Sheer Mischief

by Jill Mansell

  Janey bit her lip. What he said made so much sense, but she still couldn’t bring herself to admit quite how torn she felt. Alan loved and needed her, after all. How on earth would it affect him if she were suddenly to announce that she had changed her mind?

  Feeling horribly disloyal just thinking about it, she willed herself to remain calm. She wasn’t going to pour her heart out to Guy; he’d suffered quite enough of that after the Bruno fiasco. He might be on her side, she thought, but she still had some pride. She didn’t want him to think she was a completely hopeless case.

  “We’re fine,” Janey assured him as convincingly as she knew how. She smiled. “Really. I was just having a bit of a moan, that’s all.”

  Shit, thought Guy, not believing her for a second. He’d blown it. And he had thought he’d been doing so well.

  • • •

  “Shit!” Maxine yelled practically simultaneously, in London.

  Bruno gave the maître d’ an apologetic grin and hoped he wouldn’t change his mind about giving them the last table in the restaurant.

  “She’s from Iceland,” he confided. “Doesn’t speak a word of English. I think she’s saying ‘hello.’”

  But Maxine, staring at the reservation diary lying open on the desk before them, was too appalled to enter into the spirit of the game.

  “It’s the fifteenth,” she groaned. “Oh hell, I can’t believe it’s really the fifteenth!”

  Of November, thought Bruno, following her gaze. Big deal. Unless she’d suddenly realized her period was late, in which case it would definitely be a big deal…

  “Quick, I need a phone!” Maxine launched herself across the mahogany desk. “Can I use this one?”

  But the maître d’, who had quick reflexes, had already clamped his hand firmly over the phone. The last time someone had tried that trick, they’d called their mother in South America. “This one is reserved for table bookings, madam. We have a pay phone for customers at the far end of the bar.”

  “What is it?” Bruno demanded as Maxine rifled his pockets for change. To his alarm, there were tears glistening in her eyes.

  “That bastard,” she seethed. “I asked him what she was doing tonight, and he told me she didn’t have any plans. I suppose he’s gone out…”

  “Who?”

  “Bloody Alan bloody Sinclair.” The words dripped with contempt. “Who else?”

  Bruno raised his eyebrows. “Why, what’s he done now?”

  “Oh, nothing much,” snapped Maxine. “At least, not by his standards. It’s only Janey’s birthday, after all.”

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Janey, watching Guy replace the receiver, was unnerved by his grim expression.

  “Bad news?”

  He nodded. “Very bad news.”

  “Oh no.” Her heart lurched. “What is it?”

  “It’s November the fifteenth,” Guy replied slowly. “Your birthday. Don’t tell me you’d forgotten too.”

  • • •

  “The nerve of that man,” cried Maxine, flushed with annoyance. “He wouldn’t even let me speak to her!”

  Bruno frowned. “Alan? Why not?”

  She looked at him as if he was being deliberately obtuse. “Not Alan, stupid. Guy. She’s babysitting up at the house. I thought he’d be out, but he’s back.”

  By this time thoroughly confused and too hungry to care much anyway, Bruno had begun studying the menu. But Maxine was still muttering to herself, twirling her hair around her fingers in a frenzy of indignation. He sighed. “OK, so why wouldn’t Guy let you speak to her?”

  “I don’t know, do I?” She glared at him across the table. “He told me to leave everything to him; he’d deal with it. What the bloody hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “I’d have thought it was pretty obvious.” Bruno grinned. “He’s going to make sure Janey’s birthday goes with a bang.”

  • • •

  “I know it’s my birthday.” Janey felt unaccountably nervous. “Who was that on the phone? Is that the very bad news, or is there something else?”

  “It was Maxine, ringing from a pay phone.” Guy bent to refill their glasses. “She’s mortified at having forgotten, but she sends her love and says she’ll bring you back a megastupendous present. Her words,” he said drily. “I wouldn’t get your hopes up if I were you. She bought Josh a megastupendous present the other week; it turned out to be a bouncing rubber brain. When you throw it against the wall,” he added with a look of resignation, “it screams ‘Ouch.’”

