He had to remember that.
She was not to be trusted. Her father had warned him only a few weeks before he’d died. Gemma had a habit of using people and situations to get what she wanted. She had done it all her life.
She might pretend to be repulsed by his touch now, but he was confident he would have her begging for him within weeks. He thought about possessing her, filling her, taking her to the highest pinnacle of pleasure, the pleasure she had told him he wasn’t capable of delivering.
He suppressed a little smile as he drove in the direction of her cottage.
Maybe it wouldn’t take him weeks to get her into his bed.
Maybe just days…
Gemma sat silently in her seat, trying to get her heartbeat to return to normal. The feel of Andreas’s hand brushing so gently against her had shocked her, but not for the reasons she had expected.
For years she had avoided any man’s touch, even changing to a female doctor and dentist for her check-ups in order to avoid triggering the memories of the day her life had been shattered by a man who had stripped her of her dignity by taking her by force while she had been too drunk to do anything to stop him.
But Andreas’s touch was nothing like that. Instead it had stirred deep longings she had thought she no longer possessed in any form.
Even over dinner she had looked at his hands several times, wondering how they would feel against her. He had beautiful hands, long-fingered and tanned, with masculine hairs running down from his arms into light sprinkles on the top of each of his fingers. She wondered what it would feel like to have those masculine hairs lying against the smoothness of her skin. She even wondered what it would feel like to have the dark shadow of his jaw lying against her breasts, the rasp of his skin a heady reminder of his maleness against her femaleness.
She flinched away from her wayward thoughts, but they returned as soon as he brought the car to a standstill in front of her cottage. She glanced at his hand closest her as it pulled on the handbrake with a strength that showed the muscular definition of his forearm where his shirt sleeve was rolled up against the late summer heat.
She tore her eyes away and stared down at her hands instead, wondering if he’d noticed the changes there. Gone were the talon-like nails, painted in bright look-at-me colours. In their place were ten bitten-to-the-quick excuses for fingernails, the cuticles red and uneven in places where her habit of picking at them had spun out of control in response to the recent stress she had been under.
She tucked them out of sight as he came around to open her door, wishing she could exit the car in the manner she had been capable of in the past with the lithe agility and grace she had completely taken for granted. Instead she was reduced to having to take several preparatory breaths to avoid the flash of pain any sudden movement sent through her damaged leg.
Andreas offered her a hand and this time she took it, curling her fingers around the warmth of his as he helped her out. She tried to disguise her wince of pain, but he must have seen it for he took her by both arms in a gentle but secure hold to steady her. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked, his expression full of concern. ‘You look very pale.’
‘I’m fine.’ She tried to smile but her mouth wouldn’t quite co-operate. ‘It’s just my leg is a bit stiff after sitting. It will soon loosen up.’
He escorted her to the door, with a hand at her elbow, shortening his much longer strides as she limped alongside him. ‘Is the damage to your leg permanent?’ he asked.
‘It was broken in several places and is held together by a series of nuts and bolts,’ she answered as she searched for her key in her purse.
‘Is there nothing that can be done to improve it?’ he asked, stretching out his hand to take her key.
‘It’s all right,’ she said, referring to the key in her hand. ‘I have to dismantle the security system.’
Andreas waited as she punched her code into the key pad and once the door was opened followed her in, closing it behind him.
‘No, there’s not much that can be done,’ she returned to his question about her leg. ‘The doctors assured me that over time it will stop hurting so much, but I can’t help feeling they were fobbing me off.’
‘Do you need something for the pain?’ he asked.
She shook her head. ‘No…really, I’m fine. I’ll do some stretches once you’ve gone and I’ll be as good as new…well, not quite,’ she added with a rueful grimace. ‘But, unlike some, at least I can still walk.’
She turned away to place her purse on a small table where the telephone was situated. Andreas saw her glance down at the answering machine beside it, but there was no flashing light to indicate anyone had called.
