For Revenge or Redemption? (16 page)

‘It’s getting late,’ he said and catching her hand to pull her to her feet, noticed how cold it was. He gave a shrill whistle that brought Truffle scrambling from somewhere over the rocks towards them. ‘We’d best be getting back.’

Her fingers were getting too fat, Grace decided the day she couldn’t get her rings on. It didn’t make her feel particularly jubilant when the woman who ran the post office referred to her as ‘
Miss
Mason’.

‘One of the drawbacks of being seven months pregnant,’ she responded dryly, without really knowing why she felt the need to explain. ‘It isn’t just the middle bit that swells up!’

It was just that Seth was working such long hours these days, at home and away, that she seemed to be seeing less and less of him, and with the problems they were already facing in their marriage sometimes she felt single as well as unloved. Being forced to discard her wedding band seemed like such an ill-fated thing, she mused now as she sat sketching with Truffle’s head resting on her feet under the dining-room table. It was like a curtain closing on a poorly acted scene from a play, a farce, which was what her marriage was. A travesty, she thought torturously, since it would never have taken place had she not been expecting his child.

As her pregnancy progressed, so did her concerns for the baby. Another brief scare when her blood pressure went higher than normal had her constantly worrying that something would go wrong.

Would it come too early? Too late? Would everything be all right?

Her greatest fear was that she would lose the baby altogether, something she couldn’t even begin to contemplate.

Nadia came to visit, staying for ten days to be with Grace when Seth had to shoot off to Germany unavoidably on business, and by the time her mother-in-law-left—which, as it turned out, happened to be Grace’s birthday—Grace felt considerably better.

‘She’s done wonders for you,’ Seth remarked after they were driving back that day from taking Nadia to the station, a day that couldn’t quite make up its mind whether to be blisteringly hot or to cool everyone down with its sudden and unexpected showers. ‘It begs the question why you never look that happy and contented when we’re on our own.’

‘Does it?’ Grace murmured, feigning nonchalance. She wasn’t going to tell him that she loved him too much to truly let go when he was around for fear of revealing her true feelings for him—not when he didn’t love her in the same way—and that sometimes the strain was almost too much for her to bear. ‘Perhaps it’s because she cooks better than you do,’ she added more lightly, although that wasn’t strictly true. Nadia was a wizard in the kitchen, but when her son put his mind to it he too could come up with some pretty stupendous dishes.

‘In that case,’ he said, bringing the Aston Martin through the heavy summer holiday traffic, ‘you’ll be pleased to know that I’m taking you out for lunch.’

And that turned out to be a four-course meal in her favourite Thai restaurant, which she objected to at first, feeling self-conscious and unattractive in her heavily pregnant state. But Seth had insisted, and she had to admit to having enjoyed it when the lunch was over.

The only down side was having to sit there watching how members of the restaurant’s female clientele made no secret
of their silent approval of the untamed-looking hunk who was sharing her table, while sparing the odd envious glance at the woman sitting beside him in a sun dress that could have doubled as a tent to see if she measured up.

Now as he was driving her back to the house, sitting there in that silver-grey suit he wore with such mind-blowing style, Grace wondered how she could possibly still be attractive to him when she was waddling around like a lumbering goose. After all, Seth was a sensuous and extremely virile man, yet he hadn’t shared a bed with her in weeks.

‘You’re quiet,’ he commented when he was helping her out of the car, the gaze resting on her face softly reflective. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Of course.’ She even managed a little laugh.

The look he gave her as she moved past him told her he wasn’t fooled.

‘What’s the matter?’ he pressed when they were inside the house. ‘Are you upset because I haven’t given you your birthday present yet?’

‘Haven’t you?’ She looked up from petting Truffle, who had nearly knocked her over in his eagerness to welcome her home, her face a picture of mock innocence. ‘I hadn’t realised.’

He had sent her flowers, though. Red roses, two dozen of them, which had arrived that morning. But what were flowers and presents, she thought achingly, when all she wanted was his love?

