A small smile touched her lips as she lay now in her bed with only the moon as witness. It was months later before Guy had actually admitted to doctoring her car.
‘I was not prepared to let you go,’ he had told her with all the lazy arrogance of his nature.
‘Did Jamie know it was your doing?’ she’d demanded.
‘Since it took him five hours to find the fault, I would have to presume that, on finding it, he must have guessed,’ Guy had answered blandly. ‘He is too good a mechanic not to have realised quite early on that the car had been tampered with. His problem was discovering just what it was I had done to it.’
‘Sometimes, Guy, I hate your arrogance.’
‘And sometimes, cara, you literally drown in it,’ he’d growled, pulling her into his arms to prove his point. She had had no control whatsoever of the passion he could arouse in her. And even in the very early days of their relationship, when he was very aware of her inexperience, he had been able to turn her blood to fire with an ease that had both shocked and frightened her.
A fear that had kept her fighting him right through the turbulent weeks which had followed as Guy, true to the stubborn, selfish character he was, set himself out to take what he wanted.
And take he eventually had. Ruthlessly, passionately, unassailingly and with scant regard to whether or not it was what she wanted. Or maybe he did regard it but chose to dismiss it, she allowed. Because even Guy, thick-skinned as he was, had to know that although he had forced her to surrender physically to him he had never really managed to beat down her mental reserves towards him.
Sighing wearily, Marnie gave up trying to stop the memories from coming, and climbed out of bed to go and stand by the moonlit window.
Marriage to Guy had been no less fraught than their turbulent courtship. He’d decided on marriage, he’d informed her then, because he just could not bring himself to take her innocence without the legal right to do so. And she had been so damned weakened by his sensual assaults on her that she’d foolishly agreed.
So married they were, and he took her off to his native Italy where, in a secluded villa overlooking his own private piece of the Med, he taught her all there was to learn about the physical side of love. And he possessed her to such a devastating degree that he only had to look at her to make her want him. True to his nature, he had no inhibitions about the forms their lovemaking could take, and taught her to cast off any she might have wanted to hold on to. Her body became an instrument tuned like one of his precious cars to his own personal specification, and for six dizzy, passionate months they drifted through life in a haze of mutual engrossment where the only cloud cluttering their sensual haven was a distinct absence of any sincere words of love.
Guy seemed only to require the delight of her young and responsive body, while she—well, she just accepted what crumbs of himself he threw at her and kept a vital part of herself hidden away from him in readiness for the time when the novelty would die and he would begin looking about him for pastures new.
And why did she think it would come to that? Because she had seen the way he was around other women. Guy was a born egotist, forever needing to feed that ego through the constant adoration of any woman prepared to offer it to him.
She suspected that he didn’t really see her as a living, breathing person with thoughts and feelings of her own but more like a new possession he liked to show off to his friends—like a mascot, kept for his own amusement. It never occurred to him that she wouldn’t like his friends, that the constant vying for the centre of attention by both sexes and the suggestive remarks that were thrown about so freely actually shocked and embarrassed her.
Shy by nature, she was always rather quiet and withdrawn in company, and they felt no qualms about teasing her about her quietness, making her feel more uncomfortable in their company, showing her in their cruel, deriding way that she was not and never would be one of them.
On top of that, she had to grin and bear the sight of Guy enjoying the over-amorous advances of one or other of the many women who threw themselves at him. He was that kind of man: handsome, worldly, and full of a charisma that had been earned by the dangerous way he’d achieved his fame. Women adored him, and he took their adoration entirely as his due, and wasn’t past encouraging it when the mood took him.
It was witnessing one of the more—obvious displays of adoration one night that decided Marnie that she’d had enough.
The party was being held by one of Guy’s old racing cronies, in a big London town-house with several reception-rooms packed to bursting with people enjoying themselves in their brittle, sophisticated way. She had learned early on that there were no holds barred at these functions. Drink yourself silly if you wanted to, make passes at anyone you fancy—which did not count her out just because she was the great Guy Frabosa’s wife! And it was even acceptable for some couples to disappear for a significant length of time during the evening, and not always with the person they’d arrived with! It forced her to wonder about the times she couldn’t find Guy in the crush these parties always were; to wonder if he too was not averse to sneaking off for a quick tumble with some willing creature.
But that particular night, the crunch came for Marnie when it happened to be Anthea Cole who decided to drape herself around him from the moment they arrived, and not let go since. Anthea was the woman Marnie had usurped from Guy’s bed. And to see her of all people hanging all over him, knowing that the other woman was as knowledgeable about Guy’s lovemaking as she was herself, just about blew her usual cool as a hard, hot, ugly sting of jealousy ripped through her. Then, to top it all, seeing Guy busy with Anthea, Derek Fowler had the gall to chance his arm with Marnie! She slapped him down, coldly and precisely, leaving him in absolutely no doubt what she thought of him, then walked out of the party, leaving Guy to do as he pleased.
He was furious, of course. When he arrived back at the apartment he came storming into their bedroom where she was emerging from the adjoining bathroom after a long, hot, angry shower, rubbing at her wet hair with a towel.
