Lovers Not Friends

by Helen Brooks

  By the time she was ready for work she was cool and composed, her hair secured in a tight knot on top of her head and her body clothed in a loose flowing skirt and baggy top that hid her figure almost completely. She examined her face devoid of even a trace of make-up anxiously. She looked quite ordinary like this, she did. No one would look at her twice. If she had voiced that thought to anyone else they would have stared at her as though she were mad, their eyes appreciating the silky honey-gold smoothness of her flawless skin, the wide, heavily lashed violet eyes and thick rich mass of golden hair whose beauty couldn’t be hidden even by the tight severe hairstyle, all the things Amy had ignored. Indeed, the strict lack of adornment and chaste hiding of her body under the somewhat voluminous clothes were a subtle temptation in themselves if only she had known, accentuating her natural attributes rather than concealing them.

  She took a deep breath as she left the sanctuary of her room, vitally aware of Blade in the small front garden below. He had worked in the larger back garden for most of the morning and she had heard his voice laughing with Mrs Cox in the kitchen at lunchtime, although she had remained firmly and determinedly in her room. Now he had moved round to the front garden which meant she would have to see him again as she left. Had he done that on purpose? She gritted her teeth as she opened the creaking front door quickly. Probably …

  ‘I’m just going to pop into the next town for some grass seed,’ he said in reply to her hasty goodbye as she passed him almost at a run. ‘You’re obviously late; would you like a lift?’

  ‘I’m not late.’ She resigned herself to looking at him and turned round carefully, little tremors of sensation curling her nerves as she watched him reach out to a nearby branch and unhook his shirt from its natural wooden hanger. ‘I’m meeting John at the end of the lane, actually; he sometimes gives me a lift to work,’ she finished weakly as the dark eyebrows rose mockingly with scornful amusement. ‘It’s kind of him.’

  ‘Oh, definitely.’ He eased his body slowly into the shirt without taking his eyes off her. ‘Very kind.’ She felt her stomach constrict as his muscles rippled and relaxed. He had been waiting for her, quietly, like a big powerful animal that waited patiently for its prey and then pounced without a shred of pity or compassion to deflect its aim. This devious sexual baiting was deliberate; he knew exactly the effect his body was having on hers, and what was more was making the most of every minute.

  She stared at him for a long moment without replying, but the hard sardonic face didn’t waver in its dark amusement at her discomfiture, the black eyes merciless. ‘I don’t like this side of you,’ she said slowly as she turned away from him, ‘it’s cheap and—’

  ‘Cheap!’ His eyes weren’t amused any longer; instead they were filled with a blazing anger that made her realise she had gone too far. ‘You talk to me about cheap!’ He had swung her round with such force as he spoke that she had landed with a hard jolt against the rigid wall of his chest, and now he held her forearms with both hands, his face as black as thunder. ‘You’re asking me for a lesson in manners, my girl, and this is one time—’

  ‘Amy!’ Mrs Cox’s voice from just inside the house caused him to stiffen momentarily, his hands as hard as iron, before the bruising grip loosened as he moved her away from him with a little exclamation of disgust.

  ‘What the hell am I bothering for?’ he said slowly, his eyes dark with contempt. ‘Go and keep your date.’

  ‘Amy?’ As Mrs Cox appeared in the doorway to the house the landlady’s round face broke into a pleased smile. ‘Oh, I’m glad I caught you before you left, lass. Arthur phoned. He’s had to go out himself to pick up some meat that should have been delivered earlier and he said to be sure and take your keys so you can let yourself in. Have you got them?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Cox.’ The normal tone of voice and small smile that she stitched on to her face took more effort than Mrs Cox would ever know. ‘Thanks. I’ll see you later.’

  She turned and was out of the gate before another word could be spoken, her head high and her back straight, although the hot tears coursing down her face made the narrow lane in front of her a green haze. He had looked at her as though he hated her then, really hated her. But that was what she wanted, wasn’t it? she asked herself bitterly as she walked swiftly away. No, a small still voice deep in her head answered quickly and painfully. She didn’t want that at all.

