So, did she wear it? she wondered pensively. Or did she revert to the black dress hanging in the wardrobe that she usually wore when she went out with Daniel?
Kate slipped into the bedroom, looking all rosy pink and smelling of talcum powder. She came to stand beside Rachel, her blue eyes widening on the new dress.
‘Is that what you’re going to wear?’ she asked in soft awe.
‘I don’t know,’ Rachel answered uncertainly. ‘Maybe—maybe I should just fall back on my black dress…’ Her hand went to draw the other dress from the wardrobe when Kate stopped her.
‘But you can’t wear that!’ she exclaimed, sounding horrified. ‘Daddy is all dressed up in his penguin suit and bow tie! He looks fantastic!’
Rachel’s lips twitched; obviously Kate’s fantastic’ daddy deserved something better than the black dress.
‘That old black thing is boring, anyway,’ her daughter added.
Boring, Rachel repeated to herself. Now there’s a word she had become very familiar with over the last few weeks. ‘Then the red it is,’ she drily agreed. The old Rachel was boring; this new one was determined not to be! ‘Now you go and help Grandma with Michael while I get myself ready.’ She dropped a kiss on her daughter’s cheek then watched her scamper off—eager, it seemed to Rachel, to be as much help as she could to see her parents go out and enjoy themselves.
Well…she thought a trifle breathlessly as she paused outside the sitting-room door. She had been suitably drooled over by all those in the kitchen playing snap. All she had to do now was steady her stuttering heart and go and face the real expert!
Kate was right, she observed as she slipped quietly into the room, Daniel did look fantastic in his black dinner-jacket. But it was more than just the superb cut of the cloth. It was the man inside it that made all the difference. There was an air of maturity and sophistication about him which only seemed to increase that innate sex-appeal he had always possessed. He was over by the drinks tray, his face turned away from her as he poured himself a simple tonic water. He hadn’t realised she’d come into the room yet, and Rachel was glad because it gave her a few moments to steady the effect he had on her senses. His thick dark hair was as neat and semi-casual as it always was, neither too short nor too long, fashionable or old-fashioned. But then, that spoke a lot about his character. Daniel had always stamped his impact on people with a clever balance between the conventional and the unconventional. A man of superconfidence—underplayed. And intimidating for it, because there was so much of the real person he liked to keep hidden.
He was intimidating her now as she stood there nervously fingering the lip of her black velvet bolero. He had never used to make her feel like this—in fact, she had never used to think of Daniel as anything but the man she loved. And it was yet another first she had to contend with, that she could actually feel overawed by a man she had lived and slept with for seven years of her life.
He was a stranger to her, she realised with a painful start. A stranger living beneath an umbrella of close intimacy. Had it always been like that? she wondered. Then she went cold inside as the answer came back to her, clear and cruel in its honesty. Yes, it had always been like that. Daniel was the stranger she had loved blindly, married blindly, and lived with blindly for seven whole years.
Was he aware that she didn’t know him, really know him, for the man he was out there beyond these cloistered walls? And if he did know, did it matter to him much? Or had he been quite content to live the dual life of family man and dynamic tycoon where one role did not intrude on the other?
He turned then and saw her standing there, and her heart gave another painful twist as she watched him narrow his eyes so that she could not read their expression as he ran them slowly over her.
He hides away from me, she realised. He does it all the time. Even now, as he ran his gaze from the top of her gleaming new hairstyle and her perfectly made-up face which did so much to enhance all those beautiful features even Rachel herself was not aware she possessed, he revealed nothing of himself. The dress was different, far more sophisticated than anything she had ever worn before. It accentuated her slender figure, the long graceful line of her legs. Daniel took it all in without showing a single hint of what he was thinking behind his urbane mask.
Then, without any warning, his lashes flickered, and there was a flash of emotion before he had severely dismissed it again.
Hurt. It startled her because she was sure she saw hurt in that expression then! But why should he be hurting because his wife was standing here dressed up to go out with him?
