‘And he’s obviously made her a very wealthy widow ... darling,’ she added mischievously, mimicking Greta Neal’s voice to perfection.
‘You little minx,’ he smiled, his hand gripping hers with unexpected firmness across the table, and sending familiar little tremors up the length of her arm.
‘You’d better watch out, Daniel. I have a feeling that you’re going to be chased,’ she teased lightly, amazing even herself that she could all at once be so relaxed in his company.
‘To be chased by a woman has never appealed to me,’ he replied, making her realise, if she had not done so before, that he was very much a man who did his own chasing. ‘Would you like to dance?’
She nodded a little apprehensively and was instantly drawn to her feet and led through the tables towards the space cleared for dancing which was already crowded with couples swaying slowly to the rhythm supplied by the jazz quartet. ‘You have enjoyed the evening, haven’t you?’ he asked softly just above her ear as he steered her expertly amongst the others on the floor.
‘Yes,’ she whispered back, almost reluctant to break the spell that seemed to have woven itself about her. ‘It was silly of me to be so angry. I’m sorry.’
‘If I’d extended the invitation in the usual manner, would you have accepted?’
‘Probably not,’ she replied after a moment of thought.
‘Are Bruce and I forgiven, then?’
‘Yes.’
His arm tightened about her waist, drawing her against the lean hardness of his body as she matched her steps to his. ‘Are you in the mood to say yes to all my suggestions this evening?’
‘That depends.’
‘On what?’ he asked, his warm breath stirring through the fine hair at her temples and awakening a slumbering pulse at the base of her throat.
‘It depends on the suggestions you make, naturally. ’
He drew his head back slightly. ‘You look so beautifully fragile this evening, as if you would melt in my arms. ’ His glance lingered on her lips where a tiny nerve pulsed at the corner of her mouth. ‘I want to kiss you. ’
‘Not here!’ she protested swiftly, her cheeks suffused with colour when the strange glitter in his eyes made her realise what she had said. ‘I mean—’
‘At my hotel?’ he suggested with a warmth that sent the blood racing through her veins.
‘No.’
‘Where, then?’ he demanded softly, his glance teasing. ‘Daniel—’
She got no further, for he laughed softly, lowering his head until the hardness of his chin was pressed against her temple. ‘I’m in a crazy mood tonight, my Lorelei. Let’s pretend, just for this one night, that we find each other attractive, and that we’re enjoying each other’s company.’
‘And then?’ she asked softly, her head somehow finding its way on to his shoulder where the expensive material of his jacket was smooth against her cheek.
‘Then, my beautiful sea-nymph, we just let nature take its course and see where it leads.’
They danced in silence for a moment before she said: ‘This could be a dangerous game you’re suggesting.’
‘It could also be quite an innocent game, with nothing to lose except a few harmless kisses before I deposit you at Bruce’s flat,’ he replied in a voice that was vibrantly low.
Her hand tightened on his arm where the muscles were hard beneath her fingers. ‘Can I trust you not to take advantage of me while we indulge in this rather foolish game?’
‘You can trust me, Joanne, to do nothing you wouldn’t want me to do,’ he promised, dropping a kiss on her silky hair. ‘Are we partners in this crazy game of mine?’
‘You’re very persuasive, and I am tempted,’ she replied with honesty, but could she take the risk of involving herself in this game without giving herself away completely?
‘Be a devil just this once,’ he challenged.
Joanne lifted her head and raised her glance to his, her eyes a soft, velvety green in the subdued light. ‘Just this once I’m going to be as crazy as you are, and say ... yes.’
‘Wonderful!’ he exclaimed softly, almost lifting her off the floor as he swung her round in his arms.
It was like a strange madness gripping Joanne, and the subtle change in Daniel’s behaviour encouraged her to drift more deeply into this game of pretence than she had intended to. They laughed and talked and danced until well after midnight, oblivious of the others about them, and somehow not caring that their behaviour might have been thought odd.
