by Penny Jordan
She still believed quite passionately that Gray would never have fallen in love with Carla without encouragement, and then a traitorous little voice whispered tormentingly to her, 'Why not? You did ... with him ...'
'The Fastnet is one of the most dangerous sea races there is,' she retorted to cover her own inner turmoil.
'Not so very long ago many lives were lost, and boats abandoned.'
'Yes, I know.' Carla looked at her and said quietly, 'Alex's brother was one of them. That's why Alex is so determined that this boat will be both successful and safe. Alex and David, his brother, designed and built the boat that was lost. Alex should have sailed in it, but almost at the last minute he broke his leg and couldn't go.' Her face clouded as though she was remembering great unhappiness, and against her will Stephanie felt a confused sort of compassion for her.
'I'll never forget his face when we got the news that David was lost. I promise you, Stephanie, that Gray will be safe.'
'Hey, what are you two girls talking about so seriously?' Alex interrupted them, adding with a teasing grin at Carla, 'I don't know about everyone else, but I'm starving.'
Altogether it was a very confusing evening, Stephanie decided. If she had met them without knowing of Carla's relationship with Gray, if she hadn't been aware that Carla couldn't possibly genuinely love her husband, she would have thought them an exceedingly happy couple and she would have thoroughly enjoyed their company. Both of them had a lively interest in the arts, and far from centring exclusively on sailing and the Fastnet the conversation covered a wide range of diverse subjects. Of all of them she seemed to be the only one who was ill at ease.
It was while they were drinking their coffee that Alex unknowingly dropped his bombshell.
'I've chartered the Nemesis again this summer, since
you enjoyed it so much last year, Carla.'
'The Nemesis is a ten-berth schooner moored in St Lucia that we chartered last year,' he explained to Stephanie. 'All four of us went and we fully enjoyed the experience. There's plenty of space and we'd love you both to join us this time.'
Stephanie felt her face go stiff with shock and suspicion. Was Carla behind this? Was this her way of ensuring that she had the company of both her lover and her husband ?
One look at Gray's face assured Stephanie that he was as surprised by Alex's announcement as she had been herself but, to her shock, instead of instantly rejecting i he offer he said quietly, 'That's very generous of you, Alex. I'd love to j oin you, but of course it's up to Steph.'
With all three of them focusing on her, Stephanie had little option but to swallow her ire and say huskily, 'Yes, it is generous of you. I'm sure I'll love it.'
How could Gray have acceded so easily to Alex's suggestion ? she wondered miserably. He must know the temptation he would be facing in the close confines of t he schooner. How on earth would he be able to endure being so close to Carla, knowing she was with Alex?
In his shoes.. .in his shoes, she couldn't have endured to watch him with another woman. It was tearing her apart being here tonight. Every time he looked at Carla, every, time he spoke to her, she was consumed with jealousy.
Irrationally, as she listened to the three of them making plans for the projected holiday, she was filled with resentment. How on earth could either Carla or Alex believe that she and Gray were lovers, when he
was practically ignoring her?
'You're very quiet.' Carla smiled at her, and once again Stephanie was struck by the friendly naturalness of the other woman's smile. Had she not seen for herself the faint hauteur and coldness in Carla's attitude towards her the first time they met, had she not known the truth about her relationship with Gray, she might almost have found herself liking the other woman, and that confused and distressed her.
'I'm afraid I'm rather tired,' she responded unevenly. 'Gray took me sailing yesterday, and I'm still suffering the after-effects of all that fresh air.'
Instantly she was aware of the covert look that Gray and Carla exchanged, and again she was filled with jealousy.
How could Alex not notice the intimacy of that shared glance?
'I'm afraid Stephanie isn't the only one who's tired,' Gray commented. 'Would you think us very provincial if we make an early night of it?'
Carla and Alex accompanied them to the front door and watched until they were both installed in the car.
Stephanie sat rigidly in her seat, aching with jealousy and tension. Last night Gray had made love to her, but tonight that intimacy might never have been.
She sat in stiff silence as he drove them back to the cottage, getting out of the Range Rover the moment it stopped.
She had intended to be upstairs and in her own room before Gray came in, too angry at what she saw as his weakness over Carla to want to talk to him, but her throat was dry, and she stopped for a glass of water.
He came in while she was still drinking it, and waited until she had put the glass down before taking both her hands in his and holding them gently.
'Stephanie, what is it ? You've been tense and on edge all evening. If it's because of last night ...'
Instantly she was furious both with him and with herself. 'No, it's not because of last night,' she told him tight-lipped. 'It's because of tonight. Because of the way you weakly fell in with Alex's plans. You told me that you wanted to break away from Carla, that you knew that you had no future with her. And yet tonight you couldn't wait to accept their invitation to join them in the Caribbean.'
She watched as his forehead furrowed.
'No. . .no, Stephanie, you've got it all wrong. Let me explain.'
