Phantom Marriage

Disappointment flooded her as a tall, middle-aged woman walked in.

‘The twins’ mother, Mrs Hammond,’ James introduced her. ‘Tara, meet Mrs Hammond, my housekeeper.’

‘I’m sorry if the twins have caused you any anxiety or trouble,’ Tara began awkwardly, wondering what on earth the housekeeper must think, but her apology was brushed aside by the older woman’s rich laugh.

‘Well, I was concerned,’ she admitted, ‘Simply because they wouldn’t tell me who they were, and I knew someone must be worrying about them. Too well dressed and polite for it to be anything else,’ she added, restoring some of Tara’s equanimity. ‘But Mandy’s a real caution, isn’t she? Oh, but you look so pale,’ she added to Tara. ‘You must have been worried half to death!’

‘I was,’ Tara agreed, ho longer ashamed to admit it, or concerned at what conclusions James might draw from the tears sparkling on her long eyelashes. ‘I can’t tell you how much, but what I don’t understand is how they got here.’

‘Apparently Mandy had memorised my address,’ James told her quietly. ‘They used their pocket money and somehow—God knows how—managed to make their way here.’

Tara’s stomach tightened as she thought of the appalling risks they had all unknowingly run, the terrible things that could have happened to them.

‘There, it’s all over now,’ Mrs Hammond comforted her, and as a great wave of dizziness swept over her, Tara heard Mrs Hammond’s anxious voice appealing to James to catch her.

When she opened her eyes she was lying on a watered silk bedspread in a room decorated in palest eau-de-nil, Mrs Hammond hovering anxiously on one side while James stood, tall and saturnine, on the other.

‘The twins…’

‘They’re both fast asleep,’ James reassured her. ‘You can go and check for yourself if you like. It would be pointless waking them now,’ he added, glancing at his watch. ‘It’s gone ten now… You might as well stay the night and then I can run you all home in the morning.’

Tara wanted to protest, but Mrs Hammond was already agreeing, murmuring something about coming in a little earlier in the morning to cope with breakfast.

‘Mrs Hammond doesn’t sleep in,’ James told her, correctly reading her mind. ‘But you’re quite safe.’ Mrs Hammond had obviously not overheard the comment and James’s eyes were sardonic as he murmured the words.

On shaky legs, Tara followed him to the room the twins were sharing. The two of them were tucked up in a large double bed. Tara bent to kiss them unable to resist the urge to touch them. Mandy opened her eyes, happiness filling them as she smiled drowsily, her smothered ‘Mummy’ balm to Tara’s aching heart.

James made no attempt to ignore the tears pouring down her face as she left the bedroom, but Tara was beyond caring. Relief coursed through her, drowning out every other emotion, including the dragging tiredness she had experienced during the day.

James left her at the door of the eau-de-nil room. The bedroom had its own adjoining bathroom, tiled in the same soft green, the bath reflecting the colour like a huge mother-of-pearl shell. Perfumed bath oil and soft fluffy towels hinted that she wasn’t the first female to use this room, and Tara had to smother a swift stab of jealousy. She was being ridiculous, she told herself. Any woman James had staying in his home would surely share his room and not sleep alone. No wonder Mrs Hammond did not live in. It had been plain to Tara that she thought very highly of her employer, and no doubt James fostered that impression.

She was still wearing the old jeans she had put on that morning—a lifetime ago—and her tee-shirt was stained with oil from changing the car wheel. When she looked at her reflection in the mirror she was appalled at the dishevelled, untidy picture that met her eyes. Her hair curled wildly round her face, unusually pale, her eyes dark pools of pain, her mouth free of lipstick. Distastefully Tara removed her jeans and the grubby tee-shirt. Beneath them she was only wearing a pair of briefs and a flimsy lace bra. Faced with the prospect of donning worn clothes in the morning, she shuddered. At least she could rinse her underclothes through; being nylon they would dry overnight, and she had started on her self-imposed chore before she realised that she had nothing to sleep in.