Driving back to the flat eventually, Daniel pulled off to the side of the quiet road and switched off the engine before he drew her unresistingly into his arms. His kisses were warm and deeply disturbing, and she found herself caught under the spell of the evening as she kissed him back. In the lift, as it swept them up to Bruce’s flat, he kissed her again, then in the flat, with the door closed and shutting them off from the outside world, she found herself in his arms once more.
Perhaps it was the amount of wine she had consumed, or just the sheer maleness of him that kept her spellbound, but loving him as she did made it difficult to draw the line between reality and pretence, until the warm pressure of his hands against her breasts warned her that the game would have to end.
She pulled away from him, using her brother as an excuse, but Daniel caught her close once more.
‘Bruce is at a party with some of his student pals and, if I remember my own university days, it won’t end until the early hours of the morning. ’ His mouth found the vulnerable pulse in the soft hollow of her throat. ‘We have plenty of time.’
‘Daniel, it’s been a memorable evening. Let’s not spoil it,’ she pleaded breathlessly, her hands against his chest to ward him off.
‘I have no intention of doing anything to spoil our evening together,’ he promised, drawing back a little.
‘Could we—could we talk? Quietly and calmly, and seriously,’ she suggested hesitantly, reality returning with a painful force.
‘Must we talk now?’ he asked, an incredulous smile about his lips as he slid his hands down the length of her arms to her wrists, sending tantalising sparks along her nerves.
‘I think so, Daniel,’ she nodded slowly. ‘We’re both quite calm at the moment.’
‘I wouldn’t say that I’m calm,’ he remarked with a certain harshness as he raised her hand and slipped it inside his jacket where she could feel the heavy beat of his heart beneath the silk of his shirt. ‘Would my heart beat like that if I were calm?’
‘Daniel?’ she pleaded, the warmth of his body beneath her hand almost too much to bear.
He released her instantly. ‘All right, let’s talk if that’s what you want.’
His voice had suddenly assumed its usual abruptness as they sat down facing each other in Bruce’s untidy lounge, and, for a brief moment, Joanne wondered whether it was wise of her to want to discuss a subject which could quite easily make him revert back to the mocking, arrogant stranger she had come to fear.
‘Well?’ he demanded softly, his glance compelling.
‘Won’t you please reconsider and give me a divorce?’ Clearly taken aback, he lit a cigarette, his eyes narrowed
against the screen of smoke when he eventually said: ‘If you give me a very good reason why I should, then I might consider starting divorce proceedings.’
‘I want to make a life for myself somewhere without the past entangling me in its clutches, and I want to continue with my nursing career,’ she replied, her words sounding hollow and decidedly flat. ‘I can’t do that, Daniel, while our marriage hangs over my head like the sword of Damocles.’
The silence lengthened between them, a silence during which she found herself thinking, ‘If Daniel cares in any way for me, he’ll brush aside my request and suggest again, as he did once before his mother’s death, that we seriously consider making something of our marriage.’ It was a foolish hope, a ridiculous desire, but she had to put him to the test to make sure.
‘Is
your freedom so important to you?’ he asked finally, his voice grating along her tender nerves.
‘Yes, it is,’ she lied desperately. ‘Very important.’
‘And ... if I give you this divorce you want so badly...
where will you go?’
‘Somewhere quiet,’ she announced. ‘I hope, to a place similar to Willowmead. ’
His eyebrows rose a fraction. ‘You wouldn’t stay on at the clinic?’
She shook her head, a wave of silky hair falling forward to cast a shadow across her face. ‘It would be better if we don’t see each other so often. ’
‘You would allow me to visit you occasionally?’ he asked, an unfathomable urgency in his voice.
‘Occasionally, yes. If you felt like doing so.’
A tense silence hovered between them, then Daniel sighed heavily. ‘Very well, Joanne. I’ll make the necessary arrangements. ’
Joanne tasted the bitterness of defeat as she forced a smile to her unwilling lips and whispered, ‘Thank you, Daniel. ’
‘Don’t thank me,’ he said harshly, crushing his cigarette into the ashtray. ‘Thank the mood I’m in. Tomorrow I shall quite probably want to kick myself. ’
‘I trust you not to go back on your word. ’
‘I trusted you ... once.’
