A Scandalous Innocent

by Penny Jordan

  She knew that he was going to kiss her; she could have avoided the drugging pressure of his mouth seducing her own, but she had thought if she could just stand cold and unresponding beneath it, that would show him more than any amount of words how she felt, but instead…

  Instead she felt the unmistakable arousal of her body, its instinctive yearning towards him, the aching pull of her senses that demanded that she give in to the insidious lure of his touch.

  For a while she did, drowning in the pleasure of being close to him, of touching him, of knowing that he was held in thrall to his desire for her almost as she was to her love for him, but then she pulled away, catching him off guard so that he released her.

  ‘No, James,’ she told him huskily, avoiding looking directly at him. ‘It’s over. I told you in Boston I can’t have a relationship with a man I can’t trust.’

  ‘You’re going to hold that damn court case over my head like a sword for ever, aren’t you?’ he snarled back, anger mingling with his frustration. ‘I never thought you’d be so small-minded, Lark. For God’s sake, I was doing my job, and when I…’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it any more,’ Lark told him, cutting across what he was going to say.

  Oh, God, even now he couldn’t be honest with her, couldn’t admit the truth. She ached to tackle him with it, to throw his involvement with Charlotte at him like a time bomb, but the last thing she wanted to do was to involve herself in the role of a jealous woman, even though that was exactly what she was.

  ‘I don’t want you any more,’ she threw at him bitterly.

  It was the wrong thing to say.

  One moment she was standing free and safe, the next she was imprisoned between the wall and his body, all too aware of his angry arousal as she tried to squirm away and to stop him from stripping off her robe.

  ‘So you don’t want me, do you?’ he said thickly. ‘We’ll just see about that…’

  Mingling with her outrage and fear was just the tiniest, scorching humiliating thread of triumph.

  He leaned into her, making her acutely aware of his hard body, neither of them even hearing the soft rap on the door, or aware that they weren’t alone any more until Lark heard Mrs Mayers exclaiming in a shocked voice, ‘James!’

  Her face scarlet with mortification and guilt, Lark snatched up her robe and pulled it on. Her nightdress was perfectly respectable, but the scene had spoken for itself.

  That James did not share her inhibitions was perfectly obvious from the way he said sardonically to his mother, ‘Just in the nick of time, Mother. Although somehow I doubt that ultimately it would have been rape.’

  The ugly, unkind words hurt Lark more than anything else he had done. She turned her head away quickly, hoping to conceal her feelings.

  James, she noticed, was keeping his back to his mother as he walked towards the door, and she shivered a little, remembering the aroused heat of his body against her own. Even now part of her mourned its loss.

  ‘I wanted to have a word with you, Lark, but it will wait until morning,’ she heard Mrs Mayers say just before the door closed behind both mother and son.

  Once they had gone, Lark flung herself face down on her bed, wishing she could find relief for her feelings in tears.

  She was still lying there half an hour later when she felt a light touch on her shoulder.

  ‘Lark, I’ve made us a pot of tea. You and I need to talk.’

  Mrs Mayers!

  Lark sat up clumsily.

  ‘Lark, what’s gone wrong between you and James? You seemed so happy…’

  ‘I found out that he’s going to marry Charlotte,’ Lark told her bluntly, beyond pretending that she had been naïve enough to imagine that James saw his future with her.

  ‘What?’ There was no mistaking the shock in Mrs Mayers’ voice. ‘Where on earth did you get that idea? Not from James. I happen to know that the only woman he wants for his wife is you,’ Mrs Mayers told her robustly.

  ‘But Charlotte told me herself…’

  ‘She’s lying,’ Mrs Mayers said crisply. ‘Oh, I don’t doubt she believes she wants to marry him, but James has never thought of her as anything more than an adopted sister or cousin. When did she tell you this?’

  ‘Some time ago.’

