An Inconvenient Husband (18 page)

"Right."

"This is crazy!
How long is this going to take?"

"I have no idea.
Your father will let us know."

"And I'm just
supposed to accept this? I'm supposed to just hang out here in the middle of
nowhere for God

knows how long?
Couldn't he have figured out something else?" Blake shrugged. "He
feels you're safe here." She gave a frustrated groan and dropped her face
in her hands. "Oh, God, I'm going crazy." "No, you're not,"
he said calmly. "You're tough." But not tough enough. She was going
to get out of here one way or another. She lifted her face. "Did you bring
my stuff?"

He gestured toward the
box. "Your clothes and handbag are in there." He put down the glass,
reached for his briefcase and opened it up. "Here you go," he said,
reaching in. "Notebook, computer disks, and traveler's checks." He
put them on the table as he called them off. "No passport."

Her heart lurched.
"No passport? It was right there in the desk drawer with the traveler's
checks and the disks!"

"Obviously,
somebody took it." "This is crazy! You mean to say those mafioso
actually went into my father's office and stole it out of the desk
drawer?"

He snapped the
briefcase shut. "You can apply for a new one, but it will have to wait till
it's safe to go back to KL."

Anger rushed to her
head. "I don't want to wait! I want to leave! I want to get out of
here!"

He took a leisurely
drink from his glass. "Sometimes, we can't have what we want," he
said levelly. "I realize it's not always easy to accept, especially not
for someone spoiled and indulged like you."

She gasped.
"What? You call me spoiled and indulged?"

He raised a quizzical
brow. "Surely that's not a new revelation to you?" She was beyond
words.

He took another
swallow of his whiskey. "Has there ever been anything you wanted and
didn't get?" he asked conversationally.

Heat rushed through
her body, rose to her head. "Oh, yes, there has been," she snapped,
the words spilling out like hot coals. "A happy marriage, to mention
one!"

CHAPTER EIGHT

The
atmosphere turned
instantly electric. Her words hung in the air, throbbing, threatening. Blake's
face had turned to stone and his eyes did not leave her face.

"As far as I
know," he said with slow emphasis, "we had a happy marriage up until
you decided not to be home with me anymore. And may I remind you that you are
the one who left me, that you were the one who wanted the divorce?"

No!
she
almost shouted.
You're all wrong! I didn't want it at all! All I wanted was for you to wake up!

She'd asked for the
divorce, but she hadn't wanted it.

"And you did
not
want it?" she asked with bitter mockery. "Remember how long it took
you to sign the damned papers? The lawyers had them back by return of mail! I
imagine it took you all of one lousy minute to sign them!"

His eyes narrowed.
"What had you expected? That I would force you to stay with me against
your will?"

It
wouldn't have been against my will! All I wanted was for you to tell me you
loved me and needed me and didn't want to lose me!

He shook his head
slowly. "I didn't want a woman who didn't want me. If I remember
correctly, we hadn't seen each other for four or five months when you wrote me
that lovely little note."

"You were out of
the country!'' she said wildly. "You were always out of the damned
country!"

"My work takes me
overseas, you knew that, and I was home between assignments for weeks on end,
exactly when I said I would be, give or take a day or two." His jaw was
hard as steel. "Every time I came home, you were not. You had one excuse
after another."

Excuse. Anger burned
inside her. It had never seemed to her that he cared one hoot that she wasn't
there. He'd never told her he wanted her home, never told her he missed her.
"You sure didn't seem to care!"

A silent moment.
"Oh, no," he said slowly, "you, my devoted ex-wife, were the one
who didn't care enough to be home when I was, the way we'd planned it from the
beginning. What sticks in my mind specifically is your New York jaunt."
His eyes bored into hers. "Remember that one?"

It had been one of the
most miserable times of her life, vivid still in her mind. "Yes, I
do," she said between clenched teeth.

"You came back
from Sophie's in Rome while I was in Guatemala and the day before I came home
you took off to New York for a
cooking course.
We
hadn't seen each other for four months by then.
Four months,"
he
repeated harshly, "and you had to take a
cooking
course!"

"You could have
come to New York for the weekend."

He gave a bitter,
mocking laugh. "Oh, thank you for your generosity!"

"If you cared so
much, then why didn't you?"

Clenching his hands,
he shoved them into his pockets. "You didn't ask me! I assumed you had
other plans. If you cared so much, why did you go in the first place? No,
darling, don't you dare talk to me about caring! You made it abundantly clear
you didn't care to be married anymore. You were the one who wrote that lovely
little note to me about how our marriage wasn't working and you wanted
out."

"And it bothered
you so little, you didn't even pick up the phone to talk about it with
me!"

One dark brow rose in
a mocking arch. "All you thought it was worth was a
letter.
You didn't even bother to wait for me to come back home so we could talk about
it in person. You wrote me a lousy little
note\
And going by those
few concise lines, I gathered there was no point discussing it. You were very
clear." He gave her a stony look. "And I see no point discussing it
now, after all these years." He glanced at his watch. "It's been a
long day and I'm tired. Good night."

You
were the one who didn't care to be married anymore.
His words floated
through her mind all through the night as she stirred restlessly in semi-sleep.

She didn't see him
again until lunchtime. She'd have preferred to eat alone, but didn't want to
cause Ramyah any extra work. Blake was aloof, but polite. The air was charged
with emotion, the tension between them like a living presence at the table with
them.

