by Penny Jordan
‘Are you saying that’s what happened to Hazard? Something so traumatic…’
‘I’ve already said more than enough,’ Richard told her. ‘Think very hard before you commit yourself to him, Susannah, because breaking down those barriers won’t be easy.’
‘I’ll find a way,’ she told him, and in her naïveté she foolishly believed it would be that simple; that she only had to be determined and strong enough, and Hazard would voluntarily put aside his defences.
They had been talking for so long that the restaurant was virtually empty. It was cold outside, and Susannah was glad to get into the warmth of Richard’s car.
‘Very county,’ she teased him, noting that he had changed his saloon for a larger estate model, complete with dog-grille in the back.
Richard grinned at her a little shamefacedly, ‘You know, for years I’ve fought to stay what I was essentially before I married Caroline—a working newspaper man—but now…’ He shook his head self-mockingly. ‘It’s been less than a month, and already I feel like a country hick in London, and what’s more, I hate this city. I’ve seen more of the kids in recent weeks than I’ve seen of them in as many years. If someone had told me how content I’d be with my life now, I’d have denied it. What I’m trying to tell you, Susannah, is that all of us have within us the capacity for change; none of us knows ourself quite as well as we think.’
‘You mean, the leopard can change its spots?’ Susannah asked drily.
‘Perhaps, given the right incentive.’
They were outside her flat now and, as he stopped the car, he leaned across her and planted an elder-brotherly kiss on her cheek.
‘I’ll give you one piece of encouragement. Mac prefers his executives to be married. He says it’s because it steadies them down. Ties them down is probably closer to the truth! A man with a mortgage and a family isn’t as likely to give up his job as one who’s completely free.’
‘Thanks,’ Susannah responded waspishly. ‘If my relationship with Hazard ever gets that far, the last thing I want is to be married because Mac approves.’
Richard laughed at her. ‘And Hazard is the last man to allow himself to be manoeuvred in such a way. I’d better go. I promised I’d give Caro a ring when I got in.’
Impulsively, Susannah reached out and hugged him. ‘Thanks!’
He wasn’t old enough to be a substitute father, but she felt a welling of warm affection towards him that had something of the emotion she suspected she might have felt for her long dead male parent.
‘It won’t be easy,’ he warned her. ‘Sometimes you’re going to think that you’re the one doing all the giving, and you will be; people are like that when their feelings have been brutalised the way Hazard’s have. Be patient, Susannah!’
It was frustrating to have so much hinted at and yet have it remain a mystery. What was it that lay in Hazard’s past that he refused to talk about?
There was only one way she was going to find out, she recognised. As she unlocked the door to her flat, she wished that he was with her. She badly needed the reassurance of his physical presence. If only he was here to take her in his arms and sweep away all her doubts!
It was gone twelve; she might as well go to bed. Where was Hazard now? What was he doing?
Someone knocked at her door and her heart leapt. The joy that stormed through her as she opened it and saw Hazard standing there just couldn’t be expressed. She wanted to run to him and fling her arms round him, but the shock of seeing him there, when she had believed he was still in New York, held her tongue-tied and motionless.
‘So it’s all over between you and your married lover, is it?’ he said harshly, through gritted teeth, striding into the flat and slamming the door behind him.
His face was contorted and dark with rage, and now that the spell of his unexpected appearance had been broken by the fury in his voice, Susannah could see that he looked tired and drawn.
‘You couldn’t wait to run to him could you? You couldn’t wait to be back in his arms! Have you no conscience? No thought for the destructive misery you’re causing? Do his wife and family really count for so little?’
‘Hazard…’ she broke in, shocked.
‘Cut out the acting,’ he demanded bitterly. ‘It won’t do any good. I saw you with my own eyes in his car. You two-timing little bitch… You really tried to play me for a fool, didn’t you?’
‘Hazard, what are you talking about?’ Her head was spinning, her body weak with shock and dismay.
