by Maggie Cox
Filling a tumbler with some cold water at the tap, she stood still, her mind gravitating to their house in the Algarve, Portugal—a place Reece had owned long before he’d met Sorrel and that he’d had redecorated to her taste just after they’d married. It was a very gracious old building that used to be a farmhouse, and Reece had had some very exclusive and innovative designers flown in especially from Italy to redesign the interiors.
Sorrel recalled the steamy and very satisfying three weeks that she and Reece had spent there the summer before last. They’d hardly left their bed, other than to eat or bathe or wander around the local charming little streets of the nearest town holding hands and delighting in anything and everything that met their eyes. They had been so in love and happy. Why—only just over a year later on into their marriage—had that feeling somehow drifted away from them?
‘I thought I heard a noise down here. Is everything all right?’
Startled, Sorrel spun round to see Reece enter the room. He was bare to the waist, adorned only in black silk pyjama bottoms that settled low on his tanned lean hips, exposing his navel and, further up, a light column of fine blond hair dusting across a sublimely masculine chest that was proportioned just perfectly. Sorrel had almost forgotten just how beautifully he was made. She just stared at him…she couldn’t help it. It would have been like asking a child not to notice the sweets at the checkout in a supermarket.
‘I only wanted some headache pills.’
‘Oh?’
The concern that flashed across Reece’s face was deep and immediate. He walked towards her with that slow, unconsciously sexy gait of his that stole all the breath from her lungs and started a sensuous ache deep and low in her belly.
Not many women could look as heavenly as she did woken from sleep in the middle of the night. Even when she was old his wife would remain a truly classic beauty, Reece speculated to himself as he watched her. With her face wiped clean of any trace of make-up, her eyes drowsy from sleep and her blond hair sexily tousled from where she’d lain her head on the pillow, his lovely young wife was the kind of bewitching sight that any red-blooded male would more than appreciate finding in his kitchen at three o’clock in the morning.
Just seeing her standing there in her nightgown stirred Reece’s blood with the kind of scorching, passionate desire that he knew would haunt him long after she had returned to her bed and he to his. There had always been that chemistry between them right from the start. Reece would simply look at Sorrel and she would give him an answering look back, and before even one word was spoken they would have their hands all over each other in an instant. It was wild… His English Rose could be as wanton as any dark-eyed Latin lover when it came to making love.
Remembering hotly that he had taken her once right here, up against the worktop, Reece recalled that possession had been hard and fast, furious and wonderful. The scent from her heavenly body had tied his stomach up in knots and her breathless little sighs of pleasure had stoked his lust for the rest of the night. The softness of her silken thighs as he’d positioned himself between them had been sublime, and the way her innocent blue eyes had helplessly darkened and glazed to reveal the depth of her passion and need had turned Reece on so powerfully that he grew hard in an instant, just remembering the sight.
Right then the depth of the longing and lust that swirled inside him was like a hot scorching wind from the Sahara, slamming into every hidden and not so hidden corner of his body, waking him up to a desire so fierce that he trembled to contain it. Earlier, Reece had been torn between being furious that she should listen in on his phone-calls—‘accidentally’ or not—and feeling hope because she’d demonstrated another emotion towards him besides resentment and despair. Sorrel had been jealous that he was meeting Angelina Cortez for lunch. That must mean that she still felt something for him other than disdain.
‘Maybe a nice massage would help?’ he suggested.
The idea was heavenly—as well as terrifying. Putting down her glass of water on the drainer, Sorrel self-consciously closed her robe and tightened the narrow silky belt around her middle. This close, her gorgeous, sexy husband was a little too much on the senses to take lightly. She needed to be well armed against his almost blatant sex appeal, because she remembered where most of Reece’s massages usually led. Not that it could lead anywhere close to that heavenly destination today. Her body was still healing. Not just her body, but her heart, her mind and her soul, too.
‘Sorrel?’