Shrugging she started to run her bath, helping herself to a generous capful of the expensively perfumed oil, the warm water helped to soothe away some of her tension, but Tara did not linger in the bath. All at once she was swept by exhaustion and knew that if she didn’t make an effort to reach the bed she was likely to fall asleep where she was.

Drying herself on one of the luxuriously thick towels, she padded across to the bed and was just pulling back the bedclothes when, with only a brief knock, James came into the room. In one hand he was holding a pair of pyjamas, and Tara felt the blood rising betrayingly under her skin as he looked at her, his eyes lingering longest on the rounded swell of her breasts above the confining edge of her towel.

‘I realised you had nothing with you, and I brought you these,’ he told her, proffering the pyjamas. Tara reached forward to take them, keeping a tight grip of her towel, feeling herself tremble beneath his gaze.

‘What’s wrong?’ he jeered. ‘Surely you’re not shy. You’ve been married and widowed, had lovers…’

His words were designed to be insulting and some spark of defiance Tara hadn’t known she possessed stirred her into saying coolly, ‘What are you trying to do? Ease your conscience because you took my virginity?’

‘Took it?’ The dark eyebrows rose, his mouth tightening in a thin, cruel line. ‘I don’t recall that there was much taking involved—or is that the line you perfected for your husband? Work hard at it and you might even be able to convince yourself that it was rape. That’s the next step, isn’t it? But we both know that wasn’t the case, don’t we?’

‘It wasn’t rape, perhaps, but it was deliberate seduction,’ Tara countered, too angry to care what she was saying, ‘and in my book that’s nearly as bad.’

‘Time seems to have affected your memory,’ James drawled, only the dark line of colour along his cheekbones warning her that he was fighting to control his temper. ‘As I recall it, we were both equal partners.’ His eyes dropped again to her breasts, his soft, ‘Perhaps I ought to refresh your memory as it’s so badly at fault,’ freezing the blood in Tara’s veins. She moved backwards instinctively, wincing as she felt the hard frame of the bed behind her knees, one hand going up instinctively to ward off the implacable male frame, but James ignored her. Unwilling to bear the contempt in his eyes, she closed her own, tensing as she waited for those hard hands to wrench away her frail protection, but the assault never came. Instead she felt James’s hands on her shoulders, stroking and massaging away the tension of the day, encouraging her head to fall forward heavily on to his chest as one arm slid round her back to support her. The rhythmic stroking continued, lulling her into a false sense of security, no protest escaping her lips as James’s hands moved gently over her back relaxing taut muscles.

At first the sure touch of his fingers was simply relaxing, but then, gradually, other feelings sprang to life inside her. Beneath the towel Tara felt her breasts swell and tauten, her arms automatically encircling James’s neck, her fingers burrowing into the soft thickness of his hair.

She felt him lift her on to the bed but was beyond making any form of protest. She wanted this sense of closeness, this union of flesh against flesh, this sense of desiring and being desired, and she refused to let any other emotion intrude.

Somehow her hands found their way inside the opening of his shirt, clinging to the moist warmth of his skin, exploring the maleness of his body with a sensuality she had never possessed at seventeen. Then she had merely gloried in her love; simply accepting the physical perfection of their coming together, but now, with experience on her side, Tara was well aware of the intense male virility of James’s body, of the strength in the broad shoulders and tapering chest, of the sensual pleasure to be had from pressing her palms against the fine dark hair shadowing his chest and feeling its slight rasp against her skin.

Now it was his mouth that stroked erotically against her skin, probing the hollow at the base of her throat, moving upwards to investigate the perfect delicacy of her ear before tracing the shape of her cheekbone while his thumb probed the half parted softness of her mouth, sending waves of pleasure shuddering through her body.

Her fingers tugged at the buttons denying her access to the contact she craved with his skin, a small moan of pleasure stifled in her throat as James possessed her mouth, obliterating everything but the driving need to respond to the male pressure of his body, the tautly muscled potency of his thighs as he moulded her body to his, her impatient fingers at last able to push aside his shirt and explore the vital maleness of his skin.