Adam didn’t reply immediately, just watched her shake out the mat she’d been kneeling on and wrap her tools up in it, then hesitate for a fleeting instant before she walked towards him and tilted her face up for his kiss.
Then he said, ‘Sydney was cold. How are you?’ and kissed her briefly.
‘Fine!’ she heard herself say gaily.
‘Where is everyone?’
Roz explained as she led the way into the kitchen and chatted on about heaven knew what as she washed her hands at the sink, then mixed a jug of lime squash and asked if he was hungry.
Again he took his time about replying, and as he stood watching her, leaning his shoulders against the wall, she was able to think that he looked tired but that there was something else in his dark eyes that she couldn’t fathom, something that frightened her and spurred her to further small talk when he finally said no, he wasn’t hungry.
‘Let’s go into the den and be comfortable. It’s not often we have the place all to ourselves, is it?’
The ceiling fan was on in the den, but Adam discarded the jacket of his beautiful lightweight grey suit and pulled off his navy blue tie before saying, ‘No, we don’t., Nor could their timing be better in this instance.’
Roz put their drinks down and said lightly, ‘Is something wrong? Would you rather have had a beer? I didn’t think of that …’ But at last she was able to get a grip on herself, because of course something was wrong—he had come to a decision. She put a hand briefly to her mouth and forced herself to look across at him and quietly, ‘Sorry. What is it?’
‘I thought you might like, to tell me that. At least I did think that, but you appear to be perfectly normal, happy and bright, in fact.’ He looked at her sardonically.
‘Adam … I don’t understand,’ she whispered.
‘You don’t do you, Roz? You honestly don’t. Well, I’ll tell you.’ He strolled over to her and took her chin in his fingers, while she stared up at him, her eyes wide and dark. ‘When I got back from Sydney this morning, earlier than anticipated, I went straight to the office, where there was a message for me. An urgent message,’ he added softly, but a shiver went down her spine, ‘to contact my beloved sister Lucia.’
Her lips parted and her eyes were dazed,then stunned. ‘She …’ she licked her lips, ‘she told you?’
‘Mmm … About all the things she’d told you, Roz. Didn’t you believe her?’
‘I …’A tide of hot colour stole into Roz’s cheeks and she couldn’t go on’.
‘She was right, you know,’ he said. .‘I did find myself next to an old flame on the flight to Tokyo, I did leave her hotel room at an ungodly hour, I did purchase a kimono in her presence.’
‘Oh, Adam!’ breathed Roz ‘I …’
‘But apparently you didn’t mind findings all that out, Roz,’ he overrode her roughly. ‘You were prepared to go on as if nothing had happened. ‘Indeed,’he traced the outline of her mouth with one finger. ‘It wasn’t an earth-shattering event for you at all. And of course I know why,’ he told her with devastating irony.‘
‘Do you?’ her voice wasn’t working too well and the words came out huskily.
He smiled, the coolest smile she’d ever seen. ‘So long as you can keep all this you don’t really care what I do behind your back.’
Roz pulled free. ‘I gather you didn’t discuss that with Lucia?’
His mouth hardened and flash of brilliant anger lit his eyes. ‘No. It was quite a brief conversation,’ actually, and the last we’ll be having for some time. Just as this is the last conversation you and I will be having, Roz. You see, I’m no longer content to be just a stopgap for all the lonely places of your heart, my dear. I want it all or nothing.’ She gasped, but he went on unheedingly, ‘Oh, you’ve been a brilliant actress since I apparently shook you out of your self-preoccupation and frightened you into thinking you were going to lose all this …’
‘No!’ she cried. ‘I haven‘t, it wasn’t… . ’
‘Roz, if I thought you were sleeping with someone behind my back I’d probably do something essentially violent. How can you expect me to believe you don’t give a damn—if you feel anything for me at all?’
‘I didn’t know how you really felt! Adam … ‘
‘Then I’ll tell you,’ he said unpleasantly, ‘And for the record, I never realised it so clearly as on that first night in Tokyo when l was tired and depressed and convinced you were drifting further and further away from me whatever I did—and coming to understand what it meant to me. But I persuaded myself to think, what the hell, Roz isn’t the only woman in the world, and there’s another one I right here in this hotel sending out unmistakable signals. Why not avail myself of her?’