But Daniel’s mother was quite happy to mind the baby, which took the wind out of Rachel’s sails somewhat. She’d quite liked the idea of marching into Daniel’s ultramodern office building and dumping his youngest child into his stunned arms! Mind you, she pondered as the taxi took her to London, it was one thing imagining herself doing something like that, but it was quite another actually carrying it out.
Underneath the defiance the timid Rachel still huddled, happy being just what she was and wishing she could stay like that.
And was it so wrong to be completely lacking in any personal ambition except to want to be a good wife and mother? she then demanded angrily of herself. She’d always loved her job. Loved being there for her children, having time to listen to them, play with them, or simply just enjoy them!
And Daniel. Daniel might stride like a lion through the cut-throat jungle of big business, but she knew how the tension would drain from his face and body when he came home to his ordinary family with their ordinary problems, waiting for him to sort them out.
He might come in through their front door at night looking grim and remote—wearing the face of a ruthless hunter, she realised now with clearer insight into the man himself—but within half an hour he would be stretched out on the floor with the twins, playing some really ordinary board game, or sitting cross-legged between the two in front of the television set, his mental processes dropped right down to their level while they battled against each other at one of Sammy’s computer games— and there wouldn’t be a sign of grimness or tension in him, only that relaxed boyish grin that was so like his son’s, which said he had shrugged off the other world he moved in and sunk himself into the sheer relief from it all that his family offered him.
But now she wondered if that same process worked in reverse. She had never so much as considered it before but, when Daniel walked out of the house, did he shrug off the mantel of husband and father as easily? Was it a relief to get back into that other, more exciting world he moved in? Be the big man who wielded power over others and was treated as someone very special? And did the little woman and three small children at home fade into nothing once he was back in the sophisticated arena of sophisticated people with sophisticated intellects, who wore sophisticated clothes and could converse with him on his own sophisticated level?
Sophisticated, she repeated to herself for the umpteenth time. That was what Daniel had become—a matured and sophisticated man, while she had stagnated.
She hated herself for letting it happen. And she hated Daniel for forcing her to see her own faults, because that meant she had to shoulder some of the blame for what was happening to them.
Rachel was inexplicably relieved that Daniel’s black BMW was not on the drive when her taxi dropped her off at the house well after six o’clock that evening.
She struggled up the drive with her arms so loaded with carrier bags and parcels that she had to ring the doorbell with her elbow.
‘Good heavens!’ Daniel’s mother exclaimed when she opened the door, a look of complete disbelief on her face as Rachel staggered inside the house. ‘And—good heavens again!’ she repeated when she lifted stunned eyes from the tumble of packages Rachel dropped at their feet and looked—really looked—at Rachel instead.
‘What do you think?’ Rachel quizzed uncertainly.
The Rachel who had left the house only an hour after her husband that morning was not the one now waiting anxiously for her mother-in-law’s opinion.
Gone was the long mass of pale blond hair. It had been cut, ruthlessly cut, and styled to fall in a fine silken bob on a level with her small chin. Her face had been expertly made-up to enhance those good features Rachel did not believe she had. Everything had been kept so cleverly natural that it was almost impossible to tell what the difference was about her eyes and mouth, only that suddenly they leapt out and hit you in a way Jenny found wholly disturbing.
But that wasn’t all. Gone was the baby-blue woollen duffle coat and faded jeans Rachel had gone out in, and in their place was the most exquisitely tailored pure wool coat-dress in a soft and sensual mink colour which followed her slender figure from lightly padded shoulders to the delicate curve of her calf. It fastened on two rows of large brown saucer-type buttons down its revered front, and again in a single row of three along the deep cuffs at her wrists. Her new three-inch-high brown suede ankle boots and purse matched the buttons.
‘I think,’ Jenny Masterson murmured, eventually, ‘that we had better have a stiff drink ready for my son when he gets home.’
Jenny couldn’t know it, but she had given the most satisfying reply Rachel could have wished for. But that was because she was still running on full pistons of defiance, and the longer she had been out today the stronger that defiance had become.
