Once James had organised a licence they’d been married very early one wet May morning at a register office, with only cleaners for witnesses. Afterwards the bridegroom had rushed off to sit an exam and the bride had returned, alone and disconsolate, to her college flat. Their nearest thing to a honeymoon had been spent beforehand, during the Easter vacation, when James had taken her to stay for a week in the Lake District, in a cottage not unlike this one. It had rained so much most of their time had been spent in bed.
‘It amazes me,’ he said, after a while, ‘that you never told your aunt we were married.’
‘There didn’t seem much point. If you remember, I was adamant about keeping it from any of our friends at the time—’
‘Of course I remember,’ he said scornfully. ‘You were so hysterical about your secret I felt like a murderer.’
Rose eyed him uncertainly. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Can’t you imagine how guilty I felt about getting you pregnant? How the responsibility of it all weighed down like a ton?’ His mouth twisted. ‘I couldn’t even enjoy the privileges of any normal bridegroom because I was working like a maniac—spurred on to do well in my finals so I could get a job good enough to support you and the baby.’
Rose had never looked past the rage and humiliation of their last meeting to consider this point of view. ‘I caused you a whole lot of trouble, didn’t I?’ she said after a while.
James smiled a little. ‘Not all trouble. All right, if you hadn’t embarked on this famous plan of yours I probably wouldn’t have noticed you. But the fact remains that when I did I fell crazily in love with you. I had no objection at all to marrying you, Rose, ever. Only the reason for the rush.’
‘Fatherhood thrust upon you and all that,’ she said sadly.
‘No,’ he said forcibly, and put a finger under her chin to turn her face up to his. ‘I was appalled because I’d forced motherhood on you.’
Rose returned the look steadily. ‘There wasn’t much forcing about it, James. I was very much in love, too. Which is why—’
‘Why I hurt you so badly,’ he finished for her.
‘But hurt heals. And I’m not in love with you any more,’ she said flatly, ‘so let’s forget the past.’
James studied her face at length, with a look far too much like a jungle cat about to pounce on its prey for Rose’s liking. ‘Right. If the past is taboo we’ll discuss supper instead, Miss Dryden—’ He stopped, smiling crookedly.
‘Keep to Rose,’ she advised, determinedly prosaic. ‘And lead me to the fridge. It’s long past my suppertime. I need food.’
The galley kitchen was very modern, and very small, and James refused to let Rose set foot in it.
‘There’s no room for two of us. I promised you dinner, so I shall provide it,’ he said firmly. ‘You sit down in front of the fire and relax with a book, just as you were doing earlier on before the fun started.’
‘An offer I can’t refuse! Sitting down is my favourite pastime after a day on my feet.’ Rose left James to his labour and retreated to the sitting room, where alcoves with well-stocked bookshelves offered literature very much to her taste, as long as she was happy with something she’d read before.
She chose a worn volume of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, and curled up in the corner of the sofa, her eyes on the man-made flames. She read a page or two, then stiffened as the scent of grilling bacon came drifting from the kitchen. Not the famous sandwiches! Surely James had more subtlety than that.
Rose soon found that he had. In a remarkably short time she was provided with a plateful of pasta mixed with diced pancetta and tangy tomato sauce.
‘Thank you! I’m impressed. How on earth did you manage all this so quickly?’
‘I brought a few basics with me.’ James put a glass of wine on the table beside her. ‘But Becky Henstridge’s store cupboard provided the sauce and the pasta. And Nick keeps a fair selection of wine on hand.’
‘Do you cook for yourself a lot?’
‘No more than I have to. I eat out, or get a meal sent in.’
‘When I smelt the pancetta cooking I thought I was getting one of your celebrated bacon sandwiches,’ Rose informed him.
His jaw tightened. ‘My enthusiasm for those vanished the day you left me.’
Suddenly all pretence of harmony was gone. They went on with the meal in silence, the remembrance of things past raw in the air between them.
