The Veranchetti Marriage(11)

She attempted again to phone her sister, who now lived in a flat in Chiswick which she had bought the previous year. This time, Vickie was home.

“Where the hell are you?” her sister demanded with unexpected shrillness. “I’ve been trying to get hold of you for hours!”

“I’m in London, in Alex’s apartment.”

“You mean it’s true? It can’t be, you can’t be going back to him!” she argued. “You’ve got to be out of your mind after what he did to you!”

Kerry sighed. “Vickie, I…”

“I’ll come over.”

“No, don’t.” Kerry went on to explain about the party.

“I’ve got to see you!” Vickie flared. “You don’t understand…oh, God…” Her voice trailed away.

Her sister’s almost hysterical response to the news that she was returning to Alex surprised Kerry. Vickie very rarely lost control. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning,” she promised. “Before I go home again.”

Vickie gave a curious laugh. “OK. I’ll stay home for you. Nothing earthshaking is likely to happen between tonight and tomorrow.”

Kerry came off the phone and went to examine the shimmering blue dress which Alex had mentioned. The light caught its glistening, iridescent folds. It was the sort of blatantly alluring gown which Alex would once have frowned upon. Pain snaked within her treacherously. Alex didn’t look on her as an innocent any more.

She dined in solitary state. It brought back unwelcome memories of too many other meals eaten alone with one eye to the clock. But this time she was not awaiting Alex with the feverish and resentful impatience of a teenager in love. She was afraid, terrifyingly afraid of the insanity that had taken hold of her in Alex’s arms, proving his point that she was ruled by her own physical responses. She had lied to herself all this time in telling herself that she hated him. It was her own self she hated for betraying him. In time, anyone could come to hate the reminder of a wrong. That was what Alex had become to her; an agonising reminder of that night and her own demeaning frailty.

She heard the thud of the front door while she was dressing. The gown was more daring than anything she had ever worn. The swell of her breasts rose seductively above the fitting fabric which hugged from beneath her arms to her hips. The colour was breathtaking against her hair. Picking up the toning bag and the high-collared jacket, she could linger in the bedroom no longer.

Alex entered the drawing-room a few minutes behind her. His eyes swept in rampant appraisal over her. “Take the jacket off. I want to see you.”

“No. Won’t we be late?” she said breathlessly. But she took it off to prevent Alex performing the task for her, and stood there feeling like a slave on the block.

Dark colour had risen to his hard cheekbones. He made no effort to hide his masculine appreciation.

“You really have grown up.”

The blaze of his sensual scrutiny made her shrug hastily back into the concealment of the jacket. He bit out a soft, grating laugh. “Surely not so shy? You’re almost twenty-four now.”

She was still a case of arrested development. She didn’t date. She had never taken another man to her bed. She had spent all this time suppressing an essential part of her womanhood, and presumed that that was why Alex’s hand on hers, even briefly, could send a shock of electrifying awareness through her. Frustration. That was all it was, and Alex was tormentingly familiar. She only had to look at him to recall the hard thrust of his all male body on hers, the feel of his satin damp skin beneath her caressing fingertips. Her complexion burnt up hotly, her pulses quickening. In bed there had never been distance between them. But there had been several women in Alex’s arms since she had last rested there. Accepting that cruel reality cooled her fluttering senses.

Despite the divorce, Kerry had never learnt to stop thinking of Alex as her husband. He had taken his revenge in full the first time she lifted a newspaper and saw a photo of him in a New York nightclub with a glamorous socialite clinging to him. She had been sick with jealousy, but she had not been entitled to the emotion. They had been divorced by then.

The party was a glittering crush which contained not a single familiar face. Alex kept one arm round her the whole time. They were the centre of attention, and Alex seemed content to be on display. When a well-known gossip columnist approached them, he smilingly announced their marital plans.

“What have you been doing since your divorce?” she asked Kerry bluntly. “You disappeared right off the social scene.”

