A Whirlwind Marriage (10 page)

‘And the second time?’ she asked carefully.

‘That was a year later. I was placed in another foster home after the first adoption attempt failed, and I think I was happier there than I’d ever been or ever was again. They were good folk, kind, and they understood kids. They’d got two boys of their own with learning difficulties but they still took on a couple of foster children and gave them as much time and attention as their own kids. Anyway, I was taken away from them and placed with a couple of virtual strangers who I’d visited a few times on “little tea-parties”, and I went ape.’

Marianne nodded. She could imagine, and she was filled with burning anger that someone in charge hadn’t understood how things really were.

‘I think I thought if I played up enough they’d send me back to Marlene and Jim, but of course it didn’t work out like that. I was sent to a children’s home and told Marlene and Jim had another child living with them and didn’t have room for me. I don’t think the matron who told me meant
to be unkind,’ he said flatly, his face hard, ‘but it did something to me. Something died, Marianne. Call it the ability to reach out, to be normal. I don’t know. But from that point on I stopped needing anyone. I became ungovernable and totally opportunistic; if it wasn’t for the fact that I found I enjoyed school and proving I was better than everyone else I’d have probably ended up in Borstal.’

She had been so wrapped up in what he was saying that she hadn’t noticed where they were going, but now, as the car pulled up in a small side street, she saw they were close to Rochelle’s. ‘I don’t want to eat at Rochelle’s,’ she said hastily, without considering her words.

‘What?’ As he cut the engine he turned to her, the grey eyes narrowed and very dark. ‘Why not?’

Because in Rochelle’s everyone knows who you are and how much you are worth, she thought with absolute clarity. They’ll fawn over us and you’ll be Zeke Buchanan, multimillionaire and tycoon. I won’t get another word out of you that means anything. She shrugged carefully. ‘Myriad reasons,’ she said lightly. ‘There’s a couple of pubs and various eating places all round here; let’s leave the car and walk.’

The narrowed gaze moved to the window, where the odd desultory snowflake was beginning to whirl in the wind.

‘Not far,’ she said quickly. ‘Just a little way.’

They found a small bistro on the first corner, and once they had ordered the food and a bottle of wine Marianne leant across the table and said softly, ‘Were you telling me in the car that you don’t need me, Zeke? Is that what you were saying?’ He would never know how much it hurt.

He stared at her, his black hair ruffled from the biting wind outside the warm confines of the restaurant and his grey eyes reflecting the light just above their heads, which
turned them almost silver. He had never looked more handsome, or more unapproachable.

She waited, not daring to breathe, for his answer, wondering how everything could appear so normal and mundane when she was crying, screaming inside. She had opened a can of worms that day she had run from the apartment and she didn’t know if she was strong enough to bear what he might say. She loved him, she would die loving him, and yet he was a stranger to her. She had lived with him, eaten with him, laughed with him and slept with him, they had shared physical intimacies she had never imagined in her wildest dreams, and yet all the time there had been a huge great chunk of him he had kept all to himself.

Suddenly she was angry, too. He
should
have told her some of this before; it had been her right as his wife to at least know what she was battling against. He had cheated her.

And then, almost as though he had read her mind, he said the exact same thing himself. But suddenly Zeke—her Zeke—was back, and the relief was overwhelming for a moment. ‘I’m saying I cheated you, Marianne,’ he said heavily, ‘but as for needing you…’ He looked at her with agonised eyes. ‘You’ll never know. Not in a million years.’

He shook his head, and then as her hand reached out and gripped one of his he looked down at it for a moment, before raising his head and saying wearily, ‘I’ll destroy you if you stay with me and I’ve no right to inflict any of this on you. Don’t you understand? I am what I am; I can’t change. I knew what I was doing, deep down, when I kept you from finding a job. I wanted to keep you locked away. But then you know that, don’t you?’

‘Why? Why, Zeke?’ she pressed urgently.

‘Because I needed to know you were mine, totally, that
you weren’t seeing or talking to other men,’ he said with shocking matter-of-factness. And then his gaze gripped hers as he said grimly, ‘And how does that add up with the rest of what I’ve been saying, eh? If I could have locked you away, I would have. That’s how I felt.’

