A Vow of Obligation

by Lynne Graham

  Alight with all the potency of her feminine power, Tawny grinned and whispered curiously, ‘How long?’

  His brow indented. ‘You know how long it’s been.’

  ‘You mean … I was your last lover? When we were together that last time in London?’ Tawny specified in open amazement. ‘There hasn’t been anyone else since then?’

  Navarre gave a rueful laugh. ‘I’ve always been more into quality than quantity, chérie. I’m past the age where I sleep with women purely for kicks.’

  Tawny tacitly understood what he was confirming. Even when their short-lived relationship had appeared to be over he had not taken another lover. Obviously he had not met anyone he wanted enough, which with the choices he had to have was a huge compliment to Tawny. Even more obviously, if she accepted his word on that score, it meant that he could not be engaged in even an occasional affair with Tia Castelli. Perhaps he had once loved Tia and, although it was in the past, he retained a fondness for the beautiful film star, she reasoned feverishly, desperate to explain what she had seen between them on her wedding day.

  But she was seriously surprised by the news that he had been celibate for months on end. Meeting his level scrutiny, she believed him on that score one hundred per cent and it was as if the weight of the world fell off her shoulders in the same moment. Suddenly she was furious with herself for not asking questions about Tia and demanding answers sooner. She had conserved her pride and remained silent but unhappy and she wasn’t proud of the reality that she had behaved like a coward, frightened of what the truth might reveal and of how much it might hurt. Loving a man who could be so reserved might never be easy, but she needed to learn how to handle that side of his nature.

  In the vast bedroom that she had become accustomed to occupying alone she let him unzip the coat and part the edges to look down at her scantily clad curves with smouldering appreciation.

  ‘I’m going to have to start buying you stuff,’ she began shyly as he laid her down on the bed and started to carefully unzip her boots.

  ‘No, this moment is my gift,’ Navarre countered huskily, burying his mouth between her breasts and running a skilful hand along the extended length of her thigh to the taut triangle of fabric between her legs.

  Her body was supersensitive after all the months of deprivation. The pulse of need she was struggling to control tightened up an almost painful notch. Sadly the lingerie that had brought them together received precious little attention and was cast aside within minutes while Navarre’s shirt got ripped in the storm of Tawny’s impatience. She ran her hands over the gloriously hard, flat expanse of his abs and then lower to the blatant thrust of his arousal. His breath hitched in his throat as he protested that he was too aroused to bear her touch.

  ‘You mean you’re only good for one go … like a Christmas cracker?’ Tawny asked him deadpan.

  And, startled by that teasing analogy, Navarre laughed long and hard as he studied her with fascination. ‘Where have you been all my life?’

  He kissed her passionately again and matters quickly became extremely heated. He tried to make her wait because he wanted to make an occasion of what he saw as a long delayed wedding night, but she was in no mood for ceremony and she refused to wait, holding him to her with possessive hands and locking her slim legs round his waist to entrap him. She had expectations and she was unusually bossy. He was trying for slow and gentle, she was striving for hard and fast, and with a little artful angling of her hips and caressing and whispered encouragements she got exactly what she wanted delivered with an unrivalled hunger that left her body singing and dancing with excitement. Desire momentarily quenched, she lay in his arms, peacefully enjoying the fact that he was still touching her as if he couldn’t quite believe that he had now reclaimed that intimacy. He stroked her arm and strung a line of kisses round the base of her throat while still holding her close to his lean, damp body and at that instant, with all that appreciation coming her way, she felt like a queen.

  In fact when he got out of bed she almost panicked, a small hand clamping round his wrist as if he were a fleeing prisoner. ‘Where are you going?’

  Navarre lifted the phone with a flourish. ‘I’m ordering some food, ma petite—we both need sustenance to keep up the pace.’

  ‘And then?’ she checked, heat and awareness still rippling through swollen and sensitive places as she looked at him.

  ‘We share a shower and I stay … all night?’ He was looking hopeful and she knew she wouldn’t be able to disappoint him, particularly when she just didn’t want him out of her sight for a minute.

  ‘And if you should feel the need to wake me up and jump me during the night at any time,’ Navarre drawled silkily over supper, ‘you are very welcome.’

