The Bridegroom's Dilemma

by Lindsay Armstrong

  ‘Sixty-nine. There was a short resume of his life. It was a heart attack.’

  Skye put the back of her hand to her mouth and her eyes were anguished. ‘Nick will be…’

  ‘Perhaps you should go to him,’ Iris suggested.

  ‘Oh, no. I…no.’ Skye closed her eyes in pain. ‘I’m the last person he’d want to see at the moment.

  Iris sighed then hugged her daughter.

  A week later, after a private funeral to which Skye had sent flowers but otherwise had no contact with the Hunter family, Pippa came to see her again.

  ‘I don’t know how to tell you how sorry I am,’ Skye said to her as she led her into the lounge. ‘You must be…well, I can imagine. Please sit down.’

  Pippa sank into an armchair. ‘Of course I’m terribly sad,’ she said, ‘but…none of us could have helped it and—he didn’t die unhappy.’

  Skye’s eyes widened.

  ‘That’s why I had to come and thank you, Skye,’ Pippa said. ‘That night, after everyone left, he took me aside and…and we talked, as we used to. He told me that the most important thing for him was for me to be happy, and he gave me his blessing. We were at peace with each other, Skye, and that means so much to me even though he’s gone.’ She put her hands gently on her belly. ‘I know the way you were that night with Jean-Claude must have helped. He admired you so much.’

  Skye blinked away some tears and found she couldn’t speak.

  ‘The other thing is—and Mum asked me to tell you this—before they fell asleep that night, she was able to talk to him about Nick for the first time since this all blew up. Talk rationally and openly. And he told her that he’d been an old fool because he could see Nick slipping away from him but it had only occurred to him that night that he was doing the pushing but there was something he didn’t understand riding him. Something that made him want to see his family settled.’

  Skye stared at her with her lips parted. ‘Did he have some sort of premonition?’

  ‘We don’t know but it’s possible he had some symptoms he was hiding even from himself. But he and Mum…she said, before they fell asleep, they got closer than they’d ever been. It’s something that’s sustained her and maybe always will.’

  Skye reached for her hanky this time and wept quietly for a moment. Then she raised her tear-streaked face to Pippa. ‘And Nick?’

  ‘There’s nothing much sustaining Nick at the moment, I’m afraid. Oh, you need to know him well to be able to see it but…’ She shrugged. ‘We’ve cancelled the wedding, in the form it was going to be in, at least. It’ll be very small and private in a fortnight.’

  ‘Where…is Nick?’ Skye asked.

  ‘In Melbourne on business at the moment. I think he gets back in a couple of days.’

  Skye was restless, sad and troubled over the next two days.

  She couldn’t settle to her book, she wandered around her flat touching her plants then indulged in an orgy of repotting. Although she and Pippa hadn’t said a lot more they’d parted with warmth and deep affection—and just before she’d turned to go Pippa had added one thing. Nick’s flight number, the date and the time he was due back in Sydney.

  ‘I got it from Flo,’ she’d said, and stood poised to say more but in the end she’d kissed Skye on the cheek and left.

  Not the airport, Skye said to herself over and over. If she was going to do anything it had to be done privately. But how and where? Should she ring him? Should she leave a message on his answering machine?

  Then an idea crept into her mind and she went to check her keyring. The security key and the doorkey to Nick’s apartment were still there although she’d forgotten she had them. For that matter, she mused, he still had a set of keys to her flat.

  She sat down with the keyring clutched tightly in her hand. What if…say he came home with Wynn? What if he was as angry as he’d been the night of the party? Or more so because he’d lost his father while he was still in discord with him?

  Could she rely on Pippa’s summing up of his state of mind? Because the more she thought about it, the more obvious it became that Pippa had been urging her to do this. But Pippa had no way of knowing how badly they’d fallen out again, or the special significance it had in the context of his father’s death.

  Then the day he was due home dawned, and suddenly all her uncertainty left her. Not that she was sure that she was doing the right thing, but she couldn’t rid herself of the deep desire to go to him whatever the consequences.

