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‘This is ridiculous,’ she said, with as much calm as she could muster through the racing fury of her heart-beat. ‘Hurting John won’t do any good, I’ll never come back—’
‘You’ll never get the chance,’ he interrupted brutally. ‘You’re soiled merchandise and I only have the best.’ She knew he was lashing out through his own hurt, but hearing him speak like this was agonising. After all they’d shared, all the dreams for the future … ‘By the time I’ve finished with him no other woman will want him, that much I promise you.’
‘Blade—’ She caught herself abruptly. What could she say now? The hole was getting deeper and deeper, but she couldn’t let John take the brunt of this when all he had done was to offer comfort and refuge. ‘John is a friend, nothing more.’
‘Sure he is.’ He opened the car door abruptly and stepped out on to the springy coarse grass beyond. ‘I need some fresh air, something stinks in there.’
‘I mean it, Blade.’ She sprang out of the car, her voice desperate now. ‘Please listen to me.’
‘Listen to you?’ He swung round with such ferocity that she shrank back against the comforting bulk of the car, her eyes wide with fear. ‘Listen to you? Honey, you’re garbage plain and simple. You think lover-boy is in for a good hiding? How right you are.’ The black eyes were narrowed onyx slits. ‘And there hasn’t been a day in the last three months when I haven’t wished you were a man so I could exact the same punishment on you personally. But—’ he surveyed her with a bitter smile ‘—there are more ways than one to skin a rat.’
‘Blade—’ Her breath caught in her throat and she almost choked with fear. ‘Can’t you just give me a divorce and leave it at that—?’
‘You’ll get your divorce.’ A pair of rooks suddenly swooped down over their heads from a large oak tree at the side of the road, their harsh, raucous cry fitting the moment perfectly, and as Blade’s eyes followed the birds she flinched at the bleakness of his profile. But she had to do this. She had no other choice. This might hurt now, but if she stayed with him it would destroy him in the end. She had no other choice.
‘Why, Amy?’ As he turned to confront her, it was the Blade she had been dreading through long restless nights of tossing and turning and tormented dreams. In his face was a glimpse of the Blade only she had known, vulnerable, assailable, with a capacity for tenderness that was unlimited. She could cope with the fierce hostile stranger breathing fire and damnation, but not this, never this. ‘What went wrong? I thought everything was so—’ He stopped suddenly, turning in one harsh movement to stare out over the hills again, his hands clenched fists in his pockets. ‘But I didn’t know you, did I? It was all make-believe, all of it.’
Oh, my darling. As she looked at the back of his head, the sunlight turning the burnished brown gold, she knew she was experiencing the worst that could ever happen to her. The future, with its promise of a living nightmare, was nothing compared to the piercing agony that was gripping her soul in a stranglehold, killing every spark of joy, every good thing. She would exist from this day but she wouldn’t really be alive. But she loved him too much to take him with her into the pit. This way he could recover and live his life. And he would recover. He was a survivor. He’d forget her in time and there would be countless women only too ready to help him.
Her eyes were dry. This pain was too deep for tears, and she turned blindly to look at a tiny farmhouse far in the distance from which a plume of smoke was slowly rising into the blue sky. ‘It was just one of those things,’ she said slowly as she forced the words out through stiff lips. ‘Life’s like that …’
‘Amy?’ She hadn’t been aware that he had turned and was watching her, and now, as she met his eyes, she quickly schooled her features into an acceptable mask. ‘There isn’t something more, is there? Something you aren’t telling me?’
She stared at him, her heart pounding and her mouth dry. She should have been on her guard every second, she shouldn’t have relaxed for a moment. He was too intuitive, too perceptive. How many times had she seen him go straight for the jugular in the past and marvelled at his ability to see beyond the obvious, to expose every little weakness? The same attributes that made him so formidable in business were in force now and she must be careful, very careful.
‘Aren’t the facts enough?’ she said tightly. ‘Do you want more skeletons from the closet? Well, I’m sorry, I can’t oblige you, Blade. You’ll have to hate me for what you know; there isn’t more.’
