The Strength Of Desire

Years ago, she’d consoled herself that it must be easier to bring up alone a daughter rather than a son. She’d been wrong.

She approached the front door and looked through the opaque glass to find the man still standing on the step, his back to her. She took a deep breath and told herself to be assertive, then opened the door a fraction.

‘Look, if it’s about the windows, I like them like that,’ she said, before the salesman could launch into the usual sales patter.

But it wasn’t about windows or doors or insurance or anything safe and boring and ordinary. Hope realised that even before he turned and she saw his face. She recognised him from the back, tall, broad-shouldered, narrow in the hip.

Guy Delacroix wheeled round and stared at her for a moment, long and hard. She stared back, caught by the awful surprise of it. Years stripped away and she felt her treacherous heart flip over at the sight of him.

‘You’ve changed,’ he eventually said in his precise, accentless voice, and a shiver ran through her at the sense of déjà vu.

She just stopped herself from saying ‘you haven’t’, as her past life ran before her eyes like a drowning man’s.

But it was true. He’d hardly changed at all. It had been twelve years since they’d met, yet he seemed little altered. Slightly more grey hairs threaded through the black, and some laughter-lines now fanned from his grey eyes. The latter seemed a strange thing for him to have, a man who rarely laughed. Or maybe he had learned how to, since she’d run away from Heron’s View—and him.

She thought how different she must look to him. The last time he’d seen her, she’d been only twenty, with the face of a girl and with hair so long it touched her waist. People said she still looked young at thirty-two, but she had the face of a woman, more angular, and her hair had been cropped short. She wasn’t at her smartest, either, in jeans and white T-shirt.

‘That was your child.’ He dragged her back to the present, reminding her that he had just met Maxine.

‘I…’ She wanted to lie, to say no, to deny Maxine’s existence but that was absurd. He must have heard of her from Jack. ‘Yes…Maxine.’

‘After your father,’ he recalled then commented shortly, ‘She looks quite like mine.’

Hope stared back at him, like a rabbit caught in his headlights. He’d noticed the likeness. Of course he’d noticed. How could he not? Apart from her eyes, Maxine was pure Delacroix.

But it was all right. Like his father, he’d said. His father. Jack’s father. Same person. She tended to forget. They were so unalike, the brothers.

‘I have some news for you,’ he went on. ‘May I come in?’

She hesitated, wanting to say no again. He didn’t give her the chance. He walked past her into the ball. He waited for her to close the door and lead the way.

She avoided the living-room with Maxine in it, and took him to the kitchen.

It was a fair-sized kitchen, with room for a table and chairs.

He stood in the doorway and made it look small. Dressed in a dark lounge suit and conservative tie, he made the room look scruffy too.

‘Do you want to sit down?’ Hope resented the way he made her feel.

He shook his head. ‘This won’t take long. As I say, I have some news for you.’

‘It’s all right. I heard it over the radio,’ she informed him.

He looked at her again, as if to gauge her reaction. She lifted her head a little higher, not giving him the satisfaction of seeing she’d been upset.

‘And Maxine?’ he added shortly.

‘I’ve told her,’ she replied just as shortly.

He frowned. ‘How is she?’

Hope shrugged. She wasn’t going to explain Maxine’s feelings to him. He was obviously thinking that the girl who had answered the door to him had scarcely looked grief-stricken, but then what did he expect? He must realise Maxine had barely known Jack.

‘Will she want to go to the funeral?’ he pursued.

‘I—I’m not sure.’ Hope hadn’t thought that far herself. Jack had only died that morning.

‘Will you?’ he added.

Her eyes widened in surprise. Surely she wouldn’t be welcome—an ex-wife?

‘I don’t think Jack would have wanted it,’ she said eventually.

‘No,’ he agreed, ‘probably not…Is that why you didn’t come to my mother’s funeral?’

He really hasn’t changed, Hope thought as he directed another blunt question at her. He was so different from Jack. It had been ‘anything for an easy life’ with Jack, but Guy had always met things head-on.

Well, this time, Hope decided, he wasn’t going to walk all over her. Her heart might still be racing but her head was clear.

‘No, I didn’t think you’d want it,’ she responded sharply.

His eyes narrowed assessingly. ‘No, you’re right. I wouldn’t,’ he acknowledged, then added on a note of accusation, ‘You came all the same, though, didn’t you?’

