The Ultimate Betrayal

by Michelle Reid

  On a wretched sob she twisted herself free, and made for the door. And it was with the walls around her looking strangely topsy-turvy that she stumbled down the stairs and through the front door, only just aware enough of what she was doing to remember to snatch up her purse from the hall table as she flew past it.

  Her white Escort was blocked in by Daniel’s black BMW so she simply ran off down the drive, away from the smart modern detached house that had been brandnew when they moved into it five years ago, one of a set built on a small but exclusive estate in one of London’s executive belts. A house she had loved from the moment she walked into it because it offered them all so much more space after the tiny inner-city terraced house they had rented before.

  Now she wanted only to get as far away from it as she could, and she hurried down the quiet tree-lined street and on to the main road, aware that Daniel would not come after her. It would take him ages to dress himself and three children before he could bundle them in the car to come looking for her. But knowing that did not stop her jumping on the first bus which came along.

  Central London it was making for, so central London was where she was going to go. She sat staring miserably out of the bus window, where dust and grime and dried raindrops formed unsightly patterns across her vision. She could just make out the park where she often took the children to play—or was it they who took her? She didn’t know any more. She didn’t feel as if she knew anything for a certainty any more.

  Collar turned up against the cool, late September air, hands stuffed into her pockets, blond head lowered, she walked the Sunday-quiet streets of London, lost inside a great pitiless sea of misery, her feelings becoming more battered as that cruel inner eye opened wider and wider to give her a ruthlessly honest look at who the real Rachel Masterson was.

  She was a twenty-four-year-old woman who had become emotionally stuck at the age of seventeen, she decided. She, in her fantasy-like existence, had believed Daniel loved her because he made love to her, and she had never once questioned that love.

  But she did now. And, though it galled her to do it, she found he had to be admired for the way he had calmly accepted responsibility when she became pregnant.

  Daniel had simply paid his dues for getting himself involved with a young innocent. And if he did lead a separate life outside the one he shared with her, then maybe he considered that his due.

  And a separate life it was, she accepted grimly. For it was only now, as she felt her cosy world rocking precariously on the very axis which supported it, that she realised that he hadn’t ever drawn her into sharing with him that faster, more exciting life he led beyond the confines of his neat, well-ordered marriage. A marriage he had created for her to play at being housewife and mother to his children because it was what she’d wanted to do.

  Did she only play? She didn’t even know that any more.

  Hours she walked, hours and hours without noticing them drift by. Hours just thinking, hurting, fielding the wretchedness of her own misery, until sheer exhaustion turned her feet towards home.

  She caught a taxi, because she was tired, and because she was cold, and because home was suddenly the one place in the world she most wanted to be.

  Which left her feeling somewhat defeated, because it also meant that her short grasp for freedom had done her no good at all.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  DANIEL was sprawled out on the sitting-room sofa when she entered the room. He had a book thrust in front of his face and was giving a good impression of someone who had not shifted his position in hours. He made no effort to acknowledge her, and after a short pause while she waited in defiance for the expected explosion which never came, she shut the door and went into the kitchen. She was smiling to herself as she went though, because he hadn’t fooled her for a moment with that air of indifference—she had seen the sitting-room curtain twitch as she paid the cabby. For some reason his need to hide his concern put a lighter step in her walk.

  The coffee dripped through its filter into the jug and Rachel watched it absently. Her coat was thrown across the back of one of the kitchen chairs, her boots standing neatly by the door.

  He entered like a cat stalking its prey on silent tread, shoeless, his casual trousers a snug fit to his flat hips, his dark green fleeced cotton shirt tucked loosely into them.

  ‘You’d better call Mandy,’ he muttered, kicking out a chair and dropping into it.

  ‘Why?’ Rachel glanced at him and then away again, her tone lacking a single spark of interest in his reply.

  ‘Because I’ve been giving her hell all day, believing you were there and she wasn’t telling me.’

