she choked out, hurt beyond belief by this almost ancient betrayal of his so-called love for her.
‘Don’t you? Poor Bianca.’ His smile was not at all sweet. ‘Has someone stolen your lollipop, darling? Won’t naughty Adam play the game any more?’
Her mouth returned to its earlier goldfish imitation.
Adam reached out and flicked her chin upwards, so her teeth snapped together. His eyes were narrowed and cruel-looking. He was nothing at all like the Adam she knew and loved.
‘I suggest you toddle off now, sweetheart, and make up a new story to tell your mother. I’m sure you can come up with one, being such an inventive and imaginative little minx. If you’re really stuck, you could always try the truth!’
Bianca’s startled tongue-tiedness didn’t last for long, and was quickly replaced by indignant and sceptical outrage. ‘I don’t believe any of this! Have you been drinking? Did you lose all your money at the races? This isn’t like you at all, Adam.’
He gripped her shoulders and pushed her down into a sitting position on the end of the bed. ‘Yes, I’ve been drinking,’ he agreed in a steely tone. ‘And, yes, I did lose a good deal at the races today, which didn’t please me at all. But you’re quite wrong when you think this isn’t like me. It is. It’s the new me.’
‘The new you?’ she repeated blankly.
‘I’ve been too soft with you for too long, Bianca. It’s done your character no good. No good at all. You think you can do as you please where I’m concerned. You think you can run rings around me. Well, you can’t anymore, sweetness. I’m awake to you now. Actually, I have been for ages, but it didn’t suit me to make a stand. It does now.’
‘Why now?’ she threw back up at him, feeling suddenly angry. How dared he let her think he loved her all this time when he didn’t?
‘Because I’ve met someone,’ he said. ‘Someone I intend asking to marry me. Hard to do that when I’m pretending to be married to someone else, don’t you think?’
Bianca felt her world go slightly out of kilter for a moment. Adam had fallen in love? He was going to get married?
Her heart squeezed tight. Her stomach flipped over. ‘I don’t believe you!’
He straightened, laughing. ‘You do seem to be having trouble with believing me today. Tell me what you don’t believe.’
She levered herself to her feet, shaken to find that her legs felt like jelly. ‘I don’t believe you’ve met someone. You haven’t brought a girl home here once this last month. You’re just making her up.’
But at the back of her mind Bianca was remembering all those nights Adam hadn’t come home lately. She’d presumed he was sleeping over in his room at the university, which he sometimes did. Now she saw there could be a very different explanation for his many absences.
He laughed again. ‘You’re really grasping at straws, you know that? The reason I didn’t bring Sophie here was because I wanted our relationship to last. What chance did I have with any of my other girlfriends after they’d met you as my flatmate?
‘They always took one look at you and were instantly jealous and suspicious. Nothing I could ever say would convince them our friendship was purely platonic. They were all convinced we were secret lovers. An impression you deliberately seemed to foster, I might add.’
‘I did not!’ she denied hotly. But underneath she knew she had. She’d never felt any of those bimbos were good enough for Adam. She’d only been protecting him by getting rid of them.
‘You never wanted me, Bianca,’ he swept on, a cold rage settling into his eyes. ‘But you didn’t want anyone else to have me either. You’ve been a very greedy little girl. And very selfish. It’s time you stopped thinking of no one but yourself.’
‘But that’s not true,’ she wailed, hating this new Adam and the way he was making her feel. ‘I was thinking of my mother when I told her...what I told her.’ Tears filled her eyes, tears of temper more than distress. ‘You have no right to say these rotten things to me. You’re being so hateful!’
‘The truth often hurts.’
The truth, she thought savagely. The truth was that her Adam was going to marry someone else! Just the thought of it was like a dagger in her heart. God knows why. She didn’t want to marry him herself. She didn’t want to marry any man.
Marriage, in Bianca’s opinion, would be a living death for someone like her. She was just like her father in that respect, craving change and excitement all the time. She didn’t like the idea of settling down and having children any more than he had.
Her dad had married in the throes of a whirlwind passion, then spent the next twenty years finding satisfaction outside of the marital bed. Bianca suspected she might be just as fickle. There hadn’t been a male yet to hold her sexual interest beyond six months. She suspected none ever would.
‘So who is this Sophie you’re going to marry?’ she demanded to know.
‘Oh, no, you don’t,’ Adam retorted with a dry chuckle. ‘I’m going to keep her well away from you, Madam Mischief-Maker.’
‘Where do you sleep with her?’
‘None of your business. Do I ask you where you copulate with your latest boyfriend?’
‘You can, if you like. But Derek and I have parted company. He was beginning to bore me.’
‘Gee whiz, what happened? Didn’t you fall asleep straight afterwards one night? Were you actually forced to make conversation with Mr Macho-Man?’
Bianca could feel a smile begin to tug at her lips. It was a good description for Derek, who was a professional weight-lifter with more muscles than mental capacity. ‘Something like that,’ she said.
Their eyes met, and that old camaraderie which had sustained their friendship all these years struggled to the surface. She’d always been able to tell Adam pretty much anything. And she’d never been able to shock him. He’d always listened and always given her sound advice, but never condemned. He was still her best friend, she realised, her heart squeezing tight as a wry smile began to play around his mouth.
Instinctively she reached out to place an intimate hand on his arm. ‘Sophie doesn’t have to know, Adam,’ she said pleadingly. ‘Mum will soon be gone, back to Scotland. Please...I don’t want to spoil her trip by telling her the truth just yet. I promise I’ll write to her after she’s gone back and make up something to get you permanently off the hook.’
She held her breath as he simply stared at her.
Please say yes, she was silently willing him. Please...
His sigh was weary as he removed her hand from his arm. ‘You never know when to give up, do you? Now let me make this quite clear. I am not going to play happy husband for you and your mother. I am not going to let you sleep in my bed while she’s here, unless I’m not in it. I am not going to be at your beck and call, or dance to any tune you might choose to play.’
Bianca’s dismay was only exceeded by her. panic. ‘But whatever am I going to tell her?’
‘Tell
