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But as the minutes passed and began to stretch out into something like eternity, she realised, astonished, that it wasn’t going to happen. That his deep, steady breathing was telling her he’d meant what he said about sleeping, and slowly she began to relax, letting herself sink down into the welcoming comfort of the mattress as her flurried anxious breathing steadied.
Realising too that, in a bed this size, it was quite easy to pretend that she was alone.
And that alone was the safest thing to be.
Tomorrow he’ll be gone, she thought, suppressing the swift pang twisting sharply inside her. Gone for several weeks, which gives me time to find some way—some strategy to deal with this half-life I’ve signed up to.
And Zac had done exactly the same, she reminded herself. Maybe he also was regretting his decision. Perhaps this was why he was keeping his distance, so that he didn’t turn a mistake into a total disaster.
If—if they didn’t have sex, she was almost sure they could get an annulment very quickly, whereas there had to be a statutory period before divorce was permitted.
Maybe the marriage could be quietly ended before its existence became public.
She stirred restlessly, then froze, wary of disturbing him.
Oh, God, what a mess it all was. What a ghastly mess—reaching back to the warm darkness of the summer house all those years ago. To the silent, deceptive magic of his kisses—his touch.
She remembered the friction of his frilled shirt against her bare skin and, lifting her hands to her breasts, she felt the swift hardening of her nipples through the thin fabric that now covered them.
Imagined herself somehow back in that long-ago summer night, but this time unfastening his shirt, fumbling with his waistband and zip as she stripped him in turn. As she touched him everywhere, learning him with her fingertips. Feeling that lithe male body vibrantly, awesomely alive under her seeking hands. His flesh warm under her mouth...
Of course, she’d been too shy, too inexperienced to attempt any such intimacies. And, in so many ways, she hadn’t changed. These were still uncharted waters for her.
That night had been like a claw scraping across her senses for seven years, she thought, pressing her clenched fist against her lips. But that had to end now. She could not let herself think about it any more, because if she did, she would be lost.
I won’t be able to hide what I feel, she thought. What I want. It’s bad enough just being here with him, knowing I would only have to stretch out a hand...
Instead, she put her hand to better use, biting almost savagely at her knuckles. Driving out one pain with another. Except any damage to her skin would heal. The ache inside her could not be so easily assuaged.
Yet how could she willingly surrender herself to a man who’d virtually bought her for sex, and wouldn’t care that, with her body, she would give her heart and soul? On the contrary, he was quite cynical enough to find that amusing.
Far better—infinitely safer—to resist the dark temptation he offered and remember that she was fulfilling nothing more than a clause in a contract. Oh, God—nothing more.
She hadn’t forgotten Adam’s sneering claim that, once a woman belonged to him, Zac became bored and walked away.
And it was hardly likely that a brief legal ceremony would render the future of their marriage any less bleak.
A swift annulment or polite indifference, she thought unhappily. The proverbial rock and the hard place.
Don’t go there, she adjured herself almost frantically. If you can’t sleep, be practical instead. Think about the rooms that need a transformation. Stand in each of them. Visualise paint, paper and fabrics. Work out a time scale.
Instead she found herself in a long corridor, empty, windowless, its walls and floor painted as white as the ceiling and she began to run towards a door at the far end, desperately searching for colour, for some sign of life, only to have the door slam in her face. And she sank to the floor, closing her eyes against the dazzle of the whiteness.
When she opened them again a moment later, she realised she was not on a wooden floor but in bed, the room bathed in the half-light of early morning.
And made the far more disturbing discovery that somehow in the night she’d moved across the bed to where Zac was lying, and was now held in the curve of his arm, his hand lightly clasping her hip, and her head pillowed on his chest.
How in the world had it happened? she wondered, her throat tightening. But she could worry about that later.
Her immediate need was to extricate herself and move back to the safety zone before Zac woke and jumped to any conclusions.
