Marriage on Command

by Lindsay Armstrong

  ‘May I make a suggestion?’ Lee asked very quietly.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘That you tell me exactly what kind of a future you propose for us, Damien.’

  ‘That we stay married,’ he said impatiently. ‘I thought that much was obvious.’

  ‘Yes,’ she conceded. ‘But how? You spending most of your life up here and me spending most of mine at Plover Park?’

  This time when he paused she thought it was to choose his words with care. She wasn’t proved wrong. ‘I think that would work extremely well for us. You love Plover Park and this way you could keep it.’ His lips twisted. ‘Although if you ever change your mind about how you would like to spend your life, there’s more than enough room here.’

  Lee swallowed and looked around. ‘I could never sit here twiddling my thumbs.’

  The look he shot her told her that she had just proved his point, but he shrugged. ‘It doesn’t necessarily have to be here. My mother has always said she’ll move out of the house when I marry—it is mine, anyway.’

  She hesitated. ‘What if I choose Plover Park and we have children?’

  ‘I can’t think of a better place to bring up kids—Lee…’ He drew her against him and kissed her hair. ‘What is it you’re trying to say?’

  She trembled in his arms. ‘I couldn’t do it, Damien. I would feel like a long-distance wife. We’re just too… Our worlds are too far apart for it ever to work.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ he said. ‘We have the best reasons in the world to make a go of it. We’re both the kind of people who don’t like living in anyone’s pocket—’ He stopped abruptly as she freed herself.

  She stood straight, slender and pale in front of him, her freckles standing out noticeably. ‘If Julia had been happy not to live in your pocket, Damien, don’t you think that might have removed whatever it was you couldn’t put your finger on?’

  ‘Which is, precisely?’ he drawled, his eyes suddenly cool and his mouth hard.

  ‘Precisely? That a marriage of convenience, ensuring order and heirs, is what you really want.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘ARE you suggesting that I would like to have my cake and eat it, Lee? A wife to produce heirs and a mistress to enjoy myself with?’

  If she was pale, then so was he now, and the tension in the air was electric. But it was a tension threaded with anger—his anger.

  ‘N-not immediately, perhaps,’ she said unevenly, and gestured a little helplessly.

  ‘You don’t think that kind of marriage went out with Regency times?’ He raised his eyebrows and looked at her satirically.

  She swallowed. ‘I have it on good authority that it has its appeal—especially for men.’

  ‘Who’s authority?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that, and anyway—’ she shook her head ‘—it’s not that. I’m not basing my objections on…on that.’

  ‘On what, then?’ he grated lethally.

  Why had she started this? Lee wondered despairingly. Had meeting Julia infected her with…what? More doubt than she already cherished? Or were her objections based solely on the type of marriage he was proposing, as well as the fact that he was using Plover Park as a lure? But what else would work for them?

  ‘Talk to me, Lee,’ he said dangerously. ‘I know I took pains to reassure you at Tamanu, but if you can’t come up with something better than you’ve so far produced I wouldn’t be averse to persuading your body to speak for you—extremely pleasurably for both of us.’ He raked her figure insolently with his dark gaze.

  She gasped. ‘You wouldn’t!’

  ‘Don’t bet on it,’ he warned. ‘And let’s not forget something else. Who seduced whom, initially?’

  ‘That…that has nothing to do with this!’ she stammered.

  He laughed, softly and scornfully. ‘No?’

  Lee closed her eyes. ‘Why do you think Julia wanted to speak to Melinda?’ she asked.

  ‘Lee, that has nothing to do with this. I finished with Julia before I ever married you. She doesn’t enter into this equation at all.’

  Lee flinched visibly and kept her lashes lowered. A mistake. Because that was when Damien abandoned his verbal assault and began a physical assault. Not that it felt like an assault, he was too clever for that…

  He kissed the tears beading her lashes, then cupped her face and kissed her mouth. ‘You know what you taste of?’ he said softly. ‘Tamanu—still a little salty from our last dawn swim this morning. Remember how you woke up?’