  ‘Stay away from me, Blade.’ She spoke out loud into the still warm air as she walked quickly down the lane shaded by huge old trees on either side. ‘I can take the pain and the loneliness and everything else if you’ll just stay away.’ But he couldn’t hear her in the final analysis and she wasn’t sure if she wanted him to.

  John was waiting in his usual spot parked to one side of the lane in a gated pull-in that overlooked roaming fields full of grazing sheep. ‘Amy?’ His smile had faded immediately he had seen her face. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘It’s Blade.’ She took the handkerchief he offered as she sank down into the worn seat next to his and sniffed dismally. ‘He’s helping Mrs Cox with the garden.’

  ‘He’s doing what?’ John stared at her in blank amazement. ‘I don’t believe it.’

  ‘Neither did I at first,’ she said quietly. ‘And he’s so hostile—’

  ‘He’s hurt you?’ John glared back down the lane angrily.

  ‘No, nothing like that.’ She took another deep breath and managed a wan smile. ‘I’m just being silly. He’ll give up and leave eventually, he’ll have to. I’ll just have to manage till then.’

  ‘This is crazy.’ John slipped his arm round her shoulders and gave her a comforting hug. ‘Do you want me to have a word with him?’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head slowly. ‘That would be the worst thing you could do. He’s got this idea that we’re—you know.’ She paused in embarrassment. ‘I’m sorry, John.’

  ‘Don’t be.’ He smiled down at her, his mild blue eyes warm. ‘It’s an enormous compliment to me. You’ve never thought about me like that, have you?’

  ‘Of course not.’ She smiled again. ‘We’re friends, aren’t we?’

  He was very still for a moment before sighing gently as he moved her round to face him. ‘Friends?’ He nodded slowly. ‘That definitely, but I would like there to be more. You must know how I feel about you, Amy? How I’ve always felt? You were so young when we first met, I didn’t like to push things and of course I was tied up with Carol then, so the whole thing was impossible. But when I got the wedding invitation …’ For a moment the face looking at her was quite unlike John’s. The placid easy expression had gone and in its place she read—something she didn’t want to read.

  ‘John, please—’

  ‘No, listen to me, Amy.’ He was still holding her tight and she felt unable to move away. ‘I shall regret it for the rest of my life if I don’t tell you how I feel. When you came here, to me, I couldn’t believe it at first. It was a dream come true. Oh, I know you look on me as a friend.’ He shook her very gently as she opened her mouth to speak. ‘You’ve never given me any reason to hope for more, but now?’ He moved fractionally closer. ‘You’ve left Blade, Amy, for whatever reason, but the fact remains that you’ve left him. Do you think you could learn to love me, learn to care?’ As he moved to take her mouth she turned her head abruptly and his lips merely brushed her cheek, but in the same instant she heard, rather than saw, Blade’s car flash past them on the dusty road.

  ‘John …’ She took a deep breath as she struggled away and he let her go easily, looking out of the window at the cloud of dust left by Blade’s powerful car, as his brow wrinkled in consternation.

  ‘Was that …?’ he asked slowly.

  She nodded miserably. ‘He was going to get some grass seed,’ she said weakly. ‘For the garden,’ she added unnecessarily. Her mind buzzed frantically, less with the content of John’s declaration than the fact that Blade might have seen them as he shot by and assume—what would he assume? The worst, no doubt.
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  ‘Well, I’m sorry, but it doesn’t alter anything—’

  She cut off John’s voice with a little shake of her head, her eyes pleading for his understanding as she looked into his round familiar face. ‘John, I’m sorry …’ She paused, unsure of how much to say. She hadn’t wanted to tell anyone about the illness but perhaps—

  ‘There is no hope?’ He looked at her for a long moment before nodding his head slowly. ‘I think I knew really, but I had to say it. You forgive me?’

  ‘Don’t be silly, there’s nothing to forgive.’ She touched his arm gently, moving her hand away as his face tightened. ‘It’s just that I love Blade, John, I have from the moment I met him and I always will. I value you as a friend, my best friend, and if things had been different—but they’re not.’ She didn’t want to say too much, but if John thought Blade was in some way responsible for her leaving she owed it to him to explain a little.