‘I’ve often thought of contacting you again, Rose,’ said James after a while. ‘Then I’d remember how you refused to speak to me, and my ego baulked at the idea of more rejection.’
While she, unable to accept that all was over between them, had watched for every post, and tensed every time the phone rang once she was back in college, or even at home, in spite of her instructions to Minerva.
Rose smiled politely, and pushed her plate away. ‘I’m afraid you were over-generous, James. This is delicious, but I can’t eat any more.’
He got up at once and took their plates into the kitchen, then came back with a bottle wrapped in a napkin. ‘You haven’t touched your wine yet,’ he pointed out as he refilled his glass.
She sipped obediently, and smiled. ‘I never developed much of a palate, but this is wonderful. Is it a rosé?’
James lips twitched. ‘Close.’
‘What, then?’
He removed the napkin to reveal a staggeringly expensive brand of pink champagne. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll replace it before I go. But in the circumstances it seemed an appropriate choice to celebrate our reunion. I always hoped that one day we’d be in contact again, over the divorce if nothing else.’ His smile clenched her stomach muscles. ‘Old flames are normally easy to put out the minute the affair is over. But you and I were actually married, Rose, which made you a tad harder to extinguish than the others.’
How many others? wondered Rose, giving him a hostile look. ‘You could have divorced me any time you wanted, James.’
‘I’ve explained my reasons for being quite happy with the status quo,’ he reminded her blandly. ‘But let’s not waste time on recriminations. This kind of occasion can hardly be repeated now you’re thinking of marrying again. What’s the man’s surname, by the way? Referring to him as Anthony sounds too damn friendly on my part.’
‘Garrett,’ said Rose, digesting the fact that this evening was to be a one-off in the lives of James and Rose Sinclair. What had she expected? she thought impatiently, astonished to find a lump in her throat at the thought of the name she’d never used. Rose Sinclair sounded so utterly right. But it was no use thinking of that now. After tonight she might never be in touch with James again, other than through a solicitor. She finished her champagne hurriedly, and James got up to refill her glass.
‘I shouldn’t,’ she said with regret. ‘I’m driving.’
‘It’s a very quiet road back. I doubt you’ll meet a policeman desperate to breathalise you. Besides,’ he added, ‘two glasses of wine won’t do much harm.’
‘I know. That’s my usual allowance when I’m wining and dining.’
‘With Garrett, of course.’
‘Not exclusively. I get asked out to dinner parties sometimes, and I enjoy the occasional date with one of the solicitors in Henry’s chambers. And I often make up a four with Mark and Bel Cummings and her man.’
James’s eyes narrowed. ‘The name Cummings rings a bell.’
Rose nodded. ‘Mark was my first boyfriend. He teaches history at his old school. He’s a single parent now, with a small daughter he’s bringing up with help from his mother and Bel, and even me, sometimes, when he’s stuck for a babysitter.’
‘What happened to his wife?’
‘She took off with someone else before Lucy learned to walk.’
James gave her a searching look. ‘Was that before you came back to take over the bookshop?’
‘Long before.’
‘Cummings must have welcomed you back to the fold with open arms, then.’
; ‘Yes, he did. We’re old friends.’
‘Does he know about me?’
‘No.’ She gave him a taunting little smile. ‘Everyone has a skeleton in the cupboard, James. You’re mine.’
‘Nothing’s changed, then,’ he said curtly. ‘I assume I can’t tempt you to more champagne?’
‘No, thanks.’
James poured the last of the wine into his glass, looking down into it with a brooding look Rose remembered well. ‘So when are you going to come out of the closet, Rose, and tell the world you’ve been a married lady all along?’
‘I don’t imagine the world is all that interested!’
‘I meant this pretty little town of yours.’
‘I don’t expect anything more than the merest ripple of interest,’ said Rose firmly. ‘No one knows you here. And I was quite respectably—if briefly—your wife; nothing remotely newsworthy.’
‘You still are my wife,’ James reminded her, his eyes clashing with hers.
She looked away. ‘Only in the eyes of the law.’
