Kitabı oku: «Substitute Lover»

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

AHEAD of her loomed the motorway exit sign for the village. Stephanie sighed faintly, the soft sound whispering past vulnerably curved lips. The late afternoon sunlight burnished her long hair into a shining copper cloak. Normally she wore it up in a neat chignon, but today she had left it loose.

Only the inward clenching of her stomach muscles betrayed her growing tension. She hated coming back so much. Fear and pain mingled inside her, making her fingers grip harder on the steering-wheel.

If it wasn’t for Gray … She shuddered visibly, aching to close her eyes and blot out the terrible images blocking out the gentle, rolling countryside and the wide span of the motorway.

Never, ever, no matter how long she lived, would she forget that terrible night when they had come to tell her that Paul was dead. The shock of it, coming so quickly on the heels of that last bitter quarrel, had produced a burden of guilt she carried with her still.

Even now, ten years later, she often woke in the night re-living that last fatal evening they had spent together. The quarrel had blown up over nothing—and it had not been the first time. After only three months of marriage Paul had become a stranger—a frighteningly violent stranger, too, at times—who called her frigid and sexless, and complained that he wished he had never married her.

He had stormed out of the cottage and she had let him, too confused and miserable to try and coax him back.

It had been a bad summer, with constant gales and dangerous seas. She had never dreamed that he intended to take out his boat, but he had. Who knew what thoughts had been in his mind in those last few hours of his life? The seas had been far too dangerous for a lone yachtsman, so the coastguard had told them, and Paul, reckless as always, had omitted to wear his buoyancy jacket and safety harness.

He had been swept overboard by one of the giant waves, or so the authorities surmised, because his body had been found on a beach by an early morning stroller.

His grief-stricken parents had demanded to know why she hadn’t alerted the coastguard earlier, when he had not come home, and Stephanie had been forced to lie, unwilling to add to their pain by telling them that there had been other nights during their brief marriage when he hadn’t come home, when she had slept alone in the wide double bed she had grown to hate. But John and Elise Chalmers had worshipped their only child, and she had not had the heart to destroy their image of him.

She knew that they blamed her for his death, and in her heart of hearts she felt equally guilty. If she had been a different type of woman … if she had had the sexuality to keep Paul at her side, he would not have grown bored with her company … would not have been driven by the relentless devil that possessed him, unleashing a streak of violence in him that she had never suspected existed.

They had married too young and on too short an acquaintance; she knew that now. Neither of them had really known the other, and by the time they realised how intrinsically different they were it was too late—they were married.

Tears stung her eyes briefly, her guilt momentarily overlaid by sorrow. Paul had been so alive … so good-looking and arrogantly male. She had stopped loving him within weeks of their marriage—the first time he had hit her he had destroyed her image of him and with it her almost childish adoration; but that did not stop her regretting his death and the waste of such a very young life.

Only Gray had stood up for her and said in that quiet, slow voice of his that she was not to blame for Paul’s death. But Gray didn’t know the truth. Even now he still didn’t know the truth, but his defence of her, the way his arms had held her, comforting and protecting her in the shocking aftermath of the news, had formed a bond between them that nothing could ever break.

Automatically she turned off the motorway, taking the pretty country road that dipped between the gentle hills and then meandered through the New Forest down to the coast. Her bright yellow VW preferred the gentle pace of country driving, the engine almost purring as the motorway was completely lost from sight and they were swallowed up by golden fields, ripely heavy with their summer crop.

Her friends in London teased her about her devotion to her little car. She earned a good living from her work as an illustration artist, and then additionally there was the income she derived from her share in the boat-yard that had been in Paul’s family for several generations.

She always felt uncomfortable about that inheritance, but Gray had urged her not to dispose of it, and she had agreed. Now that Paul’s parents were dead, she and Gray were joint owners of the yard.

Pauls and Gray’s grandfather had started it, passing it on to his two sons.

