The Ultimate Betrayal

He made no attempt to kiss her, or talk her into leaving with him instead of her friends. But he did take her telephone number and promised to call her soon, and she spent the next week camped by the phone, waitingyearning for him to call.

He took her for a drive on their first real date. He drove a red Ford. ‘Firm’s car,’ he explained, with a wry smile she never quite understood. Then gently, but with an intensity which kept her on the edge of her seat with breathless anticipation, he made her talk about herself. About her family, her friends. Her likes and dislikes, and her ambitions to take art at college with a view to going into advertising. He frowned at that, then quietly asked her how old she was. Unable to lie, she flushed guiltily and told him the truth. His frown deepened, and he was rather quiet after that while she chewed on her bottom lip, knowing achingly that she’d blown it. Which seemed to be confirmed when he took her back home and just murmured an absent goodnight as she got out of the car. She’d been devastated. For several days she’d barely eaten, could not sleep, and was in dire danger of wasting away by the time he called her again a week later.

He took her to the cinema that night, sitting beside her in the darkness staring at the big screen while she did the same, only without seeing a single thing, her attention fixed exclusively on his closeness, the subtle tangy smell of him, his hard thigh mere inches away from her own, his shoulder brushing against hers. Dry-mouthed, tense, and terrified of making a single move in case she blew it a second time, she therefore actually cried out when he reached over and picked up one of her hands. His expression was grave as he gently prised her fingers out of the white-knuckled clench she had them in. ‘Relax,’ he murmured. ‘I’m not going to bite you.’

The trouble was, she’d wanted him to bite. Even then, as naive as they came and with no real idea of what it meant to be with a man, she had wanted him with a desperation which must have shown in her face, because he muttered something and tightened his grip on her hand, holding it trapped in his own while he forced his own attention back to the film. That night he kissed her hard and hungrily, the power of it taking her to the edge of fear before he drew angrily away and made her get out of the car.

The next time he took her out it was to a quiet restaurant, where his eyes lingered broodingly on her through the meal while he told her about himself. About his job as a salesman for a big computer firm which, by the nature of the job, meant he travelled all over the country touting for new business and could mean his being out of the area for weeks on end sometimes. He told her of his ambition to own his own company one day. How he dabbled in stocks and shares with his commission and lived on a shoe-string to do it. He spoke levelly and softly so that she had to lean forward a little to catch his words, and all the time his eyes never left her face, not just brooding, but seeming to consume her, so by the time he drove her home that night she was in danger of exploding at the sexual tension he had developed around them both. Yet still it was just the one hungry kiss before he was sending her into the house and driving away. It went like that for perhaps half a dozen more dates before eventually, inevitably, she supposed, his control snapped and, instead of taking her to the cinema as they had planned, he took her to his flat.

After that, they rarely went anywhere else. Being alone together, making love together, became the most important thing in her life. Daniel became the most important thing in her life, over her A-levels, over her ambitions, over the disapproval her parents made no bones about voicing but which made no difference to the way she felt.

Three months later—and after he had been away in London for almost two weeks—she had been waiting for him at his flat door when he returned.

‘What are you doing here?’ he asked, and it was only now, almost seven years later, that she realised he had been far from pleased to find her there. His face had been tired and tense—just as it had looked over these last few months, she thought, on another pained realisation.

‘I had to see you,’ she’d explained, slipping her hand trustingly into his as he walked into the flat. Inevitably they had made love, then she made some coffee while he showered and they drank in silence, he lounging in a lumpy old easy-chair wearing only his terry bathrobe, she curled at his feet between his parted knees as she always was.

It was then she had told him she was pregnant. He hadn’t moved or said anything, and she had not looked at him. His hand had stroked absently at her hair and her cheek rested comfortably on his thigh.

After a while, he had sighed, long and heavy, then bent to lift her on to his lap. She had curled into him there, too. Like a child, she thought now. As Kate does when she goes to her daddy for love and comfort.

‘How sure are you?’ he had asked then.

