by Lynne Graham
Blaze had instinctively known what would hurt her most. Time and time again, he had made her lose control in his arms, and that loss of control had tortured her when she knew that he wanted to make her feel like the racetrack groupies he had compared her to…the women who hung around the track, willing to sleep with any man who was someone in the racing world, the women drawn by the fame, the money and the excitement that were all part of his existence.
He had told her that he didn’t have any use for her out of bed and he had driven home the message with humiliating ease. And maybe she could have liked herself better had she found it possible to switch off the instantaneous leap of shameless response that controlled her every time he touched her. Even if she had managed that once, she thought with bitter self-loathing. He had savaged her self-respect. What sort of a woman was she that she could respond to a male who made no secret of his hatred for her?
He strolled into the kitchen. She didn’t look at him. She was afraid to look, terrified that her wildly fluctuating emotions would betray her. He didn’t know that she had been stupid enough to fall in love with him, and the thought of what he was likely to do with that piece of information made her blood ice up in her veins. He already had more than enough ammunition to hurt her. She shrank from the prospect of that wickedly derisive tongue of his shredding her most private emotions. He would laugh at her, she knew he would…and she didn’t think she could bear that.
‘I heard Floss mentioning the playgroup in the village. You should get down there and enrol Rosie,’ he drawled.
Chrissy tensed, complete incomprehension sweeping over her as it had so often over the weekend. He talked as if they were staying…but for how long?
‘What would be the p-point?’ she muttered.
‘She ought to be mixing with other children. It’s lonely up here for her.’
‘We’re not g-going to be here f-forever.’
‘But you are here now—’
‘You c-can’t want us here!’ she suddenly burst out helplessly.
‘For as long as I want you warming my bed every night, you’re staying,’ he delivered without a flicker of conscience.
Tears springing to her eyes, she watched the table surface haze out of focus, that familiar choking sensation closing over her throat. In despair, she fought to control the tears. Tears made him angry. Anger made him derisive. Derision cut her to the bone. Her hands were shaking and she braced them hard on the scarred wood. ‘I c-can’t live like this,’ she admitted jerkily.
‘Three days of marriage and you’re a basket case.’ Blaze stroked a taunting forefinger over one of her unsteady hands. ‘I hate to state the obvious, but isn’t this what you wanted? To be Mrs Blaze Kenyon? Rich, secure…and, if not loved, sexually satisfied?’
Chrissy tugged her hand out of reach but, even though he was no longer touching her, she was painfully aware of his proximity with every fibre in her body. ‘No! I w-would never have gone through w-with the wedding—’
‘Forgive me if I continue to find that assertion unbelievable—’
‘I swear I was about to t-tell you! I was…I w-was,’ she argued feverishly, but at the back of her mind loomed a disturbing recall of the way in which she had fallen silent in the church vestibule when he’d murmured that she was so pretty in pink. For a split-second, she had fatally hesitated because she had known in that instant how very badly she did want it all to be real. For that split-second, she had wanted to marry him, had wanted Rosie to be his…and the awareness of that fact tortured her now. Did that make her guilty as charged?
‘I’m eating down at the Pheasant tonight.’ He strode out of the door.
*
She was asleep when she heard the slam of the front door. She peered at the luminous dial on her alarm clock. It was after twelve. Where had he been until this hour? Her bedroom door opened abruptly.
‘What are you doing in here?’ Blaze enquired drily.
‘Trying to sleep,’ she mumbled.
‘But not in my bed.’ Chillingly cold blue eyes bit into her.
It was on the tip of her tongue to say that sleep was the last thing she was likely to get in that location, but she swallowed it back. It had not even occurred to her that she would be expected to take up residence in his bedroom. Still sleepy, she said so.
‘Bloody hell,’ he grated with sudden unexpected ferocity. ‘We’re married!’
‘Are w-we?’ she dared, with an air of surprise. ‘You see, I thought that c-ceremony on Friday was just your passport to a dirty weekend…’
‘And yours,’ he batted back without pause, ‘considering that you carefully withheld all favours until you got that ring firmly stuck on your finger.’
