Christmas Eve Marriage (HQR Classic)

by Jessica Hart

  It was too much for Thea. As if of their own accord, her hands lifted to his arms, sliding upwards to wind around his neck and pull him towards her, or maybe she didn’t need to pull him, maybe Rhys was closing the distance between them anyway. But, however it happened, they were kissing at last and the release from all that anticipation was so intense that Thea gasped in spite of herself.

  His lips were so tantalising, the hand smoothing over her thigh so warm and so sure, it was enough to make a girl forget what she was doing. Thea certainly forgot to think, forgot anything but the sheer pleasure of kissing and being kissed, of being able to touch him at last, run her hands over his back and savour the feel of his hard, strong body.

  Fortunately, Rhys had himself under better control, or who knew where it would have ended? He pulled back slightly to look down into her face with an expression Thea couldn’t quite identify.

  ‘Very good, Thea,’ he said.

  ‘Just getting into my part,’ she said a little unsteadily, and Rhys smiled.

  ‘You’re a natural.’ Reaching out, he stroked a finger down her cheek in a gesture so tender it dried the breath in Thea’s throat, and then got to his feet. ‘I’d better go. See you later, girls,’ he called as he headed off to his villa.

  ‘Bye!’ they yelled, as if nothing unusual had happened at all and it was perfectly normal for him to kiss Thea and then get up and walk off.

  Thea was just grateful that she was already lying down and didn’t have to try and walk anywhere. She was quite sure that her legs wouldn’t have held her if she had been upright. It was bad enough trying to behave normally as it was, with this shaky feeling and that odd jittery sensation under her skin.

  So much for calm, cool and in control.

  Across the pool, she saw Clara wave and make a cheeky thumbs-up sign. Really, that girl was too clever for her own good, thought Thea, shaking her head back at her. She would have a word with Nell about her when she got home.

  Picking up her book with hands that trembled slightly, she tried to read, but the words were dancing in front of her eyes. How could she be expected to concentrate on impenetrable prose when her lips were still tingling from that kiss, when her thigh was burning where he had touched her?

  Her whole body was pulsating. This was ridiculous, Thea scolded herself. It was only a kiss. She was completely over-reacting, as usual. Hadn’t she decided last night that she was just suffering the symptoms of a holiday romance, and that there wouldn’t be a problem if she could keep things light-hearted?

  Thea laid her fingers against her skin where his hand had been, and squirmed at the memory. For a light-hearted romance, it sure felt very intense. That kiss had been wonderful—warm and exciting and, if she was honest with herself, much, much too short.

  And just a pretence. Don’t forget that bit, Thea.

  To hell with this stupid book! She had been staring at the same page for what felt like days. Tossing it aside, Thea leant under her lounger and pulled out one of her magazines instead. She was never going to stop thinking about Rhys and that kiss when she didn’t understand half the words on the page. What she needed now was a distraction. The new look on the catwalk, the latest mascara, a little celebrity gossip and she would soon regain her equilibrium.

  As it turned out, this was an excellent idea, and Thea was absorbed in the marital difficulties of two of Hollywood’s biggest stars when a shadow fell over her. Kate was standing there, perfect eyebrows oh-so-slightly lifted as she checked out Thea’s reading matter.

  Oops, how not to impress Kate! Kate was clearly much too clever to waste her time with magazines, let alone gossip. Quickly, Thea flicked over the page. She could at least pretend to be stuck into one of the more serious articles about women’s issues, but found herself instead staring at a headline trumpeting ‘Sex that makes you look slim and him feel huge!’

  Perhaps she should show Kate the article and they could have a girlish giggle together about it? Or perhaps not, Thea decided, glancing at the immaculate Kate with her air of efficient sophistication. Kate just wasn’t the type for a giggle.

  With an inward sigh, Thea closed the magazine altogether, but made a mental note to go back to it. She was always up for a laugh, and she would try anything that promised to make her look slimmer without the hassle of dieting or going to the gym.

  ‘Do you mind if I join you?’ asked Kate, dropping her bag on to the next lounger without waiting for Thea’s answer.

  Well, what could she say? ‘Of course not.’

