by Helen Brooks
'A bedroom?' Hudson suggested lazily, glancing round the sumptuous room appreciatively. 'Rather a nice one too, I might add.'
But… ' Marianne stared aghast at the most enormous bed she had ever seen in her life. 'Where's the other bedroom?
'You don't think there's room there for two?' Hudson asked with mock incredulity, although if she had been looking his way—rather than staring transfixed at the huge bed—she would have seen his eyes had narrowed intently on her shocked face. 'This suite already has a bathroom that would hold a baseball team, plus a sitting room; what else do you expect?'
'My own bed.' Her eyes turned to his. I'm not sleeping in that with you,' she stated with bald directness, her fiery face belying the flatness of her tone. I'll ring for Sorai.'
As she turned to step back into the small sitting room the maid had first shown them into Hudson caught her wrist, swinging her back to face him. 'The hell you are.' It was a soft growl, but Marianne was too angry to be intimidated. 'You can't embarrass Hassan by insulting him like that.'
'What about the insult to me, then?' Marianne shot back furiously. 'You led them both to believe I was your… your—'
'What?' he asked coldly. 'Spit it out.'
'Mistress!' She glared at him.
'Of course I didn't; don't be so ridiculous,' he said frostily.
'Then how do you explain that?' She gestured wildly towards the gargantuan bed, complete with silk covers, scattered pillows, cushions and tike sort of appeal that shouted 'love-nest'.
'Marianne, I had no idea Hassan would assume we were sleeping together,' Hudson said icily, his use of her full name an indication that the outward calm was merely a facade to mask the anger within. 'But even though he has it is hardly an insult. He knows we were together once and has naturally assumed we're more than friends.'
'Oh, and every woman you're "together" with, you sleep with, is that it?' she snapped back angrily. 'How many other girls have you brought here—?'
'That's enough.' His voice and his face were icy now.
She was too enraged to heed the warning. 'I can see it all now,' she spat hotly. 'I thought it was all too pat, too convenient What went wrong? Did she back out at the last minute? But of course, she must have done. What was it, work commitments? Or did you have a row? And you had the cheek to assume I'd fall in with your plans!'
'I don't have the faintest idea what you are talking about,' Hudson said with a softness that should have told her something.
'That woman, the redhead,' she spat furiously. 'The one who was all over you at the hotel.' She remembered her name perfectly well, but she was blowed if she was going to give him further satisfaction by revealing that—she'd said too much already.
It appeared Hudson agreed with her.
'My relationship with Jasmine is nothing to do with you.' It was deadly—the same sort of cold, analytical frostiness he used with such effect in his work when he wanted to devastate and destroy. 'But before you cast aspersions on her character I'd mention that to my knowledge she has never set someone up for a fall, unlike some.'
'Meaning?' His championship of the other woman cut her to the quick. 'Don't stop there—say exactly what you mean.'
'You really want me to spell it out?' he said grimly.
'I hate you.' And she did, right at that moment.
'Possibly.' He considered her burning face with stony grey eyes. 'But believe me, Annie, you can't feel anything for me I haven't felt tenfold for you. There was a time, when you first left and I imagined you with him, that I wanted to kill you.' As her eyes widened he nodded slowly. 'Oh, yes, it's true,' he affirmed with silky savagery. 'You get to hear a lot of things in my work, meet a lot of people that aren't nice to know, and for a time I really thought about it. If I could have found you both then… '
She shivered as he paused, surveying him with eyes that fear had turned jade-green, her face chalk-white.
'But you had covered your tracks too well,' he continued softly, 'and so I waited, biding my time, knowing that one day our paths would cross again.' He nodded slowly. 'And they did.'
'How did you know?' she whispered, trembling. 'That we'd meet?'
'Because I never give up,' he said with chilling matter-of-factness. 'It's not in my nature to accept defeat'
'What… what are you going to do?' She had never felt so paralysingly scared in her life. She had heard of women who had said—after having been attacked or threatened—that they had been too frightened to move, but she had always dismissed such statements as exaggeration. But she was experiencing it now, her limbs rigid with fright and her brain numb. She was frozen before him.
