A Passionate Affair

CHAPTER TWO

WHEN Marsha opened the front door of her bedsit a little while later, it was with the disturbing realisation that she couldn’t remember a moment of the walk home. Her head had been so full of Taylor and their conversation, not least his ridiculous presumption that she would eat dinner with him, that the stroll she normally so enjoyed at the end of the working day had been accomplished on automatic.

Her bedsit was on the top floor of a three-storey terraced house, and in the last twelve months since she had been living in it Marsha had made it her own haven, away from the stress and excitement of her working life. She stood on the threshold for a moment, glancing round the sun-filled room in front of her, and as always a sense of pleasure made itself felt.

The room had been a mess when she had first viewed it, the previous occupiers having been a pair of young female students who clearly had never been introduced to soap and water or cleaning materials in the whole of their lives. She had scrubbed and scoured and cleaned for days, but eventually, after plenty of elbow grease and some deep thought on what she wanted, she had begun to decorate.

First she had stripped the old floorboards, which had been in surprisingly good condition, and once they were finished, she’d known how to proceed. She had painted the whole bedsit in a palette of gentle shades of off-white and cream, which harmonised with each other and the different tones of wood in the floorboards, before splashing out on organdie curtains for the two wide floor-to-ceiling windows, along with ecru blinds which she only pulled at night when it was dark and she was getting ready for bed.

The small sitting and sleeping area was separated from the kitchen by a sleek and beautiful glass breakfast bar, which Mrs Tate-Collins—Marsha’s elderly landlady, who lived in the basement along with her three cats—had had installed in each of the three bedsits when she’d had the house converted after her husband had died. The pièce de résistance for Marsha, however, and the thing which had really sold the bedsit to her when she had first viewed it, was Mrs Tate-Collins’s forethought in providing a tiny shower room in a recess off the kitchen. It was only large enough to hold a shower, loo and small corner washbasin, but all the other bedsits she had viewed at the time had necessitated a walk along a landing to a communal bathroom.

Once she had bought a sofabed, TV and two wooden stools for the breakfast bar, which served as her dining table, Marsha had left the bed and breakfast she had lived in since her split with Taylor and moved into her new home, adding touches like the ecru throw and tumbled cushions of soft ash-gold, stone and cream for the sofa as she had lived there.

The slim built-in wardrobe to one side of the front door, which held all her clothes, meant she had to be selective in what she bought, and the kitchen was only large enough to house the smallest of fridges, along with the built-in hob and oven, but Marsha didn’t mind the lack of space. The bedsit was her retreat, somewhere she could shut the rest of the world out whenever she wanted to.

Her miniature garden was in the form of a Juliet balcony opening out from the windows, and although it could only hold one small wicker chair, along with a profusion of scented plants, she spent a good deal of her free time there in the warmer months, reading, dozing and looking out over the rooftops.

She loved her home. Marsha walked across to the windows now, opening them wide and letting the scents from the small balcony drift into the room. And now Taylor was going to come here, and that would spoil everything. She did not want him in her hideaway. She didn’t want him in her life.

The hum of evening traffic from the busy main street beyond the cul-de-sac the house was situated in was louder now the windows were open. Normally Marsha didn’t even hear the sound, so used had she become to the background noise. Tonight, though, it registered on her consciousness, and she found herself wondering what Taylor would make of the bedsit. The downstairs cloakroom in his lovely home deep in Harrow was about the same size as her entire living space.

‘I don’t care what he thinks.’ She spoke out loud, flexing her shoulders as though to dislodge a weight there. ‘And there is absolutely no way I am going out to dinner with him.’

So saying, she roused herself and walked into the kitchen, fixing herself a mug of milky chocolate which she took out on to the balcony. She sat down with a sigh, curling up on the big soft cushion in the wicker chair as she gazed out into space, a frown between her eyes.

Thirty minutes later and she had had a shower, and her hair was bundled under a soft handtowel as she stood surveying her meagre wardrobe.

She was only going to dinner with him to prevent a scene, she assured herself silently. A scene which would undoubtedly occur if Taylor did not get his own way. But this was strictly a one-off, something she would make perfectly clear to him, as well as letting him know she was counting the days until the divorce when all ties would be cut for good.

