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Daniel was looking fixedly at Rachel. ‘I apologise,’ he said roughly. ‘She’s been told never to ring here.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Of course it bloody matters!’ he barked, and in unison the children turned to stare at him in surprise. He ran an impatient hand through his hair, sighing in an effort to control himself. ‘Sammy—Kate. Play with Michael for a moment while I talk to your mother.’
Without waiting for any arguments, he plucked a complaining Michael out of Rachel’s arms and sat him between Sam’s legs on the floor, gathered together a selection of toys around them, then smiled at all three in what Rachel assumed to be an attempt at reassurance since they were all staring warily at him.
Then he turned and grasped Rachel’s hand, pulling her to her feet and through to his study, only letting go of her when they were safely shut behind the closed door.
‘She’s been told never to call here,’ he repeated tautly. ‘She was told to get the damned cleaner to call me if it was that urgent! But never to do it herself!’
‘As I said, it doesn’t matter.’
‘But it does matter!’ he exploded with rasping ferocity. ‘She hurt you just now—and I was determined that was not going to happen!’
‘Then you should have…’ She bit back the accusing words wanting to tumble from her lips and, with a small shrug, moved jerkily to his desk, finding his scattered papers in sudden need of tidying. ‘How is it that she still works for y
ou?’ she questioned tightly. ‘If you say it’s over.’ It had been a bitter blow that, finding out that Lydia still worked for him.
‘She doesn’t work for me,’ he said tightly. ‘She works for the firm of lawyers I employ,’ he explained at her puzzled look. ‘I had all my business transferred to one of her partners weeks ago.’
She didn’t believe him. She could still see the expression on his face when she had told him Lydia rang. She could still feel the way he had moved her roughly to one side.
She shuddered. ‘Then what is she doing calling here?’ she asked.
Daniel took in a short breath, still struggling, she was sure, with the emotions Lydia’s call caused to erupt. ‘She happened to be the last in their suite of offices when some urgent information came through by fax,’ he explained. ‘It was important enough to necessitate someone informing me as soon as possible. And she was the only person there to do it!’
‘Oh.’ That was all Rachel could think of to say to that. ‘Well, just make sure she never calls here again,’ she added flatly, and in a tone which decidedly closed the subject.
But the uncomfortable silence that followed warned her there was more to come.
She was right. ‘The thing is,’ he began carefully, ‘it means I have to go out again, almost immediately. A legal problem has developed with the Huddersfield takeover and I have to go back to the office to sort it out personally.’
The Harvey take-over, the Huddersfield take-over— what was the difference? ‘Of course you do,’ she agreed, with such acid understanding that it was like a slap in the face. ‘And I have to put the children to bed.’
Pushing past him, she went to leave the room.
But Daniel stopped her. ‘No.’ Grabbing hold of her, he brought her to stand in front of him. ‘I’m going to my own office, Rachel.’ His eyes were a cool, steady, honest grey. ‘Not Lydia’s office. She has already faxed me the information I need—to my own office,’ he emphasised clearly. ‘I won’t see her. I don’t want to see her. We will have the full width of London between us—do you understand?’
Understand? Yes, she understood. He was demanding she trust his word. His steady gaze was insisting she trust his word.
A trust she did not feel she could give him.
Could maybe never give him again.
‘Michael needs me,’ she murmured, and pulled free to leave the room.
That had been Friday. On Monday he was going up to Huddersfield to tie up the loose ends of the deal before the Christmas break. And after an awful weekend, during which they paid a cool kind of courtesy to each other, Rachel could only feel relieved that he was going.
But he reached for her on Sunday night. And, in the middle of their desperate attempts to achieve some level of mutual satisfaction from their shared passion, he broke one of her strictest rules—he spoke to her. He asked her to forgive him. It made her cry out in pained protest at his spoiling what they were managing to share. Her wretchedness curbed his tongue, but when he came into her there was a new urgency about him that verged on the tormented, and afterwards she found herself desperately wanting to comfort him when he just turned and lay with his face pressed into the pillow, yet was unable to because it would feel so much that she was conceding something too important to him.
She only wished she knew what that important thing was! The trouble was, she was beginning to lose sight of what exactly was causing all the dissension between them.
Lydia, she reminded herself. Lydia.
Yet even that name was beginning to lose its ability to wound as deeply as it used to do.
Over the next few days she threw herself into a mad splurge of last-minute preparations for Christmas. She stubbornly ignored her continuing nervous stomach as she became engrossed in bedroom re-organisation until, by the evening Daniel was due home, she was beginning to feel so limp she wondered if giving in and taking to her bed might not be a bad idea.