  “I could probably do with one of those.” Janey smiled. “So that’s really the bad news, Maxine forgetting my birthday?”

  But the humor had vanished from his eyes once more. Really, she thought, he was incredibly hard to keep up with.

  “No,” said Guy. “The bad news is Alan forgetting your birthday.”

  Janey, opening her mouth to protest, had no chance.

  “Don’t even say it,” Guy warned. “For God’s sake, Janey! Why do you always have to defend him? The way he’s treated you is sickening enough, but not even being able to remember your birthday—this year of all years—is downright despicable!”

  “Lots of husbands forget their wives’ birthdays.” She couldn’t help it; now he was being unfair. “Thousands do, all the time. It’s practically a condition of marriage.” Janey realized she was shaking.

  Guy’s dark eyes, glittering with derision, bored into her. “Don’t be such a coward,” he drawled unpleasantly. “Stop covering up for him. Why can’t you just admit the fact that he’s a selfish bastard and he’s making you miserable? Why don’t you give yourself a rest, Janey, say what you really think, and stop being so fucking nice?”

  This was too much. Something snapped inside her. Guy, launching into a totally unprovoked attack, was somehow managing to make her feel she was the one at fault.

  “How dare you!” The words came tumbling out of her mouth, but it was as if someone else was saying them for her. “How dare you try and heap the blame on me? If you want to know what I really think, it’s that you’re just as much of a bastard as my husband!” She was trembling violently, but the voice doing the talking didn’t falter. “OK, if you want the dirt, I’ll give it to you. It isn’t working out because he’s a selfish, idle sponger who expects me to do everything for him because that’s how it used to be, and he doesn’t see why it should be any different now. He’s using me…taking advantage of me. I know he’s doing it. I hate him doing it, but I don’t have any choice!”

  Janey paused, gulping for breath, panting as if she’d just run a marathon. But he had goaded her into this exorcism, and now it was all spilling out. Her chest hurt, her throat ached, and her fingernails were biting into her palms like fish hooks. But she had almost finished, and she was going to force him to understand the kind of hell she’d been through if it killed her.

  “I don’t have any choice.” She repeated the words in a low voice. “Because Alan needs me. I’m afraid of what he might do if I tell him it’s over. I don’t think he could handle it. He’s dropped hints, and they scare me witless. I really believe he would harm himself. How can I possibly afford to take that risk? How could I ever live with myself if I called his bluff and he did commit suicide?” She shook her head and shuddered helplessly at the mere mention of the word. “It would be on my conscience for the rest of my life. It would be my fault. I’d be the one who had killed him.”

  “Oh, Janey.” Guy gave her a ghost of a smile. “I’m sorry I shouted at you. Do you understand now why I had to do it?”

  He had been goading her deliberately, of course, forcing her to lose her temper with him and spill it all out. With a weary nod, she said, “I understand, but it isn’t as if there’s anything you can do to help. You knowing about my problems isn’t going to make them go away.”

  “Well,” persi
sted Guy, “do you at least feel better?”

  “I don’t know.” It was a lie. She did feel better, Janey realized, but how long was that likely to last? She would probably wake up tomorrow morning and kick herself. Ungraciously, she said, “I suppose you do, now you’ve weaseled that little confession out of me. At least your curiosity’s been satisfied.”

  “Don’t be bitchy.”

  “Don’t be bitchy?” Echoing the words, she mimed frustration. “Five minutes ago you told me to stop being so fucking nice. You really do know how to shower a girl with compliments, Guy.”

  He grinned, because there weren’t many people on the planet less adept at handling a compliment than Janey. When he’d once tried admiring her new trousers, she had replied, “At least they hide my legs.” When on another occasion he had said her hair looked nice, she’d promptly told him it needed cutting. If he displayed appreciation of her chicken casserole, she invariably shook her head and said either “Too much tarragon” or “Not enough salt.”