‘What the hell is the matter with you?’ he snapped, slamming the door shut so hard that she winced. ‘What the bloody hell were you trying to prove, walking out on me in front of my friends?’
‘You call them friends?’ she scoffed. ‘I call them a bunch of ravenous wolves, existing for only one thing in life—sex!’ she said in disgust. ‘Wherever and however they can get it. And if they are your friends, then for God’s sake don’t count me as one of them; I don’t think I could live with the taint of it!’ She spun away from him, the towel rubbing furiously at her long wet hair.
‘Someone has offended you,’ he said, coming down from his own anger because he thought he could soothe away hers now he knew the reason for it.
‘You could say that,’ she snapped. ‘You’ve offended me. You offend me every time you take me to parties like that one we went to tonight.’ She turned to view the look of surprise written on his hard, handsome face. ‘You then consolidate the offence by just dropping me to go in search of your own pleasures in another woman’s arms while expecting me to stand meekly by and await your wonderful return!’
‘Anthea,’ he said. ‘You’re angry because you’re jealous of Anthea!’
He sounded so damned self-satisfied that Marnie actually did bare her nails and her teeth as she shouted, ‘Anthea? What the hell is Anthea except for one in a long long line of Antheas who’ve been led to believe that you’re open to anything they want to offer you? Well, not this woman any more!’ Angrily, she threw the towel aside and walked threateningly towards him. ‘Because this woman has more self-respect than to sleep with an ageing old stallion who sees his main function in life as putting himself out for stud!’
Oh, she shouldn’t have said it. And even now, all these years later, she could still feel the clutch of remorse she’d felt then as she watched his face go pale, and his body jerk as if in reaction to a vicious blow.
And vicious it ha
d been, because she’d known how sensitive Guy was to the difference in their ages. It was perhaps his one and only Achilles’ heel, and she’d cruelly pierced it dead in the centre.
Of course, he went all cold and haughty on her. It was perhaps either that or seduce her senseless. She’d deserved both. But it was the haughtiness she got, and with such devastating impact that she could even find it in her to admire him for it now. Though not then—not then when he said coldly, ‘Then, of course, you must sleep alone, my dear Marnie. While I, poor ageing stud that I am, will go out and find a less discerning creature to share my humble bed.’
Which he had, she recalled bitterly now. He left the apartment and did not come back for three days—by which time she had gone from remorse to resentment and from there to an angry defiance which had her accepting a commission which took her off to Manchester for a week.
She arrived back tired, miserable and so riddled with guilt for those terrible words she had thrown at him that she was quite prepared to go down on her knees and beg so long as he forgave her for them. It was late, and Guy was already in bed when she let herself quietly into their bedroom. She wasn’t sure if he was awake, but she sensed that he was as she crossed to the bathroom and quickly showered before going and climbing into the bed beside him.
He didn’t say a word, not a single word, but the way he reached for her was a message in itself, and they made love with a kind of wild desperation that shook them both. But if she had been secretly hoping he would reassure her about those other women then she was disappointed, and a new restraint entered their relationship, the strain that last row had placed between them always hovering in the tense air around them.
Nothing was really the same after that. They went to no more parties. That complaint at least had seemed to get through to him. But Guy treated her with a new kind of respect which verged on indifference, while she threw herself into her work, accepting commissions wherever they were offered which took her away from London for long days on end. And Guy had his own commitments to fulfil, flying off to all corners of the world, so they became more like strangers than husband and wife, meeting briefly in the darkness of their bedroom to slake a hunger that was all the more wretched because it was all they seemed to have.
The strain of it all became too much for Marnie, and a depression began to set in. She came back home after spending a miserable week in Kent to find the apartment empty because Guy was away somewhere in the wilds of Yorkshire. He was away a week, and by the time he came back she was feeling so low that he took one hard look at her pale, unhappy face and gathered her into his arms.
She thought he was after sex, and retaliated accordingly by pushing him angrily away. So he did his usual, and bit out some deriding words at her about what a mess she looked and how he was going out to find someone who knew how to keep her man. He didn’t return that night. When he did, he looked as though he had just rolled out of someone’s bed to come straight home.
They had another row—one which ended up with him bundling her into his car and taking her to Oaklands. Where he left her—to decide, he said, which was more important to her: her marriage or her work.
It was the first time he had challenged the amount of time she devoted to her work. And she read it clearly for what it was: an ultimatum. He wanted total devotion or nothing, and for the next week she seethed bitterly over the choice, wishing she could just up and leave him and knowing wretchedly that she could not. She loved him too much.
Then something happened to make the decision for her. And suddenly she was in a fever of excitement, racing back to London to see Guy.
She arrived at the apartment in time for dinner, but Guy wasn’t there and Mrs Dukes, the housekeeper, said she had hardly seen him since Marnie went away. Casting aside the small sting of alarm she experienced, she set about ringing around in an effort to find him. Calling her brother was just a spur-of-the-moment idea. Guy had recently set Jamie up in his own small garage just outside London, and she knew he liked to call in and show an interest in whatever car Jamie was working on at the time.
