by Kim Lawrence
The touch of his fingers on her skin made Mari tense; slowly she turned her head to look at him. The light contact felt like a brand at every point of contact and her skin tingled and burned.
‘Right, I’ll marry you but I won’t sleep with you.’
A slow smile of satisfaction spread across his hawkish features. ‘In my experience it’s always a good idea to keep business and pleasure separate, but let’s not include it in the vows.’
Mari flinched. Hearing him say vows made it seem more real. She felt as if she were living a recurrent childish nightmare of hers—she had stepped on a carousel that wouldn’t stop and let her off, it just carried on going round and round while she started screaming.
His smile died as he said softly, ‘The next time maybe...?’
She gave a bemused frown and shook her head, parroting in a flat voice, ‘Next time?’
‘Don’t all girls dream of the wedding dress?’
‘Not the groom?’
‘Let’s hope you find a man who hasn’t been put off the white-wedding thing by having been previously publicly humiliated by a wedding crasher. Oh, and while we are on the subject it’s not the best idea to start looking for Mr. Right or even a little light entertainment until after we have split up.’
Struggling to hide her embarrassment behind an air of amused indifference, she shrugged and asked, ‘Is that in the small print?’
He did not smile back, and there was a definite warning in his voice as he told her, ‘No, that part is in the big print. If it’s any comfort, you won’t be the only one condemned to eighteen months of celibacy.’
What was eighteen months when you’d already done twenty-four years? she thought, swallowing the bubble of hysteria that rose in her throat.
‘Still, I suppose eighteen months of abstinence is preferable to a lifetime of regret.’
She lost the battle to allow his cynicism go unchallenged. ‘I suppose the trick is to find the right person.’
He gave an eloquent sneer of contempt. ‘The trick is to enjoy the party but be realistic.’
His attitude continued to get under Mari’s skin. ‘So if you don’t believe people fall in love forever, why were you getting married?’
A muscle throbbed in his lean cheek as he gave a strange twisted smile. ‘Did I say I didn’t think people fall in love forever? My parents’ passion for one another is as strong today, I would think, as the day they met.’ And just as blindly selfish.
The idea of following their example had been the perfect incentive when it came to keeping his own passions under control.
She was bewildered by the aura of anger he was projecting. It had an almost physical presence in the enclosed space.
‘Well, that’s marvellous.’ She looked at him, struggling to read his expression. ‘Isn’t it?’
‘My parents’ love has not stopped them having affairs, but they always come back to one another. However the divorces were never amicable and the marriages always headline-making lavish.’
Her eyes widened. ‘How many times?’
‘Married three times, divorced twice...so far.’
‘That must have been hard growing up.’
The tentative sympathy was met with a hard look. ‘Put your empathy away, Mari. I do not need it. My grandfather brought me over from the Argentine to England when I was eight, up from that point he raised me, and then when Fleur came along he adopted her.’
‘Do you spend much time in Argentina?’
He shook his head. ‘Not now. After the death of her husband my grandmother moved back to her homeland, Spain. I spend some time there.’ He handed her a card. ‘My private number—ring me if you have any questions. So where shall I take you?’
‘I came in my own car,’ she said faintly. ‘So what happens...now?’
‘We get married. It’s not complicated.’
Mari swallowed. ‘When?’
‘I’ll be in touch.’
CHAPTER SIX
MARI WAS PACKING her bag when her mobile rang. Finding it under a pile of underclothes, she saw the caller ID and picked it up. Chloe had been her classroom assistant for two years now. She was one of the people Mari would miss most, along with the children. She had always felt she was one of the lucky ones. She loved her job and never woke up not wanting to go into work—now all that was gone.
She pushed the thought away—no time to look back and have regrets. ‘Hi, Chloe!’
‘Is it true? Have they really sacked you?’ Without waiting for a reply the girl continued indignantly, ‘Is that even legal?’
‘I’m on a temporary contract. It runs out at the end of the term.’ Not long ago there had been some pretty broad hints dropped that she might be offered a permanent contract at that point, but that was not going to happen now. ‘They are giving me paid leave until then and a good reference.’
Would Sebastian give her a good reference when their contract was successfully completed? She swallowed a bubble of hysteria and heard the younger girl say, ‘Well, I think it’s terrible. We all do, Mari—you’re the best teacher in the place.’
Mari felt her eyes fill at the tribute.
‘So what are you going to do?’
‘I thought I might travel a bit, take a trip.’ She kept it vague, as she had done the previous day when she had visited Mark, though Chloe showed a lot more interest in her plans than her brother had.
Mark had barely listened when she’d said that she needed to take a trip. All he could talk about were the arrangements for his transfer—his mention of her part in the change in his fortune had been lightly touched on.
‘I knew if you could swallow your pride it would be all right. I’ve no idea what you said to him, sis, but it worked, Seb has done the right thing.’
‘I didn’t say anything. How do you know it was him?’
‘Who else would it be? And don’t look like that.’ He’d sighed. ‘You always managed to ruin things with that guilt thing of yours. It’s win-win—he can go around feeling good because he’s dug his hand in his pocket for the poor cripple and, let’s face it, it’s not as though he doesn’t owe me. He put me here after all.’
