The Ultimate Betrayal

by Michelle Reid

  Rachel sat up and away from him. ‘She isn’t me,’ she said simply. ‘I don’t like her.’

  He made no comment, but lay studying the drawing for a long time, while Rachel felt a touch of her old restlessness attack her and got up from the bed, pretending to return her attention to the mounds of clothes scattering their bedroom floor.

  ‘None of me,’ Daniel made wry note, when eventually he turned to the next page only to find the devil leering back at him.

  Rachel’s smile was forced. ‘How can you say that,’ she mocked, ‘when that is exactly how I see you?’

  She couldn’t explain why she had never attempted drawing him. She understood why herself, but those reasons did not translate into words very well. Daniel was different. He was one of the family—yet not. The other faces in the book belonged—they were a part of her. Daniel used to be—the most important part of her— but he wasn’t any longer. He had drifted away, become a blurred image in that place inside her where those drawings came from.

  He didn’t love her as the others did.

  Daniel was the broken link.

  She reached out to take back the pad, and he let her this time, watching her silently as she took it to store it away, in the bottom of her wardrobe, then closed the door on it before turning back to face him.

  He was still lying on the bed, with only the towel covering the leashed power in his thighs.

  ‘Where’s Michael?’ he asked softly.

  Her insides curled. ‘With your mother for the day.’

  Their eyes held, and time stood breathlessly still in the quietness of the bedroom. He was asking something of her, his lazy eyes showing her the need beginning to burn inside him. She stood a mere arm’s length away from him, nervous, unsure, blushing slightly, feeling the trailing beginnings of desire seep warmly into her blood, responding to the lean, muscular length of him stretched out on the bed.

  Her gaze flicked down to the whorls of dark curling hair covering his wide chest, following restlessly the way they tapered like an arrow across the flat tautness of his stomach and disappeared beneath the covering towel. Daniel was tall, lean and essentially male, his legs two powerful limbs with long muscular thighs, and calves sprinkled liberally with crisp dark hair which she could actually feel rasp sensually against her own softer more delicate skin, even though she stood a good two feet away from him.

  The sun was shining weakly through the window, and she realised with a small jolt that this was the first time in months that she’d openly gazed on his body like this. Her need for darkness had denied her this pleasure. Denied her the pleasure, too, of seeing the desire burn in his eyes.

  His hand reached out, inviting her without words to come to him, and silently she placed her hand in his, drawn by a force too great to fight. His fingers closed around hers, being very careful not to break the hypnotising contact with her eyes as he slowly sat up and parted his thighs so that he could draw her between them. She was wearing very little, just a loose woollen dress and a pair of briefs. Daniel slid his hands around her thickened waist, then stroked them down her hips and thighs until he made contact with the hem of her dress.

  She stopped breathing on an inward gasp. His caressing hands paused, his eyes dark and watchful, waiting to find out what that gasp meant. Then she was letting the air out of her lungs on a shaky sigh and her eyelids lowered, her soft lips parting as she bent to join her mouth with his.

  He fell back and she went with him, her dress being stripped away from her body as they went. And, as quick as that, they were lost in each other, hungry, demanding, stroking and arousing in a sensual scramble of tangled limbs and intimate caresses and long, moist, drugging kisses.

  She was ready for him—more than ready—as her senses began to draw together in that sweet, hot knot of need that made her pull him down on top of her, mouth urgent, hands clutching at the tautness of his hips in an effort to draw him deep inside her.

  Then it happened. Loving him with every sense she had in her, Rachel allowed her eyes to open slowly, gaze into that stern, dark, beautiful face above her, see the sunlight play across his gleaming black hair, see the fierceness of his driving passion, his eyes glazed with the sheer intensity of it. Then the ghost of her hell came back to haunt her, and she snapped her eyes tight shut, whimpering in wretched frustration as her body began to tighten in rejection.

  ‘No!’ Daniel rasped, violence erupting inside him because he recognised what was happening to her. ‘No, damn you, Rachel. No!’

