Guilty Passion Read Free Page B

hurry.” His voice was clipped. He went over to a window, saying distantly, “Take your time.” He studied the view, because he didn’t want to look at her. She unsettled him, with her narrow bare feet peeking from under the robe that was now belted tightly about an unbelievably slim waist. Her pale, unpainted face, her enormous green eyes and lank, sleep-tangled hair that had lost the silky sheen he remembered, gave her a deceptive air of vulnerability.
    When she came back the hair had been combed back and bundled into a knot. Her feet were shod in plain flat-heeled black shoes, and her dress was a rather shapeless affair in a colour that was neither brown nor cream. He wondered briefly where she had found it. It wasn’t the sort of thing he would have imagined she would give room to in her wardrobe.
    â€œYou take this widowhood business seriously, don’t you?” he remarked, slightly appalled at himself but unable to resist a desire to needle her.
    She blinked and said, “What?”
    It was an effective tactic, he thought. Whatever Celeste was, she had never been stupid, but if she preferred to pretend she didn’t understand him, he’d let it pass. This time. Because he needed to keep at least on civil terms in order to find out what he had to know.
    â€œDon’t you want to sit down?” she asked.
    He didn’t, particularly. He would rather have paced about the room, but it wasn’t really big enough anyway. He said, “Aren’t you hungry?”
    She shook her head. “I’ll have something later. Unless you. . .?” She had seated herself on the couch, but made to get up again.
    â€œNo,” he said. “Don’t bother.”
    She sank back, leaning into the corner of the couch as though she needed its support. He finally took the other end, half facing her, noting the faint flicker of apprehension in her eyes as he did so.
    â€œI want to know what happened,” he said.
    She was staring down at her hands now. For a moment she neither moved nor spoke. Then her eyes reluctantly rose to his. “I told you—”
    â€œThe bare facts,” he said harshly. “There’s got to be more to it than that!”
    Her head moved slowly in negation. “I’m sorry, Ethan. I told you all I know. I. . . don’t understand it, either. But there isn’t any more.”
    Ethan said, watching her with narrowed eyes, “Oh, there’s more, all right!”
    She stared at him, but he couldn’t read the expression in her eyes. The pupils were enlarged, and she looked almost blind. “No,” she murmured.
    Ethan leaned towards her, stretching out a hand, and with the first clumsy movement he had ever seen her make, she got up and said, “I’m going to brew some coffee. Would you like some?”
    She said it with her back to him, her head down, shoulders hunched. Ethan stood, too, swinging her to face him more roughly than he had intended, and holding both her arms.
    She stood passively between his hands, her gaze on the buttons of his shirt. “I don’t want coffee,” he told her. “I want answers!”
    Almost whispering, she said, “I don’t have any answers for you. I don’t have any for myself.”
    He said, his voice low and hard, “Look at me.”
    Her head came up slowly. Her eyes were dull, with a strange, unfocused blankness in them. She began to droop again, turning aside.
    He said fiercely, “Look at me!” And he put a hand under her chin, his fingers and thumb biting into her skin.
    It was a mistake. He knew it as he felt the texture of her skin, smooth and cool against his fingers. Her eyes widened, and there was a little kick of satisfaction in his stomach as he saw that for an instant he had her entire attention. He removed his hand from her face and stepped back, even as her lids drooped and he felt the sudden unexpected weight of her against the