‘What—already?’ Guy made a sound of grinding impatience. ‘I don’t call that damned caring of your brother, Marnie,’ he muttered angrily. ‘I call it downright irresponsible!’
So do I, she thought, but held the words back. Guy didn’t need any help in finding faults with her brother. He had an unerring ability to just pluck them out of the air like rabbits from a magician’s hat!
‘What’s the matter with her?’ he went on grimly. ‘Is she ill—does she need money for medical care?’ Already he was fishing inside jacket pocket for his cheque-book, his glass discarded so he could write out a cheque for whatever amount Marnie wished to demand from him.
And she was tempted—oh, so severely tempted to just let it go at that and name a figure which would probably choke him at the size of it but would not stop him giving it to her because it was for little Clare, whom he’d always had a soft spot for and therefore would do anything for.
But that would not be right—nor fair, she acknowledged heavily. If he was going to help them out, then he had a right to know the truth.
‘Wait a mintue,’ she said, swallowing because the truth was going to be that much harder to tell now he’d all but convinced himself Clare was in dire need of his financial asistance. ‘You haven’t heard it all, and I would rather you did before you agreed to anything. Clare is pregnant, but not in any danger of losing this one just yet, though it is the fear that it may happen which made me come to you.’
‘Jamie,’ he said, sitting back, the cheque-book thrown contemptuously aside.
She nodded, deciding it was time to stop prevaricating. He deserved that after the way he had reacted to the thought of Clare’s needing his help. It even warmed her to know that Guy could be so generous to someone he barely knew.
‘He’s just completed the reconstruction of a 1955 Jaguar XK 140 Drophead,’ she began.
‘I have one of those!’ Guy’s mood instantly changed to one of glowing enthusiasm. ‘I wonder if he managed to solve the problem with the—?’
‘While he was delivering it to the owner yesterday…’ she interrupted him a trifle impatiently; it was typical of him to be so easily diverted by the name of a precious car ‘…a lorry coming in the other direction skidded on a patch of oil and ploughed straight into him. The Jaguar was written off.’
‘What—totally?’ He was horrifed.
‘It went up in flames,’ she informed him grimly.
‘Bloody stupid—anyone seriously hurt?’
‘In general, my brother lives a charmed life,’ Marnie sighed. ‘No, not seriously,’ she confirmed. ‘Jamie managed to climb out of the tangled mess just before it caught fire with nothing more than a bruised face and a broken arm for his trouble.’
‘That beaufiful car,’ Guy murmured in the mournful tone of the true car fanatic. ‘Jamie must be sick.’
‘You could say that,’ Marnie agreed. ‘The car wasn’t insured.’
That dragged Guy surely back on course. He stared at her in blank amazement, then looked appalled, then just downright disgusted. ‘How much?’ he snapped.
She told him, he swore loudly and she grimaced, entirely in sympathy with him.
‘And I suppose he’s hoping that good old Guy will come up with the readies to bail him out.’ His tone was scathing to say the least. ‘Well, you can just go back and tell him that it’s no go this time, Marnie! I have just about had enough of that reckless brother of yours and his stupid—’
‘You’ve missed the point,’ she put in quietly, catching his attention before his Italian temperament ran away with him.
‘What point?’ he demanded.
‘Clare,’ she reminded him.
‘Clare?’ Guy looked blank for a moment, then went as pale as a ghost. ‘She wasn’t in the car with him, was she?’ he choked.
‘No!’ Marnie quickly assured him. ‘No—that wasn’t the point I was trying to make. But—Guy,’ she appealed to him for understanding, ‘she’s pregnant and she shouldn’t be! It was already a big enough shock for her to have Jamie come home with his face all bruised and his arm in a sling—how do you think she’s going to react when she finds out she forgot to renew his insurance policy and that they’ve now got to find upwards of fifty thousand pounds to compensate the owner of the car?’
Silence. Guy was staring at her through hard, angry eyes as he let all of it really sink in, and Marnie sat there staring back with her lovely blue eyes wide in anxious appeal, hoping that just this once—this one last time—he would come up trumps for her and help them out without demanding anything back in return.
