by Penny Jordan
‘Actually, I rather think I’d like some more champagne. I’m celebrating, you see,’ she heard herself telling him, uncharacteristically and recklessly emptying her glass before he could remove it and then looking round for the waiter with what she didn’t realise was champagne-induced vagueness. Her lips did feel slightly numb, it was true, but then so did her toes, and they hadn’t had any contact whatsoever with the champagne, had they?
‘Celebrating what?’ Marcus demanded tersely, his hold on her arm tightening.
‘My miracle,’ Lucy responded, forming the words very carefully.
She might have imagined it, but she thought Marcus actually swore softly. ‘The only miracle here is that you’re still standing,’ he muttered.
The waiter was almost level with her. She reached out to pick up a full glass of champagne from the tray he was carrying, but Marcus got there before she could lift the glass, the fingers of his free hand closing hard on her own.
‘Leave it where it is, Lucy,’ he commanded her calmly.
‘I’m thirsty,’ Lucy protested. Thirsty for the nectar of his kiss, thirsty for the feel of his mouth on her own, on her skin, everywhere, whilst she drank in the taste of him. She looked at his hand, at his long, strong fingers curled around her own. She wanted to put her other hand on top of it, so that she could touch him. She wanted to lift his hand to her mouth so that she could breathe in the scent of his skin as she explored it with her lips and with her tongue. Longing burned through her, leaping from nerve-ending to nerve-ending until she was filled with it, possessed by it…
‘I think it’s time we left.’ The cool hardness of Marcus’s voice chilled her overheated thoughts.
‘We?’ she queried warily.
‘Yes. We. I was just about to leave—and, unless you want the remainder of your great-aunt’s guests to witness the unedifying sight of you sprawled on her parquet floor, I rather think you would be wise to leave with me. In fact, I am going to insist on it.’
‘You’re my trustee, Marcus, not my guardian or my keeper.’
‘Right now, I’m a man very close to the edge of his patience. And besides, I need to talk you about Prêt a Party.’
Lucy stiffened defensively.
‘If you’re going to lecture me about Nick again—’ she began, but Marcus simply ignored her and continued as though she hadn’t interrupted him.
‘You may remember me mentioning some time ago that my sister Beatrice wants to plan a surprise party for her husband’s fiftieth birthday?’
‘Yes,’ Lucy agreed. Beatrice was Marcus’s elder sister, and her husband George was something very important in the mysterious highest echelons of the civil service.
‘I have to go and see Beatrice later this week, and she suggested that I should take you along with me so that she can discuss her party with you. I thought you might want to check your diary before we fix on a date.’
Lucy exhaled weakly. She was grateful to be given any business right now—even if it meant having to spend time with Marcus in order to obtain it.
‘I’ve got a fairly free week,’ she responded, as nonchalantly as she could. The truth was that she had a wholly free week; in fact the only event she had coming up in the whole of the next month was a launch bash for a sportswear manufacturer.
Somehow or other they had actually reached the door to the hallway, where her great-aunt was already saying goodbye to some of her other guests, and it was obvious that Marcus had every intention of hauling her through it. If she dug in her heels, would he literally drag her across the parquet?
‘You’re walking too fast,’ she told him breathlessly, and then gave a small startled ‘oof’ of exhaled breath as he stopped so suddenly that she cannoned straight into him.
She was standing body to body with Marcus, and he had one hand on her arm whilst his other was pressed into the small of her back. She could smell the faint lemony scent of his cologne, mixed with warm man scent. Suddenly the back of her throat prickled treacherously with tears. How many hours had she wasted after she had first smelled it on him haunting the men’s toiletries departments of upmarket stores? Sniffing and testing and searching, hoping that she might recognise it and find out just what it was he wore, so that she could buy some and put a little on her pillows, so that she could wear it herself if necessary—anything just to be able to feel closer to him. But she had never discovered what it was.
