Guilty Love

He had intended to choose a safe, middle-aged woman, but then Linzi York had walked into the office, and for some inexplicable reason he had found himself offering her the job.

He had rationalised his decision, afterwards, by telling himself that she had a gentle manner, which he knew he would find restful in the office after the hassle he got out on the construction sites; also she was both very capable, and very young—a combination which meant that he would have no difficulty moulding her into the sort of secretary he wanted. And, then, the fact that she was married made her safe to have around.

In fact he admitted to himself now that he really had not known what crazy impulse had made him offer her the job. He still didn’t. He was glad he had, though.

All the same, he had encouraged her to keep a distance between them, and he didn’t know why he was trying to bridge the gulf now. He would probably regret it tomorrow, but at this moment he found himself intensely curious about her; he wanted to know what sort of life she led, away from the office, what sort of man she had married, and whether the two of them were happy. In the six months they had worked together they had rarely talked about anything but work; he had no idea about her private life.

‘What exactly does your husband do?’ he asked, and saw her faint bewilderment, the blue gleam of her perfectly shaped eyes as she stared at him, frowning.

Obviously she was surprised by his sudden interest. He would have to be careful she didn’t get any wrong ideas and start being afraid he fancied her. He certainly didn’t want that.

He lowered his lids but watched her though his black lashes. She was lovely. No question about it. Except that he didn’t go for the delicate, faintly ethereal type. All that long, pale hair, the big blue eyes...he preferred his women sophisticated, experienced, exciting. Yet he kept on watching her, listening to the cool sound of her voice. What would she look like if that dreamy, cool look dissolved? What did she look like when she made love? he wondered, then frowned at his own wandering thoughts.

What on earth was wrong with him, thinking like that? She was married, for one thing, and, for another, the last thing he needed was any more disruption in the office! Stop it! he told himself.

‘He’s a computer programmer with an electronics firm,’ she slowly said. ‘Matthews and Cuthlow.’

He knew them and nodded, quite impressed. ‘Excellent firm. Computer programming is a job that demands a lot of patience, very complicated stuff usually—does he like it? Is he good at it? I suppose he must be or he wouldn’t be doing it.’

‘He’s always been clever with machines of any kind.’ Actually, Barty found the job boring. He had preferred being a mechanic with a garage that specialised in customising luxury cars and motorbikes. Barty had loved that job, it had broken his heart to give it up, but two years ago he had crashed on his own motorbike and been badly injured. For a while it had looked as if he might die. Linzi had terrible memories of that time. She had been down to hell and back in a few short days; she preferred to forget all about what happened during that week of her life.

Barty had had devoted nursing and good doctors, and he had pulled through, after months of operations and illness, because his body was fit and young and healthy. But the man who came back to her had not been the Barty she had loved and married.

That man had gone forever; perhaps she was the only one in the world who remembered that Barty, now that his mother was dead. He had been full of fun, light-hearted and loving, as much her friend as her lover because they had known each other all their lives. They’d had a few friends, but none of them had ever been very close; and since the accident they hadn’t seen much of any of them. They had come round, at first, to visit him, but they were mostly other mechanics, and Barty hadn’t wanted to see them, and he’d made that plain.

Barty could no longer stand the strain of hard physical work; it was out of the question for him to go back to his job at the garage, but an old family friend was a top executive in an electronics firm, and had suggested he take up a job as a computer programmer.

Computers had been his hobby for years; Barty had only needed to do a specialist course at a technical college for a year to bring his skills up to the right standard, and the pay was certainly very good. But the programming he was doing was often tedious, and he still suffered from headaches and eye-strain, one of the lasting effects of his accident. Barty would so much rather be doing his old job.

‘What are you thinking?’ Ritchie Calhoun abruptly broke into her thoughts and Linzi started visibly, gave him one of her wide-eyed looks.

‘Oh, just that...I’d better ring my husband right away and warn him I’ll be late home. What time do you think I’ll get away?’

‘No idea,’ Ritchie said curtly, turning away with a frown, as if tiring of their conversation. He walked to the door and left without a backward glance, and Linzi watched the back of his dark head with a wry smile.

He was back to normal, was he? She wondered why he had suddenly become so curious, asked all those personal questions. It wasn’t at all like him, but Linzi wasn’t really interested in Ritchie Calhoun. As the door shut behind him she picked up the phone to ring her husband. Her lips were dry, she moistened them with her tongue-tip, swallowing. Please don’t be furious, Barty! she thought as she dialled.

He was, though. ‘Tell him no!’ he snarled at the other end of the line after she had broken the news to him in a soft, placating voice.

‘I can’t very well—’ she began, and Barty interrupted angrily.

‘Oh, yes, you can! Tell him you can’t work late. You’ve been at that office since nine o’clock this morning, for heaven’s sake! Nobody should have to work longer than an eight-hour day! You stop working at five-thirty!’

