Sinful Nights(83)

Shaking herself free of her confusing thoughts, she put the two mugs of  chocolate on a tray and added a plate of mince pies, quickly making some  sandwiches from the ham she had roasted that morning.

Jay was sitting on the settee when she walked in, his head relaxed  against the cushions. I like the tree,' he commented, getting up to  pull up one of the small coffee-tables for her to put the tray on.

The room had an open fireplace with an immense cream marble surround,  part of the original Victorian architecture. Susie had had the fireplace  blocked off, and one of the first things Claire had done was to have it  re-opened and an attractive coal effect gas fire installed. She  switched it on, and paused for a moment to watch the flickering flames.

Mmm  …  very cosy.' An expression of sadness seemed to cloud Jay's eyes.

The girls wanted to wait until you came home to decorate it, but I thought you might be too late.'

There's nothing on the top.'

I couldn't reach,' Claire confessed. There's a fairy in the box that the girls chose.'

I'll put it on for them tomorrow. Mmm, these are good.'

He was eating one of the sandwiches she had made. Without his suit  jacket and his shirt open at the throat he looked less formidable. He  was tired, she realised.

How did it go in Dallas?' she asked.

Come and sit down here beside me and I'll tell you.'

She sat next to him on the sofa.

What an excellent wife you are, Claire: caring, obedient  … '

At first she thought he was mocking her and she flushed painfully and started to move away, his hand on her arm stopping her.

What's the matter?'

I know  …  I'm not Susie,' she said painfully. It can't be much  …  fun for you coming home to me, Jay  … '    

 



 

Fun?' His mouth twisted bitterly. Is that what you think Susie and I  had, Claire? There's nothing fun about coming home to find your wife's  out enjoying her

self with another man, while your child is left all alone. There's  nothing fun about knowing she's being unfaithful, about knowing she  doesn't give a damn. I never caught an early flight to come home to  Susie, Claire, because I never knew what I was coming home to. If you  want the truth, I dreaded coming home.'

His mouth compressed, his eyes focusing on the leaping flames of the fire, as he looked back into the past.

Don't ever thing I'm comparing you with Susie-there is no comparison.'

No, there wasn't, Claire realised. He had loved and desired Susie, while  she was just someone whom he had chosen to marry because of Heather.

I have to go back to Dallas after the New Year, and I want you and the girls to come too. John and his wife want to meet you.'

Me-but  … ?'

It's the American way,' he told her laconically. They're throwing a  big party to celebrate the signing of the contract and we're invited to  be their house guests. It will be during the school holidays, so it  shouldn't be too much of a problem.'

Jay moved to pick up his mug of chocolate, the muscles down his back and  arm tautening. His skin where it was exposed by the collar and cuff of  his shirt was brown and firm, his wrist very sinewy in comparison to  hers.

This will be Heather's first real Christmas; Susie always preferred to  go away somewhere.' He put down his empty mug and relaxed back against  the cushions. Somehow he seemed to have moved closer to her, but she  felt no compulsion to move away.

You look tired.'

He turned his head and she saw the small darker flecks in his eyes. I  am,' he admitted. He closed his eyes and sighed. It was quite a shock  to come home and find snow.'

My first white Christmas.'

He made a sound in his throat that might have meant anything and Claire  turned to look at him. His eyes were closed and she sensed that he was  on the verge of falling asleep.

She got up to take their cups to the kitchen, and when she came back he  was fast asleep, sprawled out against the sofa. She leaned over him  shaking him gently.

Jay  … '

Mmm.'

The shock of his arms coming round her and pulling her down against the  relaxed warmth of his body was totally unexpected. Her knees had caught  against the edge of the sofa so that she had collapsed on to him, and  how he was burrowing his face into the curve of her neck, his breath  triggering off tiny convulsive waves of sensation where it touched her  skin.

After her initial moment of panic, what she felt was nothing like the  terror and disgust she had experienced before. Being held in Jay's arms  was so totally different from that. She felt at once both safe and yet  deliciously trembly, her body fitting softly against the hard planes of  his.

