The Millionaire's Marriage

by Catherine Spencer

  Driven by hunger and need and hope, she’d traced her fingertip along the curve of his eyebrow, smoothed her hand lightly over his dark hair. Made bold by the fact that he didn’t stir, she’d bent down to lay her mouth on his when, suddenly, his eyes had shot open.

  Instantly awake, suspicious, annoyed, he’d growled, “What the devil do you think you’re doing?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” she’d whispered, hoping the

  warmth of her lips against his would ignite an answering fire in him.

  Instead, he’d turned his face away so that her kiss missed its mark and landed on his cheek.

  “Don’t,” she’d begged. “Please don’t turn away from me. I need you, Max.”

  She might as well have appealed to a slab of stone for all the response she evoked. Ignoring her completely, he’d continued staring at the wall, and even all these months later, she grew hot with embarrassment at what had fol lowed.

  She’d pulled back the sheet and touched him—tenta tively at first—beginning at his shoulders and continuing the length of his torso until she found the sleep-warm flesh between his thighs.

  “It doesn’t prove a thing, you know,” he’d informed her with quiet fuiy when, despite himself, he’d grown hard against her hand. “It’s a purely reflexive response— any woman could bring it about.”

  “But I’m not just any woman, Max. I’m your wife,” she’d reminded him. “And I love you. Please let me show you how much.”

  And before he had time to realize her intention, she’d let her mouth slide over the muscled planes of his chest to his belly and then, with a daring born wholly of des peration, closed her lips softly over the silken tip of his manhood.

  His breathing had quickened. He’d knotted his fingers in her hair and tried unsuccessfully to stifle a groan. Sens ing victory, she’d slipped Out of his hold and the peignoir in one swift move, and aligned her naked body, inch for inch, against his.

  She’d seen the corded tension in his neck, tasted the ifim of sweat on his upper lip when he’d grudgingly let

  her turn his face to meet hers and succumbed to the sweeping caress of her tongue over the seam of his mouth.

  She’d known a glorious tremor of expectation when, unable to hold out any longer, he’d hauled her to sit astride him and braced her so that, with the merest surge of his hips, he was buried inside her, tight and powerful. She’d felt the muscled flex of his abdomen, the steely strength of his thighs. Seen the rapid rise and fall of his chest.

  He’d spanned her waist, framed the curve of her hips, drawn a line from her navel to her pubic bone, and then farther still, until he found the one tiny spot in her body most vulnerable to his measured seduction.

  Sensation had engulfed her and left her body vibrating, from the tips of her toes to her scalp. Such pleasure! Such exquisite torture! She’d yearned toward him, wanting to prolong the delight only he could bring, but encroaching passion had slammed down with such vengeance that nei ther of them had been able to withstand it.

  Caught in a maelstrom of emotion sharpened to daz zling brilliance by the spasms ravaging her body, she’d sensed her eyes growing heavy, slumberous almost. But his had remained wide open. Unblinking. Unmoved. As though to say, You might wreak havoc with my body, but you’ll never sway my heart or mind.

  “Satisfied?” he’d said, when it was over. And, with that brief, indifferent question, managed to degrade their union to something so cheap and unlovely that she’d cringed.

  Twenty-four months should have been time enough to lessen the hurt. A sensible woman would have forgotten it altogether. But she’d never been sensible where Max was concerned and if the tears scalding her cheeks now weren’t proof enough of that, the dull, cold emptiness

  inside where once she’d known warmth and life and pas sion, should have been.

  What would it take, she wondered, to cure her of Max Logan and heal the scars inflicted by her marriage? Would there ever come a time that she’d learn to love another man as she still loved him—and if so, .would she love more wisely the next time?

  Although dense silence greeted him when he stepped in side the penthouse, he knew at once that she was there. Quite apart from her suitcases still parked by the front door, and the scent of flowers everywhere, as well as a host of other clues that she’d made herself thoroughly at home, the atmosphere was different. Vibrant, electric, and unsetthng as hell. A forewarning of trouble to come.

