Partners in Love

by Saunders, Jean

  “Your father said you were always prone to tantrums,” Luke snapped back at her, making her gasp with outrage. “When he phoned me this morning and we cooked up this little plan, he said that if you still acted stubbornly, I had his permission to put you over my knee and smack some sense into you.”

  Robin’s mouth opened wide. Just what was going on?

  “Dad phoned you?” she asked suspiciously. “That’s not the way I heard it. He said you phoned him to say that you were ill, and your voice was—”

  “Thick and muffled.” He used James’s exact phrase. “That’s the way he said it, wasn’t it? We had to make it convincing. He doesn’t need you to nursemaid him any longer, Robin, and we both decided that my needs were greater than his.”

  “Your needs!” She bristled again at that. “Everybody knows what your needs are, don’t they? Carlotta or any one of a score of girls could supply those.”

  “Carlotta’s marrying Juan Domingo at the end of the month,” he told her, still with the steely edge to his voice that told her he wasn’t as much in control as he’d like her to think. She knew him too well not to be able to recognise every nuance in his voice by then. “And why you have this ridiculous idea that I have scores of women falling at my feet, I can’t imagine.”

  “I don’t want to talk about your women,” Robin snapped.

  He suddenly shook her violently. Robin cried out, shocked at this new side of him.

  “There’s only one woman I care about, and that’s the woman in my arms, the most stubborn woman it’s been my misfortune to meet.”

  “Then the sooner we sever all connections with each other, the better,” Robin said icily. With an effort she pulled away from him, fighting off the dull inevitability of what she was saying. “Since I’m here, I’ll go across to the flat and pick up the rest of my things. You did me a favour after all, bringing me here. Once I’ve packed up everything in my car, I need never come back here again.”

  She gave an involuntary swallow and knew that he saw it. He knew her weakness. She made herself look away from that searching, glowering gaze, afraid that he would read the naked truth in her eyes. The nearness of him, her need for him, was driving her mad. She had to get away from him before she betrayed the yearning and the love she felt.

  “May I remind you that you came here today to work,” he said coldly. “There’s one last item I want you to do for me. After that, go if you must. I won’t detain you. I don’t force my women to stay.”

  The little twist to his mouth as he repeated something he’d said once before was almost real enough to give the lie to Luke’s being a womaniser. But Robin told herself ruthlessly that she believed that only because she wanted to.

  “What is it you want?” she said, pointedly ignoring all the rest.

  Luke moved to a drawer in the sideboard, almost throwing a notebook and pencil at her.

  “Take my dictation.” His voice was terse, and she realised he was as tense as she was. She sat down heavily in an armchair, suddenly feeling as if every nerve and bone in her body was aching from this meeting. The sooner it was over, the better. Then she would get out of his life forever.

  Robin leaned over the pad, flipping it open to a blank page. Her fine hair hung around her face, hiding her expression from Luke’s intense eyes, the firelight turning it to gold. She waited as he stood with his back to the fire, facing her, darkly etched against the leaping flames behind him, like some demonic figure.

  He began speaking evenly, the rich timbre of his voice filling the room as her fingers flew across the page.

  “This is to terminate our business arrangement,” Luke said at his dictating speed, deliberate and thoughtful. “And to inform you that your services are no longer required.”

  Robin looked up, renewed colour sweeping into her cheeks.

  “How can you be so cruel as to humiliate me like this?”

  “I haven’t said this notice is for you yet,” he retorted.

  She knew for certain that it was. And he was doing it in order to turn the knife that little bit more. Robin was the one woman who hadn’t fallen completely for his charm, and this was his way of paying her back. Oh, if only he knew ... if only he knew ...

  “Will you continue, please? You’re still working for me for the moment.” As she nodded, biting her lips, Luke went on. His next words made it obvious that she was right. This letter was intended for her.

  “As you know, I have a business partnership with your father. In due time his interest in the complex will become yours, and you and I will be partners. That arrangement would seem to be unacceptable to us both.”

  Robin could hardly see the page now, but she was determined to carry on. Whether she would be able to decipher her shorthand was uncertain, but his words were indelibly written on her heart.

