by Penny Jordan
Bernstein had obviously convinced her that he loved her and that they had a permanent future together. Marcus knew Polly, and he knew there was no way she could even contemplate leaving Fraser House, never mind giving Bernstein a child, unless he had. Marcus had learned from Suzi that there was a very different side to Phil Bernstein than the one Polly had seen, and that he was a man who could be as ruthless in his emotional life as he was in his business one. But there was obviously no point in telling Polly that, not when she was so obviously totally besotted with the man.
And Marcus knew better than most just what it was like to love someone beyond all logic or reason.
‘Why are you doing this to me, Marcus?’ Polly asked him chokily. ‘What possible reason can you have?’
‘You seem to forget that I have a considerable financial stake in this business, and whatever I might think about your other…capabilities…I have to admit that here at Fraser House you would be extremely hard to replace. You own half of the business yourself, and…’
‘I intend to sell my share,’ Polly told him swiftly. ‘If you want…Marcus…Marcus…let go of me,’ Polly protested as he suddenly grabbed hold of her.
He was almost shaking her as he demanded in disbelief, ‘You’re doing what?’
‘I’m going to sell my share,’ Polly repeated shakily as she felt the tension in his body communicate itself with her own via the hold he had on her upper arms.
‘I know I have to offer you first refusal and—’
‘Oh, you do, do you?’ Marcus interrupted her softly. ‘Is that why you went to bed with me, Polly…to offer me first refusal?’
‘Oh…!’ Polly’s shocked indrawn gasp of outrage was flattened in her throat as it threatened to close up with the anguish of what she was feeling. ‘I didn’t…you weren’t…’ she tried to explain in shaken self-defence, but Marcus shook his head to silence her.
He knew exactly what she was going to say, of course. She hadn’t intended anything to happen. She hadn’t wanted him. She had wanted Bernstein. He had just happened to be there, to have caught her at a weak moment when her defences were down. But he was the one who had held her, touched her, loved her. He was the one she had cried out to, responded to—and suddenly Marcus was tired of playing the ‘good guy’.
She had responded to him once. He could show her how good it could be between them…how right they were for one another. He could show her how much happier she could be with him than with Bernstein. He could show her how much he loved her, how much he longed to love her—to love her and protect her and, yes, to give her the child she claimed she wanted.
God, but didn’t she know how much hearing that had hurt him? He’d had to watch while she gave birth to Richard’s child, wanting so much for it to be his and yet loving Briony for herself in spite of his own feelings. But to see her body growing a second time with another man’s child…
No. There was no way he could endure that.
As the hot mist of his jealousy started to settle Marcus told himself that he must have been mad even to consider using Polly’s vulnerability to…But then, as he started to release her, his glance fell towards her body, where the thin cotton robe she was wearing was pulling tightly against it. He could see quite clearly the sharp, hard outline of her breast with the taut crest of her nipple pressing against the fabric as though…as though…
‘Polly…’
With a muffled groan Marcus reached out to touch her, cupping his hand around her breast, his thumb against her erect nipple, caressing it.
‘No.’ Polly could hear the sound of her own denial, only the word sounded much more like a long, low plea of craving rather than a rejection. No wonder Marcus wasn’t paying any attention to it. No wonder what he was doing was stroking her nipple more urgently.
‘No,’ Polly protested a second time, but she knew that, if anything, her denial sounded even less of a rejection than it had done the first time.
‘What is it about Bernstein that makes you want to walk away from here, Polly? You once told me that after Briony, Fraser House was the most important thing in your life because it was a part of Richard.’
Had she said that? She might have done, Polly acknowledged, but she couldn’t remember having done so. No doubt it had been a defensive remark she had thrown at Marcus when under attack, but trust him to have remembered it and to use it against her now.
‘If it’s physical satisfaction you’re hungry for,’ Marcus groaned hoarsely in her ear, ‘then I can satisfy that need for you.’
