“I want you, Tessa. You know I’ve always come back to you. I always will come back to you. You’re the one...”
He rose from his chair and tried to catch her arms. Tessa beat him away.
“No! No more! Leave me alone. Find someone else to come back to. I don’t want to talk about it. Go screw some other floozy. But not in my bed! Not ever again!”
“Tessa... come on, now... change your mind.’’
The indulgence in his voice only inflamed her rage. “I’m not going to!”
“Why not?”
She flung it at him recklessly. “Because I’ve started an affair with someone else!’’
His face went white. “You slut!” And he hit her a ringing blow across the side of her face.
She stood still, her chest heaving, her eyes dilating as she fought for control. “Black jealousy, Grant,” she taunted him bitterly. “You’d better get some more therapy.”
He ranted. He raved. He tried tears. Crocodile tears, since they were soon blinked back when they didn’t win any softening from her. Tessa stared at him stony-faced, giving him no encouragement whatsoever, projecting total indifference. It wasn’t hard. It was precisely what she felt. Eventually Grant realised he was faced with a brick wall and he hadn’t made the slightest crack in it.
“You’re a bitch, Tessa,” he said resentfully.
“I wonder why?” she mocked. “You’ll find no more joy here, Grant. This is what’s called irretrievable breakdown. Quit while the going’s easy. The longer you stay, the harder I’ll get. I’ll even call the police to get you out of my life.”
“No need for that,” he snarled at her.
He went.
It wasn’t a gracious exit.
Tessa didn’t care. He was gone. That was all that mattered. There was still the unpleasant task of calling off the wedding, but apart from weathering her mother’s recriminations, that was just mechanics. The truth of the matter was, she had had a lucky escape from being tied to a man who wasn’t worth being tied to. She was glad Grant was gone, glad that she wasn’t going to be his wife. But she wasn’t glad to be free. She wanted to be loved. Truly loved.
Tessa did sleep in her bed that night. It didn’t seem to matter any more. Somehow seeing Grant again— feeling nothing for him—made last Sunday’s infidelity completely meaningless. It had simply been the straw that had broken the camel’s back, her back. The burden that Grant Durham had placed upon her had become too great to carry.
She lay in the darkness wondering if that meant she had fickle emotions. For the first time she felt unsure and insecure about the future. Not with the decision she had made about Grant Durham. That was inevitable, given the way she felt. The path into the future, though, was very dark, very obscure and very unnerving. Or was that what encounters did to people—rearranging their perspectives and making everything look different and feel different?
It was not the same for men, Tessa decided. They seemed able to go from woman to woman without getting at all emotionally affected by it. Just sex. Blaize Callagan had obviously liked the sex he’d had with her and wanted more of it. To say he wanted to be her lover... that was a misnomer if ever she’d heard one. He wasn’t offering love. He simply found her body’s response to his very satisfying. Enough to prolong the experience for a while.
Tessa stifled her stupid desire for more of him with the thought that he would soon find someone else to satisfy him. He probably had someone else all the time. A lot of someone elses. A man like Blaize would never have to look far for that kind of satisfaction.
He hadn’t cared about her as a person. She was just the nonentity called Stockton. The person whose vocabulary was limited to “yes, sir,” so that she wouldn’t get into trouble. Stockton. Hardly a person. Just a thing. The darkness of the future loomed even larger.
Tears welled into her eyes and she turned her face into the pillow and cried. It didn’t matter if she shed tears tonight. There was no one to see her. No one to hear her. No one to comfort her. She was alone, and felt more alone than she had in her whole life.
The lesson was clear, she told herself. Encounters were not her style. She had been mad to think she could handle such an interlude. If it hadn’t been for Grant’s infidelity...
No. She couldn’t justify her behaviour on that alone. Although if Grant hadn’t done what he had, she would never have responded to Blaize Callagan, no matter how attractive she found him. One thing led to another with the strangest results.
In the end she didn’t regret what had happened. Blaize Callagan had got to her. In a way that no other man had. She didn’t regret having known him. She regretted that she was not the right kind of woman to suit him. Like Candice. Full of flair, sophistication and bright red waves of tossing, tempestuous hair.
The next morning Tessa made no attempt to create a professional image. She was herself again. Back to square one, back to go, back to her real life, and the sooner she started getting on with it the better, she told herself sternly.
The first thing would be an exotic holiday somewhere as soon as she had cancelled the wedding. Time to form new memories. Time to heal. Time to forget. Perhaps a cruise around the Pacific islands. Or anything else. It didn’t matter what she chose. She had four weeks’ leave coming up—for the honeymoon she wouldn’t have—and she certainly wasn’t going to spend it moping around alone at home, thinking of what might have been, or what should have been happening.
Tessa mentally squared her shoulders and prepared to face the new day. As she entered the CMA building she refused to think Blaize Callagan was also on the premises. He had nothing to do with her real life.
Jerry Fraine looked surprised to see her at her desk when he arrived at the office. He raised his eyebrows in quizzical fashion. “I thought I’d have to manage without you until Rosemary Davies returned,” he remarked.
Tessa returned her own surprise. “You did say I was only needed for the conference, Jerry.”
He gave a quirky little smile that seemed to express some inner satisfaction. “Well, I’m glad you’re back with me. I don’t suppose the conference went quite the way Blaize Callagan expected,” he added musingly, “but in the end we managed.”
“I think he was pleased with the result,” Tessa said.
“So he should be. We got lucky this time. Real lucky. Not even Blaize Callagan could have anticipated this result.”