She put her arm through the crook of her husband’s, smiling up at him brightly. ‘Love can be rather sneaky in its unexpectedness, can’t it?’ she purred.
Heather shot Daniel a relieved smile as she realised he had won that battle. Stella was hardly in a position to ‘throw stones’! ‘Daniel?’ she prompted huskily, their guests still waiting expectantly.
He nodded abruptly, turning back to their guests. ‘Heather has kindly consented to be my wife,’ he told them evenly. ‘The wedding will be next month, and—’
‘Next month?’ one of the female guests exclaimed incredulously.
Daniel arched questioning brows at the blushing woman. ‘Is there some problem with that?’
‘Er—no, of course not.’ Heather recognised the woman as a friend of Stella’s. ‘I just—it isn’t long,’ she excused lamely.
‘No,’ he acknowledged drily. ‘But you’re all welcome to come to another party here in three months’ time, and I’m sure you will find Heather as slender then as she is now!’
Heather’s uncle gave an uncomfortable cough. ‘I’m sure Rita didn’t mean—’
‘It’s all right, Lionel,’ Daniel sighed. ‘The truth of the matter is, what man in his right mind would want to wait any length of time to make Heather his bride?’ Several of the male guests gave an appreciative murmur, and Daniel gave them an acknowledging smile of his good luck in being the man to make Heather his bride. ‘As I was saying,’ he began again pointedly, ‘Heather and I will be married next month, and I’m sure you—and several hundred others!—will all be invited. For the moment, I suggest we all continue to enjoy the party!’
As if on signal the band began to play a slow love song, and everyone moved back expectantly, leaving Heather and Daniel at the centre of attention.
She turned to him with frantic eyes. ‘They’re expecting us to dance!’
‘I’m not completely stupid,’ he rasped, taking her in his arms to move expertly around the room in time to the music. ‘And I do know how to dance!’
She knew that, had watched him with other women. Strange, but in all the time she had known him, all the parties he had come to here, she had never danced with him before tonight. For such a big man he moved with a natural grace, in complete command as he guided their movements, his steps smooth and sure.
‘I didn’t mean—’
‘Just dance, Heather,’ he snapped. ‘And let’s get this over with!’
It was ‘over with’ soon enough, Daniel not speaking to her again as their bodies occasionally touched, releasing her as the music came to an end to ask Stella to dance, leaving her with her uncle. She absently took the glass of wine her uncle handed her, watching the other couple as they moved fluidly together. They were of a similar height, Stella several inches taller than her own five foot five inches, and with the three-inch heels on her sandals Stella’s body matched Daniel’s perfectly, a fact she seemed to take note of as she danced much too closely to Daniel in Heather’s opinion.
On the few occasions Heather had seen them together Daniel hadn’t seemed overly fond of Stella, and yet surely the couple were speaking together more warmly, and dancing together more closely, than their relationship required?
She glanced at her uncle, receiving an affectionate smile in return before he turned to watch his wife admiringly. Oh well, if he didn’t mind she was sure she shouldn’t either. But somehow it didn’t seem quite right to see her aunt dancing so intimately with the man she intended to marry, even if it wasn’t a love-match.
She turned her back on the dancing couple. ‘I hope that you will give me away, Uncle Lionel,’ she invited warmly.
‘Not because I want to,’ he agreed reluctantly, ‘even though Daniel is a fine young man.’ His eyes twinkled blue-grey. ‘I’d rather you had moved in with Stella and me and become the daughter we never had. But,’ he sighed, ‘I’m sure you and Daniel are doing the right thing.’
Given the choice between moving in with her uncle and Stella, or becoming Daniel’s wife, she had no doubt she was making the right choice! She and Stella would have been at each other’s throats in a day!
‘Let’s hope so,’ she dismissed lightly, absently noting that Daniel was dancing with one of her friends now.
