Bittersweet Love

by Cathy Williams

  ‘I’ve never seen you in that dress before.’

  He moved towards her and Natalie felt her skin prickle with sudden, alarmed awareness.

  ‘There are lots dresses you haven’t seen me in before,’ she murmured. She edged her way into the lounge, keenly conscious of him following her.

  Im beginning to think that there’s a whole lot about you that I don’t know,’ he said in a voice that sounded mildly accusing.

  Natalie sat down and crossed her legs, noticing that in so doing a great deal of slender thigh was exposed. It made her feel uncomfortable, a hang-up from when she was overweight and inclined to hide rather than reveal.

  ‘I do apologise,’ she said with bland irony. ‘I know you prefer the female sex to be one-dimensional.’

  Kane laughed and poured them both a drink, placing hers on the coffee-table in front of her and then sitting on the sofa next to her, so close that she could feel the warmth emanating from his body.

  ‘Whatever gave you that idea?’ he asked silkily. ‘I happen to know, and respect, quite a few highly intelligent women.’

  ‘Oh, yes, that’s true. I guess you just don’t like them in your bed.’

  She flushed at the stupidity of what she had just said and he laughed softly under his breath, whether at her discomfort or at her observation she didn’t know.

  ‘Sometimes I think that you’re obsessed with my sex life,’ he murmured.

  ‘Not at all,’ Natalie informed him evenly, remembering what Anna had told him and determined not to give him any leeway for thinking that she fancied him. ‘I guess I just see a great deal of it first hand. After all, you’ve never exactly hidden the fact that you, you’re…’

  ‘Interested in women?’ he prompted, amusement in his voice.

  Natalie shrugged. ‘Anyway,’ she said, dragging the conversation back to a more manageable level, ‘I bought this dress after I had lost some weight. It was a sort of present to myself.’

  ‘And this is the first time that you’re wearing it?’ he asked.

  She nodded and her breath caught in her throat as he reached out and trailed one finger along the neckline of the dress, following it to where it scooped down towards her breasts. Then she pulled back fiercely, her heart hammering in her chest.

  ‘It flatters you,’ he murmured in a voice that made her skin go warm, ‘or maybe it’s the other way around.’

  She had to force herself to keep her body under control, and it made her angry. She didn’t want to feel this way, dammit!

  ‘Spare me your well-worn clichés,’ she said tightly. ‘Don’t forget I know all those games you play with women.’

  ‘Who’s playing games?’ he asked, his mouth curving into an amused smile. ‘Or maybe you’re one of those women who is incapable of accepting compliments at face value.’

  Nothing you ever do is at face value, Natalie wanted to inform him. Did his sense of ego want him to prove that she was more attracted to him than she was to Eric? It wasn’t a pleasant thought.

  Her hand strayed to where his fingers had brushed against her skin. It still felt hot and prickly.

  ‘If it was a genuine compliment, then thank you,’ she muttered, not daring to meet those clever, assessing green eyes. ‘It’s just that I don’t ever recall you having paid me any compliments in the past before. Except along the lines of work, of course.’ And that suits me just fine, her voice implied. She tilted her chin defiantly to him and he raised one eyebrow in cynical amusement.

  ‘Don’t you? I recall a certain very attractive russet dress at a certain Christmas party…’

  Colour stole along her cheeks until he could feel her face burning. She remembered the occasion as well. She had never forgotten it She could recall every detail of what had happened between them, the music, the noise of the office workers, all slightly drunk, the secluded corner in which she had suddenly, alarmingly found herself alone with Kane, the huskiness in his voice when he told her that she looked beautiful.

  Beautiful? Her? Every nuance of what she had felt then came flooding back to her now: the momentary thrill, quickly replaced by the agonising, bitter truth that there was nothing beautiful about her. She was over-weight, hardly up to his standards in women. She had recoiled as though he had struck her, turning away so that he couldn’t see the tears blurring her eyes. Of course he was drunk; he must have been. Drunk and not averse to leading on the secretary, in the absence of anyone else. Well, she wasn’t going to be the face that greeted him when he awoke the following morning with a hangover.

