Resolve and a bit of damage limitation. She couldn’t let her parents go away in the false hope that a marriage date would be set by the time she next got in touch.
Ready for anything, Katy arrived downstairs to find that she had timed her entrance perfectly. All the assembled cast were there. Maggie had prepared a buffet-style breakfast in the dining room and, after a few pleasantries, she sat down and prepared to launch phase one of her plan.
‘I’m surprised you’re not off to work, darling.’ She glanced over to where Bruno was sitting opposite her and Joseph, sandwiched between her parents.
Having failed to dredge up the slightest compliment when she had been in the designer shop, parading herself in various outfits, he had, she noticed sourly, managed to tell her that she looked exquisite when she had appeared in the dining room, and had sounded as though he had meant every word. Her parents and Joseph had shared a look of mutual pleasure. She, on the other hand, had seen it for what it was. More play-acting. As were the searing glances he had thrown her way and the kiss he had planted on her lips. It all went a long way to making her feel more determined to curtail any rising expectations.
‘Day off,’ Bruno drawled now, looking up at her and managing to lock the rest of the room out so that she felt annoyingly red-faced.
‘Mmm.’ Katy sighed and gave everyone a slight smile. ‘Unusual. Bruno is such a hard worker. Aren’t you?’
‘Works like the devil,’ Joseph obligingly chipped in. ‘Always has. Can’t tell you how many countries he visits in a year.’
‘Hundreds, I imagine!’ Katy took up the thread before Bruno could jump in with amusing anecdotes about the places he had visited. She could already see interest hovering on her father’s lips.
‘Not quite.’ Bruno closed his knife and fork and looked at her with brooding speculation.
‘Where have you been?’ her mother joined in. ‘Anywhere exciting?’ Whereupon Bruno turned to her and wittily described some of the places he had visited, the customs he had come across, the weird food he had had to sample. All the time Katy could feel his dark interest levelled on her and, sure enough, the minute the gathering broke up, with her parents excusing themselves so that they could pack for their homeward journey, he managed to corner her.
‘What was that all about?’
‘What was what all about?’
‘You know what I’m talking about, Katy. The sudden fascination with the many hundreds of countries I travel to in a year.’
Katy shrugged. ‘I just thought we should start building up the scene for our eventual incompatibility. At the rate you’re going, everyone’s going to start asking us for wedding dates next and then what? Better to sow a few seeds of doubt.’ His face was looking grimmer by the minute but Katy was not going to be deterred.
‘Mum and Dad will probably have a cup of tea before I drop them to the station and I think you ought to imply how inconvenient you’ve found it being here for weeks on end, in one place. Maybe you could say that your work suffered because you need to be travelling around, touching base, with all those companies or whatever that you own.’
‘Progress a lie with another, in other words.’
‘But a helpful lie!’ Their conversation was taking place in the sitting room. Katy could hear the distant clatter of Maggie clearing away the breakfast dishes. In a minute, her parents would come in and so would Joseph. She felt an overwhelming desperation to get something sorted out before they entered. ‘I know my mum,’ Katy said urgently, perching against the bay window sill, which meant that she had to crane her neck upwards to look at Bruno. ‘I don’t know how you’ve done it, but you’ve managed to convince her that you’re the perfect son-in-law-to-be. No, I take that back. I know how you did it. You’re such an expert liar and you just don’t have any moral standards, do you?’
Bruno leaned down towards her and rested the palms of his hands on either side of her, caging her in.
‘We went into this together. It’s no good trying to lay the blame at my door now.’
‘Okay, so I made a mistake. I can begin to rectify that now, though, by not encouraging Mum and Dad to start thinking that this is actually going somewhere. All I need is a bit of co-operation from you!’
‘Why the sudden sense of urgency here, Katy?’ Bruno enquired coldly. ‘There’s been no mention of any wedding date.’
‘That’s not the point. Anyway, it’s just not been mentioned at the moment. They’ve come here to check you out and, now that you’ve passed muster, it won’t be long before I start getting little suggestions about wedding invitations and churches and bridal dresses.’ Katy shuddered at the possibility that this charade could carry on for that length of time, the thought that she would have to continue seeing Bruno, being in his presence, going out with him, having him touch her whenever the situation demanded a show of some affection, knowing that the touch meant nothing to him but meant everything to her. Every second in his presence gave her love time to grow and dragged her further into the net she could feel tangling around her.
She could feel his warm breath fanning her face, could feel the nearness of him like some dreadful fever against which her immune system was defenceless. Every nerve ending in her body was alive with the treacherous excitement induced by his powerful masculine presence.
‘My parents are old-fashioned kind of people,’ she carried on desperately. ‘They won’t see the point of a so-called engagement unless a date is set for the big event! And Joseph probably won’t either. I know he’s been brilliant getting back on his feet, but he still feels vulnerable. He might think that time is no longer on his side and his godson should tie the knot sooner rather than later. Have you considered that?’ She shot him an attacking glance from under her lashes and watched his face suffuse with dark colour.
‘I’m in the process of considering a lot of things, as a matter of fact.’
There was an iciness in his voice that sent a little shiver racing down her spine.
