Games People Play Read Online Free Page A

make him want her again.
    Once home, she’d accepted his perfunctory goodnight kiss, then headed to her bedroom and thrown on one of the sheer nighties he’d bought her in the old days. Then she tiptoed down the corridor to his room, pulse pounding as though she were disobeying some kind of unspoken law. When she tapped on his door and peeked in, he’d already hoisted himself into bed by the metal bar mounted above the four-poster, the coverlet and sheets neatly folded on his lap.
    Like the newspaper,
she thought now. Every part of every day the same. Every morning, the same poached egg and toast on his plate, the same grapefruit he never ate but insisted Hans serve him. Why did he waste the fruit?
Because he could.
Why did he waste her?
Because he could.
    “Max,” she said from behind her hand. “When did I become the grapefruit?”
    The clang of his juice glass bumping the side of his plate made her jerk. “What?”
    “The grapefruit.” She let her fingers slide away from her face. “You never touch it. It sits in its bowl in front of you. You look at it. Maybe you think about tasting it, but you never do.”
    Last night he’d actually flushed at the sight of her standing so brave and transparent in his doorway. All he’d done was stare at her in her pathetic see-through nightie without uttering a word. Could a dearth of desire be as consuming as lust? It had felt that way in the passage of those excruciating seconds. After a moment, she’d backed out of the bedroom and closed the door soundlessly behind her, too mortified to cry.
    “Why didn’t you say anything to me last night?” she asked from her sun-drenched spot at the other end of the table, a thousand miles away.
    The frown creasing his brow deepened. “You caught me off guard.”
    “I was trying to fix what’s wrong between us lately.”
    “Do you know what that might be?” he asked with a faint, regretful smile.
    She sighed. “Besides lack of sex?”
    “I wasn’t ready last night when you showed up. I was tired.”
    “Okay. But can’t you simply sleep beside me? I hate our separate bedrooms.”
    “I keep you awake at night, especially if I have to get up for something.”
    “I wouldn’t mind,” she said.
    “But I do. Look, Sydney . . . all couples go through rough spots. You know I—”
    The jarring gong of the doorbell pealed through the house, followed by the
shushing
sound of Hans’s footsteps as he crossed through several rooms to answer it.
    The interruption hardly permeated Sydney’s focus. By God, she was feeling something . . . something good and bad and arctic, like she’d been doused with ice water. Something besides guilt for the first time in two years.
    “Max? I don’t need more than just a touch.”
    “I can have sex if I choose,” he said flatly, as though she’d accused him of being impotent. After the accident, they’d gone to great lengths together to regain his abilities, trying Viagra and even a miraculous medical vibrator that allowed him to climax. For a while, it had given them back their lovemaking. So why had he become so distant? What had she done to deserve it?
    “I know you can have sex.” She picked up her coffee cup again just to give her hands something to do. “Why don’t you? With me?”
    “We’ll talk about this later.”
    “I think now is a good time.”
    He didn’t reply, just stared at her in stony silence as though willing her to drop the subject. And in the glare of the sun, a flash of ebony hair like Chinese silk darted across her memory.
    Her back came off the chair and she braced her forearms on the edge of the table. “Are you sleeping with that woman from the reception last night?”
    He let out a bark of laughter. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
    Sydney had been
ridiculous
before, of course. The many nights before his fall from the cliff, when he would come home late and she’d question him.
Ridiculous
, he would say.
You’re being silly and insecure.
A week before