  She had left the room, running, and she had never worn that dress again. And from that day on she had made sure that she guarded her painful love tenaciously, fiercely, storing it safely behind that placid exterior.

  It angered her now that another throw-away compliment could give her that same, wonderful, illicit thrill.

  ‘Where’s Anna?’ she asked, changing the subject abruptly.

  Kane gave her a sideways look from under his lashes. ‘She arrived about an hour ago.’ He paused. ‘You would have seen her, but you were upstairs in your bedroom.’ There was another pause while he continued to survey her. ‘There was no need to share the room with him if you didn’t want to, you know.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I want to?’ Natalie asked innocently.

  ‘Lovers share bedrooms.’ The outright blatancy of the remark made her gasp and he dropped his eyes. ‘Are you his lover?’ he asked in such a low voice that she wondered whether she had heard correctly.

  ‘Would you mind pouring me another drink?’ Natalie said in an over-loud voice. ‘A glass of white wine please.’

  ‘You haven’t answered my question,’ he repeated, his eyes flicking across to her face.

  ‘It doesn’t deserve an answer.’

  He shrugged as though he didn’t really care one way or another, but the lines of his face as he walked off to pour her drink were hard, even though when he next turned around to face her he was smiling.

  She accepted the glass from him, and the conversation was dropped as the doorbell rang and the first of the guests began to arrive, along with Eric who apologised to her for taking slightly longer than necessary, but the technicality of arranging his bow-tie had proved more taxing than he had foreseen.

  ‘If you’d been there, you could have helped me with it,’ he said, and she had smiled drily at that piece of male chauvinism.

  ‘I know nothing about bow-ties, and frankly I don’t think I’m missing out on anything.’

  The party turned out to be a good one. Kane had an instinctive ability to mix people together, knowing precisely which personalities would complement each other. There was a pleasant sound of voices filling the lounge, when the door opened and Anna made her entry.

  Natalie had almost forgotten about the other woman. Now she, along with the other people in the room, women included, fell silent as she entered. Or rather, Natalie thought, made an entrance. Her long body was wrapped lovingly in a black dress that somehow managed to be modest, yet quite wanton in what it didn’t reveal. No jewellery, except for a string of pearls and all that blonde hair upswept into a style that seemed perilously and attractively close to falling down.

  Talking resumed, but she noticed that the men couldn’t quite contain their surreptitious glances in Anna’s direction. Including Eric, who had seemingly lost all interest in the business contact whom he was cultivating, and who, he had earlier confided in Natalie, might produce a lucrative source of work. So much for putting work before pleasure, she thought.

  Anna’s eyes flicked through the crowd and settled on Natalie. She smiled coyly, glancing back over her shoulder as she made her way towards Kane, and then proceeded to attach herself to his presence as if by in-visible strings. At dinner, she sat next to him, smiling at appropriate intervals during the conversation which bounced between Kane on her right and the financial director of one of their important clients on the left.

  Next to Natalie, Eric fought to hold on to what wa
s being said to him, until Natalie finally said teasingly, ‘Any chance I could have a bit of your attention?’

  ‘Oh, sorry.’ He faced her with a rueful smile. ‘My mind was miles away.’

  ‘Was it?’ Natalie asked innocently. ‘I thought it was at the other end of the table and sitting next to Kane Marshall.’

  Eric flushed heavily. ‘Was I being obvious?’ he asked with a theatrical whisper.

  ‘Just a little.’ The thought amused her. Eric was safe, she thought fleetingly, because I’m not his sort at all. The impossibly beautiful are much more his cup of tea.

  ‘I must be a glutton for punishment,’ he sighed, concentrating on his dessert and doing it justice. ‘She re-minds me a lot of that model I was telling you about. The one who dumped me.’

  Natalie looked thoughtfully to where Anna was sitting, her beautiful face averted towards Kane. Yes, men often were attracted to the same type of woman. Was that why she and Eric were so comfortable with each other? Because physically they were simply not to each other’s taste?

