Rachel Lindsay - Unwanted Wife

by Rachel Lindsay

  "You were so anxious?" she asked in a small voice.

  "Did you think I wouldn't be?" He searched her face, wondering if Roger had been wrong in believing she loved him. She had shown no pleasure when she had seen him; made no movement of joy. Still, why should she welcome him when he had given her no welcome on the night she had arrived at his home?

  "There was no need for you to come here." She was speaking again. "Everything could have been arranged through Mr. Truscott."

  "I didn't come here to end our marriage. I came here to ask you to begin it again."

  "No, thank you."

  There was no hesitation before she answered; not even the pretense of a momentary consideration. He was so shocked that he did not know what to say. Where was the love they had felt for one another? That wonderful pulsating emotion that had transformed two people from different backgrounds and positions into one indivisible whole? But he and Tanya were no longer one; they were two separate entities with an ever-widening gulf between them.

  He cleared his throat. "If you won't come back to me, there's nothing more to be said.

  "Nothing. I'm sorry you had a wasted journey."

  She turned her back on him and began to place the tulips in a wooden box. Adrian blinked the moisture from his eyes and went to the door. He turned the handle but it was stuck, the wood swollen with rain. He wrenched at it and, as it came toward him, he caught his finger on a jagged end of metal and ripped the skin on his thumb.

  "Blast!" He drew back sharply and saw a spurt of blood. With his left hand he tried to get his handkerchief out of his pocket.

  "You are hurt!" Tanya cried and tried to take the handkerchief from him.

  "Don't touch me!" he grated.

  She paled and fell back. "I'm sorry. I did not realize you hated me so much."

  "Hated you?" He gave a hollow laugh. "If only I could." He glanced at her in anguish and saw in her eyes a look that made his anguish recede. "Don't you know I love you, Tanya? That the reason I can't bear you to touch me is because I want you so much?"

  "Want me?"

  "Ironic, isn't it? First I reject you—and then you do the same to me."

  "I didn't know… I never thought…" She took a deep breath. "Why didn't you say all this when I was in your home?"

  "And have you think I was doing it because of the election?" He remembered the times he had tried to tell her. "I was waiting till it was all over—by which time you'd disappeared.''

  "I see. I thought—when I saw you just now—that you wanted me back because Diana had married Roger."

  "What does that have to do with it?"

  "It is easier for you to continue with me than to look for a new wife."

  "My God!" he said slowly. "What sort of a swine do you take me for? I know I've behaved like one but—"

  "Please—do not criticize yourself." She placed her hands on his chest. "It is not good for a woman to hear bad things about the man she loves."

  His eyes glittered as if charged with electricity. "Did you say loves?"

  "The man I have always loved. Even when I said I hated you, I was lying. I will never love anyone else, Adrian, no matter whether you leave me or not."

  "I'll never leave you," he groaned, and wasting no more time in words, sought for her mouth with a passionate eagerness that told her how much he had longed for her. But even as she responded to his kiss, he pushed her away from him.

  "If I start now I won't be able to stop," he said abruptly. "And I dread what your George would say if he came in and found us crushing his beautiful tulips!"

  "We could always pay him for them," she murmured.

  "I've a better suggestion. If we leave at once, we can get a helicopter flight home. Then I'll make a few calls and we'll be ready to go."

  "Where?"

  "Anywhere you like. We'll continue with the honeymoon we were never able to finish."

  She looked at him with all her love in her eyes, seeing him as a supplicant before her; a defenseless, eager look on a face that until now had always been reserved. "If only you had given me a sign how you felt," she cried. "We have wasted so many months."

  "Don't I know it. You've no idea the number of times I wanted to come into your room and make violent love to you." He strained her close, pressing his body to hers. "Sometimes I was in such torment I couldn't sleep. I used to pace the floor and curse myself for having so little control."

  "Too much control to give way to yourself," she said, half-seriously, half-provocatively.

  "My control's slipping now," he said grimly. "Don't keep looking at me like that. You don't know what it's doing to me."

  "I've a very good idea." Mutual need increased their desire. Their mouths came together and their passion diffused and widened, then intensified into a single dominant ache.

  With a savagery that surprised and elated her, Adrian pulled away her sun-dress. The buttons snapped and her creamy-skinned body was unfolded before him. Willingly she surrendered to his touch, linking her arms around his neck and pulling him farther back into the greenhouse. Her own hands fluttered upon him but shyness overcame her and with a soft murmur he caught them up and pressed them to his chest.

  "Hold me," he pleaded. "Feel me…Tanya!"

  Coming around the side of the greenhouse, old George saw Tanya and a tall, brown-haired man disappear from sight behind the wooden boxes that protected the lower half of the greenhouse.

  "It's a good thing it isn't all glass," he chuckled into his beard. "If't'were, I'd be learning a thing or two!"