Marnie’s mouth was set in a petulant line, Guy’s own expression not much better. The row about where she would sleep tonight had been going on since they’d boarded his private jet in Edinburgh. She was tired, irritable and depressed—the worst of those three things being the tiredness, since she had barely slept a wink during the two nights they had spent in Edinburgh. If she hadn’t been lying there tossing and turning restlessly while she battled with her black memories, she had been lying there battling against the damned traitorous way her body wanted to remember how good Guy could make it feel if she would only give in and let him.
‘I’m not intending running away, for God’s sake,’ she sighed wearily.
‘No? Well, I am not prepared to trust your word on that. So stop nagging!’
‘I only want to get a decent night’s sleep in my own bed before I have to face your father tomorrow! God knows,’ she complained, eyeing her sadly creased and unhappy dress with distaste, ‘I must look a wreck! All I want now is a shower, a change of clothes and my own bed for one last night! I couldn’t care less about running away, Guy! I don’t think I have the energy left in me to try!’ she added drily.
‘You had the option to buy fresh clothes in Edinburgh. It was through your own stubbornness that you look a wreck. The rest you can get at the apartment,’ he dismissed.
‘But I could see to my packing tonight rather than having to do it tomorrow,’ she attempted a bit of cajolery.
‘No.’
She glared at him. ‘Did you bully the girls when you were a little boy, too?’ she threw at him tightly.
‘I was known for my charm as a child, actually,’ he answered with the first hint of a smile for days. ‘Only you have ever forced me to resort to bullying tactics.’
‘Because I won’t let you walk all over me.’
‘Because you never know when to give up!’ he snapped, then glanced briefly at her and sighed. ‘Look, you are tired, I am tired. And—dammit, Marnie, but I can still remember the last time I trusted you to remain where I left you only to find you had disappeared within an hour of my leaving you! And I have no intention of suffering another six months like those again,’ he said grimly.
So, he’d suffered: good. So had she. He deserved to. She did not. She felt no pangs of sympathy, no twinges of remorse for worrying him as she had. Her own sorrow had been much harder to shut out. Guy had not held the monopoly on distress.
On her return to London there had been plenty of people more than ready to tell her how much he had suffered during her absence, how Roberto had found it necessary to take back control of the company while his son went demented trying to find her. How Guy had, on drawing a blank with every avenue he tried, turned to the bottle instead and for weeks refused to listen to reason while he drowned his suffering in whisky.
Only when she had felt able to face the world again had she come out of hiding. And she had made Guy aware of her return in the most fitting way possible: with a legal notification that she had filed for divorce.
He had ranted, he had raved, he’d threatened her, and eventually, when he’d come to accept that nothing he could do was going to change her mind, he’d left her alone.
But he had continued to refuse to agree to a divorce. ‘I will pay any penance you consider due to you, Marnie, with good grace,’ he’d told her grimly. ‘But not by taking back the vows I made to you. Those will stay, no matter what you say.’
‘I say I will never be your wife again,’ she’d told him bluntly. ‘Which leaves us both living in a state of limbo if you continue to be stubborn about this.’
‘Then limbo it has to be,’ he agreed. ‘But no divorce. It is an unarguable fact that time eventaully heals all wounds. You will forgive me one day, Marnie. We will stay in limbo until that day arrives.’
And they would have done, if Marnie had not played her final trump card. ‘Sign the papers, Guy, or I will change the plea to adultery, citing Anthea, and drag the whole mucky thing through the courts in the most public way I can manage.’
He had signed. They both knew what her threat would do to his father if she carried it out, and Guy had just not been prepared to risk calling her bluff on it…
The car drew to a halt, and Marnie blinked, bringing her own wandering mind to a halt also, finding herself in the once familiar dimness of the basement car park to his private block of luxury apartments.
‘Out,’ Guy said, snapping open his own seatbelt and climbing lithely out of the low-slung car. Doing the same, Marnie stretched her tension-locked muscles while he moved to the boot and collected his suitcase.
