Daphne Clair - Wife To A Stranger

He retained his hold, looking at the hand he held, his thumb stroking over the back of it. ‘I don’t know what else to call it.’ His voice was low and strained.

He’d called it lust earlier, she remembered. Lust at first sight, he’d said, describing their meeting.

‘It’s not my habit,’ he told her, ‘to take a woman I’ve just met to bed—no matter how willing she is. For months I could hardly see straight for wanting you. You were…an obsession.’

‘And you resented it.’ She stated the fact baldly.

He seemed startled, his eyes meeting hers, searching her face. ‘Maybe I did in a way. I wasn’t used to that level of…distraction.’

‘Distraction?’

‘I have a demanding, complex business to run. Ever since I left university I’ve been building it, expanding it. There wasn’t time for much else in my life. Or energy. And then suddenly there was you. For a time I felt as if I’d lost control.’

‘You’d hate that.’ She knew as surely as if he’d spelled it out for her that Rolfe liked being in control of himself, of his life.

And of his wife? The wayward thought made her shiver inside. Just how had he felt, how had he reacted, when she’d insisted on visiting Australia without him? She’d sensed anger in him several times since she’d woken in that hospital room—anger controlled and usually well concealed, but simmering beneath the surface.

Rolfe released her hand and sighed, settling into the corner of the sofa, one arm laid along the back. ‘Hate it?’ he repeated. ‘The most exciting sex I’d had in my entire life?’

‘Sex?’ Capri clamped her hands together. ‘You just said you fell in love.’

‘Sometimes it’s hard to separate the two. Harder, they say, for men than women. Perhaps that’s true.’

‘Perhaps,’ she agreed tentatively. ‘I don’t think I would have found it so difficult.’

‘Don’t you?’ He regarded her pensively.

Her gaze slid aside. Maybe she was wrong. At this moment she was fighting a strong urge to close the small space between them and rest her head against his chest, feel his arms about her. Could that be love? Perhaps her body, her heart, remembered what her mind refused to give up to consciousness.

‘Listen.’ He tipped his head back, angling it to concentrate on the music from the hidden speakers. Two voices blended against a subtle, haunting melody.

Burning like a rocket

exploding into stars

most splendid in its dying

is this love of ours

The song was called ‘Fire in the Sky’. She loved the tune, but the words saddened her, telling of a love that had flared briefly, incandescently.

too bright to last the distance

a fire in the sky.

‘He knows,’ Rolfe murmured.

‘He?’

‘The guy who wrote the song.’ He turned his head, his eyes half closed and gleaming, his mouth cynical. ‘Doesn’t he?’

‘It isn’t like that with me!’

Rolfe’s attitude was relaxed but very still. Something stirred in those almost-hidden dark eyes. ‘How would you know?’ he enquired softly.

‘I know if I really loved someone it would be for ever. Not some flash in the pan, like in the song.’

‘You sound as though you mean it.’

‘I just know that’s how it is, for me.’

‘Really.’ Although he still hadn’t shifted his position, his hand was tightly gripping the back of the sofa. ‘And yet you left me.’

‘Left you?’ She stared at him.

Rolfe stirred then, sitting up but not meeting her eyes. ‘To go off to Australia without me.’

‘But that was a holiday…wasn’t it?’ Doubt sneaked in and a hollow feeling opened in her stomach. ‘Do you mean I didn’t intend to come back? But…if we were separated, I’m here under false pretences—’ The thought was frightening. If their marriage had ended, if he didn’t really want her here, she had no right to be with him, and where could she go? A sliver of fear chilled her.

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