Married By Christmas

by Carole Mortimer

  Something new, Lilli—and if your eyes had been blue instead of green it could have been something blue too! Please wear it for me today.

  Yours, Patrick.

  ‘Lilli...!’ her father breathed dazedly, still staring at the perfection of the necklace.

  She swallowed hard, carefully replacing the card in the box before releasing the necklace and holding it out to her father. ‘Would you help me put it on, Daddy?’ She turned around, carefully lifting up her hair so that he could secure the catch. ‘We’ll have to hurry, Daddy,’ she encouraged as he made no effort to do so. ‘The car is waiting outside.’

  ‘I still can’t believe—Lilli, you’re my little girl, and—’

  ‘Please, Daddy.’ Her own voice quivered with emotion. ‘Put the necklace on and let’s just go!’ Before she totally destroyed the work of the last hour and began to cry.

  He did so with slightly shaking fingers, careful not to ruffle her hair. ‘Absolutely incredible,’ her father said huskily as he stepped back to look at her.

  Lilli gave a tight smile, not bothering to glance in the hall mirror as they walked out to the car. ‘Only the best for Patrick. He would hardly give his future wife anything less.’

  ‘I was referring to you, not the necklace,’ her father gently rebuked. ‘But then, you are the best; those jewels only enhance what is already perfection.’

  She laughed. ‘I think you may be slightly biased, Daddy!’

  ‘I think Patrick Devlin is a very lucky man,’ he stated. ‘Take a deep breath before we go outside, Lilli,’ he warned as he held her arm. ‘I think half the world’s press is gathered outside to snap a photograph of Patrick Devlin’s bride!’

  Which certainly wasn’t an understatement!

  A barrage of flashing cameras and intrusive microphones were pointed at the two of them as soon as they stepped outside into what was a crisply cold but bright, sunny December day. Questions were flung at them thick and fast, questions Lilli chose to ignore as she and her father hurried to the waiting car. The press had been hounding her continuously since the announcement of the wedding had appeared in the newspaper, and the wedding day itself had been sure to engender this excess of interest.

  It was all so ridiculous to Lilli. Didn’t these people have a war or something to write about and fill their newspapers with? This interest in what was, after all, just another society wedding, albeit with one of the principal players possibly being one of the richest men in England, seemed rather obscene to Lilli, and—

  She was half in the car and half out of it when, her face paling, she caught sight of a familiar face amongst the crowd.

  Andy...

  She shook her head in denial of her imaginings. It couldn’t have been Andy. Not here; this was the last place he would ever be seen. The only place she wanted to see him was in a courtroom, in the dock!

  ‘Lilli...? Her father was waiting to get into the car beside her. ‘What is it?’ He saw her ashen cheeks.

  ‘Nothing.’ She turned to give him a glowing smile, the cameras clicking anew at what she supposed must look like the blushing bride on her way to her wedding. ‘We’ll be late if we don’t go now,’ she encouraged.

  Her father looked as if he was about to add something to that, but at her determined expression he seemed to change his mind.

  She had made her decision last week; there would be no last-minute nerves, no change of plan. That glimpse of someone she had thought looked a little like Andy had shaken her a little, but that was all...

  ‘If I don’t have the chance to tell you so again, you look absolutely beautiful,’ Patrick whispered to her as they awaited the arrival of their guests to the private reception her father had organised at the Bennett Hotel.

  Lilli barely glanced at him. She was almost afraid to. Half an hour ago she had married this man, was now his wife—and she had never been so scared of anything in her life before! In fact, she couldn’t ever remember feeling scared before at all.

  But Patrick had seemed like a remote stranger when they’d met at the registry office, making Lilli all too aware that that was exactly what he was!

  Brides who had known their groom for years, and were secure in mutually expressed love, still had wedding-day nerves over the rightness of what they were doing; how much deeper, in the circumstances, was her own trepidation?

  Just looking at the man who was now her husband was part of her panic. How on earth had she ever thought she could spend the rest of her life with this man? He was as good-looking as the devil, cool as ice, didn’t love her, and had assured her he never would. God, this was—

  ‘Gerry, when our guests arrive, greet them for us and assure them we will be with them shortly.’ Patrick spoke quietly to his sister even as he grasped Lilli’s arm.

