No More Lonely Nights (45 page)

Dominique sighed. She felt drugged. Engulfed in an unreal world. A buried part of her consciousness cried out for her to put a stop to Clay’s seductive stroking, but she didn’t want to listen to reality. She wanted to be held in the arms of her loving husband and to believe that all would be right. Clay gently eased his index fingers into the space created by the gaping bodice and pushed the material down. Dominique stood with her full breasts exposed, the breeze from the overhead fan teasing her nipples deliciously. Clay lowered his head to Dominique’s breasts and ran his tongue over them. Then down the center line of her torso, pulling the nightgown down as he sank to his knees.

For a brief moment, Dominique was aware of the irony that Clay should find her desirable even as he claimed not to want her. But it was only a brief moment. She was lost in sensation. Clay gave one final tug and the nightgown fell in a puddle at Dominique’s ankles. He stroked her calves, the backs of her knees, and her thighs. His fingers ran teasingly up her leg, making her grow moist with desire. He teased the opening between her legs, then, for the second time in their lives together, Clay moved his mouth to the same place.

Dominique started as his tongue touched her. Suddenly, reality came crashing in. He was doing to her something he had learned with that whore! He was performing the most private act possible, only he hadn’t kept it private, he had squandered it on another woman. Had done it first to her!

Dominique shoved Clay’s head away and took a step backward. “Don’t! Don’t make love to me while you think of
her!”

Clay, still on his knees, looked up at Dominique with a stunned expression. “But it’s not like that!” he protested. “You’re two different people. I still care for you!”

“Care for me!” she said scornfully. “If you cared you wouldn’t be leaving!” She bent down and snatched her nightgown from the floor. She covered herself, first with the nightgown, then with the stolid terry cloth robe that lay at the foot of the bed. She wanted to hide her body. She was filled with shame and self-hatred at her malleability in Clay’s hands. She had been so weak. How could she have degraded herself that way? Her face turned crimson as she thought of her passion. How eager she had been to please Clay, to be close to him. She was like a dog, she thought to herself. A stupid, ever-loyal, panting dog! She wanted to throw herself face down on the bed and scream into the pillow. But her dignity was already in ruins. She wouldn’t add to the destruction.

She stood before Clay and said fiercely, “Don’t touch me again!”

Slowly, Clay rose to his feet. His face wore an expression of bewilderment, as though Dominique’s mood had changed too fast for him to comprehend.

“I’m going to bed,” Dominique snapped. “You sleep on the couch.”

“But that’s silly—” Clay began.

Dominique glared at him, her eyes blazing.

“All right,” he murmured.

Dominique clicked off the light before he was halfway across the room. In the darkness, she turned her face into the pillow. Buried in the cool, white softness, she cried silently to herself.

DOMINIQUE sat huddled in the bed and stared at the gaping door of Clay’s closet. He’d been in too much of a hurry to close it on the way out. Marie had been waiting in the car.

How dare he bring her here! Dominique tortured herself with the thought. Marie, in Clay’s Cadillac, in Dominique’s place beside him. Clay couldn’t have considered the effect of such an action on his wife’s feelings. He couldn’t have been so deliberately cruel. Could he?

Yet he had been cruel. Cruel in his haste to leave the home he had so coveted once. Cruel in the certainty that his life with Dominique was over.

Dominique shuddered as she thought of her entreaties to him, in spite of his stubbornly closed demeanor.

“Clay,” Dominique’s voice pleaded for a breakthrough, “what about Gabrielle?”

Clay, a self-righteous expression on his face, replied, “She’s handling this fine.”

“You think because she didn’t cry and carry on that she’s handling it well?” Dominique’s voice rose in outrage. “How can you lie to yourself that way?” Clay turned his back on her and went to the bureau drawer, pulling out handfuls of socks and underwear. He carried the clothes to the suitcase and dropped them in, not bothering to tidy them. Dominique’s voice grew more strident. “Gabrielle may not show it, but she’s completely bewildered. She has no idea how to cope!”

Clay paused in his packing and met Dominique’s gaze.
“Gabrielle
will be fine,” he said pointedly.

“Then why hasn’t she come out of her room all day?” Dominique challenged him, her face hot and red with emotion.

