by Maggie Cox
Curling some soft blond tendrils behind her ear, Sorrel almost offered him a smile…almost…but not quite. As Reece followed her progress out of the room, he let loose the deeply weary sigh he’d been holding onto practically the whole week and sank down into a nearby red leather armchair to get his bearings.
CHAPTER FIVE
‘WHEN were you intending going back to work?’
Her gaze focused on the large stretch of water before them known as the Serpentine—where ducks, geese and swans congregated in busy little groups intent on getting their share of the bread that children were happily throwing out to them—Sorrel dug her hands deep into the pockets of her green puffa jacket and tried to stem the tide of melancholy that washed over her. Today there was no discernible sunshine, because the sun was hiding shy behind a bank of stormy-looking grey clouds, and it perfectly echoed the lack of any kind of brightness in her heart.
They both came to a standstill, staring out at the lake in unison, the chattering of children and birds alike flowing over them, silently grating on the unseen bruises of their shared heartbreak. Reece lifted a shoulder and only glanced at his wife briefly, as if the sight of her sadness these days was almost too much for even his broad shoulders to bear.
‘I’m not in any rush to get back to work, Sorrel. I have other people to help take care of things in my absence…you know that. I’ll take as much time out as you need.’
She didn’t deviate from her intense perusal of the lake. She just stared as if both she and her thoughts were miles away.
‘That’s the whole point, Reece. I don’t “need” you to take any more time off work to be with me. What purpose is it serving? I’m miserable, you’re miserable—how is it helping either of us? At least if you got back to work you could focus on something else instead of this—this.’ Sorrel had been going to use the word ‘hell’, but withdrew it at the last second as her womb contracted with a sudden piercing ache deep inside her.
One day all this would be behind her. One day the pain she was experiencing now would not be so brutal—so raw—making her feel like she wanted to escape her own skin just to get some relief. If she didn’t believe that her agony would diminish, even a little, she might as well just lie down and die right now. There had to be the promise of a day in the not too far distant future when her life would return to normal again, when she could start to come to terms with the fact that once upon a time all her hopes and dreams had been ripped away from her—like a boat torn from its moorings by a freak storm that had occurred out of the blue.
‘We’re in this together, Sorrel. I told you that before. Why should I want to focus on anything else but us?’
‘You didn’t want the baby.’
‘For God’s sake, don’t keep saying that!’
Agony piercing him at her cruel assertion, Reece curled his hands into fists down by his sides and clenched his jaw. It took him several seconds to put out the fire of anger that arose inside him, but he couldn’t extinguish it completely. It stayed simmering beneath the surface even as he told himself it was only his wife’s deep misery about the loss of the baby she’d carried that made her say such blatantly untrue things. She needed to lash out at somebody over the unfairness of it all. It hadn’t helped their case that their relationship had been at its lowest ebb when she’d discovered she was pregnant. And because of that, she naturally wanted to blame Reece for everything.
‘Anyway…I think you should go back to work. I’ve got things I need to concentrate on myself.’
Her blue eyes settled on him a little nervously, Reece thought—as though she were unsure of her ground since his outburst of temper. If only he could find the words to reassure her, to tell her that he would never willingly cause her any more pain in a million years. But right then—with the voices of excited young children ringing out in the chilly spring day—Reece’s ability to think with any real clarity just got wrapped up in the innocent yet hurtful sounds, and he bent down, picked up a pebble and threw it into the water so that it skimmed across the dull, slightly green surface and made three distinct splashes as it progressed out into the centre of the lake.
‘What “things” do you need to concentrate on?’ he asked.
‘I want to get back to work myself. Not modelling,’ she added quickly as she registered Reece’s swift frown of disapproval. ‘I’ve been working on some fashion designs, and Nina Bryant thinks that they’re really quite good. I know a lot of people in the business still, and I think I could make a go of something if I give it my all.’
Reece hated to burst her bubble, he really did, but in his opinion no way was Sorrel ready to throw herself into another career—let alone ‘give it her all.’ She hadn’t given herself proper time either to grieve or heal, and if this fashion designing didn’t work out the disappointment could set her back even further. Much more pressing was the need for them both to try and repair the damage that had been done to their marriage, so that they could weather this new storm together with some strength.
‘I don’t think now is the time to be thinking about starting out in something else, Sorrel.’ His frown deepened, furrowing the lightly tanned skin on his forehead. ‘I think we should go away somewhere, like I suggested before. We could go to the house in the Algarve. At this time of year it won’t be too hot, and we can just spend time together and relax.’
‘I don’t want any more time to relax or think or brood! Can’t you see that? I need to keep myself occupied. I really don’t want to go away on holiday, Reece. Don’t you think I would go out to Australia if I wanted to, and stay with my parents if I needed a break? My mum and dad have already asked me.’ But Sorrel hadn’t felt able to face her beloved parents’ distress about the loss of her baby and deal with her own as well—or capitulate to her sister Melody’s insistence that she return to Suffolk and stay with her. Best to steer clear of other people expressing their emotions right now, when she wasn’t exactly feeling strong or prepared.
‘And what about us?’
