Free A Whirlwind Marriage by Helen Brooks Page A

meal, despite her straight face and monosyllabic conversation. However, once they had climbed the narrow steps into the cold street—the moon shedding a thin, hollow light over the dark pavement as clouds scudded hastily past in the winter night—and Zeke had realised she had no intention of returning with him to the apartment it had been a different story.
    He had been softly persuasive at first, confident he would get his own way and that she would relent. Then he had tried ordering her to return home, followed by a far less subtle dose of anger at what he saw as her stubbornness. But Marianne had held doggedly to her declaration that she was never setting foot in the apartment again.
    ‘It’s over, Zeke.’ They had stood in the dark doorway of the shop in front of the side door which was the bedsit’s separate entrance, and she’d shivered as she’d spoken. But it had been more to do with what she was saying than the bitter wind blowing down the street. ‘I meant it when I said I wanted a divorce.’
    ‘And I meant it when I said I’d never allow it.’
    ‘What you own, you keep?’ she’d asked bitterly. ‘Is that it?’
    ‘If you like.’ For a moment he had stared down at her in angry frustration, and then, without warning, he had pulled her roughly into his arms. His mouth had been urgent and hungry, and immediately he had fired the need in her; it had been sweet, potent, taking control as it always did when he touched her.
    She hadn’t even struggled. She twisted in the bed, drawing the covers more securely around her as the icy chill of a winter morning without central heating made itself felt. How could she not have struggled, she asked herself bitterly, after all that had happened? After Liliana. But she hadn’t.
    Zeke, true to form, had taken full advantage of her mesmerised state, moulding her into him until she’d fitted into the hard line of his body as though she had been born to be there.
    He had been the master, dominant and sure of himself, demanding subjugation. And why not? she asked herself now as she opened her eyes and stared up at the cracked ceiling. From the first time she had met him he had held her will in the palm of his hand; she had been his, utterly, and he had known it.
    But not any more.
    She didn’t know who had been more surprised—herself or Zeke—when she had wrenched herself out of his hold,her breath coming in harsh, panting gasps and her eyes wild, but she rather thought it might have been Zeke. He had stood there, his handsome face incredulous as she had told him—ordered him—to go.
    ‘You can’t just crook your finger and have me come running,’ she’d said heatedly. ‘Don’t you understand, Zeke? Things have changed.’
    ‘So you are seriously saying you want to throw away more than two years of marriage on a whim?’ he’d grated furiously.
    ‘A whim?’ It had taken every ounce of her control not to strike him. ‘Just the fact that you can say that proves I’m right. You don’t know me. You don’t have a clue what makes me tick or what I’m going through. Our marriage has been nothing but a sham from start to finish.’
    She hadn’t meant to say the last words but his accusation had been so wounding she had just wanted to hurt him in return. She didn’t know if she had hurt him but she did know she had made him blazing mad; it had been there in the icy-cold eyes that had turned into chips of granite and in the furious rigidity of his face, his lips barely moving as he had ground out, ‘one more word—one more word and so help me I won’t be responsible for my actions.’
    She hadn’t provided the word; she hadn’t dared to do anything but stare at him silently. And when he had turned in one savage movement before striding off down the street she had remained leaning against the door behind which were the stairs leading to the bedsit.
    How long she had stood there she didn’t know; it had only been when she was chilled to the bone that