'No,' she shook her head slowly. 'No, there wasn't.'
'What were you hoping for?'
She felt rather than heard him coming up behind her and, when her insides began to shake, she knew that she had to answer him before her courage failed her completely. 'I was hoping that, when the right opportunity presented itself, I would be able to give you the ivory disc in much the same way as Indlovukazi gave it to her secret lover.'
There was a frightening little silence during which she was almost too afraid to breathe, then the deep timbre of Lyle's voice sent a renewed bout of tremors through her. 'Is that why you came to my house that night?'
'Yes.' She laughed and gestured a little wildly with her hands. 'I told you it was a crazy idea.'
'Christie!' He seemed to growl her name, his hands circling her waist, and his fingers biting gently into her flesh below her bruised ribs. 'Do you love me?'
She had no pride left, but he was obviously not satisfied, and her anger rose like a defensive barrier behind which she could hide. 'Haven't I just said so?' she asked coldly.
'Not in so many words.'
'What do you want from me, Lyle?' She broke free of his clasp and spun round to face him with a blaze of fury in her eyes. 'Are you demanding a sworn statement written in my blood so that you may hang it on your wall at home as the prize joke of the century?'
'Christie,' he groaned, reaching for her, but she darted away from him and that magnetism which still had the power to stir her.
'Go away and leave me alone!'
'No, dammit, I won't leave!' he shouted back at her, and chairs and tables toppled precariously as he ploughed his way across the room towards her.
The look in his dark eyes frightened her, and she turned and fled into her bedroom, but Lyle was behind her before she could slam the door shut. His hands were hard on her body, hurting her tender flesh as he stopped her flight, and his arms were like a vice clamping her against his hard frame. A scream rose in her throat when she looked up into his harsh, angry face, but his mouth clamped down on hers and stifled the sound.
Christie had the curious sensation that her mind and her body were spinning out of control. Instead of resentment and anger, she was caught up on a storm of longing which was so fierce that she locked her arms about Lyle's strong neck, and she clung to him as if he alone could offer her safety. Her body yielded against his as her resistance fled, and the hard pressure of his mouth eased against hers until the sensuality of his kiss sent an exquisite fire racing along her responsive nerves. She was trembling when he finally eased his mouth from hers, and she was clinging to him weakly when she realised that her legs would not take her weight.
'Lyle…' she breathed his name in a choked voice and buried her face against his wide chest. 'I have no pride left and, whether you go or stay, it will make no difference to the way I feel. I love you, and I've never stopped loving you.'
'If I'm expected to believe that you love me, then may I know why you were so adamant about getting a divorce five years ago?'
His cynical query confused and bewildered her, and he did not attempt to detain her when she took an unsteady pace away from him on trembling legs. 'I can't recall that I was so adamant about ending our marriage, but I do remember that you stormed out of our flat and told me to start divorce proceedings since you wouldn't be coming back.'
He laughed shortly, and the harsh sound grated along tender nerves. 'How conveniently you ignore the fact that I wrote to you, and that you never had the decency to answer my letter personally.'
'Letter?' she asked jerkily, an incredible coldness spreading through her body as she stared up at him blankly. 'What letter?'
'The one I wrote to you a week after I arrived in Italy,' he elaborated harshly and, when she continued to stare at him blankly, his features became distorted with derisive fury. 'Don't pretend that you don't know about it, and don't pretend that you can't recall instructing Sammy Peterson's secretary to send me a curt little note saying that you had no further interest in our marriage and that you would appreciate it if I didn't contest the divorce.'
'I don't know what you're talking about,' she croaked, and the truth spilled out involuntarily when there was no change in his expression. 'I was hoping you would write to me since I had a strong suspicion that you hadn't really meant it when you said that you wanted a divorce, and I waited four months before I was finally convinced that you had meant it.' His derisive smile deepened at her explanation, and she cried out in despair, 'Lyle, you've got to believe me!'
'I'd like to believe you. God knows, I'd like to believe you, but after going through five years of sheer hell I feel more inclined to call you a liar.' His eyes, ablaze with fury, raked over her white, quivering face which was raised imploringly to his, and he must have found something there to inject an element of doubt into his convictions. His taut features relaxed slightly, and some of the anger left his eyes as he gestured expressively with his hands, but there was no warmth there. 'All right, let's say you didn't get my letter, but if you didn't get it, then I would like to know who did?'
