the dark green depths.
“I know we’ve barely met, but I feel you’re someone I can talk to. Be with. Won’t you give me your company for one evening? Help me forget...other things...for a while? There’s nothing for you to be wary of—” he winced “—unless being seen with me is too distasteful.”
“No, it’s not that,” Suzanne assured him gently. He was hurting badly, but she couldn’t give him the solace he was looking for. “I’m simply not free to be with you, Mr. Carew.”
He frowned. “Couldn’t you cancel whatever arrangements you’ve made? I’m only asking...”
“No. I’m sorry, but no,” Suzanne said firmly.
His face tightened. His mouth compressed in frustration with her outright rejection. The appeal in his eyes hardened to an arrogance that challenged her decision. “Tell me what arrangements you’ve made and I’ll speak to the person or persons concerned.”
He was not used to being refused. Suzanne offered him an ironic little smile. “You misunderstand me, Mr. Carew. I am not free. I have a husband. And you’ve just been speaking to him.”
He stared at her with a look of stunned disbelief. “You’re married...”
“To Dr. Forbes,” Suzanne finished for him with quiet dignity.
Leith Carew visibly shuddered. His gaze dropped to the paperweight in his hand. His fingers tightened around it, and from the way his knuckles gleamed white Suzanne thought he would have crushed the glass to powder if it was possible.
His tension stirred the same unease he had evoked earlier. Suzanne’s sympathy for him was stretched thin. Although his meeting with Brendan could never have pleasant associations for Leith Carew, surely he realised that was not Brendan’s fault. She resented the look of repugnance on his face.
“How long have you been married?” he suddenly shot at her.
Surprised by the question, she answered automatically. “Almost three years.”
“And the magic hasn’t worn off yet?”
The mockery in his voice suggested a soul-deep cynicism, and there was a flare of savagery in the eyes that slashed at hers. Suzanne recoiled both mentally and emotionally from all he was projecting at her, yet even as a cutting retort leapt to her tongue, she bit down on it. He was reacting like a wounded animal. She had disappointed him. It would be wrong to hit back at him for lashing out at her.
“Our marriage doesn’t depend on magic, Mr. Carew,” she said calmly, her eyes holding his with steady, heartfelt conviction. “It’s based on commitment to each other.”
“Till death do you part?”
“Yes. That’s how it is for Brendan and me.”
He challenged that contention for several angry moments before the feral glitter in his green eyes faded into a bleak sadness. He looked at the paperweight, then slowly replaced it on her desk.
“That’s how it was for Ilana and Hans,” he said with bitter irony.
“I’m sorry,” Suzanne murmured, compassion spearing through the turbulence he had stirred.
He gave her a twisted smile. “Forgive me for trespassing. And thank you for your time.”
He turned and walked to the door. Suzanne was riven by the sense of unfinished business between them, yet she knew she couldn’t answer the need that he had opened to her.
“Goodbye, Mr. Carew,” she said softly, hoping he would find solace for his pain with someone else.
“No. Not goodbye,” he rasped, then looked at her, his eyes burning with a conviction that defied barriers. “We’ll meet again, Suzanne Forbes. The timing isn’t right, here and now, but the day and the hour will come when it is.”
His words seemed to thump into her heart. He had felt it, too, she thought dazedly.
“Au revoir, Suzanne,” he said with very deliberate emphasis.
He closed the door on this encounter and walked out of her life. Until their paths crossed at another time and place. But when? And why? Suzanne wondered. Her hand reached out and picked up the solid glass paperweight. His fingers had dulled its natural gleam. It felt cold. She shivered and thrust it away from her.
I love Brendan, she thought fiercely. I’ll love him all my life. Leith Carew can’t change that. Nothing ever will.
A surge of totally irrational feeling made her snatch up the paperweight again and drop it into the bottom drawer of her desk. Out of sight.
CHAPTER TWO
THE PROBLEM of Leith Carew did not go away. Suzanne wished she had not met him. The memory of his powerful presence and personality kept sliding between her and Brendan, intruding on the natural intimacy they had built up between them.
Normally she talked to Brendan about everything of interest that happened at the clinic or the centre, but something held her back from relating the details of Leith Carew’s private visit to her. She even affected a disinterest in Brendan’s comments on the man, quickly turning the subject aside in favour of a less disturbing topic of conversation.
Rightly or wrongly, she felt Leith Carew was somehow a threat to the happiness of her marriage. He had left her with a sense of inevitability that could not be denied or repressed. The day and the hour would come when they would meet again. Suzanne was afraid of what it might mean to her, so she did her best to deny him any space in her life.
Three days after his visit to the medical centre, Leith Carew was on the evening news. His strong face leapt out at her from the television set, making her heart skip a beat. She could no longer view him as a two-dimensional person.
“I’ll start putting on dinner,” she said, leaving Brendan to watch the news alone while she raced off to the kitchen to busy herself with their evening meal.
He followed a few minutes later. “They’ve called off the search for Amy Bergen,” he said with a grimace that expressed his repugnance for any unnecessary loss of life.
“Why?” Suzanne cried in dismay. Her mind told her there had been no hope of survival for the little girl, yet as long as she wasn’t found, hope persisted anyway.
“They’ve recovered a piece of her clothing.”
“Not the child?”
Brendan shook his head. “Only the clothing. But it was close to a dingo’s lair.”
“Oh, God!” It instantly recalled the Azaria Chamberlain case, when a nine-week-old baby had been taken by a dingo from the camping site at Ayers Rock. “But Amy Bergen was two years old,” Suzanne protested. “Surely...”
“The police think it’s conclusive.”
“No other trace of her?”
“Apparently not. It’s hardly to be expected after this length of time,
