Marriage On The Edge

by Sandra Marton

  Something flickered across her lovely face. Eagerness?

  Anticipation? He took a step forward ... and saw something else on her face. Panic. Even fear. Hell, why would she fear him? She knew what he wanted; it was what she wanted, too, he was sure of it.

  He took another step and she whirled away from him, vanishing into the crowd.

  She was running from him but, dammit, he wasn't going to let her get away. Not tonight. Not when she was what he needed, what he'd hungered for without even knowing he was hungry.

  He moved quickly, knifing his way through the clots of people filling the room, his gaze constant in its search for a flash of that pale face, that silken hair.

  Liz Holcomb grasped his arm.

  "Gage, you gorgeous man, there you are! I want you to meet... "

  "Later," he said, and swept past her.

  Hank was next, appearing suddenly in his path with a portly, smiling gentleman in tow.

  "Gage, old pal, here's the mayor of...

  "Later," he said again, and kept moving ... and, all at once, he saw her, hurrying out the French doors to the patio.

  She was almost running, wobbling slightly in those ridiculously high heels, those sexy-as-sin heels. Past the string quartet, down the garden steps, past the fountain where cherubs and dolphins cavorted in cascades of illuminated water. Just beyond the fountain she paused, looked back. Their eyes met again and the heat he saw in hers almost made him groan.

  Still, she turned and fled. Gage quickened his pace. There was no need to run. He was faster than she was and he knew she couldn't escape him, not out here. The garden was walled; there was no way out.

  He knew, too, that she didn't really want to escape him. It had been there, in her eyes. The need. The urgency. The hot wanting that pulsed through her body just as it pulsed through his.

  And there she was, at last. She stood in the rear of the garden, where the darkness had gathered, where the leafy branches of the trees blocked out all but the faintest hint of moonlight.

  Gage stopped, inches from her.

  Her eyes were wide, her lips were parted. She was breathing hard, and her breasts rose and fell quickly beneath the clinging black dress. A strand of hair had slipped free of the pins that held it and trailed down her neck. Her scent, an erotic blend of jasmine and roses mixed with the scent of the sea beyond the garden wall, filled his senses.

  He reached out. She drew back.

  "Are you afraid of me?" he said softly.

  She licked her lips. Nothing in the way she did it was provocative, yet the simple gesture made his body harden like stone.

  He came closer, so close that he knew he had only to bend his head if he wanted to brush her mouth with his.

  "I won't hurt you," he murmured. "Surely you know that."

  "You won't mean to," she said. Her voice was low and husky. The sound of it seemed to dance against his skin. "But you will."

  "No." He said the word fiercely but the hand he reached out was gentle as he tucked the trailing strands of hair behind her ear. "No," he said again, "I'd never hurt you."

  "You will," she whispered, "you-"

  And then, with a little sob, she was in his arms.

  Gage kissed her mouth, her eyes, her temples. He knew he was holding her too closely, that he might be bruising her delicate bones, but he felt like a drowning man clutching a bit of driftwood. If he held on too loosely, she might slip from his grasp; too tightly, and he might overwhelm her.

  She solved the problem for him. She moaned, lifted herself to him, dug her hands into his hair and crushed his mouth to hers.

  "Babe." His voice caught and broke; he clasped her face in his hands and kissed her, deep and hard. "Oh, my sweet babe."

  Her hands swept under his jacket, her palms spreading across his chest. She felt the race of his heart, knew it matched the galloping beat of her own.

  "Yes," she said, "oh, yes, please. Please ... "

  She groaned when he dragged down the straps of her dress.

  The swell of her breasts above the lacy filigree of her bra shone like fresh cream in the moonlight. She cried out when he buried his face in her neck. Her head fell back; he cupped her breasts, bit lightly at her skin, slipped his hands beneath the bra and touched the eager flesh that awaited him.

  Her answering cry tore away whatever thin veneer of civilized behaviour that remained to him. He made a sound deep in his throat, drew her further into the darkness, pressed her back against the wall.

  She whispered something he couldn't understand as he thrust his hands up under her skirt. Her hips tilted towards his; he brushed his palm over the scrap of lace that covered her. She was hot, wet enough so he could feel the slickness of her through the lace; she burned like molten lava against his questing fingertips.

  He groaned, and ripped the lace away. "Come to me," he whispered ...

  "No!"

  Her cry rose into the night, sharp and piercing as the gust of wind that had suddenly come from the sea. Gage didn't hear it. He was lost, blind to everything but the feel of her in his arms, the taste of her on his lips. It had been so long. So long ...

  "No." Her hand clamped over his; she twisted her face away from his seeking mouth. "Stop it," she panted, "Damn you, I said stop!"

  The urgency in her voice, the combined anger and fear, snapped him back to reality. He went still, his body numb as he became aware of her struggles. He blinked his eyes, like a man who has gazed too long at the sun, and looked down into her face.

