A Marriage to Remember

by Carole Mortimer

  He was driving Maggi and Mark back to the hotel, at Maggi’s insistence, protesting all the way—as only Adam could protest!

  Maggi had taken several minutes out in the hallway to recover from the shock of Mark’s accusations about Adam and Celia Mayes. She didn’t know why she was so shocked, really; there was no difference between Adam having an affair while he was married and him having an affair with a woman who was married to someone else. It was still adultery—and Adam was good at that!

  It had come as a devastating blow to her three years ago to realise that Adam wasn’t just singing with Sue Castle but having an affair with her too. And that it might have been far from the first time in their relationship it had happened. Adam was a man who liked to live by his own rules, and whilst the one of fidelity in their marriage applied to Maggi it didn’t necessarily apply to Adam himself. In fact, it definitely hadn’t!

  But the fact that he was now endangering other people’s marriages—especially that of a woman with two young children!—by his own lack of morals was absolutely disgusting as far as Maggi was concerned, and the sooner she got away from him, and Celia’s s house, the better. Adam had been far from pleased when she’d returned to the kitchen and told him she wanted to leave, although he’d given in when she remained adamant.

  ‘It’s far too early for you to go back and get your car,’ Adam bit out impatiently during the drive back. ‘I rang the hotel before we left, and the place is still crawling with reporters.’

  Maggi didn’t care. Being bombarded with a barrage of unwanted questions was better than having to spend any more time with Adam. He hadn’t changed. He never would…

  ‘Magdalena—’

  ‘The name is Maggi, Adam,’ she cut in harshly. ‘Maggi Fennell. It always has been; it always will be.’ She looked at him challengingly, having elected to sit in the front of the Range Rover beside him, so disappointed in him she didn’t care where she sat this time.

  It was ridiculous, she knew, to let him affect her like this after all this time. But it was very difficult, when she was in his company, to block out all of the past; after all, they’d had some good times together. If they hadn’t, the bad ones wouldn’t have caused her so much pain!

  But how badly she had misjudged him, and the love she’d thought they felt for each other. Adam was an owner, a possessor, but he had no intention of ever giving himself one hundred per cent

  ‘Not to me,’ he ground out forcefully. ‘Never just Maggi to me!’

  ‘I think what Maggi is trying to tell you,’ Mark put in from the back of the vehicle, ‘is that what you have to say on the subject is of little importance to her!’

  If she was honest what Adam had to say on any subject was of little importance to her! But she could see how Mark had enjoyed baiting the other man, thought how sad it was that two cousins should have such a dislike of each other. Because of her, she readily acknowledged, but nevertheless it was still sad. As an only child, of parents who were also only children, she had always found it such a waste when relatives didn’t seem to get on together, had always wanted a huge family of her own. That would never happen now…

  ‘You know something, Mark,’ Adam replied in a voice so soft it was menacing. ‘You’re even more of a pain now than you were years ago!’

  ‘Coming from you, I’ll take that as a compliment,’ Mark returned unconcernedly.

  Maggi had to smile, turning away. At least Mark was no longer bothered by Adam’s arrogance. Probably because he knew their time in his company was so limited; they should reach the hotel in a few minutes.

  ‘Magdalena—’

  ‘Thank you for the orange juice and coffee, Adam,’ she cut in dismissively, having had no appetite for croissants when she had eventually returned to the kitchen. ‘I’m sure the two of us have appreciated your help this morning.’

  ‘Now go away?’ he said dryly.

  She turned to look at him unflinchingly. ‘Exactly!’

  ‘That might be a little difficult,’ he returned. ‘We have a performance this evening,’ he reminded her, eyebrows raised.

  ‘No way!’ Mark was the one to answer him. ‘Maggi goes on alone, or not at all.’

  ‘Everyone is going to be expecting—’

  ‘What?’ Mark interjected heatedly. ‘The two of you together? I don’t think so.’ He shook his head. ‘Maggi is singing in a small nightclub this evening; there just wouldn’t be room for the crowd the two of you would attract. The organisers of the festival will just have to announce your personal non-appearance before the performance.’

