by Penny Jordan
Matt didn’t know how to contain the savagery of his own pain. He told himself that he wasn’t going to say a word to her until they reached the penthouse, but no sooner were they outside the room than he found himself breaking his own rules.
‘I don’t care what you have to say about it, Harriet, or how much you argue,’ he told her harshly, ‘our engagement is still very much on, and will remain on.’
‘You don’t—’
‘And what is more,’ Matt continued thickly, ‘if necessary it will be continued as far as marriage.’
‘If necessary? What do you mean, if necessary? How could it be necessary? I—’
‘We had sex,’ Matt told her. ‘You could be carrying my child.’
Matt’s child.
Harriet felt her heart beat a sharply painful tattoo of longing.
‘No!’ she whispered, shaking her head. Her mouth had suddenly gone dry and she had to wet her lips with the tip of her tongue. ‘That’s not possible…you used a condom.’
Matt gave her a derisory look. ‘That’s no guarantee!’
What on earth had he started? The fierce mule kick his words had brought to his emotions had activated a response in his body that told him how much it was now wanting to ensure that his unfounded threat became an absolute certainty. A child; Harriet’s body swelling with his child.
Harriet felt as though she was drowning in her own sickening panic.
‘No. No. You can’t make me. I won’t marry you, Matt. Not even if I am pregnant. I…I couldn’t bear it.’
Matt went perfectly still as he heard the emotional agony in her voice. His own emotion carved twin deep grooves of biting loss along either side of his mouth, but Harriet was too caught up in her feelings to notice. He marched towards the private lift that serviced his apartment, aware that Harriet was following him.
Savagely he pressed the button and the doors opened immediately.
‘Don’t do this to me, Matt,’ she begged as she got in the lift with him and the doors shut behind them. ‘I couldn’t bear being married to you when I love you so much and you don’t love me at all. In fact I think it would kill me.’
There was a sharp, tense silence, and then Matt asked very quietly, ‘Would you like to repeat what you just said?’
Harriet closed her eyes and gulped in air.
‘You heard me.’
‘You love me so much…?’ Matt prompted her.
‘Yes,’ she whispered in defeat.
‘And I don’t love you at all?’
Matt reached behind him for the ‘stop’ button and pressed it hard.
Harriet gasped in shock as the lift’s abrupt halt threw her against him. No, not against him, she recognised dizzily, but into him—into his open arms, which wrapped tightly around her, whilst his mouth fastened hungrily on hers in a fierce claim of possession.
‘Wrong!’ Matt corrected her thickly against her mouth when he was finally able to release it. ‘I do love you. I have loved you and I shall love you more deeply, more passionately, than I ever thought it was possible for me to love anyone.’
‘You love me?’ The miracle of hope began to edge into her voice.
Matt groaned and took her back in his arms, releasing the lift button as he did so.
He was still kissing her when the doors opened.
‘Have we reached the penthouse?’ Harriet asked dizzily.
Matt turned his head and glanced into the office behind them—to see his staff working very hard at not noticing their intimacy.
‘Not exactly,’ he answered.
Uncertainly Harriet turned her head.
‘Matt, everyone can see us!’ she whispered, pink-cheeked.
‘Yes, they can,’ he agreed, still holding her in his arms. Obviously he’d pressed ‘stop’ before the lift had started moving, and now the doors had opened automatically. ‘And what they can see is that you are mine.’
‘I never loved Ben the way you thought,’ Harriet told him truthfully. ‘I’ve never loved anyone the way I love you, Matt. It wasn’t true what I said about…about going to bed with you to prove to you I wasn’t saving myself for Ben either,’ she added huskily. ‘I wanted you like that the moment I saw you.’ Her body shuddered in visible longing. ‘In fact I think I fell in love with you the moment I saw you, but you were so…so cold towards me…’
‘Was I? It must have been something to do with all those cold showers I kept on having to take,’ he teased her, changing tack to ask, ‘How do you feel about a June wedding?’
‘June?’ Dismay darkened her eyes. ‘But it’s already May, and that means waiting a whole year.
‘I mean this June,’ Matt corrected her softly, firmly closing the lift door.
‘Where are we going now?’ Harriet asked.
‘To heaven,’ he answered thickly, ‘via the penthouse. Unless you really want to know what it’s like to make love in a lift?’
* * *
‘Oh, Matt it’s the same suite!’
Harriet’s eyes shone with love and a longing that made Matt’s hands tremble slightly as he locked the suite door and turned to walk towards her.
‘I wanted us to celebrate our true engagement here, where we both made our commitment to one another, even though then we didn’t know we shared those feelings. Harriet, come here. I can’t bear not having you in my arms a second longer.’
‘What about the champagne?’ Harriet protested. ‘And the canapés and the chocolate coated strawberries…?’
‘What’s that look for?’ she demanded, when Matt suddenly started to smile as he remembered what he had wanted to do that first night she had so innocently tormented him.
When he told her she blushed and laughed, and then whispered to him that she’d like to reciprocate but that she loved the taste of him so much she didn’t want to dilute it with champagne.
