Bridal Bargains

‘There is no one, Claire,’ he repeated in the kind of tone that forced her to believe him. ‘I would not do that to you. Desmona was talking like a loser, that was all.’

Which was what Claire had told herself when Desmona had fed her the poison, she remembered. ‘Good,’ she said, deciding to believe him. ‘That means I have one less guilty sin to carry around with me.’

‘What we did just now was not sinful,’ he denied.

‘No?’ she mocked. ‘Well, it certainly feels as if I’ve just done something dreadful.’

‘We made love!’ he husked.

‘No—we had sex!’ she burst out. ‘Just the same as we did a week ago. W-we had sex, then you walked away—just like you did a week ago. And I f-feel unclean,’ she added painfully. ‘Just like I did a week ago.’

‘I did not walk away from you just now,’ he asserted heavily. ‘I walked away from—’

The words stopped.

Sitting there with bated breath, Claire waited for him to continue. But he didn’t. Instead he ran a tired hand through his perfectly combed hair—and added nothing.

‘May you burn in hell,’ she murmured succinctly.

To her surprise he laughed—albeit cynically. ‘I have been burning away in that place for years,’ he drawled with an irony that flew right by her. ‘You will have to come up with a better curse than that to hurt me.’

And why do I get the impression that he knows exactly what that curse would be? she wondered, seeing a flash of something almost haunted pass across his eyes.

‘Whatever,’ she said, dismissing the look—because she had to do that if she was to remain strong. ‘Burn in hell or laugh at it. It doesn’t really matter to me. I don’t want you to come near me like that ever again—do you hear?’

With that she got up with the intention of leaving him—but his next words stopped her. ‘I’m sorry if I let you down,’ he said very huskily. ‘I didn’t do it to hurt you, Claire. I just didn’t think.’

‘You mean—you always walk away from a woman directly after making love to her?’ she asked derisively.

There was a distinct pause—more a guarded hesitation—before he sighed out, ‘Yes.’

‘The man on a mountain,’ she murmured softly, aware that the cryptic remark would mean nothing to him. She shivered inwardly. ‘I understand now. It’s yourself you feel the need to walk away from.’

She had been throwing out words haphazardly with the specific need to hurt him, but as she stood there watching his face grow white beneath his olive skin before it closed up altogether Claire realised, with a small shock, that she had hit the nail right upon its head!

‘You know me so well,’ he drawled, offering her that

grim brief smile again in an effort to cover his reaction up.

And she wanted to hit him—probably would have done if she hadn’t noticed the tremor in his fingers as he reached for his cup. He was more affected by all of this than he wanted her to believe.

What was it with him, Claire wondered furiously, that he hated wanting her as a woman so much that he kept his wretched sexuality hidden inside his trousers until the very last moment? As if he had still been praying for deliverance right up until then, she realised with a shudder.

And on a muffled sob she turned and ran from the kitchen—kept on running, across the hall and up the stairs, desperately needing to get to her room before she broke down and wept.

Panting and sobbing together by the time she reached her bedroom, she barely had a chance to close the door before it was thrust open again.

‘Go away!’ she cried.

‘Don’t …’ he groaned, reaching out to pull her into his arms.

To her horror she pressed her face into his chest and sobbed all the harder.

It wasn’t fair! she told herself pitiably. He loved his grandmother. He could love Melanie. Why was it so terrible for him to try to love her?

His first wife, she then remembered with a sudden chilling of her flesh. She must have been quite something to have locked his heart up as totally as this.

Fighting for control of the tears now, she tried to push away from him.