  ‘It wasn’t Blade’s fault I left but I can’t explain beyond saying you’ll have to trust me in this. He didn’t do anything wrong, just the opposite.’

  ‘Then why—?’

  ‘Please, John.’ She shook her head slowly as her face whitened. ‘I can’t explain. If I could talk about this with anyone it would be you, I promise, but I can’t. Not yet anyway.’

  ‘Amy, if you’re in some kind of trouble?’ He stopped abruptly. ‘I’ll do anything, anything to help, and forget all that I just said. There’d be no strings attached.’

  ‘Oh, John …’ She was fighting to keep back the tears, desperately touched by the emotion he had revealed and his staunch friendship when he must be hurting too, feeling about her as he did. She should never have come here, upset his life, but she hadn’t known. She had thought he was fond of her on a purely platonic footing; he had never said, never indicated in the tiniest way in the past that he felt anything more than benevolent detached affection. ‘John, I’m so sorry.’

  ‘No problem.’ He moved firmly away and settled back in his seat, his face suddenly resigned. ‘But I’m here, always, if you want me. Understand?’ He glanced at her from the corner of his eye. ‘And I meant what I said, no strings attached. Now, let’s get you to work before Arthur starts hollering.’

  The afternoon and evening were long and difficult, with a host of minor irritations that had her wanting to scream by the time she was due to leave. The little restaurant was hot and sticky, and owing to the non-delivery Arthur had been forced to fetch they were working behind schedule most of the day. And she felt so bad about John. And Blade. And everything …

  Suddenly all the doubts and fears that she was doing the right thing returned in a devastatingly bitter flood. She wanted Blade, needed him; she couldn’t handle this any more.

  She had a sudden fierce desire to be utterly selfish, to tell him the truth and lay the burden on his broad shoulders and let him deal with it as he would. But almost as soon as it was born the notion died. What would it accomplish? At the best he would view her with a mixture of love, pity, compassion and maybe, threaded through all the other emotions, revulsion. At the worst she would destroy his life from the moment she admitted the truth.

  She loaded the dishwasher in the small kitchen, with her jaws clenched so hard it made her teeth ache. This self-pity had to stop. She had made her bed, now she had to lie on it, alone.

  ‘Amy?’ The night was warm and mild, a bonus from the unusually hot day, and as she stood for a moment on the step of the restaurant sniffing the clean air filled with a hundred summer scents she felt a sharp stab of pleasure that now, at this instant, she was still vitally and strongly alive. The future was wrapped in shadows and a long way off. ‘Now’ was this quiet balmy evening in a little Yorkshire village with the sweet tang of woodsmoke hanging on the still air and the fragrance of green grass and wild flowers drifting in from the moorland and hills beyond.

  Blade had carried her off to the Caribbean on her honeymoon, with brief stops in the South of France and Switzerland, but nowhere in the midst of all that spectacular beauty had such intense pleasure and sadness combined to make one moment so piercingly sweet.

  ‘Amy?’ As Blade spoke her name again it penetrated the trance, bringing her back to reality with painful suddenness. ‘I want a word with you. I’ll give you a lift home.’

  He moved out of the shadows to stand looking up at her and she noticed the car, parked some yards away, for the first time. ‘A lift?’ She stared at him almost stupidly as her senses registered that he looked all male and incredibly dangerous in the black cotton trousers and shirt he wore so easily. ‘I think not. And we have nothing at all to talk about, Blade. It’s over.’

  ‘I’m not disputing that,’ he answered coldly, something gleaming in the dark depths of his eyes she couldn’t quite fathom. ‘But as we both seem to be living in the same small village for the moment we need to get the ground rules sorted, and they don’t include necking with lover-boy in full daylight.’

  ‘But you don’t have to live here,’ she answered hotly, suddenly furious at his manipulation of events.

  ‘And you do?’ He eyed her arrogantly. ‘Well, do you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she snapped tightly, ‘and if you were half as sensitive as I thought you were you’d just leave me alone. I don’t need—’

  ‘But I’m not sensitive, Amy, am I?’ he drawled slowly but with an iciness that was chilling. ‘And no doubt there are many other things in which I’m lacking too. But as for what you need or don’t need—’ the black eyes were like stone ‘—I really don’t give a damn.’