  She remembered all too well. She’d opened her eyes to just a faint lightening of the sky, and the thought that they were leaving Vanuatu today had gripped her and filled her with apprehension. She’d turned to Damien urgently and buried herself in his arms. They’d made urgent love without a word being spoken, then, in all the glory of a deep-rose sunrise, they’d had their last swim.

  Was it only this morning? she thought with surprise. It almost seemed part of another life.

  ‘You made love to me as if your world was falling apart this morning, Lee,’ he said very quietly. ‘But it doesn’t have to be that way.’

  She looked into his eyes at last, hers mirroring her shock at what she’d unwittingly given away in the dawn hours.

  ‘You…’ she breathed, and couldn’t go on.

  ‘I’m honoured,’ he said simply. ‘And I promise you, you won’t regret it.’ He picked her up and carried her into the master bedroom.

  She was too stunned to resist when he undressed her, then too aroused by what he did to her to take issue with anything.

  What could you do, she wondered, with a man who played your body like the finest violin so that it sang for him; a man who took your breath away and made you feel like a living flame in his arms, not only pleasured almost out of your mind but desirous of pleasing him? What could you do with a man who said the kind of things he said to her?

  Such as… ‘Lee, do you know how many words that start with L describe you?’

  ‘Uh…no…’

  ‘Lithe, lissome, lovely, languorous, lambent, luscious—’

  ‘Damien, they can’t all,’ she said with an effort. ‘But there is one more I could add—lost! Or I will be very soon, if you keep doing that.’

  ‘This?’ he asked lazily. She was lying on her back, he was on his side, with his dark head propped on his elbow and the fingers of his free hand laying a devastating trail of sensation very slowly up and down her body. He circled her breasts and touched her nipples, then continued downwards across her stomach to the auburn curls at the base of it. There they rested for a fleeting moment. She shivered with delicious anticipation, made a low husky sound in her throat, and moved luxuriously to open her legs.

  At the same time she slid her fingertips down the strong column of his throat, played a little with the springy dark hair of his chest, then continued her featherlight exploration of the hard planes of his body.

  ‘Lee—’ He stopped what he was doing, and her hand stilled. ‘You’re entering dangerous territory.’

  Her lips tilted into a faint smile. ‘You know all those words that start with L? Well, the only one I can think of to describe you that starts with D is just that—dangerous. Or, come to think of it, downright dangerous!’ Her hand started to move again, very slowly.

  ‘But you don’t mind?’

  ‘Perhaps I’m adventurous at heart. Perhaps I am more of a one-woman SWAT team than I knew…’ She paused as her voice caught in her throat. ‘Because I’m just dying for you to be as downright dangerous as you like.’

  ‘That,’ he said unevenly, ‘should do it.’ And he swept her into his arms to enter her powerfully.

  She revelled in it, moulding her slim length and soft curves to him but freeing her arms so she could wrap them around him. He eased her onto her back and their rhythm became a symphony, and she gloried not only in his strength but the mingling of their limbs, skin on skin, the smell and the taste of him, and finally their crescendo that literally caused
her to see stars behind her closed lids.

  She was still uttering sobbing little breaths when he rolled away from her, but only to pull her on top of him and anchor her there firmly, with his arms around her waist.

  She opened her eyes cautiously, then could only lay her cheek against his shoulder until her breathing steadied.

  ‘So,’ he said, and stroked her hair gently, ‘all signed and sealed, Lee?’

  A fluttering little sigh escaped her lips. She could no more fight him or think of any other decision to make at this moment than she could fly to the moon, she realised. She couldn’t even raise the indignation she should probably feel at being forced to accept his will in the matter at a time like this. Which said something, she thought. That he had a very strong point. Not exactly a weapon that was going to help her…

  ‘Lee?’

  She raised her head at last and he tucked some damp tendrils of hair behind her ears. His eyes were very dark, and it pleased her to see that his forehead was beaded with sweat. All the same, the question in his eyes was inescapable, and it occurred to her that Damien Moore might be deliciously dangerous in bed, but he was also extremely dangerous in the matter of getting his own way.

