'Then stop worrying and be nice to Grant when we come to see you.'
She made her goodbyes cheerful, but afterwards Fran sat for a long time unmoving, her blind gaze fixed on the opposite wall. Nothing was really changed, she assured herself, she hadn't learned anything new. It was just having her fear confirmed that had shaken her so badly. It was one thing to suspect, but knowing was different, and she wished desperately that she was already married to Grant—safely committed in case something else happened to highlight the folly of what she was doing.
Once she had worked out her notice the days seemed to drag by. With too much leisure for thought and uncertainty she could hear her voice growing more and more stilted each time Grant rang her. On one occasion he asked her sharply if there was anything the matter, but she couldn't tell him she was afraid that away from her he might have come to his senses. He had asked her to marry him in a blaze of frustrated passion—not the best time for a normally intelligent, clear-thinking man to commit himself, and in a later, calmer frame of mind he must question his sanity just as she was doing.
Because of delays caused by the weather he was now due back on the Tuesday. In a fresh frenzy of nerves she was waiting for him to ring to say he was home when he arrived at the flat. She went to the door impatiently, afraid that the phone might go while she was answering it, and stood speechless and rooted to the spot when she saw him.
Without a word he pulled her into his arms. For a while he just held her, then he turned his head to seek her mouth, parting her lips with an urgent, physical hunger, and feeling the rapid rise of her own response, Fran wondered dazedly what it was that made this one man different for her—what chemistry was present in him which the others lacked, and which something in her own body recognised and stretched out to meet.
He kissed her until she was mindless, then raised his head and demanded roughly, 'Has that disposed of your doubts?'
'Yes,' she admitted with a small laugh. 'And butterflies and cold feet and every other description you can think of. I've had them all.'
'Brought on by well-meaning friends and relatives?'
'You can't blame them.'
'Sitting alone in that bloody cold bedroom I did. I knew someone had been getting to work on you.'
His eyes were narrowed, and she was suddenly afraid he might question her on what her aunt had said. To divert him she asked quickly, 'Didn't you have any doubts of your own?'
For a moment his hands roved her arms and shoulders, almost as though he was unaware of his own actions, then he said, 'I know what I feel.'
He hadn't answered her question and she looked up at him quickly. His face was set in lines of sensuality, the nostrils flared, and she thought silently, 'And I know what I feel as well,' but she couldn't tell him because their emotions were different. Even now, with their wedding day so close, he still hadn't said he loved her.
Standing in front of the registrar two days later, Fran wondered if he had ever before married a couple in such obvious and indecent haste to get the ceremony over and done with. Sacha was enormously entertained, but the two clerks, summoned to act as witnesses, tried to pretend they had noticed nothing unusual in the atmosphere and stared at the flower arrangements flanking the table.
Only the registrar seemed unaffected, his measured tones slightly monotonous from frequent repetition of the words. Washed in disbelief that this was actually happening, Fran scarcely heard what he was saying, and she had to concentrate her attention to make the correct responses.
Vaguely she thought it was odd to hear Grant's full name, Charles Grantham Mercier—she hadn't known it was his second name, nor that it was short for Grantham. But then he hadn't known hers was Francesca either, and for a second she faltered in her responses and felt the registrar's eyes on her.
It was over almost before she realised—she had signed her single name for the last time and they were husband and wife. Grant's fingers gripped hers, but his lips barely brushed her mouth in the conventional kiss. From even that brief contact she felt the suppressed desire in him, and she coloured when he leaned over and muttered, 'Now the rites are over, let's get out of here.'
There was only one bored photographer lounging against the wall outside, and he was so bemused by Sacha's purple outfit that he barely glanced at Grant and herself as they threaded their way through a large group of arrivals. Safe in the car, Fran let out a sigh of relief, and Grant said with satisfaction, 'I never thought we'd manage to brush through that unobserved.' He turned to grin at Sacha in the seat behind him. 'Thanks to the distraction.'