She realised she hadn’t answered him. She’d been so caught up in the spell of him that she’d forgotten to speak. Her blue eyes alighted apologetically on his face, helplessly drifting down to his mouth—remembering the taste and feel of his passionate lips against hers and longing to experience their touch again.
‘No, it’s all right. I’ll just take the pills. It’s nothing to make a fuss about…really.’
‘You don’t want me to touch you? Is that it?’
CHAPTER SIX
THERE was an undercurrent of anger as well as pure frustration contained in Reece’s voice, and Sorrel wrestled with the wave of guilt that surged through her insides.
‘It’s…it’s early days yet, Reece.’
How could she tell him that she was afraid to let him touch her?
Trying not to permit her helplessly hungry gaze to dip lower than his chest, she lifted a swathe of curling blond hair off the back of her neck and let it fall back again. There was no denying that his overpowering proximity was getting to her…
‘Yeah…right.’
‘I’m…I’m still healing, Reece.’ Her voice went very soft, almost down to a whisper.
He gave her a lazy seductive smile that hit her straight in the solar plexus. ‘I wasn’t suggesting full-blown sex on the kitchen floor, angel.’ He moved closer if that were possible, magnetising her attention with the shifting hue and shadow in his eyes.
If there were another man alive with such luxuriously long golden lashes they couldn’t be more amazing than his. Just one devastating glance from the sexy eyes beneath those lashes could make Sorrel’s hips grow soft and the rest of her feel as though she was melting like chocolate in the heat.
Capturing one of her gently curving blond curls between his fingers, Reece stared at it for a moment, as though examining a genuine work of art. ‘Truth is, Sorrel…it’s driving me crazy not being able to touch you.’
‘I’ve missed touching you, too.’
Letting go of the tendril of hair he’d captured, Reece watched it spring away from him to rest against her shoulder. Almost holding his breath, he slid his hand behind Sorrel’s graceful neck, registering the infinite softness of the minute hairs at its base that added to the delicacy of her silken skin with an explosive little thrill down his spine. Moving his fingers up and down in the tiniest most gentle of strokes, he watched the colour of her eyes deepen to the colour of blue smoke instead of blue sky. Sensing her tremble, Reece became aware of the peaks of her breasts budding inside her gown.
She had always been like that with him…instantly responsive. He’d loved that. God, what a turn-on that had always been! And he loved her response even more because he’d been missing such a reaction for too long a time. How had he borne it?
‘Reece?’
‘What is it, baby?’
His voice wasn’t exactly steady. It couldn’t help but betray the voracious need that built and gathered like a summer storm inside him. Before Sorrel could reply, he eased her towards him, clasping her hips firmly in his hands and bringing them flush against his own. Her soft, surprised gasp feathered over him. His hands moved up to settle round her perfectly tiny waist—and Reece’s palms were suffused with the sensual warmth of her slender body beneath her robe. Her scent—the kind you couldn’t bottle—drifted over him, drowning him in a wave of erotic sensation that had the tension that had been growing steadily inside him almost snap.
Sorrel had registered the strength of her husband’s arousal as soo
n as he had pressed her hips against his own. It had sent a spiral of need and lust ravelling inside her that made her wish that they could—as Reece had so graphically phrased it—have ‘full-blown sex on the kitchen floor.’ Her own response electrified her insides like flash lightning.
‘We can’t…I mean I—’
Anxiously withdrawing from the spellbinding circle of his embrace even as she spoke, Sorrel finally pulled herself completely free of him and, with her cheeks slightly flushed with heat, offered him a shaky little smile of apology.
‘It’s…too soon,’ she explained hoarsely.
Biting back his intense frustration, Reece rubbed his hand across the flat of his naked ribcage.
‘How long am I supposed to wait before you meet me halfway, Sorrel?’
Her smile disappeared, and in its place the familiar little crease between her brows that she acquired when she was perturbed about something was evident. ‘It’s going to take a while for me to get over what’s happened to me, Reece…besides what’s happening between us as a couple. You—we just need to be patient.’
