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Admittedly that young girl hadn’t realised how complicated and perplexing the object of her devotion was, but she was still the young Marianne inside, only with the benefit of more than two years’ wisdom and maturity as Zeke’s wife. He was hurting badly, he had shown her that in the brief glimpse of himself that morning, and she had to try and get him to open up to her.
It didn’t mean she wouldn’t go through with her plans for the future; she needed to do that for her own sake. Zeke was too consuming a husband, too dominant for her not to have her own interests and career. She needed that to balance their roles. Their marriage could only benefit from it.
Of course this was assuming she still had a marriage. Her mouth twisted wryly and Zeke, who had just slid into the car and started the engine, said quietly, ‘That’s a Mona Lisa smile if ever I saw one. What are you thinking?’
The young Marianne would have told him, and so she did. ‘I was wondering if you have written us off,’ she said baldly.
The car swerved slightly but the male enigma held. ‘I rather thought the boot was on the other foot,’ he said coolly. ‘And they are very nice boots, by the way. You weren’t wearing them this morning, were you?’
Very neatly done, she thought irritably. He had sidestepped the issue with a sugar-coated pill to make her sweet. ‘No.’ She smiled brightly. ‘I bought them to impress you, if you must know. Along with the new coat.’
This time he couldn’t hide his surprise, the grey gaze flashing over her face for a moment before he said, ‘They have. Impressed me, I mean.’
‘Good.’ She returned to the attack. ‘So, have you decided we’re finished, Zeke?’
There was a heavy silence for a moment, and then he said, his voice very tight, ‘It’s not as easy as that, and you know it, Marianne. The bottom line is that being married to me is destroying you, and I see that now.’
‘And this morning, when we made love?’ she asked, with an evenness that was pure will-power as her heart thumped so hard against her ribcage she was sure it must be rocking the car. ‘Because that’s what we did, Zeke. We made love. We didn’t copulate like a pair of animals or a one-night stand. We made love to each other.’
‘That doesn’t alter the way things are,’ he said coldly.
But she had caught the hidden note of pain in his voice and it gave her the courage to say, ‘No, it doesn’t; I know that. But things don’t have to be that way, do they? You said, when you first arrived at the bedsit this morning, that you loved me. Do you? Do you love me?’
‘Of course I love you.’
‘There’s no “of course” about it,’ she said with a braveness she was far from feeling. ‘People fall out of love all the time, we both know that, and sometimes it’s said as a prelude to letting someone down gently—’
‘Hell, Marianne, what do you want from me?’ It was a harsh growl, and then, as he braked violently to avoid running into the car in front of them, he said grimly, ‘Can’t this wait until we’re having lunch?’
‘No, because you’ll shut down again then and I won’t even have a snarl from you,’ she shot back angrily.
The traffic was stationary, and as the grey eyes swept across her hot face she saw reluctant amusement in the dark depths. ‘Is that what I do? Snarl?’ he murmured softly.
And she wasn’t going to be charmed away from the main thrust of what she wanted to say either. It had happened too many times in the past and enough was enough. ‘Occasionally,’ she said evenly. ‘If all else fails.’
‘I’m surprised you’ve stayed with me two years, considering your low opinion of me.’ He said it lightly, but there was a definite edge there.
‘Perhaps it’s because I love you,’ she said quietly.
‘History is littered with people who loved each other and ended up in a hell of their own making.’ He met her eyes and held up a hand as she opened her mouth to protest. ‘No, you wanted me to talk so I’ll try and tell you how I feel, Marianne.’
The lights changed, and as the BMW purred forward he said tensely, the words seemingly wrenched out of him, ‘I’m not making excuses, so get that straight from the start, but I owe it to you to tell you how it is; I see that now. It was self-indulgent to marry you. Quite how self-indulgent I didn’t realise at the time.’
She sat quite still, her hands clasped together and her eyes staring ahead as she willed herself to listen quietly and show no emotion.
‘I’d had other women before you, Marianne, but you know that,’ he said grimly. ‘They were on the whole confident, perhaps even aggressive, career women: women who knew exactly what they wanted out of life and what they were aiming for, who wanted their personal lives to be controlled and uncluttered. They didn’t expect or want the emotional involvement that comes with commitment, but none of them were promiscuous, not even Liliana.’
She inwardly flinched at the name but remained absolutely still outwardly, her face expressionless.
‘All they required, as did I, was the assurance that for as long as the affair continued it would be monogamous, with both parties being totally honest.’
‘It sounds very cold-blooded,’ she said quietly, keeping all trace of censure out of her voice.
‘It was.’ He nodded sharply. ‘I liked it that way. You see, Marianne, the one thing I brought out of my childhood and youth was autonomy. For the fir
st five years after my mother had placed me into care she visited now and again, and at that stage she refused to consider letting me go for adoption. She lived a pretty wild lifestyle by all accounts, and in a strange sort of way I think I was her security blanket.’ His mouth twisted cynically.
‘Then she met a guy, a rich guy, who didn’t want to have someone else’s kid in the background, and when he proposed marriage I never saw her again. She signed the papers for adoption then, but I was a disturbed little boy, difficult. I—’ He paused, and then bit out tightly, as though he resented having to say the words, ‘I missed her.’
