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

‘Meaning I don’t hold with your clarification that reason means a promiscuous lifestyle where anything goes, and logic says you only begin to worry if you are caught out.’

He surveyed her defiant face expressionlessly, the magnificent tawny eyes glittering in the tanned darkness of his face. After an eternity, and very softly, he said, ‘I see.’

Marsha stared back at him, determined not to let him see the quiet response had taken the wind out of her sails. She had been married to this man for three years, eighteen months of which she had been separated from him, but she’d had no idea how he would react to what she had said. Which summed up their relationship, really, she thought wretchedly. And was one of the reasons why she had left him and would never go back. That and the other women.

Her small chin rose a fraction, and now her voice had lost its heat and was icy when she said, ‘Good. It will save me having to repeat myself.’

‘You look wonderful.’ It was as though her previous words had never been voiced. ‘Businesslike…’ His gaze roamed over her curves, neatly ensconced in a jade-green pencil-slim skirt and a blouse of a slightly lighter hue. ‘But still good enough to eat,’ he added as his eyes returned to hers once more.

Marsha ignored the way her body had responded to the hunger in his face and concentrated on maintaining her equanimity. ‘Don’t try the Kane charm on me, Taylor,’ she said coolly. ‘I’m immune now.’

‘Is that so?’ His hand came up to tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear, his fingers lingering for a moment at her neck and setting off a chain reaction she knew he could sense. ‘I don’t think so.’

She hated him: his arrogance, his supreme confidence in his mastery over her mind, soul and body… She caught the bitterness, forcing it down where the astute amber eyes couldn’t see and taking a deep hidden breath before she said, ‘Then you must believe what you like. It really doesn’t matter any more. In a month or so we will be divorced and free agents, and—’

‘The hell we will.’

She ignored the interruption and hoped she hadn’t revealed her composure was only skin-deep. ‘And we can put the past behind us,’ she finished evenly.

‘You really think I will just let you walk away from me for ever?’ He raised dark brows. ‘You know me better than that.’

‘I have never known you.’ She had answered too quickly, her voice raw for a moment, and immediately she knew her mistake. She had to be calm and collected in front of him; it was her best defence. ‘Just as you never really knew me,’ she added quickly. ‘We both thought each other was someone different. That was our mistake.’

‘Our mistake?’ The dark brows rose even higher. ‘Did I hear correctly? You’re actually admitting you’re capable of being wrong occasionally?’

She would have given the world to sock him right on the jaw. Her neck and shoulders were stiff with the effort it was taking to remain poised and dignified, but she conquered the desire to wipe the slight smile off his face, although not without some gritting of teeth. When she could trust herself to speak, she said sweetly, ‘I’ve nothing more to say to you. Goodbye, Taylor,’ turning on her heel as she spoke his name.

It was only a moment or two before she realised he was walking alongside her. ‘What are you doing?’ she asked frostily.

‘Walking you back home.’ He didn’t actually add, Of course, but he might as well have.

‘I don’t want you to.’

‘Okay.’ He stopped, but as she walked on, head high and heart thumping a tattoo, he called, ‘I’ll pick you up at eight, so be ready.’

‘What?’ She whirled round, causing a middle-aged woman with a huge bag of shopping to bump into her. When she had finished apologising she marched over to where Taylor was standing, arms crossed, as he leant against a convenient lamppost. ‘Are you mad?’ she asked in a tight voice.

‘Me?’ The innocence was galling. ‘It was you who nearly knocked that poor woman off her feet.’

‘You know what I mean.’ She glared at him, wondering how she could have forgotten quite how attractive he was. There were very few men with truly black hair, but Taylor was one of them, and the contrast between his eyes and hair had always been riveting. Brushing this traitorous thought aside, she continued, ‘I have no intention of having dinner with you, Taylor. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever. We’re getting a divorce, for goodness’ sake.’

He smiled. Marsha caught her breath. His smile had always affected her, like warm sunshine flooding over a stormy sea, possibly because he did it so rarely. Not genuine smiles anyway. ‘Then what are you so afraid of?’ he asked silkily. ‘I’m merely suggesting we have dinner together, not that we finish the evening in bed.’

Her pulse jumped and then raced frantically as her body remembered what it had been like to be in bed with this man. To be loved, utterly and completely. To be consumed by him until all rational thought was gone and all that existed was Taylor. But then it hadn’t been love, had it? At least not as she interpreted the word. Love and marriage meant commitment, faithfulness and loyalty as far as she was concerned, and she was blowed if she was going to apologise for feeling that way. ‘I’m not afraid,’ she said shakily. ‘Don’t be so ridiculous.’

‘Then have dinner with me. For the time being at least we are still man and wife, Fuzz. Can’t we try to be civilised?’ His eyes were searching hers in that old way she remembered from when they had still been together. He had always looked at her like this in moments of stress or importance, as though he was trying to see the inner core of her, the essence of what made her her.

Marsha blinked, breaking the spell the glowing tawny colour that circled fierce black centres had wrought. She clutched at a reason for refusal. ‘What about Penelope?’ she said. ‘Won’t she mind?’

‘Penelope?’ He repeated the name as though he didn’t have the faintest idea who the woman was, and then he said softly, ‘Penelope Pelham is a business colleague, that’s all. I’m quoting for new sound equipment and a load of stuff and she is my contact.’

Oh, yes? Who was kidding who? It had been as plain as the nose on her face that Penelope had decided Taylor was her next bedfellow. Kane International might well be putting in a tender for the new equipment they had all heard was being acquired, but if Taylor’s firm won the work it would be because he had provided proof that his equipment was the best in more ways than one. Marsha blinked again. That last thought was not like her—but that was Taylor all over, she thought irritably. Bringing out the worst in her. ‘I don’t think dinner is a good idea,’ she said firmly.

