A Guilty Affair

by Hamilton, Diana

  ‘And one thing more. I’m not offering marriage—now or in the future. I know that sounds brutal,’ he said coolly, watching the colour come and go on her delicate skin, hating himself for what his need for her was making him do. ‘But it’s better to face the facts. If I marry—and I suppose I must, somewhere down the line—the purpose will be to get an heir. The sole purpose. I have been as honest with you as I can be. Now it’s for you to decide.’

  He stood up, his face austere, and Bess, something withering inside her, shrivelled by what he had just told her, pointed out tartly, ‘I’m good enough to take to bed, but not good enough to be the mother of your children! Is that what you’re saying?’ Her voice rose raggedly. ‘I’m perfectly capable of providing you with an heir—a whole clutch of them if that’s what you want—so it must be, mustn’t it?’

  ‘Bess—cara—’ Pain darkened his eyes—a fleeting display of emotion, quickly controlled. ‘I don’t doubt your fertility. But you need—deserve—more from life than that. Would you want to walk through your life knowing you’d been married to provide children—like a brood mare? Think about it.’

  The things he’d said had been unbelievably harsh but his voice was achingly gentle as he told her, ‘I’ll rustle up something to eat now, let you think it over in peace. And Bess...’ He hesitated as he made to walk back to the house. ‘Take your time. Be very sure of what you want.’

  She sagged weakly back against the soft cushions, her head throbbing. She knew what she wanted.

  She wanted him. His love. For ever. But there was no guarantee of ever obtaining that love, earning it. Just the opposite. He’d been brutally honest with her—did he have any idea how much it had hurt?

  She wondered feverishly if she should cut and run—now, while she still had some strength of mind left—or whether she should stay, bowing to the inevitability of her love for him, his excruciating power over her.

  She shifted uneasily on the lounger, the sun heating her skin through the thin fabric of her suit. She was walking in a minefield; whether she accepted his offer or not the results would be cataclysmic.

  She could move in with him, love him, wake up each morning wondering whether today was the day when he would tell her the affair was over. That he had decided the time was right for marriage—to some well-pedigreed woman who would see nothing unacceptable or even slightly unreal about marrying into a dynasty to provide it with an heir for the future.

  Or she could walk away and spend the rest of her life aching for him, regretting...

  She had no defences against him, that was the problem. She had to fight both him and herself, and had nothing to fight with.

  Her lips compressed. She would find something to fight him with. She had to.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ‘FOR how long would your proposed arrangement last?’ Bess’s bluntness was down to the stiffening she’d forced into her backbone—a weapon to use against the sheer temptation of him.

  She watched him put the heavy tray down on the table and tacked on coldly, ‘It would be more convenient if I knew what sort of time limit I was looking at. A month? A year?’ She couldn’t help the note of sarcasm; she wasn’t prepared to pussyfoot around this thing. She wasn’t used to being propositioned. And the knowledge that he would enter their relationship so objectively, the decision already made to end it when it suited him, was pulling her apart.

  She wanted him to love her, but he couldn’t. Was he incapable of loving anyone? Or was she, as far as he was concerned, fanciable but unlovable?

  One brow was slightly raised in an otherwise blank and beautiful face as he perched on the other lounger; it told her quite plainly that he considered her attitude gauche to the point of rudeness.

  Well, that was too bad, she decided raggedly, watching his elegantly made hands as he leant forward and forked wafer-thin slices of cold roast pheasant and tangy pasta salad onto a fine bonechina plate.

  The desperately unsettling thing, though, was the way knowing him, loving him, had changed her. If anyone had put such a proposition to her before she would have blushed to the roots of her primly scraped-back hair and slapped his face—all outraged virginity and rigid principles.

  Yet here she was, actually discussing his invitation—or trying to, because so far he hadn’t said a thing. Falling in love with him had changed her out of all recognition.

  But he still wasn’t saying anything. He handed her the plate and a huge linen napkin to spread over her knees and there was a grim look in his eyes when he eventually said, ‘Why be difficult, Bess? Relax, why don’t you? Eat first, and then we can discuss our future. If we’re to have a future together, that is.’

