After the Loving

by Carole Mortimer

‘Then why did he?’ she persisted.

  ‘He didn’t! He saw you in a couple of restaurants together and just happened to mention it to me——’

  ‘Raff, how many restaurants are there in London?’ she reasoned.

  He gave a perplexed frown. ‘I don’t know, hundreds probably,’ he shrugged.

  ‘Then how is it that I’ve been seen so regularly with Court in different restaurants, by both you and Stuart Hillier?’

  ‘Coincidence, I suppose——’

  ‘That’s exactly what he said,’ she recalled flatly.

  ‘He?’ Raff looked totally confused. ‘You mean Stuart?’

  ‘No—Court.’

  Kate said she had seen Court with Stuart Hillier a couple of weeks ago, and yet when Bryna had spoken to Court ten days ago he had trouble remembering the other man’s name! She had nothing else to go on but the coincidence of the restaurants, the meeting Kate had witnessed, and Court’s memory lapse about the other man’s name, and yet suddenly she knew. She knew!

  ‘But that sort of coincidence doesn’t occur in a place as big as London unless schedules are known and shared,’ she sighed. ‘Court had been trying to drive a wedge in our relationship almost since it began,’ she told Raff dully. ‘It has to be him. I thought it was you, but—but now I know it’s Court.’ She swallowed hard, the pain of disillusionment almost too much to bear. She had genuinely liked Court, and he had tried to destroy her, had almost succeeded in destroying her child.

  Raff sat on the edge of the bed, frowning darkly. ‘How do you know?’

  She blinked back the tears. ‘For now will you just accept it if I tell you I do know?’

  ‘Darling Bryna, don’t you know I would accept it if you told me black was white and white was black?’

  That was it. The day she had first met Court and been introduced to Raff she had believed Court was the light one, like the sun, and Raff was the dark secretive one, like the moon. She had gone on thinking of them in that way even after she fell in love with Raff, and all the time she had had the two men the wrong way around; Raff was her sunlight, Court was the dark destructive one.

  ‘He saw exactly what I thought,’ she realised chokingly. ‘And that I loved you anyway. And he used that love against me!’

  ‘You—love—me?’

  It was a strangulated plea that it be the truth, and she looked at Raff with all her love shining in her eyes for him. ‘I’ve always loved you. I fell in love with you that first night we went out together, and it’s continued that way. I would never have agreed to have an affair with you if I hadn’t loved you,’ she added ruefully.

  He grasped her arms. ‘And I never would have settled for one if I’d known how you felt!’ he groaned.

  Bryna looked up at him uncertainly. ‘What do you mean? The affair was your idea——’

  He shook his head. ‘Yours.’

  ‘But——’

  ‘We made love, and I was about to tell you how much I loved you and wanted to marry you when you started talking about how clever you’d been to choose someone as skilled as me as your first lover, how we both knew the rules—no ties, no commitment, how we would just enjoy each other,’ he remembered bitterly. ‘For the first time since my youthful love for Josey I’d been about to bare my soul and tell a woman how much I loved her, and before I could she told me she was only interested in my body! Talk about a reversal of the roles!’ The pain he had known could still be heard in his voice.

  ‘I thought it was what you wanted,’ she pleaded for his understanding.

  ‘I don’t usually take a woman home to meet my children on a second date,’ he groaned. ‘I fell in love with you almost instantly, couldn’t get you of my mind, and that day I returned from my business trip to America and you greeted me like a spitting tigress I knew I had to have you for my wife, that I always wanted you to be there when I came home. But I had other commitments in my life, and I thought it best if you met Kate and Paul so that you knew what those commitments were, if by some miracle I could persuade you to marry me.’

  ‘I didn’t know how you felt about me, Raff,’ she squeezed his hands in her own. ‘But he did. And he used our uncertainty of each other against us.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she sighed. ‘I wish I did.’

  ‘Bryna, do you really love me?’ Raff still didn’t look as if he really believed her.

  ‘So very much,’ she said with feeling.

  ‘Then you must have been going through the same hell I have,’ he groaned, his eyes dark with pain. ‘Bryna, I love you. I love you so much!’

