'I could easily have forgotten we're in the bloody car in the street. And you wouldn't have stopped me, would you?'
Fran gave a small, shaken laugh. 'No,' she admitted.
'At least, I don't think so. Perhaps you'd better not put me to the test.'
'You're no help,' he said with wry humour.
His arm tightened and he turned to find her mouth again, but more gently this time. Warned by the previous, violent flare-up of emotion he was holding himself in check, and it was Fran who pressed herself urgently against him, his closeness and the heat of the first embrace still racing her blood.
For a moment he drew away. She gazed up at him and he muttered, 'God, what am I to do with you?' then kissed her again, his hands roving her body under the concealing cape, moulding and caressing through the thin material of her dress.
Impatient of the fine barrier, he reached behind her neck to the fastening, but the long zip stuck only part of the way down, thwarting him, and with a muffled exclamation of frustration he abandoned it and slid his hand beneath the folds of her full skirt. As his palm smoothed up her thigh and his searching fingers encountered the warmth of her flesh she whimpered against his mouth, the stroking, sensual touch sending a shudder of craving through her.
Through the thudding of her pulses she heard him murmuring her name, whispering it over and over again into her hair and her throat in an almost frenzied undertone, then he suddenly wrenched himself away and said roughly, 'This isn't doing either of us any good, is it?' His lips twisted into a smile which was half-grimace, he added, 'Or at least, I know the effect it's having on me!'
She leant her head back against the seat, eyes closed, the breath catching in her throat, and he said questioningly, 'Fran…?'
She could only shake her head, and his voice harsh with suppressed emotion, he said, 'Oh God, it's madness, and you're crazy if you agree, but let's get married and sort the rest out afterwards!'
For the space of a second she wondered if she had imagined his words. She turned towards him quickly. He was tense and still, waiting for her answer, and a wild joy sang in her veins. Half-laughing, half-crying, she said, 'I'm crazy, Grant.'
His mouth sought hers, and she returned the kiss with total abandon, her lips already parted for him. After a while he put her away from him and told her brusquely, 'Sit up. We have to talk.'
She nodded and he put a hand on her shoulder, then took hold of her thick plait, slowly twisting it.
'I've got to go to Scotland tomorrow for the filming of a play. I shall be away for ten days, but I'll get a licence before I leave in the morning and we'll get married as soon as I come back. I shall probably need some sort of proof of identity—medical card or driving licence or something.'
'I've got my birth certificate,' Fran offered. 'I think I can find it fairly easily.'
'They can't ask for more than that.' He tugged on her plait then released it. 'Come on—we'll get it now.'
When she got out of the car her legs felt much as they had done when she took her first tentative steps out of bed in hospital, and her hand trembled so much she had difficulty fitting the key into the lock. Grant took it from her, reaching from behind to open the door, then crossed his hands in front of her waist to hold her against him.
The hard pressure made her aware of the strength of his desire, and he bent and put his mouth to the nape of her neck before saying warningly, 'So don't put any more temptation in my way.'
There was laughter in the low, deep tones, but Fran knew he meant it seriously for all that. Nervously, she wondered if he had any idea of how completely inexperienced she was. Probably not. There had been nothing in her response to him to suggest that he was the only man ever to caress and explore her body. When he tried to bring back some measure of control it was she who had done the inciting, offering herself, inviting him to do whatever he wished. Hardly virginal shrinking, she realised, now her blood was cooler.
When they got in, the light was on in the lounge but Sacha had left a note propped on the shelf to say she had gone to bed. Fran read it and caught sight of herself in the mirror as she replaced it. Her eyes were languorous, heavy lidded and darkened, the full curve of her mouth swollen.
Suddenly self-conscious, she said jerkily, 'I'll go and find that certificate. It's in my bedroom somewhere,' and turned away from Grant's penetrating gaze.
