Power Games

If he had expected to catch her off guard, he was disappointed.

‘It’s a possibility, yes,’ Nadia allowed, pausing to accept the drink the waiter had brought her.

‘A possibility,’ Jay mocked. ‘How very romantic…’

‘Marriage should never be about romance,’ Nadia told him firmly. ‘Romance is…’

‘For lovers?’ Jay suggested. He was enjoying baiting her, enjoying using her to relieve the tension of the past few days, he acknowledged savagely as he watched the anger flare briefly in her eyes before she controlled her reaction.

‘Romance is an illusion, is what I was going to say. Temptingly sweet at first, but it can soon become unpleasantly cloying.’

‘So there is to be no romance in this marriage of yours…. But there will, I trust, be love.’

He was treading on very dangerous ground, Jay recognised, dangerous for himself as well as for her.

‘Yes, there will be love,’ Nadia confirmed, but she didn’t add that the love would be Alaric’s for her rather than the other way around.

‘How is your father, by the way?’ she asked with deliberate mock innocence. Talking about his father had always been a good way of goading Jay in the old days.

‘He’s fine,’ Jay responded tersely. ‘Look, Nadia—’

‘And still unmarried,’ Nadia hazarded, ignoring the keep-off signs he was posting. ‘What a waste. Do you know, Jay, it’s a pity that you and I met when I was so young. If we were to meet now and you were to introduce me to your father…I suspect that he’d be the one I’d want and not you.’

It was, Nadia recognised with an odd spurt of surprise, the truth. She had been twenty-one when she met Jay; he had been just that little bit younger and she had been tired of older men, older lovers. She had met Jay’s father a couple of times when he visited Jay at university, and on both occasions Jay had been angrily reluctant to introduce her to his father, who had arrived unexpectedly.

The first time she had naïvely assumed Jay’s reluctance sprang from his possessive streak and that he was afraid that she might prefer his father to him.

She had been right about the possessiveness but wrong, oh, so wrong, about the focus of it. The reason he had wanted to exclude her had not been because he was afraid she might prefer his father’s company, but because he had been afraid that his father might prefer hers.

She had taunted him mercilessly with that fact once she had discovered it, unable to understand then as she did so clearly now that she had been equally jealous and resentful of the fact that Jay so obviously preferred his father’s company to hers…that his father was more important to him than her.

‘Still not outgrown our daddy complex, I see, Jay,’ she murmured dulcetly. ‘But then he is quite a man, isn’t he…your father. Not that you’d ever allow any woman to get close enough to find out just how much of a man. You know, I feel very sorry for your father. It can’t be easy, having a son like you, possessive, obsessive….’

She tensed as he half made to stand up, his eyes dark with anger. Inwardly she cursed herself. He was going to walk out on her.

Her relief when she realised that he was simply summoning the waiter left her feeling sick and angry. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. She was the one in control here, not Jay. But she could see from his expression that he had guessed what she was thinking.

‘What do you want from this meeting, Nadia?’ he asked her softly. ‘If it’s to use me to get rid of the aggression you can’t vent on your tame, docile, neutered husband-to-be, then you should have found somewhere more private to do it. Mind you, I’m sure our fellow diners would be enthralled by one of your virtuoso performances—they, after all, haven’t seen one before. I, on the other hand, have—and if it’s another kind of appetite you wanted to satisfy…well, the same thing applies. Sex in public places never turned me on—you should have remembered that.’

Nadia fought to control her urge to scream at him. She could feel the blood receding from her skin and then flooding hotly back over it. She had forgotten just how clever and quick he could be…how cruelly scalpel-like the words which he used with such skin-stripping precision. He was better informed about her than she had imagined. Someone had drawn him a very accurate picture of Alaric’s character. Foolish of her not to have anticipated that.

‘Well,’ he prompted.

‘Well what,’ Nadia responded. ‘You’re wrong, Jay. I don’t want either to argue with you or go to bed with you.’

‘Liar. Oh, come on, Nadia,’ he demanded when she remained silent, ‘why the hell else would you agree to see me? After all, what else did we ever do other than fight or fuck?’

What else had they done? They had laughed, loved, argued, played.

‘Good in bed, is he, this fiancé of yours?’

‘He loves me,’ Nadia responded obliquely. The waiter had brought their food. She looked at it with distaste. Jay, on the other hand, was eating his with apparent relish.

‘He loves you.’ Jay laughed, causing every other woman in the place to focus on him with hungry appreciation.

‘He might love you, Nadia, but that wasn’t what I asked. Does he make you scream in ecstasy when he touches you? Does he make you plead with him to hold you, stroke you, lick you, suck you until…’

‘Stop it…stop it,’ Nadia demanded fiercely. Her appetite had gone completely now.

‘Still the same old Nadia,’ Jay mocked her, confident that he had got the upper hand now.

‘Oh, go to hell,’ Nadia cursed him.

He laughed again. ‘I thought you always claimed that was where our relationship took you. What exactly is it you’re hoping to get from me, Nadia?’

‘Nothing. I’ve already got what I wanted,’ she told him fiercely, and it was true. ‘You see, the reason I agreed to have dinner with you wasn’t because I wanted to relive old memories by going to bed with you.’ She gave him a cold smile. ‘It was simply because I wanted to remind myself of all the reasons why I’m glad that it’s a man like Alaric I’m going to marry, and not a man like you.’

Jay’s eyebrows rose.

‘You mean you needed reminding?’ His smile wasn’t a kind one. ‘Is that all you wanted to remind yourself of, Nadia? Are you sure?’

‘Positive,’ she told him firmly. ‘And besides, I want a man who is completely mine, completely adult…not one who’s so obsessed with his father that he can hardly bear to let him out of his sight. No, I pity the woman you marry, Jay…if you ever marry. She’ll always come a poor second to your obsession with your father.

‘What would you do, by the way, if he ever did remarry? He isn’t like you. He is capable of love… real love.’

‘My father won’t marry.’

Several of the other diners looked up as Jay’s harsh denial rang out across the quiet room.

‘You mean, you won’t let him,’ Nadia retaliated. ‘But how could you stop him if that was what he wanted to do? He’s still a relatively young man, Jay. Only in his mid-forties…if that. Plenty young enough to father a family…a second son. It’s a well-known fact that older men tend to dote on their children, especially when they’re their second family…to give them the time they didn’t give their first children. How will you like that, Jay?’

‘My father will not marry. The last thing he wants is another child, another son!’

‘Oh, really? Has he told you that? Is he afraid that he might turn out like you?’

Nadia was on a roll now, confident that she had got Jay on the run, that her sharp little darts were reaching the vulnerable tender heart of him.

What he couldn’t know was that they were piercing her heart as well, reminding her of the pain she had experienced when she first realised that with Jay she could never come first. His father held that place in his emotions; she did not even come a poor second.

Thank God for Alaric, with whom she would always come first. Alaric, who adored and worshipped her. Alaric, who shrugged off his family’s dislike and disapproval of her. Alaric, who would move mountains for her if she wished it. Alaric, whose methodical, earnest lovemaking might satisfy her physically but could never, ever transport her to the intense emotional heights to which Jay’s touch had once taken her. And could take her again.

Immediately she shut down on the thought. She had made her decision…her choice. And even if Jay had wanted her…loved her…

The thought of Jay loving anyone, abandoning himself to such a need of anyone, made her smile bitterly to herself.

‘He doesn’t need to tell me,’ Jay exploded, ignoring the second part of her taunt. ‘It goes without saying that a man of his age…’

He stopped speaking as Nadia started to laugh.