Never Leave Me (49 page)

For a long time neither of them moved. Behind her, the bridge spanned the bay, Marlin County barely visible in the distance, and then, just as he had known she would, she began to walk towards him, slowly at first, and then with increasing speed. He grinned, opening his arms wide, and the intervening years went whistling down the wind as she began to run towards him, her smile as dazzling as it had been on that long-ago afternoon when he had returned to Valmy and asked her to marry him.

As she pressed herself fervently against him, Greg felt again the certainty he had felt at Valmy. The certainty that he loved her; that she would one day love him; the certainty that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. His arms tightened around her. She had not entered them of her own volition since the hideous night when he had walked out of their bedroom at Valmy. For the first time in all the long, tortured months he had endured since then, he wondered if she had been as lonely as he had been.

He tilted her face up to his, tracing the delicate lines of her cheekbone and jaw with his fingertips. ‘It's been a long time,' he said huskily, wondering how he could ever have contemplated a divorce; ever have contemplated a life of acting as escort to glamorously beautiful women who were not her. Who had not an eighth of her radiant sensuality.

‘Too long,' she whispered, feeling his heart slam against hers, feeling again the sensation of safety and security that he had always engendered in her. The feeling of being encompassed by his love.

For a long moment his eyes held hers. He wanted to ask why, after all this time, she was returning to him. He wanted to ask about her meeting with Luke; to ask what it was that had gone wrong between them in the months and years following Lucy's birth. Instead he said, ‘I love you, Lisette. I've always loved you,' and as the children ran laughingly up to them, he lowered his head to hers, kissing her with a passion that left no room for doubt.

‘Daddy! Daddy! Are you going to spend all day with us?' Dominic asked, his eyes shining.

Slowly, regretfully, Greg lifted his head from Lisette's. ‘I think spending the day together could well be a very good idea,' he said, amused at their predicament. Lovers, who had not made love for months, prevented from doing so by the presence of their child.

At the incongruity of their situation, answering laughter bubbled up in her. There would be time, later, for love-making. And time now for all the gestures of affection that she had so missed between them. Her hand slid into his, their fingers interlocking tightly.

‘I think we should take Melanie down to the bay for a late breakfast, and then, if she isn't too tired, perhaps we could go to the zoo,' she said, knowing that the happiness now suffusing her would remain until it was time for Melanie to leave them. Until it was time for them, at last, to talk.

‘Oh, I'd
love
to go to the zoo!' Melanie said, her rosy-cheeked face ecstatic, ‘and I'm not a bit tired!'

‘We'll go in the Cadillac, I'll have the Lincoln picked up later,' Greg said, wondering what Hal Green and the chairman of United Oil and Wainwrights would say if they knew that instead of keeping his appointments with them, he was strolling like a tourist around the vast acres of the city's zoo.

They breakfasted down by the wharf, enjoying Melanie's delight as she tasted blueberry jam and bagels for the first time, and then they drove out to the Zoological Gardens, feeding seals and koala bears, watching the big cats prowl their enclosures. Lisette had done some hasty shopping down by the wharf and they picnicked on páté and French bread and brie, sitting on the grass while Dominic and Melanie ran off to see if the elephants were as big as the elephants in the London Zoo. As Greg leaned on one arm at her side, it seemed to Lisette as if this was how they had always been – happy; in love. A family like to many other families strolling the zoo gardens.

‘You said you wanted to talk to me,' he said, and the illusion vanished.

‘Yes.' She had been lying at his side, her head resting against his chest. She sat up, hugging her legs with her arms, knowing that she had to distance herself from him before she could continue. After a moment she said, ‘I've wanted to talk to you for years, Greg. Ever since you returned to Valmy when the war was over. Ever since we began our life together.'

He continued to lay at her side, resting his weight on his arm. ‘Then why didn't you?' he asked, forcing his voice to be casual, almost indifferent.

There was a long silence. He saw her knuckles whiten as she hugged her legs tighter, her eyes fixed unseeingly ahead of her, resolutely avoiding his. ‘Because I was afraid,' she said at last.