She reddened fiercely.
In the interim, he scooped her out of her nice, comfy bed, sent a very familiar hand skimming possessively over a slender hip, and murmured smoothly, ‘So go warm up my bed, sweetheart. I paid in advance…’
Chrissy spun round, flushed with absolute outrage. ‘I won’t l-let you treat me like some kind of tramp!’
A powerful hand anchored itself to her wrist. He trailed her down the corridor and thrust her into his bedroom. Uneasily aware of the flimsy nature of her silk nightdress, she climbed into the bed.
‘But I am treating you the same way you treated me,’ Blaze drawled, sinking down with innate grace into an armchair in the corner and stretching out his long legs in an attitude of predatory relaxation. ‘Without the slightest consideration for your feelings…’
Chrissy lowered her eyes, the angry colour ebbing from her face. She had treated him that way. On that charge, she had no defence to offer. She would never forget how desperately alone he had looked in that split-second when Rosie had grabbed him. It had hurt Chrissy to be a witness to that pain. She had not foreseen that vulnerability, but she should have done. In many ways, Blaze had been alone all his life.
‘You hurt me… It’s been a long time since anyone managed to do that,’ he said almost conversationally. ‘So long, I had forgotten when it felt like. I don’t get close to people, but I got close to Rosie…’
Moisture was gritting her eyelids. Wretchedly, she just nodded her head in acknowledgement, unable to meet his direct gaze. She hadn’t been prepared for him to admit that he had been hurt. The blunt admission shook her up even more.
‘Before she came along, I had never had anything to do with children…at least not one as young as that. She’s so trusting, so sweet… When you told me she was mine, maybe part of me wanted to believe it…’
‘I know.’ Chrissy was more ashamed than ever.
‘How long have you been with her?’
‘Practically since she was born… Mum couldn’t cope very well,’ Chrissy admitted. ‘I was at college, but I used to come home and find Rosie c-crying, not changed, maybe not fed. It was as if Mum could forget she was there. It worried me sick, so in the end I dropped out of my course…’
‘And you ended up taking over?’
‘She told me once th-that Dennis was furious when she told him she was pregnant. And you see, she only g-got pregnant for him…because he was younger and she thought he would want a child.’ Chrissy’s tremulous mouth hardened. ‘But, of course, he didn’t, and by then he had run through most of her divorce settlement. He was treating her pretty badly long before he walked out on her. When he was arrested and the police came to question her, she was absolutely shattered and she didn’t tell them that she was pregnant… She was ashamed of it. She just never got over that…’
‘Why did you keep Rosie after she died?’ he prompted almost lazily.
Chrissy looked up in genuine surprise. ‘Because I love her…’
His sensual mouth hardened. ‘Is that why you pretended she was mine…for her benefit?’
Her brow creased in dismay. ‘No! I l-lied to Elaine, not you—’
‘You lied to me,’ he cut in chillingly.
‘Only because I didn’t w-want Elaine to have an abor—’
>
‘I don’t want to hear that nonsense again!’ Blaze sprang upright and strode to the foot of the bed. ‘Elaine isn’t pregnant and she isn’t about to have an abortion,’ he asserted with savage coldness. ‘I want the truth, not some stupid, childish story!’
‘It is the t-truth.’ Her head was pounding. ‘But I c-can’t prove it to you…’
‘Have you got legal custody of Rosie?’ he demanded abruptly.
Chrissy stared at him. ‘No.’
‘Well, that is good to know,’ Blaze drawled smoothly, ‘considering that you are totally unfit to have custody of an impressionable child—’
‘What do y-you know?’ Desperately hurt and distressed by the condemnation, Chrissy shouted back at him. ‘I’ve done my b-best!’
‘But your best hasn’t been good enough for her or for me.’ Blaze sent her a glittering look of derision. ‘You are a liar and I can’t stand liars. I can’t trust anything you say.’
Anger gave her the strength to fight him. Blaze had started the deception, hadn’t he? His desire for revenge had given birth to this entire situation, and Blaze hadn’t given a damn who was hurt!
