Savage Obsession

'Well—'

He didn't seem over the moon about the prospect, Beth noted. His thick brows were drawn together in a frown and his forehead was wet with sweat. Though that, of course, wasn't surprising, she thought wryly. The air inside the little room was like a hot wet blanket.

Outside, thunder cracked violently, making her flinch, lightning illuminating the room for one electrified second, and William mopped his brow with his shirt-sleeve.

'That sounded close. Not frightened, are you?'

'No.' The only thing that frightened her, scared her silly, was the prospect of carrying the burden of her love for Charles through the remainder of her life. Resolutely, she pushed that bitter little re­flection out of her head, shrugging. 'Should we eat? It's getting late.'

Not that she was hungry; she wasn't. But she craved solitude, the time needed to work out her future, and as far as she was concerned the dis­cussion was over.

William had found himself an admirable full-time replacement and, although he hadn't said so, she was taking it for granted that she would be free to go at the end of the week.

But he said heavily, 'I'm not happy about your going. I'm sure the woman the agency came up with is admirable, but I'd rather you stayed. Permanently. Would you?'

He was perched on the edge of the seat, his eyes pleading directly into hers, his hands knotted together between his knees, looking as if he was waiting for a decision which would affect the rest of his life.

Beth sighed. A few weeks ago she would have jumped at his offer. The work was stimulating, her surroundings idyllic, the pay more than she felt she deserved and the man himself a poppet. But that had been before she had seen the way he looked at her, before she had realised that he was seeing her as more than a secretary. Before she had discovered she was pregnant.

'Would you?' he repeated thickly. 'And I do mean permanently—' The rest of his words were drowned under another crack of thunder, lashing above them and retreating to rattle among the hills, and the rain came down in torrents, flailing against the walls and windows, and William's face was knotted with frustration as he raised his voice to shout above the fury of the storm,

'I'm asking you to marry me, Beth. As soon as your divorce comes through we'll—'

'You can forget that, Templeton.' The steely, in­cisive voice made Beth's heart stand still and the room went quiet, and cold. It was as if Charles carried his own atmosphere around with him; even the tumult of the storm seemed to have abated, ob­literated beneath the greater, icier violence of his tightly controlled rage.

He was standing in the open doorway, his black, rain-wet hair slicked to his skull, water darkening the fabric of his blue denim shirt, plastering it to the lean hard masculine frame. And he said, his narrowed gunfighter's eyes pinning William to his seat,

'I did knock, but got no reply. You were both, obviously, heavily otherwise occupied.' The steel-grey eyes slid to Beth, making an assessment of the filmy garment she wore, the long level look an insult in itself, and her own eyes dropped as she felt the hectic onslaught of painful colour flood her face.

He could put what interpretation he liked on the scene he had walked in on, and they wouldn't have heard him knock, would they? In the rage of the storm they wouldn't have heard a bomb if it had exploded on the doorstep! But her mind was out of control, her thoughts too chaotic to put into words. She was still in shock, rooted there by his unexpected and unwelcome arrival. And it was the bemused William who found his tongue first.

'What do you want?' It wasn't said graciously and he didn't look gracious, his face red with frowning annoyance.

And Charles said simply, his voice curtly precise, 'My wife.'

Beth shuddered uncontrollably. She had never known he had a streak of possessiveness that was so wide and went so deep. He had no further use for her himself, and yet his pride wouldn't allow him to stand by and see another man pursue her. The knowledge made her cold.

'I'm sorry if you find the idea so repellent.' He had noted her shudder, of course he had. He didn't miss a trick. And he went on, the severely honed features demonic, 'But you are my wife. That is a fact.'

'But for how long?' Beth demanded thickly, fighting back. He had heard William's talk of mar­riage—after the divorce—and had decided, des­potically, to nip that little notion in the bud, disregarding the fact that his impatience for his own second marriage had to be the foremost thought in his mind.

He wasn't to know that, even if she weren't pregnant by him, she would never have accepted William's proposal. How could she have done when the cruel fates had conspired to ensure that she would travel through life capable of loving only one man?

He disregarded her throaty question—it had probably hit too closely to home—and his voice was terse with a still, devastating command as he bit out, 'Get packed. We're leaving now.'

His statement hung on the sultry air, suspended by sheer disbelief, and Beth grated out, her nerves at screaming pitch, 'Legally, I may still be your wife. But you can't tell me what to do!' Shaking inside, she made the effort to gather herself together, stay calm. 'I have a job to do here, remember?'

And William, taking his cue from her, blustered, 'That's right, Savage! Beth is employed by me, and paid by me. She has unfinished secretarial duties—'

'Is that what you call them?' Charles queried contemptuously, then went on to tell him, his nar­rowed, steely eyes never moving from Beth's anguished features, 'The day after tomorrow I'll have a secretary on your doorstep. At my expense, she will finish whatever my wife has left undone. Any other leisure-time projects you might have in mind, Templeton—' his hard mouth curled scornfully '—will be left to her discretion. Now, get your things together, Beth, or leave without them. It's up to you.'

Although his control hadn't flickered by as much as a hair's breadth, Beth knew him well enough to judge the extent of his anger. Knew that at any moment his tightly reined rage could explode with devastating results.

It was there for anyone with the wits to see it, there in the white-knuckled fists bunched against the black fabric that moulded his taut thighs, there in the smoky glint in those normally inscrutable gunfighter's eyes, in the aggressive tightening of his hard, wide jawline.

But William hadn't the wits or the discretion to see that, as far as Charles Savage was concerned, he was simply someone who was in the way, someone to be trampled heedlessly underfoot if necessary, and Beth tensed with apprehension as her employer got to his feet, blustering, 'Now look here—you can't barge into my home and tell my secretary what to do. She may be your wife—' his face went purple under the shaft of icy contempt coming his way from the younger, powerfully leashed intruder '—but, I can tell you this, she doesn't want you, she wants a divorce. And I'm not going to stand by and let you force her to do anything she doesn't want to do.'

The blustering bravado of his tone had drained away, his voice tailing off, and Beth knew