Was that it?
Her hair hung down across her face, shielding her from eyes which she didn’t want to meet, eyes that would gently tell her that he had changed his mind, that she had her freedom. Eyes that wouldn’t see the bald truth, which was that she no longer wanted her freedom. It was a commodity which was no longer hers to enjoy, not if he wasn’t around.
She had thought, when he had first proposed to her, that to accept would be to condemn herself to a prison in which she lived with the man she adored, but was forever trapped in the hopeless situation of one whose love was not returned.
She realised now that the real prison would be her flat in Reading, her job at the garden centre and a life without focus. The misery of living with him would be infinitely preferable to the misery of living without him.
She had so resigned herself to what she assumed was going through his head that she finally said, breaking the silence between them, ‘Of course, if you’ve changed your mind...then it’s not a problem.’ She looked at him. ‘We can easily work out arrangements.’ Emily appeared to be dropping back off to sleep and she removed her from her comfortable position at the breast, drew her robe together, and held her over her shoulder, supporting her with both her hands.
‘I—I’m sorry,’ she stammered. ‘I’ve been a bit silly. I never thought that you might change your mind. I...’
‘I haven’t.’
Lisa looked at him, confused. ‘Then you still want me to marry you?’
Emily had fallen asleep. Lisa could tell from the slow, rhythmic breathing and she gently lowered her back into the cot and then folded her arms.
‘Will you tell me why you changed your mind?’
Because I just can’t live without you.
‘I just thought it over. I realised that it was the most practical thing to do.’
‘And what about love?’
‘As you said, a successful marriage... Lots of people have stars in their eyes when they get married, and then everything goes wrong... This is more of an arrangement, I know...’
Why did she feel so unhappy? she wondered. Was it because all this talk about arrangements and practicalities was such an anticlimax after Emily’s arrival? She told herself that Emily’s birth had transported her to another planet, a planet where worries couldn’t intrude, but now she was back down to earth and what else could she expect?
How could I ever have thought myself to be a sensible, controlled person? she thought. I’m little more than a hopelessly romantic, incurably impulsive fool.
Angus moved closer to her, sitting so near now that she could have touched his thigh with her hand.
‘There are certain conditions,’ he began. ‘I’m not sure that you’ll find them at all acceptable.’
She was feeling more unhappy by the minute. She wondered whether it could be a symptom of postnatal depression. They had spent an entire class devoted to postnatal depression. Maybe that was why she was feeling so tearful. She wished that he hadn’t mentioned conditions. That was so cold and clinical. Would he want her to sign something as well? Some legally drawn up contract laying out the terms of their marriage, like a job contract?
She smiled bravely and said, ‘Of course, I understand. I know I shall be expected to mingle with your friends. I’m not used to things like that, cocktail parties and business dinners, but I know that that will be a condition of my marrying you. I hope I won’t let you down. I hope I won’t prove to be an embarrassment.’
She stopped talking. Something had crossed her mind. What if, by ‘conditions’, he meant that he should be allowed to have affairs outside marriage? She hadn’t thought of that before but she was no great beauty and he mixed in a world of glamorous, tempting women, women for whom married men were not out of bounds, but fair prey. A solitary tear trickled down her cheek and she hurriedly brushed it away.
‘Of course, I’m not a great cook. I may have to take lessons...’ She didn’t want to think about other women in his life. She didn’t want to think of him loving anyone or making love to anyone.
‘You silly little fool...’ he said, catching her hands in his.
‘I know,’ Lisa said in a small voice. ‘I know I’m not very sophisticated. I realise that—’
‘Stop talking and listen to me.’
Except he didn’t say anything, which made her think that he was trying to work out in his mind how to phrase what he wanted to say, what he needed to say, trying to find the right words to tell her that he could never love her, that he was no longer even attracted to her, that she would merely be around because of his daughter.
‘I’m not sure how to say this...’ he began, and she took a deep, calming breath and braced herself. ‘I haven’t got many conditions, but they’re important ones, and if you don’t feel that you can meet them, then you’re free, Lisa. Condition number one is that you give up your job at the garden centre.’
‘Of course.’
‘We could live in London, but only until we find somewhere out in the country. I don’t want my daughter being brought up in London. London is no place to raise a child.’
‘No,’ she said.
‘We can start looking for somewhere just as soon as you feel able to. It will have to be within commuting distance of London. Condition number two is that...’ He paused and she waited for the bomb to detonate. ‘Condition number two is that you start trying to like me.’
