The Marriage Takeover

by Lee Wilkinson

  From that axis, gaming tables manned by croupiers fanned out like the spokes of a wheel. The staff were impeccably dressed, the men in evening jackets, the women in glamorous black gowns. All wore a discreet, but unmistakable, gold phoenix, either in the form of a pin or a brooch.

  What seemed like a small army of waitresses were moving about with trays of champagne and caviare, smoked salmon sandwiches and cocktails.

  Apart from the singer, the well-modulated voices of the croupiers, the rattle of dice and the click of roulette wheels, there was very little noise, and to Cassandra’s surprise the atmosphere was calm, almost laid-back, more like a select club than a casino.

  She had expected a din, razzle-dazzle, electric tension, and lots of excitement.

  When she said as much, Rob laughed. ‘This is the up-market version of a gambling joint. You can get all that glittering razzmatazz, or at least a tinsel version of it, on the Strip.

  ‘The casinos there are quite different. Most of them are lined with batteries of fruit machines, known as Super-Loose Slots, that “slot professionals” stand at and feed with silver dollars…

  ‘Oh, and speaking of dollars…’ He felt in his pocket and produced a handful of thin golden discs each stamped with a phoenix and what looked like a short code. ‘Here’s some plastic money to be going on with. What would you like to try your hand at?’

  ‘Roulette, I think,’ she said doubtfully.

  He led her to a table with two free seats and sat down by her side, stacking the chips into neat piles. The croupier welcomed them with a smile, and an instant later a waitress was serving them champagne.

  Glancing round the table, Cassandra saw that the colour of the chips varied, and asked why.

  ‘It depends on their value,’ Rob explained. ‘They start from fifty dollars…’

  While the wheel spun and the ball rattled from slot to slot, he told her the rudiments of the game. ‘You pick a number and a colour, either red or black, then put as many chips as you want to bet on that particular square…’

  Unwilling to chance losing money that wasn’t her own, she placed two chips on black 7, and watched the wheel spin until it finally slowed and the ball clicked into red 3.

  A moment later the croupier’s rake was whisking her stake away, and the whole thing started over again.

  Cassandra quickly found that, as she’d suspected, she was no gambler. Several other people playing seemed to find the game enthralling, but to her it soon became boring and repetitive.

  When the waitress brought more champagne, already starting to feel slightly muzzy, she shook her head and, thirsty, accepted a glass of fruit juice decorated with cherries and mint leaves.

  It was cool and refreshing and easy to drink. The second it was gone, another appeared at her elbow as if by magic.

  She had swallowed more than half of it before she overheard the elegantly dressed woman sitting next to her, who was drinking the same, refer to it as a vodka cocktail.

  By casino standards the night had hardly begun, but she was tired, still suffering from the effects of jet lag, and before long it became even harder to concentrate.

  A man came up and spoke quietly to Rob who, after a moment, turned to Cassandra and said, ‘I hope you don’t mind if I leave you? Lang should be here any minute.’

  ‘No, of course I don’t mind.’

  ‘Would you like any more chips?’

  Shaking her head, she said, ‘No, thank you.’ She had already lost count of the amount she’d lost. It must be several hundred dollars.

  Stifling a yawn, she sat up straighter, but she found it difficult to focus. The rattles and clicks were soporific, and the spinning wheel had become a hypnotic blur. When Lang came she would excuse herself and tell him…

  Before the thought was completed, he had slipped into the empty chair by her side. ‘Having fun?’

  Turning to look into his hard-boned face, she answered politely, ‘Yes, thank you.’ Then, handing him her few remaining chips, she added, ‘But I’m rather tired. I’d like to go to bed.’

  ‘I’ll see you up.’

  ‘Really, there’s no need,’ she protested. ‘Please don’t leave on my account.’

  ‘It isn’t on your account.’ A hand beneath her elbow, he helped her to her feet. ‘I don’t want to be too late myself.’

  As she reluctantly accompanied him to the elevator, all her earlier doubts and fears that he might be hoping to seduce her suddenly returned.

