Free A Whirlwind Marriage by Helen Brooks

scowl and his mouth one bitter line. ‘What are you talking about?’
    ‘I’m talking about the man who phoned me the night you and Liliana were staying at the hotel and told me he’d been dumped,’ Marianne shot back angrily. ‘He didn’t sound too upset by it, but then perhaps he’s used to Liliana’s little ways. Whatever, he was most informative about her affair with you.’
    ‘There is no affair.’ Each word was bit out through clenched teeth.
    ‘I don’t believe you.’
    The words hung in the air for a moment, stark and naked, and Zeke’s face whitened. ‘So I’m a liar as well as an adulterer?’ he said with deadly softness.
    ‘It would appear so.’ She was frightened, terrified, but determined not to show it.
    She watched him take a hard deep breath, and then another one, his eyes fixed on hers and a muscle working in his taut jaw, and then he swirled the wine round in his glass, taking a long swallow before he said, his mild voice at odds with the content of the words, ‘It’s a good job you’re a woman, Marianne, because if a man had just accused me of what you have he wouldn’t know what had hit him.’
    ‘It wouldn’t make it any less a reality,’ she said tightly.
    ‘So, you don’t trust me.’ He settled back in his seat as he spoke, crossing one leg over the other knee as his grey eyes narrowed to pinpoints of charcoal brilliance. ‘Do you still love me?’
    ‘What?’ She stared at him, utterly taken aback.
    ‘It’s a simple enough question, Marianne,’ he said evenly. ‘I asked you if you loved me.’
    ‘After what you’ve done?’ she said numbly.
    ‘After what you think I’ve done,’ he corrected silkily.
    ‘I don’t know how you can ask that! I don’t know how you’ve got the bare-faced cheek to even think of asking that!’
    ‘Cut the splutterings of outrage and affronted virtue,’ he said with hateful equanimity, ‘and just answer the question. Do you love me?’
    ‘I hate you,’ she spat back hotly.
    The pinpoints were unblinking as they bored with laser-brightness into her soul, searching, probing. For a long moment she really felt as though her innermost self was being stripped bare. And then he blinked, breaking the spell as he said coolly, ‘Drink your wine, Marianne.’
    ‘I mean it, Zeke, I hate you.’
    ‘Perhaps.’ He leant forward suddenly and she had to force herself not to jerk backwards as his hand came out to cup her small jaw. ‘But love and hate are familiar bed-fellows and a damn sight more healthy than apathy, my love.’
    ‘I’m not your love,’ she said tensely, furious with the way his touch had triggered frissons of deep, secret intensity in the core of her.
    ‘Yes, you are.’ It was imperturbable and composed, and utterly at odds with the anger in her voice and her flushed hot cheeks. ‘You are mine and you will remain mine, Marianne, so don’t let’s have any mistake about that. And now you will tell me about this…lover of Liliana’s, and exactly what he said to you. Exactly , mind.’
    ‘Go to hell!’
    ‘I’ve been there over the last two weeks and I didn’t like it,’ he said with a flat, dark evenness that was chilling. ‘And someone, someone , is going to pay, my sweet, distrustful little wife.’

CHAPTER FOUR
    W HEN Marianne awoke the next morning, after a restless night of tossing and turning, she knew she had been dreaming about Zeke.
    She couldn’t remember the dreams, but she did know they had carried an elusive, erotic flavour that was all to do with the last few minutes she had been with him.
    They had eaten in the bistro after all. It had seemed much simpler to do that rather than to engage in a war of words she had no chance of winning. Besides which, Marianne had been more than a little hungry after a hard day working in the supermarket, and the thought of the cheese on toast she’d had planned hadn’t exactly filled her with gourmet delight.
    Zeke had been pleasant and attentive during the