Emma Darcy: Their Wedding Day

“Are you married?”

“No.”

“Divorced?” Perfect and obviously expensive make-up gave Adriana Leigh’s face a youthful glow, but Rowena had no doubt this woman was in her thirties, possibly older than Phil, who was thirty-three.

“No.” She was amused by the questioning.

“Children?”

Her laughter was mocking. “Two abortions.” There was a hardness in her eyes as she added, “I won’t go down that road again.”

It made Rowena wonder if previous lovers had let Adriana down, and she felt a twinge of sympathy, remembering the pain of being left without Keir’s support when she was pregnant with Jamie. The sympathy was short-lived. There was none coming from Adriana for the situation Rowena faced.

“Has Phil ever mentioned our children?”

She shrugged. “Emily is five and Sarah is three. They’re young enough to get over the separation without any lasting trauma. The boy is old enough to look after himself. It’s not as though their father has played a great role in their lives.”

“Is that what Phil told you or what you want to assume?”

“I know the hours Phil works,” she said smugly.

“Since you entered his life.” That truth was obvious now. Rowena silently castigated herself for not realising Phil’s long hours and overnight trips could have another purpose besides work. How complacent she had been to attribute it to ambition!

“Doesn’t his desire to stay with me tell you something?’ Adriana taunted.

Rowena hated her mocking amusement. She might be guilty of complacency, but she hadn’t gone out hunting another woman’s husband to fill in the lonely hours. It took all her will-power to keep her voice steady, her demeanour unruffled. She would not give her antagonist the satisfaction of goading her out of control.

“I suppose you think you’ve rearranged his priorities. For the short term,” Rowena emphasised, wanting to shake Adriana Leigh’s complacency. “Passion does tend to burn out.”

“You don’t know much about men, do you?” Pitying condescension. “They have two brains. Keep the one below the belt satisfied and you can bend the other any way you like.”

Such heartless calculation sickened Rowena. Phil preferred this woman to her? “If that’s the case, I find it odd that you haven’t been able to hold onto one of the many men you’ve obviously had in the past,” she retaliated.

“I haven’t wanted to until now.”

“Then your theory hasn’t exactly been tested, has it?” Rowena pointed out, to no effect whatsoever.

“Face it, darling, you’re beaten. You’ve never satisfied Phil as I do. That’s a fact.” The cat’s eyes glittered down Rowena’s classic navy suit and up again. “I daresay you’re too much of a lady.”

“There’s more to a relationship than sex,” Rowena declared with conviction.

“What?”

“Companionship, sharing goals and achievements, caring about each other, understanding…”

Adriana laughed. “Tell that to a sex-starved man. And there’s so many of them around. Especially fathers.”

The unexpected singling out of fathers bewildered Rowena. She stood, speechless, as enlightenment came in a shower of scorn.

“You dedicated mothers tend to focus all your energy on your children. Your attention is divided. You get tired. You have headaches. And the door opens for another woman to give a man back what his children have taken from him. Quite suddenly he doesn’t give a damn about his children any more. He wants a woman in his life, not a mother.”

“I’m sure that’s what you’d like to think,” Rowena said tersely, disturbed by Adriana’s knowingness. Had Phil complained to her that his wife ignored his needs?

“I’m giving you some good advice for the next time around. The world is full of discontented married men.”

“Why pick on Phil?”

“He was here. He’s what I want. I’ll keep him happy.”

Rowena dearly wanted to rattle Adriana’s mind-battering confidence. A flash of intuition came to her. “Phil wasn’t your first choice, though, was he?”

A pause. A flicker of wariness. Then a return to aggression. “He’s my last choice, and I’ll make it stick, so don’t think you can muddy the issue.”

Rowena pressed further. “You got a job here so you could be around Keir Delahunty and try to catch his interest. He’s the bigger prize, isn’t he? Only he didn’t take the bait.”

Her eyes narrowed with anger. “Did he tell you that?”

“You were still flashing availability signals at him when you came into this office. You’d drop Phil if Keir gave you any encouragement.”

Adriana snorted. “That man is made of stone. Phil’s much more my style, and he knows it. You can’t put Keir Delahunty between us.”

That was probably true, Rowena thought in painful frustration. It didn’t matter how right her observation was about Adriana’s motivations, Keir obviously had a fine sense of discrimination in judging women on the make and wasn’t interested. Why on earth couldn’t Phil see…But maybe Adriana was right about him feeling neglected, overlooked in favour of the children’s needs.

What was the best balance for being both a wife and mother? And why was the onus on her? Shouldn’t a good marriage be mutually supportive?

Her head spun between a confused sense of guilt and a sickening sense of having all her ideals betrayed. Coming here, speaking to this woman, was worse than futile. There was no help in it. None at all. If Phil wanted Adriana Leigh, then let him have her, she thought, resolution undermined by a tidal wave of deep hurt and disillusionment.

But what about the children?

“I take it you’re not overly keen about the role of stepmother,” she said flatly, trying to think of anything that might change the situation, might give Adriana pause for second thoughts about a future with Phil.

“You chose to have kids. They’re your responsibility. Not mine.”

“You honestly believe Phil will be happy about shutting them out of his life?”

“Put it this way. You needn’t worry about any fight over custody. Phil may want to see the girls now and then, and I’ll be happy to go along with that.”

“You’re forgetting Jamie.”

Again she shrugged, as though the burden was not hers to shoulder. “Well, he’s not really Phil’s, is he?” she drawled meaningfully.

“Phil is the only father Jamie’s known.”

“Whose fault is that?”

Angry heat crept into Rowena’s voice despite her resolution to keep cool. “Phil adopted Jamie as his son.”

“When he was how old? Four?”

“Three.”

“No difference. He was a little boy, not a baby. The feeling’s not the same no matter how you want to dress it up. The boy is yours, not Phil’s, and at his age, he’s bound to be a sulky troublemaker.”

Rowena could not trust herself to suppress her outrage at these callous sentiments. Her body was beginning to tremble. “Thank you,” she said tightly. “I won’t take up any more of your time.”

“Thank you,” Adriana returned snidely. “It’s always interesting to meet the wife.”

“MRS. GOODMAN has said all she wishes to say to me, Mr. Delahunty.”

Adriana’s light, almost flippant tone made Keir grit his teeth against an unwise snap. It would be unprofessional to reveal the strong antipathy he felt, knowing as he did that it was aroused by his sympathy for Rowena. He had no right to any personal involvement with this affair. It behove him to maintain some objectivity.

He unhitched himself from the edge of his secretary’s desk in deliberate slow motion. The report he’d been trying to read was still in his hands, and he used it as a point of dismissal. “Thank you for your cooperation, Adriana.”