‘What do you mean?’ Hope’s face went a shade of pink, betraying her.

‘I returned to the graveyard after the service,’ he informed her. ‘I saw you.’

‘Oh.’ Hope couldn’t deny it.

She had kept in touch with Caroline Delacroix even after her split with Jack. Occasionally the older woman would call on her when she was in London. She had come to see Maxine, her only grandchild, but Hope knew she’d never mentioned these visits to her sons.

‘Her solicitor telephoned me,’ Hope went on to explain, ‘saying it was your mother’s wish I should be there. So I was…sort of.’

She’d gone down by train to Penzance, then waited until the actual service was over, before going to the graveside. She’d placed an anonymous wreath among the others and said a tearful goodbye to a nice lady.

Hope frowned as she thought of him watching her. What had he felt? Anger, she supposed, that she’d had the nerve to appear.

Guy watched her now, much as he would have done then, with contempt in those wintry grey eyes. ‘The solicitor meant for you to come to the house—for the willreading…’ He left the sentence hanging in the air, waiting for her reaction.

Hope didn’t rise to the bait. She hadn’t expected Caroline to leave her anything, and, if she had, Hope would have heard of it by now. It had been almost two years since Caroline’s death.

‘Didn’t you ever wonder if she left you something?’ Guy added at her silence.

‘Why should she?’ Hope shrugged. ‘I wasn’t her responsibility.’

‘No, you were Jack’s.’ Grey eyes scanned the room, taking in the state of the kitchen.

Hope wasn’t ashamed of her home. It was small and the furniture shabby, but she’d done her best and it was comfortable. The kitchen table and chairs were old and marked, but they were made of solid pine. She had no money for new units but she’d splashed out on some good tiling and wallpaper which she’d hung herself.

But Guy Delacroix was hardly impressed. With a luxury flat in Truro as well as the magnificence of Heron’s View, a terraced house in Putney probably seemed one step from poverty to him.

‘You didn’t get much of a settlement from Jack, did you?’ he finally remarked.

She stared back incredulously. He dared say that to her? ‘Well, you saw to that, didn’t you?’ she retorted bitterly.

His brows rose, feigning surprise. ‘Perhaps you’d like to explain that remark.’

Hope’s lips pursed. He knew well enough. ‘Come on. You were the one who advised Jack how little he could get away with. Did you think he wouldn’t tell me?’

This time there wasn’t a flicker of reaction. Reading anything from Guy’s face had always been difficult, and nothing had changed.

‘Jack told you I advised him on your settlement,’ he stated flatly, rephrasing what she’d just said.

Hope nodded. ‘Don’t deny it’ she snapped back.

‘All right, I won’t,’ he agreed coolly, his eyes fixed on her face.

Hope refused to be intimidated, and stared back. It was a mistake. She saw reflected in his eyes too many memories, and for a moment felt, as she had all those years ago, that curious mixture of attraction and fear.

She turned away, and started to busy herself in the kitchen, talking to hide her confusion. ‘I’ll ask Maxine if she wants to go to the funeral. If she does, I’ll let you know…Now, if that’s all, I have to make tea.’

She ran water into a pan, and banged it noisily on to the cooker, then tried to light the gas with a sparking device. If there was a technique, she seemed to have lost it. She clicked the sparker ineffectively. The smell of gas filled the room.

‘The flint’s gone,’ she was coolly informed.

It did nothing for Hope’s humour. She rounded on him, with an idea of telling him to get lost, and they semi-collided as he reached past her to turn off the gas. She grabbed at his arms as she threatened to overbalance, then wished she hadn’t. He held her for a moment, and his touch was like a burn on her bare arms. She flinched visibly, and he let her go, but only so that he could turn off the gas. He didn’t move away and she was effectively trapped by his proximity.

Hope wasn’t frightened of him. She was frightened of betraying herself. Over a decade, but nothing had changed.

He felt her body tremble. His eyes caught hers, trying to see into her very soul.

Appalled by her own weakness, Hope forced herself to remember all of it. Not just the love, but what followed. The hurt. The loss. The ultimate pain of betrayal.

It didn’t seem to make any difference: her body continued to tremble at his nearness.

It made no difference to him either, as his hands began to caress her bare skin.