  ‘And you said nothing to James?’ Mrs Mayers sounded both shocked and a little angry. ‘Lark, my dear, I promised James I wouldn’t interfere, but he is my son and I can’t bear to see him so unhappy. Please be honest with me now. Is it just because Charlotte lied to you that you’ve been refusing to see him, or was that just a convenient excuse?’

  Lark shook her head.

  ‘I love James, but…’ She looked at Mrs Mayers despairingly. ‘I feel I don’t really know him…not as a person…and he doesn’t know me.’

  ‘He loves you,’ Mrs Mayers told her quietly. ‘He wants to make you his wife. He told me that before…’ She broke off and looked confused, flushing a little.

  ‘How can he love me?’ Lark protested. ‘He still believes I was involved in Gary’s fraud. I know he does… He never talks about it, but it’s still there. When he was in court…’ She shuddered violently and bent her head.

  ‘Lark, my dear, I’m going to break a confidence and tell you something I promised I wouldn’t.’ There was a moment’s pause, and then Mrs Mayers said very clearly, ‘Lark, it was because of James that the court decided not to pursue the case. He told his clients that anyone could see that you were completely innocent, that you had been brutally victimised and used as a scapegoat, and he refused to continue with the case. That was why it was dismissed!’

  The room swung wildly round her; Lark stared at Mrs Mayers disbelievingly.

  ‘That isn’t true,’ she whispered, suddenly looking haunted. ‘It can’t be! James would have said…’

  Mrs Mayers shook her head. ‘No, my dear…he would not have said. You see, he fell in love with you on sight. Believe me, he found it quite a shock. He came to see me after the first day you were called up in court. He told me that the moment he saw you he’d been struck by two things; the first, that you were the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen, and the second, that you were so obviously innocent that he couldn’t understand how the case had ever gone so far. He also told me that it would be next to impossible for him to win your trust because in court you had been terrified of him, or rather, of his reputation. He asked me for my help. He knew you had no job, nowhere to live.’ She frowned slightly. ‘He knew I needed an assistant and begged me to give you the job.

  ‘I did point out to him that to deceive you by asking me not to let you guess that I was his mother was hardly conducive to gaining your trust, but he told me that he intended to tell you the truth.’

  Lark remembered how he had come to see her at her bedsit. Perhaps if she hadn’t panicked then he would have told her. As it was, she had hardly given him the opportunity to do so, she reflected unhappily.

  ‘But why didn’t he tell me that he was responsible for the case being dismissed?’ she protested huskily.

  ‘Perhaps because he didn’t want to put any undue pressure on you,’ Mrs Mayers suggested kindly. ‘Lark, is it so impossible to believe that he wanted you to love him for himself—not out of gratitude, or any misplaced sense of responsibility?’

  She ought to have guessed, to have known. There had been so many small pointers, so much evidence to show her how different he was from the hard, uncaring man she had first imagined. So much heartache, and all for nothing. But it wasn’t too late…

  Lark got up unsteadily.

  ‘I must go and see him. Where is he?’

  ‘In the library. I’m afraid he isn’t in a very good mood,’ Mrs Mayers warned her. ‘He thinks that you’ve rejected him in favour of Hunter.’

  ‘I know. It was the only way I could think of saving face.’

  Mrs Mayers got up too, and kissed her warmly.

  ‘I shall tell him that I know…about everything,’ Lark told her firmly
, and then added softly, ‘But after I’ve told him how much I love him.’

  The library was in the Jacobean part of the house; a huge rectangular room with bookcases on three walls, and panelling and a large open fire on the fourth.

  James was sitting in front of it with his back to her, his head bent forward, his hands locked. He hadn’t heard her come in.

  She got two-thirds of the way across the room before he saw her. The look he gave her was so bleak and withdrawn that she almost lost her courage, but she owed him this if nothing else, and so, gripping her hands together, she said quickly, ‘James, I love you very, very much, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I want to have your children, and share your life, and if your mother’s wrong and you don’t really love me at all, please tell me now, before I make an even greater fool of myself than I already have.’

  For a moment she thought he intended to ignore her, and then he asked curtly, ‘What brought on this change of heart? Less than an hour ago I was the last person you wanted in your life.’

