Mistress by Agreement

Rosalie blinked, a curious rush of exhilaration causing her to shut her eyes tightly for a second. ‘What Beth thinks or doesn’t think is neither here or there,’ she said as severely as she could considering a big grin was trying to make itself felt. ‘I’m my own woman.’ Or had been before she’d met him.

‘You wouldn’t be so mean as to hold onto every little bit, surely? There’s enough to go round for a starving man.’

‘Are you saying I’m fat?’ she said lightly, a part of her mind hearing herself flirting with amazement.

‘You’re perfect. For me, that is,’ he said huskily.

Help. She was too rusty at this game to survive for more than a moment. Her thought process hiccuped and died.

‘Rosie? Are you still there?’

‘Yes.’ Pull yourself together, act nonchalant and cool as though this isn’t blowing you away.

‘Look, I’ve got to go, there’s a problem at one of the hotel sites here—some flooding. I was hoping to be back in England at the weekend but it’s beginning to look as though it might be longer before I can get away.’

She took a deep breath. ‘That’s all right,’ she said briskly. ‘If there’s any complications or difficulties with the job here, I’ve got numbers I can call, and your architect is very helpful.’

‘Damn my architect,’ he said levelly. ‘I wan

t to hold you, to kiss you, to—’ Another pause and then he said, his voice dry, ‘Goodnight, Rosie. Sweet dreams…as long as they’re of me.’

‘Goodnight.’ She replaced the receiver in something of a daze.

Once Rosalie was back in the bath she found all thoughts of peaceful contemplation had been blown out of the water by Kingsley’s voice. Just hearing the smoky tones had evoked all sorts of emotions, and not one of them sensible or sane.

She spent the rest of her time in the bathroom giving herself a severe talking-to. She was a modern career woman who had her sights set on advancement, and she’d already come a long way in the last ten years. Relationships—any relationships—meant give and take, and it was the law of dynamics that one partner would take more than the other. Control and manipulation weren’t far behind then. And Kingsley was the type of man whose whole life had been built on the will to control, ever since his broken engagement anyway. He’d said himself that he’d carved his empire from a desire to reach out and take life by the throat and choke it into submission.

But all that aside, forgetting all she knew about the motivation that drove him and his cold-blooded attitude to affairs of the heart, it was her own feelings where Kingsley was concerned that told her it would be emotional suicide to get involved with him, even slightly. For some reason he had got under her skin, and, much as she would like to lie to herself and say it was just a physical attraction and easily dealt with, the weekend had shown her differently. She enjoyed being with him too much; she liked him too much.

Miles had swept her off her feet and into his arms, and she had married him in a fever of love and physical desire without knowing the real person beneath the façade. He had fooled her and she’d paid the price.

Kingsley wasn’t like that. He had shown himself in his true colours from day one. Offended as she’d been, he had stated he would never fall in love with her and wanted an affair he could walk away from with no complications or messy feelings to complicate the nice clean finish.

She levered herself out of the bath, staring at her reflection in the misted mirror for a moment or two. She couldn’t turn her feelings off and on at will, much as she would like to right at this minute. Neither did she want to put herself in a position where a man had the power to bring her to her knees again, and she had the feeling that, much as Miles had hurt her, Kingsley could hurt her a thousand times more. She’d survived devastation once and at least she hadn’t brought it on herself knowingly. If she got involved with Kingsley she wouldn’t have that comfort when it all went wrong.

She went to bed that night determined she was not going to agonise any further over Kingsley. It was simple, quite simple when you considered all the facts logically, that she would be crazy to let their association grow stronger. He had said they would take it as slowly as she liked. Fine. Then it would be slow, so slow a virile, red-blooded man like Kingsley would soon lose interest and move on to pastures new.

She would keep busy at work, go out with some of her girlfriends on a more regular basis and start letting her hair down a bit, book a sumptuous holiday somewhere for next year and generally revamp her life. Perhaps meeting Kingsley had done her a favour after all, motivating her to take stock and decide what she really wanted out of life? She nodded firmly, turning over and almost immediately falling asleep.

But the subconscious wasn’t so easily conquered. In her sleep Rosalie was vulnerable to the ghosts she kept under lock and key most of the time during the day, and, probably because of the weekend and then Kingsley’s phone call, she found herself in a deep, dark valley of shifting shadows and half-recognisable images, past and present interweaving.

She awoke some time in the middle of the night when it was still dark, tears running down her face and her whole body tense with the nightmare. Kingsley had been there, but a different Kingsley, one who had brown eyes and not blue, and who had been crimson with anger, shouting, hitting, punching…

She sat up in bed, aware her nightie was clinging to her damp body, and ran a shaking hand over her face, brushing back the hair sticking to her wet cheeks.

Why hadn’t she left Miles long before their graduation night? It was a question she had asked herself many times. But she had been so much younger then, so confused and frightened. She had got used to him hitting her when he was in one of his moods, even punching her on occasion, but he had always been so sorry later she had forgiven him. He was Miles Stuart—the man everyone said she was so lucky to have married—so their rows had to be her fault.

And then that night, after they had partied with their friends and most people had drunk too much, she’d inadvertently walked into one of the bedrooms at the big house the party was being held in, thinking it was the bathroom. Miles and one of their friends had been in bed together.

She had shouted and stormed out of the house, intending to walk home to the flat they’d rented, and Miles had come after her in his sports car. She had actually thought he’d come to plead with her when she’d heard the car engine, but he had got out and hit her so hard she’d been dazed and barely conscious. He’d bundled her into the front seat and driven home, and there he had attacked her again. But that night the worm had turned.

Rosalie closed her eyes, hugging her knees to her chest as the past rose up on the screen in her mind. It had been a night that had finally killed the last remnant of love for him.

When Miles had begun punching her this time something had snapped and she’d fought back, kicking and scratching and biting for all she was worth. Quite when she had realised he’d intended to rape her she didn’t know, but it had only been one of their neighbours kicking the front door in that had saved her, and that at the last moment.

The divorce had been quick and silent, Miles’s parents had made sure of that once they had seen the evidence stacked against their son. They had been petrified she’d drag the family name through the mud along with Miles, and she would have. Oh, yes, she would have if he hadn’t met all her requirements, even though it would have crucified her to reveal the facts of their marriage to anyone other than her kindly solicitor.

She could still remember how she had felt the moment she had finally and legally been free of him. She’d been physically and mentally exhausted the weeks leading up to the divorce, but on that day it had been as though an invisible weight, which had kept her mind and limbs leaden and dull, had been lifted off her body and she had felt as light as a bird. It hadn’t lasted, of course—grim reality had had to be faced and she’d found the memories of the abuse and torment she’d suffered at Miles’s hands reared up at the oddest moments, but always there was the recollection of that moment when her soul had soared.