  She glanced at Eric. He was attractive enough, but in a bland way. How was it that his preferences lay in such exotic creatures as Anna?

  The train of thought slipped to the back of her mind, as the plates were cleared away and fruit and cheese was brought out. In a while they would move into the lounge and have their after-dinner drinks. A few of the couples had been brought by taxi. Those who had committed themselves to driving back would eye the brandies and ports wistfully and blame their other halves for having all the fun.

  Predictable but enjoyable enough, and Kane would have made a few business deals in the process. In the morning he would rattle off what had been achieved and she would type briefs of all of them while they were fresh in both their minds.

  She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. He was chatting to one of his clients, laughing about some-thing, a picture of ease. But she knew that, inside that head of his, his computer brain was ticking away, storing information. It was one of the things that made him so successful, she guessed. That amazing ability to retrieve information which most people would have relegated to the back of their mind and forgotten about. He could remember details of conversations from years back.

  It was after midnight by the time the last of the guests had left. Kane had showed them to the door, with Anna clinging languorously to his arm, yawning prettily as the door shut. Even when she yawned she still managed to look delicate and beautiful. She could become a professional mud wrestler, Natalie thought sourly, and still manage to look sophisticated. No wonder Kane continued to toy with her. Would she be the one to finally catch the elusive fish?

  They certainly made a good couple. Both tall, both commanding presences in their own way, and Anna’s blonde good looks were the prefect foil to Kane’s dark sensuality. And it had to be said that she had lasted a great deal longer than the rest of his playmates.

  The thought of Kane marrying, settling down with a woman, made her stomach churn over.

  ‘Shall I make a start on the clearing up?’ she asked, stifling the sickening feeling.

  Kane looked at her and shook his head. ‘I’ve got a team of cleaners coming in tomorrow to take care of that.’ He gave a crooked smile. ‘You know O’Leary. He nearly had a heart attack at the thought of having to do it all on his own.’

  Their eyes met in mutual, amused understanding and Anna looked at Natalie narrowly, her white hand tightening on Kane’s arm. She didn’t care for that at all. Natalie could see that immediately. The blonde woman yawned again, stretching with studied feline grace, and pouted at Kane.

  ‘Shall we go to bed, darling?’

  Eric’s eyes were glued to the other woman and Natalie wondered tightly how someone could invest a simple sentence with such unspoken promise.

  Kane nodded but his eyes were fixed on Natalie’s face.

  ‘Good idea,’ he murmured, then he said softly and ‘plainly for Natalie’s benefit, ‘I’m sure we’re not the only ones who are eager to get to bed.’ There was something hard and speculative in his eyes when he said that, and he looked away before he could read her response to his lazy insinuation.

  He was hitting below the belt. What, Natalie wondered, could she do? Stand up and accuse him of what? Turning his sense of humour on her? It made her anger impotent, and she knew that that amused him even more.

  She linked her arm through Eric’s, relieved that his gaze was no longer plastered all over Anna, and preceded Kane and Anna up the staircase.

  Upstairs, in the bedroom, Eric turned to her and said drily, ‘There’s an awful lot of innuendo behind your conversations with your boss. Or am I imagining it?’

  ‘You’re imagining it,’ Natalie assured him flatly. She headed to the bathroom and quickly changed into her nightie, short, lacy and thoroughly inappropriate for sharing a bed with a platonic male friend.

  Eric’s pyjamas, striped and very sensible, were much more suited to the occasion. They eyed each other and Natalie said without preamble, ‘I’ll take the ground.’

  The thought of actually sharing a bed with him, however safe he was, was enough to bring her out in a cold sweat. She had no option but to share the bedroom with him, but beds were for lovers. There was something way too intimate about that casual brushing of sleeping bodies, the feel of warm limbs against each other.

  She grabbed the bedspread and began rigging some-thing up on the ground. It wasn’t that cold, so at least she would not have to contend with that particular problem.

  ‘Oh, take the bed,’ Eric grumbled good-naturedly.

  ‘I got you into this,’ Natalie said firmly. ‘The least I can do is ensure that you’re the one who has a good night’s sleep.’