Polly could barely believe what she was hearing—not from Marcus.
‘I don’t want…’ she began huskily, but Marcus wouldn’t allow her to finish.
‘Yes, you do want,’ he corrected her savagely, ‘and I want, Polly; I want very, very much.’
And whilst she was still reeling from the shock of his frank admission he was bending his head and pushing aside her robe so that his mouth could cover the quivering peak of her nipple and draw on it with such fierce sweetness that the whole of her body turned liquid with longing.
It was different now than it had been the first time. Her body knew him now—knew him, wanted him, craved him as its lover, remembering and responding to every touch he gave her, every breath he took.
She tried to resist, to summon all her mental powers of logic, reason and self-protection, but such puny weapons were no match for the ferocity of her love-borne desire.
Every charged breath she drew seemed to tell Marcus of her weakness and her longing. His mouth left her breast to cover her lips, sealing her off from the outside world and any means of defending herself, creating such an aura of intimacy around them that it seemed to Polly almost as though she was sharing the air he breathed, as though the blood pumping through her veins came from his heart, so fiercely strong was its beat against her body. She seemed to have no will-power of her own. It was as though in his possession of her mouth he had stolen that away from her, just as his hands were stealing away the covering of her body.
But it wasn’t her robe that was making that slithering, urgent sound of impatient removal, she recognised, as she opened her eyes to see Marcus tugging off his own clothes, letting them fall where they stood.
‘You look as though you’ve been on holiday,’ she told him dizzily, unable to stop herself from reaching out to touch the warm tan of his skin.
‘All those years of working in the Middle East,’ Marcus responded gruffly.
‘My skin’s so pale,’ Polly complained, with a small sigh. ‘I used to hate it when I was young. I looked so…’
‘You looked wonderful,’ Marcus told her harshly, stunning her into bemused silence. ‘Soft and frail, so feminine that…’
Beneath the hand she had placed tentatively against his chest Polly could feel the increased surge of his heartbeat. It was beating frantically fast as though he was under some kind of strain, as though his emotions…
But Marcus felt nothing for her emotionally. Marcus loved Suzi…Marcus…
‘Oh, Polly, Polly,’ she heard him groaning as he wrapped his arms around her, holding her so tightly that it almost hurt her to breathe.
Her breasts ached where he had nuzzled her nipples, longing for the return of his hot, suckling mouth to their tender, aroused crests, but that was nothing to the ache she could feel pulsing deep within her body.
If she had longed for Marcus down through the years of her widowhood, it had been the longing of a woman ignorant, innocent of the strength of her own female sexuality; but now all that had changed. Now she knew; now she wanted him so fiercely, so immediately that she was shocked herself by the intensity of her wanting.
Her eyes widened with shock as her brain registered the boldness of her body, urging her to reach out to touch Marcus, unable to resist the impulse to explore the sinewy strength of his bare arm, her breath catching in her throat as she saw the way the muscles contracted beneath his skin and heard his betraying indrawn breath when his stomach muscles t
ensed and his…
Now her eyes really were wide open with shock. Surely it was not just because she had reached out to stroke him that his body…the most potently male part of him…had swelled and hardened so intensely?
‘It’s because of the way you stroked my arm; it felt as soft and silkily sensitive as though you had brushed your lips against me intimately,’ Marcus explained rawly to her, as though she had actually asked the question that was burning in her mind.
‘No,’ Polly denied immediately, her face flushing.
‘No, what?’ Marcus asked her thickly. ‘No, you wouldn’t ever touch me so intimately? But you did, Polly; the night we spent together, you reached out for me in the darkness and you…’
‘No. No, not that; I didn’t mean that,’ Polly protested frantically, not wanting him to remind her of just how impetuously, just how passionately and wildly she had behaved. ‘I…I meant…’
‘What did you mean?’ Marcus demanded softly. He was drawing her closer to him now, his hand stroking down over her naked back, his breath warm against the top of her head.
