‘I like your mother very much,’ he told her firmly. ‘In fact, sometimes I wonder how she could be your mother!’ he reproved.
She drew in an angry breath. ‘Believe me, there’s no doubt about that, I checked it out myself years ago!’
‘Laurel—’
‘I have to go and powder my nose!’ She walked away from him, her head held high, looking at no one, although she knew people were watching her. My God, no one believed for a minute that this engagement to Reece was a real one!
That wasn’t so surprising. She had made no secret of the fact that she was marrying Giles for anything but love. She was fond of him, he was charming and pleasant to be around, made no demands on her that she wasn’t prepared to give.
* * *
None of the people that really knew her would ever believe she had chosen arrogant, sensually attractive Reece Harrington in his place!
Then she would just have to make them believe it, make them think she had been so overwhelmed with love for Reece that for once she had thrown caution to the wind and given in to an impulse, that of marrying Reece. When the engagement was broken that would only reaffirm the claim she had always made that a relationship should be founded on liking and respect rather than the painful emotion of love.
But that would never be with Giles now. Even if he should get over his attack of nerves and change his mind and ask to come back she would never let him. He had forfeited any right to her affection by the humiliating blow he had dealt her tonight. If it hadn’t been for Reece…
Reece. She had known from the moment he helped her from her wrecked car that he was a dangerous man to be around, that any woman that became involved with him would have to give her soul as well as her heart and body.
But she had no intention of becoming involved with him, merely of letting him continue to pretend to be her fiancé. And she was about to start pretending to be his fiancée.
He was standing near the bar talking to Amanda, Polly and David when she entered the room, setting her shoulders determinedly as she walked over to his side. ‘I hope I wasn’t gone too long, darling.’ She stretched up to kiss him, even the high heels on her shoes meaning she still had to go a long way to reach his lips. ‘I missed you,’ she told him throatily.
Humour glinted in his eyes as he quickly masked his surprise at this sudden change in her. ‘I missed you too, darling.’ He teased her lips with his own as he curved her body up into his. ‘Five minutes is too long to be apart,’ he murmured mockingly.
‘Wait until you’ve been married almost five years,’ David derided. ‘Then you would be glad of five minutes to yourself!’
‘That’s all the thanks I get after becoming his child-bride at only nineteen, giving him all of my youth!’ Polly gave him a playful punch on the arm, the couple more in love now than they had ever been, and looking it.
‘What about my youth?’ he teasingly complained. ‘Have you seen how many grey hairs I have on my chest now?’
‘Six,’ his wife taunted. ‘I counted them last night. Afterwards.’
David gave Laurel and Reece an abashed smile. ‘She only treats me this way because she knows I lust after her body!’
Reece laughed softly. ‘I know the feeling!’ He looked warmly down at Laurel.
And she had thought her acting was good! If only a ‘slightly slimmer’ version of the woman he had looked at in the book illustration earlier this evening was his taste for a bed-partner then she fell far short of the required inches. What she had was all in proportion, but those proportions were minimum. Nevertheless, Reece managed to look as if he really couldn’t wait to get her into bed with him later this evening.
And secure in the knowledge that it wasn’t going to happen Laurel played the part of besotted fiancée for the rest of the evening. She was so convincing that as she and Reece languorously danced the night away she could feel the hard desire of his taut thighs against her stomach!
But none of her friends looked at her curiously any more, and even Giles’s work-mates looked convinced by her act, Laurel having assured them they had no need to leave, most of them convinced that Giles had been working this evening as a way of compensation for his broken engagement. They had assured Laurel he didn’t look too broken-hearted, and that they were sure he would quickly recover from his disappointment. Somehow that didn’t make Laurel feel better at all!
But her friends seemed to accept that, like the rest of them, she had fallen into the love-trap, that all her avowals in the past that it would never happen to her had fallen by the wayside when confronted with Reece Harrington. She was content to let them think that, knew it would only make her opinion more right when her engagement to Reece floundered.