  Biting back her alarm, she reminded herself that if he did try anything, though it would undoubtedly prove embarrassing to have to freeze him off, she was in no danger.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THEY reached the suite to find a trolley was waiting with a selection of delicious-looking open sandwiches, a pot of coffee keeping hot, and a bottle of Krug on ice.

  When Cassandra would have said a hasty goodnight and headed for her room, Lang suggested, ‘I thought we might have a glass of champagne first…’

  ‘Not for me, thank you.’ She was still feeling light-headed and slightly muzzy. ‘I’ve had more than enough to drink for one night.’

  ‘Then what about a sandwich…?’

  His face was guileless, his approach relaxed, friendly, with no hint of pressure. Finding nothing in either his looks or his manner to alarm her, she decided a little sheepishly that she had misjudged him.

  ‘You could probably use some food.’

  After three glasses of champagne and two cocktails, something to eat might not be a bad idea.

  She nodded, and, having helped herself to a selection of the dainty sandwiches, went to sit in one of the low armchairs.

  Lang brought his own plate and took a seat opposite. His voice casual, he queried, ‘What did you think of Rob?’

  ‘I liked him very much,’ she said sincerely. Adding, ‘I got the impression that you know each other very well?’

  ‘Rob was the first friend I made when I came to the States. His parents owned the house next door.’

  ‘So you weren’t born over here?’ She found herself wanting to know more about him.

  ‘No. I lived in England until I was nine. My mother was a Londoner and my father a Californian with Anglo-American business interests. Their marriage was a mistake from the word go, and when it finally broke up my mother stayed in England and I went to the States with my father.’

  It was a flat, dispassionate statement of facts, but Cassandra was oddly convinced that he’d been badly affected by the break-up.

  ‘Was that your own choice?’

  ‘No. It was my father’s price for agreeing to a speedy, uncontested divorce.’

  ‘Were you an only child?’

  ‘No, I had a younger sister whom I adored. Katy, who was just five, stayed with our mother.’

  ‘You must have missed them.’

  It was a comment rather than a question, but he answered briefly, ‘I did.’

  Then, with the first trace of a barely hidden bitterness, he said, ‘But I wasn’t allowed to show it. It would have been a sign of weakness, and my father wouldn’t tolerate any sign of weakness. He was a strict disciplinarian who equated having feelings with being soft.’

  ‘Did you keep in touch with your mother?’ Cassandra asked quietly.

  ‘I wanted to, but my father wouldn’t allow it. He pointed out that she couldn’t have loved me, otherwise she wouldn’t have let me go. And after a while I realized he was right. She must have known what a cold, harsh man my father was, what my life would be like. She could have just left him and kept both my sister and myself. But she wanted a divorce so she could marry her long-term lover, and I was expendable.’ Now the bitterness was open and searing.

  Knowing only too well what it was like to feel unloved and unwanted, Cassandra felt a deep pity for the unhappy child he must have been.

  Swallowing hard, she asked, ‘Didn’t your father want both his children?’

  ‘No. Just a son to follow in his footsteps. And in any case w
e weren’t both his children. Katy was my half-sister, my mother’s lover’s daughter, and the one who mattered to her.

  ‘But I never held that against Katy—’ for the first time Lang’s face softened ‘—and I never stopped missing her. When I knew she would be old enough to understand, with Rob’s help, I began to write to her in secret. More often than not Rob gave me the money for the postage, and I used to put his address on the letters.

  ‘Eventually she started to write back. She said she could still remember me; she said she still loved me and missed me. Whenever she wrote, she asked if I could go and see her.’

  ‘Did you manage to?’

  Lang shook his head. ‘There were times when I was tempted to tell my father the truth and ask him for the air fare, but I knew it would be no use.

  ‘Though his business was finance and he was a wealthy man, he didn’t believe in “making his son soft”. He’d always forced me to fight for everything I wanted, and grovel for every cent he gave me.’

  Cassandra bit her lip, feeling a fierce anger against a man who would treat his own son that way.

