The Marriage Experiment

She could have choked him! “Thank you so much!”

“You’re welcome.”

Aaagh! Fairly spitting out the words, she went on, “I have completed an exhaustive study of the various proposals put forward by the members of this committee, and it is my recommendation that we divert existing funds to those departments who’ve already appealed to us for help. That would leave us free to direct the proceeds of our next major fundraiser to the Cardiac Unit.”

“Would it, indeed?” he said, in a somewhat more deferential tone. “I see.”

But she was in no mood to be conciliatory when he’d done his best to belittle her in front of her colleagues. “You’d have seen a lot sooner if you’d had the good manners to let me finish a sentence without interruption.”

“I stand corrected,” he said, bathing her in his most charming smile. “Would it be out of line for me to ask how soon this major fundraising event will take place?”

“In August,” she snapped, aware that no one was missing a syllable of their exchange and that to continue the battle of one-upmanship was not only likely to end in defeat for her, but would also add to the gossip already circulating. “At the hospital’s annual carnival.”

“Carnival…? Oh, of course, that day-long shindig culminating in the Sunflower Ball! How could I have forgotten?”

How indeed, since the only one he’d attended had been during those hungry pre-wedding days when they hadn’t been able to get enough of each other, and, while everyone else had been sipping wine between waltzes, he’d whisked her out from under her father’s nose and spent most of the evening making love to her in the rose arbor at the Country Club!

“Very easily, I’m sure,” she said, stuffing her papers into her briefcase as everyone else began drifting toward the coffee urn set up on a trolley at the far end of the room. “But if you care to have your memory refreshed…” she indicated Daphne, hovering expectantly well within earshot “…speak to Mrs. Jerome, here. She chairs the social end of things and I don’t doubt she’d be delighted to fill you in on the details. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”

Dismissing him with a nod, she slid a sheet of paper across the table to Daphne. “Here’s a list of our latest sponsors, which I’ll leave for you to present to the others when the meeting reconvenes. If any other names come up, you can let me know later.”

“Aren’t you staying for coffee, dear?”

“Not today. I have another meeting to attend.”

“I’ll walk you out,” Grant said.

Plainly disappointed that the circus was over for the day, Daphne said, “What a pity you both have to leave, just when we’re about to take a social break. But I suppose you’d prefer to be alone to catch up on each other’s doings?”

“Not at all,” Olivia said stonily. “Dr. Madison and I no longer share anything in common, at least not on a personal level, so by all means feel free to enjoy his company.”

Deciding that was about as good an exit line as she could come up with, she made a beeline for the door.

He wasn’t about to be shaken off so easily, however. She’d barely left the room before he came striding out after her. “Just a minute, Olivia. You and I need to get a few things straight.”

But she’d had enough for one day, and when she saw the green arrow light up above the polished brass doors of the elevator at the end of the hall, she seized her chance to escape another lecture.

“Some other time, Doctor,” she said breezily, and, sprinting forward, managed to squeeze into the crowded car just before the doors slid shut in his face.

That afternoon, the temperature shot up into the low nineties. Not even the breeze off the river was enough to stir the air, and by the time Olivia got home, shortly after five, her smart linen suit was clinging to her like warm, limp lettuce.

Dropping her briefcase on the hall table, she propped open both front and back doors, flung wide all the windows, and hauled herself upstairs, intent on stripping down to the barest essentials and submersing herself in her swimming pool with all due speed. Add a little background music, a glass of cold white wine, and nothing but the fragrance of the heliotrope growing in pots around her patio to disturb the peace, and perhaps she’d begin to unwind from a day which had never quite recovered from the encounter with Grant.

Stupid, she knew, to let him get under her skin like that, but the way he’d behaved at the meeting had floored her. Though always something of a maverick, the young intern she’d once known and fallen in love with had been the least pretentious man she’d ever met, and had borne no resemblance at all to this morning’s arrogant nitpicker.

But the memory of his remarks, the scornful tone of his voice, his patronizing smile and confident assumption that she’d jump on command if he ordered her to, continued to mock her, even after she’d swum several lengths of the pool and collapsed on a chaise in the shade of a large sun umbrella.

You’re scarcely qualified to determine priorities…you’re clearly unable to view the matter with any kind of objectivity…you need to consult an expert….

“The nerve of him, condescending to me like that, as if I were still the wet-behind-the-ears girl he married!” she muttered indignantly, taking a swig of her wine.

A second later, the glass all but slipped from her fingers as a familiar voice inquired, “Do you often get plastered and start talking to yourself, sweet face? Because if you do, you should be aware that it’s a very dangerous habit to adopt which can and usually does lead to serious and long-lasting consequences.”

CHAPTER THREE

LOOKING supremely at ease, and for all the world as if he had every right to be there, he lounged against the frame of the French doors leading from her living room, his shabby attempt to look grave sadly undermined by the supercilious little smirk on his face.

“How did you get in here, Grant?” she spat, doing her best to sound both dignified and affronted—no easy task given that she was sprawled out practically naked before him and he was making no secret of the fact that he’d noticed.

