Lovers Not Friends

by Helen Brooks

  She took Blade’s bowl of soup to his table before she turned to the family that had seated themselves in a corner across the other side of the room. All the time she chatted with the two children and took the parents’ order she was aware of his gaze trained on the back of her head even though she was turned from him, but when she swung around and made her way to the kitchen he was quietly eating a bread roll, his dark eyes lazily surveying the peaceful scene outside the window.

  ‘What time do you finish work?’ His tone was brusque and his face expressionless as she served him the freshly cooked Spanish omelette and baked potato with a side salad.

  ‘What?’ Startled, she looked him straight in the eyes and then wished she hadn’t as the force of his gaze pierced her to the spot.

  ‘You heard what I said, Amy.’ His voice was quiet but with an undertone of iron that she knew from old. How often she had heard him use that tone in the past when he intended to get his own way. ‘We need to tie up a few loose ends so that the formalities can progress smoothly. That’s what you want, isn’t it? To be rid of me at the earliest opportunity?’

  She dropped her eyes quickly, her face bleak. If he only knew … She had never wanted or loved him as much as she did now, when she was frightened and lonely and desolately aware of what the future held. To be able to lean on his strength, to rest in the knowledge of his love, to be cushioned, at least in part, by the comfort and support of his wealth … ‘I finish at eleven,’ she said quietly. ‘But I can meet you tomorrow morning, if you like?’

  ‘I’ll be outside at eleven.’ His tone brooked no argument and she nodded, still without looking at him, before turning on her heel and seeking the sanctuary of the steaming kitchen and Arthur’s blunt normality.

  All the rest of the afternoon and evening she functioned on automatic, taking orders, smiling, engaging in conversation while her mind ticked away on a completely different plane altogether.

  When she had married Blade Forbes she had never considered for a moment that it wouldn’t be forever. Her own parents had died in a car accident when she was four years old and her sister, Sandra and herself had been dispatched to different homes of distant relatives, Sandra to the wilds of Scotland and herself into the heart of London. The two sisters hadn’t been close, the eight-year age-gap proving insurmountable in view of Sandra’s raging jealousy of her beautiful baby sister, but Amy remembered crying as much for her big sister as for her parents in the early days.

  It wasn’t until she had reached the age of sixteen that she learnt Sandra had purposely repudiated all contact in the intervening years, and after one shattering, stunning visit to her married sister’s home in Scotland when she had quite literally had the door banged in her face, she had determined to put Sandra out of her life as successfully as her sister had apparently done with her. But … Amy shook her head slowly as her thoughts travelled on. It hadn’t been as easy as that. Sandra was her only immediate family; the same blood ran in their veins; she had wanted, needed her love.

  Weak and foolish, Amy thought grimly as she smilingly served home-made steak and kidney pie to a little Japanese couple with three cameras between them. And how she had paid for the insecure feeling of inadequacy that had always dogged her footsteps. She should have been satisfied with Blade, she shouldn’t have wanted more. What was a sister that she hadn’t seen for most of her life, after all?

  The somewhat elderly aunt and uncle that she had been homed with had caused her anxiety and insecurity, she knew that now after long, deep conversations with Blade when she had poured out all her doubts and fears. They had been fanatically strait-laced, with a list of dos and don’ts that she had never got the hang of, and her outstanding beauty had alarmed and repelled their austere, bigoted minds from the word go. She had been taught that she was undeserving and wayward, that her beauty was in some way shameful, from the first day that she had lived with them, and although something in her had always rebelled against such harsh reasoning some of the poison had got through.

  But Blade had changed all that. She took a deep breath as her heart pounded painfully against her chest. He’d brought out all the old festering sores, held them up to the clean, purifying liquid of logic and reason, and in the process washed the wounds clean. And because of that she had felt strong enough to try and see Sandra again. And what she had seen and heard had appalled her.

  Enough, Amy, enough, she told herself fiercely as she stared out into the dark night outside. An hour to go and you’ll need all your wits to talk to Blade. Several cups of strong black coffee now and no more post-mortems.