  ‘I discovered that you aren’t going to marry Charlotte,’ she told him simply.

  He got up then, shock dispersing his original anger, and she could see that she had surprised him. ‘How in hell did you get hold of a crazy idea like that?’ He saw her face and smiled grimly. ‘Ah, I see. My God, I shall have something to say to that young woman the next time I see her. Charlotte never has and never will mean anything more to me than, at best, a rather irritating younger sister. Although, to be truthful, if she was my sister, I suspect that she’d have felt the flat of my hand against her rear end long before now! Her father, on the other hand, is a man I admire and respect a great deal. Charlotte is his only child. I am one of her trustees in the event of his death. He worries because even he can see that she hasn’t got the least scrap of sense.’

  ‘She loves you,’ Lark told him huskily.

  He shook his head.

  ‘No, she wants me. Like a child wanting a new toy because it’s out of reach.’

  ‘You took her out to dinner.’

  ‘She certainly made capital out of that, didn’t she? It was a twenty-first birthday party for a friend of hers, and I’d agreed a long time ago that I would escort her. A promise which I cursed most thoroughly when I realised it was going to deprive me of an evening of your company, but you see, my darling, when I agreed to go with her I hadn’t even met you.’

  ‘Nor fallen in love with me across a crowded court room?’ Lark suggested tentatively.

  He seemed to read her mind because, instead of denying it, he smiled ruefully.

  ‘Ah, I see Mother has been talking. I’m not surprised you find it hard to believe, though. I had a little trouble coming to terms with it myself. Lawyers pride themselves on their ability to reason, and believe me there wasn’t and there isn’t anything the slightest bit reasonable about the way I feel about you. I ought to beat you for what you’ve put us both through,’ he added roughly.

  Lark gave him a mischievous smile, reassured by the passionate look he was giving her. ‘Can’t I persuade you to get the case dismissed?’

  She saw from his face that he knew what she was trying to tell him.

  ‘Mother has been talking, hasn’t she?’ He was frowning now, turning slightly away from her. ‘Let’s get one thing straight, Lark. I refused to continue with the case, not because I’d fallen in love with you, but because I knew you were innocent. Had I not thought so, even though I would still have loved you, I would have continued with the prosecution.’

  He looked at her then, a hard, direct look that challenged her to either accept or reject him on his principles.

  ‘I wouldn’t expect you to do anything else,’ Lark told him huskily. ‘You frightened me in court, James.’ She ignored his wry ‘I know’ to continue, ‘But what has worried me through our relationship was the fact that you wouldn’t talk about it. It made me doubt that you could really love me, because I believed that you thought I was guilty.’

  ‘And I thought you didn’t trust me because of what happened in court, and yet I didn’t want to tell you why the case had been dismissed because, knowing your history, I could see how easy it would be then for you to feel guilty, and for you to feel that you had to love me, if only in repayment, and that wasn’t what I wanted. As it was, I had a large enough burden on my conscience for rushing you into a physical relationship before you’d had time to get to know me,’ he added roughly.

  ‘We’re both at fault,’ Lark consoled him. ‘We should both have been more honest…had more faith.’

  ‘Well, in that case, I have to admit that I got Mother to bring you down here under false pretences. I was desperate to get you away from Cabot, and to have one last attempt to convince you that we could have a good future together.’

  ‘Hunter was never any threat to you,’ Lark told him lovingly, going on to explain about Hunter’s fortuitous arrival in London.

  ‘Well, there aren’t going to be any more misunderstandings of that nature,’ James told her firmly. ‘And just to make sure, I think you and I should get married. After all, you’re already occupying the Bride’s Chamber.’

  Lark looked puzzled. ‘I thought it was called the King James room.’

  ‘So it is, because during his visit he occupied the best bedroom in the house, but that bed was bought for his bride by the same Jacobean Lacey who built on the two extra wings, and every bride has slept there since.’