‘Harriet…’ he groaned unevenly.
‘I don’t know how I’m going to bear sleeping without you for three whole days when we go home for the wedding,’ Harriet said, tugging at his shirt buttons and nuzzling her lips against his skin.
‘We’ll be able to make up for it once we’re on honeymoon,’ Matt promised.
‘Mmm…a whole month of just the two of us.’ Harriet shuddered with eager pleasure, and then sighed happily as she succeeded in unfastening his shirt.
EPILOGUE
‘OH, LOOK at the bride—isn’t she beautiful?’ the little girl called out in excitement as she stood on the pavement watching the bridal party arrive.
Harriet could see her father’s proud smile as she walked towards the church on his arm.
It was a perfect June day, and the ivory silk gown she and her mother had chosen together moved softly in the warm summer air.
Her brother and his wife and children had flown over from America for the occasion, and behind her she could hear Ben speaking sternly to her small niece and nephew, reminding them of their important duties as flower girl and page boy.
A smile curled Harriet’s mouth.
She knew it was unusual for her to have a male supporter as part of the bridal party, but Ben was her best friend and Matt had totally agreed with her wish to honour that friendship by asking Ben to be her supporter and Cindi to be her bridesmaid.
‘Of course you will have to wear pink,’ Harriet had told Ben gravely.
‘Over my dead body.’ Ben had refused point-blank—until he had realised she had been teasing him.
The church doors opened and Harriet stepped from the sunlight into the porch. The organ music swelled and Harriet walked as slowly as she could down the aisle on her father’s arm—when in reality she wanted to run to Matt as fast as she could.
Around her the pews were filled with family and friends, but Harriet was oblivious to everyone but Matt. Matt was now her family, her friend, her all and her everything.
Unconventionally he was standing facing her, watching her draw closer to him, and when she reached him they looked at one another, shar
ing an intimate moment of silent commitment and promise.
The familiar words of the marriage service began. ‘Dearly beloved…’
Matt was hers; for now and forever.
* * * * *
Now, read on for a tantalizing excerpt of Sharon Kendrick’s next book,
THE ITALIAN’S CHRISTMAS HOUSEKEEPER
When shy Molly is found sobbing by Salvio, he comforts her…with the most amazing experience of her life. But when it costs Molly her job, she must become Salvio’s temporary housekeeper – just in time for Christmas!
Read on for a glimpse of
THE ITALIAN’S CHRISTMAS HOUSEKEEPER
CHAPTER ONE
Salvio De Gennaruo stared at the lights as he rounded the headland. Flickering lights from the tall candles which gleamed in the window of the big, old house. They made him think of Christmas and he didn’t want to think about it—not with still six weeks left to go. Yet here in England the shops were already full with trees and tinsel and the kind of gifts surely no sane person would want for themselves.
His mouth hardened, as the dark waters of the Atlantic crashed dangerously on the rocks beneath him.
Christmas. The least wonderful time of the year in his opinion. No contest.
He slowed his pace to a steady jog as dusk fell around him like a misty grey curtain. The rain was heavier now and large drops of water had started to lash against his body but he was oblivious to them, even though his bare legs were spattered with mud and his muscles were hot with the strain of exertion. He ran because he had to. Because he’d been taught to. Tough, physical exercise woven into the fabric of his day, no matter where in the world he was. A discipline which was as much a part of him as breathing and which made him hard and strong. He barely noticed that his wet singlet was now clinging to his torso or that his shorts were plastered to his rocky thighs.
He thought about the evening ahead and, not for the first time, wondered why he had bothered coming. He was here because he wanted to buy a prime piece of land from his aristocratic host and was convinced the deal could be concluded more quickly in an informal setting. The man he was dealing with was notoriously difficult to pin down—a fact which Salvio’s assistant had remarked on, when she’d enquired whether she should accept the surprise invitation for dinner and an overnight stay.
Salvio gave a grim smile. Perhaps he should have been grateful to have been granted access to Lord Avery’s magnificent Cornish house, which stood overlooking the fierce midwinter lash of the ocean. But gratitude was a quality which didn’t come easily to him, despite his huge wealth and all the luxury it afforded him. He wasn’t particularly looking forward to dinner tonight. Not with a hostess who’d been eying him up from the moment he’d arrived—her eyes lit with a predatory hunger which was by no means unusual, although it was an attitude he inevitably found tedious. Married women intent on seduction could be curiously unattractive, he thought disdainfully.
Inhaling a lungful of sea air, he grew closer to the house, reminding himself to instruct his assistant to add a couple of names to the guest list for his annual Christmas party in the Cotswolds, the count-down to which had already begun. He sighed. His yearly holiday celebration—which always took place in his honey-stone manor house—was one of the most lusted-after invitations on the social calendar, though he would have happily avoided it, given the opportunity. But he owed plenty of people hospitality and you couldn’t avoid Christmas, no matter how much the idea appealed.
