Table of Contents

Cover Page

Excerpt

About the Author

Title Page

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Copyright

“Are you worried that I might walk out on you?”

“Yes,” Daniel admitted.

Rachel was shocked by the overwhelming sense of relief she experienced. “It isn’t my place to leave,” she pointed out. “That prerogative is all yours.”

“Yes.” Daniel didn’t look at her. “But I don’t want to leave. I know I have to prove myself to you again. I know it’s going to take time. But I won’t give in, Rachel….”

MICHELLE REID grew up on the southern edges of Manchester, England, the youngest of a family of five lively children. But now she lives in the beautiful county of Cheshire with her busy executive husband and has two grown-up daughters. She loves reading, the ballet and playing tennis when she gets the chance. She hates cooking, cleaning and despises pressing clothes! Sleep she can do without, and produces some of her best written work during the early hours of the morning.

The Ultimate Betrayal
Michelle Reid

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

THE telephone started ringing as Rachel was coming downstairs after putting the twins to bed. She muttered something not very complimentary, hitched six-monthold Michael further up her hip, and rushed the final few steps which brought her to the hall extension—then stopped dead with her hand hovering half an inch above the telephone receiver, her attention caught by the reflection in the mirror on the wall behind the telephone table.

God, you look a mess! she told herself in disgust. Half her pale blonde hair was hanging in damp twists around her neck and face while the rest of it spewed untidily from a lopsided knot to one side of the top of her head. Her cheeks were flushed, her light blue overshirt darkened in huge patches where bathtime for three small children had extended its wetness to her also. And Michael was determinedly trying to wreak its final destruction by tugging at the buttons in an effort to expose her breast. A greedy child at the best of times, he was also tired and impatient now.

‘No,’ she scolded, gently but firmly forestalling his forage by disentangling his fingers from her blouse. ‘Wait.’ And she kissed the top of his downy head as she picked up the telephone receiver while still frowning at her own reflection.

‘Hello?’ she murmured, sounding distracted—which she certainly was.

So distracted, in fact, that she missed the tense little pause before the person on the other end answered cautiously, ‘Rachel? It’s Amanda.’

‘Oh, hi, Mandy!’ Rachel watched pleased surprise ease the frown from her face, and only realised as she did so that she had been frowning. That brought the frown back, a perplexed one this time, because she had caught herself doing that a lot recently. ‘Michael, please wait a little longer!’ she sighed at the small boy grappling with her blouse.

He scowled at her and she sent him a teasing scowl back, her blue eyes alight with love and amusement. He might be the most bad-tempered and demanding of her three children, but she adored him just the same—how could she not when she only had to look into those dove-grey eyes and see Daniel looking back at her?

‘Aren’t those brats in bed yet?’ Amanda sighed in disgust. She made no secret of the fact that she found the children an irritant. But then Mandy was the epitome of made-it-in-a-man’s-world woman. She had no time for children. She was a tall, willowy red-head who strode through her highly polished life on a different plane from the one Rachel existed on. She was the sophisticate while Rachel was the comfortable, stay-at-home wife and mother.

She was also Rachel’s best friend. Well, maybe that was going a bit far, she acknowledged. She was the only friend Rachel had kept in touch with from her school days. The only one of the crowd who now lived in London like herself and Daniel. The others, as far as she knew, had made their lives back home in Cheshire.

‘Two down, one to go,’ she told her friend. ‘Michael wants feeding but he can wait,’ she added, for the baby’s benefit as much as Amanda’s.

‘And Daniel?’ Amanda asked next. ‘Is he home yet?’

Rachel detected more disapproval in her friend’s tone and smiled at it. Amanda did not get on with Daniel. They struck uncomfortably hostile sparks off each other whenever they were in the same company.

So, ‘No,’ Rachel said, adding ruefully, ‘So you’re safe to call him all the rotten names you like. He won’t overhear you.’

It had been meant as a joke, and not a very new one either. Rachel had always given Amanda leave to vent her opinion of Daniel when he wasn’t around. It allowed her friend to get off her chest all those things she would have loved to say to his face only she never quite had the courage to. But this time just an odd silence followed the invitation, and Rachel felt a sudden and unaccountable tension fizz down the line towards her.

‘Is something wrong?’ she asked sharply.

‘Damn,’ Mandy muttered. ‘Yes. You could say that. Listen, Rachel. I’m going to feel an absolute heel for doing this, but you have a right to—’

Just then, a pair of Postman Pat pyjamas came gliding down the stairs, the small figure within making out he was a fighter pilot, firing his forward guns. Michael shrieked with glee, his eyes lighting up as he watched his big brother come hurtling down towards them.

‘Drink of water,’ the pilot informed the questioning look in his mother’s eyes as he reached the hallway, and flew off in the direction of the kitchen.

‘Look—’ Mandy sounded impatient ‘—I can hear you’re busy. ‘I’ll call you back later—tomorrow maybe. I—’

‘No!’ Rachel cut in quickly. ‘Don’t you dare ring off!’ She might be distracted, but not so much that she hadn’t picked up on the fact that whatever Mandy wanted to say was important. ‘Just hang on a moment while I sort this lot out.’

She put the receiver down on the table then went after her eldest son, her long, beautifully slender legs moulded in white Lycra leggings which finished several inches above white rolled-down socks and white trainers. She was not tall, but she was incredibly slender and her figure was tight—surprisingly tight considering the fact that she’d carried and borne three children. But then she worked out regularly at the local sports centreswimming, aerobics, the occasional game of badminton when she could find the time.

‘Caught you red-handed!’ she accused her six-yearold, who had his hand lost in the biscuit barrel. Rachel sent him a fierce look while he went red, then sighed an impatient, ‘Oh, go on then—and take one for Kate— but no crumbs in the beds!’ she called after him as Sammy shot off with a whoop of triumph before she could change her mind.

The kitchen was big and homely, big enough to house the netted play-pen hugging one corner of the room. She popped Michael into it and gave him something messy to suck at while she went back to the phone.

‘Right,’ she said, dragging the twisted telephone cord behind her as she went to make herself comfortable on the bottom stair. ‘Are you still there, Mandy?’

‘Yes.’ The answer was gruff and terse. ‘Why don’t you employ someone to help you with those kids?’ Mandy asked irritably. ‘They’re an absolute pain in the neck sometimes!’

‘I’ll tell Daniel you said that,’ Rachel threatened, not taking offence. So Mandy was not the maternal type; she could accept that. Rachel was very maternal, and was not ashamed to admit it. ‘And we do employ help,’ she defended that criticism. ‘It’s just that I like the house to myself in the evenings, that’s all. Live-in help feels as though you’ve got permanent guests. I can’t relax around them.’

‘Become any more relaxed,’ Mandy mocked acidly, ‘and you’ll be asleep! For goodness’ sake, Rachel! Will you stop emulating Sleeping Beauty and wake up?’

‘Wake up to what?’ She frowned, totally bewildered as to why Mandy felt this sudden need to attack her.

A harsh sigh rattled down the line to her eardrum. ‘Rachel,’ she said, ‘where is Daniel tonight?’

The frown deepened. ‘Working late,’ she answered.

‘He’s been doing a lot of that recently, hasn’t he?’

‘Well, yes—but he’s been very busy with that takeover thing with Harveys. You know about it, don’t you?’ she prompted. ‘I’m sure I heard you both discussing it the last time you came to dinner…’

‘The Harvey thing was over months ago, Rachel!’ Mandy sighed.