‘You know damn well what I’m talking about. Your affair with Richard! The moment Caroline told me that she was concerned for her marriage, I guessed what was happening. After all, it isn’t anything out of the ordinary, is it? The keen young assistant, the experienced older man. I don’t suppose you ever gave a single thought for his wife and family. They just didn’t matter, did they?’
‘You…you think I’m having an affair with Richard?’
Susannah was standing up, and she had to grab hold of the back of the chair to prevent herself from collapsing with shock.
‘No, I don’t think it, I know it!’ Hazard shot back at her. ‘I’ve just seen the two of you outside in his car. God, you couldn’t wait, could you? The moment my back was turned. A pretty fool you must think me! All those soft protestations, all that remorse, and all the time—’ He looked at her with hard eyes. ‘I suppose you even guessed what I was trying to do?’
‘Trying to do?’ Susannah felt as though she had walked into a nightmare. She had no idea why on earth Hazard should think she was having an affair with Richard. She was trying to tell him as much, but, every time she tried, he shouted her down with some fresh piece of invective.
‘Oh, come on, don’t play the innocent! You obviously guessed I was trying to break the two of you up by pretending I wanted you myself.’
An awful coldness seized her, chilling her to the bone. She stood like a statue, barely able to even breathe. Her lungs felt congested, her heart an icy lump of pain lodged somewhere deep inside her.
She saw Hazard frown, observing it as though it was something remote and unconnected with her own pain.
‘You can cut out the injured innocent act. We both know it means nothing.’
She didn’t hear him. Her thought processes, frozen along with the rest of her senses, came slowly to life. ‘What do you mean, pretending you want me?’
Her voice seemed to come from a distance, as though someone else had spoken. She looked at him with pain-shadowed eyes, her mouth stiff with the agony she was trying to control.
‘Oh, come on! The farce is over, Susannah. You know quite well what I mean.’
‘No… No, I’m afraid I don’t.’
An odd expression rippled across his hard face, doubt flickering momentarily in his eyes, and then they too hardened, cold and hostile as they surveyed her agonised pallor.
‘You’re having an affair with Richard,’ he told her contemptuously. ‘When Caroline pleaded with me to take the job Mac was offering me, she told me that her marriage depended on it. Caroline is the closest thing I have to a sister. She’s never asked me for anything before—not anything!’
Susannah closed her eyes and tried to think rationally, while her emotions cried out to her for something to take away the pain. How could she think while she felt like this? How could she do anything other than submit to the agony his words were inflicting?
‘Caroline told you that Richard and I were having an affair?’ She couldn’t believe it.
‘Not in so many words. She didn’t need to. When she told me that she was having marital problems, I knew immediately there must be another woman involved. It didn’t take much intelligence to work out that you must be the woman. When I saw them before I took over from him, Richard couldn’t stop himself from singing your praises.’
‘And…when you saw me…at the party, you knew who I was?’
‘Not immediately, but when you started talking about your married lover, I started to
suspect.’
It was all a nightmare. It had to be! She wanted to tell him that he was wrong, but pain burned in her chest, making it almost impossible for her to speak.
‘And you were determined to come between me and Richard right from the start?’
‘I was determined to break you up, whatever it took, yes,’ he told her uncompromisingly.
‘And…and last weekend…everything you said to me then…that was all a…a pretence?’
His lashes dropped, shadows slanting over harsh cheekbones as he turned slightly away from her. ‘You seemed to be attracted to me.’ He shrugged, and the smile he gave her wasn’t a pleasant one. ‘I thought it was a good opportunity to pretend that I was equally attracted to you and detach you from Richard, but it seems you were even more devious than I thought. Tell me something,’ he demanded, taking hold of her and shaking her savagely, ‘did you tell him how close we came to making love?’
This couldn’t be happening, but it was, and Susannah was too overwhelmed by the shock of it to defend herself. Besides, what did it matter? Hazard cared nothing for her; he had just told her so.
