It was only when they had packed their bags, three days after they had first arrived, and the prospect of London was looming on the horizon like a black cloud heavy with foreboding, that the elusive thought that had been nibbling away at the back of her mind took shape and revealed itself.
Curtis Greene had proved himself a first in the most disastrous way.
He was the first man she had ever fallen in love with, and she knew, with a sinking, wretched feeling, that he would be the last.
Through all their discussions by day and pillow-talk by night not once had the word love ever crossed his lips.
Wanting, yearning, craving…that was the vocabulary of lust. And lust was nothing more than water through your fingers. For a while, you could capture it, but sooner rather than later it trickled away, never to reappear.
As they waved goodbye to Tom and she played out the final charade of impending marriage with a hollow emptiness in the pit of her stomach, she knew that before the snow had melted from the car she would be gone.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE snow was passable, but still thick enough to make driving a lengthy business, and now that Jade had made up her mind that she was leaving the house her attitude altered as the city grew nearer.
She thought that Curtis hadn’t noticed, after all his concentration was fixed heavily on the road, but as soon as the drive became smoother he said, without looking at her, ‘Are you going to tell me?’
‘Tell you what?’ She jumped at the abruptness of the question, and when she looked at his profile it was to find him staring directly ahead, his face grim and unsmiling. Miserably she thought that he was feeling what she was as well. The tug of reality was banishing those few days in their wilderness, turning it into a hazy dream, misting over the sharp edges. By the time they were on the plane his mind would be racing ahead to work, and the humorous, sexy man she had found and fallen in love with would become a disturbing stranger in whose life she no longer had a role.
‘Tell me why you’ve suddenly turned into a block of ice.’ He risked taking his eyes off the road for a split second to look at her. ‘What’s the matter? Aren’t you pleased to be leaving our enforced state of isolation?’ He offered a hair’s breadth of a pause, into which she steadfastly refused to drop any kind of answer.
Was that how he viewed their time together? As enforced isolation. So what the hell? Might as well make the most of it by getting into bed with the woman who happened to find herself alongside him? It hadn’t seemed that way back there, but hadn’t she seen for herself just how consummate an actor the man was?
‘Of course I’m pleased,’ Jade replied neutrally, turning her head to stare out of the window. In a short while they would be at the airport and she could feign sleep on the flight.
‘You don’t look pleased,’ he mused, giving her more of his undivided attention now that he no longer had to focus single-mindedly on the road. ‘You should be smiling, whistling a merry tune…maybe you miss our enforced isolation…? I know what’s going through your head,’ he murmured roughly, ‘but there’s no need for this to end…’
‘What do you mean?’ Jade’s heart began to gallop. Don’t be ridiculous, she told herself, and the thought was promptly and absurdly followed by a series of sharp mental clips of the two of them, growing old together, blissfully married, children pattering about. In winter an open fire, a cosy sofa, and maybe bedroom slippers, or was that a little fuddy-duddy? The galloping heart turned into a fast trot. In a minute it would be racing. This was what she wanted. She wanted Curtis Greene for ever and beyond. She wanted to go to bed with him at night and arise with him in the morning. She wanted to go shopping with him, cook meals with him and share every nuance of her life with him. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
‘I mean,’ he said, glancing across at her, ‘exactly what I said. There’s no need for this to come to an end. Because we’re heading back to London doesn’t mean that we have to pretend that nothing happened between us. Let’s face it, Jade, there’s something between us, some kind of chemistry, and it’s been there from the very moment we first laid eyes on one another. At least for me. The past few days have been good. No, more than good. Spectacular.’
His voice swam around her in velvety waves and she sank a little lower into the seat. Shame that the airport was getting closer and closer. This was what she wanted to hear. It was music to her ears. She only wished that she had a portable tape recorder with her so that she could record it all and play it back over and over again.
‘Yes, it’s been…good. Very good,’ she answered dreamily. She slanted her head to look at him, absorbing every inch of his face lovingly.
‘So you agree with me, then, do you? That there’s no point fighting it? Do you know,’ he added softly, his mouth curving into a smile that sent shivers of pleasure racing through her, ‘even when we were at each other’s throats, I still felt a crazy urge to get my hands on you? I still wanted to rip your clothes off and take all that fighting to bed, see for myself whether all that fire was just on the outside.’
There was a certain masculine smugness in his voice that thrilled her. She wondered what kind of father he would make. A good one, she suspected, ferociously devoted. A brilliant father to their two children. Or maybe four— Caroline’s premature death had cruelly brought home to her the fact that she was now an orphan, and it was a fate she would wish on no one.
‘You’re already living in my house,’ he continued, while her mind carried on playing with glorious fantasies of miniature Curtis Greenes scampering about the grand house, felt-tip pens in hands, wreaking marvellous chaos on the impeccable furnishings. ‘You would just need to change rooms.’
She was so wrapped up in her cosy little dreams that it took a second or two for what he said to sink in.
‘Change rooms…?’