Gray’s parents had been killed in a sailing accident when he was fourteen years old, and he had virtually been brought up alongside his cousin. But Paul had never really liked Gray. She had known that from the first and had put the animosity between them down to the seven-year age-gap. As a teenager, newly arrived in the area, she had found Gray both distant and rather formidable.

It had been her father’s interest in boats that had led to her introduction to Paul. The boat-yard was one of his accounts at the branch of the bank he had just been transferred to as manager, and he had taken Stephanie with him, on a visit to inspect the yard.

Paul had been working in the yard, a slim, golden-haired young god with a deep tan and a self-assured smile.

She had thought their love was mutual, but she realised now that to Paul she had only been a new challenge. He had a reputation locally as something of a playboy, but she hadn’t known that then.

She had been a rather shy teenager, a product of an all-girls’ school, studious and not as knowledgeable about sex as most of her peers.

She had just left school, and had been looking forward to going to art school after the long summer break. And then she had met Paul.

Within days they were virtually inseparable. When Paul discovered her reservations about allowing him to make love to her, and the fact that she was still a virgin, he had announced that they would get married.

That had been typical of his impulsiveness and his determination to have his own way, Stephanie had recognised later, but at the time she had been too bemused to do anything but follow where he led. Of course they had encountered massive parental objections, from both families; but the more their parents urged them to wait, the more determined Paul became that they would not.

Even Gray had suggested that they get to know one another a little better before making such an important commitment, but Paul had laughed at him, she remembered, sneering that since Gray was not married himself he was not qualified to speak.

In the end their parents had given way, perhaps in the fear that if they did not, they might do something even more reckless … and who knew … perhaps they would have done. Paul had whispered on more than one occasion that if it was the only way, they could start a baby. ‘Then they’ll have to let us get married,’ he had coaxed.

Whether or not she would have gone that far she didn’t know. Certainly she had been bemused enough by her feelings for him to do almost anything he suggested. Her parents had tried to tell her that she was suffering from a classic case of infatuation but she hadn’t wanted to know … she hadn’t wanted to believe them.

In the end, Paul had got his way. They had had a small family wedding, she had worn a white dress; and they had moved into a pretty cottage down near the harbour that Paul’s parents had bought for them. Mr and Mrs Chalmers had a large house just outside the village, and Gray lived in what had been his grandfather’s cottage quite close to the boat-yard.

Their honeymoon had been a bitter disappointment—for both of them. Paul did not have the patience or the experience to arouse her to the point where she could enjoy his lovemaking, and he had swiftly grown impatient and then angry with her for her lack of response.

The first time he had hit her had been after a quarrel, and she had been too shocked to do anything other than stare at him. Her father had never raised a hand to her in all her life, and the cruelty of Paul’s blow hurt her emotions more than her flesh.

Of course, he had immediately been contrite; they had made up their quarrel and he had sworn never to touch her in anger again.

Within days he had broken that promise and, by the time their honeymoon was over, Stephanie had learned to fear her new husband’s sudden surges of temper.

She returned to her new home and her new life sick at heart and cowed in spirit.

People noticed of course, especially her parents, but she had too much pride to tell them the truth. Inwardly she felt, as Paul claimed, that she was to blame for his violence, that she invited it in some way, and deserved it for her inability to respond to him as a woman.

His violence towards her quickly escalated to the point where she cringed every time he came near her.

They stopped making love within days of returning to their new home, and quite soon after that Paul started staying out later and later at night, and then not coming home at all.

He had made no secret of the fact that there were other girls, but whenever she suggested that they end the marriage he had flown into one of his almost maniacal tempers, and she soon learned not to bring the subject up.

His death might have freed her from the physical violence of their marriage, but emotionally she was still trapped, both in her own guilt for failing him as a woman, and her fear that she was somehow not like other members of her sex—not capable of responding sexually to anyone’s embrace.

Her memories of the unhappiness of the few short months of her marriage, and the guilt feelings that had come afterwards, were so strong, that she hated returning to the village.

Paul’s parents no longer lived there—they had moved away shortly after his death, when Paul’s father had sold out his share of the boat-yard to Gray. Now they were both dead, increasing her sense of guilt. They had both adored Paul, worshipped him almost, seeing no fault in him.

