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‘So you’re telling me you love me but you don’t trust me or want to remain married to me?’ he said in a low, tight voice. ‘Then forgive me but your idea of love stinks. Don’t you think I get jealous too? That I’ve been burnt up with
it since you left, wondering if some other guy would sweet-talk you into believing you’d be better off with him while you’re in such a vulnerable state? Times I wanted to come and get you, drag you back by force if necessary, but I didn’t because I genuinely believed you needed time to come to terms with this stuff. I was foolish enough to trust in you, in your love for me, all the promises and the vows we made on the day we married. And now you’re telling me you want to throw away what we had, what we still have, because you’re too damn cowardly to come out of the past and live in the present?’
He was breathing hard, his eyes angry and hostile. Miriam felt paralysed by the force of his rage. She tried to think of something to say and failed utterly. She was a coward, she thought wretchedly. And his opinion of her couldn’t be lower than the one she had of herself. But it didn’t change her mind. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again, weakly.
‘No you’re not.’ His words were emphasised by the silence that followed, a silence that pressed on the nerve-endings until it was a force in itself, dark and angry. After some long moments he ground out, ‘If you were sorry that would be something to work with but you’re so damn sure you’re right about all this. You’re content to retreat into yourself and lock the door in your mind labelled love and throw away the key, that’s it at bottom. You’ve always faintly despised your mother for loving your father the way she did, but I tell you this. If you had half her backbone and courage you’d be doing all right.’
‘How dare you?’ Suddenly the weakness was gone and she was furiously, blazingly angry. ‘I have never despised my mother, not for one second. Just because I didn’t agree with her wasting years of her life waiting for a man who wasn’t worthy to lick her boots, it didn’t mean I thought any the less of her.’
‘If you didn’t despise her it frightened you though, didn’t it?’ he said more quietly. ‘Terrified you. Tied you up in knots.’
His insight was more unnerving than his rage. Bracing herself, she said tightly, ‘Haven’t you a plane to catch?’
‘That’s it? Don’t tell me, you aren’t prepared to discuss this any further, right? Because I’m getting close, too close.’
She went for total honesty. ‘Yes, you are. And I can’t handle that, OK? More than that, I don’t want to handle it. I should never have married you, Jay. I’m not cut out for marriage. I see that now.’
‘Rubbish.’ Eyes that had turned as hard as amber held hers. ‘Like you’ve pointed out so distinctly, I come into contact with a lot of women and you’re more suited to be a wife and mother than all of them. Look at this afternoon—can you tell me in all truthfulness it wasn’t heaven on earth? We didn’t have sex, Miriam. We made love. There’s a hell of a difference.’
She steeled herself to remain strong. ‘This afternoon was—was goodbye.’
‘You don’t mean that.’
She raised her head and no one could have mistaken the determination in her voice. ‘Yes, I do,’ she said.
The moment stretched and lengthened. ‘Goodbye?’ he said softly. ‘You’re sure about that?’
He reached out and stroked a wisp of hair from her face, his fingers lingering on the silky skin of her neck. Miriam fought the unbidden visceral response to his touch with all her might. Somehow she managed to keep the trembling out of her voice as she said, ‘Yes, I’m sure. When you come back from Germany I don’t think we should see each other. There—there’s no point. You must see that? It’s just prolonging the agony.’
‘The arrangement was till Christmas.’ The hard, handsome face was suddenly imperturbable and she couldn’t tell what he was thinking. ‘Or is that another promise you’re going to break?’
‘Don’t—don’t be like this.’
‘I rather think that’s my line.’ He reached down and took the coffee she’d prepared for him, swilling it down in a couple of long gulps before straightening. ‘There’ll be a taxi waiting downstairs whenever you’re ready to leave, but don’t rush,’ he said evenly, his tone almost completely devoid of expression. ‘Goodbye, Miriam.’
His mouth skimmed hers in the lightest of kisses and then he turned before she could speak or react, walking to the door of the suite and opening it.
‘Jay?’
Her voice caught him on the threshold and he turned, looking straight into her drowning eyes as he drawled, ‘Yes?’
‘If you love me like you say you do then please let this be goodbye right now. What’s the point in delaying things a couple of weeks?’ she said unsteadily. ‘I need things to be like they were before we saw each other again.’
She saw him draw a deep breath. ‘Then you’re crying for the moon,’ he said simply.
And shut the door.
CHAPTER NINE
WHEN Miriam left the hotel thirty minutes later the snow which had looked so Christmassy and pretty when she’d been warmly wrapped in Jay’s arms in the suite was positively vicious in the wind, stinging her cheeks and whitening her coat before she reached the taxi parked a few yards away.
‘We’re in for a packet,’ the taxi driver remarked cheerfully as she climbed into the back of the cab. ‘Can’t see much evidence of global warming in this lot, can you? Where to, love?’
After giving him the address, Miriam settled back in her seat and prayed he wouldn’t be the chatty sort. The thought of having to make conversation horrified her. As it was the atrocious weather conditions kept him occupied and she was left to her own thoughts, a dubious blessing in the circumstances.
She had made an awful mistake in sleeping with Jay again. How could she have been so foolish? It hadn’t been fair on him, sending mixed messages and confusing the issue, and as for her…She bit her lip, trying hard not to cry as she gazed out of the window at the solid sheet of whirling snow. How could she get through the rest of her life without him?
But she would. She blinked the tears away, wishing she were home in her little bedsit with the door locked so she could give way to the storm within. She had been incredibly stupid today to give in to the desire to be close to him one last time but it was done now and she couldn’t undo it. She just had to pick herself up and brush herself down and go on from here. Easy—in theory. In practice it might be a whole lot more difficult.
