by Heidi Rice
‘It’s such a shame your mother is on an around-the-world cruise and won’t be able to share your big day,’ Olivia had said with fake sincerity when Leah had explained that her father was dead, and her mother wouldn’t be attending the wedding.
Her mother being on a cruise had been a blatant but necessary lie. Leah shuddered at the idea of her mum staggering into the church and behaving outrageously, as Tori had done many times in the past. She had even turned up drunk to Leah’s university graduation ceremony and ruined what should have been a proud day.
James had only met Tori once. Leah had invited him round early one Saturday morning, when her mum was usually still sober. The meeting had gone without incident, although Leah had quickly invented an excuse when James had suggested they all go to the pub for lunch.
During James’s visit Leah had seen her mum almost as she’d remembered her from long ago: intelligent and articulate with a hint of the great beauty she had once had in her smile. But when she’d gone into the kitchen to make a cup of tea she had found a bottle of vodka that Tori had hidden in the cupboard under the sink. She hadn’t had a chance to pour the vodka away, and she knew that Tori would have finished the bottle by that evening and visited the local supermarket to buy more.
Leah had felt too embarrassed to tell James about her mother’s drink problem. She’d spent her childhood wishing that her mum was ‘normal’, like other parents. It hadn’t been so bad when they’d lived abroad in a commune, with Tori’s artist friends. But when Leah was twelve they had moved back to England.
She cringed at memories of her mum attending school functions drunk and talking too loudly, attracting attention. Once at a prize-giving ceremony Tori had flirted with the headmaster and then thrown up in the school hall in front of everyone. From then on Leah had never invited Tori to school events, but that hadn’t stopped the other kids’ taunts that her mum was ‘an alky’.
After the wedding she would explain to James that her mum was what was termed a ‘functioning alcoholic’. Somehow Tori managed to hold down her job as a bookkeeper with a building firm, but her heavy drinking every weekend was destroying her health. Leah was sure James would be supportive of her intention to use some of her inheritance to pay for specialist treatment for her mum.
Where was he?
She started to turn her head towards the back of the chapel, hoping to see that James had arrived, but her gaze snagged on Marco’s enigmatic grey eyes. She estimated that he must be three or four inches over six feet tall, as she had to angle her neck to look at him, and his chiselled features had a peculiar effect on her pulse. From where she was standing, she couldn’t see his scar, and her breath caught in her throat as she studied the sculpted perfection of his bone structure. He was beautiful in a powerfully masculine way.
She could not stop staring at his face and he lifted one dark brow mockingly, as if he was aware that she was fascinated by him. Blushing hotly, Leah jerked her eyes towards the front of the chapel. She was trembling. Not because she was fiercely aware of Marco, she assured herself, but because she was angry at his arrogance when he had said he thought she was uninteresting.
She forced herself to concentrate when the vicar spoke.
‘At the beginning of the ceremony the bride and groom will turn to face each other and hold hands.’
Reluctantly Leah turned towards Marco, and her heart gave a jolt when he reached for her hands. She was about to tell him that it wasn’t necessary to practise every detail of the wedding, but before she could speak he wrapped his strong fingers around hers, enveloping her small hands in his much bigger ones.
She inhaled swiftly as a sensation like an electrical current shot through her fingers and up her arms. Marco’s touch was warm and firm, and she sensed inherent strength in his grasp. She stared down at their linked hands and noted how his darkly tanned skin contrasted with her milky paleness. Her traitorous mind imagined his fingers skimming over her naked body and curving around her breasts.
Swallowing hard, Leah raised her eyes to Marco’s chest, where the top few buttons of his sky-blue shirt were undone, revealing a vee of tanned skin and a sprinkling of black hair. He smelled of soap and spice: exotic notes of a bergamot and sandalwood cologne mixed with an indefinable scent that was raw male.
On the periphery of her mind she registered that the vicar was explaining how he would talk them through the ceremony rather than read through the entire wedding service word for word.
‘You will want to save making your vows until the actual wedding, and to the right bridegroom,’ he said, giving Leah a pointed look.
She felt guilty colour rise in her face. Had the vicar guessed that she was having inappropriate thoughts about the man who tomorrow would become her brother-in-law? How could her mind be so disloyal to James? Her reaction to Marco De Valle was inexplicable and inexcusable.
She tried to withdraw her hands from Marco’s, but he tightened his fingers and stroked his thumb lightly back and forth over the pulse beating erratically in her wrist. Perhaps it was meant to be a soothing gesture, but it had the opposite effect, making Leah’s heart pound so hard that she was surprised it wasn’t visible beneath her shirt.
‘After the declarations and the vows and the exchange of rings, the congregation will be seated while the bride, groom and witnesses accompany me into the vestry,’ the vicar explained. ‘Once the register has been signed, the newly married couple will return to stand at the altar rail, and I will invite the groom to kiss his bride.’
Leah’s eyes jerked to Marco’s face and she stared at his sensual mouth as he lowered his head towards her. Her heart lurched. He wouldn’t! He couldn’t mean to kiss her.
It must be shock that was keeping her feet welded to the floor. She did not want Marco to claim her mouth with his, she assured herself.
His dark head came closer and she felt the hard glitter in his eyes evoke a wild heat inside her. He filled her vision, and when her eyelashes swept down she could still see his chiselled features as though they were imprinted on her retinas.
The air around them seemed to tremble and Leah could hardly breathe. They stood like that—close, but not close enough—for what felt like a lifetime. But it could only have been a few seconds before the spell that Marco had cast on her was shattered.
‘Sorry I’m late!’
The voice from the back of the chapel jolted Leah to her senses. Her eyes flew open and she drew a shuddering breath. Marco had already straightened up. Perhaps she’d only imagined that he had been on the brink of kissing her. His eyes were hooded, and she could not read his expression.
With a low cry she snatched her hands out of his and ran down the aisle. ‘James, where have you been? Why didn’t you answer your phone when I called you?’
‘The battery died.’ James’s eyes sidled away from Leah’s. ‘You know how I always forget to charge it.’
She bit her lip. ‘We had to start the rehearsal without you...your brother offered to take your place,’ she explained, when Marco walked up to her and James.
Leah had previously sensed the coolness between the brothers, and now the temperature in the chapel seemed to drop by several degrees as the two men faced each other.
‘I trust you will afford your bride the courtesy of turning up on time for your actual wedding tomorrow?’ Marco said curtly.
‘You are hardly the right person to give me advice on how to treat my bride,’ James muttered. ‘Your marriage lasted for just a year, and it’s rumoured that your wife died trying to escape from you.’
Leah’s eyes flew to Marco. She expected him to say something in his defence, but he stayed silent. His face might as well have been carved from the same unforgiving granite as the chapel walls, and his eyes were the dull, cold grey of a midwinter sky. The scar on his cheek was a stark white line ruining the perfection of his olive skin.
He was beautiful, and
terrible, and Leah could not understand why he had such a devastating effect on her. She was shocked by her uncontrolled response to Marco. A knot of tension tightened in the pit of her stomach as she wondered if her mother had been overwhelmed by this same helpless fascination with a man every time she’d rushed headlong into a new relationship.
She was not going to make the same mistakes as her mother, Leah promised herself. Thank goodness she was marrying dear, safe James, she thought as she watched Marco stride out of the chapel.
Copyright © 2020 by Chantelle Shaw
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ISBN-13: 9781488059698
A Forbidden Night with the Housekeeper
Copyright © 2020 by Heidi Rice
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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