by Helen Brooks
‘You did what?’ She was more than a little grateful for the outrage that brought her as straight as a ramrod. ‘How dare you, Zeke?’
‘How dare I?’ He swore, very explicitly, which wasn’t like him. ‘You take off like a bat out of hell, leaving just that note, and you ask me how I dare? You’re priceless!’
‘Just so, and you can’t afford me,’ she said cuttingly. ‘I consider faithfulness of inestimable value and it’s clearly just too costly for you.’
He eyed her furiously, the narrowed gaze black with rage. ‘I am not going to have this conversation out in the street,’ he ground out tightly. ‘Okay?’
‘Oh, no, no.’ As he went to manhandle her along towards the bedsit she resisted in such a way she left him in no doubt she meant business. ‘You are not stepping foot into my home.’
‘Your what?’ He stared at her as though she was mad, and perhaps she was, she thought almost dispassionately. The world was full of women who turned a blind eye to their husband’s little indiscretions, but she wasn’t one of them! She loved him—she didn’t want to, but she did love him—and she hated him at the same time, and in finishing their marriage she was losing more than just a beautiful home and a fabulous lifestyle. Those things didn’t matter at all. But Zeke; Zeke mattered—not that she could let him see that now.
‘My home,’ she repeated icily, willing the trembling that had started in her stomach and was threatening to shake every limb not to come through in her voice. ‘It might not be up to your lofty standards but my little bedsit is more of a home to me than your empty shell of a place has ever been. I loathe your apartment, Zeke; it’s cold and false and worthless.’ Just like the woman who had stage-managed it.
‘Great.’ It was scathingly sarcastic. ‘Well, now we’ve established just how you see my taste—or lack of it—where do you suggest we talk? Because we are going to talk, Marianne, even if I have to carry you somewhere kicking and screaming.’
‘That won’t be necessary,’ she said with as much dignity as she could muster, silently admitting to herself that the raw December night was bitterly cold, with a nasty north wind that cut the air like a knife. ‘There’s a little wine bar in the next street that’s supposed to be quite nice; we can talk in there.’
‘Sure there’s enough folk in there this time of night to provide the protection you so obviously feel you need?’ he asked caustically.
‘Quite sure.’ She stepped back a pace and this time he made no effort to restrain her, letting go of her arms as he surveyed her through dark narrowed eyes.
He looked gorgeous. She didn’t want to acknowledge that his magnetic attractiveness was as powerful as it had ever been but there was nothing she could do about it. The big charcoal-grey overcoat he was wearing gave his already broad shoulders even more width than normal, and his raven-black hair and chiselled cheekbones turned his face into a picture of angled shadows in the dim light.
Marianne turned sharply, walking back the way she had just run as Zeke fell into step beside her, and she wasn’t even aware of the moment they passed the bedsit as she desperately tried to damp down the fierce, searing fire inside her that his presence had produced.
He had come to find her. He had cared enough to instigate a search for her. And then she called on the clear, hard voice of logic to combat the weakness he’d induced. She was his property; that was how he saw it, she told herself savagely. She fitted into his life in the same way as his cars and businesses and other possessions, but she was slotted in under a label entitled ‘Wife’.
All this wasn’t just about Liliana—bad as that was. How often had she tried to talk to him over the last twelve months in particular, only to be brushed aside or, worse, patronised? He had expected her to be happy just waiting for his return home each evening to the brittle palace he’d installed her in. He was to be her everything; nothing else was supposed to exist for her. She was glad now they hadn’t had children.
The thought shocked her, causing her to glance up from under her thick eyelashes at the grim, handsome profile as they walked towards the wine bar.
Every time she had had her period she had thought it was the end of the world for a while; she had been so desperately eager to have a part of him growing inside her, filling her belly with their love. But it would have been wrong, very wrong. All that would have happened was that another label would have been attached to her—‘Mother of his children’. Wife and mother of his children. And the real Marianne, the Marianne that had died a little more with each month of their marriage, would have been buried so deep she would never have clawed her way out of the abyss. And yet he had loved the real Marianne at first…hadn’t he? She wasn’t sure about even that now.
