The Bitter Price Of Love

by Amanda Browning

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she told him, shifting uneasily in her seat. She had the distinct feeling that the ground had just been swept out from under her, but she still couldn’t see the hole.

  His teeth flashed as he grinned briefly. ‘Selective ignorance isn’t going to save you. You’re running up one hell of a bill. You’d better start thinking how you intend to pay it.’

  She refused to understand, knowing she was already on very shaky ground. He was talking in riddles, and she didn’t know if she dared try to work them out, for fear of reading into them something which wasn’t there. In an attempt to ignore him, she stared fixedly out of the window, and that was how, an hour later, she first saw the building they were making for.

  Reba sat up straighter as they sped through the entrance, the sign printed on her brain. ‘This is the Chamberlain Hospital,’ she pronounced faintly, turning troubled eyes on her silent companion. ‘What are we doing here?’

  ‘Visiting,’ he informed her drily as the car drew to a halt before the entrance. ‘Are you going to behave, or will I have to send for restraints?’

  She was too numbed by shock to fight. ‘I’ll behave,’ she promised, while her brain began to work overtime. Why this hospital? Why the very one her mother would have been booked into if only Hunter had kept his part of the bargain? Could it be sheer coincidence, or…? What did it all mean? Docilely she followed him into the antiseptic precincts, acknowledging that he seemed to know his way about.

  ‘Is it a relative of yours we’re visiting?’ Reba asked as they proceeded up to the top floor.

  Hunter led the way along a corridor until he stopped before one room. ‘I certainly look upon her as a relative,’ he confirmed, holding open the door for her to precede him inside. ‘After you,’ he said politely, and with a wary look she stepped inside.

  The closing of the door behind her went unnoticed as she stared dumbfounded at the woman in the bed. ‘Mum!’

  Harriet Wyeth glanced up from the magazine she was reading and held out her arms, smiling as her daughter rushed into them. ‘Reba! I wasn’t expecting you until later.’

  After assuring herself that her mother was real and not a figment of her imagination, Reba pushed herself free, wiping away emotional tears as she stared at the very last person she had expected to see. ‘I wasn’t expecting you at all! What are you doing here? How did you get here? Where’s Maggie?’ The questions flowed off her tongue, making Harriet laugh.

  ‘Silly, you know what I’m doing here. As for how, Hunter arranged it all. He flew over to get me in his own plane two days ago. He brought his cousin Lucy with him, and she’s staying with Maggie and Christopher until after the operation.’

  Reba felt peculiarly light-headed. ‘Hunter arranged it?’ she queried faintly, automatically looking around for him, but finding that he hadn’t joined her in the room. ‘Mum, I don’t understand!’

  Harriet patted her hand. ‘Of course not. It’s a surprise. He told me how you had asked him to handle the financial side of things, but as he knew how hard you had had to work to raise the money, he thought it would be a nice surprise to bring me over himself and relieve you of any more worry. After all, he is almost family.’

  Reba wondered if she might have gone mad without realising it. ‘Family?’ she parroted, while all she could think of was that Hunter knew. He knew everything. And if her mother was here, then that could only mean he had arranged for the money to be paid. Which meant all this had happened before she went to see him today. So what had that confrontation in the board-room been all about?

  Into all these chaotic thoughts, her mother’s soothing voice penetrated like a lancet. ‘Well, you are going to marry him, so that makes him family. I’m so pleased. I really like him, darling. He told me how worried you were and that he wanted to take the burden off your shoulders, and of course I couldn’t argue with that. I could see that he loves you very much.’

  Only one sentence really got through, and Reba felt her colour come and go. ‘Hunter told you we were going to be married?’

  Harriet laughed reminiscently. ‘He had to introduce himself, darling. How else could I believe who he was? He told me he was Eliot’s cousin, and that you broke off your engagement because the pair of you took one look at each other and fell in love. So romantic!’

  Reba hardly knew what to think. ‘Hunter said all that, and you believed him?’

  Her mother’s smile faded slowly. ‘Shouldn’t I have done? Isn’t it true? Don’t you love him?’

  Seeing the change her careless words had wrought, Reba could only speak the truth. ‘Oh, yes, I love him, Mum,’ she admitted, although she couldn’t go on and confirm the marriage.

  Mrs Wyeth didn’t think it necessary. ‘Well, that’s all right then. Maggie would have been most upset. She’s looking forward to being your bridesmaid.’

