A Wedding To Remember

At last he set her on her feet, and Joanna found herself standing beside the passenger door of a sage-green Jaguar, almost the exact colour of her suit. Rory liked green. Always had. But since when had he been able to afford such an expensive car?

Bemused by his sudden rise to wealth, Joanna did not think of trying a getaway. Rory unlocked the door and opened it before she realised he wasn’t holding her captive anymore. He stood back from her, one hand on the door, the other gesturing an open invitation to choose her own course. He spoke quietly, seriously, his whole manner in marked contrast to all that had gone before.

“You may find this difficult to believe, Joanna, but I want you to be happy. I thought I was the man you could best be happy with. Even when things were wrong between us, I still felt we were right for each other, right in a way that I’ve never felt with anyone else.”

He paused, searching her eyes for a similar admission, some hint of vulnerability to what he was saying, but Joanna stubbornly resisted giving him any concession. If she gave Rory an inch he would take a mile. Yet his words did strike a deeply buried chord in her heart. She had believed that, too. Until he betrayed her faith in the worst possible way.

He gave her a wry smile. “I can’t go back and do things differently. If I’m not the man you can be happy with, then I want to know that Brad is. So long as I know you’ll be happy with him, Joanna, I can let bygones be bygones. But if you’re not sure about marrying him...”

“I didn’t say that,” she cut in swiftly, defensively.

“Joanna, there’s no engagement ring on your finger.”

Her eyes flashed defiance of this superficial judgement. “You didn’t give me a ring.”

“In those days I couldn’t afford what I wanted to give you. Is that the case with Brad?”

She grimaced in vexation at being pinned down. “He’s away at the moment. When he comes back...”

“So this is decision time. And you came to me for help.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Joanna.” He reached out and took her hand, his long, lean fingers curling around hers, stroking them, lightly pressing their persuasion. “Remember how we used to talk? Tell each other everything? No holding back?”

“That was before,” she protested, her eyes flashing with the pain he had given her. Yet she didn’t tug her hand out of his. Somehow it triggered good memories, of when her love for Rory had been young and innocent and full of joy.

“I have no wish to rake over old arguments, either,” he said softly. “We’ll talk about the future. Your future. How you want it to be. How you see it with Brad. As you say, you don’t have to prove anything to me, Joanna, but come with me now and prove whatever you need to prove to yourself. Conclusively. That is what you want, isn’t it?”

She stared at their linked hands, feeling his warmth and his strength and desperately wanting what he was offering. Could she trust him to do what he said? She lifted her gaze, meeting his in fearful uncertainty. “You’ll let me go free whenever I want to, Rory?”

“Whenever you want to,” he promised, the steady blaze of his blue eyes giving her the assurance she needed.

She heaved a sigh to relieve her pent-up turmoil. The voice of hard-learnt cynicism told her it was still a risk to go with him. He undoubtedly meant to take advantage of her compliance, one way or another. Nevertheless, he had to know that force wouldn’t get him any lasting advantage. He had already changed tack on that score. So what harm could it do to spend an hour or two with him? If it clarified her feelings, it would be time well spent.

“All right. I’ll come with you. For a while,” she said warily.

He smiled, a happy, lilting smile that transmitted unbounded joy, the kind of smile Rory used to give her long ago, enveloping her in his pleasure. Joanna’s heart gave a kick, sending a tingle of excited anticipation through her veins as she stepped into his car and settled herself into the low-slung passenger seat. Rory closed the door and moved quickly around to the driver’s side, as though he could not contain an eager exhilaration at the prospect of being with her again.

Joanna deliberately kept her gaze averted from him as he settled himself in the seat beside her. How she could find him so compellingly attractive was deeply worrying. Reawakened sexual chemistry. That’s all it could be. The years apart had somehow corroded the hurts that had formed a protective shield around her.

She had proved she could live without Rory, although existing was probably the more accurate word to describe most of her life since she had left him. Nevertheless, it was paramount she remember these dangerously wayward feelings couldn’t be trusted. It was time she concentrated on the problem that had brought her here, whether or not she could ever give herself wholeheartedly to Brad.

Her head told her Brad Latham was a good, dependable man who would never give her the terrible pain that Rory had. She liked him very much. They had a lot of interests in common. And while liking wasn’t love, Joanna didn’t trust love anymore. Love could lead one badly astray.