Months? Had it really been months since Mandy had come to dinner? Rachel pouted, thinking back. Michael had been about—three months old, she recalled. That was three months ago! My God, where had the days, weeks—months gone to?

‘Hey!’ she exclaimed. ‘You’ll have to come to dinner again soon. I hadn’t realised it was so long since I’d seen you! I’ll talk to Daniel and see which night would be—’

‘Rachel!’ The sheer exasperation in Mandy’s voice cut her short. ‘For goodness sake—I didn’t call you to wheedle a dinner invitation out of you! Though your dinners are worth attending when you bother to put one on,’ she added, with yet more criticism spicing her tone. ‘Not that I know how you find the time, what with a house and three crazy kids to take care of, not to mention a selfish swine like…’

She was off on her usual soap-box, Rachel acknowledged, switching off. Mandy hated the way Rachel liked to run her home virtually singlehanded, and she thought Daniel contributed little or nothing. She did not understand how busy he was, how hard it had been for him to scramble his way to the top and support a young family at the same time. Nor did she understand that Rachel did not mind the long hours he had to work, that she understood that he was doing it for them, herself and the children, for their future security.

‘…and I just can’t let it go on any longer without telling you, Rachel. You are my friend, after all, not him. And it’s time someone woke you up to what’s going on under your very nose…’

‘Hey, back up a little, will you?’ Rachel had switched her attention back to what Mandy was saying only to find she had completely lost the thread of the conversation. ‘I think I missed something there along the way. What’s going on right under my nose that you think I should know about?’

‘See?’ Mandy cried impatiently. ‘There you go again! Switching off when someone is trying to tell you something important. Wake up, for God’s sake, Rachel. Wake up!’

‘Wake up to what?’ Like Mandy, she was beginning to get impatient herself.

‘To that bastard you’re married to!’ Mandy cried. ‘Dammit, Rachel—he’s playing you for a fool! He isn’t working late. He’s out with another woman!’

The words cracked like a whip, bringing Rachel jerking to her feet. ‘What, tonight?’ she heard herself say stupidly.

‘No, not tonight in particular,’ Mandy answered heavily, obviously thinking the question as stupid as Rachel thought it. ‘Some nights,’ she adjusted. ‘I don’t know how often! I just know that he is having an affair, and all of London seems to know about it except for you!’

Silence. Rachel was having difficulty functioning on any conscious level. Her breath was lying frozen inside her lungs, as pins and needles—like a deadening drug administered to ward off impending shock—gathered in her throat and made their tingling way down to her feet.

‘I’m so sorry, Rachel…’ Sensing her shock, Mandy’s. voice softened and became husky. ‘Don’t think I’m enjoying this, no matter how…’ She had been going to say how much she resented Daniel and would enjoy seeing the mighty fall. But she managed to restrain herself. Mandy disliked Daniel. Daniel disliked Mandy. Neither of them had ever made a secret of the fact that they put up with each other only for Rachel’s sake. ‘And don’t think I’m telling you this without being sure of my facts,’ she added defiantly to Rachel’s continuing silence. ‘They’ve been seen around town. In restaurants—you know—being too intimate with each other for a business relationship. But worse than that, I’ve seen them with my own eyes. My latest has a flat in the same building as Lydia Marsden,’ she explained. ‘I’ve seen them coming and going…’

Rachel had stopped listening. Her mind had turned entirely inwards, seeing things—pointers that made everything Mandy was saying just too probable to be dismissed as malicious gossip. Things she should have picked up on weeks ago, but she had been too busy, too wrapped up in her own hectic routine to notice, too trusting of the man whose love for herself and the children she had never questioned.

But she was seeing now. His frequent grim moods recently. The way he snapped at her and the children, the many times he had remained downstairs in his study working instead of coming to bed with her—making love with her.

Sickness swam like a wave over her, making her sway, close her eyes, see other times when he had tried to make love with her only to find her too tired and unresponsive. Weeks—months—of bitter frustration when she had been willing enough to give but he had been unwilling to take without knowing he was giving back in return.

But she’d thought they’d sorted that problem out! She’d thought over the last week or two—since Michael had been sleeping through the night and she had been feeling more rested—that everything was getting back to normal again.

And it was only a few nights ago that they had made love so beautifully that Daniel had trembled in her arms afterwards…

God…!

‘Rachel…’

No! She couldn’t listen to any more. ‘I have to go,’ she said huskily. ‘Michael needs me.’ Couldn’t, because she was remembering one other pointer that was far more damning than any weak points of irritability or even poor sexual performances! She was remembering the delicate scent of an expensive perfume emanating from one of his shirts one morning as she prepared it for washing. It had clung to the fine white cotton, all over it. The collar, the shoulders, the two front sections. It had been the same delicate scent she had smelled but not quite picked up on each time she had kissed him when he came home at night—on his late nights. On his lean cheek. In his hair.

Fool!

‘No—Rachel, please wait. I—’

The receiver dropped noisily on to its rest and she sank, leaden-bodied, back on to the stairs. Seeing Daniel. Daniel with another woman. Daniel having an affair. Daniel making love, drowning in another woman’s…

She retched nauseously, a hand going up to cover her mouth, turning into a white-knuckled fist to press her cold and trembling lips painfully against her clenched teeth.

The phone began ringing again. A tired cry coming from the kitchen joined the shrill sound, and she stood up, a strange kind of calmness settling over her as she first picked up the receiver, then dropped it immediately back on its rest. Then, with that same odd calmness which actually spoke of reeling shock, she lifted it off again and left it off, then walked towards the kitchen.

Michael went straight to sleep after his feed. He curled himself up into his habitual ball with his padded bottom stuck up in the air and his small teddy tucked beneath his chubby cheek. Rachel stood for a long time just staring down at him—not really seeing him, not seeing anything much.

Her mind seemed to have gone a complete blank.

She checked the twins’ rooms as she passed by. Sammy was fast asleep with his covers kicked off as usual, arms thrown out across his pillow in abandonment. She bent to drop a soft kiss on her eldest son’s cheek before gently pulling the covers over him. Sam was more like his father than the other two, dark-haired and determined-chinned. Tall for his age, too, and sturdy. Daniel had looked like him at that age; she had seen snaps of him in his mother’s photograph album. And Sam showed a stubbornness of purpose in that six-year-old face—just like his adored father.

Her heart wrenched, but she ignored the ugly feeling, turning instead to go to the other room where she stood staring down at the sleeping figure of her daughter. Kate was a different proposition entirely from her twin. You could come into this room in the morning almost guaranteed to find her sleeping in exactly the same position you had left her in the night before. Kate, with her silky hair like sunshine on her pillow. The apple of her father’s eye. She could wheedle more out of Daniel than anyone else in the family could. He openly and unashamedly adored his blue-eyed princess. And the precocious little madam knew it—and exploited it to its fullest degree.

Would Daniel so much as consider doing anything which could hurt his little girl? Or lower his stature in the eyes of his adoring eldest son? Would he dare place all of this in jeopardy over something so basic as sex?

Sex? A terrifying shiver went skittering down her spine. Maybe it was more than sex. Maybe he couldn’t help himself. Maybe it was love—the real thing. Love. The kind of love men were willing to betray everything for.

Maybe this was all just a stupid lie. A dark and cancerous bloody lie! And she was doing him the worst indignity of all by even considering it as the truth!

Then she remembered the perfume. And the times he had stayed out all night—blaming it on the Harvey contract.

The damned Harvey contract.

She reeled away and walked blindly out of Kate’s room and across the landing into their bedroom where, only last week, they had found each other again. Made love beautifully for the first time in months.

