Marriage On The Rebound (HQR Presents)

by Michelle Reid

  ‘Try not to think,’ he murmured with a husky, low note to his voice. ‘Just lie still and let me hold you.’

  Don’t think. She daren’t think. She had been thrust back into a deep state of shock.

  Only this was a different kind of shock. The shock of discovering the driven depths of her own sensuality.

  She fell asleep like that, lost in the tumbling shock of her own discovery.

  * * *

  Next time she awoke it was to sunlight pressing at the closed curtains, casting a rosy-pink glow over the whole room, and the familiar tones of a voice sounding harsh and angry.

  ‘No—just do it!’ It was Rafe, sounding slightly muffled by walls and distance, but it was most definitely his voice, tight with impatience.

  Still half-asleep, she responded with instinctive automation to the hard, tough command in his tone, sitting up and sliding her feet to the floor before she was even aware that she’d done it. Then she realised she was naked—remembered why she was naked—and grabbed hold of the sheet, dragged it round her, and then just sat there shuddering while a jumbled mass of fragmented pictures tumbled across her sleep-scrambled mind.

  Awful pictures, humiliating pictures, of her virtually offering herself to Rafe—of herself almost begging Rafe!

  ‘Oh, God.’ A trembling hand flew up to cover her eyes in burning mortification as his voice came again, deep and angry.

  ‘I don’t care if it causes problems!’ he snapped ‘Yes, I know,’ he answered to whatever had been said to him. ‘But it will just have to stay on the backbumer until I get back… I don’t know when,’ he sighed. ‘When I’m ready—When she’s ready…’

  And Shaan slowly straightened, the hand sliding from her face as she realised he was talking about her here.

  ‘Piers?’ His hard voice gave a crack of deriding laughter. ‘Since when did he give a damn about anyone else but himself?’

  Oh, damn. Feeling that dull thud as her heart dropped at the mere mention of Piers’ name, she came to her feet and just stood, swaying dizzily.

  ‘Of course he saw it,’ he muttered. ‘Hell—didn’t they all see it?’ he growled in rough derision. ‘What do you think it was all about? He wanted to ruin things for me in revenge for Madeleine… What? Yes, of course I still love her,’ he sighed. ‘You can’t turn love on and off like a bloody tap just because she happens to love someone else, you know…’

  Madeleine? Eyes hot and burning, Shaan stared out at nothing and saw the cruel, bitter truth leering knowingly back at her.

  Rafe was in love with Madeleine.

  ‘My mistake was in not realising that he would sink that low just to get back at me,’ Rafe’s voice continued bitterly, while, as if she’d been pulled helplessly through the frames of a very bad dream, Shaan found herself walking over to the bedroom door.

  With the bedsheet clutched to her in one cold, trembling hand, she reached out to grasp the edge of the door with the other, pulling it towards her so she could step silently into the next room.

  He was standing at the desk wearing only his bathrobe. He had his back towards her and a telephone clamped to his ear.

  Angry tension pulsed from every muscle in his long, lean frame. ‘You think I don’t already know that?’ he muttered. ‘But he gave me no time, no space—nothing to work with! Shaan’s feelings certainly didn’t matter to him. As far as he was concerned they were expendable…’

  Expendable, she thought painfully. Was that all she was to Piers—just an expendable pawn in a fight he had been having with his brother over Madeleine?

  ‘Yes, well…’ Rafe sighed. ‘At least he got what he wanted out of this bloody mess. Which means I can do what the hell I like with the leftovers…’

  Leftovers. Her. Oh, God, she couldn’t hold back on the choked gasp of distress that particularly cruel word had dealt her.

  He heard it and spun around, eyes flashing silver sparks of anger her way—until he realised just who he was looking at, then the look changed to one of utter, absolute, jaw-locking consternation.

  She didn’t speak—couldn’t. Her voice felt trapped in her own horror-stricken throat, and neither, it seemed, could he say a word.

  What he did do was drop the phone onto its rest without even warning the person on the other end that he was going to break the connection. Then he made a gesture with one hand—a short, angry, half-helpless gesture.

