The Secret Sinclair (20 page)

The complex, three-dimensional, utterly wonderful man she had fallen deeply in love with was well and truly out of the box in which she had tried, vainly, to shove him. Holding back the effect he had on her was like trying to shore up a dam with a toothpick.

The bedroom in which they had been put—her old bedroom newly revamped, but with all the mementoes of childhood still in evidence—did nothing to repair her frayed nerves.

She was as jumpy as a cat on a hot tin roof when, at a little after ten, they were shuffled off upstairs—because surely they must be exhausted after that long drive from London?

‘And don’t even
think
about getting up for Oliver,’ her mother carolled as Sarah was leaving the kitchen. ‘Your dad and I want to spend some time with him, so you just have yourselves a well-deserved lie-in! Lots planned for the weekend!’

Sarah crept upstairs to find Raoul already showered and waiting for her on the bed, where he was sprawled, hands folded under his head, wearing nothing but for a pair of dark boxer shorts. Instantly all thought left her head. Her body reacted the way it always did: liquefying and melting, and already anticipating the feel of his fingers on it.

But her emotions were all over the place, and she informed him that she was going to take a shower.

‘I’ll be waiting for you when you return,’ Raoul told her, following her with his eyes as she disappeared into the adjoining shower room, which was small but perfectly adequate.

She reappeared twenty minutes later. He watched her
walk towards him, wearing nothing, and swiftly whipped the duvet over him—because a man could lose his mind at the sight of that glorious body, with its full, pouting breasts and smooth lines, and his mind was precisely what he needed at this very moment.

Sarah slid under the covers and turned towards him, covering his thigh with hers and splaying her fingers across his broad chest.

The shower had helped cool her down, but there was still a desperation in her as she slid further on top of him and felt the rock-hardness of his erection press against her. With a soft moan she parted her legs and moved sinuously against the shaft, her body aching and opening up for him. As the sensitised, swollen bud of her clitoris rasped against him she had to stop herself from groaning out loud.

Raoul shuddered, fighting the irresistible impulse to spin her onto her back and sate his frustration by driving into her.

‘No,’ he said unevenly.

Sarah wriggled on top of him. ‘You don’t mean that,’ she breathed, panicked by that single word.

She dipped her head, covered his mouth with hers, felt him groan as he kissed her back. Hard. He flipped her onto her back and straddled her so that he could carry on kissing her.

Sarah arched away. Her breasts ached and tingled. She wanted the wetness of his mouth on her nipples, suckling them, driving her crazy. She desperately needed to feel his mouth licking and exploring between her legs, sending her to greater and greater heights until she needed him to thrust into her. She wanted the fragile balance she had forced onto their relationship restored, because without it she was all at sea, lost and struggling to find a foothold in stormy waters.

‘
No
, Sarah! God!’ Raoul sprang back from her, literally leapt off the bed and walked tensely towards the window, to stare outside until his body began to damn well do as it was told. ‘Cover yourself up,’ he told her harshly, because the distraction of her nudity was doing his head in.

Sarah squirmed until she was sitting up and drew her knees up, pulling the covers right the way to her chin while he continued to loom over her in the semi-darkness like a vengeful god.

She felt cheap and dirty, and the ramifications of how she had tackled her own wayward emotions slammed into her with the savagery of a clenched fist.

How could she ever have thought that she could separate herself? Peel away her emotions and leave intact the deep craving of her body to be satisfied under cover of darkness? She wasn’t built like that. She was engulfed with a sudden sense of shame.

‘This isn’t working,’ he told her with harsh condemnation.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘You know damn well what I’m talking about, Sarah!’ He raked his fingers through his hair. He wanted to punch something.

‘No, I don’t! I thought today went really well! I mean, they like you …’

‘Against all odds?’ His mouth curled cynically.

