He scoured the town for her, and the university, empty as yet, but he couldn’t find any sign of her.
In the end, in desperation, he visited the lodging house where she had been staying when he had first met her, but the woman who ran the place was away on holiday with her husband, and her cousin, whom she had left in charge, didn’t even recognise Annie’s description.
He didn’t sleep that night, nor the night after, expecting with every heartbeat that she would return. But when?
One day passed, and then a week without any sign of her, without any word from her, and Dominic began to think the unthinkable. Annie had left him, and all because of a stupid quarrel.
She’s eighteen, a baby still, he tried to remind himself. Her reaction to their quarrel was excusable and understandable. She would come back once she had stopped sulking. Their love was too strong for her not to do so.
Ten days later, on the eve of his departure for the Middle East, he still hadn’t been able to accept that she had actually left him, that she wasn’t just playing a silly game with him to punish him. Right up until the moment the final call for his flight was given he still kept on expecting her to appear, to come running up to him, telling him that it had all been a mistake, that she loved him.
And even then he still didn’t give up hope, asking the estate agents and the couple he had let the house to to let him know if she should get in touch.
But of course she didn’t do any such thing, and in the end he had to accept that the reason she hadn’t returned—no doubt the reason she had walked out on him in the first place—was that she regretted their marriage and considered it to be a mistake.
He didn’t bother returning home to the UK that Christmas. What was the point? His birthday in March he celebrated alone, and all the birthdays that followed it, along with certain other special anniversaries: the one when he had first met her, the one when they had first made love, the one when they had married.
The years passed, and with them his initial shock of disbelief. All that remained was a natural irritation at not knowing why she had gone without an explanation. He had resigned himself to never losing the hurt, but the last thing that he had expected or envisaged was that she would simply walk back into his life, his home—his bed—as though nothing had happened…without any warning…without any real explanation, without any acknowledgement of what she had done. And he had certainly never imagined that she would behave in such an extraordinarily bizarre way.
His body tensed now, as he fought to quell the surge of aching longing that filled him. In the past, as lovers, he had been the tutor and she the disciple. But tonight…With the bitterness of the gall that only a man who has loved a woman more than she has loved him can feel he gritted his teeth against the ferocity of his jealousy at the thought of the relationships she must have had in his absence.
All that rubbish she had talked about fate and them being meant to be together had just been so ridiculous. Surely she couldn’t possibly have expected him to believe her! So why hadn’t he said something, stopped her—stopped himself? Because he was a man, that was why…She meant nothing to him on a personal level now—nothing whatsoever—and the first thing he was going to do when she eventually woke up was to demand an explanation of her reappearance in his life.
Yes. That was the first thing he was going to do. And the second was that he was going to get a divorce!
CHAPTER FIVE
ANNIE woke up with a small anxious start, peering quickly round the bedroom before smiling in relief as she saw the tall, familiar male figure standing in front of the window.
‘It wasn’t just a dream,’ she breathed happily.
Dominic stared at her. What the hell was she playing at? Well, he could play as well.
‘No, it wasn’t a dream,’ he agreed silkily. ‘And I’ve got the scratches to prove it. Want to see them?’
As she blushed and lowered her eyelashes in faked modesty he admitted to himself that she was an excellent actress. Even he, knowing the truth, still found his heart giving a funny little erratic beat as he fought the temptation to move reassuringly closer to her.
Hardening his heart, he prepared to tell her that she was wasting her time trying to bamboozle him, but before he could say anything Annie pre-empted him, telling him shyly, ‘I know this sounds silly, but I still can’t quite believe that all this is real. That you and I are real,’ she added for extra emphasis.
‘What would you like me to do to prove it to you?’ Dominic asked her urbanely. ‘Come over there and—?’ He stopped abruptly as he recognised that his words, designed to put her in her place, were instead having a very emphatic and very unwanted effect on his own body as his mind agilely leapt the chasm between his words and the events of the previous night, furnishing him in no uncertain terms with the knowledge of just how his body felt about renewing the intimacy they had so recently shared.
His body might want her but his emotions most certainly did not, Dominic assured himself sturdily, but for some reason he still found that he was moving closer to the bed and to Annie—because he wanted to ensure that she had no way of escaping when he confronted her and demanded an explanation of her behaviour he told himself firmly.
‘I really ought to get up,’ she was saying quietly. ‘You must have things to do, and…’
‘And so do you. What are you doing with your time, Annie? With your life?’ he demanded aggressively.
For a moment she looked slightly taken aback, but her manner as she gathered the duvet around her body was so composed and quiet that Dominic felt reluctantly impressed.
‘I…I work part-time for Petrofiche,’ she told him hesitantly.
Dominic stiffened. No doubt that explained how she had known that he was returning to the area. She must have heard on the office grapevine about his appointment.
‘Part-time?’ he began critically, but Annie didn’t appear to register the contempt in his voice because she had ignored what he was saying.
‘Oh, this is a dream come true for me,’ she told him huskily. ‘I never thought…And then, when I saw you in the restaurant the other night…I never imagined that this could happen.’ As she spoke she reached out to touch his hand, her expression one of luminous joy, her whole body trembling openly as she whispered, ‘People say that reality can never match up to the expectancy of one’s dreams, but now I know that they’re wrong. My reality…You…’
She paused, visibly swallowing as she raised her head and fixed her gaze on him, her eyes wide and dark with an emotion that looked so real that Dominic had to remind himself just what she was, and how impossible it was for her to mean a word of what she was saying.
‘You,’ she emphasised, ‘are more, so very much more than…than I ever dreamed you could possibly be. I can’t believe even now that I’ve been lucky enough to find you…that fate should have picked us out for one another. I feel so…’ She paused and swallowed, her eyes almost purple-grey with the intensity of the emotions Dominic knew she had to be faking as she continued huskily, ‘I feel so, so blessed too. Last night,’ Annie went on tremulously, drawing his hand closer to her, so he had to sit on the bed, ‘was the most wonderful, the most beautiful, the most perfe
ct night of my life.’ She paused, and Dominic could hear the tiny emotional catch in her voice before she said, ‘You made it that way for me. I love you so much…I…’
When her voice became suspended by emotion Dominic reminded himself that she was merely acting…lying…
‘Oh, dear,’ he could hear her saying, her voice rueful and husky with self-deprecatory laughter. ‘I think I might be going to cry, and men hate weepy women, don’t they?’
He had originally fallen almost as much in love with her gentle sense of humour as he had with her, but, like everything else about her, it was a fiction, he reminded himself sharply now as he made to pull away from her.
‘I’m hungry,’ he told her abruptly. ‘I’ll go downstairs and start breakfast.’
It made sense to wait until they were in less emotive surroundings before he confronted her, he told himself as he moved to stand up, but to his consternation, instead of letting him go, she clung tenderly to his arm.
‘I’m hungry too—for you,’ she whispered, her voice soft with love.
She blushed as he turned to look at her—a soft pink flushing of her skin that, like her downcast glance, had to be manufactured, he told himself.
‘You want sex?’ he demanded angrily, and then, before she could say anything, and without giving himself time to analyse either his anger or the way he was reacting to it, he turned back to her, once again sitting on the bed as he reached for her, wrapping her tightly in his arms, his mouth hard and punishing on hers.
Annie felt almost as though she might faint. To wake up this morning in the bed she had shared last night with the man she loved, to know that he was real, that their love was real, was almost too much for her to comprehend. And now to have him hold her, kiss her with such fierce hungry energy, to know, to see that he wanted her so much…She ached to reach out and caress him…intimately…but there were still some things, some intimacies she felt too shy to make the first move towards.