'I—I don't know,' she gulped confusedly, her mind delving frantically into the past for an explanation, and finding none.
'Tell me exactly what happened after I left for Italy.' Lyle forced her to recount the incidents which had occurred during that dark and painful period in her life.
'I was miserable and terribly unhappy because of what had happened. I didn't want to go on that six-week tour, but I had to, and I hated every moment of it. I came back home expecting to find a letter from you, but there was… nothing.'
'Who collected your post while you were away, and what happened to it?'
'I asked the caretaker to collect it for me, and to send it on to…'
'Sammy Peterson's office?' Lyle finished for her when her voice petered out into a frightening silence.
Her mind went wild as her thoughts skidded along an unfamiliar path, and the implication was so distasteful to her that she rejected it at once. 'Sammy would never have done such a thing!'
'I suggest you consider that very carefully before you discard the idea,' Lyle warned darkly. 'Sammy never liked me, and he wasn't very happy when you married me. Afterwards he did almost everything in his power to keep us apart, and you can't deny that, so why wouldn't he intercept my letter to you and have his secretary reply to it as if you had instructed her to do so. It was the easiest thing on earth,' he laughed harshly, 'and with me out of the way there was no possibility of you ever discovering the truth.'
It all made such dreadful sense, but her mind stubbornly refused to accept it. 'It's a monstrous thing to accuse him of! Sammy knew how much I loved you and how much I wanted you to return to me. I wouldn't have been able to cope those first four months if it hadn't been for Sammy's support, and it was he who eventually made the wise suggestion that a clean break would help me adjust to the realisation that you no longer cared.'
Lyle's eyes narrowed speculatively. 'Sammy convinced you that I didn't care and persuaded you to start divorce proceedings?'
'Yes,' she nodded, 'he said it was obvious that you had meant what you had said, and that it was silly of me to want to hold on to…'
Her voice trailed off into silence again as memories drifted back which made it impossible to continue ignoring the glaring truth. She had returned from her tour to find that Sammy's faithful secretary had resigned. Sammy had brushed the matter aside, saying that they had had a difference of opinion which had made it impossible for them to continue working together, but from Sammy's assistant Christie had learnt that they had had a frightful row about an unethical letter which Sammy had forced his secretary to write. Christie had not considered it of any significance at the time, but from that moment onwards Sammy had literally pestered Christie to start divorce proceedings. Vulnerable as she had been at that stage, she had finally allowed herself to believe that Lyle had never cared for her, and she had gone ahead with the divorce. Many things were beginning to m
ake frightening sense now, and she sat down heavily on her bed when it felt as if her trembling legs wanted to cave in beneath her.
'Oh, Lyle,' she murmured brokenly, 'I think I'm beginning to understand now why I had that feeling I was being accused by you of something I had no knowledge of, and I'm not surprised that you hated me so much.'
'I never hated you.' The bed sagged beneath his weight when he sat down beside her, and strong fingers tipped her white face up so that she was forced to meet his dark, probing gaze. 'It was a shock seeing you again when I least expected it and, when I thought of the hell you had put me through, all the old fury returned, but none of that altered my feelings for you.'
'I'm sorry.' She swallowed back the choking tears. 'What else can I say, except that I'm so terribly sorry.'
His fingers gently caressed her cheek and traced the outline of her quivering mouth. 'If I had trusted my own judgment I would have known that you could never have viewed my letter with such a total lack of feeling that you would have asked someone else to reply to it in such a callous, dismissing manner.'
'Do you believe now that I never received it?' she asked, her pulse-rate quickening as he leaned towards her.
'I believe you.'
His lips brushed against hers with the lightness of butterfly wings, tantalising and provoking. She drew a ragged breath, parting her lips in eager anticipation, and this time his warm, moist mouth shifted over hers with an intimacy that sent little shivers of sensual pleasure racing through her. It also awakened a hunger in her which she had difficulty in quelling, but there was something she had to know, and she dragged her lips from his to bury her hot face against his shoulder.
'What did you write in that letter?' she asked in a muffled voice, and Lyle began to shake with silent laughter.
'If I still had any doubts, then your curiosity has convinced me entirely.'
'Don't tease,' she pleaded, 'and tell me what you had written in that letter?'
