Charade of the Heart

by Cathy Williams

  They were discreet, but it was impossible to hide from Jane the fact that something had happened between them. There was a familiarity between them that hadn’t been there before, and Jane’s sharp eyes absorbed it all.

  ‘You’ve slept with him, haven’t you?’ she accused acidly, when Marcos had left his seat for a few minutes.

  Beth didn’t answer. She didn’t have to; the tell-tale flush on her cheeks said it all for her.

  ‘Well, you got what you wanted,’ Jane muttered, her eyes daggers. ‘You bedded the boss. What were you hoping for? A pay rise?’ She laughed shortly, ‘Because he won’t marry you, you know.’

  The venom in her voice spurred Beth into self-defence.

  ‘Nor would I expect him to!’ she lied.

  ‘Ha! Crack another one! All women hope for marriage, even someone like you. Not that you’ve had much luck. I mean, first David, now Marcos.’

  Beth gritted her teeth together. Jane’s words stung, because they were true. Admit it or not, she wanted Marcos Adrino for herself—not just for a week, or a month, or even a year, but for a lifetime.

  ‘And what about you?’ Beth asked quietly. ‘Don’t you want to get married?’

  Jane flushed suddenly. ‘Sure, but I don’t intend to play the field until it happens.’

  Beth didn’t bother to object.

  ‘Look,’ she said earnestly, leaning across the aisle, ‘maybe you’re right. Marcos is inaccessible, and I’m a fool. But you don’t have to be. You could find someone, someone to share things with. Isn’t that better than clinging to a wild dream?’

  It was a baldly honest statement, and Jane’s face looked first surprised, then angry.

  ‘You’ll be sorry you ever got involved with him,’ she promised. ‘I’ll…’

  What she intended to do was lost on Beth, because at that moment Marcos reappeared, his eyes not taking in Jane at all, but hungrily dwelling on Beth until a surge of colour flooded her cheeks.

  He slipped into the seat next to her and murmured, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed a plane flight as much as this. Right now, I could take you. Maybe we could explore the more private regions of this plane together?’

  ‘Not on your life!’ Beth looked at him, horrified, and then burst into helpless giggling. The thought of finding somewhere on a plane private enough in which to make love was wildly amusing.

  ‘What about if we spread a blanket discreetly over ourselves…?’

  ‘Somehow,’ Beth informed him drily, ‘I think we might be noticed. There are other people in this compartment, not least Jane.’

  ‘Jane?’

  ‘Your employee sitting across the aisle.’

  ‘Oh, Jane. She won’t notice a thing. Besides, she’s glued to a magazine.’

  A casual dismissal. Was this how he would speak about her once their affair was over? It was a fair chance that that would happen even before she had a chance to tell him who she really was, because she would tell him. Just as soon as she found the courage.

  They chatted throughout the flight, but under the easy conversation his eyes were burning, devouring her. He touched her lightly, but just a fraction of a second longer than was necessary, so that she knew what was going through his head.

  And she felt like a teenager, as though loving him had stripped her of her years and turned her into the vulnerable girl she had once been.

  When they finally arrived back in London, it was an effort to drag herself away from him. Suddenly Laura’s flat seemed like an exercise in isolation.

  But Jane had resolutely hovered, determined to stay until she saw them leave on their separate ways.

  Beth caught a taxi back to Swiss Cottage, dumping her suitcases on to the ground and heading for the telephone.

  The time had come to put a stop to their little game.

  Laura picked up the phone almost instantly, and Beth smiled.

  ‘You weren’t sitting on the phone, were you?’ she asked lightly.

  ‘Of course I was. Waiting for your call. How was it? Was it very hot?’

  ‘Very,’ Beth agreed. ‘Hot and beautiful. Paradise, in fact. I could have stayed longer.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad you didn’t,’ Laura said petulantly. ‘I’ve been eaten with envy ever since you left. If you’d stayed any longer, you would have found my corpse in your flat.’

  Beth laughed loudly. ‘You eat too much to ever waste away from anything, including envy!’

