Midnight Wedding Read online

  ‘What does that mean?’

  He twiddled the top of the spirit bottle. ‘Oh—you know. All silent suffering and making the rest of the world apologise because she had a bad start.’ He looked up and Holly suddenly realised that she had touched on a slow-burning anger that he had been nursing for a long time. ‘She had Jack on his knees. When they broke up he looked like death for months.’

  Holly could have gasped aloud, it hurt so much. Ramon was brooding too hard on his memories to notice.

  She said slowly, ‘You’re very fond of him, aren’t you?’

  Ramon looked uncomfortable. ‘He’s a good boss.’

  She swallowed. ‘One more question. Did he want to marry her?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Ramon. He sounded furious. ‘He wanted to marry her all right. Bought her the dream castle in England and everything. Even a ring.’

  Holly stuffed her left hand into her trouser pocket as if she had burned it.

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘She wouldn’t make up her mind. Kept telling him to go. Then calling him back at a moment’s notice. Even after the Colombian job was finished. She had no conscience. She’d pull him out of India, or Macedonia or anywhere, it didn’t matter. In the end she went back to her husband. Didn’t even have the courage to tell Jack. He just walked in on them.’

  Holly sat bolt upright. ‘She was married? And Jack knew?’

  ‘She was supposed to be divorced. But if you ask me, it was a lie from the beginning. She told him this big story about her little brothers and sisters and the old grandmother she was responsible for and he paid their bills while the husband was away working in Venezuela. That’s my opinion.’

  Holly was shocked. ‘Jack couldn’t love a woman like that!’

  ‘Men,’ said Ramon bitterly, ‘can love a woman like Medusa. It’s just a matter of hormones and timing.’

  ‘But—so calculating. Surely he would see through her.’

  Ramon said with great deliberation, ‘Jack has a strong protective streak. He thought she needed rescuing.’

  Holly froze where she sat.

  ‘Are you telling me I’m a substitute for Susana Montijo?’ she said at last.

  ‘Of course not.’ Ramon sounded shocked. And then delivered the death-cut. ‘He was in love with her.’

  It was dark outside when Holly left. She was grateful for the torch as she made her way back to their tent. The camp looked bigger and more threatening than it had by day.

  Jack was tapping away at his laptop. He looked up when she went in.

  ‘What happened to you? I lost you.’

  ‘I had a drink with Ramon.’

  ‘Oh?’ His brows twitched together.

  Holly sensed disapproval. ‘He’s the only person I know here.’

  ‘You know me.’

  But Holly was still reeling from finding out about Susana Montijo, who had had Jack on his knees for months.

  ‘Do I?’

  His frown deepened. ‘That doesn’t sound good. Want to talk about it?’

  Holly shook her head violently.

  He attacked the keyboard with a couple of vicious stabs. There was a musical tone and he switched it off, snapped it shut and put it on one side.

  Holly watched, trying to block out Ramon’s words. He was in love with her. He was in love with her. She fought for self-control.

  After all, what did it matter if Jack had been in love with a woman in the past? What did it matter if he had not told her? Why should he tell her? He was not in love with Holly, after all. He might have wanted her, briefly and to his own retrospective regret. But that was all. He had made that plain only this morning.

  It won’t happen again.

  If she was honest, that was worse even than anything that Ramon had said. That was the splinter she could not pull out of her heart.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Jack said quietly.

  Holly pulled herself together. She rubbed her eyes. ‘Tired, I suppose.’

  ‘It’s been a long day.’ It sounded as if he was agreeing with her but the watchful eyes were not agreeing to anything. They were on patrol.

  In case I try to make him break his vow of abstinence? Holly laughed aloud at the thought. There was an edge of hysteria to it that even she recognised.

  Jack made an instinctive move towards her but she flung up a hand. He stopped dead.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, turning away. ‘Too much continent-hopping. I’m not used to it, like you are.’

  ‘Oh, is that what it is?’ he said drily.

