“So you have your choice,” he concluded drily.
She bit her lower lip painfully. “You haven’t given me a choice!” she argued furiously.
“You have until tomorrow to give me an answer.” Golden eyes held hers with cruel mockery.
“You ruthless bastard!” she burst out unsteadily.
Lean-fingered hands enclosed her wrists. He jerked her up against his hard, boldly masculine body as if she was a rag doll. “I’ll make you pay for every insult you give me now,” he swore roughly. “In my bed…whenever and however I want you.” Her darkened green eyes widened to their fullest extent. Alex’s fingers pushed up her chin, savage amusement burning in his gaze. “I shall enjoy that. Using you as you used me. I loved you. I loved you beyond the bounds of my own intelligence,” he confessed derisively. “I was so weak in the grip of that love that I was blind. But I don’t love you any more. I don’t need you, either. You have no hold on me now. You don’t even have my respect. If I were you, I wouldn’t incite my temper any further. You’ll only pay for it at a later date.”
The raw emphasis of the assurance left her boneless. His dark-timbred drawl had almost mesmerised her into complete paralysis. But, as his meaning sank in, her stomach somersaulted in violent rejection of his intent. A loud thump which she could hardly recognise as her own heartbeat was pounding in her eardrums.
“Capisci, cara?” With a cynical smile, he released her chin. “Tomorrow afternoon you can present yourself in my office in London. A car will call for you at two. You will leave Nicky with your parents and explain that you are attending a party with me tomorrow evening and staying overnight in London. I doubt if they will place any objection to the plan.”
“Alex…you mustn’t do this…” she whispered in absolute turmoil. “I have a life of my own…for God’s sake, I can’t spend the rest of it paying for…”
“One mistake?” The golden blaze of his bitterness lanced into her without warning. “It won’t be for the rest of your life. It will be until Nicky is old enough to do without you.”
He left her standing there. He let himself out. She stumbled over to the chair she had earlier forsaken in temper. She hadn’t even realised that she was crying. But now her hands covered wet cheeks. She had been wise to fear Alex even when he was invisible in her life, for Alex hated more fiercely than she was capable of hating. He despised her utterly, and he hated her because once he had loved her and she had proved unworthy of that love.
Yet in all those months of their marriage he had not once told her that he loved her. Indeed, it had seemed after the honeymoon was over that Alex was more set upon showing her that he did not need her around constantly. He hadn’t devoted much time to her. That primitive and fierce pride of his had seen shame in loving a teenager. Shame and weakness. Perhaps he had believed that it would give her too much power over him if she realised how he really felt about her. Instead he had slotted her into place and shut her out.
She did not doubt the veracity of his declaration of love. By making it, he had twisted something painfully within her. It all seemed such a waste. He had loved her and he hadn’t liked loving her. In the end he would have overcome what he saw as a shortcoming. Alex was built that way. It might almost have been a relief when she blotted her copybook and he could rid himself of his despised susceptibility towards her.
But what she was realising now was that Alex had suffered too, and that, in punishing her, he had also been punishing himself. Even if he had relented and come to see her in Florence, though, she was still certain that he would have carried neither pardon nor clemency in his heart. He was hard and inflexible. His standards admitted no adjustments. Wrong was wrong in Alex’s eyes.
And in her own. She might have lost her head when he threatened her, but still she saw his reasoning. She could understand his desire to have his son in his own home. She was less able to deal with the ferocity of Alex’s desire for revenge. He wanted to make her suffer. He didn’t know how much she had already suffered. Understandably, he did not believe that she had ever really loved him. What was she going to do?
Checking the time, she reluctantly put on her coat and set out for the showroom. Fortunately her home was on the outskirts of the village, and Antiques Fayre was on the main street. To her surprise, the showroom was already open. Steven was behind the counter, drinking coffee and chatting to a regular customer, who collected antique plates.
“I thought you had deliveries to make,” Kerry opened ruefully.
He grinned. “I couldn’t be bothered. Have you seen the state of the roads out there? Want some coffee?”