‘I think the conditions in Max’s will were completely unfair, but—’
‘When did he ever behave any other way?’ she finished bitterly. ‘He never forgave me for not being the boy he’d wanted!’
Her uncle sighed, his smile regretful. ‘Max could be an unreasonable man—’
‘You know he could be worse than that.’ Her eyes were hard with the memories.
Her uncle frowned. ‘In his own way he did care for you, Heather.’
‘Then why has he arranged to marry me to a man he despised?’ she scorned.
‘He didn’t despise Daniel,’ Uncle Lionel sighed. ‘He resented him—’
‘Because he came along at the right time with the money he needed!’ Her eyes were bright. ‘If I could have proved he was insane when he made that will, Uncle Lionel, then I would have done so, I would have publicly contested it.’
‘Daniel, too,’ he nodded with a sigh. ‘But it was impossible.’
Her father had made certain of that, had made sure every loophole was covered at the time he made his outrageous will. For six months, she and Daniel had consulted their lawyers trying to find a way out of it, and in the end they had had to admit defeat, to accept that her father had won. How he must be laughing at them both!
Maximilian Danvers hadn’t been a kind or yielding man, hated to be thwarted in any way, and when she had been born instead of the son he had wanted he had received the biggest setback of his life.
Heather grew up knowing he resented her gender, that she was a disappointment to him. She had been sent away to school when she was eight, rarely seeing him after that, even when she came home for the holidays. She hadn’t been able to understand how her mother could have loved and married such a coldly self-centred man, let alone had a child by him. But as she got older, and her mother told her the truth, she had respected the fact that at the time her mother had believed she was doing the right thing for everyone.
Pregnant, the father of her child already married and not interested in her pregnancy, her mother had been working for Max Danvers’ newly established airline at the time and hadn’t known who to turn to for help when she realised she was to have a child. The airline had been small then, with the owner playing quite a large part in the running of it, and Joyce had broken down one day and told Max Danvers of her predicament, her complete desolation. After that, he had begun to take her out, to offer her comfort when she felt so frightened of what the future held for her, until finally he had offered her and her child a home and his name. It had seemed like a miracle to her mother, believing that Max Danvers had come to love her as she had him, and she had gratefully accepted his proposal, determined to be as good a wife to him as she possibly could.
It was only after the birth of her child that Joyce had realised what had been expected of her; a daughter was not what Max Danvers wanted at all. It had been then that he had told his wife of his sterility, of the son he had wanted to continue his name, to one day inherit the empire he intended building, and that he had only married her because she was already pregnant!
But, unless he divorced Joyce and found another pregnant woman to become his wife, a daughter was what he had got, and in the end he had decided that even that was better than no child at all, everyone believing Joyce had been pregnant with his child when they were married. Only Uncle Lionel and her parents had known the truth, and it had remained that way until Heather’s mother told her about her real father.
She had understood Max’s resentment towards her then, his disappointment in her, and she had learnt to live with the fact that he practically ignored her existence most of the time, his barbs only becoming painfully obvious after the death of her mother six years ago, and then only in the privacy of t
heir home where people wouldn’t learn that he wasn’t her father at all.
Maybe if he had been, the pain of what he was doing to her would have been too much to bear, but over the years, she had learnt to armour herself against the hurt he inflicted.
But he had known how she felt about Daniel, had somehow guessed at the love she felt for him, she was sure, and he was giving her the final punishment for not being the son he wanted, making it impossible for Daniel ever to feel anything but contempt or hate for her; contempt because if she agreed to the marriage she was obviously marrying him for the money she would inherit, or hate because if she refused to marry him she forced him to lose control of his airline.
It was a situation she couldn’t possibly win, and her father had known that!
CHAPTER TWO
HEATHER had often wished she could return the hate her father seemed to have for her, but she had grown up believing he was her father, and it was very difficult for a child to hate its parents, no matter how cruel they were. Even when her mother had told her the truth she had pitied him rather than hated him, had tried, despite his indifference, to be the sort of daughter he could be proud of. After her mother died she had known he needed her more than ever, although his bitterness was deeper than ever; too.
