by Lynne Graham
Claire unwrapped the crab mousse in its individual soufflé dishes.
‘The problem won’t go away,’ he continued doggedly.
Her delicate profile washed with colour. ‘A baby isn’t a problem.’
‘It is when you act as if I had nothing to do with its conception.’
She studied her mousse with fading appetite and put an absent hand to the base of her spine to massage her sore back. ‘It was an accident.’
His jawline squared. ‘The baby’s going to love hearing that,’ he gibed coldly.
She rammed down a terrible jolt of pain. He didn’t have to be so literal. ‘You’ve spent months being more visible than you’ve been in years, having a good time, because three wretched weeks of marriage frightened you half to death.’
‘Four weeks,’ he corrected pleasantly. ‘It was your choice to leave.’
Yes, it had been. Without his love it had seemed the kindest and most fair decision to make. His gipsy life-style suited him and so did the Mei Lings who never demanded more than he was prepared to give. He didn’t need anyone. The kind of intense, aching pleasure-pain she endured just being close to him lay within a range of emotions that he was immune to. But in spite of that inviolability he still knew what he ought to feel and he was clever enough to say and do what he conceived to be the right things. She sighed. ‘I don’t want you to be unhappy, Dane.’
His wolfish smile was larded with cynicism. ‘What is happy, Claire? Oh, don’t look at me like that,’ he mocked. ‘You’re so innocent, sometimes I feel a hundred years old. A year ago you were happily planning your future with Max and I wasn’t planning mine with anybody. All that’s changed now. You can’t turn back the clock. I tried. The one decent thing I did in the last decade and it turned out to be the stupidest thing I ever did!’ Lush black lashes fanned up, throwing her into glancing contact with intensely blue eyes. ‘Don’t tell me you’re happy now because I wouldn’t believe you. You’ve got to shake this idea that marriages are made in heaven.’
‘Ours certainly wasn’t.’ She let him refill her glass, still flinching from his blunt statement about how stupid he had been to marry her in the first place.
He cast her a cool smile. ‘Neither was my parents’ and it survived,’ he stated with derisive challenge. ‘And our marriage hasn’t even had a proper trial yet. There’s a lot of things I like about you. If we didn’t crowd each other and develop too high expectations, we could survive too.’
He was staring down into her absorbed face and when he lazily angled his mouth down to capture her lips, one palm framing her cheekbone as he smoothly adjusted her weight against him, it seemed entirely natural. Her heart threatened to break free of her chest. The high voltage charge of sexual electricity she met sent her flat, boneless as a jellyfish and about as graceful as one stranded on the beach, she thought wretchedly as he lifted his head again. Eight months pregnant, too. She shrivelled with shame, certain it was her fault he had suddenly backed off.
He sat up, carefully distancing himself from her, she noted, and she was still all jittery and hot and cold with the hunger only he could ignite. He appeared cool, colour lying along his blunt cheekbones in a hard line, however, and a spasm of repudiation held her taut as the lovely taste of sensation faded, leaving only distaste in its place. She veiled her too-expressive eyes. Exactly who was waiting in the penthouse back in London for him? She was masochistically tempted to ask but knew he would answer truthfully and the pain would be hers, not his. And the pain away from him, she finally acknowledged, was even greater. It didn’t matter how many other women there had been over the past months, she still needed him, still wanted him in her life on any terms. So perhaps it was time to match his honesty.
‘I saw you kissing Mei Ling on Dominica,’ she said abruptly.
He looked forgivably surprised by her long memory. ‘I know,’ he confessed none the less.
Damp squib. An urge to thump him with the bottle of champagne struggled within her. ‘Is that all you’ve got to say?’
‘She launched herself at me!’ The animal brilliance of his jewelled eyes dared her to disbelieve him.
‘Oh.’ Claire delved back into the hamper for plates, too self-conscious to attack such a whisper-thin explanation. ‘You never said.’
‘You never asked,’ he answered craftily. ‘Here, let me put this stuff out. Just lie back and relax. I want an answer by the end of the afternoon.’
‘I thought you’d already made up my mind for me.’
