by Helen Brooks
'Quit wondering.' As his mouth came down hard on hers she realised that there was more than a touch of anger in the kiss—almost a fierceness that bruised and punished, but it didn't seem to make any difference to her traitorous body, which leapt into immediate and vibrant life.
In fact, the only time she was alive, fully and completely alive, was around him, she realised helplessly as he ravaged her mouth with a raw desire that was shockingly pleasurable. His hands firm in the small of her back, he moulded her into the length of him and shaped her against his arousal so that the embrace was almost like an act of physical possession.
It should have shocked her, she knew that, but, instead of anger or self-disgust at her wanton response to his aggressive domination, she gloried in it, gloried in the fact that she could make him want her so badly.
When he released her they were both breathing heavily, and as she touched a finger to her swollen lips his eyes followed the gesture, self-contempt turning his eyes black. 'I'm sorry, Katie; I didn't mean to hurt you,' he said thickly as he turned and walked to the doorway.
'Carlton?' Her voice stopped him as he was about to leave. 'I didn't mean—I haven't met anyone.'
He turned to face her and nodded slowly, his face expressionless now and his eyes veiled. 'Good.' His eyes stroked over her face, flushed and warm, and over the tousled silk of her hair. 'Because I don't share what's mine, Katie, not now, not ever. And I would kill anyone who tried.' She stared at him, her eyes wide. 'Does that answer your question? And skip the coffee; it's getting late. I'll see you tomorrow.'
Once Easter had come and gone and she no longer had to work each day, Katie found that she was dividing her time between her own house and Carlton's most of the time. His limitless wealth had smoothed the arrangements for the wedding like magic in spite of the comparative haste.
The church was booked and she had chosen her dress— a fairy-tale concoction of ivory silk and old lace over a wide hooped skirt and tiny fitted bodice. The staff of the madly expensive hotel where Carlton had booked the reception for over two hundred guests had fallen over themselves in an ingratiating desire to satisfy his every wish, and even Jennifer's dress—her sister was her only bridesmaid—was hanging ready and waiting in her wardrobe at home.
The fact that all that side of things was taken care of had left Katie free to organise some changes at Carlton's home—a suggestion that had come from the man himself.
Since that night when David had come home Carlton had maintained a cool, almost distant approach to her when they were alone that Katie didn't understand. In company he was the perfect fiancé—charming, attentive and always ready to please—but when they were alone… Katie wrinkled her brow as she smoothed the last fold out of the new curtains in the room that was to be their bedroom. He was reserved, wary even. Always holding himself in check.
'Hi.' She turned to see Joseph in the doorway. Carlton had had a chair-lift installed in the early days of Joseph's accident so that he was able to move about the house freely. 'Maisie says lunch will be ready in twenty minutes.'
'Lovely.' She smiled warmly at Joseph. The more she had seen of Carlton's brother, the more she liked him, and the two had found that an easy, friendly relationship had developed between them almost without their realising it.
Maisie she found harder to communicate with. The girl was an excellent housekeeper but painfully shy and the only person she really seemed to open up to was Carlton, a fact which Katie had to admit, in the odd moment of self-analysis, she didn't like. And the way he was with Maisie— gentle, protective even… She brushed the thought aside as Joseph wheeled his chair into the room.
'What does Carlton think to all this, then?' he asked cheerfully as he glanced round the room that had been Carlton's. He had been sleeping in one of the spare bedrooms while she redecorated this one. 'Does the master approve?' he asked cheekily.
'Uh-huh.' She smiled down at the face that was so like her fiancé's, and waved her hand expansively at the dusky grey curtains and carpet, and deep scarlet duvet that covered the large four-poster bed. 'It was a compromise.'
'Bodes well for the future.' She nodded but the shadow that passed over her face wasn't lost on him. 'Anything wrong, Katie?' he asked casually as he wheeled his chair across to the large full-length window and looked out into the garden, lit with soft May sunshine.
