Sinful Nights(52)

I've just been to see a potential client,' he told her. I couldn't  believe it when I saw you. I thought you were immured in the depths of  the country.'

I came up to do some shopping.' It was hard to believe that she once  thought herself attracted to him. Compared with Joel he seemed  lacklustre somehow.

Enjoying marriage, are you?' There was a nasty little bite to the  words, and Lissa was faintly surprised by it, but when he suggested they  chat over a cup of coffee, she could think of no reason for refusing  without being impolite and so she allowed him to guide her towards a  small coffee house.

They were given a table in the window and once they had been served  Simon started to ask her again how she had settled down in the country.  He looked disbelieving when she said she was enjoying it, telling her,  I got the distinct impression that you were being rather railroaded  into this marriage. You know, Lissa, I miss you,' he added, covering her  hand with his own. Since she could not snatch it away without causing a  fuss, Lissa let it lie there, feeling her irritation towards him  growing. Come back to my place this afternoon,' he cajoled. We can  talk there.' The way he looked at her warned Lissa that talk wasn't all  he had in mind and she felt instantly angry. Did he really think she was  the sort of person who would contemplate breaking her marriage vows for  something as shallow as a brief sexual fling? As she fought down her  anger, she felt a prickle of awareness run down her spine. Someone was  staring at her. She lifted her head and looked through the window. There  was no one there. Shaking it, she told herself that she would have to  stop being so over-imaginative and then turned to tell Simon in no  uncertain terms that she was not interested in what he was proposing.  They parted less than amicably. A cold, frigid bitch, he had called her.  Once she would have believed him, but now, thanks to Joel she knew  better. Joel! Her heartbeat quickened as she thought about him, and  suddenly she couldn't wait to get home. If only she knew what was making  him so cool towards her. She froze almost in her tracks, other shoppers  bumping into her. Dear God, what if Joel had guessed the truth. What if  he suspected that she loved him and he was keeping her at a distance  because he did not want any deep emotional involvement with her? She bit  her lip in sudden anguish. Was that it? Had she stumbled on the truth?  If so, what was she to do? She could only play the game by Joel's rules,  she decided as she made her way home. She would have to be as cool to  him as he was to her so that he would not be burdened with an emotional  commitment he obviously did not want. Unwanted love could be a burden  and an embarrassment she acknowledged. Perhaps Joel feared that she  would demand more of him than he could give and so had decided to hold  himself aloof from her as a warning. She thought about the dress she had  just bought with the express intention of showing herself off to her  best advantage, and swallowed hard. She would have to pretend it was one  she had had for some time. Pride stiffened her determination. From now  on she would do nothing  …  nothing that would betray how she felt. She  would be as cool and distant as Joel.    

 



 

Luckily he was not in when she got back and she was able to take her  purchases upstairs and put them away. He came in while she was watching  the news on television, looking sombrely formal and almost chillingly  forbidding. The expression on his face was close to the one of her  nightmares, and her heart quailed as she looked at him.

Busy day?'

Yes  …  And you?'

Were they really reduced to this  …  to these banalities, she wondered  miserably, contrasting them with the discussions and conversations they  had shared with such enthusiasm not so very long ago.

No  …  not really.' She wasn't going to tell him about her trip to  London. He would want to know why she had gone, and that was something  she wasn't going to tell him now.

She looked across at him, dismayed by the coldness in his eyes,  conscious of a leashed tension about his movements. Was it purely  because of her, or was it something to do with the fact that tomorrow  they were dining with his old girl friend?

I'm going out.'

The harsh anger in his voice cut coldly through her frail defences, chilling her, and she shivered.

When will you be back?'

I don't know.' The curt dismissal in his voice hurt.

What about dinner?'

If I'm not here then start without me,' he told her derisively,  striding towards the door, slamming it on his way out. She listened to  his footsteps dying away and then the sound of his car engine firing,  standing tensely where he had left her until that too faded. She then  went into the kitchen pinning a bright smile to her face as she greeted  the girls and Mrs Fuller.

