by Joy Wodhams
Yet she knew now that whatever Rod's feelings about his ex-wife he would not conduct a furtive affair. If he wanted to go to her he would have to be open and honest about it and he would have to extract himself from their own marriage contract. And Rod wouldn't do that. He had made promises, and he was not a man to break promises.
It was late when he came home but she was still awake, still dressed. She had been nerving herself all evening to talk to him, knowing that for both their sakes she could postpone it no longer. He might not want her love but she felt she owed it to him at least to offer it.
She waited ten minutes and then she tapped on the door of the dressing room. “May I come in?” she whispered.
“If you like,” he answered. His voice was tired and when she entered she saw that his face was set in weary lines. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, elbows propped on his knees, chin resting on his hands. He looked at her, an eyebrow raised. “Come for your report?” he asked. “Want to know what's going on with Caroline? I suppose you want all the lurid details.”
She flushed but willed herself to cross the room. She sat beside him on the bed, partly because her knees were trembling and she could not go on standing awkwardly in front of him, and also so that she would not have to look at him.
“No,” she said. “But I'd like to talk to you. If you're not too tired?”
He rubbed a hand wearily over his face. “I am tired. Is this really important, Gabriella?”
“It's important to me,” she said, “and – and I hope it may mean something to you – if we're to carry on with our relationship in any way.”
He sighed. “Go on then.”
!It's – it's taken a long time,” she said, “but – I've learned to see things clearly at last. I've been wrong about so many things. Particularly about you, Rod, and I want to – I must tell you – how very much I regret everything I've done and said.” She stumbled on, still not looking at him. “I know what you must think of me and I deserve it – all of it. I know I've made things unbearable for you and believe me, if I could only go back and put things right I would.” Her voice faded away and she waited.
“Well, thank you for telling me,” he said at last. His voice was listless. A knife twisted inside her. It was too late. But she had to go on.
“I'm worried about – about you and Caroline -” She faltered.
“Why? D'you think I'll leave you?”
She shook her head. “I know you won't leave me.”
“Do you? How do you know that?”
“Because you promised. Because I know now that you don't let people down. Because -” She laughed shakily. “Because I've learned to trust you. Yes, I know that sounds ridiculous coming from me, but it's true. I've changed, Rod. I've grown up. I wish with all my heart that I could have done it sooner. That I hadn't destroyed any chance of happiness for us.”
She could feel his eyes on her but she still couldn't meet them. “I'm not going to ask you about Caroline. I know it's none of my business. But – I just hope you're not going to get hurt again.”
“Do you care if I'm hurt?”
She lowered her head. “Yes.”
There was a long silence, then he leaned back against the headboard. “Caroline and Jeremy have split up. I suppose even good old Jeremy has a financial limit. Anyway, he's currently negotiating for Wife Number Three and Caroline – well, Caroline has never believed in standing on her own two feet, she much prefers to stand on someone else's – preferably a man's – and as she'd heard that I'm now co-owner of a reasonably large company with potential she thought she'd sound me out.” He smiled cynically. “Of course, she's interviewing a few other prospects as well. I wouldn't say I was top of the list by any means.”
“Doesn't she know you're married?”
“Oh yes, I reminded her. But that's a minor obstacle for Caroline.”
“She sounds -”
“A bitch. Yes, I suppose she is.”
“But … you still care about her?”
He thought about it. “No, I don't think so. I was very much in love with her at the time but I realised later that I loved someone I'd invented, not the real Caroline. But I can't help feeling some responsibility.”
“You feel responsible for so many people. It's one of the good things about you that I never understood.” And if he wanted to go on being responsible for his ex-wife, Gabriella resolved that she wouldn't stand in his way. She looked up. “If you want to help Caroline – if you want to see her now and then ...”
He looked at her and a half smile lightened the sombreness of his face. “Oh, come on, Gabriella, stop being so saintly, it doesn't suit you.”
“I just meant -”
“I've no wish to see Caroline. I shall probably keep an eye on her from a distance for a while but I'm sure she'll find another husband before too long. And she won't do too badly from the share-out with Jeremy when the divorce goes through. She must be amassing quite a good bank balance by now.”
He looked at Gabriella thoughtfully. “Well. Thank you for talking to me. I shall look forward to dealing with the new grown up Gabriella!”
She was tempted to leave it at that but knew she couldn't. The hardest part was still to come and she began to tremble again. She turned away so that he could not see her face.
“There's something else,” she whispered. “I feel I owe it to you to tell you, after the way I've behaved. I hope you'll hear me out – and that you won't find it too embarrassing – and you mustn't feel under any obligation -”
She took a deep breath and he waited while she struggled for words.
“This is nailbiting stuff!” he said at last, keeping his voice light. “Whatever it is, you don't have to tell me, you know.”
“I must,” she said. “The thing is – God, it's so hard to say. Please don't look at me.” She took another deep breath. “The thing is – I've discovered – I love you, Rod.”
Now it was her turn to wait. And then he said, “This is rather sudden,” and she thought he was mocking her, but risking a glance at him she saw that his face was grave.
“It isn't really. I know now that I was drawn to you right from the first day I saw you. It scared me. I didn't want to fall in love with anyone – and most of all, I didn't want to fall in love with you!”
