‘There wasn’t time for that,’ Joel said harshly.
Hard green eyes snapped with anger. ‘I didn’t force those pills down his throat!’
‘We both forced him into a situation where he had no other choice!’
‘Everyone has a choice,’ Marilyn scorned. ‘He just wasn’t enough of a man to fight for what he wanted.’
‘You?’ Joel bit out with contempt.
‘Yes!’
‘Why should he want to fight for you when you’d just told him you were expecting another man’s child!’
Lindsay watched in numbed fascination as Joel and Marilyn glared across the room at each other like the adversaries they obviously were, hate glittering in both their gazes. She knew now that Joel had never been Marilyn’s husband, and yet there was still something that bound them together in their hatred.
‘Your baby,’ Marilyn told him softly, turning to Lindsay with scornful eyes as she gasped. ‘Shocked your puritan little soul at last, have I?’ she sneered. ‘Well, you needn’t worry, it wasn’t true.’
‘What did you say?’ Joel breathed harshly.
The black-haired women looked at him with challenging eyes. ‘It wasn’t your baby.’
‘But—’
‘I was only six weeks pregnant, Joel, not the nine I claimed to be.’
Joel was almost grey with shock, sitting down abruptly in one of the armchairs. ‘You lied?’ he choked.
‘Yes.’ Marilyn’s mouth twisted.
‘Why?’ he groaned, his eyes pained.
‘Because I was sick to death of listening to David feeling inferior to you!’ she shouted at him. ‘He always felt as if he was in your shadow, his talented older brother, while he had nothing. I married him, didn’t I?’
‘After seducing me almost on the eve of your wedding!’
‘You didn’t need much seducing!’
‘No,’ he admitted gruffly. ‘But then you didn’t tell me you were going to marry my brother.’
Marilyn gave a humourless laugh. ‘That’s because he hadn’t asked me then.’
Joel gave her a look that clearly spoke of his disgust. ‘Why did you tell David the baby was mine? You must have known what he would do.’
‘I thought it would bring him to his senses, make him see that you were no better than he was. Instead he blamed himself,’ she remembered angrily. ‘Said he couldn’t have made me happy enough. You saw the letter he left, you know what he said!’ Her hands were clenched together in front of her.
Joel stood up as if in a daze. ‘All these years you’ve let me go on believing I was responsible for David’s death, you’ve let my parents go on believing it too.’
‘Why should you be happy when I lost the only man I ever loved!’ Marilyn spat the words at him. ‘Oh yes, I loved David,’ she stated at his stunned look. ‘I loved him more than I ever thought possible. To himself he might have been a pale shadow of you, but to me he was everything. But he couldn’t forget you had had me first, he was even suspicious when I told him about the baby. I had wanted him to be happy about it,’ her voice broke emotionally, her face ravaged by grief. ‘Instead he questioned our baby’s parentage.’ Her eyes were wild as she glared at Joel. ‘I just told him what he wanted to hear. But I didn’t expect him to kill himself! I would have told him the truth once I’d calmed down, he just didn’t give me the chance.’
All the anger seemed to have gone out of Joel at this impassioned confession, and Lindsay’s heart went out to the couple as he tried to take Marilyn in his arms to comfort her and was instantly rebuffed.
‘Don’t pity me, damn you!’ she told him heatedly. ‘Especially when I’ve been doing my best to ruin what you have with your little girl-friend here,’ she added scornfully. ‘Although it seems I’ve failed even to do that.’
‘Marilyn, I—’
‘What do you mean, you’ve been trying to ruin things between Lindsay and me?’ Joel cut forcefully over Lindsay’s sympathy. ‘What did you do?’
Green eyes flashed at him. ‘Whatever I did I didn’t do it alone. You’d already given Lindsay the impression there was something between the two of us before I even came back to England, I just helped that idea along the way.’
‘How?’
‘By acting as if we were seeing each other again,’ she shrugged. ‘It worked perfectly. But the best part was when I told her we were the ones who got married seven years ago.’
Joel looked at Lindsay with pained eyes. ‘That was what she told you that day you had to leave early with a headache?’