‘I meant, no, I didn’t believe that just because…that you…could…would…’
‘You’re trying to say that you didn’t think I could be so aroused by such a simple touch; is that it?’ he picked up wryly. ‘Why not? After all, I can arouse you just as…simply…’
‘No,’ Polly protested explosively. ‘No. I want…’
‘You want?’ Marcus demanded grimly. ‘You want Bernstein—but it’s me you’re with, Polly, me your body is responding to.’
‘No,’ Polly repeated.
‘You want me to stop? You don’t want me to do this?’ Marcus challenged her, bending his head to cup her breast and slowly draw its hard crest deep into his mouth.
Polly tried to deny him, to tell him to stop, but instead of forming the words she wanted her lips would only part with a long, slow, tortured sound of female longing.
She might as well have spoken her need and longing out loud, because she recognised how Marcus reacted immediately, picking her up bodily and covering her with hot, slow kisses. Hot, slow kisses that became increasingly demanding and urgent with every step he took towards her bed. Did he touch Suzi like this? Did he make her feel like this…did he…?
She couldn’t bear it, Polly acknowledged; she couldn’t endure the agony of what she was thinking, imagining, but she couldn’t bring herself to stop him either. She wanted him too much, loved him too much. Why was he doing this to her? To hurt her, punish her, to show her how weak and vulnerable she was, to show her that he had guessed how she really felt about him? Or was he simply driven by male desire, taking her out of his need for someone else, simply because she was there and his hunger was so great that it had to be appeased?
‘No.’ The whimpering sound of agony was drawn from her throat in a wrenching sob of pain but it was too late; her body was already welcoming Marcus within it, and not just welcoming him but reaching out to hold and embrace him, to hold him possessively within her, drawing him in deeper, urging him.
Helplessly Polly gave in to the desire she could no longer control, everything else overturned and swept away by its pounding tumult. She cried out to Marcus to hold her, clinging to him as the climactic waves of her own pleasure rocked and buffeted her, needing him as her security, her safe place, her haven from their intensity. Needing the sweet, warm balm of his completion inside her to ease the raw emptiness that lay deep within her body.
Whilst she lay beneath him in exhaustion, sexually fulfilled but emotionally empty, so hungry that her need was a gnawing, burning rawness of pain, Marcus removed himself from her, saying thickly, ‘Well, whatever else Bernstein is doing for you, he certainly isn’t satisfying you in bed.’
‘How can you possibly know that?’ Polly retaliated immediately.
‘How do you think?’ Marcus taunted her, adding softly, ‘Or would you like me to prove it to you—again?’
Her throat ached with the weight of her pain, but there was still something she had to ask him.
‘Marcus…the notice period. You have to release me from it.’
‘Why? Because you went to bed with me?’ He laughed savagely as he shook his head and moved away from her to sit on the edge of the bed with his back to her.
‘Oh, no, the time to make that kind of demand was earlier, Polly…before…But then you weren’t really in any state to make any kind of demand other than the one you made for my body, were you?’ he said, with such devastating cruelty that it literally took Polly’s breath away.
‘That clause stays in place,’ Marcus told her softly. ‘So you might as well resign yourself to it, Polly. For the next six months you are mine…and you’d better make sure that Bernstein knows it because if you don’t I certainly shall.’
CHAPTER NINE
‘SIX months? Hell…’
Polly could hear Phil’s irritation at the other end of the telephone line. ‘What the hell possessed you to give him that kind of power over you, Polly? Your legal advisors—whoever they are—should have—’
‘Marcus and I use the same firm,’ Polly told him quickly. ‘They’re Richard’s family’s solicitors and—’
‘Don’t say any more. I get the picture. Well, if Marcus is determined to refuse to release you…’
Polly held her breath, half expecting Phil to say that he had changed his mind, that he would have to find someone else to run the hotel, but to her relief instead he said simply, ‘I guess I shall just have to be patient. Have you got any holiday due to you? Only that could cut down the six-month period.’
