And it was only when she felt the cold, solid press of something sandwiched between their two warm palms that she remembered the little Buddha she had just given to him.
For luck, she had said. She only hoped there was some truth in it, for she had a feeling they were going to need it if they were to make anything of this odd liaison that never should have begun in the first place—or come as far as it had done since.
And maybe Rafe’s thoughts were moving along similar lines, because as he guided them both through yet another storm of heated passion he kept that little Buddha pressed between their heated palms, and even afterwards still kept it there as they slid into a languid sleep.
Oddly, she felt comforted feeling it there. Maybe there was more to its myth than mere fiction. She hoped so; she really hoped so.
* * *
So they worked at it—both of them. Worked at it through the rest of their two-week stay in Hong Kong and the weeks following when they returned to London.
And it went very well—aided and abetted by the fact that they kept themselves very much to themselves for most of the time, which meant that no outside influences could put a spanner in the works. And they also utilised to its fullest potential the main ingredient that kept it going.
The sex, to put it crudely. Sex in the morning, sex in the evening, sex when a certain look or a touch would set the whole cauldron of desire bubbling up without warning.
Sex, sex and more sex. It seemed to completely take her over. She thought of little else, she wanted little else, and it never occurred to her to question the sense in such a blinkered view of their marriage.
Because she had firmly locked away, in a mental box somewhere inside her head, all the reasons why sex could not and should not be enough to support a relationship. Locked away the fact that what she had actually done was accept physical love in place of emotional love. The relationship really didn’t stand a chance, and was just begging for something or someone to come along and smash the blinkers from her eyes.
CHAPTER NINE
‘WELL—?’ Jemma demanded. ‘Are you in love with him or aren’t you?’
Dressed in a wheat-coloured trouser suit that was supposed to be casual wear but still managed to look outrageously expensive, Shaan sat at a small table in what had used to be her favourite London wine bar, watching the busy turnover of lunchtime customers mill around in front of her while she decided how best to answer that.
It was odd, she mused idly, but she felt quite out of place here now. In fact, she would go as far as to say that she didn’t even know who Shaan Saketa was any more, because Mrs Rafe Danvers was an entirely different being altogether.
She had been back in London a week, after spending two weeks in Hong Kong, and it was during those first two weeks that Shaan Danvers had been created—moulded by clever hands to suit the man she was now married to.
In every sense of the word.
Her clothes, the way she carried herself, the way she looked at life and even the way she perceived herself had all completely altered.
But, perhaps most significantly of all, gone was the strained-faced, empty-eyed, lost-looking creature Jemma had worried so much about the last time she had seen her, and in her place sat this alluringly beautiful woman whose dark eyes now wore the look of disturbingly sensual self-knowledge. A fact any of the men present in the crowded bar would eagerly vouch for.
She seemed to glow with fulfilment. It was sexy. It was enticing. It talked to a man’s sexual antennae and told him that there sat a woman who knew how to make a man feel fantastic about himself.
In short, she was special. And she belonged to someone special, if the way those sexy eyes barely noticed any other man was a judge. And, whoever the guy was, the rest of them envied him and hung around perhaps longer than they should in the hope of getting a glimpse of this member of their sex who was lucky enough to have her.
‘Is the answer that difficult?’ Jemma mocked drily when the silence between them went on too long.
‘Yes, actually,’ Shaan murmured, bringing her eyes back into focus with a smile so sensually enigmatic that it almost made Jemma gasp. ‘It is that difficult.’
‘You said you loved him,’ she reminded her. ‘Before you married him, you promised me that you did.’
‘Ah.’ Shaan relaxed back into her chair, taking her glass of chilled white wine with her. ‘But we were all playing at make-believe then, weren’t we?’ she ruefully pointed out. ‘Pretending everything had worked out perfectly because it was the only way we could deal with the true horror story.’
‘And now?’ Jemma might not be a man, but she wasn’t blind. She too could see the new sensual awareness glowing in those luxurious eyes—could feel it too, almost pulsing in the very space Shaan occupied.
‘The horror story is no longer a horror story,’ Shaan answered simply. ‘Rafe and I—understand each other.’ She decided this said it best. ‘We’re happy.’ In our own little world so long as no one else tries to infiltrate it, she added silently.
‘Happy with a lot of things, by the look of you,’ Jemma grunted, not comfortable with any of this—not the new Shaan she was being offered here, or the answers that new Shaan was giving her.
But then she hadn’t been comfortable with it from the beginning, she recalled. And that discomfort had included Shaan’s association with Piers Danvers, never mind his older, tougher, and far more formidable brother.
‘What’s the matter, Jemma?’ Shaan questioned lightly. ‘Don’t you think I should be happy? Is that it?’
‘How do I know when you won’t tell me anything?’ Her best friend sighed in exasperation.