Cruel Legacy (60 page)

'Mark!'

She stared at him in disbelief, frowning. 'What are you doing here... how did you get in...?'

'I still have my key. I'm sorry if I gave you a shock...'

A shock! Quickly Deborah turned her back on him, not wanting him to see the emotions she suspected were all too clearly revealed in her eyes.

He had been standing by the fireplace but now, as she turned around, she saw that he was walking towards her.

Immediately she made a tense, defensive movement with her body, and Mark stopped.

'Can we talk?' he asked her quietly.

Deborah pushed her hand into her dark chestnut hair. Mark looked tanned and well, making her feel depressingly aware of her own weary tension. She started to shake her head. What, after all, was there for them to talk about? But Mark stopped her.

'Please, Deb. I promise it won't take too long.'

Wearily Deborah nodded her head. It would be easier to listen to him than to argue with him.

As she sat down on the settee she saw him frowning. 'You look tired,' he said abruptly.

'Thanks,' Deborah told him drily, and then reminded him, 'You said you wanted to talk.'

'Yes.' He sat down opposite her, the soft fabric of his jeans stretching against his thighs. Her body gave a small, dangerous jerk of sexual recognition which she instantly suppressed.

Ryan would probably not believe it, but as far as she was concerned, when it came to male visual and physical sex appeal, in any contest between them Mark would have won hands down. She remembered how once in their early days together he had laughed at the way she had buried her face in his chest, nuzzling at his flesh and breathing his scent.

'I love the way you feel,' she had told him then. 'Like a lovely firm, cuddly, soft teddy bear... You're so gorgeous to snuggle up to, Mark—so warm and safe...'

'Oh, thanks,' he had laughed, but she had meant what she said; to her his body—firmly muscled, broad-shouldered and softly furred with light golden hair—was overwhelmingly sensually appealing.

It was the combination of sexuality and security which he represented to her that had made it possible for her to express her own sexuality with far greater freedom than she had ever known before.

Now, watching him sitting there in front of her, legs apart as he leaned forward, watching her earnestly, she could feel the aching need flooding her body.

Funny how easy she had found it to resist Ryan, she reflected absently, and how very, very hard it was to stop herself from going over to Mark and...

'I've been doing a lot of thinking recently, Deb, a lot of heart-searching and trying to be honest with myself. When I left it was because I'd convinced myself that you were the one who was responsible for my problems.'

He shook his head.

'I suppose the truth is that I couldn't bear to admit, even to myself, what was so obvious to you: that I felt threatened by your success, jealous of it and afraid that it would take you away from me.

'I resented the fact that your success demeaned me in the eyes of the other men, and because of that...' He paused.

'I thought that by walking away from you I was being a man, proving myself... and in reality all I was proving was that I was a fool, throwing away something of irreplaceable value..
.someone
of irreplaceable value.

He looked up at her.

'I still love you,' he told her emotionally.

Deborah closed her eyes. The longing to go over to him, to touch him, to hold him, to be touched and held by him was so strong that it rocked her body like a giant hand trying physically to propel her towards him.

'You said you didn't want me,' she reminded him quietly. 'You didn't want to make love to me...'

'Yes,' he agreed.

'You were punishing me, Mark, withholding sex from me... using sex and my need for you to try and control me... We can't go back,' she told him, trying to keep her voice steady. 'It wouldn't work... Sooner or later we'd be facing the same problems all over again. I can't live with that fear hanging over me; you know how important my career is to me... That won't change. I
can't
change, and I can't live with the fear of wanting professional success and yet dreading how you'll react to it.

'Can't you see what would happen... how I'd be compelled to start pretending... playing down my career... creating an unreal persona, a disguise for myself in case the real me threatened or upset you...?

'You've always known what I am, Mark, what I want from life... I've never tried to deceive you about that...'

'No,' he replied quietly. 'I'm the only one who's been guilty of deception... not just of you, but of myself as

well... But not deliberately, Deb—never that... It's different now, though—I've----------'

'How can it be different?' Deborah demanded painfully. 'It's only been a few weeks. People don't change just like that...'

'No, they don't,' he agreed. 'I'm not trying to claim that I've changed, only that I think I've come to terms with myself, with what I am and what I'm not, with what's important to me and what isn't.. .with whose definition of what it takes to be a real man is most important to me— mine, or that of people like the Ryan Bridgeses of this world. I'm not competitive. Deb. I never have been, but these last few months I've felt as though that lack of competitiveness made me a failure as a man...'

'Oh, Mark,' Deborah protested sadly. 'I thought you knew that in my eyes it made you more of a man, not less of one, that you never needed me to put you up on some kind of pedestal, to make a false pretence of deferring to you, to boost your ego at the expense of my own, to have to hide from you how I felt about my career. To me those kinds of needs are a male weakness, not a male strength, and most other women feel the same.

'I admired and respected you more because you
didn't
need those false trappings of manhood, because you
didn't
follow the herd, bow down to the rules men have imposed on society... I loved you
because
of what you are, not in spite of it,' she told him.

'Loved me?' he repeated quietly.

Deborah turned away from him. What point was there in allowing him to know that she still loved him? What point could there be in their love if it was always going to be in conflict with her other needs? There was no point in deceiving either herself or Mark; she could not make him the whole focus of her life, become dependent on him and live only for him, and she had thought that he understood; that his love for her was like hers for him; that he loved the person she was and had no desire to change her.

