Charade of the Heart

by Cathy Williams

  ‘Go back to the party, I’ll take her back.’

  ‘I do not want to go anywhere with you!’ Beth all but shouted. ‘Now take your hands off me!’

  His fingers were digging into her flesh, making it impossible for her to move. As if suddenly realising that he was hurting her, he relaxed his hold slightly.

  ‘I told you I’ll take her back,’ he repeated to Roger. ‘And that’s an order.’

  ‘I’ll be fine, Roger,’ Beth said, defeated, knowing that he was unsure what to do and not wishing to prolong his embarrassment further.

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘What the hell do you think I’m going to do with her?’ Marcos bit out. ‘Now clear off!’

  He more or less dragged her through the door, collecting her jacket from the cloakroom and tossing it over her shoulders.

  ‘How dare you talk to Roger like that?’ Beth asked angrily, as soon as she had recovered her power of speech.

  ‘He works for me!’ Marcos thundered, his brows knitted in a dark frown.

  ‘That doesn’t give you the right to push him around!’ She yanked her arm away from him. ‘And I do not want to go anywhere with you!’ She began walking quickly towards the taxi rank.

  His lean hand shot out, stopping her in her tracks and she raised furious eyes to him. ‘Let me go! I’m not going anywhere with you, I told you! I’d rather throw myself under the nearest bus!’

  ‘They don’t run at this hour.’

  ‘Hilarious!’ she yelled, looking at him. ‘What a sense of humour! You missed your calling as a stand-up comedian! Now, if you don’t mind, go away.’

  ‘I do mind.’ His voice was harsh and it flashed through her mind that he was not nearly as controlled as he seemed to be. Right now, though, the last thing she felt inclined to do was analyse his state of mind. She didn’t care what it was. She only cared about reaching the safety of her house, without him.

  ‘Well, isn’t that sad?’ she bit out. ‘But frankly I don’t care one way or another.’ She wrenched herself free of him and shouted, ‘You’re a bastard, Marcos Adrino!’

  ‘You made me that way!’

  There was a silence and then he reached out, pulling her towards his car, opening the passenger door and pushing her into the seat.

  She was hardly inside the car, when he accelerated away from the pavement, tearing along the London streets until they finally pulled up outside Laura’s flat.

  The journey seemed to have been accomplished in five minutes. One minute they were screeching away from the hotel entrance, the next they were outside the flat, and during that time not one word had passed between them.

  Beth had been too caught up in her thoughts, too angry at his arrogance, and he had been wrapped up in his own thoughts as well. She turned to him, her hand on the door-handle.

  ‘Goodbye,’ she said stiffly.

  She pushed open the car door and she watched in horror as he stepped out of the car, his hands in his pockets, his foot idly kicking the car tyre.

  ‘I can see my way to the front door,’ she informed him icily. ‘You’ve done what you set out to do. You’ve chauffeured me back to my flat; now just go away!’

  Their eyes tangled and Beth felt a shiver of panic course through her.

  She looked away and he gripped her chin with his fingers, forcing her to look at him. ‘Dammit, woman,’ he countered furiously, ‘look at me! Can’t you see what you’re doing to me?’

  CHAPTER TEN

  BETH STARED at the commanding dark face reluctantly.

  ‘What do I do to you?’ she asked shakily. ‘As far as you’re concerned, I’m a liar, beyond contempt, and you’ve made no effort to conceal the fact that as soon as I was out of the way you couldn’t wait to…’ Her voice felt as though it would break at any moment and she took a deep, steadying breath. ‘To jump into bed with someone else.’

  She turned away and fumbled with the key, finally managing to insert it into the lock, and with one quick movement she pushed the door open and tried to slip inside. But Marcos prevented her from slamming the door shut behind her, which was what she had in mind, by barging his way in.

  Beth watched in growing dismay as he prowled restlessly around the room, finally standing still by the window and turning to face her.

  ‘Where’s your sister?’