And until he had met her he had never been plagued by that emotion before, she thought intuitively. He had liked his other women to be independent and self-sufficient, living their own lives and making no claims on him, and then with her a whole new set of feelings had come into play, and it had made him feel weak, confused, vulnerable.

Because of his upbringing he hadn’t gone through the normal family ups and downs to knock off the edges and round him off as a person. All the punches life had thrown at him had been knock-out blows aimed straight for the jugular—annihilation and being crushed, or retaliation and militant aggression; that was how he had seen it. Get the other fellow before he gets you. Life on his own terms and damn the rest. And then she had happened.

‘Don’t you trust me, Zeke?’ she asked shakily.

He made a sound deep in his throat and removed his hand from under hers, leaning back in his chair and surveying her broodingly. And then he smiled bitterly. ‘My honest little wife,’ he said mordantly. ‘Nothing swept under the carpet.’ He straightened slightly, and then, as the waiter brought their bottle of wine, took it from him with a nod of thanks as he said, ‘I’ll see to it.’

She waited until he had poured two glasses of the deep red wine, and then she said again, ‘Do you, Zeke? Do you trust me?’

‘No.’

She had been expecting it, but it still hit her like a blow in the solar plexus. ‘Thanks.’ She couldn’t quite keep the bitterness from showing through.

He looked at her as he caught the note, a long look, and then he took a hard pull of air as he said, ‘I don’t trust that one day you won’t see me as I see myself.’

‘And how’s that?’

‘Unlovable.’

Oh, Zeke. Oh, my darling… She didn’t say a word, and she tried, really hard, to keep her face from revealing what she felt, but she obviously failed because he said, his voice harsh, ‘And don’t feel sorry for me, Marianne, because that will be the last straw. I’ve made a life for myself and a damn good one; the Buchanan name is both feared and respected.’

His remark about his name triggered a thought, and she forced herself to sit back in her chair and take a sip of wine before she said calmly, ‘Is Buchanan your mother’s name or your father’s?’

‘My mother’s, before she married.’ He took a long swallow of wine himself before he added, with no expression at all, ‘I told you; she led a pretty wild lifestyle. I gather my father could have been any one of a number of bozos who got lucky. Certainly no one was willing to claim paternity, and who can blame them?’

You, for a start. ‘Has your mother contacted you since you were older?’ she asked quietly.

‘When I became wealthy, you mean?’ His lips tightened and then he breathed out slowly from his nose. ‘I’m sure she would have done; she was a mercenary little—’ He stropped abruptly, finishing the glass of wine in one gulp. ‘She died,’ he said blankly. ‘Fell off a friend’s yacht when she was drunk at a party and drowned.’

Her eyes widened slightly with shock. He had never spoken about his mother except once, when he had told her, on their second or third date, that his mother had given him away as a baby. But she was dead; his mother was
dead. That meant there was no chance of any reconciliation or possibility of a reunion.

It was a silly question in the circumstances, but she’d said it before she’d thought. ‘Are you sure?’

His features were as flint-hard as his eyes when he said coolly, ‘Quite sure, Marianne. I spoke to her husband some years ago and he filled me in on all the gory details of her life. He didn’t spare my feelings,’ he added drily. ‘I was left with the impression they’d deserved each other.’

‘I’m so sorry, Zeke.’

He shrugged. ‘Don’t be.’ And then, as he glanced over her shoulder, ‘Ah, here comes the food.’

He regretted telling her everything; she could tell. She stared at him as the waiter placed their meals in front of them. But she wasn’t going to stop battering at that wall he had built between them.

‘What if we’d had a baby, Zeke? What then?’ she asked quietly once they were alone again.

‘A baby?’ There was just the tiniest inflexion in his studiously flat voice that made her look at him more intently. He
wanted
a child, she realised suddenly. He had always wanted a child, perhaps even more than she did. And she could understand why now. A tiny little being that was no threat, that wouldn’t turn away from him or fall out of love with him, that would be linked to him through the blood as well as the heart.

