The Marriage Replay (10 page)

‘I'm sorry if that's the way you see it.'

‘No, you're not! You're not sorry at all! All you want to do is wallow in your own unhappy misery and drag me down, too! Well, to hell with it! If you don't pull yourself together soon, then we may as well call it a day.'

Not waiting to hear her response—or indeed even
caring
right then what it might be—Reece strode away and disappeared inside the patio doors before Sorrel could call him back.

 

Her hand shook as she tried to apply the pretty rose-coloured lipstick in front of the bathroom mirror. All last night and most of the present day Reece had practically ignored her—except to tell her in almost dictatorial terms that they were going to be Angelina Cortez's dinner guests that evening, at her villa in Almancil, near Vale do Lobo.

To say she'd been shocked to learn that Angelina was in Portugal at the same time as they were was pretty inadequate to describe the state of her feelings. Sorrel's heart had slammed so hard against her ribs at the news that she'd wondered the whole of the country couldn't detect her distress.
Had they planned this little invitation between them?
They must have. Reece had to have told the opera star that he was going to be in the country with his wife, or how else would she have got his telephone number there?

The situation was a definite wake-up call. Clearly Reece was right. Maybe she had wallowed long enough in her ‘unhappy misery', as he'd called it, and now she needed to bestir herself and fight for her marriage if that was what she really wanted. When she thought about being without Reece for the rest of her life, fear jack-knifed through Sorrel's insides with such force that she felt quite ill. She had already lost her precious baby…to lose her husband—the love of her life as well—was simply too terrible an idea to be tolerated.

A star of Angelina's beauty and talent could probably get any man she wanted.
But Sorrel had only ever wanted Reece…despite what he might believe to the contrary.
So she would try her hardest to ‘pull herself together'—the phrase made her heart bleed—and try to remind her disbelieving husband of the woman he had fallen in love with and married…
for better or for worse.

 

The villa was quite compact and understated—beautifully decorated and appointed, but not the palatial residence that Sorrel had expected at all. It was more like a much loved home than a house that was only occupied by its internationally renowned owner very occasionally. And if the stunning Angelina welcomed Reece a little too warmly for his wife's liking, then she was surprised by the woman's equally enthusiastic welcome of Sorrel herself.

As they sat round in comfortable couches in the charming living room, every shelf and surface decorated with clearly personal photographs of family and friends, Sorrel stole a furtive glance at her husband. He was dressed in casual linen trousers and a plain white
linen shirt that enhanced his tanned good looks with eye-catching compulsion. She longed for him to notice her as he seemed to be noticing Angelina. The Spanish star was dressed in dramatic red, her slinky low-cut dress clinging to every ripe curve, her dark hair swept up behind her head in an elegant and stunning chignon. When she moved, the slim gold bracelets on her wrist jangled and the air was permeated by her exotic perfume.

In her own little strapless blue sundress with the gauzy silver wrap shot with faint blue stars that Sorrel had added in deference to the invitation to dinner, she felt like a small grey mouse sitting next to a beautiful, sleek Siamese cat.

‘Sorrel…I hope you did not mind me dragging you both away from your vacation to come and join me for dinner? When I found out that Reece was going to be here, I could not resist inviting you. As well as being the only promoter I would trust to oversee my concert tours, I much enjoy his company. He is always the perfect gentleman…always! Now, what can I get you to drink? A little wine, perhaps, before dinner? There will be just the three of us tonight, so you must both just sit back and relax. My housekeeper Pepe is preparing our meal, and he is the most divine cook!'

‘Some wine would be lovely…thank you.'

‘The same for me, thanks.'

As Reece added his own acceptance of some wine to Sorrel's, Angelina excused herself and disappeared from the room to fetch it. The silence that fell in her absence was marked, and Sorrel all but squirmed with discomfort as she sat on the smart white leather couch
and smoothed her palms awkwardly down the sides of her dress.