“I
told
you,” Clay said tightly, “she’ll get over it.”

Clay’s deliberate calm sickened Dominique. She wanted him to show emotion. Wanted to find words to hurt him. To bring him alive. “You know nothing about your daughter!” She pointed an accusing finger at him. His face stiffened, and Dominique could tell that he was trying to restrain himself from responding. He didn’t want the involvement. That enraged her further. “You’ve been so busy traveling and… and…”—she sputtered for a moment, trying to think of the most insulting phrase she could—“and having your sordid little affair, that you haven’t even bothered with your own daughter!”

Clay’s eyes snapped with anger. He took a step toward Dominique. “My daughter loves me. And she knows I love her!”

Dominique felt as though the top of her head would blow off from the pressure of her mounting emotion. Don’t be so sure! she wanted to counter. But she held back. Gabrielle was sacrosanct. Dominique refused to use her as a weapon in her quarrel.

Instead, she changed tacks. “Have you thought about what our friends are going to say?” she asked in a venomous tone. “Have you thought about how people are going to laugh behind your back for making a fool of yourself with a woman half your age?”

For the first time, Dominique saw that she had stung Clay. Bright spots of color appeared on his tan cheeks. “Marie and I are a perfectly appropriate couple,” he said huffily. “No one has ever—” Clay stopped, realizing that he’d given away too much.

Dominique blinked as the full import of his words sank in. Her voice sank to a dangerous growl. “You’ve told other people about this.”

Clay dropped his eyes. “Just one or two.” He sidled away from Dominique as though trying to escape a tiger’s cage without arousing the occupant’s attention.

“Who?” Dominique hurled at him. She took several steps forward until she stood directly in front of him. “You’ve humiliated me like this? You’ve let other people gossip about this and feel sorry for me behind my back?” Her stomach burned painfully as she realized the extent of the betrayal that had been visited on her. Not only her husband, but her friends. Why had they conspired with him? Didn’t they care about her?

For a moment, Clay didn’t answer. He stood still and gazed down at the top of Dominique’s head, careful not to meet her eyes.

“Who?” Her voice rose and cracked.

“Only Lucas and Henry!” Clay shot back, his voice defensive. His golfing chums, both vice presidents at Parker Shipping. Their wives were Dominique’s friends. Henry’s wife, Celeste, belonged to the French club and often came to the house.

Dominique’s glare bored into Clay until he was forced to meet it. “Celeste and Linda know about this?” she asked dangerously. “You introduced them to your
whore?”

“Don’t be naive!” Clay said scornfully. “You think those guys aren’t doing the same thing? You think they’d let their wives know about it?”

Dominique was aghast at her own blindness, the blindness of her friends. She lifted her hands to her face, but no tears came. Her despair, her sense of loss, went beyond tears. She wished she could block out what was happening. She felt as though she were headed for a raging waterfall in a barrel and could do nothing to stop certain disaster. Helplessly, hopelessly, she dropped her hands. Clay stood silently before her. He stared at her without emotion. Dominique was reminded of the flat, black eyes of a shark she had once seen at an aquarium—two eerie pools of emptiness. Where was Clay, her husband, behind those stranger’s eyes? Was he so focused on his love affair, that he had no emotion for anyone else?

She took a deep, trembling breath and said, “Why is it so necessary that you move in with her? Why can’t you just do what your friends are doing?” Her voice broke, but she forged ahead with the shameful words. “Why can’t we make some”—she turned away, unable to look in his eyes—“accommodation?”

Clay shrugged, seemingly unmoved by his wife’s despair. “Because she’s the woman I love.”

That had been hours ago, Dominique wasn’t sure how many. How long had she sat huddled, trembling in her bed? She blinked in the dim light and tried to focus on her watch. It was almost five and already growing dark. A violent wind outside, a winter storm, slammed a loose shutter against the house. Dominique cringed miserably.

She knew she should call Gabrielle and Solange in to her—explain things more clearly, talk about the future. But she hadn’t the will. She had kept the news from them for the past four days, ever since their return from St. John. After all, there had still been the chance that Clay would change his mind. There had still been the hope.