Are you fooling him? You’re not fooling yourself. Your mind’s already made up and you cast up objections, praying he’ll tear them down again. She couldn’t keep on denying herself her own heart’s desire. She wasn’t that unselfish.
‘I’m not a staging post in a storm. If you come back, you stay,’ he assured her arrogantly. ‘And speaking as someone who had one father and three stepfathers, there’s no way you’ll ever get a divorce after the baby’s born.’
Unbeknown to him, that announcement had a reassuring flavour for Claire. Obviously he wasn’t regarding a reconciliation as a trial that he could walk away from again, and she saw how it would be. He would grant her a corner of his life. No more, no less and she would never get to crowd him. He wouldn’t be living in the country more than one week out of three. And Dane was a past master at ensuring his own comfort. In any case, the baby had to be considered. An occasional father was better than no father at all.
‘All right.’ She tried not to sound too enthusiastic, but some of it still crept out, for he searched her face suddenly. ‘I don’t like being on my own,’ she added brightly. ‘And I like the country.’
His eyes glittered. ‘I come with the package.’
‘Yes, well, you’d be rather difficult to overlook,’ she replied. ‘You and your ego. I hope it’s a big house.’ She pillowed her cheek on the shirt he had just discarded, loving the scent of his flesh that still clung to the fabric and stifling a yawn. ‘You know that if I clung to you and moaned and nagged and dogged your every footstep, you’d be in torment. You can’t have it all ways.’
Impervious to his hard scrutiny, she slid into sleep, able to wind down now that she had graciously agreed to exactly what she wanted. He didn’t let her sleep long, or so it seemed when he woke her up, for she still felt woozy.
‘Champagne.’ Dane advanced, helping her upright, finding her mules and practically putting her feet in them. ‘I wonder if it’s blitzed, too.’
‘I only had two glasses.’
‘And practically no food,’ he countered. ‘You’ll be more comfortable sleeping at home. The car ought to be back by now. It’s three.’
‘For a mile walk?’ she exclaimed, clutching his arm as the sunlight almost blinded her. What a lovely word home was, she reflected cheerfully, only wincing as she straightened her back.
‘For you,’ he said steadily.
Ten minutes later the car was sweeping up a wooded driveway and the symmetrical splendour of Wytchwood’s Georgian frontage came into view. It was not the enormous house she had feared and, tucked as it was among a grove of tall, graceful trees, it was a delightful surprise.
Thompson was opening the doors before they even reached the top of the shallow steps. His welcoming smile warmed her and she gazed appreciatively round the spacious, mosaic-tiled hall, already enchanted by the light which seemed to flood in through the tall window.
‘She’s too tired to take a tour,’ Dane was saying with a soft laugh.
She wasn’t. The drowsiness had gone, but her back remained sore so she decided it might be more sensible to lie down and rest for a while.
‘You ought to go to bed.’ Dane was already herding her masterfully towards the carved staircase.
‘The house is lovely,’ she murmured.
‘Glad you like it.’ He pushed open a panelled door and simultaneously a tight, clenched sensation constrained her stomach muscles and she gave a gasp of discomfort.
‘What’s up?’ Dane d
emanded harshly.
She made it over to the bed before pain followed in a blinding wave, wrenching a moan of fear from her. Dane said something unprintable. As the force of the contraction receded she breathed again. ‘It’s the baby,’ she muttered.
‘Early?’ He ran long fingers through his silvery hair, the gesture not far removed from one of desperation.
‘Is there a hospital nearby?’ she pressed anxiously.
He seemed suddenly to unfreeze and while he was out on the landing shouting for Thompson, another contraction seized her, arriving far sooner than she had naïvely expected.
Dane reappeared, to sweep her hastily off the bed. ‘This is my fault. The way I carted you out of that apartment.’
‘I should have realised earlier what was wrong,’ she soothed uneasily. ‘I never counted on this, not now … with you …’
His arms tightened round her on his passage down the stairs. ‘I ought to be with you, but I won’t be much help.’ He gazed down at her, distinctly embarrassed. ‘I’m in a cold sweat.’
