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‘Or, in your case, uncovered!’ he drawled, toasting her tight bodice with his glass. ‘You’ve certainly perfected the art of distraction. With a bodyguard like you around, few men would be likely to find anything else worth pinching…’
‘Is that why you stopped Westons winning those contracts we quoted on?’ she burst out, the suspicion having haunted her ever since those abortive meetings. ‘Not because we didn’t present the best bid, but because of some stupid macho prejudice you have against me? Because of the way I look you presume I can’t possibly be a competent professional. Is that why you’ve been whispering to your father and Neville Stiller, warning them against choosing us for the KR Industries job?’
‘You think I’m macho?’ His wandering attention was snagged by the diverting notion.
‘Just answer the questions!’ she rapped out.
‘I thought they were rhetorical,’ he responded blandly. ‘In view of the sex discrimination act, if it were true I’d be stupid to admit to it…and we’ve both already agreed that I’m merely drunk.’
He crooked his elbow at her in a parody of politeness. ‘I think I just heard the call to dinner. Shall we go in? No doubt Merrilyn’s already arranged for us to sit cosily together, so that her pet Amazon can keep me firmly on the leash!’
CHAPTER FOUR
‘I THINK a choke-chain would be more appropriate,’ muttered Rachel as she reluctantly linked her arm with his. ‘Are you going to behave during dinner?’
‘Probably not…’
There was an angry bleakness in the laconic answer that made her heart sink. She halted, forcing him to swing around to face her, his back to the pool.
‘Why?’ She braced herself for yet another sarcastic, evasive response.
He shook off her hand and fortified himself with another mouthful of bubbles, uttering a sound of disgust when he discovered he had drained the bottle. He cast it with a reckless arm into the pool. It hit with a loud splash and bobbed briefly on the surface, then spiralled down through the ripples of light as the water poured in through the narrow neck.
He watched it sink with an intense fascination, waiting until the rippling surface of the water settled back into reflective smoothness before he spoke. ‘You know…it was a night just like this; a perfect, romantic, cloudless, starry summer night…’
His lyrical tone gave Rachel an ominous tingling at the base of her skull. ‘What night?’
‘The night my wife killed herself,’ he said casually, and Rachel’s breath stopped in her throat.
‘She—didn’t…drown?’ she stammered, alarmed by the fixed intensity with which he was staring into the pool.
He pivoted unsteadily on the coping stone to give her a sardonic look. ‘No, she wanted to make it neat and tidy for both of us. She took a handful of pills washed down with half a bottle of vodka…exactly four years ago tonight.’
Oh, God, no wonder he was in such a black fugue! On each anniversary of David’s death Rachel, too, was a mass of raw nerves as she coped with the onslaught of painful memories, re-experiencing the angry sense of helplessness she had suffered at the time. But for Matthew the pain must be multiplied tenfold. At least Rachel had the comfort of knowing that the man she’d loved had died for a positive purpose—to save the life of the child his car had successfully swerved to avoid.
‘Perhaps she expected to be found…’ she offered tentatively, hampered by her ignorance.
‘And saved? By me?’ His laugh was bitter. ‘Then I obviously failed her, didn’t I? Her death was my fault…’
‘That wasn’t what I meant—’
‘Even though she was married to me?’ he lashed out. ‘Grounds for suicide in itself. Wasn’t that what you said?’
‘When I said that, I didn’t know about your wife—’
‘You were just taking a lucky guess?’
She swallowed. ‘I was angry. I was trying to think of the worst insult I possibly could.’
‘Congratulations. You succeeded admirably!’
‘Matthew, I’m sorry.’ She reached out, unconsciously using his first name in an effort to re-establish their tenuous emotional connection.
He recoiled violently.
‘Go to hell!’ He struck her hand away and in that moment she knew that it would be sheer madness to let him sit down in polite company.
His self-control was too precarious. The alcohol had already stripped away far too many of his inhibitions, freeing him to express thoughts and feelings which would normally be taboo to a man of his pride and emotional reserve. He had gone beyond the point where he was willing, or even able, to exercise reasonable judgement.
