Mistress: Hired for the Billionaire's Pleasure
Page 18
‘Arabella? Is she waiting for you?’
For a second he looked almost bewildered, shaking his head as he said irritably, ‘Arabella? She’s gone. We were never together.’
Rachel could feel the metal railing biting into her aching fingers. ‘But Felix…’ she said desperately. ‘She said if you weren’t together she would take Felix…’
Bitter understanding suddenly flooded Orlando’s face. With deliberate care he set Felix down on the floor at his feet. ‘Another of Arabella’s sophisticated tactics,’ he said acidly.
A tiny spark of tentative hope glowed somewhere in the darkness of Rachel’s barred and shuttered heart. ‘Why are you here?’ she asked, trying to keep the pleading note out of her voice. ’Why did you come?’
Below her, Orlando was standing perfectly still, perfectly straight, his face an emotionless mask.
‘To see you.’ He gave a sudden ironic laugh. ‘To hear you. Whatever. It was worth it. You were astonishing.’
‘But you’re a philistine,’ she protested, unable to stop the hope that was now spreading like wildfire through her whole body. Holding onto the balcony railing for support, she started to move along it towards the stairs, never taking her eyes off his pale, tense face. ‘You said so yourself…You don’t even like music. You burn pianos.’
He gave a deep, shuddering sigh. ‘You wouldn’t believe how much I’ve changed.’
She had reached the stairs now, and she began to run down them on bare, silent feet towards him. Tears were streaming down her face as she came to a standstill in front of him on the second step from the bottom. Adrenaline and love and the same gut-wrenching desire she had always felt whenever she looked into his ocean-coloured eyes fizzed through her, making her brave.
‘I don’t want you to change…’ she whispered fiercely. ‘I love you just the way you are.’
Very slowly he lifted his hand and held it out towards her. The smile he gave her was one of unbearable sadness as he tilted his head back slightly, as if preparing himself for the firing squad.
‘Oh, Rachel…’ he said resignedly, ‘I love you too. Far, far too much to ruin your life. You’re too bright, too beautiful, too talented to throw yourself away on me. This is where you belong—and if I had any doubts about that before, tonight has put them all to rest once and for all. If we were to…’ He faltered, and an expression of fathomless suffering flickered across his face. ‘I’d only stand in your way, and I can’t do that. I won’t.’
For a moment Rachel couldn’t speak, couldn’t take in what he was saying. The words were like silvery, shimmering snow-flakes, and for a second all she could do was watch them in wonder, terrified that if she tried to catch them they’d melt away. Hesitantly, she brought her hand up to his, and with infinite tenderness her fingertips brushed his outstretched palm.
‘Again…’ she breathed, her face streaked with tears. ‘Say that again.’
Their fingers tightened, twisting together, locking fast, so that they were holding onto each other as if from either side of a deep and unbridgeable ravine.
‘I love you,’ he said harshly. ‘I love you, but I won’t hold you back. I won’t take you away from everything you’ve worked for. You were right. Your hands are far too brilliant, far too precious for everyday life at Easton. I can’t do it to you.’
‘You don’t have to.’ Joy sang out of her voice, falling onto his bowed head like sunlight breaking through cloud. ‘I’m doing it to myself. As of tonight, I’m retiring.’
‘No—’
‘Yes,’ she said tenderly, emphatically, lifting her chin and gazing at him in a blaze of defiance and love. ‘Yes. This time, Orlando Winterton, you have no choice. As of tonight I’m starting my maternity leave, and there’s nothing at all you can do about it.’
His head whipped violently upwards. His face was ashen, but his eyes burned with terrifying emotion.
‘What?’
Gently she pulled the hand that was still entwined with hers downwards, and placed it on the slippery satin over her small bump.
‘See?’ she whispered.
And then suddenly he was pulling her into his arms, bringing his mouth crashing down on hers, and they were devouring each other with all the desperate longing of the past four months, all the hope of the next lifetime. When he finally pulled away Orlando couldn’t tell whether the wetness on his cheeks was from her tears or his own.
As his hands moved wonderingly over her rounded stomach, moved upwards over the cold, slippery satin to the new fullness of her breasts, her eyes never left his face. The fierce, dazed longing there told her everything she needed to know.
‘There’s an expression…’ she said slowly. ‘An old proverb that says “Love is blind, but marriage restores its sight”…’
Orlando took her face in both his hands, gazing down at her with his intense, mesmerising stare. ‘I don’t want to have my sight restored,’ he said gravely. ‘I don’t need to, because when I’m with you I see things more clearly than I ever did before. God, Rachel, I do want to marry you. I want that more than anything.’ He paused, frowning. ‘But can you really live with this illness?’
She smiled into the clear pools of his eyes. ‘I can’t live without it. Because it’s part of you, and I can’t live without you. Your life is my life. Your problems, your joys, your triumphs, your children…all mine. Because you see things in me that I didn’t know were there. You give me courage.’
He laughed, though his dark lashes were wet with tears. ‘You’re going to need it if this baby’s a boy. Believe me, Winterton brothers are a nightmare.’ Still holding her face between his hands, he pressed a kiss to her quivering lips, feeling them part beneath his, welcoming him into the darkness of their private heaven. He felt drunk with longing, drunk with love.
Behind them there was an embarrassed cough. ‘Miss Campion…Excuse me…’
‘Mmm?’ Rachel murmured against Orlando’s mouth.
‘The audience are wondering if there will be an encore…They want more.’
Orlando groaned. ‘They’re not the only ones,’ he said with a rueful grin, taking a step backwards and giving her a little push in the direction of the hall. ‘Go.’
‘I don’t have to…’
‘You do. Over a thousand people are waiting for you.’
‘You and Felix are the only ones who matter.’
‘We’ll wait as long as it takes.’
