by Kim Lawrence
‘Make the best of a bad job. Keep busy,’ she quipped with a brittle smile as he danced around the message he was delivering: that their lives might collide and sometimes in the bedroom, but essentially they were to live their own lives. It was nothing more than she had ever expected from marriage, but that had been before she had been stupid enough to fall in love with her husband.
That changed everything!
‘That wasn’t what I was going to say. The next twelve months...the workload will be... I won’t be there to—’
She lifted her chin, her pride coming to her rescue. ‘I am not a child, Sebastian, so relax. I do not need entertaining.’
I just need loving!
‘I do not need my hand held,’ she continued, ignoring the ache in her chest. ‘And I am not going to be a needy wife,’ she promised, managing to inject a note of amusement into her voice. ‘I’m not going to ask you for anything.’
She finished saying what he wanted to hear, getting a hard look for her efforts.
Sebastian knew he should be feeling relief; instead he felt an odd sense of dissatisfaction as he listened to her list the things she would not be asking of him. He knew that anger was an irrational response but struggled to put his finger on the exact cause.
‘What if I need my hand holding?’ From her expression the unplanned question appeared to surprise her almost as much as it had him. ‘Not literally, just a figure of speech,’ he said, responding to a need to clarify his comment. After all, he had never actually needed someone...anyone.
The addition made her wonder if she had imagined the hard-sounding question. Her eyes flickered from the brown hand he had moved across the counterpane until his splayed fingertips were a whisper away from her own, before shifting back to his face. A wave of sheer longing and lust pierced her like a knife blade, causing her chest to lift as she caught her breath.
‘Oh, for one moment there I thought the story that you don’t actually need more than one hour’s sleep a night was more than an urban myth.’
He responded with a half-smile to her comeback, not seeming to notice her heightened colour. ‘I have watched your parents. They work as a team.’
She nodded agreement. ‘Yes, but that’s different. They—’
‘Love one another.’
It wasn’t his assertion that sparked her angry response but the patronising little half-smile that accompanied it, though that faded as he continued. ‘But leaving the emotional stuff to one side...’
Suddenly the anger blocked out everything. It was simply too extreme for her to navigate around. ‘As far as I’m concerned marriage...a real marriage...is all about the emotional stuff! There,’ she charged, discovering that it was possible to love someone and want to throw something at them at one and the same time. ‘Is that emotional enough for you? Sorry if I lack your control!’
The mattress shifted, making her slide sideways as he got to his feet and turned, spreading his hands in a pacifying gesture as he looked down at her. ‘I’m sorry if I’m throwing the cold water of realism on your dreams, but we have to be realistic. Palace life...marriage, if I can say the word without you throwing something at me? It will take some adjusting to but things might work better if we don’t immediately form two opposing camps, if we are one...team.’
His logic was impeccable and deeply depressing, and the only thing, she reminded herself, on offer.
She lifted her brows before directing her retort at her pearly polished toenails. ‘Who knows? Your robot logic might cancel out my silly, girly emotionalism.’ As the last quivering resentful words left her lips her head lifted, but there was no answering anger in Sebastian’s face as their eyes clashed. He looked...hell, he looked incredibly sexy and exhausted. Her anger was lost in a wave of protective empathy.
‘For God’s sake, Sabrina, I want you in my bed, not in my head!’ he blasted, then saw her expression and stopped, a curse of frustration escaping his clenched teeth. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean—’
‘Yes, you did.’ She sat there looking frozen, offended and so incredibly sexy with her honey tumbled hair and pink mouth still partly swollen from their kisses from the previous night that he experienced the tsunami of all hormone surges. It struck with no warning and the results on his brain function was devastating—a white-hot, brain-melting blast.
Endurance was the only response. Waiting for it to pass, Sebastian closed his eyes, the muscles of his throat working as he fought for control—this should not be happening. Sex should have smoothed the path; the absence of love should have meant this was easier, not more complicated...yet another occasion when theory fell well short of reality!
He took a deep breath and tried again to breach the chasm he could feel forming between them. ‘Look...’ Their eyes connected and the silence stretched, only interrupted by the discordant sounds of their individual jagged breathing.
‘Marriage does not have to conform to any set pattern. We need to set out our own rules, not conform...and we must be flexible.’ She had been beautifully flexible last night.
‘What are you saying?’ she whispered, unable to tear her eyes away from his hot, scorching stare. Her insides were melting.
Good question, he thought. ‘I really don’t know...’ he said, because this was very much outside his experience. ‘I can’t promise anything, Sabrina. I know you have dreams and...’ He gave a short laugh, hating himself and the system for all that she had been robbed of. ‘Maybe you never had any, but anyway I’m sorry that this is your life, the politics, the scheming. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I don’t want us to be warring factions, sending notes to one another through a third party. You deserve more than that.’ And more than me, he thought.
