by Isobel Chace
‘I try to keep my promises,’ she said to his chest. How much she would have liked to have leaned against him and to have had his arms close round her, shutting out the rest of the world.
‘Ah, but did you know what you were promising?’
‘Fat chance I had of not knowing!’ Stephanie retorted. ‘I had Amber coaching me, don’t forget! She’s a perfectionist, that girl! I don’t know how she could, feeling as she does about you!’
He stopped rubbing her head. ‘And just what do you mean by that?’
‘You know very well!’
‘I wonder if you do,’ he said finally. ‘Amber doesn’t often talk about her affairs.’
‘She didn’t have to say anything!’ Stephanie retorted.
‘No, she didn’t. But she likes you, so she might have said something. Did she?’
‘Me!’
He gave her a quick hug. ‘Just enough to make you jealous?’
She was, of course, but that he should know it was too much for her. ‘Why should I be jealous?’ she demanded. But her voice shook, betraying her, and she hid her face in his shoulder, abandoning herself to the truth. ‘She’s so beautiful! And I want you to love me!’
She felt his shock as if it had been in her own body. ‘Stephanie, are you absolutely sure?’ he asked her.
She nodded helplessly. ‘I’ve always wanted it!’
‘Look, honey, this is important. I know you’re physically attracted to me, but how committed do you want to be?’
She shrugged her shoulders. ‘I’m your wife, she said simply.
He caressed her cheek, pushing her head back to meet his gaze. ‘I hope it’ll always be enough for you,’ he said, and he kissed her very gently full on the mouth.
They finished packing the Range Rover together after that. Stephanie, her mood ebullient, checked off the stores of food on her list and then sat back, watching Cas put it away, marvelling at the easy way he lifted the heavy boxes into the back of the vehicle.
‘Were you always big?’ she asked him. ‘What a Rugby player was lost in you!’
He paused in what he was doing. ‘I made out okay in my college football team,’ he told her. He grinned reminiscently. ‘It was the best way of getting the girls to come around, apart from the glory of being the star of one’s class. I liked the girls even better than I liked the team!’
She decided she didn’t want to hear about it. ‘You would have been safer on the Rugger field,’ she said. ‘We don’t have cheer-leaders and other inessentials to distract us from the really important matter in hand!’
‘How often did you play?’
She opened her eyes wide. ‘Have you ever seen a Rugby match?’
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Full of bodily contact, so I was told!’
‘Well then, it’s a man’s game. Women don’t play Rugger!’
His mouth twitched. ‘Pity,’ he murmured.
She giggled. ‘Women play Soccer nowadays!’ Her eyes glinted with mischief. ‘And of course we play all your American games. I played them all at school. Basketball, only we call it netball; and baseball, only we call that rounders. I was very good—’
‘It sounds to me as though your experience of playing games has been very limited if those were the only games you played at school,’ he drawled.
‘Cas!’
‘You’d better watch out,’ he went on, taking base advantage of her confusion. ‘I learned some pretty fancy footwork in my time! You won’t escape me easily if I set my mind on having my way with you!’
‘How do you know I’m not playing on your team?’ she countered.
‘So that’s the league you’re aiming at?’ he murmured.
‘Oh, Cas, don’t tease me! Why else did you marry me? I know I’m not—’ She broke off, bitterly aware of what she had been about to say. But there were some things that were better not said, especially to one’s husband when one was almost sure that he was in love with somebody else. ‘I believe in aiming high!’ She caught herself up, lifting her chin to show herself as much as him that she was not afraid of him, or anyone else.
He held out his hand to her, lifting hers to his lips. ‘I think we’d better go inside, sweetheart. How will you like to be back in the apartment you shared with your father?’
‘I shall miss looking out at the dome of the Madrasseh. It’s my favourite of them all.’
His arm about her shoulders was both possessive and disturbing. As a married lady you’ll have less time to day-dream at your window. What else will you miss?’
‘It’s never really seemed mine,’ she confessed. ‘One doesn’t get very involved with a hotel bedroom, and it didn’t seem much more than that to me. I prefer your apartment. It has a much better cooker.’
‘You would know,’ he agreed. ‘You haven’t seen it, though, since you moved out of it, have you? Not until today?’
She shook her head. ‘Have you let it get into a terrible mess?’
‘You’ll have to judge that for yourself!’
She wouldn’t have minded if he had. She was besotted enough to have thought it fun to clear up after him. She would have the place clean, tidy, and respectable in a jiffy, and she would enjoy doing it.
But when he opened the door and ushered her inside, it was not chaos that met her eyes, but flowers everywhere and her own suitcases neatly standing within the door.
‘I thought you might want to unpack your own things, he said, ‘but you won’t need anything right now that I can’t supply, will you?’
She couldn’t answer him. She had never seen such riches as those banks of flowers. Nobody had ever made such an open-handed gesture to her before!
‘Oh, Cas, you shouldn’t splurge—’
He stopped her mouth with a finger. ‘I’ll splurge all I like when it comes to my own wife, honey. It would be more gracious to thank me, rather than to stand there adding up the cost, like the housewifely soul that you are!’
