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They weren’t talking about coffee. Kim walked past him into the hall as he waved her over the threshold of the house, and again she had the feeling that she was the guest and Lucas the host. It rankled but she welcomed the shot of adrenalin; she would take any Dutch courage she could get to see her through the next little while.
Kim continued through to the kitchen and she saw immediately that Lucas had restored the place to its usual gleaming brightness. The only hint of their earlier breakfast was the faint smell of bacon.
‘You shouldn’t have cleared up,’ she said stiffly. ‘There was no need.’
He ignored the comment as though she hadn’t spoken, following her into the limited space and leaning against the wall, his hands thrust deep into his trouser pockets and his eyes broodingly intent.
He had shaved whilst she’d been gone. Kim found her gaze drawn to the hard square jaw and her heart gave a little kick. And showered too by the look of his still-damp hair.
Kim found she was moving jerkily as she poured the two cups of coffee; the liquid steel gaze was far too intense to be comfortable. She swallowed hard as she handed Lucas his coffee, keeping her gaze fixed on a spot over his left shoulder.
‘Thanks.’ He straightened as he took the cup and she felt her senses respond with humiliating swiftness. ‘So…’ He made no effort to stand aside and unless she literally barged past him she was effectively trapped in her little part of the kitchen. ‘I told you I loved you and you reacted by telling me to get the hell out. Care to explain why?’ he asked with a cool lack of expression.
‘Would you listen if I said no, I wouldn’t?’ Kim responded painfully. ‘No.’
‘I thought not.’
Where could she start? She took a hefty gulp of the scalding hot coffee and then winced as it burnt her throat, her eyes smarting. ‘Do you want me to resign?’ she asked quietly, knowing she was prevaricating. ‘No, Kim, I do not want you to resign,’ Lucas said with formidable control. ‘I want you to talk to me.’
He was asking for the hardest thing in the world, as though it was as easy as falling off a log. She stared at him, her face tight with tension, and then looked down into the rich warmth of the fragrant coffee as she said very softly, ‘It’s a long story and it won’t change anything.’
‘I’ll be the judge of that.’
She looked up at him then, searching her mind for an escape route, but there wasn’t one. She had known all along there wouldn’t be. He had made up his mind he wanted the ‘t’s crossed and the ‘i’s dotted and, Lucas being Lucas, that was exactly what he would get. Never mind about her pain, her humiliation, her excruciating shame…
She took a deep breath and began talking. It wasn’t so bad at first; she began with the agony of her aunt dying and the way she had been whisked into care, detailing the fight to rise above the loneliness and isolation she had felt in a steady quiet voice. And then she paused, her voice very low as she said, ‘And then I went to university and met Graham.’
‘Did you love him?’ Lucas asked softly.
‘I thought I did.’ She smiled bitterly. ‘It was so amazing to have someone need me so badly, to want to be with me every minute, to love me so much. I’d never had that before and it quite literally bowled me off my feet. Graham bowled me off my feet. And then we got married.’ She stopped abruptly, feeling horribly trapped and moving restlessly in the tiny space. ‘Can we go through to the sitting room?’
‘Sure.’ He gently touched her cheek with one large hand before standing aside to let her pass. His fingers were cool, steady, and the tingling sensation in her flesh made her suddenly short of breath. It made her scurry through to the sitting room with more haste than dignity, and as she turned to face him again he raised his eyebrows at her.
‘I wasn’t going to ravish you on the kitchen floor.’
‘I know that.’
‘You don’t lie very well, Kim,’ said Lucas matter-of-factly. ‘Continue with the story. You’re now married.’
It sounded simple when it was said like that.
‘Graham didn’t love me,’ Kim said mechanically, forcing herself to go into automatic to get through the next minutes. ‘I don’t actually think he was capable of the emotion. He’d put on a good show at university and we always seemed to be with a load of people there, the life was so gregarious. His drinking didn’t stand out there, either; everyone in Graham’s set drank too much.’
Lucas nodded. ‘I too was young once,’ he said drily.
‘His parents financed a little business for him and he was pleased with that at first, acting the big I am among his friends and cronies. But the drinking was getting worse. I tried to help him but he’d turn everything round on me, saying he had to drink because I was a useless wife, hopeless in bed, that sort of thing.’
She had tried to continue in the flat even tone but the pain of Graham’s rejection, the incredibly cruel things he had used to throw at her, was still a raw wound.
‘We’d been married eighteen months when he suggested…’ Kim sat down on one of the easy chairs, her head lowered and her hair covering her face like a veil. She had felt too weary that morning to fiddle with it before taking Melody to school, but she was glad now of the slight protection it gave from those piercing eyes.
‘What did he suggest, Kim?’ Lucas said tensely.
‘He asked…he wanted me to sleep with one of his prospective clients,’ Kim said numbly. ‘He’d been furious when I got pregnant with Melody so quickly after we’d got married, and when I wouldn’t have an abortion like he wanted he blamed that—the added responsibility of a family—on the business failing. He said I owed him.’
Lucas swore softly but the sound was none the less ugly for its quietness. He knew this slimeball’s type; unfortunately there were several spawned in each generation. Men without conscience, men who would use vulnerability and gentleness in another person to bring them under their domination. Kim had been a sitting target for him with her background, and with her looks he must have thought he’d won the jackpot.
‘Melody was five months old,’ Kim continued quietly, ‘and right up to that point I’d tried to convince myself that I could turn the marriage around, for our child’s sake if nothing else. I’d done everything I could to make him love me, tried to please him in every way I knew how.’ She stopped again, the memory of her abasement from those days horribly vivid. How often, in the weeks and months following Graham’s vile request, had she told herself she must have been mad, insane, not to see what he was really like? But she hadn’t. She just hadn’t.
