An Imperfect Affair

by Natalie Fox

  He smiled and poured wine into her glass. ‘You’re not afraid, then?’

  She knew what he meant. ‘Wine doesn’t lower my resistance, just makes me snore, as you’ll probably find out in due course.’

  He laughed. ‘I just might settle for that tonight ...’ and just when she thought it was going to be all right he added mockingly ‘... but I won’t make any promises.’

  Surprisingly, that remark didn’t rock her as much as she thought it might. She wondered if she pushed him far enough he might not funk out before she inevitably would.

  ‘This chicken is gorgeous,’ she enthused as they sat down to eat.

  ‘Nothing to do with me,’ he said modestly. ‘It’s just a decent chicken.’

  ‘Thank you for cooking it. It was nice of you. Tomorrow it’s my turn.’

  ‘So this is going to be a regular routine, is it?’ He spooned potatoes on to her plate.

  ‘Why not? We’ve gone this far—’

  ‘We might as well go all the way,’ he finished for her.

  Verity sipped more of the wine and decided not to bite back at that. ‘Don’t put words into my mouth. We’ve made a start and there’s no reason to back down now. I can’t see why we can’t eat together every night. We both work hard all day and deserve some relaxation. Not the sort that’s obviously on your mind morning noon and night, but just a meal and some talk. I’d like to know what you’re working on.’

  ‘It wouldn’t interest you.’

  Verity raised a brow. ‘Try me.’

  ‘No way, treasure. It’s top secret—’

  ‘And I can’t be trusted?’

  ‘It has nothing to do with trust. My emotions are running high enough with you in this house, Verity Brooks, without you putting a witch’s curse on my work.’

  ‘Hmm, now you really have whet my appetite. I just might creep into your bedroom while you’re otherwise occupied and take a peek.’

  ‘If I catch you in my bedroom I’ll make the obvious presumption and act accordingly,’ he warned with just a glimmer of humour in his eyes.

  ‘I’ll heed that warning,’ she told him brightly to show she could take it. ‘So if we don’t talk about your work, what will we while away the hours with—mine?’

  ‘Remind me; I’ve forgotten what you said you were here for.’

  Verity was inexplicably hurt by that. She watched him eat before saying anything. He was an impenetrable man. She’d thought that the first time she had met him. Hidden depths, a poor excuse for moodiness. So the man had quite an empire to run but was there no room for relaxation in his life? She was forgetting. His mode of relaxation was bedding. She could just imagine the sort of lover he would be—wham-bam-thank-you-ma’ am, excuse me while I get up and make another million while you’re recovering!

  ‘The wedding book,’ she told him offhandedly to cover her hurt. ‘Diets and exercises to prepare the bride for a life of wedded bliss.’

  ‘Ah, yes, I remember now. What some people will do for a buck, I thought at the time you mentioned it,’ he said derisively.

  ‘It wasn’t my idea,’ Verity retaliated. ‘It’s one of Alan’s money-spinning ventures. It’s giving me some trouble, though,’ she admitted. ‘It’s dragging its weary train up the aisle at snail’s pace.’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t help you there. I’m not very successful at the wedded-bliss game,’ he told her with such coldness that Verity nearly dropped her fork with surprise. For some reason a cold chill ran up and down her spine. The lady in his life—was she his wife? Dear God, he was married! Not successfully, though, by the sound of it.

  ‘You sound cynical about marriage,’ she ventured, too afraid to ask him outright if he was or wasn’t married.

  ‘And what do you think of it?’ he asked, cleverly getting out of giving her an answer, though it had hardly been a direct question.

  ‘I believe in it. If two people truly love each other it’s inevitable.’

  ‘Did you expect to marry your boyfriend?’

  Verity’s eyes levelled with his. She had asked for this, wanting to shift their relationship to a more convivial level, and this was the result. Oh, well, if she opened up he might. She was madly curious to hear about his wife.

  ‘I didn’t love him,’ she answered truthfully.