  When she emerged from the warm, cosy interior of the restaurant just over an hour later she thought for a moment that Blade hadn’t come, and her stomach lurched churningly, whether in relief or disappointment she wasn’t sure. And then she heard her name at the same time as he emerged from the shadows across the other side of the road.

  ‘Where’s your car?’ she asked weakly, as he reached her side. He was dressed casually in jeans and black leather jacket and he’d turned her legs to water.

  ‘Quite safe.’ His voice was mocking with a hard bite of cruelty. ‘I thought we would walk the short distance to your lodgings.’

  ‘You know where I live?’ she asked in alarm.

  ‘Of course.’ He looked down at her, slender and waiflike against his hard masculine bulk. ‘The private detective I hired to find you is both thorough and discreet and excellent at his job.’

  ‘He would be,’ she answered dully. Blade only tolerated the best.

  ‘Come along.’ He took her arm in a firm grip as he turned her in the direction of Mrs Cox’s little guest house, and although the contact was brief the heat from his fingers seemed to burn her arm. She had jerked away before she could check herself and as his body stiffened at her side she cursed the gesture. It would only make him angrier. It did.

  ‘I’m not a disease that’s fatal on contact,’ he said cuttingly, ‘and another little move like that and I warn you now I won’t be responsible for my actions. Understand?’

  ‘I didn’t mean—’

  ‘I know what you meant.’ The hard voice was inflexible. ‘And I’m quite aware that I’m not the person you wish to be with, but as I’m here and he isn’t I suggest you act accordingly.’

  They walked the length of the street in silence and she began to feel almost faint with a mixture of terrified foreboding and lack of food. She hadn’t been able to force anything past the huge lump in her throat all day and she hadn’t eaten her evening meal last night. He had eaten the meal at lunchtime with every appearance of relaxed enjoyment, she thought resentfully as they turned into the quiet unlit lane that led eventually to the small row of cottages in which her lodgings were situated. But then, why shouldn’t he? she asked herself honestly. What a mess this was, what a hopeless, terrifying mess.

  ‘Now then.’ As he swung her round she had no idea of his intention, but as his arms closed round her in an embrace that had her arms pinned at her sides and her head thrown back he took her lips in a brutal punishing kiss that spoke of his fury more eloquently than any words could have done.

  She tried to move her head, to break the hold of his mouth on hers, but his force was relentless and she was trapped as effortlessly as a tiny mouse between the paws of a big black cat. The familiar smell of him filled her nostrils and in spite of the knowledge that this was intended as a cruel exercise in submission she found herself responding to his touch in the old way, her body eager for any contact with the man she loved beyond life. He sensed her capitulation immediately, his mouth softening fractionally as his hands moved up and over her straining breasts, caressing her thoroughly and completely before he moved away in a hard movement that almost threw her from him. The whole embrace couldn’t have lasted more than a couple of minutes but as she stood swaying in the darkness, her eyes fixed on his in mute appeal, she felt as though they had made love for hours.

  ‘I don’t believe it.’ There was contempt and r
aw scorn in his voice along with something else she couldn’t recognise, something almost bordering on pain. ‘You can kiss me like that after all you’ve done. Who the hell are you, Amy, what are you?’ His eyes were dark and glittering in the single shaft of moonlight filtering down between the newly leafed branches of the huge oak trees bordering the lane. ‘I expected you to fight me, to object—something!’ He was furiously, bitterly angry, she reflected dully as she watched his contorted face in the shadows, more angry than she had ever seen him. ‘I thought I’d met the lot in my time but you sure as hell take the biscuit! Even the trashiest whore wouldn’t …’

  He was still speaking as she slid into a dead faint at his feet, her hair fanning out in a golden halo under her head and her face deathly white in the still night.

  She came round slowly, her head jangling with a thousand nightmarish images, to find herself held close to his chest as he knelt beside her on the thick grass of the small verge. ‘Blade …?’ She couldn’t speak very well; her brain seemed to know what it wanted to say but her tongue wouldn’t obey.