‘Oh, Cas, I was not!’ she denied. ‘Only it’s too much! A few flowers—’
‘Don’t you like them?’
‘You know I do!’ She flung her arms round his neck. ‘I wish I were exotic enough to live up to them, but of course I like them!’ She touched his cheek with the palm of her hand and reached up to offer him her lips. ‘I wish I could have given you something too,’ she whispered. I didn’t even think of getting anything for you!’
‘Why should you? It’s the man who woos the woman, not the other way round!’
She stared up at him, her eyes dark. ‘But I thought—’
‘It’s too late to ask me to wait now, little Stephanie,’ he murmured against her lips. ‘You’ve gone out of your way to convince me it isn’t necessary, and I want to know that you’re mine. I’ve wanted to make love to you ever since I bumped into you in the square, and now that you’re my wife—’
His lips were soft and warm against hers, but when she made a movement of withdrawal, she realised that he was being deceptively gentle. He had no intention of letting her go. She remembered how easily he had handled her when she had collided with him in the door of the shop, lifting her clear off her feet to prevent her falling, and she knew again the glorious excitement of her own weakness and the longing to submit completely to his male strength.
He picked her up bodily, ignoring her soft protest that she was too heavy for him, and sat down on the easy chair her father had always considered to be his own, holding her closely against him. When he kissed her again, he had forgotten his intention not to frighten her by demanding too much too soon. His lips demanded her compliance and more, leading her quickly to an ecstatic response that she had never known before and which shattered her by its intensity.
‘Mmm,’ he said. ‘You taste nice!’
‘So do you.’ She smiled shakily, making an instinctive movement to tidy her appearance.
‘Not beery?’
She shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t care if you did!’
He took a pleasure in rufflin
g her hair and destroying her efforts to smooth down her skirts. ‘A sweet disorder in the dress is much more appealing,’ he said in her ear. ‘Who would have suspected that cool exterior of yours hid such a warm heart?’
She peeped up at him, still shy of revealing her feelings to him. ‘I think you did,’ she said.
His eyes were incredibly blue. ‘Darling, don’t ever get hot and bothered about anyone else, will you? I like to think I’m the only one you’ll allow to turn your emotions upside down and make chaos of your tidy instincts.’
He did that all too easily! ‘I can’t help liking things neat!’ she protested.
‘There’s nothing tidy about love, honey. You might as well try to tame a flooding river, or a freak storm, or the waves of the sea. You have to go along with it. If you hold back, it’ll wash right over you. It’s stronger than you are!’
She ran her fingers through his hair, liking the feel of it. She liked the hardness of the muscles in his shoulders too, and the strength in the arms about her. She strained closer to him. ‘You’re strong enough for me! Cas, I only want to please you, only I’ve never—I mean, it’s never been like this for me before.’ She ran her lips across his cheek and kissed his ear, hiding from the burning light in his eyes. ‘I love you!’
His hands found the zip down the back of her dress and slipped inside her bodice, and he smiled against her lips as he felt her heart rocket beneath his touch.
‘I’d hate it if you had known this before. I want you to be all mine—and you want it too, don’t you?’
‘You know I do!’
He kissed her again, but more tenderly this time, though she could feel the passion just below the surface, kept firmly under control. She loved him very much in that moment, knowing how easily he could overwhelm her and how little she would have blamed him for doing so, and yet he was giving her all the time she needed to allow her own response to burgeon into life and to blossom into something lovely for them both.
When at last he put her away from him she felt as triumphant as if she had climbed Mount Everest singlehanded, and she could hardly contain her glee when she put her hand on his and felt the frisson that the contact gave him travel up his arm, and knew with certainty that she could move him, even as he could her.
‘What time do we leave in the morning?’ she asked him.
‘As early as possible,’ he answered lazily. ‘I thought we’d call by the office first. I want them all to know that we’ve gone together.’
Her interest was caught. ‘Are you up to something?’ she demanded.
‘Nothing that I plan to tell you about.’
She was hurt and found it hard to hide it from him.
‘Something to do with my father?’
‘Don’t fish, honey. I’m not telling you until I’m good and ready, and that isn’t now.’
‘I see,’ she said. ‘I have to trust you, but you don’t trust me!’
‘That’s about the size of it,’ he agreed, without interest.
‘But why not? I haven’t done anything to make you distrust me, have I?’
‘I’m not prepared to discuss it!’ He rose irritably to his feet. ‘Do you want to go out to get something to eat, or shall we have something quietly here?’
‘I don’t mind.’ She felt cold and very close to tears. ‘Cas, I would have brought those letters to you sooner or later. I only wanted time to think about it. They were supposed to have been typed by me!’
‘Exactly, so drop it, will you?’ He made no move to console her. ‘How do you feel about caviare and vodka?’
‘I’d sooner stay here.’ She made a determined effort to put a good face on things. ‘If we’re going to make an early start I’d like to put my things away and decide what clothes I want to take with me, things like that.’
‘Okay.’ He bent over her and dropped a kiss on the end of her nose. ‘Good girl! You have me to look after you now, but I have to go about it my way. There’s too much at stake for both of us!’