‘I can’t tell you how happy I am for you both,’ her mother told them warmly, Reece insisting on driving them both home after the party had broken up after one o’clock in the morning, driving Amanda home first, even though Laurel had argued that he would only have to drive back again after taking her home. Reece had been adamant. ‘Robert is going to be so surprised when he gets home tomorrow,’ she added lightly. ‘You could have let me in on the secret before the party, Reece,’ she chided her stepson indulgently.
‘Amanda—’
‘Laurel had to talk to Giles first.’ Reece’s warning look in the driving mirror as Laurel sat in the back of the car effectively silenced her, her mother sitting beside Reece in the sleek silver sports model Jaguar. ‘It wouldn’t have been fair for us to tell anyone else until she had had a chance to explain to him.’
‘No,’ her mother conceded, turning to smile at Laurel. ‘When is the wedding to be, darling?’
‘Give us time to catch our breaths, Amanda,’ Reece derided lightly. ‘We only realised this evening that we’re in love.’
Amanda’s eyes widened in the semi-light of the streetlamped streets. ‘When you went to the shop to see Laurel about my invitation?’
‘Yes,’ he nodded.
‘Goodness, Reece, you’re an even faster worker than your father,’ Amanda chuckled. ‘At least he waited a week after we met before proposing.’
‘But I’ve already known Laurel for a year,’ Reece reminded.
‘And suddenly realised you were in love with her when you knew she was going to marry another man! That’s so romantic,’ Amanda sighed happily. ‘Do you realise that once you and Reece are married, Laurel, that our last names will once again be the same?’
This time she ignored the warning look in the mirror, her mouth twisting derisively. ‘And it’s certainly been a long time since that happened,’ she rasped.
‘Has it?’ Amanda frowned. ‘Yes, I suppose it has,’ she nodded slowly. ‘You could have taken Frank’s name—’
‘I didn’t want it,’ she dismissed sharply, having disliked her mother’s second husband intensely.
‘No,’ Amanda grimaced. ‘You and Frank never did get on.’
She had never felt the need to tell her mother the reason she disliked Frank Shepherd so much, of the advances he always made to her whenever she came home from the expensive boarding-school they had sent her to after their marriage. She had been on the edge of sixteen at the time, just budding into womanhood, a late developer physically, and Frank had obviously found the way that she was developing extremely erotic.
‘Frank was a—’
‘We’ll get straight off if you don’t mind, Amanda,’ Reece cut in tightly as he stopped the Jaguar outside the impressive Harrington home, several lights glowing welcomingly inside the house. ‘Laurel has to open the shop in the morning.’
‘Of course, darling.’ Amanda got out of the car as Reece opened the door for her, turning to push the seat forward so that Laurel could get out. ‘I’m sure you want to sit next to Reece,’ she said knowingly.
As Laurel had been the one to insist her mother be the one to sit next to him on the drive here that assumption was completely erroneous. She reluctantly climbed out of the back of the car, receiving a hug from her
mother before getting into the front passenger seat.
‘The two of you must come to dinner tomorrow evening,’ Amanda invited eagerly. ‘Robert will insist,’ she added firmly as Laurel seemed about to refuse.
‘And as Dad’s even more arrogant than I am we might as well give in gracefully,’ Reece accepted lightly. ‘About seven-thirty, okay, Laurel?’
‘Fine,’ she agreed drily, staring out the front window as Reece walked her mother into the house.
‘What did he do to you?’
Laurel turned to give Reece a startled look, the question coming out of the blue after they had driven in silence for the last ten minutes. ‘Giles?’ she frowned her puzzlement. ‘You read the letter—’
‘Not Gilbraith,’ Reece dismissed harshly. ‘Frank Shepherd!’
Her breathing suddenly became ragged. ‘I rarely saw him, I was away at school a lot.’
‘And when you weren’t?’ he persisted grimly.
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know—’
‘Laurel, don’t lie to me; I could clearly see your face in the driving-mirror.’ His hands tightly gripped the steering-wheel, his body rigid. ‘What did the bastard do to you?’ he asked again.
