A Wedding To Remember

Although she was almost ten years older than when she had first met Rory, Joanna prided herself on having a dignity and sophistication that more than made up for any fresh-faced prettiness she might have lost. She had also regained her best weight. Rory could not fling the accusation of being anorexic at her now. The firm roundness of her curves attested to her good health and well-being.

Not that she had ever been truly anorexic. The emotional stress of the divorce had simply robbed her of any appetite. It was hard to enjoy food or anything else when all one could feel was a soul-tearing sense of failure. But she had survived and risen above all that. If she could finally put Rory behind her today, she could feel whole again, her own person, free to accept Brad as the man to share her future with.

Joanna swung around expectantly as she heard the receptionist entering her office. The young woman stood at her opened door, eyeing Joanna with blatant curiosity as she said, “Mr. Grayson will see you now. I’ll take you to him.”

“Thank you,” Joanna replied, more loudly than she meant to.

The prospect of facing Rory, now that it was upon her, had an appalling effect. Her pulse leapt into a wild beat that throbbed through her temples, making her head feel like a buzz-saw. Her stomach could have been a pancake being flipped over by a deft chef who enjoyed showing off his dexterity. Her legs, as she followed the receptionist, alternated between wooden pegs and quivering jelly. It took a supreme act of will to force her mind into reciting, Rory means nothing to me. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

They walked the whole length of the cubicled area, eyes looking up, assessing Joanna as she passed by. Rory’s office was in the corner at the far end, and it was a relief to Joanna to reach it. The receptionist ushered her inside. Joanna was vaguely aware of the door being closed behind her, ensuring the privacy of the meeting, but the man in front of her claimed her attention with such devastating impact that she knew instantly she had been a fool to come.

“Joanna...” he said softly, as though he took pleasure in the sound of her name, not a trace of surprise in his voice or his eyes.

“Rory...” she managed to reply, her voice a bare, husky whisper.

He made no move towards her, gave no invitation for her to sit down and be at ease. Joanna was not really aware of the omission of standard politeness. She stared at him, and he stared right back at her in a silence that swirled with the painful bitterness of unfulfilled dreams and hopes and desires.

Joanna had never seen Rory like this, so elegantly dressed in a finely tailored three-piece suit, the sheen of some silk mixture in the cloth. Its subtle blue-grey colour and the blue and gold silk tie picked up the intense blueness of his eyes. His thick black hair had been stylishly layered to its natural waves, the riotous curls cut out of existence. It was a tamed image of the young man she had known and married, yet she sensed a self-assurance with it, an aura of control that was more dangerous than any overt rebellion against social standards.

This was a man who knew who he was, who used outer trappings to his advantage because it suited his purpose to be seen as a successful businessman. It had nothing to do with ego or status. The flash of cynicism in his eyes as he noted her surprise told Joanna that. Underneath his suit and haircut, he was still the Rory who thought for himself, disdaining any influence by others.

Even his casual pose reflected that. If he’d wanted to impress her with his new affluence, he probably would have been sitting in the high-backed leather chair behind the expensive executive desk, but he was half sitting on the front edge of the desk, one leg stretched down to the floor, the other hitched up, dangling carelessly.

The hand resting on his raised thigh held her note. He lifted it, drawing her attention to what she had written.

“I can’t believe you care whether or not I find success sweet. What do you want of me, Joanna?”

His mouth curved into a sensual little smile as his gaze dropped to rove down her body, making her uncomfortably aware of his intimate knowledge of it and the pleasure he had once taken in giving her pleasure. Her skin tingled as though he had caressed it, and her lungs stopped breathing as his eyes bored through the figure-hugging knit fabric, remembering the shape of her, the feel of her, all the secrets of her femininity that were no secret to him.

“You’re wrong on both counts,” she said quickly. “I am glad your ideas worked out so well. And I don’t want anything of you, Rory.”

His eyes lingered for a moment on the heave of her breasts before lifting to hers, a direct challenge in their vivid blueness. He raised one of his rakishly arched eyebrows, a mocking invitation for her to explain why she was here.

“I wanted to see you,” she blurted out, her cheeks stinging with a rush of heat she could not control.

