Wife: Bought and Paid For

by Jacqueline Baird

  ‘Solo Maffeiano. What the hell is he doing here?’ Patricia exclaimed, her eyes out on stalks. ‘I thought I told you to get rid of him years ago.’

  ‘Please, Patricia, let me explain.’ Penny felt the sudden stiffening in Solo’s long body and abruptly he let her go, stepping to one side. The feel-good factor had not lasted one morning. Penny almost groaned aloud her frustration, and, glancing up, her green eyes were captured by narrowed grey ones.

  ‘I don’t think I know your friend, Penny, darling,’ he drawled, his hard, dark face expressionless, but only a fool would fail to detect the steel beneath the silky smoothness of his voice. ‘Introduce me.’

  Now would be a good time for the floor to open and swallow her, Penny thought dryly, tearing her gaze from his, but one look at Patricia’s bossy, big-sister-type expression, and then back to Solo’s icy one, and she knew she was in trouble with both of them.

  ‘Solo, this is Patricia Mason—Jane and Simon’s older sister. Patricia and her child were on holiday with James and her parents,’ Penny began to explain.

  ‘Never mind the social niceties,’ Patricia said. ‘What is he doing here?’

  ‘I live here,’ Solo said with a sardonic arch of one dark eyebrow in Patricia’s direction. ‘And as far as I know I have never met you.’

  ‘Well, you have once,’ and she mentioned a première in New York. ‘And I know all about you,’ Patricia fired back. ‘I told Penny—Lisa Brunton is a friend of mine.’

  ‘And?’ Solo prompted icily. Penny sensed the increased tension in his mighty frame, and slanted a brief glance at his chiselled profile. She saw his jaw tighten and a muscle jerk in his cheek; he was livid.

  ‘Stop it, both of you,’ she cut in firmly.

  ‘Yes, let’s have a coffee and be civilised.’ Solo’s hand snaked out, and his fingers dug into Penny’s waist as he fixed her with a piercing glance that sent a shiver of fear down her spine. ‘I do not want to see my wife upset.’

  ‘Wife? You’re married!’ Patricia exclaimed. ‘To him?’ She waved a hand at Solo. ‘I don’t believe it.’

  ‘Believe it!’ Solo drawled. ‘Penny and I were married last Monday in Italy, and I have to thank you, Patricia. If your family had not taken James on holiday, it might never have happened,’ he ended with a mocking, cynical smile.

  The sound of a car horn echoed in the fraught silence. ‘Oh, damn—I have to go, they are waiting in the car.’ Patricia frowned at Penny. ‘But I’ll talk to you later.’ And, spinning on her heel, she left.

  ‘You can let me go now,’ Penny said bluntly. ‘I think you made your point with Patricia.’

  ‘Your friend is of no importance to me,’ he opined in a flat, chilling voice, turning her to face him, his strong hands spanning her waist. ‘But she obviously has a vast influence on you.’

  ‘No, I hardly ever see her,’ Penny said truthfully. The last thing she needed was to get into a discussion on Patricia. ‘She lives in America.’

  Solo’s eyes rested thoughtfully on her taut face. ‘Your ex-boyfriend Simon is her brother.’ His lashes drooped, hiding any sign of emotion in his grey eyes. ‘Cast your mind back, Penny—was she in England the first time we met?’

  A hot tide of colour surged up into her face. ‘She did visit to show her parents their first grandchild,’ she said to somewhere over his left shoulder.

  ‘And you listened to her gossip,’ Solo prompted, jerking her closer, his hands tightening on her waist. ‘What exactly did the woman tell you, mia sposa?’ He kissed her angrily. Heaven knew what would have happened next if James hadn’t appeared at the moment.

  Penny had never been so grateful for an interruption in her life. James ran into the hall, his mouth covered in chocolate, and skidded to a halt at the sight of Solo.

  ‘You let go of my Penny.’ He stuck a sticky hand on Solo’s jean-clad leg.

  ‘What the devil—?’ Suddenly Penny was free, and Solo dropped gracefully down on his haunches. ‘You must be James. I knew you when you were a baby, and I can’t believe how big you have grown.’

