by Miranda Lee
He didn’t think it was doing her much good being with her mother. Adelaide had obviously shut the door on her old life and home—both mentally and emotionally—and kept talking about Tom and the future with a slightly insensitive optimism.
Marcus suspected that was her way of coping, but it wasn’t Justine’s. She needed to openly grieve the loss of her home, and everything that home represented. When Marcus whispered that they could go back and look at what was left of the house now, she nodded her agreement.
It was worse than he’d envisaged. A blackened, sodden shell. A fire truck was still there, and they were warned not to touch anything, although it was obvious the thick stone walls weren’t in any danger of collapse. Nothing was salvageable inside, everything either reduced to ash, or melted and twisted into unrecognisable shapes.
‘Oh, Marcus,’ was all Justine said over and over as they picked their way carefully through the rubble, her voice breaking.
It wasn’t till she stared up at where the staircase had been that she seriously began to cry. Marcus folded her to him and let her. She needed to cry, needed to let it all out, needed to grieve.
She was deathly silent during the drive home. His, not Tom’s. Marcus wasn’t about to let her go back there. Not tonight.
He poured her a stiff drink on arrival and pressed it into her hands.
‘Don’t be angry with your mother, Justine,’ he said as she drank it down.
‘I’m not,’ she said, sighing. ‘Not really. She’s only doing what she’s always done. Putting her head in the sand and pretending everything will be all right. And it probably will be. Tom’s a good man. She’s obviously going to be very happy with him. It’s just that I feel so desolate. I can’t explain it. I have nothing left from my life there. No photographs or mementoes. Nothing. It’s as though I don’t exist any more.’
‘Not exist? Oh, Justine, my love, you exist more than anyone I’ve ever met. You walk in a room and the air is instantly warmer, the light brighter. You have a living aura around you which is both captivating and enchanting. You are life. But I understand what you’re saying. I would have dearly loved some photographs of my mother. But, be assured, there are more photographs of you and your past life around than you realise. All your friends will have some. Relatives. Old classmates. Photographers keep negatives for decades, and so do people. We’ll get some photographs for you, my love. Meanwhile, I have a little surprise for you—something which I think might make you feel better.’
‘What?’
‘Seeing is worth a thousand words,’ he said, smiling, and led her along the hallway to the large back room which had been empty till a week or so ago.
He opened the door and guided her in, watching as her eyes widened on a gasp of spontaneous joy.
Marcus would always remember that moment, the way her face went from a bleak sadness to blazing happiness in one split second.
‘Grandma’s things!’ she exclaimed. ‘Oh, I’d forgotten about them. Oh, Marcus, what a wonderful surprise!’ And she ran around the room, touching everything with loving little strokes of her hands, laughing and crying at the same time.
‘I won’t even make you marry me to get them back,’ he teased.
Her head shot up and a mischievous glint came into her eyes. His heart turned over. The girl he’d fallen in love with was back, as bright and bold as ever.
‘Was that a proposal I just heard?’ she asked saucily. ‘Or a bribe? Marcus Osborne, you wouldn’t be trying to corrupt me, would you?’
‘Could I?’
She started to undulate towards him and his throat thickened. ‘Not with things, my darling,’ she murmured, reaching up on tiptoe to wind her arms around his neck and press herself against him. ‘But make love to me like you did last night and I’ll be yours for ever.’
‘Is that an acceptance, or another bribe?’
‘It’s a promise.’
Justine was moved by the expression which came into his eyes. She realised then that her mother had been right. Love was all that mattered. Not a house. Or things. Love.
‘Will tomorrow be too soon for the ceremony?’ he asked impatiently.
She laughed. ‘I don’t think a marriage can be arranged that quickly. Not legally.’
‘Where there’s a will there’s a way.’
‘Then go to it—pronto. Meanwhile...’
She became his wife by special licence seven days later-Marcus pulling all sorts of strings and claiming a pregnancy as the reason for the undue haste.
As it turned out, technically, he hadn’t lied. Their first child—a daughter—arrived eight months and three weeks later, just in time to move into the new house Marcus had had built on the burned-out site—a duplication of the original house from the plans they’d found still lodged at the local council.
It was always a happy house, with a carved mahogany balustrade which the children slid down, but only when their grandmother was minding them. She never seemed to notice their misdemeanours—not like their mother, who was very strict. None of them believed for a moment the stories their father told of their mother being a wild child who had played hookey from school, been an outrageous flirt and who’d worn tight, sexy dresses. That wasn‘t their mother. No way. That had to be some other person.
But when their parents found the privacy of their bedroom at night, and the children were fast asleep, something happened to their mother. In Marcus’s arms she became a different woman, a woman who knew she was very lucky to have found her true love in life. They would have been very surprised to see the woman she became then. Very surprised indeed!
ISBN : 978-1-4592-5178-6
THE MILLIONAIRE’S MISTRESS
First North American Publication 1999.
Copyright © 1998 by Miranda Lee.
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All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
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