  ‘Well, the pregnancy damage is already done.’

  ‘Don’t say that even jokingly,’ he urged, feeding her grapes and Parma ham and tiny sweet tomatoes and reminding her all over again why she loved him so much. ‘I can’t wait to be a father.’

  In the secure circle of Navarre’s arms for the first time ever, Tawny slept blissfully well. To his great disappointment she didn’t wake him up for anything so that he could prove all over again that he had nothing in common whatsoever with a Christmas cracker. When she wakened it was late morning and she blinked drowsily. Stretching a hand over to the empty space beside her in the bed, she suppressed a sigh even as she stretched luxuriantly while lazily considering their marriage, which she was finally convinced had a real future. He was gone, of course he was long gone, he left for the office at the crack of dawn most weekdays. Only when she had stumbled out of bed to move in the direction of the bathroom did she realise that Navarre had not even left the room—he was actually seated in an armchair in the dimness.

  ‘My word, I didn’t see you over there … what a fright you gave me!’ She gasped, stooping hurriedly to pick up her robe from the foot of the bed and dig her arms into the sleeves because she was still somewhat shy of displaying her pregnant body to him. ‘Why are you still at home?’

  ‘May I open the curtains?’ At her nod, he buzzed back the drapes and light flooded in, illuminating the harsh lines etched in his taut features. ‘I’ve been waiting for you to wake up.’

  ‘What’s wrong? What’s happened?’

  ‘Your cell phone has been ringing on and off for a couple of hours … your sisters, I assume, your family trying to get in touch with you … I didn’t answer the calls.’ Navarre lifted a shoulder in a very Gallic shrug and surveyed her with brooding regret. ‘I switched off your phone because I wanted to be the one to tell you what has happened—’

  ‘I need to use the bathroom first!’ Tawny flung wildly at him and sped in there like a mouse pursued by a cat, slamming the door behind her. She didn’t want to know; she didn’t want to hear anything bad! She had wakened feeling happy, safe and insanely optimistic for the first time in a long time. How could that precious hope be taken away from her so quickly?

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ONCE Tawny had freshened up and mentally prepared herself for some sort of disaster, she emerged again, pale and tense.

  ‘Has someone died? My gran—?’

  ‘Merde alors … no, it is nothing of that nature!’ Navarre hastened to assure her.

  Tawny breathed again, slow and deep, striving to remain calm when all she really wanted to do was scream and be hysterical and childish because she had never wanted bad news less, and now she feared that he was about to tell her something or confess something that would destroy her and their marriage. If nobody had died or got hurt, what else was there?

  ‘I saw Tia while I was over in London. She took a hotel room and I visited her there. Yesterday an English tabloid newspaper published an account of the fact that we were in that hotel suite alone together for more than an hour and printed photos of us entering and leaving the hotel separately.’

  Tawny drew her body up so stiff with her muscles pulled so tight that she stretched at least an inch above he
r normal height. ‘You went to an hotel with her … you’re admitting that?’

  ‘I won’t lie to you about it.’

  ‘You know a normal man would be rendezvousing with his secretary or a colleague between five and seven in the evening for clandestine sex before he comes home to his wife. That’s the norm for a mistress—you’re not supposed to be shagging a world-famous film star!’ Tawny condemned shakily, throwing words in a wild staccato burst while nausea pooled in her stomach because she immediately grasped the appalling fact that his confession meant that all her worst fears were actually true. She felt as if she had woken up inside a nightmare and did not know what to say or do. She hovered on the priceless Aubusson rug, swallowed alive by her anguish.

  Navarre was watching every flicker cross her highly expressive face and he too had lost colour below his bronzed complexion. ‘Tia is not and has never been my mistress. We’re friends and we lunched in her suite in private, that’s all,’ Navarre declared, shifting an emphatic hand to stress that point. ‘The paparazzi never leave her alone. Her every move is recorded by cameras. She has to be very careful of her reputation because of her marriage and her career, which is the only reason why we usually meet up in secret—’

  ‘Never mind her. What about your marriage?’ Tawny asked him baldly, wondering if he could seriously be expecting her to swallow such an unlikely story. Lunch and no sex? What sort of an idiot did he think she was?

