The Innocent's Secret Temptation

by Penny Jordan

  As she looked upwards she could see a pile of rubble—bricks, plaster, pieces of wood—and her heart jerked fearfully inside her chest. She held her breath, trying to stifle her fear, her pain, slowly making her way up the temporary wooden staircase until she was on a level with the collapsed wall. What she had seen from below had simply been a small part of the devastation. Now that she was on a level with it she could see the magnitude of what was happening.

  An entire interior wall appeared to have collapsed, spewing bricks and plaster everywhere. She could see through the gap in the wall quite clearly into the room beyond it.

  Trembling now, she walked towards it. The house was empty, quiet; there was just her and the dust her coming had disturbed to swirl heavily around her.

  As she reached the fallen masonry she saw something lying on the floor. A jacket… Ben’s jacket, surely.

  Trembling, she bent down and picked it up, pressing the soft fabric to her cheek. Yes, it was his. It smelled of him. Her fingers closed on it compulsively. Where was he? How badly was he hurt? If only she had known…been here… She felt the pain, the panic, building up inside her, a huge tearing agony she couldn’t contain.

  Tears pricked her eyes, and as she blinked them away she saw the blood on the jacket.

  A long agonised moan of pain ripped her throat, she dropped to her knees, pressing the jacket to her face, protesting on a tortured moan.

  ‘No…please… Ben… Ben!’

  ‘Miranda.’

  The shock of hearing him say her name spun her round, her eyes huge with disbelief as her tears rolled down her dusty face.

  ‘What is it? What are you doing here? This floor isn’t safe.’

  He was coming towards her, reaching her as she stood up, repeating almost angrily, ‘What are you doing here? Why are you here?’

  ‘I heard… I thought you’d been hurt.’

  She saw suddenly that he had been, that his shirt sleeve was rolled back and that there was blood on his arm. She swayed as she saw it, shivering when he reached out to steady her.

  ‘It’s only a cut,’ he told her roughly, stopping when he saw that she was clutching his jacket. ‘So, you thought I’d been hurt. And that’s why you came rushing round here. Am I supposed to believe that after the note I found this morning?’

  He was angry, she recognised, flinching back from him.

  ‘Or were you hoping that I had been injured…that a few tons of falling bricks might have conveniently deprived me of all memory of last night?’ He gave her a savage, wolfish smile. ‘Well, let me tell you this: the whole damned building could have fallen on me before that could happen.’

  She couldn’t bear the pain of what he was saying to her, and reacted to it instinctively, denying his words, crying out to him, ‘No, you’re wrong! I didn’t—’

  ‘You didn’t what, Miranda? You didn’t walk out on me, leaving me a polite little note saying thanks but no thanks? Well, that wasn’t the message I received.’

  He was angry, and not just angry, but bitter as well.

  ‘No, please…it wasn’t like that. You don’t understand.’

  ‘Then explain it to me. Tell me why, after the most perfect loving I can ever remember, I woke up this morning to find you gone and that chilly polite little note waiting for me.’

  She shook her head despairingly. ‘I can’t… I can’t explain.’

  ‘You mean you won’t.’

  She started to shiver. ‘You’re angry with me.’

  ‘Angry with you?’ He gave her a biting, incredulous look, pushing his fingers through his hair, his body tense and aggressive. ‘My God, you’re speaking like a child. You must have known.’

  A shout from below interrupted them. Miranda watched as Ben went to the head of the stairs and called back, ‘Yes, I’m up here. Any news from the hospital?’

  ‘Yes,’ the other man called back. ‘He’s going to be OK. Lucky bastard. After what he tried to do, he doesn’t deserve it.’

  ‘And his wife’s been informed?’ Ben wanted to know.

  ‘Yes, we did as you instructed and made sure someone took her out to the hospital. Oh, and Jack Meade said to tell you he’ll have the men in after lunch to make everything safe.’

  ‘Thanks, Rob.’

  Miranda watched as Rob, the man who had been guarding the front door, went back to his post, leaving the two of them alone.

  Her throat felt stiff and sore, and, now that the initial shock of believing that Ben had been hurt and then discovering that he was safe was over, she felt oddly weak, as fragile as though her body could hardly support the burden of her emotions.

  ‘What happened?’

  The words sounded disembodied, vague and uncertain.

  She watched as Ben turned round and studied her.

  ‘We’re not totally sure as yet, but it seems that Charlesworth decided to have another go at making his dislike of me felt, only this time he misjudged things badly, and the wall he had been tampering with, no doubt hoping to cause a set-back and more expense for me, collapsed on top of him.

  ‘Luckily I was here at the time. I had just come in, heard the commotion and got up here just in time to drag him free. He’d been stunned by a falling brick when the wall first started to collapse. He was damned lucky he wasn’t killed.’

  Miranda closed her eyes. She was trembling all over, visibly shaking as she recognised what Ben wasn’t telling—that he, in saving Ralph, had been equally at risk.

  ‘Miranda.’ His voice sharpened with anxiety, as he came towards her, demanding roughly, ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

  He had reached her, was touching her before she could evade him, the sensation of his fingers on her arm, even with the thickness of her shirt between them, making her feel so vulnerable that she tensed immediately and tried to pull back, her face empty of all colour, its pallor heightened by its coating of dust.

