He knew the answer already... of course he did, but if he wanted to drag it out of her, to hear her admit her vulnerability and stupidity, then he could.
‘You know that it’s because of you,’ she told him.
She got up and walked over to the window, keeping her back to him.
‘I want you to leave, Marsh,’ she told him, hoping he couldn’t hear the tears choking her voice.
‘Have you been back to the house yet?’ he asked her.
His question shocked her. How on earth could he ask?
‘No,’ she told him fiercely. ‘And I never shall. Now please leave.’
She could hear him walking towards her, her whole body went tense and rigid with awareness, but he didn’t touch her.
Standing directly behind her, he said savagely, ‘You’re very good at turning your back on things, aren’t you, Debra? Your job.. .your home.. .me.’
Suddenly his hands were on her shoulders, turning her round to face him, propelling her against his body and keeping her there while he kissed her with a fierce anger that made her pummel his shoulders with her fists until he let her go.
‘I’m sorry. I never meant...’
He looked ill, she recognised, sick and ashamed.
‘Get out,’ she told him hoarsely. ‘Just...just go.’
She could feel the hectic spots of colour burning in her face, but it was only after he had actually gone that she recognised that at no time at all had she actually felt fear; desire, need, anger and even self-contempt, yes; but fear, no.
She walked over to the settee on shaky legs and sank down on to it.
There was something else she had not done either. When she had thought of touching Marsh, of how she had touched him, of how she had loved him, those memories had been completely free of any shadow of degradation, of any echo of Kevin Riley’s taunts.
She had, she realised on a sudden sharp sense of roaring relief, never even thought of Kevin Riley at all, only of Marsh... the way he had responded to her, the words he had said to her.
‘You’re very good at turning your back on things,’ he had accused her.
Was she? Was she, as he had implied, a coward, unable to face reality, wanting only to escape from it? Her house, for instance? She might not want to live there again, but it was her responsibility. She wetted her dry lips with her tongue-tip.
Tomorrow...tomorrow she would go there... Tomorrow she would prove to Marsh and to herself that, although she might be weak, although she might be vulnerable in her love for him, she was not a coward.
Yes, tomorrow she would prove to everyone that she was not a coward.
But first there was something else she had to do which was equally important, and that was to make it clear to her interfering stepsister that she could run her own life.
CHAPTER NINE
‘I MEANT it for the best, you know,’ Leigh told her remorsefully in a troubled voice. ‘He was so very anxious to see you, Debra, and I thought...’
‘What? That he was going to take me in his arms and declare his undying love for me?’
Debra’s hands clenched as she heard the tears beneath her anger.
She had been stiff and cold last night with Leigh when she had returned home, and had not mentioned Marsh. She had been so hurt and angry that Leigh could have gone behind her back in letting Marsh find her when she was alone and vulnerable that she had not been able to trust herself not to lose control and perhaps even to quarrel irreversibly with her stepsister.
And, whatever else she might feel like accusing Leigh of, she knew that her actions had not been motivated by anything other than love for her. ‘So you do love him, then?’
The soft question caught her off guard. She swung round, her body tight with tension, her eyes huge, glittering with the tears she would not let herself shed.
‘Of course I love him,’ she said fiercely. ‘But that isn’t the point. Do you know why he wanted to see me, Leigh?’