  A hasty rat-a-tat-tat sounded on the bedroom door and, with a bitten-off curse that betrayed just how worked up he was as well, Navarre strode past her to answer it. Hearing Gaspard’s voice, Tawny rested a hand on a corner of the bed and slowly, carefully sank her weak body down on the comfortable mattress. Her legs felt like wet noodles and she felt dizzy and sick. It was nerves and fear, of course, she told herself impatiently. She wasn’t about to faint or throw up like some silly Victorian maiden. Her husband had slept with Tia Castelli. In fact he obviously slept with the actress on a very regular basis, for by the sound of it their meeting arrangements seemed to be set in quite a cosy little routine. That suggested that their private encounters had been taking place for at least a couple of years.

  Navarre closed the door and raked long restive fingers through his short black hair. Momentarily he closed his eyes as he was struggling to muster his resources.

  ‘What did Gaspard want?’

  Navarre expelled his breath in a hiss and shot her a veiled glance. ‘To tell me that Tia has arrived—’

  ‘Here? She’s here?’ Tawny exclaimed in utter disbelief.

  ‘We’ll talk downstairs and settle this for once and all,’ Navarre pronounced grimly. ‘I’m sorry I’ve involved you in this mess—’

  ‘Tia will be even sorrier if I get my hands on her,’ Tawny slammed back strickenly. ‘How on earth could she come here? What sort of a woman would do that?’

  ‘Think about it,’ Navarre urged tautly. ‘Only a woman who is not my lover would come to the home I share with my wife—’

  ‘That might be true of most women, but not necessarily when the woman concerned is a drama queen like Tia Castelli! I’ll get dressed and come down … but don’t you dare go near her without me there!’ Tawny warned him fierily while she dug frantically through drawers and wardrobes to gather up an outfit to take into the bathroom.

  He’s having an affair and his lover has got the brass neck to come to the home he shares with his pregnant wife, she thought in shock and horror. Yet last night they had been so close, so happy together. How could she have been prepared for such a development? In a daze she pulled on her jeans and a loose silk geometric print top. She couldn’t even try to compete with an international star in the looks department.

  He had belonged to Tia first, Tawny reasoned wretchedly, only choosing to marry Tawny because she was pregnant and possibly because he had wanted to make his own life away from Tia’s. After all, Tia was married as well. And she could have forgiven him for the affair if he had broken off his liaison with the blonde beauty to concentrate on his marriage instead. But he had not done that. Indeed Navarre appeared to believe that he could somehow have both of them in his life. Did he aspire to enjoying both a mistress and a wife?

  ‘What is she doing here in France?’ Tawny pressed Navarre on the way downstairs.

  ‘We’ll find out soon enough,’ Navarre forecast flatly.

  A very large set of ornate pale blue leather cases sat in the hall and Tawny was aghast at that less than subtle message. Tia had not only come to visit but also, it seemed, to stay. Tia, sheathed in a black form-fitting dress that hugged her curves, broke into a tumbling flood of Italian as soon as Navarre and Tawny entered the drawing room.

  ‘Speak in English, please,’ Navarre urged the overwrought woman. ‘Let us be calm.’

  Tawny dealt him a pained appraisal. ‘Only a man would suggest that in this situation.’

  ‘Luke’s thrown me out—he won’t listen to anything I say!’ Tia cried in English and she threw herself at Navarre like a homing pigeon. ‘What am I going to do? What the hell am I going to do now?’

  Standing there as superfluous as a third wheel on a bicycle and being totally ignored, Tawny ground her teeth together. ‘Well, you can’t stay here,’ she told Tia loudly, reckoning that it would take a raised voice to penetrate the blonde’s shell of self-interest.

  Slowly, Tia lifted her golden head from Navarre’s chest and focused incredulous big blue eyes on Tawny. ‘Are you speaking to me?’

  ‘You’re not welcome under this roof,’ Tawny delivered with quiet dignity.