‘If you'd rather I hadn't come with you tonight you should have said.'

At the hurt look in her eyes Reece bit back the cutting rejoinder that had immediately hovered on his tongue. If Sorrel had indicated even once that she would prefer him to refuse Angelina's invitation in deference to staying at home and trying to sort out their problems, he would most certainly have conceded to his wife's request. Even though at the time he'd told her they were going he had stated the fact in a tone that had brooked no argument. But she'd said nothing.

At the idea that she was likely building up more and more resentment towards him, and that the evening was bound to end up in another bitter argument, all Reece wanted to do right then was book the first available flight home.
But what would that solve?
Sooner or later they were going to have to come to some mutual agreement about their future. Reece wished his chest didn't feel as if it had been buried beneath the crushing rocks of a landslide at the thought, because it was becoming more and more clear that as far as he and Sorrel were concerned there might not
be
any shared future at all.

‘I
wanted
you to come,' he said irritably, and felt mere inches away from snapping any second now if she so much as hinted at refuting that statement.

He despised himself for being so tetchy with her—especially in light of all that she'd suffered—but he reminded himself that he had suffered, too, was suffering still. As his emerald gaze fell on her now, looking so pretty and enchanting in her simple blue sundress and sparkly stole, he longed to be able to take her somewhere
private and kiss her—like he had kissed her the other morning, when he'd woken to find her sharing his bed at last. Of course since then she'd gone back to sleeping alone, and she would no doubt just push him away if he tried to make any kind of advance.
So much for making headway…

‘Reece…I really would like us to—'

Sorrel had to bite back her anxious attempt at conciliation when Angelina swept back through the door, carrying a bottle of wine and a tray of glasses. Once again the woman's sultry perfume and exotic presence impinged itself indelibly on the room like a colourful parakeet amid a flock of little brown sparrows.
Could Sorrel really blame Reece if his gaze turned to Angelina in admiration instead of to his wife?

‘By the way, I am sorry that my darling Emmanuel could not manage to stay awake to meet you, but he is only five years old and he gets so tired. You know how it is with little ones, yes?'

Turning her lovely dark eyes to Sorrel, Angelina couldn't know that that last sentence of hers had cut into her guest like a scythe cutting through corn. But as Sorrel lifted her wounded glance to Reece's she saw brief panic followed by regret mirrored in his own concerned gaze, and she let go of the breath she had inevitably sucked in hard and willed herself to release her pain…

‘My sister has two small children, so, yes…I do know how tired they can get.' Adding a smile to her words, Sorrel didn't see Reece relax his shoulders and some of the strain around his mouth gradually disappear.

Later on in the evening, after a superb dinner, Angelina declared that she wanted to show her guests
around the charming well-kept grounds of her lovely villa. As they both stood up to join her, Sorrel asked to be shown where the bathroom was. Leaving Reece to accompany their hostess out into the balmy warm evening, she let herself into the immaculate bathroom with its shimmering sea-green tiles and marble basin, and thankfully shut the door behind her.

Dinner with Angelina as host had been surprisingly enjoyable and entertaining, and not nearly as great a strain as she'd anticipated it might be, but as the evening had worn on Sorrel had felt the inevitable tiredness creeping up on her. Glancing at her pale reflection in the mirror, she felt like a masked performer in a circus who, when the lights dimmed and the audience went home, was left with the less than sparkling face behind the mask.

With a little sigh she examined her watch and wondered how much longer they should stay before they could politely make their excuses and leave. Thinking about it now, she honestly would have liked to meet Angelina's little boy. Not because she wanted to wallow in the unhappy misery of not having a child herself—but because she was genuinely more comfortable in the company of children rather than adults.

Realising that she was missing the nephew and niece she had lived with for almost a month, Sorrel decided to ring Melody the next day and make arrangements to see them all as soon as she returned to the UK. And, after washing her hands in the bathroom basin, with some exquisitely scented soap that smelt like honeysuckle, Sorrel tidied her hair, reapplied some lipstick and went in search of her husband and hostess.