“I let myself in,” he said, staring his fill at great leisure. “The butler doesn’t seem to be on duty. I thought perhaps you’d given him the night off.”

“I don’t have a butler.”

His smirk grew. “What, and no maid, either? Gee, it must be tough, having to do for yourself!”

“It is. But somehow I manage.” Aware that her strapless bikini top was precariously close to letting all it was supposed to contain fall out before his amused inspection, she tried rather unsuccessfully to cover herself with a towel.

Of course, if he’d had a grain of decency in his make-up, he’d have averted his eyes and let her fumble in private, but he’d never been long on chivalry. “You don’t seem to be managing that too well,” he drawled, shoving himself away from the door frame and ambling toward her. “Need any help?”

“Not from you,” she fumed, slapping the towel in his direction to keep him at a distance.

“No need to get all exercised, Olivia,” he said mildly. “I didn’t come here with seduction in mind.”

“What did you come for, then?” To her horror, the question emerged loaded with unintentional petulance, a fact he was also quick to pick up on.

“You sound almost disappointed, sweet face, as if it’s been a long time since a man reminded you how it feels to respond like a woman. Am I to take it that Hank from the Bank is no great shakes between the sheets?”

“His name is Henry,” she exclaimed, almost choking with anger, “and I thought I made it plain on Saturday that we are not lovers! This might come as a surprise to you, Grant, but there are men for whom sex is not the be-all and end-all of existence.”

“Only if they’ve been neutered.” Uninvited, Grant took a turn around the patio, peering into the various jardinieres as if he suspected Henry might be lurking amid the flowers. “If you were my woman, I’d be out defending my territory, especially if her unattached ex suddenly showed up in town.”

“But I’m not your woman. I never was, although I suppose it would be expecting too much for you to understand the difference between sharing your life with someone and treating her as if she were just another possession to load in the trunk of your car.”

“I was willing to share my life with you, Olivia,” he said, the very softness in his tone a warning as lethal as a jungle cat’s low snarl. By now, the sun had begun its descent toward the horizon so that his shadow lay long and narrow on the flagstones, making it seem almost as if he were reaching out to her. “I was willing to share everything—all my dreams and ambitions and, most assuredly, my heart. You just weren’t interested in coming along for the ride.”

His accusation brought the resentment she’d thought she’d buried years before rising up to engulf her, along with a smattering of remembered agony and a wealth of bitterness. “You’re the one who walked out, Grant Madison, not I, so don’t try rewriting history now, because I’m not about to buy it! I might not have been bright enough to have the letters ‘M.D.’ after my name, but I was far from the simpleton you took me to be. I knew exactly what you were doing, the day you presented me with an ultimatum no sane person would have found acceptable. You wanted an excuse to back out of our marriage and you found one.”

“I offered you adventure and freedom,” he said, the sudden edge in his voice sharp as a scalpel, “but you didn’t have the guts to seize opportunity when it came knocking. Instead you chose to remain in your father’s shadow and to hell with me!”

“As if you even cared! Your only passion was medicine.”

“Not just medicine, Olivia. At one time, I was passionate about you, too.”

“You didn’t let that stop you from abandoning me at a time when I was most vulnerable, though, did you?”

He swore at that, a profanity so explosively obscene that she cringed. “Save it, Olivia! I didn’t come here to be raked over the coals yet again for something over which I had absolutely no control!”

She shrugged contemptuously. “So, leave! I don’t see anyone keeping you here against your will.”

“Not until I’ve said my piece, which is simply this: it seems that you’ve carved quite a niche for yourself in hospital affairs, which means we’re bound to cross paths frequently in the next month or two. I suggest that, unless you want to set every tongue in town wagging, you learn to leave your personal antipathies at home, because the job site is no place to air them and I won’t put up with being made to look like a fool in front of my colleagues. Your little performance this morning will not be repeated, Olivia. Do I make myself clear?”

“Don’t you condescend to me, Grant Madison! I’m no longer the insecure little twit you once knew. I haven’t just grown older, I’ve grown up, as well. Meet the new me: Olivia Whitfield, B.Comm., fully accredited fundraising executive. It takes determination and guts to go out into the big world of business and hustle for bucks. But you wouldn’t know about anything like that, would you, locked away in your pure, anti-bacterial ivory tower?”

“Holy cow!” he murmured. “I’m impressed!”

But he didn’t sound impressed; he sounded highly amused.

“Listen to me,” she hissed. “I won’t put up with being treated like some feather-brained socialite playing at being important for want of something better to do! So the next time you get the urge to tell me to consult an expert, remember that I am the expert when it comes to finding ways for Springdale General to operate in the black, and if you really want to see that new equipment in CCU, you’d be well advised to put a lid on your ego and listen to me on the best way to go about getting it.”

She hadn’t rehearsed the tirade, but it rolled off her tongue as smoothly and with as much fire as if she’d been practicing for weeks. She was breathless when she finished: breathless and triumphant. In the old days, she’d never have put him in his place so effectively that he was rendered momentarily speechless.

