wanted them to be there, for some part of his story to be true. Her desperate hope was that he’d stuck to the facts so far—that there had been an accident, and Celine had taken the opportunity to wander in while he was half dressed—and had come on so strong that no red-blooded man could have refused—
Dan’s expression destroyed her hopes. She flinched, a hollow sensation gnawing at her stomach. His lie had been found out.
‘My clothes aren’t there,’ he announced, his eyes burning feverishly in his face.
‘No,’ she said, her tone clipped and glacial as she watched him grimly flinging open wardrobe doors and hunting through drawers. ‘I never thought they would be.’
‘They were!’ he insisted, flashing her an irritated glance.
This was awful, she thought as he pretended to search for his supposedly stained clothes. He was making a good job of it, becoming more and more incensed and baffled as he explored every possible hiding place in the room.
‘Stop this,’ she said wearily. ‘I’m not impressed.’
He whirled, hot anger turning his eyes to glittering jet. His legs were planted apart, his entire body fired with suppressed fury. Helen gulped. He was beginning to believe his own lies, she thought, aghast.
‘Just listen to me,’ he hissed through his clenched teeth. ‘My clothes were splashed with coffee. I put them on the basket and went to take a shower—’
‘While Celine silently dashed up the stairs, grabbed your suit and shirt, stuffed them down her cleavage and then raced downstairs to hide them—only to lay a trail of clothes as she came back up again!’ she suggested sarcastically.
‘Yes! Something like that!’
‘Oh, come on, Dan!’ she scoffed.
His hand mussed his hair. ‘I know it sounds mad—’
‘Not mad. Preposterous,’ she said coldly.
‘Well, I don’t know how she did it…’ Dan continued to thrust an exasperated hand into his hair till it was as confused as his manner. ‘All I do know is that I came out of the shower to find Celine wearing nothing but that blue towel.’
That part could be true, she thought grudgingly. Before she’d left for work, she’d taken a fresh one out of the airing cupboard on the landing and had flung it on a bedroom chair ready for her shower later that evening.
‘And?’ she muttered, not sure she wanted to hear the rest.
He made an impatient gesture with his hand. ‘What do you think? I asked her what the hell she was doing, of course.’
‘And?’ Helen goaded. ‘What happened then?’
Dan’s eyes blazed at her temerity. ‘And nothing!’
‘I mean, what reason did she give for stripping off without any encouragement from you?’ she persisted.
A frown pulled his brows together. He appeared to be taking a while to think of an answer.
‘As a matter of fact, she seemed disconcerted at first, as if she hadn’t expected me to find her there—’
‘That doesn’t make sense.’
‘I know! Don’t ask me to read the damn woman’s mind!’ he snapped irascibly. ‘I employ her because she’s got a brilliant imagination and can think around corners. I’m the straightforward sort.’
‘Well, I’m a woman with the same talents as Celine,’ she said, ‘so let’s see if I can unravel the mystery. She deliberately threw the coffee over you, waited downstairs till you went up for your shower and then she stripped. After that, she went up the stairs arranging her things enticingly in reverse order, and slipped into our bedroom to take your suit away—perhaps to send it to the cleaners, like a good PA should,’ she suggested acidly. Dan glowered. ‘But you came out too soon and caught her snitching my towel, whereas her real plan was that you’d follow the trail of clothes down the stairs, getting progressively more and more excited. And she’d be reclining in a seductive pose on a rug, with a glass of champagne in her hand, a rose in her teeth and a huge smile of welcome on her face.’
He stared, appalled. ‘Do you really think—?’
‘For heaven’s sake, Dan!’ she scathed. ‘Can’t you recognise sarcasm?’
Two high spots of colour fired his cheekbones. ‘Well, women can be unbelievably devious,’ he said angrily. ‘I’m beginning to discover that to my cost. I can only give you my version.’
‘Which is?’ Helen asked, sweetly saccharine.
‘I came out of the shower and saw her. When she recovered her composure she just started talking in this odd, husky kind of voice. Saying that this was our opportunity. Stuff like that,’ he mumbled.
‘Details,’ she demanded.
‘No.’
‘Can’t think of any?’ she taunted.
He glared. ‘It was embarrassing.’
‘So relive it.’
‘It…was all about her feelings for me. The kind of man she thought I was,’ he said shortly. ‘I told her not to be so stupid and to get dressed.’
He was lying. He looked ashamed of himself. She would have preferred him to admit his adultery and to beg her forgiveness. This was just cowardly.
‘So you’re saying that you were confronted with a gorgeous, almost-naked woman who admitted that she worshipped the ground you walked on and said, “How about it?” and you said, “No, thanks, I’m married.’”