  ‘Yet you were having sex with him, and there was I, thinking you were a little puritan at heart.’

  Verity dammed a blush before it flooded her face. So he hadn’t remembered much about the book she was working on, but there was nothing wrong with his memory where her sex life was concerned!

  ‘I liked him a lot when we started going out with each other. You don’t have to love a person to want to go to bed with them.’

  His dark brow went up at that. He said nothing but she sensed what was going through his mind. If those were her views and morals, why hadn’t she leapt into bed with him?

  ‘I hoped it would lead to love,’ she went on hurriedly. ‘I cared enough for him to want him to make love to me. I thought that once we were actually lovers it might prove that I actually was in love with him but if I wasn’t it might deepen into love. I made a wrong calculation, a mistake. I ended up being used.’

  ‘And you’re still very bitter about that?’ He leaned back in his chair, the meal finished, the dessert, her confessions, making her squirm in her seat.

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘With myself more than anyone. I made a mess of the whole affair.’ She levelled her eyes at his and he held them and she thought he would understand. ‘I made mistakes and then couldn’t rectify them. I didn’t know how to handle him or how to get out of it. He was a graphic artist and in the wrong job and he wasn’t happy. I couldn’t help him and he made me think it was my fault. When he died it was as if he had done it to punish me.’

  ‘He committed suicide?’

  Verity shrugged her narrow shoulders. ‘I’ll never know. We had rowed for the umpteenth time and he went out drinking and headed up north. There was a motorway pile-up... and... and he died. It was foggy—’

  ‘So it was more than likely just an accident,’ Rupert volunteered quietly.

  Verity shrugged. ‘I try to convince myself that it was an accident, but there will always be a doubt.’

  ‘ You can’t go on living like that, though. You’ve to get on with your life.’ He didn’t sound as if he was very convinced of that advice himself, and Verity frowned slightly.

  ‘Oh, I have,’ she insisted. ‘I can’t change what’s happened but... well, it’s made me wary, unsure of myself where personal relationships are concerned.’

  ‘And you don’t want to make the same mistake twice?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘It might surprise you to hear that I wholly endorse that.’

  So he did have a murky past he was trying to live with. Perhaps a painful divorce, or possibly one coming up!

  Verity gave him a watery smile. ‘If there is ever a next time for me I want to be absolutely sure the man is as committed to me as I would be to him. A good, honest, down-to-earth relationship with no holds barred.’

  ‘Equal partners in the love game,’ he mused with a cynical laugh. ‘Asking a bit much, aren’t you?’

  He grated his chair back and got up to put the kettle on, and Verity watched him through narrowed eyes. He looked so sombre that she wondered what had happened in his life for him to be such a cynic. That painful-divorce theory loomed larger than life now.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ she told him warily. ‘At least I’m looking on the positive side of marriage.’

  ‘You’re seeking perfection, which is totally unrealistic in this day and age.’

  Verity bridled. ‘And you’re preoccupied with the imperfect side of it. Just because yours didn’t work, it doesn’t mean—’

  ‘My what didn’t work?’ he questioned stonily, turning to face her.

  ‘Your... your marriage.’

  ‘I don’t recall mentioning I was married.’
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  ‘You didn’t but you said you had a lady in your life and... and you’re pretty cynical about marriage and you just said you weren’t very successful at wedded bliss.’

  ‘All very true,’ he admitted in an unforthcoming manner, and turned back to making the coffee.

  ‘Now who’s turning their back,’ she said pointedly. ‘Face me, Rupert,’ she mimicked, ‘and be honest with me and yourself.’

  He swung round then, so ablaze with anger, his eyes so threatening and intense with rage that she nearly ran for her life.

  ‘Just what the hell do you want from me?’ he rasped furiously.

  In that moment Verity wasn’t at all sure why she was doing this, pushing him to reveal something of himself, something he was loath to open up to. Her mind flash-fired everything she knew about him, and one thought flamed above all others: the picture of him dining alone in that Knightsbridge restaurant; a lonely man. She hadn’t seen it before, not till now.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured, lowering her lashes. ‘I...I don’t want anything from you...I just thought...’ She took a deep breath and looked up at him, her violet eyes wide open. ‘It helps to talk,’ she murmured.