'I wrote all the usual stuff a man writes when he has behaved like an idiot,' he said with a hint of self-mockery in his voice as he pressed his rough cheek against her hair. 'I explained that my disappointment at not being able to take you with me had made me angry, that it had been unfair of me to make you choose between our marriage and your career, and that I didn't want a divorce. I asked you to forgive my disgusting behaviour, and I told you that I would make all the necessary flight arrangements if you would agree to join me in Italy as soon as you were free.'
'Oh, Lyle!' She wrapped her arms about his waist and pressed her body closer to his as a mixture of emotions surged through her. There was a piercingly sweet joy in knowing that he had cared after all, and there was also a fierce anger directed at Sammy for having caused them so much pain. 'What are we going to do?' she whispered, her heart heavy at the thought of how she had been deceived.
'Well, first of all I'm going to give you this.' His arms fell away from her and when she sat up she saw that he was holding an ivory disc between his forefinger and thumb. She felt a little dazed when he pressed it to his lips and dropped it into the palm of her hand and, when her fingers closed about it, he was dangling a small blue pouch almost directly under her nose. 'Now it's your turn.'
Her hand was shaking when she took the pouch from him, and she had difficulty in untying the satin cord. There was a certain magic in this moment, and a tingling excitement cascaded through her when at last she dipped her fingers into the pouch and produced the disc she had found in the small black jar. She pressed it to her lips as he had done and, when she placed it in his hand, she asked shakily, 'Does this mean what I think it means?'
'It means that I love you, and that there could never be anyone else but you,' he said in a voice vibrant with emotion, and tears of happiness glistened in her eyes.
'You've never said that to me before.'
'I have never been much good at voicing my feelings, but I was convinced that you would always know how I felt.' He smiled at her with a new and tender warmth in his glance while he brushed away her tears with the tips of his fingers.
'I was convinced until…' She shook her head as if to rid herself physically of those unhappy thoughts. 'What happens next?'
'You put these away safely so that they will always be together,' he instructed, his smile deepening as he picked up the pouch she had dropped. They placed the discs into it, and Lyle dropped the pouch on to the bedside cupboard before he turned back to Christie and drew her into his arms. 'All that remains now is for you to agree to marry me as soon as I can arrange it.'
She stared at him in incredulous wonder. 'You want to marry me?'
'They say that marriage the second time around to the same woman is always more successful,' he mocked her, his arms cradling her against him while he lowered her on to the bed and held her prisoner with his body. 'Will you marry me, Christie?'
'Yes… oh, yes,' she whispered, her hands touching his lean cheeks in an attempt to convince herself that this was not a dream, and a choking sob rose in her throat as she flung her arms about him and buried her tear-wet face against his warm throat. 'Oh, darling, I love you so much.'
They clung to each other a little wildly, and kissed with a hunger which would not be stilled. He shifted his position, taking her with him so that they lay full length on the bed, and she welcomed the fiery touch of his mouth as he trailed exquisite little kisses along her throat and down to where his impatient hands had exposed her breast.
'I want you, Christie, and I'm damned if I'm going to wait until it's legal,' he growled, burying his face in the scented valley between her breasts. 'Will you let me love you?'
'I don't recall that you asked the last time,' she teased, a breathless, husky note in her voice when he parted her dressing-gown and tugged at the confining satin ribbon which would give him freer access to her body.
'I was still suffering from the after-effects of seeing that mamba slithering all over you, and I was angry with myself for still loving you and wanting you. Making love to you was not intended as a punishment, but it ended that way, and I despised myself for it afterwards.'
'Lyle…' she groaned his name when his hands slid beneath the silk nightdress. 'That was the past and let's leave it at that. This is another moment in time, and we dare not mar it by lingering too much on the past.'
'A moment in time,' he growled thickly, guiding her hands inside his unbuttoned shirt. 'When you sang that song on our last night in the camp I felt myself cracking wide open, and I had to get away before someone noticed what had happened to me.'
She had never before seen him look so tortured, and she felt his agony as if it were her own. 'Darling…'
'I did a lot of soul-searching after that, and I decided that, no matter what you had done before, I wasn't going to let you go out of my life again.'
'Lyle,' she murmured impatiently against his lips, 'make love to me.'
He laughed suddenly, a deep-throated, triumphant laugh that was like music to her ears, and perhaps, in some distant moment in time, there was an echo of that deeply satisfied laughter.
A Moment in Time Page 15
