by Неизвестный
‘Please, Trish, please stop!’ he pleaded harshly in her ear, shaking her in his anxiety. ‘l’ll need to go and tell Lucy to look after your guests——’
‘Yes! Go!’ she snuffled. A huge sob tore through her and she feared for her baby. ‘Go,’ she repeated, desperately controlling her tears. ‘I want to sleep.’
‘I’ll be back,’ he promised.
But she said nothing and turned to face the wall. Hours, a day, another and then another came and went in a blur of tears and torture. In her mind, she went through all the signs she’d ignored. His undisguised attraction to Lucy. The supposed ‘computer lessons’. He’d deceived her whilst pretending to be Mr Wonderful, promising her total commitment, going through all the right motions. For that, she’d never forgive him.
Thankfully the sickness had stabilised but she felt lethargic and uninterested. Adam tried to talk to her but she pushed him away, and when he offered to get her grandmother she yelled at him like a fishwife.
‘I’m sorry!’ she mumbled, shamefaced. There was no reason for her to descend to his level. ‘I don’t want Gran to be worried. Tell her it might be catching and I won’t let her near me.’
Looking hollow—eyed, he nodded. Cynically she wondered if he was finding it hard, managing a harem. How often had he crept off to see Lucy? Burning the candle at both ends didn’t suit him, she thought sourly. And thinking of him and Lucy perhaps making love on the camomile turf together made her burst into floods of tears.
‘Trish, you can’t go on like this! Think of your baby!
You need help. I have someone downstairs waiting to see you,’ Adam said gently.
‘Not Lucy!’ she muttered in dismay.
He brushed back the hair from her hot, damp forehead, smiled and left the room. She vowed that if he’d brought a doctor she’d hurl the bedside lamp at him. Scowling from beneath her lowered brows, she waited to see who it was. When the handsome young man appeared with Adam, she opened her mouth in astonishment.
‘Stephen!’ she cried weakly.
‘Hi. Sorry to hear you’re not well,’ he said, with suspicious interest. ‘I came over to see Dad. Got a few days off,’
he explained, sitting on the bed. He put a briefcase on the floor and rummaged around in it. ‘What have you taken for this virus?’ he asked, suddenly brisk and professional. ‘I’ve got a couple of things here...’
Trish’s eyes narrowed. ‘This isn’t a casual visit, so don’t pretend it is!’ She drew in a sharp breath. ‘You asked him here, didn’t you?’ she snapped at Adam.
He frowned. ‘What if I did? Let him help you. He’s got something to calm you down——’
‘How dare you? He’s not even qualified! And you know my views—’
‘I didn’t know what to do,’ he said tightly. ‘I know nothing of your remedies. You didn’t want a local doctor and you asked me not to tell your grandmother-what was I supposed to do? Watch you get sicker and sicker?’
‘I’m not sick any more.' She glowered.
‘No. Just behaving bizarrely,' he replied, grim-lipped. Sparks were flying between them. The air seemed charged with their emotions. He was angry with her! How dared he be?
‘It was utterly high-handed of you to drag Stephen over here, all this way—!’ she began furiously.
‘I’d have abducted the Prime Minister if I’d thought it might do any good!’ he growled.
‘You’re not my keeper? she yelled. ‘You don’t have any rights over me! My body’s mine, do you hear? I don’t want anything to do with you.’
She stopped her tirade, shocked by Adam’s white face. Colour had drained from it completely and he was swaying. Stephen, looking concerned, steadied his father and there passed between them a look of affection, which touched her heart.
‘She’s ill. She doesn’t mean it,’ Stephen said gently.
‘I do!’ she cried, incensed to be patronised like a silly child. ‘I don’t want to be involved with you, Adam. It’s very simple.'
He’d withdrawn into that private fortress where he kept his emotions safely chained up. Totally in control, he asked coldly, ‘Why?’
She flung him a look of scorn. ‘Work it out for yourself!’
‘I’m sorry, Stephen,’ Adam said curtly. ‘I brought you here to no avail. Thanks for coming. I appreciate it.’
‘Not often you say you need me,’ Stephen said drily. The two men once again exchanged looks of mutual sympathy. Unable to bear any more, Trish slid from the bed, grabbed her clothes and headed for the en suite bathroom.