‘He promises to pay you back—Guy,’ she added quickly, when he continued to say nothing, ‘he—he said to tell you he’s managed to acquire an MG K3 Magnette and you can have that as a down-payment. And he’s—’
‘A damned fool if he thinks I would accept anything from him!’ Guy cut in impatiently. ‘And I warned you, Marnie, quite distinctly, the last time you came begging to me on his behalf, that I had done more than enough for the man who wrecked our marriage,’ he reminded her forcefully.
‘Jamie didn’t wreck our marriage,’ she said wearily. ‘You did that all on your own.’
The dark head shook grimly. ‘We would still be together,’ stated the man who had always preferred to scatter blame around like raindrops so long as none of it stuck to himself, ‘living together—loving together, if your stupid brother hadn’t stuck his nose into my affairs.’
‘”Affairs” being the operative word,’ she derided.
‘Damn you, Marnie!’ Angrily, he climbed out of his chair, frustration making him run a hand through the thick, sleek blackness of his hair. ‘I didn’t mean it in that way—and you know it!’ He turned to glare down at her, then sucked in a deep, calming breath. ‘Your brother was directly responsible for—’
‘I don’t want to discuss it.’ It was her turn to cut him short—as she always did when he attempted to bring up the past. ‘It’s all just dead news now.’
‘Not while I’m still breathing, it is not,’ he bit out. ‘We still have unfinished business, you and I,’ he went on to warn, wagging a long finger at her in a way which was consciously gauged to infuriate her. ‘And, until you are prepared to give me a fair hearing, it will remain unfinished. Just remember that as you sit there hating me with your beautiful eyes. For one day I will make you listen, and then it will be you doing the apologising and I taking revenge!’
‘Oh, yes.’ The scorn in her voice derided him outright. ‘As I think I’ve already said, I don’t want to talk about it. I came here today to—’
‘Beg for more money for your useless brother,’ Guy tartly supplied for her.
‘No,’ she angrily denied that. ‘To beg for Clare!’ She too came to her feet, irritation and frustration in every line of her slender frame. ‘I was as determined as you are not to bail Jamie out of any more of his disasters,’ she snapped. ‘I told him this time and in no uncertain terms that I would not involve you again! But—God,’ she sighed, lifting her strained eyes to his, ‘this is different, Guy, you’ve got to see that? This time it isn’t just you and me and Jamie we’re fighting about; it involves Clare! Sweet, gentle Clare who has never wished harm on anyone in her entire life! You can’t turn your back on her, Guy, surely? Not just to gain your sweet revenge over Jamie?’
He was going to refuse, she could see it in the grim, hard cut of his tightly held mouth, and panic began to shimmer inside her. ‘Please, Guy.’ She lifted a trembling hand to clutch pleadingly at the bunching muscles in his upper arm. ‘Please…’ she begged.
He looked long and hard into the deep blue of her pleading eyes, his own so dark and disturbing that Marnie’s insides began to churn with an old memory so sweet and aching that she wanted to cry out against it. Once she had drowned in that look, placed all her vulnerable love and trust in its meaning what it appeared to tell her.
She watched him glance down to where her hand clutched at him, his beautiful eyelashes forming
a thick, sweeping arch against his strong cheekbones. Watched the hardness ease from his mouth as he lifted his gaze back to her own, and suddenly the silence between them began to throb with tension—a raw sexual tension that had no right to show itself at this vital moment! Marnie moved, her tingling fingers flexing slightly in an effort to dispel the unwanted sensation, her tongue flicking in agitation across the fullness of her suddenly dry lips, her breathing slow and heavy.
Guy saw it all, every revealing thing she was experiencing at this new kind of physical closeness, and something unfathomable passed across his face…a further darkening of those rich brown eyes that had her holding her breath in dear hope that her plea was reaching him.
‘Please…’ she repeated huskily. ‘Put your prejudices aside this one last time—for Clare’s sake?’
He hesitated visibly—long enough to make hope flare into her eyes—only to have him dip his dark head a little closer to her own as he countered softly but with a ruthlessness that left her in no doubt at all to his meaning, ‘And you, Marnie? Are you prepared to put your own prejudices aside, for sweet Clare’s sake?’
Her thudding heart sank, her body went cold, and she stood very still, staring into the utterly uncompromising set of his lean, dark features, wondering why she had actually had the gall to convince herself that she could win him round this one last time. Guy had, after all, told her in no uncertain terms not to come begging to him again unless she was prepared to pay the price. She had never known him say anything without carrying it through. It was what made him the man he was today, this stubborn unwillingness of his to compromise over anything—even the way he conducted his life, she reminded herself grimly. Married or not, Guy had always refused to answer to anyone but himself.
