It seemed that his years of patience were about to bear fruit.
She glanced across the mad clutter of her busy studio room to where the telephone sat innocent and inert on the small table by the door, and slowly, carefully she steadied her emotions, settled her features into their normal cool, calm mask, and readied herself for what was to come. For Jamie might be placing her on a plate for Guy, but it did not mean she was going to sit still on it!
With these defiant thoughts to accompany her across the room, Marnie lifted the receiver off its rest and began to dial the never-to-be-forgotten number of il signor Guy Frabosa’s London home.
CHAPTER TWO
HE WASN’T there.
‘Typical,’ Marnie muttered as she replaced the receiver, ‘just damned typical!’ feeling all that careful mental preparation going frustratingly to waste.
Guy might live in London, have his business base there, but the very nature of that business kept him constantly on the move, personally overseeing every aspect of the conglomerate of companies he had inherited from his abdicating father on Guy’s own retirement from motor racing. And it took several calls to different numbers suggested to her before she eventually tracked him down, in Edinburgh of all places.
She was put through to a plastic-sounding female voice who seemed about as approachable as a polar bear. ‘Mr Frabosa is in conference,’ came the uncompromising block to Marie’s request to speak to him. ‘He does not wish to be disturbed.’
Is that so? mused Marnie, the woman’s frigid tone putting a mulish glint into her blue eyes. For the last hour she had been passed from pillar to post in her attempt to contact Guy, and in the end she had only got the Edinburgh information by pulling rank on the frosty-voiced female blocking her request. It wasn’t often that Marnie laid claim to her married title, but she felt no qualms about doing so when she thought the moment warranted it. She had more than earned the right, after all.
And it seemed the same tactic was required again! ‘Just inform him that Mrs Frabosa wishes to speak to him, will you?’ she said coldly, and gained the expected result as the woman stammered through a nervous apology and went off to inform Guy of his caller.
For the next five minutes, she hung on the line with only the intermittent crackle of static to tell her she was still connected while she waited for Guy to come dutifully to the phone.
He didn’t.
Instead she got the plastic voice again, sounding flustered. ‘Mr Frabosa sends his apologies, Mrs Frabosa, but asks if he could call you back as soon as he returns to London?’
Marnie’s lips tightened. ‘When will that be exactly?’ she asked.
‘The day after tomorrow, Mrs Frabosa.’
The day after tomorrow. Marnie paused for a moment to consider her next move. The very fact that she was calling him must in itself tell Guy that she needed to speak to him urgently, since it was such a rare occurrence. It was typical, she irritably supposed, for him to make her wait. He always had liked to annoy her by stretching her patience to its limits.
Well, two could play at this game, she decided, as sly calculation joined the sense of mutiny. ‘Then tell him thank you, but it doesn’t matter,’ she announced, and calmly replaced the receiver.
She knew Guy, she knew him well.
It took just three minutes for him to get back to her. And, just to annoy him, she waited until she had counted six hollow rings before she lifted the receiver and casually chanted her name.
‘Sometimes, cara, you try my patience just a little too far.’
The deep velvet tones of his voice swimming so smoothly down the line had her closing her eyes and clenching her teeth in an effort to stop herself responding to the sheer beauty of it. Loving or hating this man, he still had the power to move her sexually.
‘Hello, Guy. How are you?’ Of the people who knew him in England—his adopted country since his father emigrated here some decades ago—most called him Guy with a hard G. Marnie, on the other hand, had always preferred the European pronunciation, and the way the softer-sounding ‘ghee’ slid so sensually off the tongue. And Guy loved it. He said just hearing her say his name was enough to make his body respond to the promise it seemed to offer. Once upon a time she would say his name just to witness that unhidden burning response. Now she said it to annoy him because he was well aware it held no invitation any more.
‘I am well, Marnie,’ he politely replied, before going on to wryly mock, ‘Right up until I heard you wished to speak to me, that is.’
‘Poor darling,’ she mourned, quite falsely. ‘What a troublesome ex-wife you have.’
