‘You’re divorced?’ she frowned.
Marilyn shook her head. ‘There was never a divorce.’
Lindsay swallowed hard. ‘Then you and he—You’re still married to each other?’
‘As I said,’ the other woman shrugged uninterestedly, ‘there was never a divorce.’
Lindsay found it difficult to think of Joel married to this woman, especially for the last seven years. And if they had lived apart all this time why hadn’t they divorced?
Marilyn seemed to guess some of what she was thinking. ‘Of course, like a lot of couples, we’ve had our problems, but as you can see, we’re well and truly back together now. By the way,’ she added, her eyes narrowed, ‘you left an ornate comb at Joel’s apartment, I must remember to post it to you some time. Maybury was quite embarrassed when I asked him if he knew who it belonged to,’ she revealed dryly.
Lindsay noticed Joel hadn’t felt the same emotion! ‘Don’t bother to send it back to me,’ she dismissed abruptly. ‘I have plenty of other combs.’
‘But this is such a pretty one,’ Marilyn persisted. ‘Brown shot through with gold.’
Lindsay knew the comb instantly, although she couldn’t say she had missed it. How awful that this woman should be the one to find it. ‘It’s quite inexpensive,’ she shrugged. ‘The gold isn’t real.’
‘What a pity,’ Marilyn mocked softly. ‘I’ll send it to you, anyway.’
‘Please don’t bother,’ requested Lindsay through gritted teeth, knowing she would never wear the comb again now anyway; each time she did it would remind her of Joel and this woman living together.
‘It’s really no bother,’ Marilyn drawled. ‘And in a way it helped me to know your taste in jewellery. Joel and I picked the gift out together that he’s going to give you tomorrow when you leave—I hope you like it.’
Whatever it was Lindsay hated it already! ‘Joel had no need to buy me anything—after all, I chose to leave.’
‘I believe it’s the customary thing to do,’ Marilyn dismissed in a bored voice.
‘Perhaps,’ she acknowledged tightly, although she would still rather Joel hadn’t done it, and especially wished he hadn’t taken this woman with him to choose it; it wouldn’t even be something she could cherish and always think of as something Joel had given her, knowing it would remind her more of his wife than of Joel.
‘I’m sure you’ll like it,’ the other woman smiled. ‘I’ll go in and see Joel now.’
As far as Lindsay was concerned she could stay in with him all day if she wanted to; but she couldn’t stay around and watch it. She had received a severe shock today, and as soon as Shirley returned from lunch she made her excuses and left for the day, needing desperately to be alone.
Would the pain of loving Joel never be over? How could he have kept something so important as his marriage a secret from her? Because she didn’t doubt it was the truth, Marilyn wasn’t stupid enough to claim something as fact that could so easily be disproved. And Joel had known how she would feel about his marriage, had realised she would never consider becoming involved with him if she had known, which was precisely the reason he hadn’t told her.
But she kept to her promise to herself not to cry over him any more, even though her throat and her head ached from the effort it took her to hold the tears inside her. Damn Joel to hell, why did he have to be married, how could he do that to her!
It was obvious from what the other woman had said that she had moved back in with him, that they had now resumed their marriage, that Joel had even told Marilyn about their own relationship. Perhaps he had needed to tell her everything after Marilyn had found her comb!
The last thing Lindsay expected was to find Joel on her doorstep at six-thirty!
‘Yes?’ She kept him standing there, her behaviour definitely hostile.
‘Shirley said you left early because you weren’t feeling well,’ he frowned his concern. ‘I thought I would just come and check that you’re okay now.’
Her mouth was tight. ‘Wouldn’t a telephone call have sufficed?’ she said waspishly.
He seemed puzzled by her cold manner. His face had lost some of its healthy tan the last few weeks, and he looked thinner. His hair was longer than he usually wore it to, as if he hadn’t had time lately to worry too much about his appearance, even his navy blue three-piece suit did not fit as well as it did normally.
‘I wanted to see for myself that you’re all right.’ He spoke quietly.
Lindsay still held the door firmly closed, only opening it enough to be able to see him clearly. ‘As you can see,’ her voice was brittle, ‘I’m perfectly all right.’