‘Well, did you…?’
Did she what? She stared up at him with bruised, shocked eyes.
‘God! Even now you can’t stop putting on the injured innocent air, can you?’ he breathed bitterly. ‘Do you know, there were moments last weekend when you almost had me convinced that I was practically the first man ever to have touched you… What will it take to make you give him up?’ he demanded abruptly. ‘How much?’
The pain inside her body couldn’t be contained. Her throat was too taut to give voice to anything more than a small, searing moan.
‘Perhaps I’m going about this the wrong way. Perhaps it would be easier to make him give you up. What would it take, I wonder?’ His eyes darkened mercilessly. ‘I wonder how he’d feel about the thought of you making love with another man. With me, for instance?’
Somewhere deep inside Susannah a scream of denial built up, but it couldn’t be voiced. She had gone beyond that, retreated somewhere where no more pain could touch her. She felt Hazard pick her up, and knew he intended to make good his threat. Her body was limp and unmoving in his arms, her eyes dark, empty pools of nothing as he laid her on the small single bed.
‘How will he like the sight of your body bearing the signs of another man’s caresses?’ Hazard muttered furiously, looming over her.
His hands were on the zip of her dress, tugging it downwards. Susannah shivered as she felt the cold air brush her skin.
‘Tell me you’ll give him up.’
She closed her eyes and turned her head, knowing there was nothing she could say. It would be the final terrible destruction of what she had believed there was between them; the ultimate blasphemy, a parody of what their lovemaking should have been. Deep down inside her soul, a tiny part of her wanted him to make her hate him, and so she didn’t resist as his hands found her skin and slid away the protection of her clothes.
‘Give me your word that you’ll give him up, and I’ll stop this right now.’
Her word. He demanded her word, when she had been prepared to give him so much more?
Let him do what he liked, she no longer cared.
She kept her head averted and heard him mutter savagely, ‘So cold and remote, but you weren’t like this the other night, were you? Shall I make you burn for me like that again, Susannah? Shall I make you cry out for my hands, my body?’
She felt his breath against her skin and tensed, but he didn’t touch her mouth. Instead, his lips feathered across the satin smoothness of her shoulder, his fingers stroking softly against her skin.
‘One way or another, I’ll make you give him up, you know that, don’t you?’ he threatened softly.
She heard the words, and yet they meant nothing. Her frozen flesh lay dormant beneath his touch. She felt the stillness invade his body, and didn’t resist the hand that turned her face towards his own so that he could look into her eyes.
His glittered beneath the thick darkness of his lashes. She could feel the heat of his rage, but it meant nothing to her. Her eyes mirrored the frozen stillness of her body.
‘Say something, damn you!’
He seemed to know exactly how to coax her vulnerable flesh into arousal. Her mind writhed back from the humiliation he was enforcing. She closed her eyes against the sight of his dark head against her breasts, of his hands splayed out across the quivering swell of her stomach.
‘After tonight, no matter who touches you, you’re always going to remember this,’ he told her thickly, his eyes glittering up at her as his hands roamed her body with insolent possession.
If she hadn’t loved him, it wouldn’t be like this; it was her love for him that made her weak, just as it was his hatred of her that made him strong. Hatred must be just as powerful a stimulant as love, Susannah decided brokenly, feeling the hardening of his body against her, shocked by his arousal when she knew how much he despised her. It was so hard to stem the swell of feeling building inside her; so very, very hard to maintain the tense stillness of her body, when every nerve-ending wanted to respond openly to his touch.
‘Such self-control!’ he marvelled tauntingly. ‘I wonder what it will take to break it? And I shall break it, Susannah. I shall break it, and hear you cry out my name. And the next time you go to your lover, it will be me you remember!’
He’d do anything to break up her relationship with Richard, he had said. Her body quivered and Susannah saw him smile.