  He had brought, she saw, champagne on ice, and her throat closed up as she watched him neatly strip the foil from the top of the bottle.

  Difficult? She was entitled to be difficult, wasn’t she? It wasn’t every day the man she loved asked her to be his live-in lady! Offered her paradise with one hand and the certainty that she’d be booted right out of it with the other!

  The man she loved. That was the true difficulty. Bess put her plate down on the table. The food would choke her. There was a steel band round her heart and it was tightening by the second, suffocating her.

  She loved him to the point of lunacy, so why, she asked herself, wasn’t she snatching at the opportunity of living with him? She could work hard at making herself indispensable, couldn’t she? Insinuate herself into his heart, teach him to love her, make sure he couldn’t Jive without her.

  She could accept his offer as a wonderful, oncein-a-lifetime opportunity. A challenge. Couldn’t she?

  She saw the danger just in time, and put the brakes on the helter-skelter of her imagination, stopping herself from losing herself completely in the fantasy her mind was creating for her.

  ‘Future? What future do we have? That’s what I’m asking.’ She balled up her napkin and tossed it on the table where it landed on her unwanted food. ‘Discuss it now. What’s the point in waiting?’

  Why draw out the agony of not knowing what he had in mind? she asked herself. Could he see his need for her body lasting longer than a few short months? She couldn’t, not with the track record Mark had told her about. How long ago that seemed. And yet it was a matter of a few weeks only. How rapid, and catastrophic, the change in her had been.

  Wordlessly, he gave her a glass of champagne. She barely noticed it. He leaned back, seemingly relaxed, his plate beside hers on the table, also untouched. So he’d lost his appetite too. Because she was being ‘difficult’? Because she wasn’t already on her way, eager to pack her bags and move in with him?

  ‘Why so confrontational, Bess?’ His steely eyes were narrowed, watching her minutely, waiting for her reaction. ‘Nervous?’

  Nervous? She was gutted with nerves. Her future happiness was on the line here. He held it in his cool, careless hands. Suddenly, perspiration stood in beads on her forehead. Recklessly, she emptied her glass in one long swallow and, twisting the slender stem between her fingers, muttered, ‘No. Curious. As I have every right to be.’

  ‘Ah.’ He gave her a thin smile, put his barely touched glass down on the table and leaned forward, his silver eyes raking her pale features. ‘You know what curiosity did to the cat. Well, we might be killing two cats with one throw, but we’ll have to risk that.’

  He looked so tired, she thought emotionally. Quite suddenly, he looked exhausted. Contrarily, she now wished she hadn’t been difficult and confrontational. She hated to see him looking this way.

  ‘You insist on knowing how long I see our proposed relationship lasting?’ he questioned. He spoke slowly, as if he was weighing every word, his eyes holding hers intently. ‘How can I give you an answer when there isn’t one to give? I made a mistake once before and don’t intend to repeat it. I made vows in church, committed my life to Elaine and expected for ever.’ Briefly, succinctly, he spread his hands. ‘If the experience taught me one valuable lesson, it was that nothing la
sts for ever.’

  ‘Do you want to tell me what happened?’ she asked into the stretching, straining silence of the warm afternoon air. He had sounded so cynical, so drained.

  He must have been badly hurt. Suddenly, sympathy took over, driving her past the barrier of jealousy, the knife-twisting pain of knowing that there had once been a woman capable of igniting his love, his passion, his loyalty. A woman he had loved so deeply that, in losing her, he’d lost the ability to love again.

  He shrugged, his eyes going dark. But there was no bitterness in his voice, merely resignation, as he told her, ‘I guess you do have a right to know. If only to help you understand the way I am. You see, Bess, I was made a fool of, taken for a ride. And OK, I’m not the first man that’s happened to and, like anyone else, I could have come to terms with it.’

  He lifted his wide shoulders again, explaining, ‘We’d been married only two years when the company got into trouble. Big trouble. One of my uncles—Carlo—had gambled investors’ money on the stock market and made spectacular losses. For a time it was thought the whole shooting-match would go under.

