Yes, had she been looking for such a man, for love... A small wave, but higher than the rest, took her unawares, wetting her to her knees, and she stumbled, almost fell, then righted herself and turned and saw him a mere two yards away. Everything inside her seemed to stop, just for a moment, before racing on, the blood thudding through her veins, her heart pattering a demented tattoo.
'Jude--' Her voice was thick, his name dragged from her on a sighing breath that faltered hopelessly, because she had known in that instant when time had stood still for her, when her breath, her very heartbeat, had hung suspended, that she loved this man, had probably been falling in love with him since she'd first set eyes on him. It was almost laughably simple! It had certainly been inevitable.
Moonlight, slow and silver, touched his face, stroked his magnificent body with tender moulding fingers, stopping the breath in her throat.
Naked, save for brief dark swimming shorts, he looked pagan—the dominant male to her feminine fragility— and he said her name, like a question, his shadowed eyes, bereft now of their startlingly vivid colour in this ghostly light, raking her, lingering hungrily on the shape of her, on the aching softness of feminine curves only lightly and tantalisingly concealed beneath gossamer fabric.
'I couldn't sleep.* He moved closer, close enough to touch, and her skin turned to flame with the nearness of his almost naked body as he cupped her face in his hands, his eyes searching hers, revealing the depth of his own wanting.
His body shook with it. She could feel the fine tremors that ran over the taut, glistening skin so near to her own, feel the control as he released her, his fingers feathering lightly down the length of her throat before they fell away, clenched into fists now, revealingly, though she knew she was not supposed to know the effort it had cost him to restrain himself from touching her more intimately.
'I'll walk you back.' His voice was kind, but there was a roughness in it, just below the surface, that told her he wanted her, as she wanted him. 'Perhaps a hot drink might help? Me, too—probably more than the swim I'd decided to take before I saw you along the shore.*
He could have been a father, soothing a wakeful child for all the emotion he allowed himself to show. But Cleo knew better, and she wasn't afraid, not now, because she had at last admitted to herself the fact that she must have unconsciously known for months. She loved him, and that was why her proposal to him had seemed so logical, so right! She had been blind for so long, so convinced that she didn't need or want emotional ties that she hadn't recognised what was happening to her!
But she knew it now, knew that the restrictions she had placed on these early days of marriage must be almost intolerable to a man such as he. And they were intolerable to her, now, quite intolerable.
But, such was his sense of honour, he would make no move towards her until the period of restriction he had agreed to was over. Any move had to come from her.
'Jude--' He was waiting for her, just a step or so ahead now, but he pivoted round as her voice touched him, tense, his skin glistening in the silver light as though drenched with sweat, although the breath from the sea was cooling.
'Make love to me.' The husky ease with which she spoke the words didn't surprise her. They were right, so right, and should have been said so very much sooner. She caught the sound of his sharply indrawn breath and her soul shook with the wonder of this moment, with the simple knowledge of her love for him, with what she read in his eyes as he took the hands she held out to him, folding them inwards against the wall of his chest.
'Are you sure?' His voice was throaty, urgency contained. 'Quite sure?'
And she nodded, too full of love for him to speak, too near to tears, or laughter, because she'd been such a blind fool these last months. She lifted her face to him, and he caught his breath, drawing her closer so that their bodies touched, just; magic was born as after one long and incredibly tense moment their bodies joined, and the softness of her melted into the demanding hardness of him, hands and lips seeking, finding, consuming.
And there on the shore, with the pulse of the sea melding into the rhythm of the blood in their veins, he made love to her with subtlety, with a tender poignancy that made her want to cry.
She loved him so.
CHAPTER FIVE
'You were leaving without saying goodbye!' Cleo's voice was a husky accusation as she stood in the breakfast- room doorway, fastening the belt of her fine voile robe around her narrow waist. And Jude looked up from the breakfast-table, his smile lazy, his azure eyes incredibly sexy.
