Tempted by Trouble

by Michelle Smart

  “I’m listening now,” he said, raising his hands in the sign of peace. “I want the truth, Pippa. And we’re not going anywhere until I get it.”

  She remained rigid, only her shallow breaths any indication that she was alive.

  “Need I remind you that you have bruises on your legs, arms, chest, and stomach, a sprained wrist, and a lump the size of a plum on your scalp?” His voice was grim, his eyes penetrating as he waited for a reaction.

  He expelled a tiny breath of relief as her fighting spirit returned in one fell swoop.

  She thrust her chin in the air and fixed her blazing gaze upon him. “No, I do not need reminding, thank you very much. I’m well aware of my injuries. If you really want to know, I assaulted my boss and this was his retaliation.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Why not?” she asked, her nostrils flaring. “It’s what you believed five minutes ago.”

  “From the state of your injuries it is obvious that you have been assaulted.”

  “I bloody well was assaulted but no one believes me.” She was so indignant, yet so icily composed.

  “I believe you.”

  She blinked. “You do?”

  “I do.”

  That seemed to knock the wind from her sails.

  “So what happened?”

  He caught a brief glimpse of the little lost lamb hiding under the table before the mature woman stepped back into place.

  Eyes fixed on the ground, she said, “My boss—the owner of the restaurant—let everyone else leave early. I was doing a stocktake in the bar at the back, so I didn’t realize it was just the two of us left.” She gave a long, ragged sigh, as if she were expelling air in incremental steps.

  He did not speak, simply waited for the rest of what he knew would be no fairy-tale ending.

  “He got a bit amorous—well, he would, wouldn’t he? After all, I’m the tarty ‘It’ girl who can’t say no to anyone.”

  “Had there ever been anything between you before this?” He felt like a complete heel, but he had to ask.

  “No!” Her eyes snapped to his, her cheeks flushing with indignation. “He’s a married man.”

  “So what happened next?”

  She shrugged tightly and threw her arms wide, this time inviting him to inspect her injuries. “As you can see for yourself, he wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

  Beneath her understandable fury lurked a smidgeon of vulnerability that reached out and squeezed his heart.

  “You fought him?” Of course she had. She must have fought like a wildcat to be the one arrested and charged.

  A sudden whiff of vindictiveness made him hope she had caused the bastard some real damage.

  Pippa laughed, a cynical, maniacal sound. “I wish I had. I wish I had kicked lumps out of him. Spending six hours in a prison cell would have been worth it then.” Her rosebud mouth closed and he watched silently as she took more deep breaths, her attention once again focused on the tiled ground beneath her feet.

  “He went berserk. He shoved me into the kitchen.” She shuddered and closed her eyes as if the act could banish the memories from her mind. “I thought he was going to…” Her voice caught and tailed off. “He tried to…” Again the words wouldn’t form.

  Marco held his breath, his whole body contracting at the horrific thought of what was coming next.

  She shook her head with a scowl. “To cut a short story even shorter, his phone rang, and luckily for me, it startled him. He loosened his grip and somehow I wriggled free. I ran but he had locked the kitchen door. He came after me and I managed to grab a saucepan that was left on the draining board and bashed him over the head with it.” Here, her voice faltered. “I knocked him out.”

  “Good,” he interjected venomously. Never had he wished violence on a fellow human being, but when he got his hands on that monster, he too would knock him out, using his bare fists. “So what happened next?”

  She gave a despondent shrug. “He hit his face on a worktop on the way down and fell into a heap on the floor. I called the police and an ambulance. Head injuries bleed an awful lot, and so do smashed noses. The police took one look at the mess and arrested me for assault.”

  “But what about your own injuries? Surely once the police had seen the extent of them, they could see you were the innocent party?”

  She closed her eyes. For a moment he thought she was fighting back tears, but when she opened them they were haunted but dry. “He regained consciousness briefly when the police arrived. He told them that I assaulted him. He said I had accused him of fiddling with the tip box and that I went, quote, ‘mad.’”

  Blinking rapidly, she continued. “My boss is a respected man of the community and the chairman of the local Rotary Club. I am the spoiled daughter of landed gentry with an atrocious reputation and more than one drunken night spent in a police cell to my name. Not to mention the police caution I received for driving without a license or insurance.” The sorrowful words flowed like an unleashed dam. “Who do you think the police believed? Oh, they said they would take my allegations seriously, but they said I was guilty of using unreasonable force, especially as my bruises hadn’t properly developed at that point. They took photos of my injuries and took a statement from me, made sure I was given adequate painkillers, but I could tell that they were just going through the motions.” She shrugged again. “I’m not the one who ended up in a hospital ward.”

  Marco clenched his fists, fighting another overwhelming urge to pull her into his arms. This urge fought alongside another, equally as strong, to take his private jet to England, track down her former boss, and beat him to a pulp.

  The violence of his response was unprecedented.

