Bittersweet Love

by Cathy Williams

  He pulled her towards him and there was a glimmer of satisfaction in his eyes. ‘I know. I like that. It turns me on.’ He found her mouth with his, and she felt her treacherous body stir into life once again. Very gently, she disengaged herself from his arms, even though every fibre of her being was screaming out for her to abandon her pointless principles and enjoy what he could give her for as long as he could give it.

  ‘Coffee?’ she reminded him, with a trace of desperation in her voice. ‘Or tea?’

  Kane lay back down, his hands behind his head, and looked at her from under his lashes. ‘I’d rather have you,’ he drawled and a wash of hectic colour flooded her cheeks.

  She made herself remember that all these were old lines for him, clichés that he rattled out for every woman who shared his bed. Because his voice was slightly uneven, because he sounded sincere, didn’t mean a thing.

  ‘I’ll be back in a moment.’ She stood up, horribly conscious of her nudity, and of his green eyes surveying her lingeringly. She slipped on her bathrobe and hurried off to the kitchen, feverishly making them both some coffee and trying to work out what on earth she was going to do now. She couldn’t afford to spend much more time with him. She couldn’t afford to let his charm and sheer animal sex appeal make her forget her resolutions.

  He was sitting up when she returned to the bedroom.

  ‘What is it?’ he said abruptly, as she perched on the chair by the dressing-table, with her mug cradled in her hands.

  Natalie gave him a blank look. ‘What’s what?’

  ‘Don’t play games with me, Natalie,’ he said sharply, ‘Something’s wrong. Why else would you be sitting over there with that cup of coffee between your hands, like some damned schoolmistress about to discipline an un-suspecting pupil?’

  ‘Well, if you must know…’ She sought for the right phrase, sensing his mounting anger with dismay. ‘If you must know…’ She took a deep breath and plunged on. ‘About last night—it should never have happened. I don’t know what came over me.’

  ‘Lust,’ Kane said tightly. He stood up, throwing the covers back, and Natalie averted her eyes. ‘Look at me,’ he commanded. ‘You’ve touched this naked body, so looking away is rather like shutting the door after the proverbial horse has bolted, isn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t expect you to understand…’

  He moved towards her so quickly that she barely had time to catch her breath, and pulled her to her feet, yanking her towards him, his face thrust into her own.

  ‘I damn well understand,’ he bit out, ‘you’ve spent a lifetime denying that desire can be any part of your life, and you’re ashamed of what happened between us.’

  ‘I’m not!’ She glared at him and his face in front of her blurred as her eyes filled with tears.

  ‘Then why the sudden attack of guilt?’ He tugged her towards the bed and threw her down on it unceremoniously. ‘If you’re not ashamed, if there’s no attack of guilt, then prove it. Touch me.’

  Natalie looked away miserably. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Dammit, Natalie,’ he muttered, and he sounded frustrated and uncertain. ‘It’s just sex.’

  ‘That’s exactly it,’ she responded, ‘just sex. But I’m not built like that.’

  ‘No,’ he said slowly, ‘you’re not, are you? It’ s commitment or nothing, isn’t it?’

  She shrugged. ‘Is that so bad?’

  ‘Why deny yourself pleasure simply because you want marriage at the end of it?’ He knelt down by the bed and she could feel the urgency seeping out of him. ‘Last night was wonderful. We could continue to enjoy each other; why spoil all that because you want to attach strings?’

  ‘It’ s just the way I am,’ Natalie said in a small voice. ‘I knew you wouldn’t understand. I know it’ s a dent to your pride…’

  Kane gave a short, ironic laugh. ‘My pride? Believe me, I think my pride will recover.’

  ‘Yes,’ she muttered, ‘there will be enough women available to help you along the way, I’m sure.’

  She edged across to the opposite side of the bed and they stared at each other like wary adversaries.

  ‘What do you think I’m going to do?’ Kane asked tersely, his mouth twisting. ‘Rape you?’

  After persuasion, Natalie thought, comes anger. Whatever he said, his pride would have been wounded by her refusal to have a shortlived affair with him.

