A Marriage To Remember

It had always been like this with Adam; everyone else’s feelings had always meant more to him than hers. He hadn’t changed, would never change.

‘All right, Adam, we’ll do this one last song,’ she finally conceded flatly, swinging her guitar strap back over her head onto her slender shoulder. ‘And then I’m leaving the stage. After that I don’t ever want to see you again.’ Her voice was strong and unyielding, but the words sounded childish in their intensity. But it was the truth; once she left this stage this evening she didn’t want Adam anywhere near her.

‘The first you may be able to do,’ he murmured softly, before turning back to the waiting audience. ‘The second you may not have any choice about,’ he added grimly.

Maggi looked at him sharply; exactly what did he mean by that last remark?

CHAPTER FOUR

‘I CAN’T believe he did that!’ Mark strode angrily up and down in their hotel suite. ‘I just couldn’t believe it was actually him up on the stage with you when I came back from the dressing-room with your guitar. Arrogant bastard!’ He shook his head, as if he still couldn’t quite take in what he had seen.

Maggi could easily understand his anger and disbelief; she was sure a lot of other people who had been in that hall tonight were still stunned at having seen Adam Carmichael.

As she was!

It all seemed like a dream now that they were back at their hotel, Maggi having escaped from the stage at the end of ‘their song’, glancing back only once, to see that Adam wasn’t having the same success in leaving, the audience calling for more, refusing to let him go. And with good reason; Adam was, and always had been, a phenomenon in his own right. He had gone on in the last three years to be an entertainer much in demand all over the world. The audience tonight had been more than aware of just how privileged they were to hear him sing so unexpectedly.

But Maggi could well have done without it, and was still shaken by the way he had joined her on stage in that autocratic way. But then, he always had been the most arrogant man she’d ever met in her life; he didn’t believe any of the rules were meant for him, living his life by his own set of codes—and they were like no one else’s. When Maggi had first met him she had believed his arrogance to be self-confidence, had felt protected by it—it had only been later that she had learnt, to her cost, just how wrong she was...!

‘He ruined your comeback, damn him!’ Mark continued furiously. ‘You were going to do this on your own, and now he’s—’

‘What’s done is done, Mark.’ She sat in one of the armchairs, exhausted, mainly by all the emotional trauma of the evening. ‘There’s nothing we can do to change that,’ she added wearily, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that the music festival had turned into a fiasco as far as the return of her music career went.

It had all been planned so carefully, the whole thing to be taken slowly: the music festival this weekend, a couple of other low-key gigs lined up for next month—nothing too exacting, just a slow introduction back into the world she loved best. But if the Press got to hear of the performance with Adam this evening...!

‘I can’t do the third evening tomorrow, Mark,’ she told him.

Mark stopped his pacing and looked across at her. ‘You have to, Maggi.’ He frowned. ‘You’re billed to appear and people will be expecting to hear you.’ Mark was another person who believed that the public must be given what they wanted.

She shook her head, a rueful smile on her lips. ‘They will be expecting to hear Adam too now,’ she pointed out with a heavy sigh. ‘And they will be disappointed,’ she added determinedly; there was no way she was going to perform tomorrow evening and have Adam do to her again what he had done tonight. ‘I—’ She broke off as a knock sounded firmly on the door of their hotel suite, her eyes wide as she gave a startled look in its direction.

She didn’t need two guesses as to who was standing on the other side of it; Adam had obviously managed to find her at last. She didn’t want to see him just now. If ever!

‘It’s Adam,’ she told Mark with certainty, standing up abruptly. ‘I don’t want to see him, Mark.’ She gave a shake of her head.

Mark’s mouth was set angrily, blue eyes blazing as he too turned towards the door. ‘But I do!’ he grated. ‘I—’

‘Then you see him,’ she dismissed agitatedly as that knock sounded firmly again. ‘I’m going to my room.’ She turned quickly on her heel.

‘This had to happen some time, Maggi,’ Mark called after her softly. ‘Isn’t it better to get it over with now?’

Speak to Adam? Be close to him once again? Know the full force of his personality? Know she had once loved him to distraction? Until he had destroyed that love as callously as he might have swatted a fly, when it no longer suited him to have her love. To look at him again and know all that?

‘No!’ she told Mark with a shudder of revulsion. ‘It isn’t better to “get it over with now”. I was over Adam a long time ago, said everything that needed to be said then; I have no reason to ever see him again!’ She strode determinedly from the room, unwilling to listen to any more arguments for reason from Mark, closed her bedroom door behind her and sat down heavily on the bed, because her legs were shaking too much to support her, reaction having set in with a vengeance.

She had sung on a stage with Adam this evening—something she had been sure would never happen again. Something she had sworn would never happen again!

Even now she still had trouble believing it had happened. It had been just like old times, their voices harmonising as if it were only yesterday when they’d last sung together.

They had been the perfect couple, both on and off the stage. Everyone had said so. The love they had shared had deepened their performance when they’d sung together. Until tragedy had struck so unexpectedly and Maggi could no longer sing at Adam’s side. It had been then, when she’d already felt as if she was in the depths of despair, that she had learnt all too forcibly just how tenuous the love that Adam had professed to feel for her was.

