A Scandalous Engagement

by Cathy Williams

  ‘What about us?’

  ‘Not here.’ He nodded towards the kitchen and she trailed behind him, heart pounding like a sledgehammer, watching in silence as he removed little boxes from the bag and fetched a couple of plates from the cupboard.

  He helped himself to food. She helped herself to some orange stuff, some noodle-looking stuff and some brown stuff with bits of green thrown in. When she began eating, it all tasted like cardboard.

  ‘How have you enjoyed the past few weeks?’ he asked, when he was into his third mouthful of food.

  ‘Fine.’ For someone, she thought, who had been living on borrowed time.

  He didn’t answer for a while, just carried on eating, then he looked at her over his chopsticks.

  ‘I thought so too.’

  ‘Better make sure no one knows that.’ She laughed, with an edge of hysteria in her voice. ‘Not if the intention is to ease them in gently to the inevitable breakdown of our relationship.’ She laughed again, and this time she could detect definite mania in the laugh. Oh, God. That had to stop.

  ‘Which brings me to the essence of what I have to say.’ He looked so serious. Why did he have to look so serious? Why couldn’t he reduce the whole thing to light-hearted banter? Couldn’t he see how close she was to tears? She closed her chopsticks, neatly lining them up in perfect parallels, and tried to clear her face of all emotion.

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘That I think we should make this legal.’

  The bottom seemed to drop out of her world. One minute her stomach was churning in anticipation of the worst, the next minute she had no stomach. It had shot downwards at speed. ‘Legal?’ she asked weakly.

  ‘Get married. Tie the knot. Call it what you want.’ He stood up and began clearing the table, and she hastily followed, both working in silence and avoiding eye contact.

  ‘I mean,’ he continued, dumping his plate in the sink, ‘as far as teams go, we make a pretty good one.’ He still wasn’t looking at her. ‘Everyone’s taken to you, even some of my more forthright, obnoxious clients. You’ve charmed the lot of them. They all think that you’re fresh and young and invigorating.’

  And what do you think?

  ‘None of this love business to complicate matters.’ Scrape, scrape, scrape as congealing food hit the bin liner.

  You don’t love me. Why not just say it?

  ‘You could carry on with your art course, naturally. There would be a lot of entertaining were I to remain here permanently.’ The clatter of plates being washed, drowning out his voice. Still no eye contact.

  Are you embarrassed to look me in the face because you’re ashamed of turning the institution of marriage into a business arrangement, or do you just want to avoid my eyes in case I give in to an outpouring of horrid, nasty, unwelcome emotion?

  ‘So what do you say?’ His back to her as he vigorously scrubbed plates clean and stuck them onto the draining board.

  She unglued her tongue from the roof of her mouth and heard herself say,

  ‘Can I think about it?’

  ‘That’s the worst bit,’ she confessed four hours later to Andy.

  Sleep, after that surreal conversation, had eluded her, and she had crept into Andy’s room, in her nightie, and was now sitting cross-legged on his bed, pouring out her heart. What would she do without him?

  ‘He doesn’t love me, he made that fact perfectly clear, yet instead of throwing his ridiculous proposal back into his face I ended up asking him if I could think about it! Am I mad, Andy? Do I look like a lunatic to you? Why am I behaving like one?’

  ‘You’ve now been bending my ear for…’ he glanced at his bedside clock ‘…forty minutes, darling, and you still won’t say it, will you?’

  ‘Say what?’

  ‘That, love or no love, you want to marry my brother.’

  Jade shot him one long, telling, forlorn look, then sidled up to him without unfolding her legs and sank into him. ‘Oh, God,’ she moaned, ‘Ohgoddogoddogoddogod. I’m an utter fool. I could give lectures on stupidity. I’m totally and irretrievably insane. I want to marry for love. I want violins and promises of a wonderful ever after, but, failing that, I just want to spend the rest of my life with your damned brother. Tell me I’m an idiot. Please? Better still, tell me that there’s some pill I can take to get back to normal. I keep thinking that I could convince him that I’m indispensable, that he loves me after all, even if he seems to have chucked in the whole sex bit without too much looking back.’