Reece turned to face her head-on and Sorrel caught the merest glimpse of a muscle flexing slightly in the plane of his beautiful angled cheekbone. She sensed the undoubted tension building inexorably inside him, as though he was on a very short fuse that was going to ignite any second now.
‘Us?’
‘Don’t you think it would do us both good to get away together? To have time to rest and relax and make some decisions about our future?’
Her heart jumped. Hadn’t he already told her he was in this ‘for better or worse’? Was he now changing his mind?
‘I’ll still agree to a divorce, if that’s what you want.’
Inside, Sorrel was so frozen she felt as if she’d been buried beneath an icy avalanche that she would never escape from.
‘There’s not going to be any divorce. I told you that already! Instead I’m going to be right beside you while you heal, and we’re going to work things out together—as we should have done right from the beginning, when everything started to fall apart. Do you hear me?’
She flinched at his uncompromisingly irritated tone, and at the perfectly delineated features that were so compelling. All she ever seemed to do these days was make him furious with her. But there were no manuals available with ‘quick fixes’ in them, to tell her how to get over this terrible thing that had happened to her and stop destroying the one thing that she’d always counted on until recently…her husband’s love.
Turning away from the sight of the lake and the activity surrounding it, Sorrel returned her chilled hands to her pockets and started to walk away.
‘Sorrel!’
Reece chased after her, halting her progress with the ring of command that inevitably laced his voice. Studying him with dulled blue eyes, Sorrel wished that the day, her body, and her life didn’t all feel so deathly, irredeemably cold.
‘I’m sorry,’ he ground out, the cold air turning his breath to steam. ‘I’m not trying to upset you. I’m merely trying to get you to see that I want t
o help you. I’ve never seen you so low…do you know what that does to me?’
‘It’s OK.’ Grimacing slightly, Sorrel could hardly bring herself to meet his eyes. ‘You probably deserve a much better wife than me, Reece.’
‘Don’t say that!’
‘I’ve brought you nothing but trouble.’
‘Why are you doing this, Sorrel? Isn’t it enough that we’ve both suffered over what’s happened without punishing ourselves even more?’ Wanting to ease her anxiety and let her feel his genuine support, Reece reached out and brushed a lock of her hair tenderly away from her eyebrow. ‘Why don’t you let me make an appointment with a doctor or a bereavement counsellor to get you some help?’
Could some cool, detached professional help show her the way out of her sorrow and pain? The idea didn’t fill her with much reassurance. Swallowing down a fresh wave of despair, Sorrel glanced up into Reece’s warm, concerned gaze.
‘I know that you mean well, but I’m not ready to talk about this with anyone else just yet.’
‘That’s OK, honey.’ He touched her mouth, then withdrew his hand with a smile. ‘When you’re ready, we’ll get you all the help that you need. In the meantime I’m here for you—twenty-four seven…you got that?’
Because he was smiling at her, Sorrel couldn’t resist the warmth that the gesture engendered in all the icy little corners of her heart. Her hand moved towards him and she found her fingers curling tentatively around his. Registering his surprise and pleasure, she allowed her grip to tighten a little. ‘Can we walk a little more, do you think?’
‘Of course…as long as you don’t overdo things.’
Feeling his heart lift for the first time in days, Reece remembered what sweet pleasure it was just to do something as simple and innocent as hold hands with his beautiful wife….
Despite their fledgling truce at the park, they were still sleeping in separate rooms, with Sorrel continuing to fight shy of making conversation and withdrawing into herself for hours on end.
When the telephone rang on his study desk one evening about a week later, Reece was actually genuinely pleased to hear the exotic Spanish tones of the beautiful Angelina Cortez.
‘Reece, mi querido! I rang your office but they told me that you were on leave. I am so glad to find you at home! I was hoping we could still have lunch together, as I suggested before? Would tomorrow at one o’clock suit? I am still at the Dorchester, so we can eat there. Please say that you can join me?’
Knowing that Sorrel had already turned down his suggestion of lunch tomorrow at one of the new Conran restaurants in town, Reece rubbed his hand round the back of his neck to ease the strain that had accumulated there from the past few weeks and quickly scribbled the time down in his opened diary.
‘One o’clock will be just fine, Angelina. I’ll look forward to seeing you tomorrow.’
‘And I have to ask…have you thought any more about accepting my offer to organise a new tour for me? I am anxious to know.’
Ordinarily Reece would think Why not? and relish the prospect—although challenging, with a star like Angelina—of getting his teeth into another demanding and all-consuming project. But right now there was no enthusiastic response left in him—not when all he could think about was Sorrel, and when and if she would ever show even the merest glimpse of returning to a normal life again. Because his emotions were so affected by his wife’s melancholic moods, he questioned his own ability even to pull off a major project like the American tour Angelina had in mind.
‘We’ll talk about it tomorrow, if you don’t mind,’ was all he said, and at Angelina’s subdued adios he put down the receiver.
Pausing outside the door of her husband’s modern and spacious study, Sorrel let her hand drop to her side instead of knocking to go in, and drew her finely arched brows together in a helpless expression of anguish. Reece was going to meet Angelina Cortez for lunch tomorrow.