  ‘What you doing with my sister?’ James asked, not to be deterred.

  ‘Kissing her,’ Solo grinned at the little boy. ‘I know you love Penny very much, but I love your sister as well, and it is a lot for Penny to look after this big house and everything else, so I am going to live here and help you both.’

  Penny was horrified. She had not thought how she would tell James she was married—she doubted he understood the concept—but she certainly would not have started with a lie. Solo did not love her. If only it were true, Penny thought with a stab of longing, staring down at the two dark heads so close together.

  ‘Can you swim?’ James asked with the single-mindedness of a child.

  ‘Yes, and I have a house with its very own swimming pool where we can all go on holiday.’

  ‘I’ve just been on holiday.’ James grinned. ‘And I can swim.’

  ‘In that case we must build a swimming pool here, maybe in the basement, so you and I can practise swimming together—’

  It was outright bribery. ‘Hold on—’ Penny cut in, but was stopped by James.

  ‘Can we really have a pool?’ James turned glowing eyes up at his sister, and she hadn’t the heart to say no.

  It was as inevitable as night follows day, Penny thought ruefully a few hours later, sharing a pot of tea in the kitchen with Brownie. James was completely captivated by Solo, and surprisingly Solo was extremely good with the little boy.

  He had carefully explained he and Penny were married, husband and wife, as James’s parents had been. James had pondered for a while and then decided it was okay. Which might have had something to do with discovering Solo had, not only a great car, but a boat and plane as well. Penny glanced out of the window, and at the moment Solo was showing James the engine of his car.

  ‘Alone at last,’ Solo said as he walked into the bedroom, just as Penny exited the bathroom wearing a blue towelling robe and nothing else. James had soaked her as she had given him his bath and put him to bed, with Solo looking on. She had left Solo reading James a bedtime story, and had hoped to be washed and changed before he had finished, but luck was not on her side.

  ‘It is almost dinner time,’ she said jerkily.

  Solo, in a few lithe strides, crossed the room and wrapped a hand around the back of her neck. ‘I am sure Brownie will not mind waiting. James is asleep.’ His voice dropped to a sibilant softness. ‘And you and I are going to have a talk, a long talk about what your so-called friend Patricia told you four years ago.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Penny looked straight at his broad chest, unable to meet his shrewd gaze; she had been dreading this moment all day. Solo was no fool, he must have guessed immediately after Patricia’s unthinking outburst this morning there was more to Penny’s rejection of him years ago than she had admitted at the time.

  ‘You’re a hopeless liar,’ Solo taunted. ‘Your pulse is racing.’ He drew her closer, and her nostrils flared slightly at the familiar male scent of him. ‘You’re as nervous as a mouse with a cat on its tail, and you know you really want to tell me.’

  ‘I am not,’ she snapped back, her green eyes flashing up to his. She did not appreciate being likened to a mouse. ‘And I’ve forgotten anyway.’ He held her gaze for a tense moment, and, although his expression did not alter, she sensed a hidden threat.

  ‘Okay,’ Solo said lightly. ‘Then I’ll ask your friend myself tomorrow.’ She was lying and he had a damn good idea why. She had listened to the poisonous Patricia’s gossip and stuck with young Simon. ‘She’s staying at the vicarage, I believe.’ And he watched with savage satisfaction as colour flooded her skin.

  ‘No… Yes. Oh…I don’t want you upsetting my friends; I have to live here,’ she said quickly.

  There was a long moment of silence. ‘Not necessarily,’ Solo finally said coolly, and he allowed his hand to slip around the front of her throat and graze gently ove
r the swell of her breast. ‘We could live in Italy, James as well, of course.’ His slate-grey eyes narrowed on her beautiful face, and he waited for her response, tension riding him.

  Penny jerked back out of his reach, heat swirling within her, prickling through her breasts until the peaks pushed achingly against the cotton of her robe. Flustered and completely missing his point, she muttered, ‘Then you get this house for your damn hotel. You must be joking.’

  Solo’s shoulders squared, his hard face an expressionless mask. Penny would not move an inch for him, never mind a country. Her friend must have done a real hatchet job on him, and he hated gossips almost as much as he hated liars. ‘I never intended turning this house into a hotel. Architecturally it is a perfect gem, and I appreciate perfection. It would be a desecration to alter it. So if you really believed I wanted it for a hotel, then you’re a fool.’

