‘Too late?’ Matthew was frowning down at her.
‘I was hoping you might still care for me.’ Olivia shrugged bravely. ‘But I was wrong.’
To her astonishment, a slow smile spread across his face. ‘Do you really mean that—that you hoped I still cared?’
Dumbly she nodded. Vain hope!
But suddenly he was taking her hands in his, and his eyes were serious again as he chided, ‘You little fool! Do you seriously take me for the sort of immature individual who changes his mind about that sort of thing?’
As he paused, she could not answer. She could scarcely breathe. Stupefied, she stared into those deep hazel eyes as he told her, ‘My feelings for you are the same as they ever were, right from the very first time we met. If anything, they’re more powerful.’ He pulled her to him. ‘I love you, Olivia.’
Olivia blinked at him. This had to be a dream.
‘Why did you want to save our marriage?’
She blinked again, still disbelieving. Any minute now she would wake up. Like a sleepwalker, she opened her mouth, and then heard herself say, ‘I wanted to save our marriage because I’ve fallen in love with you.’
What happened next was definitely no dream. The lips that suddenly crushed down on hers, sending a heatwave through her senses, were utterly, achingly, heart-stoppingly real. And the powerful male body whose arms enclosed her, locking her to him as though he might never let her go, was wondrously warm and hard and substantial, no mere fantasy of her imagining. She gasped as Matthew leaned back a little and demanded, ‘Do you really mean that, Olivia?’
She smiled. ‘Do you take me for the kind of immature individual who would lie about a thing like that?’
As he laughed, all the tension between them vanished. Then he kissed her face and hugged her close. ‘If we weren’t already married, I’d ask you to marry me this very minute!’
‘And I’d accept.’
She kissed him back, then blushed a little as he teased, ‘Though come to think of it, you and I, my dear Olivia, are married in name only.’ A wicked smile spread over his face. ‘And I think it’s time we put that right.’ With a lingering kiss he swept her into his arms. ‘I reckon now would be as good a time as any.’
Olivia twined her arms happily around his neck, her fingers trailing through the thick, dark hair. ‘I reckon you’re right,’ she agreed with a nervous smile as he carried her to the bed and laid her on the eiderdown. Though, as he bent to kiss her, she reached out a restraining finger gently to cover his lips. ‘First, there’s one promise you have to make me.’
He kissed her finger. ‘Anything.’
She held his eyes with a serious look. ‘From now on, no more Celine.’
At that, Matthew’s expression altered. He sat down beside her and stroked her hair. ‘I owe you an explanation about that as well.’ Thoughtfully he drew in breath. ‘I know what you think—and what I’ve allowed you to think… but there’s never been anything between me and Celine.’
Olivia frowned. ‘What about your affair?’
‘There never was an affair—though one of us would have had it otherwise and the other one came very close to obliging. Probably, if you hadn’t come along, I’d have fallen into bed with her eventually.’
‘You mean you never did?’
‘Never. I dated her, but that was all.’
‘But what about that time I caught you together in the Regent’s Park flat?’
Matthew smiled a wry smile. ‘I admit that was close—but it wasn’t quite the way it looked. I hadn’t invited Celine to the flat. She phoned me just after I arrived… As you were aware, she’d been keeping tabs on me. I reckon she must have got wind of the fact that our marriage wasn’t exactly a raging success.’
As he paused, Olivia nodded, remembering all those phone calls to the house, and suddenly wondering, in a flash of intuition, if they had been deliberately designed to undermine an already rocky situation.
‘Next thing,’ Matthew went on to explain, ‘she turned up on the doorstep. She caught me at a bad moment, I suppose. I was just in the mood to drown my sorrows. And I probably would have if you hadn’t turned up when you did.’
‘But I thought you went after her that night?’
‘Not likely!’ Matthew shook his head. ‘I’d already had more excitement and drama than I could cope with in one night. No, I didn’t go after Celine. I checked in alone at a hotel for the night.’
Olivia felt a great weight slip away. It would always have made her feel uncomfortable just knowing that he and Celine had been lovers. ‘So that weekend in Brussels really was just strictly business?’
‘Absolutely,’ he assured her. ‘In fact, for Celine, I think that weekend was the last straw. She handed in her notice the following Monday and, in fact, she’s already left.’ He smiled at the look of surprise on her face. ‘She’s gone to work for some property tycoon in the City who’s presumably a little more amenable to her charms.’ He kissed Olivia on the nose. ‘Do you forgive me for leading you on?’
With a smile, she pulled him to her, knowing at that moment that she would have forgiven him anything. ‘I forgive you. Just don’t do it again. I nearly died of jealousy, you know.’
‘That’s what I was banking on.’ His lips curled in a Machiavellian smile. Then he laughed and nuzzled his lips against her neck as he drew himself down on the bed beside her. ‘And now, before we go any further, I suggest you pick up that phone and cancel the taxi I’m sure you’ve ordered.
‘Later—much later,’ he emphasised, his fingers caressing the soft skin of her throat, ‘you can make a call to your friend Jeffrey in Chester and tell him that from now on he’ll be running The Gallery for you. You, my dear, will be staying here to look after your very demanding husband. And if you have any energy left over from doing that,’ he added as she blushed with pleasure, ‘we’ll find another gallery for you in St Albans.’ He kissed her temple. ‘How does that sound?’
It sounded perfect. She smiled. ‘I like it.’