He’d learnt to tolerate the festival and conceal his aversion behind a lavish display of generosity. He bought expensive gifts for his family and staff and injected yet more cash into the charitable arm of his vast property empire. He took a trip to his native Naples to visit his family, because that was what every good Neapolitan boy did, no matter how old or successful he was. He went back to the city which he avoided as much as possible because it was the home of his shattered dreams—and who liked to be reminded of those? For him, home would always be the place where he had been broken—and the man who had emerged from the debris of that time had been a different man. A man whose heart had been wiped clean of emotion. A man who was thankfully no longer at the mercy of his feelings.
He increased his pace to a last-minute sprint as he thought about Naples and the inevitable litany of questions about why he hadn’t brought home a nice girl to marry, nor produced a clutch of bonny, black-haired babies for his mother to make a fuss of. He would be forced to meet the wistful question in her eyes and bite back the disclosure that he never intended to marry. Never. Why disillusion her?
He slowed his pace as he reached the huge house, glad he had declined his hostess’s invitation to accompany her and her husband to the local village that afternoon, where a performance of Cinderella was taking place. Salvio’s lips curved into a cynical smile. Amateur dramatics in the company of a married woman with the hots for him? Not in this lifetime. Instead, he intending making the most of the unexpected respite by trying to relax. He would grab a glass of water and go to his room. Listen to the soothing soundtrack of the ocean lashing hard against the rocks and maybe read a book. More likely still, he would chase up that elusive site in New Mexico which he was itching to develop.
But first he needed to dry off.
* * *
Sinking her teeth into a large and very moist slice of chocolate cake, Molly gave a small moan of pleasure as she got her first hit from the sugary treat. She was starving. Absolutely starving. She hadn’t eaten a thing since that bowl of porridge she’d grabbed on the run first thing. Unfortunately the porridge had been lumpy and disappointing, mainly because the unpredictable oven had started playing up halfway through making it. Not for the first time, she wondered why her bosses couldn’t just have the kind of oven you simply switched on, instead of a great beast of a thing which lurked in the corner like a brooding animal and was always going wrong. She’d been working like crazy all morning, cleaning the house with even more vigour than usual because Lady Avery had been in such a state about their overnight guest.
‘He’s Italian,’ her employer had bit out. ‘And you know how fussy they are about cleanliness.’
Molly didn’t know, actually. But more worrying still was Lady Avery’s inference that she wasn’t working hard enough. Which was why Molly dusted the chandeliers with extra care and fastidiously vacuumed behind the heavy pieces of antique furniture. At one point she even got down on her hands and knees to scrub the back door porch—even if she did manage to make her hands red raw in the process. She’d put a big copper vase of scented eucalyptus and dark roses in the guest bedroom and had been baking biscuits and cakes all morning, so that the house smelt all homely and fragrant.
The Averys rarely used their Cornish house—which was one of the reasons why Molly considered being their resident housekeeper the perfect job. It meant she could live on a limited budget and use the lion’s share of her wages to pay off her brother’s debt and the frightening amount of interest it seemed to accrue. It was the reason she endured the isolated location and demanding attitude of her employer, instead of spreading her wings and finding somewhere more lively.
But the winter had made her isolation all the more noticeable and it was funny how the approach of Christmas always reminded you of the things you didn’t have. This year she was really missing her brother and trying not to worry about what he was doing in Australia. But deep down she knew she had to let go. She had to. For both their sakes. Robbie was probably having the time of his life on that great big
sunny continent—and maybe she should count her blessings.
She took another bite of chocolate cake and did exactly that, reminding herself that most people would revel in the fact that when the Averys were around, they entertained all kinds of amazing people. Guests Molly actually got to meet—even if it was only in the context of turning down their beds at night or offering them a home-made scone. Politicians who worked with Lord Avery in the Palace of Westminster, and famous actors who spouted Shakespearean sonnets from the stages of London’s theatres. There were business people, too—and sometimes even members of the royal family, whose bodyguards lurked around the kitchen and kept asking for cups of tea.
But Molly had never heard Lady Avery make such a fuss about anyone as she’d done about the impending arrival of Salvio De Gennaro, who was apparently some hotshot property developer who lived mostly in London. Earlier that day she had been summoned into her boss’s office, where the walls were decked with misty photos of Lady Avery wearing pearls and a dreamy expression, in those far-off days before she’d decided to have a load of extensive work done on her face. A bad idea, in Molly’s opinion—though of course she would never have said so. Lady Avery’s plump lips had been coated in a startling shade of pink and her expression had been unnaturally smooth as she’d gazed at Molly. Only the hectic flicker in her pale eyes had hinted how excited she was by the impending visit of the Italian tycoon.
‘Everything is prepared for our guest’s arrival?’ The words were clipped out like tiny beads of crystal.
‘Yes, Lady Avery.’
‘Make sure that Signor De Gennaro’s bed linen is scented with lavender, will you?’ continued her boss. ‘And be sure to use the monogrammed sheets.’
‘Yes, Lady Avery.’
‘In fact…’ A thoughtful pause had followed. ‘Perhaps you’d better go into town and buy a new duvet.’