Unclipping her hand from his arm, she took a shaky step back from him, then turned away so she wouldn’t have to witness the flare of triumph her answer would put in his eyes. ‘Yes,’ she whispered, ‘I’m prepared to do that.’
Oddly, and surprisingly since she had just conceded to him what he had been trying to get her to do for four long years now, instead of thrusting his triumph down her throat, Guy too turned away, going to stand over by the window.
‘How prepared?’ he persisted, not turning to face her with the final challenge, his back a rigid bulk of taut muscle for her to stare bleakly upon.
‘Whatever it takes,’ she promised flatly. ‘Whatever it is you want in return.’
‘You.’ He turned his head, his expression as cool and uncompromising as she had ever known it. ‘I want you back.’
She had expected it. Had travelled up here knowing exactly what he would demand; so why did she experience the sudden drain of blood from her head, or the blow of pain that knocked all the breath from her body in a way that sent her sinking down on to the sofa? ‘Oh, God, Guy,’ she whispered threadily, ‘I don’t think I can!’
If she thought him remote before, then her broken little cry managed to close him up completely, seeming to rake over every nerve-end he possessed before turning him into a cold statue of ungiving rock.
‘I did warn you not to involve me in your brother’s problems again,’ he said harshly. ‘I also remember warning you that my—penance for hurting you had almost run its course.’ He let out a sharp sigh as he watched her wrap her arms tightly around her trembling body as if she was protecting herself from his very words. ‘It is time to break this—foolish deadlock we are both stuck in, Marnie!’
‘But I don’t belong to you any more!’ she cried.
‘You have always belonged to me!’ he snapped, moving at last to come and stand over her, his anger so palpable that she could actually feel it throbbing out of him. ‘All you have done here today is save me the trouble of finding my own way to get you back!’
‘By using Jamie?’ she jeered. ‘Using the weak to aid the strong?’
Guy nodded curtly, taking no offence at the accusation. ‘Just as Jamie uses your strength to prop up his own weaknesses, Marnie. It works both ways, my dear.’
‘And Clare?’ she demanded.
‘Clare is your weakness, Marnie,’ Guy stated. ‘Not mine. Not even Jamie’s. I wonder why that is?’
Marnie looked away from the probing thrust of his hard black eyes, not willing—never willing to confess just why she held such a vulnerable spot in her heart for her sister-in-law.
‘So, in what capacity am I to become your property this time, Guy?’ she enquired bitterly, finally conceding the point that she was indeed entirely in his power. She lifted her gaze to show him an ice-cold contempt that held his own face taut and grim. ‘Wife or mistress?’ she posed. ‘Not that one has any precedence over the other in your life,’ she acknowledged cynically, ‘but your father will condone nothing less than a legal marriage between us, you must already know that.’
‘Then for my father’s sake, of course—’ he shrugged as if it mattered little to him either way ‘—we will be man and wife again—not that I have considered us anything less during the last four years,’ he added drily.
Marnie’s mouth took on a contemptuous line. ‘If we’re to take into consideration your behaviour over the last four years as well as the one we were actually married, Guy, then the adultery charge can be laid at your feet a dozen times over.’ Her eyes leapt to spit accusation at him. ‘Or is it two dozen—or four?’
‘Bitch!’ he growled, reaching down to grasp hold of her. ‘That is for me to know and you to wonder about! A wife’s place is at her husband’s side, warming his bed and keeping his body content! Your desertion of those duties leaves you with no right to question how I quenched my needs, and nor ever will it in the future!’
‘I see,’ she sneered, ‘then what is good for the goose is most definitely good enough for the gander—remember that, Mr God’s-Gift-to-Women Frabosa, when you carry on your little affairs. I may be back in your power again, but only for as long as it takes me to prove what a worthless rat you really are!’
‘Be careful what you say to me, Marnie!’ he warned, the anger vibrating from every pore as he took hold of her shoulders in a rough grip. ‘I have taken the bitterness from your vicious tongue for long enough—paid for my crimes a thousand times over, and will pay no longer!’
