The Marriage Resolution

Dee couldn’t help her consternation from showing in her voice, and she knew that Hugo had recognised it from the look he gave her.

‘What’s wrong?’ he taunted her. ‘Don’t you like the thought of me living here?’

‘No, I don’t,’ Dee told him truthfully, too driven by the way he was goading her and the shock of what he had just told her to be cautious or careful. ‘I don’t like it at all.’

‘Oh, and why not, I wonder? Or can I guess? Could it have something to do with this…?’

And then, before she could guess what he intended to do, he had dropped the hold-all he was carrying and pinned her back against the wall, his hands hard and strong on her body as he held her arms, his body so close to her own that she could feel its fierce male heat engulfing her.

Once, being held like this by him would have thrilled and excited her, her awareness of the danger he was inciting only heightening her intense desire for him. The sex between them had been so passionately explosive that for years after he had gone she had still dreamed about it…and about him, waking up drenched in perspiration, longing for him, aching for him; and now, like a faint reflection of those feelings, she could feel her body starting to shudder and her nipples starting to harden beneath the practical protection of her jumper.

‘Cashmere…Do you know how many Third World people the cost of this would feed…?’ she heard Hugo murmuring contemptuously as his fingers touched the soft fabric of her sleeve. His mouth was only centi-metres from her own, and Dee knew that merely to breathe would bring it even closer, but she still couldn’t resist the urge to verbally defend herself. After all, it wasn’t as if he was any less expensively dressed.

‘It was a present,’ she told him angrily. ‘From a friend.’

‘A friend…’ Hugo’s eyebrows rose. ‘A friend, and not your husband?’

‘I don’t have a husband,’ Dee gritted furiously.

‘No husband!’

Something hot and dangerous flared in his eyes and Dee started to panic, but it was too late. The damage had already been done, the tinder lit.

‘No husband,’ Hugo repeated thickly. ‘What did he do, Dee? Refuse to play the game your way…just like I did…?’

‘No. I—’

Dee gave a gasp and then made a small shocked sound as the pressure of Hugo’s mouth on her own prevented her from saying anything else.

It had been so long since she had been kissed like this. So long since she had been kissed at all. So long since she had felt…Hungrily her mouth opened under Hugo’s, and equally hungrily her hands reached for him.

She was reacting to him as though she was starving for him…dying for him, Dee recognised as she fought to control the primeval flood of her own desire. Her reaction to him must be something to do with all her dredging up of the past, she decided dizzily. It couldn’t be because she still wanted him, not after all these years…Years when she had been willingly and easily celibate…years when the last thing she had ever imagined herself doing was something like this. He was kissing her properly now, releasing her arms to cup her face.

Dee gave a gasping moan beneath her breath as his tongue traced the shape of her lips. If he kept on kissing her like this…Beneath her sweater she could feel the taut ache in her breasts—an ache that was already spreading wantonly even deeper through her body.

Against her mouth Hugo was saying tauntingly, ‘No husband, you say. Well, it certainly shows.’

Immediately Dee came to her senses. Angrily she pushed him away, managing to lever herself off the wall as she did so.

‘I’ve heard the rumours about women of a certain age, with their biological clocks ticking away, but…’

‘But you prefer them slightly younger…around Dr Jane’s age, no doubt,’ was the only reply that Dee’s shaking lips could frame.

She was totally stunned by her own behaviour, her own reaction, her own feelings. What on earth had she thought she was doing? She felt as though she had been subjected to a whirlwind which had sprung up out of nowhere, leaving her…devastated.

‘What I prefer is…my business,’ he told her quietly, and then, whilst she was still trying to pull herself together, he demanded curtly, ‘How long have you been divorced?’

‘Divorced!’ Dee stared at him. ‘I’m not divorced,’ she told him weakly. She saw the look on his face and then added angrily, ‘I’m not divorced because I have never been married.’

‘Not married? But I was told…I heard…’ He was frowning at her. ‘I heard that you’d married your cousin and that you had a daughter…’

Dee thought quickly. Two of her cousins had married, and they did have a daughter of nine now, but she didn’t tell Hugo so, simply shrugging instead, and informing him dismissively, ‘Well, I’m afraid you heard wrong. That’s what listening to gossip does for you,’ she added pointedly. ‘I’m not married, I don’t have a daughter, and I’m most certainly not a victim of my biological clock.’ Two truths—one fib. But she was determined that Hugo wasn’t going to know that!

‘You wanted children so much. I can remember that that was one of the things we used to argue about. I wanted us to wait until we’d had a few years together before we started a family, but you were insistent that you wanted a baby almost straight away, just as soon as we were married.’

As he spoke automatically Dee reached for the bare place on her ring finger which had once carried his special ring—a family heirloom he had given her to mark their commitment to one another.

‘So that’s two things we still have in common,’ she said. ‘Neither of us is married and neither of us has children.’

‘Three things, in fact, when you count…’ He was looking at her mouth, Dee recognised, and beneath her sweater the ache in her breasts became an open yearning pulse.

‘Three…?’ she managed to question croakily, ignoring the savage tug of her own newly awakened sexuality.

‘Mmm…both of us are involved in fundraising for charitable organisations. I’d better go up and see Peter,’ he added calmly.

‘Er, yes…I…’ She was behaving as foolishly as though she were still the teenage girl he had knocked off her bicycle as he’d come flying round the corner on his way to one of Peter’s meetings—a meeting he had never actually attended. By the time he had picked her up and carefully checked her over for bruises or any other damage, and then insisted on taking her for a restorative cup of coffee, Peter’s meeting had been over—but their love affair had just been beginning.