  Andy didn’t answer. He just stroked her hair, which was what she needed, and gradually she began to feel a bit calmer. She had talked herself out and now the only talking going on was in her head. The word fool was cropping up a great deal, coupled with madwoman and misguided idiot. She was beginning to be lulled into a light sleep, and was gearing herself to get back to her own bed, when the bedroom door was pushed open and they both looked in unison to see Curtis standing on the threshold, his face dark with rage. Thunderous with rage, in fact. Ten seconds of complete silence turned into several hours as six eyes tangled, then Jade let out a squeal of horror and leapt from the bed, as though the mattress had suddenly gone up in flames.

  In that minuscule space of time Curtis had turned away, slamming the door behind him. The noise reverberated through the silent house like a clap of thunder. Jade acted on instinct. She glanced back at Andy, only to wave him back into bed because he seemed on the verge of following her, then she was running, nightie flying around, pelting towards Curtis’s bedroom, banging on the door, determined that he would open it if she had to keep up the assault for the next two hours.

  She wanted him. Yes, she did. Wanted him enough to take him even though she knew that he didn’t love her. Wanted him enough to suffer a lifetime of unrequited love in return for his presence in her life.

  It only occurred to her after several minutes of banging to try the door handle, and it turned easily. He hadn’t locked the door!

  He was standing by the window, staring out, and he didn’t turn when she padded into the bedroom.

  ‘How long?’ was the only thing he said as she approached him, tentatively reaching out to put her hand on his arm but letting it drop to her side instead.

  ‘There’s nothing going on…’

  ‘Don’t lie to me.’ His voice was low, even and chillingly controlled. ‘When did you and Andy devise your little plan for you to get me into bed so that my money could join the nest egg? Has he gone through his inheritance, or maybe greed took over somewhere along the line…when the opportunity presented itself? Was that why you were so adamant about not becoming my mistress? Holding out for the big thing?’ He finally turned around to face her, and his face was as chillingly controlled as his voice had been. ‘I should have suspected something, but you both carried off the “just friends” act so convincingly that I actually believed you.’ His mouth twisted into a sneer of pure dislike and she flinched as though he had struck her.

  ‘You don’t understand…’

  ‘What don’t I understand?’

  She looked at him blindly, unable to continue. Keeping silent now was the end of all her meagre hopes, but silence was the one thing she had to maintain. She owed it to Andy.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ she whispered. Just when she wanted to catch his eye, he turned away.

  ‘Pack your bags tomorrow and leave this house, and you can tell my brother to do the same. If either of you ever dares set foot in it again I’ll have the police throw you out. Now get out.’

  ‘But, please…’ She was pleading now, and the first tear had splashed down her cheek. ‘You don’t understand. There’s nothing between me and Andy…’

  ‘Because, big brother,’ came a voice from the doorway, ‘I’m gay.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  AS BOMBSHELLS went, that one could have stopped a charging rhino at ten paces.

  Jade had not known what to expect. Fury, outrage, disgust, according to Andy and his busy imagination. In all ev
ents, the one reaction she had not anticipated was the one reaction that Curtis had afforded her. Surprise, yes, but then that had been swiftly followed by calm acceptance. She wished that Andy had had the courage to stay and witness his brother’s reaction for himself, but, having finally confessed his bitter secret, he had swept out of the room and out of the house like a vacating tornado.

  They had both heard the sound of his steps clattering down the stairs, then the distant slam of the front door.

  Now Curtis was sitting in the paisley-covered stiff chair by the bay window of his bedroom. He was far too big for it, but for once his restless energy seemed to be dormant. His legs were extended straight in front of him and his hands hung over the sides of the chair. He looked like a giant who had decided to appropriate a chair designed for a midget.