'Not so. I would have come to wake you before I left.' He put his morning paper aside. 'Shall I ring for Meg to bring your breakfast through?'
'No, thanks.' Cleo pushed a hand through her rumpled silvery hair and sat opposite, helping herself to a morsel of crisp bacon from his plate, eating it from her fingers. She didn't want anyone to intrude, not even Meg, who was one of the most unobtrusive people she knew; she wanted Jude to herself.
Never again could she affect to be cool and blase towards this husband of hers. She loved him so much.
Her only regret was that she couldn't tell him so. He had married her because it was convenient to do so, no other reason. That she had proved to be as sexually eager as he, would, to his logical masculine mind have proved a bonus. To admit her love, would embarrass him. He wouldn't want the responsibility of it.
He was looking good, very good, his dark hair, still damp from the shower he must have taken earlier, clinging to his skull, his deep tan contrasting dramatically with the stark whiteness of his shirt. Her fingers ached to touch him. Every morning when she had wakened from luxurious sleep she had reached out for him and he had woken, turning to her, nuzzling her hair and then lazily, languorously, they had made love.
Not this morning, though. It was their first back in London because he'd said, 'What the hell!' contacted Mescal Slade and informed Dawn Goodall that they were taking another week, staying on the island. And this morning she had reached for him and he hadn't been there. Just an empty space between cool sheets, and she'd panicked, remembering he'd said he'd be going to the City today.
Stumbling out of bed, she'd grabbed at her robe, struggling into it as she'd run down the stairs, not wanting him to leave before she'd had a chance to see him, simply see him.
Now, relaxed again because she was with him, she reached for his coffee-cup, cradling it in both hands, sipping while he finished his bacon and eggs, and he asked, 'What are you going to do with yourself today?'
Cleo hunched one shoulder, her mouth curving in a warm, slow smile. 'Go shopping?' she hazarded. For some reason Jude had suggested she take a further week off. She would have preferred to be behind her desk again, close to him, working with him. But he had insisted and she wasn't up to arguing with him about it, about anything, not in this mood of euphoria she wasn't. A dark eyebrow lifted and she elaborated, 'I might get a new dress.'
She felt in the mood for celebrating, and buying something exciting would serve. That her ever- deepening love for him was just cause for celebrating she couldn't explain, not yet, so she tacked on, 'We're entertaining the Blairs on Thursday, so I need to pull out all the stops!'
She expected him to comment on the planned dinner party. Sir Geoffrey Blair was chairman of Blair and Dowd Developments, a company that was climbing fast and far, and Jude had been angling for their account. Thursday night could well clinch it. But he growled, leaning over the table to take his coffee-cup from her hands, 'Do you intend to consume all my breakfast, woman?* However, the quirk of his mouth belied the black bar of his lowered brows, and he drank the remains, then refilled the cup, took a mouthful then put the steaming cup back between her hands. 'Henpecked already,' he grinned and she nodded sagely, as if she quite agreed, although she knew that henpecked was the last thing this man would ever be. But their developing relationship admitted this type of gentle teasing and she welcomed it, as she welcomed everything about him.
'Do you know how irresistible you
look in that thing?' Lazy eyes swept her, the soft movement of his mouth adding erotic emphasis to the drift of his eyes as they roamed from the spun silver disorder of her hair, her flushed cheeks, the slope of her shoulders, to the swelling roundness of her breasts.
The robe she had pulled on was meant to be worn over a matching nightdress. Worn over nothing at all, its pink transparency was little more than a blush, and Cleo's pulses quickened as the sensual curve of his mouth became more pronounced, his voice a growly inspiration as he whispered,
'Irresistible enough to take you back to bed and let Mescal Slade look after itself.'
For a silent, timeless moment their eyes held, the intimacy almost shocking, and she thought he might just do that, but then she saw the change, the assumption of briskness that told her he had moved away from her, on to a separate plane entirely, and she knew—as if she could ever have doubted it—that work would always take first place for him.