He couldn’t help feeling she lived a lonely, isolated life locked away in her little cottage prison.
‘Would you like a coffee?’ she asked, he assumed out of general politeness rather than any desire to prolong his stay.
‘Coffee would be nice,’ he said. ‘But why not let me make it while you put your leg up for a while?’
Her eyes flashed with the ferocious pride he had always associated with her. ‘Please do not pity me,’ she bit out. ‘I can make a cup of coffee without falling over.’
‘I was not suggesting you couldn’t. But, as I said a few minutes ago, you look pale. I was only trying to be helpful.’
‘I do not need your help.’
‘Ah, but you do, Gemma,’ he reminded her as he closed the distance between them with a couple of strides. ‘You need me more than anything. Without me you will lose everything.’
Gemma couldn’t drag her eyes away from the smouldering depths of his. She could smell the lemon-scented aftershave he wore until her senses began to reel with its intoxicating allure. She could even feel the warmth of his body as it stood so close to hers, making her feel unsteady on her feet, which for once had nothing whatsoever to do with her injured leg.
She held her breath as he lifted a hand to her face, brushing the back of his hair-flecked hand across her cheek in a touch so gentle she felt each and every fine hair on the back of her neck lift in response.
‘It would be in your interests, cara, do you not think, to humour me until you get what you want?’ he asked in a sexy low drawl that sent a reactive shiver along the bare skin of her arms.
She moistened her lips with her tongue, trying her best not to sound breathless. ‘Wh-what are you saying?’
He smiled a lazy smile as he tipped up her chin, gazing deeply into her eyes. ‘You are a bewitching combination of two women, are you not? The brash, selfish and proud young woman of ten years ago, and the new one, the fragile, sensitive one that I find totally irresistible.’
Gemma had not thought of herself as irresistible in a very long time and tried not to let his compliment get to her, but it was impossible not to respond in some way to the words that held such promise of healing within them.
She wanted to feel beautiful again, beautiful not just in body but in personality and soul as well. Andreas might think she was a combination of two people, but the truth was she was nothing like the young girl she had been in the past. She could never go back to being that sort of person. Not after what had happened. The lessons of life had been hard to learn, but she had learned them well and had no intention of making the same mistakes again.
‘I was just a teenager then,’ she said in a scratchy whisper. ‘I was only eighteen when we met.’
He gave her a suddenly probing look, his fingers on her chin tightening a fraction. ‘I thought you could not remember anything about that time?’
Gemma’s heart clanged against her ribcage with such force she thought it was going to land at her feet. ‘Um…I—I don’t…but you said it was ten years ago and I…I did the numbers. I was eighteen…still a teenager…sort of…’
He seemed to accept her answer as the truth, for his hold relaxed. His thumb roved a pathway across her bottom lip as he continued to hold her gaze for a moment before he lowered his eyes to her m
outh.
Gemma watched as his head came closer and closer, but she did nothing to step out of the reach of his mouth as it finally settled on hers.
His kiss was soft, softer than she’d been expecting and certainly softer than anything she’d experienced before. But although the movement of his lips upon hers was gentle she could still feel the electric current of sensations just under the surface of both of their mouths, making hers tingle and ache for more pressure and the total possession of his tongue.
But, as if he didn’t want to deepen the kiss any further, he stepped back, looking down at her with an expression on his darkly handsome features she had no hope of decoding.
‘I think I will not have that coffee after all,’ he said after a tiny pause. ‘It will no doubt keep me awake all night.’
Gemma stood uncertainly before him, silence her only refuge. She watched as he turned for the door, deftly releasing the four locks before leaving without another glance in her direction. The door clicked shut on his exit, the deadlocks automatically activated as they were designed to do.
She let out her breath in a ragged stream as she sank to the nearest sofa, her fingers going to her mouth, touching where his lips had been so briefly.