‘Is that what you’re going to be?’ he enquired. ‘Troublesome?’
‘Probably,’ she admitted, keeping her voice light. It always paid to be in control around Guy; he was just too quick to turn the slightest sign of weakness to his own advantage. And the advantage was going to be with him all too soon enough. ‘It’s rather important that I see you today. Can it be arranged?’
‘Not unless you can get to Edinburgh,’ he told her bluntly. ‘I will be stuck here for at least another two days.’
Marnie suppressed an impatient sigh. Could Jamie’s problem wait that long? Going by the sense of urgency her brother had brought in with him that afternoon, the answer was no, it would not wait.
Marnie chewed on her bottom lip, considering calling his bluff a second time and just severing the conversation with a light, ‘Shame, but no matter, forget I even called,’ kind of reply. It had worked several times in the past. They might be divorced, but not with Guy’s blessing. He had fought her all the way, until she had turned totally ruthless and used her trump card against him. But he made no secret of the fact that he was quite willing to do almost anything for her but die at her feet, and usually when she snapped her fingers he came running.
Then she remembered Clare, and any idea of playing cat and mouse with Guy on this one slid quietly and irrevocably from her mind.
‘I suppose you have your plane up there with you?’ she said.
‘Correct, my love,’ he said quite happily. Guy liked to thwart her when possible. She allowed it to happen so rarely that he tended to wallow in the few occasions when it did occur. ‘Of course,’ he went on, his velvet voice smoothly mocking, ‘if the idea of flying shuttle up here is totally abhorrent to you, then I think I can put Sunday afternoon aside for you…’
And what about Saturday? she wondered, feeling the biting discomfort of evil suspicion creep insidiously through her blood. Today was Wednesday. He said he was stuck up there for two days. That brought him to Friday. That could only mean one thing in Guy’s book, for he had this—unbroken little rule about never spending Saturday alone! He most probably had her with him now! Her suspicious mind took her on another step. After all, hadn’t she personal experience of Guy’s passions? One night without a woman and he wasn’t fit to know!
‘And I also suppose you are entertaining one of your ladies up there?’
‘Am I?’ he murmured in a maddeningly unrevealing drawl.
‘If I make the effort to get to Edinburgh, Guy,’ she went on tightly, ‘it will not be to play gooseberry to your latest fancy piece!’
‘Darling,’ he drawled, silky-voiced, refusing to be riled by her frankly aggravating tone, ‘if you can take so much trouble just to share my company, then I will make sure I am free.’
Which still told her exactly nothing! ‘And the poor fool who is living under the mistaken belief that she will be enjoying your full attention—what happens to her?’
‘Why?’ he countered. ‘Are you expecting to stay with me all night?’ He sounded insufferably at ease, mildly surprised, and horribly mocking. ‘If that is the case, darling, then I most certainly will make sure I am free.’
Marnie’s lips tightened. ‘If you’re still hankering after that, Guy,’ she told him witheringly, ‘then I feel sorry for you. I happen to be rather fastidious about the men who share my bed. One cannot be too careful these days.’
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‘Bitch,’ he said. ‘Take care, Marnie, that one day I don’t decide to prove to you just how weak your aversion to me actually is, because you would never forgive yourself for surrendering to this—now, what was it you once called me?’ He was playing the silky snake now, slithering along her nerve-ends with that lethal weapon of a tongue of his. ‘A middle-aged has-been putting himself out for voluntary stud? Quaint,’ he drawled. ‘Very quaint.’
Marnie had the grace to wince at the hard reminder of those particular words. She had flung some terrible things at him four years ago. Unforgivable things, most of them. But she had been hurting so badly at the time, while he had been so calm, so utterly gentle with her that she had simply exploded, wanting to rile his sleeping devil with terrible insults and bitter accusations. She had not succeeded. All she had achieved was to make him walk abruptly away from her. It was either that or hit her, she knew that now. But four years ago his turning his back on her at that moment had hurt almost as much as everything else he had done to her.