‘All this time, and nothing’s changed.’ He spoke the words in her ear as they stood there, caught by the past.

She shook her head and breathed, ‘I hate you,’ meaning it.

‘And I hate you,’ he breathed back, clearly meaning it too.

But he was right. Nothing had changed. Desire was as strong as hate, and just as destructive.

She told herself to break free. She tried to; he held her easily. Not just with his hands but with his eyes. It was strange how such cold grey eyes could be so mesmeric.

‘Mum…Mum?’ Maxine stood in the doorway, looking from one to the other, unsure what she was witnessing.

At last Hope broke free, almost leaping back from Guy as she caught sight of her daughter. ‘I didn’t realise you were there,’ she said unnecessarily.

Maxine said nothing, but stared hostilely at Guy. He didn’t seem to notice, greeting her with a peculiarly soft, ‘Hello, Maxine.’

Maxine continued to stare, and Hope stepped in, saying, ‘Maxine, this is your uncle—’

‘Guy,’ Maxine completed for her mother. ‘I remember. My father told me about you.’

Not your mother, Guy’s eyes said as they slid in accusation to Hope.

Hope’s lips tightened. Did he imagine that she had any memories of him which she would willingly share with her child?

His eyes returned to Maxine as he said, ‘I’m sorry about your father.’

‘Thanks.’ Maxine took sympathy from him more readily than from her mother.

‘I know he hasn’t seen you much lately,’ he ran on, ‘but he’s spent most of the year performing in America.’

‘Is that where—where he died?’ Maxine asked, a catch in her voice, and, at Guy’s nod, added, ‘Will he be buried there?’

He shook his head. ‘No, we’re bringing him home to Cornwall. That’s why I’ve come…to tell you about the funeral arrangements.’

‘Do I have to go?’ Maxine looked slightly alarmed at the prospect.

Hope decided it was time for her to speak up. ‘No, of course not. Only if you want to…’

Maxine still looked uncertain. ‘I’ve never been to a funeral.’

‘There’s nothing to worry about,’ Guy told her quietly. ‘It’s just…well, a way of saying goodbye.’

‘Yes, I suppose.’ Maxine accepted his reassurance with a thoughtful nod.

Hope had to give him full marks. For a man without children, he certainly knew how to speak to them.

But perhaps he wasn’t—without children. She’d just assumed. Who knew? He might be married, with his own family, by now.

‘I can look after Maxine at the service, if that suits you,’ he directed at Hope, catching her deepening frown.

‘I…um…’ Hope looked to her daughter, who gave a nod. ‘Yes, OK, if that’s possible.’

Hope felt she’d been left with little choice. Maxine had a right to be there if she wanted, and it appeared she did. Her initial hostility towards her uncle had faded rapidly and Hope was left wondering how he’d managed it. She watched them exchanging smiles, acknowledging kinship, and her heart sank a mile.

‘Where’s Katie?’ Hope purposely changed the subject.

‘Working in the living-room,’ Maxine relayed. ‘I came for drinks.’

‘All right.’ Hope went to the fridge and found two cans of Coke, almost throwing them at her daughter in her hurry to be rid of her.

Thankfully Maxine took the hint.

‘See you later,’ she said to her uncle, then paused in the doorway to ask, ‘Are you staying for tea?’

Hope waited for Guy to give a firm denial. Instead he glanced at her. She didn’t have to mouth the word ‘no’. Her appalled expression said it all.

‘No, but I’ll be in touch.’ Guy returned Maxine’s smile before she disappeared. ‘She’s beautiful,’ he said to Hope, with disconcerting frankness.

Hope felt a moment’s pride, quickly followed by guilt, then anger. It hadn’t been all her fault. She’d had no choice, and there was no going back.

‘Have you any?’ she asked in an almost aggressive tone.

He raised a brow. ‘Any what?’

Was he being deliberately obtuse? ‘Children!’

‘No.’ He answered her question without giving away any more.

Was he married? Had they decided not to have children? What?

Hope told herself that it was none of her business. A decade had passed and they were strangers. Perhaps they always had been.

Hope was just deciding to steer off personal subjects, when Guy went on the attack, saying, ‘I suppose it was worth it—going back to Jack—however temporarily?’

‘What?’ Hope was taken aback.