Kerry tipped more champagne down her dry throat, an ignominious desire to giggle attacking her as Alex smoothly stepped in to speak for her, as he had done on several other occasions throughout the evening.

“My wife was living in the country.”

“Selling plates,” Kerry added brightly. “Atoning for my…” She collided involuntarily with Alex’s dark eyes, and inwardly she collapsed like a pricked balloon. He made some witty remark, smoothing over her crazy outburst, and she studied the carpet, feeling like a child about to be put in the corner. Really, an ex-wife who had painted the town red would have been an intolerable threat to Alex’s idea of what was decent. Without even trying, she had done what would have pleased most, she acknowledged bitterly. She had lived like a nun.

“Don’t ever do that again,” Alex growled as the woman moved away. “And don’t drink any more. You’ve had enough. I’m surprised you can even touch alcohol after…”

A chill ran over her flesh and doused the rebellion incited by an entire evening spent firmly beneath Alex’s thumb.

His chiselled mouth compressed. “I should not have said that,” he drawled curtly. “I apologise.”

It was an apology of glacial and grudging proportions. Ahead of her stretched a lifetime of them. Her infidelity was as fresh as yesterday to Alex, and it always would be.

“You’re never going to trust me again, are you?” she muttered sickly.

“I wouldn’t trust you to the foot of the street,” he agreed in a simmering undertone. “And it gives me no pleasure to tell you that. But since I believe that you are…genuinely sorry…”

“You mean, you really believe that?” Shame could not drown out anger. “You’d have been much happier if I put myself over a cliff somewhere, Alex. That’s your idea of genuinely sorry,” she whispered strickenly. “And you damned near succeeded in getting your wish. If I hadn’t been pregnant I…I…”

He had lost colour. “Don’t talk like that!” he snapped.

“No, you don’t want to hear it, do you? All about the revenge you took then.” Her tremulous voice was breaking. “How you let me crawl…I’ll never forget that, Alex, and I’ll never…forgive you either…”

He swept her out to the hall and sent a maid off for her jacket while smoothly thanking their hostess for her hospitality. She noticed the columnist covertly absorbing their departure and she reddened miserably, regretting her loss of control. But she could not for ever hang her head in remorseful silence, listening to Alex bestow pious comments. She was only human. The trouble was that Alex wasn’t. Even loving her, he had given no quarter to either of them. He had meted out punishment with a ruthlessness which still had the power to make her shiver.

“You will never forgive me…ha!” Alex vented in the suffocating atmosphere in the rear of the limousine. “You wrecked our marriage. You went out like a spoilt, over-indulged brat and got drunk and gave yourself to another man while you carried my child. Am I to apologise for not having it within me to forgive you? I knew I couldn’t. I stayed away for your safety, too. You were pregnant, you might have lost the baby. Perhaps I was hard upon you…”

Her teeth had bitten into her tongue, and the salty tang of blood had filtered into her mouth. “There is no perhaps about it. You nearly destroyed me. I loved you.”

“If you had loved me, you would never have let another man touch you, drunk or sober!” Alex ripped back at her, all cool abandoned now that they were in private. “Do not talk of love to me. You were infatuated. Once the novelty had worn off, you wanted your freedom back.”

“That’s untrue…I was unhappy, but I didn’t regret marrying you.”

“Well, believe me,” Alex breathed cruelly, “I regretted marrying you.”

Dear God, what sort of relationship were they to have in the future? Alex tearing at her continually for a past she could not wipe out, and Kerry hating him for the grain of truth in every pronouncement. It was a vicious circle.

He sighed. “I don’t wish to talk to you like this. I concede that I made mistakes too. Instead of giving way to my desire for you, I should have decided upon a long engagement, during which we could both have adapted to the differences between us. You were too young and insecure, and I was too selfish and intolerant,” he conceded tautly. “I should have bought us a home in England. You would have had your own family then, and I would not have felt the need to play both father and lover. The combination does not work, and I disliked the necessity, but I asked for the problem.”