She could hear the murmur of voices in the other room, knew that whatever Mark had said when he opened the door to Adam it hadn’t been enough to get the other man to leave. Not that she would have expected it to be. Adam had been arrogant enough three years ago; his solo success since that time had probably just made him more so!

Mark’s voice was rising in anger now, and Maggi felt herself cringe inside as she heard the slow coldness with which Adam made his replies. He always had been able to rip a person to shreds with that icy control, and no matter how angry Mark might be, and however justified his anger, Maggi knew he was no match for Adam’s cool determination.

Mark’s voice seemed to be getting louder. ‘I’ve told you, Adam—’

‘I don’t give a damn what you’ve told me,’ Adam returned harshly. ‘I intend to see Magdalena before I leave.’ Even as he made this last statement the bedroom door was flung open, Adam almost filling the doorway as he stood there, his six-foot-four height only inches away from the top of the doorframe.

‘Nice bedroom,’ he drawled mockingly as he strolled nonchalantly into the room, just as if it hadn’t been ages since they had last spoken, as if there hadn’t been all that heartache with the passing of those years. ‘I’m sure the two of you are very comfortable here,’ he added hardly, grey eyes still icy cold as he met Maggi’s rebellious gaze. ‘You always did like your creature comforts, didn’t you, Magdalena? And a nice big bed was one of them.’ He looked pointedly at the king-size bed she still sat on. ‘Preferably with a man inside it!’ he added harshly.

Maggi gasped at his insulting tone, and in the outer room she could see Mark’s hands clench into fists at his sides; she knew that his volatile temper was in danger of exploding. But it would be no match for the freezing concentration of Adam’s!

She drew in a deep breath and stood up, feeling at a complete disadvantage sitting on the bed. Not that standing up made too much difference to that; Adam always had had the ability to make her look—and feel!—like a little girl disguised as a woman, her shortness and slenderness of frame emphasised by his height and sheer masculinity.

‘How right you are,’ she returned, sounding much more calm than she actually felt. ‘But I do draw the line at having two men in my bedroom at the same time!’ she told him levelly, walking over to the doorway where Mark still stood. ‘Shall we all go through to the lounge?’ She looked at them both pointedly.

Adam shrugged broad shoulders beneath his black silk shirt. ‘I’m quite happy for this conversation to take place in there,’ he dismissed with a mocking twist of his lips. ‘It was your boyfriend here who had a problem with it.’ He looked contemptuously down his aristocratic nose at Mark as he strode past him; he was several inches taller than the younger man, despite Mark’s own six feet in height.

Maggi walked slowly back into the sitting-room, aware of the two men behind her; they were so different as to be almost opposites. Mark was easygoing, comfortable to be with, undemanding, whereas Adam, ten years his senior, had never been any of those things; he was the most demanding man she had ever met, and, far from finding him comfortable to be with, she had always been very aware of him in every way, her senses constantly alive to his mere presence.

Which was probably why she had been so sure last night that he was at this music festival; she had sensed he was there!

‘You’re looking well, Magdalena,’ Adam told her softly once they were all assembled in the sitting-room.

That name again!

She sat down in one of the armchairs, more tired from the strain of the evening than she cared to admit. She sat forward in the chair, unable to relax, the darkness of her hair falling forward over her shoulders. ‘How did you expect me to look, Adam?’ she returned scornfully, deep blue eyes clashing with icy grey. ‘Broken and defeated?’ As she had undoubtedly been on the day he’d left her life three years ago!

At the time she hadn’t believed, after what had already happened to her, that her life could get any worse than it already was; how wrong she had been! She hadn’t allowed for Adam, for his cold selfishness.

His mouth tightened. ‘No, I—’

‘As you can see, Adam—’ Mark was the one to interrupt him ‘—Maggi is happy and well—and doing just fine without you!’ he added challengingly.

Glacial eyes were turned in his direction. ‘When I want your opinion, dear cousin—’ Adam drawled the last two words insultingly ‘—I’ll ask for it! At this moment I happen to be talking to Magdalena.’

Cousin. Yes, these men were first cousins. It was hard to believe they could be related, that their mothers had been sisters, but it had been through her friendship with Mark that she had first met Adam, having accompanied the younger man to a family wedding. Adam had got up to sing during the reception and Mark had encouraged Maggi to join him. Even then, though their performance was completely unrehearsed, it had been obvious to the people listening that there was something magical about the two of them singing together.

Adam had been at the wedding with his long-term girlfriend, Jane, and Maggi had been dating Mark for almost six months. But something had happened between the two of them that day, and when Adam had telephoned her a couple of days later, having got her number from Mark, and suggested they go through some songs together with the intention of actually performing them in front of an audience in the future, Maggi had felt no hesitation in agreeing to meet him.

If only she had hesitated! If only she could have known the heartache that would follow, then she would never, ever have gone near Adam after that telephone call.

‘As Mark has already told you,’ she firmly answered Adam now, ‘I am very well, thank you.’

Adam’s mouth twisted again at the formality of her tone. ‘I’m so glad!’ he returned tauntingly.

Her head went back challengingly. ‘Are you?’