A Christmas Night to Remember(20)

They had eaten the moist, wonderfully tangy cake after dinner with their coffee, sitting on the villa’s balcony in the richly perfumed air as a glorious sunset had filled the sky with rivulets of scarlet, gold and deep violet, and afterwards, content and sated, had made love for hours in their big, billowy bed. He’d told her she was exquisite, a goddess…

Enough. The warning was loud in her head. That was then and this was now, and the girl who had lived in a bikini practically the whole holiday was gone. She had never considered herself particularly beautiful, but had always had confidence in her firm, graceful dancer’s body, able to hold her own in that regard with the jet-set who congregated around Zeke like moths to a flame. What would they say now?

People. Melody’s green eyes darkened. Always people. When she thought about it now, she had never felt she had Zeke completely. There had always been people in the background making claims on him. Even in Madeira there were friends who came by for dinner or barbecues—beautiful people, rich, funny, intelligent, fascinating. She had told herself she had to expect that; he was nearly forty years old, for goodness’ sake, and he had built a life for himself that had to continue when she had come along. It would have been totally unreasonable to expect anything else. And she hadn’t minded then—not much, anyway. Only sometimes she’d felt on the outside looking in.

‘What’s the matter?’ He was staring at her. ‘What is it?’

She came back from the past to find she must have been looking at him without seeing him. ‘Nothing,’ she said quickly. ‘My mind was wandering, that’s all.’

‘Wherever it had wandered it didn’t seem to be a good place from the look on your face.’ His gaze narrowed. ‘What makes me think it was something to do with us?’ he added softly, leaning back in the sofa as he surveyed her through glittering black eyes. ‘It was, wasn’t it? What was it?’

Her senses registered the way his powerful muscles moved as sleekly as an animal’s, and she was reminded again how magnificent his body was. The first time she had seen him naked she had been in awe of his male beauty. She still was.

‘Melody?’ he pressed silkily, in a way she knew meant he wasn’t going to let the matter drop. ‘Tell me.’

Suddenly she threw caution to the wind. ‘I was thinking about how in the whole of our marriage, apart from on our honeymoon, we were constantly surrounded by people wanting a piece of you,’ she said flatly. ‘Weekdays, weekends—it was always the same. Looking back, I’ve sometimes thought I was just one of many hangers-on in your world.’

To say she had shocked him was an understatement. She watched as his fiercely intelligent mind considered what she’d said. ‘You were never, ever just anything. As my wife you were up there with me one hundred per cent. Or at least I thought you were.’ He had sat up straight as he’d spoken, every line of his body tense now. ‘Obviously I was mistaken.’

She wasn’t going to let him lay it all on her. ‘You never asked me what I wanted, Zeke. Not really. And I admit for my part I should have spoken up, but I was overwhelmed by it all.’ By my incredible fortune in marrying you. By the impossible fact that you loved me. ‘And I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy it, because I did, but I never really felt—’

‘What? What didn’t you feel?’

‘That I fitted in, I guess.’ She shook her head, biting her lip. ‘Maybe you were right when you said I never thought we’d last. I was never conscious of thinking that, but once you said it I realised there was an element of truth there. And it wasn’t just because of my grandmother and her attitude to men. Not wholly. It was because I sort of slotted into your life without you having to make any changes, with me hardly making a dent in your way of going on. And if I disappeared out of it again the same would apply. Nothing would really alter. I’d barely make a ripple as I left.’

Zeke was staring at her as though he’d never seen her before. ‘You can’t believe that,’ he said eventually, clearly stricken. ‘How many times did I tell you I loved you? That I had never loved anyone else? Did you think I was lying?’

Melody paused before answering. She was aware she had opened a can of worms, but there was no going back now. ‘No, I know you loved me,’ she said slowly. ‘But why wouldn’t you when I was doing everything you wanted? Being what you wanted? And it wasn’t all your fault. I’m not saying that. I loved seeing how the other half lived and being part of that world. It was exhilarating and crazy and a million things besides. But—’ Another silence while she searched for words to explain the unexplainable. ‘But there’s another world too—a real world. A world devoid of rose-coloured glasses.’