And he would be a devoted father. He would lavish love and tenderness on the flesh of his flesh, knowing he could do so without appearing weak or vulnerable. He didn’t have to trust a baby not to leave him, and whatever happened he would still be its father.

‘It didn’t happen, did it?’ he said with smooth control. ‘Which is probably just as well in the circumstances.’

‘I agree.’

As his eyes shot to meet hers she saw it was not what he had expected her to say.

‘We weren’t ready to have a child, Zeke,’ she said softly but clearly. ‘We still had too much growing up to do ourselves.’

‘Is that a dig at me?’ he bit tightly, his skin stretching over the rugged lines of his face.

‘No, I said both of us and I meant both of us,’ she said firmly. ‘You called me honest a while back, so you can’t have it all ways. I believe that every child should have the right to be conceived through love and born into a loving and trusting relationship. There might be some people who would disagree with that, but I can’t see it any other way. Trust, love, tenderness, commitment—they should see all that mirrored in their home, Zeke. I’ve grown up a great deal in the last two years and I’ve had to sort out what
I
want and what
I
believe, not what my parents or society or anyone else tells me.’

‘And all this growing up told you to leave me.’

‘It told me we couldn’t go on as we were,’ she said sharply. His voice had been dry and cynical. ‘I’m a person in my own right, Zeke, with dreams and aspirations, but that doesn’t lessen my love for you an iota. I don’t have to be just a wife, or a wife and mother and nothing else, don’t you see? You can only benefit if I’m happy and fulfilled.’

‘And being my wife wasn’t fulfilment enough,’ he said tightly.

‘No, it wasn’t.’ Her hands were trembling with the enormity of their differences, and she linked her fingers together to stop their shaking. ‘Like being my husband isn’t enough for you. You have your work, which consumes you at times. Admit it.’

‘That’s different,’ he said harshly.

‘Why? Because you’re a man?’ she challenged swiftly. ‘What rubbish, Zeke. You know as well as I do that a woman can be just as dedicated as a man to her work.’

‘We’d agreed you were going to have children and I’d be the breadwinner,’ he shot back roughly, changing his tack in view of her scathing voice.

‘And the children didn’t happen.’ She eyed him firmly. ‘And you know as well as I do that you don’t have to do another day’s work in your life and you’ll still be a multimillionaire for the rest of your days.’

‘This is a ridiculous conversation,’ he said crisply, dark colour flaring across his countenance.

‘Why? Because you are hearing a few home truths?’

‘That’s enough, Marianne.’

‘And now you’re shutting down again because you aren’t winning.’ She was looking at Zeke and he was looking back, his eyes narrowed and hot and his mouth a thin line in the tautness of his jaw.

She had gone as far as she could for one day. Marianne followed her instinct and, despite the churning of her stomach and the trembling in her limbs, smiled brightly. ‘Think about what I’ve said, Zeke,’ she advised calmly, willing her voice not to shake. ‘You are telling yourself you can’t change because you are too scared to try, and out of that has come a whole cart-load of hang-ups. Whatever you might think, I love you, and I shall continue to love you as long as I live. I could be the next Prime Minister and I’d still love you—a top model, whatever.

‘You exasperate me at times, annoy me, drive me mad, if you want to know. And you’re right—you
have
cheated me. You’ve cheated us both, actually. But I still love you, more than ever. Because love, real love, doesn’t choose where it wants to go; it just happens. There’s no rhyme or
reason to it very often, and certainly it defies logic. But it happens and that’s that.
Fait accompli.
’

She had expected some dry, cynical barb at the end of her little oration, one of the razor-sharp cuts that he did so well, and her stomach muscles had clenched in readiness. But he just sat there, his expression frozen and revealing nothing of what was going on in his mind.

And then, as one of the young waiters bustled over, enquiring if their food was to their satisfaction, Zeke made some polite comment on their as yet untouched meals and they both began eating.

But Marianne had seen his hand shake slightly as he transferred a forkful of food to his mouth, and that, more than anything else that had occurred, gave her the slightest ray of hope.