  As if you didn’t know that, Lee, she chided herself, and cleared her throat to speak. What came out was a surprise to her, though. She said huskily, ‘OK, José, I’ll give it a go. That’s all I can think of at the moment.’

  He laughed, then sobered. ‘Why don’t I skip work and we go home?’

  A curious feeling of warmth flooded Lee. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Well, I need to make a few calls, but I should be ready to leave in an hour or so. You could have a long soak in the tub, or you could wander around and decide if there’s anything you’d like to change here.’

  Lee’s eyes widened.

  He shrugged. ‘It’s your home too.’

  ‘I don’t think I’d be game to change a hair of its head, so to speak.’

  A wicked grin tugged at his lips. ‘Are you not my interior designer extraordinaire?’

  Her hand flew to her lips. ‘Byron Bay—I’d forgotten all about it!’

  He rolled over with her and kissed her lightly. ‘I like the sound of that.’

  ‘But…what do you mean?’

  His dark eyes were alive with amusement. ‘I like the thought of being able to drive all else from your mind, Lee.’

  She coloured faintly, but said with dignity, ‘Vanuatu had something to do with it too.’

  ‘Of course,’ he replied gravely. ‘Viva Vanuatu! I was the guy who took you there, however. Surely that deserves some recognition?’

  She pretended to consider.

  ‘Lee,’ he said dangerously, ‘if you have any plans of leaving this bed in the near future—’

  ‘Damien,’ she broke in hastily, ‘I think you’ve done enough damage for one day—OK, it was the fantastic combination of you and Vanuatu!’

  ‘Damage?’ There was a slight frown in his eyes now.

  ‘Yes, damage,’ she said softly. ‘You’ve wrecked me twice today—very nicely, but wrecked all the same.’

  He hesitated and searched her eyes, but they were clear though a little shy. Then he said gravely, ‘OK, I’ll accept equal billing with your favourite South Pacific Island on one condition.’

  She raised an eyebrow.

  ‘That we do this again in the near future.’

  ‘I…don’t see any problem with that, Mr Moore.’

  He laughed, kissed her again, then got up, tucked her in modestly and strode through to the bathroom.

  Lee stayed where she was while he showered, and treated herself to the pleasure of watching him dress.

  He pulled on clean jeans, then sat down on the side of the bed to put on his socks. Lee lay as still as a mouse with her arms beside her above the sheet—in awe, she realised, because he was so beautifully made.

  Not that it came as any surprise to her. Vanuatu had really revealed his physique, as well as tanned it, but it still always came as a joy to her. The width of his shoulders, his compact hips and taut diaphragm, the line of dark hair disappearing into his jeans as he stood up and reached for the shirt.

  And as her nerve-ends started to tingle their gazes caught and held. She was not to know there was something helpless in her expression. Helplessly starstruck…

  Nor did she understand why he looked briefly grim, then sat down beside her again and spoke quietly and gently. ‘I know this may typify all the things I’m bad at—running roughshod over people, for example.’ He looked rueful. ‘But trust me, Lee. I won’t let you down.’

  He picked up her hand and kissed her knuckles. ‘Have a rest, my lady,’ he added. ‘We’ve got all day to get home.’

  She did rest for a while, bodily, but mentally she was trying to grapple with the enormity of the decision she’d taken. And a little refrain kept running through her musings—his words Trust me, Lee. Was that Trust me not to hurt you, Lee? And did he know, though, that the very fact he hadn’t said I love you was a hurt of its own, even though she seemed to be hopelessly bound to him?

  And what proportion of his feelings for her, whatever they were, included a sense of responsibility? Responsibility for the fact she had fallen in love with him?

  She pulled his pillow into her arms and breathed deeply. He had also said You didn’t really think I’d let you go, Lee. Maybe that was what she should concentrate on. Maybe she should abrogate all her concerns and simply go with the flow. Because there was one thing that was in no doubt at all. She loved Damien Moore whatever he felt for her.