Oh, Zeke, Zeke. She found she was crying inside, although her eyes were dry. How had they come to this?
‘Are you eating properly?’
‘What?’
His deep voice brought her out of the dark morass of her thoughts, and now he repeated gruffly, as he glanced down at her white fragile face, ‘I said, are you eating properly? You look thinner.’
Now he mentioned it there were signs of strain about his eyes and mouth, Marianne thought suddenly as she wrenched her gaze away from his, and the skin was drawn tight over his cheekbones. ‘I’m eating enough,’ she said flatly, part of her crying out, Don’t let him be nice. I can cope with this if he isn’t nice.
‘This is crazy, Marianne. You know that, don’t you?’
‘Here’s the wine bar,’ she said hurriedly, ignoring the fact that he had stopped to face her as she all but ran the few feet to the steps that led down to the cellar bar.
She thought she heard him swear but she wasn’t sure, and then she had negotiated the steps and was aware of Zeke just behind her as she entered the arched doorway into warmth and light and noise.
They found a small table for two in a corner of the bustling bar, and Marianne watched Zeke as he walked across to get their drinks. He looked every inch the assured man about town, she thought, aware—with a kind of painful pride that was terribly misplaced in the circumstances—of more than one pair of female eyes following his progress. Assured and vital and strong, with a sort of dark power about him that was dangerously attractive. It had certainly attracted Liliana de Giraud anyway, she reminded herself tensely.
He got served immediately, despite the others already waiting—he was that sort of man—and returned to her with a bottle of red wine and two large glasses. ‘I’ve ordered a table for two in their bistro upstairs,’ he said shortly as he sat down beside her. ‘In about half an hour.’
‘I don’t want anything to eat,’ she protested quickly.
‘Then you can watch me eat, can’t you?’ He raised his eyes from the wine he was pouring and she was shocked at the piercingly cold light in the grey orbs.
‘Look, Zeke, I agreed to have a talk with you, that’s all.’ Marianne frowned at him, refusing to be intimidated.
He shrugged lazily as he handed her the glass of wine. ‘A talk, a glass of wine, a meal—what’s the odds?’ he drawled with irritating insolence.
‘A wife, a mistress on the side? Yes, I get your drift,’ Marianne said cuttingly.
‘For crying out loud!’ The calm contemptuousness vanished and he sat up straight, almost knocking over his glass of wine. ‘Liliana is not my mistress. She’s temporarily employed by me, that’s all, whatever you call it.’
‘I call it adultery,’ Marianne said as calmly as she could through the swirling of her stomach. ‘And so did her ex when he called me the other night.’
‘Her ex?’ Zeke stared at her, his dark brows drawn together in a ferocious scowl and his mouth one bitter line. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘I’m talking about the man who phoned me the night you and Liliana were staying at the hotel and told me he’d been dumped,’ Marianne shot back angrily. ‘He didn’t sound too upset by it, but then perhaps he’s used to Liliana’s little ways. Whatever, he was most informative a
bout her affair with you.’
‘There is no affair.’ Each word was bit out through clenched teeth.
‘I don’t believe you.’
The words hung in the air for a moment, stark and naked, and Zeke’s face whitened. ‘So I’m a liar as well as an adulterer?’ he said with deadly softness.
‘It would appear so.’ She was frightened, terrified, but determined not to show it.
She watched him take a hard deep breath, and then another one, his eyes fixed on hers and a muscle working in his taut jaw, and then he swirled the wine round in his glass, taking a long swallow before he said, his mild voice at odds with the content of the words, ‘It’s a good job you’re a woman, Marianne, because if a man had just accused me of what you have he wouldn’t know what had hit him.’
‘It wouldn’t make it any less a reality,’ she said tightly.