She swallowed hard, moistening stiff lips. ‘Amanda was only married to him for a year—’
‘Laurel,’ Reece cut in with controlled violence. ‘I could see the disgust in your face, a remembered fear in your eyes. Darling, tell me,’ he encouraged throatily. ‘It will be all right.’
She sighed. ‘He didn’t really do anything,’ she shook her head. ‘Not really.’
‘Then tell me!’
‘He… it was just talk, mainly! About my body.’ She looked down at her hands. ‘I was just developing breasts.’ She swallowed again. ‘And he—he was offensive, Reece, that’s all,’ she dismissed impatiently.
‘Did he touch you?’
She gasped at the bluntness of the query, glad of the semi-darkness to hide her flushed cheeks. ‘Only once or twice,’ she admitted in a pained voice. ‘Look, Reece, I don’t—’
‘Do you know why Amanda divorced him?’ Reece asked harshly.
Laurel shrugged uninterestedly. ‘She told me they had realised they weren’t suited to each other.’
He nodded. ‘That was part of it. She stayed with him to try and give you a stable life, the education you deserved. I’m sure that if she had any idea what he was doing to you—’
‘I didn’t tell her then, and I don’t want her to know now,’ Laurel gave him a warning glare. ‘I don’t blame her for it, Frank was careful always to be the loving stepfather whenever my mother was around.’
‘She had quite an unhappy time with him too, although it isn’t up to me to discuss that with you. What a damned mess!’ he ground out. ‘Has—did the experience put you off making love?’
‘No,’ she answered abruptly. How could she be put off something she had never been on! She had been prepared to be a wife to Giles, but he hadn’t been all that interested in the physical side of their relationship either, had never tried to make love to her fully. It had been something else about him that she liked and approved of.
‘Thank God,’ Reece sighed his relief at her answer.
‘Why didn’t you let me tell Amanda the engagement wasn’t a real one?’ she abruptly changed the subject.
‘I didn’t think you would want to be the object of her pity any more than you did anyone else’s,’ he rasped. ‘Less so than most!’
She blushed at the truth of that. ‘Thank you. I—I don’t think I said this earlier, but—’
‘You didn’t,’ he mocked.
Laurel glared at him. ‘You have no idea what I’m going to say!’
‘I don’t?’ He raised innocent brows. ‘I thought you were going to thank me for becoming your fiancé and so rescuing you from an awkward situation.’
‘I was,’ she snapped.
‘Well?’ he prompted as no gratitude was forthcoming.
‘I said I was; I changed my mind!’
Reece began to laugh softly. ‘Laurel, has anyone told you that you’re adorable?’
No one ever had. She hadn’t been a pretty child, a late developing adolescent, was now a capable lady rather than a sexy one. ‘Not lately,’ she drawled. ‘Although I’m glad you find me so amusing,’ she added with obvious sarcasm.
He sobered instantly. ‘I’m not laughing at you, Laurel, I’m laughing at your humour. I like it.’
‘It isn’t something I’m renowned for,’ she scorned drily.
‘That’s why it’s all the more refreshing when it does surface.’ He began to frown. ‘What are you going to do about Giles?’
She managed to keep up with his change of thought this time, glad the subject of her unhappy experience with Frank Shepherd had been forgotten. She had never forgotten it, was surprised she had told Reece about it. But then he seemed to bring out a lot of reactions from her that weren’t strictly normal for Laurel Matthews. ‘I don’t think I have to do anything about Giles; he seems to have already done it.’
‘So it’s over between the two of you, just like that?’ he said disbelievingly.
‘It would seem so,’ she nodded abruptly, still raw from the betrayal.
‘No loose ends to tie up? No broken heart to be mended?’
‘My heart is my affair,’ she snapped. ‘And there aren’t any loose ends that I can see,’ she frowned.
‘What about the ring he asked for?’
