‘Why not?’
‘I can’t marry without love,’ she said quietly, and before she could finish he interrupted with an angry growl.
‘You mean you loved that bastard who fleeced you of your money?’
‘No!’ Roberta protested.
‘But you would have married him?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Then how come the sudden onset of principles with me? Does Emily mean that little to you?’
‘You know she doesn’t!’ Roberta flared up angrily. ‘You’re twisting everything around. I didn’t marry Brian... I thought I loved him; I was wrong.’
‘You love Emily, don’t you?’
She nodded, and immediately felt as though she had stepped into a trap which had been cleverly set to trip her up just when she least expected it.
‘Did you come all this way to ask me that?’
‘I love my daughter.’
‘So much so that you would enter a loveless marriage with me?’
He looked away from her at that, and the discomfort that she had guessed at earlier was more apparent now.
‘I find,’ he said heavily, still not looking at her, ‘I find that I seem to need you as well.’
She looked at him in confusion and astonishment. He needed her. Was that his way of saying that he wanted her? It certainly didn’t have anything to do with love.
‘But you don’t love me,’ she muttered dully. ‘You’ll never love me or anyone else. You gave your wife your love and you’ll never have any left over to give anyone else.’
‘Does that matter so much to you?’ He was staring at her with interest now, and Roberta flushed.
‘Emily needs a mother,’ she said, lifting her chin mutinously, ‘and all right, perhaps you’re attracted to me.’ She gave a dry, humourless laugh. ‘Or perhaps you’re just attracted to the ghost of your wife that you see in me.’
‘You’re talking rubbish!’
‘Am I? That night in the cabin, when we made love. Would it have happened if I hadn’t been wearing that nightshirt of your wife’s? Would it have happened if, for just one minute, I hadn’t reminded you of her?’ When he didn’t answer, she continued relentlessly, ‘I’ll never be a substitute! I’ll never let myself be used by anyone again. Can’t you try and understand that?’
‘Why do you insist on dragging my wife into all this?’
‘Because—’
He held up one hand. ‘Let me explain about Vivian,’ he said in a low, weary voice. ‘Yes, I can’t deny that when I first saw you, it was a shock.’ She opened her mouth to interrupt and he said harshly, ‘Let me finish. You had the same sweet, vulnerable-looking face, those wide grey eyes, that bright hair.’ He reached out and gathered her hair in his hand, trailing it through his fingers like water, and it was all she could do not to pull back.
Part of her didn’t want to hear this at all, but another part longed to with almost masochistic yearning.
‘I fell in love with that same sweet face,’ he said heavily. ‘We were both very young, and it didn’t occur to me to look any further than what I could see. You don’t, do you, when you’re nothing more than a kid?’
‘And?’ Roberta prompted when he didn’t speak.
He let her hair fall and sat back, staring upwards at the ceiling. ‘And I didn’t see the obvious. That, sure, she was attracted to me, but she was far more attracted to my money. I was rich then; I had inherited a vast sum on my father’s death. My own career was already beginning to take off and I was hungry for success. She recognised the potential for wealth and that was what drew her to me. We got married and almost immediately things began to go downhill. She wanted all the trappings of the high life and she was determined to get them. She threw massive parties. Her sweet vulnerability fell away to reveal the determined, avaricious woman that she was. She had countless affairs and I withdrew from her. But by then we had had Emily, and she threatened to ensure that I would have no visiting rights if I divorced her. I was in a Catch 22 situation.’ He sighed. ‘I lived with her and I loathed her. I’ve never said this to another living soul, but it was a relief when she was killed in that road accident. So when I saw you I reacted; well, I over-reacted. But of course you weren’t like her at all. Nothing like her. You have no idea how I fought what I felt for you.’
‘And what did you feel?’ Roberta asked in a small voice.
‘I was attracted to you,’ he said heavily. ‘You know that. You probably knew it from the very start. You’re shrewd.’
‘That’s a dubious compliment.’ She gave him a wan smile.
‘I told myself that you were probably just like the rest of the female species. Born manipulators. But it didn’t help. I was still so damned attracted to you that it was eating me up.’
Roberta’s skin was burning, and she had to remind herself that lust and love were poles apart, but when he was so close to her, and after what seemed like such a long time, forever, she could hardly think straight. All she had to do was to stretch out her hand and she would be able to touch him, to feel that hard, bronzed body that had driven her mad in Toronto, and had finally driven her out.
He reached out his hand and stroked the side of her face, and her breath caught in her throat.
‘Attraction’s not enough,’ she said, drawing away, but he caught her and pulled her towards him, his lips touching her face with tiny, hungry kisses that made her whimper.
She put her hands flat against his chest to push him away, but she never got that far because the gentle insistence of his lips on her face became a fierce, demanding kiss on her mouth, an onslaught that left her breathless.
She moved her hands behind his head, pulling him hungrily towards her, feeling the pressure of his body on hers as they both tumbled into a lying position on the sofa. He was too long for it, though, and in a quick movement he lifted her off and carried her towards her bedroom, knowing where it was almost by instinct, kicking shut the door.
‘I want you to marry me, Roberta,’ he said huskily, his hand moving to free her from her clothes, expertly unbuttoning her blouse and tossing it on to the floor. ‘You’re beautiful. You’ve been in my head since I set eyes on you, do you know that?’ His voice was unsteady.
He unclasped her lacy bra and her breasts spilled out, rising and falling quickly as her breathing became erratic.
