Marriage on the Rebound

by Michelle Reid

  The sex, to put it crudely. Sex in the morning, sex in the evening, sex when a certain look or a touch would set the whole cauldron of desire bubbling up without warning.

  Sex, sex and more sex. It seemed to completely take her over. She thought of little else, she wanted little else, and it never occurred to her to question the sense in such a blinkered view of their marriage.

  Because she had firmly locked away, in a mental box somewhere inside her head, all the reasons why sex could not and should not be enough to support a relationship. Locked away the fact that what she had actually done was accept physical love in place of emotional love. The relationship really didn’t stand a chance, and was just begging for something or someone to come along and smash the blinkers from her eyes.

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘WELL—?’ Jemma demanded. ‘Are you in love with him or aren’t you?’

  Dressed in a wheat-coloured trouser suit that was supposed to be casual wear but still managed to look outrageously expensive, Shaan sat at a small table in what had used to be her favourite London wine bar, watching the busy turnover of lunchtime customers mill around in front of her while she decided how best to answer that.

  It was odd, she mused idly, but she felt quite out of place here now. In fact, she would go as far as to say that she didn’t even know who Shaan Saketa was any more, because Mrs Rafe Danvers was an entirely different being altogether.

  She had been back in London a week, after spending two weeks in Hong Kong, and it was during those first two weeks that Shaan Danvers had been created—moulded by clever hands to suit the man she was now married to.

  In every sense of the word.

  Her clothes, the way she carried herself, the way she looked at life and even the way she perceived herself had all completely altered.

  But, perhaps most significantly of all, gone was the strained-faced, empty-eyed, lost-looking creature Jemma had worried so much about the last time she had seen her, and in her place sat this alluringly beautiful woman whose dark eyes now wore the look of disturbingly sensual self-knowledge. A fact any of the men present in the crowded bar would eagerly vouch for.

  She seemed to glow with fulfilment. It was sexy. It was enticing. It talked to a man’s sexual antennae and told him that there sat a woman who knew how to make a man feel fantastic about himself.

  In short, she was special. And she belonged to someone special, if the way those sexy eyes barely noticed any other man was a judge. And, whoever the guy was, the rest of them envied him and hung around perhaps longer than they should in the hope of getting a glimpse of this member of their sex who was lucky enough to have her.

  ‘Is the answer that difficult?’ Jemma mocked drily when the silence between them went on too long.

  ‘Yes, actually,’ Shaan murmured, bringing her eyes back into focus with a smile so sensually enigmatic that it almost made Jemma gasp. ‘It is that difficult.’

  ‘You said you loved him,’ she reminded her. ‘Before you married him, you promised me that you did.’

  ‘Ah.’ Shaan relaxed back into her chair, taking her glass of chilled white wine with her. ‘But we were all playing at make-believe then, weren’t we?’ she ruefully pointed out. ‘Pretending everything had worked out perfectly because it was the only way we could deal with the true horror story.’

  ‘And now?’ Jemma might not be a man, but she wasn’t blind. She too could see the new sensual awareness glowing in those luxurious eyes—could feel it too, almost pulsing in the very space Shaan occupied.

  ‘The horror story is no longer a horror story,’ Shaan answered simply. ‘Rafe and I—understand each other.’ She decided this said it best. ‘We’re happy.’ In our own little world so long as no one else tries to infiltrate it, she added silently.

  ‘Happy with a lot of things, by the look of you,’ Jemma grunted, not comfortable with any of this—not the new Shaan she was being offered here, or the answers that new Shaan was giving her.

  But then she hadn’t been comfortable with it from the beginning, she recalled. And that discomfort had included Shaan’s association with Piers Danvers, never mind his older, tougher, and far more formidable brother.

  ‘What’s the matter, Jemma?’ Shaan questioned lightly. ‘Don’t you think I should be happy? Is that it?’

  ‘How do I know when you won’t tell me anything?’ Her best friend sighed in exasperation.

