The Playboy in Pursuit Page 10

  ‘Then what has, Mr Psychoanalyst? You tell me, since you know everything about me, even things I haven’t told you. Things I haven’t told anyone!’

  ‘Your husband didn’t love you.’

  Lucille’s eyes widened and she just stared at him.

  ‘He didn’t love you. Or care about you. Or understand you. Or appreciate you. He took the beautiful, brave, brilliant girl that you must have been and tried to crush her under his chauvinistic male ego.’

  Lucille’s mouth had dropped open. Tears threatened and she had to battle for control, shoring up her defences again as she always did. With sarcasm and cynicism.

  ‘My mother would be surprised to hear that. Dear Roger was a prince in her eyes. I was a feminist bitch who wanted the world and wouldn’t do what a good wife should do without complaint or question. I wouldn’t even have a baby.’

  ‘I don’t believe that. If you wouldn’t have your husband’s baby, then it had something to do with him, and not you. I think you’d make a marvellous mother.’

  Lucille could feel her chin begin to wobble. She tipped the rest of the wine down her throat and prayed for calm.

  But all calm had been shattered. She was beginning to shake inside. ‘I really don’t want to talk about this,’ she bit out.

  ‘But you need to, Lucille,’ Val challenged. ‘Can’t you see that? It’s poisoning you. Everything you say and do is influenced by what happened in your marriage. It’s twisted your views and warped your mind. You can’t even have a normal relationship with a man because of it.’

  ‘Are you saying our relationship isn’t normal?’

  ‘It’s way from being normal, and you know it. But normal is what I want with you, Lucille. I’m sick of all this secret coming and going. I’m sick of your being ashamed of my being your lover. I’m not ashamed of you. I want to shout our relationship from the rooftops. I’m not a bad man, Lucille. Your ex-husband’s the bad man. He’s the one who deserves to be judged, not me. So let’s do that now. Let’s judge him together. Then let’s get him the hell out of your life!’

  Lucille was thrown into turmoil by Val’s impassioned tirade. She hadn’t realised he felt so negatively about their arrangement. She’d thought he’d be more than happy to go along with a strictly sexual affair. A lot of men would have been.

  His desire to have a real relationship with her stirred deeply female longings which would not be denied. Because underneath that was what she wanted too, despite all her supposed lack of faith in men. As for his idea of their judging Roger together… That was fraught with far more personal and emotional risk than Val realised.

  She hadn’t visited that place in her memory in a long, long time. Not directly. Or in detail.

  On top of that, how could she explain everything Roger had done, and hadn’t done, without sounding as self-pitying and selfish as her own family had accused her of being?

  She didn’t want Val looking at her and thinking the same things.

  Still, she had to try, didn’t she?

  It was time.

  But as she tried to gather her thoughts and her words, Lucille found that deciding and doing were two entirely different things.

  ‘I…I don’t know where to begin,’ she choked out.

  ‘Anywhere. What’s the worst thing he did to you that you can think of? The thing you can never forgive? The thing that’s still eating into you, even now?’

  ‘The baby,’ she blurted out, and he looked shocked.

  ‘What baby?’

  ‘Our baby,’ Lucille confessed with a shudder, shutting her eyes in a vain attempt to shut out the pain of remembering.

  ‘You had a baby with your husband?’ He sounded stunned.

  ‘She…she was stillborn at six months. Right on my twenty-eighth birthday.’

  ‘Oh, God, Lucille. I’m so sorry.’

  Lucille eyes snapped back open, blazing with bitterness and anger. ‘Roger wasn’t,’ she ground out. ‘He wasn’t sorry at all. He hated my being pregnant. He hated my feeling sick all the time. He hated the house being messy, hated the meals he missed out on, hated me not being able to jump up and get him a beer whenever he wanted one. But he especially hated not getting any sex. The doctor said we weren’t to do anything, you see. I’d had some spotting. The night I went into labour, he…he insisted. It was either that or he was going to go out and get himself laid elsewhere, by a real woman.’

