which went on and on until she slid into a dark dull sleep.
Morning came with the gurgling of Michael, awake but content at the moment to kick playfully in his cot. And it took Rachel several moments to remember why she was sleeping in his room rather than in her own bed with Daniel.
There was a single crashing feeling inside her as memory returned, then she felt herself go calm again, last night’s storm of weeping seeming to have emptied her clean of everything.
She got up, grimacing when she realised she was still wearing the same clothes she’d had on when Mandy called. A hand went to her head, finding the elastic band still partly holding a clump of hair in a tangle of silky knots. She tugged it out then shook her long tresses free. She looked a mess, felt a mess—she hadn’t even bothered removing her trainers! She did that now, sitting down on the bed to pull the hot and uncomfortable shoes from her feet just as the baby noticed her and let out a delighted shriek.
She went to bend over his cot, his welcoming smile a balm to her aching heart. And for a while she just immersed herself in enjoying him, tickling his tummy and murmuring all those little nothings mothers shared with their babies, which only babies and mothers understood.
This was hers, she thought wretchedly. No matter what else life wanted to take from her, it could never take away the love of her children.
This, she declared silently, is mine.
He was soaking wet, and she stripped him before attempting to lift him from his cot. Michael was always lively in the mornings, chirping away to himself, bouncing up and down against her while she carried him through to the small bathroom to run the few inches of bath water needed to freshen him up for the day.
She took him, wrapped snugly in a towel, back to his room to dress him. Normally she would then take him downstairs for his breakfast without bothering to get dressed herself. That usually waited until they were all out of the way—at work or at school—but there was no way she could greet the twins looking as she did. They were just too sharp not to wonder out loud why she was still wearing the same clothes she’d had on the night before.
But it took a great gathering together of her courage to enter the room where she knew Daniel would only just be stirring from sleep. She let herself in quietly, searching the gloom for a glimpse of his lean bulk huddled beneath the duvet.
He wasn’t there, and it was then that she heard the tell-tale sounds coming from the bathroom. He appeared a moment later, already dressed in a clean white shirt and the trousers of his iron-grey suit. He saw her almost at once and came to an abrupt halt.
In all the years of knowing him, she had never felt so vulnerable in his presence, or so aware of her tumbled appearance: her puffy eyes, made so by too much weeping, her tousled hair hanging limp and untidy around her pale face.
Nor so aware of him: his height, the length of his long, straight body and the tightness of its superbly honed muscles. Wide chest, flat stomach, narrow hips, long powerful legs with…
No. Dry-mouthed, she flicked her gaze warily up to clash with his.
He looked tired, as though he hadn’t slept much. He would have been thinking, working things out, trying to find the right solution to an impossible situation. He was good at that—making a success out of a disaster. It was the most fundamental source of his outstanding business success.
His gaze lingered on her face, his own a defensive mask. He had just shaved; his stubborn chin looked clean and shiny-smooth. Rachel caught the familiar scent of his aftershave, and felt her senses stir in response to it. Sexual magnetism held no boundaries, she acknowledged bitterly. Even now, while she was hating and despising him, she was disturbingly aware of him as the man she had loved for so long and so blindly.
Shifting jerkily, she moved over to the bed, lifting a knee on to the soft mattress so that she could lay Michael in the middle. It was only then that she realised that the bed had not been slept in, and the only evidence that Daniel had used it at all was in the imprint of his body on the smooth peach duvet.
Michael was kicking madly, trying to catch his father’s attention—attention that was firmly fixed on Rachel. The baby let out a frustrated cry, going red in the face in his effort to pull himself into a sitting position, and Rachel smiled instinctively at his efforts, capturing a waving hand and feeling the instant tug as the child tried to use it for leverage.
Daniel came over to the bed, stretching out to recline on the other side of their son and automatically reaching for the other small hand, which was all Michael needed to lever himself into a sitting position.
‘Da!’ he said triumphantly, twisting free of both of them so that he could pat his satisfaction on the soft duvet.
Rachel kept her eyes firmly on her son while she felt the searing appeal in Daniel’s gaze sting into her pale cheeks. ‘Rachel please look at me.’ It was a gruff plea that twisted at something wretched inside her, but one she refused to comply with, shaking her head.
‘No,’ she whispered, keeping her voice level with effort, and Daniel sighed heavily, then reached for Michael, lifting him to kiss the soft baby cheek before placing him further up the bed.
Alerted, Rachel moved to get up, but Daniel was too quick for her, his hand circling her wrist and pulling gently until he had hauled her across the small gap separating them, then enclosing her in the warm strength of his arms.
It’s not fair! she thought piteously as her insides dipped and dived with a need to immerse herself in the comfort he was offering her. Her chest became tight, then began to throb with the need to weep, and she let free a constricted gulp in an effort to stop the flood.
‘Don’t,’ he murmured unsteadily.
It had been the wrong thing to say, because the instant he showed her tenderness her control went haywire and she was sobbing deeply into his shoulder. He tightened his arms around her, and lowered his head on to hers. ‘Sorry,’ he kept saying, over and over. ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry…’
But it wasn’t enough, was it? It would never be enough. He had killed everything. Love, faith, trust, respect—all gone, and sorry would never bring them back to life again.
‘I’m all right now,’ she mumbled, making the monumental effort to pull herself together and draw away from him.
But his hold tightened. ‘I know I’ve hurt you unbearably, Rachel,’ he murmured, trying to keep a rein on his own distress. She could feel the tension in his chest, in the erratic thump of his heart. ‘But don’t make any rash decisions while you’re in such an…’ Emotional state, she guessed he was going to say, but he stopped himself. ‘We have everything going for us if you’ll just give it another chance. Don’t throw it all away because of one stupid mistake on my part. You can’t throw it all away!’ he insisted thickly.
‘I didn’t do the throwing away,’ she countered, and this time, when she pulled, he let her go, his eyes dark and bleak as he watched her get up from the bed to begin moving around the room searching out fresh clothes, an electric current of suppressed emotion following her as she went from wardrobe to drawers then back again without really being aware of what she was choosing to wear.
All those years of blind trust she had given him, years of quiet understanding and acceptance of his deep personal need to achieve his ambitions. Through all those years she had stayed at home like some pampered pet dog and, so long as he gave her frequent
