Lord, but his nerve was breathtaking, she thought as he gazed at her, all wide-eyed innocence. His invitation had absolutely nothing to do with the meal she’d cooked for him. He knew it, and she knew it, too.
‘It’s very kind of you, Mark,’ she began, hoping her cheeks weren’t as red as they felt, ‘but there’s really no need.’
‘I insist,’ he declared. ‘It seems the least I can do in the circumstances.’
Why wasn’t Tom saying something? Why didn’t he simply tell Mark his invitation was unnecessary? Surely he must know that she didn’t want to—couldn’t—go out with Mark, but he was just standing there, gazing at them both, his face devoid of all emotion.
‘Like I said, it’s a kind thought, Mark,’ she repeated, ‘but you don’t need to thank me by taking me out to dinner, and I’m sure Tom would agree, don’t you, Tom?’
Her husband’s grey eyes met hers, blank and expressionless. ‘It’s up to you, Helen.’
Up to her? Didn’t he care if she went out with his friend? Was he so blind, or so stupid or so uncaring, that it didn’t occur to him that it might be wrong for her to go out with such a devastatingly handsome man?
‘Tom—’
‘Your choice, Helen—your decision,’ he said, and as she stared back at him a wave of hurt anger flooded through her.
He didn’t care. He didn’t care what she did, where she went or with who. Well, all right, then. If that was how he felt she’d damn well go out with Mark and to hell with him.
‘Tonight, you said, Mark?’ she said tightly.
‘I understand Tom has the evening off so there’d be no need for you to get a babysitter,’ he observed.
Her eyes met her husband’s once more, hoping for a flare of anger, a spark of interest, but there was nothing, and her jaw set.
‘Tonight would be lovely, Mark.’
He smiled. ‘I thought it might be. Liz tells me Stephano’s is the best restaurant in town, but if you’d like to go somewhere else…?’
Stephano’s was indeed the best restaurant in Glasgow. It was also the place men took women they wanted to impress. Well, if she was going out with Mark she had no intention of going to some hole-in-the-wall café.
‘Stephano’s sounds wonderful,’ she replied, forcing a smile to her lips.
‘Terrific.’ Mark nodded. ‘I’ll pick you up at eight, shall I?’
‘Eight will be fine,’ she said, daring her husband to object—longing for him to object—but Tom didn’t say a word.
He was thinking plenty, though, as he watched Helen leave the staffroom. Thinking plenty, and praying he’d be able to keep the lid on his temper long enough for him to say what he wanted to say.
It wasn’t easy. In fact, he only managed to keep silent until the staffroom was safely closed, then he rounded on Mark, his face dark with fury. ‘I want to say only one thing to you—keep your hands off my wife.’
Mark’s eyebrows rose. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘So you should, but morality’s never been one of your strong points, has it?’
‘Hey, Tom, my old friend—’
‘Don’t play the innocent with me, Mark,’ Tom said, his tone dangerous. ‘It didn’t suit you ten years ago and it sure as hell doesn’t suit you now. Helen is my wife—’
‘Then why are you letting her go out with me?’
‘I don’t let Helen do anything,’ Tom retorted. ‘She’s not chained to me at the hip. I’m her husband, not her jailer, and I trust her. It’s you I don’t trust.’
‘But—’
‘I know very well what you’ve been up to,’ Tom declared, his eyes blazing. ‘You’ve been hitting on her, haven’t you, turning on your charm, sweet-talking her? Well, you can forget it. You can take her out to dinner tonight, but that’s all you’re going to do. She’s not on offer.’
Mark smiled. ‘Certain about that, are you? Well, let me tell you something—’
He didn’t get the chance to. All of Tom’s resolve to keep his temper vanished and he grabbed Mark by the lapels of his white coat and slammed him up against the staffroom wall.
‘Helen is my wife,’ he thundered, rage making his voice shake. ‘Mine, do you understand?’
‘And what if she doesn’t want you any more?’ Mark managed to gasp. ‘Face it, Tom, you’ve been damned lucky to have held onto her this long. What have you got to offer a gorgeous woman like Helen? More years in this crummy little hospital, the occasional two-week holiday in some two-star hotel if she’s lucky. It’s not much of a life, is it?’