  Jade had retreated warily to the other side of the room onto the sofa, which she had had to clear of discarded ties, several business magazines and, incongruously, a silk bathrobe which had been carelessly slung over the arm.

  For the past ten minutes she had watched and left him to his thoughts. She would have given a million dollars to crawl inside his head and find out first-hand what he was thinking, but as it was she had to content herself with second-guessing.

  It only occurred to her when he finally stood up that he might not have wanted her around, might still not want her around now, that her presence might be intrusive at a time when he might need privacy to contemplate revelations which had been a long time coming, and she hesitantly stood up as well, uneasily aware that she should have had the foresight to leave at the same time as Andy, instead of hanging around like a spare part. All the things she had been bursting to say since she had stormed into his bedroom carrying her banner of self-righteous self-defence had vanished with Andy’s confession.

  ‘Where are you going?’ he asked. She realised, with a start, that those were the first words he had spoken for the past ten minutes.

  ‘I thought…’ she mumbled, spreading her hands in a helpless gesture, ‘…that perhaps you might want some time to yourself to…you know…think about…you know…’ It occurred to her that Curtis Greene had the amazing ability to reduce her vocabulary to stuttering, inarticulate nonsense, someone in desperate need of English lessons.

  ‘What’s there to think about?’ he answered smoothly. ‘Sit back down.’

  She obeyed without thinking, and he strolled over to where she was sitting and flopped onto the sofa next to her.

  ‘You could have told me from the very beginning,’ he said, ‘when I first accused you of having an affair with my brother. Why didn’t you?’

  It was a very small two-seater sofa. He had extended his arm along the back and his fingertips were close enough to touch her hair. His legs were inches away from hers. It was certainly not the place to have an impartial conversation about anything, at least not for her, when half her mind was preoccupied with his proximity. The fact that the room was lit only by the two bedside lamps made the atmosphere all the more hazardous to her nervous system.

  ‘Because it was up to your brother to…finally confront you…explain…whatever you want to call it…’

  ‘Everything slots into place now,’ he murmured, and the low throb of his voice wrapped itself around her like a blanket.

  ‘What? What everything?’

  ‘Fragments of the past.’ He sighed. ‘Too late to say that I wish he had confided in me sooner.’

  ‘How could he? You were never around.’

  ‘No,’ he admitted ruefully. ‘I really never was.’

  ‘Too busy pursuing your own life,’ she said on a little sigh of her own, and he didn’t argue the point. Instead, to her dismay, he touched a strand of her hair, then withdrew his hand almost immediately, before she could pull back.

  ‘What were you discussing with him that couldn’t wait until morning?’ he asked ruminatively. ‘Was it us?’

  He wasn’t going to discuss Andy, and she respected him for that. Later they would talk, as brothers, with no areas left uncovered, but for now he had other things on his mind. She flushed guiltily and recovered some of her lost spark.

  ‘Us? There is no “us”.’

  ‘Oh, yes, there is. Very much so, and there’s no point denying it any longer.’

  She wished that he would use his normal voice, instead of this low, seductive drawl that had her mesmerised. She imagined her eyeballs spinning around in circles, like a figure out of a cartoon, and almost smiled at the image.

  Another passing touch of her hair, just a whisper of a touch as his finger brushed across her forehead, leaving a tingling feeling where it had been.

  ‘If you weren’t talking to Andy about us, then what were you talking to him about?’ he persisted, not letting her off the hook. Her eyes darted to his, and darted away, unable to withstand the brooding intensity in his gaze.

  ‘Art.’

  ‘At that hour of the night?’ He laughed, amused and disbelieving, and she glared ferociously at him in response. ‘Pull the other one.’

  ‘The world, believe it or not, Curtis Greene, does not revolve around you. Conversations can be generated about any number of things in which you don’t feature.’ He was still smiling at her, and she wished that she could think of something pithy that would wipe the smile off his face. She knew how he was interpreting events, throwing her into the role of emotionally hijacked woman who was so consumed with passion for him that she had to pour her poor little heart and soul out to someone in the middle of the night.