“Why not?” he asked, his voice quiet.
“Because – because I was frightened of you, I suppose. You were so handsome, so attractive to women. I kept thinking of my father. I was frightened of repeating all my mother's mistakes. And when I saw you taking out various girls from the office -” She lowered her head. “I suppose it was self defence in a way. I let myself see only the things in you that were bad – or rather, that I thought were bad. But deep down I've known all the time that I could love you. Wanted to love you. And I just kept fighting it.”
She looked up at him then. “Rod, I know I don't deserve anything after the way I've behaved. I don't expect you to love me but – do you think you could ever forgive me?”
“I tried to make allowances,” said Rod. “After you told me about your father I thought I understood the way you were. I wanted to help you but it seemed that everything I did was wrong. You went on condemning me without any evidence.”
“I've been such a fool.”
“It's hard to keep trying when someone treats you like some sort of monster,” he said. “In the end I lost heart.”
“I'm sorry,” she whispered, her eyes beginning to fill. “Oh God, I'm so sorry. I've ruined everything and now you hate me!”
He was silent for such a long time that she stumbled to her feet. She had to get back to her room and bury her humiliation and despair beneath her pillow.
And then, “Is that what you think?” he asked. She turned and stared at him through a blur of tears and he held out his arms. “Come here, my little idiot!”
She flung herself at him, hardly daring to believe that he didn't hate her after all. He wrapped his arms around her, his chin r
esting on the top of her head.
Lying against his chest she heard the slow beat of his heart, breathed in the warm essence of him, tickled her nose on the dark hairs that ran down to the taut planes of his stomach, and thanked God for giving her a second chance.
He tilted up her chin until she looked at him. “Did you really think I hated you?” he asked gently. “Even if I never said it, couldn't you see that I cared for you?”
“My mother said so.”
“A clever woman, your mother.”
“I was wrong there, too.”
He burst out laughing then. “Oh, Gabriella! You really have been seeing life upside down, haven't you?”
She managed a tiny smile and nodded. “It seems I've been wrong about everyone. You. My mother. Bernard. Sue. Your wife. My father. How could I have been so blind and stupid?”
“Here.” He reached over, flipped open a drawer and pulled out a handkerchief. “I buy them by the dozen now.” He blotted her eyes and cheeks. “Blow,” he ordered.
She did and felt better. “Oh Rod,” she whispered. “I love you so much.”
He looked down at her. “When I watched you walk down the aisle at our wedding … You were so beautiful. You looked like an enchanted princess. Unawakened. I wanted to be the one to waken you. I wished so much then that we were marrying for the right reasons.” He brought his hands up to her face and cupped it, gazing deep into her eyes. “And then on our honeymoon I began to hope that things would work out. I was sure that you wanted me as much as I wanted you.”
“Oh Rod, I did! You don't know how many nights I've lain awake since, wanting you.”
“And how I've managed to keep my hands off you night after night is a miracle!” he added huskily.
“Why did you?”
“Pride, I suppose. You had such a poor opinion of me, I was damned if I was going to chase after you. The first move had to come from you.”
“When I came to your room -” No, this was not the time to tell him that she had had a different motive entirely. She sighed. “We've both wasted so much time.”
He bent his head and tenderly traced his lips down over her eyebrows, her eyes and the corners of her mouth. “I love you, Gabriella. I've wanted to say that for a long time.”
“You really love me? In spite of everything?”
“In spite of. Because of. Both, I suppose. Even though you've driven me nearly insane!”
She smiled and slid her hand round his neck into the thick curling hair. “Darling, you don't have to now,” she murmured.
“What?”
“Keep your hands off me.”
He looked at her and the naked desire in his eyes turned her dizzy. Her lips trembled as they met his in a kiss that banished all the frustrations and misunderstandings of the previous weeks.
Just for a moment when Rod pulled away saying, “This isn't right,” an echo of an earlier fear cast a shadow over her but when he added, “We're in the wrong place,” she understood. He rose, lifted her into his arms and carried her to their room.
He sat her down gently on the edge of the double bed and knelt before her. “I love you, Gabriella,” he whispered.
“I love you too, Rod,” she answered gravely, knowing that now at last they were making their true marriage vows.
Burying his hands in the long pale strands of her hair he brought her mouth to his and then slowly he began to undress her, his lips moving tenderly over each part of her body as he uncovered it, as if he were staking his ownership. His lips sent long shivers through her and she knew that beneath the tenderness lay a passion he could only just control.
“There was always a special magic between us when we made love,” he murmured. “I should have trusted my instincts.”
“Trust them now,” she breathed. “Trust them now!”
With a low half smothered sound he lifted her into the centre of the bed, and then the strength and urgency of their desire blotted out all thought.
Some time in the early hours of the morning as they lay side by side, momentarily sated, he spoke.
“We must go and see Brewster next week,” he said. “Five years is a ridiculously short contract. I think we should get it altered.”
“I agree,” she said, smiling at him in the pearly light of the dawn.
“So what d'you think? Twenty years? Thirty?”
Beneath the single sheet that covered them Gabriella slid her fingers down his hot damp body, herself aroused by his immediate response.
“How about a lifetime?”
Rod gave her that slow lazy smile of his and took her in his arms again.
“Done,” he said.
THE END