She realised that she had stopped outside the ward. Sighing to herself, she shook her head and forced herself to continue down the corridor.
The door to Ian’s office was closed. She knocked briefly on it out of politeness and then opened it and walked in.
She had expected to find Ian on his own, but it wasn’t the shock of realisation that someone else was with him that stopped her in her tracks; it was the discovery that the other man in his office was none other than Lewis.
Lewis…here in Ian’s office. Her whole body felt heavy and cumbersome, unable to respond to the sluggish commands of her brain, and yet at the same time her stomach was churning, her metabolism racing so frantically out of control that she was afraid she might literally be sick where she stood.
Ian, apparently oblivious to her shocked distress, was smiling at her, coming over to stand beside her and put a friendly arm around her shoulders as he said warmly, ‘Lewis, I’d like you to meet a very good friend of mine: Lacey Robinson. Lacey has been the main motivator behind the appeal. She’s worked far harder than the rest of us put together.’
Ian gave her a fond smile.
‘Did Jessica get off all right this morning? A pity that she couldn’t stay on a bit longer. Still, it’s her first year and she won’t want to miss out on any of her tutorials. Jessica is Lacey’s daughter,’ Lacey heard him explaining to Lewis. ‘I must admit I still find it hart to believe that Lacey is the mother of a university student.’
Lacey could feel her face beginning to burn with a mixture of shock and anxiety. She couldn’t bring herself to look at her exhusband…couldn’t endure the contempt and disinterest she knew would be in his eyes. She knew that Ian was only meaning to flatter her, that he genuinely did believe she looked much younger than her thirty-eight years; that he genuinely did find it difficult to believe that she was Jessica’s mother; but that didn’t stop her from feeling hideously embarrassed as though she were one of those women who made a point of telling everyone within earshot that she had been a child bride, and that they and their daughters were more like sisters really. That kind of thing had always made her squirm and feel acutely sorry for the poor unfortunate daughters, who in some way were almost never allowed to grow up to maturity, who always seemed to be held back by their mothers’ determinedly clutching on to ‘youth’, who were never quite as pretty or as popular as their mothers had been at their age—and yet stubbornly she refused to open her mouth and make any disclaimer. After all, why should she feel any need to justify herself in any way to Lewis?
She could see him just within the periphery of her vision. He was standing in the shadows of the room, his head slightly averted, as though he didn’t want to look at her, to acknowledge her.
His hair, she realised, was still as dark as it had always been, untouched by grey and apparently as thick and vibrant as ever. She remembered how she had loved to touch it, to feel the soft springiness of its curl beneath her fingertips, envying him that natural characteristic which had been denied her. And yet he, it seemed, had been equally fascinated by the soft sleek fall of her own straight locks, praising their silkiness, saying her hair was fluid and warm like sun-stroked water. When they made love he had liked the sensation of her hair against his skin…against his body. He had coaxed her to rub herself against him like a small sleek cat, and the sound he had made in his throat when she did so had not been unlike the rusty purr of some jungle animal.
He had taught her so many things about both his sexuality and her own; not just in terms of the physical act of union, but also of the wide variety of small intimate pleasures that could arise from the lightest, most delicate, and sometimes often unexpected kind of touch. He had been both gentle and passionate, demanding and patient. He had been the best of lovers, and the worst of husbands.
She started to shiver suddenly as her body caved in under the pressure of her shock. Lewis still hadn’t looked at her properly nor she at him and yet she had recalled faultlessly and unwantedly the sensation of his hands against her skin, coaxing, stroking, loving…hands which she now saw were bunched into hard, tense fists.
He moved abruptly, flexing his fingers, a gesture unfamiliar to her and which, being unfamiliar, should have released her from her bondage to her unwanted memories; but instead it eroded her self-discipline, and anguish and desolation rose up inside her. She had changed and so of course must he, and it was foolish beyond all measure of her to mourn her own lack of knowledge of something so slight as an added mannerism.
He was tense; that involuntary flexing of his fingers proved that. He had been tense the night he’d told her he didn’t want her or their marriage any more, but tense in a different way: then he had used his tension as a barrier between them…a barrier which had told her, ‘Don’t come any nearer. Don’t even think about trying to touch me,’ and yet she had done so…foolishly, and his recoil from her had been instant and shocking, betraying his physical revulsion for her.
Alongside her, Ian was still talking.
‘Lacey almost single-handedly organised the appeal for Michael Sullivan; that was why I wanted the two of you to meet. Lacey, Lewis is—’
She couldn’t endure any more. The initial shock had faded now, but what was left in its place was even worse: a kind of sick anxiety, coupled with pain and something more…something she could not bear to analyse.
‘Ian, I’m sorry,’ she interrupted shakily. ‘I’m afraid I can’t stay…’
As her dazed brain sought frantically for some excuse for her unscheduled departure, she saw out of the corner of her eye that Lewis had turned his head, and was looking at her.
Their glances met, meshed; blue eyes blazing into grey. Every never-ending in her body burst into painful life. It had been like that all those years ago. He had looked at her then with those amazing blue eyes, and then…
But then the look in his eyes had been one of admiration; or arousal and eagerness. Now it was one of…
Of what? she asked herself dizzily as she tried to look away. Absently she wondered why—when his body had so obviously matured from the slight thinness of his early twenties as though now he had finally grown into the height and breadth of the bone-structure nature had given him—his face seemed so much more sharply sculptured, so much harder, so much more shockingly masculine. He had never been good-looking in the almost too handsome fashion of a film star, but he had always had a potent, very unnerving almost—at least to her—aura of male sexuality which time seemed to have enhanced rather than lessened; and yet there was nothing overtly sexual about him. He was wearing a well-tailored plain navy suit, a crisp white shirt and a suitably discreet tie, his clothes very similar in fact to those worn by both Ian and Tony, and yet on him…
The slight movement of his body re-attracted her attention, her glance flicking helplessly towards it so that she was gut-wrenchingly conscious of the power of the muscles that lay beneath his skin, achingly aware of his body, his maleness, in a way she hadn’t been aware of a man’s physical masculinity in years.
‘I…I must go,’ she reiterated huskily. ‘I promised I’d go round and see Michael.’
‘But I thought we were going to finalise the formal winding down of the appeal,’ Ian protested. ‘I—’
‘I’m sorry, Ian. I…I can’t stay. Not now!’
She was almost gabbling now as she headed for the door, desperately conscious of the way Lewis was watching her, and desperately anxious to escape from the room before she panicked completely. She