Louise wanted to know where Joel had gone.

He had to go and see someone about business,' she told the little girl,  wondering as she did so, rather bleakly, how many times in the months  and years to come she was going to repeat that phrase.

The physical consummation of their marriage, the tenderness Joel had  shown her then, which should have boded so well for their marriage,  seemed only to have widened the gap between them.

Feeling thoroughly depressed, Lissa went upstairs into her bedroom and  opened her wardrobe door, staring miserably at the blue dress she had  bought with such fervent determination to draw Joel's attention to her.

Joel did return in time for dinner but he was withdrawn, curt to the  point of aggressiveness whenever she talked to him so that gradually her  questions ceased and a tense silence filled the room.

She was not surprised, rather relieved in fact, when after dinner Joel  announced that he had work to do and disappeared in the direction of his  study.

Lissa went to bed early but it was gone one when Joel came up, walking  into the bedroom so quietly, not switching on any of the lights, so that  she was forced to the conclusion that he would prefer her to be asleep.  Her heart ached with love and despair.

Tomorrow was another day, and somehow she must find the courage to face it-and Marisa Andrews.





CHAPTER EIGHT


NO ONE COULD ever have dressed for a dinner party with less enthusiasm,  Lissa thought miserably as she brushed her hair. Joel was in their  bathroom; she could hear him splashing about under the shower.  Disturbing mental images of the lithe maleness of him tormented her,  making her hands shake so much that she had to put down the brush. Her  body now awakened to the pleasure of Joel's lovemaking seemed to crave  it with all the single minded intensity of an addict for his favourite  drug. Whenever he was in the same room with her she ached with a tension  that had nothing to do with tiredness or over-stretched nerves. It was  humiliating that she should feel like this. How could she love and want  him to this extent, especially when she knew that he cared little or  nothing for her?

He came out of the bathroom while she was zipping up her dress. Out of  the corner of her eye Lissa studied him, tiny shivers of awareness  feathering down her spine as he shrugged off his robe and started  getting dressed. Unlike her he seemed totally unselfconscious about his  nudity; totally unaware of the dry-mouthed anguish with which she fought  not to look at him because to look was to want to touch and to go on  touching  …

Her zipper stuck and she made a small impatient sound. Joel looked up and frowned, immediately perceiving what had happened.

Here let me.' His voice was as cool as the touch of his fingers against  her over-hearted skin. She could smell the clean male scent of him and  she wanted nothing more than to turn round and be taken into his arms.  The intensity of her own emotions overwhelmed her, making her tense her  body against any such betrayal.

Relax.' The cool bite in Joel's voice chilled her. I'm not about to rape you, if that's what's worrying you.'    

 



 

Painful colour stung her skin as she caught the cynically bitter undertones to his voice. I didn't think you were.'

Her zip came free and slid smoothly upwards. Joel stepped away from her,  turning his back on her as he continued dressing. He looked  devastatingly masculine in the formality of his evening clothes, Lissa  acknowledged miserably, watching covertly as he inserted gold links into  his shirt cuffs, deftly snapping them closed.

Ready?'

His glance swept over her, dismissing her without comment, his  indifference towards her so painful that her face felt stiff from the  effort of trying to conceal her feelings from him.

They went downstairs together, Joel's attitude towards her punctiliously correct as he handed her into the car.

As he started the engine he inserted a cassette into the tape deck,  turning up the sound just loudly enough to make conversation difficult,  effectively shutting her off from him, Lissa thought. He couldn't have  made it more plain if he had spelled it out for her, how uninterested in  her he really was.

It took just under an hour for them to reach the Andrews' house-a rather  solid Victorian red-brick building on the outskirts of a small village.  The gateposts and short drive were illuminated clearly enough for Lissa  to have a brief glimpse of the edge of an immaculate lawn that somehow  matched the mental picture she had already built up of Marisa  Andrews-cool, immaculate, perfectly groomed.