He moved then, and suddenly words didn’t matter. Their bodies were so in tune that they climbed together in a rhapsody of deep, slow body movements, and when the climax did come it hit her with a sudden racing of the pulses, and that wonderful high tensile floating of the senses held her hovering for endless moments of incredible beauty before she was released, pulling Guy with her into the storm awaiting them, ripples becoming waves, and waves a riptide of pure sensation that carried them on and on before finally, inevitably letting them swim lazily into quieter waters.
They lay spent for a long time before either of them felt willing to move. And then only Guy seemed to find the strength to do it, sliding away from her then reaching to flip back the covers before lifting her gently beneath them and joining her there.
He took her back into his arms, and Marnie lay wrapped in the wonderful afterglow of a beautiful experience, her mind still drifting somewhere high above the clouds, limbs heavy, body replete, senses content to settle back into a languid calm while she listened to the comforting throb of his heartbeat beneath her cheek.
Guy moved again, scooping up the thick curtain of her hair and giving it one gentle twist around his fist—as he always used to do—just before he set it on the pillow behind her.
Then he settled his cheek lightly on top of her head, brushed his lips against her hair and said quietly, ‘Tell me about the child we made and lost, Marnie,’ and succeeded in exploding her contented world into a million broken pieces.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MARNIE came awake the next morning to find herself alone. And only the imprint on the pillow beside her said that Guy had ever been there.
But he had been, she remembered dully. Carefully, steadily—ruthlessly stripping her of every last layer of protection she had grown around herself over the years until all that was left was the raw and tortured woman he found beneath.
So, now he knew everything. She had told him the lot, dumping it all on his lap with a bitter malice which showed how thoroughly he had deranged her with his cruel shock-tactics.
And if she had locked it all away inside her because it was the only way to deal with the pain of it all, then the opening up of that terrible door had inflicted double the pain, double the anger and double the guilt for what she saw as her own unforgivable selfishness in running away as she had, giving no thought to the fragile life growing inside her.
To be fair to Guy, when it had all come pouring out, he had held on to her tightly, refusing to let go even when she fought him like a wildcat in an effort to break free.
Oh, he had held her close, given her his strength and his comfort throughout the whole ordeal. But he had not been satisfied until he had wrenched every last detail from her.
‘You should have told me all this a long time ago!’ he had censured angrily when her sobs had threatened to tear her apart inside. ‘Look how it hurts for its four years’ festering. See what you do to yourself now.’
‘How did you find out?’ she asked when she had enough control over herself to wonder at his uncanny knowledge. She had told no one about her poor baby. No one. Not even Clare, when she’d gone through a similar tragedy.
‘Let’s just leave it that I did know,’ he said grimly. ‘For now it is all out in the open, Marnie, it should be let go. God knows, we’ve both suffered enough over it—more than enough.’
For some reason, the dull throb in his voice set her crying all over again. He drew her closer, and it was in his arms that she fell asleep—only to wake up to find him gone.
And she didn’t dare wonder what that had to mean.
It was then she heard it—the distinctive growl of a powerful engine revving in the distance. She climbed out of bed and, grabbing the loose end of the sheet, wrapped it around her naked body and moved over to the window to wait, knowing that the sound meant that Guy was already down at the track and preparing to take out one of his cars.
It must have rained in the night, she noticed. The air had a fresh, damp smell about it, the lawns below her sparkling in the weak morning sun. She could see the stream babbling more fiercely down towards the lake. And over to the west, just beyond the valley itself, she could see more clouds gathering, thick and dark, promising yet more rain soon.
But the sun still shone on Oaklands, and Roberto’s roses seemed happy enough to lift their heads and open their petals, so maybe the storm was not coming this way—
She heard it then, the sudden change in motor noise, followed quickly by a throaty roar which said Guy had put the car in gear and was speeding smoothly out of the pit lane.
She had often stood here like this waiting for him to go flashing by in some sleek growling monster at awe-inspiring speed. And she closed her eyes now, so she could watch with her mind’s eye him shoot out of the pit lane on to the track itself, each small cut in engine sound denoting a split-second change in gear.
He was already in top gear by the time he hit the track, accelerating away down the main straight on a roar which set her pulses racing along with it. In a second or two he would reach the first sharp curve which sent the track into a tricky S-bend. She heard the distinctive sound as he changed down, the throaty noise as he throttled back followed by the frightening surge of power that said he was out of the bend and accelerating towards the bridge which would take him over the stream then on around the lake until he hit the straight directly in front of the house, coming into her view just as he cleared the water.
Her breath caught in anticipation, eyes wide with a mixture of excitement and fear, for when he hit the length of road in front of her it meant he would have whichever car it was he had decided to take out travelling at its maximum speed.
But it was only when she saw the flash of blue and white as he came into view that she realised he wasn’t driving one of the beautiful museum pieces, but the Frabosa Formula One.
The updated and daunting car was similar to the one he had won his world championships in, but had since moved on a pace in its development to become one of the best cars on the circuit this decade. Guy had decided to include this one in his collection as a testimony to his own success.
And it was the car she hated the most, for its gruesome power, for its flimsy build, and for its total lack of respect for anything human. And because Guy only ever drove that awful car when he was in the blackest of moods.
But what had her heart thudding heavily in her breast as she watched him fly past was the knowledge that he was driving that thing because of what she had told him last night. She was sure of it, just as she was suddenly sickeningly sure that he had taken the blame for their lost child entirely on himself.
With her eyes tightly closed, and lips drawn tight across her teeth, her ears took up her whole concentration, listening for and interpreting each minute sound the engine made for signs of malfunction. Or, worse—any bad timing on the driver’s part. You didn’t spend twelve months of your life around men like Guy without learning quickly the sounds which mattered.
He should be changing gear—now!