'There isn't a woman in this place to touch you tonight,' he said softly. 'I mean that.'
She couldn't respond; it was taking all her control, all the fortitude she had built up through the long years since her mother's death to cope with the knowledge that had suddenly burst into her consciousness as though his words had been a key that had unlocked a door she had kept tightly bolted.
She loved him.
As she forced a careful smile to her face and took a small sip of champagne her mind was screaming the truth at her. Quite when this physical attraction, the fascination she had felt since the first moment of seeing him had changed into something deeper she didn't kno
w, but she had been fighting the knowledge for days, weeks even. How could she have been such a fool as to let it happen?
'Katie? Are you all right?' he asked quietly.
She stood up quickly as he spoke, keeping the smile in place even as the muscles in her jaw hurt with the effort. 'Fine, just fine. I'm just popping to the cloakroom for a moment; I won't be long.' She had left the table even as she spoke.
He was too knowledgeable, too intuitive for her to remain sitting there. She found the ladies' cloakroom and collapsed on to one of the velvet-covered seats in front of an ornate mirror, overwhelmingly thankful that she had the small room to herself.
The worst thing, the very worst thing in the world had happened and she was powerless to do anything about it.
She looked deep into the haunted eyes staring back at her from the mirror and shook her head wearily as she let the truth permeate her mind. Most women would have given everything they possessed to be in her place—the fiancée of Carlton Reef. And the fact that she loved him? They would look on that as natural, inevitable even with a man like him who was larger than life in every way.
But he didn't love her. The face in the mirror could offer no comfort. He had made that perfectly clear. A deep sexual attraction, a satisfaction in the type of woman she was and her standards and morals maybe, but that wasn't love. She had experienced years and years of trying to win the love of one cold, ruthless, hard man and had never won. And now the process was to begin again but intensified a million times because what she felt for Carlton made any other emotion in the past seem lukewarm by comparison.
What was she going to do? She groaned and leant her head against the cool glass, only to straighten almost immediately as the door opened and two women, elegance personified, glided past her in a cloud of expensive perfume. That was the sort of woman Carlton should have married.
She watched them in the glass as they purred and wriggled, stroking already immaculate hair and glossing beautiful lips like two sleek, expensive cats. They would know how to survive with a man like him but her sense of self-worth, already badly damaged by her father's constant rejection, was too fragile to endure a life of walking on eggshells.
She bit her lip as the women disappeared and she was left alone again. Stop it. She glared into the greeny brown eyes as she spoke the words again out loud. 'Stop it.' She was going to be his wife, bear his children, be at his side both publicly and privately. And he had said, promised, that there would be no other women.
She would make him love her. Somehow, even if it took years, she would reach that cold, cynical heart and make it her own. Time, if nothing else, was on her side.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The next three weeks sped by in a whirl of last-minute arrangements and minor panics. May had been a beautiful month, full of warm spring sunshine that heralded the approach of a perfect summer, new life bursting out in a frenzy of curling new leaves, the heady perfume of a thousand spring flowers, and, best of all, the steady, reassuring improvement in her father's health that meant the world to Katie. And she was miserable. Desperately, frantically miserable.
She couldn't fault Carlton's handling of their relationship. He was attentive, affectionate to a point, introducing her to many facets of his life and work in easy stages so that she absorbed each one without too much effort, but…
Her brow wrinkled as she arranged a bowl of fresh dawn-pink roses which she had just picked from the garden, their rich perfume scenting the hall with their promise of summer.
He was remote, in the same way he had been since that night they had brought her father home. It was as though he was deliberately keeping her at a distance, controlling his emotions in a way she found impossible. His lovemaking was still intoxicating—he only had to touch her for her to melt in a heady, trembling fever that she strove to conceal—but even in that, or perhaps especially in that, he allowed himself to go so far and no further, his control absolute.
And tomorrow she would become his wife in the eyes of God and man. She stifled the flood of panic as her hands shook, dislodging a rose, which fell to the floor, its velvet petals scattering in a little arc at her feet.
'Katie?' Her father came carefully down the stairs, his steps slow but steady, and she glanced up at him as she knelt to gather the petals in her hand. 'Come and talk to me for a while.'
Since his graduation from the study to his bedroom upstairs, her father seemed to have accepted that he was really going to get well and the realisation had made life easier for the rest of the White household.
'Come on.' David held out his hand as she rose, and led her into the drawing-room, walking through the wide French doors, open to the early June sunshine, and into the garden beyond, drawing her down beside him on the old wooden bench just behind the house. 'Jennifer will be here soon and that will be the end of any peace and quiet,' he remarked with his customary causticity.
'You don't like peace and quiet,' she chided softly as she smiled up into his face. 'Look at you this week, sorting through all your papers, discussing the business with Carlton all the time, and working into the night when you should be in bed.'
'I'm going to let Carlton run it in future, Katie.' She stared at him, too surprised to speak. 'Or, at least, he's putting one of his managers in to do the job. I'll still be around in an advisory capacity but the heat will be taken out of the job.'
'And that's what you want?' she asked quietly, her eyes fixed on his. 'That's what you really want?'
'Katie…' He paused and, to her amazement, reached out and took both of her hands in his, his eyes soft. 'I've been doing a lot of thinking over the last few weeks when I've been laid up in that damn bed and I've made a hell of a mess of the last few years, haven't I, girl?' He shook his head slowly. 'A hell of a mess.'
'No, I—'
'Don't deny it, lass. Carlton and I have done some honest talking which I didn't thank him for at the time, but I've faced some personal demons that have been on my back for years. I've only loved two people in my life, Katie— your mother was one of them and you are the other.' His eyes were intense on her face.