‘Well, aren’t you going to invite me in?’ Frances stepped into the room without waiting for an answer to that one and swung around, her eyebrows arched as she took in the modesty of the décor.
Christina shut the door, very quietly. She wanted to do everything very quietly, because any sudden movement and she knew that her head would burst.
Why did this come as such a shock to her? she wondered. Had she really thought that Adam was going to rip away the barriers he had erected against committing himself to a woman and plead for her on bended knee? Not likely. In which case, why did Frances’s declaration make her want to collapse in horror? It wasn’t as though she had any prior claim on Adam Palmer. She had known that he was no celibate. Had she seriously expected him to curtail his sexual life because of her?
They had spent five days together in Trinidad, five blindingly wonderful days. They had talked and explored and made love and she had convinced herself that in that land of fairy-tales nothing could go wrong.
But things did go wrong, didn’t they, in real life? Even before they’d arrived back to the dismal reality of English soil, she had already begun to feel the first qualms about their relationship. In the heat of the tropical sunshine it had seemed unassailable, but by the time they had stepped on to the plane bound for Heathrow it was all beginning to feel like a holiday romance—a period of passion followed by a blast of reality, then all the expected withdrawal symptoms.
What made it worse was that she knew Adam. She knew that his world did not revolve around commitment to one quite plain, physically nondescript photographer. He might have taken her into his bed, a combination of gratitude and a lazy, amused acceptance of her willingness to sleep with him, but as soon as they had taken off from the airport reality had reasserted itself with frightening speed.
They had parted from each other at Heathrow in a flurry of haste and confusion. A chauffeur had been sent for Adam. There was some crisis at the company and his presence was urgently required at a meeting. He had shot her a regretful look and she could see that he was already retreating.
‘I’ll be in touch,’ he had thrown over his shoulder, as he hurried behind the chauffeur and was absorbed by the milling crowds. She had barely had the time to acknowledge his departure.
She had caught a taxi back to her flat and all the way she had replayed in her mind, in agonising slow motion, the indifferent casualness of his parting. No bursts of emotion, no dinner date arranged. They could have been strangers.
That was one week ago, Or rather, six days, five hours and a handful of minutes.
Frances was browsing around the room, eyeing this and that, elegant fingers trailing over the bookshelf, along the spines of the books, before coming to rest on the mantelpiece, which was the one striking feature in the flat. She turned to face Christina and her eyes were glittering with victory.
‘I said that he was meant for me,’ Christina heard her say, from some very great distance, through a haze of confused pain, ‘and I meant it. Every word. Did you think that you could net him by sleeping with him? Did you think that you had that much to offer in between the sheets?’
‘How pregnant are you? You don’t look pregnant.’
That brought a frown of anger to Frances’s perfect features. ‘I’m only a couple of months. Nothing will be showing.’ The complacent look returned. ‘If you have any pride, you’ll leave him alone now. You must know that Adam would never abandon a lady in distress.’
Frances fluttered her eyelashes with a pretence of helplessness and Christina balled her fists in sudden rage.
‘I had no intention of continuing what was started over there,’ she managed to mutter through clenched teeth. ‘So you and your threats can get the hell out of my flat. Now!’
‘I suppose that means that you’ve realised that you don’t have a hope in hell of marrying him?’
‘Out! Now!’
Frances began retreating as Christina moved towards her. The pounding in her ears was getting stronger and stronger, threatening to take over completely.
‘Leave him alone!’ Frances said, as her mask of smug control slipped to reveal the angry, hissing animal underneath.
‘You’re welcome to him!’ Christina retorted, her whole body trembling as if she was in deep shock. ‘I have more sense than to ever let myself get involved with him! I feel sorry for you if you’re prepared to go to such lengths to trap him into a loveless marriage! You give women a bad name!’
Frances’s porcelain face was rigid with anger. They stared at each other, and Christina thought hysterically, What a snapshot for the photo album. Me, watching my life crumble away, and her, blonde and beautiful and wicked beyond words. Then the moment disintegrated as Frances turned on her heel and walked quickly out of the flat, slamming the door behind her.
Christina sat on the sofa, her head in her hands, and for the first time since she had returned to England allowed herself to cry, long, racking sobs that felt as though they would tear her apart. She had no idea how long she had sat there, but when she finally did stand up her limbs were numb and aching and it was dark outside.
So another chapter of my life has just ebbed past, she thought, and I felt as though I had learnt something from Greg, which just goes to show that a fool will always be a fool. She tried to be philosophical, to tell herself that Frances’s declaration didn’t change the fact that Adam had been toying with her in Trinidad, that she had been nothing more than a little diversion, but she just couldn’t surmount the image of Frances, carrying his child. She, Christina, had made sure, making lazy love with Adam, that there was no way that she could fall pregnant, but now she wished desperately that she hadn’t been so conscientious. Not that she would have ever told him, far less used it as a lever to trap him into marriage. No, she would have just loved to be carrying his baby, to know that something wonderful and positive had emerged from her fruitless love.
