The Bridegroom's Dilemma

by Lindsay Armstrong

  Skye blinked, conscious immediately of the trap she’d fallen into, and for a moment her expression defied description.

  This time Nick Hunter laughed softly. But at the same time he possessed himself of her hand. ‘Look, I’ve been overseas. For quite a bit longer than I’d originally planned, I’m afraid. Would it be too much to hope that we’re going to the same cocktail party?’

  Skye opened her mouth, shut it then said, ‘I’m going to the launch of this new wine. I don’t know about you.’

  He laughed again and ushered her into the lift. ‘I am now.’

  She stared at him. ‘Do you mean…?’

  ‘Precisely,’ he drawled. ‘I intend to come to the wine party with you.’

  ‘But if you haven’t got an invitation—and what about the one you were invited to anyway?’

  ‘I never seem to have any trouble getting into parties whether I’m invited or not,’ he commented gravely. ‘And the one I was going to will be deadly dull in comparison—’

  ‘So why…?’

  ‘Because you won’t be there,’ he finished softly.

  Skye blushed and he watched the colour surge beneath her smooth skin, which had the effect of making her feel hotter than ever.

  But as she cast around in her mind for a suitable rejoinder he grimaced, kissed her knuckles lightly and said, ‘Shall we be friends again?’

  He was right. He was more than welcome at the cocktail party; the producers of the new wine were even old friends of his, and they lamented loudly that they hadn’t known he was in the country otherwise they’d have sent him an invitation.

  And Skye watched, somewhat bemused, because Nick Hunter in action at a party was a sight to behold. Everyone seemed to know him and be delighted to see him. Including some very attractive women who hung on his every word.

  But, after about an hour, he came back to Skye’s side and said for her ears alone, ‘I’ve had rather a good idea. Shall we go?’

  She moistened her lips. ‘Where?’

  He narrowed his eyes. ‘I wonder why I get the impression Skye Belmont has never lived a little dangerously?’

  ‘Believe me, I have,’ she countered. ‘Every time I go in front of a camera I might as well be white-water rafting down the Zambezi in crocodile-infested waters—that’s how nervous I get.’

  His lips quirked and his eyes glinted with amusement. ‘You don’t show it.’

  ‘Perhaps not. I feel it all the same. The funny thing is, as soon as the cameras are rolling, I lose it. But—’ she shrugged her slim shoulders ‘—I am cautious by nature. So, before I make any commitment, how dangerously are you asking me to live at the moment, Nick Hunter?’ Her own eyes were a cool, amused blue.

  His changed to reflect a glimmer of surprise but he was not to know that Skye had learnt a thing or two in the preceding hour. She had accurately perceived that he very quickly divested himself of women who could not hide their admiration of him.

  ‘All I had in mind was you doing something you’ve done for me before—cooking me dinner,’ he said. ‘Which was not dangerous at all, if you remember. And I happen to have a refrigerator stuffed with food—but you know how hopeless I am in the kitchen,’ he added helplessly.

  Skye’s lips twitched. ‘Ah. But I was paid for that.’

  ‘Then could you consider this?’ He glanced around. ‘Little bites of food on toothpicks always leave me the same way. Starving,’ he said simply.

  ‘You could go to a restaurant,’ she pointed out.

  ‘When I know the best cook in town? That would be sacrilege,’ he said softly. ‘But, I give you my word, I’ll deliver you home all safe and sound.’

  Skye hesitated but she couldn’t help laughing at his expression, which was an entirely false mixture of pleading and mournfulness. ‘OK.’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t know why I don’t always go out armed with an apron!’

  ‘This…’ he paused, looking somewhat put out ‘…happens to you often?’

  ‘Being lured to a man’s house under the guise of cooking him dinner? All the time.’

  ‘So I wasn’t being in the least original?’

  ‘Not one bit!’ she said blithely.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ he murmured. ‘I must be slipping. How often do you accept?’

  ‘Very seldom,’ she said seriously. ‘But you did boost my ratings the last time I cooked for you so I owe you one, Mr Hunter. Besides, I’d like to use you in my next cookbook.’