  "What?" he said. "What?"

  She was trembling and she hated herself for that, hated herself almost as much as she did for having succumbed, for having let herself be caught up in one blind, foolish moment of passion.

  "Let go of me," she whispered.

  Let go of her? Let go of her, when she'd just been coming apart like a falling star in his arms?

  "Let go," she said again, and what he heard in her voice now vanquished whatever dream had held him. Reality was her cold voice, her cold eyes ...

  Her contempt.

  The fire inside him died. He stepped back, adjusted his tie, smoothed down his shirt. She fixed her shoulder straps, tugged down her skirt.

  "That's a dangerous game you were playing, lady," he said, when he could trust himself to speak.

  Her eyes flashed. "You were the one playing games, not me."

  "Dancing a man to the edge and then telling him to behave himself might win you applause in some quarters, babe,· but sooner or later, you're liable to do that to a man who doesn't give a damn about the rules."

  She wrapped her arms around herself. It was hot out here in the garden, but the wind carried a chill in its teeth, or maybe the chill was inside her; it was impossible to tell and she didn't much care. All that mattered was how close, how dangerously close, she'd come to falling into the trap again.

  "I suppose you think I was the one who stalked you." "Stalked?"

  She heard the growl in his voice, knew he was angry, but so what? She was angry, too, dammit, angry and hurt.

  "Stalked," she said. "Followed me, even though I made it perfectly clear I was trying to get away from you."

  Gage gave a bark of laughter. "Give me a break! You wanted me to come after you. I saw the way you looked at me. I understood what it meant."

  "It's just a good thing you finally figured out what 'no' meant. Otherwise-"

  "Otherwise, what?" A slow smile crept across his mouth, He reached out, traced a finger over her parted lips. "Be honest, baby. If I'd ignored that 'no,' I'd be inside you right now and you'd be-"

  The crack of her hand against his cheek echoed through the silence of the night.

  "You no good bastard!"

  Her voice trembled. She despised herself for it, for the weakness that had sent her into his arms ... and for the knowledge that he was right. For all those reasons and a thousand more, Natalie Baron lifted her chin, met her husband's angry glare and spoke the words she'd once never imagined herself saying, t
he words she'd bitten back over the last endless months.

  "Gage," she said, "I want a divorce."

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE sound of a lawnmower woke Natalie from a fitful sleep.

  She· blinked her eyes open, then shut them against the bright sunlight that poured into the room. That was a surprise. Hadn't Gage remembered to close the blinds before he'd come to bed? It was something he always did, for her. The light didn't bother him but she ...

  "Oh, God."

  Natalie's whisper rose into the still morning air. Of course Gage hadn't closed the blinds. This wasn't their bedroom, this was the guest room. She and Gage hadn't shared a bed last night.

  Her throat constricted.

  For the first time since the night they'd eloped, she and her husband had slept apart.

  Well, no. Not exactly. Slowly, she sat up and swung her feet to the carpeted floor. Actually, they'd slept apart lots of times. More and more times, in fact, over the past year and a half. Gage was always off on business trips, exploring new sites for Baron Resorts, talking high finance with bankers from Bangkok to Baltimore, checking out the competition ...

  Or so he said.

  Natalie pushed a fall of dark hair back from her face. She rose and made her way into the attached bathroom, trying to avoid seeing her reflection, but it wasn't easy. The interior designer who'd "done" the bath had covered the walls with mirrors. Since the room was the size of the first apartment she and Gage had lived in, that meant lots of mirrors. Acres, or so it sometimes seemed. It wasn't what she would have done-what woman in her right mind really wanted her reflection beaming back at her from every angle, first thing in the morning? But Gage had given the designer carte blanche.

  "Everything subject to my wife's approval, of course," he'd said, standing there with his arm around Natalie's shoulder.

  "Of course, Mr. Baron," the designer had replied, casting a fawning smile in her direction…

  "Just don't bother her with details," Gage had added, with a just-between-us-guys grin. "My wife has enough to do without worrying about chips of paint." He'd beamed down at her. "The country club tennis tournament, her charities…isn't that right, darling?"

  "Absolutely," Natalie had answered. What else could ~he have said, with her husband and a complete stranger beaming at her as if she were some clever new wind-up doll?

  Natalie brushed her teeth, rinsed her mouth, and winced when she looked up and saw a universe of Natalie’s watching her. .

  "Ugh," she said to the straggly hair, the pale face, the smudge of mascara beneath one eye that was all that remained of the makeup she'd never taken off last night. She could have: the guest suite was well-equipped. The designer had seen to that. Cotton sheets so soft they felt like silk, unisex pyjamas, fluffy white bathrobes, disposable slippers, sample sizes of cosmetics enough to stock a department store. Hairbrush, comb, toothbrushes, toothpaste, mouthwash, tissues... The man with the flirty voice had thought of everything. And when they had guests, part of Luz's housekeeping duties was to restock whatever had been used.

