‘I didn’t imagine the fact that you put me in the office of the man you had believed was my lover!’
‘I knew by then that he wasn’t and never had been,’ he reminded her harshly. ‘I gave you that office because it was the one closest to mine without my having to ask Lionel to move out!’
‘I’m surprised you didn’t do that,’ she snapped caustically. ‘As it is he’s thinking of retiring early when he had never even mentioned the idea before you took over!’
Daniel’s mouth twisted. ‘Maybe he’ll reconsider that decision if he has his beloved niece at AI, too!’
‘I told you, it’s too late for that.’ She shook her head.
‘Because of some damned grudge you have no right—’
‘Because I already have a job!’ she corrected heatedly, unable to believe this had really started out as a conciliatory conversation.
‘You what?’ Daniel’s voice cracked between them like a whip.
Heather met his gaze unflinchingly. ‘I have a job,’ she repeated calmly.
‘Doing what?’ His voice was so soft that its very control was dangerous.
‘I own and run an interior design company. Don’t look so sceptical, Daniel,’ she snapped at his derisive snort. ‘I do have all the necessary qualifications, I’ve just never had the opportunity to use them before.’ It had all started out as a way of showing him that even though she was out of her depth at Air International she knew exactly what she was doing with the interiors of houses and offices. It had started out that way, but in the weeks since it had become so much more; she loved what she was doing, got up every morning with the challenge of a new day. ‘Didn’t I do a wonderful job on the interior of this house?’ she prompted lightly as Daniel still looked thunderstruck.
‘How many people know about this business of yours?’ he rasped.
She frowned, shaking her head. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Who knows you own this interior design company?’ he enlarged harshly.
‘All my friends, the ones I’ve been asking for business, anyway,’ she grinned. ‘And quite a lot of other people too. I’m really enjoying it—’
‘So half of London is aware of the fact that my wife works for a living?’ he cut in savagely, his eyes glittering silver.
‘You wanted me to work at AI—’
‘That’s different and you know it!’ he snapped fiercely.
‘No,’ she frowned, ‘I don’t know it. What’s so wrong with my doing something I love so much?’
She had envisaged triumphantly telling him of her success in a few more months, once the company was well established; she certainly hadn’t imagined this as his reaction. Amazement, perhaps, that she had managed to achieve so much in so little time, because she had achieved a lot already, had taken on two new designers to the staff of five she had already had at the failing company she had taken over.
‘Or are you more like my father than I realised?’ she accused. ‘Not liking to see others enjoying their life, but taking delight in denying them the things you know they want?’
‘I’m nothing like Max, and you know it—’
‘I believed you weren’t—’
‘I’m not,’ Daniel rasped firmly. ‘But there’s no reason for you to go out to work.’
‘There’s every reason—I’m enjoying it,’ she told him stubbornly. ‘For the first time in my life I feel independent, free.’
‘You’re my wife!’ He glared.
‘Have I been any less your wife the last two months than I was for those few days before I started my business?’ she challenged.
A ruddy hue darkened his cheeks. ‘You know that wasn’t what I meant!’
‘No,’ she sighed, ‘I don’t think I do know. I don’t understand your reaction at all.’
His hands clenched at his sides. ‘When your father was alive you were quite content to stay at home and run his household for him.’
‘Who says I was?’ Her eyes flashed. ‘I wasn’t given a choice.’
‘You were an adult—’
‘Completely dominated by Max Danvers,’ she recalled bitterly. ‘You saw by his will how much he cared about my happiness; I tried all my life to gain his approval, to find some way of making him love me. And I gave up a lot of things that it would have made me happy to do.’
‘A career?’
‘Yes!’ She looked at him imploringly. ‘It’s something I always wanted, something I’ve always loved, but the closest my father would let me come to it was allowing me to decorate his home. All he ever wanted from me was that I always be there, always beautiful, always attentive to his needs. Is that what you want from me, too?’ she asked in a pained voice.