  He looked comically put out this time. ‘As in how, Ms Belmont?’

  ‘As in what your favourite foods are, particularly with an international flavour, including favourite little restaurants you might have around the world. You can tell me all about it while I cook.’ She watched him serenely.

  ‘So this is very definitely a quid pro quo?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  He shook his head. ‘You’re a hard woman, Skye. OK, I accept. Let’s go.’ Once more he took her hand and led her out.

  For the next three months she often cooked him meals, although they never made any prior arrangements. He would simply ring her at work or at home and if she wasn’t free he’d say, ‘Bad luck. Maybe next time?’ And she’d agree without giving any intimation that it was getting harder and harder for her to be just a good friend of Nick Hunter’s.

  Harder, also, to live with the thought that the last thing he would respond to was being pinned down in any way. It struck her, too, that the Skye Belmont she was presenting to Nick Hunter was her public persona, not the true girl who lurked beneath the surface and was a more serious, not-necessarily-admiring-of-the-worldliness-of-his-world girl.

  Then things changed dramatically one evening. She was cooking roast beef for him. In the act of beating the ingredients for Yorkshire pudding at the same time as she was telling him about her last show, which had been a behind-the-scenes disaster, she realized he was unusually quiet.

  ‘Am I talking too much?’ she said lightly. ‘I guess you had to be there to see the humour of it. Nothing came out right.’

  He was sitting at the kitchen counter twirling a glass of wine in his fingers. The sun was setting, flooding his beautiful apartment and its views of Sydney Harbour with a golden radiance. And he didn’t answer but only allowed his dark gaze to drift over her in a way it had once before. This time there was something darker about it, though.

  She stopped beating. ‘Nick—is something wrong?’ she asked uncertainly.

  He smiled but with an effort. ‘You could say so.’

  ‘What? Tell me?’ she whispered.

  ‘I don’t know if this is on your agenda, Skye, but—even watching you make Yorkshire pudding is driving me out of my mind.’

  She blinked, her mouth fell open and all she could say hoarsely was, ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’d very much like to be kissing you.’

  Several reactions hit her. Relief, disbelief and a sudden inner trembling. ‘Oh. I thought it was something serious.’ She stopped and blushed as he looked at her ironically. ‘Well, you know what I mean—’

  ‘No. I’m not at all sure what you mean, Skye.’

  Her hands were all floury and she rubbed her forehead agitatedly, transferring some of the flour to it. ‘I was thinking of an illness or… I didn’t think you saw me like that. That’s what I meant.’

  ‘Then we shared the same dilemma.’

  Skye sat down on a stool rather abruptly. ‘Surely— I wasn’t that good at covering it up?’

  A fleeting frown came to his dark eyes. ‘You tried to?’ he hazarded.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said simply. ‘I learnt my lesson the first time you took me to lunch.’

  He got up and came round the counter so he was standing in front of her and he put his fingers beneath her chin to tilt it so he could look into her eyes. ‘Didn’t that put you off?’ he asked sombrely, not attempting to deny the charge.

  ‘Unfortunately, the other thing about you is that you’re such fun to be with and I really enjoy your company
.’

  ‘We’ve never been anywhere or done anything other—than this.’ He glanced around the kitchen.

  She shrugged slightly.

  ‘So—may I kiss you, Skye Belmont?’

  A faint smile trembled on her lips. ‘You know, Nick, I didn’t think you were the kind who waited to be asked.’

  ‘There could be a lot of things you don’t know about me, Skye,’ he said, and took her in his arms.

  How true, Skye thought, lying on her bed. Things that he had never intended her to get to know, either. But the sheer magic of being kissed by and intimate with Nick Hunter had claimed all her senses, including her common sense.

  It had been a revelation. He’d made love to her with a mixture of laughter and intensity that had been breathtaking. Just to see his hands was enough to make her stop in her tracks and go hot and cold at the memories of how he’d handled her body, how he’d made her feel like silk and velvet, how protective his whipcord strength had been, how much pleasure he’d brought to her. How they’d laughed at the oddest things while they were lying in each other’s arms.

