Reclaiming His Wife

‘Which is also why I booked a restaurant no more than ten minutes from the dental practice.’

‘You…’ Leaning back against the shelf again, Taylor wrapped her arms around herself in a subconsciously protective gesture, the bright lights behind her making her hair gleam like liquid silk as she shook her head. ‘I don’t believe you’re for real,’ she whispered, flabbergasted, feeling her privacy being sorely invaded. ‘What rights have you got to go checking up on me? Are you hoping to find some besotted lover so you can sue me for adultery rather than admit to it yourself?’

A nerve seemed to jerk in his jaw, but he made no comment in response to her little outburst.

‘It was more a case of serendipity than purposely checking up on you,’ he said phlegmatically instead. ‘When I phoned here they said that if I wanted to catch you I’d have to do so quickly as you had a dental appointment at two. I then deduced that you were probably using the same practice as when we were living together, so I simply rang and asked if my wife had arrived yet and when they told me when you were expected, I knew I’d guessed correctly.’

He had also assumed—and correctly—that for convenience she would still be using her married name at the dental practice. Silently she had to compliment him on his ingenuity, but his calculated determination unsettled her.

‘And if I needed to find someone besotted…’ Coolly he reached over her shoulder, causing her to catch her breath from his unsettling nearness as he flicked the switch that turned off the lights around the mirror. ‘I don’t think I’d need look much further than these studios, Taylor, do you?’

The meal was a tense, uneasy affair. At least where she was concerned, Taylor decided, which was why she had ordered only a piece of crisp bread with a light topping which she would still have had difficulty swallowing if it hadn’t been for the mineral water she had ordered with it.

Jared, however, seemed perfectly relaxed as he tucked into his steak sandwich with a second cup of coffee. She supposed under normal circumstances she would have complimented him upon his choice of restaurant. Totally informal, it was small but airy, the tables well spaced, the efficient service apparent as soon as they stepped inside, when a waiter had swiftly and discreetly borne their coats away.

‘No wonder you’re so thin.’ His dark glittering irises surveyed her with unmasked disapproval across the table. ‘Charity’s cats eat more than you do and they’re like waifs. How long have you lived with Charity?’ he was demanding before she could respond to his comments about her weight.

‘I’m not living with them,’ she stated pointedly.

‘Don’t split hairs,’ he said, sounding impatient. ‘You know exactly what I mean.’

Taylor inhaled deeply. He was right. It was pointless deliberately antagonising him. It was just that he hadn’t even skirted the subject he had brought her out here to discuss and her anticipation had become a tight knot in her stomach.

‘Just over a year,’ she told him then. ‘Within a week or two of my being engaged by the studios. With Josh on the way, Craig and Charity decided it would be practical financially to let the top floor. I was looking for a flat. And that was it. I couldn’t have found anywhere better if I’d tried. Charity’s such a lovely person it wasn’t difficult striking up an instant friendship with her, and Craig’s so easygoing, it’s never been a problem working with him all day and seeing him socially as well. He’s been a marvellous friend to me too.’

‘Well, bully for Craig,’ he drawled.

His meal finished, he was sitting with one elbow resting on the back of his chair, so that a good deal of white shirt was exposed beneath his open jacket.

Disconcertedly, Taylor dragged her gaze from the dark shadow of his body hair, clearly visible through the fine cotton, aware of a different kind of tension invading her now.

‘You’re determined not to like him, aren’t you?’ she accused, wondering for a few fleeting moments if his motive sprang from jealousy. But, no, she decided, dismissing the thought before it had scarcely taken shape. Jared Steele was the type of man who evoked that emotion in others, not experienced himself. And, anyway, he was in love with someone else. He had always loved someone else… ‘I thought Charity was a friend of yours,’ she challenged when he ignored her last question.

‘She is. Or rather, her parents are.’

‘Well, then,’ Taylor uttered, with an unconscious lifting of her chin. ‘Don’t you think they—and she—might take exception to your insinuations that I’m having an affair with her husband? Because she’s my friend too—and I do!’

A faint smile played around the hard masculine mouth. He didn’t look at all perturbed.

