LITMIR.BIZ

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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,

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