Yesterday's Husband

‘You’re such a swine, Richard,’ she breathed.

‘I’m glad you realise it, Emma. Well, what’s your answer?’

Emma’s entire body was shaking, but she tried to fight down her anger and think coolly and rationally. She had worked hard to build up the firm to the point where it was now, and if it hadn’t been for the collapse of the Sawford bank she knew it would have been a prosperous business. Besides, there were people who worked for her, people who depended on her for their livelihood. What would happen to their jobs if she let the company go bankrupt? However much she hated Richard at this moment, loyalty to others urged her powerfully to accept his offer. But beneath that there was another reason: an insane, unwanted flare of longing to be in Richard’s arms and in his bed again. It wasn’t going to be permanent, she knew that, and it would probably bring her more pain than pleasure. But the sight of him had awoken all the old, clamorous physical need for him and perhaps the emotional need too. Even if she couldn’t find love in his arms, maybe she could find a temporary quenching of the flames that scorched her. She bowed her head in bitter assent.

‘It seems I have no choice.’

‘Look at me, Emma. Tell me what you’re going to do.’

Their eyes met—naked, burning with hatred and with something else.

‘I’m going to come back to you as your wife,’ she said through her teeth.

‘Good,’ murmured Richard as blandly as if she had just agreed to become his shorthand typist. ‘Then I suggest you eat some of this excellent food and after that well go for a little stroll on the beach together before bed.’

Alarm bells rang noisily in Emma’s head. She looked down at the chicken satay with as much horror as if it were deadly nightshade. In spite of the balmy, tropical air, her hands felt suddenly chill and clammy.

‘Wh-when does this reunion begin?’ she stammered.

Richard smiled lazily, his blue eyes narrowing with amusement.

‘Oh, didn’t I tell you? It begins tonight.’

Emma took a sudden gulp of champagne and choked.

‘T-tonight?’ she gasped, her eyes streaming.

‘Yes. I stayed in another hotel in Sanur last night, but I’ve given orders for my luggage to be transferred to our bungalow this evening. It should be there by the time we get back from our walk.’

‘I don’t believe this,’ she said, shaking her head in a dazed fashion. ‘It’s not really happening.’

‘Yes, it is,’ Richard assured her kindly. ‘You’ll find it much easier to believe tomorrow morning after… a good night’s sleep. And don’t worry. I’ll send off faxes to my lawyers and my bank first thing after breakfast to organise the financial side of our agreement.’

Emma scarcely heard that last sentence. She was too busy panicking about the implications of ‘a good night’s sleep’ in Richard’s company. Trying hard to maintain an air of normality, she pulled one of the chicken pieces off its skewer, dipped it into the peanut sauce and ate it. To her surprise, she found it was delicious.

‘The food is still very good here, isn’t it?’ she remarked, with the half-hysterical feeling that she was dreaming and would wake up at any moment.

This time Richard’s smile seemed almost genuine.

‘Yes. I’ve often thought about this place over the years and I suppose you have too or you wouldn’t be here. Let me see, what else did we do last time we were here? Oh, yes. The trip to Penelokan. Now that really was a highlight. Perhaps we ought to set out tomorrow and see if it’s still as beautiful as ever. What do you think?’

Emma stared at him as if he had gone insane. Was he really proposing to replay every detail of their honeymoon just as if the violent quarrels, the estrangement, the hostility of the last eight years had never existed? Well, if he was, perhaps the safest thing she could do was to humour him.

‘That would be lovely, darling,’ she said in a strained voice, looking wildly round the table for some means of escape. But all she could see was the waitress bearing down on them to remove their empty plates. Shortly afterwards the girl returned with the rijstafel—a fragrant and delectable array of pork, prawns, chicken, vegetable and curry dishes around a central mound of steamed rice. Richard helped Emma to a massive serving of everything and grimaced comically when he dropped a prawn in the centre of the flower arrangement.

‘Oops, looks as if I’m still clumsy in the dining-room. Are you still as lousy at cooking as you used to be, Em?’

Emma pulled a face, torn bctwoon amusement and resentment.

‘Not quite, but it isn’t my favourite activity. I tend to buy a lot of take-aways and heat them in the microwave oven.’

