‘Ah,’ she smiled, ‘there has to be a but, I suppose.’
‘The hair, for instance,’ he observed. ‘I saw the other Madeline marching directly to the nearest stylist’s and having the lot shorn off as a defiant gesture aimed directly at me.’
‘Ceremonially, of course,’ she assumed, understanding him exactly. Dominic and her hair had once enjoyed a private love affair all their own. He had loved to bury his face in its silken mass and she had loved to feel his fingers combing through it, reacting to his touch with a shivering pleasure that had used to stir her blood.
His hand moved to her waist in an attentive gesture meant to guide her through the pair of open doors into the dining-room. And, unintentionally maybe, his fingers touched the silken edges of her hair. That instant tingling response on her scalp forced her to smother a gasp.
‘I’m sorry to disillusion you, Dominic,’ she murmured coolly in an effort to cover up her reaction, ‘but I really wasn’t that stricken.’
His step faltered. And Madeline gained the small satisfaction of knowing her reply had thrown him.
‘You were,’ he muttered. Then, before she could form any kind of protest, he added, ‘We both were.’
She was saved from having to defend herself against that potentially provoking remark by the waiter, who was eager to see them both comfortably settled at their corner table. Dominic took her by surprise by refusing to take the seat opposite her and instead slipping into the one to her right.
‘I hate talking across two dinner plates,’ he explained the move as the waiter quickly rearranged the dinner placings, then disappeared, leaving the menus behind. ‘If I am wining and dining a beautiful woman, then I want to enjoy her, not to peer at her over the top of some stupid table decoration.’
‘This woman has not come here simply so that you can enjoy looking at her,’ she said, dampeningly. ‘You wished to talk. About Vicky, I believe you said.’
‘Not yet,’ he refused. ‘First I want to know about you. What you’ve been doing with yourself, how you are—how you really are, Madeline.’
‘I’m fine,’ she said, then gave him a brief résumé of her life in Boston. ‘It feels strange being back in England, but I expected it,’ she concluded. ‘Boston is my home now and I feel more comfortable there—’
His hand coming to cover one of her own where it lay on the table brought her to a breathless halt. ‘Stop it, Maddie,’ he commanded grimly. ‘Stop trying to show me how wonderfully cool and sophisticated you’ve become, and cut out all that blasé spiel you’ve managed to fool everyone else with.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she denied, trying to remove her hand from beneath his, but he wouldn’t let her, so she stopped the undignified struggle, gathered together all that impressive sang-froid he was being so scornful of and turned blandly patient eyes on him instead. His face was very close to hers. She could see the silver flecks lightening his slate-grey eyes, and remembered on a wave of sad nostalgia how once she had used to provoke the whole iris to turn black with passion. Angry passion, sexual passion; she’d never used to mind so long as she got a passionate response from him.
The silence between them grew, and slowly Madeline ceased to breathe as tension began to inch itself along her spine, watching his gaze flicker over her face, relearning, taking in the changes and reacquainting himself with those things about her that would never change: the classical structure of her bones, for instance, and the creamy smoothness of her skin; the sensual fullness of her mouth, slightly parted now as she tried to breathe evenly; the small straight line of her nose, and those once so expressive eyes which now hid everything.
Slowly, as the silence stretched, and the tension altered to a fine buzz of awareness, the rest of the room began to lose itself in a blurred haze on the periphery of their tunnel vision, no mockery evident in either of them because for some reason they had both discarded it in this long private communion.
This, Madeline recalled achingly, was the Dominic she’d only ever seen when they were alone with each other—which had been so rarely. This was the one who could probe through the bright glittering girl she had been and home right in on the sensitive and vulnerable creature who hid within.
His hand was warm on hers. They were sitting close enough for their thighs to touch. She could feel the power in those corded muscles cloaked in expensive cloth, feel the ever-present animal magnetism of him. And old, forgotten sensations began to tingle just beneath the surface of her skin.
We once spent hours just gazing at each other like this, she remembered sadly. Her hand resting in his, the only real contact other than their eyes, the link to something so deep and meaningful that suddenly she wanted to cry for the loss of it.
‘Boston was good for me,’ she heard herself say, then blinked to break the disturbing eye contact. Dangerous, this, she warned herself with an inner shiver. Dangerous. ‘I grew up there, Dominic. Don’t try looking for that other foolish creature you once knew; she no longer exists.’
Something dark passed over his face—a hint of a sadness one felt with the fleeting memory of a loved one long gone from this life. ‘And are you content with this new—image you project?’ His voice was oddly gentle, and his eyes showed an alarming understanding.
Madeline removed her hand from his, and so withdrew spiritually away from him. Content? ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m content.’ Happy? No. Alive? No. She took in a deep breath. ‘And you?’ she threw the conversational ball back at him. ‘Are you—satisfied with your life? Vicky tells me you’ve outstroked your father in the money-making race. Success must taste sweet at that level.’
His mouth went awry in recognition of what she was doing. And at last he relaxed back into his seat as his own urbane mask slid smoothly into place. ‘We all have our—successes to savour and our…failures to rue.’ He looked directly at her, and Madeline knew that she had been one of his failures.
As if by tacit agreement, they both picked up their menus. Rocky ground was always best avoided whenever possible, Madeline mused ruefully. Their conversation had been drawing perilously close to rocky ground. And with an atmosphere tempered better to suit the occasion, they ordered and ate, using trivia to carry them through the interminable meal, and no one looking at them would ever guess that once they had been so closely in tune that it was sometimes impossible to distinguish where one spirit ended and the other began.
‘I’m worried about Vicky,’ Dominic said when at last they reached the coffee stage. A frown pulled his brows together.
‘Yes, I am too,’ Madeline agreed. ‘Something has to be done about the situation, Dom,’ she said grimly, too intent to notice the way she had shortened his name the way she’d used to do. ‘It appalled me to come home and discover there was a feud in progress between our two families.’ She turned an apologetic look on him. ‘No one so much as mentioned it in their letters to me. And, quite frankly, I was annoyed to learn that the situation has been allowed to develop just because of our—our…’
‘Stupidity,’ he supplied for her. Madeline grimaced her dissatisfaction with the word but offered no other. She hadn’t got one. And in any case, if she had, it would only have led to a discussion on their ‘stupidity’ which she had no wish for.
‘Poor Vicky is caught right in the middle. And I’m afraid I can see no solution to the problem. She knows without my having to say it that she’s more than welcome in my home, that Nina wants her to be bridesmaid at her wedding. Just as we understand that she can’t do that without feeling she’s letting her own family down.’ Madeline gave an impotent shrug. ‘I wish…’ She sighed, forgetting for the moment to keep her guards in place. ‘I wish…’
‘What do you wish for, Madeline?’ Dominic prompted gently, his gaze fixed on her wistful face. She didn’t answer him, lost in those same wishes in a way the old Madeline used to do. ‘Do you wish the last four years had never happened?’ he suggested, his hand going up to touch her hair as though it couldn’t help itself, eyes suddenly dark on her. ‘That we could turn back the clock to a time when we were all happy, and everyone loved everyone else with no dissension anywhere in sight?’
But there had been dissension, she remembered with a hardening of her heart. ‘It’s easy to look back and remember only the good times,’ she declared. ‘But only dreamers and fools do that.’ She reached out for her coffee-cup and in doing so dislodged his hand from her hair. ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘I don’t wish the last four years away. I only wish I could end this silly feud.’