by Kim Lawrence
He glanced over his shoulder. ‘We’re five minutes early. I can drive around the block once more if you like?’ he suggested, fighting the impulse to apologise.
It was convenient, but had he realised that the office was situated on a road where most shop windows were either boarded up or smashed, he would have added a few miles to their journey.
Mari shook her head and took a deep breath. Not waiting for him to come around and open the door, she flung herself out, gasping, ‘No, I’m fine.’
She had actually never been this far from fine in her life!
Seb came to join her. ‘It’s probably better inside.’
It was actually much worse, but Mari barely noticed. It wasn’t the place that made her heart feel like a stone; it was exchanging words that were meant to mean something. She felt a hypocrite saying them—making a mockery of something that she considered sacred left a bad taste in her mouth.
Mari felt like a cheat.
As they walked through the swing doors, Seb pulled Mari out of the way of a boisterous crowd. At the centre of the laughing group was a bride whose white minidress did nothing to disguise her large pregnancy bump and a groom who didn’t look as if he had started shaving yet.
Mari turned her head for one last look as the loud group left the building.
‘They looked so happy.’
Seb didn’t know if it was the wistful look on her face when she said it, or the fact he had fully expected her to make some catty remark about the other woman giving birth before she got to exchange vows, but as they headed towards the ceremony room Seb found himself wishing he had bought her some flowers.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE MOMENT MARI got out of the car, even though it was almost midnight, the Spanish summer heat hit her. She focused on the physical impressions and tried not to think beyond them to the lump of apprehension she was carrying around like a stone in her chest for the entire journey.
It was utterly still; the air was heavy and stickily oppressive. For the last mile or so they had driven through what seemed to be a pine forest, and warm air carried the green smell of the trees.
She got out her mobile and texted goodnight to her brother.
‘I imagine he is much as he was the past ten times you texted him.’ While Seb was exploiting the sisterly devotion, her inability to see that she was being used by her brother was really beginning to irritate him. So was her frigid, tight-lipped silence.
She had not said anything the entire journey; not to him anyway—she had been charm itself to the steward on the flight. The boy had been positively salivating. ‘And you’ve proved your point. Some women can keep quiet.’
He had hardly said a word the entire way, so now he broke his moody silence to criticise her!
‘If you’d spoken to me I’d have replied. And texting my brother, that’s called caring,’ she snapped back, choosing not to inform him that the texting exercise had been pretty one-sided.
He turned his head briefly to scan her profile in the darkness. ‘Would he be grateful if he knew what you’ve done for him?’
‘You’re the one who is paying for his treatment. This was my choice.’
‘So why didn’t you tell him?’
‘Mark has got enough on his plate without feeling responsible... What’s that meant to mean?’ she asked in response to his harsh laugh.
‘Is it a happy place, this little fantasy world you inhabit?’
Mari shot a look of simmering dislike at his patrician profile. ‘I wouldn’t expect you to understand.’
‘Try me.’
Taken unawares by the unexpected offer, Mari found herself answering, ‘I love him. He’s my brother.’ She could have left it there but for some reason she heard herself say, ‘I know he’s not perfect but he’s not had an easy life, rejected by his mother.’
‘Is that the way you feel about it—rejected?’
Too close to the truth. She ignored his interruption.
‘Two foster homes that didn’t work out, and the children’s home—’
‘Weren’t you in those same places?’
She shook her head. ‘You don’t understand—he was there because of me. He would have been adopted straight away when we were babies if they had allowed us to be split up, but they didn’t.’
‘Why him and not you?’
‘People want pretty babies. Mark had blond curls and dimples—he was adorable. I was not an attractive baby.’ It was a matter-of-fact statement with no self-pity he could detect, and all the more poignant because of it.
‘Aren’t all babies pretty?’
‘Not me. I was allergic to pretty much everything. I had asthma, that wasn’t so bad, but my skin was awful—eczema. It took hours every day putting on and washing off my treatments...and when it flared up...’ She gave a little shudder at the memory. ‘People do not want to push around a scabby baby, and not many want the responsibility of looking after a kid with a chronic skin condition.
‘Mark got left on the shelf with me, and when we did get fostered my red-headed temper—well, you’ve seen that—got us sent back both times. So, you see, without me Mark could have had a very different life.’
‘Is that how you think of yourself—left on the shelf...?’
‘Actually it was a doorstep.’ To abandon your own babies that way you had to be pretty desperate...but maybe if there had only been one...?
She heard him swear and then, anxious that he didn’t think she was playing for the sympathy vote, added quickly, ‘It wasn’t all doom and gloom, though, in our teens. We got fostered by Sukie and Jack, and they are the most inspirational couple you can imagine,’ she enthused, her voice filling with warmth.
‘Are you coming?’
He knew it was irrational of him to be angry with her for not being a person he could despise. It was a lot easier to take advantage of someone when you could say they were asking for it, they deserved it, than someone who literally didn’t ask for anything, and as far as he could see had never been given anything either! Mari had worked hard and...ah, hell, she was an adult. If she wanted to spend her life paying an imagined debt, that was her business, he told himself. The story changed nothing.