Three days later, when Adam finally phoned, apologising for not having contacted her sooner and blaming it on an overseas emergency, she was ready for him.
Her heart was still beating hard, though, as she said coldly, ‘Forget about the apologies, Adam. I’m surprised you saw fit to call at all.’
‘I told you,’ he repeated curtly. ‘I was abroad. Anyway, I needed time to think.’
‘What about? Not us, I hope, because as far as I’m concerned I won’t be wasting much sleep on that.’ She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of thinking that he had hooked her, but every word was breaking her heart.
‘And what the hell is that supposed to mean? I—’
‘What do you think it means?’ Christina cut in acidly. ‘I don’t want anything to do with you, and I don’t want you to call this number again—if it was your intention to do so, though, knowing you, that’s open to debate.’
‘Dammit, Tina—!’
‘Or maybe I’m wrong,’ she said, closing her eyes and clenching her fingers so tightly around the telephone cord that her nails bit into her palm. ‘Maybe it’s your style to sleep around even when your ex-lover is pregnant with your child.’
If she had knocked him unconscious she couldn’t have silenced him more effectively. Now, she thought, now would be the perfect moment to hang up, but she didn’t.
‘That’s impossible. Now would you like to explain that?’ he asked tightly.
‘Impossible? Ha! And I would have thought that it was self-explanatory. In fact I’m surprised that she hasn’t told you herself already.’
‘As I said, I’ve been out of the country. I’ve only just this minute stepped foot back in the house, and I don’t have a clue what the hell you’re talking about.’
Christina licked her lips. ‘I think I’ll leave the explanations for Frances,’ she said.
‘Why? You’ve already done one hell of a job of ruining my return, and anyway, if you’d like to just listen for a minute—’
‘No, I would not!’ she said with rising anger. What, she thought, do you thi
nk you’ve managed to do with my life? ‘I should go and have a bath, then have a drink, then sit down to wait for her arrival.’
‘Now you listen to me—!’
‘No,’ she yelled into the receiver, ‘you listen to me! I don’t want anything further to do with you! Sleeping with you was the biggest mistake I ever had the misfortune to make and I don’t intend to compound it by ever setting eyes on you again! Do you hear me?’
‘Loud,’ his voice reached her, ‘and bloody clear.’ And he denied her the final luxury of hanging up by doing so himself, leaving her to cradle the receiver until she felt as though her fingers had become welded to it.
I won’t die because of this, she told herself the following day as she tried to make herself resume the reins of her life. Nobody ever died of a broken heart. But the agony followed her every movement and thoughts of him dogged her every step until by the end of the day she wanted to scream in pain and frustration. She had no idea how to cope with it. Greg’s departure from her life was, in comparison to what she was feeling now, a picnic, but then she had never been in love with him, had she?
Over the next week, nothing got better. How could she find a way out? she wondered desperately. She tried to summon up enthusiasm in her work, to drown herself in it, but her lack of concentration wouldn’t let her. The only thing she could focus on was Adam—Adam and Frances—and thoughts of them revolved around and around until she felt as though she was going crazy.
She was sitting, staring blankly at the television screen, trying not to think of the long, empty days stretching out in front of her, years which Adam had rendered devoid of any meaning, when there was a knocking on the door. Or rather something more like a hammering. It was a noise that demanded answering, and Christina clicked her tongue impatiently. Her neighbours had been acting up recently. They were both art students, each with an enormous capacity for generous displays of temperament, and over the past few days she had been subjected to their various tirades. They had been in the flats almost as long as she had, and they used her as their sounding-board.
Usually Christina was very patient with their temper tantrums, but right now she was in no mood for yet another ear bending. She was going through her own personal catastrophe and she didn’t have the patience at eleven o’clock in the night to deal with other people’s arguments.
So she yanked open the door, but instead of a petulant Arthur or an angry Yolande she was faced with Adam’s remarkable face, and he didn’t give her time to withdraw either. He pushed open the door, pushing her backwards with it, walking into her flat as though he had every right to be there.
Christina’s mind struggled to grapple with the enormity of seeing him there, in her flat, after she had spent what seemed like a lifetime conjuring up his image. She might have guessed that he was taller, harder, more aggressively handsome than she had remembered.
He had divested himself of his jacket by tossing it on one of the chairs and he rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, exposing his muscled forearms, sprinkled with dark hairs.
Christina watched all this in fascination. She couldn’t take her eyes off him, but slowly her brain got back into gear and she rounded on him with a surge of fury.
‘What are you doing here?’ Being near him was like a starving man being near to a plate of food, only able to watch and yearn and remember how good it once was to eat, and that vulnerability made her even angrier with him.
‘I don’t want you here!’ she shouted, walking across to the door and yanking it open.
‘Shut that door!’ he ordered, moving swiftly towards her, but she held her ground, until he slammed shut the door and picked her up bodily, ignoring her frantic struggles.
‘What,’ she panted, ‘do you think you’re doing?’
‘What I’ve wanted to do for the longest while, which is—’ he dumped her unceremoniously on to the sofa and pinned her arms to her sides so that she couldn’t move ‘—to sit you down and make you listen to what I have to say.’