‘You’ve grown more confident,’ he remarked.

His soft observation was unexpected and disarming and quickly she lifted her glass, took a last draught of the cool water.

‘What did you expect?’ she challenged, setting her glass down on the pale cloth. ‘Even the most naïve of us grow up—if we’re forced to. And boy! Was I naïve!’

He acknowledged this only with a subtle lifting of a dark eyebrow.

‘As I recall, you also didn’t always make friends so easily. Or perhaps it was just that you didn’t try.’

No, she thought. She always had been a bit of a loner, too shy and self-conscious for her own good. Even at school she had preferred to read or sketch rather than join in with the more communal pursuits of her peers. Perhaps that was just how she was. Or perhaps it sprang from a reluctance to get too close to anyone…

‘We all change—for better or worse,’ she said without thinking, and felt a sudden sharp emotion stab her.

She saw a furrow crease the high, intellectual forehead, met those far too perceptive eyes and looked quickly away.

‘So what were you doing for the first six months after you ran away? I did contact your mother but she couldn’t give me any information, and with no friends to pump—or relatives in this country—it proved to be an impossible task trying to find you.’

Had he looked for her? The knowledge brought a treacherous colour to her cheeks.

‘It doesn’t matter now, does it?’ she murmured. After all, whatever his reason for trying to find her then, it didn’t alter the fact that now he had found her, it was with only one purpose in mind. Which suited her fine! she convinced herself, in spite of the dull ache under her ribs.

He sat forward then, resting his elbows on the table, his chin on his clasped fingers.

‘Humour me,’ he breathed.

So she did, telling him how she had moved north for a while, taking a short, intensive art course to further the basic grounding she had received at college. It was difficult though, keeping her voice steady, trying not to notice how strongly chiselled his face was, how his long lashes seemed to emphasise the darkness of his eyes and how his cruel mouth—a mouth that had once worked magic on her sensitive flesh—firmed now first with something like disapproval then with what…? Admiration? she wondered. Surely not!

‘I saw an opening for a make-up artist down here in London, grabbed it and moved back. So there you have it. My wild and exciting life in its most uncensored form.’

A contemplative smile touched his lips. ‘Can there be anything more wild and exciting than what we had, Taylor?’

The smoky quality of his voice played across her frayed nerves, working its own magic on her senses. Before her mind’s eye rose the image of his hard and superb physique, of his naked limbs entwined with hers, of strong, dark body hair grazing her softness.

No, she thought. Whatever else their marriage had lacked, it certainly hadn’t lacked sensuality.

That he still wanted her was obvious, in the most primitive sense at least. She could see it in those dark, dilated pupils, in the flaring of those proud nostrils that spoke of the huge hunting male catching the scent of a mate. She closed her eyes against it now, knowing that he would recognise an answering and involuntary response in her if for one moment she let her guard down, and with the instinct of self-preservation she forced herself to remember why he had come. Shakily she whispered, ‘If you try to press a settlement on me, I’d like you to know, I won’t accept it.’

When she looked at him again his heavy eyelids had come down over his eyes, cloaking any traces of desire. Grimness compressed his lips now and there was an unfathomable edge to his voice as he said, ‘We’ll talk about that later. In the meantime…’ he dropped a glance to the gold wristwatch peeping out from his immaculate cuff ‘… I think you’d better get yourself sorted out for your dental appointment.’

He had left the car in a nearby Pay and Display car park, a newer model of the type of low-slung saloon he had always driven.

The wind was biting as they crossed the tarmac towards it.

‘I thought spring was coming,’ Taylor remarked, struggling to keep her coat from being wrenched open by the tugging wind. She felt low and dispirited, seeing the turn in the weather as a reflection of how her life had suddenly changed over the past week.

On the surface, nothing was different. She and Jared were still living apart. She still had her job. Her interests. Her friends. But seeing him again had revived memories she didn’t want to think about; feelings she didn’t want to feel. Oh, if only he had stayed away! If only things could have stayed the same and she could have gone on with her life thinking…

Thinking what? That one day he might come and tell her that he missed her? Loved her?

‘What’s wrong, Taylor?’