She reluctantly respected him for that, she decided, watching as he shot a glance at his watch. The most she could hope for was that in time she would become as necessary to him as he was to her.
And there was a chance of that, she knew there was. The knowledge was like a small, bright flame inside her, warming her, allowing her to see more clearly ahead. He , liked and respected her and he took pleasure in her body, and that was as good a basis as any to build on. And she would build on it, brick by patient brick, be as much to him as he would allow, hide the depth of her own emotional involvement, her total commitment, until he was ready to accept it.
He stood up, reaching for the light grey suit jacket which had been hanging over the back of his chair, shrugging into it, his movements, as ever, sheer male elegance. And Cleo got to her feet, too, longing to go to him* to slip her arms beneath the beautifully tailored jacket and feel the warmth of muscle, sinew and bone through the crisp whiteness of his shirt.
But she wouldn't do that, of course. She couldn't give herself that luxury.
Their marriage was a compartmented thing and his mind was now geared to the working day ahead; he wouldn't welcome an untimely display of her physical need of him. It might annoy him, and it would certainly reveal the depth of her emotional involvement.
He picked up his briefcase and she lifted her face to receive his goodbye kiss, an unsatisfying brush of his lips over hers, and she expected that to be that, but he stood for a moment, smiling down at her, making her heart tumble about beneath her ribs.
The character lines on either side of his mouth indented wryly as he held her eyes, and it was all Cleo could do to prevent herself from reaching up and fastening her lips over the superbly crafted lines of his mouth. But she knew she had to be circumspect if this unusual but already beautiful marriage of theirs was to work out, to live and grow. Their relationship was too new, too delicately balanced as yet, to give him one inkling of the way she really felt.
He could, at this stage, be horrified by the implications.
Then he touched the side of her face with a slow- moving finger and his eyes were soft.
'I'll give you lunch at Glades. One o'clock.'
Cleo had finished dressing and was half-way down the stairs when Meg came out of the kitchen.
'There's a phone call for you, madam. Luke Slade.'
'Thanks, Meg, I'll take it in the study.'
Cleo responded warmly to the housekeeper's smile. Meg's devotion to Jude had lapped over on her, and the older woman asked, 'Shall I bring your breakfast through, madam? How about a nice boiled egg—free- range and fresh?' she tempted.
Cleo shook her head, admitting, 'I finished off the toast Jude couldn't eat, thanks,' and was aware of Meg's cluck of disapproval as she went to take that call, wondering why Luke had bothered to contact her. He certainly wouldn't be enquiring about her health—they had never got on very well together.
'Cleo?' His voice sounded harsh and tinny. 'Thank God you're back. I was afraid you and Jude might have skived off for yet another week. How soon can you get here?'
His urgency worried her and she asked quickly, 'What's wrong? Not Uncle John?'
But Luke snapped, 'He's fine. Just get here. Fenton's been round, making unpleasant demands. We can't discuss it on the phone. Just get here.'
She arrived at the Slade Securities head office in Eastcheap still in a state of shock, but as she dismissed Thornwood and the Rolls and walked across the pavement her thoughts began to unlock themselves, tumbling out all over her brain.
In the exquisite delight of recognising her love for Jude, in the joy they had discovered together during those long golden days and jewelled nights, Robert Fenton, and her reason for needing a husband in the first place, had been pushed from her mind, because garbage like that had no place in the ecstatic, the delicate, the passionate act of falling in love.
She had told Fenton they would be away for one week. But Jude had taken two. And Fenton hadn't been able to wait. So his greed had taken him to Luke, to spread his poison, make his threats, turn the screw.
Her hands were wet with sweat as she took the lift to Luke's office. His secretary told her to go right in, her eyes puzzled, sensing something was wrong. Luke was pacing the floor and he shot over to her, slammed the door closed behind her and grated, 'What the hell kind of mess do you think you've got us into? His narrow face was flushed and his hand shook as he took a bottle from the hospitality cupboard and sloshed two inches of Scotch into a glass. 'He walked in here on Thursday with his oily threats and I've been going spare ever since.' He took a long gulp of the neat spirit and told her, 'He said you'd promised to hand over twenty-five thousand pounds last week, for withholding certain information. By Thursday he'd decided you were reneging so he came to me.'