‘Very sure,’ she had answered, snuggling closer because he was the axis her whole world turned upon. ‘I bought one of those pregnancy test things when I missed my period this month. It showed positive. Do you think there could be a mistake?’ she had asked guilelessly then. ‘Shall I go and get a proper test from the doctor before we decide what to do?’

‘No.’ He had rejected that idea. ‘So, you’re only just pregnant. I wonder how that happened?’ he had pondered thoughtfully.

That made her chuckle. ‘Your fault,’ she had reminded him. ‘You’re supposed to take care of all that.’

‘So I was and so it is,’ he had conceded. ‘Well, at least we have time to get married without the whole town knowing why we’re having to do it.’

And that had been it. The decision made as, really, she had expected it to be. With Daniel making all the arrangements, shielding her from any unpleasantness, handling her parents and their natural hurt and disappointment in her.

Again, it was only now, seven years later, that she took the words he had spoken and looked at them properly. ‘We have time to get married without the whole town knowing why we’re having to do it’ he had said. And it hit her for the first time that Daniel would not have married her otherwise.

She had trapped him. With her youth, her innocence, with her childlike trust and blind adoration. Daniel had married her because he felt he had to.

Love had never come into it.

The sound of a key turning in the front door lock brought her jolting back to the present, and she turned, feeling oddly calm, yet lead-weighted, to glance at the brass carriage-clock sitting on the sideboard. It was only eight-thirty. Daniel had not been due home for hours yet. A business dinner, he’d called it. Now she bitterly mocked that excuse as she went to stand by the open sitting-room door.

His back was towards her. She could see the tension in him, in his neck muscles and in the stiffness of his shoulders beneath the padding of his black overcoat.

He turned slowly to send her a brief glance. She looked at his face, saw the lines of strain etched there, the greyish pallor. He moved his gaze to where the phone still lay off its rest and went over to it, putting his black leather briefcase down on the floor before picking up the receiver. His hand was trembling as he settled it back on its rest.

Mandy must have called him. She would have panicked when Rachel refused to answer the phone, and rung Daniel to tell him what she had done. Rachel would have liked to have listened in to that conversation, she decided. The cut and parry of confession, accusation, condemnation and defence.

He looked back at her through eyes heavily hooded by thick dark lashes, and she let him have his moment’s private communion as he ran that gaze over the mess she must look. Then, without a word, she turned and went back into the sitting-room.

He was guilty. It was written all over him. Guilty as sin.

CHAPTER TWO

SEVERAL minutes passed by before he joined her. Minutes he needed, to compose himself for what was to come, while she sat patiently waiting for him.

Strangely, she felt incredibly calm. Disconnected almost. Her heart was pumping quite steadily, and her hands lay relaxed on her lap.

He came in—minus his overcoat and jacket, his tie loosened around his neck and the top few buttons of his crisp white shirt tugged undone. He didn’t glance at her but made straight for the drinks cabinet where his usual bottle of good whisky waited for him.

‘Want one?’ he asked.

She shook her head. He must have sensed her refusal because he didn’t repeat the enquiry, nor did he look at her. He poured himself a large measure, then came to drop down in the chair opposite her.

He took a large gulp at the spirit. ‘Loyal friend you’ve got,’ was his opening gambit.

Loyal husband, she countered, but didn’t bother saying it.

His eyes were closed. He had not looked directly at her once since coming into the room. His long legs were stretched out in front of him, whisky glass held loosely between both sets of fingers—long, strong fingers, with blunted nails kept beautifully clean. Like the rest of him, she supposed: long-limbed, strong-bodied and always kept scrupulously clean. Good suits, shoes, hand-made shirts and expensive silk ties. His face was paler than usual, strain finely etched into his lean bones, but it was still a very attractive face, with clean-cut squared-off lines to complement the chiselled shape of his nose and slim, determined mouth. Thirty-one now—going on thirtytwo—he had always been essentially a masculine kind of man, but through the years other facets of his character had begun to write themselves into his features: an inner strength which perhaps always came with maturity, confidence, a knowledge of self-worth. The signs of power and an ability to wield it efficiently all had a place in his face now—nothing you could actually point to and say, You have that because you’re successful and know it, but just a general air about the man, which placed him up there among the special set.