‘Would any of those things be what I was just talking about?’ Katy asked nervously. The closer she had got with Bruno, the less nervous she had begun to feel around him, but right now the forbidding cast to his features had her heart pumping like a wild, trapped bird inside her.
‘I would say that I’m making a connection here between what you said yesterday and what you’re telling me now…’
‘What? What did I say yesterday?’ Katy frowned and tried to think back but, since she had no idea what he was on about, it was impossible to isolate any strands of conversation that might have given her some clues as to where he was heading.
‘The clothes. The clothes that you’ve now decided to keep because you’ve suddenly realised that they might just come in handy. Oh, yes. The shy, stammering girl of the printed floral smock has taken stock and seen that a wardrobe of classy clothes can go a long way to trapping a man. Didn’t you say so yourself? And why wait before you put it to the test? Mmm? I can see why this pretend engagement is getting on your nerves all of a sudden…’
‘You can have your clothes back!’
‘What’s it like taking the leap from innocent young girl to woman on the prowl, Katy?’ He looked at her flushed face and the thought of her going out into that deadbeat town, shimmying her slender hips and giving men that unknowingly sexy look of provocative innocence, exploded in his head like a fistful of fireworks. He felt the unexpected rage of a jealousy he had never experienced before and didn’t know what to do with.
‘You gave a very convincing performance of a timid young thing scared at the prospect of losing her virginity. Now I think about it, were you really that scared? Who knows? Maybe you had plans…is that it, Katy? Did you have plans to use me? After all, you have to admit that I’m a supremely good catch…’
‘Plans to use you? What was I planning to use you for?’
Bruno overrode her question savagely. ‘You’re twenty-three. Maybe, just maybe you decided that it was high time you lost your virginity a
nd who better than a single man with money? Lots of it? With Isobel out of the way, you’d have no need for any conscience…’ Staring down into her startled, bewildered eyes, he knew that he was being utterly implausible. He was attacking, losing control and his loss of control was driving him crazy. He couldn’t rid himself of the image of her laughing with some other man, sending him those shy little looks that she had sent to him, taking her clothes off, getting into bed…
He pushed himself away from her and fought to regain his self composure.
‘I don’t know what you’re on about.’ Katy restlessly twisted her fingers together and finally walked over to where he had subsided onto one of the sofas. ‘I’m not after anything from you,’ she said miserably. ‘I don’t understand how you can make a series of connections like you have and come up with all the wrong answers. We just happen to have found ourselves in an odd situation. I mean, if it weren’t for Isobel and her need to get revenge we wouldn’t even be here!’ He would have been on his way to some other woman’s bed, she thought to herself, because she wouldn’t conduct a casual fling with him, and she might have been recovering from the body-blow he had delivered to her instead of being catapulted on a roller-coaster ride for a variety of reasons that were growing less convincing by the second.
‘No, we damn well wouldn’t,’ Bruno said grimly. ‘But we are and we can hardly wriggle out of it from day one.’
‘I object to you telling me that I’m some kind of opportunist.’ Katy felt the need to clear the air. ‘I didn’t plan to lose…well, to make love to you…it just happened, and I don’t care how much money you have or not. That’s appalling. I would never enter into a relationship because of money. That’s a really unfair accusation.’ She could feel tears struggling to well up and fought them back. Bursting into tears would infuriate Bruno. After all, he hadn’t asked for this mess to land on his head either and, whatever she thought now about the situation they had found themselves in, and the rights and wrongs of it, the plain truth was that they had entered into it for the right reasons.
‘Okay. I apologise,’ Bruno said, flushing darkly.
His apology only made her want to cry more. Katy gulped, feeling emotional, and with a frustrated sigh Bruno leaned towards her and pulled her into him. His hands tangled in her hair and, like a blind man, he sought her mouth with his, parting her lips with hungry ferocity and plundering the soft moistness.
He could feel the softness of her small breasts squashing against his chest and with a moan he pushed his hands underneath her shirt and pulled down the nothing of her stretchy cotton bra so that her breasts popped out of their restraints.
‘What…are…you…doing?’ Katy whispered shakily. His big hands covered her breasts and she shuddered with exquisite, agonised pleasure in response as his thumbs rubbed her nipples until she wanted to scream out with longing.
‘What are we doing, you mean…’
‘You shouldn’t be touching me like this…it’s not part of the deal…’
‘Then why are you responding?’ He pushed up the shirt so that he could look at what he was doing and breathed thickly as he saw the evidence of her arousal. Nipples big and dark, the buds tightly begging him to continue doing what he was doing. ‘I want to suck them,’ he groaned softly. ‘Do you want that?’
‘I want…’ She knew what she wanted. Or at least, she thought she did. She wanted him to put distance between them, she wanted to step back from feelings that had taken control of her and were holding her common sense to ransom. Katy gazed deep into his bright black eyes and the protests died in her throat. Instead of pulling back and putting her case forward for not touching her again, she arched up slightly so that one breast dipped tantalisingly against his mouth.
