Bridal Bargains

His laugh was soft and rueful. ‘I forgot to say stubborn, too,’ he murmured—only to tag on harshly, ‘Why can’t you make this easier on both of us and accept that I am not going to let you stay with me?’

‘Because I love you,’ she replied. ‘Though I don’t think you deserve it. Or you couldn’t be trying to hurt me like this. And if you dare to quote the cruel to be kind thing at me,’ she added warningly, ‘I will probably hit you again—old man.’

‘Then I won’t say it,’ he promised. ‘But neither will I change my mind.’

He sounded so strong, so—resolved, her heart gave a painful little lurch in response to it. ‘So, if I get up right now and walk off into that darkness leaving Melanie behind—which is what you only ever really wanted—will that make you happy, Andreas? Will it?’

He didn’t answer, but she could feel the sharp increase in his tension. On impulse she stood up—could have wept when his hand snaked out to capture hers and he muttered, ‘No,’ so rawly that it rasped over his throat like sandpaper, and his grip was intense.

In a flurry of shaking limbs she spun around to come and squat down in front of him. Her hair had grown longer over the last couple of months, grown thicker and glossier so that even here, in the darkness of the terrace, it shone like golden syrup around the tense pallor of her face as she tried to capture his eyes. Only he wouldn’t let her do that—hadn’t, in fact, since he’d appeared in front of her tonight. And that made her hurt for him, because she understood why he would not meet her gaze.

It was wretched—utterly wretched.

‘OK,’ she murmured shakily. ‘New scenario—right?’ Her free hand went up, ice-cold and trembling fingertips touching the white ring of tension circling his mouth. ‘You meet a girl, you fall in love with her. You ask her to marry you. She turns round and tells you that she can’t have children. Do you just walk away, Andreas?’ she asked him gently. ‘Does the fact that she can’t give you children suddenly make her less worthy of your love?’

‘This is a senseless exercise,’ he gritted, dislodging her fingers with a tense movement of his head. ‘Simply because it is not the case here.’

‘How do you know?’ Claire challenged. ‘How can either you or I know whether I don’t have my own flaw that will stop me from conceiving? When it has never been put to the test?’

‘And never will be by me,’ he uttered grimly.

‘But that isn’t the point I was trying to make,’ she pressed. ‘Are you saying that when this fantastic new man comes along to sweep me off my feet I have to have him checked out to see if he’s fertile before I fall in love with him? And that he has to do the same with me?’

‘Don’t be foolish.’ He began to scowl. ‘And stop this line of argument right now. For I refuse to play mind games with ifs, buts and maybes. Why can’t you simply accept that I am not going to let you stay here with me?’

‘Then why are you holding so tightly to my hand?’ Claire countered softly.

His hand snapped away from her, his hard face darkening with a sudden loss of patience. ‘I’ve had enough of this,’ he muttered, going to get up.

But Claire beat him to it. ‘So have I,’ she agreed, straightening away from him before he could stand up. ‘So I am going to go to my lonely bed to dream of wildly exciting men with very high sperm counts,’ she bitterly informed him. ‘And you never know—if I dream hard enough, by the time morning comes around, I may have managed to purge my love for you right out of me! Then leaving here tomorrow could well turn out to be a pleasure!’

With that she stalked into the house, leaving him sitting there alone with only his stubborn pride to help him mull over what she had just said.

On reaching her room, she stripped off her clothes and climbed into bed, closed her eyes and, with gritted teeth, waited to see if her angry words managed to shock a reaction out of him.

Sure enough, a couple of minutes later, the door to his own room slammed shut, and a few more minutes after that the connecting door flew open. Claire refused to open her eyes.

‘You asked for this,’ he growled, coming to lean over her. ‘You wanted to make me angry—well, I’m angry,’ he confirmed as his naked b

ody slid between the sheets. ‘You wanted to make me jealous,’ he added as he reached out for her. ‘Well, I am damned well jealous!’

‘Of my dreams?’ she taunted, opening her eyes.

‘Of everything to do with you!’ he rasped, and imprisoned her very willing mouth.

It became a battle of wills as to who could arouse the other more. He kissed and licked and teased her, and shrouded her in the heaviest kind of sensuality. And she returned everything with interest, driving him out of control with the touch of her mouth and the caress of her fingers and the soft urgency with which she whispered her desire to him. ‘Will my other men make me feel as good as this?’ she dared to question curiously.

Her innocence before he came along added immense power to the question. But it was dangerous, it was reckless. He responded by entering her like a man who had lost touch with his sanity.

And as he drove her before him into the same wild place she thought she heard an anguished whimper, and realised with a sense of wretched guilt that the sound had come from him.

‘I don’t leave tomorrow, then?’ she murmured when it was all over and she was lying curled close up against him, his arms still wrapped around her as if they couldn’t let go.

‘You stay until you are ready to go,’ he replied. ‘I refuse to accept more than that from you.’

Very magnanimous, Claire thought, and broke herself free from his arms to walk off to her own bathroom. When she came back she had something hidden in the palm of her hand—though he didn’t notice that because he was too busy absorbing every nuance of her slender shape as she came back to him.

Straddling his lean waist, she sat looking thoughtfully down at his dark face. His eyes were hooded again—but lazily, their dark depths gleaming with a deliciously greedy possessiveness as they looked at her body.