They rode the lift to the penthouse floor in silence, neither apparently prepared to risk another row by making eye-contact, which seemed to be all it took to give the tension buzzing between them cause to vent itself.
Nothing really changes, Marnie thought ruefully to herself as she followed him into the apartment. Everything looked very much as it had done the last time she had been here. Oh, no doubt the walls had enjoyed a fresh lick of paint, she allowed, but other than that it felt a bit like walking through a time warp coming back here.
She shivered delicately.
‘You know the layout,’ Guy said. ‘Take your pick of the guest rooms. I’ll just get rid of this case…’ He was already striding down the wide caramel and cream hallway towards the master bedroom. ‘Be an angel, Marnie,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘See what Mrs Dukes has left in the fridge for dinner, will you?’
‘You still have Mrs Dukes?’ she asked in surprise. The prune-faced housekeeper had worked for Guy long before Marnie arrived on the scene.
He stopped, turning to mock her with a cynical look. ‘Not everyone finds me as objectionable as you do, you know,’ he drawled, and moved on, leaving her feeling ever so thoroughly put down.
She found a ready cooked chicken cacciatore sitting in the fridge with detailed instructions on how to heat it placed neatly on top of the dish.
That made Marnie smile, despite her mood. Neither she nor Guy was much use in the kitchen, and Mrs Dukes had a habit of leaving precise instructions on how not to ruin her carefully prepared dishes.
Marnie followed the instructions to the letter, gaining some childish kind of pleasure in mockingly checking each command as it came up on the list. Mrs Dukes was a quiet, aloof kind of woman. Nice, but not someone Marnie had ever felt she could get close to. The housekeeper had always considered the kitchen her domain. And if she and Guy ever had ventured in here in the dead of night to pillage the fridge, they had used to do it like two naughty children. Mrs Dukes’ kitchen, they’d used to call it. Mrs Dukes’ cooker. Mrs Dukes’ fridge.
A sharp pang of something she had no wish to acknowledge pulled her up short and she walked quickly out of the room, turning towards the guest bedrooms in search of the room she would be using tonight. Only her feet slowed outside another door. The door to her old studio. A room she had not entered since the night four years ago when she’d flown at Guy.
If the kitchen had been Mrs Dukes’ domain, then this, Marnie recalled, had been hers. North-facing, wide-windowed and converted exclusively to suit her needs. Guy had provided her with every conceivable artistic aid she could possibly require.
Slowly, almost unsure that she actually wanted to do it, she turned the handle and stepped quietly inside.
It was empty. Her heart gave a painful dive. The room was bare, completely stripped of everything that had once been so familiar to her. Weak tears beginning to cloud her vision, she moved slowly to the middle of the room.
All gone. Everything. Her easel from where it used to stand by the window, the draughtsman’s board from close by where she worked for hours on her sketches before turning her attention to a canvas. The canvases themselves, rows of them which used to lean, face turned inwards to the walls, all gone. Things she had loved too much to sell but had never quite got around to hanging on the walls.
She had painted Guy in this room. He had stood—just there. Her misty
gaze went to the spot on the polished floor where he had posed naked for her in that oh, so arrogant way of his. ‘Like this?’ he’d teased her, turning his impressive body into some disgustingly provoking pose or other. ‘Or this perhaps?’ taking up another pose which would verge on the indecent while she tried to remain professional and shift him into a more respectable position. ‘How am I supposed to stand here calmly dressed like this?’ he’d demanded when she’d scolded him.
‘You aren’t dressed in anything!’ she’d laughingly pointed out.
‘Neither will you be in a minute,’ he’d growled.
Now there was nothing left in the room but the echoes, echoes of something warm and special…
‘I had the room cleared when it became—obvious that you had no intention of coming back to me,’ a deep voice murmured from the doorway, making her spin round to find him standing there with his dark eyes guarded. ‘I thought, for a time,’ he went on quietly, ‘that you might have at least wanted your canvases, but…’ His shrug said all the rest, leaving a heavy silence behind it.