  Kate was wearing a sarong, just as Thea had the day before, but where Thea’s had kept slipping and falling apart, Kate’s was elegantly and securely tied. Now she was unwrapping it to reveal a perfectly tanned and toned body in the kind of bikini Thea could only ever dream of wearing.

  The kind of bikini that might have been specifically designed to make Thea feel fat and blowsy. Give her some whiskers and a couple of tusks, and she’d be a dead ringer for those great, blubbery walruses you saw floundering around the beach in their rolls of fat on nature programmes, she thought glumly. It was amazing to think that she had been quite pleased with her appearance earlier.

  She eyed Kate with resentment. Look at her, not even having to hold her stomach in as she sat and oiled herself complacently, perfectly aware of the contrast her trim, taut figure made with Thea’s voluptuous curves.

  If only her mother hadn’t brought her up to be so polite, Thea could have moved to the other side of the pool, or preferably taken that tube of suntan lotion and squeezed it all over Kate’s shiny blonde hair. As it was, she was stuck feeling fat and inadequate and making polite conversation.

  ‘Where are Damian and Hugo today? I was expecting to see them in the pool with the girls.’

  ‘Nick’s taken them to the archaeological museum in Heraklion.’

  ‘Gosh, won’t they be bored?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ said Kate crisply. ‘They’re both very interested in history. Hugo’s a member of the local archaeological society. He’s got his own trowel.’

  Thea laughed until she realised that Kate was not being humorous. Should have known better, she thought with an inward sigh.

  ‘It’s so important that children learn something about the culture of the country they’re staying in,’ Kate was saying. ‘I’m sure you agree.’

  ‘Oh, yes, absolutely,’ said Thea, who couldn’t be bothered to argue. She amused herself instead imagining Clara’s reaction if she suggested that she might like to forgo a day in the pool to go to a museum.

  Kate settled herself on the lounger. ‘Is Rhys not joining you today?’ she asked delicately, as if she hadn’t been watching him say goodbye to Thea from her observation post on her terrace.

  ‘He’s gone for a hike,’ said Thea, conscious of a warm little thrill down her spine at the mere memory of how he had said goodbye.

  ‘I think it’s marvellous of you not to mind him going off on his own on your first day here.’

  Thea looked at her sharply. It was hard to tell whether Kate took her seriously or not. In the end, she managed a careless shrug.

  ‘I’m feeling lazy, and you know Rhys. He’s not one for sitting around.’ At least, she didn’t know whether he was or not, but he hadn’t struck her as a man who would be very interested in sunbathing, and it was a fairly safe bet that Kate wouldn’t know either.

  To her surprise, Kate took this very seriously. ‘Yes, I gathered from Lynda that Rhys has problems relaxing.’

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ said Thea, unaccountably annoyed. ‘Just that he didn’t like sunbathing.’

  ‘Nick and I think it’s marvellous Rhys has met someone at last,’ Kate confided earnestly. ‘I know Lynda was quite worried about him for a while. She was afraid he was never going to get over her leaving. She’s often said to me that she knows how much damage she did to him, and she feels very guilty about that.’ Kate leant towards Thea. ‘Apparently he was absolutely devastated when she left. He absolutely adored her.’<
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  ‘Really?’ said Thea discouragingly.

  She didn’t want to hear about Rhys from Kate, and she certainly didn’t want to hear about how much he loved Lynda, and frankly she thought it was monumentally tactless for Kate to assume that she would. As far as she knew they really were engaged, after all.

  Picking up her magazine, she opened it once more in the hope that Kate would take the hint, but the woman clearly had the hide of a rhinoceros.

  ‘No, Lynda says that he never really seemed to accept that she had left for good,’ Kate went on in the same concerned tone. ‘She really wanted him to be able to move on, but of course the first thing he did when he got back to London was to buy a house just around the corner from Lynda.’

  ‘It’s possible that he wanted to be near his daughter, not Lynda,’ Thea was provoked into saying, and Kate nodded as if she had made an interesting point. Wrong, but interesting.

  ‘That’s what Lynda hoped, but I think she was secretly afraid that he was trying to be part of her life again. It wouldn’t be surprising if he did. Lynda is a beautiful woman and very talented. It’s an old-fashioned word,’ she went on, oblivious to Thea’s unreceptive attitude, ‘but I always think that Lynda is really accomplished.’