  ‘Keep still.’ There was a look on his face that caused the blood to pound violently in her ears, a piercing, haunting cry of burning hunger, unmitigated rage, dark fear and a terrible expectation of she knew not what. ‘You fainted. Keep still.’

  ‘I fainted?’ Her lips seemed wooden she reflected dazedly. ‘I’ve never done that before.’

  ‘No.’ He seemed about to speak and then the words were stilled as he surveyed her through veiled eyes in which all emotion was suddenly blanked. ‘Have you got something to tell me, Amy?’

  ‘Tell you?’ She tried to move away but his arms were rigid. ‘I don’t understand.’

  He swore, softly but with deadly intensity, before lifting her up into his arms as he stood upright. ‘Let me put it like this,’ he said grimly as he stood for a moment before striding down the lane in the direction of the lights in the distance. ‘It is not unusual, in certain circumstances, for a woman to pass out round about the time of three months. Do I have to go on?’

  ‘What?’ She twisted so sharply in his hold that he almost dropped her. ‘You think I’m—you do, don’t you?’

  ‘It wouldn’t be the first time that a woman has left her husband for another man and in the first flush of unbridled passion got a little more than she had bargained for,’ he said, with a terrible lack of expression in his voice and face.

  ‘Put me down, Blade.’ Her voice was faint, more from the intoxicating sensation of being held in his arms again than the import of his words. Her head was muzzy and her legs felt like jelly but she knew she had to stand on her own two feet again before she disgraced herself a second time. The temptation to wind her arms tightly round his neck and kiss his face and throat was fast becoming too strong to resist, and she could just imagine his reaction. It was clear from what he had said that he had intended the kiss as a punishment and lesson in obedience; he hadn’t expected her either to enjoy or tolerate it. He was probably very disappointed his chastisement hadn’t worked as he’d envisaged, she thought miserably.

  ‘Can you walk?’ Even as he spoke he had placed her on terra firma again, moving back a pace swiftly as though the contact with her body had repelled him.

  He loathed her, she thought painfully. Loathed and hated her. ‘I’m not expecting a baby, Blade.’ How she kept her voice steady she would never know. ‘There is no possibility of that at all.’

  ‘I see.’ He surveyed her coldly, eyes narrowed and hands thrust deep in the pockets of his jacket. ‘Well, at least you kept enough sanity to take care of that side of things.’

  ‘I don’t want to discuss it.’ As she went to walk he stepped forward abruptly to block her path, his eyes icy.

  ‘Don’t you indeed?’ He shook his head slowly. ‘You know, your sheer effrontery amazes me. What happened to the happy innocent girl I married, Amy?’

  ‘She’s dead.’ The words passed her lips before she had even thought about them, coming straight from the heart, and something in her tone of voice must have set the antennae buzzing again because his eyes searched her face slowly and consideringly, their inky depths thoughtful, before he took her arm and indicated that they continue walking.

  ‘Now what makes me think that the course of true love is not running as smoothly as you would have liked?’ he asked coldly, with bitterly raw cynicism. ‘What’s the problem, Amy? Did lover-boy prefer having you as an extra little titbit now and again rather than you camping on his doorstep?’

  She glared at him without answering as Mrs Cox’s small detached cottage drew nearer.

  ‘Or maybe the appeal of being a working girl again in the big bad world is less than attractive?’ He looked down at her steadily, his eyes veiled.

  ‘Can’t you just leave things alone?’ she asked tightly. ‘Accept—’

  ‘By “things” I take it you mean you?’ He smiled coldly. ‘You would like that, wouldn’t you: to be able to finish my chapter in your life as though this were all an abstract exercise? But it isn’t and we aren’t. You are still my wife—my wife, Amy.’ The emphasis and intonation of his words were exactly as spoken in the dream, and as a slow shiver crept down her spine she gazed up at him with naked fear in her eyes.

  ‘Do I frighten you?’ They had reached the cottage now and he leant back against the post of the garden gate as he swung it open for her, his stance lazy and laconic and his face cruel. ‘You’d be wise to fear me, Amy. People have feared me for far less than you have done.’

