A Passionate Affair: The Passionate Husband / The Italian's Passion / A Latin Passion

And he turned and left the room.

Once Marsha had visited the en suite bathroom, pulling on one of the guest robes hanging on the back of the door before she left the gleaming marble surrounds, she found to her absolute amazement she was ravenous.

She demolished the plateful of eggs, bacon and sausages, the two slices of toast and blackcurrant preserve and the pot of coffee the breakfast tray held in indecent haste, before sinking back against the bedhead and staring straight ahead.

A bath. She nodded at the thought, refusing to think of Taylor until she was clean and groomed again. The tiny shower room in her bedsit was all very well, but a long warm scented bath would be sheer heaven, and if ever she had needed a touch of heavenly comfort it was now.

It was five minutes later, when she was engulfed in a sea of perfumed bubbles and trying to empty her mind of everything but the pleasure her body was experiencing, that she suddenly sat up with enough force to send water slopping over the side of the bath. Why hadn’t Taylor placed her in their bed last night? She had been out of it, she admitted, and hardly in a position to resist any overtures on his part, so why hadn’t he taken advantage of the situation? Not that he would have forced himself on her when she was unwell, she didn’t think that for a moment, but if she had been in their bed then this morning would have been a different kettle of fish entirely. To wake up beside him…

She sank down again, a frown crinkling her brow as she pondered the thought. When she had left him she had left practically every article of clothing and every personal item she possessed, and from what he had intimated this morning her clothes, at least, were still all in place. He could have used that as an excuse to have her in his bed. Not that Taylor had ever needed an excuse for something he wanted to do, she reflected acidly.

She raised one foot from beneath the foam, studying her scarlet-painted toenails thoughtfully. If they had woken up together the inevitable would have happened; he must know that. She had never been able to resist him, and he was fully aware of his sexual power.

Another half an hour of rumination brought her no nearer to an answer other than the obvious one—he hadn’t wanted her to share their room again. As she rose from the now cool water she refused to let the idea hurt. They would no longer be married in a few weeks’ time, and once she left this house today she would make sure she never set foot in it again. She didn’t understand Taylor Kane, she had never understood him, and she wasn’t about to waste any more time trying.

She flexed shoulders which should have been relaxed after the amount of time she had been lying in the water but were taut and tense, and then proceeded to dry herself with a big fluffy towel. It was as she was smoothing scented body lotion on every inch of skin that she stopped suddenly, gazing into the mirror in front of her. She needed to talk to Susan. Her heart began to thud as she accepted the notion which had been hammering away at the door of her mind ever since Nicki had expressed her doubts about the other woman’s motives.

A sound from the room outside, and then a knock on the en suite door jerked her out of her musing. She whipped the bath towel round her, folding a smaller one turban-style round her wet hair, before padding across and opening the door.

‘Hi.’ Taylor smiled at her. ‘I was beginning to think you’d drowned in there.’

‘It was nice to have a bath for a change.’ And at his raised eyebrows she explained, ‘I only have a shower at home.’

There was a quick, almost imperceptible change in his expression. ‘This is your home.’

Marsha brushed past him, ignoring the swift reaction of her body to his nearness. She paused in the middle of the bedroom, turning to face him as she said, ‘Are my clothes ready now?’

‘No.’ He offered no more explanation before he said, ‘But, like I said earlier, you have a wardrobe full of things in our room. Come and select what you want to wear.’

She stiffened. It was bad enough being in her old home in one of the guest rooms; she didn’t know how she would handle entering the room where they had enjoyed so many hours of love and tenderness and passion. But she couldn’t let him see that. He would regard it as weakness and play on it accordingly. ‘Fine.’ She raised her chin and aimed a level stare.

Taylor’s mouth twitched. ‘Personally, I think you look great in what you’re wearing now,’ he said easily, his eyes going to her head. ‘Sort of… eastern, harem-like.’

Marsha ground her teeth at the implication. No doubt he would just love to have his own little bevy of beauties dancing at his beck and call, but she was blowed if she’d be one of them. ‘I hardly think a handtowel wrapped round one’s head deserves such a comment,’ she said coolly.

‘Perhaps not.’ He tilted his head, and now the amusement crept into his eyes. ‘But a man can dream, can’t he?’

She had no intention of continuing down this path, and she wished she had taken the time to put the towelling robe back on when he had knocked. It was infinitely more reassuring than a towel. Battling a number of emotions, none of which were clear, she said, ‘My clothes?’

‘Of course.’ He turned, opening the bedroom door and then bowing slightly. ‘When you’re ready, ma’am.’

Even though she had prepared herself for the moment when Taylor opened the door to their bedroom, Marsha felt something akin to an electric shock travel down each nerve-end as she entered the big spacious room. The windows had been flung wide open, and the scent of lavender from the grounds below was sweet. Her eyes were drawn to the huge bed which dominated the cream and coffee-coloured room, but she forced herself to remain blank-faced as she marched across to her walk-in wardrobe.

Everything was just as she had left it, she noticed, down to the last pair of shoes on the racks below her clothes—and the perfume she had worn during her marriage—a madly expensive extravagance first bought on honeymoon—still lingered in the air.