Last week. So what had happened last week to make him suddenly turn to her again? She had made an effort; that was what had happened. She’d been worried about the way their relationship was going, and she’d made an effort. Sent the children to stay with his mother for the night. Cooked his favourite meal, laid the table with their best china and lit candles, and greeted him home in a slinky black dress and with a kiss that promised so much…

So much, in fact, that she’d not even noticed the clenching of his jaw and the sudden twitch of that little nerve beside his mouth which was always a dead giveaway that he was labouring under severe stress. But she noticed it now, with aching hindsight. She closed her eyes tightly in the silence of their bedroom and saw his lean face clench, his tanned skin pale, that little nerve begin to work as she wound her arms around his neck and leaned provocatively against him.

God. The nausea came back, almost overwhelming her, and she stumbled blindly out of the room and down the stairs to their sitting-room, seeing so much—so much that she had been foolishly blind to until now—that she was barely aware of what she was doing.

The tension with which he had held her shoulders, trying to put some distance between them. The pained bleak look in his grey eyes as he had stared down at her inviting mouth. The sigh which had rasped from him and the shudder which had shaken him when she’d murmured, ‘I love you, Daniel. I’m so sorry I’ve been such a pain to live with.’

He’d closed his eyes tightly, swallowed tightly, clenched his lips, and clenched his hands on her shoulders until she’d actually winced in pain. Then he’d pulled her close, hugged her to him, burying his face in her throat, and said not a word, not a single word. No answering apology, no answering declaration of love. Nothing.

But they had made love beautifully, she remembered now, with an ache which echoed deep into her being. Whatever else Daniel was getting from this other woman, he could still want her with a passion no man could fake—surely?

Or could he? she wondered now. What did she know of men and how their sex-drives worked? She had been just seventeen when she met Daniel. He had been her first lover—her only lover. She knew nothing—nothing about men.

Not even her own husband, seemingly.

Her eye was caught by her own reflection in the mirror set above the white marble fireplace, and she stared numbly at herself. She looked pale, she noted, a trifle tense around the mouth, but otherwise normal. No blood evident. No scars. Just Rachel Masterson nee James. Twenty-four years old. Mother. Wife—in that order. She smiled bitterly at that. Facing the truth of it in a way she had never allowed herself to do before.

You wanted him, she told her reflection. And my God, you got him—and all in the space of six short months, too! Not bad going for a sweet naive seventeen-year-old. Daniel had been all of twenty-four. Far too worldly-wise, surely, she mocked her reflection cynically, to be caught out by the oldest trick in the book!

Then the cynicism left her, because it had not been a trick, and she had no right denigrating herself by calling it one. She had been seventeen and utterly innocent when she met Daniel at her very first visit to a real nightclub, with a crowd of girls from school who thought it hilarious that she was frightened they would ask her her age and discover she was not old enough to enter their establishment.

‘Come on, Rachel!’ they’d mocked her. ‘If they ask you, you lie, like we do!’ And they had given her a new date of birth which she repeated over and over to herself until she was safely inside the glittering dimness of the nightclub. And even then she had jumped like a terrified rabbit every time someone so much as brushed by her, half-expecting to be thrown out by one of the big burly bouncers dotted around the place. Then, slowly, she had relaxed, begun to enjoy herself along with the rest of them, dancing to the disco music and sipping white wine and feeling less inhibited as the evening went on.

She was aware of Daniel from the moment he stepped into the club. He carried that kind of charisma with him. A big, lean man with neat dark hair and the kind of clean good looks film stars were made of. The others noticed him too, and giggled when he seemed to be taking an inordinate interest in their dancing group. But it was Rachel he was looking at. Rachel with her long, pale blonde hair billowing in its natural spiralling curls around her shoulders and pretty face, expertly made-up by the far more experienced Julie, and her slender body encased in one of Julie’s tight black mini-skirts and a red cropped vest top which gave tantalising glimpses of her flat stomach as she gyrated to the disco music. If her parents had seen her dressed like that, they’d have died of horror. But she had been staying with Julie while her parents went off to visit relatives that weekend, and they had no idea what their only child, born very late in their lives, was up to while they were away.

And it was to Rachel that Daniel came when the music changed to a lazy smooch, his hand light on her shoulder as he turned her to face him, his smile, like the rest of him, smooth, confident, charismatic. Aware of the other girls’ envy, she let him take her in his arms without a word of protest, could still remember those first tingles of shy awareness that fizzed up inside her at his touch, his closeness, the hard smooth line of male brushing against soft and sensitive female.

They danced for ages before he spoke. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked simply.

‘Rachel,’ she told him, shy-eyed and breathless. ‘Rachel James.’

‘Hello, Rachel James,’ he murmured. ‘Daniel Masterson,’ he announced himself. Then, while she was still absorbing the sexy resonance of his beautifully modulated voice, he slid his hand beneath the cropped top, making her gasp at the hot stinging sensation of his smooth touch against her bare skin, and pulled her closer.

He made no attempt to kiss her, or talk her into leaving with him instead of her friends. But he did take her telephone number and promised to call her soon, and she spent the next week camped by the phone, waitingyearning for him to call.

He took her for a drive on their first real date. He drove a red Ford. ‘Firm’s car,’ he explained, with a wry smile she never quite understood. Then gently, but with an intensity which kept her on the edge of her seat with breathless anticipation, he made her talk about herself. About her family, her friends. Her likes and dislikes, and her ambitions to take art at college with a view to going into advertising. He frowned at that, then quietly asked her how old she was. Unable to lie, she flushed guiltily and told him the truth. His frown deepened, and he was rather quiet after that while she chewed on her bottom lip, knowing achingly that she’d blown it. Which seemed to be confirmed when he took her back home and just murmured an absent goodnight as she got out of the car. She’d been devastated. For several days she’d barely eaten, could not sleep, and was in dire danger of wasting away by the time he called her again a week later.

He took her to the cinema that night, sitting beside her in the darkness staring at the big screen while she did the same, only without seeing a single thing, her attention fixed exclusively on his closeness, the subtle tangy smell of him, his hard thigh mere inches away from her own, his shoulder brushing against hers. Dry-mouthed, tense, and terrified of making a single move in case she blew it a second time, she therefore actually cried out when he reached over and picked up one of her hands. His expression was grave as he gently prised her fingers out of the white-knuckled clench she had them in. ‘Relax,’ he murmured. ‘I’m not going to bite you.’

The trouble was, she’d wanted him to bite. Even then, as naive as they came and with no real idea of what it meant to be with a man, she had wanted him with a desperation which must have shown in her face, because he muttered something and tightened his grip on her hand, holding it trapped in his own while he forced his own attention back to the film. That night he kissed her hard and hungrily, the power of it taking her to the edge of fear before he drew angrily away and made her get out of the car.

The next time he took her out it was to a quiet restaurant, where his eyes lingered broodingly on her through the meal while he told her about himself. About his job as a salesman for a big computer firm which, by the nature of the job, meant he travelled all over the country touting for new business and could mean his being out of the area for weeks on end sometimes. He told her of his ambition to own his own company one day. How he dabbled in stocks and shares with his commission and lived on a shoe-string to do it. He spoke levelly and softly so that she had to lean forward a little to catch his words, and all the time his eyes never left her face, not just brooding, but seeming to consume her, so by the time he drove her home that night she was in danger of exploding at the sexual tension he had developed around them both. Yet still it was just the one hungry kiss before he was sending her into the house and driving away. It went like that for perhaps half a dozen more dates before eventually, inevitably, she supposed, his control snapped and, instead of taking her to the cinema as they had planned, he took her to his flat.