'Do?' A strange expression flicked over his face for a second as he saw her fear. 'I'm going to do nothing, Annie,' he said quietly, his body as tense as hers. 'I could never hurt you, I knew that all along, but it didn't help in the initial pain and humiliation to acknowledge it. The guy might have been a different matter… ' He nodded slowly. 'Would have been,' he affirmed softly.
She continued to stare at him, her composure fragile.
'But that's all dead and gone now,' he said grimly as she still remained frozen in front of him, like a tiny rabbit in the headlights of a car. 'We've moved on, both of us. You have your exciting life, your career… Is it enough, Annie? In the chill of the night, when you can't sleep and there's no one there to stroke away the fears, the nightmares? And don't tell me you don't have them,' he added, 'because everyone does, even the toughest of us.' The silky voice was ruthless.
'I… I'm doing all right,' she stammered weakly.
'But I don't think you're tough, Annie.' He continued as though he hadn't heard her trembling whisper. 'I don't think you're tough at all. Don't ask me how I know, I just know, and I'd bet my life on it Strange, really… ' He paused again, but she could read nothing from the veiled eyes beyond a kind of thoughtful pensiveness. 'I feel so sure about that aspect, and yet everything you've done points to my being wrong. Am I wrong?' he asked suddenly, his voice and manner changing and shocking her out of the false security his words had lulled her into.
Oh, he was good, he was very, very good, Marianne thought desperately, recognising too late he had been using the same sort of tactics he applied with such brilliance in the courtroom.
She didn't reply immediately, forcing herself to take a few deep, calming breaths to steady her pounding heart and racing pulse, before she said, 'We… we weren't discussing me. I was objecting to you bringing me here and setting this up—'
'Objection noted.' His eyes narrowed, and he actually had the gall to smile as he added, 'You'd be a worthy adversary in court, Miss McBride-Harding. You don't get intimidated easily.'
'The name is Harding, and this isn't a game,' she bit back quickly, bitterly hurt that he could dismiss the crucifying pain he had brought to the surface so casually.
'I know that.' His voice was a whiplash. 'And just be glad you've got off so lightly. It's more than you deserve.'
'Lightly? When you're suggesting—?'
'I have no intention of leaping on you when you're asleep and ravaging your body,' he said coolly, and with such disgust that every bit of self-confidence she had shrivelled up and died. 'Believe it or not, I do actually know women who find my attentions welcome.' The bolt of jealousy she felt was so savage, it lolled any retort 'I have never taken anything that wasn't freely given.'
She didn't doubt that for a minute. There was probably one such woman kicking herself at this moment because she had been prevented from making the trip with him. A woman with red hair and the sort of come-hither smile that would never turn him away, a woman who was free to love him, with no skeletons in the cupboard and messy family traumas. Someone vibrant, uninhibited…
'Now, the bed is seven feet across if it's an inch,' Hudson continued evenly. 'I hardly think we're going to bump into each other by accident. However, if it makes you feel safer—' the sarcasm was caustic '—we can make it into two separate halves with some of those pillows.'
'I can sleep on the sofa in there.' She pointed through the doorway to the neat sitting room where a brocade sofa reposed, along with matching easy chairs and a small television set.
'I don't think so.' He eyed her daddy. 'And there is no way I'm doing the gentlemanly thing and having a night of misery out there either. No, reconcile yourself to the bed,' he said with dry mockery. It'll only be for a few hours, after all.'
'I really don't think that's a good idea, and it's not because—'
'Just do it, Annie.' It was the voice of a man who had come to the end of his tether, and she recognised it as such.
'All right' She felt raw and vulnerable and exposed, and his earlier words—about the other women, and Jasmine in particular—were eating away at her brain. It was one thing to make the supreme sacrifice and walk away when she knew she wasn't going to see him again, quite another to have him in the flesh in front of her and have all the nightmares and daytime images of Hudson with other women confirmed to her. Quite another.
