Susan Fox - Reclaiming His Wife

If he could do it, why couldn’t she? she thought, conscientiously steering the car towards the open garage.

Having never negotiated the drive before, however, she hadn’t reckoned on the unexpected swing to the left at the top of the incline, or the sheet of ice just outside the garage door.

Pressing her foot down on the accelerator, needing a few more revs to accommodate the slope, she had almost levelled up when the back wheels started to spin alarmingly.

Feeling the car starting to slide, she braked instinctively, but too hard, she realised too late, and with a sinking heart felt the back wheels pull away from her as the car skidded with an ominous scraping into the steel frame of the garage door.

‘Oh…!’ She swallowed the small invective, uncertain as to what hurt most as Jared rushed up to survey the damage, her loss of face or what she might have done to her car.

‘I’m afraid you’ve put a hell of a crease in the front wing,’ he called over his shoulder before moving back to open her door. ‘Good try,’ he breathed in a way that left her unsure as to whether he was praising her efforts or being sarcastic. ‘But you’d better let me take it from here.’

This time Taylor didn’t argue. If she had she could only have wound up making an even bigger fool of herself, she decided, and she was feeling bad enough as it was.

With banked resentment that she knew was totally unjustified, she watched him put the car into reverse gear, pull back and set it easily on a straight course into the garage, bringing it to a halt beside the dark gleaming lines of his own saloon.

Shoulders hunched, she was waiting on the drive as he used the remote control switch to close the garage doors— a feature that certainly hadn’t been there in his grandmother’s time, she was certain—and as he strode back down to her she gripped her upper arms as though to fend off more than the freezing air.

‘There you are. All safe and sound where nothing can touch it,’ he said dryly and now she knew he was mocking her. ‘Does it hurt so much to let me help you?’ he enquired, walking beside her back down the drive. She wasn’t looking at him but she could feel his eyes resting on her with a regard that was as ruthless and penetrating as the icy wind. ‘Is it just me you want to prove your independence to? Or are you the same with every other man?’

‘So I pranged my car.’ The sparkling hillsides were almost painful to her eyes and she dragged her dazzled gaze away, tossing over her shoulder, ‘Do you have to make such an issue of it?’

There was a side gate in the low hedge that separated the drive from the garden. He reached around her, opening it with a sharp click of the latch.

‘One day, Taylor, you might realise—to use an old cliché…’ he held the gate open as she preceded him through ‘…that no man—or woman—is an island. We all need each other.’

She didn’t answer, mainly because passing so close to him she was all too aware of his long, lean body—of his dark and dangerous persona—dangerous to her at any rate, she decided, sticking out her chin, fighting against the truth of his words.

Perhaps he was right, she thought, hearing the gate close behind them. But needing someone too much left you exposed and vulnerable, didn’t it? Hadn’t she learnt that lesson long ago, with the bitter betrayal of that first and fundamental trust?

They had sandwiches for lunch with the tinned salmon Jared had bought in town, then they boiled more water to wash up and were glad to get back into the warm sitting room where Jared heaped more wood on to the fire, and where, for the rest of the afternoon, they talked and read. Taylor couldn’t remember afterwards exactly what they talked about. Current affairs. The state of the nation. Global warming.

It was easy not to be too worried about global warming, she thought, when the temperature was ten degrees below outside and you were wondering whether the candles were going to last out until the power was restored. But the discussion was stimulating nevertheless, like their discussions in the early days always had been, and it was all right if they kept to safe, impersonal subjects. She could go along with that.

When dusk fell they lit a couple of the candles and drew the curtains to shut out the winter’s night.

They cooked potatoes for supper on the open fire, listening to them sizzle, inhaling their increasingly delicious aroma as they cooked. Then they cut wedges of crumbling cheese and buttered the soft white flesh of the halved potatoes, watching them run golden with black flecks from the melted butter and the crisp, disintegrating layers of the charcoaled skins.

Jared produced a red wine that was too cold at first but which grew warmer standing, uncorked, on the hearth.

‘The snow ploughs were out in the valley.’ Glass in hand, he had just dropped down to join her in front of the fire, having finished his meal on the settee. She had been too snug to move from the rug, and now she wished she had.

‘I know.’ She had seen them, way down on the flat white plane that formed the very mouth of Borrowdale, or at least seen the work that they were doing, watched over by the harsh faces of the imposing fells.

‘It could be days before they get to us up here.’

She looked at him quickly. Her eyes were dark and guarded.

‘What are you thinking?’ In the flickering candlelight his mouth took on a sardonic curve. ‘That it couldn’t have worked out better if I’d planned it?’

She shrugged, trying to appear nonchalant. ‘You’re so scheming, Jared, it wouldn’t have surprised me if you had.’

He had shaved finally, earlier in the day, but now that dark shadow was appearing again around his mouth and jaw so that in the subdued and dancing light his features took on an almost formidable attraction, as menacing as the cruel heights of the scree-scarred fells.

‘Believe me. Improvising round a camp-fire wasn’t exactly what I had in mind,’ he told her, pushing a charred log back into the flames with the poker and a scintillating spray of sparks.

‘What exactly did you plan?’

Pursing his lips, he set the glass he had just drained down on the hearth beside her. ‘To wine and dine you in the best hotels Cumbria has to offer. For you to enjoy your holiday.’

Taylor cocked her head to one side, her eyes still wary. ‘Why? To try to tempt me into coming back to you?’

He shrugged. ‘Let’s just say for old times’ sake if you prefer.’

For old times’ sake…

Broodingly her gaze roamed over the mason-cut stone of the fire surround, lifting to the old clock ticking peacefully away in the centre of the mantelpiece. Beside it, on either side, antique figurines and plates bore testimony to a gentler age—a slower, less materialistic world. Like those framed drawings she had penned and he had hung in the recesses bore testimony to a happier time, Taylor thought with a sudden wave of nostalgia for those days washing over her with such unexpected force that determinedly she uttered, trying to stay afloat, ‘No, not for old times’ sake. Anyway, we were always fighting.’

‘Not always,’ he said softly.

She couldn’t look at him, knowing she would see in his eyes the same fervent emotion that thickened his voice. But, try though she did, she couldn’t stamp out the memories of her own traitorous desires. They sprung out at her, sensual and erotic, from the darkest corners of her mind, of wild, uninhibited nights when, scored by his verbal lashings she had turned away from him in bed, only to be dragged unceremoniously into his arms where hurt, anger and pain had turned to lust as dark and desperate as their rows had been. Because how could it have been anything but lust—on either of their parts—when it had been born out of such bitter words and scarring accusations? she wondered, shamed now even to think how wantonly she had abandoned herself to him.