She had liked Daniel from the day her father first brought him home to dinner, but as it soon become apparent that her father disliked the younger man, she knew that if her father ever learnt of her feelings for his business partner it would be yet another black mark against her and, as Daniel was totally uninterested in her, it had never been necessary. But the day her father’s will—she could never think of him in any other way!—was read, she had realised she couldn’t have kept her secret hidden very well, for he had made sure she never had the one thing she had always wanted—Daniel’s love.
She and Daniel were trapped now, forced to marry each other. She would have gladly given up the inheritance she felt she had no entitlement to anyway, if it wouldn’t have hurt Daniel for her to do so. But she doubted, knowing his opinion of her privileged background, that he would ever believe her motives could be that unmercenary. To convince him she would have to tell him of her love, and pity was the one emotion she refused to accept from him.
‘Well, it’s all settled now,’ she answered her uncle with a bright smile.
‘I always thought you and Phillip—’
‘I wasn’t in love with him, if that’s what you mean,’ she interrupted with a feeling of betrayal towards the other man. It was true that she had made it clear to Phillip that she didn’t care for him in that way, but that hadn’t stopped him professing to care for her.
She would have liked to have spared Phillip the painful humiliation she knew he must be feeling at having to witness her engagement to Daniel, but as all the airline’s executives had been invited, it would have looked worse to have singled him out in that way.
‘I’m glad about that at least,’ her uncle squeezed her arm.
‘Which isn’t to say,’ she drawled drily, ‘that you aren’t going to have a very angry young man working at Air International for a while!’
Her uncle grimaced. ‘Maybe I’ll give some thought to sending him up to the Manchester office for a while.’
‘Sending who up to Manchester?’ Stella joined them, light brows arched mockingly. ‘Surely you aren’t trying to get rid of Daniel already, Heather?’ she taunted maliciously.
Heather shook her head, steadily meeting the other woman’s gaze. ‘We have all the wedding arrangements to sort out yet. Besides, Daniel owns the airline, I doubt he could be sent anywhere!’
Stella shrugged. ‘Then who is being sent into exile?’ she drawled.
‘We were just discussing poor Phillip, my dear,’ her husband put in with a sigh.
‘He left, you know,’ the other woman snapped at Heather. ‘I think you used him shamefully—’
‘Stella—’
‘She’s been leading him around by the nose for almost a year now, Lionel,’ his wife reminded him waspishly. ‘And now, just because that savage—’
‘Stella, that will be enough!’ her husband said with quiet authority. ‘Heather is doing the only thing she can in the circumstances.’
‘I always did think Max was slightly vindictive where she was concerned,’ Stella scorned, completely unperturbed by her husband’s disapproving frown. ‘It’s the only reason I can think of for wishing a man like that on his only daughter!’
The first part was true and undeniable, but ‘a man like that’ rankled; Stella had no reason to malign Daniel in that way. ‘He’s a good man—’
‘He’s uncouth!’ the other woman dismissed disparagingly. ‘That remark he made about your not being being pregnant, for instance—’
‘And wasn’t that what Rita was thinking?’ Heather’s eyes were deep purple. ‘Wasn’t that what almost all the people here had assumed?’ she scorned.
‘I think you’re being a little unfair to some of them,’ her uncle chided.
‘Well, I don’t,’ she snapped. ‘And all because we’ve decided to marry soon!’
‘With undue haste,’ Stella corrected pointedly. ‘I can’t see what all the rush is about personally, you have another six months before Max’s deadline is up.’
‘Daniel and I discussed waiting,’ Heather bit out tautly. ‘And we decided that for the good of the airline—’ She broke off as Stella gave a disbelieving snort. ‘—For the stability of the airline,’ she added firmly, ‘it would be better if we ended the uncertainty of ownership as soon as possible.’