‘At least I love her,’ Tom exclaimed. ‘At least I’m not offering her a cheap, sordid affair before I move on to my next conquest.’
‘Neither am I. In fact, strange as it might seem—and, believe me, there’s nobody more surprised than I am—I’ve fallen in love with her.’
‘You wouldn’t know the meaning of the word,’ Tom said with disgust. ‘This is just another game to you.’
‘No, it’s not. Believe me, Tom, I’ve never been more serious in my life.’
He wasn’t lying. Tom wanted him to be—he desperately wanted him to be—but as he stared into Mark’s handsome face he knew that he wasn’t, and his grip on him loosened.
‘I don’t care if you’ve fallen in love with Helen,’ he said uncertainly. ‘She’s mine. She loves me.’
Mark smoothed down the crumpled lapels of his white coat and walked over to the sink. ‘Does she? Are you sure about that?’
No, I’m not, Tom thought, feeling a pain so deep inside him that it was all he could do not to cry out loud.
‘I won’t…’ He shook his head blindly. ‘Even if Helen doesn’t love me any more…I’ll never give her a divorce.’
Mark looked at him pityingly. ‘People don’t bother about divorce nowadays, Tom, or marriage, come to that. People do what they want, go where their heart calls them.’
‘If…’ Dear God, just to get the words out was agony. ‘If she leaves me, the children will stay with me.’
‘I don’t think there’s a court in the land that would agree to that,’ Mark said. ‘Helen’s their mother. Wherever she goes, they’ll go, too.’
Tom clasped his hands together until the knuckles showed white. ‘If we weren’t in a hospital—’
‘You’d knock me down, punch my nose?’ Mark nodded. ‘Go ahead and do it if it will make you feel any better.’
Tom stared at him impotently. He wanted nothing more than to hit him, to smash him into tiny fragments, to obliterate him from the face of the earth, but Mark was right. It wouldn’t solve anything. The only person who could solve anything was Helen. She had to choose between them, and what woman in her right mind would choose what he had to offer?
‘I thought you were my friend,’ he said with difficulty, and Mark shrugged.
‘All’s fair in love and war, mate.’ He walked to the staffroom door and opened it. ‘I’ll be round at eight to collect Helen.’
Mark didn’t close the door as he left, and for a moment Tom stood in the centre of the staffroom, listening to the familiar sounds of the hospital—the ping of the lift, the muffled drone of voices in the distance, the squeak of a trolley’s wheels—and then he lifted Mark’s empty coffee-cup and hurled it into the sink where it shattered into a dozen broken pieces.
‘I can thoroughly recommend the steak and the lemon sole, madam,’ the waiter declared as Helen stared at the menu and tried hard to concentrate.
‘I don’t know…I…’ She shook her head indecisively. ‘What are you going to have, Mark?’
‘The fish, I think.’
‘I’ll have the same,’ she declared, handing back the menu to the hovering waiter with relief.
‘Liz was right,’ Mark remarked, glancing round. ‘It’s nice here.’
And expensive, Helen thought. In fact, she could probably have fed Tom and the children for a week on what Stephano’s was charging for a three-course dinner for two.
‘You’re worth it, Helen,’ Mar
k said, clearly reading her mind. ‘Whatever it costs, you’re worth it.’
It was a nice speech, a pretty speech, but as the waiter brought Mark the wine list all she could think as she stared at the happy, chattering couples around them was, What in the world am I doing here?
She’d never intended accepting Mark’s invitation, had told herself she never would, and yet here she was, wearing her best green dress, sitting in a candlelit room with a man who’d told her quite blatantly that he wanted to make love to her.
She must have been out of her mind.
No, not out of her mind, she realised, shifting her gaze to the white damask tablecloth in front of her, the glittering array of silver cutlery. Angry. Angry with Tom for saying nothing when Mark had asked her out. Angry with him for not seeming to care whether she went with him or not.
Even when Mark had arrived to collect her, Tom still hadn’t said anything.