  ‘You don’t scare me,’ she lied bravely as she lifted her chin a fraction. ‘And I don’t like threats.’

  ‘Then take it as a warning,’ he drawled smoothly as his gaze held her eyes, their blueness dark and velvety in the moonlight. ‘One that you can pass on to interested parties. I understand John is due home tomorrow.’ The last sentence had been arctic cold, his voice chilling.

  He had turned and walked off down the lane before she could react and she felt a moment’s deep thankfulness that he hadn’t seen the relief on her face. He still thought this was something to do with poor John, then? If she could just get through the next few days without betraying herself he would have to leave soon. His empire needed him at the helm and he couldn’t afford to be away for long, besides which this place would drive him mad. She would have smiled to herself if her heart hadn’t been so raw and bleeding. The swelling moorlands, deep wooded valleys, rolling hills with their trickling pure streams and crystal-clear waterfalls that spelt peace and sanctuary to her would be an enigma to the man she had married. His place was in the cut and thrust of the razor-sharp business world he inhabited. The hectic lifestyle and cynical, sceptical people he dealt with every day were what he knew. Her quiet backwater with its stolid, unexcitable Yorkshire folk who were the salt of the earth couldn’t be more different. He’d soon tire of all this and then—

  ‘One more thing, Amy.’ She started violently as he reappeared at her side, dark eyes glittering hotly. ‘I’ve got all the time it takes.’ It was as though he had read her mind and she stared at him, with the garden gate a small wooden barrier between them, as he smiled sardonically. ‘I’m in no rush to get back to London, and this is a beautiful part of the world. Now go in and rest; you look as though you’re going to pass out again.’ He was mocking, taunting her! She kept her thoughts hidden as the black gaze raked her face.

  ‘The last three months have been a little—troublesome. I could do with a nice relaxing holiday about now. What do you think?’ he finished silkily.

  ‘I think you’re lying through your back teeth,’ she said angrily. ‘In all the time I’ve known you you have never, ever, had a “nice relaxing holiday” of any description. It would kill you—’

  ‘Ah, but then that’s the crux of the matter, my sweet.’ There was no mockery in the deep cold voice now. ‘You haven’t really “known” me at all, have you? A whirlwind courtship and within months you were a blushing bride. You have no idea really of what makes
me tick. If you had, you would never have had the temerity to walk out on me with another man.’ The icy threat in his words was unmistakable. ‘And don’t make the mistake of thinking that I’m staying here because I care in any way. I’ve told you before, I don’t.’ He eyed her cuttingly. ‘But you are my property as far as I see it and no one, no one steals what is mine.’

  ‘Your property?’ For the first time since he had come back in her life undiluted burning rage swept all the darkness out of her mind. ‘How dare you say that?’

  As she raised her hand to strike him he moved swiftly, grasping her upraised hand in an iron hold at the same time as pushing her backwards while he opened the gate with his legs, joining her in the small front garden before she could draw breath.

  ‘You don’t like my terminology?’ he said tauntingly. ‘Well, how would you describe yourself, then?’

  ‘I’m your wife, not your property,’ she said hotly as she struggled against the sheer hard bulk of his body. ‘How dare you say that, how—?’

  ‘Ah, so you’ve remembered at last.’ As his lips descended on hers for the second time that night she began to fight, really fight, with her arms and legs kicking and writhing in desperate panic as she twisted her head this way and that to avoid his searching mouth. She heard him swear once, softly, as her foot made brief harsh contact with his shin-bone, and then he had pinned her arms at her sides as effortlessly as though she were a child, moving her backwards into the shadows of a gnarled old lilac tree that was scenting the cool night air with its heady perfume. ‘You need to be taught a lesson, my girl,’ he said thickly.

  She knew, even as she continued to struggle, that it was a hopeless battle. It wasn’t really him she was fighting after all, there might have been some hope of success if it were, but it was her own weakness where he was concerned that was sending her whole system into hyper-drive.