She pulled a pair of slinky, slightly flared pants in a misty silver colour from the wardrobe, teaming them with a bolero-style silk jacket in pale green. They were the newest items of clothing she possessed, bought for a cocktail party she had attended a month or so before. After placing the clothes on the back of the sofa she walked over to the full-length mirror on the back of the wardrobe door, staring at herself long and hard for a moment or two.

How could Taylor imagine, even for one single second, that there was any hope for them after what he had done? But then she had walked away from Taylor, rather than it being the other way round, something he would have found insupportable. To her knowledge, no woman had ever ended a relationship with him before—it had always been Taylor who had ditched them. Which was probably why his ego had been big enough to think he could have his cake and eat it.

This last reflection brought Marsha’s lips into a thin line as she pictured the ‘cake’ in question. Tanya West—a voluptuous redhead with the body of Marilyn Monroe and the face of an angel. And according to Susan, Taylor’s sister, Tanya hadn’t been the first little dalliance he’d indulged in since his marriage.

She whipped the towel off her head, beginning to blow dry her hair into a soft silky bob and all the time denying the hurt and anger which had flared up at the thought of the other woman.

She was still denying it when the buzzer next to the door sounded forty minutes later. Pressing the little switch, she stared at Taylor’s face—small and very far away—as she said, ‘I’ll be down in just a second.’ She didn’t open the front door of the building, deciding he could think what he liked.

One last swift glance in the mirror told her she was looking cool and controlled, despite the way her heart was pounding, and she offered up a quick prayer that the illusion would hold during the time she was with Taylor. He had to understand she wasn’t the same gullible fool who had been so besotted with him she hadn’t seen what was in front of her nose. She had thought he’d accepted that when she had left him and refused to see him eighteen months ago, especially in view of the fact there had been no objection from his solicitor—to her knowledge—when she had filed for divorce.

Locking the door of the bedsit behind her, she made for the stairs, careful how she descended in the high strappy sandals she was wearing, and it was as she approached the ground floor that she heard the unmistakable sound of Taylor’s voice talking to someone inside the house. Someone had let him into the hall. She froze for a moment on the stairs, her ears straining to hear whom he was speaking to.

Mrs Tate-Collins. As Marsha identified the other voice she raised her eyes heavenwards. Her landlady was a sweetie-pie, but the elderly lady really belonged in a powder and crinoline age, where men were gallant and noble and all women were prone to attacks of the vapours. Mrs Tate-Collins had told her once of her privileged upbringing and her private education at home and then an establishment for well brought up young gentlewomen. When Marsha had said she had been raised in a children’s home after her single-parent mother had abandoned her when she was two years old the other woman had stared at her as though she was a creature from another planet. Not that she hadn’t been sympathetic, Marsha qualified, but it had been plain the other woman was out of her depth with such an alien concept. How Mrs Tate-Collins was going to cope with finding out Miss Gosling was really Mrs Kane, Marsha didn’t know.

‘Ah, here she is, Mr Kane,’ Mrs Tate-Collins trilled as Marsha came into view. ‘And looking very lovely.’

Marsha gave what she hoped was a neutral smile. ‘Thank you,’ she said directly to the other woman, before glancing at Taylor, whereupon the smile iced over. ‘I told you I’d be straight down,’ she said evenly. ‘There was no need to come in.’

‘Oh, I was just on my way across the hall after seeing Miss Gordon when your young man rang,’ Mrs Tate-Collins chimed in before Taylor could speak, turning to him as she added, ‘That’s the lady who lives on this floor, you know, the poor thing. She had a fall the other day and it has shaken her up a little, so I took her a drop of soup and a roll to save her having to think about supper. She is getting on a bit, bless her.’

Marsha saw Taylor gaze into the lined face of the small wizened woman in front of him, who looked ninety if a day, but his voice was perfectly serious when he said, ‘That was kind of you, Mrs Tate-Collins.’

‘Shall we go?’ It was clear Taylor hadn’t got round to mentioning their marital status, which suited her just fine, and she was anxious to get him out of the door before her landlady started another cosy chat. ‘Goodbye, Mrs Tate-Collins,’ she added briskly.

‘Oh, goodbye, dear.’