  Dropping his briefcase on the desk in his office—one area, he was glad to see, that she hadn’t tried to carnou flage into something out of a happy homemaker maga zIne—he made a quick circuit through the rooms on the main floor before climbing the stairs. The thick carpet masked his footsteps thoroughly enough• that she was completely unaware of him coming to a halt at the en trance to the master suite.

  Shoving his hands in his pockets, he leaned against the door frame and watched her. She stood at the highboy dresser and appeared to be mopping her face with his golf shirt. But what struck him (most forcibly was how thin she’d become. Not that she’d ever been fat or even close to it but, where once she’d been sweetly curved, she was now all sharp, elegant angles, at least from the rear. Her hips were narrow as a boy’s, her waist matchstick slender.

  Though probably a prerequisite for all successful fash ion models, it wasn’t a look that appealed to him. Even less did he like the air of fragility that went with this

  underfed version of the hellion he’d been coerced into marrying. It edged her too close to vulnerable, and once he started thinking along those lines, he was in trouble, as he very well knew from past experience.

  “I’d appreciate it if you’d wipe your nose on something other than a piece of my clothing,” he said, relishing how his voice suddenly breaking the silence almost had her jumping out of her skin.

  But when she spun around, the expression on her face made short work of his moment of malicious pleasure. He’d forgotten how truly beautiful she was. In particular, he’d forgotten the impact of her incredible eyes and, sud denly, he was the one struggling for composure as mem ories of the night they’d first met in her father’s house rushed back to haunt him.

  “I’d like you to meet my daughter,” Zoltan Sikiossy had said, as footsteps approached along the flagstone path that ran the width of the front of the rambling old mau soleum of a place.

  Max had turned and been transfixed, the impact of the city skyline beyond the Danube forgotten. Backlit by the late May sunset, she’d appeared touched with gold all over, from her pale hair to her honey-tinted skin. Only her eyes had been different, a startlingly light aquamarine, one moment more green than blue, and the next, the other way around.

  Fringed with long, curling lashes and glowing with the fire of priceless jewels, they’d inspected him. He’d stared back, mesmerized, and said the first thing that came to mind. “I didn’t know Magyars were blond. Somehow, I expected you’d all be dark.”

  A stupid, thoughtless remark which showed him for the ignorant foreigner he was, but she hadn’t taken offence. Instead, she’d come forward and laughed as she took his

  hand. “Some of us are. But we Hungarians have a mixed ancestry and I, like many others in my country, favor our Finnish heritage.”

  Though accented, her English was perfect, thanks, he

  - later discovered, to an aunt who’d studied in London years before. Her laughter hung like music in the still, warm evening. Her hand remained in his, light and cool. “Wel come to Budapest, Mr. Logan,” she purred. “I hope you’ll allow me to introduce you to our beautiful city.”

  “I’m counting on it,” he’d replied, bowled over by her

  • easy self-assurance. Although she looked no more than eighteen, he believed her when she told him she was twenty-seven. Why not? After all, her parents were well into their seventies.

  In fact, she’d been just twenty-two and the most con niving creature he’d ever met—not .something likely to have changed, he reminded himself no
w, even if she did look about ready to keel over in a dead faint at being caught off guard.

  “I’m not wiping my nose,” she whispered shakily, clutching the shirt to her breasts.

  He strolled further into the room. “What were you do ing, then? Sniffing to find evidence of another woman’s perfume? Checking for lipstick stains?”

  Something flared in her eyes. Guilt? Shame? Anger? “Should I be? Do you entertain many women here, Max, now that I’m no longer underfoot all the time?”

  “If I do, that’s certainly none of your business, my dear.”

  “As long as we’re married—”

  “You left the marriage.” •

  • “But I’m still your wife and whether or not you like it, you’re still my husband.”

  He circled her slowly and noticed that ‘her eyes were

  suspiciously red-rimmed. “A fact which apparently causes you some grief. Have you been ciying, Gabriella?”

  “No,” she said, even as a fresh flood of tears welled up and turned her irises to spariding turquoise.