She was halfway across the hall, but then she ran back to him and stood on tiptoe to brush her mouth across his ear, her fingers lightly caressing his neck as she breathed very softly, ‘Five minutes. And then I’m yours—exclusively, for ever.’
Closing his eyes, he smiled languidly into her fragrant hair as her touch and the whisper of her breath against his ear sent shockwaves of ecstasy through his entire body.
Five minutes suddenly seemed a hell of a long time…
EPILOGUE
THE rose-petal-pink sun drifted gently down behind the garden’s old brick walls and violet shadows gathered, darkening to deepest indigo beneath the sheltering limes. Felix ran ahead, the sound of his clear, pure laughter floating through the honeyed evening air as he reached the fountain which bubbled up through the stones at the secret heart of the garden.
Rachel’s design for the old rose garden had been faithful to the original in spirit rather than in actual detail. Old-fashioned blooms still spilled abundantly over arches and pathways, but these had been re-laid to her exact specifications, using specially chosen materials. In the gentle days of the previous autumn, as her bulk had swelled, she had paced and sketched and directed a team of gardeners who had been under strictest instructions from Orlando not to let her do anything remotely strenuous. The completion of the garden had coincided with the arrival of a delicately beautiful baby girl, whom it had seemed only right should be called Rose.
Pausing now, in the golden summer twilight, a cool, moisture-beaded bottle of champagne clasped in one hand, Rachel looked
back. The garden was at its most intoxicatingly perfect—ripe with blossom, heavy with perfume—but her joy in the achievement was nothing compared to the familiar surge of deep-down, wrenching love she felt as she watched Orlando walk towards her with his sexy, long-limbed stride, their daughter in his arms. Although she was the first Winterton girl for three generations, seven-month-old Rose had the dark hair and thrill-seeking energy of all her male forebears, and she kicked and wriggled delightedly in her daddy’s easy grasp.
The neck of Orlando’s white wedding shirt was open, his tie long since discarded. A couple of hours ago, in a private ceremony in Easton’s church, he had reverently added a plain band of old gold to the finger of Rachel’s left hand that already bore the Winterton rubies. Afterwards, coming out of the church into the drowsy late-summer afternoon, the new Lady Ashbroke had taken her bouquet of apricot roses, gathered that morning from the garden, and laid them at the feet of Felix’s angel.
They had returned to Easton, where all the estate employees and Rachel’s new friends from the mother-and-baby group in the village had mingled happily on the lawn and drunk champagne beneath a soft, forget-me-not blue sky. It had been perfect. And yet Orlando had found himself longing for this moment, when he could have Rachel to himself again.
Beneath his bare feet the slate pathway felt like warm silk as he followed the ribbon of smooth stones set into it. This began at the doorway at the end of the lime walk and got gradually wider as the path wound its way to the centre of the garden, meaning he could instantly orientate himself. Rachel’s idea, and just one of the many millions of ways she made his life better.
She made him better.
He followed her to where the stone seat stood, in its arbour of frothing white roses, and stooped to set his daughter down on the circle of flat cobbles around it. Instantly Rose hitched herself up onto her plump pink knees and, cooing with satisfaction, scuttled off in her precocious crab-like crawl to find her beloved Felix and the water. Orlando sat down beside Rachel, taking the glass of champagne she put into his hand. Her wedding dress was a simple knee-length shift of palest coffee-coloured silk, and he dropped a kiss onto her bare creamy shoulder.
‘Are you sorry we’re not jetting off somewhere exotic for a honeymoon?’ he murmured. Her skin was like the velvet of sunwarmed peaches.
‘No.’ She smiled, bending her head to expose the curving sweep of her rose-scented neck to his lips and sighing with pleasure. ‘I’m glad. I love it here too much. At home.’
The shadows stretched and deepened, and the first tiny diamond stars flickered in the lilac sky above them. The children’s laughter and muted shrieks of joy rose like soft moths in the hazy, fragrant evening. Sipping champagne, Rachel let her head fall back as Orlando’s beautiful fingers moved languidly down her arm, trailing rapture. Through half-closed eyes she gazed at him, feeling the familiar unfurling hunger inside, watching as his mouth spread into a slow smile of recognition.
‘Lady Ashbroke, would I be right in thinking that you’re giving me that look?’
She breathed a low, wicked laugh and slipped her hand between the buttons of his shirt, feeling the muscles of his taut stomach tighten beneath her palm. ‘How did you guess?’
‘I can feel it.’
‘How does it feel?’ she whispered huskily.
‘Exquisite.’ He drained his glass of champagne and stood up, pulling her to her feet. ‘But, unless you do something about it soon, extremely uncomfortable. Come on—time for bed.’
Rachel quirked an eyebrow. ‘Us or the children?’
‘Both.’
Laughing, Rachel gathered up a protesting Rose, raining kisses down onto her face and her fat little hands, while Orlando lifted Felix high, setting him on his shoulders. Together they made their way back up the path to the house through the blue evening haze.
A vast disc of gold hung over the rooftops of Easton as they approached.
‘Moon,’ said Felix sleepily, pointing. ‘Big yellow moon.’
‘Honeymoon,’ said Rachel quietly, as Orlando’s fingers closed around hers, his thumb caressing her palm. ‘A perfect honeymoon.’
And, in every way possible, it was.
All the 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 the incidents are pure invention.
All Rights Reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Enterprises II BV/S.à.r.l. The text of this publication or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, storage in an information retrieval system, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the prior consent of the publisher in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
® and TM are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.
First published in Great Britain 2008
Harlequin Mills & Boon Limited,
Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR
© India Grey 2008
ISBN 978-1-408-91480-9
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Table of Contents
Cover Page
Excerpt
About the Author
Other Books by
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Epilogue
Copyright
Additional Resources