  ‘I think it’s best if you left,’ she said, ignoring his gibe. ‘Talking about this isn’t going to change my mind.’

  He continued to stare at her for one long moment, then he picked up his various bits of clothing, sticking them on with jerky movements, not looking at her at all until he was standing by the bedroom door.

  ‘You don’t know what you’re doing,’ he said, his face clenched in angry lines.

  ‘Right now,’ Natalie replied with a great deal more bravado than she was feeling, ‘I know exactly what I’m doing.’ He had slipped on his clothes, a ridiculous outfit at five-thirty in the morning, and she felt a pang of pain so intense that she could scarcely breathe.

  Was he right? Should she indulge her own physical desire for him to the detriment of everything else?

  I’ve already done too much, she thought with bitterness. I’ve already let him see just what he can do to me. That had been a mistake.

  She watched in silence as he let himself out of her bedroom, shutting the door behind him without a backward glance, then she got up from the bed and began straightening the room. With any luck she might just be able to straighten it all so much that she eradicated his presence completely. When she had done that, she sat on the bed and remained there, hearing all the little noises of the world outside coming to life.

  She moved in a daze for the rest of the morning, shopping for food for the weekend, going to the gym where she rigourously worked out for over an hour, and for the first time ever didn’t feel in the slightest bit better for it She had to keep reminding herself that she had had no alternative but to ask him to leave, that her own stupidity had landed her in the mess, and it was just a good thing that some scrap of dignity and wisdom had given her the strength to salvage at least some of herself out of the disaster.

  Several times the telephone rang, and each time she eyed it warily, half hoping it was Kane, but knowing realistically that it wouldn’t be, and in no mood to talk to anyone at all. So she allowed it to ring.

  By Sunday evening, she felt as though she had spent fifty years in solitary confinement. She was consoling herself with a cup of coffee, wondering whether a glass of wine might not be more appropriate and then remembering that there was none, when the doorbell went.

  She jumped and stared at the door apprehensively. It couldn’t be Kane, could it? It certainly wouldn’t be Eric. He had told her that he would be visiting his parents in Shropshire on Sunday and Monday.

  There was another demanding shrill from the doorbell and Natalie stood up. Why was she so scared? It was probably someone totally innocuous, maybe the Avon lady. She could handle an Avon lady without too many problems.

  She pulled open the door and her face dropped. Not Kane, as she had dreaded, but not the Avon lady either. Anna. And, from the expression on her face, not in mood for light-hearted bantering either.

  ‘Yes?’ Natalie positioned herself in the middle of the doorway. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘To talk to you, of course. Why else do you imagine I would come here?’ She glanced around her as though to imply that she would never normally venture into such an unsavoury neighbourhood. ‘Can I come in?’

  Natalie racked her brains for a suitable excuse for saying no, but couldn’t think of any, and finally stood aside, watching Anna walk into her flat with a sinking feeling.

  ‘Would you like some coffee?’ Natalie forced a polite smile to her lips and was relieved when Anna shook her head impatiently.

  ‘I don’t intend to stay very long.’

  Oh, good, Natalie thought, the shorter the better. She sat on th
e sofa at opposite ends to Anna and observed the other woman. Dressed to kill and looking quite out of place. Had she been somewhere first or did some people really hang around in silk tops and matching silk culottes? And all that make-up, Natalie thought cattily, must weigh a ton. Not to mention the hair piled on top of the head.

  She smiled and felt a little better. ‘So what can I do for you?’

  ‘You can tell me why Kane has suddenly dropped me.’

  There was a silence and Natalie hoped that she was managing to maintain a poker-still face, but she had her doubts. Her cheeks were burning furiously.

  ‘He’s dropped you?’ she asked. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  Anna’s full lips thinned. ‘I doubt that. You never did care for me, did you? I was right about you, wasn’t I? You wanted Kane for yourself and you intended to get him. I saw the way the two of you were on the weekend; I saw the way you were leading him on with those coy little looks, never mind your boyfriend in the background.’