The touch of his wet tongue against her sensitised nipple was almost unbearably exciting. He delicately licked the bud, then, when he could stand it no longer, Bruno pulled her down so that he could ravage her breast with his mouth, suckling at it and blindingly aroused by her responses.
They both heard the sound of approaching footsteps and voices and Katy shot off him and frantically got herself in order just as her parents walked into the sitting room. Packed and ready to go, they said. Joseph had offered to have Jimbo drop them off at the station, and that, her mum continued, taking in her daughter’s flushed face with knowing eyes, seemed like a good idea, especially as Katy and Bruno would be going out later.
It seemed like a very good idea to Katy as well. Normally, she would have enjoyed the trip to the station and the cup of tea while they waited for the train, but this time she had a pretty shrewd idea of what being cooped up with her parents might involve.
So there had been no mention of a wedding date. Yet. But her mother had given her a very perceptive look when she had walked into the sitting room, only just missing catching them in flagrante.
She and Bruno and Joseph saw them off, standing on the drive. Bruno, true to form, had his hand circling her waist, although as soon as the Range Rover had disappeared from sight and Joseph was inside the house Katy edged her way out of the embrace.
She couldn’t bring herself to look at him, although she was keenly aware of him next to her, not saying a word, hands stuck into his pockets. It was the perfect early-summer morning, quite still and very quiet, which had always been one of the most appealing things about the location of Joseph’s house. No sounds of traffic or trains or overhead planes to intrude on the littler noises of the breeze through the trees and the birds singing.
It seemed hypocritical to launch into a speech about sticking to the deal and only doing what was necessary for just as long as it was necessary, when only a short while earlier she had been lying in his arms offering herself to him like the proverbial sacrificial lamb.
‘What time do we need to leave this afternoon?’ she asked in a detached voice, keeping her distance and still not looking at him. Instead she inspected the gravelley stones at her feet, kicking them slightly with the toe of her shoe.
‘The car comes at five-thirty. Just spit it out.’
Katy raised her eyes to his and blushed.
‘This evening will be a complete fiasco if you go into one of your thoughtful, silent moods so I suggest you just tell me what’s on your mind and get it out into the open.’
‘You know what I’m thinking.’ By ‘complete fiasco’ she wondered if he meant that she would simply irritate the hell out of him if she wasn’t prepared to conduct an Oscar-winning performance of a woman in love for the benefit of the public at large.
‘You’re beating yourself up because we touched one another. Am I right?’
Katy nodded and folded her arms.
‘Well, I won’t waste my time trying to talk you out of your over-developed guilt complex,’ Bruno drawled, looking at her with an inscrutable expression, ‘so let’s just put the blame solidly on my shoulders. If my memory serves me right, I yanked you down on top of me and started kissing you. It won’t happen again.’
‘It won’t?’ For some reason, his ready assurance was woefully disappointing, but Katy managed to rally round with something she hoped resembled intense relief.
‘It won’t.’
‘You mean because you don’t fancy me any more.’
Bruno gave her a crooked smile but maintained a respectful distance. ‘I never said that, did I? I just won’t lay a finger on you if the aftermath is anguish on your part. Of course, that’s not to say that I won’t ravish you if you decide to make the first move.’
Disappointment gave way to foolish rapture, then she reminded herself of the million and one downsides to the offer he was extending.
‘Well, I won’t,’ Katy said shortly. ‘It would be stupid and short-sighted.’ She thought of sleeping with him, again and again and again, without getting tied up in emotional knots and thinking about the future they would never have together. She thought about being carefree enough to just enjoy the moment. She wondered how it would be if she broke her own rules.
/> Before she could let herself speculate out loud on any of this, she began moving back into the house, aware of him right there behind her.
‘Shall I meet you in the hall, then? At five-thirty?’ she suggested.
‘Feel better after our little chat?’
Katy shrugged. ‘I’ll feel better when tonight’s over. When,’ she asked suddenly, ‘are you going to go back to London, Bruno? I can’t imagine you can stay trapped up here indefinitely, even if there’s a fake engagement to keep in motion for a while.’
Bruno’s eyes narrowed and he looked at her thoughtfully. ‘I’ll work something out. I’ve got to go out to the town right now, so I won’t be around for lunch.’
‘Where are you going?’ Katy blurted out, without thinking first, and then reddened.
‘I have a clandestine meeting with a hot blonde,’ he said lazily, his stunning eyes intent on her face.
Katy’s mouth parted in shocked confusion. It took her a few seconds to realise that he was teasing her and then she glared at him.
‘Very funny.’
‘Jealous?’
‘Certainly not! You’re free to do exactly what you like.’
‘Even though we’re engaged?’ Bruno shook his head sorrowfully. ‘Don’t you think I have any principles at all?’
‘We’re not engaged and I’m sure you haven’t got any principles at all.’
His eyes hardened fractionally. ‘This could really lead to an involved conversation, which I don’t have the time for right now. The hot blonde is, in fact, a fifty-something lawyer in town who’s handling something for me up here.’
‘Okay.’ Katy had the uneasy feeling that she had been foolish, accusing him of having no principles. She wanted to apologise, but didn’t quite know how and, besides, she could see that he was itching to be off. He had already glanced at his watch twice.
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