It was a little surprised, but in view of the fact Marsha had gripped Taylor’s arm with one hand and opened the front door with the other, virtually pushing him on to the top step, she really couldn’t blame her landlady.

‘She’ll think you can’t wait to have your wicked way with me.’ Once they had descended the eight steps and were on the pavement Taylor raised an amused eyebrow at her.

Up to this moment she had successfully fought acknowledging how drop-dead gorgeous he looked, but as her heart missed a couple of beats she said stiffly, ‘Mrs Tate-Collins would never think anything so vulgar.’

‘Really? I thought she had a little twinkle in her eye.’

Any female, whatever her age, would have a twinkle in her eye when she looked at Taylor. That was the effect he had on the whole of womankind. ‘I think not,’ she said crisply. ‘And before we move from here I want to make it perfectly plain that I have agreed to this meeting under sufferance, and only because I want the divorce to go through with the minimum of disruption.’

Taylor surveyed her silently, his customary stern expression now in place. ‘Feel better now you’ve got that off your chest?’ he asked mildly after a very long moment.

Marsha shrugged. ‘I just wanted you to know, that’s all,’ she said, wondering why she suddenly felt like a recalcitrant schoolgirl.

‘Believe me, Fuzz, I was never in any doubt,’ he said drily. ‘You are nothing if not straightforward.’

Which was more than could be said for him. She hadn’t spoken, but the words must have been plain to read on her face because he next said, even more drily, ‘Especially when you say nothing at all.’

‘So, in view of that, why are we doing this?’ she asked a touch bewilderedly. He hadn’t contacted her in almost eighteen months, so why now, with the divorce just weeks away?

‘Because it’s time.’

He had always been good at those—the cryptic one-liners. Right from when she had first met him she had known he was an enigma, but she had thought she’d found the key when he’d asked her to marry him just weeks after they had first been introduced at a dinner party by a mutual friend. Love. She had mistakenly imagined he loved her as she loved him—had loved him, she corrected immediately. Had.

The warm evening was redolent with the faint smells of cooking from various open windows, along with the strains of a popular chart hit and bursts of laughter from the house next door. Marsha watched Taylor wrinkle his aquiline nose. ‘Shall we go?’ he asked quietly, his eyes tight on her face.

She would have liked to have said no and turned on her heel, but it really wasn’t an option. She nodded, allowing him to take her arm as they walked a few steps to where his Aston Martin was parked. He had changed the model in the last eighteen months, she noted silently, although the other car had only been six months old when she had left him. This one was sleek and dark and dangerous—very much like Taylor.

He opened the passenger door for her, and she slid into the expensive interior with a gracefulness she was pleased about, considering the way her stomach was jumping and her legs were trembling. That was the trouble with Taylor, she thought irritably. However much she tried to prepare herself, he always got under her skin.

Once he had joined her in the car, she steeled herself to glance at him as though his closeness bothered her not at all. ‘Where are we going?’

‘Surprise.’ He didn’t look at her, starting the engine and then manoeuvring the powerful car out of the close confines of the parking space. Her eyes fell on the thick gold ring on the third finger of his left hand, and again her heart lurched. Did he wear his wedding band all the time, or had he donned it specially for this evening? she asked herself, before answering in the next breath, what did it matter anyway? The ring was just an item of jewellery if the commitment it was meant to signify wasn’t there. Her own hands had been ringless from the moment she had walked out of their house and out of Taylor’s life.

The car purred along the busy London streets, passing numerous pubs and wine bars where folk were sitting outside drinking or eating in the dying sunshine. In the interim between leaving university and meeting Taylor Marsha had often enjoyed summer evenings with friends in this way, but since the breakdown of her marriage she hadn’t wanted to go back to the old crowd. She still saw one or two of them occasionally, but it wasn’t the same—not for her. They were still all relatively fancy-free and into having a good time, but she felt she had passed that stage and couldn’t go back—certainly not while she was still legally a married woman anyway. Stupid, maybe, she admitted a trifle bitterly, considering the way Taylor had behaved, but she couldn’t help it.

She glanced down at her hands, which were tight fists in her lap, and forced her fingers to relax, uncurling them one by one as she breathed deeply and willed her pulse into a steady beat. ‘I don’t like surprises,’ she said clearly, as though Taylor had just spoken that moment rather than all of ten minutes ago. Ten minutes of ragged vibrating silence.