  She fought it, oh, she fought it with everything she could, her fingers clinging to him, her breathing fast and labouring with the struggle.

  ‘Look at me!’ he demanded raspingly, struggling to hold back from making that ultimate union. ‘For pity’s sake, open your eyes and look at me!’

  Her lids lifted slowly, eyes taking their time to focus on his dark face locked with tension. His eyes were shot through with a hot haunted need she could not deny. Daniel might not love her, but he desired her passionately—still, after almost eight years—still, when she was swollen with his child—still, with, during and through everything that had come between them over this last six months. Daniel still desired her with a need that made him tremble against her, and maybe that was enough…

  ‘No!’ he protested harshly as her lids began lowering back over her eyes. ‘No—you won’t shut me out this time, Rachel!’

  His hands came up to take hold of her face, tightening until her eyes flickered open in frowning confusion.

  ‘You want me,’ he stated fiercely. ‘But you won’t have me unless you keep your eyes open and accept just who it is you want! Me!’ he stated harshly. ‘Me, Rachel. Faults and all. Me, the man I was before I let you down so badly and the man I am right now!’

  ‘And if I can’t do that?’ she whispered wretchedly. ‘What if I can never accept what you did to us?’

  ‘Then you’ll never have me again,’ he answered grimly. ‘Because I know I can’t keep on making love to a woman who has to hide behind her closed eyes before she can accept me inside her.’

  He pushed himself away from her then, while Rachel took in what he was actually saying. Daniel had just issued her with an ultimatum, she realised as she watched him stride back to the bathroom. He was telling her that he had done paying for his crime. He was, in short, telling her that she had to learn to trust him again or forget the physical side of their marriage.

  She couldn’t believe it—found it incredible the expert way he had just managed to turn the tables on her, making her the one who had to make the concessions from now on if there was to be a normal relationship between them in the future!

  Resentment simmered, boiled, then died when it came to her that he could perhaps be right, and she did have to accept him, faults and all, if their marriage was going to survive—which only threw her into further confusion about what she was going to do.

  She was still floundering on the question a week later when something happened which tossed all her other troubles into oblivion by comparison.

  The twins disappeared.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  RACHEL blamed herself the moment she realised they had gone. It had been a week to top all weeks for tension in the home.

  Daniel had gone into a cold withdrawal, making no effort to hide his anger with Rachel, so the whole household heaved a sigh of relief when he went off a couple of days later on a trip to Manchester.

  But that wasn’t all of it. It was the Easter break from school and the twins were at home all day. It didn’t help Rachel’s frayed nerves that they were excited about the coming move, that they seemed to be constantly under her feet, getting in the way so much that she caught herself snapping at them more often than was fair.

  She was up to her neck in packing-cases when she heard the ring of the telephone and, on a muttered curse, she fought her way across the room on her way to answer it when it stopped.

  That did her temper no good whatsoever, and her curses became
richer as she fought her way back to where she had been working and got back to her packing again.

  She was still grumbling to herself when Sammy and Kate sidled into the room. ‘It was Daddy on the phone,’ Sam informed her sullenly. He had not forgiven her yet for shouting at him for spilling orange juice all over the kitchen floor. He saw the scolding as an injustice because he had been getting the juice for Michael at the time, in his way saving Rachel the trouble, but Rachel had only seen the sticky orange mess she had to clean up and lost her temper.

  ‘He said to tell you that he’s on his way back from Manchester.’ The small boy relayed the message with the same haughty coolness his father would have used in the same mood. ‘And that he has to go into the office first so he will be late home tonight.’

  Well, bully for him! she thought grumpily. Let him hide in his office while she did all the hard graft! Playing the martyr, Rachel? She heard the acid echo of Daniel’s voice sound so clearly in her head that she actually jumped and glanced round, half expecting to find him standing right behind her. He was not, of course, but the taunt went reluctantly home.