M
ARIANNE
had expected—perhaps foolishly, she acknowledged to herself as she sat at the bedsit window watching a frosty Christmas Eve dawn—that Zeke would be in touch after their frank and somewhat caustic meeting that snowy December lunch-time.

Admittedly she had received an outrageously generous cheque through the post from his solicitors two days later, along with an official note stating the same amount would be repeated on the fifth of every month, and asking could Mrs Buchanan please inform Jarvis & Smith of her new address in due course? She had returned the cheque the same day, with a short note stating that she did not intend to change her address, neither did she want the money.

After that, sixteen days ago, she had heard nothing from the solicitors and nothing from Zeke.

Her father had been to see her twice and taken her out to dinner, and on the first occasion—once the initial awkwardness was over—they had talked as they hadn’t done for a long time. By the time he had left she had known he understood how things were, and on his second visit they had simply enjoyed each other’s company, which had been great.

Pat had come to stay for a couple of days the week before—complete with army sleeping bag which she’d insisted on spreading out on the floor at the side of the sofa bed, refusing Marianne’s offer to use the sleeping bag herself—and the two of them had had a girly weekend which had done Marianne the power of good. You simply
couldn’t wallow in self-pity or any other negative feelings with Pat around.

And Mrs Polinkski—bless her—seemed to have made it her mission in life to make sure Marianne was well-fed and befriended, inviting her to their spacious flat above the supermarket for a home-cooked meal several times a week, and always insisting the son of the family—Wilmer—saw her home to the door of the bedsit, despite Marianne’s protests.

Marianne frowned as her thoughts unfocused her gaze on the winter sky of silver and pale peach. She might have something of a problem brewing with Wilmer, actually, she told herself darkly. The Polinkskis were fully aware of her situation, but in spite of that Wilmer had asked her out for a drink twice in the last few days, and despite her refusals seemed more keen, if anything. He had taken to looking at her with great sad puppy-dog eyes and making unnecessary visits into the front of the shop every two minutes. It was beginning to drive her mad.

He was a nice enough boy—he was probably her age, but seemed heaps younger to Marianne—and quite good-looking, with his shock of dark blond hair and brown eyes, but, apart from the fact that she was a married woman, she could never have liked him in a romantic sense in a hundred years.

All in all, life had been full and busy—she had barely had time to look through the university and college prospectuses she had sent away for—so the gnawing feeling of aloneness which hadn’t left her since she had first walked out of the apartment was silly, ridiculous,
crazy
. But it was still there, she admitted with a deep sigh as her eyes focused on the river of mother-of-pearl and varying shades of luminescent peach again. And it was worse, if anything, when she was with people. All she wanted, all
she seemed able to think about whatever she was doing or saying outwardly, was one particular person.

‘Oh, Zeke.’ She spoke his name out loud, her breath misting the cold glass before she rubbed at it with the sleeve of her dressing gown. He had admitted to a profound emotion for her that was all at odds with the rigid control he liked to keep on his feelings, and in the voicing of it had made it impossible for them ever to go back to the old way of things. Not that she would have contemplated that herself, of course.

Nevertheless, the portent of all they had said that lunch-time had the power to blow their marriage to smithereens or ultimately make it stronger than it had ever been, but it all depended on Zeke. And she didn’t, she really didn’t, she reiterated miserably, know which way he would jump.

Christmas Eve. She looked up above the frosted rooftops and then shut her eyes against the brilliance of the early-morning sky. Last year Zeke had worked until nearly five, despite giving his employees the afternoon off, and she had spent most of the day wrapping presents for him, which she’d placed under the little tree she had bought, and getting a sumptuous festive meal for the two of them and a couple of friends he’d invited round. They had eaten in the intimidating dining room and she had hated every minute of it, mainly because just before the friends had arrived she’d discovered that her late monthly cycle had been another false alarm and her hopes had been crushed again.

Since her mother’s death her father had taken to spending Christmas with his small army of brothers and sisters, most of whom lived in Scotland, and for the first two Christmases—until she’d met Zeke—she had joined him. However, Zeke had been reluctant to take any more than two or three days away from his empire—or that was the
excuse he had given for not leaving London and their apartment—and so their Christmases had been short affairs, filled with his friends and acquaintances.