‘S
O YOU
will think about what I said,
querido
? You know this means a lot to me.' Sorrel could hear Angelina petition Reece as they stood behind an intoxicating hedgerow of heavenly scented flowers. Her footsteps coming to a halt on the lamplit garden pathway, she flinched as though she'd been physically struck.
What was the other woman talking about so intimately with Reece?
Were her very worst suspicions coming true, and were they
really
having an affair?
Or were they simply on the brink of one?
Had things between her and Reece come to this sorry pass because she couldn't get over her grief about the loss of her baby and recognise that he had needs, too?

If Angelina
were
going to tour the States, and Reece agreed to promote that tour, then their paths would be thrown together almost daily. It would also mean that Reece would be away from home for months on end.
So much for a reconciliation and the possibility of renewing their marriage…

‘I promise to give it my serious consideration, Angelina,' Reece replied thoughtfully, and Sorrel heard a definite smile in his voice. ‘That's all I can tell you
right now, honey, but I'll definitely ring you in a few days.'

What was he going to give his proper consideration to?
Sorrel fretted in panic. The possibility of having an affair with the beautiful opera star? Promoting her American tour? What?

Trying to hear herself think over the wild roaring in her ears, she took a deep shuddering breath, then walked forward to join her husband and hostess. The last thing she wanted Reece to accuse her of was lurking about in the shadows spying on him while he talked to Angelina. If she wanted to make matters ten times worse then that was definitely the way to go about it.

‘Hi, there.' She smiled, deliberately keeping her voice light so as not to alert Reece to the fact that she'd inadvertently overheard some of their conversation.

Sorrel couldn't help noticing that the smile she'd heard in his voice when he'd spoken to Angelina was definitely
not
in evidence when he turned to regard her—his wife. Feeling ridiculously abandoned when he didn't reply to her greeting either, she shrugged her shoulders and turned to Angelina instead.

‘Mind if I take a look around?' she asked, her feet already moving down the path away from her and Reece.

‘Be my guest, my dear.'

Waving her away effusively, Angelina linked her arm through Reece's and, as easily as that, led him away in the opposite direction to his wife….

 

Sipping his Scotch, Reece walked out onto the terrace. The captivating scents of fragrant white lavender and red bougainvillea immediately entrapped his senses, so that
he stopped for a moment simply to inhale the sensational heady fragrance more deeply into his lungs. Along with the luscious floral perfume that drifted up to him came the familiar sound of rasping insects mingling with the blessedly temperate night air.

Sorrel had long gone to bed, and out here on his own, thinking his thoughts and allowing relative silence to flow over him, Reece could finally exhale and give vent to his private frustration and pain over his marriage.
He would just have to give Sorrel her freedom.
What was the point in trying to hold onto a woman who clearly no longer cared for him? Somehow along the way they had lost touch with each other's needs and broken faith with the vows they had both voiced so passionately on the day they'd wed. Her eyes no longer lit up when Reece walked into the room, her mouth didn't immediately smile in welcome when he returned from his long trips away from home, and her manner and demeanour towards him—apart from the other morning, when she had briefly let him into her heart—were bordering on contemptuous…even more so since she had lost the baby.

Pressing the coolness of his glass against his heated forehead, Reece choked back a protesting groan and for a moment was completely gripped by the shudder of violent longing and regret that shivered through him when he thought about the baby they had lost.

Had it been a boy or a girl?
Don't go there,
his own silent voice warned him, briefly allowing the searing pain of the thought to grip him with a vengeance. Would the child have been as fair as Sorrel, maybe favouring the dark emerald of Reece's own eyes? Whatever their
offspring had looked like, Reece would have loved him or her without reservation and with all his heart.