‘You’d also better arrange with Jeffrey to send poor old Sydney down. We can’t have him languishing up there on his own. Though I warn you,’ he teased her, biting her ear, ‘there’ll be no more private little evenings for the two of you together. From now on you spend all your evenings with me. You’re not the only one with a jealous streak. I can get jealous too.’
Olivia giggled and rumpled his hair. ‘Of a cat?’ she demanded, laughing.
‘Of a cat,’ he assured her, smiling. ‘When I said I was a demanding husband, I wasn’t joking, you know. You’d better get used to the idea of devoting your every spare moment to me.’
Olivia could think of nothing in the world that could possibly give her greater pleasure. ‘I’ll be your slave,’ she promised, hugging him.
He kissed her. ‘And I’ll be yours.’ Then his expression sobered momentarily as he drew from his pocket what looked like a telegram and crumpled it into a ball. ‘I guess I can give this the fate it deserves,’ he said, throwing it contemptuously into a corner of the room.
Olivia frowned. ‘What was it?’ she asked.
‘An ultimatum from the despicable Lewis Ottley. He’s threatening to spill the beans about our marriage being a put-up job unless I agree to drop all charges against him.’ He smiled thinly. ‘And I was right about where he’s hiding out. The telegram came from Rio de Janeiro.’
At the mention of Lewis’s name, Olivia felt her stomach tighten. The accountant’s callous betrayal of herself and her family was something that still hurt. But the hurt eased instantly as Matthew gently tilted her chin and gazed lovingly down into her eyes.
‘It was the telegram that brought me here,’ he admitted with a wry, poignant smile. ‘I thought I ought to let you know in case he got in touch with Richard.’ A wide smile broke the sudden seriousness in his face. ‘But nothing Ottley can do now can hurt us. This marriage of ours is no put-up job. It’s going to be the best marriage in the world.’ He paused. ‘W
hich reminds me… ‘he drew her to him and kissed her deliciously and began to undo the buttons of her blouse, ‘hadn’t you better cancel that cab?’
Somehow Olivia managed to make the brief phone call as, lingeringly, one by one, Matthew continued to undo the buttons of her blouse. As she finished speaking he took the receiver from her hand and laid it pointedly to one side.
‘I suggest we leave it off the hook. A little trick of yours, if I remember rightly.’ He smiled as the final button came free. ‘We definitely won’t be wanting any interruptions for the next couple of hours—at least.’
A shiver went through her as he pulled her close, kissing her lips, her eyes, her throat, making her flesh burn with excitement as, with delicate fingers, he slipped away her blouse. Then, still kissing her, he was removing her skirt and divesting himself swiftly of his own clothes, till they lay warm and naked, side by side.
As she moulded her soft, pliant body to his, trembling and eager for his love, Olivia could feel his hunger thrusting against her, undeniable, urgent and strong. But his loving was gentle and unhurried, minutely sensuous, nerve-tinglingly thorough, slowly but surely whipping her senses to a storm of aching desire.
‘This is going to be special, my love,’ he promised her, his voice ragged and thick. ‘I’ve waited so long for you, my darling. I want this to last forever.’
Firm, gentle fingers swept across her flesh, exploring every female dip and curve, sending glittering sensations scorching through her bones that her awakening woman’s body could never have imagined.
‘You’re beautiful,’ he told her, pausing to look down into her face. ‘And every beautiful inch of you, from this moment, belongs to me.’
She sighed his name, ‘Matthew, my love,’ as his hands reached down to cup her breasts. Then her sighs were turning to helpless moans as his lips bent to tug at each hardened peak in turn. And she longed to cry out in an anguish of pleasure as his tongue strummed the gorged and heated buds, sending goose-bumps rippling across her flesh and desire, like a skewer, piercing through her flesh.
Shuddering, she clung to him. Surely it was not possible, she wondered, for one human being to bestow such an ecstasy of pleasure on another?
Yet it was, and she longed to reciprocate. Tentatively, she traced uncertain fingers over the hard male contours of his chest, loving the way he shivered and moaned as the heels of her hands rubbed against his nipples. Her inhibitions loosening, she caressed the sinuously moving shoulders, the broad back, the muscles of his stomach, on a voyage of exploration, like the voyage her senses were embarked on now.
‘Are you ready?’ he murmured as, with a deep caress, he parted her thighs. A shaft of sheer, exquisite sensation whipped through her like an electric current, sending her fingers tugging wildly through his hair and her body aching hungrily against him in response to the sweet, burning ache in her loins.
But equal to the physical sensations that seemed to tear her flesh apart was the sudden overwhelming intensity of the love that shone like a beacon within her soul. It was as though it had been smouldering in the shadows, waiting for this moment to burst into life. Waiting for this man, as she had been waiting, since the moment of her birth.
For she knew, as surely as she could feel her senses rising to some pinnacle beyond earthly reach, that this whirlpool of emotion that engulfed her was drawing her not merely towards a union of the flesh but towards some higher union—the indissoluble union of two souls. As though the two of them had been created for this moment, and for all the wondrous moments that lay ahead.
She could feel the ache in her rise to agony as Matthew paused for a moment to gaze into her eyes. ‘I love you, Olivia.’
‘I love you too, Matthew.’ Tears of blissful happiness stood in her eyes.
And then he came to her. And at last, and forever, they were one.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
Bride for a Price Page 15