The Ultimate Betrayal

by Michelle Reid

  ‘We were sharing more than that, Rachel, and you know it,’ he scathed her derision. ‘But it was all just a game with you, wasn’t it? You saw I fancied you and thought you would play me along for a while. What was it?’ he demanded bitterly. ‘Did your ego need a bit of a lift? Has it begun to get to you at last that he gets a bigger kick out of bedding his legal adviser than he does his wife?’

  She hit him then, her hand striking at his cheek while her own face went white with pain. Then she made a grab for the door-handle, her other hand fumbling to unfasten her seatbelt so that she could get away. But Zac grabbed her arm, his fingers biting. ‘Oh, no,’ he muttered. ‘You don’t get away with that so easily.’

  With a tug he pulled her against him, and his mouth came down on top of hers. It was an intrusion—a vile rape of her unresponsive mouth. And by the time he let her go again she was choking on the taste of him.

  Then thankfully she was out of the car, slamming the door shut in his hard angry face.

  He didn’t hang around. He fired the car engine into life, then was driving off on a screech of tyres, leaving her standing there in the biting cold wind, watching his red tail-lights disappear from view.

  She dragged a hand across her mouth, grimacing when she felt the telling sting which said he had managed to cut her inner lip. Damn him! she thought, wishing herself back in that old fairy-tale world she used to exist in, where nothing nasty happened. Damn Mandy for waking her up out of it! she added bitterly as she began the walk home. Damn Daniel for his infidelity and damn Lydia for giving in to his expert seduction! But most of alldamn herself!

  She wasn’t too far away from home, she noted thankfully, but her feet were killing her by the time she hobbled through the front door, and she kicked the offending high heels off as soon as she’d closed the door behind her. It was warm inside, after the biting cold night air.

  One o’clock, she noticed testily as she climbed the stairs. She felt utterly done in; depression sat on the top of her head with a vengeance and the ugly scene with Zac echoed over and over in her mind. She didn’t bother trying to look for Daniel. He could be in hell for all she cared. And anyway, she was in no mood for yet another row tonight. He obviously agreed that they’d done enough of that on the phone because he hadn’t bothered meeting her with the proverbial whip at the front door as she came in.

  But she was wrong if she thought he was going to ignore her completely. She had only managed to strip off her dress and pull on her dressing-gown when he entered the bedroom, her discarded shoes dangling from his fingers.

  ‘You forgot these.’ He dropped them by the closed bedroom door.

  ‘I didn’t forget them,’ she snapped. ‘I just left them where they came off.’ She was sitting on the edge of the bed, massaging her aching toes, her head lowered so that the soft cloud of her hair hid her face from view.

  ‘He didn’t bring you all the way home,’ he remarked with suspicious levity.

  Been spying through cracks in the curtains again? she wondered bitterly. ‘Maybe he didn’t bring me at all,’ was all she said.

  ‘You haven’t had time to walk all that way.’

  I’ve walked far enough! she thought, studying her poor aching feet.

  ‘Have a lovers’ tiff, did you?’ He was getting nasty; she could hear the level of control dropping with each word.

  ‘Something like that,’ she shrugged, getting off the bed and walking towards the bathroom. Let him think what he liked! she thought mutinously. Let him think what he damned well liked.

  His hands grasping hold of her upper arms brought her spinning round to face him. He wasn’t just angry, she noted on a small bubble of alarm, he was furious— tense with it, pulsing with it, eyes like silver beacons.

  ‘And what was this—tiff about?’ he demanded tightly. ‘Wouldn’t you go back to his place with him? Is that it? What’s the matter, Rachel—weren’t you in the mood?’

  Her own eyes flashed, bitterness and a downright disgust with men in general tonight making her retaliate in kind. ‘But how do you know I haven’t been at his place all evening?’ she taunted. ‘I could have rung you just as easily from there, you know. How are you to know the difference?’

  He went white, his fingers biting painfully into her flesh, hard eyes flashing over her face as if he were looking for evidence to prove what she was suggesting could be true. ‘Your lip,’ he growled. ‘He bruised your lip!’

