‘Do you like it?’ Caroline, on her knees, putting the finishing touches to the skirting board, wanted to know because this was her first attempt at home-decorating and she wasn’t sure she’d got it right.
She scrambled to her feet and Danielle said, ‘I love it. But I would never have put you down as a hands-on sort of person. Have the decorators in and stay at an hotel until they’d finished would be more your style. And I’ve never seen you look anything but perfectly groomed before—’
‘There’s always a first time.’ With difficulty Caroline returned her friend’s grin. Danielle wasn’t to know that she was having to keep herself occupied every minute of her time to stop herself brooding. Over what might have been, over what she had so briefly had and had stupidly thrown away. ‘And it’s nice not to have to bother about the way I look. Coffee?’
‘I’d love some, but I can’t. Hair appointment,’ Danielle stated. ‘Now, what about tonight? We could take in a film, have supper.’
‘Sorry,’ Caroline declined. She wasn’t ready for a relaxed evening out; she’d be terrible company. ‘I’ve got a bedroom to paper. We’ll hit the town some other time?’
Danielle planted her hands on her curvaceous hips, her chin going up at an angle as she huffed, ‘Caroline Harvey—you are the most stubborn creature—’ and fell silent as another, harder voice intervened, ‘A sentiment I most sincerely endorse.’
Ben!
Caroline didn’t know whether she’d spoken his name aloud or whether it simply rattled around inside her head. In any case, her heart had stopped, she was sure it had. Danielle was staring with wide grey eyes, her mouth partly open, her cheeks flushed.
Caroline could understand that reaction because Ben Dexter was something else: six feet plus of sizzlingly virile masculinity clothed in a silvery grey suit that fitted the lithe body to perfection; dark, dark hair, beautifully groomed, and eyes as black as night, fringed by those extravagant lashes.
And he was still angry, she recognised with a shock of icy sensation that ran right down her spine and all the way back up again. The atmosphere positively thrummed with it, although he cloaked it with the urbanity of the smile he turned on Danielle, who went pinker and burbled, ‘Well, I’ll be off, then.’ And behind Ben’s back she rolled her eyes expressively, grinned and gave the stunned Caroline the thumbs-up sign.
‘Am I to be invited in?’ His voice was all honey-smooth on the surface but quite definitely laced with ice. Caroline put a hand up to where a pulse was beating madly at the base of her throat.
She had dreamed of being with him again, yearning, aching, desperate dreams, but the reality filled her with a deep and dark foreboding. He had the face of an austere stranger. He looked as if what they had been to each other, the glimpses of paradise they’d shared, had been ruthlessly wiped from his memory.
Wordlessly, she stepped aside, her heart flipping over because it was there, and always would be, the fateful, deeply ingrained physical recognition that made her body ache for his.
His taut profile grim, he strode ahead of her into the sitting room, a single raking glance taking in her few pieces of shrouded furniture, the paint-spattered newspapers spread all over the floor. And then his eyes flowed over her, making her suddenly and horribly aware of the sight she must present. Cheap baggy jeans and sloppy T-shirt, liberally splashed with paint, her hair caught back from her make-up-less face with a piece of string.
But the sheer length of his scrutiny, the slow gleam of something sultry in those narrowed black eyes sent her dizzy with hope. Maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t dead for him, either.
The violent sexual attraction, the meeting and mating of souls that had lasted through twelve, long years of separation, making them both unfit partners for anyone else on the planet, couldn’t have been wiped out overnight. Surely it couldn’t.
Her head still swimming, her lower limbs suddenly feeling like cotton wool she forced herself to say something, anything, to break the charged and spikey silence. And the breaking of it would enable him to open up, tell her why he was here when he hadn’t wanted to have to talk to her at all on that dreadful last day at Langley Hayes.
‘Can I—’ her tongue felt as if it were twisted into knots. Her milky skin burned with fierce colour as she forced out the words ‘—offer you coffee?’
‘This isn’t a social call.’