Still he made no effort to leave. ‘Shirley said something about a headache …?’
‘Yes,’ she snapped.
‘Do you still have it?’
‘Joel—’
‘You look very pale.’ He was watching her closely. ‘Are you sure it’s just a headache?’
‘Of course I’m sure,’ she bit out impatiently. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me—’
‘Lindsay, I have to talk to you.’ He pushed the door with enough force to open it, taking her arm to guide her back into the lounge after closing the flat door behind them.
She wrenched away from him. ‘I don’t feel like talking to you! I told you, I still have a headache—’
‘I’m not convinced you ever had a headache,’ he told her grimly.
‘I don’t lie, Joel, not even about something as trivial as that.’ Her voice was all the more forceful because she knew he had lied to her, and seriously, by omission if nothing else. ‘Now I’m sure I must be delaying you from being somewhere else you would much rather be.’
He looked at her wordlessly for several seconds, neither denying nor agreeing with the statement. ‘Lindsay,’ he finally spoke, ‘are you pregnant?’
Her mouth almost fell open in her surprise, and she looked up at Joel’s grim face disbelievingly. ‘I—What did you just say?’ she choked her shock.
He gave a sigh, shrugging the broadness of his shoulders, as if he no more liked what he was saying than she did. ‘I didn’t mean for it to come out that bluntly—’
‘Bluntly!’ she echoed disbelievingly. ‘That was—It was incredible! You come here uninvited, force your way in, and then come out with a question like that! God, I still can’t believe you said it!’
Joel ran a hand through the unruly thickness of his hair, making it even more dishevelled. ‘You haven’t looked too well lately, and—’
‘Does that give you the right to make wild accusations like that?’ she scorned harshly.
‘It wasn’t an accusation, Lindsay,’ he said wearily. ‘The last time we were together I—we—I wasn’t as careful as I should have been.’
‘The so-cautious Joel Sutherland forgot to take precautions!’ she scoffed.
‘I didn’t forget,’ an angry flush darkened his cheeks just above the jawbone. ‘I just didn’t come to your apartment that night expecting—prepared, to stay.’
‘Really?’ Lindsay’s voice was shrill with scepticism; she was all the more angry herself because it wasn’t until days afterwards that she had given the idea of pregnancy a thought. Joel’s worry seemed a little late in coming now. ‘I had the impression that was exactly what you came here for!’
‘Lindsay—’
‘Well, you can put your mind at rest,’ she told him with distaste. ‘I’m not pregnant.’
‘Oh.’ Joel looked taken aback.
Her mouth twisted derisively. ‘You might show a little more enthusiasm for the fact that you aren’t about to become a father! Unless of course Mrs Sutherland has managed to persuade you that domesticity isn’t so bad.’
Joel went very still, his face suddenly haggard, his eyes a dark gold. ‘What did you say?’ he demanded through stiff lips, a nerve beating erratically in his jaw.
‘You surely didn’t think you could keep a secret like that for ever?’ she taunted.
‘Who told you?’
‘Marilyn herself.’
‘The bitch!’ he ground out. ‘And I’m sure she took great pleasure in doing so.’
Lindsay shrugged. ‘I don’t know why you had to keep it a secret anyway, it’s nothing to be ashamed of.’
His eyes narrowed at this. ‘Just exactly what did Marilyn tell you about us?’
‘Only the barest details of the marriage.’
‘Nothing else?’
‘Wasn’t that enough?’
He gave a heavy sigh. ‘It all happened seven years ago. I’ve tried to forget it ever happened, and I wish she had done the same.’
‘Why should she? You never did,’ she mocked.
‘No,’ he acknowledged gruffly.
Her headache was slowly getting worse now, the dull throb becoming a painful ache. ‘Now that you’ve satisfied your curiosity about my non-existent “condition”, you might as well go.’
‘I’d rather stay and talk to you.’
‘What would be the point of that?’ Lindsay sighed at the futility of it.
‘You’re leaving tomorrow,’ he reminded her raggedly. ‘Surely the least we can do is part as friends?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so, Joel.’