‘But, Barty—’

He overrode her, his voice loud and aggressive. ‘At five-thirty you just get up and walk out, Linzi! Do you hear me? He can’t make you stay. Just tell him you’re sorry, but you have to get home to cook your husband’s dinner. Tell him to ring me if he wants an argument, and I’ll tell him what he can do with his job.’

‘I can’t do that, Barty,’ she said, pleading with him. ‘You know I agreed to work flexible hours—’

‘You didn’t agree to be a slave!’ Barty’s voice hardened. ‘Or did you?’

She tried to talk him out of his mounting temper. ‘You know, I don’t work that hard, in actual hours. If you average out the time I have off, during the week, and the overtime I work, it comes out more or less right, and the money is good. If I want to keep this job I have to accept odd working hours to fit in with Ritchie—’

‘Ritchie now, is it?’ Barty’s voice snapped like a whip and she tensed, turning paler. This was what she had been afraid of, had been hoping to avoid, arousing his irrational jealousy. ‘How long have you been on first-name terms with him?’

‘I’m not,’ she anxiously denied. ‘I was going to use his surname as usual, but you interrupted!’

‘Don’t try and wriggle out of it! I knew there was something going on, all these late nights, the lame excuses about flexi time and having to fit in with his working hours, not to mention the way you suddenly started earning twice as much as you ever have before—oh, it’s obvious what you’ve been up to, you little—’

‘Barty!’ she broke out, shaking and holding the phone so tightly that her knuckles showed white. ‘Don’t!’

His voice sank into bitterness. ‘The truth hurts, doesn’t it, Lin? I suppose you think you’re justified! I can’t give you what you need so you feel entitled to get it somewhere else!’

‘No,’ she whispered, the tears falling down her face. ‘That isn’t true, Barty, how can you say these things to me? You know I love you, I’ve always loved you, I haven’t changed.’

‘But I have!’ he snarled. ‘Is that what you’re saying? It’s all my fault for having that crash and not dying afterwards.’

‘No, darling! Don’t, please, don’t. I hate it when you talk like that.’

‘You’ve never liked facing facts, Lin,’ he said in a low, harsh voice that was even worse than the angry snarling he had been doing. ‘The truth is I shouldn’t have gone on living. The way I am, I’ve no right to life. I’m just a useless piece of machinery that doesn’t work any more, I belong on the scrap heap.’

She put a hand over her mouth to stifle the sob wrenched out of her, and desperately tried to think of something to say. If only she was there, with him, she could fling her arms round him and hold on, as she had so many times before, when he suffered like this; she wasn’t always able to think of anything to say that he wouldn’t shoot down in flames a second later, it was hard to say anything that he hadn’t heard before and couldn’t dismiss with derisive scorn, but she could always reach him by holding him, convincing him wordlessly that she loved him.

Bleakly, Barty went on, ‘At least if I’d died in that crash I could have been recycled—the bits of me that did work could have saved someone else’s life! I could have been some use to somebody. My kidneys were fine, my heart works OK, and I have pretty good eyesight, even if my liver isn’t up to much any more—’

Her voice trembled as she hurriedly broke in, ‘Barty, you know that’s not true, you aren’t useless, and I’d have wanted to die, too, if you’d died!’

He was silent then for a long moment, and she waited, hardly daring to breathe, praying that she had reached him, calmed him, got to that part buried deep inside him which was still the Barty she had loved all her life.

They had grown up in the same street; he had been literally the boy next door, just a couple of years older than her, and her hero from the minute she could toddle after him calling his name, begging him to wait for her. He had waited, she had caught up with him, they had married very young, and had had such a short time of happiness before tragedy hit them.

Sometimes she thought they had been far too young when they got married, but then if they had waited they might never have married at all. She realised now that Barty wouldn’t have married her after his accident. As it was he had urged her to leave him, to divorce him, but she had refused.

‘I love you, Barty,’ she whispered into the silence, and heard him sigh.

‘It would have been better for you, kid, if I had died, though,’ he said flatly, and she let out a shaky sigh of her own, careful not to let him hear it.

‘No, darling, it wouldn’t, it wouldn’t—I need you,’ she said quickly, and he almost laughed, the sound a low grunt, bitterly humorous.

‘God knows what for!’ Then his voice changed, was offhand but softer. ‘But thanks, honey. You know I need you. Always have, always will. I got the best of the bargain when we made our wedding vows. I’m afraid you didn’t have the same luck. I’m sorry I blew my top, I never mean to, the black dog just bites and...’

‘I know,’ she said gently. ‘I know, Barty. It doesn’t matter.’

‘It damned well does,’ he said in another brief spurt of rage. ‘I hate myself for what I put you through. Look, I’ll work late myself, and eat sandwiches at my bench.’

‘Don’t give yourself a headache. You know it isn’t good for you to spend too long in front of your VDU.’

‘Yes, Mummy, and the same to you,’ he said, trying to be funny. ‘And don’t let that bastard Calhoun keep you slaving in front of a hot computer all evening. See you when you do get home. I’ll be waiting up with some hot cocoa.’