The door was locked and bolted but she had never felt more unsafe in her life…
CHAPTER SIX
GEMMA spent the next morning visiting a friend she had made from the refuge, Rachel Briggs and her little daughter Isabella. They now lived in a small rented flat in a quiet suburb just over an hour by train from the city centre.
‘How is she today?’ Gemma asked Rachel once they had sat down with a hot drink.
‘She had another fit at about six this morning,’ Rachel said. ‘But she’s sleeping peacefully now.’
Gemma still found it hard to believe the three-year-old tot’s very own father had caused the damage that had left her suffering epilepsy from the severe fracture she’d sustained to her tiny skull. It sickened her to think that one’s own flesh and blood could treat a child in such a way. The father was now serving a prison term, but it didn’t seem long enough for what he had done to an innocent child. He was up for parole in a few months’ time, when his daughter had a life sentence unless what Gemma had planned worked out.
‘Listen, Rachel,’ she said, leaning forward in her chair. ‘I have a plan. I have some funds coming to me soon. It will be enough to pay for the neurosurgery Isabella needs.’
Rachel’s mouth dropped open. ‘I can’t let you do that! It could end up costing a hundred thousand at least and that’s not even counting the airfares to the States and accommodation.’
‘I know all that but I’m about to inherit some money. I haven’t told you this before because I didn’t want you to get your hopes up, but in two days’ time I will have enough money to send you to the States for as long as you and Isabella need to be there to get her well again.’
‘The surgery is risky…’ Rachel caught at her lip in agitation. ‘There’s only one guy doing it in America. What if it goes wrong and she needs to be hospitalised for months on end? It could end up costing an absolute fortune.’
‘We’ll cross that bridge if or when we come to it,’ Gemma said. ‘You have to let me do this, Rachel. Please don’t rob me of a chance to put right some things in my life.’
Rachel frowned in confusion. ‘What are you talking about? You are the sweetest, kindest person I know. How could you have done anything wrong in your life?’
Gemma gave her a sad semblance of a smile. ‘I’m not a sweet person at all. I have a past that I’m so very ashamed of. It’s all come back to haunt me, but I’m determined to fix what I can. This is one way—to give little Isabella a chance at a normal life. She doesn’t deserve to have her childhood snatched away from her with chronic ill health.’
Rachel’s tears of gratefulness were all the reward Gemma needed. ‘I can’t take all this in…It’s like a dream come true…a miracle…’ She began to sob. ‘I don’t know how to thank you.’
‘I don’t want to be thanked. But I must insist you tell no one who gave you the money,’ Gemma said. ‘Please, Rachel, it’s very important that you don’t reveal it to anyone. It could be dangerous to you and Isabella.’
Rachel gave her a worried look. ‘Because of Brett?’
‘I don’t want this leaked out in the press,’ Gemma said. ‘I come from a rich sort of background. I don’t want to draw unnecessary attention to myself and thereby to you. It might get back to Brett.’
Rachel’s expression became even more shadowed with apprehension. ‘You think he could track me down?’
‘If your name was leaked out in the press who knows what might happen?’ Gemma cautioned her. ‘Besides, it wouldn’t do for him to find out you have money. He’s due for parole soon. I know you’ve been relocated and all, but men like him are often very determined. He might try and track you down.’
Rachel nodded as she wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘I guess you’re right…but it doesn’t seem fair that you don’t get the chance to show the world how kind you are.’
‘I’m not interested in showing the world anything. The press gave me a hard time a few years ago,’ Gemma said. She paused for a moment before adding, ‘Remember I told you I had an accident?’
Rachel gave a little sniff and nodded.
‘Well…things are kind of complicated, but suffice it to say that I have a bad sort of reputation where the media is concerned. They would have a field-day with this, making up whatever they fancied to sell the most papers.’
‘Can I at least tell my mum?’ Rachel asked. ‘I’ll need her to come with us.’
‘Your mum but no one else,’ Gemma insisted. ‘I don’t want to put you and Isabella in any danger.’