Mark had. Mark had said she looked gorgeous, and beautiful, and she’d blushed like a teenager, but Tom…Tom had stared silently at them both, his face like stone, and yet still she wished she hadn’t come.
‘Relax, Helen,’ Mark murmured, apparently reading her mind. ‘This is supposed to be a pleasant evening out for you, not the culinary equivalent of a visit to the dentist. Look, if Tom didn’t like the idea of you coming out with me, he could just have told you so, couldn’t he?’
‘Tom doesn’t tell me anything, Mark,’ she said defensively. ‘I make my own choices.’
‘So what’s the problem?’
How to explain to him—how to make him understand that she felt uncomfortable being here with him, uncomfortable at the thought of Tom left at home, looking after their children.
‘Mark—’
‘Did I ever tell you about the time I spent on a cattle station in Australia?’
He hadn’t, but he proceeded to, and by the time they’d finished their hors d’oeuvres she was smiling. By the time they’d eaten their lemon sole she was helpless with laughter, and when their pudding arrived she was resting her chin on her hand, gazing at him, spellbound.
‘You’ve had such an interesting and exciting life,’ she said wistfully.
‘A smelly one, too.’ He grinned. ‘Especially when I ended up in that cow manure.’
She laughed. ‘Why did you leave Australia?’
He shrugged. ‘I’ve always had itchy feet.’
‘Which is why you’re off to Canada on Sunday,’ she said. ‘I’ve only ever been abroad once…’
She came to a halt as she remembered why she’d gone abroad. It had been for her honeymoon. She and Tom had gone to Venice for their honeymoon, and she’d thought it was the most beautiful city in the world.
Not that she’d seen that much of it, she thought, her lips curving unconsciously. She and Tom had spent most of their time in bed, making love in the mornings, and in the afternoons, as well as at night.
‘I’ve always wanted to travel, of course,’ she continued quickly, suddenly realising that Mark was waiting for her to continue. ‘India, China, America—’
‘Then come with me to Canada.’
Her chin slipped off her hand with a bump. ‘I…I can’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because this is where I live,’ she floundered. ‘My home’s here. My husband, my family, my work.’
He shook his head impatiently. ‘Helen, when are you going to face up to the fact that all you are to Tom is a housekeeper and a mum? The spark went out of your marriage years ago, and the two of you are just going through the motions, like so many couples do. You know it, and I suspect Tom does, too, but he just can’t work up the courage to tell you so.’
Was he right? She didn’t want him to be right, but…
‘Tom loves me,’ she said, and Mark shook his head again.
‘If he loved you he wouldn’t have let you come out with me tonight.’
‘Mark, he trusts me.’
‘He just doesn’t care.’ He reached out and trapped her hand in his. ‘Helen, I can give you so much more than Tom ever has. Oh, I know my track record with women is lousy,’ he continued as she tried to interrupt, ‘but I can change. If you come with me to Canada, I will change.’
‘Mark, what you’re suggesting…’ It was crazy, mad. ‘I can’t just walk away from my marriage. What about my children?’
‘They’d come with us, of course.’
‘You want my children, too?’ she said, stunned.
‘Helen, they’re a part of you,’ he said gently. ‘A very important part. Of course I want them.’
‘Mark…’ It was all going too fast, everything was moving far too fast, like being on a runaway train without any brakes, and one of them had to be sensible. ‘Mark, you’re asking me to throw away my marriage on the strength of an attraction. You don’t know me—not really—and I don’t know you.’
‘I know I’ve fallen in love with you. I know I’ve never felt this way about anyone before. What else is there to know?’
He made it sound so easy, so simple, but it was anything but that.
‘Mark—’
‘I’m not asking for an answer tonight,’ he said. ‘That would be unreasonable, putting too much pressure on you, but…’ He gently cupped her cheek in his hand. ‘Will you at least promise to think about it? To think about what we could have?’
She managed to nod. There wasn’t anything else she could do, not with his green eyes holding hers, refusing to let her look away.
They drove home in silence. To her relief he didn’t suggest coming in for coffee, but when she started to get out of the car he stayed her for a moment and feathered a kiss across her lips.