What could they possibly be thinking now, her mother and daughter? Clay said that Gabrielle was “handling it well’. As for Solange, Dominique had had to suffer the ignominy of hearing her own pleadings repeated by her mother as Clay marched down the hall with his suitcase. Clay hadn’t raised his voice to Solange. Dominique had heard little, but the portion of the conversation that had taken place directly outside her bedroom door had been enough to reveal that Clay still bore a deep affection for his mother-in-law. He was more tolerant of her appeals than of Dominique’s! But as the voices drifted away, Dominique knew her mother was fighting a battle already lost. Then the slamming of the front door, the crunch of tires on gravel. Silence.

Dominique became aware of a pressure on her bladder. She unfolded her stiff limbs and made her way shakily to the bathroom. Her muscles felt rubbery, of uncertain strength. When she emerged, she went back to the bed and sprawled on it face down. She lay still, collapsed, her mind a blank. The room darkened, but she made no move to turn on the light. She wished she could escape into sleep, but it seemed impossible that she would ever find the peace to sleep again.

A soft knocking at the door entered her consciousness. She didn’t answer, didn’t want to see anyone. Dominique buried her head in her arms.

“Dominique?” It was Solange’s voice, muffled by the thick wood of the door.

Dominique opened her mouth to reply, but no sound came out. She gave up and closed her eyes.

The knocking resumed. “Dominique?”

Dominique turned on her side. She drew her legs up in the fetal position and pulled the pillow over her head.

Then her mother was beside her, her hand on her arm. “Dominique, get up. We have to talk.”

“I can’t,” Dominique whispered hoarsely.

“Dominique, what’s wrong between you and Clay?” Solange’s voice was urgent and her hand insistently tapped Dominique’s arm to punctuate her words.

Dominique pulled her arm away and flipped in the bed, so that her back was to her mother. “I… I can’t talk now.” The words came out with difficulty, and when Dominique was finished she was short of breath.

Solange stroked her daughter’s arm more gently than before. “My poor girl,” she said, her voice soft. “It’s just a caprice of his. It happens to men. He’ll get over it,” she said with conviction.

“He wants to marry her,” Dominique said dully into the pillow.

Solange made a sound of surprise. “That doesn’t seem possible. Why, when we were in St. John he was very attentive toward you. He must love you still.”

Dominique thought of how she herself had been deceived by Clay. So, he had deceived Solange, too. Everyone. When had he stopped loving her? Dominique wondered. How many times had he made love to her since?

At the thought of it, Dominique’s teeth began to chatter. “He doesn’t love me!” she cried bitterly.

“But your marriage was good!” Solange protested. “What happened?”

“Why do you ask me that?” Dominique said in a tortured voice.

“There must have been some sign that things weren’t right!” Solange pounded the mattress with her fist for emphasis. “There must be something you can do, even now!”

Dominique jerked into a kneeling position facing her mother. Solange’s attempts to reason enraged her. There was nothing logical about what was happening! “This has nothing to do with me, Mother! He’s decided he wants someone younger. He fell in love. If you could have seen his face”—she choked on the words—“you would know that he feels nothing for me anymore. Nothing!”

Solange recoiled at the rawness of her daughter’s emotions. “Calm down, Dominique,” she said in the tone of one talking to an unbalanced person. “I didn’t say you had done anything wrong. I’m just wondering how something like this could have happened without your having any hint of it. Men often go through a stage where they seek out a younger woman for’—Solange blushed—“reassurance. They think they’re growing older, and a younger woman makes them feel important and virile. But things like this rarely happen without reason. There must have been some sign that—”

“I can’t believe you!” Dominique cried, slapping her thighs in outrage. “Clay walks out and you try to blame me!” She jabbed her finger at her own chest. “What do you know about things like this? Father died when I was nine—he didn’t have time to grow tired of you!” Dominique’s voice rose to a hysterical pitch. “What difference does it make why Clay left? He doesn’t want to come back! He wants a divorce!” Dominique clamped her hands over her ears, trying to block out further conversation. “I don’t understand why you’re bothering me with these ridiculous questions!”

Solange’s careful self-control snapped under her daughter’s assault. “I’m not blaming you!” she shouted back. “I just thought that there might be a chance to get him back. “That if you knew why he—”