The Ultimate Betrayal. Michelle Reid
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Название: The Ultimate Betrayal
Автор: Michelle Reid
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
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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.
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 СКАЧАТЬ