  ‘Elaine obviously took the scaremongering in the Press more seriously than my assurances that we’d survive it. She cleaned me out—emptied every joint account we had—and disappeared.’ He lanced her a grim look and there was entrenched bitterness in his voice now, a depth of pain that shook her. ‘She was pregnant at the time. I later learned she’d had the child aborted. That’s what really hurt. Not losing her, not knowing she thought more of my money than she did of me, but losing the child.

  ‘By the time she left the marriage was already beginning to deteriorate, but I would never have left her, never knowingly hurt her. I’d made my vows, committed myself to her, and as far as I was concerned there was no going back on that. And by God, Bess, I had wanted that child!’

  The raw pain in his voice touched her as nothing else could have. She only knew he was hurting, that she loved him and must help him, offer comfort if she could. She slid to her feet, kneeling in front of him, taking his hands between hers.

  ‘Oh, Luca—what an evil bitch she must have been! How could anyone do something so wicked?’ No wonder he was so wary of making a permanent commitment again, of giving another woman the power to hurt him that much, she thought. And if he did—some years down the road—it would merely be to replace the child he had lost.

  But now it didn’t seem important. Now she understood. Her heart was wrenched with loving compassion for what his wretched ex-wife must have put him through, for the damage she had done, for the emotional scars she had so selfishly inflicted.

  Her huge eyes filled with tears. One of them escaped and fell onto his hand, and that brought him back to her, his head lifting, the carapace of bitterness leaving his eyes, letting him see her again.

  He said softly, ‘Don’t weep for me, cara. It all happened a long time ago. I was much younger then, less cynical, less able to protect myself from that kind of hurt. I’ve moved on, believe me.’

  He reached down, clamped his hands around her waist and lifted her onto his lap. And his voice was thick as he told her, ‘I never talk about the past, and rarely think of the way she callously killed my child, but you wanted to know why I can’t make predictions about the future. And now perhaps you understand.’

  His eyes searched hers and she nodded mutely and caught her breath when he told her rawly, ‘I need you, but then you know that. When you left Italy I told myself it was for the best. You deserve so much more than I can offer. You’re a warm, loving, generous woman; there’s not a mean-spirited bone in your exquisite body. You should have everything—love, loyalty, marriage, kids—the whole package. I have no damned right to deny that to you—yet here I am, doing just that.’

  He held her eyes with a slow-burning look, his sensual mouth soft. ‘Hold me, cara. Whatever you decide about the future, I need to feel you against me now.’

  Her senses reeling, she wrapped her arms around him, burrowing her head into his shoulder, boneless and helpless as one of his hands gently stroked her hair, the other splayed out against her ribcage, tantalisingly close to her breasts, and her breathing was shallow and ragged as he murmured, ‘I want you here, with me, carissima—in my life, my home, my bed. I know you want it too.’

  His hand slid upwards to curl softly round her breast and she closed her eyes, sucking in her breath as her flesh responded invitingly. She could feel the tension in him, the tiny tremors that told her his control was precarious, but leashed for the moment.

  How could she deny him? How could she deny herself? He was all she ever wanted, and if her love was strong enough, vital enough, then surely it would breed love in him? But...

  ‘I’m afraid,’ she whispered truthfully, her hands clinging to him. Afraid of never being able to reach his heart, of the time when he would discover she’d become a habit rather than a challenge.

  Habits got boring and he’d need to move on, working his way through a string of live-in women towards the time when he’d need to call it a day, settle down with some sophisticated female who wouldn’t blink an eyelash at the type of loveless marriage he would offer, settle down to get his heirs.

  Her heart would break when he asked her to leave.

  ‘Don’t be afraid,’ he murmured softly against her ear, his tongue lapping her lobe. He was using unfair tactics, she decided muzzily, and discovered she didn’t mind at all. She turned her mouth to his and he obliged, dropping tiny, tasting kisses as he whispered, ‘It would be beautiful; everything would be beautiful, I promise. And I’d do nothing to stand in the way of your career—you’ve only recently discovered you’re capable of carving one out for yourself. And that’s important.’

