He didn’t argue. It was rather nice being waited on by her, although not entirely necessary. It made him feel a bit like one of the old hunter-gatherers, being welcomed home by his mate at the end of a hunting expedition—except that he’d only gone fifty feet to the car and back, and his quarry had been a very cooperative suitcase.
The mate was a bit grudging, too. Ah, well.
He chuckled wearily under his breath. The jet lag must be getting to him, addling his brain. He sat down in front of the fire, stretched out his legs towards the warmth and sighed with contentment. So good. Warm. Comfortable. Peaceful.
Within seconds he was asleep.
That was where Laurie found him, two minutes later, when she came back in with two cups of tea and some cake on a tray.
She set it down silently, then curled up in the chair by the side of the fire with her tea and watched him sleep. He looked exhausted, she realised. Exhausted and thinner, run to a frazzle. He was doing too much. He’d been doing too much for more than a year, but he wouldn’t even discuss it.
He did what was necessary, that was all, he said. Nothing more, nothing less. End of discussion.
It was funny, they used to discuss things a lot, but just recently she felt he’d been stonewalling her. Maybe it was just her imagination. Maybe he was just too busy to talk, and too tired to bother.
Too tired to do anything—except a hasty flurry of activity every few weeks, in a vain attempt to get her pregnant.
She felt the hot sting of tears behind her eyes, and blinked them away. They’d lost so much. They’d been so happy at first, happy and full of life and enthusiasm. Nothing had been too much trouble, too much effort, too much of a challenge.
They’d talked and argued and made up, laughed and cried together, shared everything.
And now—now they had nothing except the spectre of failure in their most personal lives, and jet lag. She rested her head on the back of the chair and gave a quiet sigh. She’d needed this time out so much. She hadn’t realised how much until she’d agreed to take the cottage, and she’d felt a huge weight off her shoulders.
Freedom, she’d thought. Freedom from unspoken criticism, from failure, from Rob’s expectations of her as a hostess, from her friends’ expectations of her as a shopping companion and marriage counsellor—that was the funny one, she thought.
Andy asking her for advice on her marriage, when her own marriage was in such disarray.
Something splashed on her hand—a tear, she realised in surprise. She blinked and sniffed, but another one fell to join the first, and another, so she just lay there with her head against the back of the chair and let them fall.
She cried silently. She’d grown used to doing it while Rob slept, it was nothing new to her, but she didn’t usually do it with the lights on so he could see her if he woke.
Still, there was no danger he’d wake now. He was exhausted, and even he didn’t catch up with his sleep that quickly. She closed her eyes, rested her hand on the dog’s shaggy head at her knee and waited for the tears to stop. They would in the end. They always did.
She’d been crying.
He lay there, sprawled out on the sofa, and watched her without moving. There were tears drying on her cheeks, long salty tracks down the pale, smooth skin, and he felt his heart contract.
Oh, Laurie. He wanted to hold her, to comfort her, but he didn’t know how, or even if he could. What could he say that would make any difference?
Nothing. It was probably him she was crying about—or them, at least. He felt sick. How long had she felt like this, so sad inside that she could sit and cry silently while he slept?
Had she done it before, maybe in their big, high bed in the lovely house he’d thought was their home? Had he slept beside her, oblivious to her misery?
And yet he still didn’t know what he’d done, or what was wrong. Until today he would have said she was crying because she couldn’t conceive, but now he wasn’t so sure.
Was she having an affair? It was possible. Maybe her failure to conceive was deliberate. Perhaps she was on the Pill, or maybe her reluctance to have any tests was because she was happy as things were and didn’t want a child.
She’d said something about that in the kitchen. He hadn’t really taken it in at the time. He’d thought she was just trying to console herself, but maybe she really meant it. Maybe she didn’t want a child—or at least, not his.
It was a sobering thought. He lay there and let it sink in, slowly absorbing the implications. It seemed there was far more to her unscheduled disappearance than a simple flounce or a cry for attention. She really seemed to have deep, fundamental doubts about their relationship, and he realised he was going to have to listen to her, to talk it through rather than simply cajole her into returning home. For the first time he felt a seed of doubt that he would win her back, and something deep inside him clenched with fear.
He watched her sleep, the tears slowly drying on her cheeks, her hand hanging over the edge of the chair above the dog’s head. He was lying against the front of the chair, his nose on his paws, as if he’d just sunk down there from sitting under her hand. His eyes were closed, but Rob knew he was alert. One move from her and he’d be up.
He was her devoted slave, and Rob felt an irrational pang of jealousy. Not that he’d want to be her devoted slave, far from it, but he wouldn’t mind going back to the lively and productive partnership they’d had before.
She’d been so vital and alive, so funny, so sharp and quick-witted. He supposed she still was, but the vital spark seemed to have gone, extinguished by something he didn’t really understand.
He remembered the first time he’d met her, at Julia and Charlie’s wedding. He’d been Charlie’s best man, and she’d been the chief bridesmaid. He’d felt his heart kick then, seeing her behind Julia, and then during the reception he’d talked to her and got to know her a little, and discovered that not only was she very beautiful, she was also clever.
She had a mind, a sharp and incisive mind and the verbal ability to go with it, and they’d wrangled about everything from fashion to the state of the stock market.
‘So what do you do for a living?’ he’d asked, and she’d laughed wryly.
‘At the moment I’m temping in an office, but my secretarial skills are slight and that’s a bit of problem in the job I’m covering, so it won’t last long, but I have to eat and run my car and pay off my uni debts, so I can’t afford to be picky. I’m looking around, though, waiting for the right thing to come up. I’d like a job with a bit of responsibility—something to get my teeth into. I’m just bored to death at the moment.’
Without pausing to analyse his motives, he slipped his hand into his pocket and pulled out his wallet, then handed her one of his cards. ‘Here. Ring me. There might be something—I don’t know what, but we’ve always got room for good people. I’ll have a chat with my Human Resources team. Come in and see us.’
She looked at the card, plucked at the sides of her pretty, floaty bridesmaid’s dress with a smile and then tucked the card down the low front of her bodice, into her bra. He caught sight of a peep of pale ivory lace against pale ivory breast, and hot blood surged in his veins.
‘I knew having boobs would come in useful one day,’ she said with a throaty chuckle, and he had to shut his eyes and count to ten. He could think of all sorts of uses for her soft, full, ripe breasts, and tucking business cards into them was way down the list.
Unless he was doing the tucking …
The next time he saw her was a week later, and she was dressed in a demure business suit with a high-necked blouse, but he could still see the firm, ripe swell of