From the second she had seen him again her love had grown stronger and stronger—its intensity heightened by the years of separation—and now the pain of it was fast becoming unbearable.
She should never have agreed to come on this trip-it had been madness, emotional suicide—and she knew, with dreadful and frightening clarity, that she was going to have to pay the price for her weakness. For wanting to be with him.
She loved him, she would die loving him, and the way she felt at this moment she wouldn't care if it was soon. But she could never let him know. And right at this minute she felt like the most pathetic creature in the world.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Marianne hid in the flamboyant bathroom as long as she dared after her shower, taking an age to dry her hair and then restraining the riotous tumble of silky gold curls in two tight plaits at either side of her head. Hudson had always liked her hair loose—finding it sexy—and the plaits served a dual purpose of hiding as much of the profusion of curls as possible and giving—she hoped—an impression of demure restraint She stared in the mirror anxiously.
Her face was squeaky clean, and in spite of the sticky, warm night she had pulled her ankle-length towelling robe over her nightie, the only visible areas of skin her hands and feet She pulled the belt even tighter before she opened the door, hoping Hudson would think the colour in her cheeks was due to the hot water rather than the embarrassing shyness that had made her as jumpy as a cricket.
'Finished?' He was sitting on the magnificent bed reading an official-looking document as she entered the bedroom, and she saw he had already set the barrier of heaped pillows into place. 'Just catching up on some background to a proposed change in the law,' he said idly as he flung the papers aside.
'Don't you ever stop working?'
'Oh, yes, Annie, when there's something more pleasant to do,' he murmured softly, straight-faced but wickedly amused at her confusion. 'There's nothing I like better than a spot of relaxing.'
She went hot inside, catching one bare foot in a luxuriant Moroccan rug as she padded across to the dressing table and nearly landing at Hudson's feet before she managed to save herself.
'The… the bathroom's free,' she said hastily.
'Thank you.' Again she heard the dark amusement he was trying to hide, and kept her eyes resolutely to the front as she sank down on the little upholstered stool in front of the dressing table and opened her pot of hand cream, her face flaming with embarrassment.
She was aware of the movement of his body as he stood up, and also that he had paused just behind her as he walked across the room, but when one caressing finger ran softly across the nape of her neck she nearly jumped out of her skin and she shot around.
'Steady, girl, steady,' he soothed irritatingly. 'I don't bite—Well, not often anyway,' he added with an exaggerated leer.
'Hudson—'
'Yes, Annie?' he interjected with suspicious meekness.
'Just get ready for bed.' It was the wrong thing to say, and immediately the words had left her lips she knew it—but he so muddled her, she thought helplessly, her senses screaming.
'Certainly,' he said politely. 'I thought you'd never ask.'
'And stop being… ' There wasn't a word for the magnetic pull of that flagrant masculinity, and she stared up at him helplessly for a moment, her gaze faltering before the dark, glittering eyes.
'Yes?' he enquired helpfully. 'Stop being… ?'
'Oh, nothing.' She tried to glare at him but it didn't come off.
He smiled, gently, and then continued towards the door, pausing for a moment as he turned to look at her again. 'It was a nice try but it didn't work,' he said softly.
'What?' She stared at him bewilderedly, her colour still high.
'The hair.' His gaze wandered over the plaits from which several little curls had escaped, the look in his eyes bringing a heat to her stomach that was a painful, pleasurable ache.
She shut her eyes for a moment before forcing steel into her gaze and glaring at him without saying a word.
'I'm going, I'm going… ' He disappeared into the bathroom.
She had only brought a couple of whisper-thin nighties with her, knowing the nights would be warm, and although the one she was wearing was the more circumspect of the two its gossamer delicacy left nothing to the imagination, Marianne reflected uneasily.
Could she sleep in her robe? The sultriness of the night mocked the idea, but she could at least keep it on until she was under the covers. She'd have to, she decided desperately, and then sort of wriggle out of it and let it slide onto the floor. She'd do that once the light was out—the covers themselves were as fine as a spider's web.
