Bought: One Husband

‘I had you down as a spunky character. Don’t tell me you’re afraid of love, of real emotion?’ he taunted softly.

A giant fist closed around her heart. He was mocking her. Her reasons were sound, based on common sense. They were!

‘Not afraid. Just sensible,’ she contradicted coolly. ‘I don’t want to end up like my mother, or Fran. They fell in love, for what it’s worth, and both ended up being deserted—in different ways and for different reasons, but deserted nonetheless. I saw what it did to both of them. Fran grew bitter and joyless, and my mother was simply—’ she shrugged, spreading her hands in a helpless gesture ‘—lost, with nothing to live for. Years ago I made the decision not to entrust my dreams, or my personal happiness, into the safe-keeping of a man. And time and time again I’ve been proved right. I’ve seen too many of my friends and colleagues leap starry-eyed into marriage, only to see them, six months later, walking down the stony road to the divorce courts.

‘Love, lust, whatever you want to call it, is just a word to describe the urge the human race has to reproduce itself. While it lasts it makes you vulnerable, open to hurt, makes you dependent. When it’s over it leaves you empty.’

‘Ah, a cynic,’ he slid in smoothly when she paused for breath.

She narrowed her eyes at him. ‘No, a pragmatist.’

He expelled a sigh, so faint she wouldn’t have heard it if she hadn’t been so tuned in to everything about him. ‘You know I want you, and if you could bring yourself to admit it, the feeling’s mutual. Sexual desire. You can’t hide the way your flesh trembles with excitement when I’m just that little bit too close to you, the way you catch fire when I touch you.’

As if to demonstrate his effortless sexual mastery, he reached over the table, ran his hands lightly over hers and on, over the tingling skin of her forearms, until he reached her elbows. Allie’s breath caught in her throat at his touch. She knew she should pull away, but, crazily, didn’t want to.

His fingers tightened as he got to his feet, still holding her, moving to her side and easing her upwards, close against his powerful body.

They were barely touching, his hands resting lightly on either side of her narrow waist now, but she couldn’t breathe, her lungs locked with a trembling expectancy. She lifted her face to his and met the glitter of his lowered golden eyes. She parted her lips as the trapped air shivered from her chest. She knew he would kiss her, and this time she would allow it not, as before, just for the benefit of an audience, but because she wanted it, craved it with an urgency that made her gasp and instinctively move closer. And now their bodies were touching, breast to thigh. The heat of him made her tremble, reduced her bones to the consistency of melted honey.

As his hands moved beneath the soft cloth of her T-shirt she arched her body, her arms clinging to him, because without his support she knew she couldn’t stand. Her breasts were aching for the touch of his hands and she moaned softly, desire flaming through her as she looped her arms around his neck, her fingers twisting in the soft hair at his nape, her voice thick and heavy as she whispered, ‘Touch me!’

But his hands moved away, found hers and brought them down between them before lifting them to his mouth. He grazed a light kiss across her knuckles.

‘Call it the instinct to reproduce, if you like, or sexual chemistry. Whatever, it’s not a bad beginning. But there’s more to it than that for me.’

His cool, measured tones flayed her. She felt cold, and lost. Terrifyingly lost. She didn’t want to hear what he was saying as his eyes homed in on hers with undisguised bleakness. ‘I’m in love with you. I love you. I care for you and want to go on caring for you for as long as we both shall live. How’s that for starters? And, you never know, you might grow to love me if you gave it half a chance. But you don’t subscribe to the view that the world is well lost for the sake of love. You won’t risk emotion because you might get hurt. You might not like it, but you can’t stop your body wanting mine. But you won’t let yourself admit it could go a hell of a lot deeper and further than an itch to be scratched. You won’t show that much vulnerability because you might be betrayed.’

He took a pace away from her, his dark shadow looming over her, and somehow he seemed even bigger and stronger, more daunting than before. Her breath shivered in her lungs. Every word he’d said had been like a knife-thrust to her heart. And it shouldn’t be like that because she was right, wasn’t she? He was asking her to love him and she couldn’t. He was asking her to risk all the things she feared most. Hurt and disillusionment. She wouldn’t.

‘Go to bed,’ he instructed. His voice was level but she could hear the anger beneath the surface. ‘Lie in your safe, celibate bed and ask yourself if you know what you’re missing. Though I doubt if your sterile heart will supply the answer, because you’re a coward, Alissa.’

CHAPTER ELEVEN

COWARD.

He’d fired the word like a bullet into her brain and it lodged there, long after he’d swung on his heel and walked back into the darkened house.

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nbsp; Everything inside her hotly repudiated the insult. She paced the terrace angrily, her arms wrapped tightly around her body. How dared he accuse her of cowardice? How dared he?

Hadn’t she been the strong one, holding her mother together after her father had thrown in the towel and taken his own life all those years ago? Hadn’t she embarked on a modelling career, even though she’d hated it, as the best way of earning money quickly—the money she needed if she were to settle Laura in a country home of her own, give her back her lost security, some of her lost happiness?

It had taken her years of hard graft, posing, smiling for the cameras, always pretending to be something she wasn’t, before she’d hit the big time. But she’d stuck at it. And when Fabian had, as it were, thrown down the gauntlet, she’d picked it up without a qualm and lied her head off to his solicitor.

That had taken courage. Proposing to Jethro had taken courage! So how could he accuse her—?

Her feet stilled, her stomach tightening. He’d been talking about something entirely different, she acknowledged at last. Her ability to take charge of her own life, rely on herself, was not in doubt. He’d been accusing her of not being brave enough to rely on him. On his love.

Weakly, she sank back on the chair she’d been using earlier, picked up her half-full wine glass and drained the contents.

Was she brave enough to accept his love, believe in it, open her mind to the possibility of returning it?

She didn’t know.

An hour earlier she had known. Had been quite definite about the lone road she intended to walk in life. The safe road. And now she was questioning it!

The question opened like a flower inside her, slowly admitting answers that were certainties. She rested her head against the back of the chair and let it happen, let the warmth grow, fizzing through her veins, the answers beginning to come thick and fast.