She lowered her glance swiftly to hide the pain in her eyes. ‘I know ... and I let you down.’
‘Yes, and—no.’ She glanced up quickly, but he was staring at something beyond her with an almost distant look in his eyes. ‘I told you, didn’t I? Up there in the Alps there was plenty of time to think, and to remember.’ His blue gaze sharpened as it met hers. ‘You did let me down, but somehow you never let Mother down. That’s the mystifying part of it. She was happy about us—right up to the end.’
‘Yes,’ she managed, her throat tightening.
He leaned forward in his chair, his knees almost touching hers. ‘Did you give her the idea that you wanted our marriage to become a real one?’
His guess was so accurate that it took almost everything
Joanne possessed not to let him see the truth; the humiliating, utterly hopeless truth.
‘Your—your mother had guessed the truth about our marriage almost before I had the opportunity to tell her. She drew her own conclusions, and I—I didn’t deny it. ’
‘My God!’ he muttered, rising to his feet and walking away from her, the muscles in his jaw standing out prominently. ‘How you must hate me for what happened afterwards!’
Long after he had gone, his words still remained with her. ‘How you must hate me for what happened afterwards!’
She had hated him, yes, for taking her in what she had thought a brutal fashion. But hate is akin to love, and love had made her heart forgiving when she had realised that her pride had been bruised most. If one word of love had passed his lips, she would not have left him, but then, as now, Daniel merely desired her body, as he would desire any other woman under similar circumstances, and she shrank from a relationship with Daniel which was based purely on the physical. When the flame had spent itself, only the ashes would remain, and ashes was not a recommended diet for a hungry heart.
Spring had come to the valley with a gentleness that brought it to life magically. The vineyards below the clinic became a carpet of green as the sap rose to produce new shoots in preparation for another season of winemaking. In the clinic gardens the daffodils and namaqua-land daisies raised their heads proudly towards the sun while the gardeners loosened the soil and planted seedlings for the coming summer.
Joanne, returning from the canteen where she had indulged in a hasty lunch, paused for a moment to admire the scene before her, enjoying too the warmth of the sun against her face and arms before she mounted the steps and entered the building through the reception hall, coming almost face to face with Daniel and Greta Neal.
‘Well, if it isn’t the little nurse I saw you with just over a week ago,’ she purred beside Daniel, but the eyes that met Joanne’s were cold and hard. ‘Will you be taking care of me while I’m here?’
Bewildered, Joanne stared at her for a moment before casting a swift, questioning glance at Daniel.
‘Sister Webster is in the theatre, Greta,’ he answered for Joanne in an abrupt, gravelly voice that matched the scowl on his face.
Greta Neal, the inevitable fur draped across her shoulders, and her diamond earrings matching the diamond pendant at her throat, placed a slender, manicured hand on Daniel’s arm. It signified a possessiveness that made Joanne almost choke with an uncommon jealousy.
‘I was hoping we could get to know each other,’ Greta Neal was saying, but despite the smile on her crimson lips, Joanne experienced a flash of warning. This woman was out to cause trouble of some sort while she staked her claim on her childhood friend, Daniel Grant.
Daniel took her arm with a gesture of impatience and with a polite nod in Joanne’s direction, he ushered Greta down the wide passage. Stunned and puzzled, Joanne glanced at the girl behind the reception desk.
‘Is Mrs. Neal going to be a patient here in the clinic?’
‘Yes,’ the dark-haired girl nodded, grasping at the unexpected
opportunity to discuss the new arrival. ‘She arrived about thirty minutes ago in a chauffeur-driven car, insisting that she wanted to see Dr. Grant, and no one else.’
A puzzled frown creased Joanne’s brow. ‘What special surgery could she possibly require that would bring her here to this clinic?’
‘Apparently she has a mole on her left shoulder that she wants removed. ’
‘A mole?’ Joanne asked in amazement. ‘But the removal of a mole could have been done just as expertly in a Cape Town hospital. Why come here?’
