He didn’t like to think that she’d been with any other man.
‘Such conceit!’ she tossed scornfully.
And nor did she want to think about the good times they’d had. No one could ever match up to him; that was a fact. ‘How about you?’ she asked, turning the tables. ‘How many girlfriends have you had?’
Dark brows rose. ‘Why should I have had any when the only girl I’ve ever truly loved walked out on me?’
Keisha’s head jerked. ‘Don’t try to fool me. There have always been other women in your life.’
Blue eyes met green. ‘I’m very serious. You’ve no idea, Keisha, how much you hurt me. When you filed for divorce I couldn’t believe it. I thought that when you’d had time to think things over you’d come back to me.’
‘Then you are either very stupid or very naïve,’ she declared strongly. ‘And I must be incredibly stupid to be sitting here having this conversation with you. It’s a complete waste of time.’
‘I’d like to take you out.’
Keisha closed her eyes briefly. There was one part of her, very deep down inside, that wanted to say yes. The part she had thought was dead and now found was very much alive. But the sane part of her mind knew what a mistake it would be.
Hunter had a massive ego if he really thought she would agree. ‘You’re unreal,’ she said.
‘Am I?’ he asked, his mouth curving into a smile. ‘Touch me. You’ll soon find out how real I am.’
‘You know what I’m talking about.’
‘No, I don’t. Tell me.’ He spread his hands expansively. ‘We have the whole evening.’
Keisha felt as though she would die from asphyxiation if he didn’t go soon. He was taking all the air from the room, filling it with a black fear that was totally inexplicable. Unless it was the feelings he was still able to invoke inside her that she was afraid of.
It was not a thought she found any pleasure in. In fact it both alarmed and horrified her. ‘No, we don’t have the whole evening,’ she said, quietly but firmly. ‘I want you to drink your coffee and go.’ She picked up her cup and took a swallow before realising that it was still too hot.
Gallantly, though, she did not show it. She waited for him to follow suit, and willed him to scald his throat. She wanted him to suffer as she had suffered. He still seemed to have no idea how much he had hurt her.
Although maybe—and it was just a little maybe—she was the one at fault. The simple truth was that she really hadn’t been mature enough for marriage. She’d had an idealistic dream of time spent together, of long, exciting love sessions, of making babies, and Hunter always at her side. When it hadn’t turned out like that, when he’d spent more time working than he had with her, when he’d come home smelling of someone else’s perfume, she’d known their marriage was over and had run like a scared cat.
Not only that, though, she’d had visions of her mother’s unhappy marriage—of a husband who neglected her, who was absent far more often than he was at home. Maybe for different reasons than Hunter’s, but even so it would almost have been like history repeating itself. It had ruined her mother’s health, and Keisha had been afraid that her own sanity would be at risk if she continued in her marriage any longer.
Hunter took one sip of his coffee and then put the cup back down. ‘Maybe I will go. Maybe tomorrow would be a better time to talk—when you’re in a more receptive frame of mind. I’ll pick you up at ten.’
And with that sweeping statement, before she could even say a word, he grabbed his jacket and walked out of the house.
Keisha was left feeling utterly inadequate. Why hadn’t she spoken? Why hadn’t she told him that she never wanted to see him again? Now she would be compelled to face him in the morning—and what was the betting that he wouldn’t take no for an answer a second time?
Sleep evaded her that night. Instead her mind went back to her first date with Hunter…
At twenty-nine, Hunter Donahue had been much older and far more sophisticated than Keisha, and when he’d turned up at her house looking suave and elegant, in dark trousers and a white shirt, she had felt sudden panic.
‘Wh-where are we going?’ she asked huskily as he escorted her out to his car.
‘The world’s our oyster. Where would you like to go?’
‘I don’t know,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll leave it up to you.’ Heavens, she was so nervous.
Hunter smiled, a lovely warm smile that began to melt the fear in her heart. ‘I know a nice quiet little restaurant by the river. Would that suit?’
Keisha nodded.
It was the beginning of a whirlwind affair. His kisses were to die for and his lovemaking out of this world. And when he proposed to her after they’d been going out for only a few weeks she could hardly believe it.
‘Are you serious?’ she asked. She wanted to say yes, she wanted to shout it from the rooftops, but she had to be sure first. This was a tremendous step.
‘Extremely serious,’ he answered, and his eyes told her that it was true. They were the most intense blue she had ever seen them, and he looked at her with so much love that she felt she would die.
Their wedding was a fairytale dream, and their honeymoon in Madeira out of this world, but what she hadn’t realised was that Hunter was obsessed with making money, and over the following months he spent so many hours at his office that she hardly saw him.
She felt distinctly lonely and neglected. She tried to keep herself busy, but there was a limit to what she could do, and even going to the gym didn’t help. She began to wonder whether he had tired of her, whether it was an affair that was keeping him away. He was sometimes too exhausted to make love, which was such a change from the rampant male he’d been in the early weeks of their marriage that there had to be something different happening in his life.
And when one night he returned home and she smelled another woman’s perfume on him her heart fell with a thud into the pit of her stomach.
‘Have you been with another woman?’ she asked fiercely, pulling away from his kiss and staring into the blueness of his eyes.
‘God, no!’ he exclaimed at once. ‘As if I’d do that.’
‘I can smell perfume on you.’
‘Maybe,’ he acknowledged with a shrug. ‘I’ve been entertaining a female client.’
‘And you got so close that her perfume is lingering on your clothes?’
Hunter pursed his lips wryly. ‘Actually, she—’
But Keisha didn’t want to listen to excuses. ‘Did you take her to bed?’ she asked swiftly.
Hunter stiffened, his blue eyes suddenly fierce and condemning. ‘Are you questioning my integrity? Don’t you love me enough to trust me?’
‘Of course I love you,’ she replied, noticing that he hadn’t actually answered her question. ‘The trouble is I love you too much. I miss you.’ It was a plea from her heart. ‘I want you, Hunter, so badly. I don’t want any other woman to have you.’
‘And none shall,’ he declared gruffly, folding her in his arms and kissing her soundly. That night his lovemaking was better than ever. And when he began to keep more reasonable hours Keisha knew that she had been mistaken.
But after a few weeks the late nights started all over again, and her insecurity grew to such an extent that she couldn’t help tackling him. ‘Who