Also by Marina Anderson
DARK SECRET
THE DISCIPLINE
HAVEN OF OBEDIENCE
COPYRIGHT
Published by Hachette Digital
ISBN: 9780748131228
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © Marina Anderson 1996
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
Hachette Digital
Little, Brown Book Group
100 Victoria Embankment
London, EC4Y 0DY
www.hachette.co.uk
Contents
Also by Marina Anderson
Copyright
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter One
* * *
HARRIET SAT IN the back of the limousine, her long legs crossed, and stared out of the window at the relentless driving rain. This wasn’t the Cornwall of her childhood memories. Then the sun had always shone and she’d spent hours on the rugged beaches surfing and sunbathing. She shivered and Lewis put his arm round her.
‘Cold, or nervous?’ he asked with a smile.
‘Inappropriately dressed,’ said Harriet ruefully. Certainly her lemon-yellow short-sleeved linen jacket worn over a soft floral print skirt with a matching scarf round her neck were inappropriate for the English weather, but that wasn’t the truth, and both she and Lewis knew it.
‘You like Edmund and Noella, don’t you?’ he queried.
‘Of course I do; Edmund’s one of those intriguing men who make you want to get to know them better, and Noella is so open and enthusiastic it’s impossible to dislike her.’
‘She’s certainly enthusiastic. I’m relieved we’re driving down in separate cars. I don’t think I could have coped with her constant little screams of appreciation at everything English on a journey of this length.’
‘I hadn’t realised how many hours it would take,’ sighed Harriet, snuggling up closer to her husband of less than two days. ‘We’ve been travelling for nearly twelve hours now.’
‘We’ve got six weeks to recuperate,’ he reminded her. ‘Is that too long for a honeymoon, do you think?’ he added teasingly.
Harriet turned to him, her grey eyes solemn. ‘But this isn’t just a honeymoon, is it?’
He shrugged, the smile still playing around his mouth, a mouth that Harriet was suddenly overwhelmed with a desire to kiss. She pushed the thought away, waiting for him to answer her. He didn’t.
‘Is it, Lewis?’ she repeated.
‘I’m going to do some work as well,’ he admitted. ‘That’s why Mark’s coming along, although he won’t be joining us for a couple of days yet.’
‘Which means we’ve really got a two-day honeymoon!’
Lewis touched her gently on the cheek, his long fingers caressing her with exquisite tenderness. ‘Do you honestly think we need a honeymoon?’
Harriet smiled, remembering the countless times they’d made love since their first meeting over two years earlier when she’d gone to work for his first wife, the famous film star Rowena Farmer. ‘I suppose not,’ she agreed.
‘Besides, you enjoy the excitement of making a film with me,’ he reminded her, his hand moving to rest on her exposed knee.
‘Last time I didn’t know I was making a film,’ she pointed out.
‘Isn’t it even more exciting knowing from the start?’
This was a question Harriet had been asking herself during the long flight from America. When she’d met Lewis James he’d just begun working on his first cinéma vérité film, Dark Secret. She’d been chosen to join his London household for the duration of their stay there, as an unwitting player in the script he was writing as real life events actually unfolded; events of such electric eroticism that the film, when it was made, had become the biggest hit of the year.
Now, finally married to Lewis, Harriet was once again to star in the sequel Forbidden Desires. The difference this time was that she knew she was being placed in a situation designed by Lewis, and that her reactions and those of the other players in the as yet unscripted plot would determine the film’s outcome.
‘Well?’ he whispered, his breath warm against her ear.
Her physical hunger for him, her almost desperate need to feel their bodies pressed together and his hands and lips on her flesh, threatened to overwhelm her. ‘I don’t know,’ she said with total honesty. ‘It rather depends on what the plot is about.’
‘Exactly what the title suggests, Harriet, forbidden desires.’
‘Whose forbidden desires?’ she murmured as his mouth travelled down the side of her face.
‘Yours, Edmund’s and Noella’s of course.’
‘What about you? Don’t you have any forbidden desires?’
‘Not at this moment,’ he replied evenly. ‘Right now my sole desire is to make love to you, and since you’re my wife that’s allowed.’
‘I don’t want anyone else either,’ she whispered, turning her face towards him and letting his light kisses move closer to her mouth.
‘That’s all right then, you’ve nothing to worry about, have you?’
‘But you won’t have a film!’ she exclaimed, pulling back from him just as their lips were about to meet.
Lewis looked thoughtfully at her. ‘Harriet, trust me. No one can resist forbidden fruit. Sooner or later you’ll be tempted.’
‘And you don’t mind?’ she asked in astonishment.
‘This film isn’t about what I mind or don’t mind. It will reflect what happens when a man is so much in love with his wife that he allows her to do anything that makes her happy.’
‘Anything at all?’
‘Yes, anything at all,’ he repeated.
‘And suppose that you find yourself attracted to forbidden fruit as well?’
‘We’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we?’
‘I don’t want you falling in love with anyone else,’ complained Harriet. ‘We’ve only just got married!’
