She blew her nose fiercely. She hardly ever cried. She must look an unholy sight, her eyes all puffy and red and her nose swollen and pink. She hated him!
‘If,’ she challenged imperiously, ‘you are so all-fired wealthy, with homes all over the place and half a hotel, and a Rolls, and goodness only knows what else, then why the sweet blazes were you cleaning windows, driving a wreck? Why did you agree to marry me when I mentioned the pay-off?’
‘Don’t forget the Jag and the private jet, and various businesses all over the world.’ He grinned shamelessly at her. She looked so feisty, so adorable, even if the end of her nose was a radiant pink. He rose to his feet, sat on the bed beside her, anchored her body to the soft mattress by leaning one arm across her.
For a moment he thought she would try to wriggle away, but she didn’t. She seemed scarcely to be breathing, her eyes very wide. And his own eyes clouded as he admitted, ‘I lied to you about who I was because I’m a selfish bastard. I only thought about what I wanted. I wanted you to love me for myself, not my bank balance. I’d had my fair share of women who came on to me for what they thought they could get out of me. I saw you for the first time over a year ago. I’d been dragged along to a fashion show and you were the model everyone was talking about.
‘I was smitten, couldn’t get you out of my head. I could do nothing about it because for the next twelve months I was living out of suitcases around the world. I thought all my Christmases and birthdays had come at once when you appeared at the bottom of the ladder that day to thank me for helping Laura. I was practically struck dumb. And, to put the record straight, I was helping Harry out. He’d come down with flu and Nanny Briggs—’
‘That’s Nanny Briggs?’ she asked quickly. Suddenly, somehow, it was all beginning to hang together. She’d felt so sorry for the little boy who had known nothing of parental love, remembered how Jethro had assured her that he’d had the best kind of mothering from Nanny Briggs. ‘I thought she was your grandmother.’
‘I know you did. And I let you think it, let you think I was on my uppers, scraping a living cleaning windows. When you explained your need to marry, offered to pay me, I jumped at it. I took you to my holiday home, told my staff to keep well out of the way, gave myself a couple of we
eks’ head start in the game of getting you to fall in love with me—head over heels, as deeply in love as I already was with you. Only it wasn’t a game. It was deadly serious. Because I knew you were the only woman I would ever love.
‘I almost blew it a couple of times. I pushed you too fast, too far. I couldn’t stop myself. I wanted you so desperately. I didn’t for one moment stop to think how the truth, when it eventually came out, might affect you. That you might think I’d somehow made a fool out of you, deceived you.’
He removed his arm, no longer imprisoning her. She was free to go if she wanted to. And his voice was low, unsteady, as he told her, ‘I know material possessions don’t mean much to you. I know you loved me when you believed I had little more than the clothes I stood up in and a rusty old van. I’ll understand if you can’t love a man who lied to you, no matter how good he once thought his reasons were. I’ll understand, and I’ll make some sort of fist out of trying to handle it.’
He watched her thick lashes sweep down to hide her eyes. She lay very still. Was she turning everything over in her mind, deciding she couldn’t love a liar?
His body went cold, his heart smothered in ice. How would he bear it if he lost her now? How could he live with the regrets, the lack of her love?
And then she raised her hand to touch his hair, raised her eyes to reveal the shimmer of tears, and her voice shook a little as she said, ‘I always felt I had a strange kind of bond with your mythical wealthy friend. I remember you telling me of his early life, telling me how he couldn’t love because he couldn’t trust, how he never knew if people—women especially—wanted him or his money. I could always understand that. Now I know you were talking about yourself, how you felt, I can understand it even better, because I love you so much you’re part of me. I couldn’t trust emotions, either. I was afraid of them, afraid of being hurt, abandoned.’
‘Sweetheart!’ His voice was raw with passion as he took her hands and kissed every one of her fingers. ‘I don’t deserve you, but I’ll do everything I can to try to!
She drew his hands back to her, rested them against her breasts, her eyes wicked as she whispered, ‘Start trying right now. I’ll let you know how you’re doing!’ Her breasts were hardening, the tight sequinned fabric barely containing them; heat was pooling heavily inside her and her body went boneless for him as his fingers found the back fastening of her dress—just as the telephone rang.
His face went dark red as he reached over for the instrument, and Allie giggled, putting a hand over his. ‘Politeness costs nothing, remember? And even if it did, you could afford it, apparently. You did suggest the poor man phone first, didn’t you?’
His smiling mouth covered hers just briefly before he said into the receiver, ‘Order’s cancelled, Mike. My wife and I have everything we need.’
And then he finished what he’d started.
Hours later, Allie stretched her arms above her head languorously, revelling in the touch of Jethro’s hard, hair-roughened body against the silky smoothness of her own. His dark head stirred on the pillow, the arm that was flung possessively around her tightening.
‘I’m hungry,’ she said. ‘Absolutely starving. I haven’t eaten since breakfast—and then you only gave me time to swallow one piece of toast—and I couldn’t eat my lunch because I’d seen you and Chloe. You didn’t tell me she was married.’
He hauled himself up against the pillows and flicked on the bedside light that made the four-poster look like a rosy cave. His darling wife looked rosy, too, flushed with lovemaking. He glanced at his watch. ‘Are you always so talkative at three o’clock in the morning?’
‘Probably.’
He gave her the slow smile that always made her heart flip over. ‘Chloe isn’t married, but I can understand why you thought she was. When she held out her hand to show me her ring all I saw was a plain gold band. It’s too big for her and the stone slips down, out of sight.’
Echoes of the shock she’d had when she’d seen the two of them together, the terrible sense of betrayal and hurt came back, haunting her. She raised her knees to her chin and looked at him sideways. ‘I could have met your sister, had lunch with you both. You needn’t have left me the way you did.’
‘I know,’ he sighed. ‘I made a pig’s ear out of everything. Our honeymoon was coming to an end and I was going to have to tell you the truth about me. I’d planned on telling you on the last day at the cottage. Selfishly, I wanted to hang onto the magic of knowing I was loved for myself. But it was Chloe who phoned last night. She’d met this up-and-coming interior designer, Guy Fellows. They’d fallen in love and she wanted me to buy her a partnership in his one-man business. Knowing her track record, I was worried, told her I’d need to meet him first, take a look at his accounts. Hence the dive back to London. I’d planned to get the business with Chloe and her fiancé out of the way, leaving myself free to concentrate on you, bring you here, tell you everything. You’ll get to meet Chloe soon enough.’
‘I’d like that. And Nanny Briggs. Properly.’
‘Then you forgive me?’
‘Well…’ She gave him a teasing smile. ‘I probably would if I weren’t so hungry.’
To prove her point her stomach grumbled. Jethro slid his long legs out of bed. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
‘There might be packets of nuts in the mini-bar,’ she suggested, but he fetched one of the towelling robes from the bathroom. ‘I think I can do better than that. I know where all the keys are kept. Keep sweet for me, my love.’