Lindsay moistened dry lips, knowing she had misjudged him. ‘Yes.’
‘God!’ he groaned. ‘Why did you do it, Marilyn? What did you hope to achieve?’
‘Your continued unhappiness!’ she spat at him.
He sighed. ‘You don’t think I’ve had enough of that the last seven years, blaming myself for my brother’s death, believing I wasn’t worthy of finding happiness myself with the woman I loved?’
Lindsay’s eyes widened at that. Could it be, dared she hope, that that was the reason Joel had rebuffed any idea of love between them?
‘Don’t you think I’ve suffered in the same way?’ Marilyn snapped. ‘At least you can console yourself with the fact that I failed to break the two of you up, that you’re together again now.’ She pulled her fur coat more securely up about her. ‘I’m sure you’ll be happy together, Lindsay has all the right ingredients to take a man in to happily-ever-after. Now I must go—’
‘Marilyn—’
‘Stay away from me, Joel,’ she ordered through gritted teeth as he reached out for her. ‘Maybe in twenty years or so we’ll be able to at least talk to each other like civilised human beings. But until then I think it would be better if we didn’t meet.’
She left a stunned silence behind her once she had swept from the room, Joel seeming too shaken to talk, Lindsay simply not knowing what to say. The terrible tragedy that had ended one life and ruined so many others was so much worse than she had even imagined.
‘Brandy?’ Joel suddenly offered raggedly.
‘Would you rather I left you to be alone?’
‘God, no,’ he said shakily, pouring two glasses of brandy and handing her one. ‘Did you understand all of that?’ he asked after he had taken a healthy swallow.
‘Some of it,’ she sipped at her own brandy.
‘Then it’s only fair that you should know the rest,’ he told her raggedly.
‘You don’t have to tell me anything,’ she shook her head.
He looked at her with dark eyes. ‘You heard me tell Marilyn that I’ve always shunned the thought of finding a woman I could love because I didn’t feel I had the right to that happiness when I’d seemingly ruined my brother’s?’ he asked gruffly. ‘Well, I fell in love with you against all my own rules, and even though it’s too late—’
‘Too late?’ she echoed sharply.
‘You’re going to marry Malcolm.’
Lindsay chewed on the softness of her inner lip. ‘Judi is going to marry Malcolm,’ she told him quietly.
Joel became suddenly still. ‘Your sister is?’
She nodded. ‘It was more or less love at first sight for both of them, and I think of Malcolm as a brother already.’
‘Then why did you—’ he broke off, sighing heavily. ‘I gave you little choice, did I, with my jealous accusations.’
‘Jealous, Joel?’ she prompted softly.
‘Lindsay, I love you. How do you really feel about me?’ Some of his normal arrogance was back.
‘The same way I always have.’ She met his gaze steadily.
He looked disappointed. ‘Oh.’
She gave a wan smile. ‘Joel, when a woman, especially one as inexperienced as I was, decides to live with a man you can usually make a sure bet on the fact that she’s already in love with him.’
His eyes glowed deeply golden. ‘And do you—I mean, did you?’
‘Yes. And yes,’ she told him gently.
He swallowed convulsively. ‘I won’t ask you to marry me just yet—’
‘Ask me, Joel,’ she encouraged softly.
‘Not until I’ve told you everything there is to know about the triangle of my brother, Marilyn and myself.’
‘My answer will still be the same.’
‘It might not,’ he bit out harshly. ‘Marilyn might have exonerated me from some of the blame for what happened, but I certainly don’t come out of it untarnished.’
Lindsay moved forward to rest her head on his chest, her arms about his waist. ‘I love you, Joel.’ It felt so good to at last be able to say the words! ‘I don’t care what you’ve done.’
His arms tightened about her convulsively. ‘I’m sorry for what I’ve put you through the last few months, but if it helps at all I’ve suffered as much as you have. When I came back from the States to find you’d walked out on me I felt as if someone had punched me between the eyes. But even then I wouldn’t admit to myself how much I loved you. It wasn’t until I realised how friendly you’d become with Malcolm that I had to admit to feeling jealous. I even started spying on you, driving past your flat just to see if he was there. And worst of all, I couldn’t stay away from you, going to your home and forcing myself on you.’