  She did take a long soak in the tub, then dressed again in her jeans and pink blouse and went to find her husband.

  He was on the phone, so she wandered into the kitchen and made them some coffee. He was still on the phone by the time she’d finished hers, so she took his advice and wandered around the apartment. Not that she was looking at it with a decorator’s eye—or even a wife’s eye, she thought with a grimace. Not yet. Would she ever? she wondered, as she stood in the doorway of the formal dining room.

  The table had a vast glass top set on three intricately carved marble pedestals. The chairs were wrought-iron and powder-coated, to match the beige marble of the pedestals, with amber velvet seats. And a marvellous marble elephant, gorgeously caparisoned with jewel-bright colours, scarlet, jade, sapphire and amber, stood in the centre of the table. The walls of the dining room were hung with beige slub silk and the windows looked over the river to the tall glass towers on the opposite bank.

  Lee suddenly found her mind drifting and adjusting the scenario in her imagination… She pictured the room at night, lit by candles, with the city lights across the river twinkling against a midnight-blue sky. She pictured the table set with gold and crystal, perhaps ecru linen placemats and napkins. She pictured herself and Damien welcoming guests into the dining room, she directing them to their places.

  What would she be wearing? Something long that shimmered as she moved, with her hair drawn back and a comb or a flower securing it. She pictured herself as poised and relaxed, the perfect foil for her tall, dark husband who would be devastatingly attractive in…

  Musical chimes interrupted her thoughts, and she came back to earth to hear Damien calling out, asking her to answer the door with a tinge of impatience in his voice.

  It was Ella Patroni, and it was hard to say who was the more surprised of the two of them. Although Ella recovered quickly.

  ‘Lee,’ she said delightedly. ‘So you’ve moved in at last! That’s wonderful. Now I might be able to talk to someone, instead of leaving messages on Damien’s machine that he never answers!’

  ‘I…well…come in,’ Lee invited. ‘It’s good to see you too,’ she said, and realised she meant it as she led Ella into the lounge.

  Damien came through from the study at the sound of their voices and smacked the palm of his hand to his head as he saw Ella. ‘I’m sorry—I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Ella!’

  ‘
So you should be,’ Ella remonstrated. ‘You never answer my messages!’

  ‘I just haven’t had the time. We’ve been away, and I spent a lot of time down on the farm before that,’ he explained.

  ‘Then you’re forgiven,’ Ella said promptly, as the phone in Damien’s study rang again and he looked over his shoulder. ‘So, shoo back to work,’ she instructed him, ‘and I will consult with Lee.’

  ‘You’re a peach,’ he said with a lurking grin. ‘I’m sure Lee will look after you.’

  Lee made fresh coffee and took Ella into the den.

  ‘I’m sorry there’s nothing to eat—not that I can find anyway. I don’t really know my way around Damien’s kitchen yet.’

  ‘All to the good,’ Ella said as she lowered her bulk into an armchair. ‘I’m on a diet. So. You obviously haven’t stayed here often?’

  ‘Once.’ Lee grimaced. ‘After your party. We only got back from Vanuatu this morning.’

  Ella sipped her coffee, then put it down with a frown. ‘I’m renowned for my plain speaking, Lee,’ she warned. ‘Nothing I do seems to prevent me from putting my foot in my mouth at times. If we’re going to be friends, I thought I should warn you.’

  A half-smile played over Lee’s lips. ‘Concerning Damien and I,’ she said quietly, ‘it’s all too easy to put your foot in your mouth. The same thing happened with his sister this morning.’

  Ella blinked several times. ‘Then,’ she said slowly, ‘you don’t mind if I tell you that the mystery of your marriage is driving us all crazy?’

  Lee looked away briefly and resisted the temptation to tell Ella that she suffered the same syndrome at times—including about an hour ago.

  ‘But whatever took him away from Julia and brought him to you, it’s working now?’ Ella said softly.