The Bride's Secret

Oh, he was good, he was very, very good, Marianne thought desperately, recognising too late he had been using the same sort of tactics he applied with such brilliance in the courtroom.

She didn't reply immediately, forcing herself to take a few deep, calming breaths to steady her pounding heart and racing pulse, before she said, 'We… we weren't discussing me. I was objecting to you bringing me here and setting this up—'

'Objection noted.' His eyes narrowed, and he actually had the gall to smile as he added, 'You'd be a worthy adversary in court, Miss McBride-Harding. You don't get intimidated easily.'

'The name is Harding, and this isn't a game,' she bit back quickly, bitterly hurt that he could dismiss the crucifying pain he had brought to the surface so casually.

'I know that.' His voice was a whiplash. 'And just be glad you've got off so lightly. It's more than you deserve.'

'Lightly? When you're suggesting—?'

'I have no intention of leaping on you when you're asleep and ravaging your body,' he said coolly, and with such disgust that every bit of self-confidence she had shrivelled up and died. 'Believe it or not, I do actually know women who find my attentions welcome.' The bolt of jealousy she felt was so savage, it lolled any retort 'I have never taken anything that wasn't freely given.'

She didn't doubt that for a minute. There was probably one such woman kicking herself at this moment because she had been prevented from making the trip with him. A woman with red hair and the sort of come-hither smile that would never turn him away, a woman who was free to love him, with no skeletons in the cupboard and messy family traumas. Someone vibrant, uninhibited…

'Now, the bed is seven feet across if it's an inch,' Hudson continued evenly. 'I hardly think we're going to bump into each other by accident. However, if it makes you feel safer—' the sarcasm was caustic '—we can make it into two separate halves with some of those pillows.'

'I can sleep on the sofa in there.' She pointed through the doorway to the neat sitting room where a brocade sofa reposed, along with matching easy chairs and a small television set.

'I don't think so.' He eyed her daddy. 'And there is no way I'm doing the gentlemanly thing and having a night of misery out there either. No, reconcile yourself to the bed,' he said with dry mockery. It'll only be for a few hours, after all.'

'I really don't think that's a good idea, and it's not because—'

'Just do it, Annie.' It was the voice of a man who had come to the end of his tether, and she recognised it as such.

'All right' She felt raw and vulnerable and exposed, and his earlier words—about the other women, and Jasmine in particular—were eating away at her brain. It was one thing to make the supreme sacrifice and walk away when she knew she wasn't going to see him again, quite another to have him in the flesh in front of her and have all the nightmares and daytime images of Hudson with other women confirmed to her. Quite another.

From the second she had seen him again her love had grown stronger and stronger—its intensity heightened by the years of separation—and now the pain of it was fast becoming unbearable.

She should never have agreed to come on this trip-it had been madness, emotional suicide—and she knew, with dreadful and frightening clarity, that she was going to have to pay the price for her weakness. For wanting to be with him.

She loved him, she would die loving him, and the way she felt at this moment she wouldn't care if it was soon. But she could never let him know. And right at this minute she felt like the most pathetic creature in the world.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Marianne hid in the flamboyant bathroom as long as she dared after her shower, taking an age to dry her hair and then restraining the riotous tumble of silky gold curls in two tight plaits at either side of her head. Hudson had always liked her hair loose—finding it sexy—and the plaits served a dual purpose of hiding as much of the profusion of curls as possible and giving—she hoped—an impression of demure restraint She stared in the mirror anxiously.

Her face was squeaky clean, and in spite of the sticky, warm night she had pulled her ankle-length towelling robe over her nightie, the only visible areas of skin her hands and feet She pulled the belt even tighter before she opened the door, hoping Hudson would think the colour in her cheeks was due to the hot water rather than the embarrassing shyness that had made her as jumpy as a cricket.

'Finished?' He was sitting on the magnificent bed reading an official-looking document as she entered the bedroom, and she saw he had already set the barrier of heaped pillows into place. 'Just catching up on some background to a proposed change in the law,' he said idly as he flung the papers aside.

'Don't you ever stop working?'

'Oh, yes, Annie, when there's something more pleasant to do,' he murmured softly, straight-faced but wickedly amused at her confusion. 'There's nothing I like better than a spot of relaxing.'

She went hot inside, catching one bare foot in a luxuriant Moroccan rug as she padded across to the dressing table and nearly landing at Hudson's feet before she managed to save herself.

'The… the bathroom's free,' she said hastily.

'Thank you.' Again she heard the dark amusement he was trying to hide, and kept her eyes resolutely to the front as she sank down on the little upholstered stool in front of the dressing table and opened her pot of hand cream, her face flaming with embarrassment.

She was aware of the movement of his body as he stood up, and also that he had paused just behind her as he walked across the room, but when one caressing finger ran softly across the nape of her neck she nearly jumped out of her skin and she shot around.

'Steady, girl, steady,' he soothed irritatingly. 'I don't bite—Well, not often anyway,' he added with an exaggerated leer.

'Hudson—'

'Yes, Annie?' he interjected with suspicious meekness.