Sinful Nights: The Six-Month Marriage\Injured Innocent\Loving (34 page)

N
O ONE COULD
ever have dressed for a dinner party with less enthusiasm, Lissa thought miserably as she brushed her hair. Joel was in their bathroom; she could hear him splashing about under the shower. Disturbing mental images of the lithe maleness of him tormented her, making her hands shake so much that she had to put down the brush. Her body now awakened to the pleasure of Joel’s lovemaking seemed to crave it with all the single minded intensity of an addict for his favourite drug. Whenever he was in the same room with her she ached with a tension that had nothing to do with tiredness or over-stretched nerves. It was humiliating that she should feel like this. How could she love and want him to this extent, especially when she knew that he cared little or nothing for her?

He came out of the bathroom while she was zipping up her dress. Out of the corner of her eye Lissa studied him, tiny shivers of awareness feathering down her spine as he shrugged off his robe and started getting dressed. Unlike her he seemed totally unselfconscious about his nudity; totally unaware of the dry-mouthed
anguish with which she fought not to look at him because to look was to want to touch and to go on touching …

Her zipper stuck and she made a small impatient sound. Joel looked up and frowned, immediately perceiving what had happened.

‘Here let me.’ His voice was as cool as the touch of his fingers against her over-hearted skin. She could smell the clean male scent of him and she wanted nothing more than to turn round and be taken into his arms. The intensity of her own emotions overwhelmed her, making her tense her body against any such betrayal.

‘Relax.’ The cool bite in Joel’s voice chilled her. ‘I’m not about to rape you, if that’s what’s worrying you.’

Painful colour stung her skin as she caught the cynically bitter undertones to his voice. ‘I didn’t think you were.’

Her zip came free and slid smoothly upwards. Joel stepped away from her, turning his back on her as he continued dressing. He looked devastatingly masculine in the formality of his evening clothes, Lissa acknowledged miserably, watching covertly as he inserted gold links into his shirt cuffs, deftly snapping them closed.

‘Ready?’

His glance swept over her, dismissing her without comment, his indifference towards her so painful that her face felt stiff from the effort of trying to conceal her feelings from him.

They went downstairs together, Joel’s attitude towards her punctiliously correct as he handed her into the car.

As he started the engine he inserted a cassette into the tape deck, turning up the sound just loudly enough to make conversation difficult, effectively shutting her off from him, Lissa thought. He couldn’t have made it more plain if he had spelled it out for her, how uninterested in her he really was.

It took just under an hour for them to reach the Andrews’ house—a rather solid Victorian red-brick building on the outskirts of a small village. The gateposts and short drive were illuminated clearly enough for Lissa to have a brief glimpse of the edge of an immaculate lawn that somehow matched the mental picture she had already built up of Marisa Andrews—cool, immaculate, perfectly groomed.

Joel stopped the car and released his seat belt, Lissa doing the same. She was out of the car before he could help her, and he gave a rather grim smile as he waited for her to precede him up the shallow flight of stone steps.

The door was opened before they rang. ‘Joel, darling, I thought I recognised your car.’

Lissa recognised the smoothly feline feminine voice instantly. She could feel the tiny hairs on the surface of her skin prickling with atavistic dislike. ‘Do come in, both of you.’

As Lissa walked into the hall ahead of Joel she had ample opportunity to study their hostess, as Joel bent to kiss her cheek. Small, much smaller than herself, ash blonde hair cut to emphasise the delicacy of her features; she was everything that she herself was not Lissa recognised on a downward plunge of her heart.
Although she suspected that her hostess must be somewhere in her early thirties, she could easily have passed for a woman of twenty-seven or eight. Although she tried not to, Lissa couldn’t help but be aware of the way Marisa’s fingers clung to Joel’s shoulder, as she prolonged his greeting kiss, neither could she miss the look of cold malevolence which her hostess directed towards
her
as she cooed with soft sweetness. ‘Joel darling, you’re neglecting your new wife. Do please introduce her to me.’