Mari began to follow and stopped. He didn’t even bother to turn around and see if she’d responded, just assumed she would.
And why wouldn’t he? She’d been responding like some meek little lamb from the moment she’d allowed herself to be bundled onto the private jet and, yes, there had been a certain amount of novelty value in the unaccustomed luxury, but it had worn off and now... What the hell are you doing, Mari?
Mari Rey-Defoe.
Mrs Rey-Defoe.
She pressed a hand to her lips but the giggle slipped past. She was married. She used both hands this time to muffle the hysteria that was locked in her throat.
From where he was standing, Seb, who had walked halfway across the gravel, heard it. There was irritation written in the lines of his lean face when he turned and saw her still standing near the car. All he could make out was the shadowy outline of her slim figure, then the moon came out from behind the heavy cloud cover.
He swore softly under his breath. Nothing, he thought savagely, was easy with this woman. She had set out to make his life as tough as possible, and when she couldn’t stage something large and dramatic she made do with little niggling details that added up to a massive and frustrating whole.
The logical thing to do would have been to put her out of his life and erect six walls to keep her out, and yet here he was dragging her in and effectively building walls to keep her there for eighteen long months. Eighteen excruciating months without sex, spent with a woman who could make a sneeze erotic.
At what point had this seemed like a logical next step?
It was a means to an end, he reminded himself. This was about saving several thousand jobs and a partnership that in the future could generate a lot more—a means to an end.
Sure it is, the voice in his head mo
cked, the end being your bed.
The illicit thought came with the accompanying image; he had undressed her in his head over the past few days so often that he felt he knew exactly what she would look like.
He ignored the voice and the desire that twisted inside him, and reminded himself this was a business deal. You let business get personal and it never ended well.
‘Come on.’ The idea of a shower and bed was appealing; the idea of a bed with Mari in it... He saw red hair spread out against the white sheet framing a face that... He clenched his jaw against the thought, but not before his body hardened. ‘It’s this way. Watch your step.’ He jerked his head towards the house.
Ignoring the gesture—did the man think she was some sort of puppy dog to be brought to heel?—Mari shook her head and struggled to maintain her defiant attitude as he crossed the gravel towards her, his long-legged stride bringing him there in seconds.
The resentful words exploded from her before the testosterone he was oozing made her tongue stick to the roof of her mouth, a situation she been experiencing all day.
‘You’ve been pushing me around all day.’
Not in the literal sense. It had almost seemed at times as though he had gone out of his way to avoid touching her. Even at the joke of a marriage ceremony when the registrar had said he could kiss the bride, Seb had barely even brushed his lips with hers, leaving her looking and feeling like a total fool.
The aggravating part of the situation was she had been letting him, and it was not a good precedent to set for the next eighteen months with a man as bossy and controlling as Seb.
She folded her arms across her chest. ‘I’ve had enough. You’re a control freak, and I’m not going another step until you tell me where we are.’
‘Don’t be childish. All you had to do was ask, but you were too busy playing the victim and giving me the stink eye.’
‘I’m amazed you noticed. You haven’t looked up from that damned tablet the whole way.’
‘Feeling neglected, were we?’
‘Not at all,’ she retorted haughtily. ‘It was an education to see what delightful manners years of inbreeding and the best school can achieve.’ It had gone pitch-black again, but his answering hiss made her decide to move on. She’d made her point, although she’d forgotten what it was as he’d taken a step towards her, not touching but awfully close...too close. ‘I’m asking now.’
Now that he was close to losing his temper she sounded maddeningly calm. She had accused him of bad manners, yet she had responded to any question with a mutter and barely said a word the entire way here; filthy looks and her ramrod-straight back—he doubted her shoulder blades had made contact with a chair back at any point—were all that had been given him.
‘Fine, but indoors.’ He glanced up as a cloud drifted like smoke across the moon. ‘There’s a storm coming.’
‘And you can tell that how?’
Before she could pour further scorn on his confident prediction there was a distant roll of thunder. So instead she flung him a disgruntled glare and directed her gaze at the sinister outline of the stone building they stood before. It rose out of the forest, making her think of a haunted mansion in a Gothic romance. Did that make her the spunky but vulnerable heroine...?
She almost laughed at the thought. She was none of the above!
‘I think I’d feel safer out here. There is no way that place is a hotel.’ The place looked very Gothic, and a little shiver slid a clammy path down her spine.
‘No,’ he agreed with infuriating placidity. ‘It’s not.’
‘It looks like the set of a vampire movie!’
Despite himself Seb’s lips twitched. ‘It was a monastery.’
Her voice rose to an indignant squeak. ‘You’ve brought me to a monastery?’
‘Obviously it is no longer a monastery. It was for a short time, I believe, a school, and now it is my grandmother’s home. Her family came from this area of Spain originally and her twin sister still lives close by. After she was widowed she returned here.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘I thought you knew all about the special bond between twins, and my grandmother and Aunt Marguerite are identical.’