‘I wonder how it would have been,’ he said musingly, ‘if we’d stayed together.’
Rose shrugged carelessly. ‘Who knows? The marriage success rate’s not very high these days, and we were very young. We would probably have split up long before now.’
‘Do you really believe that, Rose?’ he said, startling her.
She gave him a long, analytical look. Seeing James Sinclair as he was now, even more attractive in her eyes than before, it was hard to believe that she would have ever left him willingly. ‘I don’t know,’ she said honestly. ‘Nor does it matter. It’s all academic now.’
‘If you say so. Tell me,’ added James, ‘having met the man, I can’t believe you really want to marry Garrett, Rose. You must have other reasons for wanting a divorce.’
She frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘This Mark Cummings. It seems to me he’s in need of a wife and a mother for his child. Has he cast you in the role?’
‘Heavens, I hope not,’ said Rose involuntarily.
‘You don’t care for the idea?’
‘No. And not,’ she added tartly, ‘because I’m still married to you, either. I just don’t care for Mark that way. Besides, I think he still lives in hope that his wife will go back to him some day.’
His mouth twisted. ‘I can understand that.’
Her eyes flew to his in astonishment.
‘For a long time after you left me,’ James told her, his eyes locked with hers, ‘I hoped we’d get together again.’
‘Did you?’ she said huskily.
James nodded. ‘I even came here to Chastlecombe, determined to mend things between us. And caught sight of you walking down the street with a stocky, fair-haired man. You were laughing together, and so obviously a pair I dodged out of sight. After that I felt fate was telling me to give up. I didn’t try again.’
Rose stared at him wordlessly, feeling her heart contract. ‘It must have been Mark. How strange.’ She dropped her eyes to hide sudden moisture on her lashes.
James turned her face up to his. ‘Don’t, Rose. That’s the way I’ve remembered you all these years, in floods of tears during that gut-wrenching fight just before we split up. This time I want a happier picture for a keepsake.’
‘I’m not crying,’ she assured him, and smiled crookedly. ‘Just mourning for what might have been.’
‘It doesn’t have to be in the past tense,’ he said with sudden force, and pulled her out of the chair and into his arms. He tipped her face up to his, his eyes glittering with a heat that made her tremble. ‘Look me in the eye, Rose Sinclair, and tell me you feel absolutely nothing for me.’
CHAPTER TEN
HELD so close to him, Rose knew there was no point in trying to lie. ‘I can’t do that,’ she said, resentful of her body’s treachery. ‘Though, Lord knows, I’m entitled to feel enmity, James, if nothing else, after the things you once said to me. Which hurt all the more because some of them were true.’ She looked up at him in appeal. ‘Though in the beginning I didn’t dream that Con’s blueprint for seduction would succeed.’
‘But it did—God, how it did,’ he said bitterly. ‘How I passed my exams I’ll never know. All the time I was revising I just wanted to be with you, making love to my wife.’
‘I followed orders faithfully—kept away from you the whole time,’ she protested, wishing she had more control over her pulse.
‘True. But just because you weren’t there in the flesh—’ He stopped, jaw clenched, and Rose swallowed hard, conscious that her breasts were hardening in response to his nearness, and a secret liquefying feeling lower down gave humiliating proof that James Sinclair still had the power to arouse her in ways no other man had ever done. And knew this only too well by the look in his eyes.
‘Let me go, James,’ she said quietly. Please let me go, she begged silently, before I do something I’m sure to regret later when you’re gone.
‘I don’t want to let you go. I’ve always been curious to know if the chemistry would still be there. And it is. Don’t try to deny it.’ His arms tightened instinctively. ‘You owe me the truth.’
‘I don’t owe you anything!’
‘Oh, yes, you do.’ His eyes bored into hers. ‘You’re the reason I’m still on my own, lady. I’ve never been able to commit to the other women in my life because there you were in the background, reminding me of what happens when a man loses his head.’
‘That’s nothing to do with me,’ she said, angry at the mention of other women.