And controlled, she realised now. Daniel had always possessed an impressive depth of self-control, rarely lost his temper, rarely became irritated when things did not quite go his way. He had this rare ability to look at a problem and put aside its negative sides to deal only with the positive.

Which was probably what he was doing nowsearching through the debris of what one phone call had done to his marriage and looking for the positive aspects he could sift out from it.

That, she supposed, epitomised Daniel Masterson, head of Master Holdings, an organisation which had over the last few years grown at a phenomenal pace, gobbling up smaller companies then spitting them out again as better, far more commercially profitable appendages to their new father company.

And he had done it all on his own, too. Built his miniempire by maintaining that fine balance between success and disaster without once placing his family and what he had got for them at risk. He had surrounded her with luxury, cherished her almost—as a man would a possession he had a sentimental attachment to.

‘What now?’ he asked suddenly, lifting those darkly fringed eyelids to reveal the dove-grey beauty of his eyes to her.

So, he wasn’t going to try denying it. Something inside her quivered desperately for expression, but she squashed it down. ‘You tell me,’ she shrugged, still with that amazingly calm exterior.

Mandy must have told him exactly what she’d done. She must have worried herself sick afterwards that the silly blind Rachel had gone and done something stupid, like hanged herself or taken a bottle of pills. How novel, she thought. How very dramatic. Poor Mandy, she mused, without an ounce of sympathy, she must have been really alarmed to dare confess to Daniel of all people!

‘She’s a bitch!’ Daniel ground out suddenly, his own thoughts obviously not that far away from Rachel’s own. He lurched forward in his chair, hands tightening around the whisky glass. Face clenched too. That tell-tale nerve jumping in his jaw. Elbows pressing into his knees as he glared furiously at the carpet between his spread feet. ‘If she hadn’t stuck her twisted nose in, you could have been spared all of this! It was over!’ he shot out thickly. ‘And if she’d only kept her big mouth shut she would have seen it was over! The bitch has always had it in for me. She’s been waiting—waiting for me to slip up so she could get her claws into me! But I never thought she’d sink so low as to do it through you!’

That’s right, thought Rachel. Blame Mandy. Blame everything and anything so long as it is not yourself.

‘Say something, for God’s sake!’ he ground out, making her blink, because Daniel rarely raised his voice to her like that. And she realised that she had been sitting here just staring blankly at him but not really seeing him. Her eyes felt stuck, fixed in a permanent stare which refused to focus properly—like her emotions—locked on hold until something or someone hit the right button to set them free. She hoped it didn’t happen. She had an idea she might fall apart when that happened.

It must feel like this, she pondered flatly, when someone you love dearly dies.

‘I want a divorce,’ she heard herself say, and was as surprised by the statement as Daniel was, because the idea of divorce hadn’t so much as entered her head before she’d said it. ‘You can get out. I’ll keep the house and the children. You can easily afford to support us.’ Another shrug, and she was amazed at her own calmness when she knew she should really be screeching at him like a fishwife.

‘Don’t be damned stupid!’ he ground out. ‘That’s no damned answer and you know it.’

‘Don’t shout,’ she censured. ‘You’ll wake the children.’

That seemed to do it, lift the top right off his self-control, and he surged to his feet. The glass was slapped down on the mantel top, whisky slopping over the side to splash on to white marble.

He tried to glare at her but could not hold her steady gaze long enough to gain the upper hand, so he threw himself away instead, his shoulders hunching in the white shirt so that the material became stretched taut across his back, while his hands were thrust angrily into his trouser pockets.

