'That was a damn foolish thing to do!' he spoke for the first time when the icy water had drawn the stinging pain out of her hand, and there was a reprimand in his voice that brought fresh tears to her eyes. 'Does it feel better?'
'Yes, thank you,' she murmured huskily.
'You fortunately didn't scald yourself too badly, but there might be a slight discomfort until the skin has healed properly.'
He lifted her hand out of the water, and she leaned against the sink, feeling exhausted suddenly when he moved away from her to take a dry kitchen-cloth off the rail against the wall. He stood facing her while he dabbed at the moisture on her hand and studied the pinkness of the skin against the back of her left hand. His touch was gentle, almost a caress, and she could feel the tremors starting all over again.
Nathan muttered something unintelligible when he lifted his glance to look into her tear-filled eyes. He flung the towel aside and, taking her quivering face between his hands, he brushed his thumbs lightly across her damp cheekbones. Their eyes met and held for breathtaking seconds, and a little pulse was beating rapidly at the base of her throat when he lowered his gaze to her soft, trembling mouth. She knew he was going to kiss her, but she felt powerless to do anything about it, and his ruggedly handsome face became a blur when he lowered his head to hers.
Her lips parted instinctively beneath the sensual pressure of his mouth, and she welcomed this intimacy she had spent five long years hungering for. Nathan was kissing her with a lingering intent from which he withdrew at length only to return his mouth to hers with a new urgency which demanded a response she did not have the power to withhold, and her hands slid from his waist across his broad back to his shoulders as she pressed herself closer to him. She was aware of his arousal as much as she was aware of her own escalating emotions when his arms crushed her slender softness into the hard curve of his body, but the next instant she was thrust aside with a roughness that made her stagger back against the cupboard, and an icy coldness invaded her heated body when she saw his face distorted with fury.
'My God!' he exclaimed throatily and with a certain amount of disgust while his disparaging glance raked her from her honey-brown hair down to her small sandalled feet. 'I would never have thought it possible that I could still want you, but I do, and I despise myself for it!'
He turned on his heel and strode out of her cottage, slamming the front door behind him with a force that made the windows rattle in their frames, and a shuddering sigh passed Julia's throbbing lips when she stared dazedly at the cups she had set out on the cupboard. Nathan had not stayed to have his coffee, she thought foolishly, and then her vision blurred. Hot tears filled her eyes and trickled down past her nose until she could taste the salt of them in her mouth.
She did not hear Nathan drive away. She was crying too much to see or hear anything when she made her way to her bedroom, but his car was no longer parked at her gate when she drew aside the curtains some time later, and she cried herself to sleep that night for the first time in many months.
Julia did not hear her alarm go off the following morning, and it was the persistent ringing of the telephone in the lounge which finally managed to rouse her at seven o'clock. She leapt out of bed, snatching up her cotton robe and putting it on as she staggered barefoot from her bedroom into the lounge.
'Are you all right, Julia?' Warren's voice demanded when she had snatched up the receiver, and his anxiety was understandable when memories of the previous night came flooding back into her mind.
'Yes, I'm fine,' she assured him, subsiding weakly into the nearest chair and staring at the pink hue on her left hand which was still tender to the touch.
'Am I going to see you again?'
His uncertainty was touching, and it was perhaps unwise of her, but she saw in Warren the sanctuary she needed so desperately in this emotional storm which had erupted over her head.
'I'll see you whenever you wish, Warren,' she replied as she pushed her tousled hair out of her face, and she could almost hear him sighing with relief at the other end of the line.
'Perhaps some time over the weekend when it's not so busy here at the restaurant?' he suggested.
'I'd like that very much,' she agreed and, when they ended their conversation moments later, she rushed into the bathroom to shower and change into her uniform.
Julia skipped breakfast that morning, and spent the extra time with her make-up, but her attempts to disguise her puffy eyelids were not as successful as she had hoped. Roland took one look at her before he left the consulting-rooms to do his morning rounds at the hospital, and he muttered something about, 'So, we're back to that again, are we?'