‘I don’t want to hear what you’ve got to say, Adam, and anyway, it doesn’t matter. You have someone else to think of apart from yourself.’
‘What are you talking about?’ he asked after a pause, bewildered.
Christina risked a look at that dark face and felt faint.
‘Your child?’ she reminded him bitterly.
She didn’t know what she expected him to do in response to that, but the one thing she didn’t expect was for him to laugh.
‘You might see the funny side—’ she began, spitting hostility.
‘You witch,’ he murmured, as his laughter subsided. He fixed her with his amazing blue eyes and her heart flipped over. He absent-mindedly stroked her wrist with his thumb and that little inconsequential gesture brought the blood rushing to her head.
‘I—’
‘Shut up,’ he said calmly, ‘and listen to me.’
‘I don’t have much choice, do I? With my ha—’
‘I said shut up.’
She gave him an impotent glare which he met with an amused look, then he said bluntly, ‘About Frances.’
She felt her body tense, and she had to force herself to breathe normally, not to let him see how much she was hurting. She had no idea what he was doing here, but, if it was to rekindle a bit of temporary passion, then she wasn’t having it. And if it was to talk about Frances, then she wasn’t having that either. She just wanted to be left alone with her misery. Couldn’t he see that? He didn’t owe her any explanations.
‘There’s no need to explain about Frances,’ she said tightly. ‘You don’t owe me anything.’
‘Don’t I?’ he murmured, his voice a lazy caress that sent an unwelcome shiver through her. ‘After your revelation, I paid Frances a little visit.’
‘So you know what I’m talking about,’ Christina said in a dull voice.
‘Oh, I know exactly what you’re talking about, but you’re way off target. I told you when you spoke to me that the whole thing was impossible, but you weren’t about to listen, were you?’
Christina had switched off by this point. Her mind had gone off on a different tangent from the minute she’d begun to believe that Frances might not have been pregnant after all. Although why would she lie?
‘Why should I?’ she said, trying to show disinterest, because did it matter whether he was involved with Frances or not? The fact was that he would never be involved with her and she would never settle for anything but the whole works—marriage, children, the lot. Not for her a temporary dalliance with him.
‘You witch.’ He gave her a slow smile and she licked her lips in confused apprehension.
‘Stop calling me that,’ she muttered, lowering her eyes.
‘Why? Is it too close to the truth for your liking? But back to Frances. I went round to see her because I was intrigued by what you had said.’
‘Why? I thought you were harbouring thoughts of marrying her. I would have thought you’d be delighted.’
‘Don’t interrupt.’
‘Don’t tell me not to...’
He didn’t answer. Instead he stroked her face with such unexpected tenderness that she was immediately rendered mute.
‘That’s more like it,’ he murmured. ‘Now are you about to let me finish what I have to say? I confronted Frances because there was no way that she could be pregnant, at least not by me, and, knowing her, not by anyone, but flying round to your flat with that lie was so immensely vengeful that I couldn’t let her off without airing my views on the matter. I wanted to see her wriggle like a worm on a hook, and by God she did. What kind of man do you think I am? How could you have thought that I would sleep with another woman when I was already under your spell?’
Christina could picture the scene. Adam would have had her in a state of total disarray. He would have given her hell.
‘Why would she lie?’ she asked, too scared to believe what her heart was telling her.
‘Why do you think? “Hell hath no fury”,
as the saying goes. She couldn’t have me and she knew it, but she wasn’t going to let you have me either. She has quite an optimistic image of herself. She feels that she’s irresistible to all men, and the fact that I wasn’t about to join the procession was too much for her to bear. She had set her sights on me and there was no way that she was going to relinquish her potential conquest because of you. I shan’t tell you what she had to say about the whole thing. Most of it’s unrepeatable.’
‘Poor woman,’ Christina murmured bitterly. ‘Any fool can see that you’re not the marrying kind.’
‘Could you?’ he asked softly.
‘Of course, and that was before you told me about your parents.’ She began to fiddle, twisting her fingers together. ‘Look,’ she said, meeting those amazing blue eyes steadily, even though her heart was doing very odd things in her chest, ‘I don’t really know why you told me about Frances, but there was no need. What we had is over and done with and I’m quite happy to accept that.’
‘Why?’
‘Why what?’ she asked blankly.
‘Are you so happy to accept it, when you’re head over heels in love with me?’
There was a dreadful silence, during which she felt herself dying a thousand deaths. She couldn’t even croak out a denial, not when he was staring at her like that, as though he could see into her head, into her soul.
‘Because you are, aren’t you?’
She felt the prick of tears behind her eyes. ‘More fool me,’ she whispered. ‘You’d think that I’d have learnt something after Greg. As you were so eager to inform me, he was hardly a shining example of moral rectitude.’ She laughed, a bitter sound. ‘And you, of all people.’
‘As if you hadn’t learnt from the last time, all those years ago, when you made the colossal mistake of developing a crush on me.’
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