And touching her like this, holding her fantastic body against his, feeling the sweet, feminine softness of her, tasting her lips, was a need that had been driving him wild since he’d met up with her again. The beauty of it had been her unwitting response to him, the yielding softness of her parted lips, the sudden stab of sexual awareness he had felt through the barrier of clothing that had separated their heated bodies.
But that response was enough for now. More than enough. Prolonging this enforced intimacy would only make her resent him, and he never, ever took a backward step.
He reached for her hands, took them in his, gave her a soft, conspiratorial smile. ‘Thanks, Laura. But Allie and I will pick up a snack in town.’ He watched the tension drain from her lovely face, saw her kissable lips relax into a tiny smile, and that was adequate compensation—for the moment, anyway—for denying himself the physical closeness the situation here demanded she accept.
Then he drawled, in his own private, wicked retaliation, ‘We’ve got a helluva lot to thrash out. I got a special licence and the wedding’s fixed for three o’clock tomorrow afternoon.’
Fully aware of the stunned silence, he swept her mother and her aunt with laughing golden eyes. ‘I hope you two ladies will be able to make it, give us your blessings when we tie the knot!’
CHAPTER SIX
‘ARE you sure this thing’s capable of getting us there?’ Allie questioned suspiciously as she hiked the short, tight skirt of the blue silk suit she’d been married in up to her thighs, to allow her to slide reluctantly into the passenger seat of his deplorable old van. She had very little inclination to embark on a pretend honeymoon, and even less to spend the first part of it in a broken-down vehicle in the back of beyond.
Jethro tore his eyes away from the elegant, silk-clothed length of her legs and smothered a groan. This was his wedding day, and this gorgeous, shatteringly sexy lady was his bride. Not that she looked at it in quite that way, of course. But she would, he vowed—he’d make damn sure of that!
‘It goes,’ he said, the dry, almost strangulated tone of his voice the result of his ferocious internal battle with his far too lively hormones. ‘Not quickly, and certainly not elegantly. But it goes.’
Harry had been—in his own words—‘totally gobsmacked’ when he’d been asked for the loan of the van. Why drive the poor girl on her honeymoon in that clapped-out old thing when he had a brand-new Jaguar gathering dust? had been the gist of his stupefaction.
Nanny Briggs, too, had had a whole welter of objections: ‘Why the unseemly haste to the altar? Why pretend you’re not who you are? And why am I supposed to be your grandmother? I don’t like it, Master Jethro. It all sounds very underhand to me, and to my certain knowledge you were never that.’
Thankfully, though, they’d behaved themselves at the short civil ceremony—if looking bewildered constituted good behaviour. Laura, bless her, had been openly ecstatic, wiping motherly tears of joy from her eyes with the corner of a handkerchief. The only sour note had been played by that Fran woman. He didn’t know why she’d taken time off from work to attend the ceremony if all she’d been able to do was scowl.
And now the wedding party, such as it was, had dispersed, the suitcases were in the back of the van and they were heading for what was probably one of the strangest honeymoons in history.
He put the van in motion and heard Allie heave a sigh. His heart clenched. He would have much preferred an enormous splash of a wedding and the opportunity to proudly show his beautiful bride to the whole world, instead of a hole-and-corner civil affair that had been over in what had seemed like seconds.
He wanted to whisk her away to some secluded exotic island, shower her with gifts, make love to her until neither of them knew where they were at. He wanted to hang diamonds around her graceful neck and clothe her slender fingers with precious stones and gleaming gold. That thin band of brass—the cheapest he’d been able to find—was a paltry thing, an insult to her heart-wrenching beauty, a miserable denial of what she meant to him.
But if his plan to make her fall in love with the man he was, rather than with his millions, was to have any hope of working, then, as Nanny Briggs would have said, he’d have to let want be his master.