For all that, he was marvellous in the car on the way to the small cottage hospital and, by the time they arrived, Claire was in no state to worry about how the experience was affecting Dane. She was swept away from him at speed and suddenly felt totally bereft, plunged at her most vulnerable into the midst of strangers.
‘My goodness, that baby’s not waiting for anyone!’ the chirpy midwife said, and all around her there was a buzz of activity broken up by questions that she was barely able to answer, for the birth process had taken complete hold of her.
‘Dane!’ she cried at the peak of another powerful contraction.
‘Can’t you fill in your damned forms some other time?’ In the interlude his whiplike drawl carried and a moment later he was there, disregarding the chilly Sister in charge’s dirty look that said he was not wanted in her delivery-room. ‘I want to stay.’ He voiced the admission to Claire and no one else, and she grasped his hand gratefully.
They connected her to all sorts of machinery, it seemed. Someone exclaimed, ‘There are two heartbeats, Sister,’ which made no sense at all to Claire at the time because of course there were two, hers and the baby’s.
Light was shed on the comment within half an hour. First a girl was born and then a boy. ‘God, you fantastic woman!’ Dane planted an extravagant kiss on her brow.
‘Perhaps you’d care to wait outside now?’ the Sister suggested frostily. ‘While your girlfriend …’
‘Hey, this lady’s my wife,’ Dane contradicted with icy hauteur and Claire managed a weak grin. He actually sounded proud of the fact.
She was all shipshape and poured into a scratchy hospital gown before she got to see him again. Exhaustion was sweeping over her now. The twins were healthy, blonde like Dane but with very dark eyes that she suspected also came from his side of the family tree. Though both babies were a little underweight, the doctor had assured her that it was quite normal in the circumstances.
Dane sank down on the edge of the bed and clasped her hand. His own was unsteady. ‘I was really scared in there,’ he murmured raggedly, his bright hair a damp tangle round his striking features. ‘But you’re OK, aren’t you? Thank God … and them—–’ He paused again, a dazed aspect to his normally alert gaze, ‘they’re beautiful. Tiny, are they supposed to be that tiny? Hey!’ He smoothed her hair off her brow almost clumsily. ‘You should sleep now.’
She gave him a drowsy smile. Well, if she had failed to shake him into loving, the babies hadn’t. Dane had been snared by tiny fingers and toes. She would never forget that magical look of joy on his face when they had been born. He probably wouldn’t stay so enthusiastic, but she sensed it was the one bond that would never break, and one she had not hoped could exist.
‘You’ve changed quite radically.’ Carter contrived to sound peevish and reproving. ‘Still, you’ve done very well for yourself. But I can’t say I ever expected to see Dane settling down. Although with the children—–’ a sneer crept into his pompous voice ‘—he didn’t have much choice, did he?’
‘If I were you, I wouldn’t repeat that insinuation again.’ Dane’s soft intervention from behind turned both their heads. His arms enclosed her teasingly, drawing her back against him firmly as he coldly surveyed Carter’s flushed face. ‘What is it about the Fletcher clan?’ he mused. ‘Even at a christening they find time to be unpleasant.’
Dane deliberately headed her away before she could add anything. ‘I hate to say you were right about them but you were,’ she murmured. ‘With the exception of Steve, they only came to pry and bitch. Celia’s been running about pricing everything. Sandra could barely bring herself to smile even at the twins!’ Her breath ran out with an angered hiss.
His dazzlingly blue eyes were amused. ‘Don’t look now, they’re leaving …’
‘I’d better go.’ His hand had already dropped from her arm which was no surprise to her. Dane rarely touched her except in public, and Matthew and Joy were seven weeks old now. Their marriage was a happy, easy-going pretence, with separate bedrooms and the separate lives that would inevitably develop from the absence of intimacy. And if anything she was more deeply in love with Dane than she had ever been. He had hugged home and hearth with unDanelike fervour of recent. He was clearly making one heck of an effort, and she wondered why she should resent him for the necessity. It was scarcely fair. He hadn’t made her any promises. Colliding with his rueful smile, a drumbeat of aching tension held her tautly still until she shook hurriedly clear of the needling reminders of her own sexuality. ‘And I’ll check the twins, too.’
‘What do we have a nanny for?’