She kept her gaze on the windscreen as the tawny eyes flashed over her tight profile before returning to the road ahead. ‘Shame,’ he drawled smoothly.

‘So, where are we going?’ And then, as the car made another turning, she knew. He was taking her home! No, not home—home was now her tiny sanctuary in West Kensington. ‘Stop the car please, Taylor,’ she said as evenly as she could.

‘Why?’

His tone was so innocent she knew she was right. ‘Because you told me you were taking me out to dinner,’ she said stonily.

‘I am.’ He gestured with one hand at the immaculate dinner suit he was wearing.

‘Taylor!’ She paused, warning herself to take care not to lose her temper and give him the satisfaction of winning. ‘I recognise where we are,’ she said more calmly. ‘This is a stone’s throw from Harrow.’

He nodded, totally unrepentant. ‘That’s right, and Hannah has been like a dog with two tails knowing you were dropping by tonight.’

Dropping by? Was the man mad? And then the thought of the buxom, middle-aged housekeeper who had mothered her from the first moment she had been introduced to her melted Marsha enough for a lump to come into her throat. She bit down on the emotion, saying, ‘I have no intention of going to your home.’

‘Our home, Fuzz.’ His voice was suddenly dangerous. ‘And although you might be able to cast people off as though they have never existed, Hannah can’t. Mad as you were with me, it wouldn’t have hurt you to have dropped her a line or arranged to meet her somewhere. Even a phone call would have been something. You damn near broke her heart.’

She couldn’t stand this. Didn’t he know that any reminder of him, however small, had crucified her in the early days, and if she had seen Hannah all her resolve to be strong and make a new life would have been swept away? She had missed the woman who had become the only mother she had ever known nearly as much as Taylor. And then, because she was working on sheer emotion, and without the necessary protective shields in place, she spoke out the thing which had hurt her as much as his betrayal with Tanya. ‘If you were so concerned about Hannah’s feelings, why didn’t you contact me after I’d left?’ she bit out harshly. ‘You’re a fine one to talk about casting people off.’

‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this,’ he growled, raking back his hair with an angry gesture which spoke volumes. ‘I came home after three days in Germany which had been pure hell to find you already packed and waiting to leave. You came at me all guns firing and accusing me of goodness knows what, and when I tried to make you see reason you walked out of the door. I followed you to your car to prevent you leaving and you slammed the door on my hand, breaking several bones in the process.’

‘That was an accident,’ she defended quickly. ‘I said so at the time, if you remember. I didn’t know you’d got your hand in the way of the door.’

‘It didn’t prevent you from driving off though, did it?’ he reminded her heatedly.

Marsha took a moment to compose herself. He was turning this all round, as though she was the one who had had an affair! ‘Hannah was there to take care of you—’

‘Damn Hannah,’ he said furiously, as though he hadn’t just accused her of being unfeeling. ‘I drove after you, if you remember, and do you recall what you said when we stopped at those traffic lights? If I didn’t stop following you, you’d drive into a wall. Tell me you didn’t mean that.’

She had meant it. She had been so desperate and hurt that night it would have been a relief not to have to think or feel ever again.

He nodded grimly. ‘Quite,’ he said, as though she had just confirmed what he’d said out loud. ‘So I let you go. Call me old-fashioned, but I thought I’d rather see you alive than dead.’

‘Call me old-fashioned, but I always thought there were two in a marriage, not three—or more.’

She saw a muscle in his cheek twitch at her direct hit, but his voice was suddenly much calmer when he said, ‘Tanya again.’

She ignored that, continuing, ‘And my point still remains the same. You did not contact me after that night.’

‘Not physically, maybe, but surely the letter counts for something?’

‘Letter?’ She hadn’t received a letter and she didn’t believe for one moment he had written one. Whatever game he was playing, she wasn’t going to fall for it.

‘Oh, come on, Fuzz,’ he said wearily. ‘Don’t pretend you didn’t receive my letter.’

