fingers uncurling slowly, as though it took a great effort to make the conciliatory gesture.
‘What have I done to bring this on?’ he asked.
Done? ‘Nothing,’ she said. Exactly nothing. And hardened her heart against the appealing picture he made standing there pleading with her like that. He had used this tactic before when she’d been angry with him—and had always won with it. But not this time. ‘I have simply decided that it is time to get out, Mac. Surely you above all people can understand that?’ It was a pointed dig at the long string of women who had preceded her in and out of his own life.
And he took it, by dropping the open hand, the long fingers clenching up again at the same moment that his mouth clenched also. ‘But why?’ he demanded. ‘And why like this? With no prior warning but just an empty flat for me to walk into!’
Had that hurt? She looked into his hard silver eyes and saw that it had. Mac probably brought the end to a relationship by sending a bunch of roses or a pretty bracelet of diamonds and a thank-you, which meant as little as the relationship itself had meant to him. Did he think that his way was any less hurtful than hers had been?
‘The relationship was going nowhere,’ she told him, ignoring the latter to answer the former because that deserved an answer; the latter did not.
His eyes narrowed assessingly at that. ‘And you—wanted it to go somewhere?’ he murmured softly.
Roberta smiled, seeing the trap even as he set it. ‘Oh, yes,’ she admitted, ever so ruefully. ‘I wanted it to.’
‘But you knew I wasn’t into marriage even before we began.’
‘Yes.’ Her soft blonde head nodded, then stayed lowered, from where she watched her fingers pleat and unpleat themselves on her lap. Yes, she thought heavily. She had known, but she had been foolish enough to hope otherwise.
‘We agreed to live together, nothing else,’ Mac said grimly.
That brought her head shooting back up, green eyes honing on to him. ‘But we didn’t live together, did we?’ she challenged. ‘You have your Berkshire home, where I am not welcome. Your Knightsbridge apartment, where I am not welcome. And you have your Chelsea flat, where I am supposed to know my place and keep to it!’
‘And when do I ever use the Knightsbridge place?’ he demanded furiously. ‘Or spend time in Berkshire, come to that?’ With a raking flick of his hand he dismissed that argument with the contempt he thought it deserved. ‘You know as well as I do,’ he went on gruffly, ‘that where you are is where I want to be, which knocks that excuse right on its crazy head.’
‘Unless you’re entertaining, of course.’ Despite the warming response she had experienced to his gruff confession about wanting to be where she was, Roberta kept her mind firmly fixed on the point in hand. ‘When you suddenly develop amnesia where I am concerned.’
‘Good grief!’ he gasped, eyes widening as understanding suddenly hit. ‘Do you mean to tell me that this is all because of Friday night?’ He made a sound that was both impatient and scornful.
‘The final straw,’ she conceded. ‘That’s all.’
But he wasn’t listening. ‘I can’t believe it!’ he was muttering. ‘You’re just bloody miffed because I didn’t dance attendance on you all night long!’
‘You didn’t dance attendance at all, the way I remember it.’
‘I had other duties to attend to!’ he snapped. ‘It was Lulu’s night. And she, therefore, had first call on my attention!’
‘She got it, Mac,’ Roberta drily assured. ‘She certainly got it! The full, central and undivided attention of most of the room all night—at my damned expense due to your lack of support for me!’
‘Lulu said something to upset you?’ he asked sharply, really beginning to catch on at last. His eyes darkened, the anger leaving him to be replaced with another look of urgent appeal. ‘Listen, Bunny—’ he leaned towards her again ‘—if Lulu—or any of my family—offended you at the party the other night, then I apologise for them. They’re all so damned—’
Roberta suddenly shot to her feet. ‘They didn’t offend me, Mac. You did! You do it every time you pretend I don’t exist as far as they are concerned! If once—just once—you had come to my side, forced them to accept me for what I am supposed to be to you, then they would have done—and you know it!’ She sucked in a short breath, disgusted with him and herself for putting up with it all for so long. ‘Well—’ She tried to put a brake on her temper, but it didn’t work. Now that it had been let loose it did not want to retreat again. ‘I refuse to hide in the cupboard like your guilty skeleton any longer! I have done nothing—nothing—to be ashamed of. Yet your family—through you—’ she angrily made clear ‘—has sunk my self-esteem to such a level that it can’t sink any lower! And yes—’ she nodded tightly ‘—I’ve had enough!’ The lot, everything she had been bottling up all weekend, was spilling out in one furious wave. ‘More than enough! I will not allow myself to be trodden under your rotten family’s feet for another day! So you can take yourself—and your selfish idea of a relationship—and just get out of here!’
‘Finished?’ he clipped.
‘Yes,’ she said, and sat down with a bump, drawing air into her lungs in an effort to control herself. She had been determined not to lose her temper with him, to finish this with all the cool aplomb that a man like Mac would expect from a woman of her supposed sophistication. But that was the trouble, she conceded angrily. She wasn’t really sophisticated at all! She was just a love-vulnerable fool called Roberta Chandler, forced into playing an alien role because she couldn’t control her feelings for this man!
And to have him she’d had to play it his way—right down the damned line!
‘So you want out.’
‘Not want,’ she corrected, ‘I have out.’
‘Or marriage,’ he derided, shoving himself away from the desk.
‘Oh, no.’ She denied that instantly. ‘You see, that was another thing I discovered on Friday night. I discovered that I have no wish to become a member of your rude and selfish family. But I do want marriage!’ she added quickly, when he flashed her a look that said he might be considering throttling her for that particular insult. ‘And since it obviously isn’t going to be to you—’ her slender shoulders lifted and fell in a shrug ‘—then I must cut my losses and look around for someone else.’
‘Even though it’s me you love?’
Oh, that hurt, and it showed in the way she winced. But she lifted her chin to him, green eyes holding on to his. ‘And who do you love, Mac?’ she challenged quietly.
He swung away, obviously not prepared to answer that one. ‘I learned the wedding lesson the first time around,’ he muttered evasively, going to stand at the window with his hands shoved into his trouser pockets. ‘I have no intention of putting myself through that kind of hell again.’
‘I can understand that,’ Roberta acknowledged fairly. ‘But whatever hell your marriage was to you, Mac, you did gain something very precious from it. You gained Lulu, whom you so obviously love and adore—a daughter who loves and adores you in return. Do you think I don’t want to experience