‘We’re not talking about love, Harriet. We’re talking about sexual desire. Don’t worry, everything will be all right. Besides, I don’t want you getting bored.’
‘How can I be bored after two days of marriage?’ asked Harriet in bewilderment.
‘You didn’t want to get married,’ Lewis reminded her. ‘I had to persuade you, and your chief argument against it was fear of boredom, remember?’
‘Yes,’ she agreed, ‘but …’
‘No buts, Harriet. I’m simply making sure you don’t feel trapped.’
‘You want me to make love with Edmund during this holiday, don’t you?’ she said accusingly.
‘I don’t want you to do anything at all. I simply want to see what happens during the course of the next six weeks, and to that end I’ve tried to make sure we spend plenty of time with interesting people.’
‘What if nothing happens and we don’t get on?’
‘End of film plan! It won’t matter. I’ve plenty of other ideas up my sleeve.’
‘But Edmund’s putting up money for Forbidden Desires, he’ll want results.’
Lewis smiled. ‘Edmund desires you, that’s why he’ll want results!’
A faint flicker of something
perilously close to desire darted through Harriet. She knew that Lewis was telling the truth; she’d felt Edmund’s desire the moment they met straight after the wedding, and she knew deep down that it would be easy to have an affair with him. There was, as she’d already admitted to Lewis, something intriguingly enigmatic about him.
‘What if it all goes wrong?’ she repeated. ‘Suppose you and I fall out of love?’
‘Then the film won’t have a very high feel-good factor! Stop worrying, Harriet, you must have faith in me. I know what I’m doing.’
Harriet leant her head against his shoulder and closed her eyes to blot out the rain. She did trust him, but she had a terrible feeling that he’d probably said the same thing to Rowena at the start of Dark Secret, and that had ended with the disintegration of Rowena’s marriage and the end of her career as an international film star.
‘Your work means more to you than personal relationships,’ she muttered as she drifted off to sleep.
Lewis didn’t reply, he had a suspicion Harriet might be right.
Travelling behind them in the back of an equally comfortable limousine, Edmund Mitchell and his wife of ten years, Noella, were also discussing the forthcoming holiday. However, unlike Harriet and Lewis, they were unaware of the roles in which Lewis had cast them or the importance of their behaviour to the plot of his forthcoming film.
‘Isn’t it just great?’ enthused Noella for at least the twentieth time on what seemed to Edmund to be an interminable drive.
‘Isn’t what great?’ he asked quietly, refusing to allow his irritation to show.
‘The rain, honey. I mean, this is why English women have such great complexions. None of that dried-out prune look for them, it’s all peaches and cream and the natural scrubbed look.’
‘Naturally drowned more like,’ retorted Edmund. ‘You seem to forget, Noella, that I was born here. In fact, I’ve spent over half my life in the complexion-enhancing dampness of the English climate, and right now I wish I was back home in Beverly Hills.’
Noella ran her fingers lightly up his right thigh. ‘Don’t get grouchy, not before we’ve even started the holiday, sweetie. You’ve always told me you adored Cornwall.’
‘Not when it was wet, and I haven’t always told you any such thing. I may have mentioned once or twice that America lacked a similar coastline but that was all.’
Noella smiled to herself. She adored the way Edmund insisted on getting every detail right. His refusal to exaggerate or over-dramatise events was one of his greatest attractions to her, second only to his extraordinary expertise in bed. Remembering their most recent bout of lovemaking, which had occurred only a few hours after Lewis and Harriet had finally tied the knot, she wriggled slightly on the leather seat.
If anything, Edmund had shown extra finesse that night, prolonging the session into the small hours of the morning until even Noella had been exhausted. Yet – and here she forced herself to admit a rather unpalatable truth – despite her final sense of satiation, the almost dangerous sophistication of some of the things they’d engaged in that night had more than once brought with them a feeling of nearly unbearable frustration.
Edmund liked to prolong everything, to refuse her that final pleasure until he’d explored every possible avenue of enhancement, and really Noella was a woman who liked her sex to be raunchy, physical and fierce. She wished that just once in a while Edmund would take her without any of the endless preliminaries or rules that now dominated their sexual life.
Immediately she realised where her thoughts were leading and put a stop to them. She knew very well that she was lucky to be married to Edmund. Educated at Eton, he’d made his money on the stock market at an early age and now, when he’d just passed his fortieth birthday, he liked to use part of his considerable fortune to back films and plays that would otherwise never be seen. A powerful figure behind the scenes in the world of the performing arts, Edmund was admired and respected, and this meant that Noella was admired and respected too, something that a girl with her start in life could never have imagined happening.
In any case, no other man had ever kept her so satisfied sexually. Even if their tastes were beginning to diverge, he was still easily the best lover she’d ever had and she was determined to keep the marriage intact. As his third wife she was well aware that this might not be easy, but she held a lot of weapons in her armoury.