  ‘And how do you know for sure it wasn’t exactly like that?’

  There was a pause before he said reluctantly, ‘Because I got my mother to watch the children and went round to her flat to see for myself.’

  ‘So now both your mother and Mandy know I escaped for the day,’ she noted drily. The coffee was ready, and she lifted a pretty painted mug down from the rack.

  ‘You can’t blame me for worrying about you when you went off half-cocked like that,’ he grunted, looking uncomfortable.

  Good! she thought. That should teach him not to treat me like a child. I might be one, but it doesn’t mean I want to be treated like one. And, anyway, it might do him some good to realise that his predictable little wife is not so predictable after all.

  She sat down opposite him, hugging the hot mug in her hands because they still felt cold. Daniel slouched in his chair, his forearms resting on the table and his fingers twining tensely as though he was struggling with something uncomfortable inside. His head was bent, his hair untidy—as though he had spent the day raking his fingers through the thick black mass.

  She had never seen him like this before, lacking his usual poise.

  ‘Your parents know too,’ he said suddenly. ‘I rang them when I couldn’t think of anywhere else you could have gone. They’ve been expecting you to turn up in Altrincham all afternoon. You’d better give them a ring to let them know you’re OK.’

  So, it needed just three places to check before he ran out of ideas where to look for her. What did that tell her about herself? Having done enough self-analysis for one day, she decided to put that one in abeyance for the time being.

  ‘I’ll tell you what, Daniel,’ she suggested instead. ‘Why don’t you call them back, since it was you who worried them all in the first place? Call your mother—and Mandy too while you’re at it. I have no wish to speak to her personally,’ she added coolly.

  ‘Who—my mother?’ He sounded startled.

  ‘Mandy,’ she drawled sarcastically, surprised, because he had to be feeling knocked off balance a bit to make that kind of mistake. Daniel was not usually stupid. ‘You brought her back into this mess after making much of her learning to mind her own business, so you call her back, if you think she’s that bothered.’

  ‘We were all bothered!’ he snapped, sweeping her an angry glance.

  ‘I’m not suicidal, you know,’ she informed him levelly, sipping at her coffee and feeling more at ease the more tense he became. ‘I might have been a dumb-brained fool where you’re concerned, but I won’t be forfeiting the rest of my life because of it.’

  ‘I never so much as considered you were!’ he grunted, adding gruffly, ‘I never considered you dumb-brained either.’

  ‘Of course you did,’ she argued. ‘When you bothered wasting valuable time considering me at all, that is,’ she added witheringly.

  He sucked in a short breath, fighting not to rise to the bait. ‘Where did you go?’ he asked.

  ‘To London,’ she told him, bringing his head up sharply.

  ‘Where in London?’ he demanded. ‘Doing what? You’ve been out since ten o’clock this morning. That’s almost twelve hours! What the hell did you find to do in London with all the stores closed that could take twelve bloody hours?’

  ‘Maybe I found myself a man!’ she taunted, watching with a mild
fascination as his face drained of all colour. ‘It isn’t that difficult to pick one up, you know.’ She twisted the knife while he was still off balance from her first stab at him. ‘Maybe I decided to take a leaf out of your book and go in search of some—comfort, because the going at home suddenly got tough!’

  He shot to his feet, knocking the chair to the ground with a clatter. ‘Stop it!’ he rasped, raking a hand through his tousled hair. ‘Stop trying to score points off me, Rachel! It isn’t like you to take pleasure in hurting others.’

  No, it wasn’t, she agreed. Funny really, how one’s nature could alter virtually overnight. Whereas once she would never have dreamed of striking out at anyone, she was suddenly consumed with the desire to cut to the raw! She didn’t even care that her parents would be worrying about her. Or that Daniel’s mother was probably sitting in her flat not a mile away from here on tenterhooks, waiting to hear that her darling Rachel had returned safely to the fold.

