Snowflakes on the Sea. Linda Lael Miller
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fury and something very much like pain. He folded his arms in a gesture that, with him, signaled stubborn determination.
“Understand this,” he said in a low and dangerous tone. “You are my wife and you will remain my wife. I don’t intend to let you go, ever. And you will warm no one else’s bed, my love—not Brad Ranner’s, not anyone’s.”
Mallory felt the words strike her like stones, and it was all she could do not to flinch with the pain. “What?” she whispered finally, in shock.
Nathan’s face was desolate now, but it was hard, too. “You’ve been wasting away ever since you signed on with that damned soap opera, Mallory. And there has to be a reason.”
Mallory lifted her chin. There were reasons, all right, but Brad Ranner wasn’t among them, nor was any other man.
“I’ve been faithful to you,” she said stiffly. And it was true—she had never even been tempted to become intimate with another man, and she had come to Nathan’s bed as a virgin. She couldn’t bring herself to ask if he’d been as loyal; she was too afraid of the answer.
Nathan sighed, the sound broken, heavy. “I know, Mallory—I’m sorry.”
Sorry for what? Mallory wondered silently, sick with the anguish of loving a man who belonged to so many. Sorry for accusing me like you did or sorry that you have a number of nubile groupies to occupy your many nights away from home?
“I’m very tired,” she said instead.
“I see. You weren’t tired in the kitchen tonight, were you?”
The sarcasm in his voice made Mallory’s cheeks burn bright pink. “That was a long time ago,” she snapped, not daring to meet his eyes.
“At least an hour,” Nathan retorted.
“Leave me alone!”
“Gladly,” he snapped. Then, slowly, Nathan turned and left the room. When the door closed behind him, Mallory dissolved in silent tears of exhaustion and grief.
Nathan stood at the bedroom window, looking out. There wasn’t much to see in the darkness, but the storm had stopped anyway. That was something. Behind him, Mallory slept. The soft meter of her breathing drew him, and he turned back to look at her.
The dim glow of the hallway light made her fine cheekbones look gaunt and turned the smudges of fatigue beneath her eyes to deep shadows. She looked so vulnerable lying there, all her grief openly revealed in the involuntary honesty of sleep.
Nathan drew a ragged breath. How could he have urged her to surrender her body the way he had, when she was so obviously ill? And what had possessed him to imply that she was attracted to Brad Ranner, knowing, as he did, that that kind of deceit was foreign to her nature?
Quietly, he approached the bed and pulled the covers up around her thin shoulders. She stirred in her uneasy sleep and moaned softly, intensifying the merciless ache that had wrenched at Nathan’s midsection since the moment his press agent, Diane Vincent, had thrust Pat’s cable into his hands after the last concert in Sydney.
The night was bitterly cold. Nathan slid back into bed beside his wife and held himself at a careful distance. Even now, the wanting of her, the needing of her, was almost more than he could bear. Raising himself onto one elbow, Nathan watched Mallory for a long time, trying to analyze the things that had gone wrong between them.
He loved her fiercely and had since the moment he’d seen her, some six and a half years ago. Prior to that stunning day, he’d prided himself on his freedom, on the fact that he’d needed no other person. Now, in the darkness of the bedroom, beneath the warmth of the electric blanket, he sighed. If he lost Mallory—and he was grimly convinced that he was losing her, day by hectic day—nothing else in his life would matter. Nothing.
She stirred beside him. Nathan wanted her with every fiber of his being and knew that he would always want her. But there was one thing greater than his consuming desire, and that was his love. He fell back on his pillows, his hands cupped behind his head, his eyes fixed on the shadowed ceiling.
Her hand came to his chest, warm and searching, her fingers entangling themselves in the thick matting of hair covering muscle and bone. “Nathan?” she whispered in a sleepy voice.
Despite the pain inside him, he laughed. “Who else?” he whispered back. “Sleep, babe.”
But Mallory snuggled against him, soft and vulnerable. “I don’t want to sleep,” she retorted petulantly. “Make love to me.”
“No.”
Her hand coursed downward over his chest, over his hard abdomen, urging him, teasing. “Yes,” she argued.
Nathan was impatient. “Will you stop it?” he said tightly. “I’m trying to be noble here, damn it.”
“Mmm,” Mallory purred, and her tantalizing exploration continued. “Noble.”
“Mallory.”
She raised herself onto one elbow and then bent her head to sample one masculine nipple with a teasing tongue.
Nathan groaned, but he remembered her thinness, her collapse on the set in Seattle, the hollow ache visible in her green eyes. And he turned away, as if in anger, and ignored her until she withdrew.
2
The telephone was ringing when Mallory awakened the next morning. She burrowed down under the covers with a groan, determined to ignore it. If she waited long enough, Nathan would answer it or the caller would give up.
But the ringing continued mercilessly, and Mallory realized that her husband wasn’t nestled between the smooth flannel sheets with her. Tossing back the bedclothes with a cry of mingled irritation and disappointment, she scrambled out of bed and reached automatically for her robe.
The house was pleasantly warm, and Mallory smiled, leaving the robe—and an aching recollection of Nathan’s rejection the night before—behind as she made her way into the kitchen and disengaged the old-fashioned earpiece from its hook on the side of the telephone. “Hello?” she spoke into the mouthpiece, idly scanning the neat kitchen for signs of Nathan. Except for the heat radiating from the big woodburning stove, there was nothing to indicate that he’d been around at all.
“Hello,” snapped Diane Vincent, Nathan’s press agent. “Is Nate there?”
Mallory frowned. Good question, she thought ruefully. And where the hell do you get off calling him “Nate”?
“Mallory?” Diane prodded.
“He was here,” Mallory answered, and hated herself for sounding so lame and uncertain.
Disdain crackled in Diane’s voice. “One night stopover, huh? Listen, if he happens to get in touch, tell him to call me. I’m staying at my sister’s place in Settle. He knows the number.”
Mallory was seething, and her knees felt weak. She reached out awkwardly for one of the kitchen chairs, drew it near and sat down. She despised Diane Vincent and, in some ways, even feared her. But she wasn’t about to let anything show. “I’ll relay your message,” she said evenly.
Diane sighed in irritation, and Mallory knew that she was wondering why a dynamic, vital man like Nathan McKendrick had to have such a sappy wife. “You do that, sugarplum—it’s important.”
Mallory forced a smile to her face. “Oh, I’m sure it is—dearest.”
Diane hung up.
Outside, in the pristine stillness of an island morning, Cinnamon’s joyful bark pierced the air. Mallory hung up the phone and went to stand at the window over the kitchen sink, a genuine smile displacing the frozen one she’d assumed for Diane Vincent. Nathan and the enormous red dog were frolicking in the snow, their breath forming silvery white plumes in the crisp chill of the day. Beyond them, the towering pine trees edging