to herself, Mallory stripped and climbed into the tub. The warmth of the scented water was heaven to her tired muscles, and she sank into it up to her chin, giving a soft sigh of contentment as total relaxation came at last.
Home, she thought happily. I am home.
The heavy enameled door of the bathroom squeaked open then, and, suddenly, Nathan was there, his dark eyes taking in the slender, heat-pinkened length of her body. Beneath the suntan he’d undoubtedly acquired in Australia, where it was now the height of summer, he paled.
“My God, Mallory,” he swore. “How much weight have you lost?”
Mallory shrugged as she averted her eyes. “Maybe five pounds,” she said.
Nathan was leaning against the chipped pedestal sink now, his arms folded, watching her. “More like fifteen,” he argued, his voice sharpened to a lethal edge. “You were too thin when I left, but now—”
Mallory squeezed her eyes closed, hoping to press back the sudden and unaccountable tears that burned there. Was he saying that he didn’t want her anymore, didn’t find her physically attractive?
She felt his presence in the steamy bathroom, heard him kneel on the linoleum floor. When Mallory opened her eyes, she was not surprised to find him beside her, the knuckles of his powerful, gifted hands white with the force of his grasp on the curved edge of the bathtub.
“Mallory, talk to me,” he pleaded hoarsely. “Tell me what to do—how to change things—how to make you really happy again.”
One traitorous tear escaped, trickling down Mallory’s slender cheek and falling into the bathwater. “I am happy, Nathan,” she lied.
Nathan made a harsh, disgusted sound low in his throat. His eyes burned like ebony fire. “No,” he countered. “Something is chewing you up alive, and the hell of it is, I can’t do a damned thing about it if you won’t trust me enough to be honest.”
Mallory’s voice was small and shaky with dread. “Do you want a divorce, Nathan?”
He was on his feet in an instant, turning his back on Mallory, shutting her out. His broad shoulders were taut under the soft gray fabric of his shirt.
Unable to bear the oppressive silence placidly, Mallory reached out and grasped the big sponge resting in an inside corner of the tub. Fiercely, she lathered it with soap and began to scrub herself so hard that her flesh tingled.
“I would understand,” she said, when she dared speak.
Nathan whirled suddenly, startling her so badly that she dropped the sponge and stared at him, openmouthed. His face was rigid with suppressed fury and something very much like pain. He folded his arms in a gesture that, with him, signaled stubborn determination.
“Understand this,” he said in a low and dangerous tone. “You are my wife and you will remain my wife. I don’t intend to let you go, ever. And you will warm no one else’s bed, my love—not Brad Ranner’s, not anyone’s.”
Mallory felt the words strike her like stones, and it was all she could do not to flinch with the pain. “What?” she whispered finally, in shock.
Nathan’s face was desolate now, but it was hard, too. “You’ve been wasting away ever since you signed on with that damned soap opera, Mallory. And there has to be a reason.”
Mallory lifted her chin. There were reasons, all right, but Brad Ranner wasn’t among them, nor was any other man.
“I’ve been faithful to you,” she said stiffly. And it was true—she had never even been tempted to become intimate with another man, and she had come to Nathan’s bed as a virgin. She couldn’t bring herself to ask if he’d been as loyal; she was too afraid of the answer.
Nathan sighed, the sound broken, heavy. “I know, Mallory—I’m sorry.”
Sorry for what? Mallory wondered silently, sick with the anguish of loving a man who belonged to so many. Sorry for accusing me like you did or sorry that you have a number of nubile groupies to occupy your many nights away from home?
“I’m very tired,” she said instead.
“I see. You weren’t tired in the kitchen tonight, were you?”
The sarcasm in his voice made Mallory’s cheeks burn bright pink. “That was a long time ago,” she snapped, not daring to meet his eyes.
“At least an hour,” Nathan retorted.
“Leave me alone!”
“Gladly,” he snapped. Then, slowly, Nathan turned and left the room. When the door closed behind him, Mallory dissolved in silent tears of exhaustion and grief.
Nathan stood at the bedroom window, looking out. There wasn’t much to see in the darkness, but the storm had stopped anyway. That was something. Behind him, Mallory slept. The soft meter of her breathing drew him, and he turned back to look at her.
The dim glow of the hallway light made her fine cheekbones look gaunt and turned the smudges of fatigue beneath her eyes to deep shadows. She looked so vulnerable lying there, all her grief openly revealed in the involuntary honesty of sleep.
Nathan drew a ragged breath. How could he have urged her to surrender her body the way he had, when she was so obviously ill? And what had possessed him to imply that she was attracted to Brad Ranner, knowing, as he did, that that kind of deceit was foreign to her nature?
Quietly, he approached the bed and pulled the covers up around her thin shoulders. She stirred in her uneasy sleep and moaned softly, intensifying the merciless ache that had wrenched at Nathan’s midsection since the moment his press agent, Diane Vincent, had thrust Pat’s cable into his hands after the last concert in Sydney.
The night was bitterly cold. Nathan slid back into bed beside his wife and held himself at a careful distance. Even now, the wanting of her, the needing of her, was almost more than he could bear. Raising himself onto one elbow, Nathan watched Mallory for a long time, trying to analyze the things that had gone wrong between them.
He loved her fiercely and had since the moment he’d seen her, some six and a half years ago. Prior to that stunning day, he’d prided himself on his freedom, on the fact that he’d needed no other person. Now, in the darkness of the bedroom, beneath the warmth of the electric blanket, he sighed. If he lost Mallory—and he was grimly convinced that he was losing her, day by hectic day—nothing else in his life would matter. Nothing.
She stirred beside him. Nathan wanted her with every fiber of his being and knew that he would always want her. But there was one thing greater than his consuming desire, and that was his love. He fell back on his pillows, his hands cupped behind his head, his eyes fixed on the shadowed ceiling.
Her hand came to his chest, warm and searching, her fingers entangling themselves in the thick matting of hair covering muscle and bone. “Nathan?” she whispered in a sleepy voice.
Despite the pain inside him, he laughed. “Who else?” he whispered back. “Sleep, babe.”
But Mallory snuggled against him, soft and vulnerable. “I don’t want to sleep,” she retorted petulantly. “Make love to me.”
“No.”