  I’ve told you more than I’ve told anyone else, Shaan thought. ‘I refuse to tempt providence by dissecting what we have,’ was all she actually said, then carefully turned the subject. ‘Tell me how the wedding plans are going.’

  It was a brush-off in anyone’s books, and Jemma noted it as such, but was determined to have her final say anyway. ‘Well, I think you’re heading for a mighty fall if you don’t watch out,’ she predicted. But, having merely received one of those annoyingly enigmatic smiles back in return, she allowed the conversation to be turned to the less titillating subject of her own wedding day which was due to take place in a couple of months.

  And maybe Shaan should have listened to that final warning. But as it was she was happy, and when you were happy you didn’t go and spoil it all by thinking unhappy thoughts, did you?

  So she and Rafe continued to enjoy what they seemed to have found in each other, and for the next few weeks everything drifted along beautifully.

  Shaan did not return to work for him. It was her own decision, because she felt it wouldn’t look good for Rate if his new wife still worked in his typing pool while he lorded it—as she teasingly called it—up there on the uppermost floor.

  And she wasn’t a fool; she knew the people she used to work with would not feel comfortable having her around them now that she was the chairman’s wife.

  Funny, really, because she hadn’t suffered the same qualms about continuing working there as Piers new wife. But then, Piers was not the big boss, only a little boss. He had headed the company sales team, which put him in daily contact with the Danvers’ lower echelons, which in turn made him more accessible.

  And Piers liked to be liked, was always quick with the light joke and the easy smile which helped put people at their ease with him.

  Rafe wasn’t the kind of man who cared if he was liked or not. He was the man at the top who everyone else looked up to. The big decision man. The man who could hire and fire the rest, promote their careers or ruin them if he felt so inclined.

  And never in a million years could Shaan see Rafe strolling down to his own typing pool to blithely plonk himself on the corner of her desk for a light chat the way Piers had used to do without anyone else so much as batting an eyelid.

  In other words, Rafe was a man to be in awe of—not to be comfortable with. So it therefore followed that no one was going to feel comfortable with Shaan working with them any more, knowing that she would be listening in on all their conversations, hearing their gripes and groans and perhaps reporting them to Rafe.

  Like a spy in their midst.

  And even though Shaan knew she wouldn’t dream of telling tales on any of them she in turn would feel like a spy.

  Nor did she fancy having to face the kind of curious speculation that must be running rife around the building about the bizarre events leading up to her marriage. So, in the end, the decision not to go back to work there was easy. And the fact that Rafe didn’t try to change her mind had to mean that he, too, didn’t fancy the idea of having his wife working for him any more.

  But neither was she prepared to sit in his house like some pampered doll, with nothing more to do than fill her days making herself desirable for him when he got in from work each night. So she joined up with a secretarial temping agency and, once she got used to moving around from place to place like a transient, found she rather enjoyed it.

  She enjoyed the fact that it gave her a bit of anonymity, because she was never at one place long enough for anyone to grow curious enough to start asking her questions about her personal life, and therefore in
evitably put two and two together with the Danvers name and the sensational headlines which had appeared in the tabloids several weeks earlier.

  And, to top all of that, it also gave her an interest and a sense of independence—and something to talk about in the evening with this passionate man she had married which didn’t revolve around bed and sex.

  Bed and sex—the only two things they really had in common, if she’d only had the sense to take the foolish blinkers from her eyes. But she didn’t, so everything jogged along perfectly for those few more blissful weeks. And if Jemma’s caution did pop into her head once or twice, to try to warn her that this extended honeymoon could not go on for ever, she ignored it. Ignored, too, what the warm glow of pleasure she experienced every time Rafe walked into the room was trying to tell her.

  Because to face it meant threatening the precarious little boat of contentment she was happily sailing in.

  So fate did it for her. Fate, cruel fate, took the decision to reach out and rip the blinkers from her foolish eyes. And the fact that it happened in the middle of a busy London street was a further cruelty, because it left her so open and publicly exposed to what she was being forced to see.

  Rafe was supposed to be away—a three-day business trip to the States, he had told her. It was the first time they had been separated since the day they had married, and Shaan missed him beside her in their bed every night—missed him dreadfully.

