across the Serengeti, having been home only five days to dump off the film of their last field-trip—six weeks studying dolphins in the South China Sea.
Five days. She grimaced. Into their early fifties, and still they barely paused for breath between trips. Still they found no time in their packed schedule to do more than allow their only child a conciliatory phone call to offset any disappointment she might feel for their not having time to meet her, if only for a quick lunch.
They lived in a world of their own, which left no room for unimportant things like daughters. So, what’s new? she asked herself as an old bitterness began to boil up inside her. They have a vague idea of what you do for a living, that your birthday is somewhere in the month of October, that you’re not short of funds and are in good health. What more could a girl want?
A bit of tender, loving care, she grimly answered her own mockery. A father to hug and lean on once in a while. A mother to run to at times like these, confide her troubles in.
A bit of what Lulu Maclaine had a lot of.
Wow! Blowing the air out of her lungs, she pushed herself up from the table with that bit of revealing envy niggling at her conscience.
Then, No, she told herself firmly. It wasn’t just a case of her being envious of what Lulu had that she did not. It was simply that she was not going to take second place to anyone else in her life.
And that, she was determined, was that.
Mac rang the flat half a dozen times during the next two days, and by the time Roberta had come back from her final expedition to the Chelsea flat on Sunday evening poor Jenny was looking flustered.
‘He’s bloody furious with you, he’s so worried!’ she said almost accusingly, which wasn’t surprising since it was Jenny who had had to deal with his calls all weekend, and Mac could frazzle anyone’s nerves when he put his mind to it. ‘Don’t you think you should put him out of his misery now and speak to him yourself?’
‘No,’ Roberta stubbornly refused. ‘Mac has put me through twelve months of misery. Two short days of the same goes nowhere near paying him back.’
‘You went into that relationship with your eyes wide open,’ Jenny pointed out.
Yes, thought Roberta on a sigh. Wide open but hopeful. A hope driven by a deep-seated need to be loved and wanted for herself above all others by a man she could love and want above all others herself.
Well, she had found the man she loved and wanted above all others. The only trouble was, he did not love and want her in the same way!
Which, in the end, left her with nothing to be hopeful for.
* * *
Roberta was at her desk on Monday morning, dictating to Mitzy, when Mac came through the door like a bullet.
‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at?’ he barked, striding forward to slam an angry fist down hard on the top of the desk.
Mitzy jumped, startled out of her wits by his forceful entrance. Roberta took her time before reacting, but then she had been prepared for this—poor Mitzy had not.
Still, as with a carefully schooled expression she lifted her attention from the stack of papers she had been working on and levelled her cool green eyes on him she had to quell a quiver of alarm. Jenny was right, she acknowledged; he was furious. His grey eyes had turned silver with it; his mouth pulled so tightly across his teeth that he was snarling with it—like a dog. A big, dark and ravaging bloodthirsty dog.
‘Do you know the kind of trouble you’ve put me through this weekend?’ he demanded harshly when she didn’t reply. ‘I’ve been going out of my mind worrying what could have happened to you!’
‘But not enough to bring you rushing back from Berkshire to check if I was all right,’ she said, and watched him stiffen up like a board at the thrust.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ he growled.
‘Nothing.’ Removing her gaze from him, she glanced at Mitzy, who was staring directly ahead doing a good impression of a waxwork dummy, and Roberta took pity on her. ‘We’ll finish this later,’ she told the other girl quietly.
‘Y-yes, of course...’ With a blink and a jerk Mitzy hauled herself out of the chair and squeezed warily past Mac’s taut frame to leave the room quickly.
The ensuing silence thumped like a drum—or was it her pulse? Roberta wondered as she forced herself to remain calmly seated behind her desk, looking her usual coolly immaculate self in a slate-grey worsted suit and neat powder-blue blouse, while inside her everything was beginning to burn up on a mad combination of bitter pique and the usual hot, melting breathlessness she suffered whenever she looked at Mac.
Mitzy’s timely exit had given Mac time to consider just what Roberta had said, and his eyes had narrowed into harshly assessing slits. The anger in him had damped down to a more manageable level, which meant that he was beginning to realise he had a big problem on his hands with her and was responding accordingly—with his razor-sharp brain instead of his emotions.
‘Explain,’ he demanded at last. Nothing more, just that one very economical word which none the less said it all.
She studied him for a moment, completely in control of her outer self except for the slight trembling of her hands, which she clenched together tightly on her lap while she decided how best to tackle this.
He too was dressed for business, she noted inconsequentially, in one of his dark, fashionably cut suits that did so much to add to that air of power and success he carried around with him.
She would have felt much softer towards him if he had come barging in here looking like the devil, in creased clothes and with his silky hair mussed by worried fingers. But he hadn’t. Mac might have been concerned about her, but only in as much as he could not understand what was going on. His concern had not stopped him from having a good night’s sleep or making himself presentable for work this morning.
Which just went to prove how right she was about his feelings for her, she concluded.
‘It’s quite simple, Mac,’ she therefore informed him levelly. ‘I’ve moved out of your flat—’
‘I know that!’ he cut in deridingly. ‘Having arrived there at some ungodly hour this morning to find it strangely lacking any of your personal possessions!’
‘—because,’ she went on, as if he hadn’t interrupted, holding his slicing gaze with her own supremely calm one, ‘I have decided to conclude our relationship.’
He didn’t move for the space of several stuttering heartbeats, his stunned eyes fixed on her lovely composed features. Then, ‘You’ve what?’ he choked, and her stomach turned itself inside out as a strange kind of triumph grabbed hold of her.
She had actually managed to hit him right below the proverbial belt at last!
‘You heard me,’ she answered smoothly enough. ‘It’s over between us.’ Finished, finito, she added to herself cynically. No more.
Mac shook his jet-black head as if he needed to clear it. ‘Bunny...’ he murmured, the husky sound of his very personal pet name for her wrenching
