had left him and phoned frequently until the day in the spring when she knew she had mortally offended him, but never in all their dealings had his voice carried such an icy chill to it. It seemed she wouldn’t have to be the one to instigate divorce proceedings after all, she told herself sickly. It sounded as though he was ringing to set that particular ball in motion himself. Of course, she could be wrong. Bitter experience was proof she didn’t have a clue what made Jay Carter tick.
Rising to her feet, she walked across the room and made herself a cup of hot chocolate. She needed something to combat the butterflies in her stomach. Then she dialled Jay’s number.
‘Hello?’
The butterflies ignored the soothing effects of the hot chocolate and instead went for gold in the fluttering stakes. Swallowing hard, Miriam said, ‘Hello, Jay. You wanted to talk to me?’
‘Miriam?’
He knew jolly well it was her. ‘Yes,’ she said, her voice clipped now. ‘I’ve been out.’
‘Does that mean you didn’t take your phone with you or you were too…busy to answer it when it rang?’
It was nothing to do with him either way. Ignoring the question, she repeated stonily, ‘You wanted to talk to me?’
‘I think we need to talk,’ he corrected silkily.
Miriam blinked. The snub had been delivered with a smooth flatness but was a snub none the less. Recovering immediately, she said coolly, ‘So talk.’
‘Oh, no, Miriam. This time we do it my way. Civilised, over a meal and a drink. That’s what grown-up people do.’
Her temper was slowly chasing away the last of the butterflies. ‘Really? I take it this is in the same realm as adultery being an accepted social pastime for grown-up men and women?’
There was a pregnant pause before he said, ‘I’ll ignore that. Tomorrow night. Are you free?’
She was but not for the world would she have admitted it. ‘Sorry, already booked.’
‘OK, we could go on like this for hours. When are you able to have dinner with me?’
Ridiculous, because he was only talking about dinner, but his dark, smoky voice was having an unwelcome effect on her equilibrium. Or perhaps it wasn’t so much her mental or emotional equanimity, she admitted with hot shame, as a throbbing warmth spread throughout her lower stomach. How she could still physically want him after what he had done she didn’t know, but it appeared her body was working independently to the rest of her. ‘Let me see…’ She allowed a moment or two to pass, more to gain control over her voice than anything else. A breathless stammer just wasn’t an option.
Today was Tuesday. ‘Friday?’ she said as steadily as she could, considering her whole body was quivering with something she labelled lust.
‘Yep, Friday’s good for me.’
He sounded insultingly relaxed about the wait, she noted with a mixture of hurt and bitterness. But then she had no doubt at all Jay could fill his evenings without any trouble whatsoever. From the first day she had met him she had known women found him totally irresistible. ‘Fine, Friday it is.’
‘I’ll pick you up at eight.’
Now he had got his own way he sounded almost uninterested, but then that was the nature of the beast, Miriam told herself silently. Jay was the ultimate alpha male, the leader, the hunter. How she could have been so incredibly stupid as to get mixed up with him in the first place she still didn’t know, but she had further compounded that mistake by believing him when he’d said he loved her and wanted her to marry him, that the two of them would be a forever witness to the power of true love. Her thoughts prompted her to say, ‘Wouldn’t it be better to communicate through our solicitors? I mean, we’ve said all we can say, surely?’
‘Perhaps.’ It was cold. Chilling. ‘But I’ll pick you up at eight.’
The kicked-in-the-stomach feeling she was experiencing didn’t give her any strength to argue. Suddenly a sense of fatalism was there. Maybe she had to go through the final death throes to emerge whole again, she thought a trifle hysterically. ‘You—you’ve got my address?’
‘I know where you live, Miriam.’
‘Oh, right.’
‘Goodnight.’
When the phone went dead she continued to stare at it blankly for a moment or two. That was it. End of conversation. He had got what he wanted and so there was no need to prolong what had probably been to him a tedious exchange. ‘I hate you,’ she whispered into the silent room. She did, she really hated him.
But did she hate him enough? a separate part of her mind asked disturbingly. Enough to remain strong when they met, enough to refuse to let him walk all over her, enough to show him that she was finished with him for good?
Reaching for the last of the hot chocolate, she drained the mug and rose to her feet. She wasn’t going to do this—the endless soul-searching that she’d indulged in for so long in the caustic aftermath of their separation. It got her nowhere. Facts were what mattered. Jay had slept with another woman just six months after he had stood at the altar and promised to love, honour and cherish her. End of story.
Her mouth pulled tight with pain, Miriam placed the empty mug in the tiny sink in the kitchen area and walked over to the sofa. The beginnings of a headache drummed a persistent tattoo at the backs of her eyes and she pressed her fingers into the side of her forehead.
Perhaps it was as well Jay had phoned tonight, she told herself as she swiftly converted the sofa into a snug bed and got undressed. Once in her nightie she padded along to the bathroom at the end of the landing which she shared with the other occupant of that floor, a young student called Caroline, who was rarely at home since she’d found a boyfriend with his own flat. After a perfunctory wash she brushed her teeth and went back to her room, her mind still gnawing over the events of the last half-hour. Yes, all things considered, Jay contacting her wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. He was right, they couldn’t go on as they were, in a state of limbo. Their marriage was over and the sooner it was made legally so, the better. He had never been right for her; from the beginning she had known she was out of his league. He was far more suited to a woman like Belinda Poppins.
Poppins. She made a sound in the back of her throat. If ever a woman had been misnamed, Belinda had. She was as unlike a magical nanny who made everything all right for everyone she came into contact with as it was possible to be. Tall and elegant, with a perfect figure that looked sensational in anything and everything, Belinda was the sort of private secretary that was every wife’s worst nightmare. The original man-eater.
Miriam stood for a moment in front of the full-length mirror in the bedsit, surveying her reflection critically. Soft brown eyes set in an oval face liberally sprinkled with freckles stared back at her, her shoulder-length chestnut hair and creamy skin completing a picture of gentle benevolence. She was the sort of person babies and animals liked instinctively, her aura of innocent non-aggression drawing any waif and stray within a fifty-mile radius to her side. Most of her boyfriends before she’d met Jay had had something of the lame duck about them once she’d got to know them; she seemed to attract such types. And then Jay Carter had blazed into her life.
She jerked away from the mirror, telling herself to stop