‘Look…’ he said after a moment, struggling to get hold of himself. ‘It wasn’t what you think—what that bitch made it out to be! It was just—’ he swallowed tensely ‘—a flash in the pan thing—over before it really began!’ He slashed violently at the air with his hand, and Rachel thought, Poor Lydia, guillotined just like that. ‘I was under pressure at work. The Harvey takeover was threatening to kill everything I had worked for.’ He reached out for his glass of whisky, gulping at the contents like a man with a severe thirst. ‘I found I had to work night and day just to keep one step ahead of them. You were still recovering from the bad time you’d had carrying Michael, and I seemed to be spending more time with her than with you. Then the twins got measles—you wouldn’t even let me employ a nurse to help you!’ he flung at her in accusation. ‘So you looked worn out most of the time, and I was worried about you, the sick twins, Michael who refused to sleep more than half an hour at a time, work was getting on top of me and it seemed easier on you if I made myself scarce here, kept my problems confined to the office…’ He was talking about a period several months ago when she had believed that everything that could go wrong had gone wrong. She had never so much as considered adding her husband taking up with another woman to her list of problems. It had never entered her head!

‘Rachel…’ he murmured huskily. ‘I never meant to do it. I never even wanted to do it! But she was there when I needed someone and you were not, and I just—’

‘Oh—do shut up!’

Nausea hit, and she had to thrust her fist into her mouth to stop herself being sick all over their beautiful Wilton carpet. She crawled to her feet, swaying, sending him a look of hostile warning when he instinctively reached out to steady her, and he flinched away, going grey. She stumbled over to the drinks cabinet and, with her hands shaking violently, poured herself some of his whisky. She hated the stuff, but at that moment felt a dire need to feel its burning vapours shoot through her blood.

He was standing there just watching her, his pose one of violent helplessness as he watched her throw the drink to the back of her throat then stand with her head flung back, eyes closed, while she fought to maintain some control over herself.

But it was all beginning to happen now. Her body was becoming racked by a whole sea of tearing emotions. Her heart was stammering out of rhythm; she wanted to suck in some deep steadying breaths of air but found her lungs unwilling to comply. They were locked up along with the torment. Stomach muscles, ribs, all were paralysed by reaction, while her brain was the opposite, opening up and letting out all the suppressed pain and anguish, letting it taunt her, sniggering and sneering at her until she thought she would pass out.

‘It’s over, Rachel!’ he repeated hoarsely, appealing to her in a voice she had never heard before. ‘For God’s sake, it’s over!’

‘And when was it over?’ Tipping her head upright, she shrivelled him with a look. ‘When my body became yours to indulge yourself in once again? Poor Lydia,’ she drawled, the whisky having the desired effect and numbing her from the neck down. ‘I wonder which one of us you played for the bigger fool?’

He shook his head, refusing to get into that one. ‘It happened,’ he stated grimly, raking a shaky hand through his neat dark hair. ‘I wish it hadn’t, but I can’t turn back the clock, no matter how much I want to. If it helps any, I’ll admit to feeling utterly ashamed of myself. But as God is my witness,’ he added huskily, ‘I give you my word that it will never happen again.’

‘Until the next time,’ she muttered, and was suddenly moving to get out of the room before all the ugly feelings working inside her overflowed in a storm of bitter bile.

‘No!’ He made a grab for her arm, his fingers biting into her flesh as he pulled her roughly against him, hugging her close while she fought to be free. ‘We have to talk this through!’ he pleaded thickly. ‘Please, I know you’re hurting but we need—’

‘How many times?’ she threw at him, grinding out the words on a complete loss of control. ‘How many times did you come home with the scent of her still clinging to your skin? How many times did you have to f-force yourself to make love to me after losing yourself in her!’

‘No, no no!’ he groaned, his arms like steel around her while she struggled angrily to be free. ‘No, Rachel! Never! I never let it get that far!’ Her huff of scornful disbelief sent him white. ‘I love you, Rachel,’ he stated hoarsely. ‘I love you!’

For some reason that strangled declaration tipped her right over the edge and, on a totally alien burst of violence, she brought her hand up and hit him right across his unfaithful face.

It rocked him—enough to make him let go of her. Rachel stepped back out of reach, her eyes at that moment revealing a murderous kind of hatred that no one who knew her would ever have believed her capable of. And Daniel stood stock-still, digesting the full horror of that look, and was silent.