His mouth twisted with irony. “You thought the best way was to remind me of what you believed meant more to me than our marriage?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t come to rake over old arguments.”

“Does success make me sweeter for you, Joanna?”

“No.” Her cheeks burnt even more fiercely at his insulting suggestion. “I’m not chasing after you, Rory.”

He gave a harsh laugh. “Of course not. A woman of principle like yourself wouldn’t bend that far. I was the one who did the chasing after you. It was you who showed me to your mother’s door, demanding that I never darken it again.”

He let the memory simmer between them before he added, “I simply find it intriguing that you now darken mine. Do you want the money you so proudly and bitterly refused from me then?”

The sting of this reminder evoked the passionate hatred of him she had felt that night. He had come with a cheque, offering her repayment of all the money it had cost her to support him while he was trying to make a go of his fledgling business. As though money could buy back her love after he had betrayed it with Bernice!

She glared at him with stormy eyes. “I didn’t marry you for money and I didn’t divorce you for money. I came to tell you I’m getting married to someone else.”

She saw his jaw tighten, saw the taunting light fade from his eyes, leaving them empty of all expression. There was a crackle of paper as his fingers crunched her note into a tight ball in his hand. He stood up, tall and straight and suddenly formidable in the clothes of his successful thrust into the world of commerce. He stepped around his desk and pointedly dropped the screwed-up paper into a bin. Then he faced her with a viciously mocking smile.

“So what can I do for you, Joanna? Write you a reference? To whom it may concern? I have known Joanna Harding intimately for a period of...now, how long was it, exactly? As I recall, you were nineteen when I—”

“Stop it, Rory!”

“Something wrong with my memory?”

“I don’t need a reference.” She lifted her chin in disdain of his demeaning summary of their time together. “Brad thinks I’m wonderful as I am.”

“Brad...” He drawled the name as though measuring it for destruction. “Now where have I heard Brad before? Oh, yes! He was the wet-behind-the-ears hero in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, wasn’t he?”

Joanna dragged in a deep breath to calm her churning insides. Her eyes flashed scorn at the cruel injustice of Rory’s attitude. “I thought we could be civilised after all this time apart.”

He laughed at her, his eyes glittering with primitive violence. “I have never felt civilised around you, Joanna.”

“I thought we could let bygones be bygones,” she persisted, clutching at dignity as a defence against the way his eyes were stripping her bare, reminding her of the wildness he had tapped in her sexuality, the mad mating they had once revelled in without any inhibitions.

“Can you forget what we had together?” he taunted.

“I wanted to wish you well, Rory,” she forced out in determination to have done with this chaotically disturbing scene.

“How magnanimous of you! Is it better with Brad?”

The cheap shot goaded her into retaliating. “There’s more to life than sex, Rory Grayson. It’s a pity you haven’t found that out. It means that whatever relationships you have will always fail.”

His expression changed, a bleak fatigue drawing older lines on his face. “Wrong, Joanna,” he said flatly. “I happen to be very good at relationships. Genuine relationships. Not ones that are screwed up by expectations that can’t always be met when you want them met.”

Shock turned into anger as Joanna digested Rory’s perception of what had gone wrong in their marriage. He was blaming her for its failure, as though he hadn’t contributed a hundredfold to the breakdown of any healing communication between them.

“Have you fathered any children I don’t know about?” she fired at him with bitter venom. “Or do all your casual bed mates have convenient miscarriages?”

“Does your mother still ride a broomstick?” he shot back at her. “Force-feed you with poison pellets of hatred for me?”

“Leave my mother out of this!”

“Then leave my alleged affairs out, as well!”

“Right! Pardon me for mentioning them. They have long since ceased to be any of my business.”

“Why don’t you admit your real reason for coming, Joanna? Have a bit of self-honesty for once.”

“I’ve already told you,” she snapped.

He shook his head. “Hypocritical nonsense. You came to see if you were free of me. Because you weren’t sure. And you had to know. A last throw of the dice before you married Brad. So let me clear your mind for you.”

“How?” The word slipped out before she realised it was an admission.