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‘No, he’s at work. But if he were here—’
‘But he isn’t,’ Nick cut her off. His earlier sullenness had been replaced by the slick, facile falsity of what Nick considered to be charm and what she knew to be a shallow pretence of it.
‘You know, Lucy, Andrew’s right—we did rush into divorcing without giving our marriage a proper chance. I admit that I was a bit thoughtless, and selfish…’
Had Andrew Walker made him repeat those words until he had them off pat? Lucy wondered cynically. They certainly didn’t ring true, and neither did they accord with the look of patronising conceit she could see in Nick’s eyes as he looked at her.
‘I’m not surprised you regret marrying Carring. I suppose when you compare him to me, you’re bound to find him wanting—especially in bed.’ He smirked. ‘Bed is my speciality, after all—remember?’
Lucy longed to tell him that all she remembered of his so-called speciality was how barren and empty it had been, in every single way, but of course she could not do so.
‘You were my first lover,’ she told him quietly instead.
‘Yeah, and I guess you took it for granted that all men would be as good as me—right? Silly little Lucy.’ He shook his head mock-playfully. ‘But never mind. Pretty soon you and I can start making up for lost time. In fact…’ He looked towards the stairs. ‘Why don’t we start right now, eh? Why don’t I take you upstairs and give you a very special Christmas present?’
Lucy wanted to scream at him to leave before she was physically sick. But if she caused him to think that she loved Marcus then she would be putting Marcus in very great danger—and giving Andrew Walker something to blackmail her with.
‘Not here,’ she demurred, trying to look regretful. ‘Perhaps if I came to you…’ Never in a thousand years.
‘Came to me? How about I make you come for me, Lucy? And it wouldn’t take long, would it? I can see in your eyes how much you want me. Come on…’
Nick was reaching for her hand and pulling her towards him. She could smell the too-strong scent of his cologne, overpoweringly unpleasant after the familiarly of Marcus’s cool freshness.
‘Nick—no! I was just on my way out…to meet my mother,’ she fibbed.
‘Andrew told me to give you a message from him,’ he told her, abruptly releasing her. ‘You told him that you planned to leave Carring, but you’re still living here with him.’
‘I can’t just walk out,’ Lucy protested.
‘No…’ Nick gave a speculative look around the hallway. ‘I dare say you want to make sure you get a nice fat slice of his millions before you leave, and I don’t blame you for that.’
‘Yes. That’s…that’s exactly what I’m planning to do,’ Lucy agreed untruthfully. ‘And I can’t meet up with Andrew at the moment, Nick. Marcus might get suspicious. In fact he’s already suspicious because I won’t let him become a partner in Preêt a Party.’
‘Well, Andrew’s getting very impatient—and so are the men he represents. Andrew said to tell you that if you don’t get rid of Marcus voluntarily, then he’s going to have to make arrangements to do it for you. Oh, and he said to tell you not to even think about telling Carring what’s happening, because that will be as good as signing his death warrant.’
Lucy had no idea how long it was since Nick had left. And she didn’t know either that her body was cramped and stiff from sitting on the stairs, her arms locked tightly around her knees as though she were trying to stanch a wound that would not stop bleeding. She did know—vaguely—that it must have gone dark outside, because the hallway was in darkness.
Dissociated thoughts and images jumbled together inside her head. The first night she and Marcus had been to bed together; the fact that this weekend they had planned to go and look for a Christmas tree—Lucy wanted a real one and, although he had grimaced, Marcus had given in and promised to take her out to get one. The espresso machine he had bought her—the thrill it had given her the first time she had woken up beside him here in this house, as his wife; the pleasure it gave her just to look at him and watch him and the pain it gave her too, as she stored every second of time she had with him with the greed that only the deprived and starving knew.
Soon now all that would be over. It had to be. Otherwise…
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘WHAT!’
‘You heard me, Marcus,’ Lucy repeated shakily. ‘I want a divorce.’
She could see how shocked he was, how unbelieving and how white-faced with anger, even in the soft lighting of their bedroom.
‘We’ve only been married a month.’
He couldn’t believe the intensity of the pain ripping him apart.
