by Daphne Clair
“It won’t be final for two years,” Henry had warned her, not knowing that her stupid heart found that faintly hopeful. “But you’ll be a free woman before you’re twenty.”
They had been supportive and understanding when she arrived tearfully on the doorstep and announced that her marriage was over. And not once had they said “We told you so.” They enfolded her in warm love and sympathy, and with calm words of wisdom they had strengthened her resolve to separate herself from Jager and the roller coaster of their emotional life. And, noting her sensitivity on the subject, they had mostly refrained, with occasionally visible difficulty, from overtly criticizing him.
Overwhelmingly grateful, she’d begun, guiltily, to feel stifled by affection when her mother said her aunt in America would love to have her stay. And didn’t she think that was what she needed? Her uncle, a college lecturer, would help get her a student visa. She could make up for some of her missed schooling.
Her very panic at the thought of leaving the country that held Jager told Paige it was what she needed. To get right away…away from the temptation to go flying back into his arms, back to the cycle of wild happiness and crushed hopes, of amazing, spontaneous sex and its aftermath of exhausted euphoria—and of heated, door-slamming, raised-voice quarrels that usually ended in bed with more sex, but left a legacy of simmering bitterness and an increasing, gnawing sense that nothing had really been resolved.
“Weren’t your cousins kind?” Jager asked, digging a spoon into the sugar bowl on the table, although he didn’t take sugar.
“Yes, they were nice.” She watched him moodily lift the spoon and dig it in again. “And they were fun.”
It was like living in an alternative universe where her runaway marriage had never happened. Where she’d never met a boy named Jager, never fallen madly in love, never defied her parents to be with him. Never finally admitted defeat.
She had hidden alternating bouts of despair and a bewildering, unfocused rage behind a brittle facade of feverish enjoyment, filled her days with new things, new activities and new people and, when she wasn’t studying or discovering America, partied to the max with her cousins and their friends. It gave her less time to think. Less time to remember…to wish that things had turned out differently.
Sometimes she’d almost forgotten the aching void deep down inside her. She paused to sip some coffee. “Aidan was part of a group my cousins and I used to go around with.”
Jager stopped digging holes in the sugar and sat back, a hand hooking into his belt. “Was he good-looking?”
She couldn’t help a slight smile. What did it matter? “He was nice-looking.” Not like Jager, who would stand out in any company. She had scarcely noticed Aidan until the night she’d found herself standing alone in a corner at a party, while all about her people were drinking, laughing, dancing with their arms around each other.
She’d been attacked by a wave of longing. Longing for Jager, for his arms around her, his cheek against her temple, his thighs warming hers as they swayed in time to the music.
Holding a half-empty glass, she tried to stop tears from flowing down her cheeks, wondering what the hell she was doing in a strange land when everything she cared about was half a world away. And knowing it didn’t make any difference, because Jager didn’t love her anymore—he never had really loved her.
Aidan’s hand touched her arm, and his gentle voice asked, “D’you want to dance, Paige?”
Unable to speak, she’d simply shaken her head, and he’d peered down into her face and said, “Let’s go outside.”
He shifted his hand to her waist and steered her to the door, and when they reached the quiet, tree-lined street he silently took her hand, and they walked like that for a long time.
“He had a gift of empathy,” she said. “He always seemed to know what to do. Or when to do nothing. Say nothing.”
“That’s a talent.” Jager’s voice was dry but when she looked up, alert for signs of irony, his expression was sober.
“He was a special person,” she said. “Everyone liked him.”
“And you loved him.”
“Yes, I did.” She looked up at him, her eyes sad and clear. “I was lucky to be his wife.”
It hadn’t been the heedless, all-consuming emotion that burned so fiercely for Jager. But she’d valued the paler, steadier flame that she’d thought would last a lifetime. Until it was cruelly, abruptly snuffed out.
She sensed a leashed anger in Jager’s tightened jaw and the flash of fire in his eyes. He turned his head and stared out the window, where the top of a ponga fern waved its lacy fronds in a breeze off the sea. His profile was strong and austere. It struck her again how very grown-up he looked now.
His eyes still on the window, he ground out, “I’m glad you were happy.”
Tentatively she said, “What about you? Did you…? Have you been happy?”
“I’ve been busy. Too busy to think about it.” He pushed his chair back and stood up. “If you want the rest of the papering done today…”
This time she got to do some of the real work. When they hung the last strip of silk-look gold paper in her bedroom, Jager swung her down from the ladder to the floor with his hands on her waist. “That’s it. We’re all done.”
“It looks great. Thank you.” She edged away from his hold, forgetting they’d moved the bed into the middle of the room to clear the walls. It caught the back of her legs and she fell onto the soft cover.
She saw the awareness in Jager’s eyes, and held her breath as he stepped forward. But he only took her hand to help her up and a second later she was standing again.
“Do you want something to eat?” she asked to break the silence that followed. It was getting late and they hadn’t eaten, intent on getting the job finished.
He released her. “If you’re not too tired we could go out for a meal.”