'I don't need any explanations, or any lies, Gray. I can see for myself what's going on,' she told him bitterly. 'I offered to help you by pretending that you and I.. .that we were lovers because I thought you genuinely meant it when you said it was all over between you and Carla. I won't be used as a convenient screen behind which you can carry on your adulterous relationship.' Her voice was thick with biting scorn, but to her surprise Gray looked more angry than contrite.
'I am not having an affair with Carla,' he ground out furiously. 'Surely last night showed you that much?'
She felt as though her whole body was on fire. How could he refer to what they had shared last night in the one sentence as his affair with a married woman? Only to him, Carla wasn't a married woman; she was the woman he loved, she acknowledged miserably.
'I don't want to talk about last night,' she told him, childishly snatching her hands away and heading for the door. 'I'd like to forget that it ever happened.'
She was lying of course, but even so her voice rang with intensity and conviction. Gray couldn't see her face, or the tears filling her eyes. He had hurt her tonight and badly, and she wanted to hurt him in turn, she acknowledged unhappily as she headed for her room. Although how any comment of hers could hurt him, when he was so obviously concerned only with Carla, she really did not know.
CHAPTER NINE
FOR a week they shared the cottage together in an atmosphere of subdued hostility. Too proud and too hurt to back down from the stance she had adopted, Stephanie continued to treat Gray with coldness although inwardly she ached to go back to the days when they had been close.
Even his friendship seemed to be lost to her now, and several times she thought of suggesting she should leave, but she was frightened to do so, dreading hearing him agree.
It was hell living with him like this, but it would be even greater hell to be sent away.
The week stretched to ten days, time running out swifter than a rip tide as the date of the Fastnet approached.
Gray was gone most days now, testing and re-testing the boat. Hostility gave way to a cool state of armed neutrality. When he came home in the evening she asked him about the yacht's progress, but the old spontaneity of their relationship was gone. She knew that she was losing weight, growing increasingly tense.
As far as she knew Gray hadn't seen Carla since the evening of the d
inner party, and part of her urged her to apologise and take back her hasty words, but she was still too hurt and jealous.
Added to that was her ever-increasing anxiety as the days dribbled away and the race loomed ominously close at hand.
Several times she sensed Gray's frustration with the cool barrier she had put up against him, but every time he tried to recapture their earlier closeness she froze him off, panicked by the fear that if she let him get emotionally close to her again she would break down completely and reveal to him how she felt.
Once she would have said, if asked, that there was nothing she could not tell Gray, but now that had changed.
The weekend before the commencement of the Fastnet they were invited to an official pre-start party at a prestigious local yacht club, along with other entrants in the race.
Carla and Alex were also going, and on a reckless impulse Stephanie went into Southampton and spent far more than she had intended on a peach satin ballgown that did amazing things for her hair and skin.
On the suggestion of the sales assistant she also made an appointment to have her hair done in a profusion of vaguely eighteenth-century curls to compliment the formality of her gown.
Her impulsive decision to buy a new dress and have her hair done meant that she didn't arrive back at the cottage until later than she had planned.
Gray was already upstairs getting ready and she hurried into her own bedroom and quickly started getting changed.
To compliment the narrow, stiffened bodice of her dress, the saleswoman had recommended that she wear a lacy, boned basque underneath to ensure a smooth fit, and she had just finished struggling into this instrument of torture and securing fine white stockings to the attached suspenders when Gray knocked briefly on the door.
Conscious that time was running out, and her mind on the stamina of those women of long ago who submitted to being pushed and squeezed into real corsets, she forgot to respond.
When her bedroom door suddenly opened and Gray strode in, she didn't know which one of them was the more shocked.
Gray took one look at her supple, white, lace-clad body and immediately went completely still, while all she could think of was how ridiculously and deliberately provocative she must look clad in nothing but high- heeled sandals, stockings, briefs and an article of underwear that seemed to make her waist look far smaller than it had ever appeared before, and contradictorarily her breasts surely far fuller.
'I... I wasn't sure if you were back,' Gray said at last, averting his eyes from her.
'I'm sorry I'm so late.' Her fingers touched the tumbled mass of dark red curls that had been the cause of the delay. 'I bought a new dress for tonight, and then I had to have my hair done ...'
She was babbling and she knew it, but she felt so ridiculously self-conscious. Gray was already dressed. The party was a formal one, with white tie specified.
'I've only got to do my lace and put on my dress. I'm leaving it until last because the skirts are so full. I ...' She was babbling again, she realised, and she checked herself, a sudden surge of warmth invading her body as she saw Gray look at her.
'With skin like yours you don't need make-up,' he told her abruptly and she was conscious of a fresh surge of heat. It was almost as though he was actually touching her, smoothing and savouring the softness of her flesh as he had done the night they had made love.
'What time did you order the taxi for?' Somehow she had to break the heavy silence hanging over them.