  Struggling for composure, she looked at him, resentment fizzing inside her. ‘No, otherwise you would have bought me out when I offered,’ she had to concede. But he was so damn arrogant it would do him no harm to hear some home truths. Why not tell him? Deflate his enormous ego a notch or two.

  ‘But I did believe once you wanted me so that you could get my house. Four years ago when I mentioned your name to Patricia as my boyfriend, she suggested I make sure you were not going out with me simply to get your hands on my home. You see, she recognised your name and told me all about you. A confirmed womaniser.’ Penny was getting into her stride. ‘You romanced a friend of hers, Lisa, for ages, then dumped her, by my reckoning a week after you met me.’ She saw Solo’s face darken like thunder but he made no attempt to deny her assumption—on the contrary.

  ‘Lisa knew the score—it was mutually beneficial when I was in New York, nothing more, and it was over the day I met you.’

  ‘For whom, I wonder?’ Penny scorned. ‘You broke the woman’s heart. Jewellery was mentioned as a get-lost gift. Apparently that’s a habit of yours.’ She didn’t see the angry narrowing of his eyes; she was on a roll.

  ‘Never mind the fact you already had a long-time married mistress in Tina Jenson, who was the purchaser of the jewellery, as you obviously haven’t got time between women to do it yourself,’ Penny drawled sarcastically. ‘If I remember correctly, Patricia’s final comment was you were far too old for me.’ Only then did she lift her eyes to his, and what she saw there made her take a step back.

  ‘And you believed her?’ He clasped her wrists, his fingers like manacles around them. ‘Dio, you had some opinion of me.’ Fury did not begin to describe the flash of white fire in his eyes, but as quickly it vanished, his features becoming an iron mask.

  ‘Are you saying she lied,’ Penny prompted.

  ‘Not exactly, but I’m a lot older than you. What did you expect—a blow-by-blow account of every woman I had before I met you?’

  ‘No, I didn’t, I don’t,’ she blurted, hating him for making her appear a naive young fool. ‘I doubt if you could even remember them all.’

  ‘Maybe not.’ A cold, cynical smile curled his firm lips and he tightened his grasp on her wrists. ‘But I do remember four years ago Patricia’s brother was your so-called boyfriend. Did it never occur to you she might have had an ulterior motive in gossiping about me, to protect her brother’s interest?’

  ‘No.’ She grimaced and tried to tug her hands free. ‘Because he was never my boyfriend. He was just a convenient excuse at the time when I discovered what a rat you were, and you’re hurting me.’

  Solo saw red. His whole life he had been alone and fought for what he wanted. But the one brief moment he had allowed himself to consider a wife and family and reach out to Penny, idle gossip had destroyed it. Penny hadn’t trusted him, and Simon had been nothing more than a decoy.

  ‘Hurting,’ Solo snarled. ‘You don’t know the meaning of the word. I would like to break your elegant neck.’ Instead he pushed her away from him. ‘I should have guessed.’ He shook his dark head, his narrowed gaze raking over her contemptuously. ‘No man could go out with you for years and not take you to bed; you’re sex on legs.’

  ‘He was a friend, I was crying on his shoulder when you turned up. He was in the right place at the right time,’ Penny explained.

  Solo smiled tightly. ‘For whom, I wonder?’ he drawled mockingly, quoting Penny’s earlier comment about Lisa, and, tilting her chin with one elegant finger, he said softly, ‘Not to worry, Penny, darling, we have each other—for a while.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  SINCE Solo had walked back into this house five weeks earlier, her life had changed dramatically. Penny stared sightlessly at the computer screen. James was fast asleep and she was in her old room trying to work, but her troubled mind would not let her. Solo was in New York and she missed him dreadfully. A sad smile twisted her lips, she loved him with every fibre of her being, but she could never tell him.

  Solo had been great with James, and had managed to charm every one of her friends and acquaintances at the party they had held the weekend after they’d returned to England.