  Oh, great! So that no one was disappointed it would have to be explained before she sang that Adam was not going to perform with her this evening! Maggi Fennell on her own, take it or leave it! Wonderful!

  If the organisers had any sense at all they would accept a decision by her not to sing; no matter what was announced, the audience would be expecting Adam to make a surprise entrance.

  Knowing Adam as she did, they wouldn’t be the only ones! She certainly wouldn’t trust him not to be at the nightclub this evening. She interrupted the men’s argument. ‘I have no intention of appearing this evening.’

  Adam looked at her sharply, his mouth twisted derisively. ‘Chickening out again, Magdalena?’ he taunted harshly. ‘It seems to be a habit of yours,’ he added contemptuously.

  She had never chickened out of anything in her life! How dared he say such a thing? He—

  ‘You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.’ Mark was the one to answer him heatedly. ‘Maggi has more guts than you’ll ever have. She—’

  ‘I don’t believe I addressed the remark to you, Mark,’ Adam returned icily. ‘I was talking to Magdalena.’

  She was totally stunned by his attack, totally agreed with Mark’s outrage; how dared he talk to her like that? If he knew the pain she had suffered in the last three years in an effort to walk again… But Adam had no idea what she had gone through—because he hadn’t been there! He had never been there for her.

  ‘I don’t have anything to add to Mark’s comment,’ she told him frostily. ‘I have no intention of defending myself to you.’

  ‘But you don’t intend singing tonight?’ His mouth was tight with disapproval.

  ‘No,’ she answered abruptly.

  ‘Where is your professionalism?’

  ‘It’s still firmly in place, Adam,’ she bit out. ‘The fact that I carried on last night more than proved that!’ All she had wanted to do was run when he’d come on stage with her! But she hadn’t; she had stayed where she was and braved out the situation. And those stories in the newspapers this morning were the price she had paid for that bit of bravado! ‘Though I don’t have anything to prove to you, Adam, or to anyone else,’ she added tightly. ‘And I have no intention of repeating last night’s performance.’

  ‘You—’

  ‘The subject is not up for discussion, Adam,’ she told him adamantly. ‘I’m withdrawing from the festival.’

  ‘As I said,’ he muttered, ‘you’re chickening out.’

  He was being deliberately provocative now, and Maggi waved Mark to silence as he would have risen to the bait; she didn’t intend giving Adam the satisfaction. What did his opinion matter anyway? She had proved to herself what needed proving at this festival, and she could go on from there. The thing to do now was to distance herself—and her career—as far away from Adam as possible.

  As Adam had predicted, there were still a lot of reporters milling about the reception area of the hotel. But as Adam had paid their hotel bill for them—something Maggi intended rectifying at the earliest opportunity!—there was no reason for them to actually go inside.

  ‘My car is over there,’ she directed Adam abruptly, pointing out her black BMW to him.

  He looked at the reporters with narrow-eyed assessment. ‘We may just get your luggage into your car before they realise it’s us,’ he conceded grudgingly, swinging his Range Rover over towards her car.

/>   How it must have pained him, after all his dire warnings to the contrary, to have to admit that! But the change-over of luggage was made with the minimum of effort by the two men once Adam had parked the Range Rover next to Maggi’s car, and the reporters were barely aware of them before they had got into their respective cars and driven back out of the car park.

  ‘He’s following us,’ Maggi muttered minutes later to Mark, having spied the Range Rover behind them in her mirror almost as soon as they’d turned onto the main road. Adam continued to follow them even though it was in the opposite direction to the house where he was staying. ‘Damn!’ she muttered again as Adam flashed the lights of his powerful vehicle, obviously wanting her to stop now that they were well away from the hotel and there were no members of the Press around.

  Mark glanced round in time to see Adam flash the lights again. ‘Just ignore him.’ He turned back to Maggi. ‘We don’t have anything more to say to him.’