  Lilli’s father frowned at him; the four of them had been the first to arrive at the reception room. ‘Where are the two of you going?’

  Patrick’s hand was firm on Lilli’s elbow as he led her away. ‘Upstairs to our suite so that I can kiss my bride in private,’ he told the other man grimly.

  ‘But—’

  ‘Let them go, Richard,’ Gerry advised, her hand resting gently on his arm.

  Lilli was shaking so badly now she could barely walk, the thought of actually being alone with Patrick sending her into a complete panic. This was real. Far, far too real, as the warmth of Patrick’s guiding hand on her arm told her all too forcefully. It had seemed such a simple decision to make—the only decision she could make in the circumstances!—but the reality of it was all too much. She wanted to scream. Run away. To shout—

  ‘Not here,’ Patrick said suddenly, moving swiftly to swing her up into his arms.

  Much to the interest of all the other hotel guests who stood watching them, he strode purposefully through the lobby to the lifts, several indulgent smiles directed their way as people observed their hurried departure. It didn’t need two guesses to know what these people were thinking. But they were wrong! So very wrong...

  Patrick, literally kicked open the door to the suite he had arranged for them to stay in tonight, setting Lilli down once they were safely inside. She looked up at him with widely apprehensive eyes.

  ‘Now you can scream,’ he encouraged indulgently.

  Her breath left her with a shaky sigh. ‘It was that obvious?’

  ‘Only to me,’ he assured her. ‘I’m only surprised this didn’t happen earlier. You’ve been too controlled this last week—’

  ‘But I am controlled.’ She swung impatiently away from him, angry with herself because she didn’t seem able to stop shaking. ‘I’m just being very stupid now,’ she confessed self-disgustedly.

  ‘You’re being a twenty-one-year-old young lady who just made probably the biggest decision of her entire life.’ Patrick’s hands gently squeezed her shoulders as he turned her to face him. ‘But I promise you I’ll treat you well. That I’ll try to curb this urge I have to dominate. I will honour and cherish you,’ he added gruffly.

  But he wouldn’t love her; that omission was all too apparent to Lilli.

  ‘But it isn’t that, is it...?’ Patrick said slowly, studying her closely. ‘Tell me what it is, Lilli?’

  She couldn’t possibly tell him how she felt, that as she’d looked at him earlier as they’d made their wedding vows to each other she had known that she, at least, meant every word. She wasn’t falling in love with him—she had already done so!

  There was absolutely no doubt in her mind that she loved Patrick. It was nothing like what she had felt for Andy, was so much more intense, so—Oh, God, Andy... Had it been him she had seen earlier, or just someone that looked very like him?

  Patrick shook her gently as she frowned. ‘What is it, Lilli?’ There was an edge of urgency to his voice now.

  ‘I thought—You’re going to think I’m imagining things now. But I—I thought I saw Andy outside the house earlier.’ She frowned again up at Patrick as he released her abruptly, his expression serious now.
‘I told you it was stupid—’

  ‘Not at all,’ Patrick barked. ‘I have it on good authority that Brewster is back in London.’

  She swallowed hard. ‘He is?’ She suddenly felt very sick. After what Andy had done to her father, and to her, she had no wish for him ever to come near her again. But with Patrick’s confirmation that he was in London she was even more convinced that it had been Andy she’d seen outside the house...

  Why? What had he been doing there? What had he hoped to achieve by being outside her father’s house on her wedding day to another man?

  ‘It’s a little late for second thoughts, Lilli.’ Patrick was watching her closely. ‘You’re my wife now.’

  With all that entailed. He owned her now; it was there in every arrogant inch of his tensely held body. Minutes ago, his gentleness and understanding drawing her close to him, she had almost been tempted to tell him how stupid she had been, that she was in love with him! Thank God she hadn’t. She was a Devlin possession, a beautiful trophy to display on his arm, a wife with none of the complications of love involved.

  She nodded in cool agreement. ‘Our guests will have arrived downstairs.’