‘Then you are on my side?’
He grinned. ‘Did you doubt it?’
‘Not really, but I’m used to fighting my own battles.’
‘And your father’s too, no doubt. But that’s something you gave up when you married me this morning, my love. You’re my responsibility now.’
‘And my father too?’
‘It’s all in the family. Don’t forget he’s now my father-in-law!’
She had forgotten. She was ashamed to think that she hadn’t given her family a single thought all day. She had had enough to do coming to terms with her new position as Mrs. Casimir Ruddock. Even so, it was uncharacteristic in the extreme for her to plunge into the unknown without worrying about her parents and the effect it would have on them first and all the time.
‘I don’t know what they’re going to say when they hear I’m married. I should have sent them a cable. They simply won’t believe it!’
‘They’ll forgive you! When we get back to Isfahan, we’ll put in a call and you can speak to them person-to-person.’
‘But they don’t know you!’
‘They will one day. I’m not asking you to give up your family, but I intend to come first with my wife. You’ll find it a little different meeting them as my wife and not as just their loving daughter. But different doesn’t mean worse! I think you may all come to prefer it.’
‘I hope so,’ she said, unable to conceal her doubts about that. ‘I’m afraid they’ll be very angry!’
‘If they are, it will be with me.’ His smile was warm and affectionate. ‘In a few weeks time, when you’ve got used to things, you’ll wonder what you were worrying about. You have remarkably little confidence in yourself, my love, for one who can bring the most difficult of us round her thumb with a flick of the wrist!’
She was astonished that he should think so. And when she thought how much she would like to have her own way with him at times, she thought it unkind in him to tease her about it. ‘That’ll be the day!’ she said on a sigh.
He looked at her with some amusement. ‘You’ll do!’ he assured her. ‘You want too much too quickly, but you’ll get there in the end.’
She could only hope he was right. And whether he was or not, she would be far better off doing something positive instead of worrying herself to death about it, so she made herself take her suitcases to her room and unpacked them with a fierce concentration which she took on with her into the kitchen, rearranging that too to her complete satisfaction.
By the time she had finished she felt considerably better. When Cas came and stood in the doorway, she smiled at him over her shoulder, glad to see him.
‘If you want to eat caviare, we could eat it at home,’ she suggested. ‘I can easily make us some of those little pancakes, and melt some butter. We even have some cream.’
‘Sounds fine to me,’ he agreed. ‘Can I help?’
She allowed him to set the table when he seemed determined to do something. It still felt odd to her to have a man prepared to help her in the kitchen and she was shy of making too much use of him at first. When he offered to make the batter for the pancakes, she had no excuse ready to prevent him, and found herself standing around watching him for a change and, she had to admit, enjoying the picture he made as he beat the batter into the frothy mixture he wanted.
‘Are you going to make the pancakes, or am I?’ he asked her.
She put on the pan to heat and reached into the refrigerator for the small jar of caviare that Fatemeh had given them earlier in the day.
‘I’ll cook them and you can eat them,’ she laughed at him.
‘Indeed you won’t! There’s a gadget here to keep the pancakes hot. Cook enough for both of us and we’ll eat them together!’
Nothing loth, she put a little of the mixture in the hot pan and tossed it over with the quick, jerky movement she had learned years before.
She heard the telephone ring, but she didn’t give it a thought, so intent was she on what she was
doing. Cas went to answer it, and she could hear his deep voice arguing with whoever it was at the other end. Then there was a long silence. She didn’t even look up when he came back into the kitchen.
‘Who was it?’ she asked.
‘Amber. I’m sorry, honey, but I’ll have to go to her. I asked her to do something for me and it’s come off sooner than either of us expected.’ He kissed her lightly on her warm cheek and tweaked her fringe with his hand. ‘I shan’t be any longer than I can help.’
‘But, Cas, you can’t go now!’
His hand cupped her chin and he kissed her again. ‘I’ll make it up to you, I promise you,’ he said gruffly, ‘but I have to go!’
She didn’t believe him. It would always be the same, she thought. Amber would beckon and he would go running to her, without a thought for the wife he left behind him. She heard him slam the door as he went out without moving her muscle. The tears came slowly, running down her cheeks and hissing as they hit the hot pan below, but she made no move to wipe them away. It was a long time later before she turned off the flame and, leaving everything exactly as it was, went into the bedroom that had been her own when she and her father had shared the apartment before and, as systematically as she did everything else, went through her usual routine before going to bed, only then allowing herself the luxury of crying herself to sleep.
CHAPTER IX
Stephanie lay very still when she heard the front door opening and knew that Cas had returned. She didn’t have to look at her watch to know that it was very late. What a way to spend her wedding night!
He went first into the kitchen. Stephanie wished she had taken the trouble to put everything away before she had come to bed. He would know how much he had hurt her when he saw that she had eaten nothing and had not even bothered to wash up the tools they had used together, or to put away the ingredients they had needed for the pancakes.
After a while she wondered what he was doing, but then she heard him coming towards her bedroom door and she lay very still, pretending to be asleep. He opened the door and put his head round, checking to see that she was there.