  Beth shrugged, not moving. ‘In the bedroom, I expect. Sleeping.’ Which, her tone implied, is what I want to be doing right now. Were it not for you.

  She gazed miserably at him, drinking in the hard contours of his face, wishing that she could be more in control of her emotions so that she could handle this situation with aplomb.

  ‘I really would appreciate it if you left,’ she said finally, when the silence stretching between them was beginning to make her nerves fray even more at the edges than they already were.

  Her feet were beginning to tingle with pins and needles from her rigid position by the door and she hesitatingly walked across to one of the chairs, sitting down and staring in alarmed fascination as he approached her. He moved unhurriedly, but even so she felt as though she were in a net, and there was nothing she could do to escape.

  Not that she could run and hide anywhere. Where would she go? Into the bathroom? Anyway, hiding wouldn’t make him go away. She sensed that instinctively. He would simply wait until she was forced to emerge. In fact, she wouldn’t put it past him to use starvation tactics if he felt it would assist his cause.

  This, she knew, was an inflammatory situation. The air between them was tense, and whatever he was thinking it was obviously not to his liking, because his face was grim as it surveyed her.

  ‘We need to talk,’ he informed her shortly.

  ‘Really?’ Beth was rather proud of the fact that her voice did not betray what she was feeling, and she carried on coldly, ‘I can’t think of anything we could possibly have to talk about. And what about the party? Shouldn’t you be getting back there? You’re the boss, after all. As you’ve made clear to me on numerous occasions recently.’

  ‘The party will survive without me,’ he said abruptly.

  ‘And Angela? Will she survive without you?’ How she loathed that sharp, jealous edge to her voice. So much for her wonderful self-control.

  Marcos shrugged carelessly, not taking his eyes off her face. ‘She managed well enough before.’

  ‘Good for her, but that won’t be necessary because I don’t want you here. It would be better if you left and—’

  ‘Better for whom?’ he enquired softly. He was standing over her now, and she craned her neck to look at him.

  Better for me, she wanted to scream. Better if you just vanished in a puff of smoke and stopped turning my life upside-down whenever it suited you.

  ‘I don’t like talking here,’ he said abruptly. ‘Your sister might hear us, not to mention David, and I don’t particularly relish having this conversation overheard.’

  ‘There won’t be any conversation,’ Beth replied angrily. ‘There won’t be any conversation because there’s nothing left to be said between us. It’s all been said and it’s pointless discussing any of it further. We had a brief affair, and now it’s time we got back to our lives.’

  ‘And what’s your life?’ Marcos muttered. ‘Roger? Are you going to settle for second-best? A man you’re not physically attracted to?’

  Beth’s eyes flashed. What did he want from her? Did he want to break down her defences completely by admitting that she was in love with him so that he could have the final laugh?

  ‘I already told you that what I do is none of your business…’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t what I wanted to hear!’ With a frighteningly quick movement he took her wrist and pulled her to her feet.

  ‘Too bad!’ Beth snapped back, wriggling against him and finally giving up the unequal struggle.

  Her cheeks were flushed with confusion and anger, her lips half parted to frame a few more choice words on what he could do with his arrogance, when his head swooped d
ownwards and he kissed her fiercely, his mouth crushing hers.

  Beth fought and struggled against him, twisting her head to escape the burning, drugging ferocity of his kiss, but he was stronger than her and he had no intention of letting her go.

  His mouth forced hers open and she felt a sickening elation as his tongue found hers, moving moistly against it.

  ‘No!’ she protested weakly.

  She placed both palms against his chest to push him off, but it was like pushing against a steel barrier.

  Finally he released her, and the unexpectedness of it made her sway on her feet. Before she could react, he lifted her up, carrying her across the room to the half-opened door to her bedroom, kicking it and then shutting it behind him. The light had been switched off before she had left for the party earlier on, and the darkness lent a strange intimacy to their situation.

  Unable to see him clearly, she became intensely aware of his power. He had lifted her up as though she weighed nothing, and now he deposited her gently on the bed. Immediately she attempted to spring up, but he held her down, waiting until she had regained some of her composure before he spoke.