Of course, he had always been able to pick up on her mood, even if sometimes he had misinterpreted—and grossly—exactly what she was feeling.

‘I was only thinking…’ Suddenly her stomach muscles were knotting painfully again. ‘What has today achieved, Jared? I mean, we haven’t talked about anything we couldn’t have said on the phone.’

He stopped abruptly, the speed of his action as he swung to face her making her recoil.

‘What do you want me to say? Here are the blasted papers? Sign them. Thank you and goodbye!’ His coat was flapping open, but he didn’t seem to notice. Obviously he didn’t feel the cold as she did, she thought, although his face looked taut, the skin stretched almost to transparency over his cheekbones, as though he weren’t totally unaffected by the ravaging wind. ‘Well, this might surprise you, Taylor, but that isn’t why I insisted on seeing you today. It isn’t my intention to sue for a divorce.’ And then, after the briefest hesitation: ‘I think we should get back together,’ he said.

CHAPTER THREE

SHE looked at him quickly, her eyes dark and disbelieving, her heart beating so fast she felt faint.

‘Why?’ she whispered, that one syllable strung with all the pain and suspicion she had endured throughout her short marriage.

‘Because I think it’s what we both want,’ he answered.

‘And what about…your mistress?’ It was a soft accusation over the sound of a van pulling out of the car park. ‘What will she have to say about it?’

‘There isn’t any…mistress, as you call it. I told you—it was over between Alicia and me before we were ever married. But you refused to believe me.’

‘Because of the way you were—the way you looked!— every time her name was mentioned.’

‘That was in your mind.’

‘Was it?’ She regarded him obliquely, green eyes tortured and accusing. ‘And I suppose those late-night phone calls from her were all in my mind!’

His skin seemed to blanch, and if that wasn’t an admission of guilt, what was? she thought bitterly, seeing the disbelief in his eyes, the tightening line of his mouth.

‘Did she… speak to you?’ Caution marked his words and his slanted appraisal of her.

‘No, she obviously didn’t expect me to be there! Just like I didn’t expect you to be in Philadelphia with her when you said you were going to New York!’

‘I was in New York,’ he stated bluntly, having no difficulty remembering the time to which she had referred. ‘I had an unscheduled stopover in Philadelphia to visit a sick client who couldn’t get to the main meeting. I didn’t think it was worth mentioning—particularly as I knew what graphic pictures that imaginative little brain of yours could come up with. OK. Maybe I wasn’t being entirely open with you…’

‘Not open with me! That’s an understatement!’ she breathed, still raw from the memory of his deception.

‘Taylor…’

As he took a step towards her she shrank back, shaking her head. ‘No,’ she murmured, denying him the right to hurt her for a second time, denying them both a second chance, though it was excruciating when all she longed to do was accede to his suggestion, throw herself like the helpless fool she had been back into his arms.

‘And that’s it?’

‘That’s it.’

‘With not even a backward glance?’ Some emotion she could have mistaken for pain had she not known him better clouded those beautiful eyes. He shook his head. ‘Without any regret? Surely, I would have thought that even you—’

He broke off, hearing the sound that had also caught Taylor’s attention. It was the pitiable crying of a small child.

She couldn’t have been more than three or four, Taylor realised, horrified, as the little girl wandered out from between two parked cars. Bundled up in a small pink anorak, she was looking lost and terribly frightened.

‘What is it?’ Taylor called, hurrying over to her, glad of the diversion from a conversation that could only have caused her more grief. Stooping down, she caught the child’s sobbed, barely coherent response. It was obvious that the little girl had lost her mother.

‘She can’t be very far away,’ Taylor gently reassured her, unprepared, as she stood up to look around for a likely candidate, for the tiny hand that instantly reached up to clasp hers.

How vulnerable they were, she agonised, assailed by a sudden deluge of emotions that were suffocating—almost overwhelming. And how trusting!

Tense lines scored her face and it was all she could do to keep it averted, not to let her feelings show as Jared joined them.

‘What’s all this? What’s all the fuss about?’ The tone he used with the child was gentle and consoling. Anguished, Taylor tried not to remember how much he had wanted children of his own.