‘Of course it is.’ He slid a hand down her cheek. ‘I suppose I always knew what type of woman you’d become. You’re not beautiful, but there’s something about that face and body of yours that still gets to me like no other woman’s ever has. Not that it matters to you now, of course,’ he added suavely. ‘Because you’re not in love with me any more.’
‘Exactly.’ Rose shoved him away and stood back. ‘Just how many women have there been, as a matter of interest?’
‘It matters to you?’ he demanded in triumph.
Oh, yes. It mattered.
‘Of course it doesn’t,’ she assured him, and turned to pick up her glass. ‘I was angry when I first saw you last night. But I’m not any longer. In fact I think it’s a good thing we met up one last time to discuss the divorce in an adult, civilised way.’
‘Civilised!’ he growled, and snatched the glass away from her. ‘I don’t feel civilised, Rose. I don’t know what there is about you that’s so different from—’
‘The others?’
He smiled slowly, and Rose quivered inside as he pulled her against him. ‘Can you honestly say there’s nothing happening between us? And,’ he added, in a tone which turned her bones to jelly, ‘I’m not discussing things cerebral here.’
Without waiting for a reply James ended the argument in the way he had ended many an argument between them in the past. His lips took possession of hers, parting them, urging a response, his seducing tongue sending heat rushing through her body. He scooped her up and sat down with her in his lap, enclosing her in the embrace she had missed as much his lovemaking once it was no longer part of her life.
‘In that get-up you look like the teenager I was so crazy about. It’s hard to realise ten years have elapsed, Rose.’
‘But they have,’ she said in alarm. ‘And you promised this wouldn’t happen!’
He smoothed her hair back, his eyes hot on hers. ‘Nothing has happened. Yet.’ He pulled her close to kiss her, one hand sliding down her back. ‘I shouldn’t have mentioned the word “flesh”,’ he said against her mouth.
‘Very evocative word,’ she agreed with difficulty as his exploring fingers played havoc with her resistance, his touch burning through her shirt.
‘And if I am trying to seduce you, it’s only fair.’ He put a finger under her chin. ‘Isn’t that what you did to me all those years ago?’
Rose thrust him away. ‘I never imagined for a mom
ent that my plan would entail carnal knowledge of my quarry, Sinclair.’
He raised a cynical eyebrow. ‘But isn’t that what you intended?’
She shook her head. ‘I never aimed so high—or do I mean low? The idea was to make you fall in love with me; that’s all.’
‘The two are not mutually exclusive! Once I’d kissed you all I could think of was teaching you everything I knew about the rest of it. I’m amazed I held off as long as I did.’
Rose gazed into his relentless eyes for a moment, then, summoning every shred of self-control she possessed, she stood up. ‘Time I went home.’
His eyes hardened so suddenly she backed away as he leapt to his feet. ‘You don’t mean that, Rose.’
‘I do, you know!’
His mouth twisted. ‘Delayed retribution?’
‘Nothing so dramatic. Just common sense.’ She squared her shoulders. ‘I’ll be honest, James, and admit that part of me, the physical part, wants to give in to whatever you have in mind. But my brain tells me you can’t walk back into my life after ten years and expect me to jump into bed with you at the snap of your fingers just because you fancy a little payback of some kind. I’m human enough to be flattered that you want me, of course.’
He leaned an elbow on the stone ledge above the fireplace. ‘Are you still saying you feel nothing in return, Rose?’
‘No,’ she said unwillingly. ‘But there are several reasons why I won’t go to bed with you—’
‘You mean make love with me.’
‘For one thing,’ she said, ignoring him, ‘it could complicate the divorce.’
‘Ah, yes, the divorce.’ James’s eyes narrowed to a predatory gleam. ‘Tell me, Rose, what would happen if I informed your solicitor that I wanted a reconciliation?’
‘This isn’t something to joke about,’ she snapped.
‘Who says I’m joking?’
Rose turned away in angry defeat. ‘It’s too late for all this, James.’
‘It’s only a little before eleven, Rose.’
Husband for Real Page 12