  ‘Then go and make your phone calls,’ she advised, returning her attention to the drink in her hands. ‘Then you won’t have to listen, will you?’

  He glared at her across the length of the kitchen table, looking ready to reach across and shake her if she provoked him so much as an inch further. Then, surprisingly, he sighed harshly and turned and walked out of the room. She heard his study door close with a suppressed violence and grimaced to herself.

  She went upstairs to use the bathroom while he was busy on the telephone, stuffing her long hair into a shower-cap and taking a quick shower, only then remembering, as she was hurriedly tying her fluffy long white bathrobe around her so that she could get out of the bedroom before he came up, that she had not packed his case.

  On a silent curse she hurried into the bedroom, to dig out his soft black leather all-purpose suit-bag, and laid it on the bed to unbuckle the straps.

  ‘You don’t need to do that,’ his tight voice informed her from the bedroom doorway. ‘I cancelled this afternoon.’

  ‘Oh, dear,’ she drawled as he closed the bedroom door. ‘Lydia will be disappointed.’

  That’s it! he might as well have shouted, the way his lean body jerked as though someone had cracked a whip at him. Rachel knew a moment’s real panic as she stared into his face, white with angry frustration, then was given no opportunity to do anything other than gasp as he reached her in two strides and dragged her against him.

  ‘I can’t take any more of this,’ he muttered. ‘Nothing I can say or do is going to change your mind about me!’

  ‘But I have changed my mind about you!’ she countered, afraid of the hectic glitter she could see burning in his eyes, but refusing to show it. ‘I used to think you were a saint, but now I know you’re a bastard!’

  ‘Then a bastard I will be!’ he snarled, and dropped his mouth down on to hers.

  He used no persuasion, no gentle coaxing to get what he wanted from her, but just forced her tight lips apart by sheer brute force. She groaned in protest, his fingers like clamps on her aching shoulders, holding her up to him while the rest of her body curved frantically away from him in an effort not to come into full contact with his traitorous frame.

  His tongue snaked into her mouth and she tried to bite down on it, but he was expecting it, and just increased the pressure against her lips until they were pressed hard back against her teeth, then slid his tongue sensually over hers. She shuddered, her hands closing into fists that she pushed into his muscled ribcage in a hopeless attempt to try to stem the unbidden firing in her blood which told her she was vulnerable to him; even though she hated him to the very depths of her being, she was still vulnerable to this.

  Another groan, and she kicked out at him with a bare foot. It made no difference. He was not going to release her, and her straining body was simply a supple wand he bent to his will. Taking one hand off her shoulder to loop it around her slender waist, he moved the other to her hair, winding the long silken swath around his fingers in a tight coil before he tugged cruelly to keep her mouth turned up to receive his kiss.

  She was burning up inside her thick towelling robe, her body stinging with a prickly heat that made it all the more sensitive to the hard body now clamped tightly against her. And it wasn’t just her temperature that had gone haywire, it was her senses—her senses firing out of control, wanting this, swarming towards it like bees to the sweetest honey ever made on this earth.

  It’s not fair! she thought wretchedly, it’s just not fair that he can still do this to me! She hated herself—and despised him for making her acknowledge her own weakness.

  ‘Damn you!’ she cursed, when at last he came up for air. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes dark pools of bitter frustration as they glared down at her.

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed on a raw, driven hiss. ‘Damn me to hell! But you want me, Rachel. You want me so badly that you’re literally choking on it. So what does that make you in this nightmare?’

  She flinched, the full bitter truth in his cruel taunt making something she had been holding on to for days now snap inside her—she actually felt it give, and she leaned back against his constricting arm, careless of the painful pull it placed on her scalp, careless of everything now as, with an animal growl that was as alien to her as it was to the man who was goading her, she went for him with her nails.

  Good reflexes saved his face from serious damage. His head snapped back out of harm’s way just in time, and her nails only managed to graze his neck from jawbone to the open collar of his shirt.