‘Have you tried Derek Fowler’s house?’ he suggested. ‘There’s some kind of big party going on there tonight, so I heard. Perhaps Guy has gone there. You should keep a tighter rein on that man of yours, Marnie,’ he then went on to admonish. ‘Guy is too hot a property for you to let run around London as freely as he does. Women just can’t keep their hands off him.’
But they will learn, she thought grimly as she set out for the party. From now on, all of them will learn that Guy Frabosa is well and truly taken!
She arrived at Derek Fowler’s home to find the party in full swing. She and Derek Fowler had become cold antagonists since she’d slapped him down, so stepping over the threshold into his house took a certain amount of courage. But she was desperate to see Guy, and that was all that was in her mind as she squeezed a way through the crush of people to go in search of him, having no idea just what she was walking into.
It took just ten minutes to find out.
She found Derek Fowler first, flirting lazily with a slinky model type wearing a red silk dress and nothing else, by the look of it.
‘Is Guy here?’ she asked him coolly.
He turned slightly bloodshot eyes on her, and the lazy smile he had been wearing changed into a taunting leer. ‘Well, well, well,’ he drawled. ‘If it isn’t the child bride herself.’
‘Is he here?’ she repeated coldly, refusing to rise to the bait. Guy hated it when his friends referred to her in that way. He was sensitive enough about their age-difference without having ‘cradle-snatcher’ thrown at him.
‘Upstairs, I think,’ he informed her carelessly. ‘Second door on the right, sleeping off the old plonko the last time I saw him…’ Something else caught his attention then, sending his gaze narrowing over to the stairs, which were just visible through the crush of people spilling out into the hallway. When he looked back at Marnie there was a new vindictive light in his narrowed eyes. ‘Why don’t you go and wake the prince with a kiss?’ he suggested silkily. ‘You never know, Marnie, you might even get a nice surprise.’
Not understanding the taunt—and not even trying to—she turned away, struggling back through the crowds towards the hallway and from there up the stairs, sighing with relief at the respite from the noise and the crush of bodies on the floor below.
It was dark inside the room Derek had directed her to. She stepped inside and fumbled blindly for the light switch. ‘Guy?’ she called out softly. ‘Guy, are you awake?’
Light flooded the room, and at the same cataclysmic moment that she heard the muffled murmur of her name Marnie stood frozen by the horror of what she was being forced to recognise as Guy’s beautiful body lying naked in a tumble of white bedding, with the lovely Anthea coiled intimately around him—as naked as he.
CHAPTER SIX
‘CAN’T you sleep?’ a quiet voice enquired behind her. Marnie started violently, spinning around too quickly to mask the pain her memories had laid naked on her face. Guy saw the look, knew its source, and his own expression closed in grim response to it.
He was leaning against the open doorway, dark hair ruffled by restless fingers as if he too had been having a struggle with sleep. And for once he looked his age, harsh lines pulling at his lean features, scoring deep grooves down the sides of his nose and the taut turned-down corners of his mouth.
Older, but still the same potently sexual man who drew the opposite sex to him like bees to honey, she acknowledged bleakly as her eyes made a swift sweep of his tightly muscled body covered only by the short black robe before looking quickly away. He could still stir her senses just by being in the same room, and she hated herself for it—hated herself.
‘My shirt looks better on you than it does on me,’ he murmured huskily. ‘But then, they always did.’
Her body began to tingle in instant response to the lazy way he ran his eyes over the fine silk shirt she had taken from his room before retiring,
sending her arms wrapping around her body as the tingle centred itself in the very tips of her sensitive nipples.
‘What do you want, Guy?’ she demanded stiffly.
‘You,’ he answered without hesitation. ‘But since that is nothing new to either of us,’ he added drily, ‘and since we both seem unable to sleep tonight, I wondered if you would like to share a pot of tea with me?’
‘Tea?’ Sheer surprise diverted her away from the provocation in the earlier remark. ‘Since when have you been drinking tea?’
Guy had always shown a scathing contempt for the English love of the beverage. He liked coffee, strong and black and sugarless.
‘Actually—’ an oddly sheepish smile took the harshness out of his features ‘—I was going to treat myself to a brandy. The suggestion of tea was an afterthought—offered as an incentive for you to join me. Will you?’
Slowly, tentatively almost, his hand came out in front of him. Marnie stared unblinkingly at it for a moment. A long, strong, capable hand, a hand she knew so intimately that it was like an extension of her own self. A hand which seemed to be offering more than just an invitation to join him.
Her glance flicked warily to his face, but found nothing to mistrust written there, just a wry twist of a smile that said he was quite ready for her usual rebuttal.
‘Well…?’ he murmured softly.
‘Yes,’ she heard herself say. ‘Yes, I’d like that.’ Why, she had no idea, except maybe she found suddenly that she didn’t want to be alone, and even Guy’s company was better than the kind of cold company her black thoughts had been to her.
Easing himself away from the door as she drew near, he let her brush by him before falling into step behind her. The door to his own bedroom stood open, the soft glow from his bedside lamp illuminating the stacks of papers littered about his untidy bed telling their own story.
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