Single Dads Collection. Lynne Marshall
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than her own. Everything was simple for Roger and Beth. Why had she had to fall in love with someone whose life was incompatible with hers?
Sighing, she turned to find Will watching her. His jaw was set and his mouth was pressed together in a decidedly grim line, but Alice’s heart still skipped a beat at the sight of him.
‘Oh…Hi,’ she said.
‘You look very sad, Alice,’ he said, an edge to his voice that Alice was too full of emotion to analyse.
‘I’m not sad,’ she said. ‘Envious, perhaps.’
‘Of Beth?’
‘Yes.’ She was a little surprised that he had guessed so quickly. ‘I think she knows how lucky she is.’
‘Does she?’
This time there was no mistaking the hardness in his voice, and Alice looked at him, puzzled. But, before she could ask what he meant, Will’s attention was claimed by someone who came up to say goodbye.
The event seemed to be winding down, anyway, and, feeling deflated after the earlier high, she began to help with the clearing up. In spite of her hat, she was beginning to feel the effects of standing in the sun too long, and her head was thumping, so when Will told her that one of the divers had offered her and Lily a lift home she was glad to accept.
‘I’ll need to wait and lock up when everyone else has gone,’ he said brusquely.
Alice had put an exhausted Lily to bed by the time he came back, and she was sitting on the verandah and trying not to think that this time next week she would be home. She tried to imagine herself in her flat. She would pick up the accumulated post from the doormat. She would unpack her case, and put some washing on.
And then what? Desolation washed over her at the realisation that there would be no one to sit down with, no one to have missed her, no one to pour her a drink or put an arm around her and tell her that they were glad she was home. She would be alone again.
‘There you are.’ Will let the screen door crash behind him. He was carrying a bottle of beer, and although he sat down in his usual chair nothing else was normal. His expression was stony, and he was taut with suppressed feeling, wound up so tight that Alice looked at him in concern. Something had obviously happened, but she had the nerve-racking feeling that if she put a foot wrong he would explode.
‘Long day,’ she ventured cautiously.
‘Yes.’
‘Still, I think it was a success.’
‘Yes.’
There was a pause while Alice eyed him warily. ‘Do you want anything to eat?’
‘No,’ he said, adding grudgingly as Alice raised her brows, ‘Thank you.’
‘I wasn’t hungry either,’ she said, and gave up. If Will wanted to tell her what the problem was, he could, but she was in no mood to sit here and coax it out of him if he didn’t feel like cooperating. Let him keep it all bottled up inside him, if that was what he wanted.
The silence lengthened uncomfortably. Will drank his beer grimly, until at last he put the bottle down on the table between them with a sharp click.
‘I think you should be more careful of Beth’s feelings,’ he said abruptly.
Alice wasn’t sure what she was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t that!
‘What on earth do you mean?’ she asked in astonishment.
‘I saw you with Roger this afternoon.’
She stared at him. Surely he wasn’t jealous of Roger? ‘Yes, we’re friends. Of course I talked to Roger!’
‘What were you talking to him about?’
Opening her mouth to tell him, Alice remembered her promise to Beth just in time and closed it again. ‘That’s none of your business,’ she said after a moment.
‘Because friends don’t usually sneak away behind the lab to have a conversation, or kiss and cuddle each other when they’re doing it!’
Will had been gripped by a white-hot fury ever since he had watched Alice drag Roger out of sight. He didn’t know what had prompted him to follow them—all right, he did know, he was jealous—but he was completely unprepared for the fist that had closed around his heart as he had seen Alice bury her face in Roger’s broad chest and cling to him.
Unable to watch any more, he had turned on his heel and left them to it, and he might have left it at that if he hadn’t caught sight of Beth emerging from the office a few minutes later, looking pale and wan. She’d asked him if he had seen Roger, so of course he had said no. He couldn’t have her interrupting that scene behind the lab, but, from her drawn look, he couldn’t help thinking that she already suspected that something was wrong.
And now Alice wasn’t even bothering to deny it.
‘Roger and I have always hugged and kissed each other,’ she said, her eyes blazing at his tone. ‘He’s a friend and that’s what we do. We’re not all repressed scientists,’ she was unable to resist adding snidely.
‘Is Beth a friend too?’
‘You know she is.’
‘You don’t treat her like one,’ said Will harshly. ‘I saw her today too. She looked wretched, and I’m not surprised, if she has any idea of what you and her husband are up to!’
For a moment, Alice was so outraged that she couldn’t speak, could only gulp in disbelief and fury. ‘Are you implying that Roger and I are having an affair?’ she asked dangerously when she could get the words out.
‘I’m saying that you don’t behave to him the way you should if you were a good friend to Beth.’
‘How dare you!’ Alice surged to her feet, shaking with fury. ‘I’ve known Roger for years and there’s never been anything between us. You should know that better than anyone! I love Roger dearly, but we’ve never felt like that about each other.’
‘Are you sure about that?’ Will asked unpleasantly, remembering that disastrous evening when Roger had confessed how he really felt about Alice.
‘Yes, I’m sure! And, even if I wasn’t, do you really think that I’m the kind of person who would break up a friend’s marriage?’ She shook her head, unable to believe that Will could be saying such things. ‘What do you think I am? We’ve been sleeping together, for God’s sake! What did you think, that I was just making do with you because I couldn’t have Roger?’
Turning away with an exclamation of disbelief and disgust, she wrapped her arms around her in an attempt to stop herself shaking. ‘I suppose you think that after Tony left, I came out here deliberately to ensnare Roger because I didn’t have a man of my own!’
‘I’m a scientist,’ said Will, who didn’t believe anything of the kind but who was too angry to think about what he was saying. Seeing Alice with Roger had provided an outlet for all the pent-up anger, confusion and bitterness he had been feeling ever since she had refused to stay, and he wasn’t capable of thinking clearly right now. ‘I believe the evidence, and I’ve seen you cuddling up to Roger at every opportunity. You can’t tell me that you’ve never thought what that does to him!’
Alice turned slowly to stare at him. ‘I don’t believe this,’ she said. ‘How can you possibly think that about me? You know me!’
‘I used to,’ he said bleakly. ‘I’m not sure I do know you any more.’
There was an appalled silence.
‘I think I’d better go,’ said Alice in a shaking voice at last, and she turned blindly for the door.
The expression on her face brought Will to his senses too late, and he scrambled to his feet. ‘Alice, wait!’
But she only