  Looking at Pippa now, her whole stance proclaiming dignity and defiance, he felt another, equally powerful emotion. Pride. For all the terror she must have experienced, she had been able to grab the opportunity to fight back. It was the pain in those damned expressive eyes that did it for him.

  His voice was rough as he pulled her into his arms and held her, resting his cheek on top of her head and inhaling her honeyed scent. “Whatever the police may say, there is no justification on earth for what that man tried to do to you. Not ever. That man will not be allowed to get away with it, I promise.”

  She fitted him perfectly. He dropped a kiss on the top of her silky cloud of hair. He could feel the soft swell of her breasts crushed against his chest, felt her body quiver as she pressed closer.

  Sucking in a breath, he willed his body not to respond. If ever there was an inappropriate moment, this was it.

  He would have been better willing the sun away. It took every ounce of control to keep his arms still, to refrain from the desire to allow his hands to roam freely across that buttery skin, to keep from cupping her rounded bottom and gathering her closer.

  His chest expanded and filled with something alien, something that pulled and ached and made him wish he could slash a knife through the past.

  But of course that wasn’t possible. The past could not just be wiped out from history.

  This was Pippa he was holding.

  Chapter Five

  Pippa gave in to the moment and buried her face in Marco’s hard, broad chest. She could take no comfort in his words—her reputation preceded her, the police thought she was a joke—but she could take comfort in the sanctuary his strong arms afforded.

  Her throat closed as she realized this was the first embrace she had been given since the assault. One of the first proper embraces she had received in years.

  Her stiff-lipped father and his gentrified family had never been ones for physical displays of affection. Her father had always taken his cues from her mother. Since her mother’s death, she had grown up without the refuge of proper, solid, physical comfort. This embrace…

  Oh, but Marco made her feel safe, let the light shine through the clouds. She closed her eyes tightly, not wanting this one magic moment to ever end. His scent tickled her nose
and she breathed it in, his exotic smell overpowering the emotions reliving the experience with her boss had unleashed. Her lips tingled with the yearning to kiss his chest, kiss every part of him.

  Temptation was taken from her when he pulled out of the embrace. She should have been grateful. So why did she feel so bereft?

  “Clearly your story changes things.”

  “My story?” Their unexpected closeness vaporized and she stared at him, bewildered. Being in his arms had felt almost dreamlike. “You don’t believe me?”

  “Of course I believe you,” he said dismissively, shifting away from her. “Your bruises are testament to your story.

  “But you cannot return to England in your state. You should never have left in the first place. If I had known you had such injuries, I would never have agreed that you come here, I would have insisted you be allowed time to recover in your own home.”

  “In fairness to my father and Amelia, they were not aware of the extent of my injuries,” she stated coolly. From the inflection in his tone and the visible stress in his body, he still had his doubts. Your bruises are testament to your story. He was not going to take her word for it. “The police and lawyer filled them in before I was released, so they had already made their minds up that I was in the wrong. When they collected me from the police station, I was in too much of a state to talk to anyone.”

  Having never been held in a police cell sober before, the dank, institutional taste of it still lingered, the rancid fear she had felt at the officers’ blatant skepticism still churning in her stomach. For a few brief moments she had found respite and sanctuary from the terrifying memories in Marco’s arms, but now they returned as vividly as when she had experienced them just a few short days ago.

  If that’s what a holding cell was like, what would an actual prison be like? It would be a hundred times worse.

  The thought of being incarcerated…

  She shivered and pushed the thought away. Her mind needed to be clear when she sat down and figured out a strategy to clear her name. Being with Marco only clouded what little lucidity she had left.

  “They put me up in a hotel for the night and then my father collected me in the morning and escorted me to the airport.”

  “They didn’t bring you home?”

  “Of course not.” She was surprised he would ask such a question. “I haven’t set foot in Rowantree Manor in five years. Until a couple of days ago, I hadn’t spoken to my father in three years.”

  The black in Marco’s eyes solidified into granite. “They left you alone in a hotel?”

  “I’m not an invalid.”

  “That is not the point,” he said, speaking through clenched teeth. The tension in his body shimmered off him in waves. “Whether or not they believed you were the injured party, they should have taken you home. They should not have left you alone.”

  “I don’t know if it has escaped your attention, but I have been taking care of myself for five years. Yes, I was in a bit of a state that night but it was shock more than anything.”

  “You need someone to look after you.”

  “Actually, I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself,” Pippa disputed, getting to her feet. She limped off, keeping her eyes firmly averted from the sea, which she could now see over the wall.

  She needed to create some distance between them. When she was with him it was as if he had a large magnet strapped to his waist that kept pulling her in. It had always been like that. She had always been the moth to his flame.

  After their paths had diverted, so long ago, she had gone to great lengths to forget about him, shaking it off as an adolescent crush.

  There was nothing adolescent about her feelings for him now. This desire, this constant buzz in her veins, the sensitivity of her skin, the burning need deep in her core…this was something she had never experienced before, not for anyone. And it was dangerous. Instinct told her that if she gave into this need, and if Marco gave into his, a need when in his arms she felt as deeply as her own, then they would be opening a box that should forever be kept locked.