Did he...? Mari’s innate honesty could no longer support the deception. She felt guilty for not being more sympathetic to her brother, and when the opportunity arose she’d leaped at the chance to offload that guilt onto someone else.
‘I knew you’d come through for me, sis—you always do.’
When his eyes slid from hers she realised that he didn’t want to know how. Her twin always had a knack to ignore uncomfortable truths, the ones that made him uncomfortable anyway.
It was an ability Mari envied him.
* * *
She was expecting the knock on the door but she jumped anyway.
She’d been expecting a flunkey of some sort, so when she opened the door and found Seb himself standing there she was too shocked to disguise her reaction. Her jaw dropped and her blue eyes flew wide open. The raw masculinity he exuded hit her like a runaway train.
Like someone coming out of a trance, she blinked and hoped her knees would support her. ‘What are you doing here?’ It came out a lot more accusingly than she had intended.
In response his dark brows lifted as without a word he stepped past her and into the living room. He subjected the long narrow space to the same sort of critical scrutiny that she’d endured, and from his expression she assumed it had been assessed as wanting, also.
Lucky she didn’t crave his approval. In fact she told herself if the day ever dawned that she got it, that was the time to worry.
‘I said one o’clock. It is one.’ His frown deepened. ‘Aren’t you ready?’
Trying not to react to his abrupt manner, she gave a curt nod, and, matching his noticeably cold attitude, indicated her bag propped up against the sofa, one of several pieces of furniture in the place she had reupholstered or revamped. She couldn’t sew a stitch, but she was a whiz with a staple gun and a paintbrush.
‘Of course I’m ready.’ Was this about the way she looked? ‘Should I go back and put on my tiara?’ She tried to hide a sudden flash of uncharacteristic insecurity under sarcasm.
He slung her an impatient look. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘I thought, you thought that I...maybe should, should I wear something a bit more...?’ She glanced down at her slim-fitting jeans and the cropped jacket left open to reveal the silky acid-yellow sleeveless top that showed a tiny sliver of flat midriff.
His eyes moved in an expressionless sweep from her toes to the top of her glossy head. ‘You look fine. It’s only a register office.’
Wow, he sure knows how to make a girl feel good, she thought, compressing her lips in silent resentment, furious with herself for virtually asking for his approval.
‘Actually I wasn’t expecting you. I assumed you’d send a driver or something.’
Her calm was only a single cell thick, but it was very important to Mari that he had no idea just how not calm she was. She was almost sick with apprehension, and under that there were layers of confusing, conflicting emotions that were just too complicated to acknowledge. On a more practical level she was worried she might actually throw up.
‘So how long will it take...?’
He dragged his gaze from that tiny sliver of flat, toned, creamy-skinned stomach and cleared his throat, reminding himself that this was business.
‘The flight or—?’
‘Both,’ she cut in quickly.
‘The company jet was available, so not long for the journey. The wedding I’ve arranged so that we can stop off on the way to the airport.’
‘That sounds ideal.’ Her voice was clear and cool but Seb could see her hands were shaking as her gaze flickered around the room; she was looking anywhere but at him. She reminded him of a trapped animal.
She accused him of pride, but Seb suspected that Mari’s stiff-necked version of that sin would make her walk over hot coals before she’d admit she was nervous. It was an exasperating characteristic, almost as much as her wildly misplaced loyalty to her brother and he was not above exploiting this misplaced loyalty.
Which makes you...?
She was a consenting adult; she knew what she was doing. Somehow this didn’t stop his pangs of conscience.
‘It’s all right to be nervous.’
‘I’m not nervous. I’ll just be glad when it’s over.’
‘Is this all you have?’ He nodded towards the moderate-size holdall that was propped against a sofa that had bespoke and expensive written all over it. The open-plan living area suggested that the owner had expensive taste.
‘I fit a lot in. I wasn’t sure what to bring.’ She hurried and clumsily snatched the bag up before him. ‘I can manage,’ she said with the attitude of someone expecting a fight.
No fight materialised; he simply straightened up and watched as she flung it purposefully over her shoulder, allowing himself a faint smile when the impetus as it hit her hip almost knocked her off balance.
‘Fine by me.’
‘That’s good, then,’ she said, knowing the response sounded lame.
Mari lived on the fourth floor in a small nondescript brick building that had no lift, and by the time they had reached the third floor she was regretting he hadn’t argued her out of her decision. Halfway down she swallowed her pride and paused to catch her breath.
He paused, too, not breathless obviously, just looking like a Hollywood film star who had drifted onto the wrong set. This peeling paint and worn carpet really wasn’t his natural setting.
He looked down at her through the mesh of his crazily long dark eyelashes and nodded to the bag. ‘Manage that, can you?’
She gritted her teeth, straightened up and produced a sunny smile. The weight had almost yanked her shoulder from its socket, but she’d die before she’d admit it or accept his help. ‘I’m fine, thank you.’
He stood aside as she exited the flat door sideways, not making allowances for the bulk of the bag as she eased past him carefully.
‘Sure you don’t need help?’