  ‘Raff, make love to me,’ she urged throatily.

  He blinked. ‘Now?’

  ‘Don’t you want to?’ she teased huskily.

  He gave her a look that told her just how much. ‘But I don’t want to hurt you or the baby. We’ve had one scare——’

  ‘That had nothing to do with our making love,’ she assured him quickly.

  ‘You almost fainted downstairs just now,’ he reminded her concernedly.

  ‘Both I and the baby would like to be reacquainted with the man we love!’ Her eyes shone, no more shadows on her love for him.

  ‘If we have a daughter and she looked at me the way you do I’ll never be able to deny her anything!’ he groaned as he buried his face in her hair.

  Bryna cradled his head lovingly, for the first time knowing herself loved in return by this magnificent man. ‘I’ll make sure it’s a boy so that your authority won’t be threatened,’ she teased.

  He didn’t seem to care very much about that as he made slow love to her, touching every inch of her, his hands possessive against their child as he suckled against her, driving them both towards the edge of fulfilment.

  When finally the silken shaft of him was encased inside her they were both so highly aroused that they just lay together as the waves of pleasure washed all the past pain away.

  Raff lay damply against her breasts. ‘Perhaps it’s as well you’re already pregnant, otherwise I have a feeling you would be after tonight!’

  Bryna knew exactly what he meant. The first time they had ever made love had been so earth-shatteringly perfect, but although they had always found pleasure in each other’s arms it had never ben quite that perfect again. Tonight, just now, it had superseded perfection, had been a vow to how much they loved each other. And she now knew why the first time and just now had been so different from all the others; on neither occasion had they tried to hide their love from each other. This time nothing would spoil that.

  ‘I love you, Raff,’ she told him softly. ‘I’m proud to be carrying your child.’

  ‘No more proud than I am,’ his lips moved against her moistly. ‘God, we’ve said some vicious things to each other in an effort to hide our love.’ His arms tightened. ‘I felt as if you’d twisted a knife inside me the night I had to rush you to hospital and you told me you would never have had my child if you’d realised you could ever have had one!’

  ‘Because Court had just told me enough at Kate’s dinner party to convince me you had asked Stuart Hillier to spy on me! And because you’d already told me you wished I weren’t pregnant either!’

  ‘Because of you,’ groaned Raff, trembling slightly. ‘I thought you were going to die and be taken from me now.’ He picked up her left hand, kissing the eternity ring that sat so comfortably next to her wedding ring. ‘I could see you were puzzled when I gave you this,’ he told her huskily. ‘But it means exactly what it’s supposed to; I’ll love you for eternity. And I can take anything but losing you!’

  ‘You’ll never lose me,’ Bryna promised fervently. ‘Although I can’t guarantee that we will ever have another child,’ she added uncertainly. ‘This one is still a miracle to me.’

  ‘I love the baby because we made it together,’ he looked down at her with dark eyes. ‘But it isn’t something I planned either.’

  She frowned. ‘Are you sure you want another child in the house?’
/>
  ‘Sure?’ he dismissed lightly. ‘I’m looking forward to it. When Josey and I had Kate and Paul I was very young, believed it was a woman’s place to take care of the babies while I went out and earned the money. I intend being involved in every aspect of this baby!’

  ‘Oh, Raff, I didn’t realise, not even once, that you loved me,’ she groaned. ‘You said you were only marrying me for the baby——’

  ‘Because using the baby was the only way to make sure you would marry me,’ he corrected. ‘At first you seemed happy enough with the affair you asked for, and then you started to drift away from me. I took on Stuart Hillier in the first place in an effort to delegate my work and spend more time with you, showing you how much I needed you——’

  ‘You only seemed to need me in bed, cruelly cut me out of any interest in your work or Kate and Paul——’

  ‘Because I believed the commitment to my work and my grown-up family were part of the reason you only wanted an affair with me,’ he shook his head. ‘Kate and Paul seemed like a reminder of how much older and more experienced I was than you, and so I did my best to keep the three of you apart. I didn’t always succeed, but after that first night when you seemed so lost in their company I certainly tried.’