‘Are you still afraid?' he asked quietly, his brows flying together, small white lines etching his mouth.

She turned her head and looked at him. ‘No,' she said, and there was surprise in her voice. ‘The worst thing that could happen, happened anyway. You stopped loving me.'

He sat bolt upright.
‘That's not true!'
He seized her shoulders, swinging her round to face him, his eyes blazing.

‘You asked if I would mind if we slept apart.' There was no accusation in her voice, only remembered hurt. ‘You renewed your affair with Jacqueline Pleydall.'

His fingers dug savagely into her shoulders. ‘I asked if you minded if we slept apart because I wanted you to say no! I wanted you to realise where your unresponsiveness to me was leading!'

She stared at him. ‘And Jacqueline Pleydall?' she asked, stunned.

The lines around his mouth deepened. ‘I renewed my affair with Jacqueline because I was devastated by what was happening to us. She offered solace and comfort and I was selfish enough to take it.'

Her mouth was suddenly dry, her throat tight. ‘And does she still offer solace and comfort?' she asked, not able to tear her eyes away from his, seeing again the gold flecks in the amber-dark depths, seeing incomprehension and then incredulity.

‘My God! You don't think I'm still having an affair with her, do you?' The expression on her face was his answer. He ran his hand through the thick tumble of his hair, searching for the right words, knowing that even as he told her that his affair with Jacqueline was over, he would have to admit to other, possibly more hurtful affairs. ‘Jacqueline wanted from me what she had always wanted from me – marriage. I told her it was impossible. She left America for France months ago, and I haven't seen her since. Apart from one letter, in which she told me she was to marry a Frenchman, we haven't corresponded.'

He saw her relief and before she could express it, continued ruthlessly, ‘I hurt Jacqueline unforgiveably and I determined I would never hurt anyone else in the same way, but that doesn't mean that there haven't been other women, Lisette. There have. Women better suited than Jacqueline was to an affair with a man who has no intention of marrying them.'

‘Is there someone now?' She had twisted on to her knees, her eyes holding his, already knowing the answer.

He gave a slight, almost indiscernible shrug of his shoulders. ‘Yes. There is a girl in New York.'

She knew from the tone of his voice that the girl in New York was unimportant.

He was watching her curiously, waiting, she knew, not for her reaction to his disclosures, but for what she had still to tell him.

‘What I have to say isn't quite so easy,' she said, a catch in her voice as she saw Dominic and Melanie walking over the grass towards them. ‘It concerns Luke … and I don't want to talk about Luke while Melanie is with us.'

Greg turned his head, watching the children as they approached. ‘No,' he said, certain of what it was that she was going to tell him, and as little desirous of hearing it as she was to tell it. ‘Let's leave all revelations concerning Luke until Melanie returns to England.'

‘And other revelations?' she asked quietly as he rose to his feet.

She saw shock flare through his eyes and then he said tightly, ‘Are there other revelations?''

She nodded, her face set and pale.

The white lines etching his mouth grew more pronounced. ‘They've waited all these years,' he said decisively, stretching out his hand to her and drawing her to her feet. ‘They can wait two weeks longer.'

She felt weak with relief. It was a reprieve. No matter what happened when Melanie left for England and she told him at last about Dominic's paternity; about her affair with Luke. There were two weeks in which she could make some sort of recompense. In which she could show him how very much she loved him.

That night, when the children were asleep, they made love. It was nothing like her love-making with Luke. Nothing like the tortured, anguished love-making they had endured in the years following Lucy's birth. It was as if they were once more beneath the eaves of Madame Chamot's cottage, once more touching for the first time, surrendering with wonder and passion to their overwhelming physical need of each other.

‘I love you … love you … love you …' she whispered as he cradled her beneath him, his hands caressing the soft, gentle curve of her thighs, his lips moving hotly from her mouth to her throat to the rose-pink upthrust of her nipples. His head moved lower and she cried out in pleasure, her hips moving up to meet him, her fingers tightening in his hair as his hot, stabbing tongue searched and found.

