Bridal Bargains

CHAPTER ELEVEN

IT WAS very late by the time his car swung back into the driveway. Huddled inside a warm winter coat, Claire was sitting on one of the pale blue upholstered chairs on the front terrace, where she had been waiting for him for what seemed like hours now.

He had to have seen her sitting there because his car headlights had picked her out as he’d driven by on his way to the garages. Yet long, long minutes went by before his tall, dark figure loomed up at her from the inky darkness.

And her first response when she looked up at him was a cold little shiver. ‘Still here, I see,’ he drawled.

‘I needed to ask you a question before I left,’ she explained. ‘So I decided to wait until you got back.’

‘You mean there is a lie we forgot to rake over?’ he mocked.

‘Maybe.’ She smiled a little sadly. ‘I’m not sure … Will you at least sit down and listen?’ she then requested. ‘Only it’s very difficult to talk to someone

who is bent on cutting you to ribbons with their eyes while you speak.’

He smiled that smile she hated so much, and for a moment she thought he was going to tell her to go to hell. The tension soared, filling the cool winter night with a hostility that clutched at her throat.

Maybe it did something similar to him, because he released a taut sigh as if attempting to dispel the feeling, then in the next moment was reluctantly dropping down into the chair next to her.

‘Fire away,’ he grimly invited.

But now that she had his attention she found she’d lost the courage to say what she wanted to say. Ironic, really, she mused, when you think how many hours I’ve waited so patiently for this moment.

‘Nice evening?’ she asked, merely as a cover while she got her courage back.

His dark head turned to look at her delicately drawn profile. She looked so pale, her skin seemed to glow ghost-like in the darkness. ‘Is that the question?’ he enquired. ‘Or just an extra one you decided to throw in?’

In other words, he was not going to make this easier for her, Claire noted. ‘I am not naturally a cruel or vindictive person, Andreas,’ she murmured soberly. ‘I did not set out to deliberately hurt you today.’

‘Now that definitely was not a question,’ he clipped.

And he definitely was not going to make this easy. At which point she decided to just hit him with it and wait to see what he did.

‘Have you been making love to me for all of these weeks just for the hell of it because I was there and so obviously willing?’ she asked. ‘Or did you actually let yourself care something for me before you allowed things to go that far?’

He shifted restlessly, so his chair creaked on the tiled terrace floor. From the way his jaw clenched, he didn’t like the question and liked even less having to offer an answer.

‘I did not make love to you for the hell of it,’ he said.

Claire sat there beside him and smothered the urge to sigh loudly in relief as she felt a huge weight lift from her shoulders because, if he had not done it for the hell of it, then he must care—even if he never actually said that he did.

‘Then may I stay?’ she requested huskily. ‘Please?’

He made a jerky movement with his head that made her feel as if she’d hit him again. ‘You said one question,’ he gritted. ‘That makes two.’

So she rephrased it. ‘I’ll go if you want me to, but I prefer to stay. I need to stay here with you.’

‘And Melanie, of course,’ he cynically mocked.

Claire’s blue eyes flashed, glinting a warning at his hard profile. ‘Don’t bring Melanie into this,’ she admonished. ‘What is best for Melanie is a separate issue. I am talking about me here. My needs.’ She tersely pressed the point. ‘What I am going to do!’

‘And you want to stay,’ he drawled with crushing derision. ‘How very—saintly of you, considering who you would be staying with.’

‘Do you think that by mocking both me and yourself in the same sentence you will force me to hate you enough to leave without you having to tell me to go?’ she demanded.

‘I thought I had already done that,’ he remarked, saw her wince, and with a sigh relented in his acid tone a little. ‘Listen to me, Claire,’ he prompted heavily. ‘You are generous and loving and selflessly kind,’ he told her. ‘But you are also young and extremely beautiful. If you leave here now, you will soon pick up the threads of your own life, eventually meet a lucky man one day who will fulfil your heart’s desire in every single way. But I am not that man,’ he stated gruffly. ‘I am too old for you, too—flawed, and just too cynical for someone as fresh and perfect as you.’

‘But you aren’t saying that you wouldn’t like to be that lucky man,’ she said. ‘Only that you don’t think you can be him.’