  ‘We have to talk, Beth. Things can’t go on like this. Dammit, woman, I have to know for sure what’s going on between the two of you!’

  ‘I thought you claimed to know it all!’ There was silence. ‘Will you leave if I give you your answer?’ she asked desperately. More silence.

  Maybe, she thought hopefully, his silence implied that he would. She needed him to. His presence here was like a net around her, making her unable to respond in the way that she knew she must. He had to leave.

  She sighed heavily and then spoke. ‘Nothing. All right? Is that what you wanted to hear? There’s nothing going on between Roger and me. There never has been. He’s a friend and that’s all.’

  This, she thought, was the final humiliation. It was tantamount to confessing that Marcos was the only man who could arouse her.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me that the first time I asked?’ he questioned roughly.

  ‘Why should I have? It was none of your business. I was none of your business. Did I ask you what was going on between you and Angela?’ She could not prevent the bitterness that had crept into her voice. It reverberated in the room, echoing back at her, reminding her how much power lay in Marcos’s hands, power to hurt her.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said flatly. Suddenly he sounded bemused, as though he had been overtaken by some unexpected turn of event which he couldn’t quite fathom.

  It was all the more apparent because in every other aspect of his life he was always so much in command. He had an instinctive talent for knowing just how to play a situation, but now he was uncertain, attempting to grapple with a problem which was infinitely more slippery than he had bargained for.

  Beth looked at him wide-eyed. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness in the bedroom, but she could still only discern the shadowy outlines of his features.

  ‘Do you really expect me to believe that?’ she asked tightly, forcing herself not to succumb to the thrill of what he had admitted. ‘Your idea of nothing going on must be very strange, because you two certainly seemed to have a lot of physical contact considering you claim that it was all a platonic relationship. What was that you said about body language?’ God, she thought, her anger directed at herself, there I go again. Acting as though I own him when I know only too well that no one does.

  ‘Dammit, Beth, I’m not lying. I don’t understand it myself. No, maybe I do.’ He looked away from her uncomfortably and raked his fingers through his hair with a frustrated groan. ‘The fact is, nothing has happened between us. Not, I might add, for lack of trying on her part.’ He laughed humourlessly. ‘I wanted to get you out of my system, and I thought that the most effective way of doing that would be to replace you with another woman, but it didn’t work. You see, you must have worked some damn spell on me, because I just couldn’t respond to her. Any attraction between us—well, it wasn’t there any more and there was no way that I could resurrect it.’

  Beth felt a surge of joy rush through her. She smiled, and he must have sensed it because he immediately said, ‘I suppose that makes you very happy, does it?’

  ‘I suppose it does,’ she agreed.

  ‘Well, I hope that you spent lots of time suffering sleepless nights thinking about it, because that’s what you caused me. Ever since everything blew up in my face, dammit. Ever since I walked into that office and saw you with Roger, I’ve been out of my mind with jealousy. I needed you to tell me that there was nothing between the two of you. God, I needed that more desperately than I wanted to admit to myself.’

  He lay down beside her and stroked her hair, his actions gentle. The aggressiveness she had seen in him over the past few days had vanished.

  How nice it would be, she thought sadly, to close my eyes and forget everything that has happened between us. To pretend that only the present matters. But she knew that it was an impossible dream. Even if he still desired her, she couldn’t pick up the pieces of their affair and carry on.

  She knew now with certainty that he meant too much to her. If she had to lose him, then it was better that she lose him now rather than make the same mistake of postponing the inevitable.

  ‘There’s no point to this,’ she said shakily. ‘I can’t just hop back into bed with you. Too much has happened.’

  ‘Do you want to hear me apologise for my behaviour?’ Marcos asked huskily. ‘I do. I was angry with you, I was angry with myself and most of all I was furious because I still wanted you when you should have meant nothing to me. Do you know how much my ego was dented by that charade of yours?’ He laughed ruefully. ‘I succeeded in a tooth-and-nail world, knew how to deal with the shrewdest of businessmen. No one had ever before pulled the wool over my eyes, yet there you were, calmly confessing to the biggest con I’ve ever witnessed.’

