A Vow of Obligation (Marriage by Command 3)

Navarre was already at work in his imposing office in Paris when Tawny’s text came through and shock and disbelief roared through him like a hurricane-force storm. He wanted to disorder his immaculate cropped hair and shout to the heavens to release the steam building inside him as he read that text. Merde alors! She would be the death of him. How could she make such an announcement by text? How could she text ‘YOURS’ like that as if he were likely to argue the fact when she had been a virgin? He tried to phone her immediately but could not get an answer, for by then Tawny was already on board a flight to London. Within an hour Navarre had cancelled his appointments and organised a trip there as well.

Tawny stopped off at her bedsit only long enough to change for her evening shift at the restaurant and drop off her case. As she had decided that only actual starvation would persuade her to accept money from a man who had called her a good lay to her face, she had not cashed Navarre’s bank draft and had had to work extremely hard to keep on top of all her financial obligations. Luckily some weeks back she had had the good fortune to sell a set of greeting card designs, which had ensured that Celestine’s rent was covered for the immediate future. Tawny’s work as a waitress paid her own expenses and, as her agent had been enthusiastic enough to send a selection of her Frenchman cartoons to several publications, she was even moderately hopeful that her cartoons might soon give her the break she had long dreamt of achieving.

Navarre seated himself in a distant corner of the self-service restaurant where Tawny worked and nursed a cup of the most disgusting black coffee he had ever tasted. Consumed by frustration over the situation she had created by keeping him out of the loop for so long, he watched her emerge from behind the counter to clear tables. And that fast his anger rose. Her streaming torrent of hair was tied back at the nape of her neck, her slender coltish figure lithe in an overall and leggings. At first glance she looked thinner but otherwise unchanged, he decided, subjecting her to a close scrutiny and noting the fined-down line of her jaw. Only when she straightened did he see the rounded swell of her stomach briefly moulded by the fabric of her tunic.

She was expecting his baby and even though she clearly needed to engage in hard menial work to survive, he reflected with brooding resentment and disapproval, she had still not made use of that bank draft he had left in the hotel for her. He had told his bank to inform him the instant the money was drawn and the weeks had passed and he had waited and waited, much as he had waited in vain for some sleazy kiss-and-tell about their affair to be published somewhere. When nothing happened, when his lowest expectations went totally unfulfilled, it had finally dawned on him that this was payback time Tawny-style. In refusing to accept that money from him, in disdaining selling ‘their’ story as she had threatened to do, she was taking her revenge, making her point that he had got her wrong and that she didn’t need him for anything. Navarre understood blunt messages of a challenging nature, although she was the very first woman in his life to try and communicate with him on that aggressive level.

In addition, he had really not needed a shock phone call from her bossy sister Bee to tell him how not to handle her fiery half-sister. Bee Demonides had phoned him out of the blue just after his private jet landed in London and had introduced herself with aplomb. Tawny, he now appreciated, had kept secrets that he had never dreamt might exist in her background, secrets that sadly might have helped him to understand her better. Her sibling was married to one of the richest men in the world and Tawny had not breathed a word of that fact, had indeed ‘oohed’ and ‘ahhed’ over Sam Coulter’s rented castle and the Golden Awards party as if she had no comparable connections or experiences. In fact, from what he had since established from Jacques’s more wide-reaching enquiries, Tawny’s other half-sister, Zara, was married to an Italian banker, who was also pretty wealthy. So, how likely was it that Tawny had ever planned to enrich herself by stealing Navarre’s laptop to sell his secrets to the gutter press? On the other hand why did she feel the need to work in such lowly jobs when she had rich relatives who would surely have been willing to help her find more suitable employment? That was a complete mystery and only the first of several concerning Tawny Baxter, Navarre acknowledged impatiently.

Tawny was unloading a tray into a dishwasher in the kitchen when her boss approached her. ‘There’s a man waiting over by the far window for you … says he’s a friend and he’s here to tell you about a family crisis. I said that you could leave early—we’re quiet this evening. I hope it’s nothing serious.’

Tawny’s first thought was that something awful had happened to her mother and that her mother’s boyfriend, Rob, had come to tell her. Fear clenching her stomach, she grabbed her coat and bag and hurried back out into the restaurant, only to come to a shaken halt when she looked across the tables and saw Navarre seated in the far corner. His dark hair gleamed blue-black below the down lights that accentuated the stunning angles and hollows of his darkly handsome features. He threw back his head and she collided with brilliant bottle-green eyes and somehow she was moving towards him without ever recalling how she had reached that decision.

‘Let’s get out of here,’ Navarre urged, striding forwards to greet her before she even got halfway to his table.

Still reeling in consternation from his sudden appearance, Tawny let him guide her outside and into the limousine pulling up at the kerb to collect them. Her hand trembled in the sudden firm hold of his, for their three months apart had felt like a lifetime and she could have done with advance warning of his visit. Thrown into his presence again without the opportunity to dress for the occasion and form a defensive shell, she felt horribly naked and unprepared. Once again, though, he had surprised her in a uniform that underlined the yawning gulf in their status.

‘I wasn’t expecting you—’

‘You thought you could chuck a text bombshell at me and I was so thick-skinned that I would simply carry on as normal?’ Navarre questioned with sardonic emphasis. ‘Even I am not that insensitive.’

Tawny reddened. ‘You took me by surprise.’

&n

bsp; ‘Just as your text took me, ma petite.’

‘Not so petite any longer,’ she quipped.

‘I noticed,’ Navarre admitted flatly, his attention dropping briefly to the tummy clearly visible when she was sitting down. ‘I’m still in shock.’

‘Even after three months I’m still in shock.’

‘Why did you tell me you weren’t pregnant?’

‘I did a test and it was negative. I think I did it too early. A few weeks later when I wasn’t feeling well I bought another test and that one was positive. I didn’t know how to tell you that I’d got it wrong—’

‘Exactement! So, instead you took the easy way out and told me nothing.’

His sarcasm cut like the sudden slash of a knife against tender skin. ‘Well, actually there was nothing easy about anything I’ve gone through since then, Navarre!’ Tawny fired back at him in a sudden surge of spitfire temper. ‘I’ve had all the worry without having anyone to turn to! I’ve had to work even though I was feeling as sick as a dog most mornings and the smell of cooking food made me worse, so working in a restaurant was not a pleasant experience. My hormones were all over the place and I’ve never felt so horribly tired in my life as I did those first weeks!’

‘If only you had accepted the bank draft I gave you. We had an agreement and you earned that money by pretending to be my fiancée,’ he reminded her grittily. ‘But I understand why you refused to touch it.’

Her glacier blue eyes widened in disconcertion. ‘You … do?’

‘That last night we were together I was offensive, inexcusably so,’ Navarre framed in a taut undertone, every word roughened by the effort it demanded of his pride to acknowledge such a fault to a woman.

That unexpected admission made it easier for Tawny to unbend in her turn. ‘I made things worse. I shouldn’t have pretended that I was planning to sell a story about you.’

‘I made an incorrect assumption … time has proven me wrong, for no story appeared in the papers.’

‘That note was smuggled in to me before we flew up to Scotland. Julie would’ve been behind it. She even phoned my gran to try and find out where you and I had gone. I put the note in my pocket and forgot about it. I never intended to use that phone number.’

‘Let the matter rest there. We have more important concerns at the moment.’

‘How on earth did you find out where I was working?’

‘You can thank your sister Bee for that information.’