  ‘And you’re bruising my arms!’ she cried. ‘Will you let go?’ She tried to pull away but he just increased his grip until she winced.

  ‘How could you?’ he bit out hoarsely. ‘How could you do it, Rachel? How could you?’

  It was all beginning to boil. It had been threatening to do it for long enough, and at last the full force of their pent-up emotions was beginning to bubble to the surface.

  ‘I tell you what, Daniel,’ she flashed, ‘let’s exchange notes since you’re so damned interested! You tell me how it was with Lydia and I’ll tell you how it was with Zac!’

  ‘God, stop it!’ He closed his eyes, pain raking across his features, and Rachel felt tears of utter wretchedness burn at the back of her eyes. For the second time that night she hit out at a man, hitting him with both her fists until Daniel let her go.

  ‘You disgust me, do you know that?’ she whispered bitterly, and flung herself into the bathroom, her fingers trembling as she slid home the small bolt which was never used.

  When she came out again, calmer but by no means under control, she found Daniel sitting on the bed with his head buried in his hands. It hurt to see him like that. But, there again, everything hurt these days. She couldn’t remember a time when she had last felt like laughing in this house.

  ‘I want to go to bed,’ she said, refusing point-blank to give in to those weaker feelings his defeated pose raked her with.

  He didn’t move, and after a long taut minute while she stood there, hovering between a bitter desire to hit him again and a weak need to run over there and hold him, simply hold him because he was hurting and she loved him—damn her!—loved him no matter what he said or did to her—she felt something go snap inside her, and on a groan that was a wretched cry of frustration she dropped down on her knees in front of him, her hands going up to grasp his wrists angrily, pulling them away from his face.

  ‘Do you really want to know what happened tonight?’ she demanded shrilly. ‘He came on to me but I repulsed him, so he paid me back by taunting me with Lydia!’ The hurt shot across her eyes and Daniel closed his to shut it out. ‘Lydia,’ she repeated thickly. ‘The highpowered lawyer who is far more Daniel Masterson’s type than pathetic little Rachel is!’

  ‘That’s not true,’ he whispered tensely.

  ‘No?’ Tears spread across her eyes, the torture of it all making her heart muscles tremble. ‘Well, I think it’s true,’ she asserted thickly. ‘We’ve grown apart, Daniel! You going one way while I’ve stayed still, and I think the Lydia Marsdens of this world are far more your type now!’

  To her surprise, he laughed, deridingly shaking his dark head as if he couldn’t believe she’d actually said that. ‘Does it look as though I’ve grown apart from you?’ he demanded tightly. ‘Am I straining at the leash to get away? Are my suitcases packed and standing by the door? Hard ruthless bastard that I am, Rachel, don’t you think I’m quite capable of walking away from you if I decided it was what I wanted to do?’ She had no idea how it happened, but suddenly it was Daniel gripping her wrists, not the other way around.

  She shook her head. ‘Lydia,’ she murmured. ‘She’s—’

  ‘To hell with bloody Lydia,’ he dismissed scathingly. ‘This is not about her. This is about you and me and whether we can still stand the sight of each other!’

  ‘Guilty conscience, then!’ she sighed. ‘You stay because of your damned guilty conscience!’

  ‘Well, I certainly have one of those!’ he bitterly agreed. ‘But don’t be foolish enough to grant me concessions where non
e are due,’ he warned. ‘I am no one’s martyr, Rachel. If I believed this marriage of ours a waste of time, I would have walked out long ago. Be sure of it. This is the nineteen-nineties after all,’ he added cynically. ‘Marriages break up all the time. No,’ he murmured roughly, ‘this is why I stay.’ He pulled her towards him to kiss her hard. ‘I want you,’ he growled. ‘I can’t honestly get enough of you! Even after seven years I can still get hot in the groin just looking at you! My God!’ he added harshly. ‘I can’t even stop myself from taking you when I know I can no longer satisfy you.’

  He shook his dark head in self-disgust. ‘But that doesn’t explain why you haven’t thrown me out,’ he went on grimly. ‘How can you, Rachel, having had me hurt you, break your trust, make your life a misery? Why?’ He gave her wrists a hard shake. ‘Why haven’t you told me to get out?’

