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‘What’s the matter? Do you feel ill?’
Morgan’s voice brought her face jerking to meet his and she saw he was looking at her with concern. Shakily she shook her head. ‘I’m fine.’ She attempted a smile, which didn’t come off.
‘You’re as white as a sheet and far from fine,’ he said roughly. ‘What’s wrong? Have I said something?’
‘It’s nothing to do with you—with tonight, I mean.’ She took a deep breath; she was saying this all wrong. ‘What I mean is, I’ve enjoyed tonight. I thought the four of us got on great.’
‘Something reminded you of him again, didn’t it?’ It was as though he could read her mind at times. ‘Something I did? Is that it? Tell me so I don’t make the same mistake again.’
‘No. Yes. Oh—’ she shook her head, stepping away from him and beginning to walk to the car in a corner of the car park ‘—can we forget it?’ She didn’t want to do the Piers thing again.
He opened the car door for her and helped her in, shutting the door and walking round the bonnet with a grim face. Once he was seated, he turned to her. The muted lighting in the car park was enough for her to see he wasn’t going to let the matter drop. ‘Tell me,’ he said very quietly. ‘Please.’
‘There’s nothing to tell.’ She felt hemmed in, trapped.
‘Little fling or not, you will tell me, Willow, if we have to sit here all night.’ He wasn’t angry and his voice was soft.
So he had heard. Woodenly, she said, ‘Piers used to put his arm round me like that when we said goodbye to family or friends, that’s all.’
He swore softly before he said, ‘And?’
‘And?’ she prevaricated, not wanting to say more.
‘From the little you’ve told me about this cowboy there is definitely an and.’ He reached out and lifted her chin so she was forced to meet his eyes. ‘Tell me,’ he said again, but this time with such tenderness she found she had to clench every muscle in her body against the urge to cry. ‘I don’t want to make any more mistakes that can put that look on your face.’
‘I told you, it wasn’t you.’ She lowered her head again, smoothing her dress over her knees with small jerky movements. ‘Piers was a control freak,’ she whispered after a moment or two. ‘I suppose the signs were there before we got married but I was too inexperienced to recognise them. Maybe we’d never have married if my parents hadn’t died, I don’t know.’ She shrugged wearily. ‘But we did marry and within a little while he’d turned into someone else. He—he built himself up by knocking me down. Not physically, at least not until the end, but he’d make me feel stupid, worthless, ugly.’
Morgan’s hand covered one of hers. She could feel his anger.
‘We’d stand like we stood tonight and all the time he’d keep up a litany of what I’d done wrong, how embarrassing I was, how people felt sorry for him because he was with me. It—it was just now and again at first and he said he was pointing out things for my own good, because he loved me so much. Then it got more and more—’ She stopped abruptly. ‘But to everyone else, even Beth, he appeared the loving husband. After I left him she said she’d known something was wrong but she thought I was still grieving for Mum and Dad.’
‘You didn’t confide in her?’ he asked quietly. ‘Not even Beth?’
She shook her head. ‘I can’t believe I didn’t now, but at the time…’ She shook her head again. ‘He made me believe I was in the wrong. He—he was very clever.’
‘I can think of a better word to describe him.’ He reached out and smoothed a strand of hair from her cheek. ‘What made you finally break his control?’
She looked at him. Yes, that was exactly what she had done, she thought with an element of surprise. At the time she’d looked on her leaving him as an escape, a feral, self-preservation thing, but it was more than that. The night she had fought back with everything she had—spirit, soul and body—something had been broken. She might have been left emotionally and physically battered, but it had been her who had won. She had become herself again that night, albeit an older, wiser self.
‘He went too far,’ she said flatly. ‘Much too far.’
‘Don’t tell me if you don’t want to.’
She thought for a moment. Did she want to? There was an unsettling blend of tenderness and anger in the tough male face and she knew the anger wasn’t directed against her. Something melted. ‘He threw his dinner on the floor. It wasn’t the first time but that night something in me snapped…’
