by Kim Lawrence
The geography of the area made little sense to Mari, and her thoughts turned to her brother. What if something had happened? He hadn’t replied to her last text.
She slipped her phone out of her pocket, but before she could begin to punch in Mark’s number it was snatched from her grasp by Seb before she had even registered his presence.
She turned, eyes blazing. ‘Give that back!’
Seb looked at the phone and tucked it into his own pocket. Mari, her hands clenched, watched him and went white with rage. ‘Does he always need you to hold his hand?’
Her chin lifted in reaction to the scorn in his voice while in the distance the owl called. ‘The support is mutual.’
A slug of anger that on one level Seb knew was irrational slipped past the cool objectivity he struggled to maintain whenever he thought of the man he had judged to be a selfish waste of space. Any sympathy he might have felt for the younger man’s present situation was negated by the cynical way he used his sister and played on her irrational guilt.
And you’re not...?
Cynical, or using her?
Both. The answer came a second before he closed down this line of internal dialogue.
The situations were not comparable; she was not losing out and this was a fair exchange. Eighteen months with him was preferable to a life spent looking after a brother for whom nothing she ever did would be enough—and that was what would happen if he didn’t fully recover.
Recognising a masterful piece of rationalisation when he heard one, he buried the knowledge beneath a layer of anger.
‘You’d like to believe that, wouldn’t you? But you’re really not that stupid, are you, Mari?’
Mari was grateful for the dark when his soft suggestion made her face flame. She compressed her lips over a defensive retort, resenting his insinuation while recognising there was more than a grain of truth in it. While she wasn’t blind to her twin’s faults, it was something else to hear another person criticise him.
‘Didn’t you read the literature on The Atler?’
Her face was just a blur, but he imagined her teeth gouging into the soft plump fullness of her lower lip. She’d done that several times on the plane. At one point there had been pinpricks of blood, and he had wondered what she would do if he’d dabbed them away with his tongue...
The question still remained, as did the frustrated ache.
She was grateful for the change of subject, but it took Mari a moment to react to the abrupt question, to connect the name with the clinic that specialised in the rehabilitation of injuries like Mark’s—the expensive clinic.
She felt resentment she was uncomfortable acknowledging stir. If she had told Mark what she was doing would he have discouraged her? Her resentment was directed not towards her brother but towards the man who had made her think about it.
‘I didn’t know there was an exam,’ she countered, unwilling to admit that she had read the first page half a dozen times before she had finally given up. She’d had other things on her mind at the time, such as getting married.
Seb, drawn by the scent of her perfume—or was it her shampoo?—fought the sudden strong impulse to lean in closer. Darkness had a dangerous way of bypassing inhibitions.
The air was heavy with an almost audible expectant hum that had little to do with the imminent storm and everything to do with the indiscriminate flare of hormones that escalated the dull ache in his groin.
Sex was always one of those things that defied logic, but not, he reminded himself, his control. He was justifiably proud of his ability to vanquish the primal urges.
‘They discourage visitors during the initial assessment period. The regime appears to be as much boot camp as high-tech.’
‘It does?’
‘When the going gets tough your brother will be begging you to get him out of there...and of course you’ll rush to do what he wants, even if that isn’t the best thing for him. If you’re here with me, you have a legitimate excuse to refuse to ride to the rescue.’
His superior dismissive tone hit a raw nerve. Mari caught his arm and felt the hard muscle under her fingers tense before he swung back his feet, kicking up a shower of gravel that hit her bare shins.
‘You don’t think a lot of him, do you?’
His response was not ambiguous. ‘No.’
‘Because he’s not been born with your advantages?’ she charged contemptuously. ‘Well, my brother has got pride, too, even if he doesn’t have the required patrician blood to meet your standards!’ She glared up at the shadowy outline of his face.
‘I thought pride was a bad and wicked thing. Or is that only when it comes attached to me?’
She was attached to him.
Mari’s dark-fringed eyelids fluttered in recognition of the contact; she pulled in a tense breath and felt her insides quiver. At some point her left hand had joined her right on his biceps; she was holding on as though her life depended on it. There was no give at all beneath her fingers. He was hard and lean, strong like steel but warm. She could feel the heat through her fingertips, sending pulses of a dark warmth thrumming through her body.
‘Your sort of pride comes from an arrogant belief that you are better simply because you are you. Well, he’ll prove you wrong.’ Forcing a drop of blood from a stone could not have required more strength than peeling back her strangely reluctant fingers; no matter how hard she tried they wouldn’t budge. In the darkness with the wind rustling through the trees her heart began to thud in slow, heavy, hard anticipation.
Of what, Mari?
Time seemed to stop. She struggled, feeling things inside her that had built up begin to dissolve like sand. Control was slipping through her fingers... Shaking her head in rejection, she managed to break the contact and the spell. Holding her hands across her chest in a protective gesture, Mari took a lurching step back onto an uneven cobble and in the process triggered a powerful security light.
Without warning, the area was lit up, revealing that they had entered a courtyard. She lifted a hand to shade her eyes. The scent she had been conscious of was more pronounced, and she saw it emanated from the wild thyme growing in the cracks of the cobbles. The illumination after the anonymity of darkness made her feel exposed and horribly vulnerable.