‘I do like you, Angus.’
‘No.’ He shook his head and tilted her chin up with his finger. ‘No, I mean... I never thought that I would say this to anyone; I never thought that I would have to... Friendship is all well and good... The fact of the matter is...’
A long silence followed and eventually she said, ‘What is the fact of the matter?’
Angus sighed heavily and raked his fingers through his already tousled hair. Did he know what an endearing gesture that was? she wondered.
‘I’ll start at the beginning, shall I?’ he asked, and she replied, with a stab at humour,
‘OK. I never realised I would be settling down to a story, though.’ She waited for him to return her weak smile but he didn’t. He looked very serious.
‘Do you remember the last time I visited you in a hospital?’
Lisa nodded. Remember? How could she ever forget? Hadn’t it changed the entire course of her life? Changed her? Released some wild, free bird inside her which she had never thought even existed?
‘Well, I never thought that I was opening a door inside me which I would then find impossible to shut.’
A little flare of hope rose inside her. Had he felt that way as well? Because that was exactly how she had felt! She tried to stifle the rising hope. She was deeply in love with him but he had never once said that he loved her, not even in their moment of passion when declarations of love should have been uttered with abandoned ease.
‘You intrigued me.’ He shot her a brooding, accusatory look.
‘Is this a story or a fairy tale, Angus?’ she asked, looking at him intently, trying to read the meaning behind his words.
‘No interruptions. It’s hard enough for me to say these words without interruptions. The fact is that I had never met a woman like you in my life before. You were such a confused mixture of contradictions. Intelligent, amusing, apologetic, without a shred of vanity. I left that hospital never expecting that I wouldn’t be able to put you out of my mind, but I couldn’t.
‘Heaven only knows what I would have done if you had turned down that holiday. Hounded you to your lair, I expect. And I think now, that at the back of my mind I arranged the holiday with you in mind.’
It was an effort not to let every word send her higher and higher. There was a sheepish huskiness in his voice that made her head swim with a thousand possibilities.
‘I really thought that I would get you out of my system if I saw you for more than a few hours. I really imagined that all that holiday would entail would be my showing you a good time. You were ripe for being s
hown a good time, Lisa. You probably don’t realise how much. Those timid eyes, that defensive, vulnerable face...you were begging to see things you’d never seen before and I hadn’t admitted it to myself, but I wanted to be the one to show you sights that would make your head spin. I had no idea that in the process I would also end up wanting to show you more. Much, much more.’
Lisa felt a quiver of excitement. What was he telling her, though? Just that he had been attracted to her. Then. Once. No more than that.
‘I don’t know whether I told myself that you were a challenge. I only knew that I was fiercely attracted to you.’ He looked at her very directly when he said this and she met his eyes without blinking.
‘Yes, I know,’ she said quietly. They had both been burning up with a desire that had taken them by surprise. She looked across to the cot and wondered whether he would have turned his back on that particular challenge if he had only known what the outcome of yielding to it would be.
‘I noticed everything about you on that cruise. My eyes followed you; they saw everything you did, every move you made. I wanted to get inside your head so that I could see what you were thinking as well. But that wasn’t easy. One step forward, two steps backwards. You have no idea what a frustrating person you can be without even trying! You would reveal so much but then no more and I thought I was going to go mad trying to get to the bottom of you. Then we made love and you informed me that you wanted nothing more to do with me.’
‘I explained why,’ Lisa said defensively, and he smiled at her.
‘Yes, you did. I thought you were a fool. I was offering you what I had never offered any other woman in my life before, and you wanted no part of it. I could have strangled you, but in the end pride won out and I let you run away. I told myself that it wouldn’t have lasted. I told myself that it would be better if you weren’t around anyway, that my head would be clearer, that all I wanted from life was the satisfaction derived from work. That women, in the end, demanded complicated things which I had no intention of giving them. I knew that you were after marriage and marriage was just not on the agenda as far as I was concerned.’
‘Then you found out that I was pregnant.’
‘Then I found out that you were pregnant.’
‘You weren’t very happy.’
‘I wasn’t unhappy about the pregnancy. In fact, I was amazed at how calmly I accepted that. No, I was furious with you. Furious that you hadn’t thought to get in touch with me.’
‘Even though, if I had, you would have immediately accused me of being a gold-digger.’
