she had her daughter’s curious enquiry to deal with, and as the truth flooded into her mind and sent what vestige of colour she had left fleeing from her face, she managed an acceptable reply. ‘Michael is teething again.’
The corner of Daniel’s Sunday paper twitched, and Rachel knew he was listening, maybe even watching her over the top of that twitched corner. She didn’t glance his way to find out. She didn’t really care what he was doing.
Blonde-haired, blue-eyed, the uncanny image of her mother, Kate nodded understandingly. Michael’s teeth had been the scourge of their nights’ rest before— although Rachel had not so much as considered swapping beds to be closer to him then. But that did not seem to occur to Kate, who was already turning her attention to her darling daddy.
‘I bet you miss having Mummy to cuddle, Daddy,’ she remarked, getting down from her chair to go and climb on to Daniel’s knee, her long hair flying as she blithely shoved his newspaper aside and made herself comfortable in those big, infinitely secure arms, with the certain knowledge that she was welcome. ‘If you’d just told me,’ she murmured, with typical Kate guile, ‘I would have come and cuddled you instead.’
Tension leaped to life, unspoken words and acid replies flying about the room without being captured.
‘That’s nice of you, princess.’ Daniel folded his paper away so that he could give his adored daughter his full attention. ‘But I think I can manage for a little while longer without feeling completely rejected.’
If that last remark had been meant as a message to Rachel, she ignored it, and sat there sipping at her coffee without revealing the effort it cost her to do it.
He was sitting there dressed only in his blue towelling robe, and the cluster of dark hair at his chest curled upwards from between the gaping lapels. He dropped a kiss on his daughter’s silky cheek, his smile so openly loving that Rachel felt her stomach tighten then sink, as jealousy, like nothing she had ever experienced before, shot through her, forcing her abruptly to her feet, appalled by what was going on inside her!
Jealous of your own daughter! she castigated herself. How bitter and twisted can you get?
Sheer desperation made her start gathering pots together. Daniel’s watchful gaze lifted to her face, and she couldn’t stop herself from looking back at him. Something must have shown in the bitter blue glint of her eyes, because his own narrowed speculatively before she spun away and deliberately ruined the relaxed atmosphere by banging around the kitchen, clearing up.
She became even more embittered when her tactics to shift them all didn’t work. In fact they simply ignored her as Sam was drawn into conversation with Kate and Daniel, and even Michael, when he insisted on coming out of his high-chair, was promptly placed on Daniel’s spare knee where he chattered blithely away to them all in his usual gibberish.
She couldn’t stand it. Something in the cosy little scene gnawed into her ragged nerves. She felt left out, alienated by her inability to go over there and join in as she would normally have done. Lydia stood in her way like some huge unscalable wall, blocking her off from her family, from the love and affection she had always taken for granted as her right.
Giving up on clearing up before she broke something, she turned and left the room with a mumbled, ‘I’m going to make the beds,’ knowing no one heard her, and feeling even more cast out.
She was standing in the middle of their bedroom, just staring blankly into space, when Daniel came in. With a nervy jerk she moved off towards the en suite bathroom, trying to look as if that had been where she was making for when he opened the door. When she came out again Daniel was still there, standing at the window with his hands thrust into the deep pockets of his robe. He was big and lean and looked so damned appealing that she wanted to throw something at him— anything to ease this awful ache she was suffering inside.
Forcing herself to ignore him, she began tidying things away. She wanted to make his bed but was now avoiding so much as looking at it while he was present. It had taken on the proportions of a monster since Mandy’s call, and each morning she’d had to force herself to come in here to fluff up the pillows and shake out the duvet. It smelled of Daniel—that clean male smell that was uniquely his. It ignited senses she would far rather remained dormant, especially since she wanted to believe he had killed them. But, if anything, her awareness of anything purporting to Daniel seemed to have been intensified rather than dulled. She had found betrayal fed a hateful awareness inside her, and anger fed desire, and pain fed her ability to torment herself with all those feelings she had previously taken for granted.
He turned slightly, watching her in silence as she moved around the room. After a while, when the throbbing silence threatened to choke the very atmosphere in the room, he came to stand in front of her, blocking her path. ‘Rachel…’ he said gently, willing her to look at him while she was equally determined not to. She looked at the floor between them instead. ‘You have remembered I’m in Birmingham all next week?’
No, she had not remembered. But she did so now. Anger at his daring to put his business first, while his private life was in crisis, took the form of ice-cold efficiency. ‘What shall I pack?’ Was Lydia going? Was it to be a nice cosy double room for two for a week, with no hostile atmosphere to spoil their fun?
Her heart slammed against her breast and she had to fight not to take a step back from him. It would be like conceding some small if obscure point to him to back away, so she stood stiffly, eyes lowered, face a wretched blank.
Physically, it was the closest they’d been to each other since the night the bomb fell on her, and she was tingling all over with that bitter sense of awareness of him.
‘Anything,’ he dismissed impatiently. She had always packed his case for him when he went off on one of his trips—lovingly folding freshly laundered shirts and carefully counted socks, underwear, handkerchiefs, ties, several suits to wear. And even now, while she silently prayed for him to move out of her way so that she could put a safer distance between them, and her mood wanted to tell him to pack his own bloody case, she was making a mental list of everything he usually required.
Conditioned you are, Rachel! she scoffed at herself. Expertly programmed.
He didn’t move, and the tension between them became intolerable. ‘Will you be all right?’ he asked at last, as though the question was a reluctant one, one he did not want to voice in case she used it as an excuse to attack him. He had been very careful this week to give her nothing which could start the avalanche. ‘I…I could get my mother to come and stay if you feel the need for company or—’
‘And why should I be in need of company?’ She flashed him a bitter look. ‘I’ve managed before when you’ve been away and I shall manage this time, no doubt, without the need of a baby-sitter.’
He took the taunt about her being one of his helpless children with a tightening of his jaw but without taking her up on it. ‘I was not questioning your ability to cope,’ he said quietly. ‘But you look—tired. And I just wondered if—with everything—you would rather not be on your own right now, that’s all.’
Tired, she repeated inside her head. She didn’t just look tired, she looked haggard! ‘Is your secretary going with you?’ Damn, she hadn’t meant to ask that question. In fact, she had been determined not to so much as breathe it!
‘Yes, but—’
‘Then I won’t have to concern myself about your comfort, will I?’
‘Rachel,’ he sighed, ‘Lydia isn’t—’
