Lucy Gordon - The Diamond Dad

The sole ornament was a photograph beside the bed, showing a young boy of about nine, with a bright, eager face. Faye smiled, recognizing Adrian, but her smile changed to a frown as she saw there was no picture of Cindy.

She waited in the hall until he emerged from the study.

'What's the matter?' he asked, seeing her face.

'I'd like to see your study. There's something I have to know.'

The study told her the same story. There on the desk were two photographs of Adrian, but none of Cindy.

'How dare you?' she said, turning on him. 'You had no right to censor your own child out of existence. Cindy's still your daughter, and she loves you.'

'I don't know what you-'

'Where's her picture? You've got Adrian's. Where's Cindy's?'

'Look, I'm sorry. I didn't do it on purpose. I just didn't notice-'

'You never noticed her, and you broke her heart. The only one you cared for was Adrian, and then only when you could see yourself in him. But he isn't like you. He's gentle and sensitive.'

'There's nothing gentle about him when he's kicking a ball around a pitch.'

'How would you know? You've hardly ever seen him. Yes, he plays a tough game but he's a nice person. He looks after Cindy; he cares about people.'

'Everything I'm not, apparently,' he said in a tight voice.

'Yes. He doesn't like the things you like, and I won't have him forced to be someone he isn't. That's one of the reasons I left: to protect them from you.'

'That's a dreadful thing to say,' he told her, his face very pale.

'It's a dreadful thing to be true. Garth, I came here tonight because I'm tired of living in limbo. I really want that divorce.'

'I'll never give you one. I told you that when you left.'

'Yes, you said you'd take the children if I went for a divorce. That scared me at the time. You even used it to make me give up my job-'

'You didn't need to work. I offered you a large allowance-'

'But I wanted to be independent.'

He didn't understand that. He never had. He'd thought it madness when she'd struggled to get a diploma in bookkeeping through a correspondence course. She'd been thrilled to get work with Kendall Haines, a local environmentalist, but Garth's bitter anger had made her leave the job.

Refusing to be defeated, she'd approached the problem in a different way. She had a real flair for bookkeeping and began taking in freelance work from several small, local businesses. She'd used a computer that had been very basic even when she'd bought it second-hand, and which now looked as if it had come out of the Ark. The budget wouldn't run to the modern machine she longed for, yet still she was content. She'd won her independence in the face of Garth's hostility.

But his high-handed action still rankled. 'I was happy in that job until you forced me to leave it to stop you claiming Cindy and Adrian,' she told him now. 'I couldn't see it then, but that threat was nonsense. No court would have given you the children, and if it had you wouldn't have known what to do with them. It's just that you can't bear to let go of what was once yours. But we're not property, and it's time to let go.'

'What makes you think I've changed my mind?'

'It doesn't matter. Time has passed. Sooner or later we'll divorce, and I'd like it to be sooner. Our tenth wedding anniversary is coming up, and I don't want to be legally your wife on that day. Can't you see that it would be a mockery?'

'You were still my wife on our ninth anniversary. What difference does it make now?'

'The tenth is special,' she argued. 'It's the first of the big ones: ten, twenty, twenty-five, fifty. Ten is like a milestone. It says that your marriage has lasted. But ours hasn't.'

He looked at her closely. 'Is that the only reason?'

Under his keen gaze, she coloured. 'No, I-I want to get married again.'

She waited for his anger at this offence to his pride, but it didn't come and this disconcerted her. 'Tell me about him,' he said mildly.

'He's a kind man and I love him.'

'And you think he can fill my place with my children?'

'He already does and he's doing a terrific job. He's there for them.'

'He has no right to be. I'm still their father, just as I'm still your husband.'

'And what you have, you hold. I might have known.'

He touched the gold chain about her neck. 'Did he give you this?'

'Yes.'

'I wouldn't have thought Kendall Haines could have afforded that. He's obviously more successful than I realized. But he still isn't the right man for you.'

'I never told you his name. How did you-?' She gasped in outrage. 'You've had me spied on!'

'I always keep up-to-date information about my investments,' he said coolly. 'I knew when you went to work for him, and the first time you dated him.'

She drew a sharp breath. 'That was why you made me leave that job,' she said angrily. 'Because I was falling in love with him. You're even trying to control me now.'

'This man isn't right for you.'

'I think he is and I'm going to marry him. I can't be browbeaten any more, Garth-'

He took a quick breath. 'Browbeaten? Is that how you think of a marriage in which I gave you everything-?'

'Except yourself. Once you got your own business you were never there when I needed you. You handed your gifts down from on high and expected me to defer to you, and when I started answering back you didn't like it. I had to escape-'

'You'll never escape me,' he said harshly. 'I won't allow it.'

'You think you're going to turn the full might of the law onto me-?'

'No, it's much simpler than that,' he said softly, and pulled her into his arms.

He was too quick for her to avoid him and before she knew it his lips were on hers, caressing her with the same fierce purpose as in the past. In the beginning it had delighted her. Now, she was filled with outrage at his arrogance. Once, their sexual rapport had been perfect. Even when they had quarrelled it had still been there, giving them an illusion of a marriage. Now he thought he had only to remind her of that to overcome her will.

She fought to remain still and inwardly resist him. It should be easy with her anger to help her. Besides, she was strong now. If she waited, he would soon see that it was no use.

But his lips were full of persuasion, coaxing her to relive hot, brilliant moments, when the world had been full of love and beauty. If he'd been possessive, so had she, caressing and cherishing his body, rejoicing that he had chosen her for this magic gift. He had been young and his frame had been at its magnificent best; long legs and arms, a smooth brown chest, and hips whose power could make her cry out with ecstasy.

In the lonely, sobbing nights after their separation, she'd fought to deaden those memories and believed she'd succeeded. But he was here now, the living, breathing man, determined to make her remember what had united them, and forget what had driven them apart.

'You'll never escape me,' he murmured against her mouth, 'as long as we have this.'

His lips moved insistently against hers. This. One little word to sum up a dazzling, glorious and finally bitter experience: passion and grief intermingled. Love, pain, disillusion. All these things were there the moment he touched her, indestructible after all this time.

'I never forgot you,' he said hoarsely. 'Not for a moment. You were always with me-just as I was always with you-'

She tried to deny it but the treacherous warmth was already filling her body, weakening her will, making her want things she had no right to want. She'd sworn this wouldn't happen, but the memory of his passion still lived in her flesh, recalling her to life. She had once loved him so much, and though love might be finished, she was what that love had made her, and the past could never be destroyed completely.