The Marriage Truce. Sara Craven

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СКАЧАТЬ his profile was far too public for her to be able to exercise any kind of selective amnesia where he was concerned, and somehow she had to live with that.

      It was strange, she thought, that she hadn’t run into him in London before now. On dozens of occasions she’d thought she’d glimpsed him on the street, or across busy restaurants, even among the interval crowds at the theatre, and had felt the swift wrench of panic deep in her guts, only to realise, belatedly, that she was running scared of some complete stranger.

      But then wasn’t that what Ross himself had always been? she asked herself with bitter irony. A charming stranger who had murmured words of love to her, slept with her, given her for a few ecstatic weeks the prospect of motherhood, then abandoned her to pursue a casual affair while she was still recovering from the pain and trauma of her loss.

      She sank her teeth into her bottom lip until she tasted blood. That was forbidden territory to her now, and she would not go there.

      She’d persuaded herself that, with Thirza away, Polcarrow would be safe enough. That Ross would not come visiting unless his stepmother was there—had, indeed, not been back since the divorce.

      Only, unpredictable as ever, Thirza had returned …

      And as a result her life had been sent spinning once more into confusion—and fear.

      Although there was no reason for her to be scared of any confrontation, she told herself defiantly. She, after all, had been the innocent party in the collapse of their brief ill-starred marriage. It was Ross who’d been the guilty party—the deceiver—the betrayer.

      He, she thought with sudden savagery, was the one who should be afraid to face her.

      And maybe that was true. Perhaps he was equally disturbed to hear she was in the vicinity. Just as reluctant to undergo their eventual meeting.

      Because, sooner or later, it was bound to happen. Polcarrow was too small a place for them to be able to avoid each other, even for a short time.

      Although Aunt Grace had said he was ill. Too ill, perhaps, to leave Thirza’s house?

      Jenna shook her head, almost derisively. No, she thought. That couldn’t happen. Impossible to imagine Ross as a sick man. To see that strong, lithe body suddenly vulnerable, aware of its own humanity. To hear him forced to acknowledge personal weakness when he didn’t even know the meaning of the words.

      When he had nothing but contempt for people who gave way to their emotions, no matter what the reason.

      No question, either, of him tactfully pretending to be more ill than he was to dodge any possible confrontation.

      Ross, she thought, her mouth twisting, had always erred on the side of brutal candour—as she had such bitter cause to know. No white lies or cover-ups. Just the truth, coldly told. Whatever the cost …

      I should have known that, she told herself. Should have realised that, once the layers of charm, intelligence and sexual charisma were peeled away, I’d find ice at the core.

      I suspected it years ago, when I first met him. How was it I could be more perceptive as a child than a woman?

      Well, she knew the answer to that. As a child, her thinking hadn’t been muddled by the treachery of love—the bewitchment of sexual desire. And yet …

      She’d been just thirteen when Thirza had been widowed and returned to take up residence in the village. And it was only a few months later when her stepson Ross had paid her a first visit.

      He’d been twenty-one then, and had already embarked on his high-flying and successful career as a photojournalist.

      A tall, self-contained young man, black-haired and tanned, with eyes as dark as a moonless night. And as impenetrable.

      Nor was he conventionally handsome. His straight nose was a fraction too long and his eyes too heavy-lidded for that. But the high cheekbones and the firm, sensuous mouth were exquisitely chiselled, and when he smiled Jenna, for one, felt her heart turn over.

      ‘The looks of a fallen angel,’ Aunt Grace had commented privately, her lips pursed. ‘And trouble down to his handmade shoes.’

      But Jenna and Christy hadn’t considered him troublesome at all. From the first moment they’d been open-mouthed at the sight of him, bowled over by the aura of easy confidence and sophistication that clung to him. Starryeyed at this answer to all their burgeoning adolescent dreams, who was even—oh, joy—some kind of distant cousin by marriage. Unable to believe that for all this time they had been barely aware of his existence. But Thirza herself had been hardly more than a name to them either.

      They’d been more than ready for breathless, unequivocal hero-worship—had Ross Grantham shown any sign of wanting their adoration.

      But he hadn’t. He greeted them with a cool civility bordering on indifference, and then appeared oblivious to their existence for the remainder of his stay.

      Even after all this time, and in spite of everything that had happened since, Jenna could still wince at the memory of the lengths they’d gone to in their unavailing attempts to attract his attention.

      Christy, who been reading Jane Austen’s Emma, had bewailed the fact that all her shoes were slip-ons, and she couldn’t stage an encounter by breaking a lace outside Thirza’s cottage.

      Jenna had had notions of persuading one of the amiable hacks they rode at the local stables to bolt with her when Ross was passing, so that he would be obliged to save her.

      But before she’d been able to put this daring plan into action Ross had gone. He’d called briefly at Trevarne House to say goodbye, but the girls had been taken shopping in Truro by Mrs Penloe, so they’d missed him. And he had left no message for them either.

      ‘Beast,’ Christy had said hotly, her pretty face pink with indignation. ‘Well, good riddance to him.’

      Jenna had said nothing, aware only of a curious mixture of emotion churning in the pit of her stomach. Her almost agonised disappointment at his sudden departure had warred with an odd relief that such an unsettling presence had been removed, and her life could resume its usual placid path.

      Except that, in retrospect she could see it never really had. Ross had remained there, a shadow in the corner of her mind, never completely banished, even though it had been seven years before she saw him again, and when they finally met it had been miles away in London.

      He’d been back to Cornwall, of course, during those years. He’d come regularly to visit Thirza—never alone, and rarely bringing the same girl twice, which had set local tongues wagging. But his visits had invariably taken place at times when Christy and Jenna had been away, first at school, then at college, pursuing their respective courses.

      She suspected that this had probably been quite deliberate, because they’d made such pests of themselves the first time around, but Ross had always insisted it was just a coincidence.

      And she’d believed him, just as she’d somehow convinced herself that someone who so clearly liked to play the field could change and become focussed and faithful.

      Because he’d made her think that all that time he’d simply been waiting for the right woman to come into his life. And that she was that woman.

      She’d СКАЧАТЬ