As she went by he caught her wrist and pulled her back, studying her face. Unable to meet his scrutiny, she stared at the intricate design of the dark blues and greys in his tie. He put his fist under her chin, gently tilting her head back, and said deliberately, 'In a couple of weeks we shall be married and that's what I want to see.'
He traced his thumb slowly round the shape of her mouth, then slid it inside her bottom lip. She found the movement unexpectedly erotic and he smiled slightly at her changing expression. 'Don't try to hide desire from me. Sex isn't everything, and some people can manage to get along quite happily without it altogether, but I warn you I'm not one of them. To me it matters.'
She wondered fleetingly where he rated love, then dismissed the question. He wanted to marry her, and whatever his reasons they would have to be enough.
She gave him a wavering smile and after a moment he let her go and she went quickly to her bedroom. The birth certificate was more or less where she expected to find it, and when she got back Grant had put the kettle on in her absence and was spooning coffee into the cups. She handed the paper to him and he opened it and glanced at it casually, then gave a wry grimace.
With sharp uneasiness she asked, 'What is it?' and he shrugged.
'We are mad, do you realise that?' He gave a short laugh. 'I didn't know your name was Francesca.'
Fran watched him read through the rest of the document, her uneasiness deepening. He commented, 'So your father was a farmer,' then folded it and slipped it into his inside pocket. 'What happened to your parents?'
'My mother died when I was a few months old, which is why my aunt and uncle took me. He was my father's brother. They couldn't have children so they were happy and it solved a problem for my father. He was killed in an accident with a tractor when I was four. I don't remember him at all.'
He nodded and said musingly, 'Francesca… unusual, I like it,' then glanced down at her, smiling as he ran his finger down the edge of her cheek and under her jaw. 'But you'll always be Fran.'
She gazed back at him. He was right, they were mad, and she was crazy to even contemplate spending the rest of her life with him on the basis of one heated exchange of passion. Trying to hide what it cost her to utter the words, she told him, 'You don't need to marry me, Grant.'
Bluntly, he said, 'I know.' He watched the slow flush steal up her face almost with detachment. 'If I asked you now to come back to my apartment, you would.'
He read the admission in her eyes and smiled again, and desperately she asked, 'Then why are you marrying me?'
'Perhaps because I'm getting too old for affairs. Leaving a warm bed and getting dressed to go home can be a bit of an anti-climax.'
'No, seriously.'
The kettle boiled as she spoke, rattling the lid, and he turned away from her and unplugged it before replying. He said then, 'All right, seriously, it's too easy to walk out of an affair. I told you before, I'm not letting you get away from me.'
She almost said, 'Julia did,' but the painfully acquired caution prevented her. She was certain that Grant had read the thought all the same. His mouth was set into a hard line as he poured the water into the cups and looked round for the milk. Fran opened the fridge and took a bottle out, and by the time he turned to receive it from her the grim expression had disappeared.
They carried their cups back into the lounge and from unthinking habit, Fran sat in her usual chair. Grant observed drily, 'Prudent, but not necessary. Come here by me.'
Ridiculously shy she went into his outstretched arm and he kissed her lightly. 'I presume your uncle is still refusing to have a phone put in. You'd be
tter write to them as soon as I've fixed the date. Do we invite them?'
Fran hesitated, and said after consideration, 'I don't think so.'
Her aunt in particular would find it disillusioning, she knew. She was a churchgoer of the old school and disapproved of divorce, and it was possible she might even be against the marriage.
Grant showed no surprise, and said, 'If you start collecting your things together here, we can move them into my apartment when I get back. How much of all this is yours?'
'That poster,' Fran said, indicating it.
He read it with a smile, and his glance roaming round the room, remarked, 'Thank God.'
'Sacha feels insecure unless she's surrounded by muddle,' Fran explained lightly. She had cleaned and tidied up to some extent, but the expensive, starkly modern furniture obviously wasn't Grant's choice either.
He was silent, thinking, and she asked, 'What about your mother and stepfather? Will they come?'