This was her first real glimpse of the building. Its ecclesiastical origins were obvious in the architecture but the severity was softened by ivy on the walls and massive stone troughs beneath enormous mullioned windows that spilled out their impressive floral displays.
But it was not the geraniums that caught her attention, it was the expression in his eyes. Then the first raindrop hit her face, then another and another. The moment gone, she lifted her face to the heavens with a sigh. If ever a cold shower had been providential, this one was.
‘This way,’ he said, gesturing for Mari to go ahead of him into a wide, open porch made of oak that had silvered with age. ‘Not a creaking door in sight.’ He lifted the heavy latch on a massive door just to his right.
‘What about bats?’
‘Creatures with sharp teeth that launch themselves into the unknown with only instinct to protect them. I would have thought that you would feel something in common with them.’
Stepping under his arm and through the huge door that swung inwards as he lifted the latch, she found herself standing in a kitchen. She had barely taken in the room’s massive proportions or the latest in kitchen design sitting cheek by steam oven with the original stone flags and heavy oak aged beams, when the niggle in her head solidified into a thought.
‘How can this be a standing arrangement? You’re meant to be on your honeymoon,’ she blurted before she had considered the wisdom of reminding him where he might have been and with whom.
If the reminder had caused him pain, he was hiding it well. His inscrutable expression told her little, but that could be due to the fact that the dark shadow on his jaw and chin upped the dark, dangerous, moody stakes considerably.
‘The plan had
been for Elise to fly out to Maldives immediately. I intended to join her at the weekend.’
Her eyes went round. ‘She was going on honeymoon alone?’ Wasn’t that taking independence a bit far?
‘You have a comment to—’ He broke off as two small dogs burst into the room, yapping loudly.
Mari watched as he bent to pat them, speaking to them in Spanish and showing more warmth for the animals than she’d yet seen him display to humans. Maybe he preferred them—she gave a half smile, as she did herself on occasion.
He straightened up just as a larger dog the size of a small donkey padded at a more leisurely pace into the room. The dog wagged its tail and stood placidly while he stroked its ears.
‘You were saying...?’
Caught staring and with what she suspected might have been a soppy smile on her face, she glared. ‘I wasn’t, but, if you must know, if my new husband chose to spend the first few days of our honeymoon with his grandmother rather than me, I’d not be happy.’
‘Well, he hasn’t, has he?’
It took her a moment to catch his meaning. When she did she flushed. ‘This isn’t the same. It’s business.’
‘So you would expect your real husband to put you ahead of everything else—work, family, duty...? My grandmother will not be here forever.’
‘Well, I’d have come with you obviously... I mean, hypothetically and not you...’
Their eyes connected and she saw a flicker of consciousness in his dark eyes before he bent to stroke one of the animals at his feet who, barometers of his mood, began to yap.
Who said animals and children knew? she thought, watching as the larger dog began to lick Sebastian’s hand with slavish devotion.
‘What have you told your grandmother about me?’
Before Seb could respond a small bearded figure wearing a dressing gown and slippers shuffled into the kitchen. He carried a rifle, which he lowered when he saw Seb.
Deeply alarmed by the presence of a firearm, Mari had retreated instinctively behind the big scrubbed table. She relaxed slightly as the armed man wrung Seb’s hand up and down and addressed him in excited-sounding Spanish.
Seb responded in the same language. He spoke for a few moments and then gestured towards Mari.
‘Relax, it is not loaded.’
He said something to the older man, who looked Mari’s way, laughed and put the rifle down on the table. He waved his hands, saying something to her slowly.
‘Tomas says he is a harmless old man,’ Seb translated, saying something that made the man laugh again. ‘He says not to be afraid. I contacted him from the airport to say we would be arriving. My grandmother had already retired, but your room is ready.’
She managed a weak smile, which made the man tip his head in acknowledgement before he walked in the direction he had entered. Turning back, he gestured for her to follow him.
‘Go. Tomas will show you to your room. If there’s anything you want...’
Her eyes brushed his and she knew she was blushing. ‘There won’t be.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
THOUGH SHE WAS convinced she wouldn’t be able to, Mari finally did drift off. She had no idea how long she actually slept, but it was still dark when she woke up, her body bathed in sweat, her heart thudding; only wisps of the nightmare remained. As they slipped away, reality came rushing in.
It was far worse than the creature that had been pursuing her in the nightmare.
‘I’m married!’
It had been her secret dream, one she’d never even admitted to herself: her own home, a family and a man who she could drop her defences with, someone she could trust. She saw him in her dreams sometimes, but when she woke, his face vanished like smoke.
What have I done?
On the verge of panic, breathing hard, she sat bolt upright in bed, the crumpled sheets still clutched in her fingers.
She’d made a mistake, a terrible mistake! No, mistake wasn’t a big enough word for what she’d done. Eighteen months, Mari, that’s all and then you can have your life back, and you’ll never have to see him again.