‘Well, it would be more convenient if we were to conduct an affair, wouldn’t it? Andy’s a big boy now. I don’t think he’ll have a problem coping with us sharing a bed.’
‘And how long would this…change of rooms…last?’ Jade asked faintly. The wonderfully racing heart was turning into the dull pounding of drums, the type of drums designed for everlasting headaches, the type of drums that brought on nausea and panic.
‘For the duration.’
‘For the duration. Of course.’ She bit her upper lip and tucked her hands into the pockets of her coat, balling them into clenched fists.
For the duration. That said it all. The duration could be a month, six months, maybe even a year, but it would never be permanent. There would be no domestic bliss and the patter of tiny feet. In their place would be the sweaty grinding of bodies at night until his desire faded, at which point he would politely remind her that he had never promised permanence. If he still had any feelings left, he would undoubtedly give her time to find herself somewhere to live.
She thought of her mother, her sister. The people she loved all disappeared. What was she doing? What had she done? Given away yet more love so that what…? She could indulge it for a few weeks, secure in the knowledge that at the end of that time she would have to cope with yet more hurt?
‘You wouldn’t even have to think about money,’ he said, filling in the silent gaps. ‘You could do your art course without having to scrimp and save. I would make sure that you had everything you wanted.’
Jade didn’t say anything. She turned away and gazed out of the window. Love wasn’t supposed to be like this. She knew that it was never plain, calm sailing, but neither was it about buying, because wasn’t that what he was offering her? Comfort, luxury, even, because as his mistress she knew that her every material wish would be indulged, but in exchange for sex. Oh, she could go with this tide and hope that his caring would one day turn into something less disposable, but the thought was stillborn.
‘Is that what they call a “modern relationship”?’ she enquired dully. ‘Man meets woman, man lusts after woman, man toys around with her for a while, then man disposes o
f her?’
His grip on the steering wheel tightened.
‘That’s over-simplifying it, and anyway, there’s nothing to say that you won’t be the one to walk away.’
‘Is it?’ She gazed briefly out of the window, then turned to look at him. ‘You’re asking me to sleep with you in return for your largesse. But of course it will end, and then what? Do I return everything you’ve given me, meekly pack my suitcase and find myself some rented accommodation?’
‘I’m not saying anything of the sort!’ he exploded harshly.
‘Then what are you saying? Please clarify, because it seems that I’m too thick to understand.’
‘You’re not too thick to understand. You’re deliberately misunderstanding. You’re reducing it all to some kind of financial bargaining, which couldn’t be further from what I have in mind. If you feel insulted by my offer to help you out financially then that’s not a necessity. It may not occur to you that I might actually like the thought of spending money on you, of indulging your every whim.’
For how long? she thought restlessly. Her novelty value would no doubt kindle generous, magnanimous feelings in him, but a novelty by its own definition was something with a limited timespan.
Without her realising it, they were nearing the airport, and she breathed a sigh of relief that their conversation would come to an end.
‘What will you do about the car?’
‘What…are you talking about?’ As he drove slowly into the airport car park he turned to look at her, as though she was completely mad.
‘The car. What are you going to do? Is someone going to come and collect it?’
‘I’m trying to have a serious conversation with you and you’re talking about the fate of the bloody car?’ He banged his fist against the wheel and then, spotting a space, screeched into it with a reckless lack of caution. His face was grim as he yanked their cases out of the boot of the car and slammed down the bonnet.
‘The car,’ he grated, ‘will have a pleasant little overnight stay here and then will be collected tomorrow morning. I shall phone my chap and tell him where exactly it is. All niggling questions on that front satisfied?’ He began striding towards the airport while Jade trailed behind him.
‘I just wondered,’ she said breathlessly, trying to match his long strides and avoid colliding with other people at the same time.
‘So what you’re telling me,’ he said in an infuriatingly patient tone of voice that was not lost on the girl behind the counter taking their tickets, ‘is that it’s okay to sleep with me for a few days because we happened to find ourselves confined by snow to a guesthouse with only one spare room, but that it’s somehow not okay to carry on sleeping together when we get back to London. What kind of weird, twisted morality do you call that?’
Jade furiously mouthed at him to keep his voice down. The girl staring down at the tickets and punching numbers into the computer in front of her was fighting to hide a grin.
‘Sorry? I can’t hear you. Were you trying to answer my question? You’ll have to speak up. I’m not a lip-reader.’
Professional etiquette was struggling hard against an inclination to laugh, and Jade looked meaningfully at the girl’s downturned head, then glared a warning at Curtis.
‘Oh, I understand. You will excuse us having a personal discussion, won’t you?’ he said to the girl in a silky voice, and she met his blue eyes with a broad smile.
‘Please carry on. You’d be amazed at some of the things I hear at this counter.’ She carried on with what she was doing while Jade simmered in stubborn silence.
‘We were discussing your dubious morality,’ he said.
‘You were discussing my dubious morality,’ she hissed back. ‘I wasn’t discussing anything of the sort, because this is neither the time nor the place…’ She had lowered her voice so that it was practically inaudible. If he told her to speak up again, then she would clout him, whatever the captive audience. He had just turned her world on its head, and the worst of it was that he couldn’t understand.