‘You talk as if everything is my fault,’ she condemned. ‘But you brought Rosie and me up here to use us… You weren’t concerned about people assuming that she was your child then… You didn’t care what they said about me or her as long as it embarrassed my father!’
‘You were drowning and I threw you a lifeline.’
‘That’s not the p-point—’
‘You had no other options and you must have known what people would think.’
‘I was s-so grateful for the job, it didn’t even occur to me until it was too late,’ she argued starkly. ‘But you set me up—’
‘How?’
‘The very first morning you sent one of the stable girls up to collect that c-case, knowing that I was still in your bed!’
A sardonic brow quirked. ‘Rubbish. I’d actually forgotten you were there.’
‘Taking me t-to the Pheasant…that was deliberate,’ she accused in growing desperation.
‘Bloody hell…’ he breathed with outright derision. ‘I took you there so that you could have a bath.’
‘Really?’
‘And if you had got out of that bath and into the bed with me…well,’ he conceded with insolent cool, ‘I wasn’t about to object. Frankly, your family were the last thing on my mind that afternoon.’
Chrissy buried her burning cheeks in a pillow, stiff with defeat.
‘The one time when I might have caused you actual harm was three years ago,’ Blaze drawled. ‘And I didn’t. I never blamed you for what your father and your sister did…’
She hated to admit it, but that was true. Sticks and stones didn’t break your bones. He could have devastated her that night by telling her what her family had done to his grandfather, but he hadn’t. He could have blamed her, but he hadn’t.
Curling up into a tight ball, she turned her back on him, steeped in despair. A bitch, he had called her, an absolute bitch, and he couldn’t stand liars. Well, she couldn’t stand to share a bed with someone who thought about her in those terms!
She listened tautly to the sound of him undressing. He reached for her and pulled her across the bed into his arms. She went rigid. ‘D-don’t touch me…don’t you d-dare!’
‘Lie back and think martyred thoughts,’ Blaze advised callously. ‘A woman tried to chat me up tonight in the Pheasant…’
If possible, Chrissy went even more rigid. ‘W-what?’
‘And I suddenly remembered that I had a wife at home…a wife who went to incredible lengths to get me. But since we are married…’ a lean hand closed suggestively round one pouting breast ‘…I might as well take full advantage of what you might call the facilities.’
‘No!’ she said fiercely, and for the first time she really fought him. He laughed, dispensed with her nightdress in a breathless struggle that she lost within minutes, and captured both her flailing hands in one of his, pinning them to the pillow above her head.
Sapphire-blue eyes gleamed down into wild green ones. ‘Surrender?’
‘I hate you! I’ll n-never forgive you for what you said about Rosie,’ she threw back bitterly, painfully. ‘Just g-get it over with and leave me alone!’
‘If that’s what you want…’
Afterwards, she knew that it hadn’t been, lying there in the darkness with tears sliding down her cheeks while she listened to his even breathing on the other side of the bed. He hadn’t even kissed her. She hadn’t known that making love could be like that, that she could be made to feel the way she felt now. It had been an act of sex, stripped of all things tender and pleasurable. He hadn’t hurt her, he had just…just… How could he do that? He had entered her body and taken his own pleasure with a cold efficiency that shattered her. An act he had previously contrived to make special…something she hadn’t appreciated until much too late…had suddenly become the most gross invasion of privacy, the most utter humiliation.
She was downstairs before he was the next morning. Breakfast was served without a single word on her part. They couldn’t go on like this…she couldn’t go on like this, she realised miserably, listening to him respond to Rosie’s chatter without a shade of irritation. She had been afraid that he would take his anger out on the toddler and reject her. Once again, she had misjudged him. Yet somehow his continuing kindness towards Rosie didn’t make her feel any better. It simply seemed to emphasise her own isolation.