‘Lovers, then,’ he ground out.
Her eyes widened in alarm at the savagery in his face. ‘We stopped being that weeks ago,’ she told him, although her voice lacked force.
‘I don’t think we’ll ever stop.’ His voice was compellingly low, his gaze fixed on the parted fullness of her mouth. ‘I’ve missed you so much, Lindsay, more than I believed it possible to miss anyone.’
‘That line may have worked last time, Joel,’ she scorned, ‘but not this time.’
‘But it’s the truth.’
‘Did you miss having Marilyn in your bed in the same way?’ she jeered bitterly.
‘It isn’t the same thing—’
‘I agree, it isn’t,’ Lindsay snapped. ‘The thought of you coming near me after her makes me feel ill!’
‘I can’t help what’s happened in the past—’
‘And I want no part of your future,’ she told him heatedly. ‘Find yourself another mistress, Joel, because I’m not interested. So if you came here tonight prepared to persuade me back into bed with you you’re out of luck. I have one day left to work for you and then I hope never to see you again!’
‘You don’t mean that,’ he rasped.
‘Of course I mean it! Surely your conceit hasn’t led you to believe I’ll resume our affair once I’ve left your employment?’ She was incredulous at the idea.
‘You know about Marilyn now—’
‘Not all of it,’ she rasped. ‘And I don’t want to know either. I think the two of you are probably well matched and deserve each other!’
Joel recoiled as if she had hit him. ‘Maybe we always did,’ he agreed heavily. ‘I’ll go now—I’m sorry I bothered you.’
Lindsay regretted being so harsh with him now; she had never seen Joel so without arrogance, and she did not like it at all. ‘Joel,’ she put her hand towards him, ‘I didn’t mean—’
‘God, I need to hold you one last time!’ His control snapped as he took her in his arms, holding her firmly against his chest, his cheek resting against the gold of her hair.
His proximity was her undoing, the clean male smell of him, and for a moment she forgot all about his wife, the bitterness between the two of them, and pressed her cheek into his shoulder, her eyes closed as she breathed in the undeniable pleasure of being in his arms once more.
‘I’ve needed this so badly the last few weeks,’ he groaned into her hair. ‘Sometimes I thought I would go insane with wanting it.’
Lindsay had wanted this too, she knew that now. ‘Joel, you have to go,’ she told him huskily.
‘Yes.’ But he made no effort to release her.
‘I can’t let you stay here tonight.’
‘No.’ Still he held her as if he never wanted to let her go.
‘Please don’t tempt me, Joel,’ she pleaded for one of them to act sanely and remember he had a wife.
‘I can’t help it,’ he looked down at her with golden eyes, ‘I want to kiss you.’
‘No!’
‘Yes,’ he decided firmly, his head bending as he gently claimed her mouth in a kiss that seemed to draw the very soul from her body. ‘Oh, Lindsay,’ he murmured shakily against her aching mouth. ‘Dear God, you taste so good!’
She was a fool, she knew it even as she let him claim her mouth again, his kiss more forceful this time, parting her lips to invade her mouth with the warm hardness of his tongue. The groan of surrender seemed to come from her throat, and yet it could equally have come from Joel’s, their mouths were so finely enmeshed they seemed to be one.
This time it was the ringing of the doorbell that interrupted them, pulling them apart. Joel still looked dazed from his arousal as she moved away from him, reality returning with a harshness that made her pale.
‘The second most sadistic appliance ever invented!’ Joel tried to make light of the situation, but neither of them saw any humour in it, Lindsay turning away with a sob as she moved to answer the door.
She didn’t know who she was expecting her visitor to be, but certainly not Malcolm. ‘I didn’t think you were expected back yet,’ she said dazedly as he swung her up in his arms.
‘I wasn’t,’ he grinned down at her. ‘But I—Joel,’ he said slowly as he saw the other man just inside the apartment where he had followed Lindsay, turning back to her regretfully. ‘I didn’t realise you weren’t alone.’
She put her arm through the crook of his for moral support. ‘Joel was just leaving,’ she said pointedly.
