by Valerie Parv
To want him or to love him?
The question reverberated so strongly through her mind that she realized she had asked it out loud. Her eyes snapped open. Oh God, had she done the unthinkable by falling in love with James?
It would explain so many things: the powerful pull he exerted over her emotions; the yearnings, which twisted her into knots whenever he was in the same room; the mortal dread she felt for what he was facing. She was in love with James Langford. It was as basic and inescapable as that. Given the way he felt about her, she was probably the biggest fool in the whole, wide world.
Although she burrowed deeper into the bed, she couldn’t turn off the voice in her heart, no matter how much her head told her she ought to. She didn’t want to turn it off if the truth be told. What she really wanted to do hardly bore thinking about.
So why was she sitting up and reaching for the negligee that matched her nightgown? Why was she thrusting her bare feet into soft slippers and padding toward the cabin door? She was only going to the galley to make herself some herbal tea, she told herself. The strong coffee with which she had finished her meal was keeping her awake.
By the time she reached the galley she had almost convinced herself it was true. Then she came across the last bottle of champagne James had opened. It sat in a silver ice bucket on the table, apparently overlooked by the crew when they’d cleared away the dinner things. Or else they had left it in case James decided to have a final glass before turning in. Dewdrops of moisture ran down the sides of the bottle like tears.
She regarded it in torn silence for several minutes as she struggled to reach a decision. Once opened, champagne cannot be resealed. It has to be enjoyed in all its bubbly splendor, or not at all.
Like the marriage between her and James.
Fate had given them this one night as man and wife. Next week if the operation was a success, he would have no further use for Zoe. If he died—she almost choked on the terrifying thought, but it had to be faced. If he died, he would also be lost to her. This was a night out of time. If she let it go by without acting on the impulse, which grew stronger by the moment, she would probably regret it for the rest of her life.
No matter what James felt for her, she loved him and she wanted to show him in the only way that would have any real meaning. If he died, she would always have the memory of this night. If he lived, she would still have the memory. In either case—and the thought almost stopped her heart—it was all she would have. But it would be better by far than regrets.
He wasn’t entirely immune to her. Tonight he had behaved as if he was attracted to her, she would swear to it. The way his eyes kept straying to her whenever he thought himself unobserved, and the beguiling way he made excuses to touch her. Perhaps she was seeing what she wanted to see, but perhaps not.
What she would do if James insisted on keeping to their bargain of a marriage of convenience, she refused to think about. The cork was well and truly out of the bottle. By tomorrow, the sparkle would be gone. Before she could change her mind, she scooped the champagne out of the ice bucket, swathed it in a white linen napkin and tucked it under her arm. Between the fingers of her free hand she slid the stems of two crystal flutes.
Her heart hammered so loudly she was surprised the sound didn’t wake the crew as she retraced her steps along the corridor, stopping this time at the door to James’s suite. The faintest trace of light glimmered underneath the door. He was still awake.
Rearranging her burdens, she freed a hand to knock on the cabin door. Her legs felt weak and she shivered, although the air-conditioning made it impossible for her to be cool, even in her flimsy nightwear.
“Who is it?” came James’s vibrantly baritone response to her knock, which sounded far less confident than she had intended.
She tightened her hold on the champagne bottle. There was no going back now. In a few moments she would find out whether she had misjudged James’s response to her this evening. She knew she had not misjudged her own to him. But it still took all the courage she possessed to say calmly, “It’s your wife.”
Chapter Eleven
“Zoe?” James looked stunned when he opened the door to her. Her heart turned over. He had shed his white shirt, and his pants rode low on narrow hips. A towel was slung around his neck. In the pool of light spilling from the cabin, his naked torso shone as if bronzed. A fine scattering of dark chest hair arrowed downward, disappearing beneath his belt line. Her throat dried as she took in the signs that she had interrupted his preparations for bed.
“Couldn’t you sleep?” he asked, sounding much more hoarse than he had a moment before.
Barely able to speak, she shook her head and held out the champagne flutes. “I thought maybe a nightcap…”
To her chagrin he forestalled her entry into his cabin by angling his substantial body across the opening. “This isn’t a good idea, Zoe. You said yourself you’ve had more than your usual quota of champagne.”
“It was only two glasses,” she insisted, appalled that he should connect her presence at his door with an excess of alcohol. Had she been completely wrong about the signals he’d been sending her, allowing her own needs to override common sense? “You’re probably right, it isn’t a good idea after all.”
She turned away, intending to escape to her own cabin as quickly as she could and attempt to erase the whole mortifying scene from her mind, but his hand came crashing down on her shoulder. “Not so fast.”
“But you just said—”
“I said it isn’t a good idea. I didn’t say I had a problem with it.”
The heat of his gaze bored all the way to her core, threatening imminent meltdown. This was a monumental mistake. He didn’t love her. He didn’t even want her here now. The wedding night she had lain awake imagining was no more than a fantasy, borne of her own yearnings.
She knew she should retreat, but her feet refused to track. Her skin flushed as if she had a fever. It was a fever, but of the blood. And the only cure she could conceive of stood in front of her, his hand resting possessively on her shoulder.
