Yesterday's Husband

by Angela Devine

  Emma caught her breath and stared at him in horror. Why did he have to say such things even if he thought them? And yet, although the tone of his voice was so dry that it robbed his words of any emotion, they still had a powerful impact. To her dismay she felt a shameful heat beginning to throb through her entire body. She bit her lip, terrified that she might make the equally outrageous statement that Richard hadn’t lost his sexual allure either. Swallowing hard, she managed a small, cynical smile.

  ‘You flatter me,’ she said. ‘But I find it hard to believe.’

  ‘So do I,’ agreed Richard grimly. ‘After all, you’re flat-chested, only passably pretty and your nose is too long. Added to that you’ve been spoiled rotten from birth, you have no conception of loyalty, you’re extravagant, wilful and heartless. I just can’t imagine why I should still find you attractive. But, oddly enough, I do.’

  Emma’s fury exploded like a supernova at these provocative words. Catching her breath, she stared back at him with glittering jungle-cat eyes.

  ‘Really?’ she challenged. ‘Now you, on the other hand, are God’s gift to women. Handsome, charming, rich, irresistibly sexy and possessing a wonderful way with words. I just can’t imagine why I don’t find you attractive. But, oddly enough, I don’t!’

  Richard’s powerful brown hand came out and closed over her wrist.

  ‘Don’t mock me, Emma, or by heaven I’ll make you regret it,’ he said through his teeth.

  ‘Stop making ridiculous threats, Richard!’ she snapped. ‘And come to the point. What is this proposition you want to discuss with me?’

  ‘It’s very simple, Emma. I propose to offer you a ninety-day bill, which will allow Prero’s to keep trading for the next three months. In addition, I’ll come to your rescue with that damned office block of yours. You need a tenant, I need new premises. Fielding’s is expanding so rapidly we’ve outgrown our present quarters and I’m prepared to take over the lease you were offering Sawford’s.’

  A wave of shock and relief swept through Emma at this announcement. Her father’s company need not go broke after all! She could still hold up her head and face the employees who depended on her for their livelihood.

  Then seven years’ experience of the cut and thrust of the business world settled on her like a damp, chill blanket of wariness.

  ‘On what conditions?’ she asked suspiciously.

  Richard’s lips drew back in a feral smile.

  ‘Two,’ he said softly. ‘The first is that I am appointed managing director of Prero’s immediately. With my expertise I believe that I can turn the business around and have it trading profitably by the end of three months. At that point you can resume control yourself if you wish.’

  Emma’s brain raced.

  ‘And the second condition?’ she asked, her throat constricting.

  Richard paused before he replied. In the flickering candlelight, his eyes had a glitter that was almost menacing and his voice when he spoke was low and husky.

  ‘That you come back to me as my wife—in the fullest sense of the word—during the three-month period in question.’ He spoke as drily as if he were outlining a business clause. ‘At the end of that time we can review the situation and make a final decision about our intentions. I imagine we’ll get a divorce then.’

  Emma almost swooned with shock at the outrageous implications of this suggestion.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she asked in a voice sharp with alarm. ‘What do you mean “wife—in the fullest sense of the word"?’

  Richard took another sip of champagne and smiled thinly.

  ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it?’ he demanded. ‘I mean that we begin living together again. Sleeping together.’

  He spoke the last two words with unmistakable relish.

  Emma stared at him in disbelief.

  ‘Why?’ she burst out. ‘You’ve just told me I’m spoilt, disloyal, extravagant, wilful and heartless!’

  ‘All true,’ agreed Richard. ‘You left me for another man simply because of a stupid quarrel which wouldn’t have made a blind bit of difference to any woman with an ounce of maturity or commitment. I’ve never forgiven you for that, Emma.’

  ‘So what possible reason could you have for wanting to sleep with me now?’ challenged Emma. ‘You’re not going to tell me it’s love, are you?’

  Richard’s grip on her fingers tightened cruelly and his blue eyes glittered like chips of ice.