Without another word she turned and left the room. At the door to their bedroom she paused, then moved away, towards Michael’s room.

The child didn’t stir when she entered. Rachel walked over to him, leaned gently on the side of the cot and just stared blindly down at her younger son, wondering if the intolerable ache inside her could actually make her physically ill.

Then the dam burst, and on a sob she only just managed to contain while she stumbled over to the single bed which would be Michael’s when he grew older, she crawled beneath the Paddington Bear duvet to muffle the sounds of her wretched sobs, sobs which went on and on until she slid into a dark dull sleep.

Morning came with the gurgling of Michael, awake but content at the moment to kick playfully in his cot. And it took Rachel several moments to remember why she was sleeping in his room rather than in her own bed with Daniel.

There was a single crashing feeling inside her as memory returned, then she felt herself go calm again, last night’s storm of weeping seeming to have emptied her clean of everything.

She got up, grimacing when she realised she was still wearing the same clothes she’d had on when Mandy called. A hand went to her head, finding the elastic band still partly holding a clump of hair in a tangle of silky knots. She tugged it out then shook her long tresses free. She looked a mess, felt a mess—she hadn’t even bothered removing her trainers! She did that now, sitting down on the bed to pull the hot and uncomfortable shoes from her feet just as the baby noticed her and let out a delighted shriek.

She went to bend over his cot, his welcoming smile a balm to her aching heart. And for a while she just immersed herself in enjoying him, tickling his tummy and murmuring all those little nothings mothers shared with their babies, which only babies and mothers understood.

This was hers, she thought wretchedly. No matter what else life wanted to take from her, it could never take away the love of her children.

This, she declared silently, is mine.

He was soaking wet, and she stripped him before attempting to lift him from his cot. Michael was always lively in the mornings, chirping away to himself, bouncing up and down against her while she carried him through to the small bathroom to run the few inches of bath water needed to freshen him up for the day.

She took him, wrapped snugly in a towel, back to his room to dress him. Normally she would then take him downstairs for his breakfast without bothering to get dressed herself. That usually waited until they were all out of the way—at work or at school—but there was no way she could greet the twins looking as she did. They were just too sharp not to wonder out loud why she was still wearing the same clothes she’d had on the night before.

But it took a great gathering together of her courage to enter the room where she knew Daniel would only just be stirring from sleep. She let herself in quietly, searching the gloom for a glimpse of his lean bulk huddled beneath the duvet.

He wasn’t there, and it was then that she heard the tell-tale sounds coming from the bathroom. He appeared a moment later, already dressed in a clean white shirt and the trousers of his iron-grey suit. He saw her almost at once and came to an abrupt halt.

In all the years of knowing him, she had never felt so vulnerable in his presence, or so aware of her tumbled appearance: her puffy eyes, made so by too much weeping, her tousled hair hanging limp and untidy around her pale face.

Nor so aware of him: his height, the length of his long, straight body and the tightness of its superbly honed muscles. Wide chest, flat stomach, narrow hips, long powerful legs with…

No. Dry-mouthed, she flicked her gaze warily up to clash with his.

He looked tired, as though he hadn’t slept much. He would have been thinking, working things out, trying to find the right solution to an impossible situation. He was good at that—making a success out of a disaster. It was the most fundamental source of his outstanding business success.

His gaze lingered on her face, his own a defensive mask. He had just shaved; his stubborn chin looked clean and shiny-smooth. Rachel caught the familiar scent of his aftershave, and felt her senses stir in response to it. Sexual magnetism held no boundaries, she acknowledged bitterly. Even now, while she was hating and despising him, she was disturbingly aware of him as the man she had loved for so long and so blindly.

Shifting jerkily, she moved over to the bed, lifting a knee on to the soft mattress so that she could lay Michael in the middle. It was only then that she realised that the bed had not been slept in, and the only evidence that Daniel had used it at all was in the imprint of his body on the smooth peach duvet.