  He rang her, though. Every night before she went to bed he would call to say goodnight, his voice warm and tender, huskily sincere when he said how much he was missing her. In fact, his whole manner towards her had become warm and tender over the last few weeks, the passion tempered to something which verged almost on loving.

  Just another illusion fate decided to shatter.

  So it was perhaps fortunate that Jemma was there to catch Shaan when she finally saw the full depths of her own delusions.

  It was Wednesday, and she and Jemma were on their way to their regular Wednesday lunch together at their usual wine bar. Rafe was due back tonight, and Shaan was lost in her own thoughts as they walked along, thinking of his return and all the plans she had made to surprise him when he got home. It was Mrs Clough’s day off, so she was planning to a cook a very special dinner for them herself, and she had bought a new dress that was hardly more than a couple of scraps of chocolate-brown silk, the fabric so fine that it didn’t allow anything else to be worn beneath it.

  In short, she planned to seduce him from the moment he walked in through the door. Her eyes glowed with a darkly luminous anticipation for the moment as she walked down that busy London street, hardly hearing a word Jemma was saying to her about table arrangements and flowers and all the other wedding details which were filling her best friend’s mind.

  Then she saw them coming out of a hotel entrance on the other side of the street and everything—everything living inside her—slammed to a stark, shuddering stop.

  It was Rafe with Madeleine.

  They paused on the hotel steps. He turned towards her at the same moment that she turned towards him—a tiny creature who had to tilt her golden head right back so she could gaze into his lean dark face.

  Her hands came up, touching his lapels as she murmured something urgent to him that made him bring his own hands up to cover hers while he made some equally urgent reply.

  The golden head shook as she murmured something else, and, on a sigh that seemed to rasp from the very depth of his soul, he muttered something tightly—then lowered his dark head to kiss her.

  ‘No,’ Shaan whispered, still trying for denial.

  Yes, insisted fate. This is it. Truth time. Look at it.

  Look at it.

  And to make sure that she did the veil of self-delusion was ripped cleanly from her eyes so that she was seeing—seeing it all—in a wild, wretched kaleidoscope of cruel images. All of them revolving around Rafe.

  Rafe, the man she’d married. Rafe, the man she had given herself to night after night after night. Rafe, the man she had come to trust and believe in.

  The man she had fallen madly, blindly—stupidly—in love with while he still loved Madeleine. Had never stopped loving Madeleine.

  She must have staggered, though she wasn’t aware of it, but something alerted Jemma. ‘Shaan?’ she questioned sharply. ‘What the hell—?’ Then, ‘My God,’ she gasped out rashly. ‘Isn’t that Rafe over there with that woman…?’

  Shaan heard no more, because she was suddenly running—running madly, blindly, in an effort to get away before she fell apart inside.

  ‘Shaan!’

  She ignored Jemma’s sharp call of alarm, ignored the muttered complaints from people she bumped into, ignored everything as she ran, swerving around comers and crossing busy roads without looking, running away from herself as much as she was running away from Rafe.

  ‘Shaan!’ It was Jemma’s hand closing around her arm and yanking fiercely on it that stopped her from running out beneath the wheels of a car. ‘For goodness’ sake!’ she gasped in shaken fury. ‘What are you trying to do—kill yourself?’

  ‘I have to—get away,’ Shaan panted, beginning to shake—shake violently.

  ‘You have to calm down,’ Jemma countered sternly. And, keeping a firm hold on Shaan’s arm, she glanced impatiently around her. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘We’re only a step away from the wine bar. Let’s go and get you a stiff drink, then you can tell me what the hell all of this is about…’

  Grimly she guided Shaan along the street and in through the wine bar doors. ‘Now,’ she said once she had secured them a table over in the comer of the room and set a stiff brandy in front of Shaan. ‘Who was that woman? Did you know her?’

  ‘That was M-Madeleine,’ Shaan whispered shakily.

  ‘You mean the same Madeleine Piers married?’ Jemma said frowningly. ‘But what’s so wrong with that? She is Rafe’s sister-in-law, after all.’