He cupped one breast in his hand and said unevenly, ‘I discover that I seem to be in love with you.’
Roberta held her breath. ‘Could you repeat that?’
‘I wasn’t looking for love,’ he said accusingly, and her pink mouth curved into a slight smile. ‘After Vivian, I had made up my mind that love was something I could well do without. I told myself over and over that you were a challenge, that I just wanted to get behind that prim English façde of yours, that it was nothing more than that. Whenever I thought of you I had that gut-wrenching excitement that adolescents get when they think they’re in love. I never felt that way even with Vivian. I reasoned that it was because you were so different from the women I had gone out with before. You had a way of looking, almost as if you were laughing at me, and it made me furious and excited at the same time.’ He smoothed his hand along her stomach and bent to kiss the warmth between her breasts. ‘Please marry me,’ he whispered. ‘I don’t think I could live my life without you.’
‘How could I refuse your proposal when you put it like that?’ Roberta teased, her eyes serious. ‘I longed for you to tell me that what you felt was more than just a passing attraction.’
‘Do you know,’ Grant murmured sheepishly, ‘that at one point I thought that you were still in love with that bastard, even though you denied it?’
‘Brian?’ She laughed ruefully. ‘I was never in love with him. I knew that for sure the minute you arrived on the scene. It made what I felt for Brian seem like a passing crush. But he was like your wife, in a way. He ruined the male sex for me. When I came to Toronto it was to get away, and I was absolutely determined not to
get involved with another man again.’
‘But you couldn’t resist me.’ Grant gave her a wicked, crooked smile. ‘I seem to have that effect on the opposite sex.’
Roberta laughed at that, then she said soberly, ‘If I marry you, I don’t want you to even glance in the direction of another woman.’
‘I’ll make sure that I keep my eyes averted even when I’m talking to my mother. Who, incidentally, already likes you. She was beginning to get a little tired of my lack of serious involvement.’
‘She told you that?’
‘Not in so many words. But I was subjected to her pet lectures on men who go through life unmarried and end up as fussy, cranky old bores with eccentric habits.’
‘I’ll make sure you don’t go that way,’ Roberta assured him, thinking that that was one thing he could never become, even if he spent the rest of his days locked in a room, as a confirmed bachelor.
He gave a low laugh, hardly hearing her as his mouth found her breasts and roused one nipple into aching hardness. Then he guided her hand to his arousal, his breathing thick as she stroked him. He kissed her on her neck, massaging the fullness of her breasts with his hands while his thumbs continued their erotic teasing of her nipples. Then he trailed a path along her stomach with his finger, pausing to circle her navel.
Roberta arched back, parting her legs to his exploring fingers, wriggling against him as he caressed her intimately, keeping his hand there when he would have removed it to linger on the silken smoothness of her thighs.
She heard him groan against her neck, and when he raised his dark head to look at her passionately she knew exactly what he was thinking.
It had been weeks since they had last made love. He was as desperate for her as she was for him.
He moved into her and she shuddered convulsively, wrapping her legs around his thighs, her body responding to his with instinctive rhythm. There was something savage and hungry in the way he brought her to the shuddering peak of her arousal.
And now there was an element to their lovemaking that had not hitherto been present. This time she was not clutching to herself the awful suspicion that he wanted her body for all the wrong reasons.
Later, when they were lying in each other’s arms, she said softly, ‘Did you think that I would agree to marry you when you showed up here? It took an awful lot of courage.’
He looked at her through drowsy green eyes. ‘I would have forced you,’ he said calmly.
‘You would have forced me?’
‘Dragged you kicking and screaming to the nearest Register Office.’
‘Register Office? Not on your life! At least, not without your darling daughter there. I don’t think she would ever forgive me. And, anyway, I can’t believe that you would have done that,’ she teased. ‘Would you really?’ She gave a throaty chuckle. ‘I had no idea you were into the caveman approach.’
‘I wasn’t. Not until I met you. I blame you entirely.’ He grinned. ‘I was absolutely determined to have you. Do you know,’ he confessed, ‘that when I was with the Ishikomos I deliberately trapped you into that situation?’
‘You didn’t!’ She looked at him in surprise. ‘I thought it was a convenient excuse.’
‘Well, a man has got some pride,’ he said huskily. ‘I wasn’t sure how you felt about me. I knew that you were attracted to me—’
‘Like the rest of the female species, geriatrics included,’ she said, raising one eyebrow.
‘So you admit my universal sex appeal.’ He threw her a teasing smile. ‘Anyway, I knew that you wanted me, but you were so adamant about not getting involved that I figured that if I coerced you by hook or by crook into marrying me, I could work on you. I was determined to use every ploy in the book to get you to go through with it. I might have guessed that you wouldn’t let yourself get railroaded into my plans, though.’
‘Devious swine,’ Roberta said contentedly. ‘And if I had known the reasons behind your offer, your business arrangement, I might well have let myself get railroaded into it. It never even crossed my mind that you would do anything like that for me, or anyone else for that matter.’
‘When it comes to you, I’ll do anything. Don’t you think that sounds pathetic?’
‘I think it sounds promising.’ She stroked him, feeling him stir against her hand, and closed her eyes.
Yesterday seemed like a decade ago, and tomorrow was opening up for them like a rosebud unfurling its petals under the first rays of sun.
Now, she thought, she would never have to run again.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-8471-5
Too Scared to Love
Copyright © 1993 by Cathy Williams
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