Reluctant Wife(61)

‘You could have told me!’



She stared at him and thought he looked so tall and forbidding, and unmoved. She made a futile little gesture. ‘I couldn’t prove it then any more than I can now, it seems. I can only say that all this means nothing to me except for the people—Milly, Jeanette, your mother—everyone. They came to mean a lot, such a lot. But I would have gladly even traded them for the ability to bear you a child. I can only say it …’



She broke off and realised she was crying again, and whirled around suddenly and ran out of the room.



She must have taken him by surprise, because she was out of the house and running through the back garden before he caught her. Then the earth and the sunwarmed grass tilted as she tried to evade him and break free of his arms, but ended up in them and backed up against the trunk of an old gum tree.



Adam stared down at her upturned face and panic-stricken eyes and tightened his arms around her as she moved convulsively. ‘Roz-—I meant that you should have told me about Mike’s father. Because it would have been the best news of my life.’



‘But it was so awful!’



‘Awful for you, , , I agree,’ he said sombrely, ‘but terribly damaging to keep locked up inside you, But at least it explains the damage I didn’t do with my bloody stupid ideas about love, and that’s why it would have been good news.’



Her lips parted, but she couldn’t speak,



He went on, ‘Roz I swear the only reason I suggested the break was because I was getting desperate and getting nowhere with you other than seeing you becoming more tense and nervous, so much so it was even affecting you physically.’



‘Oh, Adam,’ her lips quivered and her voice broke, ‘you could have told me!’



‘Unfortunately,’ he said with savage mockery, ‘that was the last thing I was able to do. Do you remember saying to me once that despite all my cynicism I was determined to make you fall in love with me?



Roz nodded dazedly after a moment.



‘You were right, but not, I realised in a blinding flash when you said it, because I couldn’t bear to think of even one woman being unaffected by me, but because I’d fallen in love with you. All the frustration, even the desire to hurt you, added up to one thing suddenly. That was the



night l made the decision that perhaps the only chance I had of winning your love was to let you go for a while. Because I knew I couldn’t tell you, not me,’ he said with a grim little smile. ‘It was a miracle I even admitted it to myself, and—well, I’ve told you how, even after I’d worked it out, I tried to … deny it. But admitting it to myself was as far as I was going to go until I was convinced you could love me in return. In the end I have gone further, though.’



‘You … just now, inside, you looked as if you hated me rather than anything else,’ whispered Roz. ‘And even when I did start to …‘ hope, after you told me about Louise, you were-—in between times you were distant, and I thought it was all only an act of kindness on your part. That’s why when Lucia told me, it all seemed to fall into place. I thought you must have fallen in love with someone but you couldn’t work out what to do with me. And today, I didn’t know what to do, how to behave-—it was mostly out of fright, terror, the way I was …



‘Roz,’ he sighed, and swivelled around so that he was leaning against the tree and she was resting against him, ‘if I was distant at times, it was because of seeing Louise—no, wait,’ hesaid softly as she tensed, ‘let me explain. And coming to understand that my stupid pride was leading me into another trap. Also, coming to realise that I was going to have to lay it down even if you were … rather brilliantly acting the part of a loving wife because you were afraid of being on your own again, But my pride and I don’t part that easily, Roz, and on top of it



there was the guilt about Tokyo which you magnified in a curious way.’



She stirred in his arms, ‘If—it happened as you say,’ she murmured huskily, ‘perhaps the intention wasn’t really there.’



‘Perhaps,’ he said with a faint smile twisting his lips. ‘Don’t think I haven’t told myself that. By the way, that was one of the reasons you had to fight so hard to seduce me, something to do with the male psychology, no doubt, particularly the inflated type, like mine, Adam added wryly.



’What … oh, you mean …?’



‘Mmm. But in the end you … restored my confidence beautifully, my darling.’