‘You cooked a chocolate cake once in the microwave oven. It rose and rose and then exploded. Do you remember?’

Her lips quirked involuntarily at the reminder.

‘Yes, it was ghastly. I forgot the sugar, too. You ate it, though.’

‘"Greater love hath no man”,’ he murmured.

A terrible sense of constriction gripped her chest as if a cold hand were squeezing her heart. How could he sit there and joke about it all, as if this reunion were genuine? As if the love which had carried them through those early trials of married life were still alive and burning brightly? She caught her breath and dropped her gaze.

‘What’s wrong?’ he demanded.

‘I wish you’d asked me to do anything else but this, Richard,’ she replied in a passionate whisper. ‘It’s going to be so painful, so repellent. I can’t bear it.’ The good humour died out of his face and his blue eyes were suddenly chill and merciless.

‘You’ll have to,’ he said brutally.

They talked little during the remainder of the meal and even the luscious pineapple, cantaloup, mangoes and pawpaws which appeared as dessert failed to rouse Emma’s enthusiasm. Her whole mind and body seemed to be focused on the single, alarming question—What’s going to happen afterwards?

Yet when they finally finished their coffee and rode to the ground floor in the lift, Richard did not lead her straight back to the bungalow as she had half feared. Instead he put his arm around her shoulders and steered her towards the beach.

‘Let’s go and look at the ocean.’

The touch of his warm, muscular arm on her body made her flinch. She wanted so badly to relax into his embrace, to lean against his shoulder and rub her face against the light fabric of his jacket, to feel the beating of his heart. Instead she held herself stiffly aloof, trying to send out to him the silent message that, while she might have agreed to this farcical union, she was doing so under protest.

‘I despise you for this,’ she said unsteadily.

‘Do you?’ he retorted with a short laugh. ‘Well, I think I can live with that. It really makes very little difference to me how you feel about it, Emma. It’s how I feel that concerns me. And I feel quite satisfied.’

As the word ‘satisfied’ passed his lips, he brought her to a halt so suddenly that she was taken by surprise. Hauling her savagely into his arms, he bent his head and kissed her. His body was hard and intoxicatingly virile against hers, with a wild spicy tang of cologne and masculine warmth that she found irresistibly arousing. He tasted of champagne and tropical fruit and, when his tongue slid between her lips, she offered no resistance. Instead, seized by some primitive instinct, she gave it a soft, teasing bite. His sharp intake of breath told her that that was a serious mistake and now his hard, merciless fingers began massaging her back in a sensual, urgent rhythm that she found wildly exciting. The eight lonely years without love vanished as if they had never existed. The world spun around her and suddenly she was a young woman on her honeymoon, tasting the delirious bliss of love in a setting that was made for romance.

Sighing sensually, she tilted her trembling lips to his and let her body sway in his hold so that she brushed lightly against him. The heated evidence of his arousal was unmistakable and he caught her by the hips, grinding himself against her so that she was in no doubt of what he wanted. She heard him give a low groan deep in the back of his throat, then he cupped her face in his hands and looked down at her so intently that she felt he was studying her. Overhead the palm fronds rustled lightly in the mild breeze and the tropical sky was like a dark blue banner ablaze with stars. An aching sweetness trickled through Emma’s entire body as she met Richard’s gaze and she felt herself quivering as if she were shaken by a fever. It wasn’t too late for them, was it? Surely if Richard could still make her tremble and throb and yearn to cry out with this mysterious, molten passion there must be something between them worth saving? Mustn’t there? It couldn’t be mere lust that made him stare down at her so fiercely with that glittering moonlit gaze. Could it?

‘Come on,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I can see you want this as badly as I do. I’d strip you off and have you here and now, Emma, down on that silver strip of sand with the foam surging around our bodies. But somebody else might come out for a walk. Better to be inside our house where you can let yourself go and moan and gasp and cry out when I take you, you beautiful, heartless little witch.’

Emma stiffened at that cruel taunt. Yes, it would be mere lust! Easily, very easily. In fact she would be a fool to deceive herself for one moment into thinking that Richard felt anything else for her. Wrenching herself out of his hold, she began walking furiously down the beach.