‘What are you up to?’ Adam demanded menacingly. She whirled round, her face riven with anger. ‘I’m dressing and I’m going back to my cottage. If you’ve. finished with it, that is!’
As she stalked to the bathroom door, she heard Stephen’s voice.
‘She’s off her rocker, if you ask me...’
The rest of his sentence was lost and she realised the men must have left the bedroom and gone downstairs.
‘Good!’ she muttered viciously, pulling on her clothes haphazardly, with little regard for the strength of the fabric or her own tortured body beneath.
She looked ghastly. Running her fingers through her hair, she wished for some foundation to mask her blotchiness and give her some colour instead of the Morticia-like whiteness, which made her eyes look so dark and haunted. Then she gave a wry smile at her stupidity. What did it matter how dreary she looked? She could shave her head and grow a moustache and it wouldn’t make any difference. The men were in the kitchen. ‘I want a word with you,’
she said coldly to Adam.
‘Mutual,’ he growled. ‘Outside.’ He strode alongside her till they came to where the farmland met the little beach. They stopped, an angry two yards apart. ‘Well?’ he asked in a threatening tone.
‘No, it’s not well!’ she cried, flipping up her chin in a stubbom, aggressive gesture. ‘Don’t you ever use my house or my bedroom for your vile deeds again!’ she fumed.
‘What vile deeds might those be?’ he demanded.
‘Oh! We’re going to get a denial now, are we? Even though I saw you with my own eyes! You and your London ways and morals! Don’t you know that over here it’s not done to play fast and loose with secret lovers and—?’
‘What the hell are you talking about, Trish?’ he scathed, his eyes black with anger. ‘London doesn’t have exclusive rights on immorality, any more than the Islands are exclusively decent. I’m not playing fast——’
‘I saw you!’ she stormed. ‘You liar!’
‘Ridiculous! That’s impossible. It must have been someone else!’
She stared in amazement. He sounded totally convincing!
‘I don’t believe this! I catch you making love to Lucy——’
‘Lucy? Don’t be ridiculous! What is this? Are you trying to break up our relationship?'
‘I don’t have to,’ she muttered, her glare ferocious. ‘You already did!’
‘If you want to reject me for reasons of your own,’ he said, incredibly contained, tense in every muscle and clearly simmering with an explosive rage as he spat out each word,
‘then have the decency to say so. Don’t invent lies that accuse me and someone else of immoral actions—’
‘I walked in on you! In my bedroom! You and Lucy, panting for one another, and she telling you how wonderful it all was, talking to you as if she’d never known what it was like to stutter—!’
‘Damn you, Trish!’ he roared. He grabbed her arm. ‘You trust me that little? Stop struggling! I don’t want to hurt you or the baby, but you’ll come with me!’
‘Where?’ she wailed as he half—dragged, halffrogmarched her along.
‘To see Lucy,’ he snarled. ‘There’s something she and I have to tell you.’
‘No! No! ’ she wept, her imagination rocketing into overdrive. ‘Adam, don’t do this to me! lf you and she love one another, then I couldn’t bear to hear—’
‘For God’s sake, Trish, shut up!’
he hissed. She began to cry. He ignored her. She’d never seen him so angry and she felt very scared. He and Lucy would announce their love for one another and she would have to stand there and take it. Beautiful Lucy, made whole by the man she loved Adam...tender, passionate, irresistible, living with Lucy in the farmhouse. Next door. While she brought up her baby alone.
A primal moan burst from her throat as her legs buckled. Adam gave a rough curse and picked her up, then powered his way angrily to the cottage. Terrified, Trish stared at his impassive face and glittering black eyes and shrank at his ruthlessness. He would ride roughshod over anyone to do what he wanted, get what he wanted, she thought. She cursed the day they ever became lovers.
Adam had never felt so angry. None too gently, he set Trish down and pushed her towards a chair where she sat like a ragdoll, her face tear-streaked and utterly miserable. Damn her!
‘Lucy!’ he roared.
Wide-eyed and startled, Lucy came hurrying in, a load of sheets for washing in her hands. Impatiently, he snatched them from her.