The deck shifted beneath her feet, throwing her against him. Reflex made him wrap his arms around her. He held the pose for a heartbeat then his mouth fastened on hers, whirling her into a maelstrom of sensations so powerful that they swept away all rational thought.
With a muffled oath, he drew her into the cabin, taking the bottle and glasses from her in the next fluid movement. The cabin door swung with the yacht’s gently rolling motion and he kicked it shut before pulling her into his arms again.
This time his kiss was a more leisurely voyage of exploration, but still it battered at the rapidly crumbling walls of her self-control. The cabin reeled around her and she linked both arms around his neck, the better to keep her balance, although whether internal or external, she wasn’t sure.
She only knew she loved James. The discovery was new enough to fill her with astonishment as well as an anguish that reached to the depths of her being. It was the cruelest irony that he had set as his sole condition for marriage that she not love him. It might be possible for James, whose heart plainly wasn’t involved, but she might as well order the sea to stop foaming against the shore. It would be about as effective as ordering herself not to care.
She held to the consolation that he didn’t know how she felt. With the life-and-death challenge ahead of him, he didn’t need the added complication of her love, only the assurance that his daughter’s future was secured. Letting him believe she was content with their bargain was the least Zoe could do for him.
Knowing that the memory of this night would have to last her a long, long time lent an urgency to her responses that left her shaken. “Is something wrong?” he asked, leaning back a little to appraise the paleness she felt but couldn’t conceal. His concern darkened the brilliant blue of his eyes.
With the clarity of her newly heightened emotions, she was aware of everything about him, from the enticing way a curl of dark hair fell
across his forehead, to the slightly abrasive feel of his torso through the thin silk of her nightgown and the heat of his hands searing her lower back as he cupped her to him. A shadow of beard smudged the strong line of his chin. His last shave must have been hours ago, but her sharpened senses caught the lingering tang of the aftershave lotion he had used.
“Nothing’s wrong,” she said in a voice barely above a whisper, and knew it was no lie. At this moment, in his arms, everything was exquisitely, gloriously right. His kisses seemed to come from some deep emotional wellspring, which made her heart leap as she answered them from her own depths.
“If you want me to stop, you’d better tell me now, while it’s still an option,” he offered, his mouth only a breath away from hers. “This wasn’t part of our agreement.”
Bitter disappointment lanced through her, although he was only voicing what she had told herself before coming to his cabin. From the beginning he had offered her marriage for one purpose only—to protect the child they both loved. He hadn’t asked for her love and was not offering his now, only a night of shared physical pleasure, which he assumed was what she wanted, too.
And she did, pity help her. Whatever happened in the future, she wanted the sweet memory of this night. “I don’t want you to stop,” she breathed into the hollow of his shoulder where she had rested her head as her thoughts whirled.
His arm came under her knees, lifting her so she was cradled against the unyielding wall of his chest. Her arm dropped around his shoulder and her fingers grazed the puckered skin where the terrorist’s bullet had penetrated. An arrow pierced her heart as she imagined him hurt, or worse. “You shouldn’t carry me,” she protested. “You’ll aggravate your injury.”
“Not touching you will aggravate it a lot worse,” he growled. They had reached the bed, so the question became academic as he set her gently down in the curtained alcove. Her negligee fell open and he dragged in a deep breath as his eyes went to the soft swell of her breasts outlined by the low-cut nightdress. “You’re like a vision out of a dream,” he murmured.
Her throat closed. Andrew had looked at her with the satisfaction of a collector admiring his prized exhibit. The look on James’s face was more akin to worship. Never had she felt more beautiful or desirable. With a tiny sigh, she stretched out her arms and he slid onto the bed beside her. One hand threaded through her hair as he rained kisses across her face and throat, while the other pressed against the bone of her hip, lifting her against him until the wild pounding of his heart throbbed through her own body.
When he slid her nightgown off her shoulders to caress the warm fullness of her breasts, her remaining control spun away in a whirlpool of desires she could barely begin to identify. His lips skimmed across her heated skin, eliciting a shudder of pure pleasure. This was where she belonged, in the arms of the man she loved.
The sensation of his mouth exploring every inch of her bared skin was as intoxicating as the finest wine and she drank deeply, inhaling the masculine feel and touch and taste of him until she was dizzy with yearnings only James could possibly satisfy.
When he flung one muscular leg across hers, the hard perfection of his body met her softness in miraculous accord. Joyfully she opened her arms to enfold him, resenting even her whisper-thin gown as a barrier between them. She trembled with a longing so powerful it shook her to her core.
At her tremors, he opened heavy-lidded eyes and smiled reassurance deep into hers but his breathing was as labored as her own. Her heart soared. Whatever the future held for them, he would never forget this night any more than she could or would. She closed her eyes and gave herself up to the sheer ecstasy of his touch.
Suddenly James’s shoulders spasmed and she jerked her eyes open, shocked to see that his face was ashen. “What is it? What’s the matter?”