Stephanie’s own pride had made it impossible for her to discuss with anyone the cruelty of Paul’s treatment of her, and so it remained locked inside her, a dark, unhappy secret that still had the power to destroy her sleep.

There had been no man in her life since Paul. What would have been the point? She would only have incited them to violence once they discovered her lack of sexuality. Gray was the only man in her life, and their relationship was a sexless, friendly one that could quite easily have existed between two members of the same sex.

The road crested a hill. To her left she could see the bright glitter of the river, slow and majestic in its steady progress towards the sea.

Soon she would be there. A quiver of apprehension ran through her, all her doubts and dreads about the wisdom of obeying Gray’s request that she come down here betrayed in the cloudy darkness of her eyes.

Her body—too slim and fragile, perhaps, for a woman of twenty-eight—tensed, ready to absorb the shock of pain and guilt that waited for her with her first glimpse of the estuary and the sea.

It was a small place, the village, where everyone knew everyone else. They all knew about her loss; about Paul’s death, but none of them knew about her deeper anguish. Perhaps fearing his parents’ discovering the truth, Paul had gone into Southampton on those nights when he didn’t return home, and had found there, or so he had told her, the sexual satisfaction he could not get from her, his wife.

Cold … frigid. The accusations, so well remembered, hammered against her skull, turning her skin pale with anguish.

If only Gray had come up to London to discuss the business of the boat-yard with her, as he had done in the past, but this time he had been insistent that she return here. He had even threatened to come and get her if she refused and, knowing he meant it, she had eventually, reluctantly, given way.

Perhaps in her shoes another woman might have tried to prove Paul’s accusations wrong by taking one lover after another, but Stephanie couldn’t do that. She was too afraid that Paul had been right. She had failed with him, and she would fail with anyone else.

Instead, she had locked herself away behind the barrier of her guilt, using Paul as an excuse for not forming any new relationships. No other man was going to get an opportunity to abuse her physically, or hurt and betray her because she couldn’t satisfy him; no other man was going to turn from her to someone else, as Paul had done.

Not even Gray had known, as she wept in his arms, that she cried not just for Paul himself but for the betrayal of their love and her own failure to prove herself a woman. And he would never know it.

The village was in sight now, and she automatically tensed her muscles, glancing at her watch. Gone six o’clock, but Gray would probably still be at the boat-yard. She would go there first, rather than the cottage.

Gray lived there alone now and had done for several years. The shock of losing her son had led to Paul’s mother’s death, and Paul’s father, Gray’s uncle, had died two years later from a heart attack. Now only Gray was left.

The boat-yard was on the far side of the village, right down on the bank of the estuary. It had been in Gray’s family for about a hundred years.

As she parked her VW and climbed out of it, Gray emerged from his office and came towards her. Tall, with forbiddingly broad shoulders and a shock of night-black hair, he was a commandingly masculine man. Densely blue eyes studied her and, shockingly, Stephanie momentarily recognised in them the age-old appraisal of a man looking at a woman.

Gray moved and the appraisal was gone, leaving her to suspect that she must have imagined it.

The late afternoon breeze coming off the estuary flattened the silky curve of her skirt against her hip and the long line of her legs. She lifted a hand to push her hair back off her face and heard Gray growl, ‘You’re getting too thin. What have you been doing to yourself?’

‘I’m not thin, just fashionably slim!’ she protested.

He was wearing an old pair of jeans that clung to his body like a second skin. Hastily averting her eyes from the powerful muscles of his thighs, she was tensely aware of his eyes narrowing.

‘What’s wrong? You’re as skittish as a dinghy without a tiller.’

His fingers closed over her arm, drawing her towards him. She could smell the familiar male scent of his body, and felt an almost uncontrollable urge to cling to him and let him stand between her and her pain.

‘You know coming down here always affects me like this.’

Instead of comforting her as he normally did, he released her almost abruptly.