  ‘I could waste away from love,’ Laura said seriously. ‘I’ve tried, but I can’t get David out of my mind. I just want to see him so badly… And especially now that I’m beginning to show.’ There was a wistful sigh on the line.

  ‘Laura, I’ve been thinking,’ Beth said slowly. ‘This won’t work. I mean, my being here, pretending to be you. It was silly. No, more than that, it was reckless. We have to come clean, and then maybe you should get in touch with David, tell him about the baby; he has a right to know.’

  ‘Never!’

  ‘But…’

  ‘Please, Beth, for me. Whatever you think of all this, you’re in it now, and neither of us can back down.’

  ‘Things have changed, Laura.’

  ‘What?’

  I’m in love with your boss, she had meant to say, but now she found that she couldn’t admit it, not even to her sister. It was something she wanted to keep to herself for a while.

  ‘I don’t feel comfortable with this deception.’

  ‘Please, for me.’ She started to cry and Beth clicked her tongue impatiently.

  ‘Don’t,’ she said sharply. ‘All right, I’ll keep silent for the time being, but I can’t promise that I’ll be able to stick it out.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Laura conceded quickly, and Beth could see what was running through her sister’s mind as clearly as if it had been written up in bold letters on a notice board. Laura hoped that she could persuade her to keep going, knowing, as Beth did, that the longer the charade continued, the more difficult it would be to confess.

  Half an hour later, Beth hung up with the uneasy feeling that nothing had been resolved.

  And something would have to be done. Things couldn’t continue the way they were. Now that Marcos wasn’t around, she could think more clearly, and she knew that she would have to gamble her temporary happiness on his understanding.

  She unpacked lethargically and had a bath, afterwards standing for ages by the window and staring out, comparing the grey mournful skies outside with the brilliantly blue ones in St Lucia.

  Had the sunshine gone to their heads? she wondered. Maybe it had addled them both, released some hidden spring, which would now slot back into place back in grim old England.

  She tried to imagine life without Marcos and couldn’t. It was just physically impossible to get him out of her head.

  But the following day was work, and maybe the change of climate had already cleared her out of his system.

  The thought continued to haunt her, right through the night, and on the journey in the following morning.

  She told herself to be prepared, but by the time she let herself into the office her skin was already tingling with apprehension.

  He was already in; his coat was slung over the coat-stand.

  Beth slowly hung hers next to it, and blindly glanced down at the masses of post that had arrived in their absence.

  Letters from abroad, inter-company memos, copies of engineering reports on some of their planned sites. She sat down and began sorting them out, half her mind on Marcos, just yards away from her behind his closed door.

  When he finally buzzed her to bring him in a cup of coffee and to come with her shorthand pad, she heard herself replying in a crisp, distant voice. Not the voice of a lover. She had no intention of acting like a lovesick teenager, especially when there was a good chance that he had now relegated her to the category of the ‘Brief Fling’.

  He glanced up when she entered, then leaned back in his chair and surveyed her more thoroughly.

/>   Beth absolutely refused to act coy. It was not her style anyway. She had always been a direct person; now she stared directly into his eyes and then sat down, her hand poised to take the dictation.

  ‘Had a good night?’ he asked softly.

  ‘Fine,’ Beth mumbled. ‘I was pretty tired, though. How was yours?’

  ‘Awful.’

  She looked hesitantly at him, a flicker of delight coursing through her. ‘Yes?’

  ‘And you needn’t look so smug.’

  Beth controlled her expression, but she felt light-headed with joy.

  ‘I didn’t think I was.’

  ‘I spent the entire night thinking about you, wanting you. In fact I was very nearly tempted to pay you a surprise visit.’

  ‘Were you?’

  ‘Is that all you can say?’ But he shot her a sudden, charming smile that made her blood turn to water.

  ‘No, there’s an awful lot more I can say,’ she informed him sincerely.

  ‘Good, then you can say it tonight. I’ll pick you up at eight.’

  He returned to his work, quickly flicking through some folders on his desk, rattling off orders for her with his usual staccato rapidity, until she was happily lost in a whirlwind of work.