Blue eyes raked over her scathingly. ‘You can’t wait to crawl into his bed, can you?’
Heather paled at the viciousnesss of the taunt, all the more hurtful because it was the truth. When Daniel had asked her earlier if she were willing to share his bed, to give herself to him, she had known a thrill of anticipation like never before. She could imagine nothing more wonderful than being his woman. But it was his wife she was destined to be, a wife he was forced to accept, and not his woman at all.
Her eyes flashed as she glared at her aunt. ‘I think our sleeping arrangement once we’re married will be no one’s concern but our own—’
‘Or before we’re married,’ drawled Daniel as he suddenly appeared at her side, his arm moving possessively about her waist, his flinty gaze fixed on Stella’s flushed face. ‘Don’t you know better than to taunt children? he jeered softly.
Stella relaxed a little, glancing dismissively at Heather. ‘That child will be your wife in a month’s time!’
He gave an acknowledging inclination of his head. ‘As Heather has already said, we don’t believe that is any of your business.’
Stella gave him a taunting smile. ‘I suppose you should be admired, really,’ she mocked.
‘You—’
‘Heather, I’ve performed all the duty dances that I’m going to,’ he firmly cut in on her angry outburst, letting the other woman know that was all he considered his dance with her to be. ‘When are we going to throw this lot out so that we can be alone?’
Lionel chuckled softly, obviously relieved to have someone step in and prevent the two women from indulging in a full-scale battle. ‘I think that’s a hint for us to make the first move to leave,’ he told his wife indulgently.
‘I can’t imagine why the two of you would want to be alone,’ Stella remarked, determined to be the one to have the last word.
Daniel looked at her with flinty eyes, before turning pointedly to Heather’s alluring curves outlined in the clinging black dress, and then back again to the more obviously displayed charms of the older woman in the low-cut red dress. ‘Can’t you?’ he taunted softly. ‘I’m sure all the men in this room could give you numerous reasons!’
Strange as it felt, Heather was grateful for Daniel’s defence of her, especially when Stella flounced off in search of her wrap, her chuckling husband following once he had kissed Heather warmly on the cheek and shaken Daniel by the hand. It w
as the first time that any man, with the exception of Uncle Lionel, had defended her in that way, and it felt a little strange to feel gratitude to a man who obviously held her in contempt.
Daniel shook his head as he watched the other couple leave, the expression on Stella’s face boding ill for the older man once they were safely outside. ‘I don’t know how Lionel puts up with the shrew,’ he muttered drily. ‘If you turn into a witch like that I’ll put you over my knee and spank you,’ he warned harshly.
She stiffened, moving away from his arm about her waist. ‘I’m grateful for your intervention just now,’ she bit out abruptly. ‘But I believe there are several things we need to discuss before we can be married.’
‘Why do you think I want “rent-a-crowd” to leave?’ he rasped. ‘I want this thing settled, and I want it settled tonight!’
‘Are you sure you can spare the time?’ Her eyes flushed the colour of the flower she had been named for.
‘Just,’ he snapped grimly.
Her cheeks were flushed with anger at his arrogance, but she forced herself to relax as their guests took note of Lionel and Stella’s departure, and came over to congratulate them one last time as they began to take their leave.
An hour later her cheeks ached from smiling so much, although she knew Daniel couldn’t be suffering from the same affliction, his goodbyes terse to say the least. But finally the last guests had taken their leave, and they were now free to leave the staff to clear up the debris of the party while they retired to the small sitting-room where coffee was waiting for them.
Heather handed Daniel a cup of the black, unsweetened coffee she knew he preferred, watching as he curled a hand around the cup to take a sip, completely ignoring the delicate handle. Considering how hot the coffee had been when she poured it out, she was surprised he hadn’t burnt his mouth. Although from his grim expression, he wouldn’t have noticed even if he had!
He stood across the room from her, his restlessness something to be sensed, as he stood completely unmoving. ‘Well?’ he suddenly rasped.
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