'You've got just under half an hour.' He paused and looked at her again slowly before retreating and closing the door. After he had gone, Stephanie put her hands against her flushed face, her colour deepening even further as she saw her own reflection in the mirror.
Against the soft white of her basque and stockings, her skin glowed creamy warm. Her eyes seemed to have gone darker, almost slumbrous, and the way the stylist had done her hair gave her, even to her own eyes, an unexpected air of sensuality. Was that how Gray had seen her? Or when he had looked at her had he only seen Carla?
Impatient and angry with herself she quickly put on her make-up, applying it only slightly less dextrously than usual. Her dress came last and she stepped into it, grimacing as she battled with the mass of net underskirts. The three-quarter sleeves could be worn on or off the shoulders, and she left them down as she reached behind herself to slide up the zip, only when it got to her waist it wouldn't go any further, no matter how much she struggled.
In the shop she had commented on how close-fitting it was, but the assistant had assured her that a close fit on such a gown was essential. She, Stephanie remembered now, had had both hands free to close the fastener. Frightened of breaking it completely in her impatience, she stuffed her evening bag with what she would need
for the evening and opened the door.
Hurrying downstairs was impossible with such wide, heavy skirts, but finally she made it. She found Gray in the sitting-room.
'I can't get the zip up properly,' she told him without preamble. 'It needs two hands. Can you do it for me?'
She turned her back to him as she spoke, breathing in sharply as she felt his hands on her back.
After all her struggles it seemed unfair that the zip should slide home easily and immediately under Gray's calm hands, and she let out her breath in a jerky sigh as he closed the small top fastener for her.
The dress was quite low at the back, and cut in such a way at the front that it exposed the soft upper curves of her breasts. Conscious that Gray was looking at her as she turned round, she asked huskily, 'Well, what do you think?'
'I can't decide whether you look more beautiful with it on or off,' he said slowly at last, 'but at least now I know the reason for that amazingly sexy piece of underwear you're wearing.'
He was actually teasing her, Stephanie realised, her spirits lightening as she responded lightly, 'Ah, but you weren't supposed to see that.'
'No, I don't think I should have done,' Gray agreed huskily. 'The memory of seeing you in it is likely to cause me to keep awake at nights, Stephanie.'
He looked at her broodingly, and she held her breath, wondering what he intended to say. The sharp ring of the doorbell shattered the silence and Gray frowned.
'Damn, that will be the taxi.'
The party would have been one of the most enjoyable she had ever attended had it not been for her continuing anxiety over the Fastnet race and the misery of her own incredibly foolish love for Gray.
He danced with her most of the evening, holding he as close as the full skirts of her gown would allow, and midnight, when balloons were released from the ceiling and everyone toasted the success of the Race he swung her into his arms and kissed her with passion and something almost approaching violence, holding her against his body long after most of the other revellers had drifted apart.
The fierce passion of that kiss stayed with her on the drive home. Was it the frustration, or his need for Carla that had driven him into her arms? She would not be used as a substitute for the other woman, no matter how much she loved him, but even as she made that determined vow, she knew that if he touched her, if he kissed her, she might not be able to resist him.
Nervous tension kept her wide awake and restless on the ride home. Once inside the cottage, habit made her ask Gray if he would like a nightcap.
'Not for me,' he told her abruptly. 'I think I'll go up.'
His retreat from her, after she had half expected him to at least attempt to make love to her, brought her down to earth with shattering speed. It was no use telling herself that Gray was acting honourably in removing temptation from them both; it was no use telling herself that she would not have wanted him to make love to her while craving another woman.
As she prepared for bed, all she could think of was how he had looked at her earlier in the evening; how he had held and kissed her, and how much she ached to have him with her now.
The morning of the Fastnet dawned bright and clear. Stephanie went with Carla and A
lex to see Gray off. She was a mass of nerves, so tense that even her bones seemed to ache with it.
Gray kissed her briefly before going on board, a hard, all-too-short embrace that left her aching and alone.
'Don't worry about him. He'll be fine,' Alex reassured her as they waited for the starting signal. 'You wait and see.'
They watched until Gray's boat was just a distant speck before joining the other onlookers drifting away.
Carla and Alex invited her to go back with them, but she shook her head. There was work to do at the yard; work which would keep her occupied physically if not mentally. As always when she saw Carla, she was confused by her own ambivalent feelings towards the other woman, unable to escape from the knowledge that in other circumstances she would have liked her.
It was all so easy to understand why Gray loved her, and it was equally hard to equate the Carla who appeared to be a devoted and loving wife with the Carla she knew to have cheated on her husband.
All day she barely moved out of range of the radio, like everyone else working in the yard.
So far the weather was ideal, but Stephanie was haunted by memories of the tragic outcome of the Fastnet race only years before.
The news bulletin on television that evening showed that Gray was well to the forefront of the race. He had been interviewed by local television the week before and this interview was now re-run.