‘Well, come on, then,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘What are you waiting for?’

Her gold evening shoes sank into the sand at every step and Richard had no difficulty at all in overtaking her. She almost hoped that he would ask for an explanation of her abrupt departure, so that she could tell him a few blistering home truths about himself. But he was too shrewd or too indifferent for that. He simply strode along beside her looking as relaxed and nonchalant as if they had come out for no other reason than to enjoy the soft hiss and rush of the waves breaking on the silvery sand, the sweet, potent fragrance of the tropical flowers and the moonlight shimmering over the water. Emma was seething so furiously that she almost missed the turn-off to their bungalow and Richard had to reach out and catch her hand.

‘Let go of me!’ she spat.

‘Just as you like,’ he replied in a soft, mocking voice. ‘I can wait.’

When they reached the bungalow she hurried ahead of him, inserting her key into the door with shaking fingers and then rushing up the stairs and into the bathroom. Shutting the door behind her with a vicious slam, she leaned against it, her heart pounding.

‘Damn him,’ she muttered under her breath. ‘Damn him, damn him, damn him!’

Her heavy, dark hair was falling out of its chignon and her make-up was smudged from Richard’s kisses. A strange air of febrile excitement seemed to crackle dangerously about her as if she were a teenager who had just been kissed for the first time. It infuriated her to see herself looking so dishevelled in the mirror when she was used to being confronted by the image of a cool, composed businesswoman. With jerky, impatient movements, she took a pot of face cream out of her sponge bag and deliberately sponged every trace of make-up and of Richard off her face. Then she hauled off her clothes, flung them carelessly on the bathroom floor and stepped into the shower. It gave her a certain spiteful, childish pleasure to linger there. Let Richard wait if he wanted to use the bathroom! She hadn’t invited him here, had she? Maybe he would take the hint and go somewhere else!

But at last the water began to run cold and she was forced to emerge. She rubbed herself dry and then stood there hesitating. What was she to do now? There had been no sound of a door closing below and she felt fairly certain that Richard was still out there, waiting for her. Her skin crawled with a half-delightful apprehension at the thought. Should she get dressed again? But the mere thought of climbing back into the same clothes made her grimace. Of course she could just wrap herself in a large bath-towel and go out like that. But it seemed like a terribly poor-spirited thing to do, especially when she was bound to have it ripped off her anyway. Well, she’d show Richard that she wasn’t afraid of him! Defiantly she tossed back her long black hair, opened the bathroom door, and stepped out into the bedroom stark naked.

Richard had turned on the bedside lamps so that the room was bathed in a soft, apricot glow and he had taken off his dinner-jacket and shirt. At the sound of the opening door, he turned round and faced her and she felt an unwelcome pang of admiration at the sight of his lean, hard, muscular physique. The flare of interest in his eyes made her suspect that he was regarding her with a similar admiration. Her cheeks burned but she rested her hands defiantly on her hips.

‘Well, is this what you want?’ she demanded contemptuously.

‘Yes.’

Without a trace of embarrassment, he strolled across the room, swept her up in his arms and planted a long, burning kiss on her mouth. Then, staring down at her with glittering blue eyes, he walked across to one of the huge beds and dropped her in the centre of it. Before she could utter more than a single indignant gasp of protest, he knelt astride her, pinioned her wrists on either side of her head and kissed her even more violently than before. Emma wanted to show her complete disdain for him by remaining totally unmoved and at first it was easy. She struggled angrily, turning aside her face from his kisses. But as his mouth travelled down the column of her neck in a series of soft, biting caresses she could not repress a faint moan of pleasure. He raised his head for a moment and she saw a flicker of triumph in his eyes. Then slowly, sensually he drew her nipple into his mouth and caressed it with his tongue. A tingle of pleasure so acute that it was close to pain flared through every nerve-ending in her body and she caught her breath and arched instinctively against him, writhing and shuddering under his touch. His lips released her, only to move further down her body, nibbling over her flesh in a provocative, rhythmic stimulation that drove her wild with longing. Her hands clenched tightly on the sheets and she closed her eyes, whimpering softly. When his mouth touched the most intimate, secret part of her, she started up with a shuddering gasp of protest of incoherent pleasure, but he thrust her back.