Edmund liked a woman with strong appetites, and he liked Noella’s voluptuous figure and the strikingly sexy clothes she wore to accentuate it. After ten years of marriage he could still be aroused by the sight of her slipping on a tight-fitting black dress, putting on huge gold ear-rings and bracelets, and then going out with her, knowing that beneath it she was naked. With her blonde hair piled on top of her head and her glamorous make-up always in place even before they took breakfast on their patio, she was the epitome of the sexy blonde wife so beloved by straight-laced Englishmen in their dreams; only Edmund had made the dream a reality and Noella intended to keep him satisfied in every possible way.
‘How much further, honey?’ she asked, running a hand through his short, curly brown hair.
Edmund glanced at his watch. ‘Another half hour or so, I think. Why don’t you have a nap? We’ve been travelling for hours now and you don’t want to be half dead when we arrive.’
Noella leant back against the cushioned upholstery and closed her eyes. She certainly didn’t want to be tired when they arrived at Penruan House, and since Edmund was clearly disinclined to talk she decided to take up his suggestion.
As his wife drifted off to sleep, Edmund Mitchell stared out at the driving rain and, just as Harriet had earlier, wondered why it was that things were always so different from the way you remembered them. It must have rained before during some of his trips to Cornwall, but those days had vanished in his memory while the sunny times had remained as vivid images that encapsulated some of the happiest days of his life.
He heard Noella’s breathing slow and even out and realised that she was asleep. Giving a small sigh of relief he allowed himself to relax and settled into his corner of the back seat. Unknown to her, Edmund was beginning to tire of Noella. All his adult life he’d been searching for the perfect partner, someone intelligent, witty and sensuous, who would share in all his interests, both sexual and cerebral, but so far this combination had eluded him.
Noella had seemed close to what he wanted and for a long time he’d been reasonably content, but after ten years he was starting to realise that he was never going to smooth out her rough edges. They had once seemed endearing but were now nothing but an irritation. Her claims to connections with the world of performing arts had also been revealed as less than strictly accurate. In Edmund’s view, two years as a striptease dancer in a less than salubrious nightclub in New Orleans was hardly a claim to artistic fame. Not that Noella knew he’d discovered her secret, and he had no intention of mentioning it to her because it would be unfair. He’d married her knowing that she was probably not all that she claimed but her vibrant sexuality and vivid good looks had seemed ample compensation. Now they weren’t, and he had the suspicion that he was beginning to disappoint Noella as well.
Even so, he’d been content to continue as he was until that moment, only two days ago, when he’d first set eyes on Harriet. He’d known then that he had to have her, had to possess her and discover whether she was the one he was looking for, the perfect partner to enhance his life.
He thought that Lewis was aware of this but for some extraordinary reason didn’t seem to mind – in fact this shared holiday had been Lewis’s idea. Edmund wasn’t going to think too deeply about the reasons behind this. He had always been a man who took his chances where he could, and if Lewis was going to offer him a chance of Harriet, however remote, then he’d take it.
He liked Lewis, admired his work and was happy to back it, but that wasn’t going to prevent him from trying to take Harriet away from him if he wanted her badly enough. Desire, thought Edmund as
the car purred along through the drizzle, was a powerful spur and showed a callous disregard for moral principles. The fact that Harriet was just married and therefore should be regarded as strictly out of bounds only made his desire all the sharper. Forbidden fruits, as he knew very well, had the sweetest taste of all.
By the time Harriet and Lewis finally arrived at Penruan House the rain had eased and was little more than a fine mist. Stepping from the car Harriet realised with relief that here at least it was warm, damp yes, but at least the bone-chilling cold of London had vanished.
Lewis stretched his legs and glanced about him, his eyes taking in the large Elizabethan-style house built of grey stone and covered with trailing ivy, flanked by long sweeps of lawn stretching away on either side. He noticed too the outdoor pool and hoped the weather would improve sufficiently for them to use it, and smiled when he saw that the grounds also housed a small pitch-and-putt course. He knew that Edmund could never resist a bet, and so far Edmund had failed to beat him at anything connected with sport. He rather relished the idea of beating him on a regular basis on this small course, and wondered vaguely why it was that he should want to beat him so badly.
‘At least it’s warm,’ enthused Harriet, already picturing the house and grounds in bright sunlight rather than the soft mist.
Lewis raised an eyebrow. ‘Warm? How fortunate we didn’t come here in mid-winter!’
‘Well, it isn’t cold, is it?’ she laughed, her eyes shining.
Looking at her, her face alight with happiness, Lewis thought how lucky he was that she’d agreed to marry him. He knew without any doubt at all that if he were to lose her he would be heartbroken. For a moment a chill touched the back of his neck and he felt goosebumps rise on his forearms.
Before he could reply Edmund and Noella’s car arrived. Noella was the first out, her tight red skirt rising to the middle of her thighs as she stepped on to the drive.
‘How cute!’ she squealed, glancing around her. ‘Edmund, honey, just take a look at this place. It’s like something out of a fairy story!’
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