Reclaiming His Wife. Susan Fox P.
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their relationship already floundering, he had flown off to the States for a conference with several of his American company’s hi-tech whiz-kids a couple of days afterwards, during which time Taylor had started to miscarry. When he returned ten days later, her pregnancy was over.
‘Well, that’s exactly what you wanted, wasn’t it?’ he said when, still numb and wretched with grief she told him she had lost the baby. He had looked, she’d thought—wondering if he had had a particularly gruelling conference— bleak-eyed, yet frighteningly grim.
Illogically blaming herself for losing her baby, wanting to hurt herself as well as to hurt Jared, not thinking straight, she had thrown back, ‘Oh, sure! I arranged for it to happen! Well, you were having such a good time with your mistress, weren’t you? Why not!’
His eyes were glittering with such intense anger she wondered now what had prevented him from actually hitting her as he had snarled back, ‘At least she wouldn’t sacrifice a child for her precious job!’ There was such an edge of steel to his voice that she knew that whatever feeling he might have had for her, until then, she had killed with that last rash retort.
It was, however, to Taylor, an admission that he was still involved with the other woman, and one that had propelled her into leaving. The very next morning after he had left for his office, she had scribbled him a note, laid her wedding ring on top of it and fled, and she hadn’t seen him again until today.
‘Mmm,’ Charity murmured expressively, jolting Taylor out of her painful retrospection.
‘Mmm, what?’ she pressed, agitated, quickly stowing away the glass she was still holding.
‘Just “Mmm,”’ the woman responded, as Taylor turned round again. She could feel her friend’s perceptive gaze resting on her flushed cheeks.
Craig was home and from the floor below she could hear water running in the pipes, caught the strains of one of his country CDs playing. Safe, homely Craig who liked nothing better than to be with his family, to put up a shelf and play the odd game of golf when his job as lighting technician allowed.
‘I suppose a man like Jared could be quite overwhelming to be married to,’ Charity expressed as though picking up on Taylor’s thoughts. ‘Forceful. Possessive. Exciting. I know I said I had a crush on him but if he had asked me out, I’d have been scared to death! I mean all that dynamism and vitality! And the sophistication that makes the hard-headedness behind it all so scary and… I don’t know… I don’t suppose I should say it to you but, well… thrilling!’
Charity’s eyes were bright from the teenage fantasies she must have woven over what was after all an acquaintance of her parents while she studied Taylor sagaciously, looking no doubt for some flicker of agreement in her friend. But all Taylor said dryly was, ‘And with a temper to match,’ because of course Jared Steele was all of those things.
‘Ah-ah,’ Charity breathed. ‘I wondered why he came down those stairs like a bolt of lightning without calling in on his way out as he promised.’
In one of the rooms below, Josh had suddenly started to cry.
‘He’s just the sort of man I would have picked for you, Taylor.’ Charity was already moving towards the door. ‘I’m sorry it didn’t work out.’
Taylor gave an outwardly nonchalant shrug. ‘We had our differences.’
‘With no chance that the two of you will ever get back together?’ Charity looked hopeful, but Taylor shook her head.
‘No,’ she answered, her lowered lashes concealing the pain in her eyes as she thought of their bitter arguments, remembered the conversation she had had with Jared earlier. ‘No,’ she said again, more adamantly this time. ‘No chance at all.’
Taylor was putting the finishing touches to the face of the young actress who was last on the set that morning. It was for a televised play and the outside shooting had been completed two weeks ago. Now it was just a matter of finishing the studio shots and, taking a break, several members of the cast and production team who had wandered into Makeup were sitting around, chatting and drinking coffee.
‘… didn’t think when I arranged to pick them up at lunchtime that they’ll be defrosted by the time I get them home.’
One of the production assistants was bemoaning her stupidity over some desserts she had bought for dinner. Concentrating on blending blusher across the young actress’s cheeks, Taylor wasn’t really listening until she heard her own name mentioned.
‘Just give them to Taylor to hold for the afternoon,’ Paul Salisbury was advising dryly. ‘That should keep them frozen.’
Tall and blond, Paul was a brilliant photographer who believed his prowess with women was all due to his good looks and his success with a camera. With Taylor, however, he had had his grand opinion of himself sadly shattered, she realised, when she had refused to go out with him—or with any man, she had determined bitterly, even if she weren’t still married—which was why, she decided, Paul had been sniping at her ever since.
‘I’ll have you know, Taylor is a very warm and sensitive person,’ Craig Lucas, mug in hand, perched on the edge of a table, lobbed back.
Dear unassuming Craig, Taylor thought, sharing a smile with the man with twinkling brown eyes, whose tawny head was bent slightly forward—as though he were uncomfortable with his long lean frame, she had often thought— grateful for the unnecessary but caring way he had leaped to her defence.
He was, however, looking towards the door, just as everyone else was and, glancing curiously over her shoulder, Taylor stifled a small shocked gasp.
‘How—how did you get in here?’ she stammered, her pulses quickening under the dark brooding gaze of the man who had just come through the doorway. Security was stringent and no one could get in without a pass.
‘I told them who I was and that I wanted to see you,’ Jared answered casually.
And that would have been enough, with that daunting air of authority and that core-hard confidence, Taylor thought grudgingly, to overcome the hardest obstacles.
She saw the withering glance he directed at Craig and wondered if he had heard the technician’s complimentary remarks about her; heard what Paul had said. She couldn’t help noticing though how the long dark coat and immaculate dark suit seemed to give Jared an edge over the younger men, over the rest of the production team and over her, dressed as she was, like they all were, in casual sweaters and jeans.
As if on an unspoken order, the others were already trooping out.
‘There,’ Taylor said, having made a great show of ignoring him by brushing powder from the girl’s cheeks and standing back at last to examine her work. ‘Now go out there and do your best.’
Getting to her feet, the actress scarcely glanced at her reflection, concentrating only on sending Jared a blatantly inviting smile before leaving them to join the others.
Disconcerted at being alone with him, Taylor began tidying her cosmetics, discarding used tissues, fastening lids on jars.
‘I take it you came here to discuss… what we were talking about the other day.’ Somehow she couldn’t bring herself to say the word ‘divorce’. It hurt enough to realise that he hadn’t wasted any time in getting back to her. But that was pride, she told herself. Nothing more. ‘If that’s the case…’ she was tossing brushes into a tall plastic holder ‘… I hardly think we can talk here.’
‘Exactly,’ that deep voice agreed. ‘Which is why I’ve booked lunch for us both in a quiet little restaurant I know, so if you’d like to get your coat, we can be on our way.’
‘Now wait a minute!’ Slamming down a pot of cleansing cream in front of the brightly lit mirror, Taylor faced him with her arms folded, supported by the shelf below the bank of mirrors that stretched along one wall. ‘Aren’t you rather jumping the gun just a bit? What makes you think I can just drop everything