  So she made her plans. His flight was due in at five o’clock in the afternoon. She let herself into his apartment at four.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  SHE made her preparations carefully then stood looking around his lounge.

  She’d always liked his apartment despite what she’d said when they’d first parted. After all, she reminded herself, it had been like a second home to her for a time. But it was strange to come back to it, and alone.

  She felt as if she was trespassing. Who else had sat in his luxurious beige suede settees and chairs? Or sat cross-legged on the cinnamon carpet? Perhaps piled up the colourful scatter cushions in ochre, burnt sienna, sage-green and lain back against them, or pulled the heavy oyster curtains closed although there was no need except to give a sense of added intimacy.

  Who else had known him well enough to rearrange his collection of rocks, crystal and quartz, look for a book in the glass-fronted bookcases or simply run her fingers along the lovely satiny wood of the occasional tables and other pieces, some antiques worth a fortune?

  Who had brought flowers, then, because the one thing his apartment had lacked was anything resembling a vase, had bought him six, ranging from pottery urns to chunky square cut glass and one to-die-for Moorcroft vase?

  Her thoughts moved on to the kitchen where she’d stocked his pantry with dried herbs and spices, lima beans, sesame oil, sweet-chilli sauce and a whole host of ingredients he would never have thought to buy for himself, as well as installing an electric wok.

  Which left one essential room in the apartment to wander over in her mind: the master bedroom.

  He’d always been slightly ambivalent about his bedroom, as if the black and gold magnificence created by an interior decorator didn’t quite sit easily with him. The carpet was black with a band of buttery cream running around the bed. The furniture was exquisite—two Hepplewhite mahogany armchairs covered in straw velvet, a bow-fronted walnut bureau and bedhead—and there was black and gold linen on the bed. A magnificent gold-framed mirror hung on one wall.

  Skye had stopped to blink several times the first time she’d crossed the threshold.

  He’d laughed and explained that, while he’d exerted a restraining influence and got the rest of the apartment done to his taste, this bedroom had got away from him while he was overseas and he’d never got around to changing it.

  Had Wynn, she wondered now, when she’d first seen it, laughed with him or…?

  She snatched her thoughts away deliberately.

  At six o’clock, she heard a key turn in the lock.

  She was sitting curled up on a settee paging through a magazine, and she froze. Her limbs actually seemed to lock and the magazine slid soundlessly to the thickly carpeted floor. She could see through to the entrance hall of Nick’s apartment but because of the angle she wouldn’t be visible unless he turned.

  So she watched as he dropped his bag to the floor, shrugged off his jacket and loosened his tie. Then he went still, and sniffed. The faint, delicious aroma of roast lamb and rosemary was on the air—his favourite dish and the very first one she’d cooked for him.

  He turned slowly, his eyes sweeping the lounge, and at last she found the strength to stand up as they came to rest on her.

  He blinked, as if he thought he was seeing a mirage, and she bit her lip because he looked so different. Pale, strained—as if his nerves were stretched beyond the limit—thinner, even gaunt.

  ‘What’s…this?’ he said.

  Skye
smoothed the skirt of her button-through chalk-blue dress, and did the only thing she was capable of. She held out her hand.

  ‘Oh, no,’ he said, and closed his eyes briefly. ‘Not again, Skye.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she asked huskily.

  ‘I mean you may be able to make love to me and walk away from me but I’m…’ He stopped and gritted his teeth.

  Skye moved and came to stand a few paces from him. ‘I don’t intend to ever walk away from you again, Nick.’

  He scanned her from top to toe. The way her hair was tied back simply, the way her dress with its heart-shaped neck skimmed her figure and fell in folds about her calves, her low-heeled blue sandals. But he said dryly, ‘Why? What do you think has changed apart from the obvious?’

  ‘I’ve changed,’ she answered quietly. ‘I can’t bear to think of you suffering without me being there to help. I… Whatever you can give, Nick, is enough for me because the fact of the matter is, I can’t live without you.’

  ‘Skye, we don’t change basically. You’re still the girl who didn’t really like to live dangerously and—and you accused me of this once—feeling guilty is no reason to come back to me.’