  ‘Oh, no,’ he murmured throatily. ‘Not love, Emma. Revenge.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  EMMA was stunned that Richard could sit there smiling so blandly while uttering words that cut her to the heart. She swallowed hard, trying to contain her dismay. The silence between them lengthened. Plucking a frangipani flower out of the cut-glass bowl in the centre of the table, she crushed it unthinkingly in her fingers and inhaled its piercing sweetness. But before she could make any reply, the waitress arrived with the satay, creating a welcome diversion. Mechanically Emma put two of the little sticks with their juicy morsels of chicken on her plate and added a generous dollop of crunchy peanut sauce before giving the girl a strained smile. Yet when the waitress had departed she made no move to eat.

  ‘Your food’s getting cold,’ Richard pointed out genially, as if his previous words had been nothing more harmful than a comment on the weather. ‘Aren’t you going to eat?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Are you seriously going to sit there and tell me coldly that you want to sleep with me not out of love but just out of some power-crazed lust for revenge?’ she blurted out at last.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’ she cried.

  ‘Exactly for that reason,’ replied Richard, swallowing a morsel of chicken and smiling at her. ‘Power. I want to be in control of the situation for once instead of being some kind of bloody puppet for you and your father to manipulate.’

  ‘You were never that!’ exclaimed Emma indignantly.

  ‘Wasn’t I? Look, Emma, I married you because I fell in love with you and for no other reason, but right from the start your father tried to pretend I was after your money. And you were fool enough to believe him.’

  ‘I didn’t!’ exclaimed Emma. ‘I wouldn’t have cared if you had had nothing. I left home and married you, didn’t I? And lived in that horrid little house in Woolloomooloo?’

  ‘And kept running back to Daddy every two minutes trying to kiss up to him,’ retorted Richard scathingly.

  ‘Only because I loved both of you. I wanted you to be friends. Is that so unreasonable?’

  Richard gave a mirthless jeer of laughter.

  ‘It was when you were dealing with someone like Frank Prero,’ he retorted. ‘He was determined to part us right from the start.’

  ‘He wasn’t! I know he didn’t like the idea of our marriage’at first, but he was coming around. Why do you think he gave you that big contract on the Manly shopping centre? Because he wanted to help you!’

  Richard swore violently under his breath.

  ‘Like hell he did! It was another one of his sneaky moves to separate us, Emma. I’m damned sure he was the one who made it impossible for me to get the materials I needed to complete the contract on time. Trying to put me out of business was his way of punishing me for daring to get involved with you.’

  ‘Oh, it’s easy to make rotten accusations against someone who is dead and can’t defend himself,’ she flared. ‘But do you have any proof?’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ he said through his teeth. ‘But I’m sure of it all the same. Frank had a bad reputation in the dirty tricks department. But in any case, whatever your father had or hadn’t done, if you’d been any kind of a wife you would have stuck by me in that crisis.’

  ‘Oh, would I?’ gasped Emma. ‘Even when you stormed out of the house, insulting my father all the way, and didn’t show your face for five days? And not only that but.’

  ‘Listen, I don’t pretend I was the perfe
ct husband,’ growled Richard, ‘but I don’t think my faults justify the kind of revenge you took. Any decent wife would have made allowances for the way I behaved that Christmas, instead of packing her bags and running home to Daddy.’

  Emma’s hand closed so hard around the stem of her wine glass that she almost snapped it. Gritting her teeth, she fought down the impulse to fling the contents in Richard’s face. Oh, yes? she thought. Any decent wife would have just looked the other way while you had a squalid affair with another woman only eleven months after getting married, would she? Well, I couldn’t do that. I hated you then, Richard, and I hate you now for the way you hurt me! But when she spoke, her words came out smooth and cold and brittle.

  ‘Unfortunately I didn’t happen to be a decent wife.’

  Richard gave a sneering smile.

  ‘Not then,’ he agreed. ‘But you have another chance now, sweetheart. This time round you can get it right. Come back to me and behave exactly the way I want you to.’

  ‘Why?’ demanded Emma in an unsteady voice. ‘Why do you want me to do that?’

