Fiancee By Mistake

by Walker Kate

  One side of his face was the face of an angel, a strong, masculine beauty, with nothing soft or feminine about it Years before, she had had an illustrated Bible in which the picture of the Archangel Michael had had just that same mixture of power and attraction that made up Sean's stunning features.

  But the other profile was exactly the opposite. There the features were those of the devil incarnate, and in his personality, too, Sean was both of those things. One moment he was infinitely gentle and caring, the next darkly dangerous as any fiend. The trouble was that she didn't know which of the two she was facing now. '

  'If you won't trust me then perhaps you'll believe the evidence of your own ears.'

  With a angry movement he dumped the telephone onto her lap and stood back, pushing his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans as he watched her with brooding expectancy.

  'Well, go on!' he snapped when she hesitated, unsure of what he wanted from her. 'Phone someone, if you're so determined!'

  Nerves jangled by this sudden about-face, Leah reached out a hand to the instrument. She couldn't believe he was actually letting her do this.

  But as soon as she picked up the receiver she knew exactly what was behind his apparent change of mind.

  The phone was dead. Instead of the reassuring burr of the dialling tone, all she could hear was the stark; unwelcome total silence of a disconnected line.

  "The phone lines went before the electricity, three days ago.' It was a flat, emotionless delivery of fact, as unrevealing as his face. 'Luckily I managed to get through to the doctor before it happened. The last message in was the one the machine picked up just as you fainted. It was from Pete."

  His smile was a wry, ironic twist to his mouth.

  'He'd realised, belatedly, that he'd given me an inaccurate description of Annie's car. In the state he was in, he'd forgotten that she'd acquired a new one at the weekend. But since then the phone's been completely dead. Obviously they haven't got around to repairing them yet.'

  It was too much. It had been hard enough at first, believing Sean's lies, thinking that the cottage had no phone and there was no way she could get in touch with her family. But to discover that there had been one here all the time, only to find that now, when she had finally got her hands on it, it didn't work, was almost more than she could bear. Her mother would be frantic, not knowing what had happened to her.

  Weak tears welled up in her eyes at the thought, but, conscious of Sean's watchful blue gaze on her face, she lifted an impatient hand to dash them away.

  'Hey, it can't be that bad.'

  The unexpected softness of his voice, together with the apparently solicitous way he came to lean over her chair, were her undoing. They acted like a match set to dry brushwood, burning away the moment of insecurity and setting free all the emotions she had stored up inside her.

  'Can't it?' she flung at him, amethyst eyes flashing fire. 'Can't it? Do you know what you've done with your nasty little scheme to kidnap me and keep me here? Can you even begin to imagine?'

  His head had come up sharply, his eyes narrowing in swift response to her outburst, but not before she had caught a glimpse of something new in their bright depths.

  She had caught him on the raw, she realised. She had actually got in under that armour-plated defence of his, found a chink in his otherwise perfect self-assurance, and made him feel something at last. The sense of triumph that brought added fuel to her already blazing anger.

  'Do you know where I was going when you found me? I was on my way home! My mother was expecting me on Friday night, and when I didn't turn up she'll have rung my flat. Of course there'll have been no answer, so then she'll have rung Andy. And he won't know where I am either! So she'll be out of her mind with worry about where I am. And if that wasn't bad enough she needs me so much right now, what with—'

  'I rang her.' The quiet, firm words, inserted into a brief space in her tirade as she paused to draw breath, stopped her dead.

  'You did what?'

  'I rang your mother.' Sean destroyed her belief that she couldn't have heard him right. 'When I'd spoken to the doctor, and it was obvious that you wouldn't be going anywhere for some time, I checked your bag and found your parents' address in your diary. I told your mother you were safe here with me.'

  'Safe' wasn't exactly the word, Leah told herself wryly, before the importance of what he had said hit home with an impact that stunned her.

  'You did that!' Relief shone from her eyes, drying her tears, the desolate mood evaporating like a mist before the sun. 'Oh, that's wonderful! Thank you, Sean!'

  Unthinking impulse drove her up out of her seat to fling her arms around him in a hug of gratitude.

  'Thank you so much!'

  The swift kiss she planted on his lean cheek was an equally instinctive gesture, simply out of relieved delight, and it obviously took him as much by surprise as it did her. For the space of a heartbeat he stood absolutely stock-still, blue eyes staring down into her face with a strangely blank, unfocused expression in them.

  But then, just when she would have moved away, he woke from the momentary trance, reacting with a speed and strength for which she was totally unprepared. She was gathered up into his arms, imprisoned there without a hope of escape, and his bard mouth came down on hers, crushing it fiercely.

  For a couple of seconds Leah's mind seemed to split in two. One half of it welcomed the furious passion of his kiss; the other fought against it with all her strength, desperately struggling against the wild sensation of burning hunger that threatened to overwhelm her.

  The hunger won, making her sway towards him, parting her lips to the enticement of his tongue, feeling it tangle with her own. It was her arms that held them close now, her hands that tangled in the darkness of his hair, pulling his head down towards hers.