His tone brought her temper to boiling point once more. ‘I never pretend,’ she said hotly, ‘and I don’t lie either. I did not receive a letter, although if I had it would have made no difference whatsoever to how I felt—feel. You had an affair with Tanya West and there had been others before her. I have that on good authority. You shared a double room in Germany reserved under the name of Mr and Mrs Kane. Don’t lie to me about that because I phoned the hotel myself to check.’

‘Tanya was my secretary and only my secretary,’ he ground out, swinging the car round a sharp corner at such speed Marsha had to stifle a little scream. ‘The room in Germany was booked in error. She had the double and I took the only other bed in the whole damn place, due to the conference, and spent three nights sharing a twin with a huge Swede who looked as though he weight-lifted for his country and snored like hell. I told you that on the night you left and reiterated it in the letter.’

‘Then why was I put through to Tanya when I asked for Mr Kane after the receptionist had confirmed the double room?’ Marsha asked as icily as her raw nerves would allow. The way he was driving they would be lucky to see another day.

‘I’ve told you, the room was booked in error. The Swede kindly allowed me to share his room when the hotel asked him, but the room was in his name, not mine. Maybe the receptionist you spoke to hadn’t been informed of what had happened. It was one of the biggest conferences of the year, damn it, and the place was heaving.’

He must think she was born yesterday.

‘You don’t believe me.’ As he accelerated to pass a staid family saloon she sat tensely silent because there was nothing more to say. ‘I gave you telephone numbers to ring in that letter, and not just the hotel. I had the Swede’s business card. I also made you a promise, because of the way you had reacted that night in the car, that I wouldn’t try to force you to see me until you were ready, and being ready meant an apology and a declaration of trust.’

The nerve of him. Even if all this with Tanya was a mistake—and she didn’t think it was for a moment—what about the other liaisons Susan had told her about? Taylor bought silence from people, but he hadn’t been able to buy Susan’s. Susan had been her friend as well as her sister-in-law, and the episode in Germany had been too much for the other woman to ignore. Susan had sworn her to secrecy at the time, making her promise she wouldn’t tell who it was who had informed on him—mainly because Susan’s husband worked for her brother and their livelihood depended on Taylor’s favour. Well, she hadn’t betrayed Susan eighteen months ago and she wasn’t about to do so now, much as she would have loved to fling his sister’s name into the arena.

She took a deep pull of air. ‘If the letter said you wouldn’t contact me until I was ready to apologise and trust you, why are we here now? I don’t trust you, Taylor, and I would rather walk through coals of fire than apologise to you.’

He muttered something under his breath before saying, his voice curt, ‘I am not going to allow you to wreck both our lives, that’s why. Not through foolish pride.’

Pride? If they hadn’t been travelling at such speed she would have been tempted to knock his block off, she thought poetically. As it was she contented herself with saying scathingly, ‘I’ve salvaged by life and it’s a good one, so speak for yourself.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

They were now in territory she recognised as being a street or so away from where Taylor’s palatial home dwelt, so in view of her safety, and everyone else’s within the immediate vicinity, she waited until the car had actually passed through the open gates and was travelling up the scrunchy drive before she said, ‘That’s your problem.’

He brought the car to a standstill at the bottom of the wide, semi-circular stone steps which led up to the front door, and Marsha forced herself to look about her as though her heart didn’t feel as though it was being torn out by its roots. She had been almost demented with bitterness and pain when she had last left here, and certainly in no state to drive. She had hoped if she ever saw this place again she would be able to look at it with a measure of peace in her heart, but it wasn’t the case. She felt nearly as wretched with misery as she had then.

Taylor hadn’t answered her before he slid out of the car and walked round the bonnet to open her door, and now, as she took the hand he proferred and exited the Aston Martin, the haunting fragrance of lavender teased her nostrils. A bowling-green-smooth lawn bordered both sides of the curving drive, and the huge thatched house was framed by two cooper beech trees, their leaves glowing in the last of the sunlight, but it was the tiny hedges of lavender which ran from the bottom of the largest step in a wide half-moon shape right up to the corners of the house which produced the most evocative memory.

It had been this perfume which had remained with her the first time she had ever visited the house, on her second date with Taylor, and which had scented their nights in their big billowy bed when they had made love till dawn with the windows open to the scents and sounds of the night.

