Impasse Read online

  'You—you aren't just asking me because of the…'

  'It's my baby, too, Lee,' he cut in gently, kissing her suddenly tear-drenched cheeks adoringly. 'And I love its mother to distraction. Surely you can't doubt that now?'

  Lee couldn't. It was written too clearly in his eyes, along with the suffering he had endured. She had never seen such devotion on his face before and she felt exultant yet strangely humble that it was for her.

  'I've loved you since the beginning, I think,' she gulped, suddenly clinging to him. 'That's why I left you in Paris. I couldn't bear your distrust any longer. It was bad enough before I discovered I loved you, but after that it began making me feel ill.'

  'Oh, my love,' he groaned, 'I was so wrong about that too, if you're talking about the time I thought I caught you stealing that necklace.' His face darkened. 'It might not have been altogether my fault for believing you guilty of a crime you'd never committed, but I should have known you hadn't a dishonest bone in your whole body. Last night, when Ann Bowie came and confessed what had really happened, I think I could have killed her!'

  Lee stiffened with shock. 'She told you…?'

  'It must have been on her conscience,' he said grimly. 'I've felt she's been trying to tell me something for a long time.'

  Knowing Ann Bowie, Lee thought that was quite possible. Her heart warmed, then chilled. 'You won't dismiss Ray, will you?' she asked anxiously. 'He works for you now, doesn't he, and he's never done anything like that again.'

  'Sweetheart,' Slade muttered huskily, 'he deserves to be punished for the false image I had of you—or felt forced to keep of you, but after all this time it might be better for everyone if we just forgot about it, Besides, I'm as guilty as Ray. I let some of my father's experiences colour my whole life.'

  'What do you mean, Slade?' she whispered compassionately as his face went tight. Was she about to hear of something which she had always sensed troubled him and lay behind his reluctance to marry?

  She listened quietly while he sighed and said tersely, 'My father had brains, but he seldom used them, Lee. When he was little more than twenty, he married a much older woman, notorious for her scrapes with the law. It cost my grandfather a packet to extricate him from her last escapade. There was a divorce. Fortunately there were no children and he married Lydia, but it was years before the dust from it all settled. Even when I had grown up, remnants of the scandal kept resurfacing, particularly when my father, never a faithful husband, was killed in a car crash with his former wife.'

  So that was why Slade had always been so emphatic that no further hint of scandal should discredit his family and why he had been so wary of marriage! Children could be extremely sensitive regarding their parents. Slade's father might have put him off marriage for life. Lee sighed and gently caressed the back of his neck. 'It's all over now,' she murmured. 'Your father maybe made mistakes, but sometimes it's better to remember the good things about people, rather than the bad. And, for all our sakes, it might be wiser to leave the past where it belongs, don't you think?'

  When he didn't speak, she wondered what more she could do to help, but apparently the love transmitted through her hands was enough. His eyes glowed with an incredible warmth as he bent to cover her parted lips with his own.

  Eventually he said thickly, 'I know I'm a lot luckier than I deserve, that you can forgive me for ever thinking you less than perfect. When I saw how you put yourself out over that boy, the way you care for him, the trouble you go to for other people, you make me feel very humble.'

  'What about my terrible temper?' she teased, 'and,' her smile innocently beguiling, 'my inclination to make love at all the wrong times?'

  'Shameless hussy!' His eyes darkened as they devoured her with teasing severity. 'We have things to do today, my sweet, which for once must take precedence over our immediate desires—I think…'

  A year later a private plane landed on a Greek island and a chauffeur-driven limousine picked up two people and drove them to a white villa, perched on the mountainside above a beautiful beach on the north coast of Crete. The villa, which stood in its own ground was cool and spacious, the staff discreet. It was the first time the Westerns had been there since their honeymoon.

  Slade said softly, as he closed their bedroom door before taking his wife in his arms, 'Happy anniversary, darling. I love you.'