She nodded and watched his slim, golden-haired figure disappear into the back of the shop. Nothing worried Steven—falling trade and irate customers included. On the balance side, he was a non-stop worker with the furniture he loved. His problem was that he restored for personal pleasure rather than profit. In a normal mood she would have chased him out to deliver the completed pieces to the two customers awaiting the return of their furniture. But she was still in shock from Alex’s visit.
“He’s such a pleasant young man,” the lady plate collector commented, taking her leave. “He advised me against buying that Spode plate. He’s right, it wouldn’t really fit my colour scheme.”
Kerry silently gritted her teeth. At present, they couldn’t afford helpful advice of that brand. The coffers were far from full. Steven reappeared, clutching a mug. “So where did you get to yesterday? And what’s with the plaster?”
Briefly, she told him about the accident. Immediately, he was concerned. “You should have stayed in bed today.”
“Willard Evans is coming.”
“Oh, profiteer day, is it?” Steven gathered drily.
“We’d be out of business without him.” She spoke with greater heat than usual, and his blue eyes betrayed surprise. “Oh, never mind. Can I use your car later? I have to go and pick up Nicky.”
“Do you want me to drive you? You look like death warmed up,” he said wryly. “Is there something else wrong?”
She pushed her hair off her brow. “I saw my ex-husband last night,” she confided tightly.
Steven shrugged. “No big deal, is it? What did he do? Land his private jet on the hospital roof?” He laughed lightly. “You should have touched him for some alimony, Kerry. I’ve never understood why you live like you do when you could be sitting in clover.”
Her pale skin heated with colour. “I didn’t want to be beholden.”
“Old-fashioned word, that, and not very practical. You’ve got a kid to think of. Pretty soon he’s going to be asking more questions and learning to enjoy his luxury stays with your ex more than he likes coming home.”
“Leave it,” she begged, looking away. “I’m sorry, I’ve got a lot on my mind.”
At that point, Willard’s hired Mercedes drew up outside. Steven took off, leaving Kerry to deal with him. A small, bespectacled man, he strolled silently through the showroom as usual before making his selections and negotiating prices with her. He never stayed long. He was taciturn for an antiques dealer. He had been coming to them for more than two years, and she didn’t believe they had ever exchanged a word of anything that could be deemed personal conversation. It was one of the reasons Steven disliked him.
“There’s just something phoney about the guy,” he had said once. “He never talks. It’s just in, out and off for another month.”
“He’s very businesslike,” she had argued. “He doesn’t need to make it a social call.”
Today she was grateful for the dealer’s undemanding brevity. As soon as he had gone she went out to the rear courtyard and got into Steven’s vintage MG. During the drive to her parents’ home, she looked back ruefully over the past four years.
She had come home to the vicarage from Florence. She had been shellshocked. Until Alex had walked out of that hospital she had still nurtured desperate hopes of a last-ditch reconciliation. Her parents had been appalled by the news that she was getting a divorce for, over the six months of their separation in Florence, Kerry had continued to write home as if there was nothing wrong. When she did arrive back there had been enough trouble without a confession of infidelity. She had not had the courage to tell them in the state she was in then.
And four months later her father had had a heart attack. Nobody had blamed her, but the shock of her divorce had certainly played its part. It was inconceivable that she now dredge up the murky truth. It was too late and too dangerous. It should have been done four years ago. But would her parents ever have spoken to her again?
Had they turned on her too, she really couldn’t have coped at all. As it was, she had been under severe strain. For everybody’s sake she had decided to move out and embrace independence. An enormous amount of money had accumulated in her bank account. Alex’s money, paid monthly. She could have turned herself into a very merry divorcee. Instead she had withdrawn a comparatively small part of it and bought into a partnership with Steven. She had withdrawn the rest and returned it to Alex’s lawyers with the information that she required no further payments. Several letters had followed, trying to persuade her into accepting the allowance. She had stood firm. Living as Alex’s dependent was something she could not do, as the guilty partner. Thinking back, she realised that her obstinacy had probably antagonised Alex more, but that had not been her motivation.