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She reacted instinctively to the imperative summons, sliding awkwardly off the bed, picking up the robe on the chair and hurriedly pulling it on as she rushed downstairs.
Because of her headache she had forgotten to put the door on the safety chain, and now, as she opened it, it swung back so that the man standing outside frowned a little before stepping into the hall.
Lacey noted his brief frown with a tiny detached corner of her brain, the only part left free from the numbing, paralysing shock of seeing her ex-husband standing there.
‘Lewis!’ she exclaimed weakly.
His presence, coming so totally unexpectedly hard on the heels of her erotic dream memories, was too much for her brain to cope logically with.
As he closed the door behind him, she moved automatically towards him. Her body was still soft and warm from her dream, her senses still aroused by the memory of their lovemaking.
It didn’t seem to matter that her brain, still struggling to recover from the shock of seeing him, was desperately trying to scream a warning to her body; the latter appeared to have no intentions of listening to it.
‘Lewis.’
She said his name again, and this time the tremble in her voice wasn’t caused by shock. Her hand was already half outstretched towards him, her senses totally bemused and confused by the reality of him. She had forgotten to fasten her robe in her rush to answer the door and now, as she moved, it fell open, and in the shadowy coolness of her hallway the light from the window on the half-landing stroked the soft curve of her breast with warm gold where the robe swung open to reveal it.
The fine white fabric of her bra did little to conceal the dark silkiness of her nipple, still swollen and hard, still aching for the slow, sweet torment of the male mouth it had craved.
‘I’m sorry; I had no idea you weren’t alone.’
The harsh, almost angry words shocked her back to reality. She fell back immediately, her face hot with embarrassment and shame
as she realised how close she had come to…to what? To perpetuating the sensual myth embodied in her dreams, to trying to turn them into reality by begging Lewis to make love to her?
Sickened, and filled with self-revulsion, she quickly turned her back on him, fastening her robe with fingers that shook and then folding her arms protectively around her body, before turning back to him and saying huskily, ‘There’s no one here with me. What are you doing here, Lewis?’ she demanded. ‘What do you want?’
The dream was gone now, and in its place was reality. Her mouth twisted a little, bitterly. Whatever had brought Lewis to her door, she knew it was not any desire to make love to her.
Was he afraid that she might tell people that they had once been married? Was he motivated by guilt, or fear, or perhaps merely by curiosity?
‘You’re alone?’
The incredulity in his voice made her tense. Now that she was fully awake she was beginning to realise just what kind of picture she must have presented when she’d opened the door.
Even at twenty-one Lewis had possessed a sensitivity, an awareness of the feminine psyche and its capacity for sensuality and responsiveness, which had often awed and amazed her.
Add to that knowledge twenty-odd years of experience and living, and she knew that he must have been immediately aware that she had opened the door to him in a state of acute physical arousal, even if that arousal had now vanished so completely that even she could hardly believe she had experienced it.
Or maybe it was more that she didn’t want to admit that she had experienced it; that, twenty years on, she was still painfully and humiliatingly capable of being aroused by the memory of his lovemaking, even though she knew that their intimacy had only been a fiction on his part, that he could never have been as committed to her as he had pretended.
How many times when they had made love, when she had thought he was just as deeply enmeshed in his desire for her as she was in her love and desire for him, had he secretly been holding himself aloof from her, allowing her to believe she had his total commitment and love when she did not?
That question had tormented her ceaselessly over the years, making it impossible for her to trust her judgement where men were concerned, making it impossible for her to form another sexual and emotional relationship.
Had he ever realised how much he had damaged her, how much he had hurt her? Did he even care? But she didn’t blame him. No, she blamed herself for being stupid enough to believe in him…in his love, when surely there must have been something, some sign…some warning that he was deceiving her which she had overlooked.
Perhaps he had even thought when he’d married her that he did love her; or perhaps it was only when it was too late that he’d realised that he did not.
She put her hand up to her forehead. Her head still ached, a dull tension headache, the pain slowly spreading down her neck and into her shoulder muscles.
As she half turned away from him, she heard Lewis saying, ‘You still get them…those migraine attacks.’ His voice sounded oddly gruff, as though there was some kind of constriction in his throat.
Her own throat tightened in response, pain welling up inside her. ‘Yes, I still get them,’ she answered, keeping her back to him. ‘I’m sure you haven’t come here to talk about my migraine attacks, Lewis. What is it you do want? After all, we both know that it can’t possibly be me.’
Her whole body went tense with shock as she heard the bitterness, the betrayal in her own voice. What on earth was she doing? Did she want him to know how much the past still hurt her?
She heard him make a small sound. It could have been shock, it could have been disgust. She wanted to turn round and confront him, to tell him that there could be no purpose in his being here in her hallway, but she lacked the courage to do so, knew that if she turned and looked at him now…
