Guilty Passion by Laurey Bright Page A

Saturday night, and to wear something pretty. Over the next few days he reverted to his usual cool courtesy, and she took her cue from him, with a cowardly reluctance to stir up the emotions that had surfaced the other night.
    She met the Palmers again on the beach, and asked Janice what sort of thing she should wear.
    â€œWhatever you’re comfortable in,” the older woman replied. “We don’t dress up much here.”
    She decided to wear the red dress again. She was heartily sick of everything else in her wardrobe, and it was about the only thing she had that would meet Ethan’s requirement of “something pretty.” Once she had owned a couple of dozen pretty dresses, but that was before Alec had started making pointed remarks about her clothes and her love of fashion. Before he had begun to tell everyone how his wife liked to look beautiful and sexy, and how much time and money she spent on her appearance. It was all done with a wry, indulgent smile, and at first she had tried not to mind, putting it down to male tactlessness. He would end by hooking an arm about her and declaring it was well worth it, inviting all and sundry to agree with him. And when she did protest in private, later, that he was embarrassing her and sometimes other people as well, he laughed and told her not to be a silly, oversensitive child.
    Her clothes had not been particularly expensive, because she had a flair for fashion and an ability to pick out inexpensive garments that could be dressed up and combined to give the casual but trendy look that she liked. Over time, she had replaced them with others that were less noticeable, more conservative—and more suitable, she supposed, for the wife of a respected academic. That was another thing. She was so much younger than most of the people her husband mingled with, and it had seemed a good idea to try to minimise the age gap somehow. She did it partly by dressing older than her years, but the change in image had been so gradual that Alec apparently never noticed. He had been convinced to the end that she had a consuming and youthful frivolous interest in fashion and glamour. The red dress was, of course, the one thing that she had never worn in his company. Somehow she felt lighter when she put it on, as though a host of oppressive memories remained with the other clothing but could not cling to this new garment.
    She hesitated with the lipstick in her hand, shrugged, and applied it with a steady hand. Why not? Ethan, she felt, reacted negatively to her donning makeup, but the dress definitely needed it, and anyway, she had not been freed of eight years of trying in vain to please Alec, only to start on the same self-defeating cycle with his brother.
    The thought was barely formulated in her mind before she slammed a mental door on it, appalled. But one word echoed in her mind and wouldn’t go away. She was free. Free. Try as she would to deny it, she couldn’t help a faint lifting of the heart. In spite of the guilt that came crashing over her, so that she bowed her head on her hands and moaned aloud, that tiny spark of defiance would not be quite crushed out of existence.
    â€œWe could go by road, if you like,” Ethan said, looking at her sandalled feet.
    â€œWhat do you usually do?”
    â€œWalk across the beach, and come home by the road. It’ll be dark by then, but I’ve got a good torch.”
    â€œLet’s do it that way,” she said. “I can shake the sand out when we get there. I don’t suppose Janice and Henry will mind.”
    â€œI’m sure they won’t.”
    Dusk was falling as they gained the beach, and Celeste removed her sandals and went barefoot. Ethan was wearing an open-necked blue shirt and fawn slacks with matching slip-on shoes and no socks.
    The sand was still warm and the water lapped quietly into foam-edged curves along the beach. Celeste stopped to admire the last of the fading sunset on the