Wife by Agreement

A gurgling sound escaped the confines of her throat. 'I didn't mean...!...' She swallowed to clear the congestion of scorching embarrassment. 'Oh, you're impossible!'

'Up to this point, nothing short of thumbscrews could have prised an honest opinion out of you. Now you're flinging insults. I call that progress.'

'You're weird.' She glared at him with baffled exasperation.

'Insults are intimate,' he explained.

The way his velvet tongue caressed 'intimate' made the fine hairs on her nape stand on end. 'I thought they were indicative of incompatibility.' The frost that was supposed to coat her words thawed the moment she opened her mouth.

'We've never tried to see if we're compatible.'

'That's the way you wanted it.'

'And you didn't? Come off it, Hannah, you've spent the last year pretending I wasn't actually here. It was obvious I was the only part of this deal you found hard to stomach, and I didn't mind.' Much, he added silently. There had been times when he'd felt slightly irked that she showed no interest whatever in the things he did. But he'd accepted he was nothing but a pay packet to her. 'The less time I spent here, the more you liked it!'

She wasn't about to say anything that might give a slightly more accurate slant to his interpretation of the past year. 'So what's changed?' 'We both have, I think.'

'No!' She shook her head, refusing to take the next step. He was confusing her with clever words. She couldn't trust him; she couldn't trust herself!

'My mother says she's getting married.' He dropped the bombshell at the most unexpected moment'

'Not Drew!' she gasped, forgetting for a moment he'd manoeuvred her into a corner. 'Oh, Ethan, you didn't read her a lecture, did you?' she asked anxiously. She knew how tactless he could be when he got protective. 'See what I mean—you've lost your touch with the old cold indifference. You care, and not just about the children,' he said triumphantly.

'You rat!' she cried. 'I hope you're not trying to imply I'm in love with you.' She had been scorching hot seconds before; now shock left her trembling with cold. 'Of course I'm not.'

She could have throttled him when he had the insensitive gall to laugh. 'I suppose you made that up—about your mother?

'I wish I had. No, it looks like Galahad—with a scornful expression, he jerked his head toward the door '—is the lucky man. Whilst she didn't name him, that was the impression I got.'

'Drew? He can't be any older than you.' Faith Kemp was a good-looking woman, but there was no disguising the fact that she was of a different generation from that of her companion. Hannah couldn't help feeling shocked, even though she knew conditioning had a lot to do with her gut response.

'A year younger,' he observed gloomily. 'Thirty- five—she told me so herself. I can't believe that she'd be stupid enough to fall for some itinerant beach bum.'

'He seemed very nice,' Hannah felt impelled to protest. 'You don't know he's a beach bum.'

'I know his type,' Ethan observed with a sneer.

'Nonsense!' she contradicted firmly, and earned herself a scowl. 'And I don't suppose you'd be shocked if it was your father marrying a girl twenty—'

'Thirty years younger, and I'd be very shocked, considering he's been six feet under for the past ten years! Anyway,' he said with a frown, 'you're very eager to defend mum's toy boy all of a sudden. Perhaps that's why the door was locked? You didn't want me to interrupt.'    \

'Sure, I propositioned Drew on the way up the stairs. I'm quite a girl!' she drawled sarcastically.

'The man's a gigolo; he doesn't need an invitation.'

'For goodness' sake, Ethan, anyone would think you're jealous.'

'Wouldn't any man who found that opportunist little creep in his wife's bedroom half naked—' he swallowed hard, having difficulty containing his contempt '—have just cause to be suspicious?'

'But I'm not really your wife.'

"That can soon be fixed.' His eyes flicked to her shocked face. 'I think we'd both like that.' He reached out and touched her cheek; his fingers left a trail of fire against her skin. 'You look as if I've made an improper suggestion. We're married—nothing could be more proper than for us to share a bed.' The lazy amusement was superficial; there was nothing lazy about the expression on his watchful face or the tension in his big body.

'It's a big house—there are plenty of beds.' Inside her breast her heart was beating a wild tattoo.

'Lonely beds. Aren't you lonely in this big bed, Hannah? Why look for someone else to fill it when I'm so handy?'

Looking at him, hearing the soft, inviting purr of his voice, brought a wildlife documentary on predators she'd seen recently irresistibly to mind. So he didn't have sharp claws and a silky pelt—he definitely filled all the other criteria for predator, and she identified totally with the helpless situation of the creature being stalked.