Her heart constricted as she said that, but she knew that she needed to bury all signs of her love. On the one hand, if he knew how she really felt about him the equality of their relationship would be severely compromised. On the other—and this would be almost worse—he would pity her. He might even choose to remind her that at no point, ever, had he led her to believe that lust should be confused with something else.
It would be a sympathetic let-down, during which he might even produce a hankie, all the better to mop up her overflowing tears. She would never live down the humiliation. In short, she would become a guilty burden which he would consider himself condemned to bear for the rest of his life. Whereas if she feigned efficiency she could at least avert that potential disaster waiting in the wings.
That thought gave her sufficient impetus to maintain her brisk, cheery façade and battle on through his continuing unreadable silence.
‘If you think that we’re embarking on a sexless marriage …’ Raoul growled, increasingly outraged by every thing she said, and critical of her infuriating practicality—although he really shouldn’t have been, considering it was a character trait he firmly believed in.
Sarah held up one hand to stop him in mid-flow. This would be her trump card—if it could be called such.
‘That’s not what I’m saying …’ Released from at least that particular burden—of just not knowing what to do with this overpowering attraction she felt for him—Sarah felt a whoosh of light-headed relief race through her. ‘We won’t take the one big thing between us away …’
The hand on his arm softened into a caress, moved to rest against his hard chest, and she stepped closer into him, arching up to him, glad that she no longer had to try and fight the sizzling attraction between them.
Raoul caught her hand and held it as he stared down at her upturned face,
‘So tell me,’ he drawled softly, ‘why didn’t you just agree to be my lover? It amounts to the same thing now, doesn’t it?’
‘Except,’ Sarah told him with heartfelt honesty, ‘maybe I just didn’t like the notion of being your mistress until I went past my sell-by date. Maybe that’s something I’ve only just realised.’ She hesitated. ‘Do you … do you want to reconsider your proposal?’
‘Oh, no …’ Raoul told her with a slow, slashing smile, ‘this is exactly what I want …’
A WEEK and a half later and Raoul wasn’t sure that he had got quite what he had wanted—although he was hard pressed to put a finger on the reason why.
Sarah’s histrionics were over. She no longer vacillated between wanting him and turning him away. She had stopped agonising about the rights and wrongs of their sleeping together.
In fact, on the surface, everything appeared to be going to plan. He had moved in precisely one week previously. For one day the house had been awash with a variety of people, doing everything it took to instal the fastest possible broadband connection and set up all the various technologies so that he could function from the cosy library, which had been converted into a study complete with desk, printer, television screens to monitor the stock markets around the world and two independent telephone lines. Through the window he could look out at the perfectly landscaped garden, with its twin apple trees at the bottom. It was a far more inspiring view than the one he had had from his apartment, and he discovered that he liked it.
The wedding would be taking place in a month’s time.
‘I don’t really care when it happens,’ Sarah had told him with a casual shrug, ‘but Mum’s set her heart on something more than a quick register affair, and I don’t like to disappoint her.’
Thinking about it, that attitude seemed to characterise the intangible change Raoul had uneasily noticed ever since she had accepted his marriage proposal.
True to her word, they were now lovers, and between the sheets everything was as it should be. Better. He touched her and she responded with fierce, uninhibited urgency. She was meltingly, erotically willing. With the lights turned off and the moonlight dipping into the room through a chink in the curtains they made love with the hunger of true sexual passion.
Just thinking about it was enough to make Raoul half close his eyes and stiffen at the remembered pleasure.
But outside the bedroom she was amicable but restrained. He came through the front door by seven every evening, which was a considerable sacrifice for him, because he was a man accustomed to working until at least eight-thirty most days. Yes, she asked him how his day had been. Yes, she would have cooked something, and sure she had a smile on her face as she watched him go outside with Oliver for a few minutes, push him on the swing, then return to play some suitably childish game until his son’s bedtime beckoned. But it was almost as though she had manufactured an invisible screen around herself.
‘Right. Have you got everything?’ They were about to set off for Devon for their postponed visit to her parents. There was more luggage for this two-night stay than he would have taken for a three-week long-haul vacation. Favourite toys had had to be packed, including the oversized remote controlled car which had been his first and much ignored present for Oliver, but which had risen up the popularity ladder as the weeks had gone by. Drinks had had to be packed, because four-year-olds, he’d been assured, had little concept of timing when it came to long car journeys. Several CDs of stories and sing-a-long nursery rhymes had been bought in advance, and Sarah had drily informed him that he had no choice when it came to listening to them.
She had made a checklist, and now she recited things from it with a little frown.
‘Is it always this much of a production when you go to visit your parents?’ he asked, when they were finally tucked into his Range Rover and heading away from the house.
‘This is a walk in the park,’ Sarah told him, staring out of the window and watching the outskirts of London fly past. ‘In the past I’ve had to take the train, and you can’t believe what a battle that’s been with endless luggage and a small child in tow.’ She looked round to make sure that Oliver was comfortable, and not fiddling with his car seat as he was wont to do, and then stared out of the window.
Weirdly, she always felt worse when they were trapped in the confines of a car together. Something about not having any escape route handy, she supposed. With no door through which she could conveniently exit, she was forced to confront her own weakness. Her only salvation was that she was trying very hard, and hopefully succeeding, to instil boundaries without having to lay it on with a trowel.
She was friendly with him, even though under the façade her heart felt squeezed by the distance she knew she had to create. She couldn’t afford to throw herself heart and soul into what they had, because she knew that if she did she would quickly start believing that their marriage was real in every sense of the word—and then what protection would she have when the time came and his attention began to stray? He didn’t love her, so there would be no buffer against his boredom when their antics in the bedroom ran out of steam.
Daily she told herself that it was therefore important to get a solid friendship in place, because that would be the glue to hold things together. But at the back of her mind she toyed with the thought that friendship might prove more than just glue. Maybe, just maybe, he would become reliant on a relationship forged on the bedrock of circumstance. He had proposed marriage as a solution, and how much more he would respect her if she treated it in the same calm, sensible, practical way he did.
She