His voice was flat, the eyes that pinned hers were hard and dark. His feet planted apart, he pushed his hands into the pockets of his trousers, his superbly cut jacket falling open to reveal the pale grey silk of the shirt that covered the broad plane of his chest. ‘It’s been long enough—a full month. I used no protection. Although knowing now of your relationship with the younger Weinberg, I guessed you’re more than likely to be on the pill.’
His staggeringly handsome features were blank but his eyes brimmed with unconcealed contempt. ‘However, I need to know if you’re pregnant. And if you are, I need to know if it’s mine, or Weinberg’s.’
His lips pulled back against his teeth in a smile that wasn’t a smile at all. ‘Tell me you’re not and I’ll leave you in peace. And I promise you’ll never have to see me again.’
Caroline swayed on her feet, the final frail hope snatched away from her. Her soft mouth trembled as her blood roared in her ears. So much pain coming on the top of all that had gone before. She didn’t know how she was going to bear it.
Darkness closed in on her and she felt herself falling.
CHAPTER TWELVE
GRATING out a harsh expletive, Ben’s voice sounded as if it were echoing over some vast distance, and his face, hovering over her, was fuzzy, as if the bright May morning had spawned a thick November fog.
Caroline shook her head and her vision cleared; she had to be imagining the sharp stab of concern in the night-black eyes.
Of course he didn’t care about her, not any more, and she wasn’t going to be pathetic or crazy enough to let herself even begin to hope that he did. If he hadn’t been too lost in passion when they’d made love to remember to use protection he wouldn’t be here at all, she reminded herself wretchedly.
Struggling to escape the arms that were holding her upright, she gave a strangled, anguished sob. Being held so close to the hard heat of his body was torture, all the more painful because her own body was flooding with a wildfire heat of its own, her pulses racing, her breath coming in shallow gasps.
‘Stop it!’ His command was rough-edged as he subdued her feeble efforts by sweeping her up into his arms and shouldering his way through doors until he found her bedroom.
With a muted hiss of impatience, Ben swept the rolls of wallpaper off the narrow single bed and lowered her down onto it. ‘Stay right there,’ he stated emphatically. ‘I’ll fetch you a glass of water.’
A piercing glance from under lowered brows reinforced her opinion that concern for her well-being had been a product of her own demented imagination, an immature grasping at non-existent straws. He simply and obviously regarded her as nothing more than a nuisance, her unprecedented collapse something he had to handle but could very well have done without.
She turned her face into the pillow and shuddered. She wished he’d go away. It was better to be alone, struggling to accept that everything was finally over, rather than have to see him the way he was now. She didn’t want to have to remember him like this, so cold, so contemptuous, so forbidding.
How he must hate her!
‘Drink this.’
Unwillingly, Caroline dragged herself up against the pillows, not meeting his eyes. She couldn’t bear to see that raw contempt, that stinging impatience.
‘You fainted,’ he said tonelessly as she clutched the glass in both hands and lifted it shakily to her mouth. ‘Women in the early stages of pregnancy often do, so I believe.’
A savage spurt of temper got her kick-started. Colour flooding her ashen face, she swung her legs over the side of the bed, putting the glass on the floor before she gave into the temptation
to throw it at him.
Out of a sense of duty he’d come here with the sole purpose of finding out if she was pregnant.
That was chastening.
But he had also come to find out—if her answer was in the affirmative—whether he or Michael was the father.
And that was disgusting, infuriating!
How could he think that of her? Oh, how could he?
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ His question was laced with a good dose of aggravation as he caught hold of her ankles.
And before she could answer, Getting ready to strangle you before I throw you out, he swung her legs back onto the bed and told her, ‘You need to rest. You look dreadful.’
Thanks a bunch, Caroline fulminated silently. While he, of course, looked immaculate, remote as the moon, forbidding and utterly, utterly, heart-stoppingly gorgeous. And deserving of some hefty punishment for marking her down as a slut!
‘So what will you do if I confirm my pregnancy?’ she asked out of sheer wickedness, watching for his reaction beneath lowered lashes.