‘It isn’t my fault you crave variety,’ she put in waspishly to hide her own discomfort.
‘It is that same “craving”, as you so sweetly put it,’ he countered, ‘that made our nights such—exquisite adventures.’
‘And I was so endearingly naïve, wasn’t I?’ Her full bottom lip curled in derision. ‘Such a pathetically gullible thing, and so willing to let you walk all over me.’
‘Look.’ His patience suddenly snapped. ‘I really have no more time to give to this kind of verbal battle today. If you called me up just to fill in a few spare moments trying to irritate me, then I think I should inform you that you have managed it. Now,’ he said curtly, ‘do you come up to Edinburgh or do we sever this conversation before it deteriorates into a real slanging match?’
‘I’ll check the times of the shuttle and let your secretary know my arrival time,’ she muttered, backing down. It would do her cause no good to have put him in one of his black moods before she’d even got to see him. Things were going to be difficult enough as it was.
‘I think I should also mention at this juncture that if this has anything to do with that brother of yours then you will be wasting your time taking that shuttle,’ he warned.
‘I’ll see you later,’ she said, and heard his sigh of impatience as she quickly replaced the receiver.
*
Jamie must have been standing by the telephone waiting for her to call, because he answered it on the first ring. ‘Clare’s resting upstairs,’ he explained. ‘I didn’t want the telephone to disturb her. Have you spoken to Guy?’
‘He’s in Edinburgh,’ she informed him. ‘I’m on my way up to see him right now.’
‘Thanks for doing this for me, Marnie,’ he murmured gruffly. ‘I know how much you hate going to him for anything, and believe me, I wouldn’t have asked you to do it this time if it weren’t for Clare…’
‘How is she?’ Marnie enquired concernedly.
‘Tense,’ her brother clipped. ‘Over-bright. Pretending she’s worrying about nothing, when really she’s so afraid of doing the wrong thing that she barely makes a move without giving it careful consideration first.’
‘Yes,’ murmured Marnie, well aware of all Clare’s painful heart-searching after that first miscarriage. She could understand how a woman must inevitably put the blame upon herself. Common sense and all the doctors in the world might tell you that it was just one of those natural tragedies that happened in life, but no matter how hard you tried you could never quite convince yourself of that. The feelings of guilt still tormented you day and night.
‘If we can just get her through this next vital month, then maybe she’ll begin to believe it’s going to be all right this time…’
‘Well, give her my love,’ Marnie said. ‘And just make sure you don’t give her anything else to worry about.’
‘I’m not a complete fool, Marnie,’ her brother said tightly. ‘I do know when I’m standing right on the bottom line.’
Well, that was something, Marnie supposed on an inner sigh. Perhaps—perhaps, she considered hopefully, this double crisis could just be the making of her scatter-brained, preoccupied brother. ‘I’ll give you a call the moment Guy decides what he’s going to do about it all,’ she assured him. ‘You just take good care of Clare.’
‘I intend to,’ he said firmly. ‘And—thanks again for doing this for me.’
‘Don’t thank me, Jamie,’ Marnie sighed a little wearily. ‘Thank Guy—if he agrees to help you out of this one.’
*
No one knowing only the Marnie Western-Frabosa who was the beautiful but very Bohemian-styled artist usually dressed in a paint smudged T-shirt and faded jeans would recognise her in the elegant creature who came gracefully through the Arrivals gate at Edinburgh Airport late that same afternoon.
To the man whose lazy black eyes followed her progress across the busy concourse she represented everything he desired in a woman. The first time he had ever set eyes on her had been enough to make his jaded senses throb with a need to possess, solely and totally. Five long and eventful years had passed by since then, and he still could not control that dragging clutch at his loins simply gazing at her caused.
