Wife For a Day. Kate Walker

exhaustion, unable to move, even to breathe properly?

      ‘What is it, darling?’ Deliberately she lowered her voice to a husky whisper. ‘Have you gone off me already?’

      That got a reaction, but not the one she had expected.

      With a jerky movement, Ronan lifted his head so that his eyes once more met hers full on. Coolest sea-blue locked with the almost amber warmth of Lily’s perplexed gaze, and something deep in those eyes, some shadow darkening their limpid clearness, made her shiver in intuitive apprehension.

      ‘Gone off you?’ he echoed, his voice sounding as if it came from a throat that was painfully raw. ‘Never that!’

      As if to emphasise the words, he accompanied them with a look so sensually appreciative, so blatantly carnal, that it was almost a physical caress in itself. But, just as Lily was about to relax back into the comfortable warmth of her sleepy sexuality, the realisation of a cold edge to that look, a glitter of something disturbing in his eyes was like the splash of icy water in her face, bringing all her defences to red alert before he even spoke again.

      ‘You turn me on just by existing, lady,’ he declared with disturbing harshness. ‘And you know it. I only have to look at you to want you so much that I feel I might die if I don’t have you. But that’s a penance I have to endure.’

      ‘Penance!’

      That first tiny prickle of unease had now become a raging tide of discomfort. Every nerve stung with a tension that was like the pins and needles of blood returning to a numbed limb, but magnified a hundredfold.

      ‘I don’t understand!’

      She couldn’t hide the tremor of her voice as she pushed herself upright in a panic, feeling far too vulnerable lying down.

      ‘Ronan? What is it?’

      ‘I want you, Lily,’ Ronan persisted, as if she hadn’t spoken. Each word was so cold, so clipped that Lily flinched away from them as if they were actually formed in ice as they fell on the sensitive skin of her exposed neck and shoulders. ‘But I’ll never have you again—ever. It was good while it lasted—perhaps the best—but now it’s over. I only waited until you were awake so that I could say goodbye.’

      ‘G-Goodbye!’

      It couldn’t be true! She couldn’t have heard right. Either that or this was some appalling sick joke, one that she didn’t like at all. But she would never have believed that Ronan could be so hatefully cruel.

      ‘This isn’t funny, Ronan!’

      ‘Funny?’

      His intonation said it all, Ronan knew. There was no need for further elucidation. But still he wanted to spell it out to her, setting out the details with a precise pedantry that made it plain his intent was to spare her nothing. He wanted her to know exactly what was happening, to understand what the experience of pain was truly like.

      ‘This is no joke, my darling. No joke at all. Believe me, I never felt further from laughter; I couldn’t be more serious. Our marriage, such as it was, is over—done with. I’m leaving today and I’m never coming back.’

      He got to his feet, the easy, indolent movement somehow shocking when Lily contrasted it with the whirling frenzy inside her head.

      ‘I’ll let you decide when to serve the divorce papers.’

      ‘But…’

      ‘And now, if you’ll excuse me…’ The carefully formal politeness underlined the ruthless determination to give her no quarter at all. ‘I have a long drive ahead of me.’

      As he strolled to the door Lily could only stare after him in stunned confusion. But even as her golden eyes were fixed on his retreating back her thoughts were turned inward, reviewing the events of the previous day—their wedding day—trying to see how the glorious happiness she had experienced then could have brought her to the emotional horror of this moment.

      How was it possible that what had seemed like the realisation of her greatest dream could have changed so swiftly into the nightmare of knowing that that fulfilment now lay shattered at her feet?

      How could she not have suspected anything? Surely there must have been some clue. Some moment when Ronan had let slip the careful mask of the happy bridegroom, the veneer of a man anticipating his marriage with the same sort of excitement and delight that had filled her own heart, and revealed his true feelings.

      Because it had to have been a mask, she now saw. He could never have felt for her the way she had believed he did and then turn round and do this. And yet he had never seemed to be pretending. Certainly, she had never suspected for a moment that his feelings were anything but totally sincere.

      So when had it all fallen apart?

      No, it couldn’t be true! She had to be dreaming. She was trapped in a nightmare from which she desperately wished she could wake.

      Frantically she pinched at her hand, her arm, praying that the small, self-inflicted pain would break through the trance that held her and force her into consciousness. But nothing happened. There was nothing to happen. She was wide awake, this private hell only too real.

      And yesterday she had thought she had it all. That she’d found the true love she had looked for all her life.

      Yesterday had been quite perfect. In fact the one tiny flaw she could remember had been the silly upset over Ronan’s hair…

      ‘Well, are you ready to take the longest walk of your life?’

      George Halliday grinned down at Lily as he spoke, one hand adjusting the fall of his elaborate cravat. Above the silky material, his lined face was already beginning to redden in the unexpected warmth of early April sunlight.

      ‘The longest walk, Uncle George?’

      Lily smiled enquiringly up at the man who wasn’t really her uncle but had acquired the name as an honorary title after years of friendship. George had held the market stall next to hers when she had first started out in her florist’s business. He had been there to help when she had moved her business into a small, rented shop, and he was the closest thing to a genuine relation she had had for years. So he had been the obvious choice to turn to when, with her wedding so very close, she had been unable to track down her missing brother and had been forced to look elsewhere for someone to escort her down the aisle.

      ‘I thought that was supposed to be the walk to the scaffold.’

      ‘Tradition might have it that way, my dear, but I can’t see it. I reckon that particular stroll must just fly by! But this one! Well, that’s a different kettle of fish altogether. Too much time to think. With every step you take you’re wondering whether you’ve done the right thing. He loves me…he loves me not…’

      He mimed slow, stately steps forward with each phrase.

      ‘Oh, Uncle George! I don’t have to think, I know! I love Ronan more than life itself, and he loves me.’

      ‘Well, just so long as you’re sure. If you ask me, this was all a bit of a rushed job.’

      His worried frown told her exactly what he was thinking, and she hurried to put his mind at rest on that score.

      ‘No, I’m not pregnant, if that’s what you’re hinting at. We haven’t even slept together yet. Ronan knew I preferred to wait. He understood…’

      ‘Then he’s a rare sort of man if he did,’ George declared with typical Yorkshire bluntness. ‘But that explains his haste to get you down the aisle, I suppose. If I was thirty years younger, and had a beauty like you wearing my ring, then I know I’d want to rush through the wedding pretty damn quick too. Every day I had to wait would seem like an eternity.’

      ‘Uncle George!’

      Warm colour flooded Lily’s face from her slender neck right up under the coils of blonde hair that were topped by a delicate crystal tiara, and