right that everyone bends to your will.’ She gave an uncontrolled, acid laugh and sat up, smoothing her appearance with trembling fingers. ‘I was a fool to ever be taken in by that charm of yours’ She lifted her face rebelliously to his, her chin jutting forward with unaccustomed aggression. ‘You play with women, don’t you? Did it amuse you to play with me? Did my virginity turn you on?’ She had gone beyond the point of rational thought. She was fired by the biting pain of knowing that the man she loved belonged to his dead wife.
‘You turned me on,’ he said harshly, the green of his eyes glittering like a cat’s, ‘and yes, your virginity was part of you. Would you prefer it if I lied? Would you like me to tell you that I loved you? Would you like me to feed you stories about eternal bliss?’ She was staring up at him, her eyes as wide as saucers. ‘Dammit, woman!’ He stood up and began pacing the room, like a caged animal, raking his fingers through his hair and she watched him with unwilling, greedy fascination.
Of course she should leave, but something kept her nailed to the bed.
‘Don’t look at me like that!’ he commanded, standing still and fixing her with those amazing eyes.
‘Like what?’
‘You told me that you never played games with me. Well, I never played them with you. I never offered you what I couldn’t provide.’
The atmosphere was thick with tension and she looked away hurriedly, physically unable to outstare him even though she would have liked to. She felt as though she had opened a door and found a nightmare behind it. Her sister, she knew, would have been proud. Jackie was seven years older than her, and she had never met James Forrester, but that hadn’t stopped her from lecturing on his unsuitability.
‘I know you,’ she had told Claire early on in her relationship. ‘You’re too green for a man like that. You’re a dreamer, you’ve always been a dreamer. Even when you were a teenager and you should have been out having fun, you locked yourself away in your bedroom with your books and your fantasies. Right now you’re a novelty for him because he’s accustomed to other types of women, sophisticated women with carefully applied make-up and designer wardrobes. You’re young and fresh and just so damned innocent, but he’ll tire of you and when he does you can be sure that he won’t think twice about sending you on your way.’
Claire had listened because she loved her sister, but she hadn’t taken the slightest bit of notice of the warnings. The pull he had over her was too powerful to allow her any room for reason.
‘No, you never offered me anything that you couldn’t provide,’ she repeated dully. Her intense anger had evaporated and she felt drained and hopeless. ‘Thank you so much for that, at least. How good you’ve been, what a true gentleman.’
His lips tightened and he stared at her as though he would have liked to have shaken her and was only controlling himself with extreme difficulty.
She stood up and walked slowly towards the door. Inside, she felt dead and lifeless. This was the first time that she had ever exploded like this with James, with anyone for that matter. She was not a girl who liked arguments; she had always preferred to take the path of least possible resistance. Perhaps because her parents had so seldom argued, quarrelling perturbed her, made her feel awkward and uncomfortable.
‘I can’t compete with your wife,’ she said quietly, her hand on the doorknob. ‘I just wish that you’d liked me enough to tell me about her sooner.’
‘Liking,’ he said coolly, not trying to stop her from leaving, ‘had nothing to do with it.’
‘How can you still be so affected by the past?’ she heard herself ask, desperately, and the shutters clamped back down over his eyes. She preferred him cold, angry, biting, anything but this closed expression that gave her no inkling as to what he was thinking.
He took a step towards her and she cringed back, like a wounded animal.
‘Is it ever really possible to escape the past?’ he asked smoothly, an acid, humourless smile on his face. ‘You’re a child. I should never have given in to my impulses; I should have left you to play out your little infatuation.’
‘Thank you for that,’ she whispered, hating herself for loving this man when he was capable of being so utterly hateful. ‘But it’s not too late to be rid of me.’ She opened the door and stepped out into the corridor. ‘I’m leaving now and this is the last you’ll see of me, so you can carry on with your life and I can finish playing out all my stupid, childish games.’
She shut the door behind her and flew down the corridor, gaining momentum as she ran down the staircase as if there were baying hounds behind her, when in fact he hadn’t made even the slightest effort to stop her in her tracks.
Why should he? she thought as she let herself out of the front door. I’ve only ever been a little bit of fun on the side. He’s still in love with Olivia.
CLAIRE had been only just twenty when she’d met James Forrester.
It had been on one of those depressing winter days when the sun never seemed to rise and darkness fell like a shutter in mid-afternoon. Not a day to be wondering for how much longer she would be able to afford the rent on her poky bedroom in the house she shared with three other girls. Money was low and she was loath to mention the problem to her parents because they would immediately insist on helping her out. Even at twenty, they still thought of her as their baby, their little girl who should be protected.
Not to mention the fact that her parents would have been hard pushed to bail her out of her financial troubles. Her father wasn’t exactly rolling in money and although they had some savings, it was common knowledge to both their daughters that this money was being carefully put aside for a rainy day.
So she had continued scouring the newspapers, anxiously looking for jobs and wondering whether she would have been better off remaining in London instead of moving to Berkshire where the rent was much lower and where she had optimistically thought that the job situation would be good.
Six weeks out of work, with nothing hopeful on the horizon, was not doing much for her self-confidence, though.
Two of the girls who rented the house with her bluntly told her that she ought to find a job as a secretary, invest her time in a short typing course which would reap its rewards in the years to come; after all, they earned good money, thank you very much, working as secretaries in two of the larger companies in nearby Reading.
But Claire had not jumped at their suggestion. She had worked hard for her art diploma and to throw away everything she had studied for, to abandon her love of art in favour of a nine-to-five routine in front of a typewriter, did not hold much appeal.
But as she had sat at the kitchen table, scanning the job columns, she had been forced to admit that a love of art was not going to pay the bills.
She also doubted whether her landlord would smilingly accept her need to be creative and overlook the little matter of unpaid rent on his house. He was sharklike at the best of times, and she shuddered at the prospect of trying to engage his sympathy for her cause.
Then she had spotted it. Just when she had been about to crumple the newspaper into a ball and admit defeat. Cleaner wanted, it said, excellent rates of pay for the right person.