  ‘Of course. I’ll be better after a decent night’s sleep.’

  Which, of course, opened up a whole ravine of memories of exactly what sort of sleep they had had the night before. Holly felt herself falling into the trap, even before she had finished speaking. The silence behind her was eloquent. She shut her eyes.

  ‘Hell. Why don’t I think before I open my mouth?’ she said wretchedly.

  The silence stretched.

  Then he said in a level voice. ‘It is a difficult situation. For both of us.’

  He seemed to be waiting. What did he want her to say? Do?

  It won’t happen again.

  Out of his sight, Holly pressed her knotted fist against her lips to stop herself crying out with the pain of it.

  He said with constraint, ‘You need some privacy. I have to talk to Ramon anyway. I will leave you.’ He paused, then, when she did not answer, said in a low voice, ‘I told you once. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. Remember that.’

  Holly whirled. But the tent flap was already falling gently behind him.

  He did not come back for hours.

  By the time he did, Holly had stopped waiting for him. She extinguished the light and climbed into the sleeping bag. She could not sleep, though. Her thoughts kept racing. And any time they showed signs of letting up, her memory clocked in to do torture duty instead.

  She had him on his knees. Holly turned over, trying to find a comfortable position.

  She could not imagine Jack on his knees to anyone. Certainly not her. Last night he had tried to resist her. It was she—her whole body burned—who had forced the issue in the end. Though he had been too chivalrous to point it out this morning.

  He was in love with her. The rudimentary beds were hard. She turned again.

  Oh, she could imagine Jack in love, all right. He would be single-minded about it, as he was about everything else. Why, he had made love to her last night with such intensity that she could, if she hadn’t known better, have mistaken it for love. When he was really in love he would put his heart and soul into it as well.

  It won’t happen again.

  Just as well.

  The sleeping bag was hopelessly tangled. Holly turned again restlessly, pushing it away with impatient fingers. And the flap parted and Jack walked in.

  She could not hide the fact that she was awake. She could not hide the fact that she was looking at him. Though it was too dark for him to read her face, her whole body must have given her away. Did it give away her longing, too?

  In two strides he was there. He hauled her against him. His hands were hard and his mouth was frighteningly hungry.

  Holly kicked herself free of the corkscrew of bedding. Her hands on his body were as fierce as his, as shamelessly demanding. In utter silence, they fell on each other. Even when her hair caught on a button of the shirt he was throwing off, she did not make a sound. Silently, frantically, they drove each other to the mountain peak. And jumped.

  In the morning Jack had gone. His sleeping bag was neatly folded on the other bed and there was a note on top of it.

  Gone with the geologists. Ramon or Manolita Sanchez will tell you what to do.

  Holly put the note down. No affection there. Not a word to show that last night had meant anything; that their marriage meant anything. No one would even guess that they were friends from the curt little message.

  And perhaps we aren’t friends. Perhaps we have
gone straight from strangers to adversaries. Or, worse—perhaps when he made me his wife he turned me into a burden.

  It was a chilling thought.

  Holly took herself to task. There was no point in dwelling on it. She needed to get on with her life. Getting out of bed would be a start.

  She negotiated her way through the bathroom arrangements, taking care to observe all the warnings about saving water. Then she went back down the hill.

  Ramon was on his way out. But he steered her towards coffee and a woman with a mobile phone and a harassed expression.

  ‘The translator,’ this person greeted Holly. ‘Boy, am I glad to see you. You can’t manage French, I suppose?’

  So started one of the longest days of Holly’s life.

  She interpreted for the international party of visitors. She checked supplies. She helped cook. She translated a circuit diagram and then took three local workers and a Finnish engineer through the results.

  By the time night was falling, as Jack had predicted, she was so tired she could hardly keep her eyes open.

  ‘I couldn’t eat a thing,’ she told Ramon when he urged her to come to dinner.

  He looked at her shrewdly. ‘People been asking awkward questions about you and Jack?’

  Holly was betrayed into unwariness. ‘Only me.’