  Lucille closed her eyes and shook her head. ‘He cheated on me anyway, after I’d lost the baby. It was all for nothing. My whole marriage had all been for nothing. Roger hadn’t wanted a partner. He’d just wanted a convenient lay and a free housekeeper. His agreeing to a baby had just been a ploy to stop me from leaving him. He never wanted a child for himself, or for us.’

  ‘I don’t think I need to know any more,’ Val said sadly.

  ‘Oh, no, you haven’t heard nearly enough yet. Do you know what we did practically every weekend of the six years I was married to him?’ Now that she’d starting talking, she simply couldn’t stop.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘We didn’t do anything. Roger played golf or cards with his mates. Or drank beer and tinkered with whatever new car he’d bought with his money. Which, of course, meant the money I earnt as well, because my money was his money. Oh, yes, he did give me some sex every Friday and Saturday night, before he went to sleep, but nothing like the kind of sex he’d lavished on me during our courtship days and our honeymoon. There was precious little foreplay. Nothing of romance. Mostly he just pounded away till he came. If I hadn’t by then, it was my bad luck, because afterwards he just rolled over and went to sleep. When I complained, he said he couldn’t help it if I’d become frigid. He said his mates had told him that once you were married the sex was never as good, and he could see what they meant.’

  ‘Why in God’s name did you marry him?’

  She laughed. ‘Why? you ask. Why does any woman marry a man? Because I loved him,’ she said sneeringly. ‘Or I loved the man he seemed to be when I first met him. The man who couldn’t do enough for me, who couldn’t keep his hands off me, who flattered me and complimented and wooed me till his ring was on my finger.’

  ‘How old were you when you married him?’

  ‘Twenty-two.’

  ‘That is young. Still…you shouldn’t have stayed with him, Lucille. You should have left him long before the baby.’

  ‘It’s easy to say that, but a lot harder to do it.’ She stopped to suck in some much needed air, and to try to calm down a little. ‘The bottom line is I was afraid to leave.’

  Val looked aghast. ‘He hit you?’

  ‘No.’ Lucille shook her head. ‘No, he didn’t actually hit me. But he was big man, with a big voice. He used to shout me down all the time. If I dared complain, or ask him to do anything around the house, he called me a whingeing, nagging woman who didn’t know when she was best off. So, yes, I was afraid of him, in a way. But I think what kept me with him all that time was my fear of telling my mother that I was unhappy in my marriage and that I wanted out.’

  ‘But surely your mother would not have wanted you to stay in an unhappy marriage.’

  Lucille tried explaining. ‘Mum’s never hidden the fact I was always a disappointment to her. Always getting into trouble at school. Always going around with unsuitable boys. When I brought Roger home, she changed her tune. She thought he was just the ant’s pants. Of course, he was a very good-looking man. And older than my usual boyfriends. He also had his own plumbing business. A big plus in both my parents’ eyes.’

  ‘Didn’t they ever see you were miserable with him?’

  ‘If they did, they pretended not to. Admittedly, Roger put on a pretty good act around them. He’d be all lovey-dovey, with his arms always around me. He was the jealous type, was Roger. He never let me out of his sight. To begin with, marrying him made me feel good. In the end, it made me more miserable than I could ever describe. I kept telling myself things would get better when we had a ba
by. But of course that was just wishful thinking. His attitude during my pregnancy, then after the baby died, really made me wake up to himself. It was then I started working up the courage to leave him and make a life for myself.’

  ‘How did he take your leaving him?’

  ‘The stupid man actually seemed shocked. Yet I hadn’t slept with him after the baby died. Not once. I just couldn’t. I moved into the guest room and he got himself a girlfriend. Or two. Frankly, the man should never have married me at all. You’re right. He never really loved me. He did lust after me in the beginning. Maybe in his poor pathetic mind he thought that was love. After we got married, he often used to say how great it was to have sex without using a condom, and without having to spend any money on me first.’

  ‘Selfish bastard. So he made a fuss when you left?’