Or maybe it wasn’t hurt, but guilty conscience which caused that spasm. What was it his mother had said? ‘You’ve kept her so wrapped up in cotton wool.’ And that must have hit him on the raw, just as looking at her standing here like this, different, yet still the same Rachel inside, was hitting his conscience, because he must know she would never have gone to these extremes to make herself different if he had not made her feel so damned uncertain of the person she had always believed herself to be!
‘Drink before we go?’ he asked.
He wasn’t going to comment. She felt like a balloon slowly deflating from a central prick with a pin. ‘Nothank you,’ she refused, damning her voice for sounding husky. ‘Did…did you manage to reserve a table somewhere?’
His twisted smile seemed to mock her for some reason. ‘I managed,’ he said. ‘Shall we go then?’
Oh, let’s not bother! Rachel thought with silent resentment as she turned to walk out of the sitting-room door.
She sat stiffly beside him, watching his long fingers control the car as the BMW accelerated towards London. She rarely rode in this car because when they went out together it was usually as a family, and since it was her white Escort which had been fitted out with all the correct safety gear to take the children, that was the one they usually used. So she felt strange riding in the BMW—strange with everything, she acknowledged heavily, even herself.
‘Where are we going?’ she asked with little enthusiasm.
She felt his glance brush her and looked round at him in time to see his jaw tighten as he turned back to the road. He named a club-cum-restaurant that made her skin prickle with alarm. It was one of those well-known places which the rich and famous generally frequented. She’d always believed you needed a celebrity status to get into places like it. The fact that Daniel was tossing off the name as though it were nothing increased her mood of discomfort.
‘The food’s good,’ he was saying casually. ‘Good enough to tempt even the frailest appetites…’
Was that meant for her? It could have been, she conceded. She was well aware that her appetite had been sadly missing recently. But then food was a problem to swallow when you lived with a permanent lump in your throat.
‘You’ve been there before, then,’ she surmised.
‘Once or twice.’
With Lydia? She could not stop the thought from coming and, once there, it left her quiet and even more subdued for the rest of the journey.
If Daniel noticed he didn’t bother remarking on it, his own mood not much better than her own as he guided her into the foyer, where clever lighting enhanced the luxury of their surroundings.
‘Good evening, Mr Masterson.’ A short rotund man with a bald head and dark French eyes appeared like magic in front of them. He bowed politely to Rachel, who smiled jerkily in return.
‘Good evening, Claude,’ Daniel was saying in a familiar way which made Rachel grimace. ‘Good of you to fit us in at such short notice.’
Claude gave a typically European shrug. ‘You know how it is sir. Some people you always have room for. This way, please…’
Daniel’s hand came to her waist, his fingers settling in an intimate curve of her ribcage as he propelled her forwards. Trying not to look awed by the elegance of her surroundings, she looked around her as Claude took them through to a restaurant that was nothing like any restaurant she had ever been in before.
&nb
sp; On the other occasions when Daniel had taken her out it had usually been to one of the local places, Indian or Chinese or Italian, where he could wear a pair of his casual trousers and a polo shirt under his sports jacket, and she could wear something equally casual. They would lounge in their seats and share a meal and a bottle of wine with the relaxed intimacy of two people who felt comfortable in each other’s company. But here Rachel could not imagine daring to lounge in her seat. Just as she couldn’t imagine Daniel pinching a prawn off her plate if the mood took him, or herself leaning across the table to feed one to him, because she knew his insatiable love of prawns meant he would suck it greedily from her fingers.
The mood here did not encourage that kind of relaxed intimacy. In fact, she realised as the awe wore off to be replaced with something closely resembling contempt, she thought the place rather lacked atmosphere of any kind but the We-eat-here-because-it-is-fashionable-toeat-here kind.
‘You don’t like it.’ She glanced up to find Daniel watching her expression.
‘It all looks very—nice,’ she replied.
‘Nice,’ Daniel huffed out sardonically. ‘This happens to be one of the finest restaurants in London, and you call it—nice.’