  The movement brought her closer against him, to feel the heat and hardness of his need against her thighs. The blue tee-shirt had ridden up almost to the top of her legs, and left no barrier there to the heated exploration of his hands as they moved down over the curve of her hips and on to the smooth flesh below the soft cotton.

  With a raw sound deep in her throat, she encouraged him to continue, the delicious sensations his touch was creating driving her to writhe in sinuous delight against the jut of his pelvic bone. After a moment's hesitation those caressing hands changed direction, moved upwards, sliding under the hem of the tee-shirt, closer...

  But then with a jarring unexpectedness she found herself released as abruptly as he had caught her up. He let go of her so suddenly that for a second she was only supported by her own arms around his neck. And when he jerked back, breaking that hold too, she dropped down into her chair again, limp as a rag doll.

  Beside her Sean swore, just once, but with a brutal savagery that made her flinch, her stomach lurching in fearful foreboding. But even as she tensed with apprehension he managed another lightning-swift change of mood, switching on the coolly indifferent facade he had used before. Stunned and dazed by the rollercoaster of emotions she had experienced in quick succession, Leah was hard pressed to know which of the darker sides of this man she hated the most.

  'You don't need to thank me; it was the least I could do.'

  Leah couldn't believe his unruffled calm, the cold precision of his words, when she was reduced to a shaken heap, her mind incapable of forming any rational thought. Was the man human? Or had she been deceiving herself to believe he had felt any of the blazing passion that had swamped her so completely?

  But then she saw the faint tremor in the hand that swept his dark hair back from his face, the way his eyes were focused on a point somewhere above her head so as not to have to look into her face, and knew that his protective armour was not yet perfectly back in place. 'I would have phoned your fiancé too, but I couldn't decide which address was his. There seem to be at least four Andrews in there.'

  So much for any supposed weakness, Leah told herself. If he had felt any such thing, it had taken
only seconds to impose full control again.

  That last comment had been laced with deliberate malice, and she had a sudden vivid mental image of the address pages in her diary and the number of entries on them under masculine names.

  She could have disillusioned him. Pointed out that most of those names belonged to old college friends with whom she had done the Travel and Tourism course a couple of years before. On the last day everyone had swapped addresses with everyone else, and Leah had ended up with over twenty more entries in her address book.

  Even though she had lost touch with the majority of her fellow students, apart from duty Christmas cards, sentiment had kept her from erasing the souvenir of what had been some of the happiest months of her life. But now Sean, in his nasty, biased judgement, had condemned her as an all-time flirt, with numbers of men listed in her equivalent of a little black book.

  'So I'm afraid that dear Andy still doesn't know where you are—unless, of course, your mother lets him know.'

  'I'm sure she will.'

  It was impossible not to feel a rush of relief at the thought that Sean had not managed to contact Andy. If he had then he would have found out that the engagement she had laid claim to did not, as yet, exist.

  Earlier, she had almost told him as much, but now a newfound sense of self-preservation made her reconsider. She needed more time to sort out her own feelings before she dared risk having him know the truth.

  And that opened the door to the real problem. The one that stilled her tongue and froze her thoughts in shock at the realisation that Sean had behaved as she should have done.

  He had been the one who had considered the feelings of her supposed fiancé to the extent of being prepared to ring him up to let him know where she was, while Leah's first concern had been for her mother.

  If she was strictly honest with herself she would have to admit that Andy had been the furthest thing from her mind, when, if she truly loved him, he should have been uppermost in it And, that being so, how could she ever even think about accepting his proposal of marriage now or at any time in the future?

  Leah shivered faintly as a sensation like the slide of something cold and wet moved slowly down her spine. In the past few months, when she had felt that everything she believed to be safe and secure in her life had been turned upside down, Andy had been her anchor, something to hold on to when things got rough.

  Now it seemed that meeting Sean had taken even that, and with it her own conviction of the woman she was, and ripped it to shreds. Like the blizzard outside, he had swept over the landscape of her life and obliterated every familiar landmark, leaving behind a bleak and alien territory that she didn't recognise at all.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  GOD, but he was all sorts of a fool!

  Sean couldn't believe just how stupid he had been. What the hell had possessed him to react in such a way, responding to her like that?

  He wasn't some hormone-driven adolescent who would snatch at any opportunity to grope a girl. If anything, given the sort of publicity his TV role attracted, he usually had the opposite problem. Women would do anything to get his attention, and more. Time and experience had taught him that the quick and emotionless sort of one-night stand they offered usually brought nothing but a strong sense of grubby dissatisfaction, which meant they just weren't worth the effort.

  But with this woman all she had to do was to smile at him and he was putty in her hands. And when she had kissed him he had gone up in flames, unable to think of anything beyond the way she felt in his arms, the softness of her skin, the warmth of her lips on his cheek.

  He knew she was like all the others. After all she'd told him that she was engaged—not that it seemed to matter to her. And yet, even knowing that, he still couldn't hold back.

  He'd told her that, to him, an engagement was a binding agreement, second only to marriage vows, and he'd meant it. After the way Marnie had behaved, he had sworn that never, ever would he get involved in any sort of triangular situation with someone who was committed to another man. It had seemed so easy to stick to the promise he had made to himself—until now.

