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you?' he asked gruffly.
She knew exactly what he was asking. 'No,' she assured him softly. 'Now tell me how you knew it was Gary? Is he
really in police custody?'
'Yes,' Adam sighed his relief. 'The police arrested him when he arrived home two hours ago. I was with them, and
when they knocked on the door he just crumpled. He told them everything when they took him to the police station.
But he didn't tell us he had left you perched out on a ledge,' he frowned his anger.
'It's over now, Adam,' she touched his thigh.
'Thank God,' he breathed. 'Having you followed told us nothing ---------'
'You're still looking for the grounds to divorce me?' she pulled away from him, her expression pained. 'I hope your
detective told you that you're my only visitor! Can you be named in your own divorce?' her voice rose shrilly.
'Leonie -------'
'I don't think you can, Adam.' She stood up, moving away from him. 'So we had better stop our affair so that I can
find a lover you can name. Maybe I should have just let Gary do what he wanted to do after all,' her voice broke.
'Then you could have named him.'
'Leonie ---------'
'Silly me thought that climbing out on that ledge was better than being violated,' she said self-derisively. 'If I had
just let him go ahead I could have saved us all a lot of trouble. You really
should have told me '
'Leonie, if you say one more word, one more t word,' he repeated icily, 'I'll put you over my knee and beat the living
daylights out of you.'
'I wonder why I never realised how gallant you are.' Her eyes flashed. 'I've just escaped attack by a sex-maniac by
balancing on a ledge for more than two hours and you intend to beat me!' She gave a choked laugh. 'And to think I'd
decided, if I ever got off that ledge, that I was going to talk to you about what went wrong in our marriage. It looks
as if I needn't bother. Although you'll have to provide the evidence for the divorce, the thought of taking a lover
nauseates me!'
'Leonie...?'
'Although I know it won't be Liz,' she looked at him accusingly. 'All this time you've let me believe the two of you
were lovers, and you were lying! Liz told me the truth today.'
'If she said we didn't sleep together then she lied,' he bit out.
'I know you went to bed together, before we were married. I also know now that it only happened the once. And Liz
told me it wasn't done out of love on either of your parts.'
'I still slept with your sister,' Adam told her flatly.
'You helped a friend when she needed it,' Leonie amended abruptly.
'By making love to her!'
'Do you want a whip to beat yourself with?' Leonie scorned. 'What you did wasn't wrong.' She shook her head.
'Misguided, perhaps, but not wrong. I've believed all this time that you were in love with Liz.'
'I never was,' he denied softly.
'I know that now!'
He sighed. 'The night I made love to her should never have happened, I knew that. Never more so than when I met
you,' he rasped. 'I think I fell in love with you on sight, and yet my guilt about Liz stood between us.'
Leonie moistened suddenly dry lips. 'You did love me?'
'Yes.'
'You never once told me that.'
He frowned. 'Didn't I? But surely it must have been obvious,' he dismissed impatiently.
His emotionally repressed childhood again! 'I ought to hit you over the head with something!' she snapped.
'Why?' he looked dazed.
'Because I loved you from the moment we met too,' she glared at him. 'But my inexperience, my clumsiness, my
naivete, seemed to be driving you away!'
He shook his head. 'Your inexperience enchanted me, your clumsiness amused me, and your naivete enthralled me!'
'Then why couldn't you bear to be near me!'
'Because of Liz,' he admitted heavily. 'I was terrified that one day you would find out about that night I spent with
her, and that you would hate me for it.'
'Why couldn't you have just told me about it before we were married?' she sighed.
'I'd promised Liz. Although, believe me, if I had thought you could accept what happened I would have broken that
promise,' he added grimly.
'You thought me too immature to understand,' she nodded. 'I believe I was,' she acknowledged heavily. 'But I
understand now.'
His eyes were narrowed. 'You do?'
She gave a ragged sigh. 'Liz told me about Nick, his affair, how you tried to help her through it.'
His mouth twisted. 'I'd like to say it was all a question of helping Liz, but it wasn't. I couldn't have made love to her
if I hadn't desired her.'
'I understand that too,' Leonie nodded. 'But you didn't love her, or want to marry her.'
'God, no.'
'I thought you did, you see. That day I saw you together at your office, I thought you had married me because Liz
had decided on a reconciliation with Nick rather than marriage to you, that you both now realised your mistake, but
that it was too late for you to be together, because Liz was expecting Nick's child. I believed I was a very second,
second-best,' she admitted miserably.
'You were never that.' Adam shook his head. 'The night I met you I was driving past Liz's house and saw the lights
on. My first thought was that it was burglars. Then you opened the door!' He gave a tight smile. 'I fell, God how I
fell. And yet Liz stood between us. I rushed you into marriage before I could talk myself out of it, knew I had to
have you even if I lost you later. But our problems began straight away.'
'I was a failure in bed,' she sighed.
'You weren't a failure,' he rasped angrily. 'You were a very young girl with a problem you were too embarrassed to
even talk about. And by the time we had dispensed with that problem your barriers were well and truly up, you
were self-conscious about lovemaking to the point where you didn't even like me to touch you. You can't know
what that did to me! But my own guilt about Liz made it impossible for me to reach you. I knew I was driving you
further and further away from me, but I didn't know how to stop it. When you decided to end the marriage I knew I
couldn't stop you.'
'And now?'
'Now I'm giving you what you want,' he shrugged. 'An affair.'
'While you divorce me,' she said bitterly.
'For God's sake, I wasn't having you followed so that I can divorce you!' Adam grated. 'I was protecting you,
because of those telephone calls.'
'A lot of good that did me,' she scorned, not believing him.
Adam flushed at the rebuke. 'There was a flaw in the plan. On Saturdays I met with the detective to get his report.
We met at twelve-thirty today for lunch.'
'So that was who you were meeting?' she realised.
'Yes,' he bit out. 'And while he was telling me that he had followed through investigations into the two men that live
here, into the people I work with, and the people you work with, coming up with Gary Kingsfield as the caller, he
was here threatening you! No one was here watching you, damn it,' he admitted tersely.
Leonie could see the humour in the situation now that she knew Adam wasn't trying to divorce her. 'That was the
flaw?' she couldn't hold back her smile any longer.
'It isn't funny,' Adam growled. 'He could have could have ---------'
'But he didn't,' she soothed. 'And unless I'm mistaken, he's done me a favour.' 'I can't think what,' Adam scowled.
She walked into her bedroom without answering, coming back seconds later, opening her hand in front of him to
reveal a thin gold band, and another ring with the stone of an emerald. 'Will you marry me?' she invited softly.
His startled gaze was raised to hers. 'The affair . . .?'
'Is not what I want,' she said with emphasis. 'I only said that in the heat of the moment, because I was hurt. I'll grant [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]