CHAPTER TWO

      EMMA was stunned that Richard could sit there smiling so blandly while uttering words that cut her to the heart. She swallowed hard, trying to contain her dismay. The silence between them lengthened. Plucking a frangipani flower out of the cut-glass bowl in the centre of the table, she crushed it unthinkingly in her fingers and inhaled its piercing sweetness. But before she could make any reply, the waitress arrived with the satay, creating a welcome diversion. Mechanically Emma put two of the little sticks with their juicy morsels of chicken on her plate and added a generous dollop of crunchy peanut sauce before giving the girl a strained smile. Yet when the waitress had departed she made no move to eat.

      ‘Your food’s getting cold,’ Richard pointed out genially, as if his previous words had been nothing more harmful than a comment on the weather. ‘Aren’t you going to eat?’

      She shook her head.

      ‘Are you seriously going to sit there and tell me coldly that you want to sleep with me not out of love but just out of some power-crazed lust for revenge?’ she blurted out at last.

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Why?’ she cried.

      ‘Exactly for that reason,’ replied Richard, swallowing a morsel of chicken and smiling at her. ‘Power. I want to be in control of the situation for once instead of being some kind of bloody puppet for you and your father to manipulate.’

      ‘You were never that!’ exclaimed Emma indignantly.

      ‘Wasn’t I? Look, Emma, I married you because I fell in love with you and for no other reason, but right from the start your father tried to pretend I was after your money. And you were fool enough to believe him.’

      ‘I didn’t!’ exclaimed Emma. ‘I wouldn’t have cared if you had had nothing. I left home and married you, didn’t I? And lived in that horrid little house in Woolloomooloo?’

      ‘And kept running back to Daddy every two minutes trying to kiss up to him,’ retorted Richard scathingly.

      ‘Only because I loved both of you. I wanted you to be friends. Is that so unreasonable?’

      Richard gave a mirthless jeer of laughter.

      ‘It was when you were dealing with someone like Frank Prero,’ he retorted. ‘He was determined to part us right from the start.’

      ‘He wasn’t! I know he didn’t like the idea of our marriage’at first, but he was coming around. Why do you think he gave you that big contract on the Manly shopping centre? Because he wanted to help you!’

      Richard swore violently under his breath.

      ‘Like hell he did! It was another one of his sneaky moves to separate us, Emma. I’m damned sure he was the one who made it impossible for me to get the materials I needed to complete the contract on time. Trying to put me out of business was his way of punishing me for daring to get involved with you.’

      ‘Oh, it’s easy to make rotten accusations against someone who is dead and can’t defend himself,’ she flared. ‘But do you have any proof?’

      ‘No, I don’t,’ he said through his teeth. ‘But I’m sure of it all the same. Frank had a bad reputation in the dirty tricks department. But in any case, whatever your father had or hadn’t done, if you’d been any kind of a wife you would have stuck by me in that crisis.’

      ‘Oh, would I?’ gasped Emma. ‘Even when you stormed out of the house, insulting my father all the way, and didn’t show your face for five days? And not only that but.’

      ‘Listen, I don’t pretend I was the perfect husband,’ growled Richard, ‘but I don’t think my faults justify the kind of revenge you took. Any decent wife would have made allowances for the way I behaved that Christmas, instead of packing her bags and running home to Daddy.’

      Emma’s hand closed so hard around the stem of her wine glass that she almost snapped it. Gritting her teeth, she fought down the impulse to fling the contents in Richard’s face. Oh, yes? she thought. Any decent wife would have just looked the other way while you had a squalid affair with another woman only eleven months after getting married, would she? Well, I couldn’t do that. I hated you then, Richard, and I hate you now for the way you hurt me! But when she spoke, her words came out smooth and cold and brittle.

      ‘Unfortunately I didn’t happen to be a decent wife.’

      Richard gave a sneering smile.

      ‘Not then,’ he agreed. ‘But you have another chance now, sweetheart. This time round you can get it right. Come back to me and behave exactly the way I want you to.’

      ‘Why?’ demanded Emma in an unsteady voice. ‘Why do you want me to do that?’

      ‘I told you. I want to be in control of the relationship.’

      ‘And if I refuse?’

      Richard shrugged. ‘Then you’ll go broke.’

      Emma let out her breath in a ragged sigh of disbelief.

      ‘That’s inhuman.’

      ‘Any more inhuman than the way you treated me?’

      Her hands would not be still. She picked up a satay stick and set it down again, fiddled with her knife, traced patterns on the tablecloth. And all the time a blinding misery like a tidal wave seemed to be building inside her. At last she could bear it no longer and she stared at him beseechingly.

      ‘Richard, please! You said you married me because you loved me. If you have any of that feeling left towards me, don’t torment me like this. It’s cruel. It makes a mockery