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‘Claire …’ His voice was tight with anger; and rough with something else; a kind of raw, aching pain that caught at her heart strings and made her move towards him with the jerky, mechanical gait of a doll, without being aware that she had moved, only knowing that his pain was something she must soothe.
She reached him and wondered at the expression in his eyes, and while she was assimilating it, he reached for her with a tortured, smothered sound, dragging her into his arms, and imprisoning her against his body, so that she felt its heat and its maleness as his mouth moved hotly over her face, communicating a blind, frantic urgency that seemed to echo the fierce throb of her flesh.
No one had ever held her like this before, ever kissed her like this before, and it was like being cast adrift in an alien sea which swelled and roared as it threatened to drown her. There was only Jay to cling to for safety, her nails biting into his skin, as she trembled and shook with a kaleidoscope of new sensations.
Jay’s mouth covered hers, hot with urgency. Her eyes widened in shock and she felt him check, and then his hand was in her hair, his fingers spreading against her scalp, his tongue pressing against the closed line of her mouth, until with a suppressed sound of frustration he nipped sharply at her bottom lip.
Her sharp cry of pain surprised them both. Claire almost felt him do a double-take as the glittering heat died out of his eyes and tension invaded his body.
His face was still flushed, but this time with anger.
‘Hell, Claire, I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.’ He released her as carefully as though she was made of precious crystal, and then stepped back from her.
He turned round looking for her robe, and she heard him say in a muffled voice, ‘For a moment I forgot that …’
‘That I wasn’t Susie?’ She felt as though her blood had turned to ice. No, not ice—if she was frozen she wouldn’t be feeling this appalling, unendurable pain. In one brief, illuminating moment she had known all that Jay could have given her if he loved her, but he didn’t love her. She was merely his wife. His second wife.
She took her robe from him and pulled it on, turning her back on him so that he wouldn’t see the agony in her eyes.
‘I’ll dispose of the spider and then I’ll leave you to get dressed. We’re all down by the pool.’
It took her almost an hour to get ready to face everyone. She knew that from now on whenever she looked at her naked body she would be imagining Jay’s hands on it, Jay’s mouth. She shuddered deeply, aware for the first time in her life of the depth and intensity of her own feelings.
The terror of coming face to face with that horrendous spider—she had always feared and loathed them—seemed to have broken loose the chains that had held her in captivity to her sexual fears. She couldn’t really explain to herself why it was one minute she loathed anything to do with sex and the next she ached for Jay to be her lover—or had it really happened as quickly as that? Hadn’t she slowly been drifting towards this for quite some time, since the start of their marriage, in fact, like a leaf borne unknowingly towards the brink of a weir it didn’t know existed?
She couldn’t stay here all day, she reminded herself. Sooner or later she would have to face Jay.
‘I LIKED IT VERY MUCH in Dallas, Mummy, but I’m glad we’re going home now, are you?’
They were circling Heathrow, and soon their jet would land. Absently responding to Heather’s question, Claire glanced at Jay. He was sitting on the opposite side of the aisle, looking out of the window. Since that dreadful episode in their room, he seemed to have withdrawn from her almost completely. He was so cold towards her, so meticulously polite, chilly and indifferent, that she ached sometimes to elicit some response from him, even if that response was only anger.
She had been glad that the Goldbergs had organised so many social events for them, otherwise she didn’t know how she would have got through the visit. It had been torture sharing that enormous bed with Jay each night, knowing he was there so close to her, and yet knowing that he did not want her.
Claire had learned a lot about herself in the last few days. She had learned, for instance, that she was a woman who liked to touch. She ached to touch Jay. To run her fingertips over his body, to find out if that dark tangle of body hair felt as silky as it looked. She found herself looking at his mouth sometimes, and wishing she could feel its hard warmth against her own, against … against all of her, she admitted, shuddering faintly as she felt the molten heat run through her body.
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She had learned something else. She had learned that she was a masochist; she must be, otherwise she would not torture herself with these haunting images of what could never be. Jay did not even desire her, never mind love her, she knew that—and she also knew that what had happened in the past had made it impossible for her to give herself to a man without mutual love. She wanted Jay’s love; she wanted it emotionally, mentally and physically. She wanted the moon. She looked down at Heather who was sitting next to her, and saw trusting eyes looking back at her from the little round face. A wave of love cramped through her: Jay’s child. How she would love to give Jay another child. She bent down and gently kissed Heather’s dark head. The little girl hugged her back in wordless communication.
‘Why are you looking so sad, Mummy?’
Trust sharp-eyed Lucy to notice!
‘Oh, I’m not sad,’ she lied, ‘I’m just thinking.’
‘We’ll have to go back to school next week, won’t we?’ Lucy chattered on, and Claire forced herself to listen, glad of the diversion and yet resenting the way Lucy turned confidingly to Jay, confident of his interest and his care. She was actually jealous of her own child! Bitterness rose in her throat and she had to look away.
The last thing she had expected when she married Jay was that she would fall in love with him. Fate had played a very cruel trick on her indeed.
CHAPTER TEN
‘CLAIRE, AFTER DINNER tonight, when the children are in bed, I’d like to talk to you.’
Over the last two weeks she had barely seen Jay. Ever since their return from Dallas, there had been a kind of armed and guarded tension between them, an atmosphere unlike anything she had experienced before, but which set her nerves on edge so much that she was steadily losing weight.
Jay didn’t look too good either, she noticed, turning to look at him. She had avoided doing that recently; it hurt too much. Now she saw that there were deep grooves of tiredness carved along his face, and that his tan had faded, leaving him looking almost sallow. Of course he had been working hard—and late almost every night. They were busy, but she also knew that he stayed away because he didn’t want to come home.
What had happened to the comfortable, pleasant relationship they had been building up before they went to Dallas? Her love had happened to it, that was what. She had fallen in love with him, and now she was unable to let herself relax with him because she was mortally afraid of what she might betray.
