Mistress by Agreement

by Helen Brooks

  Rosalie felt like a great weight had been lifted off her shoulders. ‘What made you mention your mum and dad like that tonight anyway?’ Beth asked suddenly.

  Now it was Rosalie’s turn to wriggle a little. ‘I was talking to Kingsley about them at the weekend,’ she admitted.

  ‘Ah, yes, Kingsley. Where had we got to on that subject?’ Beth said immediately, homing in with the single-mindedness that often caused her offspring to turn tail and run.

  ‘Leave it, Beth.’ Rosalie eyed her aunt warningly.

  ‘Oh, yes. You aren’t sure if you want a relationship with the most gorgeous thing on two legs ever likely to hit these shores. Right?’ Beth went on as though she hadn’t heard.

  Rosalie’s gaze held more than a little exasperation. ‘It’s not like that,’ she said firmly. ‘We’re—’ what were they? ‘—friends.’ It sounded incredibly weak, even to her.

  Beth opened her mouth but whatever protest she was going to make was cut off by the buzzer to Rosalie’s flat. Beth jumped to her feet. ‘The pizza guy.’ Beth jumped to her feet. ‘I’ll get it.’

  Rosalie had pulled herself to her feet and was on her way to the kitchen when she was stopped in her tracks in the doorway to the sitting room by the sight of Beth almost buried under a mountain of flowers. The bouquet of tiger lilies and creamy pale orchids wasn’t the average red-roses type of declaration of a man to a woman, but then Kingsley wasn’t the average man.

  Beth was clearly thinking the same thing because there was a significant little silence as the older woman gave the younger a long, meaningful look before she said, ‘Friends…right.’

  Rosalie counted silently to ten. ‘That’s all, Beth,’ she said brightly, ‘and who’s to say these flowers are from Kingsley anyway?’ As if there could be the faintest chance they weren’t!

  ‘You mean you’ve more than one gorgeous man after you? No one could be that lucky.’ Beth mirrored Rosalie’s thoughts.

  They were from Kingsley. The card simply said, ‘Thinking of you, K’. Which was utterly Kingsley.

  When the pizza finally arrived Beth bustled about sharing it out onto the plates Rosalie had got ready, carrying two trays through to the sitting room where they’d planned to eat watching their favourite soap on TV. In the meantime Rosalie arranged the flowers in two big heavy vases and then left them standing on the work surface in the kitchen. She’d bring them through to the sitting room when her aunt had gone, she thought flatly, otherwise they’d act as a spur to keep Beth twittering on about Kingsley all evening.

  Her eyes returned to the card just before she left the kitchen. ‘Thinking about you.’ No kisses, no cloying message that dripped sentiment. Simply ‘thinking about you’. Was he? His life was as far removed from hers as the man in the moon. Had he given her more than a passing thought since he’d left? Flowers were easy. Miles had bought her a bunch every day for weeks when they had first got together, sending the girls in her block at the university green with envy, but after she had left him she’d discovered that even then he had been messing about with other women.

  She clicked her tongue irritably, annoyed with herself for both dredging up the past and allowing such cynicism to spoil what should have been rather a nice moment. They were unquestionably fabulous, the flowers…

  Beth’s taxi came just after nine and Rosalie decided to have a long hot soak in the tub with some wildly expensive bath oil she’d had for Christmas, and pamper herself a little. She took the remainder of her glass of wine through with her, lighting a couple of perfumed candles and turning off the main light so she could relax in the flickering candlelight.

  She had long since stopped feeling slightly ridiculous due to having to wedge the plastered foot on the chrome bath rack that fitted across the bath, and now as she lay carefully back in the silky water she shut her eyes, sighing softly and contentedly. The sensuous warmth and evocative perfume emptied her mind of everything but the moment, and she felt the tension flowing out of her in a relaxing wave.

  And then the telephone rang. And rang. And rang. When she couldn’t ignore it a moment longer she hoisted herself out of the water, grumbling profusely, and warning of dire consequences should it stop the second before she reached it. Grabbing a bath towel, she shuffled out into the vibrating hall.

