Sally Wentworth - Callum

He was watching her and she was uncomfortably aware that he didn’t believe her, and he proved it by saying, ‘I don’t usually get that reaction when I ask someone to dance.’

‘I was busy,’ she prevaricated.

‘You were furious,’ he countered. ‘Now, why, I wonder?’

‘Not at all,’ she said dismissively, and turned to the door.

But Calum was standing in the way and didn’t move. ‘Have you never danced?’

She thought of refusing to answer, but then said stiffly, ‘Yes, of course.’

‘Then I must have seriously offended you—and I’m extremely sorry. I didn’t mean to—awaken old memories.’

Elaine stared at him speechlessly, realising he was referring to supposed memories of her dead husband that dancing might have evoked. Realised, too, that he was watching her keenly to see if he was right. She suddenly found his presence, his overbearing masculinity, too much, and said shortly, ‘If you’ll excuse me, Mr Brodey, I think I’ll go to my room. I’m very tired.’

A frown flickered in his brows, but he murmured, ‘Of course,’ and moved out of the doorway. But as she went to pass him he put a hand on her arm and said, ‘I thought we’d agreed that you’d call me Calum.’

She found, unnervingly, that his touch sent a tremor of awareness sighing through her veins. But somehow she managed to control it and her voice was light, casual, as she said, ‘So we did. Goodnight, then, Calum.’

‘Goodnight, Elaine. I hope you sleep well.’

But when Elaine got into bed she lay awake for some time. Trying to ignore her stupid reaction to his touch, she went over that conversation in his study, wondering why Calum had bothered with her at all. Was it that he was piqued because she’d refused to dance with him? Did he expect all women to fall for his charm and good looks? Which they probably did, she thought cynically. Well, that made him a male chauvinist of the first order, as far as Elaine was concerned. She had seen too much of that type, lived with one for too long, and now had no time for it. In her case, it was once bitten forever shy.

Inevitably, her thoughts drifted back to the time when she had met Neil, nearly ten years ago. She had been so young then, only eighteen, innocent, impressionable. But Neil had been over thirty, a success in his chosen career, fully adult in every sense of the word. He had literally swept her off her feet, knocking into her one day at the tennis club, when he had run from his court into the next to hit a lob, and cannoned into her. She had fallen, and Neil, she remembered, had hit the lob back and scored the point before he’d turned to help her up. An action that was typical of him, although she hadn’t realised it for quite some time.

He had been staying with friends while on leave, but spent the rest of the time pursuing her—there was no other word for it—determined to capture Elaine’s heart as quickly as possible. He had done so quite easily; she had been overwhelmed by him, had never before met anyone with his masterful assertiveness, his clean-cut good looks, his easy charm. They had been married only a few months after they met, and it had been quite a lot later before she’d found out that his masterfulness hid an iron determination always to have his own way. His good looks attracted other women of whom he took full advantage, and his charm was used to make the lies he told acceptable, even believable.

Since then she had become extremely wary of any man who had any one of those qualities—and Calum Brodey had all three, in abundance. Which gave her every reason to steer well clear of him, even if all he felt towards her was a sort of conscience-pricked pity.

Elaine turned restlessly on her pillow, cross with herself for having even thought of Calum. It was, she realised, going to be one of those nights. Switching on the bedside lamp, she sat up and leaned against a pillow, picked up a novel which she kept for nights like these. But tonight reading didn’t work, didn’t leave her with buzzing eyes and a mind so tired that nothing would keep her awake. Her mind drifted from the book to that almost peremptory invitation from her mother-in-law. Again resentment filled her. Neil’s mother had always known he was a womaniser. She might have expected, if not hoped, that marriage to an innocent teenager would change him, but hadn’t cared in the least when it hadn’t. Neil might have been faithful for a year or so, but Elaine strongly doubted if it had been more than that.

She hadn’t known at the time, of course; Neil had been away a lot, taking courses and things, and he had been so ardent when he came home that she had been completely fooled. It had only been towards the end, when he’d had a post near home but was forever making excuses to be away, that she had begun to suspect. She had been pregnant at the time.

Lonely one weekend, because Neil was away—at a conference, he’d said—she’d thought she would please him by taking a couple of his suits to the cleaners. Going through his pockets, she’d found a hotel bill made out to Mr and Mrs Beresford. A hotel in a well-known chain, situated in a suburban town not too far away; a hotel at which she had never stayed, the bill dated at a time when Neil was supposed to have been on a course nowhere near that town. The kind of outdoor training course for new recruits where he was never near a phone, definitely not available, so she had never tried to contact him.

Trying to convince herself that she was wrong, Elaine rang the hotel and asked if Mr and Mrs Beresford were staying there again. She was told they were. For hours she walked round the house, wondering, trying to convince herself that there was some mistake; it wasn’t true. In the end she got in the car and drove over to the hotel, knowing that she had to see for herself. Only when she reached it did it occur to Elaine that finding out might not be so easy. The receptionist might not give her Neil’s room number; he might have gone out. Even with this terrible suspicion in her mind, she couldn’t bring herself to think of their room, that they might have gone out.

In the end it was terribly easy. It was late evening and the hotel entrance was deserted, the guests either out or eating in the restaurant. Looking through the glass doors of the latter, Elaine saw Neil sitting with a blonde girl. Even as she watched they rose to leave. Quickly, her mind panicking, Elaine hid in a darkened telephone booth. They passed quite close to her as they came out into the lobby and she saw that the blonde was very curvacious, her breasts almost falling out of her tight red dress. Neil had his arm round her and kissed her neck lasciviously as they waited for a lift. The girl giggled—and reached out to stroke him! Neil’s head came up and he looked round, making Elaine shrink back in her hiding place. Seeing no one, he put his hand over the girl’s and pressed it against himself.

The lift came and they got into it, Neil pulling the girl close, his hands low on her hips, even before the doors had closed.

For several minutes Elaine couldn’t move, then she rushed into the ladies’ room and was horribly ill. Immediately afterwards she ran blindly back to the car and drove away as fast as she could, tears streaming down her face. So much for her perfect marriage; so much for trust and love; so much for the father of this child she was carrying, the baby she had longed for for so longyears. Sobbing wildly, wiping the tears from her eyes so that she could see, Elaine just kept going, not caring where she was heading, only knowing that she couldn’t go home, that it wasn’t her home any more, the place on which she had lavished such loving care. All for Neil! All for Neil! Now it was just the place he came back to when he wasn’t with that girl!