  ‘You feel up to meeting them now?’

  ‘Don’t worry, Patrick, I won’t embarrass you. My nerves simply got the better of me for a moment. It won’t happen again.’

  ‘No,’ Patrick finally said slowly. ‘I don’t believe it will.’

  Regret...? Or perhaps she had just imagined that particular emotion in his voice; the last thing he wanted was an emotional child for a wife. Her loss of control wouldn’t happen again. After all, he had just assured her he would treat her well! He couldn’t possibly realise that, loving him as she did, there were cruel things he could do to her...

  And he must never know!

  ‘We made a bargain, Patrick,’ she told him distantly. ‘And, like you, I never break my word once it’s given.’

  His expression hardened. ‘I’m glad to hear it. Now, as you’ve already pointed out, our guests will be waiting.’ He indicated she should precede him out of the suite, walking this time; the two of them were physically apart as well as emotionally.

  That moment of gentleness and understanding was well and truly over, and for the next three hours Lilli didn’t have the time even to think, concentrating on their guests, portraying the image that she and Patrick were a golden couple. There was no doubting they succeeded; family and friends smiled at them indulgently every time Lilli glanced around the large table where they all sat eating their meal. No doubt the few members of her family present thought she was very fortunate to have married someone as eligible as Patrick, especially after the ‘Andy incident’, as most of them referred to her previous engagement. Once the embezzlement story hit the headlines, perhaps some of them would draw their own conclusions, but for the moment everyone was obviously enjoying themselves.

  Except, Lilli noticed, the late arrival standing in the doorway looking at the gathering with contemptuous blue eyes...

  She didn’t recognise the woman, so she could only assume she was a guest of Patrick’s. A very beautiful guest, Lilli acknowledged with a stab of jealousy. Tall and blonde, with ice-blue eyes, she stood almost six feet tall, with the slender elegance of a model about to make an entrance onto the catwalk.

  That icy blue gaze met Lilli’s puzzled one, the woman’s red pouting mouth twisting contemptuously as her hard eyes swept critically over Lilli—and obviously found her wanting—before passing on to Patrick. Now the blue eyes weren’t so icy; in fact, they became positively heated, seeming to devour him at a glance!

  Lilli felt herself bridle indignantly. How dared this woman—whoever she was—come here and look at her husband in that way? Patrick had told her, several times, that there had been no women in his life since his marriage ended, but the way this woman was looking at him seemed to tell a very different story!

  Lilli’s indignation rose. If she belonged to Patrick now, then he also belonged to her, and women from his past had no place at their wedding reception.

  She turned to him sharply. ‘Patrick—’

  ‘My God...!’ he exclaimed even as she spoke, the intensity of the blonde woman’s stare somehow seeming to have made him aware of her presence in the doorway, his face set grimly, a nerve pulsing in his jaw. ‘What the hell...?’ he ground out disbelievingly.

  Lilli blinked at him, unsure of his mood. She had seen him mocking, contemptuous, coldly angry, passionately aroused, even gently teasing, but she had no idea what emotion he was feeling as he took in the woman in the doorway. Every muscle in his body seemed to be tensed, and his fingers looked in danger of snapping the slender stem of the champagne glass he held.

  ‘Patrick...?’ Lilli prompted uncertainly now.

  His glass landed with a thump on the table-top as he stood up abruptly, unseeing as he looked down at her. ‘I’ll be back in a few minutes,’ he grated, turning to leave.

  Lilli didn’t need to be told he was going to the woman across the room, a woman he obviously knew very well if that blaze of awareness in the woman’s eyes as she looked at him had been anything to go by! He couldn’t do this to her, not at their wedding reception!

  ‘Let him go, Lilli,’ his sister advised quietly as Lilli would have reached out and stopped his departure. Gerry was looking across the room at the blond woman too now.

  Lilli’s mouth tightened resentfully, both at Gerry’s intervention and Patrick’s powerful strides across the room towards the beautiful woman. Her eyes flashed deeply green as she turned to the woman who was now her sister-in-law. ‘You know that woman?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Gerry’s mouth twisted contemptuously, although her gaze was soft as she looked at Lilli. ‘I’m hardly likely to forget the woman who made Patrick into the hardened cynic he is today!’