  That was one thing about working for him; there was no time to daydream. He did not spare himself, and he did not expect his employees to do so, either.

  Nor did he make any further allusions that day to the fact that their relationship was no longer the boss-secretary relationship. She didn’t think that he really cared whether anyone knew about them or not, but on the other hand he had no intention of broadcasting it. And neither had she.

  She was not given to sharing confidences by nature, and anyway her conscience wouldn’t have allowed it.

  As she dressed for dinner that evening, she felt the worry nagging away at the back of her mind. This charade had started out as a temporary game, a gamble to help her thoughtless sister out of a difficult situation and herself out of an unenviable rut after her own unsuccessful fling with Craig. Now it was much more. It had become a dangerous masquerade, with much more to lose than a job with a good salary.

  Wilful Cupid had catapulted her into a dreadful no-win situation. To confess would be to lose Marcos, but to keep silent was only a cowardly way of buying time.

  Her eyes flicked nervously as the doorbell rang, and she opened the door to see Marcos standing there, casually dressed, his black hair severely combed away from his face, a Harrods bag in his hand.

  ‘I thought we were going to eat out,’ Beth said, surprised, warming as he smiled at her slowly.

  ‘Everything I want to eat is right here,’ he drawled, shutting the door behind him. ‘Cheese, salmon, salad and champagne. Courtesy of that fine department store.’

  Beth grinned. ‘How thoughtful of you.’

  ‘And of course,’ he murmured, coiling his long fingers into her hair and upturning her face to his, ‘there’s you. The most edible thing on the menu.’

  His lips explored hers with leisurely sensuality, nibbling and teasing until she was gasping for breath. He pulled away eventually and said huskily, ‘I’ve been waiting to do that all day.’

  ‘That has a clichéd ring about it,’ Beth said, but she was laughing, the nagging doubts conveniently put into temporary storage. She took the bag from him and they went into the cramped kitchen, his arms around her, his teeth gently nipping her neck while she chopped the lettuce and tomatoes.

  ‘I’ll never get this done!’ she protested. ‘Are you normally such a pest in the kitchen?’

  ‘I’m hardly ever in one,’ he said, picking up one of the kitchen implements and twirling it around as though it were some strange apparatus which he had never laid eyes on before.

  ‘Haven’t any of your girlfriends had them?’ Beth asked curiously, averting her eyes because the desire to find out was stronger than she would have imagined.

  Marcos shrugged. ‘I expect so. I rarely ventured inside.’

  ‘You surely didn’t wine and dine them all of the time!’ She thought of the elegant Angela Fordyce. No, she couldn’t picture her in a kitchen at all. Maybe they liked a constant round of restaurants. As far as she was concerned, though, that thought held little appeal.

  ‘Isn’t that the standard courtship game?’ he said flatly. ‘I had no interest in the architecture of their houses apart from the obvious, and I certainly didn’t want any of them cluttering up my apartment.’ He had opened the bottle of chilled champagne and handed her a glass.

  Beth regarded him soberly over the rim. Unintentionally, he was telling her what she already knew. That he was not a man for commitment. He liked change, and when the time came for her to confess all he would toss her out like useless rubbish. Except with me, she thought uneasily, it’ll be far worse because his pride will have been affronted. God, why am I in this mess? But even as she asked the question the answer provided itself. She was in love with him, and doesn’t love make cowards of us all? she thought. Wasn’t it an addiction that made a fool out of good sense?

  ‘Why not?’ she asked, walking into the lounge. ‘Don’t you believe in love and marriage?’

  ‘Do you?’ The dark eyes scrutinised her face. ‘Was that what you wanted out of Ryan?’ His voice was hard.

  ‘Marriage isn’t on my agenda,’ she said, avoiding the question.

  ‘Then we see eye-to-eye.’ He came and sat next to her, lightly tracing the contour of her body through her dress. ‘Because I don’t believe in marriage at all. All that stuff about love is so much hot air. I’ve seen enough failed marriages around me to last a lifetime. No, the only certainty is with yourself.’