Sacha made a disclaiming gesture, and Fran reflected that her aunt's traditional soul would have been outraged had she been present. She suffered a twinge of conscience at the thought. Probably she had been looking forward to a white wedding in the village church, with bridesmaids and flowers and sentimental tears as they went off on their honeymoon. Certainly she would never have imagined this rushed, irreverent ceremony and a prompt return to Grant's apartment afterwards.
They dropped Sacha off on their way. As she disappeared with an airy, 'I'll see you when you surface, darlings,' Fran glanced up at what had been her bedroom window until only hours before and felt a rush of fright.
Gazing round Grant's apartment while she waited for him to put the car away, she told herself that this was now her home. Dusk was beginning to close in so she went into the lounge and switched on the lights, wondering how long it would be before all this was as familiar to her as Sacha's flat. It didn't feel like home yet. Things still caught her attention which she hadn't noticed before, and she didn't know any of the titles in the long rows of bookshelves, or what kind of music was stored in the cabinet that concealed a bank of stereo equipment.
Smitten by nerves again, she realised her hands were trembling and pressed them to her sides. She couldn't just be standing in the middle of the room when Grant came in. Drawing the curtains, she slipped off her jacket and went into the kitchen to switch the kettle on.
It sang and burbled noisily as it neared boiling point so that she didn't hear Grant until he was behind her, and she let out an exclamation of fright as his arms closed round her.
Silently he leaned forward and switched the kettle off again, then slowly turned her and brought his mouth down on hers. Instantly all the damped-down passion of the day flared between them, and he deepened the kiss, forcing her hard against the cupboard with the pressure of his body. Her own arms tightened round him in fierce response and he started to lift her silk top then paused, and his voice thick with urgency, said against her mouth, 'Come into the bedroom and I'll get you out of these properly.'
Swinging her round, he propelled her ahead of him into the fading light in the large room. The bed was tinged with pink from the winter sunset, and she checked, looking at it, then stepped deliberately out of her shoes and turned back to face him. He began to undress her, swearing and laughing under his breath when a hook resisted him, and pausing as he discarded each garment to run his hands over her skin and press his mouth to the flesh he had laid bare. But the laughter died when she stood naked before him. His gaze travelled slowly over her, seeming to touch her as he studied her, the intensity of the desire in his taut expression springing into life a leaping, half-fearful excitement.
She trembled, the quiver starting low in her stomach and spreading through her, and he suddenly pulled her down on to the bed, kissing her and returning to kiss her again as he stripped off his own clothes and came down beside her. Half underneath him, held against the hard length of his body, all the pent-up yearning of years flooded through her in a tidal wave of heated desire. His lips on her breast sent a current along nerves she hadn't known existed, the sensation so piercingly intense it seemed to burn through her flesh. On fire, she writhed, trying to pull free from the tug of his mouth and his erotic, invasive caresses, some instinct warning her that the agonising, spiralling need could build up and spill over unless she checked him.
He whispered questioni
ngly, 'Fran?' as she reached down to stay his hand, and in reply she twisted against him, her action more explicit than words. For a moment he held back. His voice unsteady, he breathed, 'Fran, you're trying to go too fast, darling—you could be left out in limbo,' but she shook her head in frantic denial, the hunger to feel him within her so desperate she no longer cared what she might be betraying of herself.
Half-sobbing, she dug her fingers into his hips to pull him towards her, and with inborn sureness rose to meet him as he covered her. Braced for his invasion she realised he controlled that first movement, searching her face for any sign of protest or distress, but when it came it was no more than a fleeting discomfort, lost in the wonder of greater sensation, and the only thing to be read in her eyes was a naked desire that dissolved the last of his restraint.
Passion unleashed, his arms reached beneath her, locking her up to him, and she thought dazedly that this was what she had craved for all her adult life—this fierce, violent coming together that for a while made him a part of her. Then she was no longer capable of thought, her only consciousness that of the driving force impelling her onward and upward to the rending culmination, the height of all human experience.