‘Marry you, if it’s mine—make sure my child’s properly cared for.’ Not a flicker of emotion, nothing, just a bland statement of intent.
‘And if it’s Michael’s?’ Caroline turned the screw, increased the punishment in an anger-fuelled and completely ignoble attempt to pay him back for his lower-than-low opinion of her.
She saw his jaw clench, a white line of anger appear around his compressed lips, as he ground out between his teeth, ‘That would be entirely up to him. Apparently, the poor sucker already thinks he’s going to lead you up the aisle. He hasn’t yet worked out that you’re unable to commit to a long-term relationship.’
The contempt in his eyes deepened. ‘When push comes to shove, you back off in a panic, write a Dear John letter or pick one hell of a fight. As I should know. And I somehow doubt if he’s got the strength of character to make you toe the line.’
And Ben had?
Of course he had. Commitment to him would never have been a problem; it had been her inability to trust him that had turned everything sour. Her fatal mistake.
Her dark head drooped, her tear-filled eyes fastening on her hands which appeared to be trying to rip the hemline of her paint-spattered T-shirt to shreds.
This had gone far enough.
‘I’m definitely not pregnant,’ she told him in a voice that was flat and cold and thin. And she closed her heavy eyes and waited to hear the bedroom door shut behind him as he left. He now had the information he must have been desperately hoping to get. There would be nothing to keep him here for one more moment.
She heard nothing, just the silence, until his voice sliced at her, ‘Then what the hell was that all about? The “what if it’s yours, or what if it’s his” spiel?’
Caroline risked a glance beneath the thick sweep of her lashes, her mouth dropping open in astonishment because she’d been so sure he’d stalk straight out the moment he had the reassurance he’d come for.
He still looked coldly, furiously angry. She looked away, her heartbeat thundering in her ears, and she lay back, turning her face into the pillows.
She couldn’t stand much more of this. ‘I wanted to pay you back for thinking I’d do something like that,’ she muttered wearily, her voice scarcely above a whisper. The anger had gone, leaving a sense of loss that utterly overwhelmed her. ‘Make love with you while supposedly in a serious relationship with Michael Weinberg.’
‘And that made you angry, did it?’ The query was laced with something approaching sarcasm. Then Ben’s voice thickened, ‘Then, you know what it feels like, don’t you? Not to be trusted. To have someone you loved think you’re capable of every slimey trick in the book.’
‘Loved.’ Past tense. So final. The door labelled Hope that had remained stubbornly ajar closed with a definitive bang in her mind.
Caroline hauled herself into a sitting position and swung her feet to the floor. Somehow she had to put an end to this nightmare. And she could cope. Right?
She would never forget him but eventually the terrible pain would leave her. The scar tissue on her heart would grow hard, letting her get on with her career because that was all she had, with never a hint that she had once been capable of any kind of emotion.
And she knew what she had to do to get the process started.
She wiped the moisture from her cheeks with fingers still sticky from the paintbrush and said with a calmness that belied all the anguished turmoil inside her, ‘You can go now. I’m fine. I don’t know why I passed out.’ She gave the hint of a tight, impersonal smile, a small hike of one shoulder. ‘It’s not something I’ve done before. Probably down to the paint fumes.’
And being unable to eat, nor sleep; and seeing him again, coupled with the brief resurrection of hope and it’s inevitable demise. But she certainly wasn’t going to mention that.
‘Then, perhaps we should open some windows.’ And he moved around the flat, doing just that. Caroline got wearily to her feet. When he’d finished he’d leave, nothing surer than that. Her legs felt unsteady and she had to hang onto the door frame when she’d tracked him down in the kitchen.
Please go, she whimpered, in her mind. I need to start the long, slow, agonisingly painful process of getting over you again.
He was taking in the frantic muddle: the opened tins of paint; emulsion brushes soaking in her stainless-steel washing-up bowl; the ones used for gloss paint standing up to their necks in white spirits; the old dusters she’d used to wipe up all the splodges she’d made screwed up on the floor. And the pizza she’d ordered ages ago and hadn’t been able to eat because just looking at it had turned her stomach.