Knowing that he needed to wrestle his frustration into submission if they were going to get anywhere, Reece nevertheless couldn’t help the impatience that rose up strongly inside him. ‘Patient’ was the one thing he was finding it hard to be around is wife. All he wanted to do was hold her, for God’s sake! Why was she making it so damn hard for him to reach out to her and get close?
‘Well, honey…my feelings are that if we wait much longer to try and rescue things between us we may well lose the chance for ever. But perhaps you’re prepared to risk that? You’ve grown so cold, Sorrel. And it’s not just losing the baby that’s made you like this. I think you’ve forgotten how to act like a warm-blooded woman around a man. And I think it’s a crying shame.’
His words made her heart sink. As well as confirming her own deep-rooted fears that she was no longer an attractive, desirable woman, they struck right at the heart of her deepest femininity. Although Sorrel despised herself for it, all she could do was retaliate with an insult.
‘Don’t you dare talk to me about growing cold! You’re the one who was going to divorce me, remember? And you would have gone through with it too if you hadn’t realised that I was pregnant! So don’t expect me to act like I’m grateful or something because you took me back. I don’t owe you a damn thing!’
His jaw going rigid, Reece silenced any further tirade she might be about to indulge in by walking away from her and slicing his hand through the air in disgust.
‘To hell with it, Sorrel! And to hell with you, too!’
The room was empty of his presence just a couple of seconds later.
Declining the cup of coffee she’d been offered on arrival, Sorrel found herself a seat in the plush waiting room of the familiar model agency that she’d worked for on and off over the past few years and sat down. Picking up a magazine from the small glass table in front of her, she started to idly flick through it while she waited.
She knew she had no business telling her agent Jenny that she was available for work when she was just barely recovering from a miscarriage, but sheer desperation to get out of the house and away from the stultifying atmosphere between her and Reece had forced Sorrel to do something constructive. So today, when he had left to meet Angelina Cortez for lunch, instead of working on the fashion designs she’d suddenly found she had no heart for, she had contacted Jenny and got herself an appointment with a view to work.
Maybe if she returned to work full-time she might reawaken her interest in modelling again? Maybe this time she wouldn’t be so quick to turn down those prestigious catwalk jobs that would take her to the fashion hotspots of the world, and would see how lucky she was to have the opportunity instead? And maybe if she approached her career with some of the same dedication that Reece had applied to his own it might serve two purposes. First of all it might help push her out of the terrible depression that had gripped her, and secondly she might just win Reece’s admiration because she was at least trying to do something positive for herself.
If her self-esteem returned then she and Reece might have a real chance of working things out between them. And if she could demonstrate to her husband that she was still desirable enough to be sought after as a model, then he would hopefully see that she was still the same desirable girl he had married. She should never have pushed him away as she had in the kitchen last night, and now she deeply regretted shrilly accusing him of only wanting to stay with her because she’d found out that she was pregnant. Especially when Reece had already made several attempts at trying to mend their relationship.
But even as her eye fell on a picture of a pretty brunette she recognised, who decorated the fashion pages of one of the best-known glossy magazines on the market, Sorrel’s sudden optimism wobbled dangerously. Could she do it? Could she find the strength inside that she needed to rise above the devastation that had overtaken her? And could she win back her husband’s love and admiration if she did so? Dear God, she had to at least try! All she really wanted to do was start a family with Reece and raise their children together, but for now she would sacrifice that need and go back to modelling if it meant that her marriage with Reece had a chance…
‘Sorrel, darling! Come in! Sorry to have kept you waiting. Have you had a cup of coffee?’
An attractive middle-aged blonde dressed in a tailored black trouser suit put her head round the door and singled Sorrel out from the two other models who sat in the room waiting.
‘I don’t want any coffee, thanks.’
Minutes later, inside the beautifully decorated office—with its walls practically covered in stunning shots of models past and present and a view of a bustling King’s Road outside—Sorrel pulled out the chair opposite Jenny’s wide desk and sat down. Crossing her long slim legs and folding her hands a little nervously in the lap of her blue and white cotton skirt, she met the slightly unsettling hazel gaze of the woman she had known for over seven years now.