‘If he wants it he’ll have to come and get it,’ she bit out tightly, thinking of the unfinished business with Giles that she didn’t want to discuss with Reece.
‘Tomorrow evening,’ Reece nodded slowly. ‘I’ll make sure I’m there.’
‘Why?’ Her eyes widened indignantly.
‘Because I don’t think you should be alone with him!’
She gave a scornful laugh. ‘Reece, until a few hours ago I was going to marry the man; he won’t harm me,’ she dismissed assuredly.
‘That isn’t the reason I don’t want you to be alone with him.’ He shook his head, his mouth firm.
‘Then why—’ She paled at the look in his eyes as he parked the car outside her home before turning in his seat to look at her. ‘Reece, this engagement isn’t real! It’s just a face-saver for me until we can break off our engagement.’
‘I know that,’ he nodded. ‘And so will Gilbraith if I’m not with you tomorrow.’
‘He won’t know we’re even engaged,’ she protested.
‘Some of the people there tonight were his colleagues,’ Reece reminded tautly. ‘One of them is probably telephoning him right now with the news that you announced your engagement to me. The whole charade will have been a waste of time if he discovers it isn’t real. And then we’re both going to look twice as foolish.’
He was right, of course, it didn’t take a genius to work it out. And why not let Giles think his defection had affected her so little she had immediately become engaged to a man who was twice the man he would ever be? If Reece were agreeable, and he obviously was, why not?
‘He said he would be over once I’ve closed the shop for the night, that’s about six-thirty,’ she told Reece abruptly.
‘Fine,’ he nodded. ‘I’ll be there.’
And Laurel knew that Giles would be at the shop by six so that gave her half an hour to talk to him alone!
Reece got out of the car to open the door for her. ‘I’ll walk you inside.’
She didn’t argue, knowing that it would have no effect if she did; Reece would do exactly what he wanted to do. He held her elbow on the way up in the lift, taking the key from her hand to unlock the door to go in and switch on the lights before she entered.
‘How do you think I manage every other evening?’ she mocked his protective action, throwing her bag down into a chair.
‘Alone,’ he bit out grimly. ‘Why didn’t you accept the invitation to move in with us?’
Her mouth twisted. ‘Because I’m a grown woman, not
a child. I run my own business and my own life. I have no intention of moving back in with my mother,’ she derided.
‘If that’s a dig at me I have my own wing of the house,’ he drawled.
‘You still live with your father and my mother, take your meals with them,’ she dismissed.
He looked at her unblinkingly. ‘I’m not about to justify myself to you,’ he told her coldly. ‘I live there because it’s my home. Now come here—’
‘What…’
‘You deliberately moved provocatively against me on the dance floor tonight.’ His arms moved about her tightly as he effortlessly moulded her body to his. ‘Now it’s time to pay up on those promises.’
‘Reece…’
‘I’ve discovered the fire in you, Laurel,’ he grated. ‘And I intend to burn in it!’
His words made her feel on fire, never having been the recipient of such earthy compliments before. He had kissed her this evening several times, with varying degrees of emotion, she couldn’t help but feel curious now about how it would be to be kissed by him with sensual intensity.
The kiss began as a slow exploration, but as the warmth spread through her body and she moved searchingly against him the kiss became subtly different, demanding, arousing; Laurel’s hands moving restlessly over the warmth of his back beneath the evening jacket.
She had never felt in the least curious about any man’s body, found Giles’s light lovemaking only mildly interesting. But she was more than just curious about Reece’s body, could imagine how magnificent he would look naked, her senses heightened because of her imaginings.
She gasped as the warmth of his hand closed over the material of her dress, on the mound of her breast. ‘No, I—’
‘Small, but perfect,’ he told her huskily.
‘Small is right,’ she agreed bitterly, pushing his hand away.
He looked down at her with honey-warm eyes. ‘But perfect,’ he insisted gruffly. ‘Don’t you have any idea how sexy you are?’
She avoided his eyes. ‘Frank said—’
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