by Sara Craven
She could hear Diana splashing and gasping beside her, trying to claw back the advantage, but she’d put too much effort into the first length and had little in reserve. Certainly not enough to catch Marin as she struck for home, coming in at least three seconds ahead.
She clung to the edge, eyes closed as she tried to recover her breath and not listen to the subdued commiserations and murmurs of, ‘Bad luck,’ greeting her opponent.
Then strong hands slid under her armpits, lifting her clear out of the water and setting her down on the tiles. She only realised the pressure she’d been under when she felt her legs shaking beneath her, threatening to collapse, and found herself being lifted bodily into a hard, male embrace.
‘Sweetheart.’ There was laughter in Jake’s voice. ‘I’m losing count of your hidden talents.’ Holding her still off her feet against the lithe strength of his body, he kissed her, his lips parting hers in total mastery, total possession.
She found she was clinging to him in return, drenched as she was, her arms round his neck, her legs wrapped round his hips, and her startled, ravished mouth yielding every last breathless drop of its sweetness to the pagan, demanding invasion of his tongue.
Her senses were going crazy, responding to the warmth, to the taste of him. To the already familiar scent of his skin.
And she felt the sharp, insistent ache deep, deep inside her of a need she had never before had cause to recognise, let alone acknowledge.
Then, as the world seemed to be spinning deliriously into oblivion, Jake lifted his head, lowering her gently to the ground and holding her in firm hands until her breathing steadied and she could stand unaided.
She heard him whisper, ‘My clever angel,’ as he kissed her again, this time, very gently, very tenderly, on the tip of her nose.
At that moment, too, Marin became aware of the silence. Realised with scalding embarrassment that this had been no intimate moment but public property. And quite deliberately staged.
Everyone was watching them: Jeff and Clare turning to exchange significant glances; Graham smiling in faintly whimsical approval; Sylvia Bannister with brows raised while her husband scowled; the Strattons frankly open-mouthed, as Chaz grasped his prize of a bottle of Cristal.
As Marin attempted to clutch at what was left of her composure, she saw Diana advancing on her, holding more champagne, her brilliant smile looking as if it had just been painted there.
‘To the victor, the spoils!’ she exclaimed brightly. She looked from Marin to Jake and back again, her glance darting like a snake’s tongue.
‘Although I suspect your real reward will come rather later,’ she added with a little trill of laughter which made Marin long to slap her hard.
‘Diana.’ Graham’s voice was quiet, but it found its mark. ‘You’re embarrassing Miss Wade.’
‘Oh, surely not? She’s a woman of the world, after all, and can stand a little teasing. All in all, she’s quite a revelation—isn’t she, Jake, darling?’
He looked back at her, his face cool and unsmiling. ‘From the moment we met,’ he drawled, ‘She has never failed to take my breath away.’
The smile never wavered, but there was a flash of real chagrin in Diana’s eyes.
If I thought for one minute she was truly in love with him, Marin reflected with curious detachment as she accepted the Cristal with a sedate word of thanks, I could almost feel sorry for her.
Because realising that you want the totally unattainable, and that no other man apart from him will ever fulfil you and make you happy, has to be the ultimate agony. Total heartbreak. The kind of nightmare from which you never wake.
Something which I dare not risk.
So why—why—did I kiss him back like that? Let him do what he did, as if it was no longer part of the pretence?
I think, she told herself dazedly, that I must be going mad.
Jake fetched her towel and wrapped it round her sarong-style. He said softly, ‘Come on, darling. Let’s get you showered and changed. It’s nearly lunchtime.’
She heard herself murmur something that might have been assent in a small, wooden voice as she slid her feet into her sandals and handed him the champagne.
Her legs were still trembling as she walked beside him back to the house.
She said, ‘You’re soaking wet. Your clothes must be ruined.’
‘They’ll survive,’ he said. ‘And so shall I.’