Marnie blinked away the mists from her eyes. ‘W-what did you do with them?’
‘Put them into store.’ Another shrug. ‘They are at Oaklands. Everything.’ His gaze drifted around the bare emptiness of the room. ‘The lot.’
She just hadn’t been able to bear the idea of coming in here again to get anything. Not the tools of her trade or even her precious paintings.
‘Still,’ Guy went on more briskly, ‘you can set up shop again at Oaklands once we’ve settled in there—so long as you don’t take in any outside work, that is. Did you find anything to eat in the kitchen?’
Just like that. The subject of her continuing to work, opened and closed, just like that. Her mouth tightened, any hint of softening in her mood gone. ‘A chicken cacciatore,’ she answered coolly. ‘Ready in about fifteen minutes.’
‘Good.’ He nodded. ‘That will give us time to take a quick shower before we eat,’ he decided, levering himself away from the door-frame. ‘Have you decided which room you want to use?’
‘It’s all the same to me, since there is nothing here I relate to any more,’ she answered bitterly. Then, because she did not feel she had the energy for a return to hostilities, she added flatly, ‘I’ll use the one next door to yours, if it’s all the same to you.’
‘But it isn’t all the same to me,’ he grunted. ‘And you know it.’ She glared at him and he sighed heavily. ‘All right, Marnie. Use what bloody room you want to use. You know Mrs Dukes; she will have left them all prepared ready for unexpected guests.’
‘I need a change of clothes,’ she reminded him as he turned to leave. ‘I suppose there’s no chance you have any of my old things hanging around?’ she enquired hopefully.
‘No,’ he muttered. ‘If you must know, I had them sent to your favourite charity—at least that should please you, since nothing else around here seems to!’
‘You gave all my lovely clothes to the Sally Army?’ she choked out disbelievingly.
‘What the hell did you expect me to do with them—have them lovingly preserved behind glass just in case you decided on a whim to come and collect them?’
‘No, of course not!’ she answered stiffly. ‘I just thought…’ Her voice trailed off. She didn’t know what she’d thought—or even if she had so much as wondered about her clothes before this moment. ‘It—it doesn’t matter.’ Dully she dropped the subject.
Guy seemed happy to do that too, because he nodded grimly and said, ‘I will get you a pair of my pyjamas and a spare bathrobe. Tomorrow, first thing, we will go and collect your things from your flat, if that makes you feel any better.’
And he disappeared down the hall, his movements sharp with irritation. She followed, passing his door to open the one next to it, feeling as though she’d been dragged through the emotional food-mixer, the way they had to constantly keep sniping at each other.
Oh, God. She sat down wearily on the bed. What was she doing, letting herself become trapped by him again? She knew it could only lead to more heartache. More wretched pain. She was in pain now—the constant nagging pain of forced remembrance. Being with him all the time like this was making her face all those things she had thrust so utterly to the back of her mind.
Good things as well as bad. And she wasn’t at all sure which side of the balance-scale was weighing down the heaviest. That frightened her, frightened because it had to mean that her grievances towards Guy were slowly beginning to fade away—just as he had always said they would do.
‘Here. I’ve brought you…’
Guy halted a stride inside the room, his words dying as he looked down at her pale, forlorn face.
‘Oh, Marnie,’ he sighed, his mouth taking on a grim downward turn as he came over to where she sat and threw down the pyjamas and robe before squatting on his haunches in front of her. He took up her hands, long-fingered and so slender-boned that you only had to look at them to know they belonged to someone who possessed special artistic gifts. They were cold and trembling, and Guy sighed again before he lifted them to his lips and gently kissed them. He had discarded his jacket somewhere, and his tie, so the tanned skin at his throat where he had yanked open the top button of his shirt gleamed smoothly in the dying sunlight.
‘Can’t you simply forgive?’ he murmured suddenly. ‘Put us both out of our wretched misery and forgive so we can at least try to move forward into a better understanding than all this bitter standing still?’