  Sanchia!

  The beautiful woman in the doorway, the woman who had looked at Patrick so possessively, was his ex-wife? Here? Now?

  Lilli turned sharply, just in time to see Sanchia smile seductively up at Patrick, before he took a firm hold of her arm and forcefully escorted her from the room.

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘GERRY...? What the hell is she doing here?’ Lilli’s father hissed agitatedly.

  Lilli turned to him. ‘You know Patrick’s ex-wife too?’

  ‘Of course. Your mother and I were part of that crowd five years ago,’ he reminded her.

  Before her mother’s illness became such that it was impossible for her to go anywhere...

  ‘Where are you going, Lilli?’ Her father’s hand on her arm restrained her as she stood up.

  Her expression was calm, a smile curving her lips—even if the green of her eyes spat fire. ‘I’m going to join my bridegroom,’ she told him, releasing her arm. ‘Don’t worry, Daddy.’ Her smile was wry now at his expression of panic. ‘I can assure you, I intend it to be a civilised meeting.’

  Gerry grimaced. ‘Sanchia isn’t known for her civility!’

  Lilli gave a genuinely warm smile as she bent down to answer the other woman. ‘I’ll let you into a secret, Gerry,’ she murmured. ‘Neither am I when I’m pushed into a corner!’ She straightened, looking towards the door through which Patrick had left so hastily minutes earlier. ‘And I’ve just been pushed,’ she muttered as she turned to move determinedly towards that door.

  Gerry touched her arm lightly as she passed her. ‘Just watch out for the claws,’ she warned.

  Lilli nodded her thanks. ‘I’ll do that.’

  It wasn’t difficult to locate Patrick and Sanchia once she was out in the corridor, the sound of raised voices came from a room a little further down the hallway, Patrick’s icily calm, the female voice—Sanchia’s—raised to the point of hysteria.

  The claws Gerry had warned Lilli about were raised in the direction of Patrick’s face as Lilli silently entered the room, Patrick’s hands on the other woman’s wrists to prevent her nails actually making contact with his cheeks.


  ‘Dear, dear, dear,’ Lilli murmured mockingly as she closed the door firmly behind her. ‘Do I take it this isn’t a happy reunion?’

  The two people already in the room were frozen as if in a tableau. Both turned to face Lilli as she calmly stood looking at them, dark brows raised questioningly. Patrick looked far from pleased at the interruption, but Sanchia slowly lowered her hands, her icy blue eyes suddenly speculative as she looked Lilli up and down.

  ‘The bride,’ she drawled derisively.

  Lilli steadily met the other woman’s contemptuous glare. ‘And the ex-bride,’ she returned just as scathingly, knowing she had scored a direct hit as Sanchia’s mouth tightened furiously. ‘Patrick, our guests are waiting,’ Lilli reminded him lightly.

  Sanchia released her arms from Patrick’s steely grip, eyes blazing. ‘Unless he’s changed a great deal—which I very much doubt!—Patrick doesn’t respond well to orders!’ The accent to her English was slightly more noticeable in this longer speech.

  Green eyes met icy blue. ‘Patrick hasn’t changed. In any way,’ Lilli added pointedly. ‘Darling?’ she prompted again.

  He couldn’t let her down now. He just couldn’t! If he did, their marriage was over before it had even begun. No matter what his feelings towards Sanchia—and Lilli really had no idea what they were, or indeed about the other woman’s towards him; Sanchia had obviously felt strongly enough about something, possibly Patrick, to have turned up here today!—it was Lilli he was married to now. And she had married him. For better or for worse.

  To her relief Patrick walked determinedly to her side, his expression grim as his arm moved possessively about her waist. ‘As I’ve told you, Sanchia—’ he looked at his former wife resolutely ‘—there’s no place for you here.’

  ‘This—this child—’ Sanchia looked at Lilli scornfully ‘—could never take my place in your life! You need a real woman, Patrick—and I was always that.’