  ‘I told you. I want to be in control of the relationship.’

  ‘And if I refuse?’

  Richard shrugged. ‘Then you’ll go broke.’

  Emma let out her breath in a ragged sigh of disbelief.

  ‘That’s inhuman.’

  ‘Any more inhuman than the way you treated me?’

  Her hands would not be still. She picked up a satay stick and set it down again, fiddled with her knife, traced patterns on the tablecloth. And all the time a blinding misery like a tidal wave seemed to be building inside her. At last she could bear it no longer and she stared at him beseechingly.

  ‘Richard, please! You said you married me because you loved me. If you have any of that feeling left towards me, don’t torment me like this. It’s cruel. It makes a mockery of what we once meant to each other.’

  But Richard’s face was so hard and pitiless, it might have been carved from granite.

  ‘Ah, but I don’t have any of that feeling left, Emma,’ he said softly. ‘Your own behaviour killed any love I had for you. All that’s left is a certain reluctant but quite powerful physical attraction. I imagine three months or so of indulging that should burn it out pretty effectively.’

  Emma closed her eyes briefly and shuddered.

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then we can get a divorce. After all, I might want to marry someone else, someone I can love and respect.’

  At these words she felt a jolt of horror as sickening as if she had just plunged ten floors in a lift. Her eyes flew open.

  ‘Do you have someone in mind?’ she demanded.

  ‘Perhaps,’ he said with an enigmatic shrug. ‘Or for that matter you might want to marry again.’

  Emma’s face contorted into a stark smile.

  ‘I don’t think so. After what I’ve been through, I’m not wonderfully keen on marriage any more.’

  Richard gave her a mocking smile and raised his glass of champagne.

  ‘Then once I set your company in order you can dedicate your life to making money and having lovers, the things which you are wonderfully keen on. Can’t you, darling?’

  ‘You’re such a swine, Richard,’ she breathed.

  ‘I’m glad you realise it, Emma. Well, what’s your answer?’

  Emma’s entire body was shaking, but she tried to fight down her anger and think coolly and rationally. She had worked hard to build up the firm to the point where it was now, and if it hadn’t been for the collapse of the Sawford bank she knew it would have been a prosperous business. Besides, there were people who worked for her, people who depended on her for their livelihood. What would happen to their jobs if she let the company go bankrupt? However much she hated Richard at this moment, loyalty to others urged her powerfully to accept his offer. But beneath that there was another reason: an insane, unwanted flare of longing to be in Richard’s arms and in his bed again. It wasn’t going to be permanent, she knew that, and it would probably bring her more pain than pleasure. But the sight of him had awoken all the old, clamorous physical need for him and perhaps the emotional need too. Even if she couldn’t find love in his arms, maybe she could find a temporary quenching of the flames that scorched her. She bowed her head in bitter assent.

  ‘It seems I have no choice.’

  ‘Look at me, Emma. Tell me what you’re going to do.’

  Their eyes met—naked, burning with hatred and with something else.

  ‘I’m going to come back to you as your wife,’ she said through her teeth.

  ‘Good,’ murmured Richard as blandly as if she had just agreed to become his shorthand typist. ‘Then I suggest you eat some of this excellent food and after that well go for a little stroll on the beach together before bed.’

  Alarm bells rang noisily in Emma’s head. She looked down at the chicken satay with as much horror as if it were deadly nightshade. In spite of the balmy, tropical air, her hands felt suddenly chill and clammy.

  ‘Wh-when does this reunion begin?’ she stammered.

  Richard smiled lazily, his blue eyes narrowing with amusement.

  ‘Oh, didn’t I tell you? It begins tonight.’

  Emma took a sudden gulp of champagne and choked.

  ‘T-tonight?’ she gasped, her eyes streaming.

  ‘Yes. I stayed in another hotel in Sanur last night, but I’ve given orders for my luggage to be transferred to our bungalow this evening. It should be there by the time we get back from our walk.’