  ‘I wasn’t leading anyone on!’ Natalie protested furiously. Coy looks? For heaven’s sake, she thought, that silly woman makes me sound like a Barbie doll.

  ‘What did your boyfriend have to say about all of that?’

  ‘Eric and I understand each other.’ That, she knew, sounded awful, but if she denied a relationship with him, then Anna would have yet more cause for suspicion.

  That’s awful. He seemed such a nice chap. How could you?’

  ‘Excuse me?’ Natalie looked at the other woman in-credulously. ‘In case it’ s escaped you, you happen to be in my flat, sitting on my sofa. I don’t have to listen to you preaching on my morality. So if you don’t mind…’ She stood up, wondering why she hadn’t done this sooner.

  Anna stood up as well and her eyes were hard like diamonds. ‘You stole my man,’ she said with bitter spite in her voice. ‘I know you did. Something happened between the two of you. He was mine and you took him from me. Well, I once warned you that revenge could be sweet. Now you’ll find that out for yourself.’

  She walked quickly towards the front door, her stiletto heels leaving little indentations on the carpet which Natalie found herself staring at in fascination, only pulling herself back to the other woman when the front door was open and the cool evening air brought the reality of the situation back to her.

  ‘You don’t frighten me,’ Natalie said, meeting Anna’s cold green gaze unflinchingly. ‘You may think it acceptable to barge your way into my flat and threaten me with all sorts of vague things, but you’re way off target if you think that I’m quaking in my shoes.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t care whether you’re quaking in your shoes or not. All I intend to do is to teach you a lesson.’ The hard, experienced mask slipped a little to reveal the spoilt little girl who had been thwarted, and Natalie realised with a sense of shock that Anna could only have been in her early-to-mid-twenties.

  ‘Don’t you think that’ s a little childish? If I can’t persuade you that Kane Marshall means nothing to me, then don’t you think that no man is worth this sort of reaction?’

  ‘Don’t patronise me!’

  ‘I’m not.’ Natalie sighed. ‘If he’s really broken off with you, then why don’t you let it rest? He’s surely not worth your regret.’ Her voice had become thick with bitterness.

  ‘Please don’t act as though you know everything! You don’t know the first thing about the relationship we had. I wanted him and I could have had him, I know it, but you came along with your new hairstyle and your new body and he saw you as a novelty. Well, I’ll make sure that you pay for that! You’ll know what it’s like to have your man stolen from under your nose!’

  There didn’t seem a great deal left to say between them. Natalie felt sorry for the other woman. So much resentment in someone so young.

  Kane Marshall, she thought, shutting the door against the cold, you have a lot to answer for. Playing games with other people’s emotions, secure in the knowledge that his lack of commitment makes him invulnerable. It made her angry just thinking about it. Then she wondered what precisely Anna had meant by what she had threatened. Quite likely that passionate reaction would fizzle out by the time she turned the corner.

  She went to bed early and lay awake in the dark bedroom, her eyes open, her mind whirring with every-thing that had happened over the past few weeks. Wouldn’t it be nice, she thought, to be able to slide back into the past? But then the past had always been a fool’s paradise.

  She finally fell into a fitful sleep filled with disturbing nightmares, images that had her waking up in a sweat, praying for the steadying light of day to come.

  Kane was not yet in when she arrived at work the following morning, which should have made things easier, but somehow didn’t. It just seemed as though the in-evitable was being delayed. She took off her summer jacket, and typed her letter quickly on the word processor, then she stuck it in a white envelope and placed it on Kane’s desk. After that she tried to busy herself around the office, scrupulously tidying away odd bits of filing, catching up on letters that had been awaiting re-plies for the past couple of days.

  She knew that Kane was coming almost before the office door opened. She didn’t know whether it was some sort of telepathy born out of working so closely with him for so long, or whether his energy simply radiated out, announcing his presence before he had physically entered a room.

  Whatever, she felt her nerves begin to jump and her whole body had tensed. He swept into the room like a hurricane, barely nodding in her direction, slamming his office door behind him, and Natalie’s body went limp like rag.