  ‘It was only that it seemed a little—strange, meeting your children. I wanted to share them as the months passed,’ Bryna sighed her impatience with the misunderstandings that had kept them apart for so long. ‘Your refusal to do so seemed a way of telling me you wanted me in bed but in no other part of your life. And then even that began to pall, be less intense. When you agreed so readily to my condition that we wouldn’t sleep together during our marriage I believed you no longer wanted me.’

  Raff gave a self-derisive groan. ‘I only agreed because I had no intention of being married to you and yet living apart. But the only way I could get you to marry me at all was by using blackmail, and to have told you then that I intended it to be a normal marriage would have frightened you away. I stayed away from you until after we were married, but I never intended to live like that for the rest of our lives.’

  ‘You told me those nights that you only wanted to touch the baby!’

  ‘And you,’ he smiled. ‘I never intended to let you go.’ He gave a pained frown. ‘Until it seemed you preferred Court to me. You told me you were leaving me after he visited you in hospital, and I thought——’

  ‘Alyson visited me too that night,’ she frowned. ‘She told me she’d been out with Stuart Hillier and he’d asked a lot of questions about me, and I thought it was because of——’

  ‘Me,’ Raff realised grimly. ‘I didn’t put him up to it, so it must have been Court.’

  ‘Raff, we have to talk about Court,’ Bryna told him quietly. ‘But first of all we have to understand that we love each other, that Court can never use our uncertainty of each other to hurt us again. I don’t know why he wanted to hurt us, but I do think a little boy capable of attacking another little boy with a cricket bat and breaking his nose can’t have just lost that temper because he’s now an adult. He may be able to control it better, but not to lose it completely.

  ‘Court told you about that episode when we were at school together?’ Raff frowned.

  ‘The first day we met,’ she nodded. ‘Oh, it’s obvious he’s a controlled man now, but that vindictiveness must still be below that surface pleasantness. We have to be sure of our love for each other before we challenge him on it, have no doubts, otherwise he’ll still be able to find a way to drive us apart.’

  ‘Darling Bryna, I swear to you I will never doubt you or your love again,’ he looked down at her with dark eyes. ‘It was only because I loved you so much and it didn’t seem to be returned that I’ve been acting like a madman since we got married, throwing out accusations while still secretly hoping we could start again and make our marriage work. That day I saw you lunching with Court and made that threat to you about forcing our marriage to be a real one I was so disgusted with myself by the time I got back to my office that I felt too sickened to come home at all that night. I dreaded coming home to find that you’d left me, acted like an idiot again when I found that you hadn’t.’

  She could see that Court had been able to witness their weakness about each other all the time, and that he had used that to hurt them. But she didn’t doubt Raff’s love now; she knew that all his cruelty since they were married had been because his heart was breaking and he just didn’t know what to do to hold on to her. He would never have reason to doubt her love for him again.

  ‘Call Court and ask him to come over,’ she said huskily.

  ‘Now?’ Raff’s eyes widened.

  ‘It isn’t that late, and this can’t wait any longer,’ she insisted dully. ‘We have to know why, Raff.’

  He had barely had time to get out of bed and pull on his trousers before a knock sounded on the bedroom door.

  Kate stood outside, her amused gaze going from her father’s tousled appearance to Bryna’s blushing cheeks. ‘And I thought you were joking downstairs,’ she mocked. ‘I came to say goodnight, but that seems a little——’

  ‘Kate!’ her father warned.

  ‘See you both in the morning. Or afternoon,’ she added cheekily. ‘I guess the honeymoon isn’t over!’

  Raff gave a rueful smile as he closed the door behind her. ‘She isn’t going to let us forget this in a hurry!’

  Bryna laughed softly, her eyes glowing with pleasure as she watched the ripple of muscles across his shoulders as he dressed. ‘She’ll have to get used to it.’

  His eyes softened caressingly. ‘God, I hope so!’

  ‘You can be sure of it,’ she promised huskily.