  “So, since I find it unthinkable to contemplate spending the rest of my life without you, Miss Pollard, I propose offering you another partnership, one that would take place as quickly as possible.”

  Robin’s hands froze, no longer scribbling. Had she really heard him right? Her head jerked up to meet his steady gaze. Her heart beat so fast, so fast. Almost incredulously she saw Luke’s steely controlled expression change. For one breathless moment he looked oddly vulnerable, his sensual mouth curving at one side as he brushed one hand through his dark hair in a gesture of frustration. Thickly he uttered a small oath.

  “How much plainer do I have to make it, Robin? These few weeks without you have been sheer hell. I’m no good with words, and I’ve resisted telling any woman that I loved her until I found the one I wanted to be my wife and share the rest of my life. I waited so long that it was more difficult to finally say it than I ever imagined it would be. But you must know that I love you! You must have known it in Ibiza. Didn’t you know that was what I was saying with everything but words!”

  He didn’t say any more, because Robin had jumped up with a little cry of pure joy. Luke held open his arms and she went straight into them. For someone who didn’t have the words, he had managed to get his meaning across very clearly, she thought ecstatically. Then all thoughts and words were superfluous as his mouth met hers in a sweet, savage kiss that seemed as if it would never end. And all the pent-up emotions and frustrations between them dissolved like a Cornish mist.

  “I’m not dreaming all this, am I?” Robin murmured when the kiss finally ended and she was still held close to his heart, which was beating as heavily as her own.

  “If you are, then I’m dreaming, too, and let’s hope we’ll never wake up.” Luke’s voice was still husky, and she felt the sweet familiar caress of his hands on her arms, her shoulders, her hair. She felt his passion in every masculine throb of his body, in every whisper-soft touch of his lips against her cheek and throat.

  “I can’t quite believe this.” Robin’s voice was becoming throaty, too, as her own body responded with intensely pleasurable sensations to the unspoken demands of his. “Did I really hear you say you loved me, Luke?”

  “You did, woman, and you’d better get used to hearing it, now that I’ve discovered it isn’t so hard to say. I love you, Robin, I love you. It’s something I haven’t heard from you yet, though.”

  He drew her down with him onto the thick carpet. Bathed in firelight, she looked into the dear face of her beloved and caught her breath.

  “Do I need to tell you?”

  “It seems you do, my darling,” Luke said, with a brief return to his old aggressive masculinity. “Men have the same need as women to be told the obvious at certain times in their lives. We have feelings, too, you know. So put me out of my misery and tell me you love me and you’re going to marry me!”

  Robin couldn’t resist laughing a little at that, sheer happiness dancing in her eyes as the music of his words flowed over her.

  “Yes, sir,” she mocked him. “I know you don’t like your secretary to embellish your words, but this time I’ll just add to it, if you don’t mind. I love you, Luke. I love
you so much it nearly cut me to shreds on New Year’s Eve when you made me act the part of your fiancée for Carlotta’s sake. For a little while it all seemed so real.”

  “And now it’s going to be real,” Luke said fiercely. He stroked the soft, silky hair spread out against the carpet. He drew in his breath at the love he saw in her glowing eyes, then looked a little shamefaced.

  “It was a rotten thing to put you through, my dearest, and I know it. But Carlotta was desperate to make Juan believe there was nothing between her and me. There never was — not in the way you thought. It wasn’t until we were coming back to Bristol that night that I guessed what an ordeal it must have been for you. Then, of course, you wanted to be released from our arrangement at the office, and I thought you had turned against me for good.”

  “Are you telling me you loved me even then?” Robin whispered. She felt his fingers on her cheek, trailing downwards to the neckline of her blouse, to the pulsing beat of her heart.

  “I’ve loved you from the day I first saw you in your Cornish cove, protesting so eloquently that I was invading your space. I didn’t think of it as love then, of course. You were more of an irritation under my skin, although a very beautiful one! It was only later, when you had infiltrated my heart so that I couldn’t even sleep at nights for wanting you, that I knew it was love. But you were always so suspicious of me and my motives. I knew that if I told you I loved you, you wouldn’t believe me.” He shrugged. “It seemed the only way I could get through to you was to keep up the brash image you’d given me and hope you might decide to try and reform me!”