‘Wh-wh-wh—?’ Lucy looked upset, her eyes flicking nervously from his seething face to Trish’s. Stephen came in, looking at the tense group for some kind of explanation. They ignored him.
‘We’re going to tell Trish what we’ve been doing these past few weeks,’ he said, reining in his anger for Lucy’s sake.
She smiled at him in delight. He went to her, turned her so that she was sideways on to Trish. Lucy gazed blissfully into his eyes and he was aware of a choking sound from where Trish sat, but he refused to pay her any attention. Placing his hands on Lucy’s diaphragm, he smiled encouragingly into her eyes and said softly, ‘Say it. Don’t be afraid. You’ll be fine.'
‘Dad!’ cried Stephen in shock. Adam silenced him with a look.
Lucy’s eyes sparkled with happiness. She drew in a deep breath, expanding his splayed fingers. And in an outrush of breath said, ‘My name is Lucy Ward.’ Another look of delight, another breath. ‘I live with my brother on Bryher.’
Adam beamed with triumph and kissed Lucy on both cheeks. ‘Well done.’ He turned to Trish, to see her reaction. She was crying. ‘You love her!’ she sobbed. ‘No—it’s all right, Lucy!’ she said, defending herself from Lucy’s gasp of dismay. ‘I’m not stupid enough to pursue someone who doesn’t love me. I’m pleased for you—’
‘You don’t get it, do you?’ he said in exasperation. ‘Tell her, Lucy. Explain in simple, one-syllable words. On your own. Without me this time.’
Lucy inhaled. He could see the misery in her eyes and wondered if she’d fail. He held his breath too.
‘Adam’s been teaching me to breathe.’ Pause. Good girl, he thought. ‘We were keeping it a secret from you.’ Her hand fluttered on her ribcage and then came away as she gained confidence. His heart softened for her. She’d done it! ‘We wanted to give you a surprise on your birthday. To show you how well I’d done. I’ve been to St Mary’s. Talking to strangers.' A huge grin split her face. ‘Strangers!’ she squealed. ‘And...Adam doesn’t love me! He—’
‘That’s brilliant, Lucy,’ he said quickly. ‘Well, Trish, I think you owe Lucy an apology.'
‘I saw you both,’ she said stubbornly. ‘Heard you pant-ing—’
‘Breathing,’ he snapped. ‘I was teaching her to breathe!
You couldn’t have seen us making love. It never happened. All I’ve ever done is to put my hands on her diaphragm as you saw just now and make her inhale and push all the air out of her lungs—and with it any nervous tension. You have to believe that, for Lucy’s sake. I don’t care what you think of me, but she’s very fond of you and likes working for you. So get it into your thick head: Lucy and I are not lovers, never have been and never will be, lovely though she is!’
‘You must believe him,’ Lucy said gently, her sweet face full of concern, and he saw the truth dawn on Trish’s face.
‘I’ve done it again, haven’t I?’ she mumbled. ‘I saw and heard things and thought". Forgive me. I———I’m thrilled you’re speaking so well, Lucy. You must be over the moon. Thank you, Adam,’ she added stiffly. ‘You will have changed her life and neither of us will ever forget that.’
Something inside him twisted, making him wince. He watched Trish and Lucy hug one another without much sense of joy himself. Saw Stephen’s eyes on the women, how his son’s gaze lingered on Lucy’s affectionate face. Trish turned to him, her eyes wet with tears. ‘Adam—’
she began brokenly.
Suddenly he couldn’t stay. He made a dismissive gesture with his hand and exited abruptly.
She caught him up on the treacherous cliffs above Hell Bay. There must have been a storm at sea because the rollers were frighteningly high, roaring into the bay like steam trains.
He watched her running up the steep, peaty black path, clutching her side as if she had a stitch. And still she continued, dogged and determined to the last. Briefly he worried about her, about the child she carried. His child. Then that was too much of a torture and he shut his thoughts away, huriying instead towards her so that she stopped trying to break her neck as she stumbled hysterically along.
‘I think we’ve said all we have to say,’ he told her, coldly and clinically, while she was trying to catch her breath.
‘I’ve——apologised! Do you want—to punish me?’
His mouth curled in contempt. ‘You talked of trust, once. Was your trust in me so weak that you’d jump to the wrong conclusions about me every time our relationship was chal-lenged? What hope does that give us for the future?’