After that, they rarely went anywhere else. Being alone together, making love together, became the most important thing in her life. Daniel became the most important thing in her life, over her A-levels, over her ambitions, over the disapproval her parents made no bones about voicing but which made no difference to the way she felt.

Three months later—and after he had been away in London for almost two weeks—she had been waiting for him at his flat door when he returned.

‘What are you doing here?’ he asked, and it was only now, almost seven years later, that she realised he had been far from pleased to find her there. His face had been tired and tense—just as it had looked over these last few months, she thought, on another pained realisation.

‘I had to see you,’ she’d explained, slipping her hand trustingly into his as he walked into the flat. Inevitably they had made love, then she made some coffee while he showered and they drank in silence, he lounging in a lumpy old easy-chair wearing only his terry bathrobe, she curled at his feet between his parted knees as she always was.

It was then she had told him she was pregnant. He hadn’t moved or said anything, and she had not looked at him. His hand had stroked absently at her hair and her cheek rested comfortably on his thigh.

After a while, he had sighed, long and heavy, then bent to lift her on to his lap. She had curled into him there, too. Like a child, she thought now. As Kate does when she goes to her daddy for love and comfort.

‘How sure are you?’ he had asked then.

‘Very sure,’ she had answered, snuggling closer because he was the axis her whole world turned upon. ‘I bought one of those pregnancy test things when I missed my period this month. It showed positive. Do you think there could be a mistake?’ she had asked guilelessly then. ‘Shall I go and get a proper test from the doctor before we decide what to do?’

‘No.’ He had rejected that idea. ‘So, you’re only just pregnant. I wonder how that happened?’ he had pondered thoughtfully.

That made her chuckle. ‘Your fault,’ she had reminded him. ‘You’re supposed to take care of all that.’

‘So I was and so it is,’ he had conceded. ‘Well, at least we have time to get married without the whole town knowing why we’re having to do it.’

And that had been it. The decision made as, really, she had expected it to be. With Daniel making all the arrangements, shielding her from any unpleasantness, handling her parents and their natural hurt and disappointment in her.

Again, it was only now, seven years later, that she took the words he had spoken and looked at them properly. ‘We have time to get married without the whole town knowing why we’re having to do it’ he had said. And it hit her for the first time that Daniel would not have married her otherwise.

She had trapped him. With her youth, her innocence, with her childlike trust and blind adoration. Daniel had married her because he felt he had to.

Love had never come into it.

The sound of a key turning in the front door lock brought her jolting back to the present, and she turned, feeling oddly calm, yet lead-weighted, to glance at the brass carriage-clock sitting on the sideboard. It was only eight-thirty. Daniel had not been due home for hours yet. A business dinner, he’d called it. Now she bitterly mocked that excuse as she went to stand by the open sitting-room door.

His back was towards her. She could see the tension in him, in his neck muscles and in the stiffness of his shoulders beneath the padding of his black overcoat.

He turned slowly to send her a brief glance. She looked at his face, saw the lines of strain etched there, the greyish pallor. He moved his gaze to where the phone still lay off its rest and went over to it, putting his black leather briefcase down on the floor before picking up the receiver. His hand was trembling as he settled it back on its rest.

Mandy must have called him. She would have panicked when Rachel refused to answer the phone, and rung Daniel to tell him what she had done. Rachel would have liked to have listened in to that conversation, she decided. The cut and parry of confession, accusation, condemnation and defence.

He looked back at her through eyes heavily hooded by thick dark lashes, and she let him have his moment’s private communion as he ran that gaze over the mess she must look. Then, without a word, she turned and went back into the sitting-room.

He was guilty. It was written all over him. Guilty as sin.

CHAPTER TWO

SEVERAL minutes passed by before he joined her. Minutes he needed, to compose himself for what was to come, while she sat patiently waiting for him.

Strangely, she felt incredibly calm. Disconnected almost. Her heart was pumping quite steadily, and her hands lay relaxed on her lap.

He came in—minus his overcoat and jacket, his tie loosened around his neck and the top few buttons of his crisp white shirt tugged undone. He didn’t glance at her but made straight for the drinks cabinet where his usual bottle of good whisky waited for him.

‘Want one?’ he asked.

She shook her head. He must have sensed her refusal because he didn’t repeat the enquiry, nor did he look at her. He poured himself a large measure, then came to drop down in the chair opposite her.

He took a large gulp at the spirit. ‘Loyal friend you’ve got,’ was his opening gambit.

Loyal husband, she countered, but didn’t bother saying it.

His eyes were closed. He had not looked directly at her once since coming into the room. His long legs were stretched out in front of him, whisky glass held loosely between both sets of fingers—long, strong fingers, with blunted nails kept beautifully clean. Like the rest of him, she supposed: long-limbed, strong-bodied and always kept scrupulously clean. Good suits, shoes, hand-made shirts and expensive silk ties. His face was paler than usual, strain finely etched into his lean bones, but it was still a very attractive face, with clean-cut squared-off lines to complement the chiselled shape of his nose and slim, determined mouth. Thirty-one now—going on thirtytwo—he had always been essentially a masculine kind of man, but through the years other facets of his character had begun to write themselves into his features: an inner strength which perhaps always came with maturity, confidence, a knowledge of self-worth. The signs of power and an ability to wield it efficiently all had a place in his face now—nothing you could actually point to and say, You have that because you’re successful and know it, but just a general air about the man, which placed him up there among the special set.

And controlled, she realised now. Daniel had always possessed an impressive depth of self-control, rarely lost his temper, rarely became irritated when things did not quite go his way. He had this rare ability to look at a problem and put aside its negative sides to deal only with the positive.

Which was probably what he was doing nowsearching through the debris of what one phone call had done to his marriage and looking for the positive aspects he could sift out from it.

That, she supposed, epitomised Daniel Masterson, head of Master Holdings, an organisation which had over the last few years grown at a phenomenal pace, gobbling up smaller companies then spitting them out again as better, far more commercially profitable appendages to their new father company.

And he had done it all on his own, too. Built his miniempire by maintaining that fine balance between success and disaster without once placing his family and what he had got for them at risk. He had surrounded her with luxury, cherished her almost—as a man would a possession he had a sentimental attachment to.

‘What now?’ he asked suddenly, lifting those darkly fringed eyelids to reveal the dove-grey beauty of his eyes to her.

So, he wasn’t going to try denying it. Something inside her quivered desperately for expression, but she squashed it down. ‘You tell me,’ she shrugged, still with that amazingly calm exterior.

Mandy must have told him exactly what she’d done. She must have worried herself sick afterwards that the silly blind Rachel had gone and done something stupid, like hanged herself or taken a bottle of pills. How novel, she thought. How very dramatic. Poor Mandy, she mused, without an ounce of sympathy, she must have been really alarmed to dare confess to Daniel of all people!

‘She’s a bitch!’ Daniel ground out suddenly, his own thoughts obviously not that far away from Rachel’s own. He lurched forward in his chair, hands tightening around the whisky glass. Face clenched too. That tell-tale nerve jumping in his jaw. Elbows pressing into his knees as he glared furiously at the carpet between his spread feet. ‘If she hadn’t stuck her twisted nose in, you could have been spared all of this! It was over!’ he shot out thickly. ‘And if she’d only kept her big mouth shut she would have seen it was over! The bitch has always had it in for me. She’s been waiting—waiting for me to slip up so she could get her claws into me! But I never thought she’d sink so low as to do it through you!’

That’s right, thought Rachel. Blame Mandy. Blame everything and anything so long as it is not yourself.