  ‘What?’

  She recovered herself. ‘Nothing. I’m talking in my sleep here.’

  ‘Well, if you’re sure…’

  ‘I am.’ She turned away and then stopped, hesitating. ‘Have you seen Jack?’ she said as casually as she could manage.

  Ramon was too tired to notice the undercurrent. He pushed a hand through his dusty hair.

  ‘He was going upstream with the exploration party. Doubt if they’ll be back tonight.’

  ‘Not tonight?’

  Holly spun round. She was shocked and it showed.

  ‘Depends what they find, of course. But the aerial photographs showed a lot of damage.’ He frowned. ‘Didn’t he tell you?’

  ‘He told me zip,’ said Holly curtly. ‘Is it dangerous?’

  Even Ramon picked up the undercurrent this time.

  ‘Hey, it’s an experienced team. Jack can take care of himself.’

  Holly glared at him in the dusk. ‘Thank you for sharing that with me.’

  She turned on her heel and marched away, before she broke down. She could feel Ramon staring after her.

  ‘What do you care?’ she thought she heard him call.

  She ignored him.

  Even exhausted as she was, she barely slept. Turning this way and that, she managed to corkscrew the sleeping bag round her. And every time she heard a step on the duckboards she came up on one elbow, hoping against hope that it was Jack.

  Ramon was right, she thought feverishly. Jack was nothing to do with her. He had made that plain enough. She was living in a fantasy world if she pretended anything else.

  Even so, she could not help lying on that hard, narrow bed waiting, waiting…

  It was like a fever. Every sort of feeling banged about in her blood: anticipation; fear for Jack’s safety; need. It shocked her, shamed her to the heart. But that was what it was all right. The need for Jack’s touch, his voice, his simple presence. She needed it like she needed air and water; more, she thought with brave self-mockery, than she seemed to need food.

  ‘Heaven help me,’ she said aloud, shaken.

  She sat bolt upright in the cold little tent, hugging her knees, and thought about it. In the end she knew there was only one answer.

  ‘I’ve got to get out of here. I’ll tell him as soon as he gets back.’

  And he got back, covered in mud and outrageously cheerful, at noon the next day. It seemed like hours before she could get him on his own.

  ‘I shouldn’t have come,’ she blurted out. ‘It’s not working out. I have to leave.’

  He did not say—as he very reasonably could have done—that she had hardly given it a fair trial. He paused in the act of towelling his hair.

  ‘What brought you to that conclusion?’ he asked at last, carefully.

  He had just returned from the shower, bare-chested and still damp. The tanned skin gleamed over compact and powerful muscles. He had not shaved. His whole body spoke of primal vitality.

  Holly felt a clutch in her stomach. It was becoming all too familiar. To disguise it she said, ‘How come you get to wash your hair when I’m not allowed to?’

  Jack blinked. A look of unholy amusement came into his eyes. ‘Did you see me when I got back?’

  Oh, yes, she had seen him. Seen and not touched and longed to go to him.

  ‘Yes,’ she said curtly.

  ‘Then there’s your answer. I was a walking health hazard until I showered. Whereas if you wash all that hair of yours…’ his voice deepened noticeably ‘…all you’re doing is using up water to make yourself gorgeous.’

  There was a look in his eyes which made her skin prickle. Hurriedly she looked away.

  ‘I don’t have a role here,’ she said, going back to her original point.

  The amusement died out of his eyes.

  ‘That’s not what the others say.’

  ‘Oh, I found stuff to do. That’s different.’

  Jack threw the towel at the tent wall. The angry little movement was in sharp contrast to his level tone when he said, ‘It was stuff that needed doing.’

  Holly shrugged. ‘I still feel I’m here under false pretences.’

  ‘Are you saying you don’t feel useful?’ Jack was scornful.

  This was horrible. She was so wretched that she forgot not to look at him.

  ‘All these people think I’m your wife.’

  He went very still. ‘Ah.’

