Dark Blue: Study in Seduction, Book 1 (25 page)

He sat on the bed next to her. “That’s okay. It is very hot. Would you rather stay by the pool or walk to the village for lunch? Olivier says there’s a new bistro that’s worth trying out.”

“Maybe…later.”

He frowned. “What’s the matter?”

She didn’t insult him by trying to pretend nothing was amiss this time. “Why did you bring me here? You said it was to get away from Oxford and to introduce me to your family. Was it also to confront your past?”

“My past?” He put down the map on the bedcover. “You mean that shit we talked about the other day? If I’d had my way, you’d never have even heard about it. You’re not still bothered by it, are you?”

“It’s not that. I don’t want either of us to change, but I’m sorry that Gaby had to be the one to prompt it. She said something else to me.”

“Did she now?”

“Yes. She said that she put the martinet in the drawer, hoping you or I would find it. You knew that, didn’t you?”

He glanced towards the open French doors as if he didn’t want to meet her eye or, perhaps, to hide his anger. “I only had my suspicions. Gaby has her ways, and they aren’t always well thought out.”

“Or well intentioned?”

“No, but in the end, the martinet wasn’t too bad an idea, was it? Or has what you heard about me and my father made you think differently about what we do? I hope it hasn’t changed anything, because there’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“It’s not our games that bother me. It’s something that Gaby said about the States and a girl you were involved with. Gaby said this girl tried to commit suicide.”

Raw anger flickered across his eyes. “
Mon dieu
. She has been chatty. I didn’t know she was in that kind of mood.”

Carla didn’t repeat what Gaby had said about being in love with Alex. She didn’t want to divert him from his own confession. “She said you wouldn’t tell me about it. I need to know the whole Alex. Do you understand? Even if that’s impossible.”

“
Cherie
, I can’t promise to give you the whole Alex when I don’t even know who he is myself, but I’ll be straight with you about one thing. Remember when I swore I’d never had an affair with a student before? Well, I lied.”

Alex knew that, once he had spoken it all aloud, he would remind himself again of why he should not have started a relationship with Carla and why he could not continue it. That loving her—and the physical pain under his heart told him that he did—would not be enough, and that she deserved so much more: commitment, stability, a father for her children. If he didn’t love her, telling her about his past would not be so painful, because it marked a turning point in their relationship. A point when he would have to turn away from her.

That would come soon enough. In this moment, all he could give her was his honesty, and nothing less would do for her. He took her hand in his.

“It happened when I was working in the States as a postdoc at one of the California universities. Lori was an undergraduate. She was nineteen, and I was twenty-five. We fell in love, and I knew that sleeping with her, never mind engaging in…other practises, broke every rule in the book.”

Alex could see from Carla’s parted lips that she was shocked. He stroked her slim fingers, marveling again at how beautiful they were.

“Why didn’t you tell me this? I wish you hadn’t lied, because I’d have tried to understand. You and this Lori were young and what happened? Surely it’s no worse than what we’re doing?”

“Oh, I think it is. You see, what I hadn’t realised at the time—or perhaps I had refused to realise—was that Lori was vulnerable. We’d only seen each other in a couple of junior seminars that I was co-teaching, and I didn’t know her background as well as I should have before we got involved. I know now that I should have made it my business to find out about her—and kept well away—because I was responsible for her as I am for you.”
 

“I’m not nineteen, and I’m not vulnerable. Why did Lori try to kill herself?”

“Because of me.”

“You can’t have known that.”

“I did know it, because she left a note alongside an empty bottle of painkillers, saying she was heartbroken at me leaving her, that we’d had what she called a ‘kinky’ sexual relationship the same night that I’d told her I’d got a job in Oxford and was leaving.”

“I…I don’t know what to say.”

Alex’s heart was ready to burst. Carla’s voice had an edge of desperation as she tried to reach out to him with comfort and sympathy. “I could say she seduced me, but that would be a lie.” Making that admission to the woman he loved caused him physical pain, but he ploughed on. “It started when Lori came to see me for some one-to-ones during office hours and things went on from there. I led her into a relationship where I dominated her and she depended on me, yet I kidded myself that we were just having fun. A kinky, youthful fling. She never told me she loved me or even that she cared that much. In fact, her occasional indifference to me just made me want her more. Now I know that she was just hiding her real feelings and problems very well under a veneer of not caring.”

He let go of her hand and examined his own as if searching for absolution he would never find.

“Go on. Please.” Carla’s soft voice, gently encouraging and probing, gave him a little courage.

“I’d thought it was just sex. I was wrong. When I got the offer of my dream post, a junior fellowship at one of the Oxford colleges, I knew I had to take it, and I ended the relationship.”

He could still see Lori now, shrugging and saying,
“Oh well, I knew it had to end sometime. In fact, Alex baby, I’m relieved. I was getting tired of all this kinky shit anyway. Lock the door on the way out and take your crappy poetry books with you.”

“She told me she was glad I was going, and that she’d wanted to end it herself.”

“How did you feel about that?”

“I don’t know. Hurt, relieved, disappointed, because at times I’d thought she really did feel more than she let on, but I told myself it was far better that she didn’t feel anything serious for me. I was young and arrogant enough to think that my insight into fictional characters was a good basis for understanding real people.” He paused as the memories of that dreadful night struck him with renewed force. Then he felt the gentle touch of Carla’s hand on his cheek.

“Alex…”

He forced himself to carry on. “I was wrong. The night I left her, she was found by her friends with a bottle of pills and booze by the bed. Mercifully, the medics at the hospital pumped her stomach and saved her life.” He remembered the phone call from the dean, and the note they’d found, naming him. “I wanted to throw myself off the faculty. When I tried to visit the hospital, it was made clear to me I had to leave instantly. It served me right. I behaved like a shit.”