‘After ten years?’ There was something almost sardonic about the way he said it. ‘That’s one hell of a long time to grieve, Steph.’

Before she could comment, the office door opened and a stunning blonde came out. Dressed in tight white jeans and a brief silky top, she swayed provocatively towards them.

‘I’ve still got a few things to do down here.’ Gray glanced towards the blonde. ‘I’ll take you up to the cottage and join you there later.’

Stephanie always stayed at the cottage when she visited Gray. The village had no hotel, and besides, where else should she stay? But now some contrariness made her glance across at the blonde walking towards them, her mouth curling slightly as she asked, ‘Are you sure you want me to stay with you, Gray? I don’t want to be in the way.’

She saw his mouth tighten. ‘Well now, that’s quite a question. What made you ask it, I wonder?’

For some reason she had annoyed him. Conscious of the blonde watching them, Stephanie took a deep breath.

‘Nothing at all. I just wondered if your girlfriend might object?’

‘Girlfriend?’ His dark head swivelled to look at the blonde. She smiled back, teasingly. She was older than Stephanie had first imagined, and she was wearing a wedding ring, but that meant nothing these days.

‘Carla won’t mind. She knows that we’re old friends.’

As though to prove the point he called over casually to the blonde, ‘I’m just taking Stephanie back to the cottage. I won’t be long.’

Stephanie had to run to keep up with his long-legged stride as he walked towards her VW. Watching him fold himself inside reminded her of how tall and broad he was, the play of hard muscles beneath his skin alienly male.

She just wasn’t used to being this close to a man … any man, she told herself as she drove the car towards the cottage; that was why she was so conscious of Gray’s masculinity.

‘I’ve put you in the far bedroom,’ he told her laconically as he opened the cottage door. ‘I’ll leave you to get yourself settled in. I’ll be back in half an hour. I’ve just got one or two things to finish off.’

‘Half an hour. I’m sure Carla would be very flattered if she heard that.’

Suddenly conscious of how waspish and acid she sounded, Stephanie turned away from him. What was the matter with her? Gray had had girlfriends before. He was one of the most eligible men on the estuary. Physically, he was everything a woman could want in a man; he was also kind and gentle. Strange that at thirty-four-odd he should still be unmarried, and stranger still that she had never questioned his lack of a wife before.

‘Oh, I’m sure I could think of a way to make amends.’ He said it so softly that the words shivered across her skin, the look in his eyes as she turned to stare at him making her own widen with shocked pain.

Gray was her friend. He knew how much she loathed anything that had the slightest sexual connotation, and yet here he was deliberately making her aware of his sexuality, of the very masculine side of him that he had previously held in check.

Before she could protest he said bleakly, ‘Don’t provoke me, Steph, I’m not in the mood for it.’

As he turned away from her she recognised that she was not the only one who had lost weight; he too was slightly thinner, his profile carved in slightly harder lines. Was something wrong? Was that why he wanted to see her? Was that why he was acting so oddly? From the time of Paul’s death he had been her friend, he had supported and protected her, and she had come to lean on him, to trust him, as she knew she could never trust anyone else, but now …

He paused at the door and turned towards her.

‘Not everyone’s like you, Steph,’ he told her harshly. ‘We haven’t all abdicated from the human race, and the needs and emotions that go with being human.’

Stephanie recoiled as though he had hit her. In all the years they had been friends, Gray had never once spoken to her like that. Never once looked at her the way he was looking at her right now, with his mouth twisted and his eyes hard and accusing.

‘Gray …’ Panic filled her voice and her eyes. What was happening to them? She was losing him … losing his friendship … she could sense it, feel it almost …

‘I’ll see you later.’

