Wife By Contract, Mistress By Demand

Chapter 4

‘Where the hell did you disappear to this afternoon?’

Gabriella looked at Rufus’s reflection in the bathroom mirror as he stood behind her in the doorway, and felt grateful that he hadn’t arrived seconds ago before she had wrapped a towel around her after her shower. She wasn’t sure she could have dealt with talking to him while completely naked!

Not that he really needed an answer to his question; it must have been pretty obvious to Rufus that she had taken the opportunity of his going to take a shower to make good her escape from the apartment. The apartment where they had just made love. The apartment where Rufus took all his mistresses, it seemed…

He hadn’t exactly chased after her, had he? Seven o’clock, she had been informed by her scornful new stepdaughter, was ‘the usual time Daddy came home from work’. And it was just after seven now.

Gabriella made no effort to turn and look at him, preferring to look at his reflection in the mirror instead. She picked up a bottle of her favourite scented lotion, and tipped some into her hands before smoothing it over her arms.

‘I thought we had finished with each other for the day,’ she said derisively.

His mouth twisted. ‘Did you? Or did you just run out like the little coward that you are?’

‘Would you please leave my bathroom, Rufus?’ she said coldly, her eyes challenging as she looked up to find him watching her movements, his gaze dark with a desire she had no intention of acknowledging. ‘Your rooms are further down the hallway, I believe.’

He leant nonchalantly against the doorframe. ‘And what are you going to do if I don’t leave? Call for help?’

Probably a futile gesture, she acknowledged; he was the new master of the house, after all…

But then, it also reasoned that she was the new mistress of the house, too. ‘If necessary,’ she confirmed coolly, smoothing the scented lotion over her shoulders now.

Rufus drew in a ragged breath, deeply irritated by her coldness after the pleasure they had shared that afternoon. Gabriella had been like fire in his arms earlier, totally wanton and abandoned. Why the sudden change?

If they were to live together for six months, then Rufus fully intended to share his wife’s bed for that length of time! Considering her behaviour in Majorca, and her response to him today, he had thought she would want the same.

Gabriella certainly couldn’t claim she wasn’t attracted to him.

So why, earlier this afternoon, when they had just enjoyed each other so much, had she taken advantage of his brief absence to disappear back here to Gresham House?

‘I asked you to leave, Rufus,’ she repeated coldly, not even looking at him but concentrating on rubbing lotion onto the creamy swell at the top of her breasts now.

Breasts he wanted to kiss and caress as he took her once again with the wild abandon of earlier today that had driven him completely out of his mind.

Her long dark hair was secured loosely on top of her head, exposing the vulnerable column of her throat and shoulders, her skin creamy and soft, skin he—

She glanced up at him irritably as she obviously sensed his heated gaze. ‘Still here?’

He drew in a harsh breath. ‘I live here, too!’

‘And as I’ve already said, your bathroom and bedroom are further down the hallway,’ she snapped.

‘Perhaps I like this one better than mine?’ he taunted.

‘In that case we can swap rooms.’ She shrugged.

This was a different Gabriella from the one Rufus had previously known, different from both the eager teenager five years ago, and the woman who had been so wild in his arms this afternoon. This was a cooler, more self-contained Gabriella.

‘I’ve been informed that dinner is at eight o’clock,’ he bit out tersely.

Gabriella gave a cool inclination of her head. ‘That’s the time I instructed the housekeeper earlier.’

Rufus gave a humourless smile. ‘You don’t mind taking on some of your wifely duties, then!’

She continued to look at him steadily. ‘Some of them.’ She gave a gracious inclination of her head. ‘But I’ll choose for myself which ones they will be, Rufus,’ she added firmly.

Sharing his bed for the next six months wasn’t one she ‘chose’ to take on, apparently.

Damn!

This afternoon it had seemed the perfect solution to the constant hunger he had to possess her. It would be a mutual satisfaction that required no commitment from either of them, no false promises, and would give him exactly what he wanted when he wanted it.

Gabriella in his bed.