‘You know what I mean—why in God’s name would you bring me to your grandmother’s house?’
‘Because it is her birthday tomorrow,’ he told her calmly. ‘She has been unwell, she is my last living grandparent and I promised to see her.’ In as much as there had been a female influence after he had come to live in England, the tough, outspoken old lady who took a delight in being awkward had been it.
‘Oh, God!’ The idea of being dropped into the middle of a family gathering filled Mari with utter horror she didn’t even try to disguise. ‘Is your entire family here?’
What had he been thinking?
What was I thinking? She pushed away the rush of panicked rejection and focused on a mental image of Mark in a wheelchair. After a moment her sense of purpose reasserted itself and the panic receded.
Many people coped with disability—one of her friends had lost her sight and gone on to not only marry and have a gorgeous child but win a medal for her country in the International Swimming Championships. She was an inspiration, but Mark... No, her brother would not react well.
And how, she wondered, was Sebastian’s family going to react to her? How was he going to explain the presence of this new wife? God, but that sounded so weird to think. Would she ever be able to say it out loud?
‘No, they aren’t here.’
‘That’s something, I suppose.’ Before he stepped back into the shadow there was something in his face that made her probe. ‘But they, your mum and dad, I mean, they were at the wedding?’ And presumably had filled Granny in on the scandalous proceedings, and just when she thought the situation could not get weirder or more awkward.
‘My parents are presently enjoying a world cruise. They were not at my wedding and will not be here.’
The undercurrent in his voice made her say, ‘I’m sorry.’
He flicked her a look, opened his mouth and closed it again. She was lifting her shoulders and rolling them to stretch the kinks that tied up her spine after the journey. Seb was struck by the almost feline quality in the sinuous way she moved. He took a deep breath as heat seared through his body, as merciless as a blade. Then he launched into a response designed to dampen her empathy.
‘My grandparents on both sides played a larger part in my life than my parents.’ He clenched his jaw and taunted softly, ‘Aren’t you going to say, well, at least you had parents?’
‘I had parents. Everyone does. The difference is I could walk past them in the street and not know them. They wouldn’t know me. I look sometimes and wonder if... When I was little I told people my dad was a war hero and my mother was a nurse.’ She stopped, hit by the sheer strangeness and odd intimacy of this encounter, standing in the dark with this man—a man she barely knew but was married to, a man who she had considered her enemy before she knew his name—talking about families.
A subject she knew little of, she thought, ignoring the knot of longing in her chest so familiar she barely acknowledged its presence. She had Mark and he had her; they were a family. Her mother and her reasons for deserting them, which she had trained herself not to think about...mostly.
It seemed like a long time before he responded. His voice coming out of the darkness made her jump. ‘You stopped.’
‘The teacher found out and made me apologise to the class for lying.’
‘Sensitive soul. I hope you are a better teacher.’
‘I am.’ It was not a subject she had any false modesty on. She’d be a better parent, too, than his, who had better things to do than attend their son’s wedding.
When her children, the ones Mari dreamed of one day adopting, had their red-letter days she would be there with bells on!
She tilted her head back, squinting, just able to make out the shape of the tiled roof.
/> ‘I can’t imagine anyone, let alone an elderly lady, choosing to live here.’ Unsure if he had even heard her, she followed the sound of his crunching footsteps because if she lost him she didn’t have a clue where she was going.
When he responded Seb’s deep vibrant voice came from a little way ahead. ‘It is a lot less intimidating in daylight when the bats are asleep.’
Trotting in earnest to catch up, she fought the urge to duck and cover her head. ‘That’s a joke, right...?’
‘Bats are perfectly harmless creatures, more frightened of you than you are of them.’
‘Want to bet?’
His low laugh was so attractive that she had to fight a responsive grin. She had to fight a few other responses, too. She was familiar with the notion that opposites attracted and that sexual attraction was indiscriminate, but this was her first real experience of how overwhelming it could be when you encountered the sort of intense physical magnetism that Seb possessed. It made what she had felt for Adrian pale into insignificance.
If he had any redeeming features beyond a fondness for his grandmother she might have been in danger of making a fool of herself and maybe enjoying it, because there was no doubt in her mind that he’d be a good lover. His hands, she mused dreamily, his mouth... Her stomach flipped.
‘You can relax.’
Shocked by the direction of her thoughts, Mari realised that was one thing she couldn’t do, not around this man with his powerful aura of masculinity.
‘My grandmother’s home is actually quite civilised, and she is a very young eighty-two. Obviously she doesn’t live here alone—a couple live in and there is a gardener and a couple of maids who come in from the village.’
‘Cosy set-up,’ she murmured, staring at the looming building and not really caring if he got her sarcasm or not, just glad he had no inkling of her previous thoughts. ‘I didn’t see any village on the way.’ Even with her having taken the precaution of turning her back to him, his nearness made the nape of her neck tingle.
‘There are two accesses to the place. We took the north road—the village is on the south side of the mountain.’