He thought that it was a simple matter of two people who fancied each other hopping into bed for glorious sex with no strings attached. She, on the other hand, wanted to scream that glorious sex would only be glorious sex if there were thousands of strings attached, and the thought of having such antiquated, laughable Victorian notions in this day and age of fast living and casual love was enough to make her cringe. How would he respond? With incredulity? Guffaws of laughter? Cold sweats and horror?
The ginger-haired girl handed him back his ticket and went through the routine explanation of which gate to go to and what time the plane would be leaving.
‘Hope you sort your differences out,’ she added with a hesitant smile, and relaxed when Curtis afforded her one of his earth-shattering ones in return.
‘I’m sure we will.’
Over my dead body, Jade thought darkly.
‘So,’ he said conversationally, as they walked towards the departure gate, ‘shall we continue what we were talking about, or perhaps you have some other urgent and totally inconsequential subject you’d like to raise?’
‘I don’t intend to become your mistress,’ she answered briefly. ‘Is that so hard for you to accept?’
‘It is when you stop to consider what we’ve spent the last few days doing.’
‘Will you stop reminding me of that?’
‘Why? Does it make you uncomfortable to think that you’ve slept with me, wherever and whenever and with an admirable lack of restraint, yet here you are now, mouthing a lot of principles and playing the outraged virgin? Talk about trying to lock the stable door after the horse has bolted.’ He laughed harshly.
‘I’m not denying that…that we slept together…’
‘That’s very clear-sighted of you! But it was simply an aberration, is that it? Brought on by the extreme weather conditions?’
‘Yes, it was an aberration, just a bit of fun…’
‘You used me, didn’t you?’ His eyes narrowed ominously. Thank heavens he was not conducting this conversation in the same elevated tones he had used earlier on. From the look on his face, she suspected that bystanders would find what he was about to say very intriguing indeed.
She looked at him warily. ‘Used you for what?’
‘As a form of therapy. You yourself admitted that your sister’s death catapulted you into a physical deep freeze. Was I your method of thawing out, Jade?’ His voice was no longer a whiplash, but his eyes on her were still curious and hard. Just the thought of being used, for whatever reason, would be enough to bring all debate on the subject to a complete stop, and although that was the result she wanted, a lie was not the route she cared to take to get there.
‘No,’ she admitted reluctantly. They had arrived for their flight with no time to spare and she followed as they boarded the plane and took their seats in the first class section.
She couldn’t quite believe that they were still having this conversation. He had made a proposition, she had declined, what more was there to say? He must have suffered a tremendous blow to his masculine pride, she decided, if he couldn’t let the matter rest. But the longer he nibbled away at the edges of her resolve, the less certain she felt about the decision she had taken. Her arguments for not sleeping with him made no logical sense, yet she couldn’t expose her feelings, so she was left floundering in a limbo of incomprehensible mumbo-jumbo and self-justification.
‘Then what is the problem?’ he demanded, exasperated.
‘The problem is that I’m not ready to climb into any sort of relationship, even a relationship of a temporary nature. What happened back there seemed…right, but I don’t intend to stretch it out. I’d prefer to leave it as a pleasant memory.’
‘A pleasant memory? We’re not talking about a ramble through the countryside! And you don’t have to view this as a potential relationship. You could just see it as a thoroughly satisfying fling between two people who are attracted to one another. No st
rings attached.’
‘So you already said. I don’t want to talk about this any more,’ Jade said, retreating into mutinous silence. Every word he spoke was like a knife being twisted deeper into an already open wound. In a minute he would get a tub of table salt and compound the pain by rubbing the lot in, and she was not going to give him the chance of doing that. ‘When we get back, I’m going to pack up and go.’
‘Don’t be bloody childish. If you do that you’ll be cutting off your nose to spite your face. Have you even got anywhere you could run to? A friend’s floor somewhere?’ When she didn’t answer he nodded, as though he understood what she was trying not to say. ‘As I suspected. Nowhere to run. Why play the martyr, Jade? I’m not telling you that you have to leave the house just because you don’t want to sleep with me.’
‘I know you’re not. I just think that it would be all-round easier if…’
‘Easier for you, you mean. Because if you’re not around me, then you need never face the risk of having your self-control slip a little, need you? Or maybe you’re scared that I might find myself banging on your bedroom door to get in. You needn’t worry, Jade. I’ve never crawled for a woman in my life before, and I don’t intend to start now.’
‘I never said that!’ The man sitting across the aisle from them glanced across in their direction and she lowered her voice. ‘Now can we let the matter rest?’
‘More fool you,’ he muttered, or else something along those lines.
‘Why? Because you think that you’re God’s gift to womankind and I’d be an idiot to throw away a few more weeks of your attention? Before you move on?’
Dawning comprehension stole across his face and he gazed at her as if seeing her for the first time. ‘So that’s what it’s all about,’ he said slowly. ‘You think that I intend to pick you up and toss you aside when I’m done with you…’
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