‘We don’t have to do this,’ she said in the cool tones that told him that the fluster brought on by the kissing, stroking and holding of last evening was buried well in the past as far as she was concerned. ‘It was good of your friend to say you could borrow his holiday cottage, but as it won’t be a real honeymoon I don’t see the point. So why don’t we head back to London instead? We did agree we’d share my flat for the duration of the marriage. In any case, we have to present ourselves, and the marriage certificate, at Fabian’s solicitors.’
‘Plenty of time for that,’ he stated unequivocally. ‘You can phone for an appointment from the cottage; you’ve got all of three weeks to wave the thing under his nose and claim your inheritance.’ The engine rattled and coughed as he negotiated the huge traffic island on the by-pass and pointed the battle-scarred bonnet west.
No way were they heading back to her place.
Last night, after they’d escaped from her family, she’d described her flat as ‘tiny’. One small bedroom, more like a cupboard, really, but there was a sofa-bed arrangement in the living room and he could sleep on that. She used it herself on the rare occasions when Laura came to visit, and it wasn’t really that uncomfortable.
He could live with a flat of shoe-box proportions, sleep on a lumpy sofa contraption—no problem. If he had to take up residence in a dustbin to be with her, he’d do so gladly. But once back in London, on her home territory, she’d take herself off, make herself scarce; he knew she would. Once the business with the solicitor was over she’d be lunching with her agent, getting back into the swing of things, and before he knew it she’d be off on a shoot on the other side of the world, putting as much distance as she could between herself and her unwanted but unfortunately necessary husband.
He needed a couple of weeks, just the two of them alone together, to get her to change her mind about his role in her life—and when he’d accomplished that, sofa-beds and separate lives would be the last thing she’d want.
‘Think about it,’ he said smoothly. ‘I already told Laura that my old school-mate offered us the use of his country hideaway. I said we’d be there for a couple of weeks and she has the phone number, remember. She’ll start to get suspicious if she tries to contact us and can’t, and then discovers we passed up the opportunity of a free honeymoon in rural isolation.’
He had a point, Allie conceded sinkingly. They must do nothing to make her mother suspect that this marriage was anything other than a true love-match. They couldn’t do a single thing to rock the boat until the fat lady sang. And that wouldn’t happen until Laura was safely back at Studley and ready to believe, twelve months down the road, that the marriage simply hadn’t worked out.
It was the ‘rural isolation’ bit that made her toes curl. Back in London she could stay out of his way for most of the time, start her career moving again, get involved in her work, take charge of herself for a change. Ever since he’d agreed to marry her he’d been the one taking control—fixing the wedding up so quickly, telling Laura that there was no point in hanging round since they knew they were going to spend the rest of their lives together, apparently contacting an old schoolfriend to ask for the use of his cottage because, as he’d said, he couldn’t afford the South of France or a Caribbean island, not on what he earned as a fledgling window-cleaner.
‘How isolated?’ she asked, hating the note of apprehension in her voice, trying to assure herself that there was nothing to get paranoid about because they had a non-consummation pact, didn’t they? He wouldn’t try anything on, would he? And the way she’d turned to a jelly when he’d kissed her and held her had been down to nervous tension.
Hadn’t it?
‘Not a neighbour in sight,’ he answered blithely. ‘Just the birds an
d the bees and the butterflies.’
Wrong—all the butterflies in creation had taken residence in her tummy. ‘Won’t you get terribly bored?’ she suggested, out of sheer desperation. ‘With nothing to do?’
And she shuddered when a million electric sparks bombarded her spine as he turned briefly to her, his mouth a sensual curve, his golden eyes heart-crashingly wicked as he murmured softly, ‘I’ll find something. You can bet a year’s earnings on that.’
Wisely, Allie shut her mouth, and kept it shut for the next twenty-odd miles. He hadn’t actually meant anything, even though his eyes had been definitely carrying a come-to-bed message. He was just teasing, winding her up, having fun at her expense.
She hoped he wouldn’t keep it up during the coming two weeks. It would drive her crazy if he did! And she was not going to ask herself why that should be.