Grimly Lissa listened to Joel’s introductions, hating the tinklingly false laugh Marisa gave when she interrupted gaily, ‘Oh Joel, no need to be quite so formal. Joel and I have known one another for years,’ she told Lissa, directing a coquettish glance towards Joel. ‘You know darling, you’ve grown into such an impossibly handsome man, that I really think perhaps I should have married
you
and not Peter. But then handsome men always make difficult husbands, don’t they, Lissa? One always has to be on one’s guard in case one loses them to someone else, wouldn’t you agree Lissa? Far better I always think to be a handsome man’s mistress than his wife. So much more fun.’

Lissa managed a cool smile, knowing quite well that Marisa was trying her best to make her feel uncomfortable and outside the charmed circle she had so plainly drawn around Joel and herself.

‘Where’s Peter?’ Joel enquired easily. ‘I haven’t seen him for ages.’

‘Oh, he’s in the drawing room.’ Marisa pulled a face. ‘He’s watching some stuffy programme on high
finance. It should be over soon. My husband’s a stockbroker,’ she explained to Lissa, ‘and sometimes I think he cares more about his stocks and shares than he does about me.’

‘Impossible,’ Joel replied smiling at her. ‘Or at least if he does, then he’s a fool.’

Lissa could feel the anger inside her, heating to a white-hot glow as she observed this interchange. Her nails were pressing so hard into the palms of her hands that they hurt.

The proprietorially flirtatious manner Marisa had adopted towards Joel set the tone for the whole evening, and Lissa had to grit her teeth and pretend not to notice the number of times her hostess excluded her from the conversation by referring to events which had happened in the past. She also had to pretend not to notice how often Marisa managed to touch Joel, or to draw his attention to her. To counteract her hostess’s rudeness, Lissa directed her attention towards Peter Andrews, who despite his rather solid appearance had a keen, rather dry wit, which he exercised to their mutual enjoyment.

‘Old Joel married,’ Peter murmured jovially when they had reached the coffee stage. He directed a brief grin towards his friend and added, ‘I was beginning to think I’d never see the day.’

‘Oh come on, darling, be practical,’ Marisa interrupted. ‘Naturally Joel had to marry. After all he has those children to think of now …’

As she waited for Joel to at least make a token attempt to deny Marisa’s insinuation Lissa could feel her
face burning with humiliation and resentment. How dare he subject her to Marisa’s bitchiness? How dare he bring her here to be insulted and tormented by the sight of Marisa continually making it plain how much she wanted him?

Peter gave an embarrassed cough and glanced rather uncertainly towards Lissa.

Pride came to her rescue. With a brittle smile she said tightly, ‘That’s right, Marisa. The children are Joel’s responsibility and as I’ve discovered, he’s a man who takes his responsibilities extremely seriously, but of course, taking our marriage seriously doesn’t preclude either of us from …’ she managed a tiny, expressive shrug, ‘shall we say making other friendships outside that marriage.’

There was a definite silence when she had finished. Without looking at either Joel or Marisa she picked up her coffee cup and made a pretence of drinking. Let Marisa make what she liked of that, she thought viciously.

‘Goodness. How very … civilised of you,’ was Marisa’s eventual comment. She turned to Joel. ‘Darling I must say that had you married me, I’m afraid I wouldn’t have been anything like as practical, and how you must have changed.’ She directed Lissa a smile of sweet malice. ‘You perhaps won’t believe this, but I remember Joel as being quite outrageously possessive and jealous.’

‘Yes, I’m sure,’ Lissa agreed with commendable control, and an acidly sweet smile of her own, ‘but that was a long time ago, wasn’t it? I think everyone feels things
more intensely in their late teens and early twenties. I know I did.’

The evening dragged on interminably. Marisa insisted on taking Joel into her own private sitting room to show him some prints she had recently bought, and to judge by the willingness with which Joel went with her, she had been right to suspect that Joel still cared for her. Why had Marisa married Peter when it was so obvious that she preferred Joel, Lissa wondered miserably. Had she perhaps married Peter on some impulsive whim only to discover that it was Joel she really wanted?

‘You mustn’t mind Marisa,’ Peter told her, breaking in on her thoughts. ‘I’m afraid she’s grown rather used to thinking of Joel as her exclusive property.’

‘No, of course not,’ Lissa agreed, feeling rather sorry for him. ‘I realise that you’re all very old friends.’