‘Say something, for God’s sake!’ he ground out, making her blink, because Daniel rarely raised his voice to her like that. And she realised that she had been sitting here just staring blankly at him but not really seeing him. Her eyes felt stuck, fixed in a permanent stare which refused to focus properly—like her emotions—locked on hold until something or someone hit the right button to set them free. She hoped it didn’t happen. She had an idea she might fall apart when that happened.

It must feel like this, she pondered flatly, when someone you love dearly dies.

‘I want a divorce,’ she heard herself say, and was as surprised by the statement as Daniel was, because the idea of divorce hadn’t so much as entered her head before she’d said it. ‘You can get out. I’ll keep the house and the children. You can easily afford to support us.’ Another shrug, and she was amazed at her own calmness when she knew she should really be screeching at him like a fishwife.

‘Don’t be damned stupid!’ he ground out. ‘That’s no damned answer and you know it.’

‘Don’t shout,’ she censured. ‘You’ll wake the children.’

That seemed to do it, lift the top right off his self-control, and he surged to his feet. The glass was slapped down on the mantel top, whisky slopping over the side to splash on to white marble.

He tried to glare at her but could not hold her steady gaze long enough to gain the upper hand, so he threw himself away instead, his shoulders hunching in the white shirt so that the material became stretched taut across his back, while his hands were thrust angrily into his trouser pockets.

‘Look…’ he said after a moment, struggling to get hold of himself. ‘It wasn’t what you think—what that bitch made it out to be! It was just—’ he swallowed tensely ‘—a flash in the pan thing—over before it really began!’ He slashed violently at the air with his hand, and Rachel thought, Poor Lydia, guillotined just like that. ‘I was under pressure at work. The Harvey takeover was threatening to kill everything I had worked for.’ He reached out for his glass of whisky, gulping at the contents like a man with a severe thirst. ‘I found I had to work night and day just to keep one step ahead of them. You were still recovering from the bad time you’d had carrying Michael, and I seemed to be spending more time with her than with you. Then the twins got measles—you wouldn’t even let me employ a nurse to help you!’ he flung at her in accusation. ‘So you looked worn out most of the time, and I was worried about you, the sick twins, Michael who refused to sleep more than half an hour at a time, work was getting on top of me and it seemed easier on you if I made myself scarce here, kept my problems confined to the office…’ He was talking about a period several months ago when she had believed that everything that could go wrong had gone wrong. She had never so much as considered adding her husband taking up with another woman to her list of problems. It had never entered her head!

‘Rachel…’ he murmured huskily. ‘I never meant to do it. I never even wanted to do it! But she was there when I needed someone and you were not, and I just—’

‘Oh—do shut up!’

Nausea hit, and she had to thrust her fist into her mouth to stop herself being sick all over their beautiful Wilton carpet. She crawled to her feet, swaying, sending him a look of hostile warning when he instinctively reached out to steady her, and he flinched away, going grey. She stumbled over to the drinks cabinet and, with her hands shaking violently, poured herself some of his whisky. She hated the stuff, but at that moment felt a dire need to feel its burning vapours shoot through her blood.

He was standing there just watching her, his pose one of violent helplessness as he watched her throw the drink to the back of her throat then stand with her head flung back, eyes closed, while she fought to maintain some control over herself.

But it was all beginning to happen now. Her body was becoming racked by a whole sea of tearing emotions. Her heart was stammering out of rhythm; she wanted to suck in some deep steadying breaths of air but found her lungs unwilling to comply. They were locked up along with the torment. Stomach muscles, ribs, all were paralysed by reaction, while her brain was the opposite, opening up and letting out all the suppressed pain and anguish, letting it taunt her, sniggering and sneering at her until she thought she would pass out.

‘It’s over, Rachel!’ he repeated hoarsely, appealing to her in a voice she had never heard before. ‘For God’s sake, it’s over!’

‘And when was it over?’ Tipping her head upright, she shrivelled him with a look. ‘When my body became yours to indulge yourself in once again? Poor Lydia,’ she drawled, the whisky having the desired effect and numbing her from the neck down. ‘I wonder which one of us you played for the bigger fool?’

He shook his head, refusing to get into that one. ‘It happened,’ he stated grimly, raking a shaky hand through his neat dark hair. ‘I wish it hadn’t, but I can’t turn back the clock, no matter how much I want to. If it helps any, I’ll admit to feeling utterly ashamed of myself. But as God is my witness,’ he added huskily, ‘I give you my word that it will never happen again.’

‘Until the next time,’ she muttered, and was suddenly moving to get out of the room before all the ugly feelings working inside her overflowed in a storm of bitter bile.

‘No!’ He made a grab for her arm, his fingers biting into her flesh as he pulled her roughly against him, hugging her close while she fought to be free. ‘We have to talk this through!’ he pleaded thickly. ‘Please, I know you’re hurting but we need—’

‘How many times?’ she threw at him, grinding out the words on a complete loss of control. ‘How many times did you come home with the scent of her still clinging to your skin? How many times did you have to f-force yourself to make love to me after losing yourself in her!’

‘No, no no!’ he groaned, his arms like steel around her while she struggled angrily to be free. ‘No, Rachel! Never! I never let it get that far!’ Her huff of scornful disbelief sent him white. ‘I love you, Rachel,’ he stated hoarsely. ‘I love you!’

For some reason that strangled declaration tipped her right over the edge and, on a totally alien burst of violence, she brought her hand up and hit him right across his unfaithful face.

It rocked him—enough to make him let go of her. Rachel stepped back out of reach, her eyes at that moment revealing a murderous kind of hatred that no one who knew her would ever have believed her capable of. And Daniel stood stock-still, digesting the full horror of that look, and was silent.

Without another word she turned and left the room. At the door to their bedroom she paused, then moved away, towards Michael’s room.

The child didn’t stir when she entered. Rachel walked over to him, leaned gently on the side of the cot and just stared blindly down at her younger son, wondering if the intolerable ache inside her could actually make her physically ill.

Then the dam burst, and on a sob she only just managed to contain while she stumbled over to the single bed which would be Michael’s when he grew older, she crawled beneath the Paddington Bear duvet to muffle the sounds of her wretched sobs, sobs which went on and on until she slid into a dark dull sleep.

Morning came with the gurgling of Michael, awake but content at the moment to kick playfully in his cot. And it took Rachel several moments to remember why she was sleeping in his room rather than in her own bed with Daniel.

There was a single crashing feeling inside her as memory returned, then she felt herself go calm again, last night’s storm of weeping seeming to have emptied her clean of everything.

She got up, grimacing when she realised she was still wearing the same clothes she’d had on when Mandy called. A hand went to her head, finding the elastic band still partly holding a clump of hair in a tangle of silky knots. She tugged it out then shook her long tresses free. She looked a mess, felt a mess—she hadn’t even bothered removing her trainers! She did that now, sitting down on the bed to pull the hot and uncomfortable shoes from her feet just as the baby noticed her and let out a delighted shriek.

She went to bend over his cot, his welcoming smile a balm to her aching heart. And for a while she just immersed herself in enjoying him, tickling his tummy and murmuring all those little nothings mothers shared with their babies, which only babies and mothers understood.

This was hers, she thought wretchedly. No matter what else life wanted to take from her, it could never take away the love of her children.

This, she declared silently, is mine.

He was soaking wet, and she stripped him before attempting to lift him from his cot. Michael was always lively in the mornings, chirping away to himself, bouncing up and down against her while she carried him through to the small bathroom to run the few inches of bath water needed to freshen him up for the day.

