Bridal Bargains

He was silent for a few seconds and she could feel him studying her. Her cheeks began to heat. Lying had never been her forte. But what the devil did not know could not hurt him, she thought with a stab at dry sarcasm that was supposed to make her feel brave but didn’t.

‘W-what time is it?’ She changed the subject.

Xander sprang back to his feet before glancing

at the gold watch circling his wrist. ‘Two-thirty in the morning.’

Nell lifted her eyes to watch the prowling grace of his long body as he took up his position by the window again.

‘I thought you were in New York.’

‘I came back—obviously.’

With or without Vanessa? she wondered. ‘Well, don’t feel like you have to hang around here for my benefit,’ she said tightly.

He didn’t usually hang around. He strode in and out of her life like a visiting patron, asked all the right polite questions about what she’d been doing since he’d seen her last and sometimes even lingered long enough to drag her out with him to some formal function—just to keep up appearances. He occupied the suite adjoining her bedroom suite but had never slept in it. Appearances, it seemed, only went as far as delivering her to her bedroom door before he turned and strode out of the house again.

‘It is expected.’

And that’s telling me, Nell thought with another wince. ‘Well, I hereby relieve you of your duty,’ she threw back, moved restlessly, which hurt, so she made herself go still again. And her eyelids were growing too heavy to hold up any longer. ‘Go away, Xander.’ Even her voice was beginning to sound slurry. ‘You make me nervous, hanging around like this …’

Not so you would notice, Xander thought darkly as he watched the little liar drop into a deep sleep almost before her dismissal of him was complete.

The night-light above her bed was highlighting her sickly pallor along with the swollen cuts and bruises that distorted her beautiful face. She would be shocked if she knew what she looked like.

Hell, the miserable state of her wounded body shocked him.

And her hair was a mess, lying in lank, long copper tangles across the pillow. Oddly, he liked it better when it was left to do its own thing like this. The first time he’d seen her she’d been stepping into her father’s house, having just arrived back from taking the dogs for a walk. It had been windy and cold outside and her face was shining, her incredible waist-length hair wild and rippling with life. Green eyes circled by a fascinating ring of turquoise had been alight with laughter because the smallest of the dogs, a golden Labrador puppy determined to get into the house first, had bounded past her, only to land on its rear and start to slither right across the slippery polished floor to come to a halt at his feet.

She’d noticed him then, lifting her eyes up from his black leather shoes on one of those slow, curious journeys he’d learned to recognise as a habit she had that set his libido on heat. By the time she’d reached his face her laughter had died to sweet, blushing shyness.

What a hook, he mocked now, recalling what happened to him every time she’d blushed like that for him—or even just looked at him.

Xander looked away and went back to his grim contemplation of the unremarkable view of the darkness outside the window, not wanting to remember what came after the blushing look.

He should have backed off while he still had a chance then—right off. If he had done they would not be in the mess they were now in. It was not his thing to mix business with pleasure, and the kind of business he’d had going with Julian Garrett had needed a cool, clear head.

Sexual desire was neither cool nor clear-headed. It liked to catch you out when you were not paying attention. He’d had a mistress, a beautiful, warm and passionately sensual woman who knew what he liked and did not expect too much back, so what did he need with a wild-haired, beautiful-eyed ingénue with a freakish kind of innocence written into her blushing face?

A sigh ripped from him. Nell was right and he should leave. He should get the hell away from here and begin the unpalatable task of some very urgent damage control, only he had a feeling it was already too late.

The tabloid Press would already be running, churning out their damning accusations cloaked in rumour and suggestion. The only part of it all that he had going for him was the Press did not know what Nell had been in the process of doing when she crashed her car on that quiet country lane.

His pager gave a beep. Turning away from the window, he went to collect his jacket from where he’d tossed it on a chair and dug the pager out of one of the pockets.

Hugo Vance was trying to reach him. His teeth came together with a snap.

And so to discover the truth about his wife’s new friend, he thought grimly, shrugged on his jacket, sent Nell one final, searing dark glance then quietly let himself out of the room.

CHAPTER TWO

FOR the next few days Nell felt as if she had been placed in purdah. The only people that came to visit her belonged to the medical staff, who seemed to take great pleasure in making her uncomfortable before they made her comfortable again.

The first time they allowed her to take a shower she was shocked by the extent of her bruising. If anyone had told her that with enough applied pressure you could achieve a perfect imprint of a car safety belt across your body she would not have believed them—until she saw it striking across her own slender frame in two ugly, deep bands of dark purple bruising. She had puncture holes and stitches from the keyhole surgery and her cracked ribs hurt like crazy every time she moved. She had bruises on her legs, bruises and scratches on her arms and her face due to ploughing through bushes in an open-top car—before it had slammed into the tree.

And the miserable knowledge that Xander had seen her looking like this did not make her feel any better. It was no wonder he hadn’t bothered to come and visit her again.

Her night things had been delivered, toiletries, that kind of thing. And she’d even received a dozen red roses—Xander’s way of keeping up appearances, she supposed cynically. He was probably already back in New York by now, playing the big Greek tycoon by day and the great Greek lover by night for the lovely Vanessa.