  ‘I wasn’t calm,’ Beth pointed out.

  ‘I felt like a complete fool,’ Marcos went on. ‘I’d met my match in you and I didn’t like it.’

  He sighed and pulled her against him, and for a minute everything flew out of her head except that peculiar warmth inside her, that stirring of her passions which only he could arouse.

  He kissed her eyes, trailing his lips to hers, covering them with exquisite, teasing gentleness, until she thought that she would faint.

  It isn’t fair, she thought, it just isn’t fair that one man can do this to me.

  ‘Marcos,’ she began unsteadily, ‘I…’

  ‘Don’t talk,’ he muttered, silencing her with his hand, which had found the zip at the back of her dress and was slowly releasing it, freeing her body from its textured prison.

  He slowly pulled the top of her dress down and she wriggled out of it. He owns my body, she thought with sudden clarity. It no longer listens to what I have to say, it listens to his commands.

  She had not been wearing a bra, and he caressed her smooth, naked breast with his hand.

  ‘I spent hours imagining him touching you here,’ Marcos murmured, his voice as unsteady as hers had been. ‘I was tormented by the thought of it. There were times when I felt like I could hunt him down and rip him limb from limb. And enjoy every minute of it. Now do you understand what I meant when I told you that you had made me into a bastard? No woman had ever been able to arouse me to such a pitch of insane jealousy. In fact, no woman had ever come close. But you…’

  He rubbed her nipple with his thumb and Beth groaned with excitement.

  Somewhere in her mind, some hazy little voice was telling her about her principles, about her decision not to become involved with him again, but, try as she might, she could not summon up enough will-power to listen.

  She stroked his face and then coiled her fingers into his hair, urging him to caress with his mouth what his finger had been caressing a moment before.

  She felt the wet warmth of his mouth on her breasts, his tongue flicking over the aroused bud, sending darts of ecstas
y through her.

  He raised himself, and she was dimly aware of him removing his clothing, then he once more bent his head to her breasts, exploring every inch of them with rapturous leisure.

  ‘You have no idea how I’ve dreamt of this,’ he whispered thickly. ‘I felt sick with wanting it sometimes. When I saw you at the office, it was all I could do not to grab you and take you to the nearest hotel and make love. I spent hours reminding myself that you had deceived me, fighting that awful, primitive urge that refused to listen to reason.’

  He eased her dress off completely, followed by her briefs, and she parted her legs to accommodate his exploring fingers. Her body felt hot and feverish with passion. It was as though she had not made love with him for years.

  ‘I want you, Beth,’ he said huskily, kissing her mouth with tiny, hungry kisses. ‘I can’t tell you how much. More than words could ever express.’

  Want, want, want, she thought with icy realisation. The word had dominated his conversation ever since they had returned to the flat. And she had been happy enough to go along with it.

  But hadn’t she already learnt from one lesson? Did she have to make the same mistake twice to realise that playing with fire entailed burnt fingers?’

  ‘I can’t,’ she whispered, turning away to hide the shine of tears in her eyes.

  It took a few seconds for her words to sink in, then his body froze.

  ‘Why not?’ he demanded. ‘I want you back. I need you to come back to me. Where’s the problem?’

  ‘The problem is me,’ Beth answered fiercely. ‘I know we’ve slept together, I know we’ve had our fling, but I can’t accept that situation any longer.’

  ‘And what’s changed?’

  ‘Nothing and everything.’ Her nudity felt uncomfortable now and she drew the quilt around her, protecting her body from his searching eyes. ‘I guess I always felt that way, but I was blind before. Now I know that I just can’t.’

  ‘After all that I’ve told you?’ Marcos asked roughly.

  ‘What have you told me? That you still want me. It’s not enough.’