  What a pleasant way to start a Monday morning, she thought; what a lovely experience it’s been working for you. She waited by her desk, knowing that sooner or later he would read her letter and confront her and wishing that she had given in to the cowardly urge to leave a message with one of the other secretaries.

  He opened the door so silently that she barely heard it.

  ‘What the hell is this?’ he asked from behind her.

  Natalie swivelled around. He was leaning against the door-frame, one hand in his trouser pocket, the other holding up her letter between two fingers, as though it were something deeply unhygienic. She cleared her throat and said in a toneless voice, ‘It’s my letter of resignation.’

  ‘In my office. Now!’ He swung around and Natalie reluctantly followed him into the room, not shutting the door behind her, subconsciously keeping her escape route open.

  ‘I find this unacceptable,’ he said shortly. He had sat down at his desk while she had remained standing, but somehow her position of superiority didn’t fill her with confidence at all.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Good. In that case, you can have it back and rip it into a thousand pieces. It belongs in the bin.’

  ‘I can’t do that,’ Natalie said in a low voice and his eyebrows met in a threatening frown that sent a quiver of alarm down her spine.

  ‘There’s no such word as can’t,’ he informed her, and she didn’t reply. She didn’t want to argue, she didn’t want to feel the power of his tongue, but on the other hand she had made up her mind to leave and there was nothing he could say or do that would convince her to stay.

  It hadn’t been an easy decision. She had worked for him for so long, had become so accustomed to postponing any decision to leave for another day, that finally doing the deed, resigning at last, had broken her heart. It was the dreadful finality of it. No more stolen glances, no more of that vibrancy which she felt whenever she was in his presence. It had to be done, but still hurt like hell. No amount of reasoning could lessen that. Her only hope was that he would never know how much.

  ‘Well?’ he barked angrily. ‘Don’t just stand there gaping, woman!’

  ‘I’ve done all the filing,’ Natalie informed him quietly, while inside everything continued to crumble, ‘I’ve also answered that backlog of queries. Everything’s in order for my replacement to take over.’

  ‘You can’t
leave! You’ve just been promoted!’

  ‘I realise that, and I’m sorry.’ Her voice was a whisper. Beyond the sheer agony of knowing that she was creating her own empty vacuum by leaving, she doubted that she would be able to find another job that was either as satisfying or as well paid as the one she was leaving behind. And there would certainly never be another boss like Kane Marshall. She loved his ranting and raving, his thunderous bad tempers, his charm, his sense of fair play.

  She swallowed hard. It was no good thinking about what she would miss. Kane Marshall had already absorbed far too much of her life. It would do her well to escape his stranglehold.

  He was no longer staring at her. He had picked up his fountain pen and was fiddling with it. ‘If you want an apology for what happened the other night, then you have it.’

  ‘I didn’t ask for an apology.’ Natalie didn’t want to discuss this; she would much rather have pretended that it had never happened. ‘Besides, I’m not going to pretend that I was an innocent party. It takes two.’

  ‘We can put it behind us. A mistake. They happen.’ He glared at her and she shook her head.

  ‘I…’

  ‘I won’t be chasing you around the desk, if that’s what you’re so damned afraid of,’ he snapped. ‘That’s what’s bothering you, isn’t it? You think that we won’t be able to resume our working relationship, but we will. Trust me.’

  Trust you? The thought made her want to laugh out loud, or scream, or cry or something.

  ‘It’s not that…’

  ‘Then what the hell is it?’

  He looked at her directly and she couldn’t think of what reply to give him. Certainly not the truth—that she was desperately in love with him, that every day in his company would be an arrow through her heart, that sleeping with him had been the biggest mistake in her life because it had taken away all her illusions. It had shown her that at the end of the day, even when the impossible had happened and he had wanted her, he had only wanted her for a while, to fill a passing need until someone else came along. How could she explain any of that to him?

  ‘I’ve been here a long time,’ Natalie began shakily, ‘five years. I’ve gained a lot of experience and now I just feel that it’s time to move on.’