He was cuddling up to her in much the same way that Heather held on to  her teddy, she thought with shaky amusement, and she had no doubt that  he was totally oblivious to what he was doing. It would have been the  easiest thing in the world to wake him up and break out of his hold of  her, but for some reason she felt no compulsion to do so. Instead she  raised her hand tentatively and touched the stubbly line of his jaw,  held deep in thrall to a curious need to know more of the alien maleness  of him. He muttered something in his sleep, releasing her momentarily  as he raised his hand to cover hers, his head turning so that he could  caress the soft skin of her palm with his mouth. The sensation that shot  through her was so totally unexpected, so thoroughly unnerving, that  she jerked back instinctively.

Instantly Jay was awake, his eyelids lifting, although he didn't move.  His cheekbone pressed hard against her shoulder, and she was acutely  conscious of him in a thousand previously unknown ways. As though some  deep inner part of her was waking from a long sleep, she felt the first  stirrings of what she sensed instinctively was her suppressed sexuality.

Fear, joy, an exhilaration beyond anything she had previously known  quivered through her; she felt as though she wanted to get up and dance,  to burst out into a song of pleasure, to open her heart to him and tell  him about the miracle his touch had somehow achieved. Because to her it  was a miracle that for the first time since she was attacked she had  felt like a woman.

A great flood of joy filled her. She wanted to reach out and touch him  to communicate to him in all the ways there were her sense of release  and freedom, but already he was withdrawing from her, his expression  shuttered, as he said curtly.    

 



 

 Sorry about that, Claire. I didn't mean to touch you.'

It was like someone cruelly puncturing a gaily coloured balloon. One  moment it was a thing of joy and beauty floating free; the next it was  gone. She came down to earth with his curt words ringing in her head,  and she shivered violently, suddenly realizing her own folly.

Jay had married her because she wasn't a sexual woman, and she must not  let herself forget that. He didn't want the complications of any sort of  emotional relationship with her, and for her a relationship in the  physical sense would have to contain an element of emotional commitment  as well.

A physical relationship? What on earth was she thinking? Her face went  white with the shock of the realisation that hit her. She licked her  lips nervously, unaware of her state of frozen tension or of the  interpretation Jay was putting on her stiff silence.

Look, Claire, it won't happen again. It was a momentary aberration,  nothing more.' He got up and paced the floor tensely. Try and put it  out of your mind.'

What was he saying to her? Her confused mind tried to sort out the meaning of the words, and failed.

I  …  I think I ought to go to bed.'

She got up, still trembling wildly, retreating from him when he reached out to help her.

Jay watched her as she fled from the room, and then walked over to the  fireplace, to stare moodily out of the darkened window. In front of it  the tree glimmered softly in all its finery, but he didn't see it.

A frustrated bitterness glittered in his eyes as he turned to face his  own reflection in the giltwood mirror above the fireplace.

Damn!' he swore savagely, bringing his fist down on to the marble with a  force that threatened to crack the bones. Damn  …  and damn again  … '

ON CHRISTMAS MORNING they were up early, despite the fact that Claire and Jay had attended Midnight Mass the night before.

Both girls had had small stockings filled with little presents left at  the bottom of their beds the night before, but Claire had already  stipulated that the rest of the presents, which were piled beneath the  tree, were not to be opened until after breakfast. She suspected that  was the only way of making sure that Heather and Lucy got something  inside them.

There had been another fall of snow, and there had been a magical  quality to their walk through the village to the pretty Norman church  the night before. Jay, in a fit of impulsive extravagance, had insisted  on buying a huge red wooden sledge for the girls on Christmas Eve, and  that too was now wrapped up beneath the tree alongside the dolls' pram  Heather had asked for, and Lucy's bike.

Claire had spent almost every evening in December knitting small woolly  garments for the golden-haired doll who was to occupy the pram, and  against her better judgment both girls were to receive the much desired,  and to Claire's mind, quite revolting pastel-haired plastic ponies they  had both ecstatically requested.