‘Yes,’ she said shortly, requiring all her breath to negotiate the last flight of stairs. They passed one of her neighbours, whose plucked brows almost vanished into her hairline when she saw Seb.
‘Moving on, are we?’
‘A holiday,’ Mari puffed.
‘I don’t think she believed you,’ Seb said in a voice that echoed spookily down the stairwell.
‘Shh, she’ll hear you,’ Mari hissed as she prepared to swap shoulders, resting her bag for a moment on the step long enough to give him ample opportunity to repeat his offer of help. She’d refuse, but it would be nice to have the option. When he didn’t, she gritted her teeth and wished she hadn’t packed the books or the pair of boots.
‘The reporters knocked on every door in the building. I think they offered money for—’
His lip curled. ‘Dirt.’
She turned her head; he was standing two steps behind her.
‘I was surprised,’ he admitted, stepping down one step and pausing just one above her.
Too close...too close... Struggling to pacify the panicky voice in her head, she took a jolting backward step.
‘Really? I thought knocking on doors and buying stories was par for the course?’
‘It is, which is why I was surprised when I didn’t get to read the lurid details, both fictional and true, of your love affairs in the tabloids. Anyone would think you have a blemish-free past.’ The humourless smile that tugged the corners of his mouth upwards faded as his hooded gaze slid covetously over the curves of her athletically slim body. She had an innate sensuality that had to make every man she met think about taking her to bed—he had.
Still was thinking, said the voice in his head.
The difference was he wasn’t going to act on it, despite the sizzle whenever they were in near proximity. This might be a long eighteen months.
It didn’t matter how hard they dug, she didn’t have a past, at least not the sort he was talking about, but Mari was not about to admit her embarrassing lack of lovers to him. She turned her head quickly. Trust issues aside, she had suspected for some time that she simply wasn’t very highly sexed. With Adrian she had been in love with the idea of it, the romance of it, which was why having her illusions shattered had been such a big deal.
She’d trusted him and he’d betrayed her and rejected her. She’d prefer to stay single than risk feeling that way again.
‘Some of us are discreet.’
‘Yeah, I had a grandstand view of your amazing discretion in the cathedral,’ he drawled, replaying the scene in his head and feeling the acrid aftertaste of anger and humiliation all over again.
Mari clamped her lips together. She was pretty sick of having her nose rubbed in it. It wasn’t as if she needed reminding she had set in motion the events that had led her to this place and this moment. ‘Are you going to bring that up often? Just so that I know.’
‘You’re right.’ Anger was a waste of energy and an indulgence; he needed to take a less negative approach. ‘I’m not in the best of moods.’
Astonished by the admission, Mari didn’t say anything.
‘After a long absence, my parents have made the news.’
The story dug up from years back by an enterprising hack told of another bride left standing at the altar. His father had been the groom, his mother the ‘other’ woman, and his father had jilted his new bride just as Seb had done.
The only downside to this story from a journalistic point of view had been that the woman left at the altar had not gone on to lead a tragic life, but instead had been inconveniently happy combining a career as a respected trauma doctor with marriage and four children.
‘Today might be better if you remind yourself that a marriage of convenience is a hell of a lot better than one of inconvenience, and there are a lot of those out there,’ he mused, fighting the impulse to grab the damned bag off her as sh
e staggered awkwardly down a step. All she had to do was ask, but she didn’t, and with a bloody-minded stubbornness she made it to the poky communal hallway where she paused.
He correctly interpreted her hesitation. ‘There were no reporters outside when I arrived.’
Still she hesitated, raising herself up on tiptoe to peer through the dusty pane of glass high up on the door.
‘Are you sure?’ If she was seen leaving complete with luggage and Seb, she could only imagine how they would spin it. Ironically nothing could be as strange, or crazy, as the truth!
With a grunt of irritation he snatched the bag from her and strode out through the door.
Left with little choice Mari followed him, relieved that no one jumped out of the shadows wielding a camera. He walked straight to the car parked by the kerb. It was an enormous four-wheel drive with blacked-out windows.
‘You’re driving?’
‘I like driving, unless you want to?’
She shook her head.
‘So what did your brother think of our arrangement?’ Being a brother himself, his opinion of a man who allowed his sister to fight his battles was not positive.
‘I don’t ask my brother’s approval for my decisions.’
Neatly dodged, he thought, observing her neat, peachy behind as she bent, ignoring the passenger door and getting into the back seat.
‘Aren’t you going to ask me where we’re going?’
She had been about to, but she responded to a perverse impulse and said instead, ‘One register office is much the same as any other.’
She saw his eyes narrow in the rear-view mirror. ‘Life is going to be a lot easier if you lose the victim act,’ he drawled.
Not replying, she turned her head and looked out of the window.
‘The silent treatment works for me. It’s peaceful, but I’ve never known a woman who can keep it buttoned for more than five minutes.’
Mari clamped her lips over a retort and contented herself with slinging him a fulminating look of dislike in the rear-view mirror.
‘Fifteen, I’m impressed,’ Seb admitted as he drew up in front of a red-brick building.
She ignored him and looked up at the building. ‘So this is it, then?’