‘I don’t remember any force being used,’ she mumbled into his chest.
‘Seductive force,’ he amended defensively.
Lindsay leant back in his arms to shake her head. ‘If I hadn’t wanted you I wouldn’t have let you stay.’
‘But the next morning you evaded even talking about it.’
‘I didn’t want to hear you say it had been a mistake,’ she corrected. ‘And when Marilyn turned up that morning all sorts of thoughts went through my mind,’ she admitted guiltily. ‘You looked as if you’d seen a vision—’
‘A ghost,’ he sighed. ‘A ghost I finally knew I had to face if I was to take the life I wanted with you. I didn’t really leave anything in the studio that day when I went to lunch, I came back to talk to you, to try and explain about the past. Finding Malcolm there, knowing he was the one to call you the night before, I realised that I was already too late.’
Lindsay shook her head. ‘You could never be that. But tell me about your brother now,’ she prompted as his eyes still looked shadowed.
He gave a ragged sigh and released her, as if he couldn’t be close to even her when he told her about something that was so painful to him. ‘David was younger than me, by five years, and all through our childhood I knew he looked upon me as his fantastic older brother. Sometimes I must have disappointed his expectations of me, but I never did it intentionally. I loved him too, you see—I felt as much admiration for him as he did for me. When I began to do well with my camera he became my assistant. After—after he died I preferred to work alone when I could.’
She had often wondered about this preference he had, knowing things could have been a lot easier for him if he had taken on a full-time assistant. But she didn’t interrupt him now, knowing he had to tell her about the past in his own way.
‘Then a young green-eyed witch sent me her portfolio one day,’ he recalled grimly. ‘I was fascinated by the photographs, even more so by the girl herself. She seemed to feel the same way about me, and we—we became lovers. What I hadn’t realised, and I doubt Marilyn had at that time either, was that David had fallen in love with her. But he said nothing, not even when the affair ended.’
‘Why did it end?’ Lindsay prompted.
Joel shrugged. ‘I suppose because we had nothing more than physical attraction going for us. What I didn’t know was that she had started seeing David shortly after that. I certainly had no idea they were getting married,’ he rasped. ‘The first I knew of that was when they got back from the register office. I suppose I said all the right things, but David was never convinced I truly wished them happiness.’ He put up a hand over his eyes. ‘You see, Marilyn had spent the night with me about a week before the wedding, and I was stunned that they were now married. David changed after that, he became morose, moody—I know now it was because he was jealous of the affair I had once had with Marilyn. I thought at the time that he’d got over that, that we were back to being brothers again. And then Marilyn told him she was pregnant. You heard why she lied to him about that,’ his eyes were dark with emotion. ‘We all believed her when she said she was nine weeks pregnant, and when David asked me if the child could be mine …’ He swallowed hard. ‘I thought it could, you see, and I couldn’t lie to him. He went home and took a bottle of pills.’
‘And his letter?’
‘He said he was only in the way, that he wanted Marilyn and me to be happy together,’ Joel told her gruffly. ‘Marilyn instantly lost the baby, and my parents disowned me.’
‘Oh no!’
‘Yes,’ he sighed. ‘And I couldn’t blame them for that. I’d as good as killed their younger son.’
‘Oh, Joel!’ Lindsay moved back into his arms. ‘It wasn’t your fault, can’t you see that?’
‘Not completely,’ he agreed softly. ‘But if I hadn’t become involved with Marilyn in the first place maybe none of this would have happened.’
‘It couldn’t have stopped your brother feeling the way he did,’ she assured him gently. ‘And if he had the tendency to take his own life inside him something else would eventually have triggered it off one day.’
‘Maybe you’re right,’ Joel nodded. ‘But it doesn’t make it any easier to live with. My parents have never forgiven me.’
‘Have you given them the opportunity to?’