  ‘I asked him to come home and play with us instead,’ put in a sulky Kate.

  ‘And he, I suppose, put the phone down quick—in sheer fright!’ She’d meant it as a sarcastic cut at Daniel, not at the twins, but they took it the wrong way, and Kate’s face went red with anger.

  ‘No, he didn’t!’ she cried. ‘He said he wished he could play with us instead of doing stuffy work! And you’re not a nice mummy!’ she added heatedly.

  Rachel caught a suspicion of tears in her daughter’s eyes just before Kate disappeared, running back down the stairs with an equally disgruntled Sammy right behind her.

  Sighing, she rested one weary hand on her swollen stomach and the other on her aching head, acknowledging that she’d probably deserved everything Kate had thrown at her, and fought her way back across the room to follow them down the stairs. The twins pointedly ignored her, pretending to be engrossed in the television.

  She picked Michael up from the floor, where he had been playing quite happily with his bricks, glanced at the other two in the hope they would look at her so that she could say she was sorry, when they didn’t felt irritation swell within her yet again, and flounced out of the room with her youngest, leaving them to watch their TV programme in peace.

  An hour later and she was going demented. She had looked everywhere she could think of. But the twins seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth! She had driven over to the park, hoping to find them playing on the swings. To Daniel’s mother’s houseknowing that Jenny was out for the whole day visiting friends, and equally sure that the twins did not know that and could well have walked around to her house in search of some sympathy and comfort. She had checked and double-checked the house, the garden and even rung the new house in the vague hope that they had somehow found their way there. But they hadn’t, and she was just reaching the stage when she knew she was going to have to call in the police when the telephone began to ring.

  She snatched it up, white with strain and trembling so badly that she could barely hold the receiver to her ear.

  ‘Mrs Masterson?’ an uncertain voice enquired.

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered through chattering teeth.

  ‘Mrs Masterson, this is your husband’s secretary…’

  Her heart leaped to her throat. ‘I-Is Daniel there?’ she asked.

  ‘No, he hasn’t arrived yet,’ the voice said. ‘But your children have turned up here just now asking for him and I—’

  ‘They’re there?’ Rachel cut in shrilly.

  ‘Yes,’ the voice assured gently, hearing her distress. ‘Yes, they’re here.’

  ‘Oh, God.’ An ice-cold fist went up to her mouth, stopping the well of tears. ‘Are they all right?’

  ‘Yes,’ she was assured once again. ‘They’re finereally.’

  Rachel dropped down on the bottom stair as relief— blessed, blessed relief—took the strength right out of her. Then she was almost instantly up on her feet again. ‘W-Will you hang on to them for me, please?’ she whispered. ‘I’m on my way. I’m—on my way…’

  She dropped the phone, gave an odd, choked little laugh, then a single wretched sob, and then was rushing to go and get Michael.

  Rachel arrived at Masterson Holdings just as the lunch-break was coming to an end, and the ultra-modern reception area was teeming with people on their way back to their respective offices.

  Her cheeks flushed with rushing, eyes slightly dazed by shock, and still dressed in the same white stretchy leggings and one of Daniel’s old pale blue work-shirts that she had been wearing all day, she came to a halt just inside the plate-glass entrance and stared bewilderedly around her while Michael did the same from his comfortable position on her rounded hip.

  The children were nowhere to be seen. Her heart gave a sickening lurch and she started forwards, making for the reception desk she could see across the spacious foyer, where a pretty young girl sat flirting with a young man who was half sitting on the corner of her desk.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she interrupted a little breathlessly. ‘I’m Rachel Masterson. My children. They—’

  ‘Mrs Masterson!’ The young girl came to her feet, her brown eyes widening as they took in every detail of Rachel as if she couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing. Rachel didn’t blame her—she knew she must look a sight—but neither did she care. She just wanted to see Sam and Kate—needed to see them.