  ‘I don’t believe this,’ she said, shaking her head in a dazed fashion. ‘It’s not really happening.’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ Richard assured her kindly. ‘You’ll find it much easier to believe tomorrow morning after… a good night’s sleep. And don’t worry. I’ll send off faxes to my lawyers and my bank first thing after breakfast to organise the financial side of our agreement.’

  Emma scarcely heard that last sentence. She was too busy panicking about the implications of ‘a good night’s sleep’ in Richard’s company. Trying hard to maintain an air of normality, she pulled one of the chicken pieces off its skewer, dipped it into the peanut sauce and ate it. To her surprise, she found it was delicious.

  ‘The food is still very good here, isn’t it?’ she remarked, with the half-hysterical feeling that she was dreaming and would wake up at any moment.

  This time Richard’s smile seemed almost genuine.

  ‘Yes. I’ve often thought about this place over the years and I suppose you have too or you wouldn’t be here. Let me see, what else did we do last time we were here? Oh, yes. The trip to Penelokan. Now that really was a highlight. Perhaps we ought to set out tomorrow and see if it’s still as beautiful as ever. What do you think?’

  Emma stared at him as if he had gone insane. Was he really proposing to replay every detail of their honeymoon just as if the violent quarrels, the estrangement, the hostility of the last eight years had never existed? Well, if he was, perhaps the safest thing she could do was to humour him.

  ‘That would be lovely, darling,’ she said in a strained voice, looking wildly round the table for some means of escape. But all she could see was the waitress bearing down on them to remove their empty plates. Shortly afterwards the girl returned with the rijstafel—a fragrant and delectable array of pork, prawns, chicken, vegetable and curry dishes around a central mound of steamed rice. Richard helped Emma to a massive serving of everything and grimaced comically when he dropped a prawn in the centre of the flower arrangement.

  ‘Oops, looks as if I’m still clumsy in the dining-room. Are you still as lousy at cooking as you used to be, Em?’

  Emma pulled a face, torn bctwoon amusement and resentment.

  ‘Not quite, but it isn’t my favourite activity. I tend to buy a lot of take-aways and heat them in the microwave oven.’

  ‘You cooked a chocolate cake once in the microwave oven. It rose and rose
and then exploded. Do you remember?’

  Her lips quirked involuntarily at the reminder.

  ‘Yes, it was ghastly. I forgot the sugar, too. You ate it, though.’

  ‘"Greater love hath no man”,’ he murmured.

  A terrible sense of constriction gripped her chest as if a cold hand were squeezing her heart. How could he sit there and joke about it all, as if this reunion were genuine? As if the love which had carried them through those early trials of married life were still alive and burning brightly? She caught her breath and dropped her gaze.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he demanded.

  ‘I wish you’d asked me to do anything else but this, Richard,’ she replied in a passionate whisper. ‘It’s going to be so painful, so repellent. I can’t bear it.’ The good humour died out of his face and his blue eyes were suddenly chill and merciless.

  ‘You’ll have to,’ he said brutally.

  They talked little during the remainder of the meal and even the luscious pineapple, cantaloup, mangoes and pawpaws which appeared as dessert failed to rouse Emma’s enthusiasm. Her whole mind and body seemed to be focused on the single, alarming question—What’s going to happen afterwards?

  Yet when they finally finished their coffee and rode to the ground floor in the lift, Richard did not lead her straight back to the bungalow as she had half feared. Instead he put his arm around her shoulders and steered her towards the beach.

  ‘Let’s go and look at the ocean.’

  The touch of his warm, muscular arm on her body made her flinch. She wanted so badly to relax into his embrace, to lean against his shoulder and rub her face against the light fabric of his jacket, to feel the beating of his heart. Instead she held herself stiffly aloof, trying to send out to him the silent message that, while she might have agreed to this farcical union, she was doing so under protest.

  ‘I despise you for this,’ she said unsteadily.

  ‘Do you?’ he retorted with a short laugh. ‘Well, I think I can live with that. It really makes very little difference to me how you feel about it, Emma. It’s how I feel that concerns me. And I feel quite satisfied.’