by Julia James
Her chin came up—it cost her all her strength, but she did it. ‘I must be on my way,’ she said. She made her voice bright, but it was like squeezing it through a wringer inset with vicious spikes.
She paused. Swallowed. Thoughts and emotions tumbled violently within her, a feeling akin to panic. There was something she had to say to him. To make things clear to him. As crystal-clear as he was making them to her. That she, too, had moved on with her life. That she would make no claim on him at all. Not even as a casual acquaintance...
She felt emotion choke her, but forced herself to say what she had to. Reassure him that she knew, and accepted, that she was nothing to him any longer.
She had said as much in her letter to him and now she would say it again, to make sure he knew.
‘I’ll be moving away from London very soon. I’m getting out of modelling completely. I can’t wait!’ She forced enthusiasm into her voice, though every word was torn from her.
His stony expression did not change.
‘I’m sure you will enjoy your future life,’ he replied.
He spoke with absolute indifference, and it was like a blow.
‘Thank you—yes, I shall. I have every intention of doing so!’ she returned.
Pride came to her rescue. Ragged shreds of it, which she clutched around her for the pathetic protection she could get from it.
‘Hans is still in the restaurant.’ She made herself smile, forcing it across her face as if she were posing for a camera—putting it on, faking it, clinging to it as if it were a life raft. ‘I’m sure that he will want to see you! He has such exciting news! Best you hear it from him...’
She was speaking almost at random, in staccato ramblings. She could not bear to see his face, his indifferent expression, as he so clearly waited for her to leave him alone, to take himself off. She shifted her handbag from one hand to the other, and as she did so she jolted. Remembering something.
Something she might as well do here and now. To make an end to what had been between them and was now nothing more than him waiting impatiently for her to leave him be.
She raised her bag, snapping open the fastener.
‘Marc—this is most opportune!’ The words were still staccato. ‘I was going to ask the jeweller across the road to courier this to you, as I promised, but you might as well take it yourself.’
She delved into her bag, extracted the jewellery case. Held it out to him expectantly.
His eyes lanced the box, then wordlessly he took it. His mouth seemed to tighten and she wondered why. Expressionlessly, he slid it into his inside jacket pocket.
For a second—just a second—she went on staring up at him. As if she would imprint his face on her memory with indelible ink.
Words formed in her head, etching like acid. This is the last time I shall see him...
The knowledge was drowning her, draining the blood from her.
‘Goodbye, Marc,’ she said. Her voice was faint.
She turned, plunging down the corridor. Eyes blind. Fleeing the man who did not want her any longer. Who would never want her again.
Whom she would never see again.
Anguish crushed her heart, and hot, burning tears started to roll silently down her cheeks. Such useless tears...
* * *
Marc stood, nailing a smile of greeting to his face as his guests arrived. It was the bank’s autumn party, for its most valued clients, held at one of Paris’s most famous hotels, and he had no choice but to host it. But there was one client whose presence here this evening he dreaded the most. Hans Neuberger.
Would he show up? He was one of the bank’s most long-standing clients and had never missed this annual occasion. But now...?
Marc felt his mind slide sideways, not wanting to articulate his thoughts. All he knew was that he could not face seeing Hans again.
Will he bring her here?
That was the question that burned in him now, as he greeted his guests. What he said to them he didn’t know. All that was in his head—all there had been all these weeks, since that unbearable day in London—was the scene he had witnessed. That nightmare scene that was blazoned inside his skull in livid, sickening neon.
Ineradicable—indelible.
Tara, leaning forward, her face alight. Hans offering that tell-tale box, its lid showing the exclusive logo of a world-famous jeweller, revealing the flash of the diamond ring within. And Tara reaching for it. Tara bestowing a kiss of gratitude on Hans’s cheek with that glow in her face, her eyes...
Bitter acid flooded his veins. Just as it had all those years ago as he’d watched Marianne declare her faithlessness to the world. Declare to the world what she wanted. A rich, older man to pamper her...shower her with jewellery.
His face twisted. To think he had rejoiced that Tara had declined to cash the cheque he’d left for her! Had returned his emeralds.
Well, why wouldn’t she? Now she has all Hans’s wealth to squander on herself!
He stoked the savage anger within him. Thanks to his indulgence of her, she had got a taste for the high life! Had realised, when he’d left her, that she could not get that permanently from himself! So she’d targeted someone who could supply it permanently! Plying Hans with sympathy, with friendliness...
It was the very opposite of Celine’s open scorn, but with the same end in mind. To get what she wanted—Hans’s ring on her finger and his fortune hers to enjoy...
With a smothered oath he tore his mind away. What use to feel such fury? Such betrayal?
He had survived what Marianne had done to him. He would survive what Tara had inflicted upon him too.
Yet as the endless receiving line finally dwindled, with only a few late guests still arriving, he found his eyes going past the doors of the ornate function room to the head of the stairs leading up from the lobby.
Would she come here tonight with Hans?
He felt emotion churn within him.
But it was not anger. And with a sudden hollowing within him, he knew what the emotion was.
Longing.