  ‘Hello?’ She had barked into the receiver, which wasn’t her normal telephone manner at all.

  There was a moment of startled silence, and then, ‘Rosie? Is that you?’ a deep, unmistakable voice said with some surprise.

  ‘Kingsley?’ Her voice was high and she fought to moderate it when she said a little breathlessly, ‘I thought you were in the States?’

  ‘I am.’ She could tell he was smiling. ‘Did you get the flowers?’ The smoky tone to his voice curled her toes.

  ‘The flowers? Oh, yes, yes, they’re wonderful. Thank you.’ Pull yourself together, for crying out loud. She was babbling like an idiot. ‘What…what time is it there?’

  ‘The time doesn’t matter.’ His voice was deep, husky, as clear as if he were in the next room, and Rosalie shivered, though not from cold. ‘Had a good day?’ he asked softly.

  ‘Fine.’ Her heart was thumping so hard she put her hand on her chest before she could manage to say, ‘And you?’

  ‘So-so.’ A slight pause. ‘I’ve been dreaming of you, whether I’m awake or asleep. What do you think that means?’

  She swallowed hard. Keep it light, Rosalie. ‘You’ve eaten too much cheese?’ she suggested levelly.

  He chuckled and her heart turned right over. ‘I wanted to hear your voice,’ he admitted quietly. ‘Right now, this minute. Crazy, eh? What have you done to me?’

  She swallowed again, feeling the drips of water trickling down her skin where the towel wasn’t touching.

  ‘It was a good weekend,’ he murmured. ‘The best I’ve had in a long, long time. Thank Beth and George again for me when you speak to them. They’re real nice people.’

  ‘Beth’s just left.’ Her stomach was curling at the tone of his voice, its seductive quality mesmerising, and to combat the feeling she added, ‘Utterly blown away by the flowers, incidentally. You’d have thought she’d received them herself.’

  ‘I’ve sent her some, as it happens, a basket of freesias.’

  ‘You have? That’s kind of you,’ she said carefully.

  There was the briefest of pauses, and then his voice held a velvet touch when he said, ‘And you’re quite right in thinking it’s a ploy to inveigle my way further into her good books. I’ve a feeling I’m going to need every weapon at my disposal where you’re concerned.’ It was totally unapologetic.

  Rosalie blinked, a curious rush of exhilaration causing her to shut her eyes tightly for a second. ‘What Beth thinks or doesn’t think is neither here or there,’ she said as severely as she could considering a big grin was trying to make itself felt. ‘I’m my own woman.’ Or had been before she’d met him.

  ‘You wouldn’t be so mean as to hold onto every little bit, surely? There’s enough to go round for a starving man.’

  ‘Are you saying I’m fat?’ she said lightly, a part of her mind hearing herself flirting with amazement.

  ‘You’re perfect. For me, that is,’ he said huskily.

  Help. She was too rusty at this game to survive for more than a moment. Her thought process hiccuped and died.

  ‘Rosie? Are you still there?’

  ‘Yes.’ Pull yourself together, act nonchalant and cool as though this isn’t blowing you away.

  ‘Look, I’ve got to go, there’s a problem at one of the hotel sites here—some flooding. I was hoping to be back in England at the weekend but it’s beginning to look as though it might be longer before I can get away.’

  She took a deep breath. ‘That’s all right,’ she said briskly. ‘If there’s any complications or difficulties with the job here, I’ve got numbers I can call, and your architect is very helpful.’

  ‘Damn my architect,’ he said levelly. ‘I wan
t to hold you, to kiss you, to—’ Another pause and then he said, his voice dry, ‘Goodnight, Rosie. Sweet dreams…as long as they’re of me.’

  ‘Goodnight.’ She replaced the receiver in something of a daze.

  Once Rosalie was back in the bath she found all thoughts of peaceful contemplation had been blown out of the water by Kingsley’s voice. Just hearing the smoky tones had evoked all sorts of emotions, and not one of them sensible or sane.

