hadn’t rehearsed the tirade, but it rolled off her tongue as smoothly and with as much fire as if she’d been practicing for weeks. She was breathless when she finished: breathless and triumphant. In the old days, she’d never have put him in his place so effectively that he was rendered momentarily speechless.
“Well,” he said, when he finally found his voice again. “Well, well, well! Daddy’s little girl seems to have grown up after all, and about time, too. Tell me, sweet face, how did you manage to slide out from under that big, controlling thumb of his?”
“After surviving ten months of marriage to you, it was a breeze, I can assure you!”
“Oh, come now, Olivia, I don’t deserve that. They weren’t all bad months. We had some memorable times.”
“Too few to count, I’m afraid.”
“Oh, really? Is that why you lost it on Saturday night? Because you couldn’t remember how it used to be with us?” He shook his head. “If you’re going to go over the top like that for no reason at all every time we happen to meet, you’ll turn the next few weeks into one long soap opera for everyone else in town.”
“I don’t give a hoot what everyone else in town thinks.”
Of course, it was a bald-faced lie, but, surprisingly, he bought it. Abandoning his contemplation of the flower pots, he strolled over to where she sat in the chaise with her knees drawn up to her chest so that he had no opportunity to subject her cleavage to further inspection. “You know,” he said, looking down at her with a mixture of respect and regret, “if you’d shown half the backbone then that you’ve acquired since, we might still be married today.”
“I don’t think so. Say what you like about my father, but he was right when he warned me that you and I shared nothing in common. It’s a miracle we stayed together as long as we did.”
She ought to have known better than to bring her father into the discussion. The old light of battle sparked in Grant’s eyes before her words had cooled on the evening air. “Nothing?” he echoed. “Oh, that’s not quite true, Olivia. We shared something quite extraordinary—for a little while, at least.”
“I suppose you’re harping on sex again,” she said, squirming a little under his gaze, “but I’m afraid it doesn’t have any staying power when it’s the only thing holding a relationship together.”
“You’re sure of that, are you?”
“Yes,” she said, but he heard the betraying quaver in her voice and, like the predator he was, took immediate advantage of her weakness.
“Why don’t we put your theory to the test, Olivia?” he murmured silkily, and before she could blink, let alone refuse him, he dropped down beside her on the chaise and kissed her.
How ridiculous that the same word used to describe a peck on the cheek should apply to the exchange which occurred between them at that moment. How preposterous that nothing Henry had been able to devise in the way of romantic overtures came even close to the utter seduction of Grant’s mouth on hers.
He didn’t touch her anywhere else. No hands sliding up her bare arms to find her throat and trace a daring line to where her bikini top clung tenuously to her breasts. No forcing her lips apart with his tongue to take possession of the dark and secret enclaves of her mouth. No doing any of those things she found herself wanting him to do. Just simple devastation with a touch as light as thistledown that lasted a second, and then two, and then three, and which left her aching in every pore. Hurting for something she had missed more than she’d ever dared admit.
The pain roared through her like fire, as though it had been lying in wait for the last eight years for just such an opportunity to destroy her. The starch went out of her spine, seeping away like water to expose the great arid desert where her heart had lain untouched for so long.
She felt the moan rise in her throat and did her best to smother it, but it escaped anyway, a pleading, shameless whimper of need. The fingers she’d knotted around her knees lost their strength and let her legs fall slackly apart, leaving her with nothing but the yellow triangle of her bikini bottom to protect her where she was, and always had been, so susceptible to his advances.
“Grant,” she implored him faintly, begging him in that single word to tell her that he understood, that he felt the same, that he wanted her as rapaciously as she wanted him.
But, although she heard the unspoken words as clearly as if she’d screamed them from the rooftop, he either did not or he chose to ignore them. Or perhaps he listened instead to his own, more prudent inner voices, because, very slowly, he lifted his head and drew back from her and muttered, “I shouldn’t have done that. It was a mistake. A very big mistake.”
“Why did you do it, then?” she asked, tears trembling in her throat.
“To prove a point that no longer has any relevance in either of our lives,” he said soberly, and stood up. “I thought it was important that we clear the air between us, but it would have been better if I’d found some other place to do it because I should never have come here, nor will I again.”
The sun still slanted across the garden, filming the surface of the pool with gold and leaving the air soporific with heat, but suddenly she was so cold that gooseflesh stippled her limbs and set her teeth to chattering. He would never know what a supreme effort it took for her to reply, “So leave. Run off and play with your stethoscope. Learn to knit with it, for all I care. I’m sorry I don’t have a butler to show you out, but I’m sure you’ll find your own way.”
Just briefly, he paused, as though perhaps he had something more to convey, some small indication that he was not completely unmoved by what had happened between them. But then he straightened his shoulders and swung away.
Miserably, she watched as he strode across the patio, dwelling on the sight of him and trying not to remember the time when she’d had the right to explore all that height and breadth of sheer masculine beauty. When to hold him in her arms and welcome him into her body had been the joy of both their lives. When to reach up and kiss him for no reason other than that he was her husband and she loved him had been as natural and instinctive as breathing.
Gradually, his footsteps faded, and as the silence he left behind came pressing down on her so did the tears. Not because he had left her tonight, but because he had reminded her too vividly of the pain she’d experienced when he’d left her before. She had not known he could hurt her so badly a second time.
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