‘You mentioned the shower deliberately, didn’t you?’ she muttered. ‘So that they’ll think we’re going to take one together. This is what you meant by being more convincing.’
‘Of course,’ he said curtly. ‘What else did you expect?’ He added, ‘But, as we both know it isn’t true, why should you care?’
‘I—I don’t.’ Her response was swift, but not as definite as it should have been, and she knew it.
Knew also that he was far too experienced not to have gauged her reaction to his kiss. Even worse, he might even have been amused by it, and by the fact that he’d been the one to call a halt, she thought, dying inside.
He paused, the blue eyes travelling over her. ‘By the way, I seem to recall specifying a bikini to Lynne, and not some one-piece effort. What happened?’
‘I made a decision of my own,’ Marin said, lifting her chin. ‘Dressing for the part is one thing. Undressing is another.’
There was sudden amusement in his voice. ‘I’ll try to remember that.’
She searched hastily for a change of subject, something more impersonal. ‘How—how did your meeting go?’
‘It went well. Better than I could have hoped for a month ago.’ He paused, his mouth twisting into a faint smile. ‘And you’ve made a real hit with Graham. I suspect if he was your father he’d be asking my intentions.’
‘And you, of course, would be telling him they were strictly dishonourable.’ She managed somehow to infuse some lightness into her tone.
‘And leaving before he could find the shotgun,’ Jake agreed drily. ‘However, as part of the improvement in our relationship Graham’s asked me to play golf with him this afternoon. I said I’d check with you first—that you might like to go for a drive instead—see something of the countryside.’
‘No, no,’ Marin denied hurriedly. ‘Golf is fine.’
‘You could come too,’ he suggested. ‘Walk round with us.’
She remembered happy times doing exactly that with her stepfather, and for a moment was tempted. Then common sense reasserted itself, and she shook her head.
‘We hardly want to give the impression we’re joined at the hip,’ she said. ‘I don’t think anyone would believe that, either.’
Jake shrugged. ‘If you say so. But be warned, Diana has a croquet event planned after lunch. She’ll want revenge for this morning’s miscalculation.’
‘Then she’ll be disappointed,’ Marin said crisply. ‘For one thing, I wouldn’t trust myself around her with a mallet in my hand.’ She paused, then said with constraint, ‘Besides, the swimming thing was horrid.’
‘You deserved to win,’ he said. ‘You’re bloody good.’
She said, ‘But she fixed the draw, didn’t she, so we’d be in the final together?’
‘Almost certainly,’ Jake agreed.
‘So it was nothing to do with real swimming. But then nothing this weekend is what it seems.’
Least of all the way you kissed me, as if you were staking some claim, telling the world that I was yours, to be taken just as soon as we were alone…
‘No,’ Jake said abruptly. ‘It isn’t. But you must have known that’s how it would be.’ He gave a short sigh. ‘However, it will be over soon, and then it’s back to reality. Comfort yourself with that.’
Comfort, she thought, offering a small, taut smile, was hardly the word she’d have chosen.
As they reached her door, Jake made to hand over the Cristal, but Marin shook her head. ‘No, you keep it—please.’
‘Marin,’ he said quietly, ‘This is one of the tr
uly great champagnes. You won it. It belongs to you.’
She turned away, reaching for the door handle. ‘It’s also very expensive. Even I know that. So it would be wasted on me, because it deserves a big occasion—a great reason to celebrate.’ She looked back at him, smiled. ‘And that’s far more your life than mine.’
She added, ‘A touch of the reality you mentioned.’
Then she went into her room and gently closed the door behind her.
Strange how time dragged when you were counting the hours, thought Marin, taking a reflective sip of her iced orange juice and bitter lemon.
Firstly, the hours until dinner. Then the hours until bedtime. Then the hours between breakfast and the blessed moment when Jake would drive them both back to London and it would all be over at last.
At which time her life would finally be able to resume some semblance of normality. Or so she hoped.