  ‘It hasn’t helped you much, has it?’ he said frostily. ‘You’re still carrying your boyfriend’s death around like spare emotional baggage.’

  Shakily Verity got to her feet. ‘I’ve tried,’ she told him levelly. ‘Which is more than you’re doing. I don’t know what your problem is but I know what you think the answer is—to bury yourself out here and hope when you surface the nasty gremlins will have run away. Life ain’t that predictable,’ she spiked bitterly. ‘If I were you I’d go back to this lady of yours and bed her instead of me! I’m no damned substitute for the real thing!’

  He caught her as she reached the archway to the sitting-room. He pinned her to the wall, holding her wrists above her head. She smelt the wine on his breath and his cologne and in that instant wondered why he had bothered, and then knew, knew what the whole evening was about, cooking for her, making an effort with his appearance: he wanted her and fully intended it to be tonight.

  ‘You are the real thing,’ he rapped urgently. ‘Flesh and blood—’

  ‘For the moment!’ she grazed back bitterly. ‘A warm body to take the place of your lady till you get back and pick up your flagging wedded bliss!’ She tried to twist her wrists free but they burned painfully.

  ‘They do say that an affair can sometimes resurrect an ailing relationship,’ he mocked.

  ‘So that’s what all this is about, is it? By seducing me it might make you realise what a little treasure you have at home.’

  ‘I know precisely what I have at home: fifteen empty rooms with the lingering scent of my lady’s perfume...’

  Verity’s whole body stiffened. So he was married and she’d left him! She didn’t want to hear any more, she just didn’t.

  ‘Let go of me!’

  ‘When I’m good and ready.’ His lips were hot and angry on hers, punishing her for that wife of his who’d left him. Verity boiled with rage and the injustice of it all. She squirmed and battled under the assault of his desire but the pressure of his mouth softened, with deadly expertise, the fight that blazed inside her. Slowly, fatally, he worked on her lips till she felt the well of her own desire rise inside her. He let go of her wrists and her arms dropped weakly to her sides and she clenched her fists tightly in a desperate attempt to hate him.

  His mouth moved from hers, fluttered across her jawline and down to the small hollow of her throat. His hands moved round her hips, moulding her into him, then, satisfied that she wouldn’t struggle any more, he slid them under her sweat-shirt, beaming up to her naked breasts, so smoothly as if they were programmed for that very purpose.

  To her shock, his fingers trembled on her nipples, only for an instant, as if he was unsure, and then he was in control again, circling her breasts, teasing her nipples till her whole body flamed with liquid heat.

  But it was that small unsure tremble that had the deepest effect on Verity. He didn’t even care for her. Just like Mike, he was trying to prove a point. Rupert loved his wife and she had left him, and she, Verity Brooks, was the woman who would prove that he wasn’t the failure he thought he was.

  She brought her hands up then and pressed them hard against his chest. He didn’t take much persuading to pull back from her. He stepped back and those smoky grey eyes were unfathomable again.

  Verity’s brimmed with unshed tears, for in that moment she knew that she wanted him. She wasn’t sure how deeply or intense the need for him was, but what she did know was that if it were a different place in different circumstances she would want this man in her life. To love her, to make love to her, to give her all she lacked in her life. But it was an impossible dream, as impossible as speculating for sure what had been in Mike’s mind when he had taken off for that foggy motorway.

  Without a word, a look, a gesture, she turned away from Rupert Scott and walked resolutely away from him.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Verity’s work took off with a vengeance the next day. She worked feverishly, determinedly. It was the only way. Rupert was married, not happily; he still loved his wife; she’d left him; he wasn’t coping... A knock on her bedroom door had her jerking with fright.

  ‘Come in.’ She turned from the computer as Rupert stepped into the room. ‘How very civilised, knocking now. What happened to the SAS approach?’