Would Sorrel consider trying for another baby with him?
The wild clamour of his heartbeat almost deafened him.
Would she want to try again in spite of all that had happened between them?
Or was he destined to go through life without ever learning what it was like to be a father? Somehow he knew that would be a real tragedy. Of course he might eventually meet someone else, if he and Sorrel split up, have a child with them, but right now the idea was anathema to him.

He truly regretted that he'd never talked to his wife more about what she wanted from their union. If he was honest with himself he'd known all along she wasn't a typical career girl. Even the glamorous allure of the fashion business had not been able to captivate the interest of his lovely wife. She was her own woman, with her own ideas about how she wanted to live her life. And two things were now crystal-clear to Reece. One, she was clearly cut out to be a mother, and
not
a career girl or some pretty adjunct to her husband's career…. And two,
she clearly no longer wanted to be married to him.

Tipping back his glass, Reece swallowed what was left of his whisky and welcomed the heated burn that slid so outrageously smoothly down into his stomach. He was not a man who gave up easily on anything he set his mind to, but it was a particular kind of torture to him to witness Sorrel walking around looking so unhappy. He couldn't do it to her. He couldn't make her stay with him when she was clearly wrestling with the idea that she might not want to.

So tomorrow they would talk about separating for
good, and Reece would state his intention to gift her a generous provision of money and property to start her new future without him. When they returned to the UK they would revisit the offices of Edward Carmichael and Co., and Reece would instigate divorce proceedings as he'd originally been going to do. Then, when he'd told Sorrel his plans, he would telephone Angelina Cortez and accept her offer of promoting her new American tour. The tour would take him out of the UK for a year at least—by which time Sorrel would be much more settled in her new life and hopefully Reece would have gone some way to forgetting the beautiful blond angel he had married with such ludicrously high hopes…

‘Reece?'

Her voice startled him so much that he almost dropped the glass he held in his hand. Turning slowly, he saw her standing between the opened patio doors, wearing a long ice-green silk nightdress and a matching robe. She'd left her hair loose and the ends lay in delightful rings of luxuriant curls about her slender shoulders, bright and glossy and infinitely touchable.

Frowning, Reece said nothing for almost a full minute. He was both perplexed and hypnotised by her sudden bewitching appearance when he'd been certain she'd been in bed asleep all this time.

‘What is it?' he said finally, his voice sounding slightly rough. He knew it was the effects of both the whisky and his tiredness.

‘Aren't you coming to bed?'

‘Now, what
exactly
does that mean, Sorrel?'

Unable to keep the slight bite from his tone, Reece put his glass down on the concrete ledge behind his knees and dropped his hands to his straight, lean hips.

‘It means are you coming to bed because I—?' She dipped her head, and if she hadn't been shadowed by the moonlight and the muted lighting round the terrace Reece would have sworn that she blushed as hard as any virgin. ‘I'd like to come with you.'

Swallowing hard, Sorrel wished her heart wouldn't beat so fast, because it was causing a spinning sensation in her head that almost made thinking impossible.
Had she left it too late to try and make amends?
Reece's expression gave nothing away, his jaw implacable and the thoughts behind those arresting green eyes of his worryingly undetectable.
Was he thinking about the vivacious Angelina Cortez and wishing that it were her inviting him to bed instead of his wife?

‘And when did you decide that?'

He folded his arms across his chest in the white linen shirt that flattered his taut, lean musculature to perfection, and Sorrel caught the glint of the solid gold wristwatch that circled his tanned wrist. ‘Please don't be so cynical,' she begged. ‘This isn't easy for me, you know.'

Smoothing her hand down the sensuous silk of her robe, she couldn't help but shiver at the mockery that had been clearly evident in Reece's tone.

‘What's the matter, Sorrel? Did you have another nightmare? That's all I'm good for, isn't it? Keeping nightmares away. Or are you of the opinion that it's
me
who causes them? Tell me—I'd really like to know.'

‘Have you been drinking?'