Her skin was pure peaches and cream, so perfect, it fascinated. Her hair, long and finely spun, had been twisted in a knot on top of her head today, but the severity of the style could not dim the thousand and one different shades of reds and golds running through it. It shimmered in the overhead lights. Hers was a rich and golden beauty, made more enchanting by the pure oval of her softly featured face. Her eyes were blue—the shade of blue that could blaze purple with passion or icy grey with anger. Her nose was small and straight—with just the slightest tendency to look haughty when she lifted her chin a certain defiant way. And her mouth…he studied her mouth, lifted slightly at the corners at the moment by some rueful thought she was considering—that mouth had to be the most sensually evocative mouth he had ever seen. The fact that he knew it felt and tasted even more exciting than it looked did not ease the slow burn at present taking place low in his gut.
She was wearing purple, a colour that had always suited her. It was nothing but a simple off-the-peg cotton jersey dress, but it did wonderful things for her figure, hugging the curving shape of her body from neck to hip to just above the curve of her slender knees, leaving little work left to the imagination. And long, slender legs he knew from experience did not stop until they reached her waist brought her onwards towards him with an inbuilt sensual grace which put a smouldering glint in his hooded eyes.
Marnie saw the gleam as she made eye-to-eye contact with the darkly handsome and dangerously charismatic Guy Frabosa.
Sired by an Italian father to a French mother, brought up from the age of ten in England, then having spent most of his adult life frequenting most of the major countries in the world, Guy should have considered himself very cosmopolitan, yet he considered himself Italian to the very last drop of blood in his veins. And perhaps he was right to do so, since it was the Italian side of his breeding that burned through him like a warning beacon to any woman receptive to sheer male virility.
Of course, he, in his conceit, did pander to it, using the liquid smoothness of his Italian accent as one of his most effective weapons, refusing stubbornly to allow it to give way to his superb grasp of the English language, so the ‘r’s rolled off his tongue like purrs, sexy enough to make any woman quiver.
He was tall, powerfully built yet surprisingly lithe with it. A figure to hang fine clothes on, good quality hand-made clothes with a cut to suit the man—exclusive. His Latin black hair had given way to silver at the temples but that only added to his attraction rather than diminished it. For a thirty-nine-year-old man who had lived every single one of those years to its fullest potential, Guy still packed a fair punch in the solar plexus. He was one of those lucky men who improved with the years—like fine wine, he matured instead of ageing. Eyes of a dark, dark brown were gener
ally lazily sensual, but could, if he wanted them to, harden to cold black pebbles which could freeze out the most tenacious foe. His nose was long and thin—not slim, thin, with a tendency to flare at the nostrils. Arrogant, and, like the rock-hard set of his chin, a direct warning to the ruthless streak in his character. Whereas his mouth by contrast was truly sensual, a very expressive tool he used to convey his moods, thin and tight when angry, sardonically twisted when mildly amused, a wide and attractive frame to perfect white teeth when touched into full-blown laughter, and soft, full and passionate when sexually aroused.
Then there was that other mouth, the one he saved for Marnie alone. The one he was wearing right at this moment as he watched her approach him through the mill of commuter bodies.
It was the half-soft, half-twisted, half-smiling mouth that said he didn’t really know how to feel about her, and really never had.
That, Marnie thought as she carefully doused down her own inevitable response to this first glimpse of him—that deep and all-consuming inner recognition of her body’s perfect master—was and always had been her most powerful weapon over Guy: his inability to decide just where she fitted into his life. He had once thought he’d done it, fitted her neatly into the box marked ‘wife’, of the forbearing and dutiful kind. Blindly besotted, safely caught and netted—only to find out, when he tried testing the springs of his trap, that he had made the biggest mistake of his life.
She reached him, waited calmly for his dark eyes to make their slow and lazy climb of her body from soft purple suede shoes to the scoop-necked top of her simple dress. Then they lifted to wryly take in the proud tilt to her chin, her mouth, heart-shaped and slightly mocking, along the straight line of her small nose until at last clashing with the full and striking blueness of her eyes.
The muscles around her stomach quivered. Standing this close to him, it was impossible not to respond to the raw beauty of Guy’s face.
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