‘Having Maxine,’ he went on relentlessly, his eyes as hard as glass. ‘I assume that was the reason for your remarkably brief reconciliation with my brother.’

‘How dare you—?’ Hope’s voice rose with her anger.

‘How dare I tell the truth?’ he cut across her, at the same time closing the distance between them once more. ‘Why not? It hardly matters now. I’m just curious. How long was it, that last time you were reunited? One month? Two?’

Hope was sure he already knew the answer, but she muttered back, ‘Five weeks,’ and prayed it would shut him up.

It didn’t. ‘Five weeks?’ he echoed, his voice a harsh, mocking sound. ‘Let’s see, now. Long enough to conceive, have a pregnancy confirmed and get the divorce papers drawn up. Fast going.’

‘That’s not the way it was!’ Hope was more hurt than angry that he could believe that of her. ‘I never intended going back to Jack. If you’d just listened to me—’

‘Listened to you?’ He grabbed her arm when she would have walked away. ‘So you could tell me more lies, make more promises you’d never keep?’

‘Well, that makes two of us!’ Hope remembered all the things he’d said, of love and their future together.

‘So maybe we deserved each other.’ His lips formed a thin, cruel smile at the idea. ‘Maybe you should have stuck with me…But then, you couldn’t be quite sure I could give you a baby, could you? Whereas my brother already had—’

‘Shut up!’ Hope cried at him. ‘You and your brotherI was sick of you both. All you ever wanted from me was—’ She bit off what she’d been about to say.

But he knew, saying for her, ‘Sex?’ and laughing his contempt. ‘Don’t kid yourself. You were never that good.’

‘Why, you—’ A decade of anger, stored but still festering, spilled over. She raised her hand and slapped him hard on the cheek.

Who was more surprised? Hope, who had never hit anyone in her life, or Guy, who had never been hit?

At any rate, it was Hope who was horrified, who backed away from him, from herself, from the violence of the emotion between them.

It was Guy who seemed almost to relish the situation, as he shot out an arm and dragged her close, forcing her to look up at him, to catch the curious triumph on his face for a moment, confusing her into inaction as he bent his head.

His mouth had covered hers even before she realised his intention. He kissed her hard, branding her as she had branded him, punishing her for daring to slap him.

One kiss and all breath, reason, sanity were knocked from Hope’s body. Even as she pushed at his shoulders, kicked at his legs, struggled for her freedom, the most terrible excitement spread through her body.

Guy knew it. He could feel it. That was why he kept kissing her, forcing her lips to open, her mouth, invading, tasting, remembering the sweetness of her, the softness, the smell of her, still the same.

It shocked Hope. Nothing had changed. Guy touched her and she lost all pride, all strength, all will. Guy held her, his hard male hands running over her back, relearning the shape of her as if he had the right. And all the time still kissing her, her cheek, her eyes, her temple, then back to her lips, biting, licking, thrusting into the warm recesses of her mouth until she had to stop herself moaning aloud. But she couldn’t stop the memories flooding back, the camera rolling in her head, of him and her, and the time they had loved. The briefest of times, but it was imprinted on her brain as if it had lasted a hundred years.

As were the words he had said afterwards. ‘It was nothing. Just sex. Proximity. Curiosity.’ And each word had been like a hammer-blow to her heart.

The same words saved her now, dredged up from memory to salvage her pride. They made her cry out, ‘No,’ and mean it, made her twist from him, with a low curse.

He watched as she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. It was a gesture of contempt, intended to wound, but the small smile on his mouth mocked her late show of pride.

‘I lied,’ he said in a low undertone, catching her eyes. ‘You were that good.’

It was no compliment. The look on his face told her that was all she’d been good for. A quick session or two in bed.

This time she didn’t slap him. Anger gave way to humiliation.

He had the last word, as he’d had the last time they’d met. He turned on his heel and walked away. She heard him go down the hall and open the front door. He didn’t slam it.

Guy Delacroix had too much control for such petty gestures. He hadn’t kissed her out of desire or impulse. He had wanted to see if he could still reduce her to a weak fool.

He could.

She wrapped her arms round her body. It was still trembling with a mixture of emotions. She felt a little sick. She wanted to go upstairs and lie down and sleep. Sleep for however many days it took to forget Guy Delacroix once more.