Blaze hated her now. She just wasn’t strong enough to bear that day in, day out. The anger, the taunts, the derision, the tension. He was breaking her down piece by piece. Sooner or later, he would bring her to her knees. It hurt too much to face that she had brought all of this on herself. She had given him a very big stick to beat her with and he was not averse to causing pain. She had always known how cruel he could be, but for a while she had stood within a charmed circle. Now she was outside that circle…and that hurt… Dear lord, but that hurt.
Abruptly, she grabbed Rosie’s hand and went to get her jacket. She had to get out of the house to sort out the turmoil of her own emotions.
‘Where are you going?’
Chrissy stilled. ‘Do y-you know where the playgroup is held?’
‘Church hall, I should think. Can I trust you not to bolt?’
Chrissy sent him an embittered look, her tense shoulders drooping in sudden defeat. Distressed green eyes collided with brilliant blue ones. ‘Where would I go?’
*
At the playgroup, Rosie left her side within ten minutes.
‘If I were you, I’d take off,’ Phyllis Roper advised cheerfully. ‘If she gets upset, we’ll bring her home, but she seems quite confident, doesn’t she? Not that that proves anything. You never know how they’ll react until you actually leave them.’
Chrissy was climbing back into the Discovery when a car shot to a screeching halt by the railings. A man vaulted out at speed and her eyes narrowed in dismay. It was her brother-in-law. That shock of curly auburn hair teamed with a beard was quite unmistakable. One hand on the steering-wheel, she watched him stride towards her, a tall, burly man in a rather shabby suit.
‘I think we need to talk, Chrissy,’ he breathed tightly. ‘Or maybe commiserate would be a better word…’
She was shocked by the harsh lines of strain etched into his set features. Without asking permission, he settled himself into the passenger seat beside her and then he sat like someone in a daze, simply staring silently out of the windscreen.
‘I’m sorry.’ He sighed, with an obvious effort to pull himself together. ‘I am so sorry that you’ve got mixed up in this as well.’
To say that Chrissy was stricken by his appearance was to put it mildly. It was obvious that Steve had come down to see Elaine. That meant that Elaine had not, as Chrissy had hoped, gone home yet. Furthermore, Steve’s visible stress indicated that, if he had had a meeting with his errant wife, that meeting had
gone badly. She dropped her head, thinking fast. How much did Steve know about what had been happening down here? The last thing Chrissy wanted to do was make matters worse by being indiscreet.
‘You’ve seen Elaine…’ she gathered awkwardly.
‘I came down to bring her home.’ Steve vented a harsh laugh. ‘I thought this was just another one of her tantrums. God knows, I wonder sometimes why I even want her back…’
‘You love her—’
‘Do you love him? The bastard, the lousy rotten bastard!’ Steve suddenly bit out viciously without warning. ‘Is this how he gets his kicks? Doesn’t he care who gets hurt? I could have fought anybody but him…anybody!’ he swore with aggression, as if Chrissy was about to argue with him. ‘But I don’t look like a bloody movie star and I’m not rich and the only time I ever got on a horse I landed flat on my face in the mud!’
‘C-calm down, Steve,’ Chrissy pleaded, out of her depth. Dear lord, how much did he know? What had Elaine told him?
Abruptly, he drove an unsteady hand through his hair and drew in a deep, shaking breath. ‘He’d never do anything that crass, would he…your precious husband?’ he spelt out. ‘He’s so perfect, he’s inhuman, but he’s got the moral restraint of a tomcat and you must have known that when you married him!’
‘Steve—’
‘So what I’m about to tell you can’t come as any real surprise,’ Steve asserted tightly, one big hand clenched in a fist on his thigh. ‘Elaine never got over him… She married me on the rebound and, if I’m honest, I was glad enough to take her on those terms…’
Chrissy took her troubled eyes from his working profile and looked away. Dear heaven, had Blaze ever once thought about how all this would affect Elaine’s husband? Had he even cared? True, Elaine had left Steve to come down and throw herself in Blaze’s path again, but it had been his encouragement that made her stay.
‘I knew what she was doing when she came down here,’ Steve continued grimly. ‘But I thought he’d tell her to get lost…’
‘He h-has…’