Malcolm raised dark brows. ‘Oh?’
‘Yes,’ rasped Joel, his expression remote. ‘I called round on a matter of—business.’
‘Then don’t let me interrupt you,’ Malcolm said lightly. ‘I’ll just go into the lounge and wait for you, Lindsay.’
‘Oh, but—’
‘Don’t be long,’ he touched her cheek gently. ‘I have some wonderful news to tell you. Nice to have seen you again, Joel,’ he nodded to the other man.
The silence between Joel and Lindsay was almost deafening once Malcolm had gone through to the lounge, each of them eyeing the other warily.
‘I didn’t know you were expecting company,’ Joel finally rasped, his hands thrust into his trouser pockets, the material tight across his thighs, his arousal no longer evident.
Her mouth twisted. ‘I’m sure you heard me say I wasn’t expecting Malcolm back from America yet.’
‘I thought that was just for my benefit,’ he bit out coldly.
Lindsay flushed her anger. ‘Then you thought wrong. The last I heard, Malcolm wasn’t expected back for a couple of more days at least.’
Joel’s gaze raked over her icily. ‘It seems he couldn’t keep away from you any longer!’
She had had so many occasions to tell Joel the truth about Malcolm and herself, and yet pride held her back from confiding in him, especially now, when she was once again feeling vulnerable. ‘Yes,’ she agreed abruptly.
‘Then I won’t keep you from him any longer,’ he told her resignedly.
As he turned to leave Lindsay could almost believe he was sorry to have to go; her hand moved out as if to stop him, falling back to her side as she mentally reprimanded herself for falling for his ploy a second time in one evening. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Joel,’ she said firmly.
‘Lindsay, what happened before Malcolm arrived—’
‘Is best forgotten,’ she dismissed.
‘Will you forget it?’ he asked raggedly.
She swallowed hard, knowing she would never forget any of the time they had spent together. ‘I already have,’ she stated with cruel bluntness. ‘Now I really can’t keep Malcolm waiting any longer. …’
‘No,’ Joel acknowledged curtly.
Lindsay took several minutes to calm her shattered nerves
before composing her features into a casually smiling mask and going in to see Malcolm. He had made himself comfortable by sprawling out in one of the armchairs, at ease in an open-necked shirt and fitted blue suit, lithely tanned and fit after his two weeks of hard work in America.
He sat forward as she came into the room, his elbows resting on his knees, a puzzled frown on his handsome face. ‘You keep telling me it’s over between you two, and yet it seems to me that every time I call or come here I fall over the guy, so what is going on? And don’t say nothing, that’s starting to wear a little thin to me.’
‘Even if it’s the truth?’
He gave her a chiding look. ‘You don’t expect me to believe that it is?’
She shrugged. ‘It’s your prerogative to believe what you want. Now tell me what this great news is of yours?’
‘Why is it you always change the subject on me?’ he grimaced.
Lindsay gave him an impish smile. ‘Because your questions are always too personal.’
Malcolm somehow managed to look offended. ‘I haven’t kept any secrets from you.’
‘Only because you needed my help to try and trap my poor sister!’
He gave a wide, satisfied grin. ‘Talking of Judi …’
‘Yes?’ she prompted excitedly.
Malcolm gave a nonchalant shrug. ‘Well, I’ve been calling her from New York every evening—’
‘I know that!’ she told him impatiently.
‘But you didn’t know that last night when I spoke to her I proposed—and she accepted!’ he announced triumphantly.
Lindsay blinked her astonishment—not that Judi and Malcolm were getting married, but that her sister had accepted a proposal over the telephone. It didn’t sound like the reserved Judi at all.
‘Don’t look so surprised!’ Malcolm spluttered with laughter. ‘She happens to love me.’
‘Oh, I know that,’ she dismissed. ‘But I somehow never thought of Judi becoming engaged over the telephone.’
‘She hasn’t.’ He reached into the pocket of his jacket to take out a brown velvet ring box. ‘When I put this on her finger we’ll be engaged. Which is precisely the reason I’m here to see you.’
Tempestuous Affair Page 13