  She spent the rest of her time in the bathroom giving herself a severe talking-to. She was a modern career woman who had her sights set on advancement, and she’d already come a long way in the last ten years. Relationships—any relationships—meant give and take, and it was the law of dynamics that one partner would take more than the other. Control and manipulation weren’t far behind then. And Kingsley was the type of man whose whole life had been built on the will to control, ever since his broken engagement anyway. He’d said himself that he’d carved his empire from a desire to reach out and take life by the throat and choke it into submission.

  But all that aside, forgetting all she knew about the motivation that drove him and his cold-blooded attitude to affairs of the heart, it was her own feelings where Kingsley was concerned that told her it would be emotional suicide to get involved with him, even slightly. For some reason he had got under her skin, and, much as she would like to lie to herself and say it was just a physical attraction and easily dealt with, the weekend had shown her differently. She enjoyed being with him too much; she liked him too much.

  Miles had swept her off her feet and into his arms, and she had married him in a fever of love and physical desire without knowing the real person beneath the façade. He had fooled her and she’d paid the price.

  Kingsley wasn’t like that. He had shown himself in his true colours from day one. Offended as she’d been, he had stated he would never fall in love with her and wanted an affair he could walk away from with no complications or messy feelings to complicate the nice clean finish.

  She levered herself out of the bath, staring at her reflection in the misted mirror for a moment or two. She couldn’t turn her feelings off and on at will, much as she would like to right at this minute. Neither did she want to put herself in a position where a man had the power to bring her to her knees again, and she had the feeling that, much as Miles had hurt her, Kingsley could hurt her a thousand times more. She’d survived devastation once and at least she hadn’t brought it on herself knowingly. If she got involved with Kingsley she wouldn’t have that comfort when it all went wrong.

  She went to bed that night determined she was not going to agonise any further over Kingsley. It was simple, quite simple when you considered all the facts logically, that she would be crazy to let their association grow stronger. He had said they would take it as slowly as she liked. Fine. Then it would be slow, so slow a virile, red-blooded man like Kingsley would soon lose interest and move on to pastures new.

  She would keep busy at work, go out with some of her girlfriends on a more regular basis and start letting her hair down a bit, book a sumptuous holiday somewhere for next year and generally revamp her life. Perhaps meeting Kingsley had done her a favour after all, motivating her to take stock and decide what she really wanted out of life? She nodded firmly, turning over and almost immediately falling asleep.

  But the subconscious wasn’t so easily conquered. In her sleep Rosalie was vulnerable to the ghosts she kept under lock and key most of the time during the day, and, probably because of the weekend and then Kingsley’s phone call, she found herself in a deep, dark valley of shifting shadows and half-recognisable images, past and present interweaving.

  She awoke some time in the middle of the night when it was still dark, tears running down her face and her whole body tense with the nightmare. Kingsley had been there, but a different Kingsley, one who had brown eyes and not blue, and who had been crimson with anger, shouting, hitting, punching…

  She sat up in bed, aware her nightie was clinging to her damp body, and ran a shaking hand over her face, brushing back the hair sticking to her wet cheeks.

  Why hadn’t she left Miles long before their graduation night? It was a question she had asked herself many times. But she had been so much younger then, so confused and frightened. She had got used to him hitting her when he was in one of his moods, even punching her on occasion, but he had always been so sorry later she had forgiven him. He was Miles Stuart—the man everyone said she was so lucky to have married—so their rows had to be her fault.

  And then that night, after they had partied with their friends and most people had drunk too much, she’d inadvertently walked into one of the bedrooms at the big house the party was being held in, thinking it was the bathroom. Miles and one of their friends had been in bed together.

  She had shouted and stormed out of the house, intending to walk home to the flat they’d rented, and Miles had come after her in his sports car. She had actually thought he’d come to plead with her when she’d heard the car engine, but he had got out and hit her so hard she’d been dazed and barely conscious. He’d bundled her into the front seat and driven home, and there he had attacked her again. But that night the worm had turned.

  Rosalie closed her eyes, hugging her knees to her chest as the past rose up on the screen in her mind. It had been a night that had finally killed the last remnant of love for him.