He would receive masses of invitations for Christmas Eve parties and Christmas lunch; he always did, she thought soberly. Along with drinks here and there, and Boxing Day soirées and so on. And if word had got out that they were living apart and he was ‘available’, there would be more than one eagle-eyed female willing to provide a shoulder to cry on. In fact they’d be queueing for miles.

Her mouth tightened at the thought and she brushed back a wisp of fine, silky silver-blonde hair from her cheek. His silence over the last two weeks might be indicative of the fact that he had decided to avail himself of female comfort, and she could use up all her fingers without even trying in counting certain women in their social circle who would be aching to provide it.

Marianne sighed heavily and rose to her feet, her face as pale as alabaster from her musings. She missed him so badly. Missed waking up beside him and seeing him, relaxed in sleep, more like the serious-faced little boy with black curly hair he had spoken of at their last meeting. Sleep ironed out the cynical lines of his hard face, mellowing his features and bringing emphasis to his thick dark lashes and firm, beautifully moulded mouth. And his body… She shut her eyes tight for a moment and then opened them, walking across the room with what amounted to a grim expression on her face now. She wasn’t going to think about him right now;
she wasn’t
. She could do all her moping later.

She had a long, leisurely bath and washed her hair before getting dressed for work, some perverse determination making her pull on the bright red jumper the faithful old
charity shop had provided a few days before, after which she tied her hair high on the top of her head in a jaunty ponytail, securing it with a red velvet ribbon.

She had decided to spend Christmas at the bedsit, despite numerous invitations from her father and his relatives, Pat and her family and Mrs Polinkski, so she wasn’t going to belly-ache about it now. Her husband had obviously decided to call it quits, she didn’t have two pennies to rub together and Christmas dinner was going to be a turkey sandwich, but what the hell! She had two arms, two legs and she was in her right mind—there were others who were much less fortunate.

The little pep talk helped—a bit—but her eyes were still gritty with unshed tears as she ran down the stairs half an hour later and opened the door into the street.

‘Zeke!’ He was standing there, right in front of her, and for a moment she felt herself go weak at the knees at the sight of him. She stared at him as if her eyes were deceiving her, and she noticed the lines etched round his eyes and mouth appeared deeper and he looked thinner overall.

‘Hallo, Marianne.’ It was cool and contained, but she had seen the hot glitter in the grey eyes in the moment she had opened the door and taken him by surprise. ‘I wanted to talk to you.’

‘I’m just on my way to work,’ she said breathlessly, and then, in case he thought that was a refusal, she added quickly, ‘But they won’t mind if I’m a few minutes late.’

His eyes had been moving over her flushed face and wavy, silky hair, and now he touched the red ribbon with one finger as he said thickly, ‘I like that. You look like a Christmas sprite this morning, bright and glowing.’

‘Do I?’ Zeke was the last person in the world given to fanciful compliments and it threw her even more.

‘Yes, you do,’ he said softly. ‘And very beautiful.’

‘Thank you.’ She gestured backwards with a trembling hand. ‘Do you want to come up for a minute?’

‘That’s not necessary, I don’t want to make you late for work.’

She stared at him uncertainly. This big, powerful and very sexy man was her husband, and yet she didn’t have a clue what was going on in his mind.

‘The reason I came…’ He paused, and she realised with a little shock of surprise that he was nervous. It hit her like a bombshell. ‘It’s just that your father said you weren’t spending Christmas with him when I spoke to him last night.’

‘Did you expect me to?’ she asked evenly.

‘I suppose so. Yes, I did,’ he added suddenly. ‘Or with Pat or other friends. But Josh said you intend to have Christmas on your own here.’

‘He shouldn’t have phoned you,’ she said tightly. Zeke’s pity she could do without!

‘He didn’t. I phoned him,’ Zeke said shortly. ‘I—I wanted to make sure you were all right.’ And then, before she could say anything, he raked back his hair irritably in a gesture she recognised only too well, and said angrily, as though she had forced it out of him, ‘In actual fact I wanted to see if there was a possibility we might meet some time over Christmas, but I didn’t know if you would be around or if you’d feel like it.’