A new job to go to, she thought, and a chance to reassure Wendy Ingram that she was still to be totally relied upon. Plus—and maybe this was most important of all—a much-needed opportunity to get her head together and stop drifting off into the kind of forbidden fantasies she was ashamed to contemplate.
Jake had left for the golf club with Graham immediately after lunch, and she swiftly excused herself from the proposed croquet competition on the grounds that she wanted to go for a walk. No one, she noted with irony, had attempted to dissuade her.
She headed for the village, but most of it seemed to be shut—even the church—so she bought a drink in the village pub, discovered a shaded corner of its garden, found an unused page in her diary and began with a certain gritted determination to write down what she’d need to pack for Essex.
Planning for the future, she told herself, and letting the immediate present take care of itself. That was what she needed to do. And finding somewhere else to live when she returned from Essex was a matter of urgency.
Because she could not go on being Jake’s tenant, even in the short term. She had to distance herself from him totally. Make sure she had no reason even to set eyes on him again until she could be sure he was out of her system for good.
She might even have a man of her own beside her by then. Someone strong, kind, reliable and loving. Not a serial woman-iser who used people then dumped them.
Out of Greg’s frying pan, she thought, her throat tightening, into Jake’s fire. Potentially, a far more damaging experience.
Belle-laide, she thought. Graham had meant it kindly, but it wasn’t the most flattering description.
Oh God, what had Jake been thinking of? she asked herself unhappily. Why hadn’t he picked someone who looked the part, at least? Why on earth had he chosen her?
Because you, said an inconvenient voice in her head, know this weekend is business, not personal, and that he trusts you to take the money and walk away afterwards, without causing him unnecessary aggravation.
Yes, she thought. But only she would ever know that his trust could be misplaced.
Because when she’d been showering before lunch, standing under the torrent of water, she’d allowed her thoughts to drift. To imagine that she wasn’t alone, that she felt the warmth of someone’s breath on the nape of her neck and hands touching her, applying the scented gel to her skin, stroking its fragrance into her breasts, her stomach, her thighs. Caressing her gently.
Jake’s hands…
Then paused, startled and ashamed, as she’d been forced to put out a hand to steady herself against the cubicle’s tiled wall; her legs had suddenly been shaking under her, matching the race of her heart and the fierce, heated trembling that was at the same time building inside her. As her senses shivered in renewed arousal at the remembrance of his kiss, the hard, lithe strength of his body and the warm, clean scent of his skin. Emotions—responses she’d never experienced before or wished to indulge in. Because no other man she’d ever met, however decent and attractive he might be, had offered the least incentive for her to do so.
Now, as the memory came back to haunt her, Marin lifted her glass and drank deeply, trying to ease the dryness of her mouth as she felt her skin beginning to burn all over again, and a deep, yearning ache twist in the pit of her stomach. Oh God, she thought, her throat tightening. Why did it have to be Jake Radley-Smith of all people in the world who was making her feel like this?
But she had one shred of comfort. At least Jake didn’t—couldn’t, know the sensations he’d ignited in her hitherto un-awakened flesh. She’d managed to conceal the fact that she was still quivering inwardly and give him an impersonal smile when he’d knocked at her door earlier to escort her to lunch.
She could only pray that he’d assume her unguarded response to his kiss that morning was simply role-playing. That she’d been actually doing something to earn the promised money, trying to stop the plan coming off the rails.
He and Graham were still at the golf course when she eventually got back to the house. The croquet tournament was still in full swing, to judge from the laughter intermingled with cries of triumph and despair coming from the lawn, so she was able to escape up to her room unnoticed.
She felt hot, sticky and generally on edge, so she indulged herself with a long, cool bath then anointed herself all over with the achingly expensive scented moisturiser which Lynne had insisted on and, more cautiously, the perfume that matched it. It had a soft, musky fragrance with under-notes of lily and jasmine that were released slowly by the warmth of her skin, and it was far more beguiling and sophisticated than anything she’d possessed before.