‘Yes … Joel was dating Marisa when he introduced her to me,’ Peter agreed, confirming what Joel himself had told her. ‘Of course, he wasn’t in a position to get married then. His father was extremely strict with him—kept him on a very tight rein financially.’

Lissa bit her lip. Was that the reason Marisa had married Peter in preference to Joel? Because Peter had been the better-off financially. Lissa was under no illusions about the other woman. Marisa was a woman who wanted the very best that life had to offer. Her marriage to Peter had given her financial security, but now she wanted more … she wanted Joel … And Joel quite plainly wanted her, Lissa reflected sickly seconds later as they both walked into the room. There was still a faint smear
of lipstick on Joel’s mouth, and she felt the sickness boil into fierce hatred as she averted her eyes from Marisa’s cat-like expression of complacency.

It was gone one in the morning when they eventually left. The angry surge of adrenalin which had kept Lissa going throughout the evening evaporated the moment she got into the car, leaving her unbelievably exhausted and more miserably unhappy than she could ever remember being in her life.

They had driven half a dozen miles or so when the tape finally stopped. As Lissa reached out to turn it over, Joel stopped her, his eyes meeting hers briefly for a moment, before he bit out, ‘And just what the hell were you trying to do to Marisa?’

What was
she
trying to do to
her!
Lissa took a deep breath and tried to steady herself, her voice when she eventually managed to speak sounded unfamiliar, but reassuringly steady. ‘Only the most stupid or appallingly cruel man would confront his wife with his mistress in such intimate conditions,’ she told him huskily. ‘If I was rude to Marisa, then I was only responding to her verbal attacks on me.’

For a moment it seemed to Lissa that he checked and would have said something, but then he paused and at last said coolly, ‘In self-defence? Is that all it was? There were one or two moments when I thought I detected more than a hint of jealousy.’

His astuteness infuriated her. ‘Me, jealous of your relationship with Marisa? Why did she marry Peter and not you in the first place, Joel? Was it because he promised
to be the better husband from a material point of view?’

He stopped the car with a jerk that threw her forward in her seatbelt with such force that her head almost bumped into the windscreen. The jolt winded and shocked her, but Joel made no allowances for that, his hands gripping her shoulders as he swung her round to face him, his eyes glittering with a savagery that made her draw in her breath. He did love Marisa. He would never have reacted like this otherwise. Pain … awful and all-consuming filled her until there was no room for anything else, not even the ability to be alarmed by the quality of his anger.

She let what he was saying wash over her, and then when he had finished said numbly, ‘You’ve still got her lipstick on your mouth …’

She watched in anguish as he raised his hand and rubbed it off.

‘Even if you didn’t care about humiliating me, Joel,’ she said tiredly as he re-started the engine, ‘I should have thought you might have spared some consideration for Peter. After all he is supposed to be your friend.’

‘Peter knew what he was getting into when he married Marisa,’ Joel informed her harshly.

After that neither of them spoke until they reached Winterly. Lissa got out of the car quickly and went straight upstairs to the girls’ room. Mrs Fuller had promised to listen out for them, but they were both fast asleep. Emma was sucking her thumb, Lissa released it from her mouth, and bent down to kiss both girls, tears stinging her eyes. Joel had married her for
their sake; and she must always bear that in mind. The tender, caring lover she thought she remembered had just been an illusion. Now she had no idea why Joel had made love to her. Once she had thought she knew, but after tonight … She shuddered, suddenly picturing him with Marisa … the sickness grew inside her and she dashed into the girls’ bathroom. Joel walked in just as she was wiping her face, frowning quickly.

‘Something wrong?’

‘I must have eaten something that disagreed with me,’ Lissa told him shakily, snapping off the light. ‘I think I’ll go to bed now, Joel. I’m tired.’

‘Of me? Is that what that little speech to Marisa about marriage was all about?’

He followed her into their room and tugged savagely at his shirt buttons, stopping suddenly to frown and walk over to his tallboy. He opened a drawer and took out a long flat gift-wrapped package, which he tossed casually over to her. ‘I nearly forgot, today’s your birthday, isn’t it?’

Lissa could have wept. It was, and she herself had almost forgotten about it. She would rather have had no present at all from Joel than one thrown at her in this careless manner which made it plain that it was no more than a duty gift.

‘Aren’t you going to open it?’