“What did the university say?”

“They hushed it up. I expected an inquiry, but Lori’s parents didn’t want a scandal. They just wanted to take their daughter home and let her try to get better without the eyes of the world on her. The dean couldn’t get me off his campus and away to Oxford fast enough, and so I left.”

“So when did you meet your wife?”

That was a relief. He could talk about Deanna far more easily than Lori, even though his part in that relationship disaster was hardly blameless. “I met her at Oxford. Deanna was a few years older than me and had no interest whatsoever in the BDSM scene. I liked her, and we had fun. I suppose I thought I’d be responsible and sensible and atone for my crimes by acting like I assumed a normal man would—like your Stephen. It didn’t fool my wife, and two years later, she left me. Perhaps she suspected that my heart wasn’t in the regular-bloke thing, or maybe she was just bored. Either way, we got divorced. In hindsight, I probably should never have married her on the rebound.”

Carla shook her head, whether in disgust or sympathy, Alex wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure about anything regarding relationships anymore. Relating the saga of his disastrous love life to Carla had made that starkly obvious.

“I see the way you look at me. Now you understand why I’m a disaster where relationships are concerned, and why you should keep a hundred miles from me.”

Or why I should never have let Carla get within a hundred feet of me.

Every look from her, every soft press on his hand or gesture of sympathy only made him realise how beautiful and brave she was, and how deeply he’d fallen in love with her.

“That’s for me to decide,” she said quietly. “I told you that I make my own decisions. I chose to get into this with you. I’m deeply sorry for what happened with Lori and your wife, but I think you’re too hard on yourself. What about your relationships since? What where you doing at the fetish party?”

“Being brutally honest? I’d hoped for a meaningless kinky fling or even a one-night stand. I knew as soon as I walked in that it wasn’t my scene. I might think I like meaningless flings, and I might think I can have a regular, vanilla relationship—and I have tried it a couple of times, briefly—but I’ve backed out because I never want to hurt anyone again or be the source of such pain.”

“And what about me? What about hurting me?”

His fingers traced her wrist. “I’ve tried to be careful not to do you any lasting harm.”

“We both know I don’t mean physically.” Her gaze was steady, unflinching, but he could feel the pulse in her wrist fluttering wildly. He couldn’t give her the answer she wanted.

“Don’t back away from this now, Alex. Where do you think this is heading?”

He had to be honest, even though he knew he was about to deal his cruellest stroke yet to the sexy, fearless woman in front of him. He would not lie to her. “You want the truth?” he asked.

“Do you have to ask?”

“Then the truth is, I don’t know.”

Carla reeled at his confessions, not only the revelation of his past but his brutal frankness about the future. Their future.

“Gaby said you would hate me for making you tell me all of this.”

“Carla, I could never hate you.”

His eyes were full of pain as he spoke, as if she’d lashed him with the whip again—but he didn’t say
love
. He never had. Never once. She got up and, without a word, walked out the French doors and into the sunlight, fighting back tears. She’d asked for the truth, for brutal honesty, and he’d given it to her.

Chapter Twenty-Six

The pop of the champagne cork outside the hostel window finally made Carla lift her eyes from the computer screen. She’d spent the morning online, checking and refreshing the exam results site. Ten minutes previously, the list of names had been posted. She’d hardly dared breathe while she’d scrolled to the Js and found her name.

She’d had to read the result again. And again. And another dozen times before she would finally believe it was true.

“Woo-hoo. Aren’t you a clever girl? You got a First!” Emma rapped on the window and held up a bottle of fizz. “Come on out, you nerd, and let’s celebrate.”

Nerd
. That was a new one. It made her smile for the first time that morning, possibly that week.

It had been three weeks now since they’d returned from La Bastide, and she’d hardly seen Alex. The surface reason—and it sounded perfectly practical on both sides—was that she’d had to go back to her house in the Midlands to sort out a new tenant and see her family. She’d popped back to Oxford for only a couple of days to get her results and collect some books to prepare for the autumn term’s reading.

Alex had been all over the place shooting his new TV series about forbidden books, and apart from a couple of calls, she hadn’t seen him for almost a week.

They both knew the truth and were too scared to admit it. Like the leaves on the trees around the hostel, their relationship was in the autumn of its days, perhaps deeper into the dark and chill even than that. It was simply that neither of them had the courage to end it yet.

And there had been more notes.

She’d found two more waiting when she’d got back to Kingsfield, both in manila envelopes this time, both dated while she’d been in France. Same writing, but the messages were more cryptic:

How do you think I feel?

It surely couldn’t have been Michael, because he didn’t know her home address, and while he could conceivably have found out, it didn’t honestly seem like his style. Besides, he was dating a girl from the Scrabble club now. This note sounded more like a jealous ex of Alex’s or a disturbed student—who now knew where she lived. Maybe it was time to go to the police with the notes. They surely wouldn’t care less that she and Alex were tutor and student, not at her age. As there were only notes and they weren’t threatening, the police might not even do anything about them.

So what was the point in showing them? She had to grit her teeth and hope that this latest would be the last. In fact, there would be no more notes if she and Alex split up.

The worry about those combined with knowing Alex was slipping away from her… She hadn’t told Alex. He was busy, but more, the notes confirmed her decision. This secret life could not go on. She couldn’t stand it, and if Alex wouldn’t end the agony, she would have to.

Carla picked up her bag and walked out the hostel door, where Emma hopped about. “Hello. You must be ecstatic, you brilliant bitch!”