She swallowed hard, keeping her back to the room as she selected a light pair of trousers and a short-sleeved top, along with a bra and pair of panties. There were several pairs of sandals at one end of the wardrobe, and she chose a low-heeled style suitable for a working day. She still intended to go into work that afternoon, but she wasn’t about to announce it again until she was ready to leave.

‘Thank you.’ After closing the wardrobe door she nodded at Taylor, who was leaning against the far wall, strong muscled arms crossed over his chest and a faintly brooding expression on his face. ‘I’ll see you downstairs, shall I?’

‘What do you feel? Coming in here again, I mean.’

‘What?’ He had taken her completely by surprise. Her eyes flickered with momentary panic, quickly controlled. She shrugged carefully. ‘It’s a beautiful room,’ she said steadily.

‘That’s not what I asked,’ he countered coolly.

‘How do you think I feel?’ She found herself glaring at him now and warned herself to tread warily. No show of emotion, no challenges. ‘A little sad, I guess,’ she added quickly.

‘A little sad?’ Something flashed in his eyes at her words. ‘A little sad as in having your guts torn out by their roots, or the sort of feeling you would have when watching a weepy movie?’

‘Taylor, I don’t want to do this.’

‘Tough.’ He took a step nearer and instinctively she brought the clothes up to her chest. ‘We’ve done it your way all through this and where have we got?’ His eyes locked on hers, anchoring her to the spot. ‘I want to know what you are thinking for once, damn it. All through our marriage—right from when we met, in fact—I’ve had to pull what you’re thinking out of you like a dentist extracting a tooth. I’m sick of it.’

She stared at him, her eyes hot as her temper rose. ‘I didn’t ask you to bring me here,’ she shot at him furiously, ‘and if you’re so sick of me, wouldn’t it be best for both of us if I left right now?’

‘As always, you don’t hear what I’m saying.’ He reached her in one fluid movement, gripping her shoulders as he said, ‘I’m sick of the lack of communication, not you. There’s a difference there, if you’d open your eyes to see it. I never wanted a clinging vine who couldn’t say boo to a goose and lived in my shadow, but you’re something else. It’s like there’s an invisible wall round you, and however high I climb I never get to the top. You’ve never really let me in, have you? Not in all the months we were together did I ever feel I’d breached the guard you keep round the real you.’

‘And that’s why you slept with Tanya?’ she flung at him bitterly. ‘Because I didn’t fall at your feet and worship you like all the others?’

‘Give me strength! Listen, woman, will you? This is about me and you, not Tanya or anyone else. From the day I met you I’ve never looked at another woman. You’re enough—more than enough,’ he added scathingly, ‘for any man to handle.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘No, and do you know why you accepted those lies about me and our marriage so easily? Because you are frightened of the truth.’

‘You’re crazy,’ she said harshly, aware she would have bruises where his hands were gripping her.

‘About you? I must be, to put up with all this stuff and nonsense. You are petrified of letting go and giving me everything. That’s the crux of all this. If you trust me absolutely I’ll let you down—that’s what you’ve told yourself from day one. And then, surprise, surprise, you were told exactly what you were waiting to hear—I’d fallen from grace. I was having an affair. It must have been music to your ears.’

‘That’s a hateful thing to say.’

‘But this is Taylor talking, remember? The low-life, the scum who was fooling around just eighteen months after he had promised to forsake all others for the rest of his life.’

‘You’re hurting me.’ She was rigid and as white as a sheet under his hands.

‘Damn it, Marsha.’ His muttered oath had all the power of a shout, and she almost winced before she controlled herself. But he had released her.

He stepped backwards a pace or two, as though he didn’t trust himself not to take hold of her again, and then, slowly and deliberately, he slipped his hands into his pockets. ‘You still believe, without a shadow of a doubt, that I’m guilty as charged?’ he asked in a flat grim tone which frightened her far more than his rage.

Did she? The answer was there without her having to think about it, and she spoke it out without considering her words. ‘I don’t know what to think any more. I was sure…’ She hesitated. ‘I mean, why would anyone make something like that up?’

He shook his head, his eyes mordant. ‘How long have you got? Come on, Fuzz, you can’t pretend to be that naive. There’s a hundred reasons why people turn sour.’

But it was your sister. Your sister. For a second she thought she had actually spoken the words out loud, but when his expression didn’t alter she knew the shout had just been in her mind.

‘I hoped when you’d had time to think about all this you would begin to question—at least that. If you couldn’t trust me, surely that wasn’t too much to ask, was it? But there was just silence. No contact, no phone calls, no answer to my letter. So I told myself to be patient, to wait. We loved each other and no one could take that away. Hell!’ It was bitter. ‘And I called you naive.’

Marsha stared at him for a moment before turning her head aside. She had the terrible feeling deep inside that everything had shifted again. Just when she had trained herself to get through each twenty-four hours without him he was back in her life, turning over all the stones to examine the dirt beneath. And she didn’t want to do that. It had nearly killed her, leaving him, but she had managed to crawl through the weeks and months since, and that was something.