A REASON FOR MARRIAGE

Sara avoided his piercing green gaze as she concentrated on breaking open a piece of the crispy bread. “I’m not really one for post-mortems, are you?” she dismissed lightly. “We had fun together. Let’s just leave it at that.”

Simon looked across at her. “Can we do that?”

She gave him a startled look. “Sorry…?”

Simon leant his elbows on the breakfast bar and continued to stare across at her. “Yeah, can we?”ConTEent bel0ngs to Nôv(e)lD/rama(.)Org .

Sara moistened suddenly dry lips and gave up all pretense of putting food on her plate as she straightened warily. “Yes… I guess… I don’t know what you want me to say, Simon,”

He nodded, “Okay, I guess what I’m trying to ask is how do you feel about me now that we have come to know each other better?”

This wasn’t what Sara had been expecting when she got out of the shower, especially after the decision she’d just made not to get carried away. She gave him a startled glance before focusing that wide gaze somewhere over his left shoulder. “How do I feel about you?”

“Yes!” A nerve pulsed in his tightly clenched jaw. “Now that we have spent time together-talked, made love-what are your feelings towards me?”

Sara gave a pained frown, knowing she couldn’t deny that she had initially behaved in exactly the petty way Simon suspected she had. Quite when her feelings towards Simon had changed from scathing dismissal to a grudging liking, Sara had no idea, but she had known last night, when he’d behaved so protectively towards her in regard to Bruce, that she not only liked him-a lot- but also that she desired him too. It was a desire the two of them had acted on earlier today-several times.

But Sara didn’t want to totally humiliate herself and tell Simon how much, and how deeply, she now liked him-perhaps more than liked him. Which was definitely something she needed to think about once she was alone in the privacy of her own apartment. Even she was confused about how she truly felt at the moment.

Sara forced a rueful smile. “I believe I told you earlier my intentions are entirely dishonorable!”

He gave a humorless smile. “In exactly the way you have imagined my own were in regard to the women who have shared my bed in the past? Women who would, if asked, confirm that I have never deliberately, knowingly, hurt any of them. No matter how much the gossips or newspapers might have chosen to sensationalise those relationships. Certainly I have never behaved towards a single one of those women in the cruel and heartless way that they appear to claim I treated them,”

“I believe you-”

“Do you?” he questioned sceptically. “Do you really believe me, Sara? Or do you still think your suspicions in regard to me have been justified? Enough, perhaps, for you to have decided to give me a dose of my own medicine?”

Her eyes widened. “Are you implying that I might have deliberately gone to bed with you with the intention of-of-?”

“I have absolutely no idea what today was about.” His eyes glittered intently. “Why did you go to bed with me, Sara?”

“I don’t-” She gave a dazed shake of her head. “You were kind to me last night-”

“And do you always spend the day in bed with men who are kind to you?”

Her face was very pale as she answered him quietly, “There really haven’t been that many.”

“Men in your bed? Or men who have been kind to you?”

Both, as it happened, Sara acknowledged heavily. Just as she acknowledged that this conversation had now deteriorated to such a level there was surely no hope of the two of them continuing a relationship.

“Sara, talk to me, damn it!” Simon’s hands were clenched into fists at his sides. “Help me to understand what happened between the two of us earlier today.”

She released a heavy sigh. “Can’t we both just accept that we made a mistake -?”

“Is that truly what you believe?” He stood still as a statue and looked at her from between narrowed lids.

Sara nodded abruptly as she stood up to slip the shirt off her shoulders and slide it off her arms before dropping it down onto the barstool. “It’s time that I left.”

“You have nothing else to say?” Simon could only stare at her with frustrated anger.

She looked up at him with eyes of deep, smoky amber. “I’ve behaved badly, unprofessionally. Otherwise I don’t know what else you want me to say.”

Simon wanted Sara to dismiss the lies she’d heard about him-to assure him that she had come to know him for herself this past week, and that she at least liked what she had come to know of him, that they had spent the day in bed together because of that liking. The guarded expression in her eyes told him that was never going to happen.

“Nothing,” he said flatly. “Obviously there is nothing more you can or wish to say to me.”

She nodded abruptly. “Which is why I am going to collect my bag from the bedroom and leave.”

Just an hour ago Simon had been filled with a feeling of well-being, of contentment in a woman’s company and in love making such as he had never experienced before. Only for all of those feelings to have been completely shattered by one stupid conversation. He nodded abruptly. “I will need to accompany you.”

“I’m perfectly capable of seeing myself out, Simon!” she assured him heavily.

His jaw tightened. “The lift will not work without putting in my security code, and the same applies to the outside door.”

Colour darkened the pallor of her cheeks at the obvious rebuke. “I’ll just go and get my bag.”

Simon was filled with regret as he turned to watch Sara leave the kitchen- her back very straight and proud, her hips swaying slightly, sensuously, as she walked, her legs long and shapely in the high-heeled black sandals-but he knew he was too angry still to attempt to set things right between the two of them. If such a thing was even possible…

Sara held back the tears for as long as it took her to reach Simon’s bedroom, then she couldn’t hold back her emotions any longer and instead allowed the tears to cascade down her cheeks with the heat of molten lava.

How could this be ending so badly?

How could she and Simon be parting like virtual strangers after having made love together so tenderly, and then so wildly, only hours ago?