CHARLOTTE LAMB - Secret Obsession

Ben flared suddenly, his voice harsh. ‘Why do you go on with this pretence? Isn’t it time it all came out into the open? What the hell is the point in going on with these lies and half-truths? This whole business is so ingrown and contorted—if you once faced up to facts you might actually work out a few things about yourself.’

‘Do you think I haven’t?’ she huskily threw back, looking up then, her eyes almost black with emotion in that white face. ‘Once I knew…I realised I had to go away, and I did—you know that!’

Ben brooded on her, his face grim. ‘How could they lie to you all these years? That’s what I don’t understand. The lies. Why couldn’t they come out and tell you, years ago?’

‘Pride,’ she said, sadness in the line of her mouth, in her eyes. ‘I said you didn’t understand them. Can’t you see? It was their pride that kept them from telling me.’

‘Their pride?’ exploded Ben. ‘They cheated you for their own selfish reasons—you grew up unaware that you had a living father, not a dead one! If they had told you when you were small…’

‘They couldn’t bear to!’

‘To hell with what they couldn’t bear! What about you? Look what they did to you, with their pride and their lies! If they had ever cared twopence for you they’d have told you the truth years ago, and you would have been spared a lot of grief.’

‘If they had known it was ever going to matter they’d have told me, but how could they guess? They couldn’t see the future; they didn’t have second sight.’

Ben’s grey eyes flashed contemptuously. ‘You’re a born victim, aren’t you? No matter what they did, you forgive them. Where’s your pride, for heaven’s sake? Where’s your self-respect?’

Nerissa watched his hard, remorseless face and knew how he had looked when he’d seen his first wife, Aileen, in bed with her lover. Ben was not the forgiving type; from that instant his first marriage had been finished. And although he had told her, when they’d first met, the bare outline of what had happened he had never mentioned his first wife’s name since. He had excised her from his life ruthlessly.

Nerissa was in no doubt that he would do the same with her. It would be easy enough; Ben had never been in love with her. She suspected that his capacity for love had died with Aileen’s betrayal. One wound had been enough for Ben; he had made up his mind there and then never to let himself be vulnerable to such hurt again.

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