‘I didn’t exactly
say
all those things I told you,’ Sarah confessed in a small voice. ‘I didn’t really tell them about the state of our relationship. Of course they know how it ended between us five years ago, but I didn’t tell them that we were only together now because of Oliver. I just couldn’t face telling them the truth—at least not just yet …’

‘Why are you only now coming clean on that score?’

‘What difference does it make whether they know or
not? It’s true, isn’t it? One chance meeting,’ she said bitterly, ‘and both our lives changed for ever. What’s that they say about the butterfly effect? Half an hour later and I would have finished cleaning that part of the office. Half an hour later and you would have left without even knowing that I was only metres away from you, in another part of the building …’

‘I prefer not to dwell on pointless
what if?
scenarios.’

Sarah gazed down at her interlinked fingers. Raoul’s reappearance in her life might have turned her world upside down, but for Oliver it had been nothing but the best possible outcome.

Her heart was beating so furiously inside her that she could scarcely breathe.

‘That bracelet …’

Sarah looked up at him quickly, so aggressively dominant in the small bedroom. ‘What about it?’

‘Gold rope? With some kind of inscription on the outside? Your mother was wearing it. Looks like the gardening accident wasn’t quite as terminal for the piece of jewellery as you imagined.’

‘I … I … Maybe I was mistaken …’

‘No,’ Raoul told her coldly, ‘maybe
I
was mistaken. I stupidly thought that you were willing to give this marriage a try, but you’re not.’

His lack of anger was terrifying.

‘I
am
giving it a try …’

‘Really? Because you’re sleeping with me?’

Sarah felt the slow boil of anger thread its way through her panic and confusion. Suddenly he was dismissive of the fact that they were sleeping together? What a noble guy! Anyone would have thought that making love was way down on his agenda, when it was the
only
thing he had placed any value on! The only thing he had
ever
placed
any value on. How dared he stand there, like a headmaster in front of a disappointing and rebellious student, and preach to her that he wasn’t satisfied?

‘Weren’t
you
the one who made such a great big deal about our
mutual attraction
? Our
sexual chemistry
?’ she flung at him. ‘Didn’t you tell me that we had
unfinished business
and the only way we could possibly sort that out was by
jumping into bed together
? You have a very convenient memory when it comes to things you don’t want to remember, Raoul!’

‘Am I to be forever punished for being honest when we first reconnected, Sarah?’

‘And am
I
to be punished for being honest now?’ she returned just as quickly. ‘
You
made it clear what this marriage was going to be all about, didn’t you?’

She hated the shard of hope inside her that still wanted to give him the chance to say something—to tell her that she was wrong, that it wasn’t just about the fact that they had a child together.

His silence shattered her.

‘I’m playing by
your
rules, Raoul, and I’m finding that they suit me just fine! In fact, I think you were right all along! Having sex and lots of it is really working wonders at getting you out of my system!’

She sensed his stillness and wanted to snatch the words back. But they were out in the open now, and she didn’t know what to do with his continuing lack of response. She tried to recapture some of her anger but it was disappearing fast, leaving in its wake regret and dismay.

‘So the sex is all that matters to you, I take it?’

‘Yes, of—of course it is …’ she stammered, bewildered by that remark. ‘Just like it is to you. And responsibility too, of course … We’re doing this for Oliver, because it’s
always better for a child to have both parents at home. We’re being sensible … practical …’

‘What story are you going to spin your mother when it comes to the heirloom bracelet?’

‘Wha …?’

‘I one hundred percent agree with you. Heirlooms to be handed over are for brides who actually
want
to be married.’

‘You’re not being fair, Raoul.’

‘I’m being perfectly fair. I had actually thought we had more going for us than just physical attraction, but I was wrong.’ He began walking towards the door.

Sarah watched him, frantically trying to process what he had said.

His voice was flat and composed and as cold as ice. ‘I’ve got your message loud and clear, Sarah. It’s always good to have the rules laid bare …’

S
ARAH
lay frozen for a few minutes. Now that she wanted to recall everything he had said, so that she could sift through his words and get them to make sense, she found that her thoughts were in a jumble. Her heart was beating so furiously that she could scarcely catch her breath, and she had broken out in a film of perspiration. Her nakedness was a cruel reminder of how she had attempted to drown her misery in making love.