He stilled. Closing his eyes momentarily. He knew that feeling. Knew its unbearable strength, its agony. Had felt it once before in his life.
After his parents had been killed.
The longing...the unbearable, agonising longing to see again those who were lost to him for ever.
As Tara was.
Tara who could never be his again...
‘Marc—I am so sorry to arrive late!’
His eyes flashed open. It was Hans—alone.
He froze. Unable to say anything, anything at all. Unable to process any thoughts at all.
Hans was speaking again. ‘We have been a little delayed. Bernhardt is with me, and I hope you will not object but I have brought two other guests as well. Karin—Bernhardt’s fiancée—and...’ He smiled self-consciously as Marc stood, frozen. ‘And one more.’ And now Hans’s smile broadened. ‘One who has become very dear to me.’
Marc heard the words, saw Hans take a breath and then continue on, his eyes bright.
‘Of course until my divorce is finalised no formal announcement can be made, and it has been necessary, therefore, to be discreet, so perhaps my news will be a surprise to you?’
Marc’s expression darkened. ‘No—I’ve known for weeks.’ His voice was hard—as hard as tempered steel. His eyes flashed, vehemence filling his voice now, unable to stay silent. ‘Hans, this is madness—to be caught again! Did you not learn enough from Celine? How can you possibly repeat the same disastrous mistake! For God’s sake, man, however besotted you are, have the sense not to do this!’
He saw Hans’s expression change from bewilderment to astonishment, and then to rejection. ‘Marc,’ he said stiffly, ‘I am perfectly aware that Celine was, indeed, a very grave error of my judgement, but—’
; ‘And so is Tara!’ Marc’s voice slashed across the other man’s.
There was silence—complete silence. Around him Marc could hear the background chatter of voices, the clinking of glasses. And inside the thundering of his heartbeat, drowning out everything. Even his own voice.
‘Did you think I hadn’t seen you both, in London? You and Tara—’ His voice twisted over her name. Choking on it. ‘Did you think I didn’t see the ring you were giving her? See how her face lit up? How she couldn’t wait to take it from you? How eager she was to kiss you?’
Hans stared. Then spoke. ‘Bist Du verukt?’
Fury lashed across Marc’s face. Insane? No, he was not insane! Filled with any number of violent emotions, but not that!
Then suddenly Hans’s hand was closing over his sleeve with surprising force for a man his age. ‘Marc—you could not possibly have thought—’ He broke off, then spoke again. His tone brooked no contradiction. ‘What you saw—whatever it is you feared you saw, Marc—was Tara’s very kind reaction to the news I had just told her. Of my intention to remarry, yes, indeed. But if you think, for an instant, that she was the object of my intentions—’
Marc felt his arm released. Hans was turning aside, allowing three more people who had just entered the room to come up to them. Marc’s eyes went to them. Bernhardt, a younger version of Hans, well-known to him, with a young, attractive woman on one arm. And on the other arm an older woman with similar looks to the younger one. A woman who was smiling at Hans with a fond, affectionate look on her face. And on the third finger of the hand tucked into Bernhardt’s arm was a diamond ring...
Hans turned back to Marc and his tone was formal now. ‘You will permit me to introduce to you Frau Ilse Holz and her daughter Karin?’
His eyes rested on Marc.
‘Ilse,’ Marc heard him say, as if from a long way away, ‘has done me the very great honour of agreeing, when the time is right, to make me the happiest of men. I know,’ he added, ‘that you will wish us well.’
Marc might have acknowledged the introduction. He might have said whatever was required of him. Might have been aware of Hans’s gaze becoming speculative.
But of all of those things he had absolutely no awareness at all. Only one thought was in his head. One blinding thought. One absolute realisation. Burning in him.
And then Bernhardt was leading away his fiancée, and the woman who was to be both his mother-in-law and his stepmother, into the throng.
Hans paused. His eyes were not speculative now. They were filled with compassion. ‘Go,’ he said quietly, to Marc alone. ‘This...here...’ he gestured to the party all around them ‘...is not important. You have others to see to it. So—go, my friend.’
And Marc went. Needing no further telling...
CHAPTER TWELVE
A BLACKBIRD WAS hopping about on the lawn, picking at the birdseed which Tara had started to scatter each day now that autumn was arriving. A few late bees could be heard buzzing on what was left of the lavender. There was a mild, drowsy feel to the day, as if summer were disinclined to pack its bags completely and leave the garden, preferring to make a graceful handover to its successive season.
Tara was glad of it. Sitting out here in the still warm sunshine, wearing only a light sweater and cotton trousers, her feet in canvas shoes, was really very pleasant. The trees bordering the large garden backing on to the fields beyond were flushed with rich autumnal copper, but still shot through with summer’s green. A time of transition, indeed.
It echoed her own mood. A time of transition. She might have finally made the move from London to Dorset some weeks ago, but it was only now that she was really feeling her move was permanent. As was so much else.
She flexed her body, already less ultra-slim than she’d had to keep it during her modelling career. It was filling out, softening her features, rounding her abdomen, ripening her breasts.