  ‘Don’t even begin to think you understood what that was all about,’ he clipped out gruffly. ‘Because you couldn’t possibly have done.’

  She’d understood enough. More than enough. ‘You’re in love with Madeleine,’ she told him in a stark, broken whisper.

  If anything, he looked even more disconcerted. Colour shot across his high cheekbones; his eyes turned from silver to dark mirrors of shock. She’d clearly hit accurately on the truth.

  And while she stood there, staring at him through a haze of deep personal humiliation, the whole thing slotted together like the end of a whodunnit movie.

  He hadn’t urged Madeleine back to England to bring Piers to his senses, but because he must have believed it safe to bring her back for himself, with Piers effectively committed to another woman!

  And he hadn’t suggested this marriage between the two of them simply out of a sense of family honour and guilt—but because his own pride had been slighted!

  ‘That makes us both someone else’s leftovers,’ she said, then laughed as it appeared that once again the quick-thinking Rafe Danvers had been rendered utterly speechless. Because he just continued to stand there staring at her across the full length of the room, his clever mind seemingly gone perfectly blank!

  ‘My God…’ she choked, leaning weakly back against the frame of the door as full appreciation of the whole morass of deception took the strength from her legs. ‘What a mess,’ she whispered. ‘What a damned mess.’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he muttered.

  ‘No?’ Her dark eyes flashed a look at him—and saw a completely different person from the Rafe Danvers she was used to seeing. Not that he’d changed, exactly. It was her own perception of him that had taken on a radical alteration.

  So, she thought bitterly. This is it. This is him. The real Rafe Danvers. The head of the great Danvers empire. The older brother, the darker brother, the stronger brother. The one with a finger on the pulse of every single thing that went on in his tightly controlled sphere. And the one who showed no hint of weakness anywhere in his make-up.

  Not like Piers, or so she’d let herself believe. Nothing like Piers. The younger brother, the extrovert. The one who smiled at lot where the older brother rarely ever did. The one with the poetically handsome features that half the female population swooned over, the one who liked to be liked and even went out of his way to make sure that he was liked.

  But she’d always seen Rafe as the kind of man who couldn’t care less what people thought of him—as a man who stood apart from the rest, protected by an impenetrable ring of strength he wore around himself.

  Now she realised that, far from being protected, he was as vulnerable as the rest of them!

  And who to? Madeleine. His younger brother’s childhood sweetheart. A small, sweet, gentle creature, with wheat-blonde hair and corn-flower blue eyes. The kind of woman who incited a man’s primitive need to love and protect.

  The kind of woman men like Rafe and Piers, for all their character differences, preferred.

  The absolute opposite to herself, in fact.

  She shuddered, hating herself—despising Rafe.

  Did Madeleine know how he felt about her? Had Piers known? From what she’d overheard of that recent conversation, then, yes, the whole world except Shaan seemed to know! Which must hit right at the very heart of Rafe Danvers’ ego.

  It was no wonder he had jumped in with this marriage thing. It was a simple case of damage control—not for her sake, particularly, but for his own damned sake!

  So why did he make love t
o me? she wondered on a wretched clutch of pain that had her fingers crushing the sheet where it covered her breasts. Had he been simply using her—was that it? As he’d accused Piers of doing? Had he been getting a bit of his own back?

  My God; she closed her eyes, her body swaying slightly as she pushed herself upright from the door-frame. ‘I want no more part in this,’ she whispered, and stumbled back into the bedroom, only to stand looking around her in blank incomprehension of what she was going to do next.

  ‘No part in what?’ It was his turn to prop up the door-frame, looking more in control of himself now in the way he had his hands resting casually in the pockets of his white towelling robe.

  But she knew better now. Everything about the Danver brothers was a damned cleverly erected lie. Piers with his warmly smiling, open expression of love, Rafe with his you-can-depend-on-me façade.

  Lies. Damned lies.

  ‘I won’t play substitute for yet another damned Danvers man,’ she declared.

  ‘No one is expecting you to,’ he said quietly.

  ‘No?’ Her chin came up, dark brown eyes shrouded in bruises of deep personal pain as she bitterly contested that.