‘Lie still and enjoy it,’ he urged, his body so closely linked to hers that she could feel the vibration in his throat. She tried to remind herself that she hated him, that she was doing this only under protest, but her body seemed to have taken on a will of its own. And what it wanted it wanted urgently, violently, without any delay.

‘Richard… we shouldn’t… it’s insane…’

‘Yes, we should. And it isn’t insane. I want this more than I’ve wanted anything in the past eight years and you do too. Don’t you? Don’t you? Admit it, Emma; tell me that you want me. Say it!’

He had hauled himself up in the bed and was looming above her now, supported on his forearms, with his halfnaked body crushed against her. She could feel the warmth, the heat, the tension in that body, the unmistakable virile hardness of it, and she wanted him! Oh, how she wanted him! Not just to touch her and hold her and kiss her, wonderful as that was, but to plunge deep inside her until they were fused in a total union.

‘Say it,’ he rasped again.

‘I want you, Richard,’ she breathed.

‘That’s all I needed to know,’ he said coldly.

And, to her astonishment and chagrin, he rose to his feet and stood staring down at her with a strange, ravenous mixture of desire and hatred in his eyes.

‘Goodnight, Emma.’

She lay in shocked disbelief, instinctively drawing up the sheet to cover her nakedness, and watched as he swiftly finished undressing with his back turned to her, pulled on a pair of lightweight cotton pyjamas and climbed into the other bed. Then, without another word, he switched off the light and began breathing deeply and evenly. She didn’t ask him why he was doing this. She already knew. It was an act of cold-hearted, calculating revenge. First the challenge had been to see whether he could excite her to the point where she actually wanted him and then, having demonstrated the humiliating fact that she did, he had twisted the knife by rejecting her. The bastard! The unutterable, manipulative bastard! She wanted to kill him…

Her heart was still pounding furiously and her body was hot and pulsing with the effects of unsatisfied desire so that it made her more angry than ever when a few minutes later she heard his quiet breathing deepen into the unmistakable rhythm of sleep. How could he lie there and just sleep when Emma herself wanted to cry and rage and throw things? It was inhuman! There must be some way she could get back at him for this, there must, there must! For hours she lay awake, tossing and turning, thumping her pillow and letting out occasional, low gasps of annoyance. But some time after three o’clock she fell asleep with her last conscious thought surging through her head as monotonously as the breaking surf outside. I hate him, I hate him, I hate him…

Her dreams were confused and anxious, centring not on the humiliating scene she had just endured but on the violent parting quarrel which had separated them eight years before, except that this time Richard didn’t storm out without any explanation. Instead he came back to her and told her some long and complicated rigmarole which made everything magically all right. In the dream she was filled with a happiness so quiet and profound that it was like listening to lyrical music. Then the dream changed and she was in her office at Prero’s, trying to make her father proud of her, feeling anxious and unhappy with a computer whirring in the background and the printer grinding. As she came slowly up to the surface of consciousness, she realised that it wasn’t just a dream. There was a computer whirring right in this very room. Blinking, she sat up and squinted. It seemed quite crazy, but Richard was sitting at the foldout mahogany desk in the corner of the room with a portable computer, the telephone and a tiny printer laid out in front of him. Without even stopping to think about how much she hated him, she spoke impulsively.

‘What are you doing?’

He turned around and smiled at her, then tore a document off the printer and waved it in the air.

‘Working. I’ll have to get you to sign this in a moment. It’s a faxed letter from my lawyer concerning our agreement about the office complex.’

His voice was neutral, even friendly. As the events of the previous evening came rushing back to her mind, Emma stared at him in consternation. Had she dreamt all those torrid details of what he had done to her? Her face flushed and she darted a quick, uneasy glance at him and then hastily looked away. No, she hadn’t. That cruel, superior look of amusement around the edges of his lips made her certain that he remembered everything just as clearly as she did. Yet he chose not to refer to it. Why?

‘Why don’t you get dressed and we’ll go and have breakfast on the balcony?’ he suggested.

At a loss to know what else to do, Emma agreed.

‘All right,’ she said warily. ‘Will you call Room Service and order it?’