  'I'd like to go back to bed now.'

  Leah's voice intruded into his thoughts, drawing his attention to the way she sat huddled up in the big leather armchair. She looked disturbingly vulnerable and damnably feminine like that, he acknowledged unwillingly. The soft cotton of the tee-shirt clung to the curves and valleys of her body in a way that was guaranteed to raise his blood pressure alarmingly. That shirt had never looked as good on him, that was for sure!

  But the softening effect of her physical appearance was counterbalanced by the coldness of her voice and a matching lack of warmth in her eyes, the stiff little lift of her chin as she addressed him. -

  'All right.' Reluctantly he forced himself to concentrate on practical matters. 'Do you think you can make it up the stairs on your own?'

  She'd do it if it killed her. That much was written all over her face, firming the soft mouth and darkening her eyes.

  And on this topic at least they were in total accord with each other. The last thing he wanted was to have to carry her again. He had only just been able to control his baser impulses after the first time.

  But when she got to her feet it was obvious that her determination, strong as it was, was not enough. It was far outweighed by the physical effects of her recent illness, and what little colour she had leached from her face.

  'I'm—not sure...'

  It cost her a great deal to admit it, and she looked about as enthusiastic at the idea of the only possible solution to the problem as he felt. Despairingly, Sean closed his eyes against the images that assailed his thoughts.

  Upstairs, he had come close to losing his grip on his temper. Well, if he was honest he had lost it, full stop.

  Incensed by the accusation he had seen burning in her eyes, the obviously perverted objectives she had clearly attributed to him, he had blown his top. Furious that she should believe him capable of such perfidious motivation, he had acted on an impulse that he hadn't even considered in any sort of rational light, let alone thought through.

  It had taken him precisely three seconds to realise his mistake. By the time he was out of the bedroom, heading for the stairs, his whole body had been agonisingly aware of the soft, warm weight of her in his arms, the brush of her hair against his jaw. She had felt so good, so bloody good! Totally female and so sexy that it bad been all he could do not to turn right round and carry her back to the bed.

  That was why he had acted so stupidly just a moment ago. He didn't want that to happen again. To touch her was to risk fanning the flames that he had only just succeeded in reducing to still smouldering embers. It had taken the sort of ruthlessly brutal control that had left him aching in every nerve, each cell of his body bitterly resenting the way be had denied the fulfilment it sought.

  With an inward sigh he forced his eyes open again, fixing his gaze on a point just past her head so that he didn't have to cope with her white-faced resolve.

  'Look, I've got a better idea.'

  His voice didn't sound as it should, and he swallowed hard to ease the sudden constriction in his throat.

  There's a fire in the living room; it'll be so much warmer than that ice-box of a bedroom. Why don't you lie on the sofa and I'll bring the duvet down to cover you?'

  'I think I'd like that.'

  "Then that's what we'll do.'

  Did his own face mirror the relief that showed so clearly in hers? And did that mean that she had felt it too? That electric spark when they touched. The sudden heated awareness that turned the blood white-hot and sent it pounding through every vein, making the heart race as if after some violent exertion.

  She let him take her arm, leaning against him for support as they made the short journey from his study and across the hall.

  But that was all she allowed. At the first possible moment she jerked away from his hold, dropping down onto the settee with obvious relief.
r />   'I'll get the quilt.'

  He was glad of an excuse to get out of the room, fighting a determined battle for control as he made his way to the bedroom, taking the stairs two at a time.

  Did she know what it had done to him when she had pulled away from him like that? He'd be willing to bet that she did, and that she had deliberately aimed for just such a reaction. But he hadn't liked the way it had made him feel. She had reacted as if he was something foul, something it would contaminate her to touch, and it twisted painfully deep in his guts to know she thought of him like that.

  Yanking the quilt off the bed, he bundled it up in his arms and returned to the living room. Leah was still where he had left her, her slender legs curled up underneath her, her dark-eyed gaze fixed on the fire.

  For a couple of seconds Sean paused in the doorway, just watching her, his gaze moving over the disordered rumble of her hair, the pallor of her cheeks, the long dark lashes that fringed those beautiful eyes. But then it fell lower, sliding over the swell of her breasts, down to the point where the creamy flesh of her thighs emerged from the soft blue of the tee-shirt, and he felt an unwanted heat build up in his lower body, driving him to make a sudden, uncontrolled movement that drew her gaze to him.

  For a long, tautly stretched moment their eyes locked and held. Sean had the uncomfortable feeling that his thoughts must be written on his face, etched clearly there for her to see exactly what lustful images had been going through his mind. So it was a distinct surprise when she smiled suddenly.

  'I was just remembering how, when I was a child, I used to imagine that I could see pictures in the flames if I stared long enough. It's been years since I had a real, open fire. There's only an electric one in my flat in London.'

  'Pete thought I should have this one taken out and replaced by one of those gas-effect things.'

  Sean dropped the quilt over her legs and lower body as he spoke. He thought about tucking it in around her, then hastily reconsidered, moving instead to sit in an armchair on the opposite side of the fire. He found he could breathe easier now that there wasn't quite so much of that luscious body on display.