'Not really, it's just that—' She hesitated, unsure of how much to say. Although she and Joseph got on well he was still Carlton's brother and fiercely loyal. She didn't want him to think that she was criticising Carlton behind his back. 'He's a very private person, isn't he?' she murmured quietly. 'It's hard to know what he's thinking.'
'Persevere.' There was a note in Joseph's voice that made her join him at the window and as she sat on the carpet at his side he looked down at her, his face open and direct. 'The last thirteen years or so haven't been easy for him, Katie, looking after this house, the business, being father and mother to me.' He hesitated, then continued slowly and quietly as though he found his thoughts difficult to express.
'I went through a bad patch after the accident. I was just a kid, Mum and Dad were gone and I couldn't bear to think I'd never walk again, that I was a cripple for life.' The last few words were full of pain and she put out a hand to him, her eyes soft. 'At the time I took all the care and love Carlton gave me as my right; kids can be very selfish…' He paused, his expression reflective.
'Carlton dedicated himself to me in those early days, gave me the will to fight, to go on, and I slowly came to terms with it all. It was a long time later that I realised just what he'd had to sacrifice too.'
'He'd been involved with a girl, Penny, at the time of the accident They'd been going to get married. Oh, it wasn't official—' he flapped a hand '—nothing like that but he'd told me and they'd started to make plans.'
'Well, like I said, he put in a lot of time with me in the early days and Penny began to object A helpless little kid brother wasn't her idea of the best start in the world to married life. She made his life hell for a time, trying to make him choose between what she saw as a millstone round his neck and herself, and then one day he found her in bed with someone else and that was that.'
He eyed her warily and she forced herself to keep her face blank and betray none of the pain that had hit her like a ton of bricks. 'It hit him hard—he's the original still waters that run deep—but he'd never talk about it after he told me what had happened. But from that point—' He paused abruptly. 'Well, he played the field, I guess. You know that.'
'Yes.' It hurt It hurt far, far more than she would have thought possible and everything in her wanted to ask him if he thought Carlton still loved his first love, but she couldn't She was too frightened of what the answer might be.
'And then he met you.' Joseph looked up at her as she rose slowly to her feet. 'And I could see straight away you were the real thing.'
'Could you?' For a moment she almost told him—told him that this whole thing was a sham and that Carlton was merely acting a part, but she bit back the words before they passed her lips.
'Sure.' He grinned as she forced a smile to her face. 'The way he looks at you, his voice when he speaks your name—I never thought to see him like this but, like I said, still waters run deep. But it's difficult for him to open up, Katie; he's always been like that, but more so after Penny. Don't give up on him.'
She nodded blindly. Well, she'd brought this on herself; she should never have started the conversation in the first place. But oh—she found she was gritting her teeth as she followed Joseph out of the room to go downstairs for lunch—why couldn't she have affected him the way this Penny had?
The thought shocked her and she immediately tried to explain it away. Of course it would be better if he had some feeling for her—they were going to be married for goodness' sake. That was all she wanted, just some sort of normal human warmth. She didn't love him and she knew he didn't love her but they were going to commit a good part of their liv
es to each other. It was only natural that she wanted some solid basis to build on, wasn't it?
She continued to talk to herself all the way downstairs and into the kitchen where the three of them ate at lunch-time at the huge wooden kitchen table that Maisie kept scrubbed snow-white.
Maisie glanced up as they entered, her beautiful velvety brown eyes lowering swiftly as she quickly began to place the cold meat, jacket potatoes and salad on to the table. For the hundredth time since she had first come into this house Katie found herself wondering about the relationship between Carlton and his housekeeper.
She couldn't fault Maisie. The girl was sweet and quiet and almost painfully timid and yet there was something… Something in those big brown eyes that she couldn't quite fathom. And Carlton was…different with her. Whereas Joseph would tease and chaff Maisie he always managed to keep her at a distance too, but Carlton… He was defensive, protective even.
