chair, all too aware that his physical reaction to Imogene when he’d seen her today had been as fierce and as instant as it had ever been. He still remembered the first time he’d met her, when she’d brought a child from her primary school into the ER where he was a trauma specialist. Even as he’d switched into his clinician’s role seamlessly, he hadn’t remained unmoved by her presence. Now, with her seated beside him, studiously avoiding his gaze when he turned to look at her again, he observed the proud posture of her slender body and the surprisingly determined line of her jaw. A jaw he’d traced with kisses. His body clenched on a surge of desire—his instinctive need for her as overwhelming as it had ever been—and he turned his stare back to his grandmother.
“No, I cannot,” he said with great reluctance.
“And, Imogene? When you realized it was Valentin waiting at the altar for you today? How did you feel when you saw him?”
“Confused,” she said bluntly.
“And?” Alice prompted.
“Fine, I was attracted to him. But attraction isn’t the only thing necessary to make a marriage work. We proved that already.”
“Yes, you did,” Alice conceded. “But since that attraction still burns between you, don’t you think you owe it to yourselves to find out if, under different circumstances from those in which you originally met, you can make an honest attempt at a good marriage?”
“I believed I was making more than an attempt at the time,” Imogene protested. “I loved Valentin with all my heart. A heart he subsequently broke.”
Alice sighed and leaned back in her chair, settling her hands in a loose clasp in her lap. “I see,” she acknowledged. “And it still hurts, doesn’t it?”
Imogene gave Alice a stiff nod.
“Then you still have unresolved feelings for my grandson, don’t you?”
Valentin made a sound of protest. “Nagy, that’s not fair. She made her decision a long time ago. You can’t make us do this. It’s cruel and unnecessary.”
“It’s never easy facing your failures,” Alice said, slowly and stiffly rising from her seat. “I will leave you two for a few minutes to discuss this further. I strongly urge you to give your marriage one more chance. Your circumstances have changed dramatically since then. Neither of you is as young or as volatile as you were and, I might point out, neither of you has found a more suitable mate since. Please, discuss this as rational adults. Be certain that you won’t spend the rest of your lives wondering if you should have given each other another chance. I will wait outside for your decision. Don’t make me wait too long.”
The door closed as Alice left them alone in the room.
“She’s a piece of work, your grandmother,” Imogene said harshly. “How dare she do this?”
“She dares because it’s what she does.”
Imogene rose from her chair, her gown whispering with her rapid movement and her breasts heaving above the jeweled neckline.
“What she does? Seriously? You’re condoning her behavior?” Imogene forced a short laugh from her throat. It was either that or scream.
“No, I’m not condoning it. I’m as angry and as shocked as you are. I never thought in a million years...”
She stared at Valentin as he rose to his feet and faced her. Always a big man, he dwarfed the room, but she wasn’t scared of him. She knew all too well how gentle he could be—how tender his touch was. Her pulse kicked up a beat and she fiercely quelled the direction of her thoughts. This wasn’t what she’d signed up for.
“A million years wouldn’t be long enough,” she murmured, and turned her face from his piercing blue-eyed gaze.
No, she thought. The end of time wouldn’t be long enough to undo the ravages of their first union. He’d taken her love, her adoration, her heart. Then he’d thrown it all away. She’d never forget that moment she’d walked into their small house and smelled the distinctive heady perfume one of his colleagues at the hospital had always worn. Nor would she forget walking on legs that had become stiff and wooden toward the bedroom where she’d discovered said colleague, still naked and drowsy in her and Valentin’s bed.
The sheets of the bed had been tumbled in disarray. The combined scents of fresh sweat and sex had been heavy on the air. Imogene had heard the sound of the shower running in the tiny bathroom down the hall but she hadn’t waited to see her husband. When his colleague Carla had asked if she was looking for Valentin and gestured to the bathroom, she’d turned on her heel and marched straight back through town and stopped at the first law office she’d seen.
Numbly she’d gone through the motions of filing to dissolve the marriage that had obviously meant so little to Valentin and yet had meant the world to her. He had meant the world to her. Until she’d been faced with his infidelity.
She’d been in such a state of shock. Was it possible she’d misunderstood Carla? But then again, if she had, why had Valentin so easily given her up? If he was as innocent as he protested himself to be, why—at any time in the next few weeks—didn’t he find her at the hotel she moved her things into until she could be released from her teaching contract and get the next flight back to the States? Instead, he’d simply let her go, which smacked of a guilty conscience to her—both then and now. Besides, she didn’t want to think for a minute that she’d made a mistake, or that she’d behaved rashly in the heat of the moment. Carla had had no reason to lie, and Imogene knew the other woman and Valentin had been an item before her own arrival in Africa. Valentin himself had told her. More fool her, she’d believed him when he’d said it was over—that Imogene was the only woman for him.
She was dragged back into the present by the sound of Valentin clearing his throat.
“So I’m guessing you’re a no, then?”
“You’re guessing right,” she answered adamantly.
“Not even prepared to think about it?” he coaxed.
“Not even,” she said firmly. “I will not marry a philanderer ever again.”
“Imogene.” He said her name softly, with a tone of regret lacing the three syllables together in a way that struck her at her core. “I was never unfaithful to you.”
“I know what I saw, Valentin. Don’t take me for a complete idiot.”
He shoved a hand through his hair in a gesture of frustration. “What you saw was—”
“Your mistress, curled up in my sheets, in my bed, and stinking of you!” she answered viciously.
“It wasn’t what you thought it was.”
“Oh, so now you’re going to tell me you never slept with her?”
“You know I can’t tell you that, but I told you the truth when I said that had all been in the past. I was never unfaithful to you,” he affirmed.
“You say one