She climbed into bed, wrapped the folds of the robe about her legs and pulled the covers around her waist, thereby dislodging the army of pillows which fell in all directions. By the time they were back in place and she was installed with a book in her side of the bed, Marianne had heard Hudson leave the bathroom.
She gazed feverishly at the book in her hands, the lines of black print dancing madly in front of her eyes, and tried to pretend she always lay in bed on a baking-hot night with enough nightwear on for the Antarctic. It appeared Hudson had no such scruples.
'That feels better,' he said contentedly.
She raised her eyes from the book to see him strolling round the end of the bed, dressed in nothing but a small—alarmingly small—towel wrapped snugly round his lean hips. And once Marianne looked she kept on looking—she couldn't help it.
His broad, muscled shoulders and wide, powerful chest were gleaming in the muted light from the bedside lamps, and his chest was hairy—very hairy, Marianne thought as a trickle of something hot shivered down her spine. His legs and arms were hairy too, and on his chest the tight black curls suggested his head hair would be curly as well if he let it grow beyond its severely cropped style—perhaps that was why he didn't, she reflected shakily.
His thighs looked strong and hard, and he was very tanned, his skin dark against the snowy whiteness of the towel. Altogether it was a male body—overwhelmingly, menacingly male—that looked as finely honed as any athlete's, and it made Marianne feel even more jittery than she had been feeling.
Hudson glanced at her as he reached his side of the bed and she dropped her gaze quickly, mortifyingly aware that she had been ogling him, and that he knew. She could tell from the gleam of satisfaction in the slumberous, darkly sensual eyes.
'Cold?'
It was a lazy drawl and meant to provoke, but even with her eyes on the book all Marianne could see was a lithe, tanned, muscled body that would make any woman weak at the knees, and her voice reflected her own weakness as she said shakily, 'Not particularly.'
'Oh.' He continued to watch her without moving.
One little word, but it carried a wealth of meaning, and this time the adrenalin provided a welcome boost that made her voice sharp as she retorted, 'I'll take my robe off when I'm good and ready, thank you,' as she raised her head t
o glare at him.
'I told you, Annie, you've nothing to fear from me,' Hudson said gently. 'And I meant it'
The ridiculousness of the statement hit her between the eyes as she found herself staring at him again, and she was conscious of the fact that she was desperately trying to keep her gaze fixed on his face and ignore the acres of bare flesh beneath. 'I didn't think I had,' she replied stiffly. And it genuinely wasn't Hudson's control she was worried about so much as her own. How was she going to manage to get through the night and keep her hands off him?
'Good.' He smiled, and she could have hit him. 'You'll have to excuse the towel,' he continued contentedly, 'but I don't possess a pair of pyjamas.'
'Oh.' Her colour increased and with it her agitation.
'And by some oversight I left my robe in Tangier.' He shrugged easily, the movement flexing powerful muscles and making her hot. 'No doubt they'll send it on.'
'No doubt.' He was going to sleep naked? He couldn't, could he?
'Good book?' He gestured innocently towards the novel in her hands, and she reflected that the towel looked frighteningly slack.
'What? Oh, yes, yes it is,' she agreed quickly.
'Perhaps it'd help if you… ' He made a turning movement with his hands, his voice magnificently expressionless.
She hadn't! She hadn't been holding the thing upside down? She had. She prayed the bed would open and swallow her.
'Oh. I'd just dropped it. When you came in, I'd just dropped it and I must have… ' Her voice trailed away as she realised she was babbling, and she forced herself to take a long, deep breath before she said, 'I'm ready for sleep now, anyway.'
'Me too.'
He dropped the towel with magnificent unconcern, and although Marianne kept her eyes glued frantically on his face she was agonisingly aware of the hair on his chest narrowing to a thin line before it flared out again between his thighs.
'Goodnight, then.' She shot round in the bed and slid down under the covers with her face flaming. He had been aroused. For all his easy talk and coolness, he had been aroused…
