Alison Fraser - The Strength Of Desire

Hope waited for Guy to give a firm denial. Instead he glanced at her. She didn’t have to mouth the word ‘no’. Her appalled expression said it all.

‘No, but I’ll be in touch.’ Guy returned Maxine’s smile before she disappeared. ‘She’s beautiful,’ he said to Hope, with disconcerting frankness.

Hope felt a moment’s pride, quickly followed by guilt, then anger. It hadn’t been all her fault. She’d had no choice, and there was no going back.

‘Have you any?’ she asked in an almost aggressive tone.

He raised a brow. ‘Any what?’

Was he being deliberately obtuse? ‘Children!’

‘No.’ He answered her question without giving away any more.

Was he married? Had they decided not to have children? What?

Hope told herself that it was none of her business. A decade had passed and they were strangers. Perhaps they always had been.

Hope was just deciding to steer off personal subjects, when Guy went on the attack, saying, ‘I suppose it was worth it—going back to Jack—however temporarily?’

‘What?’ Hope was taken aback.

‘Having Maxine,’ he went on relentlessly, his eyes as hard as glass. ‘I assume that was the reason for your remarkably brief reconciliation with my brother.’

‘How dare you—?’ Hope’s voice rose with her anger.

‘How dare I tell the truth?’ he cut across her, at the same time closing the distance between them once more. ‘Why not? It hardly matters now. I’m just curious. How long was it, that last time you were reunited? One month? Two?’

Hope was sure he already knew the answer, but she muttered back, ‘Five weeks,’ and prayed it would shut him up.

It didn’t. ‘Five weeks?’ he echoed, his voice a harsh, mocking sound. ‘Let’s see, now. Long enough to conceive, have a pregnancy confirmed and get the divorce papers drawn up. Fast going.’

‘That’s not the way it was!’ Hope was more hurt than angry that he could believe that of her. ‘I never intended going back to Jack. If you’d just listened to me—’

‘Listened to you?’ He grabbed her arm when she would have walked away. ‘So you could tell me more lies, make more promises you’d never keep?’

‘Well, that makes two of us!’ Hope remembered all the things he’d said, of love and their future together.

‘So maybe we deserved each other.’ His lips formed a thin, cruel smile at the idea. ‘Maybe you should have stuck with me…But then, you couldn’t be quite sure I could give you a baby, could you? Whereas my brother already had—’

‘Shut up!’ Hope cried at him. ‘You and your brotherI was sick of you both. All you ever wanted from me was—’ She bit off what she’d been about to say.

But he knew, saying for her, ‘Sex?’ and laughing his contempt. ‘Don’t kid yourself. You were never that good.’

‘Why, you—’ A decade of anger, stored but still festering, spilled over. She raised her hand and slapped him hard on the cheek.

Who was more surprised? Hope, who had never hit anyone in her life, or Guy, who had never been hit?

At any rate, it was Hope who was horrified, who backed away from him, from herself, from the violence of the emotion between them.

It was Guy who seemed almost to relish the situation, as he shot out an arm and dragged her close, forcing her to look up at him, to catch the curious triumph on his face for a moment, confusing her into inaction as he bent his head.

His mouth had covered hers even before she realised his intention. He kissed her hard, branding her as she had branded him, punishing her for daring to slap him.

One kiss and all breath, reason, sanity were knocked from Hope’s body. Even as she pushed at his shoulders, kicked at his legs, struggled for her freedom, the most terrible excitement spread through her body.

Guy knew it. He could feel it. That was why he kept kissing her, forcing her lips to open, her mouth, invading, tasting, remembering the sweetness of her, the softness, the smell of her, still the same.

It shocked Hope. Nothing had changed. Guy touched her and she lost all pride, all strength, all will. Guy held her, his hard male hands running over her back, relearning the shape of her as if he had the right. And all the time still kissing her, her cheek, her eyes, her temple, then back to her lips, biting, licking, thrusting into the warm recesses of her mouth until she had to stop herself moaning aloud. But she couldn’t stop the memories flooding back, the camera rolling in her head, of him and her, and the time they had loved. The briefest of times, but it was imprinted on her brain as if it had lasted a hundred years.

As were the words he had said afterwards. ‘It was nothing. Just sex. Proximity. Curiosity.’ And each word had been like a hammer-blow to her heart.

The same words saved her now, dredged up from memory to salvage her pride. They made her cry out, ‘No,’ and mean it, made her twist from him, with a low curse.

He watched as she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. It was a gesture of contempt, intended to wound, but the small smile on his mouth mocked her late show of pride.

‘I lied,’ he said in a low undertone, catching her eyes. ‘You were that good.’

It was no compliment. The look on his face told her that was all she’d been good for. A quick session or two in bed.

This time she didn’t slap him. Anger gave way to humiliation.

He had the last word, as he’d had the last time they’d met. He turned on his heel and walked away. She heard him go down the hall and open the front door. He didn’t slam it.

Guy Delacroix had too much control for such petty gestures. He hadn’t kissed her out of desire or impulse. He had wanted to see if he could still reduce her to a weak fool.

He could.

She wrapped her arms round her body. It was still trembling with a mixture of emotions. She felt a little sick. She wanted to go upstairs and lie down and sleep. Sleep for however many days it took to forget Guy Delacroix once more.

But she couldn’t. Her daughter trailed into the kitchen, eyes all curious at her flushed face, and she took refuge in her role of mother by busying herself with the tea.

She didn’t get away from Guy Delacroix that easily, however, as Maxine insisted on bombarding her with questions about her uncle. What did he do for a living? Did he still live in Cornwall? Was he older or younger than her father? Was he married?

‘How should I know?’ Hope snapped at the last question as she finally lost patience.

Maxine gave her an offended look, muttering, ‘I was only asking.’

‘Well, don’t!’ Hope snapped again. ‘Just eat your tea.’ She slapped the plate in front of Maxine and effectively silenced any more talk of Guy Delacroix or the past.

But later, when Maxine went to bed, Hope couldn’t silence her thoughts.

Of course, things had turned out just as Guy had predicted. She’d joined Jack on tour in America and it had been a disaster—moving from one American city to the next, living out of suitcases, lying awake and alone in a hotel bedroom while Jack had thrown a party for anyone and everyone next door, still awake and alone the following day while Jack slept off the party.

It would never have been the life for her, but it had been made worse by the depression she was suffering. It had been less than three months since her miscarriage.

Jack, if he’d grieved at all for their dead baby, had long since put it out of his mind. Hope hadn’t felt ready for lovemaking, but bare tolerance on Jack’s part had quickly turned to resentment. She had given in. Sex had become a joyless physical act without love. Jack hadn’t seemed to notice.

She’d been in America a fortnight when she fell ill. She’d felt unwell for days, and had woken up in the early hours with severe pains in her abdomen—and no sign of Jack.