She took him, wrapped snugly in a towel, back to his room to dress him. Normally she would then take him downstairs for his breakfast without bothering to get dressed herself. That usually waited until they were all out of the way—at work or at school—but there was no way she could greet the twins looking as she did. They were just too sharp not to wonder out loud why she was still wearing the same clothes she’d had on the night before.

But it took a great gathering together of her courage to enter the room where she knew Daniel would only just be stirring from sleep. She let herself in quietly, searching the gloom for a glimpse of his lean bulk huddled beneath the duvet.

He wasn’t there, and it was then that she heard the tell-tale sounds coming from the bathroom. He appeared a moment later, already dressed in a clean white shirt and the trousers of his iron-grey suit. He saw her almost at once and came to an abrupt halt.

In all the years of knowing him, she had never felt so vulnerable in his presence, or so aware of her tumbled appearance: her puffy eyes, made so by too much weeping, her tousled hair hanging limp and untidy around her pale face.

Nor so aware of him: his height, the length of his long, straight body and the tightness of its superbly honed muscles. Wide chest, flat stomach, narrow hips, long powerful legs with…

No. Dry-mouthed, she flicked her gaze warily up to clash with his.

He looked tired, as though he hadn’t slept much. He would have been thinking, working things out, trying to find the right solution to an impossible situation. He was good at that—making a success out of a disaster. It was the most fundamental source of his outstanding business success.

His gaze lingered on her face, his own a defensive mask. He had just shaved; his stubborn chin looked clean and shiny-smooth. Rachel caught the familiar scent of his aftershave, and felt her senses stir in response to it. Sexual magnetism held no boundaries, she acknowledged bitterly. Even now, while she was hating and despising him, she was disturbingly aware of him as the man she had loved for so long and so blindly.

Shifting jerkily, she moved over to the bed, lifting a knee on to the soft mattress so that she could lay Michael in the middle. It was only then that she realised that the bed had not been slept in, and the only evidence that Daniel had used it at all was in the imprint of his body on the smooth peach duvet.

Michael was kicking madly, trying to catch his father’s attention—attention that was firmly fixed on Rachel. The baby let out a frustrated cry, going red in the face in his effort to pull himself into a sitting position, and Rachel smiled instinctively at his efforts, capturing a waving hand and feeling the instant tug as the child tried to use it for leverage.

Daniel came over to the bed, stretching out to recline on the other side of their son and automatically reaching for the other small hand, which was all Michael needed to lever himself into a sitting position.

‘Da!’ he said triumphantly, twisting free of both of them so that he could pat his satisfaction on the soft duvet.

Rachel kept her eyes firmly on her son while she felt the searing appeal in Daniel’s gaze sting into her pale cheeks. ‘Rachel please look at me.’ It was a gruff plea that twisted at something wretched inside her, but one she refused to comply with, shaking her head.

‘No,’ she whispered, keeping her voice level with effort, and Daniel sighed heavily, then reached for Michael, lifting him to kiss the soft baby cheek before placing him further up the bed.

Alerted, Rachel moved to get up, but Daniel was too quick for her, his hand circling her wrist and pulling gently until he had hauled her across the small gap separating them, then enclosing her in the warm strength of his arms.

It’s not fair! she thought piteously as her insides dipped and dived with a need to immerse herself in the comfort he was offering her. Her chest became tight, then began to throb with the need to weep, and she let free a constricted gulp in an effort to stop the flood.

‘Don’t,’ he murmured unsteadily.

It had been the wrong thing to say, because the instant he showed her tenderness her control went haywire and she was sobbing deeply into his shoulder. He tightened his arms around her, and lowered his head on to hers. ‘Sorry,’ he kept saying, over and over. ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry…’

But it wasn’t enough, was it? It would never be enough. He had killed everything. Love, faith, trust, respect—all gone, and sorry would never bring them back to life again.

‘I’m all right now,’ she mumbled, making the monumental effort to pull herself together and draw away from him.

But his hold tightened. ‘I know I’ve hurt you unbearably, Rachel,’ he murmured, trying to keep a rein on his own distress. She could feel the tension in his chest, in the erratic thump of his heart. ‘But don’t make any rash decisions while you’re in such an…’ Emotional state, she guessed he was going to say, but he stopped himself. ‘We have everything going for us if you’ll just give it another chance. Don’t throw it all away because of one stupid mistake on my part. You can’t throw it all away!’ he insisted thickly.

‘I didn’t do the throwing away,’ she countered, and this time, when she pulled, he let her go, his eyes dark and bleak as he watched her get up from the bed to begin moving around the room searching out fresh clothes, an electric current of suppressed emotion following her as she went from wardrobe to drawers then back again without really being aware of what she was choosing to wear.

All those years of blind trust she had given him, years of quiet understanding and acceptance of his deep personal need to achieve his ambitions. Through all those years she had stayed at home like some pampered pet dog and, so long as he gave her frequent pats of affection, fed the few basic needs she had, like food to eat and water to drink and the occasional trip out in the evening, she had been quite content with her lot.

What a pathetic creature you are! she jeered at herself now. What an utter bore!

Michael let out a wail, and they both started. He wanted his breakfast, and the playful game he had been having with himself had now turned into a demand for some attention.

Rachel stood hovering in the middle of the room, with her clean clothes clutched in her hands while her bemused mind grappled with the problem of what she should do next. Get dressed first or see to Michael first. A simple choice, but she couldn’t seem to make it.

It was, in the end, Daniel who lifted the baby into his arms and walked towards the bedroom door. ‘I’ll see to him,’ he said. ‘Take your time. It’s still quite early.’ He let himself out, and Rachel literally sagged beneath the strain of it all.

Breakfast was awful. She seemed intent on flying off the handle at the slightest provocation: from Kate for talking too much, Sam for not putting enough milk on his Weetabix so the biscuits congealed in his dish like two cement bricks which he proceeded to hack at with zeal. She put too much coffee in the filter bag so that it tasted so bitter it was barely drinkable. In the end, angry with herself for over-reacting to everything, frustrated with her inability to cope with her own distraught emotions, she turned on Sam, remembering that he had left his computer out the night before with his selection of games spread all over the floor. By the time she’d finished Sam was stiff and pale, Kate was appalled, Michael silenced and Daniel…Well, Daniel just looked grim. The rest of the morning routine went off in total silence. The children looking openly relieved when Daniel eventually sent them off to their rooms to collect their school things.

‘There was absolutely no reason for you to let fly at Sam like that!’ Daniel gritted as soon as there was only Michael left to listen. ‘You know as well as I do that he’s usually the tidiest one of us all! You’ll have all three of them a bag of nerves if you don’t watch out,’ he warned. ‘They’re good kids. Well-behaved kids for most of the time. I won’t let you take it out on them because you’re angry with me!’

She whirled on him. ‘And since when are you around enough to know how they behave?’ she threw at him, seeing to her deep and bitter satisfaction that he stiffened as the thrust went home. ‘You see them at breakfast, but only from behind your precious Financial Times! You don’t even know you have three children most of the time! Y-You love them like you 1-love that…Lowry painting you bought—when you remember you’ve got them, that is. So don’t…don’t you dare start telling me how to bring up my children when as a father you’re damned useless!’

What was happening to her? she wondered as she took a jerky step back and Daniel lurched angrily to his feet, glowering at her across the kitchen table and looking fit to hit her. I’m cracking up! she realised dizzily. I’m going to shatter into a million tiny pieces and I don’t know if I can stop it!