  ‘He isn’t going to give up, Mark,’ Maggi sighed a few minutes later when the Range Rover showed no sign of dropping back, despite their own obvious lack of intention of stopping.

  ‘He never did,’ Mark muttered grimly.

  Maggi wasn’t altogether sure she agreed with him on that; Adam had certainly given up on their marriage when the going got too tough.

  ‘Okay, we had better stop,’ Mark conceded heavily. ‘But I’ll be the one to go and talk to him.’ He straightened in his seat, ready to get out of the car once Maggi had pulled over to the side of the road.

  But, before Mark could even undo his seat belt, it seemed, Adam was out of the Range Rover and standing beside Maggi, obviously waiting for her to open the car window so that he could talk to her. Something she did with great reluctance…

  ‘We haven’t forgotten about the hotel bill, Adam.’ Mark was the one to speak to him. ‘The money will be forwarded on to you! I didn’t realise you were so short of money, or I would have reimbursed you earlier.’

  Adam gave the younger man a contemptuous look, the only indication he gave that he had heard Mark at all, before turning his attention on Maggi. ‘I’ll be in touch,’ he told her huskily.

  It was the last thing she wanted to hear, although she couldn’t have said it was altogether unexpected. ‘You stopped me just to tell me that?’ She looked at him impatiently.

  ‘We didn’t exactly get the chance to say goodbye.’ And before Maggi could take in what he meant, let alone take evasive action, he had leaned forward, bent his head and lightly brushed his lips over hers. Her immediate instinct was to gasp, and even as she did so she could feel him deepening the kiss, his mouth moving searchingly against hers.

  ‘For God’s sake…!’ Mark muttered incredulously. ‘What the hell—! Adam, stop that!’ he ordered frantically.

  Adam had no intention of stopping anything, and it was left to Maggi—who was mortified at her own brief response!—to be the one to wrench away.

  She was breathing deeply in agitation as Adam slowly straightened up away from the car, his own expression one of grim satisfaction. He knew that she had responded to him too.

  ‘That felt more like hello,’ he said seductively, grey gaze assessing.

  She knew exactly what it had felt like, could still feel the tingling pressure of his mouth moving against hers. How dared he do that to her? How dared he humiliate her in front of Mark in that way? Or perhaps that was why he had done such a thing in front of his cousin; despite their two bedrooms at the hotel, Adam still didn’t seem convinced that she and Mark weren’t lovers.

  ‘Goodbye, Adam.’ Her voice was low as she pressed a button to close the window next to her. She put the car into gear, not caring whether he had stepped back from the car or not, and accelerated away, not even sparing him a glance in the driver’s mirror.

  ‘Bastard,’ Mark muttered at her side.

  She had to agree with him. Adam hadn’t had to behave in that cavalier fashion. But then, Adam being Adam, she supposed he had…

  She was devastated that she had responded. It wasn’t good enough that she had been taken by surprise, that she hadn’t believed even Adam was capable of such audacity; Adam was capable of anything, and she should have been the first person to realise that.

  But to have kissed her…

  Why had he done such a thing? What on earth could he hope to gain by it? Except hurting her once more, of course…

  * * *

  ‘It’s the record company again,’ her mother told Maggi with a pensive frown.

  Maggi had lived back at home with her parents for the last three years because she hadn’t been able to cope on her own after the accident—and not just physically. Her parents had been a great source of support to her during her recuperation, but they were all at a loss now to know how to deal with this new and constant pressure from the recording company for her to make another album with Adam.

  It was the publicity from the festival that had caused this, of course; subsequently, the record company had re-released one of their old CDs, while at the same time clamouring for a new one to follow its undoubted success. A request Maggi had adamantly refused twice already during the last two weeks since her return from the festival.

  ‘Shall I tell them again that you’re unavailable?’ Her mother looked at her questioningly.

  That reply had worked twice, but she doubted it would work a third time. The problem, as far as she could see, was that Adam had already consented to do the album, which increased the pressure on her to agree to it also.