She moaned rapturously, overcome by the sense of completeness, the sense of rightness that his love-making gave her. It was like flying. Like the sensation in dreams of having wings and soaring high above the earth. With a deep groan of need, he entered her and she gasped, her arms tightening around him; knowing that this time frigidity would not cripple her. That the climax they reached would be as perfect, as cataclysmic, as the climax they had reached together on that long ago night in Sainte-Marie-des-Ponts.

‘I love you, Lisette … love you …' he uttered hoarsely as they moved together, ascending a summit so high, so terrible in its beauty, that he doubted he would survive it. He heard her cry his name, felt his very heart jar and move, and then hot gold shot through him, and he knew, as the most intense orgasm of his life convulsed him, that they had conceived another child.

She felt as she had felt with Dieter in the turret room at Valmy, that she had stepped out of time. That the days that followed had no relation to anything that had gone before, or that would come after. She savoured every moment, every second, storing them away in her memory so that nothing would ever be able to rob her of them.

‘I don't want Melanie to go back to London,' Dominic said to her as the first magic-filled week ended, and the second week began.

She had hugged his shoulders, not letting him see the agony that flashed through her eyes. ‘No,
mon petit,'
she had said, her voice even huskier than usual. ‘Neither do I.'

As he walked disconsolately away from her she wondered, with terror, if Greg would no longer wish to act as a father to him when he knew the truth. If she was putting not only her own happiness at risk, but his also. Her nails dug deep into her palms. If she was, it was the terrible price she would have to pay. She could only pray that not only would Greg forgive her, but that in time Dominic would forgive her also.

‘I shan't be able to come with you to the airport to see Melanie off,' Greg said the day before Melanie was due to leave. ‘United Oil are coming in to discuss next year's campaign.'

‘That's all right,
chéri,'
she said, her smile brilliant, refusing to think of the moment when Melanie left, thinking only of the day stretching out before them, the day he had promised to spend entirely with her.

He stood behind her, sliding his arms around her waist. ‘How about a few days in Texas next week? Now that the Hal Green deal has gone through without a hitch, I'd like to fly down there and cast my eye over the new agency personally.'

‘Texas would be lovely,' she said, her voice faltering slightly. By next week he would probably not want to go anywhere with her. Might not even still be living with her.

‘That's good,' he said, sliding his hands up towards her breasts. ‘And now, if Simonette has taken all those incredibly inquisitive children bowling, let's take advantage of our privacy and go to bed.'

It was only ten o'clock in the morning and they had returned to bed as hungrily and as eagerly as two healthy animals in heat. At lunchtime he had taken her to the most exclusive restaurant in San Francisco and ordered lobster and champagne.

‘If this is what it's like staying home and not working, I might just retire,' he said grinning, clasping her hands tightly in his.

‘Alors!
And miss all the wheeling and dealing that you love so much?' she said, her mouth curving into a deep smile. ‘I think you would get very bored, very quickly,
mon amour.'

He laughed, ‘I doubt it, the wheeling and dealing is pretty fraught at the moment. Del-Air Airlines have appointed a new marketing director and he's unhappy with the campaign we produced that was briefed by his predecessor.'

‘Is there any real chance of him moving the account?' she asked, realising how little he had talked to her of business in the past; how far she had distanced herself from all that was important to him.

‘He will if we don't produce an outstanding advertising campaign,' he said, topping up her glass of champagne, only the hardening of his jawline indicating how serious such a loss would be.

‘Then perhaps you should be at the agency now, and not here with me,' she said anxiously.

He squeezed her hand reassuringly. ‘Don't worry about it, sweetheart. Nick's working on the new campaign now. If there's a problem he'll be on the telephone to me within minutes. I told him where I was lunching. Now stop worrying.'

‘Did you also tell him where you could be contacted at ten o'clock this morning?' she asked mischievously.