What was the ‘it’ they were going to talk about? Sorrel longed to know. Since losing the baby her anxiety about her relationship with Reece had become even more acute. She ached to discuss her feelings with him, to ask him to give her time and not become despondent that she was so uncommunicative and withdrawn—and especially not to seek comfort in the arms of someone else. Someone vital and exotic and lovely…like Angelina Cortez… But how could she even begin when she knew in her heart that he had to be getting tired of her behaviour?
It had been months now since they had had any kind of intimate relations, and there would be another month yet—the gynaecologist at the hospital had told her—before ‘normal’ sexual activity could resume. It didn’t help Sorrel that she was terrified of resuming any kind of intimacy with her angry and frustrated husband. They had both levelled some terrible accusations at each other, and how did they go about healing the scars of all that? How could Sorrel start to see herself as a desirable woman again when her body wouldn’t even allow her to carry a baby to full term?
The door opened suddenly while she was standing there thinking, and she jumped back in surprise. Reece’s commanding frame stilled in the doorway, and his glance was wary, as if he wondered what new problem his wife was going to present him with now. It hardly reassured Sorrel to imagine that her own husband viewed her as someone with an endless list of problems and demands.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘I—I think I might like to go out to lunch tomorrow after all.’
Finding it hard to meet the searing examination of his forthright gaze, Sorrel glanced down at her unpainted nails and pushed back the cuticle of her forefinger with the nail of her thumb. She knew perfectly well that Reece was meeting Angelina tomorrow, and she wanted to know what he would do about it if she presented him with this new dilemma. Would he choose the sultry opera star over his sad, depressed wife?
‘What made you change your mind?’
‘I—I…’ Shrugging a shoulder, Sorrel found she couldn’t lie. Lies would only dig them both into a deeper and deeper slough of despond. ‘I heard you on the phone just now. You’re meeting Angelina Cortez, aren’t you?’
‘Dammit, Sorrel! Just what the hell do you think you’re playing at? Have things got so bad that you have to resort to hanging around outside my study door listening to my phone calls?’
‘I only heard by accident,’ she protested, her blue eyes revealing her hurt that he believed she would deliberately do a thing like that.
‘So if you know I’ve already agreed to meet Angelina why are you now telling me you want to go to lunch after all?’
‘Is it a business lunch?’
Sorrel had to know, because her very bones ached at the thought that it might be something more.
Disappointment, pain and sheer disbelief briefly clouded Reece’s enigmatic features.
‘Of course it’s a business lunch! What are you suggesting, Sorrel? That I’m having an affair with the woman?’
Her mouth went dry as chalk. ‘Are you?’ Her lips quivered a little and she drew her hand across her ribcage beneath her sweater, to try and quell the churning that was going on inside.
‘No. I’m not having an affair.’
Leaning a shoulder against the doorjamb, Reece didn’t bother to hide his weariness. All of a sudden Sorrel pined for him to hold her. She wanted to bury her face in his broad, hard chest so badly. She knew a great need to smell the heavenly, rather exotic tang of the aftershave cologne he used, which would be mingled with his own innately gorgeous smell. She wanted to feel him slide his fingers through the soft strands of her long blond hair and then raise her face to his for a deep and satisfying kiss. A kiss that would reassure her that he still loved her. Oh, how she craved all those things!
But as she continued to regard him she saw him mentally withdraw from her rather than share her need to be closer. If only she could just find it in herself to tell him that she was sorry for everything—that she knew she had played her part in helping them drift further and further apart—that he wasn’t so
lely to blame. Longing to share with him her grief about the baby, she also wanted to confess that she’d always had a secret desire to bear his child. But, knowing instinctively that children had never been a particular desire for him, as they’d been for her, Sorrel had held back from admitting it in case he told her to her face that he absolutely did not want children—period. She’d been far too scared to hear him say the words she’d dreaded.
But how was she supposed to tell him all those things now when she didn’t even know if he really loved her any more? Only a couple of weeks ago he’d been going to divorce her, and he’d only withdrawn from that intention when he’d learned that Sorrel might be pregnant.
‘So Angelina is thinking of touring again, is she?’
Trying to make her tone conversational, Sorrel crossed her restless arms in front of her chest.
Straightening up from where he’d been leaning against the door, Reece nodded once, as if silently confirming something to himself.
‘You’re not interested in my work, Sorrel. You never have been. So don’t start pretending now. If you really want to go to lunch tomorrow I’ll cancel my meeting with Angelina. Of course I will. But if you’re only saying that you want to go because you’ve got some dumb idea that I’m having an affair…then forget it. I’ll be working late tonight, so go to bed whenever you’re ready. I’ll see you in the morning.’
Withdrawing into the room behind him, he didn’t hesitate to shut the door in her face.
Getting up for a glass of water and some headache pills at three in the morning, Sorrel crossed the tiled kitchen floor in her bare feet, her silk robe flapping open across her matching short silk nightgown as she headed towards the sink.
Her headache had developed, she was convinced, because her mind was just so restless with thinking. Past, present and future were all melding into one hazy blur, pressing on her tired brain—the happiness of the distant past sadly and heavily outweighed by the unhappiness of the present and Sorrel’s dread of the future.