‘Couldn’t you have asked
me
that?’ she asked steadily through the mad beating of her heart.

‘I wasn’t sure if you would want to speak to me,’ he said with brutal honesty, ‘not with the way things are. The separation means you are free and I didn’t want to complicate things or embarrass you.’

She didn’t know whether she wanted to kiss him or hit him! ‘You haven’t embarrassed me, Zeke,’ she said care
fully, trying to ignore the shaft of pain that had pierced her heart at the ‘free’ statement. ‘What had you in mind?’

He shrugged warily, his eyes roaming over her face again, and she suddenly found herself longing to reach out and touch him, to feel his arms about her. She curled her fingers into fists and buried them deep in the pockets of her coat to restrain herself.

‘I haven’t made any plans either,’ he said, even more carefully than her, ‘so perhaps dinner tonight?’

‘Everywhere will be packed Christmas Eve.’ She took a deep breath, praying for courage, as she continued, ‘Why don’t you come here and I’ll cook us something?’ Mrs Polinkski would sub her for the food out of her next wage packet.

And then he took care of that detail when he smiled at her with his eyes and said, ‘As long as I provide the food and the wine?’

‘It’s a deal.’ How could everything that had been so wrong be so right in a few moments of time? she asked herself silently. Suddenly the day was transformed, beautiful, and all because she was going to see him tonight. It was hard to contain the wild beating of her heart; even though she knew how dangerous it was to hope she couldn’t help herself. And he had agreed to come
here
, to her little bedsit. A few weeks ago she couldn’t have imagined him doing that, not when he had been so furious at her leaving the apartment.

And then something of the glow left the morning as he said, quietly and very matter-of-factly, ‘And I know this is no strings attached, so don’t worry.’

No strings attached? She wouldn’t object to all the strings in the world! Or perhaps she would? Oh, she didn’t know—she didn’t know anything when Zeke was around.
He had the power to turn her upside down and inside out with just a glance of those devastating grey eyes.

‘I’ll walk you to the supermarket,’ he offered coolly, and then, as she fell into step beside him, he said politely, ‘How are you enjoying working there?’

If she had answered truthfully she would have told him it was boring and allowed her far too much time on quiet days to daydream about him, but instead she said brightly, ‘Oh, the Polinkskis—who own it—are very nice. I think Mrs Polinkski looks on me as one of the family now; she’s even hinting at my continuing there when her daughter comes back from Poland in a couple of weeks’ time.’

He nodded, his profile aloof and distant, and she found herself wondering if he was regretting agreeing that she cook for them that night. And perhaps it was too twee and cosy at that? she thought worriedly. And how on earth was she going to cook anything worth eating in the archaic oven that had a mind of its own? And the tiny table would just about carry two place settings and nothing else; it certainly wasn’t going to be a dignified affair, with candles and bowls of this and that.

Of course she could fetch the bamboo screen back in from where she’d placed it in the bathroom—she’d dispensed with its services as soon as she’d moved in, finding it just got in the way—and hide behind that while she dished the food up, but it wasn’t going to be easy. Oh, why hadn’t she thought of all the consequences before she’d thrown caution to the wind?

‘What time do you finish work?’

They had reached the shop and he turned her briefly to face him, his hand dropping from her elbow almost immediately.

‘Four. I’m working through my lunch hour because Mrs
Polinkski says the world goes crazy from about eleven to three and then we’re shutting shop at four.’

They were talking as courteously as two strangers. He
was
regretting this evening, she thought miserably. She stared up into his dark face, searching for the right words to tell him he didn’t have to come, and that she perfectly understood how he felt about things—the comments relating to her freedom and no strings being attached had been crystal-clear—when he bent quickly and kissed her.

It was a hard kiss, and passionate, and certainly couldn’t have been mistaken for a friendly goodbye. One hand was clasping the back of her head and the other arm was wrapped round her back, and she could smell the intoxicating fragrance of him as he held her close to his hard male frame. The scent released a thousand erotic memories, and as the desire to moan against his lips rose overwhelmingly she jerked away, horrified at his power over her.