  It was like drowning, Reba decided. She felt helpless in the pull of a current stronger than herself. Either Hunter was acting some monstrous lie, or he meant every word of it. She couldn’t believe he would do the former, and yet the latter seemed even more incredible. It would be a miracle if he really loved her, and yet a small voice which wouldn’t be ignored asked why he would have done it if he didn’t.

  Lord, she wanted to believe, but how could she, after all she had done? Yet nothing else made any sense.

  For the rest of the visit she was only half concentrating on what her mother said, and when she finally said she had to go, promising to return later, her thoughts were already leaping ahead to her meeting with Hunter. He wasn’t in the corridor, and she went in search of him with a fast-beating heart. However, he wasn’t in the building, and when she got to where the limousine was parked, she discovered that he wasn’t there either. It was the chauffeur who filled in the blanks.

  ‘Mr Jamieson left, miss.’

  ‘Left?’ It was the very last thing she was expecting, and it stunned her.

  ‘Yes, miss. He had the helicopter come and collect him. But he left you a message.’

  Her heart sank. She had a dreadful feeling that she knew what it was going to say. ‘OK, give it to me,’ she said, squaring her shoulders.

  ‘He said to tell you if you wanted to see him, you’d know where to find him. If not, I was to take you back to town.’

  Reba’s heart took off at a gallop. She had been expecting to hear goodbye, but this was something different. But what did he mean, she would know where to find him? She didn’t know where he lived, for heaven’s sake! Except the island, and he surely couldn’t mean there. Or the yacht. Yacht? Inspiration made her gasp.

  She turned to the waiting chauffeur. ‘Do you know a place called Backbay Marine?’

  ‘The company? It’s down the coast, miss.’

  Bingo. Reba opened the front passenger door and prepared to climb in. ‘Take me there, please.’

  The chauffeur came to attention. ‘Yes, miss, but it will take some considerable time,’ he warned.

  Reba smiled. ‘I don’t care how long it takes, just so long as I get there,’ she said, knowing she was going to the right place, and hoping against hope that she knew how it was all going to end.

  She had had the chauffeur drop her off outside the office of the boatyard. It was deserted, the drive having taken them beyond working hours, but she could hear the sound of hammering, so she knew that someone was about. It was a beautiful evening, still very hot, but there was a refreshing breeze coming off the river. She followed the curve of it as she made for the sound, and, as she rounded the side of a building, she saw Hunter perched on top of a ladder, nailing new shingles on the roof of a shed. He had changed clothes, and looked more like the man she remembered, dressed solely in cut-offs, the rest of his quite magnificent body glistening in the sun.

  She had thought her arrival had gone unnoticed, but Hunter must have heard her approach, for as she stopped beneath him he ceased hammering and looked down at her.

  ‘What took you so long?’ he
mocked, but there was a light in his eyes which set her heart tripping.

  She let her bag drop to the ground, and put her hands on her hips. ‘I don’t keep a helicopter in my handbag!’

  ‘Well, now, that means you’re either going to have to save up all your pennies and buy your own, or marry a man who already has one,’ Hunter declared as he descended agilely to the ground and stood before her.

  ‘According to my mother, I’m already going to. Unless you lied,’ she challenged, and then caught her breath as he reached out a finger to wipe away the drip of perspiration which was trailing a path down towards the valley between her breasts.

  ‘I wouldn’t lie to your mother,’ he murmured, licking the salty moisture from his finger, yet never taking his blue gaze from hers. Her stomach tightened on a painful wave of desire.

  ‘Didn’t you think of asking me first?’

  ‘Nope. You’re going to marry me, tiger-eyes, make no mistake about that. Fancy a beer?’

  Bemused, she nodded, and climbed up on to the porch while he disappeared inside the shed. He returned with two misted bottles. Tossing one over to her, he propped himself on the rail and took a long swallow. She found herself following the movement of his throat with sensual pleasure, and forgot to breathe.

  ‘So, you found me. Have much trouble?’

  Jolted back to awareness, Reba rolled the bottle between her hands, suddenly nervous now that she was here facing him. A glance at his face showed that he had been aware of her watching him, and had enjoyed it as much as she had. That openly sensual acknowledgement made her tremble, but not from fear. It was hard to frame intelligent thought.

  ‘Not when I thought about it. But why did you go? You must have known I’d want to speak to you.’

  Hunter uttered a soft laugh. ‘Because I was human enough to want you to come after me. And here you are.’

  ‘Yes, here I am,’ Reba agreed softly.

  He took another mouthful of beer. ‘How is your mother?’

