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Guilt. She might have known it! Well, she didn’t want his guilt or his sympathy. Neither was a substitute for love. And neither was desire, she now realised. Desire without love had no strength, no substance to cling to when times got rough...
‘You don’t have to wor—’
She broke off as there was a soft knock at his door, rolling over on her side to stare at it in horror.
Adam recovered first. Pulling part of the quilt over his hips, he called out, ‘Who is it?’ He anchored Honor’s precious covering with his arm over her waist as she instinctively made to leave, dragging her back against his curved torso so that she felt the soft crush of thick chest hair cushioning her sensitive skin. ‘No, don’t you dare move until this is settled!’ he growled, not bothering to lower his voice.
There was a little pause, then a subdued voice drifted through the wood panels. ‘It’s Tania. I’m going into town to look at apartments this morning and wanted to know if—’
Honor was shocked when Adam called out again, ‘For goodness’ sake, you don’t have to yell it through the door, Tania. Come on in.’
‘Adam—!’ Honor’s horrified retreat beneath the shared quilt wasn’t quick enough. The door opened before she had covered more than her chin.
To her credit Tania didn’t say a word, even though her shock was palpable. Neither did she take up Adam’s invitation and step inside. She just looked, her eyebrows raised in a way that implied that whoever she had expected to find in Adam’s bed it hadn’t been Honor. Helen, most probably. After all, with a swan around why would Adam want to bother with an ugly duckling?
Tania shrugged in cool resignation. ‘I just wanted some advice, that’s all. But I can see you’re very busy.’
Honor felt her whole body tingle as Adam’s lips suddenly brushed the top of her bare shoulder in a tacit acknowledgement of the sarcastic comment. ‘You obviously see very clearly. Call my construction office and get Don Shelly’s number—he’s my property lawyer, he handles all kinds of real estate and can give you far better advice than
I can... I’m afraid at the moment I find my concentration severely impaired.’
Tania looked along the hall and then back at Adam, smiling brilliantly. ‘Thank you, Adam. I wonder if you’ll still look quite as disgustingly smug in a few moments from now?’ And with that she turned on her heel and walked away.
Adam’s arm tightened across the quilt as Honor tensed, wondering what on earth Tania had meant. She didn’t have to wait long.
Perversely, in her school uniform, Sara actually looked older than her twelve years. Her expression was equally mature as she looked at Honor’s bare shoulders protectively framed by her father’s bare chest, the quilt cuddled around their closely pressed bodies.
‘Hi.’ She came across the room to bounce on the edge of the bed, eyeing them with mischievous curiosity. ‘What are you doing?’
‘OK, brat, there’s no need to try and embarrass me into asking Honor to marry me,’ her father told her sternly, but Honor felt the laughter rumbling against her spine. How could he laugh at a time like this? she thought, too shocked to take in fully what he was saying. ‘As it happens I’m just about to do it. We’ve been having a private discussion leading up to the subject, with the emphasis on private, and we haven’t finished it yet. So buzz off while we finish it, will you?’
‘Discussion, huh?’ Sara whooped, bouncing off the bed again and winking at Honor’s pale face. ‘I knew it would happen. I just knew it would! You love each other, right?’
‘Too right.’ Adam’s arm contracted painfully at Honor’s convulsive movement, but nothing could have hurt more than the excruciating pain in her chest. This must be what a heart attack feels like, she thought through the mist of agony.
‘And you’re gonna get married and everything?’ she dimly heard Sara say happily.
‘Especially the everything,’ said Adam wickedly, nipping at the side of Honor’s throat, not seeming to notice her deathly stillness. Moments later when Sara had skipped out of the door she had torn herself out of his arms and thrown off the quilt, her modesty forgotten in her anguish...
Honor saw her white picket fence through blurring eyes. The relief was enormous. She had been right to come home, she thought, as she parked the VW crookedly in the short driveway and stumbled out.
Adam hadn’t understood her numb refusal to listen to his glib explanations. He hadn’t understood what he had done by pretending to love her for the sake of his daughter, not until she had finally turned on him and flung his humiliating lie about wanting to marry her in his face.
‘We both know what you want and it isn’t a wife you’re madly in love with!’ she’d accused wildly when he had doggedly followed her into her room and refused to leave while she dressed. Cornered like an animal, she’d lashed out.
‘Oh, yes, it’s fine for you if she’s in love with you...that makes it all so much easier for you. And isn’t it terrific if she’s a Plain Jane who’ll be so grateful for any attention at all that she won’t mind playing second fiddle to a blasted ghost? You’re not capable of loving anyone who’s alive. If I were beautiful or vivacious I might be competition for your goddess-like Helen of Troy and you wouldn’t like that—that would be like being unfaithful to her. It wouldn’t matter that you were being unfaithful to me. What do I matter? I’m just someone who happened along to fit the bill as Sara’s mother and your bed-warmer. A friend who could be relied on not to get too emotionally demanding...’
She laughed bitterly at his expression of shock, pleased that she had finally penetrated through his thick skin. ‘No wonder you were so appalled to find out I was a virgin; I wouldn’t have had much to recommend me if I hadn’t been good in bed, would I? How lucky I managed to pass the test after all!’
‘Is it so difficult to believe that I’ve fallen in love with you?’ Adam asked quietly, but her rage was a thunder in her ears, drowning out the emotion behind the calm words.
Honor’s laughter was wild with despair. ‘The way you fell in love with your first wife, your one and only wife? Oh, is that why you sent me all those love-letters and plied me with sweet nothings and were so proud to be my first lover? Oh, yes, Adam, you were so-o-o convincing...!’
Honor’s hand shook as she fitted her key to the front door, almost falling over the threshold in her haste to get inside.
She had brought nothing with her, she realised with a weird sense of detachment as she walked through the silent rooms. She had started to pack but then Helen had come in and began talking to her in that slow, aggravatingly calm voice as if she were trying to communicate with a half-wit. Honor knew that Adam had sent her—everyone was on his side, no one on hers—and had succeeded in completely ignoring her until Helen had started taking things out of her suitcase as fast as she put them in.
‘This is absolutely ridiculous! I hope you don’t expect me to come with you—I didn’t come all this way to spend it packing and unpacking. I have to leave tomorrow, you know—I’ll be sued for breach of contract if I don’t. I can’t hang around here and watch you ruin your life for the sake of a stupid little misunderstanding that could be cleared up in an instant. It’s as plain as the nose on your face that you’re in love with the man.’ Honor winced at the unhappy metaphor. ‘And if he claims he loves you, why look a gift horse in the mouth? Why don’t you give the poor guy a break...?’