  ‘You’ve been crying.’

  The husky comment made her focus on him, her eyes dark and frantic.

  ‘I told you; I thought you’d been hurt,’ she repeated dully.

  She was still holding his jacket and, as though she suddenly realised how betraying her behaviour was, she opened her fingers and dropped it.

  Ben stared down at her for a few seconds and then bent to pick it up.

  She started to tremble again, even more violently than before.

  ‘Miranda.’ His voice was heavy and sombre and a knife-like pain sliced through her. He had guessed the truth she was trying to conceal. He was going to confront her with it; she couldn’t endure that…couldn’t endure his compassion, his pity…

  ‘No.’ She tore herself free of him, almost flinging herself down the stairs and darting out of the building, much to the surprise of the small crowd still gathered there.

  When she got back to the office, Liz was waiting for her, her face creased with concern.

  ‘Miranda.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ she told her tightly.

  She walked into her own office and closed the door, walking unsteadily over to her desk and sitting down in her chair. She was shaking again, even more than before. She was crying as well, she realised, as she felt the wetness on her skin and the shudders that tore at her chest and hurt her throat.

  Putting her head down on her desk she gave in to her emotions and wept.

  When she heard her office door open, she didn’t bother to lift her head. Her tears had exhausted her. Drained her. She had no energy, no will, no ability to do anything.

  ‘It’s no good, Liz,’ she said in a low, exhausted voice. ‘I can’t help it, I love Ben Frobisher and it’s never going to get any better…never ever going to go away.’

  ‘I’m very glad to hear it.’

  ‘Ben!’

  She lifted her head, her lips framing his name, but no sound emerged as shock held her in its grip.

  In disbelief she watched as he closed her office door and came towards her, half dragging her out of her c
hair and holding her against him as he demanded roughly, ‘Tell me that again.’

  Tell him what?

  He must have recognised her confusion, because he said, half impatiently, like a man trying desperately to exercise restraint, ‘Tell me that you love me, dammit!’

  When she flinched, unable to endure his cruel mockery of her, trying to break free of him, he shifted his weight so that she was trapped between his body and her desk, and then cupped her face, forcing her to look back at him.

  ‘Miranda, what is it?’ he demanded rawly. ‘What the hell have I done to make you act like this? When I ask you to tell me that you love me, you flinch away from me as though I’m threatening to torture you.’

  ‘Aren’t you?’ she demanded achingly, shuddering as her body registered the heat and intimacy of his.

  ‘That wasn’t my intention, no,’ he told her drily. ‘I recognise that an independent career-minded woman might not relish the knowledge that a man loves her and wants her love in return, but I hadn’t realised it would cause her so much revulsion that it would make her physically cringe away from him. I’m only human, Miranda,’ he told her rawly. ‘I can’t help it. If my love for you makes me want to elicit the same response from you, makes me ache to hear you say that you love me, and I can’t help feeling bitter…cheated almost that your need to remain independent means that you’d rather deny what you feel.’

  He felt her tension and gave her a tired look.

  ‘What did you think I was going to do—use the fact that you loved me to force you into some kind of permanent commitment.’ He shook his head. ‘I can’t deny that’s what I want from you, but only if it’s given freely. I’m not going to pretend I don’t want you as my wife, that I don’t want to share the rest of my life with you, but I love you too much to force that kind of situation on you. Don’t you understand? I love you enough to accept that you want your freedom.’

  Tears were sliding down her face. He trapped one with his thumb, stroking her skin, watching her with loving, concerned eyes.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ she managed to tell him. ‘I didn’t know you loved me. I thought it was just…just sex.’

  His mouth twisted as he looked at her.

  ‘Just sex…my love…just sex is never, could never come anywhere near being like what we shared.’

  ‘But you didn’t say anything. Didn’t tell me.’

  ‘I may not have given you the words, but my love for you was in every touch, every kiss. I thought you must surely know that. I thought that was why you left me…why you wrote me that callous, chilly little note, because you were rejecting that love.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘No. I just didn’t want to burden you with mine.’ She shivered and asked him anxiously, ‘Do you really love me? I’m not sure any of this is actually real.’

  ‘It’s real,’ he assured her softly, ‘and what’s even more real is the fact that just as soon as your father and Helen get back, you and I are going to be married.’ He paused and looked at her, hesitating for a second before asking her uncertainly, ‘You do want to marry me, don’t you?’

  This time it was joy that made her tremble as she wound her arms around his neck and whispered tremulously, ‘Yes. Yes, I do.’

  * * *

  ‘MM. ALONE AT LAST,’ Ben teased, as Miranda sat down on the bed of their honeymoon hotel, easing off her shoes.

  It had been a long flight from Heathrow to this remote tropical island and the privacy of their own private bungalow in the spectacular grounds of the island’s single hotel.