‘Being near you does nothing for my sanity,’ he said ruefully, with a crooked smile. ‘Then you had the nerve to inform me that you weren’t going to marry me. I produced the most infallible arguments in the world and you turned your back and told me that I was wasting my time.’
‘I changed my mind,’ Lisa said, looking at him. ‘I went to the cottage because I told myself that I needed to think things over, but I had already made up my mind to accept your proposal.’
‘Which brings me to my last condition.’
Lisa was no longer feeling nervous. She didn’t know what this last condition was, and her emotions were in a complete muddle, but there was something in his eyes, something in the set of his features that made her feel wonderfully reckless, even if she couldn’t quite analyse what that something was.
‘You know what I’m telling you, don’t you?’ He leaned a little over her. ‘I’m in love with you, Lisa, and it’s no good marrying me for practical reasons if you can’t see your way to returning my love at some point in time.’
She smiled. A smile that grew until it reflected the happiness spreading through every tiny niche in her soul.
‘About time,’ she said, flinging her arms around his neck. ‘It’s about time this love of mine was returned.’
Lisa and Angus stood outside the black and white house. They had left Emily in London, with the girl who came in from time to time to help out.
The garden was a mass of weeds, which appeared to be winning the battle for supremacy over the rose bushes and various other plants which had not been tended, according to the estate agent, for a year and a half.
‘Well, Mrs. Hamilton?’ Angus slipped his arm round her shoulders and she felt a thrill of pleasure, contentment, possession. They had been married now for six months and she still loved the way he looked at her, the way he excited her.
They let themselves into the cottage. It was musty, but not dirty. Sunlight filtered through the uncurtained windows, great shafts of it, like arrows striking the floor and the walls.
‘It has character,’ Lisa said, looking around her.
‘As well as all the necessary physical credentials.’
‘In need of a face-lift, though.’
‘Minor cosmetic surgery.’
They went upstairs and explored the bedrooms—all seven of them. The master bedroom overlooked an expanse of trees and garden and beyond that fields.
‘Could you put down roots here?’ he asked as she perched on the window-ledge and he placed his hands on either side of her. She never doubted his love for her, but in some tiny part of her she continued to be amazed that a man as sexy and as accomplished as he was could find her so utterly bewitching.
‘I think I could,’ Lisa said slowly. Putting down roots. With the man she loved and their child. The stuff that dreams were made of. She wrapped her arms around him and lifted her face to his, closing her eyes as his mouth parted her lips and explored wetly and hungrily.
When he slipped his hand under her shirt and caressed the swell of her breast, without the constraint of a bra because it was so warm a day, she giggled and protested half-heartedly and he grinned and buried his head into her neck, nipping with his teeth, rousing her with his fingers, which stroked and teased her swollen nipple.
He unbuttoned the shirt and drew it aside, then bent to suckle at her breasts, and then, on his knees, he lowered her jeans and she stepped out of them. His mouth trailed along her stomach, down to the furry patch of her womanhood. He nuzzled against it, and she groaned as his tongue began a delicate, leisurely exploration. She sat on the ledge of the bay window, parted her legs to accommodate his questing tongue and looked down hungrily at the dark head moving there.
How sweet the memory was of that first time, on that beach a thousand years ago. They had been back there, on their honeymoon, and had taken Emily to the same spot, and had felt the same wonder at the life they had created there.
She drew him up to her and said, with a flushed smile, ‘I need you.’
‘I should think so.’ He unbuckled his belt and removed his trousers then pulled her onto him, and, with her legs wrapped round him, their bodies fused in wild passion. Her breasts pressed against his chest, her head was flung back and his mouth caressed her flesh—hot kisses that made her dizzy with desire and need.
As the roar in her veins gradually subsided, he said, half joking, half serious, ‘Now this house is ours. We’ve christened it.’
‘You’re a corrupting influence, Angus Hamilton,’ she said, laughing, slipping back into her clothes.
‘Only with you, my darling.’ He took her hand and they went down the stairs and out into the sunshine. ‘I was made just for you and no one else.’
‘Good.’ Her voice was teasing, satisfied.
They stood outside and looked back at the house. Their house. The house of her dreams, even though, as she now knew, it mattered not in the least where they were, because wherever he was would be home.
ISBN: 9781408987599
Accidental Mistress
© Cathy Williams 1997
First Published in Great Britain in 1997
Harlequin (UK) Limited
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