She could get herself worked up at the thought of Raoul using
her
, but only now was she appreciating that she had been equally guilty of using
him
—even if she had tried to tell herself that that couldn’t possibly be the case, because wasn’t sex all he had wanted from her from the very start?

Where had he gone?

His self-control was such a part and parcel of his personality that to see him stripped of it had shaken her to her core.

Or had she been mistaken? Was he just angry with her?

With a little cry of horror and shaky panic, Sarah flung the covers off her and scrambled around the room to fling on a pair of jogging bottoms and an old long-sleeved jumper—a left-over reminder of her teenage years, when she had been in the school hockey team.

The house was dark and quiet as she tiptoed into the
hall. Her parents had never been ones to burn the midnight oil, and they would be fast asleep in their bedroom at the far end of the corridor. Oliver’s door was ajar, and she peeped in, through habit, to see him spread flat on the bed, having kicked off his quilt, a perfect X-shape, lightly snoring.

Just in case, though, she made sure not to turn on the lights, and so had to grope her way down the stairs until her eyes adjusted to the darkness and she could move more quickly, checking first the kitchen, then the sitting room.

It wasn’t a big house, so there was a limited number of rooms she could check, and her anxiety increased with each empty room. After twenty minutes, she acknowledged that Raoul just wasn’t in the house.

The temperature had dropped, and she hugged herself as she quietly let herself outside.

At least his car was still there. She hurried down to the road and glanced in both directions. Then, as she headed back towards the house, a faint noise caught her ears and she stealthily made her way to the back of the house.

The garden wasn’t huge, but it backed onto fields so there was an illusion of size. To one side was her mother’s vegetable plot, and towards the back, through a wooden archway that had been planted with creeping wisteria, was a gazebo. Her father’s potting shed was right at the very bottom of the garden. Trees and shrubbery formed a thick perimeter.

Walking tentatively through the archway, she spotted Raoul immediately. He was in the gazebo, sitting with his head in his hands. She paused, and then walked quietly towards him, feeling him stiffen as she got nearer although he didn’t look up at her.

‘I’m really sorry,’ she said helplessly.

Just when she thought that he wasn’t going to reply at all, he looked up and shrugged his broad shoulders.

‘What for? You were being honest.’

‘I was just trying to be mature about the whole thing …’

Raoul flung his head back and stared up, away from her, and in the fierce, proud, stubborn set of his features she could see the little boy who’d grown up in a foster home, learning young how to hide himself away and build a fortress around his emotions.

She rested her hand on his forearm and felt him flinch, but he didn’t pull it away and for some reason that seemed like a good sign.

‘I gave you what you wanted,’ Raoul said, his eyes still averted. ‘At least I gave you what I thought you wanted. Don’t you like the house?’

‘I love it. You know I do. I’ve told you so a million times.’

‘I’ve never done that before, you know. I’ve never let myself be personal when it comes to choosing things for another person, but I made it personal this time.’

‘I know. You wanted Oliver to have the very best.’

‘I very much doubt whether Oliver cares that there’s a bottle-green Aga in the kitchen or not.’

Her heart skipped a beat. ‘What are you trying to say?’

‘Trying? I thought it had been obvious all along.’ He glanced across at her and her breath caught painfully in her throat. ‘I wanted you to marry me. Maybe at the beginning I didn’t think it was necessary. Maybe at the beginning I was still clinging to the notion that I was a free, independent guy who happened to have found himself with a child. It took me a while to realise that the freedom I’d spent my life acquiring wasn’t the kind of freedom I wanted after all.’

‘I don’t want to tie you down,’ Sarah said quietly. ‘I did.
Once. When we were out there. I thought you were just the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life. I built all sorts of castles in the air, and then when you dumped me my whole world fell to pieces.’