  Reba raised a diffident shoulder. ‘She’s fine. She——’ She broke off abruptly, dragging a hand through her hair. ‘Hunter, this is ridiculous! Why didn’t you tell me what you’d done, instead of staging that charade in the board-room?’

  ‘I was going to. In the board-room, when you told me why you needed the money,’ he returned levelly, quirking an eyebrow and bringing colour to her cheeks.

  ‘But…But you already knew why,’ Reba protested.

  A nerve jerked in his jaw. ‘Hard as it may be to believe, tiger-eyes, I had this burning need to have you trust me enough to tell me yourself!’ he said tightly, and she gained some idea then how her silence must have hurt him.

  ‘You don’t understand. It wasn’t my secret to tell.’ She pressed trembling lips together. ‘I do trust you, Hunter. I always have.’

  His head went back, breath exploding from him in a sigh. ‘You have a hell of a way of showing it!’

  She swallowed back painful tears. ‘My mother is a proud woman. I couldn’t break her trust. I’m sorry. I had no choice.’

  Hunter looked at her then, blue eyes softening wryly. ‘No. You had no choice. It was thinking that you had which sent me into hell, and hearing that you hadn’t which brought me out again.’

  The admission made her start. ‘I don’t understand,’ she whispered.

  Hunter set his unfinished beer aside and did the same with hers. Then he cupped her face in his hands. ‘You told Eliot you had no choice but to agree to marry him. That was when I stopped being angry and started doing some thinking—something which, at the time, you very cleverly made sure I wouldn’t do. Why had you had no choice? I asked myself. Because you believed Eliot had the one thing I didn’t have—money. Yet, right up until that last day, money wasn’t important to you. I’d been around women who only wanted me for my money long enough to tell the difference. When you claimed to be a gold-digger, my emotions got in the way of clear thinking. I couldn’t believe I could have been so wrong about you.

  ‘Then I overheard you and Eliot, and I began to wonder if I hadn’t been right all the time. I got the idea that perhaps you didn’t want money so much as need it. I remembered things you’d told me, like that your mother had been ill. It took me umpteen telephone calls and several hellish days to figure out just what was going on, but I know now, and I’m not likely to forget it in a hurry.’

  Her hands rose to cover his, her faint smile coming and going. ‘And what did you figure out?’

  Briefly his lips came down and brushed over hers. ‘Firstly, that I loved you, and always had. Secondly, that if I ever had cause to do something which could hurt you, then I’d do my very best to make you hate me, and spare you the pain.’

  So he really did know. Her eyes became molten at the memory. ‘Please believe me, I didn’t want to do it, but it seemed the only way.’

  His forehead came to rest on hers, and his eyes closed. ‘You should have told me, Reba,’ he growled, and she heard the pain, and her hand went to his nape in an attempt to ease his stress.

  ‘I wanted to. Oh, how I wanted to! But how could I, when I didn’t think you could help? Everything went wrong so quickly. Mum got worse. It had to be now or never. I couldn’t let her die, so it had to be you I gave up.’ It was impossible to hide her own despair, and Hunter groaned in understanding as a sob escaped her.

  ‘Don’t cry, tiger-eyes, that tears me apart. I was no help to you, was I? I should have told you who I was in the beginning. This need never have happened if I hadn’t been so paranoid about wanting to be loved for myself and not my money.’

  After all the mistakes, she wouldn’t have him blaming himself. ‘We were both vulnerable, but it’s over now, thanks to you,’ she whispered.

  ‘Your mother will have the operation she needs, and you and I will have each other. That’s the important thing,’ he responded gruffly.

  ‘Thank you for not telling her where the money came from. I was so worried that if she knew she would refuse to accept it.’

  Hunter laughed wryly. ‘I’d figured that out. You’re not your mother’s daughter for nothing. She should be proud of you.’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m not proud of a lot of the things I’ve done. I made such a mess of it. But I do love you, Hunter. Not because of the money, or anything else. I love you because I can’t help myself. It’s always been you. Only you.’

  Hunter kissed her then, taking the love from her lips and giving it back with a depth of passion which rocked them where they stood. His hands strained her to him, and she could feel the tremors go through his body as the tension which they had lived under for so long finally gave way. When he released her enough to look down at her, she found herself gazing deeply into eyes which were no longer shuttered. It was all there for her to see, and she felt emotion threaten to overwhelm her. She was home—really home at last!

  eISBN 978-14592-7604-8

  THE BITTER PRICE OF LOVE

  First North American Publication 1996.

  Copyright © 1995 by Amanda Browning.

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

  All characters In this book have no existence outside the Imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

  ® and TM are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.
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  Printed in U.S.A.