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'You don't understand.' Beth lifted her face but she could hardly see him through a haze of tears.
'No, I don't. I won't pretend I do. I haven't been married before, committed my life to someone only to be let down in the worst possible way. But I have loved someone and lost them. I do know what grief is. Kirk taught me about that.'
'I.. .1 lost my parents so I know what you mean, but this is something completely different.'
He stared at her and now she saw anger colouring the clear grey. It was in his voice when he spoke, the tone grim. 'Yes. it's different but it's about time you finished with the self-pit) and thinking the world only revolves around you.'
Beth was shocked to the core. Never, in all the time they had been together, had he spoken or looked like this.
'People go through worse than you have,' he continued when she didn't answer him. 'And I'm not demeaning what you suffered either. But you came out the other side, you survived. Maybe hanging on by your fingertips, but you survived. Do you mean to tell me that was all for nothing? That you are going to let this cretin have the last laugh? Where's the backbone that got you through the divorce?'
'How dare you speak to me like this?' Anger dispelled the numbness of shock, her eyes blazing. 'How dare you?'
'Because I love you, that's why. Maybe it would have been better if we'd met a few years later. Eighteen months isn't long to come to terms with it all, I know that, but we didn't. That's life. Neat packages are an illusion.'
'I want you to leave.'
'Tough. I want a lot of things but it doesn't look as if I'm getting them either,' Travis responded grimly.
Beth fought for composure as she stood up and faced him. 'This is my home, albeit temporarily, and you're not welcome any more,' she said, the brief support of anger dying and leaving her terrified. She couldn't weaken—she mustn't. He said he loved her, and perhaps he did, but it didn't alter the fact that Travis was the man with it all. How could she, Beth Marton, ever hope to hang on to a man like him? She didn't have what it took, she knew that. She was ordinary, nothing special. All over the country other women, plain or pretty, fat or thin, managed to make their marriages work but hers had failed amid devastation. If she hadn't been enough for Keith, how could she ever hope to be enough for Travis?
'You don't believe I love you?' Travis's face was rigid, slashes of colour across the hard cheekbones.
'You perhaps think you do.' Her voice was unsteady, an¬guished. 'In fact I'm sure you believe you do.'
'But you're not sure.' His features had softened. 'So we go on as before until you are sure. Do you think you could ever love me?' he added quietly. 'I shouldn't ask, but...'
Beth averted her face. The night she had walked out on Keith was something of a blur in her mind, so much had been said—screamed even—and she had been so distraught. But one thing was crystal clear. Amid all the accusations and counter-accusations, the lying by Keith and the pain and bewilderment she had been feeling, she had asked him why he had done this thing to her. Why, when he had said he loved her, married her, had he continued to see Anna and the other women?
He had looked at her and said what was possibly the only honest statement he'd voiced that night. 'Because I could. Because you let me. You never queried anything I said. Never challenged me when I was late or went away on business trips. You took everything at face value from when we met.'
And when she had cried that was because she had loved him, trusted him with every fibre of her being, he had stared at her for a moment before shrugging. Even then, she knew, he had been confident of his power over her, had been con¬vinced he would be able to talk her round. And she had given him that power in the beginning by loving him, by telling him every day how much she adored him, by believing in him and closing her eyes and her reason to any question marks which had cropped up during their twelve months of marriage. It had almost destroyed her. She raised her face, her heart hammer¬ing in frightened, panicked beats. This time when she lied he had to believe her.
'No,' she said very steadily. 'I couldn't love you.'
She saw the blood drain from his face and for one awful moment was close to flinging herself on him and begging him to forgive her, to admitting she loved him more than she had fought possible, that he was everything she'd ever wanted in a man. A paralysing fear stopped her. The same emotion enabled her to stand as still as stone when he nodded slowly. There was an unnerving silence, vibrating with terrifying intensity, before he said tonelessly, 'Then there really is nothing more to be said, after all. Goodbye, Beth.' She watched in numb disbelief as he turned on his heel and go across to the front door, opening it without looking ck. Harvey had bounded in and then, as Travis closed the behind him, whined and pawed at it as though to ask at was happening.
