‘I can’t believe you were interested enough to investigate my life.’
‘Can’t you?’ His words pained her, but she managed to hide it. ‘I guess we don’t know one another very well anymore.’
‘And whose fault is that?’ he countered, feeling his heart quickening in tune with his rising agitation. ‘For God’s sake, Rachel, I didn’t move out of your bed!’
‘You know why I did,’ she cried, stung into defending herself, but Jack wasn’t in the mood for compromise.
‘They were my babies, too,’ he said savagely. And then, feeling as if he’d pass out if he didn’t get some air, he walked unsteadily across the kitchen floor. ‘Just go to hell, Rachel,’ he muttered, going out of the door.
Jack was sitting in his office in Plymouth, slumped over his desk, when the intercom buzzed. Scowling, he pushed himself up and pressed the answering button. ‘Yeah?’
‘You’ve got a call, Mr Riordan.’ His secretary sounded apologetic. ‘I know you said you didn’t want to be disturbed, but it’s your wife.’
‘My wife?’ Jack was stunned. He had no idea why Rachel should be ringing him after their altercation that morning. But he was ever the optimist, he thought dourly. ‘Put her on.’
‘Yes, Mr Riordan.’
The line went dead for a moment, and then a voice said, ‘Hello, Jack.’
It wasn’t Rachel. That was his first thought, and his spirits foundered. And because of that his response was savagely blunt. ‘Karen,’ he said, recognising her voice instantly after what Rachel had said. The way he was feeling now, if the woman had been in the immediate vicinity he’d have wrung her neck.
‘Darling—you remember me!’ she exclaimed, and Jack wondered how she expected him to forget. She’d been ringing him off and on for the past three months—ever since she’d been fired, actually. So many times, in fact, that he’d had to ask his secretary to monitor all his calls.
‘Don’t call me darling,’ he snapped, wondering why he didn’t just slam down the receiver. He’d done it before. ‘Do you want to tell me what you’re doing? Impersonating someone else is a criminal offence. If you ring this number again I’ll have you arrested. There’s a word for what you’re doing, Karen, and it’s harassment.’
‘Oh, Jack, don’t be so stuffy. You didn’t used to be like this when we were together.’
‘We were never together, Karen.’ Jack was wearily aware he’d said all this before. ‘We went out together once. And believe me, that was a mistake.’
Karen only laughed. ‘You don’t mean that, Jack.’
‘Yes, I do. And I mean it when I say I’m going to report you to the authorities. I should have done it before. But I guess I felt sorry for you.’
‘Don’t feel sorry for me, Jack.’
Her tone had altered now, and he could tell he’d annoyed her. Well, good! Way to go. He hoped she’d got the message at last.
‘Feel sorry for yourself, Jack,’ she went on sharply. And then, her tone softening again, ‘We need to be together. You know that. You can fight it if you like, but it won’t do you any good.’
‘For God’s sake!’ Jack lost patience. ‘Get a life, Karen. One that doesn’t include stalking me!’
He would have slammed the phone down then, but she must have sensed it, and rushed into speech. ‘We’re going to have a baby, Jack,’ she burst out wildly. ‘That’s why I’ve been ringing you. We have to talk.’
Rachel spent the morning in the studio Jack had had built for her in the garden. It was on the far side of the property, with a magnificent view of Foliot Cove. The cove was at the foot of the cliffs that etched this part of the coastline, and could be reached by a flight of stone steps some previous owner of the land had had carved out of the rock.
Rachel was quite a gifted painter, using both oils and charcoal in various forms. But her favourite medium was watercolour, and she’d created quite a name for herself in recent years, illustrating children’s books for the London publisher who’d recognised her talent.
Today, however, it was hard to concentrate. She kept thinking about what she’d done the night before, and remembering Jack’s face when she’d told him she knew about his affair with Karen Johnson.
He hadn’t admitted he was having an affair with Karen, but then he hadn’t denied it either. Instead, he’d accused her of abandoning their marriage. Of moving out of their bed and effectively putting an end to their relationship.
Yet surely he should be able to understand how she’d been feeling at that time? Three times she’d become pregnant, three times she’d felt the miracle of life inside her, and three times she’d lost the baby in the third month. All right, perhaps she hadn’t given enough thought to how Jack was feeling. Perhaps she had been totally tied up with her own emotions, her own grief.
But Jack had always seemed so strong, so impervious to anything life threw at him. The eldest son of an Irish labourer and his wife, who had emigrated to England in the sixties, he’d worked hard to get his degree in civil engineering. He was the only member of his family who’d ever gone to university, and although one of his brothers and all three sisters were settled now, with families of their own, for years Jack had helped to support his siblings, doing two jobs even when he was at university so that he could send money home.
She couldn’t help wondering now if she’d been too quick to put his behaviour down to disappointment. Disappointment that he wasn’t going to be a father, and disappointment in her, too, as a woman. She’d believed he thought she’d let him down—not once, but three times. And when she had refused to let him near her again, he’d turned to someone else.
It had all seemed so simple—and so sordid. She hadn’t been able to believe that a man like Jack could exist without some woman in his bed. The fact that it had taken her almost eighteen months before she found out about his involvement with Karen Johnson didn’t reassure her. Karen wasn’t the first, she was sure. But she was the only one who’d got pregnant with his child.
At lunchtime, Rachel abandoned any attempt to continue with her painting of Benjie Beaver and went back to the house. She had still to explain to Mrs Grady why her bedroom had been littered with burnt-out candles that morning, and why Jack’s bed hadn’t been slept in.
However, Mrs Grady was out. She usually went shopping on Thursday mornings, Rachel remembered, finding even normal events as difficult to concentrate on as anything else. Karen Johnson’s visit the day before—and her own shameless behaviour—had left her in a state of confusion. She knew that she’d seduced her husband. She just didn’t know why.
Oh, there was the obvious reason: she wanted to get pregnant. But where was the sense in that? Why should she believe that this pregnancy—if indeed there was to be one—would be different from any of the others? Wasn’t she just building up a whole lot of heartache for herself?
She shook her head. She only knew she’d had to do something to stop that woman from stealing her husband. Despite everything, she still loved him—although she had no intention of telling him that. But if she was expecting his child it would prove to Karen that they were sleeping together. And it gave her an added advantage. After all, she was still his wife.
To her surprise, Mrs Grady had left a cold lunch for two in the morning room. Chilled asparagus soup, a Caesar salad—Rachel’s favourite—and strawberry shortcake for dessert. Rachel wondered if the housekeeper expected her to ask Lucy to join her. Her best friend, Lucy Robards, only lived half a mile away.
Rachel hadn’t mentioned having a guest, so that seemed unlikely. But Jack never came home for lunch these days. It was a stretch if she had his company for dinner.