  ‘You mean your career,’ Beth amended. He was at least being honest, but honesty hurt.

  ‘I guess I do,’ he said lazily. ‘Women come and go, but without a career—’ He shrugged. ‘I’ve seen firsthand what happens, and that’s not the way I intend to go.’

  ‘And how long do you give us?’ she asked, noticing that her hand trembled as she took a sip of the champagne. ‘A week? A month? Three months maybe?’

  ‘Who knows? Does it matter to you?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ she said bitterly, ‘but if I knew, maybe I could plan my diary accordingly.’

  He laughed at that, but she wasn’t laughing at all. She wished she had never given him the opportunity for truth. Truth had a curious way of backfiring.

  ‘You make me laugh,’ he said, his eyes feverish as they swept possessively over her body, ‘and that’s a first for any woman. I’m prepared to live dangerously. Are you?’ His hand cupped her breast, and under the thin cotton of her dress she felt her body hot with arousal.

  Oh, yes, she thought, I’m living dangerously all right. More dangerously than you could ever imagine. Right now I feel as though I’m walking on a knife-edge, with two very sheer drops on either side. But until then…

  She lay back on the sofa, breathing quickly as he unbuttoned the front of her dress, exposing her nudity to his hungry gaze, closing her eyes as his mouth found the hardened tips of her breasts.

  Until then, I’ll fill myself with you, my love, because it’ll have to last a lifetime.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  GRADUALLY BETH’S LIFE slotted into a pattern of lovemaking by night, while during the day no one would guess that there was anything between her and Marcos at all.

  And every day she fell a little deeper in love with him. But that didn’t stop the worry nagging away at the back of her mind. Every morning she woke up and thought, Today’s the day, today I’ll confess everything; but the thought of the immense void that his absence in her life would bring always made her good intentions die on her lips. So she kept silent, hating her cowardice, torn between the ecstasy of being with him and the agony of knowing that every minute brought her closer to the end.

  And at work Jane continued to be a malicious threat hovering in the background, yapping at her heels like a little terrier that wanted to bite but found it ma
ddeningly impossible.

  She was in the office now, an irritating presence which Beth attempted to ignore by concentrating on her wordprocessor. Eventually Jane gave up her round of antagonistic questions and sullenly flopped into the chair facing Beth.

  ‘I’m about to go to lunch,’ Beth said pointedly.

  ‘I didn’t realise you ever went to lunch,’ Jane said with staged incredulity. ‘I thought you just stayed up here working and building up brownie points with Marcos.’

  ‘I’ll make sure that he gets those files you brought,’ Beth said politely, changing the subject with accustomed swiftness. Jane insisted on angling every conversation back to Marcos, and particularly this morning Beth was not in the mood for it. She had too much on her mind.

  ‘Still sleeping with the boss?’ Jane enquired idly, juggling the plastic container with the pens so that they rattled irritatingly.

  It was the very first time she had brought this out in the open, and Beth stared at her aghast.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘You heard.’

  ‘I thought I must have been mistaken.’ There was a tremor in her voice which Jane seized upon with malicious glee.

  ‘Would you like me to repeat the question?’

  Beth snatched the irritating pen container out of Jane’s hand and dumped it unceremoniously on the far side of the desk. ‘There’s no need,’ she said tightly, ‘because my answer’s going to be the same anyway. It’s none of your business. It never has been and it isn’t now. So if you don’t mind…’ She began slipping on her cardigan, a rose-coloured one that matched her skirt and picked up the floral colours in her short-sleeved jumper.

  ‘Marcos has changed, you know,’ Jane said, an element of bitterness in her voice. ‘He’s not as caustic as he used to be, and he never, ever flirts any more. It’s all your fault.’

  Beth’s mouth dropped open. ‘I hadn’t noticed any change in him,’ she said without thinking.

  ‘Well, he has, and it’s all your fault. I suppose it’s what you’ve been working towards, domesticating him.’ Her tone was acidly accusatory.