twenty-one and hopelessly naïve; he had been thirty-five and anything but.
He was successful, wildly handsome, with a string of much-publicised affairs credited to his account, but when he told her he had never been in love before she believed him. If it had been different he would have told her. He was that type of man. They had laughed together, loved together—and now it was over. Because Blade Forbes was an action man. Their honeymoon had been spent scuba diving and hang-gliding with long, warm nights of passionate love. He hardly knew what it was to be still. And she had loved that too along with everything else about him.
But how would such a man, hard, dynamic, with a zest for life that was unquenchable, cope with a wife who would be confined to a wheelchair by the time she was thirty and a hospital bed five years after that? Unable to move, breathe by herself?
The impersonal brutality of the stark medical facts came back to her as though she were reading them for the first time. The doctor’s report she had been shown hadn’t pulled any punches; indeed the clinical outline of the effects of the disease that was lying dormant in her body till it was matured enough to rear its head in a few years’ time had seemed almost savage on that first reading. But then, how many ways were there to impart news like that? She twisted in the darkness, a pale slender figure in the shaft of moonlight from the uncurtained window.
The cold, typewritten report was engraved in her memory word for word; she only had to close her eyes for the small black letters to be there in all their severity. Her heart pounded as she ran over them again in her mind, their message of a living death as hard to take now as when she had first read it.
She had been right to leave Blade, she had. She caught her breath on a sob of pain; she had had no choice. But, oh—she gazed round the dark room almost wildly—that didn’t make it any easier.
CHAPTER TWO
‘GOOD morning, Amy.’ She stood transfixed, halfway out of the kitchen door, as Blade sauntered across the small restaurant after shutting the front door quietly behind him.
‘What do you want?’ she breathed softly, her eyes drinking in the sight of him even as her logic repudiated the thrill that had shot through her whole body.
‘Lunch? If that’s not too outrageous? I did assume this was a working restaurant?’ The sarcasm was cold and biting and she blushed hotly as he seated himself at a table, his whole demeanour lazy and relaxed.
‘Why are you here?’ She moved to stand by his chair, her voice a low hiss.
‘I am here to eat,’ he said slowly, with exaggerated patience. ‘You do remember that I do all the things a normal man does? Some with more enjoyment than others,’ he finished silkily, his voice dark and rich and his eyes hard and mocking as she blushed hotly.
Thank goodness John would be away for another twenty-four hours yet; she had to get rid of Blade before that somehow.
‘You know exactly what I mean,’ she flashed back tightly. ‘We said all that could be said yesterday—’
‘We did not,’ he said sharply. ‘And please cut the naïve and stupid act because we both know that you are neither. We still have arrangements to make and matters to discuss. And my movements are my own affair, remember that, Amy. You have waived the right to question me in any way.’
‘I see.’ She glared at him angrily. ‘It’s the muscle-man approach, is it? Forcing your way in—’
‘It was barely twenty-four hours ago that you accused me of being a bully in this very place,’ he interrupted her coldly, his words falling like small pieces of ice into the heated atmosphere. ‘I’d drop the insults if I were you, sweetheart. I don’t like them and I have no intention of tolerating any more. Now, get the menu and do the job I assume the proprietor is paying you to do.’
His arrogance left her speechless and as she swung round, with a furious twist of her body that set the high silky ponytail at the back of her head swinging madly, she heard him laugh softly and the sound chilled her blood. There was no amusement, no mirth in the sound, just a callous, biting cruelty that brought all her fine body hairs upright in instinctive protection. Whatever game he was playing he wouldn’t be able to keep it up forever and she would just have to put up with things for the moment, but why was he here? He’d said he despised her, that he felt nothing but contempt and scorn for her, so why was he back here this morning …? To torment her? She looked him full in the face as she placed the handwritten menu on the table in front of him, and the black eyes stared back at her, their expression unfathomable. Yes, that must be it. She wouldn’t have thought he was capable of such pointless cruelty, but then she had never defied him before and after what he thought she had done maybe she shouldn’t be surprised. Some men wouldn’t have stopped at verbal abuse. And he still clearly intended to settle things with John in his own way.
‘Thanks.’ As he studied the menu she stood at his side, her eyes drawn to his bent head and a feeling of inexpressible emotion causing shivers of fear to flit down her spine in ever-increasing rhythm. His tawny brown hair gleamed richly with virile health in the May sunlight, his coal-black eyes with their thick, almost feminine lashes in impressive contrast. How often had she run her fingers through that mass of strong, coarse hair after a night of passion when she had felt as though even her toes were alive with sensual delight? He had been a magnificent lover. She forced her gaze up to stare blindly out of the window. Sensuous, erotic, but with a tender sensitivity to her own feelings that had caused the bond between them to strengthen and grow night by night. No wonder he didn’t understand why she had left. If only she hadn’t followed through on the impulse to visit Sandra that day …
‘I’ll have the soup, followed by an omelette, please.’ She jumped visibly as he spoke and a dark frown creased his forehead. ‘Daydreaming, Amy? I won’t ask who’s featured in them but for the moment would you concentrate on doing your job?’ The tone was biting.
‘You don’t have to be so thoroughly unpleasant,’ she said tightly as she wrote his order on the small notepad attached to her belt.
‘You call this unpleasant?’ he asked with a mocking, frosty amazement. ‘You don’t know the half, girl. But you will.’ The dark eyes were pure granite. ‘Oh, yes, you will.’
As she walked through to the kitchen a feeling of incredible weariness had her hands shaking. Was all this worth it? Perhaps it would be better to tell him? To let him share in the agony with her rather than bear it all alone? But then she remembered Sandra’s drawn, lined face, the sunken features and the still young body already twisted into a caricature of an old woman. Could she bear those eyes that had always blazed with love and passion dulling with pity and wretched, helpless misery? To have him look at her each day as she slowly got worse, to see— She stopped her thoughts from the destructive path they were following and straightened her back as hot rage against the unfairness of it all flooded her system with adrenalin.
Stop your whining, girl, she told herself fiercely as the doorbell in the outer room signified more customers. One day, one hour at a time. She had realised weeks ago that was the only way she was going to bear the months and years ahead. If she looked into the future she lost all her courage.
She took Blade’s bowl of soup to his table before she turned to the family that had seated themselves in a corner across the other side of the room. All the time she chatted with the two children and took the parents’ order she was aware of his gaze trained on the back of her head even though she was turned from him, but when she swung around and made her way to the kitchen he was quietly eating a bread roll, his dark eyes lazily surveying the peaceful scene outside the window.
