The Grafton Girls - Annie Groves [111]
‘You’re married,’ she reminded him tersely. ‘I can’t…Even if I wanted to…to…I couldn’t; not knowing that you’d be cheating on your wife.’
‘Let me tell you something about my marriage and my wife. Six months ago I found out that she’d been cheating on me with the guy her folks had wanted her to marry all along. We would have been divorced by now if she hadn’t decided that it wouldn’t look good for her to “divorce a man about to go to war”. And making sure she looks good in every single way matters one hell of a lot to Carrie. In fact, you could say it is all that matters to her.’
‘You sound as though you hate her,’ Diane told him unsteadily.
‘Sometimes I think I do. I know she certainly hates me. She’s told me so often enough. That’s what happens in a relationship when you both realise you’re tied to a person who has turned out to be not the person you originally thought they were. Speaking as a man, I guess it’s easier to blame the woman than to accept the fact your balls got in the way of your brain.’
His frank speaking should have shocked her, Diane knew, but instead it seemed to create a shared sense of intimacy between them, as though they had both already accepted that they had a relationship that allowed that kind of frankness.
‘I didn’t just come round here because I wanted to kiss you again,’ Lee continued.
Diane looked at him.
‘I was worried about you after yesterday. What you did yesterday for that kid was one of the bravest things I have ever seen.’ He drew her closer and somehow it felt natural and right to let him.
‘You had me shit scared, I can tell you. Just thinking of what would have happened to you if that plane had gone up kept me awake half the night, whilst thinking about how it felt to kiss you kept me awake the other half,’ he told her with a small smile.
‘I…I’d wondered about writing to Eddie’s mother,’ Diane told him in a valiant attempt to switch their conversation over to a less personal topic. ‘I’ve been trying to put myself in her place but of course I can’t. I don’t know if it will help her to know that someone was with him, or whether knowing that his last words were for her will be too much for her to bear.’ She bent her head, turning her face into the major’s shoulder to muffle the emotion seizing her by the throat. He smelled of cologne and sweat, and that earthy combination sent a charge of longing surging through her. It had been so long since she had known the intimacy of a man’s hold.
‘You shouldn’t be here,’ she told him, to punish herself for her forbidden longing. ‘My landlady will probably throw me out when she gets back and hears how long your Jeep has been parked outside.’
‘We don’t have to stay here. I’d planned to take you out so that we could talk properly. I’ve got a picnic and a blanket.’
Diane’s heart missed a beat. ‘No…we can’t,’ she protested.
But the major was ignoring her, smiling down at her as he told her firmly, ‘Yes, we can. Come on.’
TWENTY-TWO
‘Not brought Walter with you, then?’
Jess almost choked on her lemonade. She hadn’t heard Billy coming up behind her and now, as he obligingly thumped her on the back, he said jovially, ‘I know you, remember. You’ll be hiccuping in a minute if I don’t do this.’
‘I haven’t hiccuped since I was six years old,’ Jess fibbed. ‘And no, I haven’t brought Walter with me. This is a family occasion, after all,’ she added, pointedly looking over to where the curvaceous blonde Billy had arrived at the church with was standing talking to one of Billy’s friends.
‘Quite right,’ Billy told her approvingly, irritatingly oblivious to the meaning of her comment. ‘Have you asked Walter yet about that photograph I saw in his wallet?’
You had no right to go spying on him like that.’ ‘I wasn’t spying. I just happened to see it when I picked his wallet up off of the Grafton dance floor.’
So that was how he knew about Walter’s girl.
‘No, I haven’t, and what’s more I’m not going to,’ Jess informed him, answering his original question. She could