A Marriage Betrayed

An appalled horror descended on her. She was a nonviolent person. Words, not fists, had always been her creed. Ever since she had entered this hotel, things had started swinging out of normality.

Was it Alice who had stepped through the looking glass and into another world?

Kristy was beginning to feel the same thing had happened to her. She took a deep breath and tried to regain some sanity. How could there be any sense of intimacy between this stranger and herself? She had to be imagining it. His talk of love and lovemaking must be triggering wild offshoots from the need to belong to someone, somewhere.

Yet, as though they were somehow acutely attuned to each other, she sensed a similar withdrawal from him, the automatic reaction to shock and disbelief, needing time to pause and take stock, to reassess. His face tightened. His mouth thinned into a grim line. The dark eyes narrowed to gleaming slits.

Kristy thought about apologising, but since this whole scene had erupted from her initial apology, it didn’t seem like a good idea. Besides, he had been as much in the wrong as she was. Pride insisted she concede no fault in what she had done, but explanations were certainly due.

“Monsieur . . .” she started again.

“Don’t call me that!” he snapped angrily.

Whatever I say seems to get me into trouble, Kristy thought. “Very well,” she agreed, wondering what else she could call him. “There is an explanation....”

“I shall be interested to hear it,” he snapped again. “I shall be fascinated to hear how you explain yourself,” he went on, his voice gathering a stinging contempt. “Every word will be a priceless pearl to my ears. I shall assess it with intense appreciation for its worth.”

Which set Kristy back on her heels because her explanation didn’t make much sense to her, and she doubted it would make sense to him either. However, the truth was the truth. “I have this key....” she began slowly. “The manager gave it to me....”

That was as far as she got.

He took hold of her shoulders and shook her in furious impatience. “You are incredible! Totally incredible!” he seethed.

Kristy realised that what he was saying was true. Her explanation was totally incredible. But this man was teetering on the edge of being totally out of control and she didn’t know what to say or do. “Please...” She couldn’t call him monsieur. “. . . take your hands off me,” she begged.

He laughed with arrogant disdain, but he released her and dropped his hands to his sides. “You think I cannot do that?” he taunted, his eyes flashing bitter derision. “You think I have to touch you? That I cannot help myself?” He bared his teeth in a scornful sneer. “I can do it. See for yourself!”

“Thank you,” Kristy breathed in deep relief.

Violence did breed violence, she thought. She shouldn’t have slapped him. Strictly words from now on, she promised herself.

As though he had come to the same civilized conclusion, he stepped back from her in haughty rejection, a cold pride stamped on his face. His aristocratic bearing was very pronounced as he strode around the room, releasing his inner turbulence in sharp angry gestures and bursts of scorn.

“You are nothing,” he hurled at her. “Nothing at all! Not a speck of dirt. Utterly insignificant. Meaningless.”

Kristy steeled herself to remain cool, no matter how hotly this man stirred her blood. In actual fact, what he said was a fairly accurate description. To the world at large, she was a nobody. There was no-one left who cared whether she existed or not. Besides, agreeing with people’s ideas was a better way of placating them than disagreeing with them.

“I realise that,” she said calmly.

Her answer brought him to an abrupt halt. His brow creased in puzzlement. The dark eyes stabbed at her in suspicious re-assessment “You realise that?” he said slowly, watching intently for some telltale reaction from her.

“Certainly,” Kristy said with assurance. Why should she mean anything to this man? They were complete strangers.

He sauntered towards her, ruthless purpose stamped on his face. “I’ll prove how worthless you are.”

“You don’t have to prove anything of the kind,” Kristy cried in alarm. She didn’t want him to shake her again.

“Where have you been for the last two years?” he bit out savagely. “What have you been doing? Why did you move out of my life without so much as a word of warning or excuse?”