‘Hm?’ He looked puzzled.
‘It usually takes the co-operation of both sides to heal a rift like this,’ she explained softly. ‘And with the chip on the shoulder you’ve been walking around with they wouldn’t have found it easy to make the first move either! I’m not saying that’s the way it is,’ she touched his face with gentle fingertips. ‘I’m just saying it could be.’
‘Maybe,’ he agreed slowly. ‘Perhaps introducing them to their future daughter-in-law might break the ice?’ he queried pointedly. ‘Yes?’ He raised dark brows.
‘Yes.’ She gave him a glowing smile. ‘I told you my answer would still be the same.’
‘So you did.’ He gave a relieved smile. ‘And tomorrow I’d better start convincing my future inlaws I’m worthy of becoming a member of the family.’
‘And what about your future bride?’ she teased.
‘I’m going to start convincing her now,’ he promised huskily, lifting her up in his arms.
That was what she had hoped for!
* * * * *
Now, read on for a tantalizing excerpt of Caitlin Crews’s new release,
BOUND TO THE SICILIAN’S BED
The next part of the Conveniently Wed! miniseries!
When Rocco’s runaway wife asks for a divorce, the Sicilian billionaire seizes his chance! They’ve never discussed their painful past, but this is the perfect opportunity to get Nicole out of his system for good. He offers her a deal: if Nicole wants to move on with her life she will be his one last time!
Keep reading to get a glimpse of
BOUND TO THE SICILIAN’S BED
CHAPTER ONE
ROCCO BARBERI FELT anger pumping through his veins and it was enough to stop him in his tracks. Because he didn’t do anger. He was known as a man of cool calculation. His implacable Sicilian features were notorious for never betraying a flicker of emotion and his business rivals often said he would have made a world-class poker player. So why was rage flooding through him like hot lava as he stood outside a tiny art shop in some God-forsaken Cornish town?
He knew why. Because of her. His wife. His mouth twisted. His estranged wife. The woman who was standing inside the shop studying some sort of vase, her thick dark curls cascading down her back, leading the eye naturally to her narrow waist and the luscious curve of her bottom. The woman who had walked away from him without a qualm, uncaring of his reputation and everything he had don
e for her.
He pushed open the door and the doorbell jangled loudly as he walked in. He saw her look up, her face freezing with shock—and Rocco enjoyed a brief moment of pleasure as he read disbelief in those green eyes, which had once so bewitched him. He heard her suck in an unsteady breath and as she put the vase down he noticed her fingers were trembling. Good, he thought grimly. Good.
‘Rocco,’ she said breathlessly and he could see her throat constricting as she swallowed. That long, pale neck he had once covered in urgent kisses before moving on to the infinitely softer territory of her breasts. ‘What…what are you doing here?’
The deliberate pause he allowed was just long enough to increase the sudden tension, which had gathered like a storm cloud in the small shop. ‘You’ve just served me with divorce papers, Nicole,’ he drawled. ‘What did you think would happen? That I would just sign over half my fortune and let you walk off into the sunset with a toss of your pretty curls? Is that what you were hoping?’
She was brushing a dark spiral of hair away from a face flushed pink—acting with the self-consciousness of a woman who was uncertain about her appearance and Rocco was unprepared for the sudden wave of lust which washed over him. Would she have taken a little more care with her clothes if she’d known he was coming—worn something a little more flattering than those faded jeans and a filmy white shirt, which concealed far too much of those luscious breasts?
‘Of course I wasn’t,’ she answered, still in that faintly breathless voice. ‘I just thought…’
‘Yes?’ His voice rang out flatly and he saw her flinch.
‘That you might have given me some kind of warning.’
‘You mean, like you did when you walked away from our marriage?’
‘Rocco—’
‘Or when your lawyer sent me those papers last week?’ he continued relentlessly. ‘You didn’t even do me the courtesy of a phone call to let me know you were about to file for divorce, did you, Nicole? Which naturally led me to the conclusion that you were the kind of woman who favoured surprises. So here I am,’ he finished softly. ‘Your big surprise.’
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