He broke the lengthy silence. ‘Almost there.’ They were inching down a steep gradient now, down an unmade track with grass growing along the centre and high leafy hedgerows almost meeting overhead, cutting out the sunlight. Welsh border country, and, as the crow flew, not too far from Studley. Romantic country.
She didn’t want to think of romantic, but couldn’t help it when the final bend brought them to a high garden wall with an arched opening that gave them a glimpse of a stone-built cottage, very much larger than she’d expected, with roses sprawling round the wide oak door and dozens of tiny-paned mullioned windows that twinkled in the late afternoon light.
‘It’s beautiful!’ Despite being dead set against coming here at all, Allie couldn’t quash the exclamation of delight. From what she could see of the obviously extensive gardens Jethro’s friend favoured the rampageous cottage style, and if she craned her neck she got a glimpse of an archway in the high stone boundary wall which framed a tantalising vista of meadows, trees and distant rolling hills.
A perfect place to spend a week or two soaking up the peace, wallowing in the serenity of the Garden of Eden before the Fall—but there wasn’t going to be a fall, she reminded herself when her body went into high-tension mode as Jethro strolled round from the rear of the van to open the passenger door at her side.
If he touched her he would spoil it all, shatter the trance-like peace of this magical place. She held her breath and her skin prickled with the tightness of expectancy and apprehension, because after that charade last evening in front of Laura and Fran she knew that his slightest touch was capable of starting a major riot inside her.
But he made no move to help her out, simply held the door open, reaching for the two suitcases he’d fetched from the rear while she’d been lost in admiration of the property, and left her to it.
Left her to unwillingly admire his back view as he carried the cases towards the cottage door. Somehow he’d managed to find time to buy a suit in honour of the occasion. It certainly looked brand-new, and very definitely off-the-peg. But the poor cut and inexpensive fabric did nothing to detract from the superb body beneath, or the fluid, macho grace of the way that body moved.
Allie gulped around the rock that had suddenly taken up residence in her throat and reluctantly followed.
Jethro unlocked the heavy oak door, reclaimed the suitcases and pushed his way in, and hoped to heaven his staff had absorbed his telephoned orders and would follow them to the letter. Any slip-up could ruin his long-term plans.
He had no worries as far as Jim, his gardener, was concerned. Practical, reliable, unquestioning, male, old Jim wouldn’t come near the property for the next two weeks because his boss had told him not to. But Ethel, his housekeeper, who kept the cottage spick and span during his lengthy absences, would be itching to know why she’d been instructed to fully stock the deep-freeze, fridge, larder and wine racks and then make herself scarce for a couple of weeks.
He wouldn’t put it past her to be hovering around, ostensibly just on her way out after carrying out his orders and stocking up on food and wine, her black eyes sparking with feminine curiosity as she waited to see just why he wanted this place entirely to himself, and who, if anyone, he was bringing with him.
Unapologetic for the sexism of his thoughts, he strode through to the kitchen, relieved to find it innocent of any avidly curious female presence, and then went back to collect Allie, who was still hovering in the hall, twisting the tawdry wedding band round and round on her slender finger.
His heart twisted with compassion. The poor darling was wired up with nerves, had lost that fabled cool, touch-me-not persona that had been—as he’d discovered to his cost—bone-deep, not merely a trademark.
She glanced up, saw him, and tried to smile. It wobbled alarmingly, and she settled for chewing on her lush lower lip. And he asked himself why? Why so apprehensive? She’d successfully frozen off all his early attempts to date her, get to know her, and, apart from a couple of understandable glitches, which could be put down to a natural distaste for having to ask him to go through a form of marriage for mutual financial gain, she had been calm and collected right up until he’d touched her, kissed her.
So maybe he’d stripped away one of the layers from around her heavily protected heart. Maybe his own yearning need for her had been transmitted through the heated touch of their lips. And maybe she had felt herself respond to it and was terrified, because she could feel her steely lack of interest in matters sexual slipping away.