But she couldn’t. Her daughter trailed into the kitchen, eyes all curious at her flushed face, and she took refuge in her role of mother by busying herself with the tea.

She didn’t get away from Guy Delacroix that easily, however, as Maxine insisted on bombarding her with questions about her uncle. What did he do for a living? Did he still live in Cornwall? Was he older or younger than her father? Was he married?

‘How should I know?’ Hope snapped at the last question as she finally lost patience.

Maxine gave her an offended look, muttering, ‘I was only asking.’

‘Well, don’t!’ Hope snapped again. ‘Just eat your tea.’ She slapped the plate in front of Maxine and effectively silenced any more talk of Guy Delacroix or the past.

But later, when Maxine went to bed, Hope couldn’t silence her thoughts.

Of course, things had turned out just as Guy had predicted. She’d joined Jack on tour in America and it had been a disaster—moving from one American city to the next, living out of suitcases, lying awake and alone in a hotel bedroom while Jack had thrown a party for anyone and everyone next door, still awake and alone the following day while Jack slept off the party.

It would never have been the life for her, but it had been made worse by the depression she was suffering. It had been less than three months since her miscarriage.

Jack, if he’d grieved at all for their dead baby, had long since put it out of his mind. Hope hadn’t felt ready for lovemaking, but bare tolerance on Jack’s part had quickly turned to resentment. She had given in. Sex had become a joyless physical act without love. Jack hadn’t seemed to notice.

She’d been in America a fortnight when she fell ill. She’d felt unwell for days, and had woken up in the early hours with severe pains in her abdomen—and no sign of Jack.

She’d telephoned the hotel reception just before blacking out. A doctor had come. He had called the paramedics, who had whisked her to hospital for a proper examination. It was gynaecological—complications from the stillbirth resulting in possible long-term damage. It was unlikely there would be any more babies.

It had followed the pattern of the stillbirth. Jack had turned up the next day, with flowers and excuses and apparent concern. She had told him that they might never have children now, and he had taken the news almost too well.

He had explained his absence with an all-night poker game, and Hope hadn’t challenged it. She’d felt a little guilty herself, because throughout the crisis she had found herself wishing that another man had been there, one who could cope, who would be strong, unselfish, reliable.

She’d returned to Britain on discharge from hospital. Jack had made a token effort to talk her out of it, but had been quick enough to arrange for plane reservations.

He’d been less happy with her plan to stay with her friend Vicki until she could find a house of their own in London. Even when not on tour, Jack had preferred to live in hotels, with the convenience of room service, rather than keep a house or flat. He was still trying to dissuade her from her plan as she boarded the plane.

She had phoned Vicki beforehand, of course. Her friend had sounded taken aback at first, then sympathetic at her circumstances. She’d gone on tour with Jack as a gofer the year before, and knew what an exhausting round it was. From her initial reluctance, she’d quickly switched to insistence that Hope make her temporary home with her.

‘She’s agreed?’ Jack said in near-shock when Hope put the telephone down.

Hope nodded, frowning. ‘I know you think Vicki is silly and self-centred, but she’s not really…You said yourself she was pretty useful as an assistant.’

‘Yes, well.’ Jack still looked unhappy. ‘It’s different. You need someone who can look after you.’

Hope shook her head. ‘I’ll be fine when I get back to Britain, and it’ll be less than a month till you join me.’

‘I suppose.’

Jack didn’t argue further, and Hope assumed the matter was settled. She didn’t know Jack very well then. If he wanted something to go his way, he enlisted other people to make sure it did.

In this case, Guy. He was there at Arrivals at Heathrow. But so was Vicki.

Hope noticed them immediately, before they noticed her. It was hardly surprising. They were deep in argument. Guy had his hand on Vicki’s arm, holding her there as he talked down at her. Hope was so surprised that she stopped in her tracks and watched. Whatever they were arguing about, it was obviously something heated and personal, yet she couldn’t remember any occasion when Guy had even met Vicki.

She was still staring at them when Guy looked up and saw her. So did Vicki, and took a step forward, only to be stopped by something Guy said.

Whatever it was, it must have been something pretty powerful, as the other girl gave Hope an anxious look before suddenly breaking off and almost running in the opposite direction, leaving the field clear for Guy.

He walked up to her, reaching for her hand-luggage, and saying, ‘You look exhausted. How are you?’