Her mind seemed to be hovering, as the seasons were, between her old life and the one she was now embarked upon. She knew she must look ahead to the future—what else was there to do? She must embrace it—just as she must embrace the coming winter. Enjoy what it would offer her.
Her expression changed, her fingers tracing over her midriff absently. She must not regret the time that had gone and passed for ever—the brief, precious time she’d had during that summer idyll so long ago, so far away, beside that azure coast. No, she must never regret that time—even though she must accept that it was gone from her, never to return. That Marc was gone from her for ever.
A cry was stifled in her throat. Anguish bit deep within her.
I’ll never see him again—never hear his voice again—never feel his mouth on mine, his hand in mine. Never see him smile, or laugh, or his eyes pool with desire... Never feel his body over mine, or hold him to me, or wind my arms around him...
Her eyes gazed out, wide and unseeing, over the autumnal garden. How had it happened that what she had entered into with Marc—something that had never been intended to be anything other than an indulgence of her overpowering physical response to him—had become what she now knew, with a clutching of her heart, to be what it would be for ever?
How had she come to fall in love with him?
She felt that silent cry in her throat again.
I fell in love with him and never knew it—not until he left me. Not until I knew I would never see him again. Never be part of his life...
Her hands spasmed over the arms of the padded garden chair and she felt that deep stab of anguish again.
But what point was there in feeling it? She had a future to make for herself—a future she must make. And not merely for her own sake. For the sake of the most precious gift Marc could have given her. Not the vast treasures of his wealth—that was dust and ashes to her! A gift so much more precious...
A gift he must never know he had given her...
Her grip on the arms of the chair slackened and she moved her hands across her body in a gesture as old as time...
She would never see Marc again, and the pain of that loss would never leave her. But his gift to her would be with her all her life... The only balm to the endless anguish of her heart.
In the branches of the gnarled apple tree a robin was singing. Far off she could hear a tractor ploughing a field. The hazy buzz of late bees seeking the last nectar of the year. All of them lulled her...
She felt her eyelids grow heavy, and the garden faded from sight and sound as sleep slipped over her like a soft veil.
Soon another garden filled her dreamscape...with verdant foliage, vivid bougainvillea, a glittering sunlit pool. And Marc was striding towards her. Tall, and strong, and outlined against the cloudless sky. She felt her heart leap with joy...
Her eyes flashed open. Something had woken her. An alien sound. The engine of a car, low and powerful. For a second—a fraction of a second—she remembered the throaty roar of Marc’s low-slung monster...the car he’d loved to drive. Then another emotion speared her.
Alarm.
The cottage was down a dead-end lane, leading only to a gate to the fields at the far end. No traffic passed by. So who was it? She was expecting no visitors...
She twisted round to look at the path leading around the side of the cottage to the lane beyond. There was a sudden dizziness in her head...a swirl of vertigo.
Had she turned too fast? Or was it that she had not woken at all, was still dreaming?
Because someone was walking towards her—striding towards her. Someone tall and strong, outlined against the cloudless sky. Someone who could not be here—someone she’d thought she would never see again.
But he was in her vision now—searing her retinas, the synapses of her stunned and disbelieving brain. She lurched to her feet and the vertigo hit again.
Or was it shock?
Or waking from the dream?
Or
still being within the dream?
She swayed and Marc was there in an instant, steadying her. Then his hands dropped away.
Memory stabbed at her—how he’d made the same gesture in that nightmare encounter at the hotel, dropping his hands from her as if he could not bear to touch her. She clutched at the back of her chair, staring at him, hearing her heart pounding in her veins, feeling disbelief still in her head. And emotion—unbearable emotion—leaping in her heart.
She crushed it down. Whatever he was here for he would tell her and then he would leave.
For one unbearable moment dread knifed in her.
Does he know?
Oh, dear God, she prayed, please do not let him know! That would be the worst thing of all—the very worst! Because if he did...
She sheared her mind away, forced herself to speak. Heard words fall from her, uncomprehending. ‘What...what are you doing here?’
He was standing there and she could see tension in every line of his body. His face was carved as if from tempered steel. As closed as she had ever seen it.
Yet something was different about him—something she had never seen before. Something in the veiling of his eyes that had never been there before.
‘I have something to give you,’ he said.
His voice was remote. Dispassionate. But, as with the look on his face, she had never heard his voice sound like that.
She stared, confused. ‘Wh-what?’ she got out.
‘This,’ he said.
His hand was slipping inside his jacket pocket. He was wearing yet another of his killer suits, she registered abstractedly through the shattering of her mind. Registered, too, the quickening of her pulse, the weakening of her limbs that she always felt with him. Felt the power he had to make her feel like that... Felt the longing that went with it.
Longing she must not let herself feel. No matter that he was standing here, so real, so close...
He was drawing something out from his inner pocket and she caught the silken gleam of the grey lining, the brief flash of the gold fountain pen in the pocket. Then her eyes were only on what he was holding out to her. What she recognised only too well—the slim, elegant jewel case she had returned to him that dreadful day in London that had killed all the last remnants of her hope that he might ever want her again...