  ‘But I don’t feel guilty.’

  ‘Don’t you? I sure as hell do.’ He turned away and pulled off his tie.

  ‘What about?’ she whispered.

  He turned back, running the navy blue strip of silk through his fingers. ‘About letting him go to bed thinking you and I were getting back together. About—letting anyone or anything come between us because there’s no way, nor is there ever going to be a way, to rectify things.’

  Skye licked her lips. ‘Have you spoken to your mother?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said wearily. ‘I presume you have too—’

  ‘No, Pippa.’

  ‘Whoever, but that doesn’t mean a great deal to me. Look, I’m happy for my mother and I’m happy for Pip but I didn’t get the opportunity to straighten things with him myself so it’s not the same.’

  ‘Nick, your father deserves better than this.’

  His dark eyes grew sardonic. ‘What would you know about it, Skye? What would you know about losing someone through your own stupidity—’

  ‘Because that’s how I nearly came to lose you, Nick,’ she broke in. ‘I wanted perfection but it doesn’t exist. And losing your father brought that home to me. Life is too short and precarious to be making mountains out of molehills. So if loving you is also going to be living dangerously, so be it.’

  The faintest smile touched his mouth but it was gone almost immediately. ‘That’s easy to say, Skye, not so easy to live. And don’t think I don’t appreciate this but half of it still has to be motivated by guilt—we set out to deceive him so how can we assuage that guilt? By doing what he would have wanted.’

  ‘I set out to deceive him, Nick, not you. And I did it along with your sister and your mother, both of whom also loved him dearly.’

  ‘I gave a pretty fair imitation of it.’

  She paused for a moment, trying to regroup, trying to find the key to break through his defences. ‘All right, let’s examine that. If you did give a pretty fair imitation of it, might it have been because you couldn’t help yourself?’

  ‘Skye, I saw you rubbing your wrist that night and I know I must have left bruises on it. I was also dead angry underneath.’

  ‘I remember,’ she said quietly, and involuntarily put the fingers of one hand around her other wrist. ‘But perhaps it wasn’t only because we were deceiving him. Perhaps it was to do with…you wanting it to be real as much as he did.’

  He was grimly silent for a long moment.

  She took advantage of it to add, ‘You did say only just now that you couldn’t make love to me and walk away—not that it was ever easy to walk away from you, Nick. In fact it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, so don’t be deceived into thinking otherwise.’

  He shrugged and turned away from her. ‘I don’t know about you but I need a drink.’

  Skye swallowed and clasped her hands, then she went back to the settee and sat down.

  Presently he came back and put a glass of wine down beside her. He’d poured himself a rather dark looking Scotch and he sat opposite her in the same low armchair he’d been occupying the first time she’d ever laid eyes on him, and been so determined to be unimpressed by him.

  She took a sip of her wine and put the glass down resolutely.

  Causing him to eye her with amusement, and say, ‘That looked ominous, Skye. I gather you’re about to lecture me again?’

  She froze then made an effort to pull herself together. ‘Not necessarily,’ she murmured. ‘Certainly not if you intend to act like a brick wall.’

  He raised a lazy eyebrow at her. ‘Retreat, then? That would be unkind, at least before you’ve fed me.’

  ‘As a matter of fact none of those things, Nick. No,’ she said thoughtfully, although inside she was both angry and determined, and quite aware that a devil was riding her but unable to do a thing about it. ‘No, I thought I might—live a little dangerously, Nick.’ Her eyes glinted with sheer irony. ‘Like this.’

  She stood up and took off the band tying her hair back, and ran her fingers through the free curls. Then she slowly and unconcernedly began to free each little button down the front of her dress.

  She heard him take a sharp breath but she didn’t even look at him.

  It was by the time she’d reached her waist that he said sardonically, ‘I get the picture, Skye, but should we stop and try to work out whether this is Skye Belmont, TV personality, or the real girl?’