  His lips left hers and trailed down to her throat and she wriggled closer, as close as she could get, making a tiny, mewing, ecstatic sound. And he told her, satisfaction at her responses making his voice rich and dark, ‘There would be times when we’d be separated. Work—yours or mine—could take us away for a while. I know I’d hate that, but we’d always know we were coming home to each other.’

  Always! He’d said always! Unknowingly, maybe, but what did that matter? There was hope. There was!

  Using that word, that wonderful word, in connection with their future relationship revealed more to her than he knew himself!

  His lips were at the base of her throat now, his hands parting her white jacket. With the instinct of Eve, she wriggled voluptuously in his lap and heard the quickening of his heartbeats, the rasp of a shallow indrawn breath as her pouting breasts were revealed in their sinfully mere coverings of delicate white lace.

  ‘Carissima—’ His throat jerked, his eyes closing as if he was in pain. His hands tightened around her waist as he pushed her upright, away from him. Then he gently folded her jacket together, hiding her body. ‘It would be too easy to take you, force you to admit that we belong together as lovers. Your body already knows that,’ he told her thickly, a rough shake in his voice, ‘but your mind must know it too, and want it, accept it. I won’t touch you again, I promise, until you’ve decided to come to me.’

  ‘I’ve already made my decision,’ she whispered huskily, placing her tender hands on either side of his beloved face, loving the feel of the hard bones, the austerely beautiful features.

  ‘And?’ He went very still, his eyes piercing hers with sharp urgency. ‘What have you decided, cara?’

  She dropped her head, her eyes drowsy with love. ‘That I will live with you, be with you.’ And she almost added ‘always’, but held it back because the time was not yet right. But it would be. One day the time would be right. She had to believe that.

  For a tiny moment she thought he hadn’t heard her, but then his eyes darkened with passion, a wicked smile beginning to curl his lips as he growled, ‘Well, in that case...’ He reached behind him and, as if by magic, the lounger reclined. ‘I’m too impatient for you to carry you to the bed we will share in the future. We will make love tog
ether in the sun.’ Deftly, he slid her jacket away, his hands quickly dropping to the waistband of her skirt. ‘No one can overlook us. There is no one to interrupt.’ With just a little help from her, he wriggled her skirt down over her hips, but removing her stockings was his undoing.

  With a groan, he buried his head against her tiny lacy briefs, spasms of urgency shaking his strong body.

  ‘Help me, Bess—help me. God! I need you so desperately!’

  Tenderly, lingeringly, loving him more with each passion-filled moment, loving him more for his masculine vulnerability, she helped him all she could. She unbuttoned his shirt and slipped it from his powerful shoulders, running her fingers across the width of his chest before trailing them slowly down, tucking them beneath the waistband of his trousers, moving in tantalising exploration until he snatched them away, carrying the culprits to his mouth, kissing them fiercely.

  And his voice was heavy as he exclaimed, ‘Witch!’ and turned the torment on her, stripping away her remaining garments until she was unashamedly naked, the sun caressing her supple body. Then he caught her in his strong arms, pulling her down, covering her body with his mouth, feverishly devouring her until she cried out for mercy, writhing with frenzied desire beneath him.

  It was dusk when they finally smiled hazily into each other’s eyes and Luca pushed her tumbled hair away from her face.

  ‘You are beautiful. I can’t have enough of you. Do you know that? But we have to get dressed,’ he added regretfully. Then he smiled his slow, beautiful smile. ‘We will help each other.’ A lean finger trailed down between her breasts. ‘It will take longer—much longer—but it will be far more exciting. And then, carissima, we will go together and fetch your things. Tell your friend she will have to find someone else to share with.’

  Bess sat up slowly, wrapping her arms around her body, her eyes solemn. ‘No, Luca. I can’t.’

  She saw his mouth tighten. ‘You’ve changed your mind!’ he accused harshly, and Bess shivered convulsively, feeling shy and awkward for the first time with him as he jerked upright, his hands grasping her upper arms, his fingers biting savagely into her flesh. ‘You can’t do that to me. You can’t do that to us! I won’t let you!’