  If he thought for one minute it would help, Guy told himself, he would shower her with compliments. He would tell her she was beautiful, that she had stunning legs, wondrous eyes, a deeply kissable mouth…

  He could also tell her that the prospect of spending the night with Valentina di Angelo had left him utterly cold, whereas the thought of spending the night with Janey Sinclair was infinitely desirable.

  Guy smiled, because at least he could stop worrying about male menopause. He also—finally—understood why he hadn’t wanted to sleep with Valentina. It was because he wanted Janey.

  But it was hardly the time to make his feelings known. If anything was guaranteed to send her screaming out of the house, he decided, it was a declaration of lust from some bastard who had just bullied her into revealing the innermost secrets of her hopeless marriage to another bastard. Oh yes, that would really restore her faith in men.

  “What are you thinking?” Janey demanded in accusing tones, because Guy was miles away and there was a hint of a smile around his mouth. If he was laughing at her, she would slap him.

  “Nothing. Sorry.” Hastily, he composed himself. “Look, I understand how you must feel about Alan, but this rubbish about killing himself is emotional blackmail. Janey, nobody has the right to do that to you. It’s ludicrous. If he wants to jump off a cliff, that’s his decision. You wouldn’t have made him do it, and you wouldn’t be responsible.”

  “But—”

  Guy’s expression was severe. “No, this time you’re just going to have to sit there and let me have my say. What he’s doing is sick. It’s also selfish. And people who will stoop to such depths in order to get whatever they want are way too selfish to off themselves, believe me. He’s threatening to do it because it’s the only way he knows of making sure you don’t dump him. If he really loved you as much as he says, he wouldn’t dream of putting you through this kind of hell. Janey, if I thought for one moment you’d take me up on it, I’d bet my house, my car—my kids, for God’s sake—that he’s bluffing. If you tell him to take a running jump, believe me, the last place he’s going to visit is a handy cliff top.”

  “It’s so easy for you to say that.” Just listening to him made Janey’s stomach squirm. “You don’t even know him. It’s different when it’s your own husband. I can’t gamble with his life.”

  More’s the pity, thought Guy. But she clearly wasn’t going to change her mind. At least he had forced her to admit the problem; it might not be much, but it was a start.

  “No. OK.” He had to agree she had a point. Maxine, faced with a similar threat, would doubtless hand the poor chap a Stanley knife and run him a nice hot bath.

  But Janey was Janey, and that wasn’t her style. She considered other people’s feelings, had probably never deliberately hurt anyone in her entire life, and was prepared to sacrifice her own happiness in order to avoid upsetting Alan bloody Sinclair.

  That was the trouble with nice girls, he thought ruefully. They had a conscience. Sometimes it was bloody infuriating.

  “Now what?” Janey glared at him, because he was doing it again. She never knew what he was thinking, and it unnerved her.

  He grinned. “We’ve finished the bottle. Shall I open another one?”

  “What, so that you can lecture me for another hour?” She was only half joking. When Guy set his mind to it, he could be horribly persistent. Especially when he was determined to prove that he was right.

  “We could change the subject.”

  Janey looked at her watch; it was after eleven thirty. “I can’t drink any more and still drive home,” she said with a note of regret. “And it’s later than I thought. I’d better be making a move.”

  “You don’t have to drive. You could always spend the night here. In Maxine’s room,” he said, before she had a chance to become flustered. “It wouldn’t do Alan any harm to wonder where you’d gotten to,” he added slyly. “Serve him right for forgetting your birthday.”

  But Janey was unfolding her legs, searching around for her shoes. “And tomorrow morning I’d go to work with a raging hangover.” She pulled a face. “Thanks for the offer, but I have to be at the market by six.”

  She had ignored the dig, resolutely refusing to rise to the bait.

  “Let me just go and check on the kids,” said Guy, good-naturedly accepting defeat. “Then I’ll see you out.”

  Janey was waiting in the hall when he returned downstairs. She wound a red cashmere scarf around her neck. “Are they all right?”

  “Out for the count.” Guy nodded and grinned. “How about you, after all that interrogation? Are you OK?”