  He stood up and followed her. “I’m afraid you’re not going to get any choice in the matter,” he said, his long strides keeping pace. “I insist you remain in my home until I am satisfied you are fully recovered. Joycy can watch over you.”

  Pippa shook her head, wishing this nightmare would end. Whatever she had done wrong in her late teenage years—and she freely admitted she had done more wrong than right—surely she didn’t deserve this.

  In her ears, the waves of the sea mocked her, reminding her even more forcefully of all she had lost.

  Her mouth went dry as a sudden craving consumed her—to drive to George Town, find a bar, and drink it dry. Or drink until she passed out.

  Grimly, she shook the craving away.

  Oblivion never lasted for long. The ensuing hangover always lasted longer, the problems she had been escaping from still there when she sobered up. That was a lesson she had learned the hard way,

  She might have hit the bottom, but she would not use that as an excuse to let the madness take her again. There was no excuse. The only thing she could do was dust herself off and start over.

  And really, it had been worse when she had first left home. Then, she didn’t even have savings, no matter how meager they might be. But she had managed. God knew how, but she had. She would manage again. On the whole, waitressing jobs were easy to come by.

  “Joycy’s an old woman—she doesn’t need to nurse me and I don’t need to be watched over, thank you very much.”

  Marco opened the French doors into the drawing room for her but blocked the way before she could advance any farther. “You will stay here and rest. When you are healed, you can return to England. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Who made you master and commander?” She pursed her lips at his high-handed arrogance, tilting her head to look at him properly. God, but he was huge and utterly implacable. The smoldering desire and tender compassion so evident just a few minutes before was gone, replaced by his usual imperviousness.

  “I said, ‘Do I make myself clear?’ ” he repeated.

  “Do not speak to me as if I were a child,” she snapped.

  “Then act like an adult and stay. You are never going to recover properly if you’re too busy job-hunting and home-searching to heal.”

  She hated that his logic made perfect sense. She tried to think of an alternate option that allowed her time to recover. It was a quick search. There were no other options. “I’ll stay until I’m better, but on the condition that you stop throwing my past in my face and stop treating me as if I’m something dirty you’ve trodden in.”

  She held his narrowed, blazing eyes until he gave an almost imperceptible nod and left the drawing room.

  They had reached a tenuous truce.

  Slowly she wandered up the stairs to her room, her mind full and her heart heavy.

  Reliving events to an ear that for once hadn’t been prejudiced had been surprisingly cathartic. It had also left her feeling dirty. Under her nose lay the odious smell of the holding cell and though she knew it was just a memory, she needed to scrub the scent away.

  She went straight for the shower and stood under its powerful jets before sinking to floor and letting the water pour over her.

  All at once it hit her.

  What had she just agreed to? Every cell in her body was screaming at her to run now, while she was still in possession of her sanity.

  So many years of her life had been wasted waiting for him. Throughout her teens she had prayed every night that he would wait for her, prayed that when she grew up and he saw her as an adult, he would recognize her as his one and only true love. In her twisted little mind, she had thought he would be impressed with her underage drunken antics. But even if she hadn’t believed that, she knew full well she would have carried on doing them anyway. She would have done anything to numb the pain that was her life.

  She remembered so
clearly, the nights full of torment when the only image in her head was the rage on his face at her eighteenth birthday party. No amount of alcohol could dull that particular image.

  It had been bad enough wanting a man who thought her nothing but a spoiled, troubled brat but to want that same man now, when he so clearly despised her, was little short of masochistic. Even if he did want her. Which somehow made it worse.

  It wasn’t until her digits had turned into prunes that Pippa turned off the shower and shook the painful memories away.

  …

  Marco was in his home office, his fingers absently tapping on the mahogany desk, reluctant to return to his office in George Town before the doctor had finished examining Pippa.

  Her bruises still lingered in his memory, taunting him, deriding him for his assumptions.

  He had believed her father over her and had inadvertently conspired to withdraw medical attention when it was so clearly needed.

  Nausea rolled in his belly, merging with the acid that had become a permanent fixture there.

  God help him but he hungered for her, with every fiber of his being. She was all he could see. At that moment, all he wanted to was to go to her room, climb under the sheets and worship her. He would be so gentle, take every care not to hurt her tender, bruised flesh.

  It was a road he could not travel, no matter how strong his appetite.

  Her actions had nearly destroyed him, both personally and professionally.

  After everything he had done for her, after all the times he had tried to help, guide, and advise her, she had thrown it all back in his face.

  And he hated her for it.

  Or at least he had.

  Just twenty-four hours in her company and his world had spun on its axis, her siren call growing louder by the second.

  What he could not allow himself to forget was that beneath that beautiful exterior lurked an attention-seeking liar. She had turned lying into an art form. For all he knew, there could be more to her story with her boss than she was letting on. Maybe a flirtation had gotten out of hand. His gut didn’t believe it, but his head…