‘I’m sorry.’ She looked at him. ‘Am I supposed to be suitably impressed?’
‘No.’ That nerve twitched in his jaw.
‘Or maybe I’m supposed to be impressed with your ability to get in here at short notice?’ she suggested. ‘Be careful, Daniel,’ she drawled, ‘or I might even begin to suspect that you’re trying to impress me.’
‘And that is just too ridiculous to contemplate, is it?’
She thought about that, her gaze drifting among the other tables where people sat in their elegant clothes with their elegant faces wearing elegant expressions. Then she looked back at Daniel.
‘Frankly, yes,’ she replied, her mouth taking on a selfderisive slant. ‘I thought we both knew that you’ve never had to do anything to impress me.’
He sighed impatiently. ‘Rachel. I didn’t bring you here to argue with you. I only wanted to—’
‘Give me a special treat?’ she suggested sardonically.
‘No!’ he denied. ‘I wanted to please you—please you!’ he repeated with a bitter-soft ferocity.
‘By showing how your other half lives?’ she mocked.
‘My other half?’ He looked genuinely nonplussed. ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’
‘The other you I know nothing about,’ she shrugged, adding heavily to herself, The Daniel who’s grown stronger while the other one has been slowly fading away before my very eyes without my noticing it. ‘The one who feels perfectly at ease in places like this.’
His grey eyes flashed her an impatient look. ‘Would you rather we had gone to the local Chinese dressed like this?’ he derided. ‘You went to a lot of trouble today to create your new image, Rachel. This—’ his gaze flicked briefly around their surroundings ‘—suits the new image. It’s up to you to decide whether you prefer it or not.’
Not, she thought, then grimaced when her heart gave a dull thump in acknowledgement of what that answer meant. This was not her, dressed for the part or not. But it was so obviously Daniel that she wanted to weep. Had they anything in common left worth hanging on to?
‘And do you prefer it?’ she asked him curiously. ‘The new image?’ she enlightened his puzzled frown.
He sat back in his seat, his eyes wearing an odd expression as they ran over her. ‘I like the new hairstyle,’ he admitted after a moment, ‘but I’m not sure I like your reasons for doing it. I like the dress,’ he went on, before she could respond. ‘It’s beautiful—as you probably well know—but I don’t like what it does to the woman I—’
A waiter appeared at her side, effectively cutting Daniel off mid-word as he placed a glass of something cool and clear in front of Rachel then offered the same to Daniel. ‘Your menus, sir,’ he murmured, opening the dark green leather-backed menus and presenting them with one each.
‘Thank you,’ Daniel said, abruptly dismissing the man with a curt flick of a finger. The waiter bowed politely, then left them.
‘You were very short with him,’ Rachel censured. ‘What did he do to make you behave so rudely?’
‘He interrupted me while I was trying to compliment you.’
She sent him a deriding look. ‘If you call those compliments, Daniel, then I’m certainly not impressed with your style!’
He grimaced ruefully. ‘All right,’ he conceded, ‘so I’m finding it difficult to come to terms with the new you. Rachel—’ he leaned forward suddenly, his gaze urgent as he took hold of one of her hands ‘—you’re beautiful, you don’t need me to tell you that—’
Don’t I? she questioned wryly.
‘But don’t—please don’t lose the lovely person you were before in your effort to prove something to me!’
‘I didn’t do this for you, Daniel,’ she informed him coldly. ‘I did it for myself. It was time, after all,’ she added bleakly, ‘that I grew up.’
‘Oh, no, darling,’ he murmured thickly, ‘you’re so wrong! I—’
‘Well, Daniel Masterson, as I live and breathe!’ a smoothly sardonic voice drawled.
‘Damn!’ Daniel muttered, his grip tightening on Rachel’s hand before he let go of her abruptly, schooled his expression into a fascinatingly bland mask, then looked up into the face of their intruder.
‘Zac,’ he acknowledged, coming smoothly to his feet. ‘I thought you were in the States.’