Flushed and trembling with hurts which went back years, and quivering with a hated, hot searing sense of awareness at his physical closeness, Marnie glared at him with contempt. ‘So get thee behind me, woman!’ she scorned his arrogance. ‘For I am your lord and master!’
‘Yes!’ he hissed, almost lifting her out of the chair with the hard grasp of his hands. ‘That is exactly it! Now stop riling me to anger.’ He threw her away from him, to straighten up. ‘And accept the inevitable with the kind of grace I know you to possess. It is over, at last and with deep relief on my part. You and I are as one from this moment on and I will hear no more of your malice—understand?’
She understood only too well, sliding from anger to depression with a speed that spoke volumes about her defeat.
He remained standing over her for a long time, staring down at her bent head until her nerves began to fray beneath the tension she was putting on them. Then, with a sigh which came from somewhere deep and dark inside him, he moved away, slamming out of the door without another word.
CHAPTER FOUR
SIGHING, Marnie let her head sink back into the soft-cushioned sofa and closed her eyes.
So, she thought heavily. After four years of relative peace and contentment, she was back with a man who could only make her life hell for a second time. Living with Guy the first time had been no picnic. He possessed too volatile a temperament to make him a comfortable person to be around. And she was just too spirited to be anything but a spark to his fire. The only place they had ever found any mutual accord had been in bed, and even that had proved itself inadequate in the end.
Did he believe that forcing her to come back to him would automatically heal all that had gone before? she wondered cynically. Or was it just that
he did not care so long as he had her back where he considered she belonged. He possessed a colossal pride, and she had dented it badly when she walked out on him. Having her back would mend that dent, show him to be the irresistible Guy Frabosa everyone always thought him to be.
He came back into the room, and Marnie stirred herself enough to stand up. ‘I need to use the bathroom,’ she said coolly.
‘Of course.’ His dark head dipped, a new stiffness entering the atmosphere now the main battle was over. He opened the sitting-room door again and waited for her to precede him out of it, then indicated another door in the tiny hall. A bedroom, she discovered as she stepped inside. ‘There is a bathroom en suite through that door opposite.’ He informed her. ‘While you freshen up, I shall go and order us something to eat.’ With another nod he was gone, closing the door behind him on Marnie’s wretched sigh of relief.
When she came back to the sitting-room Guy was talking on the telephone, his tone that brisk, clipped, arrogant one he used when issuing orders to his minions; she smiled at it, hoping it was that frosty-voiced woman she had come up against earlier. It gave her a real sense of satisfaction to know that that was one tone of voice Guy had never used with her—thank God, because it sent ice-cold shivers up and down her spine just listening to it.
He hadn’t noticed her return, his dark head bowed to study the shiny leather of his hand-made shoes as he leaned against the edge of the huge desk which had always been an essential requisite for any hotel room he stayed in. And she paused on the threshold of the room, the artist in her drawn to follow the long, lean length of him.
He hadn’t altered much in the last five years, she noted wryly, sliding her eyes along the full length of his powerful legs encased in their usual expensive silk-wool mix with creases so sharp, they accentuated the flatness of his taut, narrow hips.
She had once painted Guy in many guises. The dynamic racing-car driver decked out in a silver space-suit, his head lost beneath a big crash helmet which left only his eyes, gleaming out from the gap where the protective plastic visor would be flicked into place the moment he climbed behind the wheel. But, while he waited, those eyes would spark and glitter with all the fevered impatience for what he was about to take on. Then there was the mocking painting she’d done of him when he looked like a sloth, lazily stretched out in an armchair wearing nothing more than a loosely tied robe about his naked body, hair ruffled and his square chin roughened by a twelve-hour shadow, attention fixed on the Sunday newspaper like any ordinary mortal man. As studies, they were almost ridiculous in their stark contrast to each other, yet both held a kind of magic that could set a thrill of excitement tingling up and down her spine, because nothing could ever disguise the latent power of the man himself. Not the all-encompassing space-suit or the unkempt sloth—or even this elegantly clad, super-dynamic tycoon she was looking at now, she added as her eyes lifted to take in the muscled beauty of his torso beneath the crisp white shirt he was wearing. In every persona, Guy always managed to exude what was the sheer male essence of the man—that hot, pulsing core of raw sexuality which could still make her body react violently, even while her heart remained coldly unimpressed.
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