The Bridegroom's Dilemma

‘Such as?’ He said it quietly but she divined a dangerous little glint in his eyes.

‘If you must know I find your social world incredibly shallow at times. I can’t stand motor racing, speedboat racing—and all the groupies who go with them—and I don’t think the way you have to travel overseas so frequently is conducive to a happy life.’

‘Then why are we getting married?’

‘Because I thought it would change,’ she said intensely. ‘But I now see that out of bed we might as well inhabit different planets. Especially if you’ve got something against us having children!’

‘I didn’t say that—’

‘You might just as well have, Nick; I can tell when you have reservations—about anything.’

He closed the paper at last and stood up to lean his shoulders against a cupboard. ‘What is so wrong about wanting us to learn to live with each other before we set about populating the earth, Skye?’

She gasped. ‘That’s as good as saying you don’t…you’ll make your marriage vows but on the understanding you can break them!’

‘It happens,’ he said roughly. ‘It happens to people with the best of intentions. By the way,’ he added pointedly, ‘I don’t quibble about your work which also takes you round the country, nor have I laid down any ultimatums that you’ll have to stop and devote yourself to me once we’re married.’

She was speechless.

Something he took advantage of. ‘As for going overseas, I’ll never be able to help that. It comes with the job, but…’ he paused significantly ‘…if you are not burdened down with babies, you could always come too.’

Shock lit her eyes. ‘You really don’t want kids, do you, Nick?’ she whispered. ‘At least tell me why?’

He stood very still for about half a minute, his dark gaze resting on her pale face. Then he said, ‘Perhaps I know myself well enough to know—how hard I find it to be tied down.’

‘So why—you asked me this—why are we getting married?’

His lips twisted. ‘I hadn’t figured you for such a conventional homebody, Skye.’

‘Not even,’ she said huskily, and put out a hand to support herself against the fridge, ‘when all I’ve done is be at home with you?’ She stared at the bacon and eggs then lifted her gaze to him. ‘Could there be anything more homely than this?’

‘In a sense,’ he said dryly, ‘that’s been part of the problem. You seem so happy just to be at home.’

‘So you thought you’d be able to live your old life while I stayed put and kept the home fires burning?’

‘You haven’t seemed to mind until now,’ he pointed out.

She swallowed a great lump in her throat. ‘It doesn’t make sense. One moment you tell me you didn’t suspect I was such a conventional homebody—’

‘Ah, but that’s the operative word. I didn’t think you were conventional. You’re very successful, Skye,’ he said meditatively. ‘You’re very cool and confident, not at all, one would have thought, a clinger.’

‘Who’s talking about clinging?’ she managed to say although there were tears of anger and sorrow in her eyes. ‘I was talking about being in love and sharing—our lives. However, you’re right in one sense. I did mislead you.’

He raised a sceptical eyebrow at her.

‘Skye Belmont, as you see her on television, is not the real me. It’s something I don’t fully understand myself and perhaps, with you, I’ve extended that persona. I think I always knew when you let me dangle for two months…’ She stopped and shrugged. ‘Well, that I should be all cool and confident.’

‘That’s not how you are in bed.’

‘No,’ she said thoughtfully, although something felt as if it was frozen inside her—her heart? she wondered.

‘Perhaps that is something we should take into account before we do anything—drastic,’ he drawled.

‘How good we are in bed?’ She swallowed again as his dark gaze drifted down her robe, resting on the outline of her nipples beneath the thin yellow silk then the slenderness of her waist bound by the sash and finally to the curve of her hips—hips, he often told her, like perfect peaches on a slender stem. ‘No, Nick,’ she said hoarsely. ‘For months I’ve…used that to…to blind myself to everything else.’

His gaze was sardonic as it reached her eyes again. ‘Then what do you propose? Isn’t it a little late, Skye,’ he said with sudden savage impatience, ‘to have this dramatic awakening? Do you know what would happen if we did go back to bed?’

She closed her eyes. ‘I’m sorry but I just can’t do it.’

‘Sorry?’ he repeated. ‘You’re the one with a wedding dress in your cupboard, a cake you made yourself, all your new honeymoon clothes, two bridesmaids—’

‘Stop it,’ she whispered, appalled. ‘You’re the one who has just told me you’re going to resist us having children to the nth degree.’

‘Skye, if it makes you happy, have them,’ he said wearily.

‘No, thank you, Nick. Not with you.’

‘Look, this has blown out of all proportion and I can’t believe you’ve made love to me time and time again with such joy—when all this was on your mind.’ He raked a hand through his hair and set his teeth. ‘When all these shortcomings of mine were niggling away at you!’

‘Neither can I,’ she said with a deadly sort of calm. ‘And I am sorry I didn’t understand and…look this in the face earlier. Goodbye, Nick.’ She pulled her engagement ring off and laid it on the counter.

‘Keep it,’ he said dryly. ‘Who knows? It might bring you some comfort when you’re not in my bed, just loving it.’

Her eyes registered the sheer hurt of his words but she drew on a reserve of strength she hadn’t known she possessed, and left the ring lying on the counter. ‘Would you announce it? I think we’d be better doing that otherwise there’ll be endless speculation.’

He laughed and picked up the ring to turn it between his long fingers. ‘There’s still going to be endless speculation, Skye, but if that’s what you really want?’

‘Yes. Thank you. I’ll go now.’

His eyes captured hers. ‘There’s no reason we couldn’t still be lovers. We’re pretty good at that, whatever we may lack for marriage.’

She bit her lip to stop herself from crying out in anguish and he stood watching her attentively, the stuff her dreams were made of, until she’d run into the reality of Nick Hunter. It was as if every time they’d made love or laughed together passed before her eyes, as if she were drowning, she thought torturedly.

But remember this, she told herself. Remember his last words to you.

‘Not any more,’ she murmured, and turned away.

The simple announcement had been in the paper the next morning. Today, she mused. Had she hoped there would be some attempt on his part to mend things? Of course. Had she hoped a lonesome night such as she had passed last night would change him? Yes.

But no olive branch had come. Only a few formal lines on page three of the paper together with a photo of them in happier times. So it really was over and the sooner she came to grips with it, the better. Nick Hunter was not for her.

She would go away, as soon as she could arrange it. She would take the cake to a hospital and she would even donate her wedding dress to charity…

CHAPTER TWO

THREE weeks later, Skye was pounding away at a laptop computer in her bikini beside a beach so perfect, most other people would have been lost in admiration for the view.

Or lazing in the aqua shallows beside its whiteness, perhaps snorkelling over the reef with its jewel-bright coral, or simply wondering what culinary delight was in store for lunch.