‘Doesn’t it bother you that people are probably laughing at us behind our backs?’ he grated. ‘Saying that I can’t even support my wife!’
A heavy weight settled on her chest. ‘It obviously bothers you. Why, Daniel? A lot of women have careers nowadays, regardless of wealth.’
‘Not my wife!’ he stormed.
‘That’s the real problem, isn’t it, Daniel?’ she sighed. ‘It isn’t that I’ve at last found something that makes me happy, it isn’t even that I chose to do this rather than work with you at Air International, it’s because your wife is working, something I’m sure you once swore to yourself would never happen.’
‘Right,’ he agreed tersely.
‘Like my father, you’re only thinking of this from your own point of view, how it affects you,’ she said heavily. ‘You don’t care about the fact that this makes me happy.’
‘You were happy before!’
‘No, I wasn’t!’ she cried frustratedly. ‘I’ve always wanted something more in my life!’
He drew in a ragged breath. ‘Then you refuse to give up this business?’
‘Yes!’
A nerve pulsed in his cheek. ‘Even though you know exactly how important it is to me?’
‘Oh, Daniel,’ she shook her head sadly, ‘it’s just as important to me that I do work.’
‘Very well,’ he nodded stiffly, wrenching open the door. ‘You’ve made your choice.’
What choice? Heather stared numbly at the door after he had closed it. What choice had she just made?
By the time she was able to move to open the bedroom door she was just in time to hear the front door close decisively behind Daniel. He had gone. But where? And for how long?
He had promised to give this marriage two months, and that time was now up. Did that mean he would return to the life he had led before their marriage, to his other women, something she knew he hadn’t done in the last two months despite their arguments, too busy to see anyone else during the day, and spending every night with her? Had he gone to another woman now?
Tears squeezed between her tightly closed lids. She had just wanted something of her own, something she could finally claim was her own success. Was that so wrong? She understood Daniel’s aversion to having a working wife, of course she did, but he was making no effort to see this from her point of view.
Was this it, then, the end of the dreams she had had of this marriage one day being a happy one?
If giving up her business would give them that, then she wouldn’t have hesitated to do it. But she couldn’t see anything changing the way things were between herself and Daniel in the near future, least of all making herself unhappy and resentful.
Daniel still hadn’t returned to the house by the time she went to bed, and she stared blindly at the ceiling as she wondered who he was with. Any number of women would have been glad of his attention, in fact several of her friends had confided recently how much they envied her her husband rather than pitied her, as Daniel had always accused. She had blushingly accepted their compliments about her husband; now she couldn’t help wishing he wasn’t quite so attractive, that his air of needing no one wasn’t quite such a challenge to every woman he met.
Quite apart from that she missed his presence beside her in their bed. Rarely a night had
gone by when he hadn’t made love to her, and the closeness between them then was all she had to comfort her when he was so much apart from her at other times.
She was staring fixedly at the bedroom door, had been for some time, when it was quietly opened and she could see Daniel step into the room.
It was one o’clock in the morning, she had no idea where he had been or who he had been with, but she was so glad to see him at all that she didn’t care about that right now, giving a choked sob as she held out her arms to him.
For a moment he froze. And then he was crossing the room in long strides, coming down on his knees beside the bed to cradle her in his arms. ‘I’m sorry,’ he groaned between raining kisses on her cheeks and brows. ‘I’m so sorry!’
For a moment it felt as if her heart would break as she guessed the reason for his apology, and then it didn’t matter any more as Daniel kissed her as if he would never stop. What did it matter who he had been with tonight, he had come back to her!
‘No, darling, no!’ He shook his head as he guessed the reason for her brief resistance, staring down at her in the darkness. ‘My only companion tonight was a brandy bottle, and then only briefly,’ he added ruefully. ‘Then I realised I’d been wrong to talk to you the way I did, to demand you give up something you love so much.’