She knew what he had meant. During her first lonely months in Doornfield she had cried herself to sleep many a night, coming to work with swollen eyelids the morning after, but Roland and Elizabeth had showered her with their friendship and understanding, and those tearful nights had finally dwindled into obscurity. She had thought that she would never shed a tear again, but… oh, God!… how foolish she had been to think that she would never have cause to cry again! All it needed was for Nathan to walk back into her life, and her calm little world was disrupted as if by a tornado. She had believed that her love for him was dead and buried, but she could not have been more mistaken. The pain was back, this time in multiple form, and a great deal more intense.
The weather was hot and humid after the rain, and Julia's body felt clammy beneath her white uniform when she left the consulting-rooms to take her lunch-hour break on the Friday of that same week. She was contemplating having a long iced drink at a nearby tearoom when her attention was drawn to a silver Jaguar parked against the kerb. The man leaning against it was wearing a hat with a leopard-skin band, and the wide brim was pulled down over his forehead to leave his face partly in shadow, but there was something so familiar about him that Julia's steps faltered and slowed down.
'Could I perhaps give the lady a lift somewhere?' he offered, straightening to his full height, and that deep, gravelly voice was unmistakable.
'Damian!' Her face lit up with the sheer joy of encountering an old friend and, regardless of who might be watching, she flung her arms about his neck and kissed his leathery cheek. 'Oh, it's been such a long time!'
'Whose fault is that, may I ask?' he demanded, pushing his hat on to the back of his head and giving her a glimpse of that coppery hair she remembered so well.
'I plead guilty,' she smiled, raising her hands in a gesture of surrender, but her expression sobered the next instant. 'What are you doing here in Doornfield?'
'I was invited for the weekend, and I decided to stop in town to pay you a visit before I drive out to the farm.' Damian's green eyes were narrowed against the glare of the sun as he glanced about him. 'Is there somewhere in this God-forsaken place where one could get a decent lunch?'
'The Mopani restaurant,' she enlightened him, inwardly amused at this city man's description of the small village she loved so much. 'You must have driven right past it without noticing it.'
Damian opened the door on the passenger side of his Jaguar. 'You'll have to direct me to it.'
'Is this an invitation to lunch?'
'It most certainly is, and I'm not taking "no" for an answer.'
Julia had no intention of declining his invitation, and Damian waited until she was seated comfortably before he closed the door and walked round to the driver's side.
'I've often wondered, Julia. Why Doornfield?' he asked her when he pulled away from the kerb and drove down the main street. 'I can understand your reason for wanting to get away from Johannesburg, but why didn't you go to Cape Town, or to Durban where you could have got a job in one of the hospitals?'
'After my grandmother died I needed the peace and tranquillity that Doornfield had to offer, and I've been happy here.' She did not add that she had been in such a dire state of physical collapse that she had been advised medically to take a complete break away from the city and the pressures she would encounter
in a large hospital. 'The Mopani restaurant is to your left up ahead,' she directed Damian when they approached a fork in the road.
'This is nice,' he smiled, the dappled sunlight setting fire to his hair as he glanced about him appreciatively when they had seated themselves at the only table which was still vacant beneath the shady mopani trees. 'Very nice.'
Julia looked up to see Warren making his way towards them among the tables with their bright, checkered tablecloths.
'This is indeed a honour to have you here in the middle of the day, Julia.' He smiled down at her when he reached their table, but there was curiosity in the glance he cast in Damian's direction.
'Warren, I'd like you to meet an old friend from Johannesburg, Dr Damian Squires. Damian, this is Warren Chandler, the owner of the Mopani restaurant,' Julia introduced the two men.
'I'm delighted to meet you, Dr Squires.' The two men shook hands, and then Warren gestured towards the white-coated waiter hovering close to their table. 'Joseph will see to it that you have everything you desire, and I wish you both a pleasant lunch.'
Joseph stepped forward with the menus as Warren departed, and Julia and Damian both ordered an iced fruit drink to be served while they waited for their salad lunches.