  ‘I…’ No. She shook her head, refusing to answer, because the answer was so utterly degrading to her already humiliated soul.

  ‘Then would you like to call it a day?’ He altered the challenge slightly. ‘And have me out of your life?’

  Her body jerked in reaction, a harsh stab of pain cutting right through her. ‘No,’ she whispered, feeling the weighted beginning of tears build in her chest.

  ‘Why not?’ he persisted ruthlessly. ‘How do you stand having me living in the same house with you—sleeping in the same bed as you—touching you—holding you— how do you stand it, Rachel? How—how—how?’

  Because I love you, you rotten bastard! she thought, and let the tears break free on a helpless sob.

  Daniel sighed, the sound coming from some deeply wretched part of him, and the next thing she knew he had freed her captured wrists to wrap his arms around her and he was falling back, taking her with him, his body covering her, curling around her and holding her, holding her so tight and so close she could barely breathe.

  ‘Does this feel as though we’ve grown apart?’ he demanded sensually.

  ‘No.’ This felt wonderful, the only place in the world she wanted to be.

  ‘Then shut up about us growing apart,’ he said thickly, then kissed her, long and fiercely, giving her no chance to think, no chance to recover, but just governing her every thought and feeling until she began to sink languidly into the warm morass of his loving.

  ‘Did you let that bastard touch you, Rachel?’ The rough-voiced enquiry brought her swimming protestingly up from the wonderful place she had sunk to.

  Her eyes flicked open, furious blue staring into tortured grey, searching, half refusing to believe that he had actually asked her that question.

  But he had. ‘Did you?’ he persisted when she said nothing. ‘I want to know—I need to know! God,’ he choked, ‘I have to know!’

  She stared at him for a moment longer, then bared her angry teeth to say, ‘Go to hell.’

  He did, it seemed, she realised later, go straight to hell, but he made sure he took her with him. It happened with an angry passion that had him wrenching open her robe then releasing himself from his own clothes so he could thrust inside her with such appalling ruthlessness that she didn’t think she took a single breath until it was all over.

  Then she rolled away on to her own side of the bed and Daniel went into the bathroom and shut the door.

  He stayed in there a long time. Long enough to let her crawl beneath the duvet and be asleep by the time he came back.

  The next evening, the telephone began ringing just as she was clearing away the children’s evening meal. She walked towards the hall extension and picked it up, frowning in annoyance because the children had the TV on too loud.

  ‘Rachel Masterson,’ she murmured absently into the receiver, stretching the telephone cable to its limits in her effort to reach the sitting-room door so that she could pull it to.

  There was a pause on the other end of the line, then a cool voice asked to speak to Daniel.

  ‘I’m afraid he isn’t home yet,’ she answered. ‘Can I take a message or get him to call you back?’

  Another pause while the caller deliberated with herself, and Rachel looked distractedly at the time. She had a pair of steaks under the grill; if the woman didn’t hurry up, she—

  ‘This is Lydia Marsden,’ the cool voice explained, and Rachel went absolutely still.

  CHAPTER NINE

  RACHEL was still staring at the telephone where she had placed it very carefully back on its rest when Daniel came home a few moments later. He saw her as soon as he got in the door—and stopped dead in his tracks.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked sharply, seeing at a glance that she was suffering some kind of shock.

  Her hand lifted to her cheek, ice-cold fingers resting on equally cold flesh. ‘Lydia just called,’ she told him blankly. ‘She wants you to call her back.’

  As she continued to stare at him, wondering if she was just going to faint quietly away or go the whole hog and fall apart at the very seams, she saw Daniel’s face suffuse with hot colour, watched his chest lift and fall on a single throbbing breath as emotion, the like of which she had never seen him display before, threatened to explode right over her bemused head.

  His mouth tightened and lost all vestige of colour, his nostrils flaring like a wild animal threatening attack. He dropped his briefcase to the floor, sucking in another breath through teeth so tightly clenched that the air whistled as it was pulled into his heaving lungs.