Having her now play hard to get didn’t fit in with that idea at all.

‘Shouldn’t you be going to see Holly now?’ Gabriella prompted pointedly. ‘She informed me when I spoke to her earlier that you always spend half an hour with her before she goes to bed.’

Rufus frowned darkly as he straightened. ‘Do I sense criticism in your voice, Gabriella?’

‘I don’t know—do you?’ she came back softly, coolly holding the reflection of his pale green gaze with hers.

Inside she trembled, the memories of their lovemaking clearly etched in her mind, remembering how she had completely lost control in Rufus’s arms.

It should never have happened, but it had been so unexpected, so instant, that she simply hadn’t had the strength or will-power to resist knowing Rufus intimately to see if she still felt that same desire for him.

Which she did. More than ever, it seemed…

But by giving in to that weakness she had put herself in a vulnerable position from the onset of this bogus marriage, a position she intended reversing as quickly, and abruptly, as possible. By whatever means possible.

Rufus’s mouth thinned. ‘My relationship with my daughter is none of your damned business!’

She raised her dark brows. ‘Do you have one?’

His gaze narrowed. ‘And exactly what is that supposed to mean?’

Gabriella turned to face him, scornful now. ‘Spending half an hour with her every evening can hardly be called a relationship!’

Gabriella remembered her own early school years with affection. Her mother waiting outside the school gates to walk home with her. The two of them then sitting down together at the kitchen table enjoying a cup of hot chocolate as they chatted over the events of the day. Her mother helping her with her homework before they cooked the evening meal together.

Of course that had changed slightly once the two of them had been left on their own and her mother had had to work full-time to support the two of them. But Gabriella had been older then, almost fourteen, and quite capable of looking after herself until her mother came home, having a meal ready for her mother when she came in from work, as she had usually been too tired to feel much like doing it herself. It was how Gabriella had discovered her own love of cooking.

Holly Gresham was seven years old, was taken to and brought home from school in a chauffeur-driven car, when she was then given her tea in the kitchen with the cook. Holly wasn’t old enough to have homework yet, but seemed to spend her time after tea in her bedroom anyway. Until her father came home. And then the two of them spent that ‘half an hour together’ before she went to bed.

Holly had haughtily informed her of this earlier when Gabriella had knocked on her bedroom door to see what she was doing.

Holly was definitely her father’s daughter. She seemed to have inherited all of his arrogance and self-containment, and didn’t appear to mind the hours she spent alone in her bedroom, or the fact that she bathed herself before preparing for bed. At the age of seven she already gave the impression of needing no one.

But as far as Gabriella was concerned, Holly was far too mature and serious for a seven-year-old.

Gabriella accepted that it couldn’t have been easy for Rufus to have been left with a two-month-old daughter. After all, he’d had a job to do, responsibilities, and initially had had to engage nannies to care for his baby girl, only dispensing with them when Holly had begun school two years ago. But from the amount of expensive toys that now filled Holly’s bedroom, Rufus seemed to have showered his motherless daughter with material objects rather than the love and time with him she really needed.

His relationship with his daughter was none of Gabriella’s damned business, Rufus had informed her, and for the short time she would be in their lives maybe it wasn’t, but that didn’t stop her from having an opinion.

Or from informing Rufus of that opinion.

Something, from the dark anger on his face, he didn’t appreciate at all…

‘I told you to stay away from Holly,’ he bit out hardly.

Gabriella shrugged bare shoulders. ‘I thought someone should check earlier whether she was alive or dead—’

‘You have no right, damn it—’

‘Besides,’ she continued firmly, ‘I was never particularly fond of being told what I can and can’t do.’

Rufus scowled. ‘Then perhaps it’s time you learnt—’

‘Are you threatening me, Rufus?’ she cut in.

He stared at her for several long moments, filled with frustrated anger that she had dared to criticise the way he was bringing up his own daughter.

‘No, I’m not threatening you, Gabriella,’ he finally murmured softly. ‘I’m merely surprised that I’m receiving parental criticism from a woman whose own mother was nothing but a—’