Body to body with Marcus. If only by some miracle he would draw her closer now, and bend his head and cover her mouth with his—if only, if only…
‘Marcus, dear boy—so good of you to come. And Lucy…’
Lucy could feel her face burning as Marcus stepped back from her but still continued to hold on to her arm.
The almost flirtatious warmth of her voice as her great-aunt had greeted Marcus chilled quite distinctly over her own name, Lucy noticed cynically. Was there any woman on the surface of the earth who was immune to Marcus’s personal brand of male charm?
‘A truly delightful occasion, Alice. Thank you for inviting me.’
‘My dear boy, how could I not? After all, your family have been taking care of our family’s financial affairs since before the Peninsular War. Of course there should have been food, but I’m afraid Lucy rather let me down there.’
Lucy gasped in outrage.
‘That—Ouch!’ she protested as Marcus trod on her toes, then hustled her out into the street—just as though she were a prisoner under armed guard, Lucy decided indignantly.
‘You do realise that you stood on my toes, don’t you?’ she objected, as she breathed in the familiar scent of the sun-warmed city.
‘Better my foot on your toes than your foot in your own mouth, don’t you think?’ Marcus suggested.
It took Lucy several seconds to recognise what he was saying, but once she had she glowered indignantly and told him, ‘It was Great-Aunt Alice herself who decided not to have any food. It was nothing to do with me.’
‘You amaze me sometimes, you know, Lucy,’ Marcus told her grimly. ‘Has no one ever told you that a little tact goes a long way towards oiling the wheels of business and reputation?’
‘You’re a fine one to talk! You never bother using tact when you talk to me, do you?’
‘Some situations call for stronger measures,’ Marcus answered grimly.
‘If you mean my marriage—’ Lucy began hotly, and then stopped.
Her marriage was just not something she felt safe discussing with Marcus. The last thing she wanted was to have him probing into the whys and wherefores of her relationship with Nick. There was no point in allowing herself to be drawn into an argument she already knew she was not going to win.
‘You can let go of me now, Marcus,’ Lucy hissed valiantly several seconds later, when he was still holding on to her. But Marcus ignored her, keeping a firm grip on her arm as he flagged down a taxi and then opened the door for her, almost pushing her inside it. Lucy resentfully moved as far away from him as she could as he sat down beside her.
‘Where to, guv?’ the taxi driver demanded.
‘Wendover Square. Number twenty-one.’
‘Arncott Street.’
They had both spoken together.
‘Make yer mind up,’ the cabbie complained.
‘Wendover Square,’ Marcus repeated, before Lucy could speak, leaving her to glower angrily at him.
‘It would have been easier if he’d dropped me off first, Marcus.’
‘I want to talk to you,’ Marcus told her coolly.
‘So talk,’ she said recklessly.
‘In private,’ Marcus informed her in a very gritty voice.
The taxi driver was turning into Wendover Square, its elegant Georgian houses overlooking one of London’s most attractive private squares.
Marcus’s house—the same house his grandfather and his great-grandfather had lived in, in fact all his ancestors right back to the Carring who had first begun the bank in the days of the Peninsular War—had just a
bout the best position in the whole square. Four storeys high and double fronted, with a proper back garden, it was a true family house, and Lucy could see how impressed the cabbie was as he pulled up outside it and unlocked the door for them.
‘I do hope that whatever you want to say to me isn’t going to take too long, Marcus.’ Lucy was trying to sound as businesslike as possible—a difficult task when suddenly, for no discernible reason, her tongue seemed to be slipping and sliding over her words, and the motion of the taxi had made her feel very dizzy indeed.
‘No Mrs Crabtree?’ she managed to articulate, when Marcus opened the door and there was no sign of his housekeeper. As Lucy knew, the woman treated her employer as though he were at the very most one step down from god status.
‘She’s gone to stay with her daughter, to help look after her new baby.’
‘Oh!’ Lucy gave an exclamation of surprise as she semi-stumbled in the hallway.
‘I told you you’d had too much to drink,’ Marcus said grimly. ‘And you’re certainly in no fit state to go anywhere on your own.’