  ‘You should have seen the turn he put on in front of my parents. Went crying to them and saying he’d tried everything to please me. Accused me of being one of those feminist types who wanted the man of the house to do the washing-up and such. He also said I wanted to control all the money, which was a laugh. By then I’d simply taken control of the money I earned. But the coup de grâce was when he said he wanted to try for another baby and I wouldn’t. As if I’d ever have had another baby with that bastard.’

  ‘I don’t blame you.’

  Lucille was moved that he understood.

  ‘What I do blame you for, however,’ Val added sternly, before she got too carried away with his kindness, ‘is letting one man spoil the rest of your life. Because of him, you stopped believing in love. And you stopped trusting men, especially men like me. I know life can be cruel, and some men are mongrels, but there are mongrels in all walks of life, Lucille. Sure, I have a bit of a reputation as a ladies’ man. And, yes, some of it has been earned. But if you’re honest you must see the media have a field-day with the supposedly playboy type. There’s as much fiction as fact in what they report. And what fact there is, is given a highly salacious slant. That’s how they sell their stories. You shouldn’t presume someone is bad without getting to know them first. You shouldn’t prejudge on rumour and gossip. You should wait and see. Then make your assessment.’

  Lucille heard the sense in what he was saying. But habits did die hard, and it was difficult to throw off cynicism just like that, and embrace the future with such a clean and possibly naïve slate.

  What was in it for him, she speculated warily, if she began thinking the way he wanted her to think? If she began trusting men again?

  ‘I don’t want to get hurt,’ she said carefully.

  ‘Who does?’

  ‘I won’t be any man’s slave.’

  ‘I would hate that, anyway. I love your independence, and your spirit. I even love the occasional glimpses of the ice princess. She’s such a delicious challenge.’

  Her green eyes slanted instant wariness at him. ‘Is that all I am to you, Val? A challenge?’

  ‘Amongst other things.’

  ‘What other things?’ she demanded to know.

  He smiled. ‘Ah, now it would be very foolish of me to put all my cards on the table at once.’

  She stiffened. ‘I warn you, Val. Don’t play games with me.’

  ‘Isn’t that what you’ve been doing with me? Playing games?’

  Her insides tightened. ‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that.’

  ‘Well, I would,’ he countered. ‘And, whilst it’s been fun, I want more than just sex from you now, Lucille. I want you to be by my side in public as well as in bed. And I want you to be proud of that fact. I’m a good catch, honey, not some sleaze-bag gigolo who has to be kept your dark little secret.’

  ‘But I’m not trying to catch you,’ she flung at him, irritated by his calling her honey, and perhaps by his making her feel guilty.

  ‘Don’t you think I know that? But not every relationship has to end in marriage. I want to see you on a more regular basis. I want take you out places. I’d like to go away for weekends together. Or perhaps even live together.’

  ‘Live together?’

  ‘Yes. Would you like that?’

  ‘I thought you were going overseas in four months’ time,’ she pointed out drily, trying not to panic. Because she was so tempted to say yes, despite all her immediate doubts and qualms.

  ‘That was three weeks ago. Things have changed since then.’

  ‘You’ve made things up with your father?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then what’s changed?’

  ‘For Pete’s sake, Lucille, stop playing dumb and give me an answer. Yes or no to living together.’

  Playing dumb? She wasn’t playing dumb. She probably was dumb, since he thought she should know what he was talking about. Possibly he meant he hadn’t known three weeks ago what a great lay she was. Perhaps he thought if she moved in with him he’d get more of what he’d just enjoyed on a daily basis!

  ‘It’s way too soon for anything as serious as that,’ she said stiffly.

  His smile was wry. ‘Fair enough. It was only a suggestion. It would save all those taxi fares and the time taken running back and forth across the bridge.’

  ‘I’m sorry that seeing me is so inconvenient.’

  ‘So am I. But I guess that’s the price I have to pay for the pleasure of your company. But it’s your company I’ll be wanting more of in future, Lucille, not just your body. And not just here, in this apartment.’

  Lucille still couldn’t come to terms with their relationship going public. ‘And what if I say no to that idea as well, for the time being?’ If he cared for her at all, if he understood what she’d just told him, then surely he would give her some more time.