“Then I’m paying.”
“Uh-uh.” He shook his head.
“It’s only fair.”
“Too bad.”
She knew that look. Argument, however rational, would only rebound off the rock wall of his stubborn will.
“We’ll stay here then,” she said, “and I’ll make something.”
The pugnacious thrust of his jaw showed his frustration, but all he said was, “I’ll help.”
She found a packet of pork strips in the freezer and thawed them in the microwave oven, and while she made a sweet-and-sour sauce and boiled a pot of rice Jager stir-fried vegetables.
They worked efficiently together, falling into a rhythm established long ago, automatically moving aside to make room for each other.
Paige hadn’t realized she was hungry, but she ate with relish, while Jager cleaned up an amount that would have done her for days.
She had asked him to open a bottle of wine, but noticed that like her he’d drunk sparingly. After they’d pushed aside their empty plates there was still some left in the bottle.
When she offered it to Jager he said, “I’m driving.” Then he looked directly at her. “Unless you’d like me to stay.”
She met his eyes and they were quite serious, probing hers.
It occurred to her that she would like him to stay, to take her to bed and make love to her, give her the gift of forgetfulness for one night, and be there in the morning when she woke.
She saw that he’d read her face, saw the triumphant leap of hope in his eyes. Then she remembered the last time he had woken in her bed, at her parents’ house. It hadn’t solved anything.
“No,” she said.
The hope was replaced by a hard accusation. “What changed your mind?”
Paige stiffened. “I haven’t changed my mind. I’m not interested.”
He said softly, “Don’t lie to me, Paige. I know you too well.”
“You knew the stupid little teenager who nearly ruined her life for you. You don’t know the person I am now at all.”
“Nearly ruined your life?” he repeated slow
ly.
“I gave up everything for you. My schooling, my family, my home…”
She hadn’t realized how hard it would be.
Her father had refused to finance her studies while she insisted on staying with Jager, and although both parents had assured her she was welcome at home anytime, they wouldn’t extend the invitation to her husband. Paige wouldn’t visit without him, and of course they hadn’t ever set foot in the dingy rented flat.
She inquired about a student loan but it wasn’t enough to live on, and the amount she was going to owe by the time she had a degree was frightening.
Instead she got a job, assuring Jager that university had been her parents’ plan, not hers. She didn’t care as long as she could be with him.
“You said it was worth it,” Jager reminded her. She had said so, determined to lie on the bed she’d made for herself, and when she shared it with Jager it did seem worth it.
For a while she hardly noticed how little money they had, although Jager had warned her he wasn’t making much as a kitchen hand, and she’d conscientiously shopped for cheap cuts of meat and bargain vegetables to make their meals, even enjoying the challenge. Then he’d been promoted to barman and they’d celebrated by going out to dinner, the first time since their marriage.
And only a few weeks later he was sacked because he hadn’t held onto his temper when an obnoxious customer became abusive.
Paige understood that his self-esteem couldn’t withstand the man’s malicious insults, but the sinking fear in her stomach wouldn’t go away. The money she earned as a junior bookshop assistant would have to stretch far to keep them both. She economized further on meat and fish and cooked a lot of rice and pasta.
Sometimes she met her mother for a quick lunch in town, but as Margaret spent the time gently and insistently trying to “make her see sense” they were tense occasions, only adding to the estrangement. Her father phoned occasionally to gruffly inquire after her welfare, and she said she was fine.
She had never told them Jager was unemployed again.
Desperate, Paige answered an advertisement for nightclub dancers, promising good money but “No experience necessary” and was turned down. Her face, they told her bluntly, didn’t match up to her figure. She wished she’d thought to leave her glasses behind and put on makeup, but it probably wouldn’t have made any difference.
Jager found the newspaper where she’d ringed the ad, and she tried to make an amusing story of the interview. Only he didn’t think it was funny. White-faced and furious, he’d told her he wasn’t going to have her selling her damn body for him. And out of a simmering resentment she hadn’t known was there, she’d retaliated that it wouldn’t be necessary if he’d been less touchy about his stupid pride.
They made up later with frenzied lovemaking, both of them determined to close the frightening rift they’d revealed. It’s all right, they’d told each other. I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry.
Jager obtained temporary work laboring on a building site.
The day he came home lugging a secondhand computer, they had another row.
He put the machine down on the tiny kitchen table and Paige exclaimed, shocked into shrillness, “What on earth are we going to do with a computer?”
Accustomed to a home where the dishes went into a dishwasher, the washing machine and dryer worked perfectly, the hot water never ran out and she had no idea what the electricity bill came to, she’d been struggling to accustom herself to hand-washing dishes, dealing with an ancient and pernickety coin-operated communal washing machine, and saving money by drying clothes on a sagging outside wire in a cold, overgrown yard.
She hadn’t had anything new to wear since she’d moved out of her parents’ home, and earlier that day had yearned wistfully at a pretty skirt in a shop window and known there was no way she could justify buying it.
A computer seemed an indulgence, a luxury they couldn’t afford.