  ‘You little cat!’ he choked, long strands of strong silken hair clinging to his fingers when he released her to put his hand to his scratched neck.

  ‘I hate you!’

  ‘Good,’ he grunted, and he pulled her back against him. ‘That will make it easier when I take you, when the method of taking will make no difference to how you feel about me.’

  ‘That’s right!’ she jeered. ‘Why not add rape to adultery?’

  ‘Rape?’ he derided harshly. ‘Since when did I ever have to resort to rape with you?’ His tone sent shivers of self-revulsion rushing through her. ‘In all my life I’ve never known a more sexually eager woman than you!’

  ‘What—even Lydia?’

  She was thrust unceremoniously away from him, his arms raking a wide, defeated arc before both hands went up to grip his nape as if he had to hold on to something or hit her. And he stared at her with something close to torment burning in his eyes. ‘Stop it, Rachel,’ he whispered thickly. ‘Stop trying to rile me into doing something we’ll both regret!’

  Was that what she was doing? Riling him like some she-devil, wanting him to take her in anger—to prove to her totally that he was all the rotten things she was thinking about him?

  Yes, she realised, that was exactly what she was doing as she continued to stand there, goading him with the hot glitter of her eyes when really she should be getting out of here while the chance to escape was good. She wanted to feed the hatred she felt towards him—the anguish, the bitter disappointment she was feeling, and last of all the great lump of pain that had not shifted from the centre of her chest since Mandy called.

  And she heard herself, as if from the other end of a long dark tunnel, goad him further. ‘Then get out!’ she told him shrilly. ‘Why don’t you just do the honourable thing, Daniel, and get the hell out of here! No one’s making you stay! There’s nothing left here to stop you going to your precious Lydia!’

  ‘Will you stop mentioning her bloody name?’ he grated.

  ‘Lydia,’ she chanted instantly. ‘Lydia—Lydia—Lydia!’

  Something flared in his eyes—anguish?—gone before it could be proved. Then he was reaching for her again, top lip curling bitterly as he pulled her hard against him.

  ‘No,’ he muttered. ‘You—you—you!’

  And in a single swift movement he had turned them both and tipped them off balance so that they landed in a tangle of limbs on the bed behind them.

  What followed was less loving than anything c
ould be. It was a battle. A battle to see who could arouse whom more. A battle of the senses where each deliberate caress was answered by a matching one, each clash of their hot angry eyes taunted—scorned. The more aroused the one became, the more the other fed it, driving each other on some crazy helter-skelter ride of pained, fractured emotions.

  There was a moment within it all when Daniel seemed to make a flailing grab for sanity, snatching at his self-control and making to move away from her. But Rachel saw it coming, and on a flash of blinding panic which seemed to have its roots in a terrible fear of losing him altogether, she reached for him, her mouth finding his with an urgency that made him groan out her name in a wretched plea against her marauding lips. But she took no notice. And it was suddenly Rachel playing the seducer, Rachel conducting things from desperate beginning to wild tumultuous end, leaving the man beneath her shaken and spent while she could only crawl away to huddle in a ball of miserable frustration, her senses clawing for a release they had been denied. And she felt appalled, disgusted with herself.

  So who won the battle? she asked herself bleakly. Neither had won, she concluded. She just felt sickened by her own wanton behaviour and the knowledge that she had been driven to it by a fear of losing him—no matter what he had done—and another driving need to feel him lose himself completely in her. It had been essential—essential to her sanity to know that, no matter how many Lydias there had been for him, she, little boring Rachel, could still turn him inside out with desire for her.

  And, she had to acknowledge finally, she had wanted him, wanted him with a need which had left no room for pride or self-respect. But in the end even that had not been enough to help her find at least some release from the pressures that had been culminating inside her over the last terrible week. It was as though her wounded soul refused to let her give him that final conquest. Would it ever again?