Between The Sheets by Colette Caddle Page A

couple of days a week. But Dana had other ideas. She loved the farmhouse, he didn't doubt that, but there was something about the solitude that seemed to unnerve her. After a couple of days there she would start to get restless and edgy and finally find some excuse to return to Dublin. He had accepted this without giving it much thought, but lately it had occurred to him that perhaps it was being alone with him that was the problem.
    In hindsight, though, he wondered if the rural location just reminded her too much of home and her unhappy childhood. He didn't know much about Dana's family and she'd never told him the reason they were estranged. He had broached the subject several times in the early days but Dana made it clear that she found it too painful to talk about. He was aware that she'd visited a psychiatrist and had taken antidepressants for a time so he left it at that. Rightly or wrongly he'd allowed her to pull a veil over her previous life in Wexford, and he put his efforts into making her life with him as happy as was humanly possible.
    He'd thought he'd succeeded but he'd been fooling himself, or, rather, she'd made a fool of him. When they made love, Gus was sure that she cared as much about him as he did about her. He felt her give herself totally to him in those intimate moments and he would forget everyone and everything when she was in his arms. It had been that way right up until the end. He remembered vividly the last night he'd held her in his arms. It had been the day he'd found the letters; the day when everything had changed.
    They had gone to a party later and he had watched her move easily through the room, like a beautiful butterfly flitting from flower to flower. There had been little opportunity for them to talk and he'd been glad of that. He'd had so much information to process, his head was reeling. He'd watched her all night, wondering how he could have lived with her all these years and not really known her.
    When they got home late that night, she had turned to him in bed and he had taken her quickly, almost violently. At first she'd been surprised by his roughness, then she responded with passion. How could she possibly fake this? But how could she possibly love him and be so duplicitous at the same time?
    As they'd lain together he'd held her body close to his and wished he'd never seen the bloody letters.
    He'd been in the garage hunting for the old jacket he wore when he washed the cars, and had come across a large box; it must have been sitting there since they'd moved in. It was probably just old manuscripts — Dana, superstitiously, liked to keep hard copies. He was about to dump it in the bin but then realized he should check it first, in case there were any personal papers that needed shredding.
    When he tore the box open it was to find that it was full of press cuttings and old publicity shots of Dana, with a variety of hairstyles dating back to long before he'd met her. Chuckling, he flicked through them, wondering which would be the best one to produce at a dinner party to embarrass her. As he reached the bottom of the box, his fingers closed around a thick envelope. Pulling it out he frowned when he saw that it was sealed. Hesitating for only a moment — it wasn't addressed to anyone and was probably just more photos — he opened it and pulled out several smaller envelopes. None of them were addressed and they were all sealed. He stared at them, wondering what he had stumbled on. These hadn't got here by accident. They had been deliberately hidden and they must have been hidden by his wife.
    He tried to push away the feeling of unease that was gripping him; there was sure to be an innocent explanation. Perhaps they were love letters from an old boyfriend. If they were, Dana obviously hadn't been interested in this rather old-fashioned suitor or she would have opened them. Of course they didn't necessarily have to be from her past. Dana was a very attractive woman and Gus had