  ‘Yes. I couldn’t believe it when Susan Charlesworth turned up at the wedding on her own, could you? She’s going to divorce Ralph, so she told Helen. Helen even suspects that she might have found someone else. Well, good luck to her if she has. I must admit, I never thought she’d find the will-power to leave him.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about Ralph Charlesworth or anyone else,’ Ben told her positively, taking hold of her, and adding softly, ‘In fact, I don’t want to talk about anything at all. Mm…you taste good,’ he added thickly as his lips teased her throat.

  Miranda felt her body begin to soften and ache.

  ‘I’m all hot and sticky,’ she protested. ‘I was going to have a shower.’

  ‘Good idea,’ Ben agreed, smiling at her with a look in his eyes that made her muscles tighten and her heartbeat quicken.

  ‘It frightens me sometimes how easily we might not have met,’ she told him breathlessly as he drew her to her feet, and reached behind her for the zip of her dress. ‘If I hadn’t bumped into you by accident. If we had simply walked past one another…’ She snuggled up to him blissfully.

  She felt the small explosion that shook her body and looked at him suspiciously.

  ‘What are you laughing at?’ she demanded.

  ‘You didn’t bump into me “by accident”, my love.’

  She withdrew slightly from him, giving him a narrow-eyed accusatory look.

  ‘If you think that I deliberately—’ she began indignantly, but he stopped, placing his finger against her lips, his eyes full of laughter as he shook his head.

  ‘No…not you.’ When she stared at him, he told her wryly, ‘I’d already walked round that corner and seen you coming towards me, head down, hurrying, oblivious to my existence, while I…while I,’ he continued softly, ‘had taken one look at you, and known…known immediately that you were the one, my other half.’ He shrugged as she stared at him in silence.

  ‘Oh, I know it sounds theatrical…dramatic. It shook me, I can tell you. Half of me couldn’t really believe it, didn’t really want to believe it…but the other half…the other half had turned me round, walked me back round that corner, made me wait and then…’

  ‘And then I walked into you,’ Miranda said slowly. ‘And all this time I’ve thought…I felt…’ She swallowed. ‘I thought it was just me,’ she told him huskily. ‘That I must be going crazy, to take one look at a man, and to feel about him as I’d never, ever felt about anyone in my whole life…to think about him so obsessively that within hours of meeting him I was imagining…wanting… And then those dreams…’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ he told her sombrely. ‘It was hard for both of us. You were so antagonistic towards me that I could not, dared not, let you see you affected me.’

  ‘I wasn’t antagonistic towards you when you kissed me to save me from Ralph,’ she pointed out slyly.

  ‘No, not then, and I clung to that small seed of hope, willing it to take root, to grow…and at the same time everywhere I went I kept on hearing about how determined you were to remain single, how important your career was to you. How everyone who knew you had heard your views on marriage and motherhood. How you’d avoided both as though they were dangerous as lime pits.’

  ‘I’d already recognised that my views were starting to change before I met you,’ she confessed, leaning her head against his shoulder. ‘Each time I held a baby…played with a child, something ached inside me, although it took me a long time to admit to myself that that ache was caused by a need I’d refused to acknowledge I could feel, never mind fulfill. How could I have a child when I didn’t have a husband…didn’t have a lover? And then I met you.’

  ‘Ah-ha! I see, so it wasn’t really me you wanted, just my—’

  She silenced him, shaking her head at him as he laughed at her.

  ‘It most certainly was you,’ she corrected him. ‘I took one look at you, and all those feelings, all those needs I’d heard so much about but never experienced were suddenly there.’

  ‘Are they still there?’ he asked her teasingly.

  ‘We can discuss that after I’ve had my shower.’

  ‘Mm. I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t we discuss it while we’re having our shower?’

  * * *

  LATER, fulfilled and drowsy, curled up next to him, when he touched her mouth with his fingertip and asked her what she was thinking, she turned towards him and said serious
ly, ‘I was just wondering about our bathroom at the house.’

  He had purchased the house from the trustees of the estate the week before they were married, although it was going to be many months before they could move into it. In the meantime they were going to live in her cottage.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘I’m glad we decided to include a shower as well as a bath,’ she told him sleepily, cuddling up to him while he laughed and kissed her and told her he loved her.

  ‘I love you too,’ she whispered sleepily into his skin. ‘I love you too.’

  * * * * *

  Now, read on for a tantalizing excerpt of Tara Pammi’s new release,

  HIS DRAKON RUNAWAY BRIDE

  The third and final book in her The Drakon Royals trilogy!

  For ten years Ariana has hidden from Crown Prince Andreas—until he finds her and announces that they’re still married! He’s determined to claim Ariana for his royal bed. But dark-hearted Andreas quickly realizes desire is even more binding than duty…

  Keep reading to get a glimpse of

  HIS DRAKON RUNAWAY BRIDE

  CHAPTER ONE

  “IS THIS A coup to overthrow me?” Crown Prince Andreas Drakos of Drakon joked as he walked into his study to find his family staring at him with a spectrum of emotions—concern in his sister Eleni’s eyes, stubborn resolve in Mia’s, something he couldn’t define in his brother Nikandros’s and pure frost in Gabriel’s.

  “None of us want your job, your popularity rating or your life, Andreas,” replied Nikandros, the financial genius who had set Drakon on its path of recovery after the mess their father had made in the last decade.