'Pleasant-looking chap, this Warren Chandler,' Damian remarked when they were alone, and there was a smile about his wide, firm mouth which did not quite match the look in his green eyes. 'Has he become someone special?'
Julia shook her head and forced a smile to her lips. 'Warren is merely a friend.'
'It's still Nathan, isn't it?' Damian's astuteness should not have surprised her, but it did, and her startled glance merely confirmed his statement. That lazy, familiar smile curved his mouth as he leaned back in his chair with a hint of envy in his narrowed eyes. 'I hope I meet a woman some day whose love for me will be as unfaltering as yours for Nathan.'
'Nathan has Marcia now,' she reminded him stiffly, looking up to see Joseph walking towards their table with the iced drinks they had ordered.
'Marcia is a beautiful woman, but she's hard as nails and cold as ice.' Damian resumed their conversation when they were alone again, and his compelling glance held hers. 'Have you told Nathan why you broke off your engagement five years ago?'
'No, I haven't,' she confessed, taking a much-needed sip of her drink, 'and I don't ever intend to.'
'Why not?' he demanded with characteristic sternness.
'It won't do any good.'
'You can't be sure of that.'
Julia gestured dismissively with her hand. 'Please, let's change the subject, Damian.'
'I'm damned if I'm going to!' he persisted, his gravelly voice lowered and urgent as he leaned towards her across the table. 'You have got to tell Nathan the truth!'
'How do you think he will feel if I tell him that I broke off our engagement because I was afraid he might forfeit the chance of a lifetime to stay with me?' A look of distaste flashed across her sensitive features. 'The last thing I want is for Nathan to feel under an obligation to me.'
'Sure he might feel under an obligation, but if his love for you was sincere, and I have every reason to believe it was, then a sacrifice shouldn't be allowed to become a barrier between two people who love each other,' Damian reasoned with her. 'Loving someone isn't always the wine and roses people want you to believe. Too much wine could give you a headache, and roses have thorns. Making a sacrifice in the name of love is all part of that painful process of caring, but there is such a thing as having to endure too much pain.'
'Dr de Necker mentioned something similar a few weeks ago,' Julia heard herself confiding in Damian. 'He spoke about too long a sacrifice, and about shutting off my feelings so securely that one day I might find nothing left in my heart to give to someone else.'
Damian shook his head in disagreement. 'You haven't shut off your feelings. Your problem is that you have never stopped loving Nathan, and you've got to tell him the truth.'
'I can't!' Everything inside her shied away from the mere thought of it. 'If he's in love with Marcia then knowing the truth will serve no purpose… not for him, and certainly not for me.'
'It might make him human again, instead of the insufferable, unreasonable man he has become,' Damian argued the point, but Julia refrained from answering him when she saw Joseph approaching their table with their lunch.
Insufferable and unreasonable? Was that what Nathan had become? Julia wondered about this while they were eating their lunch. She had encountered an unfamiliar harshness in him, and a savage fury which she sensed needed very little encouragement to erupt. That did not necessarily mean that Nathan still cared for her. She had hurt his pride and his dignity, and he was merely giving vent to a long-suppressed anger which she understood and could accept despite the fact that it hurt.
'Nathan's having a braai out at the farm tomorrow evening,' Damian told her when they had finished their meal and sat with a second iced drink in front of them. 'Marcia will be there, and two other couples whom I haven't met yet, but this was such a last-minute invitation that I couldn't find anyone to invite along with me.'
Julia knew what was coming and she interrupted him hastily before he could ask the dreaded question. 'Don't ask me to be your partner for the evening, Damian, because I can't.'
Damian took his time about lighting a cigarette, but he did not take his eyes off her, and she was beginning to feel uncomfortable beneath his gaze when he asked, 'Do you want me to tell Nathan the truth?'
'No!' she gasped, almost choking on a mouthful of her drink.
'Then you will have to be there to keep me quiet,' he smiled at her triumphantly.
'That's blackmail!' she protested, her heart beating wildly against her ribs at the thought of what he expected of her.