‘Just remember that I love you, Helen Brooke,’ he murmured, his face serious under the streetlight. ‘Whatever decision you come to, don’t ever forget that.’
She was too confused to reply. She simply got out of the car, watched him drive away, then went into the house, praying that Tom might have gone to bed. But he hadn’t.
He was stretched out on the sofa in the sitting room, an unopened book on his lap, and he looked as though he’d been there since she’d left.
‘Are the children in bed?’ she asked unnecessarily.
‘They went up over an hour ago.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Did…did you have a good evening?’
The words sounded as though they’d been wrenched out of him, and she glanced across at him quickly, then away again.
‘It was a lovely meal. Were the children OK?’ she continued. ‘No problems with their dinner or getting them to bed?’
‘No.’
‘It’s going to be a beautiful day tomorrow,’ she ploughed on to fill the silence. ‘There’s not a cloud in the sky, just a million stars and a huge moon.’
‘Sounds romantic.’
Oh, Lord. She hadn’t meant to make it sound so, but she was finding his steady gaze unnerving.
‘Would you like a coffee—or tea—or something?’ she asked.
‘No. Thank you.’
Was that all he was going to say? OK, so she supposed—tried to tell herself—that she should be flattered that he obviously didn’t intend grilling her about her evening with Mark, but she didn’t feel flattered. In fact, as she stared down at him all she was aware of was an overwhelming desire to throw her shoes at him one by one, then tip him off the sofa, but she didn’t.
‘I’m tired,’ she said instead. ‘I think I’ll go up to bed.’
He nodded, but he didn’t say anything—didn’t trust himself to say anything.
He wanted to. He wanted to leap off the sofa, drag her into his arms, and yell, ‘You’re my wife, God damn it, mine!’
He’d wanted to do the same thing when she’d left with Mark for Stephano’s. Wanted to tell her how lovely she looked, her cheeks flushed with faint colour, her eyes large and bright. Wanted to beg her not to go, to stay home, but if he’d done that he would have been admitting he didn’t trust her, and he could never let her think t
hat.
But that didn’t mean he was simply going to roll over and allow Mark to take Helen away from him, and if Mark thought that then he didn’t know him.
And he didn’t, he realised as he listened to the sounds of Helen moving about upstairs, getting ready for bed. Back in med school, poaching his girlfriends had been par for the course to Mark, but Helen wasn’t his girlfriend, she was his wife, and he was going to fight Mark with everything he could think of.
He’d spent the last two hours working it out. He’d have to make a few phone calls, take a trip into town, and it might take a few days to organise, but once the arrangements were made…
‘All’s fair in love and war, mate,’ Mark had said.
‘Too damn right it is, mate,’ Tom muttered grimly. ‘Too damn right.’
CHAPTER NINE
‘IF THERE’S such a thing as reincarnation, I’m definitely coming back as a man next time,’ Jennifer declared as Helen wrapped the blood-pressure cuff round her arm. ‘No PMS, no stretch marks, no varicose veins or droopy boobs, and when I get old everyone will say how distinguished I look instead of, “Who’s that wrinkled old bat?”’
Helen chuckled as she stared at the blood-pressure gauge. ‘Sounds good to me.’
‘How’s my blood pressure this morning?’ Jennifer asked, seeing her frown.
‘Perfect, actually,’ Helen murmured. ‘And your pulse, heart rate and urine sample are fine, too.’
‘You sound disappointed,’ Jennifer said with a nervous laugh, and Helen smiled.
‘Puzzled would be more accurate.’
And she was puzzled. Just eleven days ago Tom had been sufficiently worried to ask Jennifer to come back to have her blood pressure checked again. He’d even written ‘Possible pre-eclampsia developing?’ on her notes, and yet today Jennifer’s blood pressure was completely normal.
‘How do you feel in yourself, Jennifer?’ she asked. ‘No problems with your ankles swelling, no breathlessness or pain in your chest?’
‘I’m feeling fine, Doctor, honestly I am,’ the woman insisted. ‘In fact, the only thing that’s bothering me is having to go to the loo a lot more often than I did before.’
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