  Then he moved to a paralysed Rachel, taking hold of her to move her bodily out of the way so that he could get to his study. The door slammed shut behind him. Rachel stood staring at it, wondering just what had taken place here in her hallway—besides the holocaust happening inside herself, that was.

  The mere mention of Lydia’s name could bring on a reaction like that? Have him bodily shifting her aside like that?

  She choked on a strangled sob, then quite ruthlessly controlled herself, refusing to give in to what was going on inside her.

  Lydia had called, and Daniel had run like a man possessed!

  She was nursing Michael in the sitting-room when Daniel came looking for her. He looked pale, and, although most of that terrible emotion had diminished, she could still see the residue glimmering in his eyes. Kate ran to him for her customary hug but only received a token stroke of her golden head. Sam waved a leghe was stretched out in front of the TV, engrossed in an old black and white movie. Michael was tired, and only fit to give his father a concessionary glance before sinking himself back into the pleasure of being held in his mother’s arms.

  Daniel was looking fixedly at Rachel. ‘I apologise,’ he said roughly. ‘She’s been told never to ring here.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Of course it bloody matters!’ he barked, and in unison the children turned to stare at him in surprise. He ran an impatient hand through his hair, sighing in an effort to control himself. ‘Sammy—Kate. Play with Michael for a moment while I talk to your mother.’

  Without waiting for any arguments, he plucked a complaining Michael out of Rachel’s arms and sat him between Sam’s legs on the floor, gathered together a selection of toys around them, then smiled at all three in what Rachel assumed to be an attempt at reassurance since they were all staring warily at him.

  Then he turned and grasped Rachel’s hand, pulling her to her feet and through to his study, only letting go of her when they were safely shut behind the closed door.

  ‘She’s been told never to call here,’ he repeated tautly. ‘She was told to get the damned cleaner to call me if it was that urgent! But never to do it herself!’

  ‘As I said, it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘But it does matter!’ he exploded with rasping ferocity. ‘She hurt you just now—and I was determined that was not going to happen!’

  ‘Then you should have…’ She bit back the accusing words wanting to tumble from her lips and, with a small shrug, moved jerkily to his desk, finding his scattered papers in sudden need of tidying. ‘How is it that she still works for y
ou?’ she questioned tightly. ‘If you say it’s over.’ It had been a bitter blow that, finding out that Lydia still worked for him.

  ‘She doesn’t work for me,’ he said tightly. ‘She works for the firm of lawyers I employ,’ he explained at her puzzled look. ‘I had all my business transferred to one of her partners weeks ago.’

  She didn’t believe him. She could still see the expression on his face when she had told him Lydia rang. She could still feel the way he had moved her roughly to one side.

  She shuddered. ‘Then what is she doing calling here?’ she asked.

  Daniel took in a short breath, still struggling, she was sure, with the emotions Lydia’s call caused to erupt. ‘She happened to be the last in their suite of offices when some urgent information came through by fax,’ he explained. ‘It was important enough to necessitate someone informing me as soon as possible. And she was the only person there to do it!’

  ‘Oh.’ That was all Rachel could think of to say to that. ‘Well, just make sure she never calls here again,’ she added flatly, and in a tone which decidedly closed the subject.

  But the uncomfortable silence that followed warned her there was more to come.

  She was right. ‘The thing is,’ he began carefully, ‘it means I have to go out again, almost immediately. A legal problem has developed with the Huddersfield takeover and I have to go back to the office to sort it out personally.’

  The Harvey take-over, the Huddersfield take-over— what was the difference? ‘Of course you do,’ she agreed, with such acid understanding that it was like a slap in the face. ‘And I have to put the children to bed.’

  Pushing past him, she went to leave the room.

  But Daniel stopped her. ‘No.’ Grabbing hold of her, he brought her to stand in front of him. ‘I’m going to my own office, Rachel.’ His eyes were a cool, steady, honest grey. ‘Not Lydia’s office. She has already faxed me the information I need—to my own office,’ he emphasised clearly. ‘I won’t see her. I don’t want to see her. We will have the full width of London between us—do you understand?’