A young woman, looking very fraught, was hurrying from the direction of the nearby Pay and Display machine.

‘I told you not to run off!’

Reaching them, grabbing the errant child by the arm, she smiled apologetically at Taylor and Jared. But it was Jared for whom she spared a second glance before thanking them both profusely and pulling the now merely whimpering child back to her car.

‘Are you all right?’ Reaching Jared’s saloon, Taylor could feel those shrewd eyes studying her across the gleaming black roof.

‘Am I all right?’ She still couldn’t face him head on, risk his seeing the emotion that still misted her eyes. ‘Why shouldn’t I be?’

His mouth moved in a rather speculative way. ‘You look…upset,’ he remarked.

The car alarm system bleeped as he disengaged it. His eyes were still resting on her as he opened the driver’s door.

‘Why should I be upset? It’s this infernal wind,’ she prevaricated with her chin lifting in an unconscious gesture of defence against his probing. ‘It’s making my eyes water.’

Scepticism showed in the arching of an eyebrow, but Taylor was glad when he let it go at that.

What was he thinking? she wondered, sitting beside him in silence while he drove the short journey to her dentist. Was he wondering perhaps if she was remembering their marriage—her accidental and short, ill-fated pregnancy? If she was harbouring any regrets about losing her baby? Or even—from the cruel insinuations he had made at the time—any remorse?

Her chest ached from the misery of those memories, from recalling those bitter rows and the insecurities, brought on by the suspicions of his disloyalty, which vetoed any suggestion of their getting back together. Fortunately, however, he didn’t seem to be pressing the point about trying again.

‘I’ll wait for you,’ he said suddenly, bringing her back to the present with a jolt to realise that he was pulling up outside the dental practice.

‘That won’t be necessary,’ she said in a flat voice, keen to get away from him. Seeing him again like this wasn’t doing her any good at all. ‘The station’s just around the corner and it’ll be easier and quicker for me to take the tube back to the studios.’

Fortunately he acknowledged this with a slight tilt of his head.

‘In that case I’ll call round next week.’

Why? she wanted to throw at him bitterly. Why are you doing this to me? But she held herself in check and was relieved at least to be able to tell him, ‘You can’t. I’m away on location next week.’ The crew were filming a short documentary drama just outside of Edinburgh. ‘After that I’m taking a week’s leave.’

Jared switched off the engine as though he needed total silence to digest this information.

So that told you! Taylor thought, not caring if she had messed up his carefully calculated plans.

‘Where are you going?’

She hadn’t planned to go anywhere. She had been hoping for a quiet time at home, baking, shopping and generally relaxing until her next pending assignment that promised to take her away again, abroad, for the best part of three weeks. But the last thing she wanted was to tell him that and so pulling a face she said, ‘Who knows? I’m taking it as it comes. Right now I’m thinking it might be a good idea to stay in Scotland.’

‘That’s where you’re filming, I take it?’ It didn’t require an answer. ‘OK.’ He exhaled heavily and, sounding suddenly bored, ‘I’ll see you when you get back. It’s possible I’ll be away myself the week after next. By the way, while you’re up that way you could look into the Borrowdale house,’ he went on to suggest rather wearily. ‘I let it to the odd friend now and again but no one’s using it at the moment. There are a few things of yours there, though—some you might consider to be of a sentimental nature. If you’ve no intention of going back there, you might prefer to have them with you,’ he concluded, the cool delivery of his statement and his obvious acceptance that it was over between them sending a swift dart of pain down through her heart.

The house in Cumbria had been his late grandmother’s and they had spent several long blissful weekends there between their return from Hawaii and that fateful party that had ruined all her illusions about her marriage.

‘Give me a ring if you decide to…’ with a hand as steady as his voice he was taking a card out of his wallet ‘… and I can arrange to have the place aired and heated for you.’

She looked at the small white card he handed her. As though she were one of his business associates, she thought achingly. It listed his office, email and fax numbers, which she already knew, plus the number of his new mobile phone.