‘I love you Daniel.’ Heather clung to him, her eyes bright with unshed tears, beyond pride now. She had tried everything else to try and make their marriage a success, and none of it had worked, and after going through the trauma tonight of believing she had lost him completely she just wanted him to know how she felt about him. ‘If you really want me to stop working then I’ll do it.’
His hand trembled slightly as he smoothed the hair at her temple. ‘Wh-what did you say? About—about—’
She swallowed hard, knowing that Daniel had difficulty even saying the word. ‘I love you, Daniel. I always have.’
‘You had a crush—’
‘Not a crush.’ She shook her head. ‘It was love, it always has been.’
His face was very white in the moonlight, his eyes darkly searching. ‘Then Max’s will—’
‘Has nothing to do with how I feel about you,’ she told him firmly. ‘Except that it’s made it impossible for you to ever take my love seriously. It’s all right, Daniel,’ she caressed his cheek as a nerve pulsed there, ‘I don’t expect you to believe me.’
‘It isn’t that—’
‘I don’t expect any declarations of love in return, either,’ she sighed. ‘I’m just tired of hiding my feelings behind a wall of cool sophistication. I loved you from the moment we first met, and nothing you do is ever going to change that.’
‘I can be a bastard—’
‘Rigid and self-defensive,’ she corrected firmly. ‘It’s just part of the person you are, it doesn’t change my love for you.’
‘Heather, I—I—’ He swallowed hard.
‘Will you hold me?’ He rested his head against her breasts. ‘Just hold me!’
For ever, if he would let her!
It was the first time, the very first time, that she had felt close to him, that he had let her close to him, without them having made love first.
CHAPTER TEN
‘I’M sorry, darling, but I’m afraid we could be a little late.’
The use of the endearment still thrilled Heather to her toes!
As she had assured Daniel that night a month ago, she wasn’t expecting any declarations of love in return, and she hadn’t received any, then or in the time since. But their relationship had changed. Daniel no longer spent all his evenings in his study. Occasionally he still brought work home, but when it did happen he invited Heather to join him and she would usually curl up in an armchair in there and read a book while he worked. He telephoned her at least once a day when he was at work, if only to tell her what time he would be home for dinner. He had even accepted her invitation to look around Taggart Interiors, offering a few helpful comments, but no more criticism. And at night he made love to her with a sweet desire that had her crying out her love for him as he drove her to the brink of madness. And lastly, he occasionally called her darling!
As he had just now. It certainly took the sting out of the fact that he and her uncle were going to be late for dinner tonight.
‘I’m sure Stella and I will do our best to entertain each other until you arrive,’ she said drily, anticipating the bitchiness the other woman would show in full measure without the slightly sobering presence of the two men. Her uncle and Stella had been over to dinner several times during the last three months, and each time the other woman seemed to become more scathing.
Daniel gave a throaty chuckle. ‘Keep her away from the dinner table; the knives would be too accessible!’
Heather felt an inner glow at the complete naturalness of his laugh, no bitterness or scepticism in his manner with her now, as if he were finally beginning to believe in her love for him. They still had a long way to go, and she hadn’t yet told him the truth about Max’s relationship to her, but each new day gave her the confidence to feel they would soon have everything together.
‘I’ll try and hold her off until you get here,’ she mocked.
‘She’s getting worse, isn’t she?’ he agreed, soberly.
It didn’t surprise her that Daniel had noticed that, it would take a blind man not to notice how caustic the other woman had become. Although Uncle Lionel seemed completely unaware of his wife’s brittle manner. Maybe he was just too close to the situation.
‘I’m sure it will pass,’ Heather dismissed.
‘Now what time can I expect you home?’
‘No later than eight-thirty,’ he replied confidently.
‘There’s nothing wrong, is there?’ she frowned; Daniel hadn’t worked late at the office for weeks.
‘Lionel has some figures we need to go through,’ he explained. ‘It shouldn’t take too long.’