  ‘I never told you, but I felt so damned grateful that I was the first man to make love to you,’ long fingers caressed her cheek. ‘I was going to tell you, but——’

  ‘I started talking about rules and no commitment,’ she realised ruefully. ‘I thought it was what you wanted!’

  ‘You were still a virgin because you were afraid, weren’t you?’ he said huskily. ‘Afraid you were incomplete in some way?’

  ‘Yes,’ she nodded with remembered sadness. ‘I’d like to say I saved myself for you, but the truth is——’

  ‘The truth is that was exactly what you did,’ he finished firmly. ‘I’m sure I wasn’t the first man to want to make love to you, and yet it was me you trusted to make you feel you were a complete woman.’

  ‘I loved you,’ she said simply. ‘I needed you.’

  ‘We’ll always need each other, Bryna. I promise you nothing else will drive us apart!’ he vowed fiercely.

  When Raff telephoned Court the other man had just got in, although he was obviously alone, but he agreed to come over straight away.

  Bryna and Raff were seated together on the sofa when the doorbell rang a short time later. Raff went to answer the door himself, having dismissed the staff for the night, and Kate obviously having gone to bed and to sleep too.

  Court was still wearing the evening suit he had obviously worn to go out in. He gave Bryna a friendly nod, refusing Raff’s invitation for him to sit down. He turned to the other man. ‘So what was so important it couldn’t wait until morning?’

  ‘Did you have a pleasant evening?’ Raff enquired cordially, handing him a glass of brandy.

  Court gave a puzzled frown. ‘Very nice, thank you,’ he answered distractedly. ‘What——’

  ‘See anyone we know while you were out, my assistant, for instance?’ Raff added, silky-soft.

  Court’s eyes widened. ‘Hillier?’ he queried. ‘Why should I have seen him?’

  ‘Well, you look as if you’ve probably eaten out this evening, and with the coincidental meetings that have gone on at restaurants lately I wondered if the two of you might have met.’ Raff quirked dark brows, his eyes icy.

  Court glanced at Bryna’s stony expression, and then back to Raff’s accusing one, giving a choked cry as he dropped down into an armchair. ‘I never meant it
to go this far,’ he groaned, his face buried in his hands.

  Bryna looked at Raff in stunned disbelief; the last thing either of them had expected had been an instant confession from Court. In fact, she was sure that secretly they had both hoped they had made some terrible mistake. But that was impossible now, and some of the coldness drained out of Bryna as she saw how broken Court was.

  ‘Why, Court?’ Raff prompted gruffly, and Bryna wanted to go to him and comfort him because of the pain she knew he was suffering. But she sat completely still, having the feeling this was something the two men had to settle between them. The time to comfort Raff would be after Court had gone.

  ‘Because I loved her and she wouldn’t leave you!’ Tears fell unashamedly down Court’s cheeks. ‘I was okay to go to bed with, even to love a little, but she wouldn’t leave you!’

  Bryna gasped. ‘I never went to bed with you——’

  ‘Not you,’ Court shook his head. ‘Josey!’ he explained bitterly. ‘We were lovers for five years before she died, and although I pleaded with her, begged her, to leave Raff, she never would.’

  Bryna could plainly see what a shock this revelation was to Raff. Of course he had always known there was someone else in Josey’s life, but not Court!

  ‘I couldn’t give her the children she wanted if she left you,’ Court continued harshly. ‘And she knew you would never let her take Kate and Paul away from you. I waited ten years for you to love someone the way I loved Josey,’ his eyes glittered as he glared at Raff. ‘And when Bryna did come along you were too damned arrogant to tell her how you felt.’

  Raff drew in a ragged breath. ‘And you used that to hurt me.’

  ‘It was what I wanted—I wanted you to know how I felt, loving Josey but unable to have her,’ Court rasped. ‘Unfortunately Bryna got hurt too, and I didn’t plan on that happening, I really do like her. When she almost lost the baby I knew I had to stop. I could never hurt an unborn child, never hurt any child!’

  ‘And Hillier?’ Raff frowned. ‘Where does he come into all this?’

  Court’s mouth twisted. ‘I should get rid of him, Raff—he can be bought!’