He bit down on his lower lip and she could see the effort it cost him even to shake his head. “It’s just a twinge. It will pass in a second.”
It had to, she thought desperately. How could she stand seeing him like this? There had to be something she could do. She slid off the bed and helped him to lie down on it. It was a measure of his suffering that he didn’t try to resist. He lay back with his eyes closed, his jaw clenching until the veins stood out in his neck.
With a soft groan he passed out altogether and her heart turned to stone inside her. The fingers she pressed to his neck found a pulse that was alarmingly thready. No, it couldn’t end like this.
She ran to alert the crew.
She prayed as she had never prayed before as the yacht put in at Cremorne Wharf where James, still unconscious, was transferred to a waiting ambulance. “I’m coming with you,” she told the paramedics as they worked on him. “I’m his wife,” she added, her look daring them to raise a single objection.
One look at her face convinced them because they made room for her without demurral. During the yacht’s dash to the wharf she had thrown on a pair of jeans and a sweater but her tousled hair and flushed face must have told their own story. Not that she cared if the whole world knew she had been in James’s bed when he collapsed. Her only concern right now was for the man she loved. If he had been alone when the attack hit…
Her blood chilled as another possibility struck her. Had she contributed to the attack by coming to him tonight? It was a profitless line of thought. She couldn’t undo what had happened. All she could do was cling to his hand, trying to infuse some of her strength into him as they raced through the city streets, lights and sirens clearing their path, until they reached the hospital.
Notified by radio, a team of specialists was waiting for them headed by James’s surgeon who introduced himself as Bill Margolin. He swiftly checked James over then gave a string of instructions to his team. While they carried out his orders, the surgeon sought out Zoe, hovering white-faced outside the emergency room. “I believe you were with him when he collapsed.”
She nodded, wrapping her arms around herself. “Will he be all right?”
“No way to tell until I operate, but James is strong so there’s every reason to hope for the best,” he told her guardedly. “Are you a close relative?”
A pang shot through her as she saw the surgeon reach the same conclusion as the paramedics, that she was simply James’s companion for the night. There was some small satisfaction in saying quietly, “I’m his wife. Tonight was our wedding night.”
The doctor looked startled. “His wife? Surely James wouldn’t—”
“He told me about the operation before we married,” she forestalled him, “including the risk that he might not survive it.”
Dr. Margolin regarded her with renewed respect. “You must love him a great deal to put yourself through this.”
She did and the only one who didn’t—couldn’t—know it was James himself. “How long will it be until we know the outcome of the operation?” she asked shakily.
His frank gaze met hers. “Almost at once. If he comes around, the headaches will be gone and he’ll have full mobility back.”
He didn’t need to spell out the alternative. For an instant she went cold, imagining it, before thrusting it from her mind. James would be all right. She wouldn’t consider any other possibility.
She was shown to a private lounge to wait. The knot of tension inside made her want to scream, but there was nothing to do except leaf blindly through magazines, drink endless cups of coffee and resist the urge to pace. The specter of James unconscious in her arms refused to leave her.
“Oh God, let him be all right,” she prayed, wanting the miracle more than she had ever wanted anything in her life.
She knew now why she had agreed to marry him. It was as much for her own sake as for Genie’s. Some part of her had known she was lost from the moment he arrived on her doorstep in Sydney, although it had taken her weeks to accept it. All that he was called to her at some primeval level and her heart could do nothing but answer.
The time ticked by relentlessly, squeezing her emotions i
nto a vise so tight she could hardly breathe. She paced. She drank more coffee. She leafed through magazines without seeing a word on the pages. At some point she must have dropped into an exhausted doze because she awoke when a hand flexed on her shoulder. “Mrs. Langford?”
It took her a moment to connect the unfamiliar name with herself then she jolted upright, fear clenching a tight fist around her heart. “James?”
Dr. Margolin frowned. “He came through the surgery with flying colors, but we’re having trouble bringing him out of the anesthetic. He doesn’t seem to want to wake up.”
James had come so far. He couldn’t give up now. “Will it help if I talk to him?”
He nodded. “Exactly what I was going to suggest.”
She followed the surgeon into the recovery room and her heart constricted at the sight of James lying still and pale amid a tangle of tubes and monitors. She squared her shoulders. Whether he knew it or not, he wasn’t alone in this battle. Afterward there would be no place for Zoe in his life, but for now she was his wife and would fight for him to the gates of hell and beyond if necessary. She met the doctor’s eyes resolutely. “What do you want me to do?”
“Talk to him, sing to him, whatever you think will reach him. He’s being monitored and the sister is right outside if you need anything.”
The door closed behind the surgeon, leaving her alone with James, the heavy silence punctuated by the discreet beeping of the medical equipment. Dragging a chair alongside the bed, she took James’s hand and searched her mind for the right words to reach him. “It’s Zoe,” she began, her voice strengthening as inspiration came to her. “The doctor tells me the operation was a success. He removed the bullet and there’s no nerve damage, so you won’t have any more headaches or muscle weakness. You’ll be your old virile self again.” She almost choked on the word as it conjured up vivid images of being in his arms.