  ‘And why did you storm out when you saw us together?’ she threw at him, taking random aim and unconsciously hitting the right target. ‘Were you jealous?’

  The sudden dark flush that spread across his cheeks was answer enough, and she was momentarily silenced by it. Silence was dangerous though. Even as dangerous as his nearness, because it emphasised the frantic beat of her heart and tightened the tension between them until she could almost hear her nerves beginning to shred.

  ‘Would you believe me if I told you that I was?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jade answered promptly. ‘I’m sure you would be, because you don’t mind letting go. You just find it galling if the tables are turned.’ She expected to find some answering glimmer of assent in his eyes, but instead she saw nothing. He just continued to stare at her, as though he wanted to eat her up with his eyes. It gave her the most peculiar sensation. One of being possessed. She wasn’t sure that she liked it. Possession was too closely linked with lust, as far as she could see, and lust was the thing that had ended up coming between them and turning her world on its head.

  ‘You’re right. I was jealous. In fact, I wanted to rip his legs and arms off.’

  Jade squirmed in the face of this raw, naked emotion. No, she was not going to let herself be persuaded by it. No, she was certainly not going to get turned on by it. In fact, she ordered her body to listen to her brain, but the sudden heavy ache in her breasts and the throbbing in her groin was evidence that her body, as usual, had decided to go its own way, irrespective of her commands.

  She licked her lips nervously and let her eyes slide away from his, down to the carpet, where they remained fixed and unseeing.

  ‘Jealousy is a very unhealthy emotion,’ she muttered thickly, kicking her bare toe into the carpet and watching it deepen the colour of the pelt.

  ‘It certainly would have been if I’d followed my instincts, but I didn’t. Shall I tell you something?’

  He was doing it again. Stroking her hair. She shifted slightly, but his fingers followed the movement of her body and she lacked the will to pull away again. She liked him doing that. She liked him touching her. Wasn’t that why she had spent an hour with Andy, verbalising all the reasons why she couldn’t go through with the marriage arrangement he had proposed? Because she had hoped that hearing her reasons spoken out loud might convince her that the thread of temptation snaking through her was a lost cause?

  ‘What?’ she heard herself ask.

>   ‘It was something of a relief.’

  ‘What was?’ Her eyes inched away from the fascinating sight of her toes to the bottoms of his trousers. If they travelled much further they would hit his thighs. She kept them firmly rooted to his calves.

  ‘Andy’s passionate declaration.’ He laughed drily. ‘The first thing that ran through my head when he said it was Thank God. I’ve never quite been able to erase the image of the two of you in bed watching television at eleven in the evening when that leak occurred.’

  ‘So now you know.’

  ‘So now I do,’ he agreed absently. ‘Look at me. I don’t like addressing the side of your face, ravishing though your profile might be.’

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ she whispered, dragging her eyes to meet his.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Being like this, when…’

  ‘I’m being honest with you. Don’t you want my honesty?’

  ‘You’re playing with me.’

  ‘Oh, no, I’m not, my girl.’ He laughed softly under his breath, as though amused at something that had suddenly occurred to him. ‘I can show you what it’s like to be played with, if you want.’ Without waiting for her response, he curled one loop of her hair around his finger and gently pulled her towards him, then he bent across and trailed his tongue over her mouth. ‘That’s playing,’ he murmured huskily. ‘Does it feel good? Would you like me to play with you some more?’

  She had thought that he had given up trying to get her into bed, that he respected her reasons for refusing him and had turned on the charm to suit the occasion, in accordance with their little spate of play acting. She realised now that he had simply been biding his time, waiting in the wings. She had left him wanting her, and Curtis Greene always got what he wanted.

  His finger trailed the side of her face, then the column of her neck, then her collarbone, dipping provocatively to the neckline of her baggy tee shirt which she was wearing as a nightdress.