The Bride's Secret

'You don't think there's room there for two?' Hudson asked with mock incredulity, although if she had been looking his way—rather than staring transfixed at the huge bed—she would have seen his eyes had narrowed intently on her shocked face. 'This suite already has a bathroom that would hold a baseball team, plus a sitting room; what else do you expect?'

'My own bed.' Her eyes turned to his. I'm not sleeping in that with you,' she stated with bald directness, her fiery face belying the flatness of her tone. I'll ring for Sorai.'

As she turned to step back into the small sitting room the maid had first shown them into Hudson caught her wrist, swinging her back to face him. 'The hell you are.' It was a soft growl, but Marianne was too angry to be intimidated. 'You can't embarrass Hassan by insulting him like that.'

'What about the insult to me, then?' Marianne shot back furiously. 'You led them both to believe I was your… your—'

'What?' he asked coldly. 'Spit it out.'

'Mistress!' She glared at him.

'Of course I didn't; don't be so ridiculous,' he said frostily.

'Then how do you explain that?' She gestured wildly towards the gargantuan bed, complete with silk covers, scattered pillows, cushions and tike sort of appeal that shouted 'love-nest'.

'Marianne, I had no idea Hassan would assume we were sleeping together,' Hudson said icily, his use of her full name an indication that the outward calm was merely a facade to mask the anger within. 'But even though he has it is hardly an insult. He knows we were together once and has naturally assumed we're more than friends.'

'Oh, and every woman you're "together" with, you sleep with, is that it?' she snapped back angrily. 'How many other girls have you brought here—?'

'That's enough.' His voice and his face were icy now.

She was too enraged to heed the warning. 'I can see it all now,' she spat hotly. 'I thought it was all too pat, too convenient What went wrong? Did she back out at the last minute? But of course, she must have done. What was it, work commitments? Or did you have a row? And you had the cheek to assume I'd fall in with your plans!'

'I don't have the faintest idea what you are talking about,' Hudson said with a softness that should have told her something.

'That woman, the redhead,' she spat furiously. 'The one who was all over you at the hotel.' She remembered her name perfectly well, but she was blowed if she was going to give him further satisfaction by revealing that—she'd said too much already.

It appeared Hudson agreed with her.

'My relationship with Jasmine is nothing to do with you.' It was deadly—the same sort of cold, analytical frostiness he used with such effect in his work when he wanted to devastate and destroy. 'But before you cast aspersions on her character I'd mention that to my knowledge she has never set someone up for a fall, unlike some.'

'Meaning?' His championship of the other woman cut her to the quick. 'Don't stop there—say exactly what you mean.'

'You really want me to spell it out?' he said grimly.

'I hate you.' And she did, right at that moment.

'Possibly.' He considered her burning face with stony grey eyes. 'But believe me, Annie, you can't feel anything for me I haven't felt tenfold for you. There was a time, when you first left and I imagined you with him, that I wanted to kill you.' As her eyes widened he nodded slowly. 'Oh, yes, it's true,' he affirmed with silky savagery. 'You get to hear a lot of things in my work, meet a lot of people that aren't nice to know, and for a time I really thought about it. If I could have found you both then… '

She shivered as he paused, surveying him with eyes that fear had turned jade-green, her face chalk-white.

'But you had covered your tracks too well,' he continued softly, 'and so I waited, biding my time, knowing that one day our paths would cross again.' He nodded slowly. 'And they did.'

'How did you know?' she whispered, trembling. 'That we'd meet?'

'Because I never give up,' he said with chilling matter-of-factness. 'It's not in my nature to accept defeat'

'What… what are you going to do?' She had never felt so paralysingly scared in her life. She had heard of women who had said—after having been attacked or threatened—that they had been too frightened to move, but she had always dismissed such statements as exaggeration. But she was experiencing it now, her limbs rigid with fright and her brain numb. She was frozen before him.

'Do?' A strange expression flicked over his face for a second as he saw her fear. 'I'm going to do nothing, Annie,' he said quietly, his body as tense as hers. 'I could never hurt you, I knew that all along, but it didn't help in the initial pain and humiliation to acknowledge it. The guy might have been a different matter… ' He nodded slowly. 'Would have been,' he affirmed softly.

She continued to stare at him, her composure fragile.

'But that's all dead and gone now,' he said grimly as she still remained frozen in front of him, like a tiny rabbit in the headlights of a car. 'We've moved on, both of us. You have your exciting life, your career… Is it enough, Annie? In the chill of the night, when you can't sleep and there's no one there to stroke away the fears, the nightmares? And don't tell me you don't have them,' he added, 'because everyone does, even the toughest of us.' The silky voice was ruthless.

'I… I'm doing all right,' she stammered weakly.

'But I don't think you're tough, Annie.' He continued as though he hadn't heard her trembling whisper. 'I don't think you're tough at all. Don't ask me how I know, I just know, and I'd bet my life on it Strange, really… ' He paused again, but she could read nothing from the veiled eyes beyond a kind of thoughtful pensiveness. 'I feel so sure about that aspect, and yet everything you've done points to my being wrong. Am I wrong?' he asked suddenly, his voice and manner changing and shocking her out of the false security his words had lulled her into.