Heather was far from looking forward to being alone with Stella for half an hour. The two of them had little or nothing in common, and the other woman had been openly disparaging about Heather’s career, scorning the need to work when she was already so wealthy, having spent years herself trying to get away from working. She lost no opportunity to get in as many rude comments about it as she could. Tonight proved to be no different.
‘If I had your money I wouldn’t waste my time working for other people,’ she attacked.
Stella had greeted her by telling her how tired she looked, and the statement about her money had been made in answer to Heather’s comment that she had been working hard.
Heather smiled. ‘Could we at least go through to the lounge before you start an argument?’ she said lightly.
The other woman gave a haughty inclination of her head; she was looking very attractive in a clinging black dress, showing by the slenderness of her figure that she had lost weight the last couple of months. In fact, she looked thinner than she had when Heather had seen her two weeks ago.
‘Are you on a diet?’ Heather frowned.
Blue eyes flashed. ‘Of course not,’ snapped Stella. ‘There’s absolutely nothing wrong with my figure.’
‘I didn’t mean to imply that there was—’
‘You’ve put weight on,’ the other woman accused.
She had, a little. Despite working harder than she ever had before, spending ecstatic nights in Daniel’s arms, she had put several pounds on lately as the result of a suddenly healthy appetite. ‘A few pounds,’ she conceded.
Stella gave her a critical look. ‘You aren’t pregnant already, are you?’
It was difficult to hold on to her temper in the face of the personal question that was put as a criticism; she was more than a little disappointed that she wasn’t yet expecting Daniel’s child. ‘No,’ she bit out tautly.
‘Don’t tell me you actually want children?’ Stella scorned. ‘I know I made very sure I wouldn’t have any unwanted brats.’
Heather blinked. ‘How?’<
br />
‘The usual way,’ the other woman shrugged. ‘Lionel wanted them, but I didn’t, and so—It’s just as well it never happened,’ she rasped.
Heather looked at Stella searchingly. It was true that the other woman would have made an atrocious parent, but even so, it should have been a decision both partners made.
Although she doubted Stella would see it that way if she pointed that out to her.
‘Are you still seeing Phillip?’ The question was blurted out before she could stop herself, and she could tell by the fury in cold blue eyes that Stella was furious at the intrusion.
‘Jealous, Heather?’ she taunted.
‘Not at all,’ she dismissed easily. ‘I was just concerned about you and Uncle Lionel.’
‘I can’t imagine why,’ Stella snapped. ‘Lionel has his work to keep him happy, and I—’
‘Have Phillip,’ Heather realised heavily. ‘Stella—’
‘For God’s sake, don’t start lecturing me,’ the other woman rasped. ‘Who am I hurting?’
The obvious answer was her husband, even if he weren’t yet aware of the affair. But Heather could see that Stella was also hurting herself, that even the little softness of emotions she might once have had was buried beneath her obsession with Phillip Wingate.
‘And don’t claim I’m hurting Lionel,’ Stella continued sarcastically. ‘He hardly knows I’m alive most of the time!’
‘He loves you—’
‘He loves his precious airline,’ the other woman snapped.
‘He’s giving that up to be with you—’
‘Rubbish,’ Stella scorned. ‘The airline has always been Lionel’s life.’
‘Nevertheless, he’s retiring early so that he can spend more time with you.’ Heather frowned. ‘Surely he told you that?’
‘Of course he told me,’ the other woman said dismissively. ‘But he’ll never do it.’
‘But—’
‘I told you, he’ll never do it!’ Stella insisted heatedly, her eyes feverish. ‘Do you have anything to drink in this house, or is this going to be a dry dinner party?’
From the way the other woman was behaving Heather would have guessed the whisky she poured for her was far from her first drink of the evening; Stella’s behaviour was positively reckless, as if she didn’t care about keeping up appearances even for the sake of her marriage any more.
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