  “You used to be a better liar. What happened? Not had enough practice lately?”

  “I...” Battling for composure, she pressed slender fin gers to her mouth.

  Irked to find his mood dangerously inclining toward sympathy, he made a big production of tipping the loose change from his pockets Onto the shelf of his mahogany valet stand. “Yes? Spit it out, whatever it is. Alter evely thing else we’ve been through, I’m sure I can take it.”

  Her voice, husky and uncertain, barely made it across the distance separating them. “I hoped we wouldn’t.. .be like this with one another, Max. I hoped we’d be able

  to...” -

  She swallowed audibly and dribbled into another trem ulous silence.

  “What?” He swung back to face her, stoking the slow anger her distress threatened to extinguish. “Pick up where we left off? And exactly where was that, Gabriella? At each other’s throats, as I recall!”

  “I was hoping we could get past that. I think we must, if we’re to convince my parents they need have no worries about me.” She held out both hands in appeal. “I know you.. .hate me, Max, but for their sake, won’t you please try to remember there was once a time when we liked each other and, for the next two weeks, focus on that instead?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Hm reminder touched a nerve. They had liked each other, in the beginning. He’d been dazzled by her effervescence, her zest for life. Only later had he come to see them for what they really were: a cover-up designed to hide her more devious objectives.

  “My father treats me as if! were made of bone china,” she’d confided, the day she took him on a walking tour on the Buda side of the Danube, some three weeks after he’d arrived in Hungary. “He thinks I need to be pro tected.”

  “Not surprising, surely?” he’d said. “You’ve had a very sheltered upbringing.”

  She’d batted her eyelashes provocatively. “But I’m a woman of the world now, Max, and quite able to look out for myself.”

  Later that afternoon though, when they’d run into some people she knew and been persuaded to join them for refreshments at a sidewalk café near Fishermen’s Bastion, Max had seen why Zoltan Sikiossy might be concerned. Although she made one glass of wine last the whole hour they were together, Gabriella’s so-called friends—social- climbing opportunists, from what he’d observed—ordered round after round and showed no qualms about leaving her to pick up the tab when they finally moved on.

  “Let me,” Max had said, reaching for the bill.

  “No, please! I can afford it,” she’d replied. “And it’s my pleasure to do so.”

  But he’d insisted. “Humor me, Gabriella. I’m one of

  22

  those dull, old-fashioned North Americans who thinks the man should pay.”

  ‘Vu!!?” She’d turned her stunning sea-green eyes on him and he’d found himself drowning in their translucent depths. “I find you rather wonderful.”

  For a moment, he’d thought he caught a glimpse, of something fragile beneath her vivacity. A wistful inno cence almost, that belied her frequent implicit reference to previoUs lovers. It was gone so quickly thathe decided he must have imagined it, but the impression, brief though it was, found its way through his defenses and touched him in ways he hadn’t anticipated.

  If she were anyone else and his sole reason for visiting Hungary had been a summer of fun in the sun, he’d have found her hard to resist. But there was no place in his plans for a serious involvement, and he hoped he had enough class not to engage in a sexual fling with his hosts’ daughter.

  The way Gabriella had studied him suggested she knew full well the thoughts chasing through his mind, and was determined to change them. Her usual worldly mask firmly in place again, she asked in a voice husky with promise, “Do you like to dance, Max?”

  “I can manage a two-step without crippling my part ner,” he said, half bewitched by her brazen flirting and half annoyed to find himself responding to it despite what his conscience was teffing him.

  • “Would you like to dance with me?”

  “Here?” ‘He’d glance at the hulking shadow of Mátyás Church, and the sunny square next to it, filled with cam era-toting tourists. “I don’t think so, thanks!”

  “Of course not here!” She’d laughed and he was once again reminded of music, of wind chimes swaying in a summer breeze. Good sense be damned, he’d found him-

  self gazing at her heart-shaped face with its perfect straw beriy-ripe, cupid’s-bow mouth and wondering how she would taste if he were to kiss her.