She lay for a long time afterwards, limp and still in his close embrace, exhausted by the savage spending of emotion. Finally he eased away and she felt his faint, sighing breath on her shoulder before he turned her face up to meet his gaze.
She stared back at him, straining to see his expression in the last of the light, and his voice low and uneven, he said, 'That was what I dreamed of, Fran, in that barn of a room in Scotland.' He laughed suddenly, a short sound laced with self-derision. 'Waking and sleeping, it's all I've thought of since the night I kissed you. I knew then what you'd be like.'
She should have been filled with happiness because she'd lived up to his hopes and he wasn't disappointed in her, but instead, inexplicably, she wanted to cry. The slow descent from that fevered pinnacle of emotion had brought an emptiness in its wake, leaving her confused and strangely forlorn. She wanted Grant to hold her and tell her he loved her, to kiss her without passion to show she meant more to him than the physical obsession which was all he ever admitted to. Lying beside him now, freed from the compulsion of her own desire, she felt more like a mistress to him than a wife. And yet he had turned down that offer when innate wisdom had forced her to make it.
She cut off the thought, wondering how she could persist in deluding herself even now. Grant didn't want an affair, he wanted the substitute he had made of her in his mind. She had known that this afternoon when he slipped the ring on to her finger. She had accepted it then and she must accept it now, but she knew all the same that she had hoped that with the act of loving he would reveal some deeper, different feeling for her. Something which was for her alone.
Slow tears formed but she restrained them with her lids and turned to press her forehead against his chest. He ran his hand down the side of her face, then continued down gently over her throat and the curves of her body. She felt his fingers pause as they encountered the ridged scar on the side of her stomach, and half under his breath he exclaimed, 'God, I'd forgotten about that!'
Reaching over her he switched on the light and frowningly studied the red line which disfigured her skin. 'Have I done any damage?'
Fran shook her head. 'The surgeon said I could do what I liked as long as I didn't try to lift any pianos in the next two or three months.'
Still frowning, he demanded bluntly, 'Does that include getting pregnant?'
'No.' She coloured slightly, and at the back of her mind thought his enquiry had come a little late. 'I checked with my own doctor and he said I wouldn't come apart at the seams but it would be better to wait a while.' Meeting his swift glance of interrogation, she added, 'But it's all right—it won't happen.'
He continued to regard her, his expression unfathomable, then nodded and traced his fingers over the puckered skin. 'It looks as though he operated with a kitchen knife. I thought they could do it without leaving much of a mark nowadays.'
'Usually, but there was some infection and it didn't heal very well. Do you mind?'
'Yes and no. If you mean does it affect me, no of course not, but aesthetically I hate to see perfection marred.'
So at least she was a perfect body to him if nothing else. She closed her eyes and heard him laugh suddenly, saying, 'Anyway, you're not the only one scarred.'
Her eyes flew open again, and still laughing he turned his shoulder towards her, indicating the teeth marks and the darkening bruise on his skin.
She stared at it, horrified and embarrassed, and his voice light with mockery, he said, 'Perhaps it's just as well we didn't go to some exotic foreign resort for a honeymoon. Who knows what other damage I might be exhibiting on the beach by the end of a fortnight.'
Fran was speechless, shaken to find she had no conscious memory of inflicting the bruise, and he smiled slightly and flicked her nose. 'Forget it—I could have defended myself.' He watched her eyes slide guiltily away from his shoulder, and added, 'Though it might help to know if it's a habit of yours, because if it is I shall need to.'
It took a second for his real question to register, and for her to realise he was asking if she had been a virgin. He wasn't sure. With some women it would be beyond doubt, but he knew that initial pain, or the lack of it, wasn't an infallible guide.