‘It’s an excellent idea,’ he said, even more firmly.

‘I’m trying to say no nicely.’ She eyed him severely.

‘Try saying yes badly.’

He was so close his warm breath fanned the silk of her hair, and for a moment she wanted to breathe in the smell and feel of him in great gulps. Instead the intensity of her emotion acted like a shot of adrenalin. ‘It might surprise you, Taylor Kane, but you can’t always have what you want,’ she said steadily, the blood surging through her veins in a tumult.

‘Not always, no.’ This time he didn’t smile. ‘But tonight is not one of those times. Eight on the dot. I’m quite prepared to break the door down if you play coy.’

She was so surprised when he upped and walked away that for a good thirty seconds she was speechless. Then she called after him, oblivious of the passers-by, ‘You don’t know where I live!’

He turned just long enough to say, ‘I have always known where you are, every minute since you’ve been gone.’ And after that she found she was unable to say another word.

CHAPTER TWO

WHEN Marsha opened the front door of her bedsit a little while later, it was with the disturbing realisation that she couldn’t remember a moment of the walk home. Her head had been so full of Taylor and their conversation, not least his ridiculous presumption that she would eat dinner with him, that the stroll she normally so enjoyed at the end of the working day had been accomplished on automatic.

Her bedsit was on the top floor of a three-storey terraced house, and in the last twelve months since she had been living in it Marsha had made it her own haven, away from the stress and excitement of her working life. She stood on the threshold for a moment, glancing round the sun-filled room in front of her, and as always a sense of pleasure made itself felt.

The room had been a mess when she had first viewed it, the previous occupiers having been a pair of young female students who clearly had never been introduced to soap and water or cleaning materials in the whole of their lives. She had scrubbed and scoured and cleaned for days, but eventually, after plenty of elbow grease and some deep thought on what she wanted, she had begun to decorate.

First she had stripped the old floorboards, which had been in surprisingly good condition, and once they were finished, she’d known how to proceed. She had painted the whole bedsit in a palette of gentle shades of off-white and cream, which harmonised with each other and the different tones of wood in the floorboards, before splashing out on organdie curtains for the two wide floor-to-ceiling windows, along with ecru blinds which she only pulled at night when it was dark and she was getting ready for bed.

The small sitting and sleeping area was separated from the kitchen by a sleek and beautiful glass breakfast bar, which Mrs Tate-Collins—Marsha’s elderly landlady, who lived in the basement along with her three cats—had had installed in each of the three bedsits when she’d had the house converted after her husband had died. The pièce de résistance for Marsha, however, and the thing which had really sold the bedsit to her when she had first viewed it, was Mrs Tate-Collins’s forethought in providing a tiny shower room in a recess off the kitchen. It was only large enough to hold a shower, loo and small corner washbasin, but all the other bedsits she had viewed at the time had necessitated a walk along a landing to a communal bathroom.

Once she had bought a sofabed, TV and two wooden stools for the breakfast bar, which served as her dining table, Marsha had left the bed and breakfast she had lived in since her split with Taylor and moved into her new home, adding touches like the ecru throw and tumbled cushions of soft ash-gold, stone and cream for the sofa as she had lived there.

The slim built-in wardrobe to one side of the front door, which held all her clothes, meant she had to be selective in what she bought, and the kitchen was only large enough to house the smallest of fridges, along with the built-in hob and oven, but Marsha didn’t mind the lack of space. The bedsit was her retreat, somewhere she could shut the rest of the world out whenever she wanted to.

Her miniature garden was in the form of a Juliet balcony opening out from the windows, and although it could only hold one small wicker chair, along with a profusion of scented plants, she spent a good deal of her free time there in the warmer months, reading, dozing and looking out over the rooftops.

She loved her home. Marsha walked across to the windows now, opening them wide and letting the scents from the small balcony drift into the room. And now Taylor was going to come here, and that would spoil everything. She did not want him in her hideaway. She didn’t want him in her life.

The hum of evening traffic from the busy main street beyond the cul-de-sac the house was situated in was louder now the windows were open. Normally Marsha didn’t even hear the sound, so used had she become to the background noise. Tonight, though, it registered on her consciousness, and she found herself wondering what Taylor would make of the bedsit. The downstairs cloakroom in his lovely home deep in Harrow was about the same size as her entire living space.

‘I don’t care what he thinks.’ She spoke out loud, flexing her shoulders as though to dislodge a weight there. ‘And there is absolutely no way I am going out to dinner with him.’

So saying, she roused herself and walked into the kitchen, fixing herself a mug of milky chocolate which she took out on to the balcony. She sat down with a sigh, curling up on the big soft cushion in the wicker chair as she gazed out into space, a frown between her eyes.

Thirty minutes later and she had had a shower, and her hair was bundled under a soft handtowel as she stood surveying her meagre wardrobe.

She was only going to dinner with him to prevent a scene, she assured herself silently. A scene which would undoubtedly occur if Taylor did not get his own way. But this was strictly a one-off, something she would make perfectly clear to him, as well as letting him know she was counting the days until the divorce when all ties would be cut for good.

She pulled a pair of slinky, slightly flared pants in a misty silver colour from the wardrobe, teaming them with a bolero-style silk jacket in pale green. They were the newest items of clothing she possessed, bought for a cocktail party she had attended a month or so before. After placing the clothes on the back of the sofa she walked over to the full-length mirror on the back of the wardrobe door, staring at herself long and hard for a moment or two.