  And the way his dark gaze drifted over her, often in public, had the same effect. So that she knew he would take her to his apartment very soon, whatever they were doing, and slide her clothes off, paying meticulous attention to all her most sensitive, erogenous zones until she could barely speak. Then he’d take her to bed and their bodies would unite in a way that spoke for itself.

  It struck her that if she’d once thought he was tall, dark and dangerous she now thought he was tall, dark and to die for.

  Then, any hidden doubts she might have had had been allayed one day when he’d propped his head on his hand, drawn his other hand across her breasts with a touch so light yet at the same time electrifying, and said, ‘I think we ought to do something to formalize this state of affairs, Ms Belmont.’

  ‘Oh?’ She’d smiled dreamily. ‘Don’t tell me. You’re thinking of hiring me as your full-time cook?’

  ‘On the contrary, I’m thinking of asking you to marry me.’

  Skye had opened her eyes wide and sat up suddenly. ‘What…?’ She’d had some trouble with her voice. ‘What do you mean?’

  He’d eyed her quizzically. ‘What do you think I mean?’

  ‘But—’ she’d groped for his hand and held it tight between hers ‘—I didn’t know you felt like that…’ She’d trailed off, and the sheer surprise had still been in her eyes.

  ‘Skye—why do you think I keep doing this?’ He’d freed his hand and pulled her into his arms. ‘For that matter, we keep doing this,’ he’d said into her hair.

  She’d trembled in his arms.

  ‘Don’t tell me—’ he’d raised his head and looked into her eyes quite wickedly, ‘—you’ve only been toying with me, Skye Belmont?’

  Because the opposite had sometimes occurred to her, because, while it wasn’t in her to toy with anyone in this way but the same might not be said of him, by reputation anyway, she’d actually gasped and looked so thunderstruck, he’d started to laugh.

  ‘Are you serious?’ she’d demanded then.

  ‘Of course. What plans did you have for us?’

  It was a question that had suddenly revealed all her hidden fears to her. Fears that she hadn’t been able to look in the face because his effect on her had been so powerful… Would they go on being lovers until the gloss wore off and a new woman replaced her?

  How stable could a relationship be when they lived it inside a bubble—their daily lives were not in the slightest altered by it? He came and went, often with little or no explanation. She did the same, often doing the show interstate. They didn’t spend much time together at all that wasn’t spent in passionate lovemaking—or, it struck her with some irony, her cooking for him. Now this.

  She’d looked around his bedroom and licked her lips. ‘I…didn’t have any plans, actually.’

  ‘Then I think it might be time to start making them,’ he’d said wryly. ‘Will you marry me, Skye? I promise it’s not only your cooking I love about you.’

  That had done it. She’d lain back in his arms, overcome not only by him but the fact that this offer of marriage had to banish all her fears. Surely? ‘Yes.’ And then, in the grip of love and excitement such as she’d never known, she’d kissed him. ‘Yes, please.’

  That had been six months ago, she recalled. He’d bought her an engagement ring of Tanzanite, an exquisite violet blue stone that was the colour of her eyes, surrounded by diamonds. She’d met his parents and his sister and been welcomed with open arms, although she’d thought his mother had looked at her with secret surprise.

  But his father had been particularly warm and welcoming of his prospective daughter-in-law, and she’d formed the impression that Richard Hunter had decided she would be good for his son.

  Nick had met her mother and charmed her thoroughly. Although, again, Skye had sensed some reservations in her mother. All Iris had ever put into words, however, had been the fact that she sensed Nick Hunter might be more complicated than met the eye.

  And they had become an item, Skye Belmont and Nick Hunter—a celebrity couple. Once again her ratings had skyrocketed and she’d continually had to field questions about Nick, how they’d got together, what their plans were, what the wedding would be like, her dress, the cake—would she make it herself?—their honeymoon plans, how many children they wanted.

  And that, she thought sadly, lying on her bed, was when the rot had started.

