Wife To A Stranger. Daphne Clair
glanced around the room. The long sofas arranged in a U-shape with glass end tables, and the group of chairs around another, larger glass table looked comfortable enough. The pictures on the walls were originals and she recognised the signatures on a couple of them.
The drapes that Rolfe had drawn against the night were textured faille silk, well chosen to complement the turquoise carpet used throughout the house, and in the daytime to frame the view of the sea and echo its colours.
Everything was beautifully co-ordinated and money had not been stinted. But she felt like a visitor here. ‘Who decorated the rooms?’ she asked. ‘And who designed the house?’
‘One of Auckland’s top architects did the house. And we hired an interior designer. You wanted perfection and insisted on expert advice. What’s the matter?’
She had shifted restlessly, oddly dissatisfied. ‘Nothing. It’s a lovely room.’
It was a lovely room, only it seemed to lack warmth. She supposed that in summer the cool effect might be an asset.
The music had stopped. ‘Was that Mozart?’ she asked.
‘Yes—I know you’d prefer something a bit livelier. The tapes and discs are over there under the player. Why don’t you choose one?’
Hesitantly she got up and went over to the built-in unit holding the music centre, knelt and opened the top drawer.
Rolfe said, ‘Most of yours are in the second drawer down.’
She opened the next drawer. The first few labels meant little, but then she found a CD that she lifted out with delight—an album by a New Zealand group that had made the pop charts both in their home country and overseas. ‘This is one of my favourites!’
‘Yes.’ Rolfe had approached silently across the carpet and was standing just behind her, looking over her shoulder. ‘You used to play it a lot.’
And her subconscious had remembered. ‘Can we play it now?’ She twisted to look up at him.
‘Feel free.’
She turned back to the music centre, inspecting the rows of buttons and dials. It took her a minute to locate the CD component. ‘Here?’ she asked, checking.
‘Right.’
She slid out the disc that was already there and replaced it with the new one. Nothing happened, and Rolfe said, ‘You need to press the “play” button.’
Her fingers hovered as she read the labels on the various buttons, then touched one. ‘This?’
‘Yes.’
The music began, barely audible, and she asked, ‘Where’s the volume control?’
‘Here.’ His lean fingers turned the knob. A hand briefly lighted on her shoulder, then he offered it to help her up.
Taking it, she rose to her feet. ‘Thank you. Don’t you like pop music?’
‘Some.’ He let go her hand. ‘These guys are musicians. They know what they’re doing.’
‘So we have tastes in common.’
He regarded her strangely. ‘I guess we do.’
Her lips parted, her tongue caught for a moment between her teeth. ‘Of course we do, or we’d never have married.’
His laugh was brief. ‘That’s a remarkably naive view of marriage, for you.’
‘For me?’
‘For anyone,’ he amended swiftly. ‘Don’t they say opposites attract?’
‘Do they? I mean, yes, I know people say that but…I’m not sure it’s a good basis for marriage. Are we opposites?’
‘Some people might have thought so,’ he allowed. ‘But we were both willing to take a gamble on our relationship. Perhaps for different reasons.’
‘Different reasons? What were they?’
He was silent, staring down at her. ‘I can’t speak for you,’ he said. ‘It wouldn’t be fair. And as for myself…’ Shrugging, he turned away to go back to the sofa. ‘I suppose I was in love.’
‘You suppose?’ Following him, she stopped short as he sat down, facing her.
When he looked up his eyes had a strange, glazed glitter in them. His smile twisted. ‘All right,’ he said, and reached forward, his hand closing about her wrist to tug her down beside him.
He retained his hold, looking at the hand he held, his thumb stroking over the back of it. ‘I don’t know what else to call it.’ His voice was low and strained.
He’d called it lust earlier, she remembered. Lust at first sight, he’d said, describing their meeting.
‘It’s not my habit,’ he told her, ‘to take a woman I’ve just met to bed—no matter how willing she is. For months I could hardly see straight for wanting you. You were…an obsession.’
‘And you resented it.’ She stated the fact baldly.
He seemed startled, his eyes meeting hers, searching her face. ‘Maybe I did in a way. I wasn’t used to that level of…distraction.’
‘Distraction?’
‘I have a demanding, complex business to run. Ever since I left university I’ve been building it, expanding it. There wasn’t time for much else in my life. Or energy. And then suddenly there was you. For a time I felt as if I’d lost control.’
‘You’d hate that.’ She knew as surely as if he’d spelled it out for her that Rolfe liked being in control of himself, of his life.
And of his wife? The wayward thought made her shiver inside. Just how had he felt, how had he reacted, when she’d insisted on visiting Australia without him? She’d sensed anger in him several times since she’d woken in that hospital room—anger controlled and usually well concealed, but simmering beneath the surface.
Rolfe released her hand and sighed, settling into the corner of the sofa, one arm laid along the back. ‘Hate it?’ he repeated. ‘The most exciting sex I’d had in my entire life?’
‘Sex?’ Capri clamped her hands together. ‘You just said you fell in love.’
‘Sometimes it’s hard to separate the two. Harder, they say, for men than women. Perhaps that’s true.’
‘Perhaps,’ she agreed tentatively. ‘I don’t think I would have found it so difficult.’
‘Don’t you?’ He regarded her pensively.
Her gaze slid aside. Maybe she was wrong. At this moment she was fighting a strong urge to close the small space between them and rest her head against his chest, feel his arms about her. Could that be love? Perhaps her body, her heart, remembered what her mind refused to give up to consciousness.
‘Listen.’ He tipped his head back, angling it to concentrate on the music from the hidden speakers. Two voices blended against a subtle, haunting melody.
Burning like a rocket
exploding into stars most splendid in its dying is this love of ours
The song was called ‘Fire in the Sky’. She loved the tune, but the words saddened her, telling of a love that had flared briefly, incandescently.
too bright to last the distance
a fire in the sky.
‘He knows,’ Rolfe murmured.
‘He?’
‘The guy who wrote the song.’ He turned his head, his eyes half closed and gleaming, his mouth cynical. ‘Doesn’t he?’
‘It isn’t like that with me!’
Rolfe’s