Secure in his love she would have told him what she knew he wanted to hear, but a sudden resentment held her back. That, and the knowledge that it would tell him too much about her feelings for him if he learned that her only experience was the one they had so recently shared. For years his image had come between her and every man she had gone out with, banishing whatever flickering interest they aroused almost before it had begun. The memory of him had kept her untouched, emotionally as well as physically, but Grant brought to their own marriage the memories of a previous one, and of the countless times he had held another woman's naked body under him in that most intimate of all embraces.
Jealousy surged through her with the thought, almost choking her. She turned her face into the pillow, afraid of betraying it, and he said, 'Fran…?' then broke off.
There was an odd note in his deep voice, and she felt herself weaken. Even if he hadn't been married, she would still be far from the first to know what it was like to lie beneath him and feel him lose himself in her. He was thirty-seven and she had always known that he was deeply sensual. It was an aura he gave off unconsciously, something she had responded to from the depths of her own nature, and which had given the added spice of danger to her adolescent pursuit of him. But while strong sexual attraction was something she had only ever experienced with him, men were less emotional, more physical in their attitude to sex, and there would have been a good many other woman before her anyway. But strangely, the others she didn't mind. Only Julia.
CHAPTER FIVE
For a while neither of them spoke, and Fran was aware of an irrational sense of guilt. She knew Grant had picked up the lightning change in her expression as she realised what he was asking, and as far as he was concerned there was only one conclusion to be drawn from her silence. Already she regretted it but the moment had passed, and explanation now would take her into forbidden territory.
He sat up, grimacing as he ran his hand over the slick of sweat on the back of his neck, then turned to look down at her, and laughing under his breath, muttered, 'Who needs central heating?'
Fran watched as he reached for a towelling robe and wrapped it round himself before crossing the room to close the curtains against the winter dark. So he had accepted her silence for what it seemed and his manner implied that it didn't matter to him. Apparently he didn't care if she had been to bed with a dozen other men.
Perversely, his tolerance made her angry. For a moment she was gripped again by that fierce sense of betrayal she had felt when she learned he was married, but then logic reasserted itself. Grant knew nothing of the wild passion she had nurse
d all these years. Along with most people he would presume that by twenty-three she would have been sufficiently attracted to succumb to one man at least.
Her mood swung round abruptly as she recalled the scene she and Seth had played out for him at the hospital, and paralysing fright flooded her at the thought that but for that same tolerance she wouldn't be here now. Weak with thankfulness she rubbed the unfamiliar band of her wedding ring and rolled on her side to follow him with her eyes as he moved towards the door.
He paused to look back at her, smiling faintly at her questioning gaze. 'I'm not going far. Just to have a quick shower and make us a drink. I'll leave you this bathroom if you like.'
She nodded and he studied her for a moment before he went out. The deliberate scrutiny sent a kick of desire through her, catching in her stomach like the heart-stopping physical lurch of extreme fear. The strength and unexpectedness of it dismayed her, and swinging her feet to the floor she wondered if it was normal to react again so violently so soon.
There was no way of knowing, and she shrugged and stood up stiffly, conscious as she did so of the strain in the unaccustomed muscles of her hips and upper thighs. To ease it she ran a bath instead of showering, and emerged from the bathroom still faintly damp to find Grant leaning back against the padded bedhead drinking coffee.
Grinning lazily, he indicated her mug on the table on the far side. 'I'm establishing territories. That's your half.'
'Thank you,' she retorted. 'Fortunately I don't have a preference.'
She tightened the belt of her robe as she spoke and sat on the bed with her back to him. With difficulty she had kept a sharp note from her voice and kept her comment light. It was true she had no preference—she had always slept alone so it was unlikely that she would have, and Grant hadn't realised that his remark was in any way revealing.
Were all second wives so acutely sensitive to every unconscious reference to a past which had been shared with someone else? Probably. But even as she tried to convince herself she knew that her own case differed from most. Few successors would carry, as she did, the memory of that tortured expression in Grant's eyes when she had unknowingly turned herself into a replica of Julia.
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