‘I don’t know. I don’t normally take a holiday as such…’ Polly told him doubtfully. ‘I don’t remember putting it in the contract, but it was all such a long time ago.’
‘I wish you’d let my lawyers take a look at this contract; they could blow holes in it so big that—’
‘No, Phil,’ Polly protested. A costly legal battle was the last thing she needed, and despite Phil’s confidence she had an uncomfortable feeling that somehow or other Marcus would find a way to win.
‘Well, at least you’ll be able to spend your time off down here in London setting things up for when you do take over the job,’ Phil informed her.
‘Yes, I’ll come down whenever I can,’ Polly agreed obediently.
But, two weeks later, she was forced to admit that the likelihood of her being able to take any time off whatsoever whilst she worked her six months’ notice was becoming more and more remote.
The hotel was fully booked, and Marcus had stunned her by announcing that he wanted to have the business professionally valued, and not only that but that he had commissioned a firm of management consultants to evaluate the efficiency of the way the hotel was currently being run as well, so that not only was Polly having to cope with a fully booked hotel, but she was also at the beck and call of two different sets of professionals, both of whose teams seemed to want to go through every tiny detail of the way the hotel was run with a fine-tooth comb, presenting her with list after list of questions which it seemed only she was qualified to answer.
The last straw came one busy Thursday morning, which should have been the morning she worked with the chef to get in their last food orders for the following week and the weekend, but she was finding it impossible to do so because the management consultancy team wanted to know not only how much they paid the gardeners who took care of the formal gardens that surrounded the hotel but also why she had elected to have the beds planted with high-maintenance seasonal plants instead of more cost-effective shrubs.
‘The perennial borders were originally planted by my husband’s great-grandmother,’ she told the earnest young woman who was questioning her, through gritted teeth. ‘Our guests like the idea of staying at a hotel that was once a family home: they enjoy reading the history of the house and its gardens, which we commissioned and which we keep in the library, and I don’t think they would be quite so interested or enthusiastic if we r
eplanted the long walk with modern, low-maintenance shrubs.
‘As I said, the whole point of Fraser House is that it was once a home. Our guests expect those touches which make them feel that they are staying in a private house.’
When the girl raised her eyebrows rather disparagingly Polly began to feel her self-control slipping.
‘We are not part of a chain of hotels providing rooms in much the same way as a fast-food chain provides burgers,’ she told her sharply. ‘If we were…’ Taking a deep breath, Polly stopped.
‘I’m only trying to do my job,’ the girl told her defensively.
‘Yes, I appreciate that,’ Polly agreed, before telling her crisply, ‘But, as I’m sure you’ll appreciate, I too have a job to do, and right now I should be sitting with my chef going over the menus for next week, so if you’ll excuse me…’
‘But we still haven’t discussed the cost of having the windows cleaned,’ the girl protested.
Polly had had enough.
‘We haven’t, have we?’ she agreed evenly. ‘Look, why don’t you take that up with Mr Fraser? I’m sure he’d be delighted to help you and to see how painstakingly thorough you are being.’
And with that Polly marched determinedly to her office door, holding it open in such a way that the girl had no option but to leave.
Two hours later, as Polly came away from her meeting with the chef, she saw Marcus walking into the hotel foyer.
‘I want a word with you,’ he told her peremptorily.
‘And I want several words with you,’ Polly responded with asperity.
‘What were you playing at, sending that girl to me to ask about the gardens?’ Marcus demanded shortly.
‘I might ask you exactly the same question,’ Polly pointed out. ‘It’s Thursday, Marcus, and Thursday mornings I spend with the chef, going through the menus and organising the buying in—you know that. It may have escaped your notice but we are fully booked and we also have two members of staff off sick. The last thing I need right now is to have to answer questions about the cost-effectiveness of the gardens.’