‘I already have.’

She was still naked and did not want to endure the embarrassment of climbing out of bed in front of that disconcertingly cool blue gaze. But even as she sat hesitating, with the sheet pulled up high in her armpits, Richard turned back to the computer as if he had already lost interest in her. Feeling rather affronted, Emma slid out of bed on the opposite side, groped in her suitcase for a dressing-gown and made her way to the bathroom. When she returned a few minutes later, dressed in a yellow cotton T-shirt, yellow and white daisy-patterned cotton skirt and casual sandals with her hair hanging loose, she found Richard already sitting at the table on the balcony with an array of iced juice, fresh tropical fruit, coffee and Danish pastries in front of him. Next to these was a camera, and a litter of guidebooks and maps. He smiled at her as if there had never been the slightest unpleasantness between them. The charm of that smile unnerved her.

‘ “Will you walk into my parlour?” said the spider to the fly,’ she chanted under her breath.

‘What did you say?’ asked Richard, frowning.

‘Nothing.’

‘Sit down and eat,’ he urged. ‘Then we’ll decide what we want to do with our holiday.’

The coffee was fragrant and full of flavour and the Danish pastries were unexpectedly crisp and delicious but Emma found it hard to keep her mind on her breakfast. All the time she was eating she kept darting Richard nervous, speculative glances, trying to figure out his intentions. Yet he seemed as cheerful and unruffled as if he really were just enjoying a long-awaited holiday. When at last her plate was empty, he slid one of the glossy coloured brochures across the table to her.

‘Do you fancy an excursion to Penelokan?’

Emma flinched. His question brought a rush of unwelcome memories flooding back to her as she remembered the magical blue lake set high in the mountains in the northern part of the island. Lake Batur was located in the crater of a dormant volcano and the ascent to the nearby mountain and the few days they had spent exploring the idyllic countryside around it had been the highlight of Richard and Emma’s honeymoon. For that very reason she now wanted to avoid it like a plague spot.

‘No, I don’t,’ she said in a rush.

Richard shrugged indifferently.

‘What would you like to do, then? After all, we still have quite a lot of time to kill in each other’s company.’

That casual statement touched Emma on the raw. How could anybody speak of killing time in Bali, of all places? An idyllic tropical paradise whose magic had once enchanted her so thoroughly that she had believed every minute spent there was precious and irreplaceable. And of course she had once felt the same way about any time spent in Richard’s company. Well, things had certainly changed! Her lips twisted into a cynical smile.

‘I don’t care what we do,’ she retorted. ‘Although frankly I hope we won’t have to spend too much time alone together. Perhaps we could go to see some Balinese dancing, or go shopping, or do some local sightseeing.’

She tried to keep her voice as light and indifferent as his. There was no way she wanied Richard to guess her true reason for avoiding Penelokan—the fear that she would simply crack up and weep if she had to go there in his company. Besides, if she stayed here in the south of the island, she would still be close to the airport at Tuban. If she ever got too desperate, she could always flee back to Sydney.

But Richard didn’t even seem to notice the faint tremor in her voice that marred her poise. He was leaning back in his chair with a mocking smile of triumph on his lips.

‘All right,’ he agreed lazily, picking up another pile of brochures and flicking through them. ‘We’ll do all those things. It’ll be a second honeymoon, Emma.’

CHAPTER THREE

THEIR second honeymoon began that very morning with a swim in the nearby pool. It was another perfect, tropical morning. The sky overhead was blue and cloudless, the air was warm, moist and filled with the scent of flowers and the water in the swimming-pool sparkled invitingly. But Emma dawdled deliberately at the poolside, feeling reluctant to shed the protective cover of her thin green, cotton beach wrap. She didn’t want Richard ogling her when she emerged in her bikini. Nor did she want to be hired into playing silly games in the water as if she were really enjoying his company. And his ostentatious concern for her comfort didn’t make her feel any better disposed towards him. Even when he pulled up a cushioned banana lounge for her and ordered a couple of iced fruit juices from a passing waiter, she didn’t thank him but simply continued to glower at him. With a mocking smile, he took a swift gulp of his iced fruit juice, set down the glass and patted her patronisingly on the head.