  Luckily Patricia had returned to her husband in America before the party, but not before she had subjected Penny to a long and detailed questioning over the telephone, ending with the words, ‘I hope you know what you are doing, Penny. It is bound to end in disaster.’

  Well, her relationship with Solo hadn’t. Yet! He was the perfect husband, to the rest of the household, and courtesy itself to Penny. It was only in the privacy of their bed at night he changed into a demon lover. A lover she could not resist. She was like a drug addict hungering for the taste of him, and the more she had, the more she wanted. Sometimes, lost in the wonder of his love-making, she could almost believe he cared, and other times she was filled with shame at her helpless response, her almost blind obedience to his mighty will.

  After today it had to stop, she told herself adamantly; she had more to consider than herself now. Determinedly she focused on the screen; she was going to need her work and the money she could earn more than ever.

  ‘So this is where you hide.’ A deep, dark voice vibrated though the silence of the room.

  Penny swung around in her chair, her startled gaze flashing to the tall, dark figure of Solo standing in the open door, and her heart lurched. ‘You’re back!’ Simply the sight of him turned her on. He had shed his jacket and tie somewhere, his white shirt was open at the neck and his pleated trousers hung low on his lean hips. His black hair had escaped its usual sleek style to fall in wayward curls over his broad brow, and he looked dishevelled and less arrogantly assured than when she had last seen him. They had been married over a month and he had been away for the past four days.

  ‘Miss me, did you?’

  Yes—yes—yes! her heart cried. His face was taut, his silver eyes darkly shadowed as they captured hers. For the first time she noticed that his stunning features were tightly drawn and he actually looked tired. She had an incredible urge to simply throw herself into his arms, but instead, with her gaze remarkably level, she said, ‘I thought you were away for a week.’

  He gave an indolent shrug. ‘I managed to finish my business quicker than expected.’ He walked across to where she sat at her computer and slanted her a wickedly seductive smile. ‘And decided to spend the night with my wife, so you can stop fooling around with the computer, and fool around with me.’

  She clocked the time on her computer—it was almost midnight. Briefly she closed her eyes; she was tempted, very tempted. Involuntarily her tongue slipped out and ran over the fullness of her lower lip, but his arrogant assumption she should drop everything for him riled her no end. The past four days apart had made Penny take a long, hard look at herself and she did not like what she had become: a slave to her senses. ‘How was your trip?’ she asked stiffly.

  His dark eyes gleamed with mocking cynicism. ‘Polite convention at all cost.’ His lips twisted sardonically and he let his gaze wander over her slender body. ‘A little more wifely enthusiasm would not go amiss.’
His eyes narrowed fractionally on the computer screen. ‘What is that?’

  Wifely enthusiasm! He made her sound like the little woman sitting at home, and it annoyed her. ‘It is the draft of my latest children’s book, the second of five I am contracted for,’ she told him proudly. ‘Contrary to what you think, I do not sit around waiting for some man to provide for me. I do work; I do have a career.’

  ‘I know.’ Hard hands caught hold of her arms and she gasped as he lifted her to her feet, and he chuckled. ‘Poor Penny. James showed me weeks ago the book you had written. I was wondering how long it would take you to tell me yourself,’ he admitted dryly.

  Penny winced. ‘Am I that transparent?’

  ‘No, not at all,’ he murmured wryly. ‘You are like me in that respect, very good at hiding things. For instance, I came back tonight because I couldn’t keep away from you a moment longer.’

  Her green eyes widened in surprise on smouldering grey. It was not a declaration of love, but it was more than he had ever offered before, Penny thought wonderingly. Then his mouth closed over hers in a kiss of breathtaking hunger, his arms enfolding her, and she was left in no doubt he had missed her by the hard strength of him against her thighs.

  ‘Hmm,’ he drawled a long time later, giving her a scorching look. ‘The master suite—or your childhood bed looks very tempting, and much nearer,’ he opined with a husky groan.

  Winding her arms around his neck, her whole body alive with excitement, she glanced teasingly up at him. ‘The master suite,’ she declared adamantly. ‘You’re a tough guy. I’m sure you can manage.’

  ‘Remind me to exact due punishment later,’ he threatened, swinging her up in his arms and carrying her from the room.