'I'll ring her but I doubt it. She won't fly, and it's a long way to travel for a few minutes in a register office.' He raised his eyes to her face. 'It won't be the sort of wedding girls dream of, Fran. Do you mind?'
'No,' she said truthfully. 'I've never had visions of myself floating down the aisle in bridal white.'
With a small shock she realised she had never imagined herself getting married at all. There had been several men in her life, and one or two, she knew, had been on the brink of proposing, but she had never been emotionally involved with any of them. What would have happened if Grant hadn't found her again? Inwardly she shivered, appalled because she knew that unconsciously she might have waited for him for the rest of her life.
She heard him say, 'Has Bernstein got any work lined up for you?' and still wrapped in her thoughts, replied absently, 'No, I haven't done any since I came out of hospital.'
It wasn't until afterwards that she realised he didn't know about her job in the store and by then he was talking of something else. It didn't matter, she reflected. She only had to give a week's notice and she could do that when she went in tomorrow. She suspected that he didn't like the idea of her modelling and wouldn't be keen on a working wife anyway. Possibly he wanted children. The thought sent a quiver through her, but she couldn't ask him yet. Get married first and we'll sort the rest out afterwards, he had said.
She came out of her reverie to find he had undone the end of her plait and was pulling the strands apart and draping them round her shoulders. He said, 'There,' when he had finished, and smiled at her. 'You look about eighteen like that.'
'I'm twenty-three.'
'I know. And I'm thirty-seven.' His face became sombre for a moment. 'Not far off forty, Fran. Does it matter?'
'No,' she replied without hesitation.
'Satisfyingly prompt.'
His eyes roved her face, lingering on her mouth, and he turned her in his arms and lowered her back on to the settee. His lips hovering above hers, he murmured softly, 'But I can promise that I shall be able to cope with you for a good many years to come.'
She was slow to realise his meaning, and he watched her dawning comprehension with amusement as he gradually brought his mouth down on hers, gently invasive at first, then suddenly harder. She felt the sharp change from practised, sensual expertise, to primitive hunger, unthinking and uncontrolled, and reaction flared in her instantly, quickening her breathing and racing her pulse. The pressure of his arms increased until it was painful, then with a sudden movement he rolled on to her.
She gasped as his weight drove the air out of her lungs. Mouths locked together and pinned beneath the hardness of his heavy body she felt suffocated, and she made a sound of protest in her throat.
Hearing it, he raised his head and muttered thickly, 'This is the reason we're getting married, Fran.'
But it isn't my reason, she wanted to cry. Oh, the driving physical force was present in her just as strongly, but it didn't account for the rest of her feelings. The need she felt to be a part of him was the expression of her love, not its source.
Grant drew a deep breath and lifted himself on his hands to look down at her. He was frowning, almost grim, and without pausing to think, she said, 'You don't like the way you feel about me, do you?'
She met his eyes and saw the flicker of surprise there before he said slowly, 'No, I don't.'
'Why?'
Abruptly, he swung his legs down and rested his elbows on his knees, half-turned away from her. She studied his profile, noting the character lines etched in his face during the last nine years, the implacable set of his strong jaw.
He said at last, 'I suppose because I feel you're a weakness in me and I resent it. Everything else about myself I can control, but my feelings for you I can't. These last weeks I haven't been able to stop myself thinking of you, even though I tried. I nearly drove myself insane imagining Bernstein as your lover.' He turned his head to look down at her, then the thick lashes lowered, veiling the intensity in his eyes. 'But don't ever make the mistake of trying to use it against me, Fran. I'm not dependent on you. I would never allow myself to be dependent on anyone.'
Chilled, she asked, 'But… why do you resent it so? Isn't it how people should feel about each other when they marry?'
When he didn't reply, she said, 'But you've been married before so you know more about it than I do. Is it because of Julia that you feel the way you do?'
'Leave it, Fran,' he ordered harshly.