'I'm sorry you had to get mixed up in this.' Cleo slumped weakly on to a chair. 'I forgot. We didn't get back to London until late yesterday afternoon.'
'Sorry?' Luke bared his teeth in a mirthless grimace, his eyes incredulous.
'And how the hell can you forget a thing like that? Or do you have so many blackmailing threats hanging over you that this one just slipped your mind?
It wouldn't surprise me,' he jeered, 'you always did seem too good to be true!'
She wanted to walk out there and then, but couldn't afford the luxury, so she asked, tight-lipped, 'Is this as far as it's gone? Just trying to get the money out of you?'
'He'd be lucky!' His mouth twisted. 'And isn't it far enough? Can you imagine what the kind of publicity he's threatening to put around would do to the company—stuff like that can affect confidence. I can't afford to have that happen. In the state we're in, it could finish us.' He sat down heavily. 'If the money isn't in his hands by tomorrow he threatened to go to Father for it, and if that failed he's seeing some newspaper creep- as bent as he is, no doubt. I would have kicked him out of the door, but I knew he had to be telling the truth about what happened between you, otherwise you'd never have agreed to pay up in the first place.'
'He told you everything?' Cleo felt sick and she almost asked for a drink when Luke got up to pour himself another Scotch. But she needed a clear head to contact her bank and ask them to have the money ready for her to collect in the morning, to arrange a meeting place with Fenton.
Luke sat down again, disgust on his face. 'About your affair, the debts he ran up trying to give you a good time, your promise to marry him, the night you spent together at some out of the way hotel just before you gave him the boot.'
And Cleo said tiredly, 'It wasn't like that. We did date, but it never got heavy and I soon woke up to the fact that all he wanted from me was a share in the Slade Millions.'
'So why did you agree to pay up?' Luke sneered. 'If your relationship was that innocent he wouldn't have had a thing to hold over you. You've got to be as guilty as hell. Not that it bothers me,' he added spitefully. 'I couldn't care less if you have to pay him to hold his tongue for the rest of your life. But I don't go a bundle on being personally threatened by a creep like Fenton.
Anyway,' his eyes glittered triumphantly, 'if your relationship was so pure, what about the night you spent together at that Red Lion place? He said he could prove you'd shared a room as man and wife.'
'And so he could,' Cleo agreed wearily. 'We went for a drive in the country—he'd asked me to marry him, secretly, and I turned him down because by that time I knew he was primarily interested in the money I'd eventually inherit. He seemed to take my refusal well, said he hoped we could still be friends. God, I was green!' Her brows knitted over cloudy grey eyes. 'I'd already realised he was a bit of a con-man, but I didn't know he could be evil. I don't know why I'm explaining all this to you, but he engineered the whole Red Lion episode. He booked us in as man and wife and when I found out it was too late to do anything about it. But I spent the night in an armchair. Fenton and I have never been lovers--'
'Yet you're willing to pay out that kind of money!'
Cleo saw the sneering disbelief in his eyes and she said grittily, 'I can't prove we weren't lovers. He can prove we shared a hotel room for a night. I can't disprove his lies—that I said I'd marry him, made him spend money on me he couldn't afford then walked away when he got into debt. And I've found--'
her eyes lashed him scornfully '—that most people prefer to believe the worst of others.'
He didn't even look uncomfortable, she noted bitterly, and she punched her message home, 'Had I been the only person concerned I would have told him to go to hell before I gave him a penny. I've no doubt at all that he could have got the whole pack of lies into some grotty scandal sheet, and it wouldn't have done my career much good, but I would have survived. But your father wouldn't. He's old and he's sick, and that type of publicity would finish him.
A Secure Marriage Page 7