He was gone before she could object. Numbly she stared at the closed door. What was happening? A tiny frisson of fear trembled through her. She wandered uneasily round the small sitting-room. The cottage was very old, the rooms low-ceilinged and beamed. She sat down in one of the chintz-covered chairs and stared unseeingly into the empty fireplace. The horse brasses, collected by Gray’s mother, shone against the buttermilk-coloured walls, the soft salt-laden breeze flowing in through one of the open lattice windows. The room was as familiar to Stephanie as her London flat, although she could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times she had been here since Paul’s death. The house had been let while Gray lived with Paul’s parents, but as soon as he was eighteen he had announced that he was moving into his parents’ old home. There had never been the rapport between Gray and Paul’s parents that had existed between them and their own child. Many, many times he must have felt shut out, but to his credit he had never let it show … never resented Paul in the way that the younger man had resented him. They had never discussed Paul’s animosity towards him; the past was a closed book and one which she had assumed neither of them wished to open.

She had never thought of Gray in any male or sexual sense, but today, shockingly, she had looked at him and seen not her friend, but a man with sexual desires and drives like any other.

A curious, aching pain built up inside her and spread tormentingly through her body. What was wrong with her? Was she really so insecure that she feared the thought of sharing Gray with someone else? She had always known that he didn’t live the life of a monk … but until today she had never come face to face with the reality of his sexuality, and she was shocked by her own reaction to it. Instead of feeling nothing, she had felt a surprising degree of jealousy. But why?

And why had Gray been so offhand, almost angry with her? Normally he greeted her with a warm hug and a welcoming smile, but not this time—not today. Had it been because Carla had been there? It shocked her how much she had missed that brief, warm contact with his body. Confused by the chaos of her thoughts and feelings, she tried to dismiss them as a natural result of her return to the place where she had known such pain and misery, but something deep inside her refused to be convinced.

Angry with herself, Stephanie went outside to her car and brought in her suitcase. She didn’t intend staying for more than a couple of days, and it didn’t take her long to unpack her things and put them away. The room she was sleeping in had sloping eaves and a tiny window that overlooked the wild tangle of the cottage garden, and the hills beyond. The cottage had four bedrooms, and this one had once been Gray’s.

Now he slept in the large double bedroom which had once been his parents’, and as she stepped out on to the landing something made her hesitate and then slowly push open the door to Gray’s room.

He had an experienced sailor’s neatness. Nothing was out of place. An old-fashioned four-poster bed dominated the room, and against her will Stephanie’s eyes were drawn to it. How many women had shared it with Gray over the years? None of them would have been like her, frigid and undesirable. A lump gathered painfully in her chest, a familiar sense of anguish enveloping her. She didn’t want to be the way she was. She …

‘Looking for something?’

The unexpectedly harsh sound of Gray’s voice behind her made her jump. She turned round sharply, stumbling in shock. She hadn’t heard him come in.

Instantly his arms came out to steady her. Although it had been months since he last held her, she was immediately aware of a sense of homecoming and security. Without being aware of what she was doing, she snuggled up against him, sighing faintly.

‘For God’s sake, Stephanie!’

Instantly she stiffened in his arms, suddenly conscious of the hard thud of his heart and the heat coming off his body.

‘What the hell are you doing? Dreaming about Paul? He’s dead, Stephanie. Dead. And for all the living you do, you might as well be, too. Hasn’t there been anyone in these last ten years?’

‘I don’t want that sort of relationship in my life. You know that.’ She had to turn her head so that he couldn’t look at her.

As his arms dropped away from her, he said flatly, ‘We … you can’t go on living like this, Steph. It’s not …’

‘Not what? Not “natural”? Is that what you’re going to say, Gray? That I’m not “natural”?’

Her overwrought nerves shrieked in protest as she flung the words at him.

He seemed to be looking at her with an odd mixture of pain and defeat in his eyes. Her breath locked in her throat, tears not far away. What on earth was happening to them? She and Gray had been so close, such good friends, and now … and now they seemed to be teetering on the brink of destroying all that they had shared.

He made a slight movement, a reaching out towards her from which she immediately recoiled, her expression proud and tortured as she cried out painfully, ‘You want the truth, Gray? All right, I’ll give it to you. I don’t have the least interest in sex.’ She took a deep, rather shaky breath. ‘I’m frigid, Gray.’ There, she’d said it; she’d admitted at last the agonising lack of sexuality that had caused her so much pain.