‘I thought I’d keep something back for later,’ he drawled with a flash of something in those incredible steely eyes. ‘Something, perhaps, that will show you how beautiful you are. Something you seem to have had difficulty believing lately.’

Unavoidably, her eyes lit up, curiosity breaking through her melancholy mood.

‘In the bedroom,’ he told her, giving nothing away.

She remembered him coming back inside after he’d handed her into the car earlier with Nadia, and she guessed that that was why.

Frowning, her smile cautious, Grace made her way upstairs.

What did a man like Seth give his wife on her birthday? Something to make her look beautiful, he had said. And in the bedroom.

A sexy nightdress? Enticing underwear?

A leap of reckless excitement was swiftly tempered by unease. He’d said something about that the day he’d come home and found her on the beach with Truffle, but she thought he’d been joking. Would he disappoint her like that?

Gingerly she pushed open the door.

She couldn’t see anything unusual at first. There was certainly no exotic clothing spread out on the bed.

A shaft of sunlight slicing through the dark, dramatic clouds broke into the room like a beacon. She followed its path, her head doing a double take as her eyes skimmed over and then returned, shocked and disbelieving, to the figure that graced the top of the bookcase.

Her bronze!

The one she’d always regretted letting go.

She went over to it and ran trembling fingers lightly over the silky-smooth lines of the young woman it depicted, whose blouse hung loosely over her tight-fitting jeans, her long hair blown back by a whipping wind from the sea. Matthew Tyler had captured it all in that lost and lonely look about her. All the turmoil in her face. All the emptiness and lonely longing in her soul.

Hearing the creak of the door, she spun round. Silent tears were trembling on her cheeks.

‘Where did you find it?’ she whispered.

Seth came in, pushing the door closed behind him. ‘You remember the auction?’

How could she forget it? The mixed emotions that had clawed at her that day: the frenetic interest in that saleroom; the escalating bids that had sent the price of her father’s work shooting through the roof. The bronze had sold through an agent over the phone on behalf of an anonymous bidder. Someone rich enough and crazy enough to justify spending…

‘
You
bought it?’ she whispered incredulously.

Beside her now, he ran a hand lovingly over the statuette, just as she had done.

‘Why?’ Why, when he didn’t even like her? she wondered, baffled.

‘How could I resist such a work of art?’ he said with such a depth of appreciation in his deep voice that she could almost imagine she had heard it tremble.

But why hadn’t he resisted it? Because it was a Matthew Tyler sculpture? Or because…?

Her eyelids came down, obliterating the hope that threatened to reveal itself to him, because she didn’t think she could really bear to know the answer.

He was a speculator with an eye for an investment. Why else would he have bought it, when his only interest in the girl it represented was to get even with her? While she had gone home, tearing herself apart after the hammer had come down in that auction room for allowing herself to sell it, a decision she had never stopped regretting.

Her eyes clashed with his, her face an open book now.
How had he known?

‘It didn’t take much working out to realise how much it had cost you to part with it,’ he explained, answering her unspoken question. ‘Or why you did.’

‘I did it for the money,’ she said defensively. ‘To pay bills and to save my gallery.’ Yet she knew now that, remarkably, it was only Seth’s bidding that day that had made it possible.
Only
his
money. Nobody else’s. So she hadn’t been independent from him, even in that.

‘Nevertheless…’ An arching eyebrow told her that he didn’t wholly accept her motives. ‘I’m sure if you had had an easier relationship with your father you would have found some other way to raise the money.’

Would she have? Grace bit her lower lip. Possibly. But she had had other grounds for parting with that statue, which were as torturous in their own way as being abandoned by her father.

‘Don’t be too hard on him for not coming back, Grace. He had his reasons.’

A cloud had crossed the sun again, putting the room in shadow. ‘How do you know?’

She saw that broad chest rise then fall after a few moments as he let his breath out slowly.