  ‘Then why are you here tonight?’ she asked desperately. ‘What’s the point in torturing me like this?’

  ‘Oh, come, come.’ He sounded almost bored. ‘A little dramatic, don’t you think? And I’ve told you why I’m here.’

  ‘I was talking to John, just talking,’ she said to his cold face. ‘You’re trying to drive me away from here, aren’t you?’ she stated with flat painfulness. ‘This is part of my punishment, this hounding?’

  ‘If it were, why should you expect anything different from me?’ he asked coldly. ‘I haven’t exactly noticed any love and consideration in your dealings with me lately, or maybe there’s something I’ve missed?’ The sarcasm was scathing. ‘You can’t have it all ways, Amy, or haven’t you woken up to that little fact of life yet?’

  She stared at him helplessly without replying, but there must have been something in her eyes that revealed her anguish, because in the next instant he was at her side, his face black with a mixture of rage, confusion and something else, something banked and hidden behind the jet black of his eyes. ‘Damn you, Amy. I should walk away from here and cut my losses …’ He took her arm, forcing her down the steps and towards his car with such speed that she felt her feet weren’t touching the ground. ‘If you let him touch you again—’

  ‘Let go of me!’ She tried to pull away but only succeeded in jarring her arm so hard it made her eyes water. ‘Blade!’ There was real panic in her voice and as they reached the car he opened the door and pushed her inside in one movement.

  ‘Stop screeching,’ he said coldly, as he slid into the driving seat a second later as she sat rubbing her arm helplessly. ‘I have accepted your opinion of me is pretty low, but even I draw the line at abduction if that’s what you are worrying about. I’ll drop you home later but first I tell you the ground rules regarding lover-boy. OK?’

  ‘No, it’s not OK,’ she said furiously as the colour came and went in her face in rapid succession. ‘And how dare you manhandle me like that? I’m not some stray parcel that you can throw about—’

  ‘No, you’re my wife,’ he said with bitter rawness, his eyes flashing. ‘And I for one take that seriously. I thought at first that you’d looked on this as a game, our marriage, everything. But now, now I’m not so sure. Having seen you with John …’ The penetrating gaze swept over her white face and now that piercing discernment that made him such a formidable adversary was in full force. ‘I think there’s
something more, something I can’t quite get yet. You were everything I wanted in a woman, Amy, everything I’d dreamed of, and for a time I lost sight of the fact that I’m an excellent judge of my fellow man.’ The arrogance was hot and fierce. ‘I still do when you make me angry.’ His face was reflective as he turned to look out of the windscreen into the darkness beyond. ‘You are the only person who can make me lose control like that.’ It wasn’t a compliment and she kept quite still, hardly daring to breathe.

  ‘But, when I’m thinking logically, I know I couldn’t have been fooled so completely. So—’ he looked at her again, his face proud and imperious ‘—I have to assume that something happened in those forty-eight hours when I was in France. Something momentous. It could be another man other than John, but my enquiries haven’t revealed anything to substantiate that. I know you left very early that first morning in the car and returned late at night from the servants but other than that—’ he eyed her coldly ‘—nothing. I don’t like mysteries, Amy,’ he continued expressionlessly, ‘I never have, and this one least of all.’

  ‘I want a divorce.’ He was getting too close. ‘That’s all that matters—’

  ‘No, my beautiful little wife, that is not all that matters,’ he interrupted harshly. ‘I have to accept now that you can be selfish and cruel, the facts speak for themselves, but one thing I know for sure is that you aren’t happy. You might have done something that is eating you up with guilt, whatever—I don’t know. But I will.’ She couldn’t bear the derision in his eyes. ‘Because I want my pound of flesh, Amy. Now that’s not nice and it sure isn’t the British way, but I’m not British.’ He laughed caustically. ‘And your body still holds a certain appeal.’ He laughed again and the sound chilled her blood. ‘As mine does for you. Don’t bother to deny it; that gets boring after a time.’

  He started the engine as he spoke and the big car growled immediately into life, the bonnet nosing into the road as the powerful headlights lit up the darkness.