‘So, you don’t trust me.’ He settled back in his seat as he spoke, crossing one leg over the other knee as his grey eyes narrowed to pinpoints of charcoal brilliance. ‘Do you still love me?’
‘What?’ She stared at him, utterly taken aback.
‘It’s a simple enough question, Marianne,’ he said evenly. ‘I asked you if you loved me.’
‘After what you’ve done?’ she said numbly.
‘After what you think I’ve done,’ he corrected silkily.
‘I don’t know how you can ask that! I don’t know how you’ve got the bare-faced cheek to even think of asking that!’
‘Cut the splutterings of outrage and affronted virtue,’ he said with hateful equanimity, ‘and just answer the question. Do you love me?’
‘I hate you,’ she spat back hotly.
The pinpoints were unblinking as they bored with laser-brightness into her soul, searching, probing. For a long moment she really felt as though her innermost self was being stripped bare. And then he blinked, breaking the spell as he said coolly, ‘Drink your wine, Marianne.’
‘I mean it, Zeke, I hate you.’
‘Perhaps.’ He leant forward suddenly and she had to force herself not to jerk backwards as his hand came out to cup her small jaw. ‘But love and hate are familiar bed-fellows and a damn sight more healthy than apathy, my love.’
‘I’m not your love,’ she said tensely, furious with the way his touch had triggered frissons of deep, secret intensity in the core of her.
‘Yes, you are.’ It was imperturbable and composed, and utterly at odds with the anger in her voice and her flushed hot cheeks. ‘You are mine and you will remain mine, Marianne, so don’t let’s have any mistake about that. And now you will tell me about this…lover of Liliana’s, and exactly what he said to you. Exactly, mind.’
‘Go to hell!’
‘I’ve been there over the last two weeks and I didn’t like it,’ he said with a flat, dark evenness that was chilling. ‘And someone, someone, is going to pay, my sweet, distrustful little wife.’
CHAPTER FOUR
WHEN Marianne awoke the next morning, after a restless night of tossing and turning, she knew she had been dreaming about Zeke.
She couldn’t remember the dreams, but she did know they had carried an elusive, erotic flavour that was all to do with the last few minutes she had been with him.
They had eaten in the bistro after all. It had seemed much simpler to do that rather than to engage in a war of words she had no chance of winning. Besides which, Marianne had been more than a little hungry after a hard day working in the supermarket, and the thought of the cheese on toast she’d had planned hadn’t exactly filled her with gourmet delight.
Zeke had been pleasant and attentive during the meal, despite her straight face and monosyllabic conversation. However, once they had climbed the narrow steps into the cold street—the moon shedding a thin, hollow light over the dark pavement as clouds scudded hastily past in the winter night—and Zeke had realised she had no intention of returning with him to the apartment it had been a different story.
He had been softly persuasive at first, confident he would get his own way and that she would relent. Then he had tried ordering her to return home, followed by a far less subtle dose of anger at what he saw as her stubbornness. But Marianne had held doggedly to her declaration that she was never setting foot in the apartment again.
‘It’s over, Zeke.’ They had stood in the dark doorway of the shop in front of the side door which was the bedsit’s separate entrance, and she’d shivered as she’d spoken. But it had been more to do with what she was saying than the bitter wind blowing down the street. ‘I meant it when I said I wanted a divorce.’
‘And I meant it when I said I’d never allow it.’
‘What you own, you keep?’ she’d asked bitterly. ‘Is that it?’
‘If you like.’ For a moment he had stared down at her in angry frustration, and then, without warning, he had pulled her roughly into his arms. His mouth had been urgent and hungry, and immediately he had fired the need in her; it had been sweet, potent, taking control as it always did when he touched her.
She hadn’t even struggled. She twisted in the bed, drawing the covers more securely around her as the icy chill of a winter morning without central heating made itself felt. How could she not have struggled, she asked herself bitterly, after all that had happened? After Liliana. But she hadn’t.