‘Because I made it my business to find out. As big a swine as you think I am, I couldn’t stand by and watch you harbouring such hurt and resentment because of the way he deserted you. I found it hard to believe that a man who could create such sensitivity in his work could be so completely without heart. He came from a different background and couldn’t fit into your grandparents’ world. They didn’t want him to marry their daughter, and certainly had no time for him after your mother died. He gave you up, Grace, because they convinced him it was impossible for him to keep you. He believed he was doing the right thing in handing you over and that you’d have a far better life with them than he could ever give you. I had to do some extensive research, but I managed to find out why he didn’t contact you again as he promised he would.’

She couldn’t believe she was hearing all this. Seth had gone to all this trouble—on her behalf?

‘He was a very private person and guarded his privacy jealously, but after a lengthy search I found out from an exlady-friend and neighbour of his what happened. He had an
accident, Grace, not long after he saw you last. It left him with epilepsy and other problems. She said he didn’t want to let you know because he didn’t want to ruin your life by making you feel obligated or burdened by him. She said he knew he must have caused you enough pain in your life without causing you any more. Apparently he was banking on the fact that you wouldn’t try and contact him, because—as he told his friend and neighbour—he didn’t deserve to be contacted.’

And she hadn’t, thinking the worst about him.

The tears that had been glistening on her cheeks at having found her most treasured possession now started to flow freely, and suddenly she was sobbing into the warmth of a strong, masculine shoulder.

‘I’m sorry, Grace,’ he whispered. ‘But I couldn’t leave you to go through the rest of your life hating him for having broken his promise. His motives were good, even if they kicked in a little too late to do either of you any benefit.’

As her tears subsided he turned her with him to look at her father’s work again. ‘There’s a lot of love in that sculpture,’ he observed, running a finger over its fine patina. Because her father had loved her—in his own way. She wasn’t in any doubt about that now. ‘A lot of love,’ Seth reiterated, startling her when he suddenly appended, ‘And in more ways than one.’

Could he see it? Had he seen it when he had made that ridiculous bid for it over a year ago? Was it that that had made him buy it?

‘I was young. I’d lost my baby.’
And you
, she added silently, but couldn’t tell him that.

‘Is that all?’

‘What else could there be?’ she queried, afraid.

He chuckled softly and, reaching out, lifted her chin with a gentle finger. Another shaft of sunlight breaking through the clouds turned his bronzed skin to fiery gold.

‘Oh, Grace.’ He drew her back to him, his lips against her
hairline so tender that she wanted to weep with the longing for that depth of caring in his voice to mean something. ‘You poor, naïve little fool.’

Because, of course, it didn’t mean anything—not what she wanted it to mean, anyway. Oh, he would be kind to her. Respect her. Show her all the care and consideration owed to a pregnant wife. But he didn’t love her. Wasn’t that what he was saying in calling her a naïve fool? Because he must have recognised it on the face of that girl who was immortalised in bronze. One would have had to be blind or stupid not to understand the feelings which her father had captured, the thing which made Matthew Tyler’s works stand out over the work of his contemporaries—emotion. And Seth Mason was neither blind nor stupid.

She couldn’t resist as his lips moved across her face, her throat, the sensitive hollow at the juncture of her shoulder, and she gave a small murmur of wanting as he slid the thin straps of her dress aside.

Her arms around his neck, she felt his darkly shaded jaw against her cheek, smelled the heaven of his aftershave lotion which, even while it thrilled her, couldn’t hide the more potent musk of his own animal scent as he skilfully dispensed with her bra.

Her breasts were heavy in his hands, their large, dark aureoles marking her advanced pregnancy.

Seth groaned as he bent his head to look at her, his hands, his fingers, his touch as reverent as the look of awe that seemed to light his face. Gently then, somehow, they were on the bed, and he was removing the rest of her clothes.

Self-conscious, she uttered a small sound of embarrassment at having him see her naked like this.

‘You’re so beautiful,’ he murmured, and she could see the flush of hard desire, of barely controlled passion, staining his cheeks, a passion that had been stifled and denied them for weeks.

Now it emerged in an urgent fusing of mouths and tongues, and skin against heated skin. He hadn’t undressed beyond helping her to remove the shirt she had tugged out of his waistband, so her hands could caress the hair-coarsened contours of his chest and powerful arms, and the velvet-clothed muscles of his back.