Damian looked into her accusing eyes and shrugged carelessly. 'Call it what you will, but I'm serious.'
'I thought you were my friend.'
'I am your friend, Julia, but I'm also Nathan's friend, and I can't bear to see two people I care about destroying themselves like this.'
Her hand was shaking so much when she lifted her glass that she put it down again for fear of spilling. 'I can't tell Nathan the truth until I know what his feelings are for Marcia.'
'I will tell you what Nathan feels for her,' Damian growled fiercely, jetting smoke from his nostrils. 'She's beautiful, she boosts his ego, and she's available.'
'You shouldn't talk like that about the woman he might choose to marry,' Julia rebuked him even though she was driving a painful sword into her own heart.
'If he married Marcia Grant then he'd be a fool!' Damian exploded harshly.
'You can't really be sure of Nathan's feelings for Marcia, and neither can I.'
'How are you going to find the answer if you're so determined to stay out of his way?'
Julia felt as if she was being driven into a corner from which there was no escape, and her grey glance was pleading. 'Don't make life difficult for me, Damian.'
'My dear Julia, I'm not half as considerate as you are, and I shan't hesitate to tell Nathan the truth from your point of view as well as my own,' he continued relentlessly, a look of frustration and anger flashing across his face. 'My God, he needs to have some sense knocked into that clever head of his!'
'Damian…' She hesitated, her tortured mind spinning in its desperate search for a way out of this dilemma she was confronted with, but Damian was wielding a powerful weapon.
'Will you be my partner tomorrow evening, or do I drive out there now and spill the beans?' he demanded, and she knew him well enough to know that he would not hesitate to carry out his threat.
'I'll go with you,' she agreed, very much against her will.
'Good!' he nodded, crushing the remainder of his cigarette into the ashtray, and they finished their drinks in silence before he raised his hand to summon Joseph. 'May I have the bill, please?'
Joseph entered the restaurant and returned a few minutes later, without the bill. 'Mr Chandler sa
id to tell you that he hopes you enjoyed your lunch, and there is no charge for Miss Julia and her doctor friend.'
Damian slanted an amused glance at Julia, and took out his wallet to give Joseph a substantial tip. 'You may tell Mr Chandler that I consider his hospitality overwhelming and very much appreciated.'
Joseph's face was split with a white-toothed grin as he bowed himself away, and moments later Damian was ushering Julia back to where he had parked his car.
'I guess there is another, more important reason why Warren Chandler has been so generous,' Damian remarked slyly when they drove away from the restaurant.
'Warren is just a friend,' she insisted.
'From your point of view perhaps, but not from his,' he summed up the situation accurately, and a guilty flush stained her cheeks which did not escape Damian's notice. 'Yes, I think a little healthy competition might be just the thing Nathan needs at this moment to shock him out of this complacent world he is living in.'
She went cold and rigid with anxiety as she turned in her seat to face Damian, and her voice rose to a frantic pitch when she said, 'Damian, you're not going to do or say something which might give Nathan the impression that I—'
'Calm down, my dear,' he interrupted her in that soothing voice she had heard him use so often with his patients, and she drew a gulping breath to steady herself before she explained the reason for her anxiety.
'Nathan doesn't have a very good opinion of me at the moment, and dropping unfounded hints about Warren and me might substantiate Nathan's belief that I'm a—a tease.'
She almost choked on that hated word and looked away when she felt herself blush a furious red.
Damian's hand gripped hers briefly where it lay in her lap. 'I can promise you that Nathan won't say that again in my presence and get away with it.'
'Oh, Damian!' She sighed heavily and blinked away that film of unexpected tears. 'I know you merely want to help, but I wish you would leave well alone.'
Damian did not answer her, and during the short drive into town Julia hoped that he would free her from the ordeal of having to accompany him to the braai the following evening, but he obviously had no intention of doing so. He parked his Jaguar in the street outside Roland's consulting-rooms, and she knew it would be futile to plead with him when he asked for her address.
Too Long a Sacrifice Page 5