  ‘Then, sadly, I will have to say no to any more of this…arrangement…you’ve been enjoying.’

  ‘I don’t believe you’d do that,’ she said, flustered and shocked by his stand. ‘No man would give up what I’ve been giving you.’

  His face hardened. ‘This man would.’

  Panic coursed through her veins, as did a swift anger. Did she mean so little to him that he could jettison her from his life simply because she wouldn’t do things his way?

  Apparently so.

  The hurt was intense, but so was her resentment.

  ‘So that’s it, is it?’ she snapped. ‘Get lost, Lucille. Simply because I won’t play the game by your new rules. After all the things I just told you. All those private and personal details. My God, I was right about you all along. You fooled me with your Latin lover charm and your “I love women” line, but underneath you’re just another male chauvinist pig, with no real understanding of anything but what you want. To think that I…I—’

  She broke off just in time, squashing her rising hysteria and dredging up her best ice princess act with the remnants of her pride. Her green eyes were glacial as they raked over him.

  ‘Sorry, lover. If that was a poker bluff, then you just lost. I’m outta here. And I won’t be back.’

  Spinning on her heels, she brushed past him and stalked back through the open sliding glass door into the living room. There, she dumped her empty wine glass on the grey granite bar-top, scooped up her bag from where she’d dropped it earlier and marched to the front door.

  There, she hesitated for a second, but when there were no sounds of his coming after her she wrenched it open and left, banging it loudly behind her.

  The man on the balcony flinched at the sound, lifted his glass to his lips and drained it dry.

  ‘Bravo, Val,’ he said bitterly. ‘Bravo.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  LUCILLE refused to cry. She held onto her self-righteous fury the whole time she waited for the night manager to call her a taxi, and again during the fifteen-minute drive home. She flounced out of the taxi, still feeling outraged, propelling herself across the pavement and up the steps towards the building’s security doors.

  She didn’t see the dishevelled lout lurking in the outer shadows of the portico, and wasn’t at all ready
for the push and grab attack on her handbag. One second she was stabbing her key angrily into the lock; the next she was sent flying, and her bag was being wrenched off her shoulder. Instinctively, and perhaps stupidly, she tried holding onto it, but the drug-crazed youth was way too strong for her and she had to let go, or have her shoulder pulled out of its socket.

  He ran off, leaving her sprawled on the ground, not really hurt but in a state of shock. Dazed, Lucille glanced around, her mouth already opened, ready to shout for help. But there wasn’t anyone in sight. The street was deserted and there was no one going in or out of the building. Yet it wasn’t all that late.

  Clearly Monday night was the perfect night to mug someone, Lucille thought ruefully as she struggled to her feet. No witnesses. No passing Prince Charming to chase after the bastard and tackle him to the ground. No Good Samaritan to take her arm and check if she was okay.

  Thankfully, her set of keys was still in the door, so she at least had the means of getting into the building and her flat.

  But she groaned at the thought of everything else that had been in her handbag. All her bank cards and credit cards. Her Medicare card. Her driver’s licence. And over fifty dollars in cash.

  Her phone was ringing as she let herself with suddenly trembling hands into her flat.

  Lucille hurried to answer, grateful to have someone to tell her horrible experience to. It was probably Michele. Or maybe her mother. She hadn’t rung for a while. For once, Lucille wouldn’t mind it being her mother.

  She sank down on the chair next to the hall table and picked up the receiver, but before she could utter a single shaky word Val’s voice came urgently down the line.

  ‘Thank God, you’re home at last. I’ve been going out of mind, calling myself all sorts of names, hating myself even more than you could possibly hate me. You’re right. I was a presumptuous pig and an arrogant fool to think you could just forget everything rotten that had happened to you in five minutes simply because I said to. Lord knows, I understand how the past can screw up your mind and your emotions. I wasn’t being rational. There again, I haven’t been all that rational ever since I met you, Lucille. I know you won’t believe me if I tell you I love you, that I fell in love with you that very first night we spent together. But it’s true. I know I rushed you tonight. I know it. But I thought… I hoped… Hell, I’ve turned into a blithering idiot.