  “My parents would like to throw a party for you,” she went on, drawing his gaze down by crossing her long, lovely legs so that the hem of her skirt, short enough to begin with, rode a couple of inches farther up her thigh. “They hold your family in such esteem, as I’m sure you know. Your grandfather is a legend in this city.”

  “He took a few photographs.” Max had shrugged, as much to dispel the enchantment she was weaving as to dispute her claim. “No big deal. That was how he earned a living.’?

  “For the people of Budapest, he was a hero. He braved imprisonment to record our history when most men with his diplomatic immunity would have made their escape. As his grandson, you are our honored guest and it’s our privilege to treat you accordingly.”

  “I’m here on business, Gabriella, not to make the social scene,” he reminded her. “It was never-my intention to impose on your family for more than an hour or two, just long enough to pay my respects. That your parents in sisted I stay in their home when I had a perfectly good hotel room reserved—”

  “Charles Logan’s grandson stay in a hotel?” Her laughter had flowed over him again beguilingly. Her fin gers grazed his forearm and lingered at his wrist, gently. shackling him. “Out of the question! Neither my mother nor my father would allow such a thing. You’re to stay with us as long as, and whenever, you’re in Budapest”

  A completely illogical prickle of foreboding had tracked the length of his spine and despite the bright hot sun, he’d felt a sudden chill. “I don’t anticipate many return visits. Once I’ve concluded the terms and condi

  —

  tions of the property I’m interested in buying and have the necessary permits approved, I’ll turn the entire resto ration process over to my project manager and head back home.” -

  “All the more reason for us to entertain you royally while we have the chance then,” she’d said, leaning for ward so that, without having to try too hard, he was able to glimpse the lightly tanned cleavage revealed by the low neck of her summer dress. She hadn’t been wearing a bra.

  Responding to so shameless an invitation had been his first in a long line of mistakes that came to a head about a month later when the promised party took place. It seemed to him that half the population of Budapest showed up for the event and while he lost traëk of names almost immediately, everyone appeared to know not only of his grandfather but
, surprisingly, of him, his purchase of the dilapidated old building across the river, and his plans to turn it into yet another of his chain of small, international luxury hotels.

  “You see,” Gabriella had cooed in his ear, slipping her hand under his elbow and leaning close enough for the sunlit scent of her pale gold hair to cloud his senses, “it’s not just Charles Logan’s grandson they’ve come to meet. You’re a celebrity in your own right, Max.”

  She looked exquisite in a sleeveless flame-pink dress made all the more dramatic by its simple, fitted lines. The eye of every man in the place was drawn to her, and his had been no exception. “I’m surprised people don’t resent a foreigner snapping up their real estate,” he’d said, tear ing his gaze away and concentrating instead on the bub bles rising in his glass of champagne.

  “You’re creating work for people, bringing tourism here in greater numbers, helping to rebuild our economy.

  What possible reason could anyone have to resent such a man?”

  He’d been flattered, no doubt about it. What man wouldn’t have been, with a roomful of Budapest’s social elite smiling benignly at him and a stunningly beautiful woman hanging on his every word?

  He should have been satisfied with that. Instead, he’d gone along with it when she’d monopolized him on the dance floor because hey, he was passing through town only, so what harm was there in letting her snuggle just a bit too close? Not until it was too late to change things had he seen that in being her passive conspirator, he’d contributed to the evening ending in a disaster that kept on going from bad to worse.

  “Didn’t we, Max?”

  Glad to escape memories guaranteed to unleash nothing but shame and resentment, he stared at the too thin woman facing him; the woman who, despite the fact that they lived hundreds of miles apart and hadn’t spent a night under the same roof in eighteen months, was still tech nicafly his wife. “Didn’t we what?”

  “Like each other, at one time. Very much, in fact.”

  “At one time, Gabriella, and they are the operative words,” he said, steeling himself against the look of na ked hope on her face. “As far as I’m concerned, every thing changed after that party you coerced your parents into hosting.”