  “Oh, Luke,” Robin breathed softly. “All this precious time we’ve wasted.”

  She felt him unfasten the buttons of her blouse, and his hand moved inside to caress her breast. Seconds later, as his mouth followed where his fingers had led, a tingling warmth filled Robin’s veins as she closed her eyes, totally cocooned in Luke’s love.

  “Don’t let’s waste any more time,” he said against the softness of her flesh. “We have the house to ourselves for the day, Robin. And as soon as we can get a certain special license, we’ll have the rest of our lives together.”

  “Starting now,” she whispered, knowing that no time could be more right for them than there and then. In the firelight the union of hearts and minds and bodies made a vow as binding as any marriage troth.

  Still feeling as if it were all part of a dream from which she must surely awaken soon, Robin shed her clothes in trembling haste, following Luke’s lead. And when at last he lay with her, his lean, hard body fitting against hers so perfectly as she matched his every movement, Robin knew at last the meaning of fulfillment between a man and a woman.

  Nothing less than love could extract the ultimate explosive pleasure Luke gave her. Nothing less than love could make his rich male voice thicken with emotion as he told her that that was only the beginning of their lives — that everything until then had been leading up to that.

  Luke told her he loved her over and over again, as if the words, once unleashed from him, were as natural as breathing. Robin felt completely secure in Luke’s love, giving him back touch for touch, kiss for kiss, learning the needs of a man with exquisite pleasure, loving the teacher too much to feel any embarrassment.

  That day Luke had made her feel a woman for the first time in her life. As she lay drowsily in his arms, the first passion spent, she stroked the skin of his shoulder, pressing her lips to the muscle.

  A small bubbling laugh rose to her throat as she told him he’d have to start looking for a new secretary after all.

  “That’s a minor problem.” Luke ran his hands down the curving line of her body, as if to memorise its perfection forever. “I can always get a new secretary. I’m far more interested in signing you up for the one job for which you’ll be the only applicant. How do you feel about being my partner for life, my lovely Robin? My partner in love.”

  “Don’t you know how I feel?” she answered huskily. “I thought that was perfectly obvious.”

  She didn’t require an answer, and neither did she mind that Luke seemed to have run out of words for the time being. Instead he gathered her up in his arms again. She tasted the sweetness of his mouth on hers, and she gave a small breathless sigh of pleasure as Luke began making love to her all over again.

  If you enjoyed reading Partners in Love by Jean Saunders then you might be interested in Second Time Around by Vanessa Graham.

  Extract from Second Time Around by Vanessa Graham

  Chapter One

  I glanced at my watch and then, impatiently, along the hallway to the swing doors. It always irritated me when David kept me waiting. The film started at seven-thirty and unless he was quick, we shouldn’t have time for a meal beforehand: which meant another late night. Not a good policy midweek, with the pressure that was on at the office at the moment.

  The doors started to revolve again, and a man came quickly into the hall. It wasn’t David, and I was about to look away when something about the set of his shoulders and his purposeful stride struck a chord inside me and started a discordant jangling.

  As though mesmerized I rose slowly to my feet, staring at him as he came towards me—at the rather hard face with the firm chin and disillusioned eyes. My heart gave a little jerk and as he drew level I said tentatively, as much to myself as to him, ‘Simon?’

  He stopped abruptly, his head turned and for a moment his eyes raked my face. Then slow-dawning recognition flickered.

  ‘Good Lord, it’s not—?’

  ‘Cherry,’ I supplied shakily. ‘Cherry Lester.’ ‘Little Cherry—ye gods! What are you doing so far from home?’

  ‘I live in London now.’

  ‘Do you indeed? Well, well! I’d never have recognized you. How long has it been?’

  ‘About six years, I suppose. I—thought you were in Africa?’

  ‘Got back last month. What a coincidence, though, meeting you like this. Come and have a drink and tell me all the news.’

  ‘I’d love to but I’m afraid I can’t. I’m—meeting someone.’ And over his shoulder at last I saw David emerge from the maw of the swing doors—just when I least wanted him.