His driven words penetrated the warm sexual whirlpool that was drawing her inside, a weird but oddly seductive experience. ‘That won’t happen,’ she managed faintly.
‘It could. I’ve seen it in action...my parents...no matter what, we will never be them.’ Kill me first, he thought. ‘I’d tell you about it but maybe in the long run it will just get easier when this chemistry wears off.’
Did the fact his deep voice was actually shaking with need make his prediction any the less painful? The rampant hunger glowing in his eyes made this a question for later; right now all she wanted to do was feel him inside her.
‘But in the meantime let’s enjoy it?’ he growled.
The hungry intent stamped on his lean face made her insides quiver with helpless desire.
Sebastian was fighting his way out of his jacket as he levered his long length onto the bed beside her.
Sabrina helped him.
* * *
It was the following day before he saw her next.
In that time, he had been able to gain some perspective, and a little sympathy he had previously lacked for people who actually convinced themselves that a hormonal response was something spiritual and everlasting. It was an easy mistake to make, he now appreciated.
Of course, there was more involved with his situation with Sabrina. They were two people in a unique arrangement that very few would ever experience; the affinity, the sense of understanding, when combined with a physical attraction had, when you viewed the situation logically, been almost predictable.
Then he saw her, and the smug, comforting conclusions slipped through his fingers like sand.
‘Hello, there.’
Sabrina started guiltily, looking from him to the heavy tome in her lap. She removed the rather sexy specs that had been balanced on the end of her nose.
‘Sorry!’ she said as she stood, clutching the heavy book to her chest. ‘We weren’t expecting you until later.’
‘Is that a royal we?’
She tried to slide her foot back into a sandal. ‘Hard to be royal when you’re barefoot.’ Hard to sound as if you had more than
one brain cell when this man was standing so close. ‘How did it go?’
Well done, Brina, you sounded almost sane and not sadly deluded and desperately in love.
He dragged a hand through his hair ‘I have some sympathy with the idea of being a despot...’
‘That’s because you are incredibly impatient.’ Gifted with a quick mind and an exceptional intellect, Sebastian struggled, she suspected, with the intellectual pace of a normal human being.
‘So what are you reading?’
Heart beating fast, she hugged the book closer to her chest, knowing she looked guilty as she shrugged and took a step back. ‘Just a thing...nothing really.’
He bent down to her level and read the spine, running a finger along it as he read out the title. ‘“Dementia and the Socio-Economic Impact on Developing Nations...” Wow, racy stuff! Don’t look so worried—it can be our guilty secret.’
‘Someone I know wrote it. They asked me for a review.’
‘So they are getting paid to read it?’
She frowned, wondering if that was against the rules. ‘Not exactly. I keep the book.’
His teasing smile faded as the full impact of what she had left behind, the expertise that she was never likely to use, hit home. In contrast to the knot of anger in his belly, his voice was gentle. ‘This really is not your world, is it?’
‘It is now.’ She lifted her chin and along with it any wimpish impulses to throw herself at him and confess it had been awful: the arrival, tea with the Queen and being introduced to the women who she was expected to be friends with, suitable women.
She could deal with that, but she would be the wife he needed even if he didn’t know he needed her yet... Would he ever? ‘You never said—beyond discovering buried despotic tendencies you discovered, how was your day?’
Better since I saw you.
And the shocks just kept coming, he thought, pressing a hand to the region of his chest where the pleasurable warmth had ignited when he’d seen her sitting with her bare feet dangling in the historic fountain. He lowered his hand and focused instead on the lust that had come with it. There was something delightfully uncomplicated about lust. It was one of the basic needs in life, like hunger and sleep, and he was tired. It was a known fact that exhaustion could do weird things to a man’s brain.
His glance slid to the inches of smooth calf revealed as she lifted her skirt to grimace at the inches of damp silk that clung to those smooth calves. As it lifted he saw there was still a question in her eyes.
‘Long.’ And so were her legs.
The signs of tiredness in his face intensified the ache inside her.
‘And you?’
‘I had tea with your...the Queen.’
‘And you’re not lying down in a darkened room? I’m impressed.’
‘She was trying to be helpful.’
One dark brow elevated. ‘That bad.’
‘Apparently I am meeting a stylist tomorrow.’
‘No!’
Her eyes flew up to his face. ‘No what?’
‘Just no, you do not need a stylist, and the last thing you need is to be turned into some sort of “ladies who lunch” clone, and the idea that you need a makeover is an insult.’
His indignation on her behalf made her lips twitch but also filled her with a deep sense of relief. She didn’t want to emulate the women she had met today. ‘Is that an executive decision?’
He arched a haughty brow. ‘You have a problem with that?’
She gave a tiny smile. ‘I’ll let you know when I have a problem.’ She responded to the touch of his hand on her elbow, skipping a little to keep up with his long-legged pace. ‘Obviously I can’t offend the Queen.’
He gave a laugh. ‘She has the hide of a rhino.’