  Lee didn't doubt it, and her adoring blue eyes were glowing evidence that she loved him too. Any doubts she had entertained over their marriage had long since disappeared. Slade worked from home now, seldom leaving it unless there was an emergency, and, since their son had been born, unless she was with him. This was their first real holiday together since their honeymoon, and he had insisted that he must have her to himself for a few weeks. Slade junior had been left in the care of his nanny, with his doting grandmother and Ann Bowie supervising. Lee hadn't been too keen on having a nanny for her child at first, until she realised her husband had first call on her time and that was the way she wanted it. Slade hadn't insisted, he had left the final decision to her, but she knew he loved her all the more for it.

  As he began kissing her, then undressing her, and his kisses deepened, she managed to whisper huskily, 'Sofia said dinner was almost ready.'

  'Who's interested in dinner?' he muttered hoarsely, picking her up and carrying her to the bed. Seconds later they were drifting in an even more magic world than the one outside. Slade was a skilful lover with a totally responsive wife, but the incredible excitement of their coming together was always new. Slade's clothes joined hers on the floor, a button tearing as undisguised desire flared in his dark eyes, and as he gathered Lee to him, she felt him trembling against her.

  Soon they were a tangle of straining arms and limbs, with inflamed senses already crying out for release. Lee was struck, as always, by the terrifying power of their attraction. As soon as they touched their flesh would burn in the current that passed between them. He kissed her face, her neck, her breasts and thighs, letting his mouth linger as he called her name. His hands and mouth incited her almost beyond endurance, then, when she thought she could bear it no longer, he joined them in an explosion of feeling so powerful that she cried out. Together they soared in an eruption of ecstasy and pleasure to that other realm they were now very familiar with but which, as always, seemed just the beginning.

  A loud knocking on the door and a grumbling warning from Sofia, who had known Slade all his life, that dinner would be ruined if they didn't hurry, brought them reluctantly back to earth again.

  'Ah, well,' sighed Lee in the middle of it, 'if we spend much more time here, it won't be long before our son has company in his nursery.'

  'He's going to anyway,' teased Slade, his eyes on the lush slenderness of his young wife rather than the clock. 'At least half a dozen brothers and sisters, wouldn't you say?'

  He got a pillow thrown at him for his pains as Lee hurriedly left the bed in an attempt to appease Sofia, but her heart was singing. Whatever Slade wanted, she would try and give him. She was wise enough to realise they shared a relationship to be treasured. Once she had thought never to see Slade again. Now he had been her husband for a year and a loving father for four months. What more could she ask?

  'Nothing!' she exclaimed aloud, on a high happy note as Sofia sounded a last dire warning, thinking, Lee suspected, as Slade turned on his broad back and laughed, that the English were all slightly crazy!

  'What was that all about, my love?' He made a pretence of being anxious. 'I hope Sofia doesn't think you were telling her we don't want any dinner.'

  Lee's eyes widened in dismay. 'She wouldn't think that, would she?'

  'She might,' he grinned, catching the unwary hand she lowered to topple her down beside him. 'Would it matter?'

  Tumbled against him, she couldn't resist putting her arms around him again. 'No,' she murmured, cheeks pink, 'it wouldn't.'

  'On the other hand,' he teased, 'it looks as if I'm going to need all the strength I can find if I'm to keep
this up, so maybe we should go and eat?'

  Much later, as they took a midnight stroll along the seashore before turning in, Slade took her in his arms and said, 'Do you know, this last year has been the happiest in my life, my darling.'

  'For me, too.' Lee lifted her own arms and wrapped them around his neck. Secure in the knowledge of his love, tears glinted suddenly in her eyes. 'You've given me so much,' she whispered unevenly. 'I wish there was some new and splendid way of saying I love you.'

  The kiss he gave her in return was incredibly gentle, a communication that went beyond words. 'Just keep on caring for me,' he said huskily, 'exactly as you're doing now. And as long as we have each other, that's all that matters.'

  And, as his lips closed once more over hers, Lee could only show him silently how much she agreed.