  ‘Really?’ said Thea coldly again.

  The chill in her voice was lost on Kate, who was still burbling on about Rhys’s ex-wife. ‘Did you know that she set up her own business selling alternative therapies? They’re absolutely marvellous and we all swear by them!’

  Kate’s cold blue eyes swept over Thea. ‘I’m sure she’d have something that could help you lose weight,’ she added as an aside and then swept on while Thea was still open-mouthed at her rudeness and spluttering for a retort.

  ‘She only started it up two or three years ago, but the turnover last year was phenomenal, apparently.’ Kate shook her head admiringly. ‘She really is a fantastic person—very astute, extremely successful, amazingly insightful…I can’t think of anything she isn’t good at, in fact. Really, she could make a success of anything she put her mind to.’

  Pity she didn’t try making her marriage work in that case, thought Thea, fed up with hearing about how marvellous Lynda was. If she was that clever, why were Rhys and Sophie out here on their own?

  ‘Well, perhaps hearing about our engagement will put Lynda’s mind at rest about Rhys,’ she said acidly, but sarcasm was evidently wasted on Kate too.

  ‘Oh, yes, I’m sure it will,’ she agreed. ‘She’ll be delighted.’

  Flexing her toes, she smiled patronisingly at Thea. ‘Here’s me chatting on, and you want to get back to your magazine. I should have brought something down to read myself.’

  ‘Here, you can borrow this if you want.’ Thea fished Nell’s book out from under her lounger and offered it to Kate.

  Kate’s face changed as she saw it. ‘Oh, you’ve got that? I hear it’s marvellous.’ It was obvious that she hadn’t expected Thea to be able to read books without pictures in them. ‘Lynda’s read it twice and told me I should read it. She said it was one of the best books she’d ever read.’

  ‘I think it’s rubbish.’ Thea smiled sweetly as she quoted Rhys. ‘You’re welcome to it.’

  Defiantly, Thea went back to her celebrity scandal, too cross with Kate by then to care what she thought of her. The other woman had no business gossiping about Rhys’s affairs anyway, and that Lynda seemed to take an unhealthy interest in her ex-husband’s affairs.

  Thea wished Kate hadn’t told her anything. Especially, she wished she didn’t know how heartbroken Rhys had been when Lynda left. He must have loved her a lot—but then, he seemed to Thea the kind of man who wouldn’t get married unless he did love deeply.

  Thea turned a page morosely. She couldn’t get into the article any more. She had been enjoying it, too, she thought, shooting Kate a resentful glance. It was all her fault.

  Be honest, Thea told herself. You don’t like the idea of Rhys being in love with anyone else at all.

  It shouldn’t matter to her one way or another. It wasn’t as if there was anything between them. Their relationship was entirely imaginary, and if Rhys was as obsessed with his ex-wife as Kate had implied, it would be better if it stayed that way. Thea had had enough of playing second fiddle to the ex with Harry, and if there was one thing she had learnt, it was that you couldn’t compete with emotional history.

  Time to stop flirting with the idea of a holiday romance, she decided a little sadly. That would be the sensible thing to do.

  It was late afternoon before Rhys returned. Thea was doing her nails in the shade by the pool, and when she saw him she quickly whipped the emery board and polish into her bag. She might have decided not to get too involved, but she didn’t want him thinking that she was hopelessly superficial either, even if she was.

  She would just have to stick with the natural look for the next two weeks. Lynda was probably far too busy being successful and talented and insightful to do her nails, unless of course she had someone to do them for her. Thea’s eyes narrowed at the thought. She sounded like the kind of person who had a weekly manicure. Thea was beginning to dislike her intensely on principle.

  Rhys lifted a hand as he saw her, and Thea’s heart did a silly little lift of its own in return. Stop it, she told herself firmly, and forced herself to stop smiling quite so widely.

  He was on his way round the pool to join her when Sophie called out to him. ‘Dad! Dad! Look at this!’

  Even from the other side of the pool, Thea could see the blaze of expression in Rhys’s face as his daughter demanded his attention, and he stopped to watch her perform a handstand, legs flailing wildly above water for a moment before she surfaced, gasping and spluttering and looking extremely pleased with herself.