Since Dane was often to be found at six in the morning in the nursery, getting under that same starchy nanny’s feet, she just laughed. ‘I haven’t seen them in hours.’
‘Yes, we surely have hit the jackpot on longstaying guests,’ Dane breathed drily, glancing round the still crowded confines of the lounge.
She couldn’t help smiling at his tone, and she took her leave of her erstwhile relatives with poise. She had much to be grateful for after all, and it wasn’t being pessimistic but realistic to suspect that Dane was bound to start disappearing for long stretches soon. Squashing that apprehension irritably, she chose to survey with pride instead the difference refurnishing had made to the penthouse. Although they spent most of their time at Wytchwood, Claire had worked hard to bring a less chilly aspect to the apartment, and the warm colour schemes in the large reception-rooms were a great improvement.
Surely there was more to marriage, though, than being mother, hostess and interior decorator … if there was, it looked as if she was destined to remain in ignorance this time around. She sighed. He liked her. He adored the twins. There was nothing cool, sophisticated or pretend about his unashamed fascination with them, and when she got to the stage where she was inclined to be envious of her own children, she knew how unreasonable she was being.
‘A gentleman has called to see you, madam,’ Thompson intercepted her before she reached the nursery. ‘A Mr Walker. He insisted that he needed to speak to you privately. I showed him into the study.’
Claire’s smooth brow furrowed. Max? What on earth would Max be doing here? Her feet carried her swiftly back down the corridor and there he was, considerably improved in apearance from their last meeting, his stocky figure complemented by a smart brown suit, his dark hair shorter and neartly combed.
He spoke the moment she entered the room, his manner almost jocular. ‘You’re certainly not easy to get hold of these days! Ex-directory number, out of the country half the time, and when I do finally get hold of you you’re in the middle of a party,’ he complained.
‘Max.’ Rather awkwardly she held out her hand. ‘You look well.’
He clasped her fingers and held on to them. ‘I must’ve looked a slob that day at the flat. Fact of the matter is, things have changed. I’ve got a job now again, and after speaking to your cousin … Good lord, Claire, why didn�
�t you tell me what you’d done that day?’ he demanded heavily. ‘I didn’t know you were married or why until I got your cousin on the phone. He told me the whole story. I was horrified.’
Uncomfortably Claire tried to retrieve her fingers. ‘My cousin?’
‘Carter. When I realised what you’d done for me … the sacrifice …’ He had the cheek to look insufferably smug.
Claire tugged her hand back, mentally cursing Carter. He was a pot-stirrer. He had had absolutely no business telling Max about Adam’s will and embarrassing her like this. ‘What sacrifice?’ she asked stiffly.
‘Marrying Dane. I mightn’t have been able to find you but I have been reading the papers,’ he confided with a covert smile. ‘The guy’s been running around with other women ever since you married him.’
Claire turned an angry pink. ‘I fail to understnad what my marriage has to do with you, now, Max.’
‘Look, Sue … well, I can understand you still being annoyed about that.’
‘It’s nothing to do with Sue,’ Claire got in, in exasperation. ‘Carter had no right to give you the wrong impression … oh, what does it matter? I happen to love Dane.’
He regarded her with irritating disbelief. ‘You couldn’t possibly,’ he argued. ‘Your cousin told me you married him to get your grandfather’s money for us.’
Her mouth set. ‘I’m still in love with him.’
‘Sue and I are finished,’ he emphasised tautly. ‘Claire, I still love you.’
He grabbed both her hands as if determined to force a more encouraging response from her. She could see the anger gathering in him now, born out of the fear that he was making a fool of himself. ‘We can still be together. You can get a divorce. You can’t want to stay with him …’ he beseeched roughly. ‘You don’t know how much I’ve regretted hurting you and how much I’ve missed you.’
A rush of moisture stung her eyelids. She hated to hurt anybody. Perhaps only loneliness and boredom had been behind Max’s involvement with Sue, but it was irrelevant now. His appearance here was only an embarrassment now for both of them. ‘Max,’ she interrupted tightly, a tiny shake in her voice. ‘Dane and I have children. I’m sorry … I …’