  “I’ll live.” With a smile, she flipped the tasseled ends of the scarf over her shoulders. “At least you didn’t pull my fingernails out.”

  “I do have something else to say,” he warned. “Before you go.”

  Janey braced herself. She might have guessed he would. “Oh. What is it?”

  “Happy birthday.” The red scarf was covering the lower half of her face. Before she realized what was happening, Guy was gently pushing it down, out of the way. There was her mouth, wonderfully soft and inviting. When you wished someone a happy birthday, he reasoned, it was perfectly in order to give them a kiss to go with it.

  But he didn’t want to alarm her. Instead, exercising almost superhuman control, he cast one last regretful glance at those slightly parted lips and aimed, instead, an inch to the left.

  “Except it hasn’t been too happy,” he murmured. Ridiculously, his heart was pounding like a schoolboy’s. “I’m sorry about that.”

  Janey, startled by her own reaction to what was, after all, only a polite gesture, was deeply ashamed of herself. Just for a fraction of a second, she had thought Guy was going to kiss her properly. What was even more awful was the fact that she had wanted him to.

  “It isn’t over yet.” Flustered, she resorted to feeble humor. “I’ve still got Maxine’s present to look forward to, haven’t I? If Josh’s brain says ‘Ouch,’ she’ll probably find one for me that yells ‘Dimwit.’”

  Guy, who was still wearing his dinner jacket, reached into the inner pocket and withdrew a small, green leather box.

  “Well, I can’t compete with a bouncing brain.” As he took Janey’s hand and placed the box in her palm, his eyes silently dared her to object. “But at least this won’t hurl insults at you.”

  Inside lay a slender, rose-gold bangle engraved around the outer edge with delicately entwined leaves and flowers. It was old, simple, and breathtakingly beautiful. Janey, who had never been more embarrassed in her entire life, said, “Oh, for heaven’s sake, you don’t want to give me something like this.”

  “Don’t be silly. Call it making amends for giving you such a hard time tonight.” Since she evidently had no intention of taking the bracelet out of the box, Guy did it himself and pushed it over her trembling hand.<
br />
  “But where… Who…?”

  “I spotted it in an antique shop in Saint Austell a few months ago,” he lied. “I was going to give it to Serena, then I decided it wasn’t her style. You may as well have it,” he added casually. “It’s no use to me.”

  Janey flushed with pleasure. It was still embarrassing to be on the receiving end of such generosity, but Guy clearly wouldn’t take it back. The engraved flowers were forget-me-nots, she realized, studying the bangle in more detail and loving the way it gleamed rather than glittered in the light, showing its age and quality.

  “Definitely not Serena’s style.” She gave him a mischievous smile. “I’m glad you didn’t give it to her. I love it, Guy. Thank you.”

  This time she reached up and kissed him, her warm lips brushing his cheek a decorous inch from his mouth, just as he had done earlier. The same tingle of longing zipped through her. Janey, fantasizing wildly, wondered what Guy would do if she moved toward him…moved her mouth to his.

  The image flashed into her brain. Ready-made, as if in answer. Pushy, eager Charlotte, throwing herself at Guy. Guy, good-humored but resigned, wondering how the hell to fend her off without hurting her feelings. And Janey herself, hearing all about it, wondering how Charlotte could bear to make such an idiot of herself when he was so plainly uninterested.

  No upturned bucket of ice-cold water could have shocked her to her senses more abruptly. So much for wild fantasies, Janey decided, and prayed that Guy hadn’t been able to read her mind.

  “Thanks again for the bracelet.” She took a hasty step backward, pulling the scarf up over her chin once more and making a clumsy grab for the front door. “Gosh, it’s freezing outside! Look at all those stars… There’s even ice on your bird table. Poor old birds…”

  One stupid kiss on the cheek, Guy realized, shaking his head in disbelief, and she’d managed to give him a severe erection. Never mind the poor birds, he thought, watching Janey as she jumped into the van, anxious to get home to her undeserving pig of a husband. To hell with the wildlife. What about me?