‘When we met again, that evening, I would have staked my last penny against you ever deigning to get your pretty white hands dirty.’
Which was why he’d taken one look at her, her make-up a perfect mask, not a hair out of place, her designer suit a statement of her status as a cool, efficient career lady, and had sent her to grovel in the dust of the Langley Hayes attics, she thought with a reluctant inner salute for his ability to cut her down to size.
Caroline merely shrugged. It seemed to take the last scrap of energy remaining to her, but she managed to say, ‘You can go now.’
Ben ignored her. He turned his back on her, filled the kettle and plugged it in, searching for mugs and tea bags. There was no milk, just a curdled couple of inches in the bottom of a carton. He tossed it into the pedal bin. ‘Empty fridge, an untouched pizza wearing a mouldy wig—you certainly know how to look after yourself.’
He moved aside a pile of old newspapers, a roll of masking tape, the ancient pizza, and put two mugs of milkless tea on the small square table. Pulling out two chairs he ordered, ‘Sit.’
She complied because it seemed easier than arguing, but she told him, ‘There’s no need for you to do this—make tea, hang around. I can look after myself.’
‘Obviously!’ His tone was dry. Then, his voice lower, gruffer, he admitted, ‘I don’t like to see you like this—washed out, exhausted.’
His words made her heart contract and twist, but she wasn’t going to let herself read anything into them that wasn’t there. Lifting her mug in both hands she took a sip of the strong, hot brew and then another, and felt for the first time since he’d walked in on her just a fraction more than half-alive.
Revived enough, she asked the question that had been lodged in the back of her mind. ‘Who is the father of Maggie Pope’s daughter? Did she tell you?’
‘You’ve already decided I am,’ he reminded her brusquely and pushed his mug to one side with an expression of deep distaste. Whether for the milkless tea or for her, she didn’t know. The latter, she supposed.
‘No.’ Her mug had left a damp circle on the surface of the table. She rubbed at it with her forefinger. ‘Not now, not after you told me what she’d said, that Dad had paid her to tell that lie. I do admit,’ she went on tiredly, ‘to believing her twelve years ago, and going
on believing her. When he—my father, that is—said he’d given you money to go away and stay away, I couldn’t believe it, not of you. I thought you really loved me, the way I loved you.’
A final rub with the heel of her hand and the ring of moisture disappeared. ‘Then, of course, came the final blow. He suggested I ask Maggie who had fathered her child. Maybe I shouldn’t have done, but think what it was like—I was only seventeen, all churned up emotionally. You’d disappeared, Dad had planted those doubts in my mind. I had to know. Well, you know what she said, and why she said it. She was very convincing.’
Caroline lifted her eyes to find Ben watching her, his burning gaze roving over her face. She felt the muscles in her shoulders relax. Even if he had no strong feelings for her now because her lack of trust had killed them stone dead, it felt good to get it all off her chest.
She pulled in a deep breath. ‘That awful day—when I’d said I couldn’t marry you because I couldn’t trust you—after you drove away I went to see Maggie and get the truth out of her. The real truth,’ she stressed. ‘You’d told me to listen to my heart, do you remember? And I did. My heart told me you’d been telling the truth, that you were nowhere near callous enough to betray anyone. The only question was, why had Maggie lied? I was going to drag the truth out of her. But it started to pour with rain and I sheltered at Dorothy’s. We saw the three of you. Maggie, you and the child. Dorothy was looking at you and talking about the child’s father, talking as if I knew him.’
‘And that put me back in the frame?’
‘Not entirely.’ She shook her head. ‘I went back to the house to wait for you. Michael had phoned, he was in the area, and was to drive me back. I knew we didn’t have much time, I knew we had to talk, and I knew—’ she met his eyes, willing him to believe her, ‘—that I would believe, implicitly, whatever you told me. You were still angry, but you did say we’d talk before I had to leave. But you’d gone when I came down after changing.’
The Billionaire Affair Page 13