  The shocked look had gone, she noted, the consternation at being exposed now wiped clean from his face. But he was wary—very wary—she could see that in the way he was looking at her, as though he wasn’t quite sure what was going to come out of this.

  ‘Are you in love with Madeleine?’ she demanded outright.

  He didn’t answer for a moment, the expression in his eyes shaded by some deep thinking of his own he seemed to be doing. ‘I don’t see what that has to do with this situation,’ he replied carefully at last.

  ‘Yes, you do,’ she argued. ‘Because if you’re in love with her then it makes you no better than your brother.’

  ‘Because I wanted to marry you in his place?’

  She made a sound of scorn at that. ‘Don’t make this a bigger farce than it already is, Rafe. You didn’t want to marry me. You merely wanted to save face.’

  ‘Your face.’

  ‘My face—your face.’ She shrugged away the difference. ‘Whatever, you were still using me to cover up your own failures.’

  ‘And you weren’t using me in exactly the same way?’

  Oh yes, she acknowledged heavily. Very much so. ‘At least you knew my reasons!’ she flashed at him angrily. ‘But you had no intention of revealing yours to me, did you?’

  ‘I didn’t see them as relevant,’ he replied.

  ‘Well, I do!’ she cried.

  ‘Why?’

  Why? Shaan stared at him blankly, the question totally throwing her, because she didn’t really know why any of this was relevant. Only that it was—very relevant.

  Then the answer hit her, and a sudden cold shiver shook her, sending her arms inside the sheet wrapped round her slender frame in protection.

  ‘Madeleine,’ she whispered thinly. It all revolved around Madeleine. Piers loved Madeleine. Rate loved Madeleine. Neither loved Shaan, but both were prepared to use her for their own purposes!

  ‘Jealous of her, Shaan?’ Rafe taunted silkily.

  ‘Yes!’ she cried, tears washing across her eyes at the blunt, cruel way he’d made her face that. ‘Don’t you think that it’s humiliating enough to know she took the man I loved away from me, without knowing she was there haunting every moment we shared together last night?’

  ‘And Piers wasn’t haunting every moment along with her?’ he threw right back in shrewd comparison, and watched stark realisation wipe what was left of the colour from her face, leaving her totally exposed and painfully vulnerable.

  For some reason her reaction infuriated him. He strode forward, his hands cruel as they fixed on her shoulders. ‘Well, let’s get one thing straight,’ he gritted. ‘No other man haunts my bed, Shaan. And if you’ve a modicum of pride inside you you won’t allow another woman to haunt yours!’

  ‘Never again!’ she agreed. ‘No!’

  His eyes narrowed. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ he demanded

  ‘Get your hands off me, Rafe.’ She tried to push him away.

  But he wasn’t letting go. ‘Explain what you meant,’ he insisted grimly.

  Her chin came up, brown eyes flashing with a blaze of that pride he had just challenged. ‘Since it won’t be happening again,’ she informed him stiffly, ‘neither of us has to worry about any resident ghosts—which also renders this discussion redundant!’ Once again she tried to shrug him free, and once again his grip tightened.

  ‘Because you overheard something you didn’t like?’ he prompted derisively.

  Her eyes flashed again. ‘Because it shouldn’t have happened in the first place!’ she snapped, still struggling.

  ‘But it did happen,’ he pointed out. ‘We made love, Shaan—’

  ‘We had sex!’ she scathingly corrected his interpretation.

  ‘Sex, then,’ he conceded. ‘But incredible sex! Mind blowing, out-of-our-heads sex!’

  ‘Which you would know, wouldn’t you?’ she threw at him bitterly.

  ‘Yes,’ he sighed. ‘I would know.’ Then his eyes darkened to a look that was almost primitively possessive. ‘But you wouldn’t know,’ he added succinctly, and watched the colour rush into her cheeks as his meaning sank in. ‘So I am telling you this so you won’t be labouring under any misguided notion that what we shared last night could be had with anyone, because it couldn’t!’ he stated gruffly. ‘It was special—too damned special for you to mock it!’