His accusation stung—and all the more so because it was just not true. She didn’t drink! But before she could say so, he was continuing curtly, ‘You’re out of touch, Lucy. The tipsy, thirty-something, Bridget Jones-type female is over. The in thing now is the committed working mother with two children and a husband—and if you don’t believe me take a look at your own friends. Carly and Julia are both married now, and both mothers.’
As though she needed reminding of that! Lucy thought miserably.
‘I am not thirty-anything,’ she told him crossly instead. ‘And, just in case you had forgotten, I’ve been married.’
‘Forgotten? How the hell could anyone forget that?’
‘And I have not had too much to drink,’ Lucy added forcefully.
The look Marcus gave her made her whole body burn, never mind just her face.
‘No? Well, all I can say is that if this is the state you were in when Nick Blayne picked you up, it’s no wonder—’
‘It’s no wonder what?’ Lucy stopped him. ‘No wonder that I went to bed with him? Well, for your information, I went to bed with him because—’
‘Spare me your reminiscences about how much you loved him, Lucy,’ Marcus told her flatly. ‘Blayne saw you coming and took advantage of you—financially, emotionally, and for all I know sexually as well. He used you, Lucy, and you let him. Couldn’t you see what he was?’ he demanded in exasperation. ‘I should have thought even a sixteen-year-old virgin could have recognised that the man was a user.’
‘Sixteen-year-old virgins probably have better eyesight than twenty-plus unmarrieds,’ Lucy retaliated flippantly. How many times had she used flippancy as her defence against the powerful blasts of Marcus’s irritated broadsides? Surely more than enough to know how much they increased his ire. But what else could she do? Without her protective shield of nonchalance she might just break down into a sobbing wreck of pleading female misery, and he would like that even less!
‘I loved Nick,’ she lied wildly.
‘Did you? Or did you just want to go to bed with him?’
‘A girl doesn’t have to marry a man in order to have sex with him these days, Marcus. She doesn’t even have to love him. All she needs to do is simply do it.’
She could see the contempt flashing through his eyes as he looked at her.
‘Have you any idea just how provocative that statement is? Or how vulnerable you are?’
Lucy stared at him. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that right now any man could get you into his bed.’
‘That is so not true!’
‘No? Want me to prove it to you?’
‘You couldn’t,’ Lucy objected recklessly.
‘No?’
He reached for her so suddenly that she didn’t even have time to think about evading him, never mind actually do so. One minute she was standing in his hallway, the next she was in Marcus’s arms, held securely against him. His mouth came down on her own, hard and sure, hot with male pride and anger, and he took her half-parted lips in a victor’s kiss. And she didn’t care, she didn’t care one little bit. A feeling far more potent than the bubbles from a thousand bottles of champagne hit her emotions. He was kissing her. Marcus was kissing her.
Marcus was kissing her.
Marcus was kissing her!
CHAPTER THREE
‘OH. MMM. Oh…’ Greedily Lucy clung, both to the sensation and to the man delivering it, reaching up to wrap her arms tightly around Marcus’s neck as she caved in to her own need. She had wanted him too much and for too long to resist this…this miracle of miracles, she decided headily, and she moved even closer to him, trying to ease the ache deep inside her body by arching into him and moving her body against his.
‘Oh, Marcus…’ she sighed ecstatically, as she felt the unmistakable surge of his erection pressing into her.
‘Lucy…no!’ He pushed her sharply away.
Bereft and stunned, she stared reproachfully at him.
‘You see, this is exactly the kind of situation I’ve brought you here to avoid,’ he told her brusquely. ‘If I’d let you make your own way home—’
‘But what if I don’t want to avoid it?’ Lucy demanded provocatively. ‘What if I want…’ What on earth was she saying? Another minute and she’d be telling Marcus that this was what she had been dreaming from the first time she had stood opposite him in his office. Dreaming of, lusting after, longing for…
‘Never mind what you want,’ Marcus told her acerbically. ‘What you need right now is to sleep off that champagne.’