'I can't give up my ambitions, my career...' 'No... How are things going, by the way...?'

'Fine,' she told him.

'Liar.'

Deborah stared at him.

'I had a phone call this morning from Gil Bennett and he wanted to know why I hadn't been in touch to let him know we were coming back to London. He'd heard on the grapevine that you were looking for a new job...'

'You know I've always preferred living in the city,' Deborah hedged. 'The only reason I moved out here was because of you...'

'Because of me and because the promotion prospects were better,' Mark corrected her.

'All right, all right... I admit it, Mark, you were right and I was wrong. The only reason Ryan offered me promotion was because he wanted to get me into bed. Satisfied...?'

'What...? You—he's trying to force you out because you wouldn't sleep with him...?'

At any other time the outrage on Mark's face would have been welcome, but it had hurt to have to admit the truth to him.

'Not force me out exactly, but he's made it plain that I won't be getting any promotion,' Deborah admitted wearily. 'Go on, gloat, Mark... I'm sure you must want to...'

'Gloat? That's the last thing I feel like doing... You can't let him do this to you, Deborah. It's sexual harassment and '

'And what? I could take him to court? Would you, in my shoes...? Oh, yes... that would look good on my c,v., wouldn't it? No, I shan't do a damn thing about it and he knows it... He even had the gall to introduce me to the other girl whom he's hired to train in my place. Apparently my managerial skills aren't all that they might be... I don't handle people very well...' She gave a small bitter smile as her feelings broke through her control.

'Balls,' Mark told her forcefully. 'That's not true and you know it. You deserved that promotion, and if he's trying to renege on it now... Why didn't you let me know...?'

Deborah shrugged. 'There didn't seem any point. It wasn't your problem. ..and to be honest,' she added ti redly, 'being told "I told you so" was the last thing I was in the mood for.'

His quiet, 'Thanks,' made her look at him. 'Is that really what you think...? That all I'd have wanted to do was gloat?'

The pain in his voice caught at her own vulnerable emotions. She shook her head.

'I don't know. I just...' She stopped, recognising the truth: that she hadn't wanted him to know, not because she'd thought he would gloat, but because of the blow it would have given her own pride.

Her j
pride?
Since when had that mattered? Since when had it been important for her to prove herself to Mark, to protect herself from the risk of his seeing her defeated?

Something in his expression made her add shakily, 'I would have got in touch with you... told you...'

'Would you?' he asked her quietly. 'What's happened to us, Deb? I used to think our love was so strong; that we...that we trusted one another...that
nothing
could ever come between us...'

'Perhaps we made the gods jealous,' Deborah replied wryly, a ghost of a smile touching her mouth.

She looked older, thinner, drained of her normal vivacity and self-confidence. His heart ached for her and for the ability to restore them to her and his body ached even more with desire for her.

He took a step towards her and then another.

'No,' Deborah told him huskily as she put out a hand to hold him off. "This isn't the answer, Mark... This isn't...' But her lips were already clinging hungrily to his and the hand she had put out to reject him was now resting against his body, feeling the heavy pounding of his heart.

It was like the early days when they had first met all over again, his touch on her body so lovingly tender that it seemed to make her very bones melt with longing for him.

'This wasn't supposed to happen,' he told her ruefully as he leaned over her, gently circling her nipple with his tongue.

Stretching herself luxuriously beneath his caress, Deborah responded wryly, 'It wasn't exactly on my agenda for the evening either.'

She waited for him to ask her if she wanted him to stop, to put the onus of making any decision on her, but to her surprise he didn't.

Instead he opened his mouth over her nipple and caressed it with such slow sweetness that it made her cry out in pleasure as she slid her hands into his hair and held him against her body.

She felt the slightly rough grate of his teeth against her flesh, the sensation so fiercely erotic that a shiver of pleasure gripped her. The weeks without him had made her body extraordinarily sensitive and responsive to his touch.

She heard him groan as his hand covered her sex and he buried his hot face between her breasts.

There was laughter as well as chagrin in his voice as he told her thickly, 'Oh, God, Deb, I'm so sorry, but I don't think...'

Against all the evidence that her senses were giving her to the contrary, she immediately thought that he was trying to tell her that he didn't want her, that he couldn't... It wasn't just sexual frustration that was clogging her throat with tears and making her heart ache with pain, she recognised as she pulled away from him, shivering as she reached for the duvet.

It was a shock to feel his arms coming round her, pulling her back against him, his mouth warm against her ear as he told her, 'I'm sorry... I feel like a raw kid again, desperate to prove how much of a man I am and instead proving only that I haven't got an ounce of self-control.

'It's all these weeks of celibacy without you. Can we try again?' he asked her softly. 'And this time I promise I'll do my best to hold on at least until I'm inside you...'

When she realised what he had said, Deborah turned round in his arms.

'Blame it on the pleasure of being back here with you,' Mark murmured against her mouth. 'On the need I have for you. Oh, Deborah... I could make love to you all night long and still want you...'

Despite the fact that her body was trembling as it recognised the passion and desire in his voice, she still laughed, albeit a little shakily.

'Not on recent evidence, you couldn't,' she teased him.

'Oh, no?'