'How can I leave it? Is there always to be six years of your life that I must never talk about?'
'We'll talk about it one day, but now isn't the time.'
She pushed herself jerkily into a sitting position. 'Then perhaps now isn't the time for us to be getting married either.'
She stood up and turned her back on him to hide the self-inflicted pain in her face. Following her, he gripped her shoulders from behind. His voice hard with determination, he said, 'Perhaps it isn't, but we're going to. We both know how we feel and what's going to happen, whether it's here tonight or in ten days' time.'
'It's not a good enough reason.' Amazingly she sounded calm, no hint of her underlying misery showing in the words. 'Isn't there something in the vows about so long as ye both shall live?'
After a pause, Grant said, 'I have to admit that I don't know the precise wording of the civil ceremony, but it's something to that effect I agree. So?'
She twisted round and silently met his eyes, and he said, 'I shan't be making promises I have no intention of keeping, if that's what you're afraid of.'
'You made them before,' she pointed out.
His face tightened with the withdrawn look she already feared, and he said deliberately, 'Julia left me.'
'Yes, I know, but…' Ignoring the warning in his bleak expression, she went on, 'Who instigated the divorce?'
Flatly, he replied, 'She did.'
She wondered why she had bothered to ask. She had known it wouldn't be Grant who sought freedom.
'Has she married again?'
She risked a careful glance at him as she voiced the question, but his face was unreadable again. Except for that grim impatience it was only when he was caught off-guard that he betrayed anything, like earlier in the evening when he had first seen her with her hair coiled on the top of her head.
He said, 'No, she isn't married,' then, almost wearily, 'stop digging, Fran. I told you it was my fault—I haven't hidden it from you, but it was something which could only happen once, from one particular set of circumstances.'
'And you're not going to tell me what they were?'
'Not at this moment, no.'
'Was there anyone else… involved?'
He hesitated fractionally, the pause so tiny she could almost have imagined it. 'Not in the sense you mean. The divorce was on the grounds of separation.'
He suddenly pulled her against him, his fingers hard on her spine. Rocking her, he touched his lips to her temple. 'It will be all right, darling, believe me! I know what was wrong the first time and I'm not
making the same mistake again. I swear there's nothing for you to be afraid of—you above all women.'
She believed him because she so desperately needed to, and looking up quickly caught a flash of tenderness in his eyes. Reassured, she relaxed against him and he kissed her gently and without heat, like a lover who is sated. When he raised his head she smiled at him, and he said, 'So I'll still book the wedding.'
When she nodded he pressed her face against his shoulder for a moment and said, 'I must go soon. I'll ring you from Scotland tomorrow night to tell you the arrangements. I can give you the hotel number then so that you can reach me if you need to.' Feeling in the back pocket of his trousers, he added, 'And I'll give you a spare key to my apartment so you can go in and have a look round while I'm away.'
She took it from him and he watched her put it safely in her bag, then unexpectedly began to laugh, a deep sound of genuine amusement. When Fran raised her brows at him, he ordered, 'Find me a piece of paper I can write on!'
Sorting amongst the untidy litter of bills and envelopes on the shelf for a notepad, she asked, 'What for?' and still laughing, he regarded her quizzically.
'I think I'd better give you the address as well!'
CHAPTER FOUR
Fran broke the news to Sacha over breakfast, and withdrawing her attention from her muesli, Sacha said carefully, 'Are you sure you aren't being a teeny bit impetuous, darling?'
'Impetuous?' Fran repeated in rueful tones. 'Why wrap it up? Crazy is what you really mean.'
'True,' Sacha agreed with disconcerting candour. She chewed thoughtfully on her muesli for a while. 'You've always been rather a cautious girl until now. True love seems to have taken you remarkably suddenly.'
She left the question hanging delicately in the air and Fran met her astute gaze and shook her head. 'No,' she said. 'There's nothing sudden about it—it's a revival of a very old theme. I can't remember a time when I didn't love him.'
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