  He kissed her gently, and then far less gently, releasing her with reluctance.

  ‘I think we’d better go and tell my mother that she can stop playing deus ex machina, before she comes looking for us.’

  He kissed her again and then put his arm around her, to hold her against his side, as they walked towards the door.

  * * *

  Two months later Mrs Middleton was standing beside the verger’s wife as they both watched the newly married couple emerging from the church.

  It was a perfect September day, warm and sunny, with the trees just beginning to turn. The bride looked radiant in the heavy satin dress that had been made especially for her in London. Her veil had been loaned by her new mother-in-law, and its creamy lace suited her vivid colouring to perfection.

  ‘I knew the moment he asked me to prepare the Bride’s Chamber for her what was going on,’ Mrs Middleton exclaimed happily. ‘Mind you, I was a bit surprised that she wasn’t wearing a ring that first time I saw her, and when she told me she had come to work… But then I suppose they wanted to keep it to themselves for a while…’

  ‘They’re off to America for their honeymoon,’ the verger’s wife responded.

  ‘Yes, Mrs Mayers has a house near Boston.’ She sighed again. ‘You should have seen the way they looked at one another when she offered to lend it to them! My, it quite took me back to my own courting days.’

  Both women gave exclusively feminine and satisfied sighs.

  Lark floated down the ancient church path on James’s arm while the bells rang triumphantly around them. He kissed her by the lych gate, much to the delight of their guests, and murmured under his breath, ‘Got you sentenced at last, Mrs Wolfe.’

  Lark laughed and responded, ‘For a lifetime.

  * * * * *

  Now, read on for a tantalizing excerpt of USA Today bestselling author

  Dani Collins’s new release,

  XENAKIS’S CONVENIENT BRIDE

  The second book in The Secret Billionaires trilogy!

  Stavros Xenakis refuses to marry—until deliciously tempting Calli proves that a wife is exactly what he needs! Stavros’s proposal gives Calli the chance to find her stolen son. But she doesn’t expect life as Mrs. Xenakis to be quite so satisfying…

  Read on to get a glimpse of

  XENAKIS’S CONVENIENT BRIDE

  PROLOGUE

  STAVROS XENAKIS THREW his twenty-thousand-euro chips into the pot, less satisfied than he usually was postchallenge, but it had nothing to do with his fellow players
or his lackluster hand.

  His longtime friend Sebastien Atkinson had arranged his usual après-adrenaline festivities. It had wound down to the four of them, as it often did. Many turned out for these extreme sports events, but only Antonio Di Marcello and Alejandro Salazar had the same deep pockets Stavros and Sebastien did. Or the stones to bet at this level simply to stretch out a mellow evening.

  Stavros wasn’t the snob his grandfather was, but he didn’t consider many his equal. These men were it and he enjoyed their company for that reason. Tonight was no exception. They were still high on today’s exercise of cheating death, sipping 1946 Macallan while trading good-natured insults.

  So why was he twitching with edginess?

  He mentally reviewed today’s paraski that had had him carving a steep line down a ski slope to a cliff’s edge before rocketing into thin air, lifted by his chute for a thousand feet, guiding his path above a ridge, then hitting the lower slope for another run of hard turns before taking to the air again.

  It had been as physically demanding as any challenge that had come before and was probably their most daredevil yet. Throughout most of it, he’d been completely in the moment—his version of meditating.

  He had expected today to erase the frustration that had been dogging him, but it hadn’t. He might have set it aside for a few hours, but this niggling irritation was back to grate at him.

  Sebastien eyed him across the table, no doubt trying to determine if he was bluffing.

  “How’s your wife?” Stavros asked, more as a deflection, but also trying to divine how Sebastien could be happily married.

  “Better company than you. Why are you so surly tonight?”

  Was it obvious? He grimaced. “I haven’t won yet.” He was among friends so he admitted the rest. “And my grandfather is threatening to disinherit me if I don’t marry soon. I’d tell him to go to hell, but…”

  “Your mother,” Alejandro said.