The sitting-room door came flying open and Sammy’s gasped ‘Wow!’ made Rachel grin like an idiot. But if she had worried a little bit about how the children were going to react to this new mother they’d got, then it was a worry wasted.
‘What’s in the parcels?’ he demanded, dismissing the new Rachel as if she was no different from the one he was used to seeing. And within ten minutes the sitting-room floor was littered with half-open packages, and Kate was strutting around in a set of red beads that Rachel had bought on impulse—along with the set of building bricks for Michael, who was now engrossed in tearing up the cardboard box they came in, and a new computer game for Sam, who had already shot off upstairs to try it out—when Daniel walked in.
He stopped and stared. And, with that, the room seemed to come to a shuddering halt as Kate stopped strutting to view his reaction, and his mother stopped trying to tidy up some of the mess to eye him warily while Rachel, caught in the middle of coming to her feet, had to force her suddenly shaky limbs to finish the move, then stood staring at Daniel in a mixture of mutinous defiance and helpless appeal.
It was his mother who broke the spell, bustling forward to scoop Michael up from the carpet, then grab Kate’s hand to hustle them all from the room.
‘Children see and feel more than grown-ups give them credit for,’ Jenny had told Rachel only a few days earlier. No more, just that candid one-liner, but it had been enough. Rachel received the message. The children had obviously been saying things to their grandmother they felt they could not say to their parents.
But at this moment Rachel was not thinking of her children; her attention was turned entirely on Daniel’s perfectly inscrutable expression as he ran his narrowed gaze over her.
As she watched him in growing tension she saw a small smile twist his lips. It jolted her because she recognised it as the same smile he had used on entering the disco all those years ago when they first met—one she read as rueful and cynical—and it had the effect of pushing up her chin and adding a touch of challenge to her expression.
‘Well, well,’ he murmured eventually. ‘Stage two has begun, I see.’
Stage two? Rachel frowned. What was he talking about?
‘Going somewhere nice?’ he asked before she could question him. ‘You’ll have to forgive me, Rachel, but if you did warn me that you’d made plans to go out tonight, they seem to have completely slipped my mind.’
Her frown deepened, and the way he clipped out the ‘nice’ was enough to make her bristle. He was a man who never let anything slip his mind! It was like a bank vault; nothing that went into it got out again without his say-so! He knew damned well she was not going anywhere, so what was he getting at with his cryptic ‘stage twos’, and ‘going somewhere nice’?
And it was obvious he wasn’t going to make a single remark about her new look—the rotter! Perhaps he didn’t like it—perhaps he preferred the boringly plain other version who wasn’t likely to cause him much trouble, the one who knew her place in his well-ordered life and never thought of stepping beyond it!
Or perhaps he wasn’t so sure of this Rachel! she then mused on a growing sense of triumph. Perhaps the enquiry was really genuine and he was wonder
ing if she was going out somewhere!
‘And if I am considering going out, what would you do about it?’ she demanded.
That smile tilted his mouth again and sent a trickle of angry frustration shooting down her spine. ‘I would have to ask you who you are going with, I suppose,’ he drawled, better at this game than she could ever be.
‘So you could vet him—or her—to see if they’re suitable company for your little wife?’
‘Him?’ He grabbed at that and threw it back sharply, sharply enough to make her sting in satisfaction. ‘And just who is—he?’ he demanded softly.
‘I don’t remember your having to inform me of every person you’ve ever gone out with,’ she countered coolly.
His face tightened, grey eyes flashing a brief warning at her before he hooded them again. ‘Humour me,’ he requested. ‘Give me a name—that’s all—a name.’
This was a stupid conversation since she was going absolutely nowhere! she realised suddenly, and sighed, her shoulders slumping inside the soft mink wool. ‘There isn’t a name,’ she muttered, angry at the easy way he had managed totally to deflate her exciting day. Her eyes glittered around the scattered parcels which had now lost all their pleasure. ‘I’m on my way in, not out.’ And one look at this room made it as clear as night followed day that she had just come in from a long day’s shopping spree! Who was he trying to kid with that small frown that suggested he was only just noticing the mad clutter of boxes, bags and tissue-paper?