  The only thing the decorator hadn't thought of was how a woman was supposed to feel when she awoke in the guest room because she'd told her husband of ten years that she wanted a divorce.

  Natalie turned off the water and patted her face briskly with a towel. She hadn't planned to say the words, not consciously. Not last night, certainly. But, really, she was glad she had. It was better this way. Why prolong things? She'd known, for a long time, that the marriage was over. That she and Gage were living a charade, known since she'd lost the baby ---a baby, she'd realized, he'd never really wanted-that he didn’t love her anymore, that she didn't love him. That-that-

  "Oh, Gage," Natalie whispered, and sank down in the middle of the tiled floor. "Gage," she said again, her voice breaking, and she buried her face in her hands and wept until she was sure she could never weep again.

  And, after that, she wept some more.

  Gage awakened, as always, promptly at : a.m.

  It was the habit of a lifetime, one he'd developed in those long-ago years when he'd first headed east from Texas. He'd figured out really early that a twenty-one-year-old kid with half a college degree, no discernible skills in much of anything that didn't involve a horse, and a brand-new wife to support had to work hard at being an early bird if he was going to catch even the smallest of worms.

  It wasn't necessary now, of course. His offices didn't open until nine but still, every morning, rain or shine, he was out of bed at six on the button.

  Usually, he crept around quietly in the shadowy darkness with the bedroom blinds shut, doing his damnedest not to disturb Natalie. She always said she didn't mind, that what she called her internal clock was still set at dawn.

  But he'd vowed, a long time ago, that his wife would never have to creep out of a warm bed at dawn again. No way would he ever have to watch Natalie stumble into her clothes, then go off to a day spent waiting tables.

  He could remember the time he'd told her that.

  "I'll take you up on the no-waiting-tables deal," Natalie had said, laughing. Then she'd thrown herself round his neck and flashed a sexy smile. "Come to think of It, staying in bed is a pretty fine idea, too ... As long as you stay there to keep me occupied."

  "Occupied?" he'd said, with a puzzled look that was hard to maintain because just the light brush of Natalie's body against his had always been enough to make him go crazy.

  "Occupied," she'd said, and then she'd threaded her hands into his hair, drawn his head down to hers, kissed him with her mouth open so that he could taste her honeyed warmth.

  Gage's face hardened.

  Kissed him, exactly as she had last night, just before she'd said, "Gage, I want a divorce."

  He muttered an oath, kicked the afghan blanket from his legs, and sat up.

  "Ouch."

  So much for spending the night on the leather couch in the den. Gage groaned, pressed his hands to the small of his back, and rose to his feet.

  Leather couches were not made for sleeping. Neither was this room. It was too big, too impersonal, too filled with stuff. What man would want to share his sleeping quarters with a pool table?

  Not him, that was for sure. But Natalie had stalked off to the guest suite, leaving the bedroom to him.

  "You can have it," she'd said with dramatic flair.

  Gage groaned again as he hobbled across the hall to the downstairs lavatory. He could have it, but he hadn't wanted it. That huge room, with its enormous bed, all to himself? With Natalie's perfume and a thousand memories lingering in the air?

  "No way," he muttered as he splashed cold water on his face.

  A man didn't want to spend the first night of the rest of his life surrounded by reminders of what he was leaving behind.

  Gage took a towel from the rack and scrubbed it over his face. Towel? That was a laugh. These puny things were more like handkerchiefs. But Natalie liked them. Natalie and that fruity designer, the one who'd hand-picked the leather couch Gage had thought, until last night, was only uncomfortable to sit on.

  He looked into the mirror. A guy in a dress shirt and rumpled black trousers with a satin stripe down the side looked back at him. Hell, he was a mess. Hair uncombed, face unshaven ... he looked like Chewbacca after a bad night, but what could you expect after six hours on a cowhide red rack?

  A smile. Damn, yes. A smile, at the very least. Because now, if nothing else, he'd had his life handed back to him.

  Gage stomped down the hall and up the curving staircase to the master bedroom.

  Okay, maybe he hadn't seen it that way, at first. Natalie's announcement had been ... upsetting.

  Upsetting?

  He shot an unforgiving glance down the corridor, towards the guest room and its closed door, where Natalie was still sleeping the sleep of what he supposed she thought of as the innocent and martyred.

  "Let's be honest here," he muttered as he marched through the master bedroom and into the bathroom.
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  I want a divorce weren't exactly the words a man expected to hear from his wife, especially after they'd been going .at each other like two teenagers in hormonal overdrive.

  Like the two teenagers they'd once been.

  Pictures flashed through his head. He and Natalie, parked in his car on Superstition Butte. Natalie, her beautiful face pink and glowing after their first kiss. Natalie, crying out in passion in his arms.

  Gage swallowed hard, slammed the bathroom door shut, and pulled off what remained of his rumpled monkey suit.