‘I don’t have to be there twenty-four hours a day,’ she reminded him sharply, and his eyebrow quirked up in response.
‘Of course you don’t,’ he said soothingly. ‘But you know my mobile number, and I do think that you could perhaps have done more than leave a note before you walked out on our relationship.’
There was no attempt now to hide the reproach, his voice hardening and showing, for the first time, his true feelings. Good. She could deal with that. She couldn’t deal with the bland, expressionless board-room persona he’d been conveying for the past few minutes. And if he was angry, then maybe he cared, and maybe, just maybe, there was hope for them.
‘I didn’t walk out on our relationship, I just wanted a little space,’ she reminded him.
‘I would have given you space if you’d asked for it. You could have said so. You know you only have to ask for anything.’
‘Maybe I didn’t want to ask. Maybe I’m sick of asking for everything.’
‘Sick of sharing?’
‘We don’t share,’ she told him flatly. ‘We hardly share anything any more. I’m amazed you noticed I wasn’t there—’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, of course I noticed.’
‘Yes, you would have had to pour your own drink, make your own supper. Poor little lamb.’
He growled under his breath, and she buried her nose in her mug and ignored him.
‘You could have said something, discussed it with me,’ he went on, hammering home the point.
‘And have you brush it aside? Or trivialise it? Patronise me with another of your “you don’t want to do that” lectures? I didn’t want that, Rob. I wanted to think—to have time to work out in my own mind just how I feel about us, before it’s too late.’
Too late?’
‘Yes, too late. Before we become locked together irretrievably into parenthood. I want to be sure I want your baby before I conceive, and at the moment I’m not sure—not sure at all, about any of it.’
‘I take it you’re not pregnant, then, again,’ he said cautiously, putting her hackles up.
‘No, I’m not damn well pregnant. I don’t get pregnant, remember, so all this might be academic anyway—’
‘And the business?’ he said smoothly, moving on without drawing breath. ‘How long have you been running that? A year? Eighteen months?’
‘Nearly a year.’
‘A year. You’ve been running it for a year—successfully, by all indications—and yet you didn’t think to mention it.’
She had. Over and over again, she’d nearly told him, but it had never seemed like the right time.
‘You’re always too busy, or away, or we’re entertaining. There’s never been a good time,’ she told him. ‘We never have time to talk.’
‘In a year?’
She sighed shortly. ‘Rob, you’ve been away—and when you’ve been home—’ All he’d done was try and get her pregnant. But she couldn’t say that, so she shrugged and shook her head and gave up. Not Rob, though. He didn’t give up.
He settled back and folded his arms and gave her a level look. ‘I’m not too busy now. You want to talk about it, tell me about it now. I’ve got nothing else to do.’
‘Yes, you have. You’re going,’ she told him, standing up and taking his half-full cup from his hand and tipping it into the sink.
That brow arched again. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Tough.’
‘It is. Look out of the window. I’m going nowhere.’
She opened the curtain and pressed her face to the glass, but all she could see was swirling white. Snow, for heavens sake! That was all she needed.
‘It’s just a little flurry. It’ll pass,’ she said with more confidence than she felt. ‘You’ll easily get to the village. There’s a bed and breakfast there. You can stay there for the night and set off back to London tomorrow.’
She snapped on the outside light, yanked open the front door and a blast of snow and arctic wind drove her back into the house. She slammed the door with difficulty and turned to lean on it, frustration threatening to overwhelm her. There was no way he could drive in that. She couldn’t see anything except a wall of white. Even finding the car would be a nightmare.
Oh, damn, she thought. They had no choice—he could die out there, and whatever was wrong with their relationship, she didn’t hate him that much—if at all.
‘All right, you can stay,’ she said grudgingly, then added with as much firmness as she could muster, ‘but you’ll have to sleep in the sitting room, you aren’t sharing with me.’
He gave a soft snort. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he reasoned. ‘We’re married. We’ve slept together for five years. What difference can one more night make?’
Plenty to me, she thought, knowing her own weakness for his charm and knowing quite well that he’d turn it up full to get her back, if that was what he wanted. He’d seduce her—win her round, talk her into going back. No, it was too dangerous to let him that near.
‘Either you sleep in the sitting room, or you go,’ she said flatly, avoiding answering his question.
‘Fine,’ he said, and she did a mental double take. It wasn’t like him to back down so uncharacteristically fast—if at all! He settled back into the chair and folded his arms. ‘Any more tea?’
His eyes were wide and innocent, but she knew better. There was nothing innocent about Rob—never had been, never would be. She didn’t trust him not to use that charm ruthlessly just the moment it suited him, but she was stuck. There was nowhere to go, no escape. They were trapped together, and it was going to take a massive effort of will not to allow herself to succumb.
But she was going to do it. Come hell or high water, she was going to do it, and that was that.
End of conversation.
Somehow …!
IT WAS bitterly cold. It took Rob five minutes to find the car, collect his case and mobile phone and get back into the cottage, after making a detour at Laurie’s request to shut down her computer and lock the garage and set the alarm.
She was going to do it herself, but he’d overruled her on that one. There was no way he was letting her go out there in the teeth of the blizzard that was raging all around them, and for one rather disturbing minute he himself hadn’t been able to find his way back to the cottage. He’d wondered in an oddly detached way if he was destined to perish out there on the barren Scottish hillside, but then the snow had eased and he’d seen the dull gleam of the outside light, and he’d realised he’d been going the wrong way.
So easily done in the confusing swirl of snow, but a mistake that could have proved fatal under other circumstances, he thought. He felt a dawning respect for the wild and tempestuous elements and the men that braved them on a daily basis. Quite where such a blizzard had come from he couldn’t imagine, but it had, apparently out of nowhere, and it was threatening to tear the roof off the house.
He turned the handle on the door, to have it almost snatched out of his hand by the wind. He shut it by throwing his weight against it, and as he stood inside it and listened to the raging storm outside, he wondered why on earth people chose to mount polar expeditions. Mad, the lot of them, he thought, brushing the snow off his shoulders and