“I’m not working for other people all my life,” Jager said. “This could be my ticket to my own business.”
“You dropped out of school!” she reminded him, unable to erase the scorn from her voice. “And what do you know about business?”
He’d become defensive and angry. “So I didn’t have a rich daddy to send me to a fancy private school—” he sneered “—and I left when I knew they couldn’t teach me any more than I could learn off my own bat. But I’m not stupid. I’ll learn.”
He had, and proved her wrong in the end. But she’d doubted him that night, and he’d lashed out in return. The wounds had never quite healed.
Throughout their short marriage she resented the computer almost as if it were another woman. She didn’t understand the complex calculations he made on it for a digital communication system that he said was an improvement on anything on the market.
She knew he was smart and could probably have equaled or even surpassed her own exam results if he’d stayed at school. But she also knew that his youth and lack of qualifications, experience or contacts would make it difficult for him to succeed in business.
“Your parents could have made it easier on you.” Jager’s hand closed around his empty wineglass.
“They were doing what they thought best for me.”
“You still believe that?” Hostility glittered in his eyes.
“Jager, I was seventeen. Far too young for marriage. Can you blame them?”
At the time Jager had wanted to try to talk them into giving consent.
“They’ll stop us,” she’d told him, alarmed at the thought. “We can’t tell them. Not until we’re married.”
She’d told them she was spending the weekend with a friend’s family at their beach cottage. Lying to them felt wrong, but marrying Jager felt so right, and this was the only way. They’d been married quickly and quietly on Friday afternoon, and spent two magical nights and days together in a seaside motel they could ill afford.
She kept the secret until after her final high school exams, seeing Jager whenever she could, both of them frustrated by the constraints on their privacy, their time together. Then, having finished school, she announced that she wanted to live with her husband. And all hell broke loose.
She’d expected it, of course. But not that her parents would be so inflexible. With the optimism of youth she had thought that, presented with a fait accompli, after the initial shock they would accept Jager as the man she intended to spend her life with.
She hadn’t been prepared for the suspicion and hostility they held toward him. Most of it she could brush off, but some things stuck, worming their way into her mind, her heart. Her mother saying bitterly, “He took one look at you and saw easy money—or so he thought. A rich man’s daughter.”
Paige had flared in his defense. “He didn’t have any idea who I was! Or who my father was.”
Margaret snorted. “Everyone knows the school uniform.”
“Not all the pupils are from wealthy families.” But people did tend to assume it. And she’d told Jager on that very first date what her father did, what his company was.
She despised herself for making an opportunity to ask Jager later if he’d recognized the uniform.
“Didn’t have a clue,” he’d answered. “I hadn’t been in Auckland for long then. Why?”
“I just wondered.” And then she felt guilty for lying to him.
Her father claimed angrily that Jager had asked him for money, and threatened him when he refused. She’d said she didn’t believe that, and hung up on him. But her father wasn’t a liar.
“I asked him for a loan,” Jager admitted. “To help develop my ideas into a business, because the banks won’t touch it without collateral and I thought for your sake he might. I drew up an agreement, with interest and everything. I’d have paid him back.”
“You didn’t mention it to me!”
“I wasn’t going to tell you if he turned me down. I did it for you, Paige. Because you deserve better than this place, this life.” He looked
around the little flat, the meager furnishings.
She could imagine how much pride he had needed to swallow even to ask.
Jager said bitterly, “He wouldn’t even look at the proposal. He’d rather see me drown, and take you with me. That’s how much he loves his daughter!”
“He said you threatened him.”
Jager frowned. “Things got a bit heated. I don’t remember all the details. He accused me of using you to extort money from him. I told him what sort of a father I thought he was, and that he’d lose you completely the way he was carrying on.”
Two versions. She believed Jager, of course she did. It was a misunderstanding.
But the misunderstandings proliferated, even after he landed a job with an electronics company, with better pay and better prospects. Perhaps by then it had been too late. She couldn’t remember now what the final row had been about. Something unimportant, probably, but the last straw. She’d packed a bag and walked out with tears streaming down her face and fogging her glasses, and flagged down a cab to take her home.
CHAPTER EIGHT
JAGER pushed back his chair but didn’t get up. “Did your parents approve of Aidan?”
“They liked him. I told you—”
“Oh, yeah. Everybody did. And it goes without saying they like Philip. Are you prepared to take second place to his ex-wife and his children? He hasn’t cut loose from her…emotionally.” Jager’s expression was ruthless.
“I don’t care!” she said, exasperated.
Fleetingly he looked furious, before his face went totally blank.
This was pointless. “I hardly know him!” Paige said, angry herself. “I met him at my parents’ place and he offered me help with the decorating. He’s just a nice man.”
Jager was skeptical. “And he hopes you can help him get over his broken marriage. Not to mention it can’t do his career any damage if he marries the boss’s daughter.”
“Not everyone has your eye for the main chance.”
His head jerked back. “What?”
“Why did you really want to marry me? It certainly wasn’t for my pretty face.”