Susan Fox - Reclaiming His Wife

Here he was fun to be with—was taking time to relax— and for the first time she was seeing a new and exciting playfulness in him that unsettled as much as it pleased her. She wasn’t ready just to shelve all her fears and her anxieties and go back to him, and she was worried that this sudden absolute interest in her—his decision to give her all his undivided attention—was just a ploy to get her back; that, once there, their marriage would revert to being the same insecure and tumultuous farce that it had been before.

‘No,’ she assured him firmly, negating his suggestion— however flippant—of any further intimacy between them, even though her body throbbed and her breath came quickly through her lungs just from thinking about it. ‘It just complicates things,’ she said.

For a moment those hard thighs gripping hers tightened inexorably. Another glance over her shoulder revealed how the bright sun made a hard, cruel feature of his mouth.

What was he thinking? she wondered hectically, scanning the sudden, stark rigidity of his face. But then almost at once his features relaxed, as did his hold on her.

‘Come on,’ he rasped, springing to his feet a second after she did. ‘Let’s get this thing back up the hill.’

After that the morning resumed most of its earlier conviviality for which Taylor was relieved. She didn’t want to be forced to look too closely at her feelings for him. She wanted to enjoy these moments together without any pressure from him.

There was tension in her laughter now though as she travelled, clinging to his long legs, down the crisp cold hill, even when she fell off in an unharmed, shrieking heap with him, and emerged from her fall, pelting him with snow. There was also circumspection in the way he touched her, as though he were avoiding any reoccurrence of what had transpired between them the previous night.

They were lovers who had just crossed a threshold and become what they knew they should be. What they really were. Estranged partners, she thought painfully, dusting snow off her anorak and track suit bottoms. Strangers, shackled together merely by bad weather and by that keen astuteness of Jared’s in knowing that she would come.

She straightened suddenly, a hand shielding her eyes— in spite of her sunglasses—as her ears registered the continuously mournful bleating some distance away.

‘What is it?’ Jared was beside her, brushing snow from his shoulder. His shielded gaze followed hers to the stream winding down towards the valley, its swollen silver waters tumbling between craggy banks.

‘I don’t know. A lamb in distress. It keeps calling but there’s nothing answering,’ Taylor said, concerned.

‘Probably been a bit too adventurous and like most kids preferred to ignore sound parental advice,’ Jared murmured dryly, but Taylor was only half listening.

She could see it now, down by the beck, its small cloven feet slipping over icy stones, its black-hooded face lifting with each cry that came piercingly on the air.

‘There it is!’ she said, pointing to the spot between two overhanging trees where the river-bank curved steeply.

‘It’s been born too early for all this savage weather,’ Jared commented sympathetically.

‘It’s all alone.’ Taylor’s face was puckered with worry. ‘We should rescue it.’

‘No, we shouldn’t,’ he contradicted her, and as she made to move past him, ‘Leave it,’ he advised with a restraining hand on her arm. ‘They have voice-boxes like radar,’ he assured her. ‘Its mother will find it. Every ewe is instinctively tuned to the call of its young.’

From behind their dark lenses, wounded and sceptical eyes flew accusingly to his.

‘She’ll come back for him,’ he promised.

‘But supposing she doesn’t?’ With all her strength she was pushing him aside, leaving him staggering backwards.

‘Taylor! Taylor, don’t be stupid! For pity’s sake! It’s treacherous down there!’

Drawn by the animal’s cries, she took no heed of Jared’s angry warning, stumbling over steep and slippery ground, her only thought, somehow to help the distressed creature.

Teetering down the bank towards the beck, she managed to stop herself by grasping frantically at the overhanging branch of a tree just before her sliding feet almost plunged her into the water.

‘Heck.’ It was a small gasp of relief at having saved herself from Jared’s scorn rather than an icy soaking. She wasn’t sure which would have stung most, but she could guess.

Taking a dim view of her sudden crashing into its sphere, the lamb, however, had leaped further up the bank, bleating now with fear and indignation.

From a few metres away, it stood shaking on its spindly legs, little face turned towards her, bleating pitifully.

‘Come on. I won’t hurt you.’ Finding a safe footing at last, stooping to make herself appear less threatening, Taylor murmured soft little coaxing phrases above the tumbling of the stream. ‘Come on, little sheep. Don’t be afraid.’

It looked frightened and cold—and was probably very hungry too, she thought, her heart going out to it standing there, lost and defenceless, with its little legs half buried in a drift of snow.

And suddenly she could feel its fear; feel the cold that numbed her own feet and the cruel wind penetrating her bones as though she weren’t protected by her gloves, thick socks and anorak because memory was stripping her of those defences, stripping back the years so that she was five years old again, shivering, vulnerable and afraid.

She didn’t hear Jared shout, catching only the stronger-voiced vibrato of the ewe that was standing, viewing Taylor suspiciously from above the river-bank, bleating her impatience with her errant offspring.

Recognising its mother, the lamb leaped into the air as if on wires, making short work now of the slippery slope. There was a joyous cacophony of bleats before the small hooded face nudged under it mother’s thick coat, tail wagging from the warm comfort of her milk.

In only a few seconds, though, the ewe was pulling away from the small questing mouth, urging her lamb to safety and more familiar ground.

Jared was right, Taylor thought with a cold emotion shuddering through her, staring after the bright disappearing rump of the ewe with her skittish, reunited lamb. Even an animal came back for its young.

‘What the hell did you think you were doing dashing—’ Strong arms were turning her roughly, the deep male voice breaking off as those shaded eyes tugged questioningly over her finely drawn features.

‘What is it?’ he asked urgently. ‘What’s wrong, Taylor?’ He was reaching up to remove her glasses, using his other hand to make her look at him when she tried to turn away. With infinite tenderness his thumb moved across the pale, drawn lines of her face, over the sadness of her downturned mouth. ‘What is it?’ he whispered, concerned.

His touch and the tone of his voice were so gentle and so moving after his anger of a few moments ago that she pressed her eyelids closed against the sensations that were running riot in her, struggling to bring her emotions under control.

‘Just me getting too sentimental over an animal,’ she exhaled heavily, opening her eyes.

Above the dark glasses, she saw the black brows come together, noticed his interest shift to the retreating ewe and her lamb before returning to Taylor again, and now the furrow deepened between his eyes.

‘Tell me,’ he commanded quietly, unconvinced, drawing a soft leather finger down the curve of her cheek.

For a moment, recognising the depth of understanding— of tenderness—in him, she wanted to open up, share her innermost fears, feeling them being drawn from her by those shielded, searching eyes. But instead came the shocking recognition of just how much she still loved him—that she had never stopped loving him! That she could so easily believe him when he said his affair with Alicia was over with, before they were married, because she wanted to— so much! Which would mean, if that were the case, that it had all been her fault that her marriage had failed, wouldn’t it? she thought suddenly, because she hadn’t trusted him enough. Because she couldn’t hold on to anything…