The receptionist giggled. ‘That’s what Dr. Grant told her, but she said, and I quote, “Darling, I wouldn’t let anyone else but you lay a finger on my mole,” unquote. ’ Her reproduction of Greta Neal’s particular way of speaking made Joanne smother a laugh behind her hand. ‘You should have seen Dr. Grant’s face,’ the receptionist continued, rolling her eyes towards the ceiling. ‘I’ve never seen him look so angry before, and if I’d been Mrs. Neal, I would have got out fast, but she merely caught him in the beam of her flashing smile and produced the necessary papers from her personal doctor. It had all been arranged, and there was nothing Dr. Grant could do about it except remove her infernal mole and be done with it.’ The girl’s dislike of Greta Neal was evident, and Joanne could not blame her, for that was exactly how she felt herself, she thought as she made her way towards the theatre wing.
Greta Neal was wheeled into the theatre during the course of the following day and, to Joanne’s surprise, Daniel treated this minor operation with as much care as if he were remodelling someone’s maimed features.
‘My personal feelings don’t come into it,’ he explained
that evening when he arrived unexpectedly at Joanne’s flat.
‘On the operating table she was just another patient, and her unnecessary request was of no importance at all. ’
‘How long will she be staying?’ Joanne asked, avoiding his
glance with care.
‘She could return home tomorrow, but, knowing Greta, she’ll most probably make an occasion out of her stay at the clinic.’ He snorted angrily. ‘When I left the clinic fifteen minutes ago, she was complaining of a weakness that prevented her from getting up and seeing to herself. ’
Joanne swallowed nervously. ‘You mean she’s going to stretch out her stay here for as long as possible?’
‘She’ll stay until I virtually have to throw her out.’ Daniel pressed his fingers against his eyes for a moment. ‘Heavens, but I’m tired tonight!’
Joanne observed him closely for a moment, seeing for the first time the tiredness etched so deeply in his features, and the dullness in the eyes that finally blinked up at her as he leaned back in his chair.
‘I’ll make you something to drink, then I suggest you go home to bed,’ she said sy
mpathetically as she went through to the kitchen to switch on the kettle.
Some minutes later when she returned to the lounge with their coffee, she found his jacket and tie draped across the arm of the chair he had been seated in, but Daniel was nowhere in sight and, placing the cups on the low table, she made her way hesitantly towards her room.
Daniel lay sprawled across her bed, and it gave her the strangest feeling to see him there in her room with his arms flung out to his sides and his features relaxed in sleep. He looked almost boyish, she thought, her hungry glance dwelling on his thick lashes, and the dark hair which lay across his broad forehead. Her hand went out automatically to brush it back, but she drew back sharply without touching him, her heart pounding uncomfortably when she realised what she had almost done.
Joanne did not have the heart to wake him and, covering him lightly with a rug, she returned quietly to the lounge to drink her coffee in silence while she settled down to the mending of some of her summer dresses which Daniel had interrupted with his unexpected arrival. It was after ten before she returned to her room with a fresh cup of coffee in her hand to awaken him.
‘Daniel,’ she whispered, touching his arm gently.
‘Lorelei,’ he murmured, opening his eyes and throwing aside the rug as he swung his long legs off the side of the bed. ‘I wish you wouldn’t tie your hair up in that ridiculous ponytail,’ he admonished her, drawing her down beside him and tugging at the ribbon until her hair fell down to her shoulders. ‘That looks so much better. ’
‘I’ve brought you a fresh cup of coffee, then you must go home,’ she said, her voice level despite his disturbing touch.
‘Did I fall asleep?’
‘Yes,’ she gestured towards the clock on the bedside table. ‘It’s after ten.’
A mocking smile touched his lips. ‘How unsociable of me!’
‘You were tired,’ she reminded him woodenly, shutting her mind to the sensations created by the touch of his hand on her hair.
‘So you left me sleeping here on your bed.’ His hand fastened on to the nape of her neck, while the other lay warm against her waist as he pushed her over backwards on to the bed. ‘It’s a very comfortable bed, too.’
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