  His face dark and brooding, Lang continued bleakly, ‘I didn’t find grovelling easy. I preferred to mow lawns, wash cars, run errands, sweep leaves…whatever…

  ‘The minute I was able, I left home, and, taking evening and weekend jobs, worked my way through college…’

  So he knew as well as she did what it was like to be a struggling student.

  ‘I’d just finished sitting my final exams when my father dropped dead with a heart attack…I didn’t feel a thing. No sadness. No regret. He would have been pleased with me.

  ‘As soon as I could raise the fare I went over to England. Katy, the only person in the world who had ever cared a damn, was delighted to see me. My mother said she was, but it was obvious she felt guilty and ill at ease. Her second husband had run off with another woman, so there was only the two of them. They were having a hard time, struggling to manage. My mother was suffering from a debilitating disease, and Katy, who was a brilliant cellist, had just started at the Royal College of Music.

  ‘I used my father’s money to help them.’ Flatly, he added, ‘My mother died not long afterwards.’

  ‘Do you still see your sister?’

  His face tightened into a white mask of pain and anger. With difficulty, as though the words hurt, he said, ‘She and her husband were killed in a car crash some eighteen months ago.’

  It was plain that his sister’s tragic death had left a wound that had remained unhealed. And on top of that he had lost a wife he must have loved dearly.

  Cassandra’s heart bled for him. A feeling of compassion, a tenderness that was almost maternal, made her want to reach out and touch him, to tell him how sorry she was.

  Before she could do either, his face wiped clear of all emotion, he said abruptly, ‘I’m sorry. You’ll have to forgive me. You’re too good a listener. But believe me, I hadn’t intended to bore you like this…’

  ‘I’m not bored,’ she assured him, ‘and I’m glad you’ve told me.’

  ‘You’re the only person, apart from Rob, who knows the sorry tale.’

  Yes, she could believe he didn’t bare his feelings often.

  Taking her plate, he asked prosaically, ‘Now what about some coffee?’

  ‘I’d love some.’

  ‘It won’t keep you awake?’

  Watching him fill two cups, she said, ‘I doubt if anything could do that. In fact if I stay here much longer I’ll go to sleep sitting up.’

  The moment their coffee was finished, he relieved her of her cup and held out both hands to pull her to her feet.

  ‘Goodnight.’ Her face soft, she smiled at him.

  ‘Goodnight.’ As if it was the most natural thing in the world, he leaned forward to touch his lips to hers. His caress, though far from tentative, was sweet, gentle, posing no threat.

  Like someone in a dream she returned his kiss, before turning to move away.

  As she took a step his arms went around her and drew her back against him. Cassandra gave a soft gasp as his lips brushed the warmth of her nape, but made no effort to resist, and she heard his faint sigh.

  She could feel the hard length of his body against her spine as, a hand beneath her chin, he tilted her head back against his shoulder while his mouth covered hers again.

  His kiss brought a glow of warmth and pleasure, a stir of excitement. When his hands moved to rest lightly on her ribcage, his thumbs just brushing the undersides of her breasts, she felt no sense of fear, just a kind of breathless anticipation.

  Her lips were parted beneath his, her body boneless, pliant in his embrace. Having deepened the kiss, he lifted his hands to cup her breasts.

  As though held in thrall she made no protest, and when his lean fingers began to tease the sensitive nipples though the thin fabric of her dress she shuddered in response.

  While his hands pleasured her, his mouth moved to caress her throat and the soft skin beneath her jaw, sucking and nibbling, enticing and erotic.

  He felt her body grow heavy and languid, and thought that making love to this woman was going to be not only a great deal easier than he’d expected, but a great deal more enjoyable.

  There was something about her that excited him, an air of naivety, a lack of worldliness. She seemed to have the kind of purity he’d once hoped to find.

  But common sense told him she couldn’t be that pure. He knew she’d had at least two lovers. Yet all his male instincts insisted that she wasn’t very experienced and, even more surprising, that in spite of her receptiveness she would be easily scared.