But what about sharing Brad’s bed for the rest of her life? Sex with him was pleasant enough. Fine, really. She had honestly believed she would never feel passionate desire again, yet Rory still aroused it, throwing all her sensible reasoning into chaos. If she married Brad, would she always be haunted with memories of what lovemaking had been like with Rory?

She probably shouldn’t be using Rory as some kind of yardstick. To Rory, sex was one of the pleasures in life to be enjoyed whenever and wherever the urge occurred. And the urge had occurred once too often, Joanna savagely reminded herself. At the wrong time, in the wrong place and with the wrong woman. One thing she was certain of in her own mind—Brad would never be unfaithful to her.

The powerful engine of the sports car throbbed into life. Joanna watched Rory’s hands slide around the steering wheel as he directed the Jaguar out of the garage and onto the road. He obviously enjoyed the feel of power under his touch. He was a tactile person, sensitive to the tiniest vibration, attuned to responding to it. Joanna wondered if Monique knew that.

“So tell me about Brad. What’s he like? Handsome? Physically attractive?”

“Yes.”

Not in the same traffic-stopping class as Monique, but Joanna was not about to tell Rory that. Besides, Brad was handsome. While his strong, clean-cut features had none of the rakish charm of Rory’s more dramatic individuality, nor the mischievous twinkle in his eyes, he was certainly good-looking. Everyone thought so.

“That’s not very forthcoming, Joanna,” Rory chided. “Tell me what he’s like.”

“He’s not a taker like you,” she shot at him in a burst of resentment. “He gives a lot of himself. He cares about people.”

“A sterling character,” Rory drawled. “What does he do for a living?”

“He’s the headmaster of—”

“Oh, no, no, no!” Rory rolled his eyes at her. “Don’t tell me this is true. Not a headmaster. Not after me. Headmasters are dull, conventional people.”

“Brad is not dull. He’s a go-getter and very progressive. Which is why he’s the headmaster of a prestigious private school.”

“Worse!” Rory groaned. “How could you even think of throwing your lot in with a stuffy, narrow-minded, elitist snob of the worst kind? To go from me to such a man...” He shook his head. “It’s not only insulting to me, it belittles you.”

“Stop the car and let me out,” Joanna commanded tersely.

“Not on this downbeat note. We haven’t got to where we’re going to yet.”

“I’m not having you criticising someone you don’t know anything about.”

“Put it down as a minor outburst of irritation and annoyance.” He threw her a smile of apologetic appeal. “I simply can’t bear to think of you putting yourself into a straitjacket for the rest of your life. That might suit your mother, Joanna, but—”

“I thought we agreed to leave my mother out of this.”

“You told me you didn’t want to live like your mother, always thinking of what others think of you.” He cast her a look of concern. “That’s how you’d have to be, married to the headmaster of a private school, Joanna. No putting a foot wrong. No letting your hair down. Dressed to the nines all the time. Like Caesar’s wife. Beyond reproach.”

“Better than being Nero’s wife, not knowing whose bed he was coming from,” she sniped.

Rory sighed deeply. “Now is that being reasonable, hitting me below the belt, unfairly, I might add, when I’m doing my best to be helpful? What happened to bygones being bygones?”

“You brought my mother into it.”

“Hard to keep her out of it when she must be promoting this match as though it was made in heaven,” came the dry reply.

In all honesty, Joanna could not deny that. She bit her lips and brooded for a few moments before her mind retrieved the claim by Rory that she had hit him below the belt unfairly with her shot about adultery. Was he still trying to deny what he’d done? While she couldn’t prove he had been unfaithful with more than one woman, one was quite enough for Joanna.

What had hurt most at that killing moment of revelation was that she herself had been trying to get pregnant for months. Not that Rory had known that. He had wanted to wait until they were financially on their feet before starting a family. Having a baby had been her decision, a desperate bid to rekindle the intimacy they had lost in endless arguments about what they should be doing and where they should be heading. For Rory to have had sex with another woman and impregnate her was a double betrayal.

Joanna could never forgive it. And she wasn’t about to forget it, either, no matter what Rory said, or did, or how he made her feel. Time did not mitigate some offences. Rory might be able to prove that Brad was the wrong man for her, but that didn’t make him the right one.

Her attention was caught by the view of beach and sea as the car turned into a street that led to them. “Where are we?” she asked, realising she had taken no notice of direction from the time they had left the office building in Chatswood.