Sounded logical to him. Elation punched through his gut, clear through to his backbone, and brought an idiotic grin to his face which he quickly subdued. Down boy, he told himself sternly. Take it easy, nice and easy…
The thought of making love to her in precisely that way—easy, nice and easy—not rushing her, gentling her along, slowly stripping every last stitch of clothing from her delectable body, stroking the warm silk of her skin, making her ready, eager for him, open and moist and willing for him, making her cry out for him as every cell in his body cried out for her, made a certain, seemingly uncontrollable part of his anatomy stand to eager attention.
Clearing his throat sharply, he reached for their cases and humped them up the polished oak stairs. Only when he was more or less sure his voice would emerge naturally did he toss over his shoulder, ‘Come and pick a room out for yourself, Allie. And while you’re freshening up I’ll make supper. Bill—’ he plucked the name randomly out of the air ‘—said we’d find plenty in the larder and fridge to keep us going.’
He wanted to be open and up-front with her, and truly hated this subterfuge, but he had no option but to blur the edges of the truth if he were to achieve his objective.
‘How many rooms are there? It’s much larger than I expected. “Holiday cottage” conjured up a two-up two-down in a patch of grass.’
The heels of her shoes beat a very feminine tattoo on the polished treads, and she sounded fluttery and strangely breathless. Surely the stairs weren’t that steep! Put it down to the relief of knowing he wasn’t about to renege on their bargain and suggest they shared a room, he told himself drily. He wasn’t stupid enough to suggest any such thing, not at this early stage. But, of course, she didn’t know that.
In the wide, panelled corridor at the head of the stairs he waited for her to catch up and told her lightly, ‘It used to be a farmhouse. It was almost derelict when—’ What the heck had he called his mythical old schoolfriend? Damn—he’d forgotten! To be a successful liar one needed a good memory. Normally he had the best, but in this instance it had failed him abysmally. ‘When my friend bought it,’ he finished, his voice shortening with self-irritation.
‘There are three bedrooms,’ he added more equably, and pushed open the nearest door, the one to the room his kid sister, Chloe, used when she could tear herself away from her student friends. ‘You can choose, of course, but this one has its own bathroom, and you might prefer not to share the main one with me.’
He was pleased with the reasonable tone he’d managed to achieve when he’d made what he considered to be that faultless, considerate statement, and the strange l
ook on her face puzzled him. There was a slight frown between her glorious blue eyes and her shapely head was tilted, as if she was thinking hard.
‘You obviously know the house well. Do you stay here often?’
‘Not as often as I’d like.’ He didn’t want her asking too many questions about his relationship with the owner of the property but he fielded that one with ease. It was the truth, after all. Later, when she wanted their marriage to be a real and lasting one, they’d be here more often. He could make it his base, delegate more, travel to London only when he wanted to—taking her with him, of course—and keep the Mayfair house on for when they needed it. This place, his country home, would be perfect for the babies they were going to make…
Holy cow! The thought of making babies with her made a red mist form in front of his eyes! So cool it, he muttered to his over-active imagination, and his voice was weirdly hoarse as he queried, ‘Well? Would you like to see the other bedrooms?’
Allie’s eyes widened, found his and clung. Suddenly, stupidly, she couldn’t look away from those black-fringed dark golden depths. He’d been reasonable, perfectly reasonable, but there’d been something about his voice, an intimate huskiness, that made her feel weak and very, very feminine.
Something was happening. She knew it was; she could feel it. Something—she didn’t know what—was responsible for the thickening air that cocooned them, alternately humming softly then prickling sharply, like smooth hands that reached wickedly beneath the thin barrier of her clothing and soothed her skin, then pricked it into skittering life, made her sharply aware, not wanting it, yet craving…
She tore her eyes away from the mesmeric lights in those hooded golden ones and squawked, ‘No. Not at all. This room—yes. Looks fine.’ And she almost fell over her feet in her haste to cross the threshold, angry with herself for her ridiculously callow behaviour.
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