Understanding began to dawn in Kristy’s mind. For some reason this man thought she was someone else. Enlightenment grew in rippling waves. The hotel staff, from the doorman to the manager, had thought she was someone else. It was the only explanation that fitted the facts; all the odd reactions she had been getting from the staff which she had set down to snobbery, the accident in the lobby that had happened because this man had caught sight of her, the bellboy’s proclaiming it un scandale terrible, the manager with his strange manoeuvrings and talk of discretion.

This certainly loomed as a very delicate situation!

The tantalising question was...who was she supposed to be? Who did they all think she was? And why couldn’t they see she wasn’t who they thought she was?

“Answer me!”

He was towering over her again, commanding her attention. Kristy pulled her mind out of its whirling flurry of activity and concentrated on what was most immediate. Somewhere, sometime, there had to be an explanation of what was happening. In the meantime, Kristy thought, it was imperative to answer this man’s question truthfully and with a calm composure. Her heart gave a nervous little flutter as she looked up into the darkly demanding eyes.

“I was in San Francisco most of the time....”

“So! You did go with the American!” he threw at her. “Yes...I can hear it in your voice. Damn you for the conniving cheat you are!”

“I’m not a cheat!” she hurled back at him in fierce resentment.

“You think you can get to me again? After what you’ve done?”

She hadn’t done anything! Except use the key that had brought her into this room. However, before she could expostulate, his hand lifted and curled around her cheek. Kristy flinched away from the touch but it was an ineffectual movement. He tilted her chin up, bent his head, and his mouth crashed onto hers.

The shock of it left her momentarily defenceless. His hand slid into her hair entangling itself in the thick tresses and binding her to him as forcefully as the arm that scooped her body hard against his. Then an explosion of sensation robbed her of any thought of resistance.

His mouth possessed hers in a frenzy of passion, igniting a response that rushed into being, spreading through her like wildfire, an uncontrollable force, taking her over, thrumming to a beat of its own. Heat pulsed from him, suffusing her entire body, exciting an almost excruciating awareness of hard flesh and muscle imprinting themselves on her. His kiss plundered and destroyed her previous knowledge of what a kiss could be, arousing a compulsive need to cast all limits aside and plummet into more and more enticing levels of melding together.

The break came as swiftly and as shockingly as the enforced connection. He tore his mouth from hers. His hands encircled her upper arms, holding her away from him as he stepped back. Dazed by the abrupt withdrawal and still helplessly churning with the sensations he’d stirred, Kristy looked at him in blank incomprehension.

His dark eyes glittered with malevolent triumph. “You see?” he said, removing his grasp, lifting his hands away as though the touch of her was distasteful to him. “I feel nothing for you. Absolutely nothing.”

It was a barefaced lie.

He was not unaffected by her, nor what had passed between them. His breathing was visibly faster and even as he swung on his heel and turned his back to her, Kristy was recalling all too acutely the burgeoning of his erection, proving he had been physically moved. Besides, how could such passion be generated out of nothing?

Though that raised the thorny question of how could she have been so deeply affected when ostensibly there was nothing between them but a misunderstanding. Worse, a case of mistaken identity! A painful flush scorched up her neck and burnt her cheeks. He had been abusing another woman, while here she was, deeply shaken by a vulnerability she couldn’t explain.

Nevertheless, explanations were in order. In very fast order, too, given the volatile nature of feelings running riot here. She had to correct his conviction she was someone he had known before. That was at the heart of this whole wretched mix-up.

“The reason there is nothing is because there was nothing in the first place,” Kristy said shakily.

He whirled around, his face contorted with furious resentment. His eyes stabbed black daggers at her. “Don’t make a fool of yourself by stating the obvious.”

Still hopelessly unsettled by the turbulence he’d aroused, Kristy couldn’t stop her own temper from flaring. “You’re deliberately trying to provoke me!”

He did not deny it. He made no reply at all but his eyes kept accusing her of dark, nameless crimes.

Kristy struggled to get herself under control. “What has happened is quite simple,” she stated once again, determined to make him listen, no matter what he said. “You see...”

“I know what has happened,” he cut in emphatically.

Kristy let the interruption fly past her. “...you’re making a mistake about me. You think I’m someone else....”