  She wasn’t mocking it; she was doubting it

  ‘But that is not the point at issue here,’ he went on grimly. ‘The point at issue is whether, when you took me inside you with all that—’ He stopped, something crazily like agony raking across his hard, handsome face. ‘With all that wretched, begging passion,’ he finished rawly ‘were you pretending to yourself that I was my damned brother?’

  ‘No!’ She hotly denied that, managing at last to pull herself free of him and almost tripping over the trailing sheet as she did so.

  The action tautened one corner, tugging it loose from her fingers so it dropped down to expose one creamy shoulder and the globe of her breast, where the nipple still protruded, tight and sore after last night’s ravishment.

  ‘Oh!’ she choked in wretched dismay, embarrassed heat pouring into her cheeks as her fingers grappled with what was left of the sheet in an effort to cover herself.

  But Rafe’s hand was there first—not helping, but claiming possession of that exposed mound with long fingers that stroked arrogantly, then cupped, so his thumb-pad could run a knowing caress over that cruelly sensitive nipple.

  And suddenly the angry mood flipped over into something much more dangerous as she stood there staring down at those tanned fingers against her creamy flesh and felt the hot sting of desire drown out any ability to protest.

  He stepped closer. Her eyes flicked up to plead with him, then stuck when she saw that same dark, rousing heat burning in his eyes.

  ‘Please don’t,’ she wrenched out shakily.

  But he shook his dark head. ‘Your body wants me, Shaan,’ he stated huskily. ‘Even if your mind wants to reject that fact.’

  Her body wanted him. Tears slashed across her eyes. Her body wanted him so that made it all OK, did it?

  ‘Don’t you understand?’ she choked. ‘I feel as if I’m betraying myself!’

  ‘Because you don’t love me?’

  ‘Or you me,’ she threw right back.

  ‘We both tried love once,’ he stated brutally. ‘And what did it bring us but a load of pain and heartache?’

  ‘And you think this is a less painful option?’ she flashed back.

  For an answer, his thumb moved on the pulsing tip of her nipple, she sucked air into her lungs on a sharp gasp of pleasure.

  His mouth stretched in a glimmer of a satisfied smile. ‘It seems to me,’ he murmured huskily, ‘to be the perfect option.’

  And before she
could think to stop him he reached up with his other hand and stripped the sheet from her body.

  Naked, exposed, quivering, aroused, she made her eyes plead with him as he took that last vital step which brought him hard up against her. ‘Rafe—’ she managed to gasp out in a last-ditch plea, before his month covered hers.

  ‘No,’ he muttered. ‘You want this as much as I do.’

  ‘But it feels wrong!’ she groaned.

  ‘Where is the wrong in you and I helping each other get through a bad time in our lives?’ he questioned.

  Her eyes glazed over with tears of pain—his pain, her own pain; the two were beginning to blur into one now. ‘Was she there instead of me last night?’ she heard herself ask him thickly.

  ‘No.’ It was utterly unequivocal, his darkened eyes never wavering from her own helplessly vulnerable ones. ‘I can honestly say, Shaan,’ he went on huskily, ‘that Madeleine never so much as entered my head last night. I didn’t want her there. I wanted you there!’

  ‘But—’

  ‘No,’ he said again. ‘No more soul-searching.’ And he crushed whatever she had been trying to say to him back into her mouth with the urgent pressure of his lips.

  The bed waited. He lifted her onto it, then knelt, straddled across her, while he stripped the robe from his own body.

  Her heart slammed once, hard, against her breast as she lay there staring up at him. He was so magnificent to look at—big and lean, dark and tanned, with that curling mat of body hair arrowing downwards to the potent proof of his sex.

  Her own senses stirred, that slow, deep, salacious curl of excitement spiralling up from the very pits of her stomach, flooding heat into her flesh as touch-sensitive nerve-ends crowded to the surface of her skin in eager anticipation of his remembered caresses.

  He was so aroused!

  But then, she realised hopelessly, so was she. There was an alien moistness forming between her softly throbbing thighs that seemed to be begging for his touch.