  Her fingers stilled and she looked into his dark eyes calmly. ‘Nick, there may be some differences between me and that girl on TV, but taking my clothes off for a man is not something either of us would do unless we really wanted to.’ And she bent her head and began to undo the buttons down the skirt of her dress.

  He had another shot at her. He laid his head back and drawled, ‘On the other hand, you have told me that a lot of the things you did with me were done by that other girl because that’s how you thought I wanted you to be.’

  Skye came to the last button and slipped it free. She straightened and the dress fell open, revealing her white bra and bikini briefs. She bent again to slip off her sandals. Then she paused and looked at him very directly, and all of a sudden her anger, her devil and every other contrary emotion drained away, leaving her sure of just one thing…

  She eased the dress off, laid it over the back of the settee, and walked over to him. The afternoon sun gave her a golden glow so that her hair was fairer than ever and her skin looked luminous and silky. Her legs were long and slim, her waist tiny above the triangle of white silk and lace, her arms and shoulders smooth and delicate.

  His dark gaze drifted over her as it had that very first time, only this time she saw him clench his hands and knew it was only an incredible effort of will that kept him in his chair.

  She reached behind her and unclasped her bra, freeing her breasts so they lay on her body like ripe, luscious fruit tipped with velvet peaks. Then she sank down onto her knees in front of him, picked up his hand and placed it on her heart.

  ‘Nick,’ she said huskily, ‘this is the real me, taking the kind of risk I would never have dreamt of because—it’s the only way I could think of to get through to you the fact that I love you, I never stopped even when I did walk away for what seem like trivial reasons now, and I never will stop loving you.’

  He didn’t move and there were harsh lines scored in his face, there was disbelief in his eyes—and there was a tell-tale nerve jumping beside the hard set of his mouth.

  ‘Do you know what Bryce said to me when we parted?’ Skye went on in that barely audible, husky voice.

  She felt his fingers tighten on her skin beneath her hand and she saw a kind of sceptical incredulity come to his eyes, but she went on steadily, ‘He said he’d worked out that I was the kind of girl who only gave herself to one man. He was
right.’

  ‘Skye…’ he said her name on a tortured breath ‘…there’s still so much that wouldn’t work—’

  ‘No, my darling, there’s only this,’ she murmured, and lifted his hand to her mouth. ‘The rest can all be worked out somehow.’

  There was only a moment more of indecision, as if he was fighting the hardest battle of his life, then, with a groan, he pulled her into his arms. ‘I swore,’ he said indistinctly into her hair, ‘I didn’t need you, Skye, because I didn’t think I could ever get you back after…’

  ‘It’s in the past now,’ Skye whispered.

  ‘Yes, but I didn’t even know, really know, what I’d done to myself until you walked out on me on Lizard. Because my pride wouldn’t let me admit that all the things I prided myself on were…like ashes in my mouth without you.’

  She lifted her face to his and all the old love, excitement and adoration were in them.

  So much so that he held her against him so she could barely breathe.

  ‘There’s more,’ he warned, loosening his arms with a sigh. ’I could have killed Bryce Denver when I thought of him…being clumsy with you or hurting you. I could cheerfully have incarcerated Wynn in a convent when I realized what I’d so thoughtlessly got myself into, but did I stop to ask myself why? No,’ he marvelled.

  ‘Nick—’

  ‘Hush, sweetheart,’ he murmured, and kissed her on the mouth. ‘I need to let you know what a blind, bloody idiot I was. What did I do? I tried to push you into Bryce’s arms; I actually told you I should never have started anything with you; I soldiered on with Wynn, although I never did go to bed with her or anyone else after we parted, Skye.’

  ‘I’m so glad,’ she said simply.

  ‘But I did all that out of…rage, only I didn’t understand what it was at the time. Rage that I could have been such a fool. Rage battling pride and leaving this cold, empty space within that made me do things I’ll always regret.’

  ‘Nick—’ she sat up in the circle of his arms ‘—don’t think you were alone. I can remember telling you I thought Wynn would be much better for you than I ever could be—out of the same kind of emotion. Because I knew in my heart I didn’t believe one word of it, and it was sheer hell just watching you dance with her.’