There wasn’t much you could put past Jenny Taylor. If you were hiding anything the woman was sure to root it out. And Sorrel’s already precarious self-confidence dipped noticeably as she realised that the older woman would probably intuit immediately that something wasn’t right. Was her brave attempt at trying to do something positive to help herself going to be squashed before it even had a chance?
‘Something’s happened.’ The older woman frowned, absently stirring her mug of black coffee with a tiny silver spoon but never removing her knowing gaze from Sorrel’s face for even a second.
Clasping her hands even more tightly in her lap, Sorrel smiled. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You look a little too peaky for my liking. Lost weight, too. Is everything all right with you and that gorgeous husband of yours?’
The woman had to be psychic. The smile faded from Sorrel’s coral-painted lips. ‘We’ve had…some problems,’ she admitted, praying that Jenny would pry no further than that.
‘Still doesn’t like you modelling…is that it?’
‘We’re working things out.’
‘But he’s still not home a lot?’
‘He is at the moment.’
Uncrossing her legs, Sorrel rested one hand on the desk in front of her, her brow creasing slightly. ‘I don’t really want to talk about me and Reece if you don’t mind, Jenny. I was rather hoping that you might have a job for me?’
‘Sweetheart, I’ve got a couple of jobs that ordinarily you’d be just perfect for—one of them is a huge cosmetics contract, too. But I’m not going to put you forward for them when I can clearly see that you’re not yourself.’
Taking a sip of her steaming beverage, Jenny considered Sorrel curiously over the lip of her mug.
Feeling herself flush a guilty scarlet, Sorrel continued to frown. ‘What do you mean, you can see I’m not myself?’
‘You’ve always been a bit of a closed book, sweetheart, and that’s fine with me. Everyone deserves some privacy,
God knows. But I haven’t reached the grand old age of fifty-one without gaining a little bit of wisdom when it comes to reading people, and there’s something going on with you that worries me. If you’ve got problems with your marriage then you need to make that your priority, Sorrel—not work. Too many women sacrifice relationships for careers these days. God knows, I see enough of the results of that working here! Go home, Sorrel. Have a nice long hot bath. Put something pretty on, and if your husband is home, like you say he is, then light some candles tonight, open a bottle of wine and cosy up together on the sofa. That will do you far more good than coming into work looking like death warmed up!’
Sorrel rose immediately to her feet. There wasn’t much point in staying and pleading her case when she knew inside that she wasn’t exactly up to returning to work just yet. But at least she had tried. At least she had taken a small step towards trying to get better. There was a lot of truth in what Jenny had said, too—even if Sorrel believed that Reece would probably scorn the whole ‘candles and wine, cosying up on the sofa’ thing with a passion because she’d been nothing but cold towards him.
Right now he was lunching with one of the most beautiful and vivacious women she had ever seen. Coming home to his wife would be like returning to a dark, cold basement after spending most of the day in dazzling sunlight. Because Jenny was also right about her looks. Her face still bore the sorrow of her recent loss, and she’d been eating so little that it was a wonder she was still standing upright. She really had to make more of a concerted effort to eat better. Did she really think that Reece would fancy her if she resembled a bag of bones?
Clutching her blue suede bag to her chest, Sorrel managed to find a smile. ‘You are wise, Jenny. The truth is I haven’t been very well, and I should never have wasted your time like this. I’m sorry.’
The older woman got to her feet, too. Walking round her desk, she put her arm around Sorrel and briefly squeezed the younger woman to her. ‘I’m sorry to hear that, my love. And I want to assure you that turning you away right now doesn’t mean I don’t want you to come back and work for me, darling. I don’t need anybody in place for that big contract I told you about for another six weeks yet, and you would be perfect for the job. Go home, get some help for whatever’s wrong, then give me a ring in about a month’s time and we’ll talk again. OK?’