‘I’m not going to make this easy for you!’ she cried, her eyes huge in their hopelessness.
Dan muttered under his breath and bowed his head. Buried his face in his hands. He who had always been invincible. Her rock. She was still finding that she couldn’t cope with his distress. It was worse than her own.
What did that mean? she wondered. That she still loved him enough to forgive him? Would she have him back if he begged? Could she ever let him come near her again without thinking of that woman?
‘I can’t cope with your hatred,’ he whispered rawly.
An incredible agony ripped through her flesh, tearing her nerves into ragged strings. And she could not stop shaking, misery and sickness forcing their way up till she had to repeatedly swallow them back down.
He’d been rejected all his life. In his own mind he must see this as yet another rejection. But what did he expect, when he’d behaved so badly? She was hurting. She’d been wronged.
‘Cut out the emotional appeal,’ she said jaggedly. ‘Give the facts.’
He drew himself up and his hands fell away from his eyes, which he kept lowered to the ground. Helen stared. His dark lashes were wet and glistening. Her gaze flicked to his hands where they lay loosely on his knees and she saw that there was moisture on his fingertips.
But sorrow didn’t equal innocence. She steeled herself. And in a halting rasp, he began.
‘I had an appointment in Brighton. Celine came, too. Unusually, she brought a flask of coffee.’ His mouth took on a harsh line. ‘I thought it was an accident, but I can see it wasn’t—’
‘What was an accident?’ she asked in confusion, unnerved by his uncharacteristic rambling. He was always incisive and clear-headed. Or was it her brain that was woolly?
‘What? Oh, the coffee. I was driving along and she suddenly poured it out and somehow it spilled all over my shirt and trousers. Black coffee, four sugars, she said. You can’t go to the meeting like that, she said. We’re near your house. Better go home and change.’ He grunted. ‘What an idiot I was! Oldest trick in the book.’
Helen waited. He looked sour, as if it had truly happened that way. And she could almost believe that it had…
Except for the abandoned clothes on the stairs, and Celine’s implication that this wasn’t the first time they’d had ‘fun’ together. Her head drummed with the questions he wasn’t answering.
‘And?’ she prompted dully.
‘We were running late. It was an important meeting and I was annoyed,’ Dan growled, his hands doubled into tight fists again. ‘I left Celine in the drawing room with a pile of magazines, stormed up the stairs, got out of my ruined clothes—’
‘Where are they?’ Helen asked suspiciously.
Dan frowned, his eyes flicking up to meet hers. ‘What?’
She felt her stomach loop the loop.
‘They weren’t in the bathroom or I’d have noticed—’
‘I left them on top of the laundry basket,’ he answered with convincing confidence.
They both looked. The basket sat in pristine solitude in the corner of the bedroom. Dan muttered something rude and strode over to lift the lid but his movements were already uncertain.
‘Well?’
Helen could hardly breathe. She wanted them to be there, for some part of his story to be true. Her desperate hope was that he’d stuck to the facts so far—that there had been an accident, and Celine had taken the opportunity to wander in while he was half dressed—and had come on so strong that no red-blooded man could have refused—
Dan’s expression destroyed her hopes. She flinched, a hollow sensation gnawing at her stomach. His lie had been found out.
‘My clothes aren’t there,’ he announced, his eyes burning feverishly in his face.
‘No,’ she said, her tone clipped and glacial as she watched him grimly flinging open wardrobe doors and hunting through drawers. ‘I never thought they would be.’
‘They were!’ he insisted, flashing her an irritated glance.
This was awful, she thought as he pretended to search for his supposedly stained clothes. He was making a good job of it, becoming more and more incensed and baffled as he explored every possible hiding place in the room.
‘Stop this,’ she said wearily. ‘I’m not impressed.’
He whirled, hot anger turning his eyes to glittering jet. His legs were planted apart, his entire body fired with suppressed fury. Helen gulped. He was beginning to believe his own lies, she thought, aghast.
‘Just listen to me,’ he hissed through his clenched teeth. ‘My clothes were splashed with coffee. I put them on the basket and went to take a shower—’
‘While Celine silently dashed up the stairs, grabbed your suit and shirt, stuffed them down her cleavage and then raced downstairs to hide them—only to lay a trail of clothes as she came back up again!’ she suggested sarcastically.
‘Yes! Something like that!’
‘Oh, come on, Dan!’ she scoffed.
His hand mussed his hair. ‘I know it sounds mad—’
‘Not mad. Preposterous,’ she said coldly.
‘Well, I don’t know how she did it…’ Dan continued to thrust an exasperated hand into his hair till it was as confused as his manner. ‘All I do know is that I came out of the shower to find Celine wearing nothing but that blue towel.’
That part could be true, she thought grudgingly. Before she’d left for work, she’d taken a fresh one out of the airing cupboard on the landing and had flung it on a bedroom chair ready for her shower later that evening.
‘And?’ she muttered, not sure she wanted to hear the rest.
He made an impatient gesture with his hand. ‘What do you think? I asked her what the hell she was doing, of course.’
‘And?’ Helen goaded. ‘What happened then?’
Dan’s eyes blazed at her temerity. ‘And nothing!’
‘I mean, what reason did she give for stripping off without any encouragement from you?’ she persisted.
A frown pulled his brows together. He appeared to be taking a while to think of an answer.
‘As a matter of fact, she seemed disconcerted at first, as if she hadn’t expected me to find her there—’
‘That doesn’t make sense.’
‘I know! Don’t ask me to read the damn woman’s mind!’ he snapped irascibly. ‘I employ her because she’s got a brilliant imagination and can think around corners. I’m the straightforward sort.’
‘Well, I’m a woman with the same talents as Celine,’ she said, ‘so let’s see if I can unravel the mystery. She deliberately threw the coffee over you, waited downstairs till you went up for your shower and then she stripped. After that, she went up the stairs arranging her things enticingly in reverse order, and slipped into our bedroom to take your suit away—perhaps to send it to the cleaners, like a good PA should,’ she suggested acidly. Dan glowered. ‘But you came out too soon and caught her snitching my towel, whereas her real plan was that you’d follow the trail of clothes down the stairs, getting progressively more and more excited. And she’d be reclining in a seductive pose on a rug, with a glass of champagne in her hand, a rose in her teeth and a huge smile of welcome on her face.’
He stared, appalled. ‘Do you really think—?’
‘For