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her there with his presence? He really didn’t want her getting the wrong idea, and weddings were occasions when wrong ideas could easily start taking shape, but he wanted to fill in some missing pieces. He wasn’t into meeting the family members of the women he slept with, but for someone so open she was reticent when it came to family stories.
What was she hiding? He might not be in it for the long haul but he didn’t like secrets. Secrets made him uneasy. He liked knowing the layout of the land around him. He liked control, and if that meant meeting her relatives, then so be it. He wanted a complete picture. The picture might throw up all the suspicions he had had of her in the beginning again, and then it would be a shame but he would have to get rid of her.
And, on a more fundamental level, he was missing the feel of her responsive little body.
‘Er…yes, I guess so…’ Susie clung to this lifeline. ‘You know…there’ll be so many people there…relatives I haven’t seen for a million years…all that small talk…’
‘You’re good at small talk.’ He shook off the uncomfortable thought that he wanted to believe what she told him.
She gritted her teeth. ‘And I’m beginning to think that I should have got the blue dress instead of this brown one. Brown’s such a drab colour.’
So he thought she was only good for sex and small talk? Well, she might just as well live down to his expectations! She droned about the dress with suitable enthusiasm until she began boring herself.
‘You looked sexy as hell when you tried it on for me…’ Sergio murmured, thinking ahead to ripping it off her. Or maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe he would just push the flimsy fabric up and take her while she was still dressed to kill. Maybe he would insist that she left on the high stilettos…
He relaxed, comfortable with thoughts of the fantastic sex they would have. A quiet place somewhere…assuming there would be a quiet place…because he had no idea where the venue was.
He only knew that the wedding was being held in the country somewhere. Berkshire. Probably a town hall…or a village pub… He had the address, but it meant nothing to him because he rarely saw fit to venture outside London.
‘In fact…’ He dropped his voice a couple of levels, ‘I’ve been having some rather interesting fantasies involving that dress…’
Susie didn’t want to hear. She didn’t want to be reminded that she was just all about the sex and the small talk. She also didn’t want to feel the liquid she was now feeling pooling between her legs, making her want to touch herself right here, right now.
‘Shouldn’t you be focusing on your work…and…er…not having…fantasies about me in a drab brown dress…?’
‘You’re cute when you fish for compliments, Susie…’
‘I was doing no such thing!’
‘Of course you were. You want me to tell you that the dress isn’t brown…and it isn’t drab—at least not on you. You want me to tell you that those chiffon layers give just enough of a hint of what’s underneath to drive any sane man crazy with desire… You want me to tell you that if you were wearing that dress for me and me alone I’d insist you don’t wear a bra. But, considering you won’t be, then you’re under orders to wear your sturdiest, least attractive bra—because I don’t want any other man’s eyes lingering too long on your breasts…those breasts are for my eyes only…’
‘Stop…’ She hated the way he could make her blood run hot in her veins, the way he could make her blush and giggle and could drive every coherent thought from her head.
‘I wouldn’t stop,’ he murmured huskily, glancing down at his watch and realising that in under fifteen minutes someone would tap him on the shoulder and tell him that he was ready to board, ‘but I’ve got to run. And…’
‘Time is money. Yes. I know.’ It was what he always said, in that teasing voice of his, and it had become their private mantra—which was just one of the stupid little things that had lulled her into falling in love with him. One of the shared jokes which made their relationship feel so intimate to her but which really didn’t mean anything to him at all.
She remembered the pregnancy test stick, temporarily forgotten, which was on the bed next to her.
‘I’m not sure I can see you on Sunday evening when you get back,’ she said flatly. ‘Things aren’t going to end until quite late Saturday night…probably not until the early hours of Sunday morning…and I’m thinking I might just hang around for the rest of Sunday there…catch up with all those relatives I haven’t seen in such a long time…’
‘I thought catching up with the relatives you haven’t seen in a long time was one of the things bugging you about going in the first place…?’
‘There are quite a few I do actually want to see…so… Maybe next week we can…er…meet up…?’
Normally she would be hopping up and down at the thought of seeing him, not politely putting him off, but these weren’t normal times, were they? Normal times were at an end, and she had to start laying the foundations for her eventual withdrawal. She had to train herself to get used to not having him around—and widening the gaps between the times when they saw one another was step one on that road.
Her mind fogged over. Because there were now so many steps on this new road that she wasn’t sure where to put the first one.
‘No problem,’ Sergio said easily, thinking that she would be seeing him a whole lot sooner than she anticipated.
‘No problem?’
‘I’ll call you.’
‘Right. Yes. Call me.’
‘Really have to go now… I’ll see you when I see you…’
He disconnected. Susie stared at her mobile phone, heart thudding. He hadn’t expressed any disappointment at the thought that he wouldn’t be seeing her the weekend when he returned from New York.
Was he tiring of her? Had she reached her sell-by date? She had always known that it existed, but now that it was staring her in the face she felt sick, desperate with longing, panicked at the thought that he might be in the process of dumping her, and angry with herself for not being stronger when it was going to happen anyway—just as soon as she detonated her bomb under his carefully organised life.
She barely slept at all, woke the following morning far later than she had planned, and then spent the remainder of the morning rushing around, trying to do clever things with her hair, looking at the clock, and frantically wrapping the present she had bought in paper she had designed herself but unfortunately not in quite the right size, so that she had to camouflage the gap with ordinary brown paper and very wide ribbon.
In between all of this she kept stopping in front of the mirror, gazing at her still flat stomach and wondering what was going on inside.
The wedding ceremony kicked off at three, at the small church in the village where her aunt and uncle lived. It was the sort of picture-postcard-perfect place that only the super-rich could afford. No one would ever guess that it was a thriving commuter hub for many of those top businessmen who had to get into the City, where they could earn sufficient money to install their families in the rolling mansions and quaint cottages that dotted that part of Berkshire.
As a child, she and Alex had always enjoyed making the trip down to see Clarissa. Their own parents, Louise and Robert Sadler, had lived further north, and being close to London had seemed like a grand adventure whenever they had ventured south.
Clarissa and her husband-to-be, Thomas, at twenty-two and twenty-eight respectively, were good candidates for the Berkshire lifestyle. He was an up-and-coming barrister and she was destined to be the perfect stay-at-home wife.
On the way out of her flat Susie paused to look at her reflection in the mirror again and thought to herself that Clarissa might have beaten