She looked down into his face—so handsome, so sleekly hewn beneath its smooth, dark skin. His eyes, dark and deep, lacking any hint of mockery or cynicism or even the impatience he had been showing her all day. And his mouth, grim but soft, not tight and hard. Unhappy, like hers. Weary, like hers.
‘I’ll—try,’ she whispered thickly, then sucked in a breath of air that entered her lungs like a shaky sigh, the tears she had been trying to hold back since she entered her old studio minutes ago suddenly bulging in her eyes.
Guy’s mouth moved on a grimace of sombre understanding. And he lifted one of his hands to gently stroke her long bright hair away from the single tear trailing down her pale cheek. He made no effort to wipe the tear away, but simply squatted there watching its downward path until it reached the corner of her trembling mouth, when he leaned forward and gently kissed it away.
‘I ask for nothing more,’ he murmured gruffly. ‘Nothing more.’
Marnie made an effort to gather herself, pulling her hands free and sitting up straighter on the bed, effectively putting much needed distance between them, both on a physical and a spiritual plane.
‘The chicken will be ruined,’ she said, trying for a rueful smile.
‘Not if we’re quick,’ he countered, taking his lead from her and straightening his long body into a standing position. ‘A quick shower each, and we’ll meet in the kitchen in five minutes.’ He turned to walk back to the door—then stopped, turning back to glance around the room.
‘This is all right for you?’ he asked politely.
Marnie stood up. ‘Yes,’ she said uninterestedly. ‘It’s fine.’
‘You…’ He lifted a hand to run it through his hair in a oddly uncertain gesture. ‘Would you prefer to use our old room while I use this one?’
The action and his curious tone made her frown. ‘No,’ she refused. ‘That’s your room. You’ll sleep better in your own bed. Of course I don’t want to take it from you.’
‘Sleep?’ he murmured drily. ‘What’s that?’ The hand moved to the back of his neck, holding it while he grimaced wryly at her. ‘I have not had a single moment’s sleep since you came back into my life two nights ago,’ he admitted. ‘I just lie there, listening to every move you make, on the alert in case you decide to make a bolt for it again.’
‘I told you I wouldn’t,’ she reminded him.
‘I know.’ The hand dropped heavily to his side and clenched into a fist. ‘But it makes no difference. What is it that keeps you a
wake, Marnie?’ he then posed softly.
You, she wanted to say. Memories. My own black thoughts. ‘I give you my solemn vow, Guy,’ she said drily instead, ‘that I will not move out of this bed once I am in it—will that help ease your fractious mind?’
‘No.’ He smiled. ‘But I suppose it will have to do. See you in five minutes.’ Then he was gone, leaving her feeling ever so slightly—perplexed.
They ate in silence, Marnie with the long sleeves of his pyjama top rolled over several times before she found her hands. He’d grinned at the sight of her when she’d first walked into the kitchen but had said nothing, the small compromise she had allowed seeming to have taken all the tension out of the air. The chicken was not quite ruined, the pasta still edible, just about, and they washed it down with a glass of good Italian white wine.
Not very long after they had finished the meal, Marnie yawned and got up, more than ready for her bed.
She only hoped she could manage to sleep a little tonight. Certainly she was more than tired enough to do so.
And thankfully she did, dropping off to sleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow, curling herself into a loose ball with the feel of Guy’s pyjamas cocooning her in sensual silk. In fact, the feeling was so provocative that she found herself drifting into an erotic dream, where Guy was no longer her enemy and she was welcoming him into her bed and her arms as though he had never left them.
He felt wonderful to the touch, his skin like fine leather beneath her exploring fingertips, her mouth automatically softening as he gently kissed her.
‘Mmm,’ she sighed out pleasurably.
‘Go back to sleep,’ he murmured.
Back to sleep—? Her eyes flew open, her heart beginning to race madly when she found herself securely curled into the warm curve of his body.
‘What are you doing here?’ she gasped, trying to pull away.
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