Reclaiming His Wife. Susan Fox P.

arms as though to fend off more than the freezing air.

      ‘There you are. All safe and sound where nothing can touch it,’ he said dryly and now she knew he was mocking her. ‘Does it hurt so much to let me help you?’ he enquired, walking beside her back down the drive. She wasn’t looking at him but she could feel his eyes resting on her with a regard that was as ruthless and penetrating as the icy wind. ‘Is it just me you want to prove your independence to? Or are you the same with every other man?’

      ‘So I pranged my car.’ The sparkling hillsides were almost painful to her eyes and she dragged her dazzled gaze away, tossing over her shoulder, ‘Do you have to make such an issue of it?’

      There was a side gate in the low hedge that separated the drive from the garden. He reached around her, opening it with a sharp click of the latch.

      ‘One day, Taylor, you might realise—to use an old cliché…’ he held the gate open as she preceded him through ‘…that no man—or woman—is an island. We all need each other.’

      She didn’t answer, mainly because passing so close to him she was all too aware of his long, lean body—of his dark and dangerous persona—dangerous to her at any rate, she decided, sticking out her chin, fighting against the truth of his words.

      Perhaps he was right, she thought, hearing the gate close behind them. But needing someone too much left you exposed and vulnerable, didn’t it? Hadn’t she learnt that lesson long ago, with the bitter betrayal of that first and fundamental trust?

      They had sandwiches for lunch with the tinned salmon Jared had bought in town, then they boiled more water to wash up and were glad to get back into the warm sitting room where Jared heaped more wood on to the fire, and where, for the rest of the afternoon, they talked and read. Taylor couldn’t remember afterwards exactly what they talked about. Current affairs. The state of the nation. Global warming.

      It was easy not to be too worried about global warming, she thought, when the temperature was ten degrees below outside and you were wondering whether the candles were going to last out until the power was restored. But the discussion was stimulating nevertheless, like their discussions in the early days always had been, and it was all right if they kept to safe, impersonal subjects. She could go along with that.

      When dusk fell they lit a couple of the candles and drew the curtains to shut out the winter’s night.

      They cooked potatoes for supper on the open fire, listening to them sizzle, inhaling their increasingly delicious aroma as they cooked. Then they cut wedges of crumbling cheese and buttered the soft white flesh of the halved potatoes, watching them run golden with black flecks from the melted butter and the crisp, disintegrating layers of the charcoaled skins.

      Jared produced a red wine that was too cold at first but which grew warmer standing, uncorked, on the hearth.

      ‘The snow ploughs were out in the valley.’ Glass in hand, he had just dropped down to join her in front of the fire, having finished his meal on the settee. She had been too snug to move from the rug, and now she wished she had.

      ‘I know.’ She had seen them, way down on the flat white plane that formed the very mouth of Borrowdale, or at least seen the work that they were doing, watched over by the harsh faces of the imposing fells.

      ‘It could be days before they get to us up here.’

      She looked at him quickly. Her eyes were dark and guarded.

      ‘What are you thinking?’ In the flickering candlelight his mouth took on a sardonic curve. ‘That it couldn’t have worked out better if I’d planned it?’

      She shrugged, trying to appear nonchalant. ‘You’re so scheming, Jared, it wouldn’t have surprised me if you had.’

      He had shaved finally, earlier in the day, but now that dark shadow was appearing again around his mouth and jaw so that in the subdued and dancing light his features took on an almost formidable attraction, as menacing as the cruel heights of the scree-scarred fells.

      ‘Believe me. Improvising round a camp-fire wasn’t exactly what I had in mind,’ he told her, pushing a charred log back into the flames with the poker and a scintillating spray of sparks.

      ‘What exactly did you plan?’

      Pursing his lips, he set the glass he had just drained down on the hearth beside her. ‘To wine and dine you in the best hotels Cumbria has to offer. For you to enjoy your holiday.’

      Taylor cocked her head to one side, her eyes still wary. ‘Why? To try to tempt me into coming back to you?’

      He shrugged. ‘Let’s just say for old times’ sake if you prefer.’

      For old times’ sake…

      Broodingly her gaze roamed over the mason-cut stone of the fire surround, lifting to the old clock ticking peacefully away in the centre of the mantelpiece. Beside it, on either side, antique figurines and plates bore testimony to a gentler age—a slower, less materialistic world. Like those framed drawings she had penned and he had hung in the recesses bore testimony to a happier time, Taylor thought with a sudden wave of nostalgia for those days washing over her with such unexpected force that determinedly she uttered, trying to stay afloat, ‘No, not for old times’ sake. Anyway, we were always fighting.’

      ‘Not always,’ he said softly.

      She couldn’t look at him, knowing she would see in his eyes the same fervent emotion that thickened his voice. But, try though she did, she couldn’t stamp out the memories of her own traitorous desires. They sprung out at her, sensual and erotic, from the darkest corners of her mind, of wild, uninhibited nights when, scored by his verbal lashings she had turned away from him in bed, only to be dragged unceremoniously into his arms where hurt, anger and pain had turned to lust as dark and desperate as their rows had been. Because how could it have been anything but lust—on either of their parts—when it had been born out of such bitter words and scarring accusations? she wondered, shamed now even to think how wantonly she had abandoned herself to him.

      ‘That’s all in the past,’ she said and got quickly to her feet. Warmed by wine and the fire she felt a little bit woozy. ‘I think I’ll go to bed,’ she told him, collecting up some of the dishes to take them outside.

      ‘Don’t jump down my throat when I suggest this, but why don’t you share my room?’ he said. ‘It’s not warm by any means but the fire’s heated the chimney-breast and at least it’s taken the chill off the air. Your room was like an icebox when I went in there this afternoon.’

      His offer was tempting. So was the desire to give in to the pangs of wanting that just being with him had stirred in her ever since he had ploughed back into her life. But pride, or common sense, or whatever it was prevailed and she said primly, ‘No thanks. I’ll be perfectly all right where I am.’

      ‘Suit yourself,’ he said noncommittally and, picking up the bottle, poured a little more wine into his glass, his movements measured and steady, Taylor noted, as though he couldn’t have cared one way or the other.

      He was right about the bedroom though, she realised a little later after cleaning her teeth by candlelight in the equally cold bathroom. It was positively freezing!

      She could see her breath on the air in the flickering yellow light as she hurriedly undressed and pulled on her short and less than substantial tunic of a nightdress.

      Pale lemon, with a deep V-neck, cap sleeves and cutaway sides that left much of her thighs bare, it was something she had packed for a centrally heated bedroom, not the toe-nipping jaws of near Arctic conditions!

      Blowing out the candle, she scrambled quickly into bed and, pulling the heavy duvet up around her, curled up into a tight ball. She lay like that for a long time with her teeth chattering, hoping to get warm, until her feet grew so numb she was forced to move to try rubbing them together. The bottom of the bed was freezing and her feet were like two blocks of ice!

      Sometime later she heard