“Well,” he said, when he finally found his voice again. “Well, well, well! Daddy’s little girl seems to have grown up after all, and about time, too. Tell me, sweet face, how did you manage to slide out from under that big, controlling thumb of his?”

“After surviving ten months of marriage to you, it was a breeze, I can assure you!”

“Oh, come now, Olivia, I don’t deserve that. They weren’t all bad months. We had some memorable times.”

“Too few to count, I’m afraid.”

“Oh, really? Is that why you lost it on Saturday night? Because you couldn’t remember how it used to be with us?” He shook his head. “If you’re going to go over the top like that for no reason at all every time we happen to meet, you’ll turn the next few weeks into one long soap opera for everyone else in town.”

“I don’t give a hoot what everyone else in town thinks.”

Of course, it was a bald-faced lie, but, surprisingly, he bought it. Abandoning his contemplation of the flower pots, he strolled over to where she sat in the chaise with her knees drawn up to her chest so that he had no opportunity to subject her cleavage to further inspection. “You know,” he said, looking down at her with a mixture of respect and regret, “if you’d shown half the backbone then that you’ve acquired since, we might still be married today.”

“I don’t think so. Say what you like about my father, but he was right when he warned me that you and I shared nothing in common. It’s a miracle we stayed together as long as we did.”

She ought to have known better than to bring her father into the discussion. The old light of battle sparked in Grant’s eyes before her words had cooled on the evening air. “Nothing?” he echoed. “Oh, that’s not quite true, Olivia. We shared something quite extraordinary—for a little while, at least.”

“I suppose you’re harping on sex again,” she said, squirming a little under his gaze, “but I’m afraid it doesn’t have any staying power when it’s the only thing holding a relationship together.”

“You’re sure of that, are you?”

“Yes,” she said, but he heard the betraying quaver in her voice and, like the predator he was, took immediate advantage of her weakness.

“Why don’t we put your theory to the test, Olivia?” he murmured silkily, and before she could blink, let alone refuse him, he dropped down beside her on the chaise and kissed her.

How ridiculous that the same word used to describe a peck on the cheek should apply to the exchange which occurred between them at that moment. How preposterous that nothing Henry had been able to devise in the way of romantic overtures came even close to the utter seduction of Grant’s mouth on hers.

He didn’t touch her anywhere else. No hands sliding up her bare arms to find her throat and trace a daring line to where her bikini top clung tenuously to her breasts. No forcing her lips apart with his tongue to take possession of the dark and secret enclaves of her mouth. No doing any of those things she found herself wanting him to do. Just simple devastation with a touch as light as thistledown that lasted a second, and then two, and then three, and which left her aching in every pore. Hurting for something she had missed more than she’d ever dared admit.

The pain roared through her like fire, as though it had been lying in wait for the last eight years for just such an opportunity to destroy her. The starch went out of her spine, seeping away like water to expose the great arid desert where her heart had lain untouched for so long.

She felt the moan rise in her throat and did her best to smother it, but it escaped anyway, a pleading, shameless whimper of need. The fingers she’d knotted around her knees lost their strength and let her legs fall slackly apart, leaving her with nothing but the yellow triangle of her bikini bottom to protect her where she was, and always had been, so susceptible to his advances.

“Grant,” she implored him faintly, begging him in that single word to tell her that he understood, that he felt the same, that he wanted her as rapaciously as she wanted him.

But, although she heard the unspoken words as clearly as if she’d screamed them from the rooftop, he either did not or he chose to ignore them. Or perhaps he listened instead to his own, more prudent inner voices, because, very slowly, he lifted his head and drew back from her and muttered, “I shouldn’t have done that. It was a mistake. A very big mistake.”

“Why did you do it, then?” she asked, tears trembling in her throat.

“To prove a point that no longer has any relevance in either of our lives,” he said soberly, and stood up. “I thought it was important that we clear the air between us, but it would have been better if I’d found some other place to do it because I should never have come here, nor will I again.”

The sun still slanted across the garden, filming the surface of the pool with gold and leaving the air soporific with heat, but suddenly she was so cold that gooseflesh stippled her limbs and set her teeth to chattering. He would never know what a supreme effort it took for her to reply, “So leave. Run off and play with your stethoscope. Learn to knit with it, for all I care. I’m sorry I don’t have a butler to show you out, but I’m sure you’ll find your own way.”

Just briefly, he paused, as though perhaps he had something more to convey, some small indication that he was not completely unmoved by what had happened between them. But then he straightened his shoulders and swung away.

Miserably, she watched as he strode across the patio, dwelling on the sight of him and trying not to remember the time when she’d had the right to explore all that height and breadth of sheer masculine beauty. When to hold him in her arms and welcome him into her body had been the joy of both their lives. When to reach up and kiss him for no reason other than that he was her husband and she loved him had been as natural and instinctive as breathing.

Gradually, his footsteps faded, and as the silence he left behind came pressing down on her so did the tears. Not because he had left her tonight, but because he had reminded her too vividly of the pain she’d experienced when he’d left her before. She had not known he could hurt her so badly a second time.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.