Daniel moved across the room to the nearest one—a long, flat box which had not yet been delved into by curious fingers—and Rachel took her chance while he was no longer blocking her exit, picked up her new brown suede bag and moved towards the sitting-room door, her mouth set in a thin line of disappointment.
‘What’s in this?’
She shrugged, feeling as petulant as Kate did when she did not get the response she had been anticipating. ‘A suit,’ she answered reluctantly.
‘And this one?’ He nudged another box with a highly polished shoe.
‘Underwear.’ She blushed uncomfortably, because the box was full to overflowing with the most expensive silk underwear Rachel had ever seen.
‘And this?’
‘A couple of new dresses!’ Her eyes flashed resentfully at him. ‘Why?’ she demanded. ‘You aren’t going to read me a lecture on over-spending are you? It was you who gave me all those credit card things! One for every big store in London, I think!’ She had a wallet stuffed with them. They had just taken up space in her purse until today, when she had learned the delights they could offer her.
He ignored that, his expression slightly guarded when he suggested casually enough, ‘A dress worthy of dinner in one of London’s most exclusive restaurants, with maybe a little dancing later?’
She had turned back to the door by this time, but the invitation had her spinning back to stare at him in blank incomprehension. ‘Are you asking me out?’ she queried, with such a blatant lack of guile that Daniel’s smile became ruefully crooked.
‘Yes.’ He nodded, all dry mockery. And Rachel had a feeling that he found her lack of sophistication highly amusing. She flushed heatedly, wishing the world would just open up and swallow her rather than continue to put her through this purgatory. Nothing she could do, it seemed, would ever make her anything more than a silly, gauche fool! ‘Yes, Rachel,’ he repeated more gently, as though reading her discomfort and suddenly sorry for causing it. ‘I am asking you if you would like to dine out with me tonight.’
‘Oh.’ Thoroughly disconcerted, and not sure how to answer him, she was very relieved when Sam came tumbling down the stairs at that moment, like a snowball out of control, to rumble right by her and leap like a jack-rabbit on to his father’s chest.
‘Hi!’ he greeted, smiling into that face which was so like his own. ‘Mum’s got me this great new computer game,’ he went on in an excited rush. ‘Can I bring it down here and try it out on the big TV? It’s a flight simulator and you have to take off and land a Tornado jet!’
‘Why not?’ Daniel agreed, smiling at his son while his eyes never left Rachel. ‘If your grandmother doesn’t mind, that is, since she will be staying here with you while I take your mother out to dinner.’
‘You’re taking Mum out?’ The child sounded as surprised as Rachel had been, which made Daniel grimace. But Sam was already beaming his approval at Rachel. ‘That’s great!’ he announced. ‘Dad taking you out instead of you going on your own like last—’
‘Sam.’ The quiet warning from his father shut him up, and Rachel felt stiff and awkward.
‘Maybe your mother doesn’t want to baby-sit,’ she said uncomfortably, knowing he had only asked her because he felt obliged to after seeing all the trouble she’d gone to to make herself different. ‘She’s been here all day as it is. It isn’t fair to—’
‘I don’t mind,’ another voice chipped in quietly from the hallway. Rachel turned to find his mother and Kate standing there, listening in as if there was no such thing as privacy in this house!
‘That’s not the point!’ Rachel snapped. ‘You’ve been put on quite enough for one day. I—’
‘Take her somewhere nice,’ Jenny said to her son over the top of Rachel’s protests.
Rachel sighed impatiently because she was well aware that she was being thoroughly outmanoeuvred here. ‘I haven’t said I want to go out, as far as I recall!’ she inserted crossly.