‘I will see the stylist.’
He stopped and swung her around to face him.
‘I’ll just ignore what he says.’
The annoyance slowly faded from his face and he laughed.
‘It’s called diplomacy, Seb. You should try it.’
He placed his hands on her shoulders and leaned in closer, his breath warm on the cool skin of her face. ‘You offering to give me lessons, cara?’
She shivered and raised herself onto her toes and his mouth brushed across her wavering lips. ‘Sometimes,’ she whispered, ‘the direct approach is better.’
She went limp as the hunger in his kiss drove the breath from her body.
He stroked her face and felt the tensions of the day slip away. ‘You really are a very beautiful woman, Sabrina.’ She sighed and turned her face into his hand. ‘I’ve never believed that it is possible to maintain any sort of friendship with a woman after an affair is over, but we just might.’
Her half-closed eyes snapped open and she stepped back abruptly, leaving him holding empty air. What the hell had just happened?
‘What’s wrong?’
She gave an inarticulate little growl of fury and stuck out her chin, glaring at him, dark eyes glowing with angry contempt as the words fell from her lips in an angry rush. His comment had pierced the protective shell of a core of pain she hadn’t known was there until now.
‘That you have to ask that says it all! I’m not a woman you’re having an affair with. I’m your wife.’ In the act of turning her back on him she swung back and shook her head. ‘Has it ever occurred to you that you were never friends with those women afterwards because you were never friends before?’
An expression of seething frustration on his face, he watched her stalk away, her head high, her narrow back eloquently rigid. Any inclination he had to follow her faded when she stopped twenty feet or so away and paused to fling over her shoulder, ‘And, for the record, neither are we!’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
UNREASONABLE DIDN’T EVEN begin to cover her attitude, he decided as he paced up and down his study, pausing only to take a mouthful of the brandy that he held.
He had held out hope for the future and she had thrown it back in his face; she had acted as though he had insulted her!
And hadn’t he?
Pushing away the suggestion, he nursed his sense of injustice along with the brandy as the level of one rose higher, the other sank lower, until the glass was empty.
He stopped pacing and sat staring morosely at the wall; as the minutes ticked away his anger slipped away. When there was a knock on the door, it opened before he responded.
Sabrina took a deep breath. It had taken her half an hour to work up the courage to do this. Half an hour after a lot of angry tears to reach the point where she had asked herself why she was angry.
She was angry because the future he saw, even the best-scenario future, was not the one she dreamed of. She couldn’t force him to love her and she couldn’t punch him for not loving her.
Rather than be angry and bitter about what she couldn’t have, she should do what he had said and enjoy what they did have while it lasted.
‘I overreacted. Sebastian, I don’t want to sleep alone.’
She held her breath as he got to his feet. It seemed to take a long time and even longer for him to cross the room to her.
‘Neither do I.’ With a groan he dragged her to him, kissing her with a rough, hungry intensity that drove the breath from her lungs and the strength from her legs. As her knees sagged he picked her up and carried her over to the sofa.
She knew it was only sex he was giving her but when she closed her eyes his tender response felt like love. When he moved inside her it felt as though they were truly one, not just physically, but in every way.
He took her to a place within herself that she hadn’t known existed; she lost a sense of where she began and he ended. The sadness, deep and profound, came afterwards, when he held her tenderly, because she kne
w that Sebastian was not feeling what she did. He gave her his body but she would never touch his soul.
* * *
‘The ladies are in the Small Salon.’
Sabrina smiled in response to the gentle reminder from her assistant and thought, I can’t wait, but carried on moving papers around her desk.
She stopped and asked herself for the first time that day—what am I doing?
Beyond the obvious, which was waiting for Sebastian to return. They had spent an entire week together before he had left for a week.
She had tried to fill the hours, telling herself that she had to build a life that didn’t revolve around a husband who most likely forgot she existed the moment he walked out of the room, and one day in the future when she was in the room.
Live in the moment, Brina!
Great advice, but really tough to follow through with.
Work of a sort had saved her: the timing of the approach from the university hospital, asking her to help to fill the vacancy for a head of the new Alzheimer’s research unit they were keen to establish, had been perfect.
As well as using her contacts in London to line up someone for the post, Sabrina had surreptitiously channelled some funding their way too and acted suitably surprised when the dean of the faculty had remarked on their good fortune.
‘The ladies?’
Sabrina, who realised she had been sitting there with her eyes closed, opened them and looked from the pencil she had just snapped in half to her assistant. She painted on a smile.
‘Oh, yes, the ladies. And I use the term loosely.’
Rachel struggled to hide her smile.
* * *
Sabrina paused outside the open door of the room where her new friends were gathered and glanced in the mirror, smoothing down her already smooth hair.
The half a dozen women inside apparently represented the cream of society. One lunch had conformed her suspicions that she had nothing whatever in common with them and she despised them almost as much as she knew they despised her.