  She glared at him with hot eyes. ‘And we both know I’m not.’

  ‘Legally…’

  She looked round the bare tent eloquently. ‘Legal fictions don’t mean much here, do they?’

  Jack said on a note of discovery, ‘You regret it.’

  She had no answer for that at all. She turned away with a helpless gesture.

  He said nothing for a moment. Then, utterly expressionless, he said, ‘When do you want to go?’

  ‘As soon as possible.’ Holly’s voice was muffled.

  ‘I’ll arrange it.’ He paused. ‘Where do you want to go? What will you do?’

  She had no answer for that either. She had not thought of anything except getting away from his tormenting presence. Jack sighed.

  ‘Don’t tell me if you don’t want to. Just remember we’ll need to stay in touch until we are legally free.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said through stiff lips.

  She felt as if her heart was shattered ice, with blood seeping out of the cracks.

  ‘OK. I’ll get onto it at once but it may take a couple of days.’

  A couple of days? How will I bear it?

  Her reaction must have shown in her face. He gave a bleak smile.

  ‘Don’t worry. You won’t see much of me. I have too much work to do.’

  It sounded like a death knell.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  JACK was as good as his word. Holly did not see him for the rest of the day. It was very late when he came to their tent, but as soon as he detected that she was still awake he collected his laptop computer and went away. The next time she heard the flap she did not make the mistake of stirring so much as a muscle.

  It was agony to lie there listening to him take off his clothes. Was it only three nights ago that they had first gone mad in each other’s arms?

  It was crazy, she thought. They were husband and wife and yet they were as careful of each other as strangers.

  But, Holly reminded herself, ten days ago that was exactly what they had been. Strangers. People who did not know each other’s names. People with nothing in common. If it had not been for Brendan attacking her, Jack would never even have noticed her.

  Except she remembered that first angry encounter—she stagge
ring under her delivery boxes; Jack concentrating on his work and Ramon’s self-recriminations. Yet, in spite of their preoccupations, they had looked at each other in that over-lit corridor and recognised something. Surely it was not all her imagination?

  Her head throbbed with thinking. Long after Jack’s breathing had eased into the low rhythm of sleep, Holly lay staring into the darkness. She thought she was trying to explain the past. Or even foresee the future. But in the end she knew that all she was doing was lying there, cradling the unsatisfactory present to her.

  These were precious moments, Holly thought, dry-eyed and aching. Tonight she had the right of a wife. Well, half-wife. Tomorrow, or the next day, she would not be able to lie shielded by the dark, sensing that golden chest rise and fall in quiet sleep. Tomorrow or the next day she would be alone again.

  She slept at last. Her dreams were bleak.

  Jack was not there when she awoke. Of course. But at least today there was no chilly note on his bed.

  As soon as she got out into the camp she saw why. Blue-black hair gleaming in the early sun, Jack was striding purposefully towards an arriving convoy. He was wearing creased shorts and an old T-shirt but he still looked as if he ran the world. His long muscular legs moved like oiled pistons and shone like gold.

  Holly’s heart leaped, then sank like a stone. He looked tough and preoccupied. Not like a man married only three days. Not a man who had just left his new wife sleeping.

  He doesn’t look like a married man because he doesn’t feel like a married man. Never forget that.

  He stopped beside the leading truck. A soldier in combat gear leaned out of the cab. Jack ran beside the moving vehicle, clearly giving directions. The soldier nodded and Jack pulled away as the truck accelerated up the dusty track.

  Holly realised that he had registered her watching him. It was odd: like being caught out in something shameful. She forced herself to ignore the feeling and smiled at him as best she could.

  Their eyes met. Holly found she was holding her breath. But all that happened was that Jack gave her a polite nod. His expression was entirely neutral.

  Holly hesitated. Then went over to him.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said.

  He did not kiss her or put his arm around her. Another truck heaved up the track to them. He waved at the driver and called out in bad Spanish, ‘Leave the stuff by the main tent under a tarpaulin.’