  ‘Of course—stupid of me. You’d hardly have been here if you weren’t.’

  David came up to us and I managed the introductions a little stumblingly.

  ‘Perhaps we could make it another evening,’ Simon said easily. ‘Give me your phone number and I’ll ring you.’

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw that David had the gall to look at his watch. I gave Simon my number, but without hope. It was a graceful let-out but I doubted that he had any real intention of phoning. After all, what was the point?

  David took my arm firmly and we were out on the pavement at the mercy of the biting wind. ‘I’m surprised you fell for that line,’ he said sullenly. ‘“Give me your phone number” indeed!’

  ‘Don’t be silly, David. He’s an old friend of the family. Actually, he was married to my cousin.’

  ‘Was?’

  ‘Yes, they were divorced a couple of years ago. Anyway, if you hadn’t been late I’d never have met him.’

  ‘Okay, okay, I couldn’t help it. Let’s nip into the Chicken Inn—it’s all we have time for now.’

  I sighed. It was always the same with David—rush, rush—abandoned plans and hasty improvisations. Simon, after all these years! He hadn’t really changed: older, of course, and gorgeously tanned from his years in Africa, but still the same self-assured Simon. A thousand memories jostled for position in my head, but David was demanding my attention.

  ‘Come on, Cherry, we haven’t time to dawdle. The film starts in half an hour.’

  Obediently I hurried through the meal, trying to anchor my racing thoughts. Perhaps he had remarried. Mother had mentioned in one of her letters that Cathy had a new admirer. I’d wondered fleetingly how she could be interested in anyone else after being married to Simon for eight years.

  ‘Cherry!’

/>   ‘Sorry.’ I pushed the last of the food to the side of my plate. My appetite seemed to have disappeared anyway. We were out on the street again, wet now with an icy, drizzling rain, and dark in the early spring dusk. Oh, why couldn’t David have been later still, or Simon earlier? Then he might have made a definite arrangement, instead of a vague promise to phone.

  I pulled myself up sharply. Simon Slade was taboo. He always had been. Cathy’s husband. Unwillingly my mind flickered to my cousin, with her pale hair and large appealing eyes: a helpless appearance which concealed a will of iron, as I had learned in my youth.

  The film was, as usual, complicated and involved, and my eyes ached from trying to decipher the subtitles. The choice of it had been David’s, of course. He considered I should be au fait with all the latest foreign films. But lately they’d seemed very much the same, and I had been hard put to it to display any intelligent interest. I realized belatedly that he hadn’t taken my hand as he usually did. He probably still hadn’t forgiven me for Simon. I gave up all pretence of concentrating on the film and, with a wave of relief, released the floodgates and let the memories come.

  It all began with Cathy, of course. Her father, Mother’s elder brother, had been killed in a car crash three months before she was born. During our childhood, she and Aunt Beth often came to stay with us, but as she was six years older than I we had never played well together. I used to trail around after her, getting in the way, lost in admiration and envy when she started to wear high heels and powder her nose. Then, when she was barely eighteen, she met Simon. From my first sight of him, I’d suffered from a severe bout of hero-worship. Simon was to me what pop singers and TV stars were to my friends—someone to dream about, but completely out of reach. And they certainly made a striking couple, Cathy with her long fair hair and Simon so tall and dashing. And the look in his eyes when they rested on her sent little shivers down my back.

  I was their bridesmaid and the occasion proved a landmark in a rather uneventful childhood, so that for years afterwards I dated things as having happened either before or after the wedding. Simon and Cathy moved to Surrey and gradually faded into the background of my mind—which became involved with a new school, exams, hockey matches. Their first child, James, was born a year later, and then Paul. Cathy wrote, of course, and Aunt Beth still came to stay, but gradually I began to be aware that things were not quite right. I caught odd snatches of conversations which were broken off when I came into the room. There were long phone calls from Aunt Beth, which Mother took privately on the upstairs extension. Once I heard my father say, ‘Of course I was never happy about it, but you women wouldn’t listen. He was altogether too fond of his own way.’