She flopped back and lay, one hand curved above her head, staring at the ceiling, seeing the shape of the dark exposed rafters against the white. Even though she had left the doors to the Juliet balcony open, the room was totally still, the only noise the soft swishing sound of the whirring fan. The silence pressed down on her like a weight. Her thoughts went round in circles like the fan as she tried to work out what was going to happen next.
She tried to block the negative thoughts. He liked dogs; he loved his grandmother... Oh, God, how had she got herself in this position?
She sat up again and her stomach rumbled. She knew from experience that a glass of warm milk was the only thing that would give her any more sleep that night. How far had it been to the kitchen?
She pushed back the covers, went across to her open case and took out the first thing she saw. It was a lacy shrug, and she pulled it on over the calf-length nightshirt she was wearing.
Outside her room the corridor, with its modern-art-treasure-sprinkled walls, was still lit at intervals by soft light from the wall sconces of beaten copper that had fascinated her when Tomas had led her this way.
Right, she was here, so what next? Right or left?
She remembered a wooden carving of a Madonna at the top of the flight of stairs, but there was no sign of that or, for that matter, the stairs, just lots of doors along both sides of the hallway, all heavy banded oak.
Right, Mari, it’s hopeless. Go back to bed.
She ignored the good advice of the voice of common sense, unable to face the thought of lying there for the rest of the night. She was not ready to give up yet. She walked down to the end of the hallway that opened out onto what appeared to be a wrought iron Juliet balcony similar to the one in her bedroom, then with a sigh turned around.
She froze, the feral shriek of fear emerging from somewhere deep inside her... She opened her mouth and it just went on and on. The ghostly apparition screamed right back at her, and when she clamped her hand to her mouth, so did the spectral image that appeared to be floating in the distance.
Weak-kneed but smiling, she gave a shaky laugh of sheer relief, and her reflection, framed in the massive mirror that filled the entire wall the opposite end of the corridor, laughed back at her.
Shaking with reaction, she grabbed the nearest thing for support; it was the big heavy metal handle of the door she stood beside.
‘Ghosts don’t have red hair.’
* * *
Even if he had been asleep the scream would have woken him; the visceral sound of terror made his blood run cold.
‘Mari...?’ Heart pounding, grim faced, he threw back the thin cover on the big carved oak bed that, had the room not been vast, would have dominated it and leaped out.
Seb hit the ground running, moving as if the devil himself were at his heels. Luckily the room was not in total darkness; a small lamp still burned on a desk in the corner of the room where the book he had abandoned earlier lay open. It illuminated the corner, casting a series of dappled shadows across the vaulted ceiling.
He grabbed the heavy oak door, pulling it hard enough to wrench the ancient wood off its hinges; it held even though it carried the extra weight of someone who was attached to the handle.
Unprepared for the violent lurch, Mari found herself dragged without warning into the room behind the big door. She managed to keep her balance by holding the handle for dear life.
She barely registered the room itself. Her wide eyes developed a severe case of tunnel vision. Spectres were one thing, but flesh and blood and very real Seb clad in what seemed to be a pair of black boxers that hung low on his narrow hips and nothing else was another and far more disturbing proposition!
Her glance moved up in a slow sweeping arc from his bare feet. The farther she travelled, the hotter she got and the more squirmy the feeling in her stomach; her heart was beating harder than it had when she ha
d faced the prospect of a ghostly haunting.
He was magnificent. He looked like some sculptured statue brought to life in glowing golden tones. There wasn’t an ounce of surplus flesh on his body to blur the muscle definition of his ridged belly, shoulders and thighs.
Mari had no control over the series of breath-catching butterfly kicks in her stomach; she had never imagined a man could be so rampantly male. Before she had time or the ability to form anything approaching a rational thought, the cocktail of apprehension and excitement coalesced into a heavy ache low in her abdomen.
‘I was looking for a glass of milk,’ she heard herself say. ‘I saw a ghost...’ The protective screen of her lashes lifted. ‘Not really but—’
‘There are probably a few ghosts knocking around the place.’ Holding her eyes, he pushed the half-open door closed with his foot.
Mari’s glance went to the door and back to his face in a jerky, half-scared movement.
She was nervous. He was the one who should be feeling nervous, Seb thought... Very nervous. She was the one creeping around the place in the dead of night dressed like... Well, actually if she had not been dressed at all it could not have been any more provocative than the near transparent floaty number she had on.
The thing might be some modern take on Victorian primness, long-sleeved and fastened high at the throat with a little ribbon, but back-lit by the golden light from the lamp the white material became effectively transparent, the fabric so gossamer fine that if he tried, actually even if he tried not to, he could make out the dark perimeter of her rosy areola and the shadow between her thighs.
Mari ran her tongue across her lips to moisten them, struggling for some composure, and missing the resultant hot flare in his hooded glance.
She cleared her throat and turned her head, saying conversationally, ‘My, this is a big room.’ Big room—my God, could I sound any more inane?
He had a cameo view of the classic purity of her profile, her hair a glorious fiery halo glowing under the subdued artificial light in the hallway, appearing dark against the pale and almost transparent whiteness of her provocative nightclothes.