The pain which gripped her now wasn’t helped by the warm contact with his skin, which sent a hundred tiny needles of sensation shivering up her arm, and as soon as she was standing she extricated her hand from his.

‘You loved this place when the lavender was out.’ Taylor spoke quietly, his eyes tight on her pale face.

Her green eyes shot to meet hot amber. He had waited and planned to bring her here when the conditions were just right for maximum effect. She could read it in his face even if his words hadn’t confirmed it. The words she hissed at him would have shocked the motherly Hannah into a coma.

Taylor surveyed her flushed face thoughtfully. ‘Are you sure that last suggestion is anatomically possible?’

She glared at him. ‘You are the most manipulative, scheming, cunning man I’ve ever met.’

A corner of his mouth twitched. ‘Thank you. I think you’re pretty exceptional too.’

Suddenly the anger and resentment left her body in a great whoosh of sadness and regret for what might have been if he had been different. Or maybe if she had been different? If she had been bright and beautiful and sophisticated, like the women he had dated before he’d met her, maybe then he would have continued to love her and wouldn’t have needed anyone else. Maybe then she would have been enough for him?

She wasn’t aware of the expression on her face, or the droop to her mouth, so when he said, very softly, ‘I want you back, Fuzz. I don’t want a divorce,’ she stared at him for a moment, her breath catching in her throat at the matter-of-fact way he had spoken.

‘That…that’s impossible; you know it is.’ She took a step backwards away from him, her eyes wide.

He shook his head. ‘No, it isn’t. It’s incredibly simple. I tell my lawyer to go to hell and you do the same with yours.’

‘Nothing’s changed,’ she protested shakily.

‘Exactly.’ He eyed her sternly.

‘What I mean is—’

‘I know what you mean,’ he interrupted. ‘What I mean is I was faithful to you before you left and I’ve been faithful since. No women. Not one. That’s the bottom line.’

She stood straight and still, her chin high and her body language saying more than any words could have done.

He stared at her a moment more before saying quietly, ‘When I find out who whispered the sweet nothings in your ear, they’ll wish they’d never been born. Who was it, Fuzz? Who wanted to destroy us so badly they fed your insecurities with the very thing you most feared?’

‘What?’ She reached out to lean against the car, needing its solid support. If he had yelled at her she could have taken it in her stride, but the almost tender note in his voice frightened her to death. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m not insecure. Just because I’m not the sort of woman to turn a blind eye to—’

‘Insecurities which came into being when your mother dumped you in the hands of the social services,’ he interrupted again, his voice flat now, and holding a ruthlessness which was more typical of him. ‘Insecurities which grew in that damn awful place you were brought up in and which crippled you emotionally. The ones which told you no one could love you or want you or need you, not for ever anyway. Why would they when the one person in all the world who should love you beyond life gave you away like an unwanted gift?’

‘Stop it.’ Her face was as white as lint. Even her lips had lost their colour. ‘Why are you doing this?’

‘To kick-start the process of making you wake up,’ he said, no apology in his tone. ‘I’d been waiting eighteen months for it to happen naturally before I realised I could wait eighteen years—or eighty. I’m not that patient.’

‘I hate you.’ She stared at him, wounded beyond measure by the things he had said.

‘No, you don’t,’ he said evenly. ‘You just think you do.’

She was saved having to make a reply when the front door opened on a delighted screech of her name. ‘Marsha! Oh, Marsha, honey.’ Hannah’s plump bulk fairly flew down the steps, and the next moment Marsha was enfolded in a floral scented embrace that took the breath out of her lungs.

‘Don’t throttle her, woman.’

She was released to the sound of Taylor’s mordant voice and Hannah moved her back a little, staring into her face as she said, ‘You’re thinner. You’re too thin. You’re not eating enough.’

‘Oh, Hannah.’ It was as if she had only seen her the day before, Marsha thought wonderingly. The last eighteen months had been swept away in a moment of time and now she couldn’t prevent the tears flowing as she said, ‘I’ve missed you.’

Hannah hugged her again, and there was no reproach in her voice or manner when she said, ‘Not as much as I’ve missed you, child.’

They clung together a moment longer before Taylor’s voice brought them apart once more, saying, ‘Much as I hate to mention it, I’m starving. Can we continue the reunion inside?’