  ‘Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit,’ he drawled. ‘Can I borrow your car?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s raining and I don’t want to get wet.’

  She turned back to the computer. ‘Why haven’t you got a car of your own?’

  She heard a rasp of impatience come from deep in his throat. ‘I wanted total isolation. I took a taxi from the airport and I’ll take a taxi back. I need to go to the village to make some phone calls; now do I get the car or do I get wet?’

  She was tempted to shoot back ‘Get wet’ but didn’t. ‘The keys are downstairs on the shelf next to the glasses.’ Without turning, she said, ‘While you’re out, get some fresh bread and some salad, and I think we’re out of milk.’

  ‘What did your last slave die of, battle fatigue?’

  ‘Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit,’ she echoed brightly as he slammed the door after him.

  She stared at the window after he’d gone. She hadn’t noticed the rain and the wind howling and rattling the ill-fitting grilles on the windows. She saw it now, felt the chill of the room close in around her. She hated it when he wasn’t here, though this was only the second time it had happened. But it was daylight and she wasn’t afraid, just sort of... She shrugged; she really didn’t know.

  An hour later he still wasn’t back. She hadn’t done much in that time. He’d distracted her by coming into her bedroom, and since then she’d been too preoccupied with him and all that had happened last night. She got up from the computer and moved restlessly out of her room, across the landing and into his.

  It was tidy, although she wasn’t checking up on him. But what was she doing in his bedroom? She didn’t know, but she was here and standing in front of his computer. She wondered at her nerve as she loaded it and then slid in the nearest disk to hand.

  ‘Surprise, surprise,’ she murmured after a while, and picked up the book he was working from. She flicked through it, put it down and picked up his notes.

  ‘You surprise me,’ a cold voice came from the door.

  Shakily Verity turned to the door, scarlet in the face by the time she faced Rupert fully. He stood in the doorway, watching her, his hair wet and his features tense.

  Though his voice was cold and his words mild, she knew he was red mad with her. His narrowed, steely eyes indicated the intensity of his control over that fury.

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snoop.’

  He came towards her and ejected the disk from his machine. ‘And this loaded itself, did it?’ he grazed sarcasticall
y.

  ‘Of course it didn’t,’ she retaliated quickly. There was no defence, none at all, and she didn’t attempt it. ‘I was curious to see what you were working on.’

  ‘You could have asked me—’

  ‘I did. You wouldn’t tell me.’

  ‘So you just waited till I was out and then sneaked in here and invaded my privacy.’ His voice was so thick with contempt that Verity wished she had kept away. ‘That does surprise me, Verity; I was beginning to think you weren’t a typical female.’

  Her colour had returned to normal and she drew her chin up. ‘Well, I suppose this proves I am. I’m not denying it. I was crazy with curiosity.’

  ‘And you know what happened to the cat who was too curious?’ He slid his notes and the book into the top drawer, out of her way.

  ‘Are you going to kill me?’ she murmured, half teasingly.

  He held her eyes and she knew her attempt at humour wasn’t going to abate his anger.

  ‘Perhaps you’re angling for the alternative.’ His eyes seemed to darken more, if that was possible. ‘Remember what I said about catching you in my room?’

  Verity bit her lip. She had forgotten his threat and what he would assume if he did find her here.

  ‘I didn’t, I honestly didn’t come here... for...’

  ‘For sex?’ His black brows winged. ‘Hardly—I wasn’t here. But now I am,’ he added meaningfully.

  Verity took a step back and then another. ‘Don’t make threats like that, Rupert,’ she murmured.

  He didn’t say anything, which surprised her. She would have thought something mocking would have tripped from his lips.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she offered once again. ‘I didn’t mean to invade your privacy...’ She let out a small sigh. ‘That’s silly; yes, I did, I suppose, but...but I didn’t expect to get caught.’

  Rupert leaned back against the desk. ‘Well, that’s honest,’ he grated, ‘but doesn’t alter the fact that you did it and I’m not very pleased about it.’