  Adam’s behaviour just didn’t make any sense to her. It hadn’t at the festival and it certainly didn’t now, and she had no intention of being in the kind of close contact with him that making an album together would bring. She had told him she intended to sing alone, and that was the way it was going to remain.

  But how to get the record company to accept that? That was the problem… Especially as she had hoped, with the renewed interest in her career, to be able to bring out an album of her own in the near future.

  ‘I’ll take the call, Mamá, thanks.’ She got wearily to her feet, taking the receiver from her mother. She was a woman of almost fifty and the likeness between the two of them was unmistakable, although her mother kept her dark hair styled shoulder-length, and her eyes were dark brown rather than the blue Maggi had inherited from her father.

  ‘You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, Maggi; remember that.’ Her mother squeezed her arm reassuringly before leaving her to take the call in private.

  ‘You don’t have to,’ agreed an all too familiar voice as she put the receiver up to her ear, and she almost dropped it in her agitation as she instantly recognised the caller. ‘But you would be a fool not to do this, Magdalena,’ Adam added dryly.

  She gathered her wits together quickly, knowing he was hoping to disconcert her—and he certainly had!—but unwilling to give him the satisfaction of knowing he’d succeeded. ‘I wasn’t aware you were into owning recording studios, Adam,’ she returned dismissively. ‘But my answer is still no.’

  ‘I’m not; I merely offered to talk to you personally as you seem to be proving so difficult. Your refusal isn’t a good career move, Magdalena,’ he reasoned tautly.

  ‘For whom, Adam?’ she taunted. ‘My career is going exactly as I want it to, so I can only presume you’re the one in need of the extra publicity.’

  She had done a couple more gigs in the last two weeks, both of them very successful indeed. Admittedly they would have been even more so if Adam had been there, and the audience had initially called out for him, but once they’d realised she was genuinely alone, her reception couldn’t have been warmer. But there had been two more red roses…

  ‘Maybe it’s your career that needs the boost, Adam…?’ she added softly.

  ‘I wouldn’t pay too much attention to Mark, if I were you,’ he came back scornfully. ‘His remarks tend to be biased, to say the least. And where is my dear cousin on this bright and sunny day?’ he ad
ded derisively. ‘Out getting you more engagements like the festival?’

  That festival had been deliberately chosen for her first public appearance in three years, after much debate and discussion within her family as well as with Mark. Despite Adam’s mockery—and his unexpected appearance there!—it had been a good choice. As for Mark, he was spending some time with Andrea now that she was back from France. Although that was none of Adam’s business either.

  Unlike Mark’s interest where Adam was concerned, Adam didn’t seem to have taken any interest in Mark’s life over the last three years. Otherwise he would have known about Andrea. But Maggi had no intention of enlightening him about Mark’s relationship with her. She had no intention of telling him anything.

  ‘Adam, I have given the record company my answer.’ She ignored his remarks about Mark. ‘And I’m giving you the same answer—’

  ‘Let’s have lunch and talk about it,’ he cut in determinedly.

  ‘Let’s not have lunch and let’s not talk about it,’ she came back quickly, no longer amazed by his audacity; he was just more outrageously arrogant than she remembered. ‘Goodbye, Adam.’ She rang off before he could come back with anything else.

  She hadn’t questioned why Adam had been negotiating with the record company in the first place; she didn’t want to know, didn’t want to know anything about him. But he had been entering her life with sickening regularity over the last few weeks, after years of not hearing anything from him at all. Perhaps, she admitted, she just hadn’t been emotionally strong enough in the beginning to be told what Adam was doing with his life—or whom he was sharing it with!—and, now she was, most people seemed to have realised it was a subject best left alone.

  Was Celia Mayes the woman in his life at the moment? It seemed a strange arrangement if she were. But then, when had Adam’s life ever been straightforward?

  ‘Everything all right?’ Her mother put her head tentatively around the door.

  Maggi stood up determinedly. ‘Couldn’t be better,’ she answered brightly, deciding it was probably best not to mention what Adam had said in their telephone conversation; her parents felt pretty much as Mark did about him.