  ‘And risk my reputation as being a man of honour?’

  He began spreading the bedspread into what looked a bit like a makeshift sleeping-bag. Their fingers touched and Natalie pulled away instinctively.

  ‘You’re very attractive,’ he murmured, looking at her seriously, and she felt a twinge of alarm.

  ‘Eric, no,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t make this difficult. We’ve been through all this.’

  ‘We could go through it all again, but this time with a different conclusion,’ he said hopefully, and she folded her arms across her breasts.

  ‘Absolutely not!’ Oh, God, she thought, please don’t make him become difficult. She was not adept at handling difficult situations with men. She lacked the experience.

  Eric grinned at her. ‘Well, it was worth a try. Don’t worry,’ he continued, waving his white handkerchief when her expression didn’t thaw, ‘I’ll be as good as gold on the ground.’

  She relaxed a little, enough to flash him a watery smile. Good old Eric. If reason and fairness played any part in life, she and he would have found themselves besotted with each other. If reason and fairness played any part in life, she would have listened to her head a long time ago and left the Marshall Corporation. She would have found a job working for a Mr Average, in an average company, and she would have eventually settled down with an averagely pleasant person. Like herself.

  She slipped into bed, letting the darkness wrap itself around her while the thoughts played around in her mind, swooping and teasing until she finally fell asleep.

  Eric was already up by the time she next opened her eyes. She could hear him singing away in the bathroom. He had neatly refolded the bedspread and not quite so neatly dumped the pillows back on the bed. She closed her eyes and relaxed on the bed, feeling pleasantly lazy.

  She didn’t hear the door open at all. In fact, the first she knew of Kane’s presence in her bedroom was when he spoke, then her eyes flew open and she stared at him in alarm.

  ‘What are you doing here? Why didn’t you knock?’

  ‘I did knock.’ He was looking around the room, his eyes taking in everything, until they resettled on her face. ‘Slept well?’ There was a hardness around his mouth, even though his tone was bantering. Was he annoyed about something?
she wondered. It was only slightly after eight o’clock, so he could hardly make a song and dance about not getting up early enough to start work. Anyway, there was no excuse for him barging into her bedroom. He had never done that before. She had hitched the duvet cover up to her neck and she sat up.

  ‘Very strait-laced,’ Kane commented. His eyes flicked across to the bathroom. ‘I can’t imagine why you’re bothering. Not when your lover is in the bathroom.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she repeated. ‘If you’ve come to fetch me to begin work, I’ll be down in about half an hour.’ She glanced across at the bathroom door. ‘As soon as Eric emerges.’

  He moved across to the bed and sat on the edge of it. Natalie watched him in growing dismay.

  ‘And when is that likely to be?’ Kane asked softly.

  Natalie shook her head. ‘I have no idea. He seems to like spending a long time in the bathroom.’

  ‘Without you? I’m surprised.’

  Natalie’s heart gave a quick skip. Dismay was rapidly growing into panic.

  ‘And I’m surprised you’re not with Anna,’ she responded as tartly as she could.

  ‘Are you? Perhaps that’s because she’s beginning to bore me slightly.’

  Natalie looked down, overcome by the swift stab of delight that single sentence brought her, and then hating herself for being so foolish.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she lied.

  He gave a short laugh. ‘Why? It’s hardly the end of the world. Women come and go.’

  Natalie didn’t say anything. Did he think that she hadn’t noticed that a long time ago?

  ‘Only with you,’ she murmured. He reached forward, leaning above her, his hands on either side of her body, trapping her.

  ‘I prefer not to let my relationships with women pall. But you know that, don’t you? You know a lot about me, don’t you?’ His voice was soft and vaguely men-acing. ‘More than I apparently know about you. For instance, I have to admit I half expected to find bedlinen on the floor and only half the bed slept in.’

  ‘I’m so sorry to have disappointed you, in that case.’ Why deprive herself the chance of maintaining some control? Let him believe the worst; wasn’t it better than letting him glimpse the truth?