Zeke, true to form, had taken full advantage of her mesmerised state, moulding her into him until she’d fitted into the hard line of his body as though she had been born to be there.
He had been the master, dominant and sure of himself, demanding subjugation. And why not? she asked herself now as she opened her eyes and stared up at the cracked ceiling. From the first time she had met him he had held her will in the palm of his hand; she had been his, utterly, and he had known it.
But not any more.
She didn’t know who had been more surprised—herself or Zeke—when she had wrenched herself out of his hold, her breath coming in harsh, panting gasps and her eyes wild, but she rather thought it might have been Zeke. He had stood there, his handsome face incredulous as she had told him—ordered him—to go.
‘You can’t just crook your finger and have me come running,’ she’d said heatedly. ‘Don’t you understand, Zeke? Things have changed.’
‘So you are seriously saying you want to throw away more than two years of marriage on a whim?’ he’d grated furiously.
‘A whim?’ It had taken every ounce of her control not to strike him. ‘Just the fact that you can say that proves I’m right. You don’t know me. You don’t have a clue what makes me tick or what I’m going through. Our marriage has been nothing but a sham from start to finish.’
She hadn’t meant to say the last words but his accusation had been so wounding she had just wanted to hurt him in return. She didn’t know if she had hurt him but she did know she had made him blazing mad; it had been there in the icy-cold eyes that had turned into chips of granite and in the furious rigidity of his face, his lips barely moving as he had ground out, ‘one more word—one more word and so help me I won’t be responsible for my actions.’
She hadn’t provided the word; she hadn’t dared to do anything but stare at him silently. And when he had turned in one savage movement before striding off down the street she had remained leaning against the door behind which were the stairs leading to the bedsit.
How long she had stood there she didn’t know; it had only been when she was chilled to the bone that she had levered herself away from the flaking wood and fetched the door key out of her handbag.
This was really the end. She touched her lips, which were still bruised and full from his passionate kisses. She wouldn’t ever again wake up beside him after a night of ardent, tempestuous lovemaking and find the smoky grey eyes waiting for her, their warmth intimate and sensual. No more erotic, shameless baths and showers together, when they soaped each other’s bodies and found new ways to bring each other to a state of quivering arousal. No more delicious Sunday mornings in each other�
��s arms.
He was a devastating, wonderfully inventive lover, capable of producing such piercing pleasure at times that she had thought she would die from it.
But she hadn’t died. She threw back the bed covers and quickly slipped into her thick dressing gown, adjusting the bed back into its daytime position as a sofa so that she could turn on the little gas fire and put some warmth into the freezing room. No, she hadn’t died, she thought soberly, as she held a match to the gas jets. She had grown up instead. And she would never have believed it could be so agonisingly painful.
When Marianne arrived at the supermarket an hour later it was to find the place in something of a panic. Mrs Polinkski had had an early-morning fall and dislocated her knee, which meant that Marianne and the Polinkskis’s two younger daughters—as yet unmarried—were going to be hard pressed.
Mr Polinkski and the son of the family divided their time between the office and the small warehouse at the back of the supermarket, and neither of them would contemplate working in the front of the shop, despite knowing Mrs Polinkski did the work of two women in her bustling, capable way.
Consequently, by the end of the long day Marianne’s feet were aching, her head was pounding with the beginning of what felt like a migraine, and when she glanced in the mirror in the little staff cloakroom before leaving the shop she looked as if she had been pulled through a hedge backwards.
Which made it all the more disconcerting when she emerged into the frosty air and almost into Zeke’s arms.
‘What on earth are you doing here?’ It was a despairing cry and he recognised it as such, his mouth—which hadn’t been smiling as it was—tightening still more into a hard line.
‘Waiting for you,’ he bit back grimly. ‘And that should have been my line, not yours. I can’t believe my wife is killing herself working all hours in a two-bit shop in the back of nowhere. You look terrible.’
