Mistress by Agreement

She remained silent, the euphoria of how it had felt to be in his arms, to be kissed by him, gone. And then she said very quietly, ‘His name was Miles Stuart.’

There was a second of stillness. It seemed to go on for ever.

‘And?’ he said gently. Very gently.

‘And we met when I was eighteen, married when I was nineteen and were getting divorced when I was twenty-one.’ Her voice was louder now, her face painfully defiant. Story done.

‘When you were at university?’ he persisted softly.

She nodded. This was as far as she was going to go.

Kingsley Ward had had fifteen ruthlessly hard years of experience in the market place of big business to know all about keeping poker-faced, and this came to his aid now, enabling him to maintain an impassive countenance as he said, ‘And he hurt you?’ knowing he really had no right to ask.

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ It was unmistakably final.

He took a deep breath, finding his guts had twisted like a corkscrew. ‘Fine,’ he said calmly, ‘but what I said earlier still stands. He is the past, you have to look to the present.’

He didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. Rosalie looked at him steadily. Decisions and consequences was a rotten game to lose at eighteen years old.

‘Have you had therapy?’ he asked after a moment or two.

‘This is England, not America.’ It was too sharp and she moderated her voice when she said, ‘Like I said, I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘But you have talked it through with someone? At the time, when it all happened, or later?’ he said quietly.

Rosalie could hear the beat of her own heart. She didn’t want to think about Miles, not even for a second. It made her feel sick. She swallowed audibly. ‘I’m not like that,’ she said carefully. ‘It wouldn’t have helped.’ In fact it would have killed her; it still would, even ten years later. There were some things so degrading that to share them with another human being was unthinkable. ‘I married him and it was a mistake, that is all anyone needs to know.’

The hell it was. Kingsl

ey nodded. ‘Sure,’ he said easily, ‘whatever. But coming back to us—’

‘Us?’ Where did us come from?

There was real panic in her voice and now his tone was velvety smooth when he said, ‘There’s an us, Rosie, whether you like it or not. There was from the moment we laid eyes on each other. Call it the X-factor or whatever you like, but your body knew what it wanted long before you could bring your mind to accept it.’ His eyebrows rose, daring her to disagree.

‘You’re talking sex,’ she said flatly. ‘That’s all.’

Blue eyes glinted. ‘Sex is spelt with three letters; it’s not a four-letter word, Rosie.’

‘Don’t call me Rosie. Everyone shortens Rosalie to Lee.’ A small point but somehow vitally important.

And then Kingsley hit the nail on the head and summed up what she was feeling when he said softly, ‘But I’m not everyone, am I?’

Her skin shivered. No, he wasn’t.

‘Besides which, Lee is cold, abstract, almost boyish. Rosie is warm and soft and as sexy as hell.’ He bent and picked up her crutches from where they’d fallen seconds after he had taken her mouth. ‘But enough of this getting to know each other,’ he said dryly. ‘Beth will be waiting at home for us.’

‘I can’t believe you virtually invited yourself along this weekend,’ she muttered, disturbingly aware that she seemed to have lost on every twist and turn of this conversation.

‘Believe it.’ He eyed her unrepentantly. ‘And you ain’t seen nothing yet, Rosie. Trust me on that if nothing else.’

CHAPTER FIVE

THE June evening was warm with all the delicious smells of summer when Kingsley’s car drew into Beth and George’s pebbled drive, and Rosalie got an inordinate amount of pleasure from the fact that Kingsley was speechless for once. She hadn’t warned him what to expect, and it was clear the quaint old thatched cottage engulfed in roses, honeysuckle and jasmine, and set in a perfectly Victorian garden, had stunned him.

‘What a place.’ He turned to her after a moment or two, his voice richly appreciative.

‘Gorgeous, isn’t it?’ They hadn’t said much on the way and it was a relief for some of the crackling tension to diffuse. ‘The back garden is just as beautiful. It’s full of hollyhocks and wallflowers and all the old-fashioned types of flowers. I’ve always thought of this place as a piece of heaven on earth. A very English heaven, of course,’ she added with a smile.