Reddening and humiliated, Lucy started to walk towards the door. ‘Well, in that case I’d better go home, then, hadn’t I?’ she said petulantly. The truth was that, whilst she wasn’t drunk, the glass and a half of champagne she’d had was a whole glass more than she normally had to drink—on an empty stomach, too. And there was no doubt that the combined effect of Marcus’s presence, the privacy of his house, plus the intensity of her feelings for him were all working together to make her want to put into practice the feverish lust-filled desires she had kept hidden for so very long. However, dizzy with lust and longing though she was, she was still in control enough to recognise that the best place for her right now was somewhere with a comfortable bed and no Marcus.
‘No way.’ Marcus stopped her. ‘You can sleep it off here. Come on—this way.’
He had turned her round and was practically frog-marching her up the stairs, Lucy recognised wrathfully. She tried to pull away from him, and to her chagrin overbalanced on her spindly heels.
‘Right—that’s it,’ Marcus announced, swinging her up into his arms before she could stop him as he climbed the last couple of stairs.
With her face buried against his shoulder, and her hand splayed out across his shirt, perfectly able to feel the crisp male hair beneath it, Lucy felt as though she had suddenly become a sort of sexual Lucy in Wonderland, fallen into a magical fantasy world.
Still carrying her, Marcus strode down the landing and in true Hollywood hero fashion pushed open a bedroom floor with one highly polished shoe. How typical of Marcus that he would wear such traditional-looking shoes, Lucy acknowledged, whilst her stomach muscles cramped in pleasure at the exciting discovery that said shoes looked rather bigger than those worn by her unmourned ex-husband. They must be at least a size eleven, maybe even larger…
The room they were in was obviously a guest room, pristinely neat and decorated in a rather old-fashioned and very unadventurous mix of traditional chintz and heavy inherited family furniture.
Not that Lucy had very much inclination to study the furniture—not when Marcus was sliding her down his body in such a delicious and delirium-inducing way. Sliding her down his body and trying to step back from her, she recognised. But she wasn’t going to let him.
The shock of her own thoughts was a powerful adrenaline surge, filling her with a determination th
at was turning her into someone she hardly recognised. Someone who was demanding to know why she should not have what she wanted; why she should not do as others did and simply take what she wanted. Why she should not for once in her life simply put herself and her own needs first.
She had never experienced anything so alluringly tempting, so wonderfully empowering, so overwhelming irresistible. Why should she try to resist it? Why shouldn’t she seize this opportunity? Why shouldn’t she allow herself to seduce Marcus into taking her to bed? Why shouldn’t she do what other women did all the time instead of denying herself what she so desperately wanted? Why should she always be the one to go without? Why shouldn’t she allow herself this one night?
And tomorrow? When she had to face Marcus’s anger and rejection?
But this wasn’t tomorrow. It was today. It was here and now. She was already dealing with Marcus’s rejection and had been for years. Why shouldn’t she sweeten it with the kind of memories that would burn within the shrine of her most secret places for ever?
‘Marcus…Marcus…’ she whispered fiercely against his lips, and she lifted her mouth to his, wriggling as close to him as she could, oblivious to the fact that her movements had caused the press-studs fastening her fragile silk dress to pop open until she felt the unwanted presence of its small cap sleeves halfway down her arms.
The unwanted intrusion of her dress and its unfamiliarly draped sleeves was easily dealt with. She simply dropped her arms and let it slide down to the floor, to pool round her feet, then stepped out of it. Thus freed, she lifted her arms and wrapped them tightly round Marcus’s neck, standing in only one shoe, a thin silk camisole and matching fluted-legged brief French knickers. Ridiculously, perhaps, one of the first things she had done after Nick’s betrayal and their subsequent divorce was to go inside the Agent Provocateur shop she walked past most days on her way to her office and treat herself to the kind of underwear that every sensual woman had a right to enjoy—even if her husband had labelled her as sexless.