Lindsay shrugged with a casualness she was far from feeling. ‘You never asked.’
‘I assumed—But it never pays to assume with you, does it!’ he accused angrily. ‘I assumed you would be at my apartment waiting for me when I got back today, and look how wrong I was about that!’ He glared at her fiercely.
‘It may have escaped your notice,’ she was still outwardly calm, although she knew from experience how quickly that could change, Joel being able to fire her temper as no one else had ever done, ‘but the six months ended while you were away.’
‘It didn’t “escape my notice” at all,’ he said furiously. ‘It just never occurred to me that you would leave.’
‘That was the agreement when I first moved in with you,’ she reminded him.
His eyes gleamed with as yet suppressed fury. ‘The agreement was that we would reassess the situation at the end of six months.’ His voice was controlled, too controlled not to be dangerous.
‘As you weren’t here I did that on my own.’
‘And moved out!’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’ he demanded to know. ‘That’s what I can’t understand.’ Lindsay shrugged. ‘It was for the best.’
‘Whose best?’
‘Mine,’ she told him with simplicity.
He seemed to pale, as if she had inflicted a deep hurt on him. But she knew that wouldn’t be true. Joel would be the first to admit he didn’t have a heart to inflict pain to!
‘And what about me?’ he asked quietly. ‘I certainly didn’t want you to leave.’
‘I know that,’ she nodded.
‘Then why did you?’ His hands clenched into fists at his sides. ‘The last six months with you have been the best time of my life. I thought you felt the same way, in fact I would swear that you did,’ he added challengingly.
She moistened her lips with the pink tip of her tongue. The trouble with that last accusation was that she did. Living with Joel, being with him day and night for the last six months, had been the most wonderful six months she had ever known—and they had also been the most heartbreaking! She loved a man who refused to believe there was such an emotion, who scorned at those who did, so how could she ever know true happiness with him?
Oh, she had known all this about him six months ago, had been sure she could convince him otherwise when so many others had failed to do so, had moved in with him because she believed that. On the surface they were happy together, Joel being content to have her in his office with him every day, and in his bed every night, never letting her fall asleep without showing her very convincingly how much he desired and wanted her. And she had been content with those things too for a while, until it became obvious that it would never change, that Joel would only ever want her as a live-in lover and nothing more.
The only thing he had ever shared with her had been his work; his family and his life before he met her a closed book. The latter it had been easy to find out about; he was a world-renowned photographer and the press had reported his much-varied love-life the last five or six years. About his family she only knew that his parents lived in the south of England, and that he hadn’t visited them once while they lived together. It wasn’t much information to have accumulated about the man she lived with so intimately, and even that hadn’t been told to her by Joel himself. He was a very private man, so private he didn’t allow even those who cared about him close to him.
She still loved him, that would never change, but she wanted more from him, needed more. And he just didn’t have it to give. She didn’t like admitting she had failed, although she knew her mother would be relieved, never having approved of the relationship from the first. Her older sister had been the only one who understood and encouraged what she was trying to do; Judi was always there to listen when Lindsay needed someone to talk to. And that had been often since she had known Joel, the first rosy glow of being with him quickly deteriorating to uncertainty, and finally fear, a fear that had been proven when it became obvious he couldn’t love her.
‘I did,’ she began. ‘I——’
‘Did?’ he repeated harshly. ‘What’s that supposed to mean? Either you’ve liked living with me or you haven’t!’
‘I have. But——’
‘And you can’t deny that physically we’re perfect together,’ he added determinedly.
Lindsay blushed under his narrow-eyed stare. There was no denying what had been obvious from their first night together, when as a complete novice when it came to making love she had been initiated into a world of sensuality with a tenderness and an expertise that had meant she knew none of the pain she had associated with that dreaded ‘first time’. Joel had been elated at the idea of being her first lover, and had gone on to teach her every physical intimacy there was between a man and a woman. That part of their relationship had only got better as time went on, even Lindsay’s uncertainties about their future together not affecting that.
‘You know we are,’ she mumbled. ‘But——’
‘Then what are you doing here?’ he demanded to know forcefully. ‘And why did you never mention it to me when I telephoned you at the office? Maybury said you moved out a couple of days after I went to America.’
‘That’s right, I did. And if you’d ever called me at the apartment in the evenings Maybury would have told you I’d gone.’ Joel’s manservant had had instructions to do just that. Only Joel never telephoned her in the evenings; he had been so sure that she would be waiting for him that he hadn’t found out until his return that she had flown their love-nest.
Love-nest! That was a lie in itself. She loved, Joel just wanted, only she had been too much in love to see that was all it was. Joel had her to run his office efficiently, Maybury to see that his apartment was kept clean and comfortable, and that his meals were served when and if he wanted them. The only thing left for the woman in his life to do was share his bed, and after a while that could become a little degrading. They didn’t share their thoughts, and they didn’t share their dreams, even Lindsay’s usually open manner learning caution after Joel’s first half a dozen lukewarm responses to her mentions of her family and friends. He didn’t want to meet either, feeling it would be highly hypocritical when most of them disapproved of their relationship. And maybe it would have been, but it would also have made Lindsay extremely happy!
Most of her family and friends would tell her she was a fool, that everything she now knew about Joel, his independence from all emotional relationships, his arrogance when he felt he had been slighted, his cold-blooded disregard for anyone’s feelings but his own, had all been there for her to see before she took the irrevocable step of moving in with him. And she did know it now, to her cost.
Joel looked even more angry than ever. ‘You aren’t telling me you left me simply because I didn’t have the time to call you in the evenings?’ He sounded disgusted.
Her eyes flashed. ‘I hope you know me better than that,’ she said stiffly.
‘I’m beginning to think I don’t know you at all,’ he ground out.
‘I left you because it was time to leave.’ She refused to be antagonised into losing her temper. ‘We want different things from life,’ she told him wearily.
‘I want you!’
‘But you don’t love me.’
His eyes narrowed to wary amber slits. ‘You knew that from the beginning, I told you then how it would be.’
She deserved this, although she hadn’t expected Joel to be the first to tell her, ‘I told you so’. ‘Yes,’ she sighed acknowledgement of his honesty about his feeling