  ‘My children,’ she repeated as the young man shot off the desk and almost to attention. ‘Where are they?’ she demanded, unaware that the receptionist’s voice had carried right across the foyer and now everyone in it was staring curiously at her.

  ‘Oh, Mr Masterson arrived not ten minutes ago,’ the young girl informed her. ‘He has them in his office and said for you to—’

  ‘I’ll take you up to him if you like,’ the young man offered.

  Rachel turned a distracted expression on him and nodded in agreement. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered, and followed him over to the bank of lifts, too distraught to notice the sea of curious faces turned her way.

  The lift took them upwards, and ejected them on to a thick grey carpet that muffled their steps as they walked towards a pair of matt grey-painted doors. Rachel followed her guide more slowly, feeling odd inside, trembly and weak-limbed. The young man knocked, waited a moment, then opened the doors before standing back so Rachel could go by him.

  She paused on the threshold, glanced warily at Daniel who was leaning against a large grey grained desk, his arms folded across his chest, flicked her gaze to the two woebegone figures who were sitting very close together on a long leather settee, felt the tears flood into her eyes, put Michael to the floor, choked out thickly, ‘Oh, Sammy—Kate!’ then fainted clean away.

  She came round to find herself lying on the settee with something cool and damp across her forehead—and four faces with varying similarities about them watching her anxiously. She smiled weakly, and received four varying but similar smiles by return.

  Daniel was squatting down beside her with Michael balanced on his lap and one of his hands warmly clasping one of hers. Sammy and Kate flanked him, leaning sombrely against a broad shoulder each. They all looked rather sweet like that, and she wished she had some paper and a pencil close by so that she could catch the scene forever.

  ‘How do you feel?’ Daniel asked in a gritty voice.

  ‘Woozy,’ she smiled ruefully, then turned her attention to the two runaways. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered painfully, and received two sobbing bundles into her arms.

  They sobbed out their regrets, their apologies, their love, and their fear when they saw her faint. Then they were snuffling out the excitement of their adventure: ringing for a taxi, pooling their saved pocket money, arriving here to find Daddy not here and putting everyone into a panic.

  ‘And frightening your mother half out of her wits,’ Daniel silenced them d
ampeningly.

  He looked hard at Kate, who lowered her head in mute contrition. ‘It was all very neatly worked out.’ Daniel took up the story. ‘They rang the taxi firm you use to ferry them to school when I’m away,’ he explained. ‘Said you were sick in bed and wanted them bringing to me. They even produced one of my business cards with this address on to make it all look official.’ He glared at Kate. ‘All very slick,’ he clipped. ‘Very believable.’

  ‘Oh, Kate,’ Rachel said gravely, remembering how important Kate had felt when Rachel gave her the task of ringing the taxi firm to order a car to take the twins to school on those mornings Daniel wasn’t around to take them.

  But to abuse that bit of responsibility in such a way…!

  The poor child’s head sank lower.

  ‘I thought of using Daddy’s business card,’ Sammy put in, gallantly prepared to share the blame.

  But they all knew it was the more precocious Kate who would have thought up the whole thing. ‘I’m sorry,’ the little girl whispered, and Rachel saw with an ache her small hand lift to wipe the tears from her lowered cheeks.

  The tension was rife, the fact that Kate wasn’t going to her Daddy for a comforting hug telling Rachel that there had been some tough reprimands before she’d arrived.

  Her gaze drifted to Daniel. He looked drawn and pale, his mouth a grim tight line that warned of a simmering anger. He held Michael against him, big hands spanning the little body as though he needed to feel the living comfort of this youngest child of theirs because he was too angry to give in to what was really troubling him— the need to hold the twins close too.

  He caught her looking at him, and grimaced. ‘My secretary is preparing some coffee,’ he said. ‘As soon as it comes I’ll have her take the children down to the cafeteria for some lunch. Then we talk.’

  That sounded ominous. Rachel dropped her gaze and eased herself into a sitting position, just as a young woman with a pleasant face walked in with a loaded tray.