  ‘Did you see?’

  ‘I certainly did. I’m impressed! When did you learn to do that?’

  ‘Today. Clara taught me.’

  ‘Have you had a good time, then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Sophie’s burst of volubility was evidently over. She went back to practising handstands, and Rhys carried on round the pool to Thea, trying—unsuccessfully—to disguise how moved he was by the brief, tentative connection he was making with his daughter at last.

  He was looking hot and dusty after walking all day, but his smile as he sat down beside Thea illuminated his whole face, and she wouldn’t have been able to prevent herself smiling back at him even if she had wanted to.

  ‘How was your walk?’

  ‘Hot,’ said Rhys, swinging his legs up on to the lounger and leaning back with the contented sigh of someone who had put in a hard day’s physical exertion and is entitled to put his feet up. ‘Good, though.’

  ‘Lots of interesting rocks, then?’

  It was easier to tease him than to think about how much she wanted to be able to go over and sit next to him, the way he had sat next to her that morning, and press her lips to the pulse in his neck below his ear. To kiss her way up his throat and along his jaw to his mouth, to kiss him hello the way they had kissed goodbye earlier.

  ‘Fascinating,’ said Rhys. ‘I found some great samples of igneous rock. I brought them back to show Sophie and Clara, in fact. I’m sure they’d be interested to know about Crete’s ancient volcanic landscape, so I’ve prepared a short talk. I thought perhaps after supper?’

  It took a little while for his words to filter through, and there was a short delay before Thea found herself jolted out of her fantasy of kissing him. He had planned what?

  ‘Er, are you sure that’s a good idea?’

  ‘Why not?’ Rhys met her startled gaze blandly until he gave in and grinned at her expression. ‘Don’t worry, I’m joking! I wouldn’t do that to them, even if they didn’t have the attention spans of gnats.’

  Lying back, he put his hands behind his head. ‘Have they been in that pool all day? They must be completely waterlogged!’

  ‘Pretty much,’ said Thea, cross with herself for falling for his te
asing, but glad in a way that he had made her laugh. It had released some of the tension of meeting for the first time since that kiss. ‘I made them get out for a couple of hours in the middle of the day, and we had lunch in the shade, but they’re real water babies, both of them.’

  ‘I didn’t realise Sophie liked swimming so much.’ Rhys sounded a little sad, as if it was something he should have known about his daughter. ‘She didn’t spend so much time in the pool last week.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s swimming so much as splashing around and chatting,’ said Thea reassuringly. ‘She just needed a friend to do that with, and if there’s one thing Clara can do, it’s chat!

  ‘Tell me about your walk, anyway,’ she went on, trying to keep the conversation on safe ground. ‘What was there to see apart from those extremely interesting rocks you mentioned?’

  ‘I went up into the White Mountains and followed a gorge down again. It’s wild country, but beautiful.’ He glanced at her. ‘You should come with me some time. I’m sure you would like it.’

  Thea, whose plans hadn’t included venturing any further than the poolside, thought about spending the day on a wild hillside, alone with the heat and the light and the drifting scent of wild herbs.

  And Rhys.

  Something turned over inside her at the thought. ‘Maybe I will.’

  Her eyes met his then slid away, and there was a pause. ‘Well…I’m glad you had a good time.’

  ‘Yes, I did,’ said Rhys slowly, ‘but, funnily enough, not as much as I expected to.’

  ‘Oh?’

  He looked at her, and even in the shade his eyes seemed very light and clear in his brown face. ‘It sounds strange, but I missed you.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said again, but this time her throat was so tight that she could barely manage a croak. So much for dispersing the tension. The memory of how they had kissed was back with a vengeance, resonating in the air, drumming along Thea’s veins, so vivid that Thea couldn’t believe that Rhys couldn’t feel it too.

  But he was looking at the pool, frowning slightly as his gaze rested on Sophie and Clara. ‘And the girls,’ he was saying. ‘It’s odd. Most of my work is very solitary, so I’m used to spending a lot of time on my own, and it’s never been a problem before, but today I found myself thinking about you all, wondering what you were doing…wishing I was with you.’