  Or it was the catalyst, more accurately, that had made her see she was marrying a man she adored to go to bed with, but there was not a whole lot more between them than there ever had been…

  It had started out as a laughing discussion, three weeks before their wedding, on all the questions people asked her.

  ‘While I seem to be an open book to the whole world,’ she said with a grin, ‘you are this mysterious figure they all hunger and thirst to know about. I can’t believe people’s preoccupation with you, or things like how many children we plan to have!’ She grimaced.

  ‘Well, I hope you don’t plan to rush in and have an army,’ he replied ruefully.

  Her feeling of laughter deserted her for some reason. ‘I don’t intend to do either but—we are going to have kids, aren’t we, Nick?’

  ‘All in good time.’

  She was cooking for him again, breakfast this time—bacon, eggs, mushrooms and tomato. She had on a yellow silk robe with nothing underneath it and all he wore was a pair of shorts. They hadn’t been up long. He was reading the newspaper at the kitchen counter while she cooked.

  ‘What do you mean, “All in good time”?’

  He looked up briefly. ‘You’re barely twenty-four, Skye.’

  ‘And you’re thirty-two, Nick,’ she countered. ‘Look, I don’t want to have them immediately but by the time I’m twenty-five I’m sure I shall. I will also—’ she stopped, took a deep breath and looked around ‘—want a proper married life. I’d like my own home one day and a husband who doesn’t spend half his life away from me, doing things I don’t much care for anyway.’

  ‘Such as?’ He said it quietly but she divined a dangerous little glint in his eyes.

  ‘If you must know I find your social world incredibly shallow at times. I can’t stand motor racing, speedboat racing—and all the groupies who go with them—and I don’t think the way you have to travel overseas so frequently is conducive to a happy life.’

  ‘Then why are we getting married?’

  ‘Because I thought it would change,’ she said intensely. ‘But I now see that out of bed we might as well inhabit different planets. Especially if you’ve got something against us having children!’

  ‘I didn’t say that—’

  ‘You might just as well have, Nick; I can tell when you have reservations—about anything.’

  He closed the paper at last and stood up to lean his shoulders against a cupboard. ‘What is so wrong about wanting us to learn to live with each ot
her before we set about populating the earth, Skye?’

  She gasped. ‘That’s as good as saying you don’t…you’ll make your marriage vows but on the understanding you can break them!’

  ‘It happens,’ he said roughly. ‘It happens to people with the best of intentions. By the way,’ he added pointedly, ‘I don’t quibble about your work which also takes you round the country, nor have I laid down any ultimatums that you’ll have to stop and devote yourself to me once we’re married.’

  She was speechless.

  Something he took advantage of. ‘As for going overseas, I’ll never be able to help that. It comes with the job, but…’ he paused significantly ‘…if you are not burdened down with babies, you could always come too.’

  Shock lit her eyes. ‘You really don’t want kids, do you, Nick?’ she whispered. ‘At least tell me why?’

  He stood very still for about half a minute, his dark gaze resting on her pale face. Then he said, ‘Perhaps I know myself well enough to know—how hard I find it to be tied down.’

  ‘So why—you asked me this—why are we getting married?’

  His lips twisted. ‘I hadn’t figured you for such a conventional homebody, Skye.’

  ‘Not even,’ she said huskily, and put out a hand to support herself against the fridge, ‘when all I’ve done is be at home with you?’ She stared at the bacon and eggs then lifted her gaze to him. ‘Could there be anything more homely than this?’

  ‘In a sense,’ he said dryly, ‘that’s been part of the problem. You seem so happy just to be at home.’

  ‘So you thought you’d be able to live your old life while I stayed put and kept the home fires burning?’

  ‘You haven’t seemed to mind until now,’ he pointed out.

  She swallowed a great lump in her throat. ‘It doesn’t make sense. One moment you tell me you didn’t suspect I was such a conventional homebody—’

  ‘Ah, but that’s the operative word. I didn’t think you were conventional. You’re very successful, Skye,’ he said meditatively. ‘You’re very cool and confident, not at all, one would have thought, a clinger.’