  Ironically, in spite of all that had happened, Tia seemed aghast at that assurance. She backed off a step from Navarre, her full attention locking to him. ‘Are you going to allow her to speak to me like that?’

  ‘Tawny is my wife and this is her home. If she doesn’t want you staying here in the wake of that scandal in London, which affects me as much as you, I’m afraid you will have to listen to her,’ he spelt out.

  A little of Tawny’s rigid tension eased.

  ‘You should be putting me first—what’s the matter with you?’ Tia yelled at him accusingly, golden hair bouncing on her shoulders, slender arms spread in dramatic emphasis.

  ‘I’m putting my marriage first but I should have done that sooner,’ Navarre murmured levelly and, although he spoke quietly, his deep dark drawl carried. ‘Allow me to tell Tawny the truth about our relationship, Tia—’

  Tia stalked back towards him, her beautiful face flushed with furious disbelief. ‘Absolutely not … you can’t tell her … not under any circumstances!’

  ‘We don’t have a choice,’ Navarre declared, his impatience patent while strain and something else Tawny couldn’t distinguish warred in his set features as he looked expectantly at the older woman.

  Tia shot Tawny a fulminating appraisal. ‘Don’t tell her. I don’t trust her—’

  ‘But I do …’ Navarre reached out to Tawny and after a moment of surprise and hesitation she moved closer to accept his hand and let him draw her beneath one arm. ‘Tawny is part of my life now. You can’t ignore her, you can’t treat her as if she is of no account.’

  ‘If you tell her, if you risk my marriage and my career just to please her, I’ll never forgive you for it!’ Tia sobbed in a growing rage.

  ‘Your marriage is already at risk but that’s not an excuse to put mine in jeopardy as well.’ Navarre’s arm tightened round Tawny’s taut shoulders. ‘Tawny … Tia is my mother, but that is a very big secret which you can’t share with anyone at all outside this room—’

  ‘Your m-mother?’ Tawny stammered, completely disconcerted by that shattering claim and twisting her head to stare at him. ‘For goodness’ sake, she’s not old enough to be your mother!’

  Navarre was wryly amused. ‘Tia is a good deal older than she looks.’

  Tia went rigid with resentment at that statement. ‘I was only a child when I gave birth to you—’

  ‘She was twenty-one but pr
etending to be a teenager at the time,’ Navarre extended wearily. ‘I’ll tell you the rest of the story some other time but right now the fact that she is my mother and that we like to stay in regular contact is really all that’s relevant.’

  ‘His … mother,’ Tawny framed weakly, still studying the glamorous older woman in disbelief, for, according to what Navarre had just told her, Tia had to be into her fifties yet she could still comfortably pass for being a woman in her late thirties. Shock was still gripping Tawny so hard that she could hardly think straight.

  ‘But that can never come out in public,’ Tia proclaimed, angrily defensive. ‘I’ve told lies. I’ve kept secrets. It would destroy my reputation and I don’t want Luke to know that his own mother is younger than I am—’

  ‘I bet she’s not a beauty like you, though,’ Tawny commented thoughtfully and earned an almost appreciative glance from the woman whom she had just discovered to be her mother-in-law.

  ‘I think Luke could adapt,’ Navarre interposed soothingly. ‘You’re still the same woman he loved and married.’

  Tia shuddered. ‘He would never forgive me for lying to him.’

  ‘Why were you crying on our wedding day?’ Tawny enquired to combat the simple fact that she was still dizzily thinking, She can’t be his mother, she can’t be!

  ‘Do I look like I want to be a grandmother?’ Tia demanded in a tone of horror. ‘Do I look that old?’

  ‘I don’t think you’ll ever be asked to carry out that role,’ Tawny responded drily, weary of the woman’s enormous vanity and concern about her age while she instinctively continued to study those famous features in search of a likeness between mother and son. And she realised that when she removed their very different colouring from the comparison there was quite a definite similarity in bone structure. He was so good-looking because his mother was gorgeous, she registered numbly.

  ‘Right now I only want to lie down and rest. I’m exhausted,’ Tia complained petulantly, treating both her son and his wife to an accusing look as though that were their fault. ‘I assume I can stay now that I’ve shown my credentials.’