‘Of course you want to go!’ Jenny dismissed that argument. ‘So just get upstairs with you—and take all those boxes with you!’ she ordered. ‘Kate—Sammy—help your mother upstairs with some of these,’ she continued briskly, while Rachel heaved a small sigh of surrender because, unless she was prepared to tell all of them why she had no wish to go anywhere with Daniel, she really had no choice.
The children jumped eagerly to their grandmother’s bidding, gathering up parcels and making for the door, leaving Rachel to bring the rest. She was just starting up the stairs when Jenny’s voice drifted towards her, sounding cross and stern. ‘If you ask me, Daniel, this evening out for both of you is well overdue! And it wouldn’t go amiss if you began involving her in your business socialising too!’
Pausing on the stairs, Rachel waited curiously to hear Daniel’s reply to that stern scold, but his voice was pitched too low for her to catch the words.
But Jenny could be heard plainly. ‘Rubbish!’ she snapped. ‘How do you know she’ll hate it when you’ve never given her the chance to find out for herself? The trouble with you, Daniel, is you’ve kept her so wrapped up in cotton wool that she’s never been allowed to discover what she wants out of life!’
Was that what Jenny really thought? Rachel mused curiously. She’d always thought she knew exactly what she wanted out of life—to be a wife and mother. That was all. Nothing fancy. Nothing ambitious or overexciting. Just a wife to the man she loved and a mother to the children she adored.
Was there something wrong with that?
‘And I’ll have my say about something else, while I’m about it,’ Jenny continued brusquely. ‘I don’t know what has been happening here to break that poor child’s heart, but I know her blessed eyes have been opened to something nasty—and I know where the blame for that lies too!’
Rachel felt her heart sink, that horrible feeling of desolation washing over her as it always did when she was reminded of Mandy’s call.
Lights really do go out when your world caves in, she observed sadly.
‘Take my advice, son,’ Jenny was saying, ‘and tread very carefully from now on. Because if Rachel ever…’
Rachel ran. She didn’t want to know what would happen if Rachel ever! What was happening right now to Rachel was more than enough to contend with with-out worrying about what would happen if Rachel ever…!
CHAPTER SIX
IF RACHEL ever—what? she found herself wondering later, while she hovered in Michael’s small bathroom waiting for Daniel to finish in their bedroom so that
she could sneak in there and get ready without having to come face to face with him again.
If Rachel ever found out about his other women? Well, Rachel had already done that.
If Rachel ever decided to grow up? she then pondered cynically, catching a glimpse of her new self in the bathroom mirror and almost doing a double-take because it was like looking at a total stranger!
And just look at you! she told that reflection. Hiding away in here when you don’t even need to use the bathroom! You daren’t bath in case the steam ruins your new hairstyle. You daren’t wash because you aren’t confident enough to re-do your clever make-up. Daniel is taking you out—but only because of some reason of his own which has to hinge on his guilty conscience! And he’s expecting to take out that other person he met downstairs—the same one you’re staring at right now— when really she’s just an illusion! A disguise the real Rachel is trying to hide behind!
She heard a door open and close, then Daniel’s distinctive tread as he made his way back down the stairs. With a deep breath and a harried glance at the woman in the mirror, she let herself out of her hiding place. Over her arm lay one of the new dresses she had bought that day, and she hung it on the wardrobe door, then stood back to harry herself over whether she dared wear it or not.
It was a rather disturbingly sexy thing, made of a dark ruby lace lined in fine black silk. It had a heart-shaped bodice held up by two rather flimsy-looking bootlace straps, and the delicate fabric clung almost lovingly in sensual lacy scollops across the creamy slope of her breasts. It left her arms and shoulders bare—and the best part of her back, she recalled, giving the dress a twitch with her hand to remind herself just how low it dipped at the back. The assistant had seen her uncertain expression when Rachel had realised just how much of her skin it revealed, and had rushed off to come back with a black velvet bolero with long fitted sleeves, a small stand-up collar and two curving front panels, which left the seductive dip of ruby lace between her breasts tantalisingly exposed.
The Ultimate Betrayal Page 7