‘Steph!’

She heard the shock in Gray’s voice, but she couldn’t respond to it; couldn’t listen to any more questions now, however well meant. Gray cared for her as a friend, and would want to help her, but this was one problem that no one else could help with.

Suddenly she had an overwhelming need to be alone.

‘I … I think I’d better find somewhere else to stay tonight, Gray, I …’

She saw from the look on his face that she had hurt and angered him. So many gulfs were springing up between them, so many barriers that couldn’t be crossed.

She made a dash for her room and privacy, coming to an abrupt halt as Gray’s fingers tightened round her wrist, holding her prisoner. Shock had darkened his eyes to dense sapphire, his mouth a hard line of disbelief as he shook her.

‘What the hell is this, Steph? Is that really what you think? That you’re frigid?’

‘Isn’t it what you think?’ As she stood there, trembling, Stephanie wondered frantically what on earth had happened between them to promote this conversation. Talking about her relationship with Paul and the flaws in her femininity wasn’t something she had ever wanted to do, least of all with Gray, who, friend though he was, was also so undeniably male that he made her acutely aware of the pathetic shortcomings in her own personality. Instinctively, without knowing how she possessed that knowledge, she knew that as a lover Gray would be both skilled and tender.

Dragging her mind away from such provocative thoughts she saw that he was frowning.

‘I don’t make those kind of assumptions without some hard facts to back them up. As I haven’t been to bed with you, I don’t know, do I?’

It was what he hadn’t said rather than what he had that shocked her speechless.

‘I’ll wash and then we’ll have something to eat. I’ve got a lot to talk over with you.’

His calm words broke the spell that had held her silent.

‘Won’t Carla object to your spending the evening with me?’

His eyebrows lifted. ‘Why should she? She knows that we’re old friends.’

To her chagrin, Stephanie realised that he was looking amused.

‘Why don’t you go down and make us some coffee? And then over dinner I’ll show you the plans of the new boat I’m working on.’

This was the Gray she knew … her friend. The tension that had engulfed her earlier eased. Feeling relieved, she hurried downstairs to the kitchen.

Mrs Ames, Gray’s daily, had left a casserole ready-prepared in the fridge, and one of her famous apple pies.

Although the cottage had a pretty dining-room, normally when she came to stay they ate off trays in the sitting-room. It was more cosy.

It didn’t take long to make the coffee and, wanting to make amends for her earlier childishness, Stephanie poured some into a mug for Gray and took it upstairs.

His bedroom door was open. She could smell the clean, pine-fresh scent of his soap, and from behind the closed door of his bathroom she could hear him singing.

Her mouth curved into a brief grin as she recognised the familiar sound of an old sea shanty. It was one Gray only sang when he was feeling particularly happy. Perhaps she had been wrong about there being some serious problem with the boat-yard.

Knocking briefly on his open door, she walked into his bedroom. She had been silly to get so upset simply because he had asked about her as a friend. Not knowing the truth, he had simply thought that she had grieved for Paul for long enough.

But now that he did know the truth … he had not exhibited the shock she might have expected. Lost in thought, she gnawed worriedly at her lower lip.

The door to Gray’s bathroom opened and he walked into the bedroom, plainly unaware that she was there. His hair was damp and he was towelling it roughly. The rest of his body … Scarlet faced, Stephanie stood rooted to the spot, totally unable to move, as she slowly absorbed the details of his nude body.

Gray only realised that she was there when he threw down the towel. Transfixed with shock and embarrassment, Stephanie gulped as he walked past her and gently closed the bedroom door.

‘I … I brought you a cup of coffee.’

Her voice was a thick, unfamiliar croak, but at least speaking freed her from her momentary paralysis. She turned to flee and discovered that somehow Gray was standing in front of the door.

‘Thank you.’ He said it gently, casually reaching out to take the mug from her. Hideously embarrassed, Stephanie looked everywhere but at him. Why, oh why had she walked into his bedroom in the first place? She had known that he was having a shower.