‘I know. I’ve counted every day of it. Every hour,’ Lucy told him truthfully. ‘It isn’t working, Marcus. And I won’t—I can’t—stay in a marriage that doesn’t make me happy. I’ll find somewhere to live, and then we can start divorce proceedings…’
‘No!’
Lucy looked up at him.
‘I warned you when we married that I was making a lifetime commitment to you, Lucy, and that I expected the same commitment back from you. There won’t be any divorce,’ Marcus told her furiously.
He wasn’t going to let her go. Not ever. She was his and he loved her.
He loved her? He loved Lucy?
But that wasn’t possible. He had sworn years ago that he was not going to allow himself to fall in love. It was as though there was a vulnerable fault inside him, similar to those responsible for causing earthquakes, and his emotions—those emotions he had buried and denied and stubbornly refused to acknowledge could exist—were causing so much pressure within him that they simply could not be controlled.
Pain, grief, jealousy, and a determination never to let her go exploded inside him with a subterranean force that sent a mighty surge of love and need roaring through him, crashing through every barrier he had erected against them.
He loved Lucy!
His passionate refusal caused Lucy to waver between wild hope and joy—and the stark, horrifying reality of what his refusal meant. She hadn’t expected this kind of reaction from him. She had expected him to tell her to pack her things and leave straight away.
‘All right, don’t divorce me, then,’ she told him, making herself scowl and shrug, and keeping her voice cold and sharp. ‘But you can’t stop me leaving you, Marcus, and that is exactly what I intend to do. So far as I am concerned, our marriage is over.’
Marcus struggled to suppress an unfamiliar desire to break something—because something inside him was breaking. His heart?
He had known ever since they had come back from honeymoon that Lucy wasn’t happy, and he had believed he knew why. But he had not known then what his own feelings were. He did now! Why should he let Blayne take her from him and ruin her life a second time? She was so much better off with him—even if she was too besotted with her ex-husband to see that herself. One day she would thank him for what he was doing; one day she would come to realise, as he saw with such blinding clarity himself now, that they were meant for one another. He wanted to reason with her, to plead with her, but the unfamiliarity of dealing with such intense emotions was too much for him. He could feel jealousy, burning too high and too hot. It burst out o
f him in a slew of bitter, angry words as he warned her savagely:
‘Don’t think I don’t know what all this is about, Lucy. Because I do. I know exactly what’s been going on behind my back.’
Marcus knew? Her heart was hammering. He couldn’t, could he?
‘It’s Blayne, isn’t it?’
He heard her give a small, betraying gasp of shocked admission.
‘I saw you with him at the airport.’
Marcus had seen that? And he thought…
‘That was a coincidence!’
What else could she say? Lucy wondered, as she struggled to grasp what Marcus was saying to her. Initially she had thought he meant he knew about Prê a Party and Andrew Walker, but now she realised that Marcus thought she wanted to end their marriage because she was still in love with Nick. And wasn’t it better that he should continue to think that, rather than have him become suspicious and start to ask questions she could not answer?
‘A very unhappy coincidence—as I believe your common sense would tell you if only you would let it,’ Marcus was continuing bitterly. ‘Surely you can’t have forgotten what he did to you?’
‘It’s different now,’ Lucy told him. How true that was. ‘He’s changed.’ And how untrue that.
‘He’s changed? But have you, Lucy? Are you sure you really know what you want? After all, in my bed you wanted me…’
‘No!’
Yes. Yes…
‘I thought I did, but I didn’t. Not really.’
Yes, really—now and for ever. Only you and always you, Marcus. This is killing me, and I can’t bear it. I love you so much.
‘You’re lying, and what’s more I intend to prove it to you.’
Marcus could hardly believe what he was saying and doing. He was a man out of control, driven mad by love.
He had reached for Lucy before she could stop him, dragging her against his body whilst his mouth took and then savaged hers in a kiss of furious male anger.
Downstairs, the Christmas tree they had bought at the weekend, and which Lucy had spent all day yesterday dressing, shimmered in the window, its lights twinkling softly with promise and hope. Upstairs, in the bedroom above it, there was no promise and no hope. Only a man and a woman locked together in an embrace devoid of both, and the savagery of Marcus’s anger.