"I stopped by the
Patels' on my way out yesterday," he commented, breaking the silence. He
spooned dressing over his salad. "We've been invited to dinner on Saturday
night."

The Patels. Ghita's
family. And he apparently expected her to go with him. She concentrated on a
piece of lettuce on her plate. "You should probably go alone," she
suggested. "I have no business being there."

"You were
invited," he stated flatly. "Don't offend them by not showing
up."

If she didn't want to
go, she didn't have to go, but she recoiled from being childish about it and
coming up with headache excuses. A dinner party might be fun. It would do her
good to be around other people, and the food, spicy, Indian food, would be
wonderful, no doubt.

She went back to her
own writing after lunch. She stared at the books of love potions and
aphrodisiacs.

She'd spent all
morning reading and taking notes. It was time to do some writing.

If ever
you find yourself in the unfortunate situation of being all alone in an
isolated house with your ex-husband, you may want to reconsider food as
something you merely eat to sustain life or consume for the sheer epicurean
pleasure of it.

Food may
serve other purposes.

In a
recent article I suggested using food as a means to character analysis. Today I
want to highlight other purposes. Obviously, in the stressful situation
mentioned above, it will soon occur to you that food may be used as a weapon:
You can poison your ex and be rid of him forever. This is, shall we say,
distasteful, not to speak of illegal, and I will therefore not linger on it, or
give recipes—although I do have a few.

Nicky closed her eyes
and stopped typing. Good Lord, where was this stuff coming from? Don't think,
just type, she told herself and, taking a deep breath, she returned her
attention to the keyboard.

Let us
consider a more positive, if fanciful, possibility. Imagine, just for the sake
of it, that by some inexplicable cosmic magic, your ex-husband has become a
changed man—a dream man in fact. And now you want to win him back. Remember,
this is a fairy tale, and what's wrong with fairy tales once in a while?

Nicky's fingers stopped
moving and she took in a shaky little breath. What was she doing here? How did
she make up this stuff?

No time to think.
Later. Finish this first. Pushing out rational contemplation, her hands went
flying again.

This dream
man is not interested in you at this point, so your goal is to make him notice
you and fall passionately in love with you all over again. Food can be your
ally. I'm sure you see where I'm going with this: straight to the magic of love
potions and aphrodisiacs.

She stopped to consult
her notes, leafing through the notebook, then checking a recipe in one of
Lisette's books.

To start
with, in the afternoon, make him a nourishing shake of camel's milk, dates and
honey. If you've read your Arabian literature, you will know this works.

She was going strong.
It was a wonderful feeling to be absorbed, for the words to just come out. She
kept referring to her notes and the books, recording strange recipes from
exotic corners of the world. For all the bizarre concoctions she described, she
supplied alternative recipes more agreeable to the modern American tastebuds:
Shrimp in Ginger-Ginseng sauce, Spiced Apricots with Toasted Almonds. In fact,
they were so agreeable that her tastebuds began to beg for something rich and
flavorful.

She found it in the
kitchen: a perfectly ripe mango. She peeled it over the sink and put her teeth
into it, juice dripping down her hands and chin. It was delicious—a veritable
orgy of tastebud-titillating flavor.

At this exact moment,
Blake sauntered into the kitchen and witnessed the spectacle. "I hope you
are enjoying that," he said dryly. With her mouth full of the fruit, she
was incapable of offering more than a grunt in answer. By now the juice had
reached her elbows and she was only half finished. She put the mango on a
plate, turned on the water, and washed off.

"My I suggest an
alternative method of eating the rest?" he asked, humor coloring his
voice.

It was a relief to
hear the humor; his anger must have dissipated. She took a towel and gave him a
breezy smile. "No, you may not." She found a fork and knife, and took
care of the remaining mango in a more decorous manner while he watched her with
annoying interest.

"It tastes better
the other way," she announced, sounding faintly like a rebellious child.

"It had more
entertainment value, too," he commented. "You and your passion for
food have always been amusing."

"My passion for
food is serious business," she stated haughtily. "I make my living
with it. Also, I'm learning new things all the time. Do you want to hear what I
know about mangoes?" Good heavens, why was she doing this?

She was doing this
because having a lighthearted conversation was much easier on the nerves than
anger and bitterness. And her nerves needed soothing.

He sat down at the
kitchen table and stretched out his legs. "By all means, tell me what you
know about mangoes."

Apparently he was in
need of some nerve-soothing conversation, as well.

She rinsed the plate
and put it in the sink. "Well, to start with... Do you know that Buddha
had a whole grove of mango trees? He would sit in the shade to meditate. Now,
if that is not serious, I don't know."

He nodded solemnly.

She sat down across
from him. "Then, there was a Hindu god, Subramanya, who got so upset when
he couldn't get a mango that he wanted, that he renounced the world."

"That's taking
your mango seriously. What else?"

She waved her hand.
"I'll leave it at that." It didn't seem appropriate to discuss the
aphrodisiac qualities the mango was believed to have by men in the East.
"The rest is probably not too interesting for you," she said casually
and examined her nails.

"How's your
writing going?" he asked.

"I'm doing
well," she stated, not sure that this was true. On rereading, she might
want to toss it all in the wastebasket. "I got so hungry, I had to take a
break."

He nodded. "I can
see that. Considering your profession, I can't imagine why you're as slim as
you are."