‘See, you can’t fight me for ever. You’re too sensual…too aware.’
Her frail control broke under the invasive stroke of his tongue. She heard herself cry out and reach for him, wanting him deep within her, but already he was moving away. Abruptly he stood up, looking down into her vulnerable face, and then very slowly he bent and picked up her dress and threw it to her.
‘Break off your relationship with Richard, otherwise I’ll make sure he knows not just about last weekend, but about this as well. And, believe me, I shan’t miss out on a single detail!’
He hated her so much?
‘Nothing to say?’
She couldn’t speak at all. Some sort of temporary paralysis seemed to have attacked her vocal cords.
‘You’ve got until the weekend to break off with him,’ he told her curtly. ‘I’m going now. Sweet dreams.’
* * *
How long she simply sat there, clutching her dress, Susannah never knew. Time seemed to pass, but she wasn’t really aware of it. She heard clocks chime, but the sound only impinged faintly on her bruised mind. She knew she was cold, but she made no attempt to cover herself. She knew she was hurt, but she made no attempt to stifle the pain. Some sort of blankness seemed to have come over her; some sort of semi-comatose state that mercifully distanced her from anything approaching reality.
Outside the windows of her flat, the city started to come to life. Her alarm went off, and she stared at it as though she had never seen it before. No sense of urgency to get dressed and go to work possessed her; no sense of anything other than the containment of the dreadful pain she knew lay somewhere, waiting for her.
Time passed. Her phone rang. She heard it, but didn’t move. An awareness that there were things she ought to do touched her vaguely and then disappeared, but she was so cold that she pulled on her dressing-gown, almost absent-mindedly.
Towards lunch time, she heard the doorbell’s peal. She looked numbly in the direction of the sound, but didn’t move.
Some time later, she heard the outer door open. High-heeled feet tapped their way impatiently to her room. The door was pushed open, and Mamie stood on the threshold, irritation giving way to shocked concern as she looked at the girl on the bed.
‘Susannah…’
Unfocusing, pained eyes turned towards her.
‘Oh, my God, what’s happened?’
Suddenly Susannah’s mind snapped back to reality. There was no way she could tell Mamie the t
ruth. A need to protect herself overcame her mental agony, a fierce, driving need to conceal from curious eyes all that had happened. This was a pain that couldn’t be shared, not with anyone.
‘Susannah, what’s going on? I went to collect you for lunch, and they told me at the magazine that you hadn’t been in. Are you ill?’
Her gaze took in the rumpled bed, and Susannah’s frozen pose.
‘Why didn’t you answer the door? I had to go down and get a pass key. Susannah, what’s going on?’
‘Nothing.’ Somehow, she summoned a stiff smile. ‘Nothing…’
‘Don’t give me that! Some man’s done this to you… What happened, honey? Come on, you can tell me…’
She had to speak, otherwise Mamie would be leaping to all sorts of wrong conclusions.
‘No…nothing like that.’
‘Then…’
‘Please, Mamie, I don’t want to talk about it… Is it too late to have lunch? I can get ready quite quickly.’
The last thing she wanted was food, but instinct told her that she had to deflect Mamie’s questions. If she didn’t, Mamie would probe and pry until she had dragged every last humiliating scrap of information out of her.
‘Well…’ For once, the American looked nonplussed.
‘Where shall we eat?’ Susannah pressed.
‘Well, if you’re sure you feel well enough…’
‘I’m fine. Why don’t you wait for me in the sitting-room?’
A little to her surprise, Mamie agreed and, although she did try to bring up the subject again over lunch, Susannah forestalled her, talking determinedly instead about other matters. By the time she finally parted from the older woman, Susannah was exhausted. She couldn’t stay in London, she decided as she went home. She needed somewhere quiet and tranquil, where she could come to terms with the agony burning inside her. She needed a bolt-hole. She needed sanctuary—somewhere to hide and heal.