‘You can accuse me of many things, Rachel,’ Daniel was murmuring roughly. ‘And most of them I probably deserve. But you cannot accuse me of not loving our children!’

‘Really?’ she questioned in sarcastic scorn. ‘You only married me in the first place because you got me pregnant with the twins! And even little Michael was a mistake you took your time coming to terms with—!’

His fist slamming down on the table-top stopped her in mid-flow, and her eyelashes flickered nervously as she watched him swing his long body around the table, shifting the heavy pine a good foot off its usual setting when his thigh caught the corner in his haste to reach her. The violence in the air was tangible. Rachel could taste it on her suddenly dry lips as he approached her with his hands outstretched as if he intended throttling her.

As the very last second he changed his mind and grabbed her shoulders instead. It cost him an effort; she could feel him trembling with the need to choke the bitterness right out of her even as he suppressed the urge. ‘He’s too young to understand the implications of what you’ve just said,’ he rasped out harshly, nodding towards a fascinated Michael. ‘But if the twins overheard you, if you’ve given them any reason at all to think I don’t love them, I’ll…’

He didn’t finish—didn’t need to. Rachel knew exactly what he was threatening. He glared at her for a moment longer, then unclipped his hands from her and turned to walk out of the room.

Rachel gulped in a deep breath of air and it was only as she did so that she realised she had stopped breathing altogether. It was pure instinctive need for comfort that made her pick Michael up and cuddle him close.

She felt ashamed of herself, and angry, too, because in lashing out wildly at Daniel like that she had given him the right to attack her when, until that moment, she’d had everything stacked her way.

CHAPTER THREE

IT WAS the weekend before the twins really began to notice that things weren’t quite as they were used to seeing them. And as usual it was the sharp-eyed and more outspoken Kate who wanted to know the reason why.

‘Why are you sleeping in Michael’s room, Mummy?’ she demanded on Sunday morning while they all lingered around the breakfast table, as was their habit on the one day they had to be lazy in the morning.

They had only discovered her new sleeping arrangements because Michael had slept later this morning and, stupidly, Rachel had overslept along with him. Several nights of restless turning in the small bed while her mind tormented her with everything painful and self-pitying it could throw at her had left her exhausted, and last night when she had crawled beneath the Paddington Bear duvet she had achieved—to her relief—an instant blackout, which remained deep and dreamless right up until Sammy came to bounce on her to wake her up.

She still felt haggard, because what the sleep had made up for in hours, it had not made up for in spiritual relief. Wherever her dreams had gone off to last night, they had not eased her aching heart, or her anger, or the waves of bitterness and the soul-crushing self-abhorrence she was experiencing at the way she was letting the whole thing just drag on without doing something about it. Daniel had advised her to make no decisions until she was feeling less emotional and, like the pathetic creature she was, she had used that advice as an excuse to fall into a state of limbo where life had taken on colourless shapes of muted greys and nothing came into full focus any more.

Daniel looked no better, the same strain pulling at the clean-cut lines of his face too. He had been home by six-thirty every night since their cosy world had exploded around them. She suspected that the reason for this was her criticism of him as a father rather than a means to prove to her that his affair was over. She knew she’d hit him on the raw there.

So now he came home early enough to take over the bathing and putting to bed of the children while Rachel prepared their dinner. And on the surface everything appeared perfectly normal, as they both made an effort to hide their colossal problems from their children.

Until quietness engulfed the house—then they would eat their prepared meal in stiff silence, Daniel’s few attempts at conversation quashed by her refusal to take him up on them. So he would disappear into his study as soon as he possibly could, and she would clear the remnants of a poorly eaten meal, feed her bleeding emotions on unreserved bouts of self-pity, then go to bed in Michael’s room, feeling lonelier and more depressed as the days went by.

She was still labouring beneath the weight of a nullifying shock. She could acknowledge that even as she continued in her zombie-like existence. And Daniel just watched, grim-faced and silent, waiting, she knew, for the moment when she would crack wide apart.

Now she had her daughter’s curious enquiry to deal with, and as the truth flooded into her mind and sent what vestige of colour she had left fleeing from her face, she managed an acceptable reply. ‘Michael is teething again.’

The corner of Daniel’s Sunday paper twitched, and Rachel knew he was listening, maybe even watching her over the top of that twitched corner. She didn’t glance his way to find out. She didn’t really care what he was doing.

Blonde-haired, blue-eyed, the uncanny image of her mother, Kate nodded understandingly. Michael’s teeth had been the scourge of their nights’ rest before— although Rachel had not so much as considered swapping beds to be closer to him then. But that did not seem to occur to Kate, who was already turning her attention to her darling daddy.

‘I bet you miss having Mummy to cuddle, Daddy,’ she remarked, getting down from her chair to go and climb on to Daniel’s knee, her long hair flying as she blithely shoved his newspaper aside and made herself comfortable in those big, infinitely secure arms, with the certain knowledge that she was welcome. ‘If you’d just told me,’ she murmured, with typical Kate guile, ‘I would have come and cuddled you instead.’

Tension leaped to life, unspoken words and acid replies flying about the room without being captured.

‘That’s nice of you, princess.’ Daniel folded his paper away so that he could give his adored daughter his full attention. ‘But I think I can manage for a little while longer without feeling completely rejected.’

If that last remark had been meant as a message to Rachel, she ignored it, and sat there sipping at her coffee without revealing the effort it cost her to do it.

He was sitting there dressed only in his blue towelling robe, and the cluster of dark hair at his chest curled upwards from between the gaping lapels. He dropped a kiss on his daughter’s silky cheek, his smile so openly loving that Rachel felt her stomach tighten then sink, as jealousy, like nothing she had ever experienced before, shot through her, forcing her abruptly to her feet, appalled by what was going on inside her!

Jealous of your own daughter! she castigated herself. How bitter and twisted can you get?

Sheer desperation made her start gathering pots together. Daniel’s watchful gaze lifted to her face, and she couldn’t stop herself from looking back at him. Something must have shown in the bitter blue glint of her eyes, because his own narrowed speculatively before she spun away and deliberately ruined the relaxed atmosphere by banging around the kitchen, clearing up.

She became even more embittered when her tactics to shift them all didn’t work. In fact they simply ignored her as Sam was drawn into conversation with Kate and Daniel, and even Michael, when he insisted on coming out of his high-chair, was promptly placed on Daniel’s spare knee where he chattered blithely away to them all in his usual gibberish.

She couldn’t stand it. Something in the cosy little scene gnawed into her ragged nerves. She felt left out, alienated by her inability to go over there and join in as she would normally have done. Lydia stood in her way like some huge unscalable wall, blocking her off from her family, from the love and affection she had always taken for granted as her right.

Giving up on clearing up before she broke something, she turned and left the room with a mumbled, ‘I’m going to make the beds,’ knowing no one heard her, and feeling even more cast out.

She was standing in the middle of their bedroom, just staring blankly into space, when Daniel came in. With a nervy jerk she moved off towards the en suite bathroom, trying to look as if that had been where she was making for when he opened the door. When she came out again Daniel was still there, standing at the window with his hands thrust into the deep pockets of his robe. He was big and lean and looked so damned appealing that she wanted to throw something at him— anything to ease this awful ache she was suffering inside.

Forcing herself to ignore him, she began tidying things away. She wanted to make his bed but was now avoiding so much as looking at it while he was present. It had taken on the proportions of a monster since Mandy’s call, and each morning she’d had to force herself to come in here to fluff up the pillows and shake out the duvet. It smelled of Daniel—that clean male smell that was uniquely his. It ignited senses she would far rather remained dormant, especially since she wanted to believe he had killed them. But, if anything, her awareness of anything purporting to Daniel seemed to have been intensified rather than dulled. She had found betrayal fed a hateful awareness inside her, and anger fed desire, and pain fed her ability to torment herself with all those feelings she had previously taken for granted.