  So for the moment he would keep a tight rein on his self-control, take things slowly and make sure he didn’t allow the sensual spell she was under to slacken.

  When he had made her molten with liquid heat, dazed with longing, when it was far too late for second thoughts, then would be the time for passion and urgency and delight…

  Cassandra surfaced slowly, languorously, her brain still half stupefied by sleep, her body as sleek and contented as a well-fed cat. She was lying on her back, the silken sheets cool and voluptuous against her naked flesh.

  Why wasn’t she wearing her nightdress? she wondered blearily as, yawning, she opened heavy lids.

  The strange room was dim apart from a single sliver of sunshine which slanted through a crack in the velvet curtains. It lay like a fairy’s bright wand across a jumble of discarded clothes, amongst them her own cocktail dress, and a man’s evening shirt and black bow-tie.

  What on earth…?

  Before the question was even completed, memory supplied the answer and set her heart racing with suffocating speed.

  Jerking bolt upright, a mass of silky hair tumbling around her bare shoulders, she turned her head. Apart from herself the king-sized bed was empty. But someone had undoubtedly slept beside her.

  No, not someone. Lang Dalton.

  With instant and complete recall came total and utter disbelief. She couldn’t possibly have slept with Lang Dalton. A man she’d known for less than forty-eight hours. A man she didn’t love, and wasn’t even sure she liked.

  No, she couldn’t, wouldn’t believe it! She must be still asleep, trapped in some kind of bad dream.

  But the cold voice of reason insisted that she was wide awake, and this was no bad dream she would eventually escape from.

  Deeply shocked, shaken to the core, she was forced to face the unthinkable fact that Lang Dalton had succeeded in seducing her.

  But how had he managed to get through not only her normal defences, but through the involuntary defences that even the man she loved had been unable to penetrate?

  The uncomfortable answer came swiftly. A lethal combination of tiredness and too much to drink had to be to blame. As well as stupefying her mind it must have freed her repressions and inhibitions, and her own body, deprived for too long of its natural needs, had turned traitor.

  She desperately wanted to blame Lang Dalt
on for what had happened. But it simply wasn’t true that he had seduced her. She had been an equal partner, she recalled with a kind of awe. When he had kissed her, she had kissed him back. She had wanted him as much as he’d wanted her.

  Even so, if he had been clumsy or tried to rush or force her in any way, it would have brought back all the old nightmare and made her afraid. But he had been very clever. Cool and unhurried. Sweet and seductive. Never putting a foot wrong.

  Rather than his strength, he had shown her his need, made love to her with care and tenderness, a restrained passion that had evoked an answering passion.

  A passion that had swiftly become white-hot. A passion that had taken most of the night to expend…

  She had never suspected the sensual aspect of her nature that had lain dormant, buried first beneath an in-built shyness and insecurity, and later beneath an icy weight of stress and fear.

  During that abortive weekend in Paris, her inability to respond to Alan, to become the warm and willing partner he’d been expecting, had almost ruined their relationship.

  In desperation she had been forced to tell him about Sean to try and make him understand.

  Clearly shocked, he’d asked sharply, ‘Have you told anyone else in the office about this?’

  ‘Not a soul. It isn’t the kind of thing I’d want to talk about.’

  His relief obvious, he’d advised, ‘I think you should keep it that way. People might…well…misunderstand.’

  Once the first shock had worn off, Alan had done his best to treat the whole thing practically.

  Clearing his throat, he’d begun a shade pompously, ‘I’m sure you don’t regard me as a lustful man?’

  ‘No.’ In truth, anything but. It had been his lack of libido that had first drawn her to him. She had felt safe, under no pressure.

  ‘But I do have certain needs. Needs that, now that I’m engaged, I feel I can’t satisfy elsewhere…’

  That point made, he went on, ‘The house my parents left me will soon be available, so perhaps the sensible thing would be to bring our marriage forward. Once you’re my wife and can put the past behind you, it will make all the difference. I’m sure I’m right.’