She stared at him in abject misery. ‘How could I trust you,’ she said, her voice shaking with deep emotion, ‘when you gave me only part of yourself? You kept so much back, Adam. We made love, we laughed, worked together and lived as partners. But never once did you tell me you loved me. There’s always been this barrier between us, this insistence of yours that you won’t share whatever’s eating you up because you don’t want to get hurt. Well, I’ll tell you something! If you love someone you have to take that risk! Oh, sure you can get badly hurt, as I am now, but there is no relationship unless you do!’
He dragged in a strangled breath, a searing agony tearing open his heart. She looked vulnerable and forlorn, her hands planted on that no longer tiny hand—span waist, her beautiful head held high in angry defiance. Her eyes swam with tears, and he could see that they were all but choking her and she was fighting for words, forcing them from her trembling lips.
‘I love you,’ she said brokenly. ‘I always have and I always will. But I’m too proud to take you at any price and I know that we have to commit to each other totally, trust one another completely—or remain apart. I was prepared to give you everything. I expected nothing less than everything in return.' Her body drooped as if her bones had been broken. ‘Oh, God, Adam!’ she sobbed suddenly. ‘You won’t let me into your soul and you’re breaking my heart!’
In two strides he had reached her. Gathered her in his arms, held her grimly while she struggled and then went limp, as if defeated and too dispirited to fight him any more. Unfamiliar moisture clouded his eyes. Impatiently he brushed it away with the back of his hand, but she had stiffened and identified that movement, because she was looking up at him in shock.
‘Adam?’ she whispered uncertainly. Adam! ’
‘I—I—’ He swallowed, disconcerted by the huge wash of emotion which had engulfed him when she’d spoken his name with her old tenderness. Unable to speak, he shook his head helplessly and buried his face in her thick mane of hair.
As if co-ordinated by an unseen hand, they sank to the springy thyme on the windswept headland and clung fiercely to one another. This was where he wanted to be: in her arms, close to her heart, surrendering everything. He took a deep, tension-laden breath and launched into the unknown. ‘I love you,’ he said shakily, ‘more than I can say. More than I’ve dared to believe. You’re right. Everything you say is true. I thought I could keep my past locked up in a box where it wou
ldn’t hurt me.’
The pain came then, racking him with its intensity, and he flinched. She hugged him hard, giving him strength. He must not lose her.
She said nothing, sensing his hesitation, and raised her face, then drew his head down. Their mouths meshed and all coherent thought went with that kiss, as all his emotions flowed out to her like a river, their force, their sweetness, the incredible relief coursing through him and filling his whole body with love.
‘Trish...Trish, darling, my love...’
‘Don’t walk away from me now,’ she whispered fervently. ‘I need you. Our child needs you.’
‘I won’t,’ he promised rawly. Shaking with the depth of his passion for her, the heartbreaking spikiness of her wet lashes, the all too brutally tormented look in her eyes, he kissed her softly parted mouth and drew her around to face him. ‘Listen,’ he said, in a harsh, anguish-racked voice. She was still. Adorably trusting. He swallowed hard and began.
A long, shuddering breath. ‘I had a brother, Sam. A twin brother.’ She took his hands in hers as he battled for control of his lungs. They were closing up. He felt the familiar constrictions in his windpipe, the infuriating weakness of his own body. Her lips touched his, then his throat. And miraculously he relaxed sufficiently to speak.
‘We never knew our father. Mother found us.. .difficult. We didn’t fit in with her young, partying image.' He focused his gaze on the turbulent seas, unable to bear the distress in Trish’s face. ‘We found ourselves dumped one day on the doorstep of a children's home in a strange town. We were six, but I remember it as if it were yesterday. They never traced our mother and we never looked for her.’
Her grip tightened at the hardening of his tone. The thundering waves pounded at the rocks, the sound crashing in his ears. Looking down, he saw that the tears were running silently down her soft cheeks. Tears for him. He kissed them, let his mouth work up, absorbing the salty moisture and kissing her tormented blue eyes.
‘Hold me,’ she whispered.
Her body pressed against his, the softness of her breasts causing him to catch his breath.
‘I don’t think either of us ever got over that rejection,’