He turned slightly, watching her in silence as she moved around the room. After a while, when the throbbing silence threatened to choke the very atmosphere in the room, he came to stand in front of her, blocking her path. ‘Rachel…’ he said gently, willing her to look at him while she was equally determined not to. She looked at the floor between them instead. ‘You have remembered I’m in Birmingham all next week?’

No, she had not remembered. But she did so now. Anger at his daring to put his business first, while his private life was in crisis, took the form of ice-cold efficiency. ‘What shall I pack?’ Was Lydia going? Was it to be a nice cosy double room for two for a week, with no hostile atmosphere to spoil their fun?

Her heart slammed against her breast and she had to fight not to take a step back from him. It would be like conceding some small if obscure point to him to back away, so she stood stiffly, eyes lowered, face a wretched blank.

Physically, it was the closest they’d been to each other since the night the bomb fell on her, and she was tingling all over with that bitter sense of awareness of him.

‘Anything,’ he dismissed impatiently. She had always packed his case for him when he went off on one of his trips—lovingly folding freshly laundered shirts and carefully counted socks, underwear, handkerchiefs, ties, several suits to wear. And even now, while she silently prayed for him to move out of her way so that she could put a safer distance between them, and her mood wanted to tell him to pack his own bloody case, she was making a mental list of everything he usually required.

Conditioned you are, Rachel! she scoffed at herself. Expertly programmed.

He didn’t move, and the tension between them became intolerable. ‘Will you be all right?’ he asked at last, as though the question was a reluctant one, one he did not want to voice in case she used it as an excuse to attack him. He had been very careful this week to give her nothing which could start the avalanche. ‘I…I could get my mother to come and stay if you feel the need for company or—’

‘And why should I be in need of company?’ She flashed him a bitter look. ‘I’ve managed before when you’ve been away and I shall manage this time, no doubt, without the need of a baby-sitter.’

He took the taunt about her being one of his helpless children with a tightening of his jaw but without taking her up on it. ‘I was not questioning your ability to cope,’ he said quietly. ‘But you look—tired. And I just wondered if—with everything—you would rather not be on your own right now, that’s all.’

Tired, she repeated inside her head. She didn’t just look tired, she looked haggard! ‘Is your secretary going with you?’ Damn, she hadn’t meant to ask that question. In fact, she had been determined not to so much as breathe it!

‘Yes, but—’

‘Then I won’t have to concern myself about your comfort, will I?’

‘Rachel,’ he sighed, ‘Lydia isn’t—’

‘I don’t want to know.’ She pushed by him, preferring to let her body brush against his than to stand here any longer enduring this kind of conversation.

‘Why did you ask the damned question, then?’ he barked, then made a concerted effort to control himself again. ‘Rachel, we have to talk about this!’

She was making the bed now, gritting her teeth and getting on with the job because it was the only thing left in the room to do.

‘It can’t go on any longer.’ He appealed for common sense. ‘You must see that! Kate has noticed, which means she’ll be on the alert from now on, watching, calculating how long you stay in Michael’s room when—’

‘And we must not upset your darling Kate, must we?’ she flashed, then almost cried out in horror at herself. How could she be feeling jealous of her own child! Blindly, horribly jealous of that poor sweet child who possessed her father’s love by right!

‘Uncalled for, Rachel,’ Daniel grimly rebuked, and she agreed, sickeningly so.

The bed was made. Now she could get out of…

‘Let me just explain about Lydia,’ Daniel said carefully. ‘She isn’t—’

‘Are you planning on being here for the rest of the day?’

That threw him. It shut him up about his precious Lydia, too. ‘Yes.’ He frowned in puzzlement. ‘Why?’

‘Because I want to go out, and if you’re here it saves me having to ask your mother to come and mind the children.’ Why she had said that, Rachel had no idea. It had not been a conscious decision to go anywhere. But, once said, she found the idea of being on her own for a while—completely on her own—something that was suddenly vital to her sanity.

She made a dive for the wardrobe, trembling in her sudden urgency to get out of the house and away from them all. She dragged out the first thing that came to hand—her rainproof anorak. Daniel seemed momentarily stunned, and just stood there staring at her for the time it took her to shrug the coat on.

Then he sprang to life. ‘If you want to go out somewhere, Rachel, you only had to say so!’

The zip was being stubborn and she stood, head bent, grappling with it. It was so hot in here today! Struggling with the zip was making her hot. Was it possible to suffocate in one’s emotions? she wondered frantically. Because that was what she felt she was doing. People closing her in, walls…feelings.

‘Give me ten minutes while I get dressed myself, then we’ll all go out together…’

Shoes! She hadn’t put on any shoes! On another jerk, she was crouching on the floor and scrabbling around in the bottom of her wardrobe while Daniel seemed glued to the spot in stunned confusion.

She found her black leather boots and sat down on the carpet to pull them on, tucking the bottoms of her narrow jeans inside with fingers that shook.

‘Rachel…don’t do this!’ It must have hit him then that she really meant to go out alone because his voice was rough and urgent. ‘You’ve never gone out without us before,’ he rasped. ‘Wait until we can all…’

She was vaguely listening to him, though only from behind a wall of dark self-absorption. But one small part of what he had said got through. Daniel was right, and she never did go anywhere without one or all of them accompanying her! If it wasn’t Daniel, then it was the children—or his mother! All her adult life she had lived beneath the protective wing of others. Her parents first, her more outward-going friends, Daniel! Mostly Daniel.

She was almost twenty-five years old, for God’s sake! And here she was, a dowdy little housewife with three children and a husband who…

‘I’m going alone!’ she raked at him. ‘It won’t hurt you to have the children to yourself for once!’

‘I never said it would!’ he sighed impatiently. ‘But Rachel, you’ve never—’

‘Exactly!’ Jumping up she spun away from him when he made a grab for her, concern raking at his taut face. ‘While you’ve been busy making your fortune, chasing your personal rainbows and having your affairs,’ she threw at him bitterly, ‘I’ve been quietly sitting here in this damned house—stagnating!’

‘Don’t be stupid!’ He made another lunge for her wrist and caught it this time. ‘This is ridiculous. You’re behaving like a child! It—’

‘But that’s just it, Daniel, don’t you see?’ she cried, appealing for his understanding even while rebellion ran crazily through her veins. ‘That is exactly what I am— a child! A very spoiled, very overprotected child! I never grew up because I’ve never been given the chance to grow up! I was seventeen when I married you!’ she choked out wretchedly. ‘Still at school! And, before you came along, my parents used to wrap me in cotton wool! My God, what a shock it must have been to them when they discovered their sweet little innocent daughter had been sleeping with the big bad wolf without them knowing it!’

He laughed; she knew he couldn’t help it because her description of himself was so damned accurate that it was either laugh or weep.

‘So, I get pregnant,’ she went on tightly, ‘and swap one set of parents for another set—you and your mother!’

‘Now that’s not true, Rachel,’ Daniel protested. ‘I’ve never looked on you as a child. I—’

‘Liar!’ she declared. ‘You damned hypocritical liar! And you know what makes you a liar, Daniel?’ she demanded shrilly. ‘It’s the way you’re beginning to panic because I want to spend some time on my own—because it could be Kate making the demand by the way you’re reacting!’

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