‘Thanks,’ Taylor said, dropping it quickly into the open side compartment of her handbag because she would only have shown herself up by letting him see how much her own hands were shaking had she tried to undo the zip. ‘If I decide to, I’ll let you know.’

She was out of the car before he could detain her any longer but, as she turned towards the modern dental surgery, the sudden whirr of the passenger side window made her glance back.

‘And Taylor!’ He was leaning across the car’s plush interior, his arm across the back of her vacated seat as she came back to see what it was he wanted. ‘I just thought I ought to let you know. If you’re planning to divorce me,’ he said, ‘then I think it only fair to tell you. I’ll fight it every step of the way.’

The week’s filming was over. Everything had gone smoothly and the crew were preparing to return to London.

Normally Taylor would have accompanied them in one of the company vehicles. She had, however, driven her own small hatchback to Scotland so that, with a week’s leave ahead of her, she could make her way back to London at her own pace.

Now, watching Craig coiling up cables, and Paul loading lenses and other photographic equipment into the back of the wagon, reluctantly she considered Jared’s suggestion about visiting Borrowdale while she was in the north.

It would probably be over a three-hour drive with the odd break, she calculated, depending on the road conditions, and the traffic, but that wasn’t the reason why she wasn’t keen to go. It was because the house held so many memories of a time when she had been so happy with Jared, and going there now would only emphasise how terribly wrong their marriage had gone; represent a finality she wasn’t sure she could face. It would, however, be totally foolish not to go and collect her belongings from the house while she was up this way, she argued with herself. And wouldn’t it be best to get things over and done with as soon as possible rather than prolong the inevitable?

‘I’m glad at least that you’ve decided not to stay in Scotland,’ Craig expressed when, having made up her mind, she told him of her plans. ‘Some pretty heavy weather’s forecast over the next few days. I’d come home as soon as you can.’

He himself couldn’t wait to get back, Taylor realised fondly, if the number of times she had heard him ringing Charity over the past week was anything to go by.

‘I will,’ she promised, having not gone into too much depth about why she was stopping off in Cumbria. The truth of the situation hurt too much for her to share even with Craig.

The light was almost fading when she brought the car uphill from the bleak and lonely valley, and turned into the little lane where Jared’s grandmother’s house stood.

Snow had been threatening for most of the journey south and now the Lakeland sky above the glowering peaks of the mountains was an ominous purple.

Having been on the road since lunchtime, Taylor was happy to leave her car exactly where it was in the lane and brave the minus zero wind-chill factor to the house.

A three gabled, grey stone building with bay windows and a sloping drive, it stood alone above a rambling garden with spectacular views across the valley, and was, she remembered from those previous visits, large enough to feel spacious, while still managing to retain a cosy atmosphere.

She hadn’t bothered telling Jared that she was coming. Speaking to him again would only have unsettled her, she had decided, and the task of clearing the house of her things was going to be painful enough without that. Besides, she still had a key.

Warmth was the first thing that struck her as soon as she let herself in, which, though surprising, was more than welcome after the bitter, late Cumbrian afternoon.

Jared had obviously instructed someone to heat the place, she thought, probably guessing that if she did decide to follow his suggestion and turn up here, she would be too proud to ring him.

A small shiver ran through her as she considered just how well he knew her.

It was a relief to shed her thick grey overcoat and boots, and make herself a sandwich and a cup of tea with some of the basic provisions she had bought on the journey down. Only then, with the aid of sustenance, did she feel able to cope with the task ahead of her.

Everywhere she looked there were memories, but particularly in the country ambience of the sitting room with its comfortable sagging sofa and its rug-strewn, flagstone floor.

There were the pen and ink drawings she had sketched of the fells, on their first visit, and for which Jared had made rustic frames during their stay using his late-grandfather’s tools, then hung them in the recesses either side of the huge stone fireplace. They belonged in this house. How could she take them down? Then there was the vast collection of books—mainly Jared’s—on various shelves around the room—bursting with so many diverse subjects. Like travel and history, the Lakeland poets, psychology. Books on different cultures, religions and philosophies, all which reminded her of how well-read and well- travelled Jared was, of his staunch opinion that everyone had a voice, and deserved to be heard.