  ‘He’s in love with her. He always has been.’ Always will be, she added silently, and closed her eyes as she began to shake again, so badly that Jemma picked up the brandy glass and put it to her lips.

  ‘Drink,’ she commanded. ‘You need it. Drink.’

  Almost desperately, Shaan drank, felt the burning vapours permeate through her system, and at last began to get a hold on herself. The terrible shaking slowed and the colour in her face returned, easing into something a little less corpse-like.

  ‘Now explain what you mean,’ Jemma insisted grimly after watching all of this happen.

  Explain. Shaan’s long lashes fluttered open to reveal dark brown irises gone utterly bottomless with a shock and horror Rafe would have instantly recognised if he had been there to see it happen.

  But as it was Rafe was with Madeleine.

  ‘Rafe is in love with M-Madeleine,’ Shaan repeated threadily. ‘I th-think they even got together for a time,’ she added. ‘Until M-Madeleine became confused as to which brother sh-she really loved and ended up running away f-from both of them to her mother in the States.’

  ‘And how do you know all of this?’

  ‘Rafe told me.’ And, if it was possible, her eyes went even blacker. ‘I—overheard s-something he said on the telephone and—and faced him with it.’ She swallowed thickly. ‘So he told m-me…’

  Jemma stared at her, shocked—yet not shocked, because she had always suspected that there was some hidden reason why Rafe Danvers had taken his brother’s place.

  But because he loved his brother’s wife?

  ‘And you’ve stayed with him?’ she muttered as anger began to burn up inside her. ‘After finding this out?’

  ‘I’d just lost Piers,’ Shaan answered lamely. ‘And Rafe had lost M-Madeleine.’ She couldn’t even say the other woman’s name without stumbling sickeningly over it. ‘As he said, why not console each other…?’

  ‘Oh, very cute,’ Jemma angrily derided. ‘The scheming rotter!’ Her eyes began to flash. ‘Didn’t he bother to consider what an arrangement like that
was likely to do to you after what you had just gone through with Piers?’

  ‘We both went through it,’ Shaan corrected. ‘And h-he’s been very good to me,’ she added defensively—though why she was defending him after what she had seen today, she didn’t know or understand. ‘I can’t believe he would do anything to deliberately h-hurt me.’

  ‘So why are you sitting here right now—hurting so badly you can barely cope?’ Jemma mocked all of that tightly.

  ‘Don’t…’ Shaan whispered, lowering her dark head.

  ‘Don’t?’ Jemma repeated. ‘I’d like to throttle the devious life out of him, the underhand bastard.’

  ‘He can’t help loving her, Jemma,’ Shaan choked out thickly.

  ‘Oh, no?’ She mocked that too. ‘So if Piers happened to walk in here right now, you would feel justified in falling into his arms, would you?’

  No; Shaan shook her bowed head. ‘Not Piers,’ she whispered. But if Rafe should walk in here….

  ‘Oh, no,’ Jemma breathed, beginning to catch on at last. ‘You fool, Shaan,’ she muttered. ‘You damned bloody fool…’

  And fool just about said it, Shaan accepted bleakly. She was a fickle, blind, gullible fool.

  ‘Here.’ The brandy glass appeared in front of Shaan again. ‘Drink some more of this.’

  She was trembling again, she realised as the glass chattered against her teeth.

  ‘So, what are you going to do now?’ Jemma asked her quietly.

  I don’t know, she thought, and closed her eyes again—then wished she hadn’t when she saw Rafe’s expression just before he’d kissed Madeleine.

  It had been pained. It had been racked by an angry, helpless, useless frustration. And it split Shaan’s heart in two, because it had been the look of a man who was angrily aware that his love was unrequited.

  She recognised it because she knew the feeling, and it hurt—hurt like hell.

  Yet what right did she have to be sitting here feeling hurt and betrayed when she’d always known where Rafe’s true feelings lay? It wasn’t Rafe’s fault that she had done the stupid thing and fallen in love with him.