The thoughts that had been forming for weeks solidified. She wasn't imagining it, she wasn't. But she couldn't ask him about it. Her wedding was only three weeks away and yet she couldn't really talk to the man she was marrying. The urge to scream and shout at the tangle she had made of her life was overwhelmingly fierce but she bit it back painfully.
By the time she arrived home later that afternoon the tension had culminated in a pounding headache at the back of her eyes. Carlton was taking her out to dinner that night and she had never felt less like seeing him. There was such a mixture of emotions swirling about in her head that she couldn't identify just one and yet she knew that if he cancelled the evening she would be unbearably disappointed.
'You look tired.' Her father raised his head as she glanced into his room where he was sitting reading a book.
He was much better although he still tired easily and the fact that he hadn't insisted on returning to his old room upstairs before now told Katie that he was aware of his weakness. 'Doing too much, no doubt, just like your mother.'
He had taken to mentioning his wife more and more in the last few weeks and Katie loved it. The fact that she could talk about her mother with him, for the first time since she had died, was beginning to ease the ache in her heart that always accompanied thoughts of the woman she had loved so much.
'I'm OK.' She walked over and bent to kiss him and he raised his face to meet hers. It had happened several times now but it always stunned her. He had changed and mellowed since his illness, she thought. He wouldn't thank her for saying so but it was true. She sat a while with him, discussing her day and making something out of nothing to entertain him, and then wandered upstairs to shower and change.
At eight, when she heard Carlton's voice downstairs after an imperious ring of the doorbell, she was ready to join him. After the snow and blizzards of March May had entered as gently as a lamb and the night was warm and soft, the scent of summer hanging heavy in the air. He had warned her that he would be taking her to a nightclub so she had dressed accordingly in a chic sleeveless cocktail dress in midnight-blue with a short silky jacket that she had spent hours finding a few days before. It had cost the earth, but the expert cut of the material and the much needed confidence the dress gave her was worth every penny, and now she stared at her reflection in the mirror anxiously.
She'd left her hair loose to wave in soft tendrils about her shoulders, and had used just a smudge of eyeshadow to enhance her eyes, which now stared back at her, wide and speckled with light beneath fine, arched brows. She wished she looked older. She frowned at the artless reflection irritably. Older and sophisticated and more… More cosmopolitan.
She grimaced at her thoughts, snatched up her bag from the chair and left the room quickly, running down the stairs on light feet.
'Hi.' It had only been twenty-four hours since she had seen Carlton last but as she entered her father's room and he turned towards her, drawing her into him with a casual arm round her waist and kissing her lightly—for her father's benefit, no doubt, she thought testily—her senses went haywire. Her response to him only intensified the feeling of vulnerability, of unworldliness she had felt in the bedroom and she didn't like it but…there was absolutely nothing she could do about it either.
'Hello.' She moved away from him as soon as he released her in the pretence of folding back the covers on her father's bed. 'You won't be late to bed, Dad?'
'Fuss, fuss, fuss.' David fixed her with hard, gimlet eyes, clearly annoyed at being treated like a child, and Carlton surveyed her through narrowed grey slits that told her he had recognised her manoeuvre and didn't like it. She stared back at them both as an unfamiliar recklessness snaked through her veins. Just at this moment in time—and she knew it wouldn't last—she didn't care about what either of them thought.
'Well?' She smiled with dazzling brightness at them both before settling her gaze on Carlton's dark face. 'Shall we go?'
'Of course.' She saw the narrowed glance he. gave her as they walked through the hall and realised, with a little thrill of gratification, that for once he wasn't quite sure where she was coining from. Her satisfaction at her little show of defiance ebbed drastically once they were in the car, however, and the magnetic pull of his big, powerful body took full sway over her senses.
'You look very beautiful tonight.' His voice was as cool and controlled as always but she caught a husky edge to it that had her glancing into his dark face. His expression was implacable and she could read nothing in it but as he looked back at her, just for a lightning moment, the brilliant intensity of his eyes made her breath catch in her throat.
Why did he want to marry her? she asked herself silently. Was it just because she fitted some preconceived idea he'd had of what his future wife, the mother of his children, had to be like?