Rachel’s eyes flickered for a moment with fear. ‘I know…I still live each day looking over my shoulder wondering if one of Brett’s mates has been ordered to take me down on his behalf. He threatened me with it several times.’
‘I know, but you can put all that behind you now. This trip to the States will be just the distraction you need.’
‘I can’t believe this is happening,’ Rachel said. ‘I never thought Isabella would have a chance at a normal life. I could never afford it and I’ve always been too frightened to try and go public to get any fund-raising going. You are being so very generous.’
‘No, true generosity is giving something you can’t afford to give,’ Gemma said. ‘I can afford to give you whatever you need to help Isabella. That’s not the same thing at all.’
‘You are always so modest and hard on yourself,’ Rachel said. ‘What happened to you to make you that way?’
Gemma gave Rachel her version of a smile, but there was sadness in it. ‘Experience, Rachel,’ she said. ‘I have learned the hard way what is important in life.’
‘Yeah, well, so have I,’ Rachel said with a rueful twist to her mouth. ‘I stayed with Brett far too long and look what happened. If only I’d had the courage to leave the first time…’
Gemma grasped at her friend’s hand and gave it an encouraging squeeze. ‘Don’t blame yourself. Brett was the one who hurt Isabella, not you. You did your best. Don’t ever forget that.’
Rachel sighed and, lifting Gemma’s hand to her face, gently kissed it. ‘You have changed my life, Gemma. I feel like a completely different person since you came into my life that day I arrived at the shelter.’
Gemma fought back the tears, but Rachel’s situation had always seemed so tragic and now, with the promise of hope she had been able to provide, it was all she could do to keep control. She bit her tongue and squeezed the tears back, but still they came in a stream down her cheeks. She brushed at them in embarrassment, but Rachel reached for her and enveloped her in a bone-crushing hug.
‘You know, that’s the first time I’ve ever seen you cry,’ she said against her shoulder.
‘I usually save it for the shower or the bath,’ Gemma said, with a big, noisy sniff. ‘T
hat way I can’t see how much fluid I’m losing.’
Rachel held her from her and smiled. ‘You of all people deserve happiness. I wonder when it will be your turn.’
‘It could be sooner than you think,’ Gemma said, hating the fact that she had to act blissfully happy when nothing could be further from the truth. ‘I’m getting married on Friday.’
‘Married?’ Rachel gave a gasp of surprise. ‘This Friday?’
‘Yes…to a…man I knew a long time ago. It’s a bit of a whirlwind romance but he has never forgotten me and, well…we’re getting married.’
‘Gosh, Gemma, this is rather sudden, isn’t it? Are you sure you’re doing the right thing? You like everyone else at the shelter knows what can happen when women rush into relationships with men they don’t know very well.’
‘Andreas is not like that. He was in love with me ten years ago and came back to find me.’
‘You’ve never mentioned him before.’
There was a lot Gemma had never mentioned to her friend before, but she didn’t think now was the time to reveal all the sordid details of her past life. After all, she had only known Rachel a few months and their friendship had centred on looking after Isabella, who was so very ill much of the time.
‘No, I know, but let me assure you I’m looking forward to being married to him,’ she said with complete honesty, for if the ceremony didn’t go ahead Isabella’s surgery wouldn’t either.
‘What’s he like?’
‘Well, he’s Italian and extremely good-looking,’ Gemma answered, again with total sincerity. ‘And he makes me feel things I haven’t felt in a very long time.’
‘So you love him?’
Gemma gave her a mock-reproving frown, although her tummy did a funny sort of shuffle as she considered her friend’s query. ‘What sort of question is that?’ she asked.
Rachel grinned. ‘Yeah, well, I guess that more or less answers it. I can see you do—by the look on your face when you speak of him he has stolen your heart. Lucky you.’
Lucky me indeed, Gemma thought as she left a short time later. It would just be my sort of luck to fall in love with a man who had re-entered my life for motives as yet unclear.
Bedded and Wedded for Revenge Page 6