  When Miles had begun punching her this time something had snapped and she’d fought back, kicking and scratching and biting for all she was worth. Quite when she had realised he’d intended to rape her she didn’t know, but it had only been one of their neighbours kicking the front door in that had saved her, and that at the last moment.

  The divorce had been quick and silent, Miles’s parents had made sure of that once they had seen the evidence stacked against their son. They had been petrified she’d drag the family name through the mud along with Miles, and she would have. Oh, yes, she would have if he hadn’t met all her requirements, even though it would have crucified her to reveal the facts of their marriage to anyone other than her kindly solicitor.

  She could still remember how she had felt the moment she had finally and legally been free of him. She’d been physically and mentally exhausted the weeks leading up to the divorce, but on that day it had been as though an invisible weight, which had kept her mind and limbs leaden and dull, had been lifted off her body and she had felt as light as a bird. It hadn’t lasted, of course—grim reality had had to be faced and she’d found the memories of the abuse and torment she’d suffered at Miles’s hands reared up at the oddest moments, but always there was the recollection of that moment when her soul had soared.

  Rosalie took a deep breath, slipping out of bed and padding across to the chest of drawers where she found a clean hanky and blew her nose unelegantly.

  People went through far worse than her, she told herself firmly. She hadn’t been disfigured or disabled in an accident or lost a child; she wasn’t friendless or starving or living on the streets. She had a lovely home and a fulfilling job, and normally she was perfectly happy. Everything had only begun to go pear-shaped since Kingsley had appeared on the scene. Once he left she’d be fine.

  She ignored the lurch her stomach gave at the idea of a life in which Kingsley didn’t feature, and snuggled under the covers again.

  Mind over matter, she thought with determination, that was what all this was about. Hearing his voice so unexpectedly tonight had caused a little blip in the process, but she could cope with that. She had to distance herself from Kingsley Ward in her head and her body would follow suit. Simple, really…

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  SUMMER was in full bloom, and London was in the grip of a heatwave that sent hordes of office workers flocking to the capital’s parks in their lunch hours, where they ate their sandwiches under leafy trees and grumbled about having to return to work in such beautiful weather.

  All Rosalie was concerned about was the fact that the plaste
r was off, her ankle had mended well and the itching that had sent her crazy the last few days was gone.

  It had been two weeks since the weekend with Kingsley at Beth’s, and he had not been back in the country since then although he had phoned Rosalie several times. Each time he did she promised herself that the next time she wouldn’t be breathless and shivery and excited. But then broken promises to yourself didn’t count.

  On the fifteenth day she had yet another call, this time at work. He was arriving at Heathrow around sixish, Kingsley drawled easily, his voice deep and smoky. He’d like to do dinner if she was available? He’d pick her up at eight and they could go to a club he knew, somewhere where the food was good and they could dance a little to celebrate the plaster coming off. How did that sound?

  This was the perfect opportunity to slow things right down, Rosalie told herself silently. They hadn’t seen each other in a while, and putting a date off would send a message even Kingsley’s ego couldn’t ignore. She could be pleasant but cool.

  ‘Dinner?’ She took a steadying breath. ‘I’d love to.’

  ‘Great.’ His voice was warm and it caused her skin to tingle.

  No, not great. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

  There was a pause, and then he said very softly, ‘Have you been good whilst I’ve been gone?’

  Okay, you’ve already let the side down once, don’t compound it by going all weak and fluttery just because his voice is reaching the parts no one else’s could. ‘Good? Well, I’ve shared my favours equally between all my many lovers, so would you say that’s being good?’ she said lightly, eternally thankful he couldn’t see her flushed face and trembling hands. ‘How about you?’ she added, careful to keep her voice matter-of-fact.

  ‘All work and no play isn’t what it’s cut out to be,’ he said wryly. ‘Not by a long chalk.’

  Rosalie swallowed; the sensual quivers stirring her blood were drying her mouth too. She forced herself to say just as lightly as before, ‘That’s because you haven’t had any practice in the art of denial, perhaps?’ allowing a little sting in her tone.