She imagined the weight of his powerful body holding her prisoner, his hands and mouth moving over the softness of her feminine curves and felt weak with a strange mixture of excitement and fear and a hundred other emotions that flushed her skin and made her unutterably glad that he couldn't read her mind.
She had never thought, even in her wildest dreams, that she could feel this way about a man she didn't love but then Carlton was no ordinary man. The poor excuse for her annoying weakness was unsatisfactory and she knew it.
'You can return the compliment, you know.' His voice was mocking now, dry and sardonic, and that made it easier for her to respond in like vein.
'You want me to say you're beautiful?' she asked in tones of exaggerated surprise.
'It'd be a start.' He shot her a glance of derisive cynicism. 'Frankly, I'd take anything I could get at the moment.'
'I'm sure your ego is quite big enough as it is,' she said tartly. 'It doesn't need any help from me.'
'Oh, it does, Katie.' There was a rueful note in the deep voice now. 'I hate to disappoint you but I'm only human, you know.'
'You don't seem it half the time.' The moment the words had left her lips she regretted them, thinking that they would spoil the evening before it had started, but surprisingly he didn't fire back with a caustic rejoinder. Instead he pulled the car off the road into a quiet, gated pull-in and cut the engine as he turned to face her.
'Don't I?' His hand tilted her chin as he looked deep into her eyes. 'Then that is my misfortune, perhaps, because I assure you I am very human, Katie. I bleed when I'm cut and I feel pain as keenly as the next man.'
'But you wouldn't let anyone see like the next man might,' she whispered tremblingly as his hand moved to the nape of her neck and stroked the silky skin gently.
'Ah, now there you might be right…' As his mouth moved over hers in a kiss that was all-consuming she felt almost as though she was melting into the hard male body pressed against hers, but within moments she was free as he moved fully into his own seat and the big car growled into life.
'I've booked a table for half-past eight,' he said quietly, his tone so matter-of-fact that she could have kicked him.
He was an impossible man! She studied him from under her eyelashes as the c
ar moved away. Every time she thought she had a glimmer of insight into that hard, intimidatingly male mind he did or said something that completely destroyed the illusion. And it was beginning to hurt.
Her eyes narrowed as her subconscious tried to bring something to the surface even as her mind rejected the shadow of disquiet. She was in a situation that had been forced upon her; she had had no choice, and all she could do was make the best of things. That was all she was trying to do. She nodded mentally. Just get through as best she could.
Their entrance into the nightclub caused a discreet little ripple of commotion that was not lost on Katie and she knew it was all due to the tall, dark man at her side. The manager appeared at their elbow with a beaming smile as a waiter scurried ahead, almost clearing the way to a table for two in a prime position to one side of the small dance-floor.
She saw that a bottle of champagne was already waiting, nestled in an ice bucket; their chairs were pulled aside for them to be seated with an air of deferential humility and she could almost feel several pairs of female eyes boring into her back as she slid gratefully into her seat.
'OK?' His eyes were dark on her flushed face and she nodded quickly before forcing herself to glance around the room with studied nonchalance. What a place! And what an entrance! Was it always like this with him? For the first time the fact that he was something of a celebrity due to his enormous wealth and power fully registered on her senses. As her gaze travelled full circle she saw that the smoky grey eyes were still trained on her face, their dark depths intuitive. 'You'll have to get used to it, Katie,' he warned her quietly.
'Get used to it?' She didn't like it, this ability of his to read her mind, and there was more than a thread of antagonism in her voice. 'I don't know what you mean.'
'I think you do.' He leaned back in his chair slightly, his eyes speculative. 'There is great interest in my wealth, the significance of which is fuelled almost weekly by people like Jennifer writing their rubbish in the tabloids.' The deep voice was bitingly acidic. 'Now, other than become a recluse, the prospect of which does not appeal in the slightest, the only option open to me is to live life exactly the way I want to, ignoring that which can be ignored.'