Frankly sexy, in fact, she realised uncomfortably as she tried to relax on her bed. An impression that the evening’s designated dress would do nothing to dispel.
Lynne had been right about the colour, she acknowledged ruefully, when later she looked at herself in the mirror after a life and death struggle to get the zip fastened.
The rose-leaf-green taffeta made her creamy skin glow in sensuous contrast, and added sparks of emerald to her hazel eyes. While the stark cut of the bustier managed somehow to enhance the slight curves it only just concealed.
My God, Marin thought, caught between laughter and shock. For the first time in my life, I have a cleavage.
She’d thought about swirling her hair up into a topknot, but decided she’d look slightly less naked if she let it hang in a soft and shining swathe round her shoulders. Her high-heeled sandals were simply a couple of green, sequined straps across the instep, and her tiny evening purse matched them.
And once more she was deliberately sparing in her use of cosmetics, merely darkening her long lashes and using a soft, pink lustre on her mouth. She had no wish to look as if she was trying too hard, she thought wryly.
Now it was again time to go downstairs and pretend. Except that the terms of this pretence had suddenly changed, and she was no longer sure exactly whom she was trying to fool.
It might even be—myself, she thought, swallowing.
She took one final look in the mirror, unease warring inside her with something that could easily be the wrong kind of excitement, then walked over to the communicating door.
She’d heard Jake return almost two hours before, and had half-expected a visit from him, but there’d only been silence from his room.
She knocked and was about to call, ‘I’m ready,’ when the door swung abruptly open and he confronted her.
She’d never seen him before in the formal elegance of dinner jacket and black tie, and realised just in time that she was actually gaping at him, her breath catching at his sheer glamour.
Jake looked her over in his turn for a long moment, his face inscrutable. When he spoke, his voice was light, even faintly amused. ‘As well as the raise, I must remember to give Lynne a very large bonus.’
‘She deserves it.’ Marin tried to match his tone, although her pulses were going haywire. ‘I fought her every step of the way.’
His mouth twisted. ‘I can well believe it.’ He let his gaze travel down her again from th
e wary, dark-fringed eyes to the length of slender leg revealed by the brief bell of her skirt. ‘You look almost as enticing as you did in that towel you wore at our first meeting.’
Her face warmed. ‘Something,’ she said, ‘that I have tried very hard to forget.’
‘Now, there we differ,’ Jake drawled. ‘Because I suspect it will always feature amongst my most cherished memories.’
‘Oh, please.’ Marin lifted her chin. ‘In a week’s time we’ll have problems remembering each other’s names, and you know it.’
‘Perhaps.’ He shrugged. ‘But it would hardly be chivalrous of me to say so.’
‘I wasn’t aware chivalry featured highly on your list of priorities, anyway.’
His mouth twisted mockingly. ‘I’m probably capable of it, if the situation demands.’ He paused. ‘Now, shall we go downstairs—face the lions in the arena one more time?’
She thought— But there are far worse things than lions….
Aloud, she said sedately, ‘Let them do their worst.’
And walked beside him in silence down to the drawing room.
CHAPTER SEVEN
IT PROBABLY WASN’T the worst evening she’d ever spent, Marin thought detachedly, but it was high on the list.
Diana had rounded up all the local grandees for the dinner, including the Chief Constable, but Marin gathered that other people had been invited later for dancing, and that a disco run by the doctor’s student son had been set up in the large conservatory at the rear of the house.
In the dining room, she’d found herself next to Chaz Stratton, who confined himself to telling her that she wouldn’t have found the croquet contest quite so easy, and that Diana had won.
Marin murmured politely, thinking how much she’d like to take his vichyssoise and upend it into his lap.
On her other side was the local Member of Parliament, a thin, greyish man who clearly preferred monologues conducted by himself to conversation, so she was required to do little but listen and try not to let her glance stray too obviously or wistfully to where Jake was sitting, being animatedly entertained by a very attractive brunette.