Nervously her eyes darted to the empty glass Reece had left on the ledge.
It had been a totally stupid idea to come out here and expect him to jump for joy because she'd suggested she'd like to sleep with him tonight.
Now Sorrel could see that she had made a big mistake. She should have just left him to his whisky and his foul mood.

‘What if I have? Go back to bed, Sorrel. Don't waste your time play-acting on my account. It's a little too late in the day to start trying to behave like a
real
wife, don't you think?'

The barbed insult—used once before to searing effect—hit Sorrel hard. She'd been genuinely intent on trying to meet her husband halfway. But, even though she was hurt, she stayed where she was, her jaw lifted and her blue eyes determined as she faced Reece out.

‘I'm not “play-acting,” Reece. I
want
to be a real wife to you. I know you have needs, too, and that—I—I haven't been considering them in the light of everything that's happened. I'm sorry that I've behaved that way, I honestly am.'

Swallowing down his initial resentment, Reece couldn't tamp down the flicker of hope that leapt into his heart at her surprising words. He'd fully expected her to engage him in another bitter, useless argument. But now, as he watched her standing there—looking so beautiful and with obvious hope in her eyes—he allowed his blood to heat without trying to immediately extinguish his desire because he assumed he hadn't a hope in hell of having it fulfilled.

‘An apology? My, my…I didn't expect that.'

Although his words were faintly mocking, they weren't cruel or dismissive, and a small sizzle of warmth settled inside Sorrel's stomach and wouldn't go away.

‘Do you have any idea how much I ache for you? I swear to God you must have been put on this earth to
drive me crazy.' He started to walk towards her. ‘Do you know that?'

Shivering with the force of her own desire, Sorrel drew the sides of her robe together with trembling hands. Coming to a halt just in front of her, Reece was literally stopped in his tracks by the scent of a favourite perfume she wore, which he'd used to love. The warmth from her body seemed to reach out to him and make the ache that was already besieging him grip him so savagely that he almost swayed.

Unable to resist her charms any more than he could resist breathing, he considered her nervous blue gaze, and the peaches and cream complexion that was no less perfect from being scrubbed clean of make-up, and, using his thumb and forefinger to capture her jaw, impelled her startled face towards him. ‘Do you really want to spend the night with me?' he asked, gravel-voiced.

‘I…' Sorrel bit slowly down on her lip, hot colour pouring into her cheeks. ‘Yes, I do.'

‘Then let's go to bed, shall we?'

Surprising her, he lightly caught hold of her hand, then led her through the living room, out into the hallway and down the corridor to where the bedrooms were.

She took off her robe, laid it over a pink satin slipper chair in the corner of the room, and quickly climbed into bed. As she drew the covers up to her chest, Reece stood by the side of the bed and stripped off his shirt, quickly followed by his trousers. Already barefoot, he stood in front of Sorrel as God had made him—except for the white cotton boxers that sat low on his hips.
There wasn't a single inch of the man that wasn't totally pleasing to the eye.

He'd always worked out a little, but basically Reece was one of those lucky individuals who had been born with more than his fair share of natural beauty. Whether he was sporting a tan or not, his sublime skin was smooth and supple and warm to the touch, with enough taut, sinewy muscle rippling underneath to make even the most inured female blush with pleasure.

Holding her breath, Sorrel cast her hungry gaze over his flat, perfectly proportioned stomach and—daring a little further south—caught a glimpse of the darker blond hairs that wove seductively down into his boxers.

Switching off the lamp by the bed, Reece finally divested himself of his underwear and climbed in beside Sorrel. The sheets were cool, but the temperature emanating from her husband's body definitely was not. Her skin began to tingle in anticipation. Even though she knew that she might have to live with her frustration at not being able to fully participate in their lovemaking, Sorrel was determined that she would show Reece that she was very much a ‘real' wife when it came to the bedroom department. They might have sorted out zilch when it came to their relationship, but this was one area of their marriage that had always worked better than clockwork…the one area where communication had always been ten out of ten.