He stepped from behind their table to shake the other man’s hand, and Rachel glanced up to find herself gazing into the attractive face of a man around Daniel’s age. He was rake-thin and blond, with a pair of bright green eyes that appeared sharp enough to cut armour-plating if he wanted them to.
‘Been back several weeks now,’ he replied. ‘It’s you who seem to have been out of circulation recently…’ His glance swept curiously down towards Rachel—then darkened with pure male interest. ‘Could this beautiful creature be the reason why?’ he mused softly. Then, boldly to Daniel, ‘So what happened to the lovely L—?’
‘My wife,’ Daniel cut in, editing out whatever the other man had been going to say—but not before Rachel had added the last word for herself. ‘Rachel.’ With what seemed to her a very reluctant move, he shifted to one side to place her in full view of the newcomer. ‘This is Zac Callum. We use the same legal firm,’ he concluded tautly.’
Zac Callum threw Daniel a sharply speculative look. ‘Don’t we just?’ Rachel thought she heard him murmur beneath his breath as he stepped by Daniel’s stiff frame to hold out his hand to her.
But she was too busy repeating his name to herself to find time to wonder what that soft remark could mean, because the name she knew. He was the political cartoonist for the Sunday Globe, and cruelly witty he was too. He had an unerring ability to latch on to people’s weak points and use them to turn even the most prominent person into a laughing stock, which also made him quite a TV celebrity. He tended to turn up on quiz shows and the like, adding a bit of wicked spice to the proceedings.
‘No wonder Daniel has been noticeable for his absence over the last few weeks,’ he murmured as Rachel placed her hand in his. Long, incredibly slender fingers closed over hers. ‘A wife,’ he added softly. ‘Your taste has certainly improved, Daniel.’
He means Lydia, Rachel thought wretchedly. ‘Thank you,’ she said, answering for Daniel. He looked so tense that she had a suspicion he wouldn’t be able to speak even if he wanted to. ‘I—I’ve heard of you, Mr Callum,’ she told him shyly. ‘I enjoy your work.’
‘A fan?’ His eyes began to glint with humour. ‘Tell me more…’ Gripping the back of a vacant chair, he went to pull it out from beneath the table.
‘Zac, darling—aren’t you forgetting something?’ a wry voice intruded.
Pulling a rueful face exclusively for Rachel’s benefit, he straightened, then turned towards the woman standing ju
st behind him. ‘Sorry,’ he apologised. ‘But you must understand, this is a moment to be savoured. This man, of all men, surrendering to the wedded trap.’ His sigh was explicit, as was the taunting expression he turned on Daniel. ‘Claire.’ Placing a hand around his companion’s slender waist, he drew her forward. ‘This is Daniel Masterson of whom you no doubt have already heard.’
‘Who hasn’t?’ she said drily. ‘We all waited with bated breath for the outcome of the Harvey bid.’
The Harvey bid. Rachel lowered her eyes, wondering if she was the only person in the world who didn’t know just how important the Harvey thing had been.
‘Nice to meet you,’ Claire was saying, while Daniel only acknowledged her with a slight impression of a smile. His hard gaze was fixed on Zac Callum, who was still eyeing Rachel with undiluted interest.
‘We would ask you to join us, but we’ve already ordered,’ Daniel lied. ‘And…’ He left the rest unsaid, but it was obvious to all of them Daniel did not want them intruding.
‘Don’t worry.’ Zac laughed—a pleasant, huskily teasing sound. ‘We have no wish to gate-crash on newlyweds.’
At last Daniel opened his mouth to contest the mistake—then caught Rachel’s gaze and was silenced.
Don’t, her eyes pleaded with him. Don’t tell them the truth! He knows about Lydia. Don’t put me up for ridicule by telling them you’ve had a wife for seven years and children for six when he obviously knows about your mistress!
Grimly he looked down and away, his mouth thinning even more in angry frustration with the whole unwanted scene.
Which only made her feel worse, so out of her depth here that she wanted to run away and hide—hide in choking humiliation.
The Ultimate Betrayal Page 8