One Husband Required!

by Sharon Kendrick

  But she still didn’t want to tell Ross that.

  She shrugged instead. ‘Oh, just the usual Saturday kind of things. You know. Washing. Shopping. Catching up on all the little things I haven’t had a chance to do all week.’

  ‘But too hot and too much like hard work?’ he suggested. ‘While I have a fridge stocked up with lots of delicious goodies from the deli, plus a cool bottle of Sancerre that I’m just longing to share...’ His voice tailed off on a note of invitation.

  Well. There was only so much temptation a woman could resist. Ursula rose from her chair as elegantly as she could, trying not to look too eager! ‘Enough! Enough! You’ve convinced me, Ross!’ she said drily.

  He had also issued a challenge she knew she couldn’t ignore. So she would go and put her swimsuit on and no doubt see a look of horror cross his face. At least that might force her to accept the reality of the situation, instead of harbouring useless dreams about him.

  The swimsuit was stored in Katy’s bedroom and was, naturally enough, plain, all-purpose black. Black had properties no other colour had. Black was supposed to magically diminish fat. Black was sophisticated. Black was flattering to all skin types. As everyone said—you couldn’t go wrong with black.

  Ursula rolled the protesting Lycra up her body and then stretched it over the fullness of her breasts, before screwing her eyes up at the vision she presented in the mirror.

  Her flesh was milky white—a healthy enough sign that she didn’t sunbathe, but hardly very flattering. But at least her face wasn’t too plump, and the big sapphire eyes framed by a sweep of ebony lashes dominated her face. On an impulse, she lifted her hand and pulled out the clips which restrained her hair.

  It fell like a weighted curtain over her shoulders and down her back, gleaming the distinctive blue-black colour of truly raven hair. She shook her head and it swayed and shimmered, thick and glossy as tar—the movement giving her a slightly unkempt, wild look.

  An unexpected glimpse of her rear had her scrabbling around in the drawer for a sarong in sunshine colours of stinging orange and fuchsia, which she knotted around her hips. The filmy material didn’t completely obscure her wide beam, but at least it camouflaged it. And she felt less self-conscious with the delicate fabric floating around her.

  Ursula blinked rapidly at her reflected image. Not bad, she thought in genuine astonishment. Not bad at all!

  Out on the veranda, Ross was opening a bottle of wine, and he didn’t hear Ursula’s bare footfall as she approached, so that she was able to watch him unnoticed for a moment or two.

  She had been terrified that he was going to be clad in little more than a tiny thong—the sort of thing which male strippers ended up wearing once everything else had come off! But she realised then that her wildly inaccurate speculation said more about her than about him.

  Because of course Ross was not wearing a flimsy little anything. He had put on an old singlet bearing the name of his college, and a pair of slightly crumpled shorts which also looked ancient but which were baggy enough to be cool.

  His bare legs looked so long—even longer than they ever looked in the office when they were covered up in jeans or trousers. The singlet emphasised the muscle tone in his upper arms and clung to a torso which was lean and spare.

  It occurred to Ursula that you could work closely with someone for years and years and have no idea what their body looked like. Well, now she did, and he looked... She gulped. He looked very fit.

  He glanced up at her then, an automatic smile of welcome on his lips which froze there in disbelief when he caught sight of her.

  He frowned.

  Maybe the shock of seeing her in a swimsuit had startled him as much as she had been startled by the sight of him in shorts and singlet.

  Only more so. Because he looked really taken aback. Almost shocked.

  Ross?

  Shocked?

  ‘We-ll,’ he remarked as he extracted the cork from the bottle and poured them both a glass of wine. ‘You look...cooler.’

  Ursula quickly took the glass from him with the eagerness of a drunk and swallowed a huge mouthful. ‘So do you.’

  She noticed that he’d drunk a pretty big mouthful himself, and that the blistering heat of the day was causing the wine to lose some of its chill. ‘Maybe we should have a barbecue?’ he suggested, with the determined air of a man who had decided he needed activity. ‘How does the scent of fish grilling over hot coals with lemon and rosemary grab you?’

  Ursula shuddered. If she were at home now, she would be trying hard to resist the chocolate fudge ice cream in the freezer, but oddly enough her appetite seemed to have completely deserted her. Suddenly there were more exciting things to look at than bowls of ice cream...

  ‘A barbecue will make us even hotter, won’t it?’ she objected, as she plonked herself down in one of two sun loungers he must have dragged there while she had been upstairs. ‘I’m too hot to eat anything at the moment, anyway.’ And too het up to risk drinking any more alcohol, she thought, as she slid the half-empty glass to he beneath the shade of the chair.

  ‘Yeah.’ He sipped his drink, and perched on the edge of the lounger next to hers.

  They sat again without talking, but this time it was no longer the easy, companionable silence she was used to. Ursula was pretending to doze, but between the foresty curtain of her half-closed eyelashes she couldn’t help noticing how edgy he was. He seemed restless too, and started walking around the veranda to peer at the contents of the terracotta pots, dead-heading flowers which had more than a little life left in them.

  ‘Hungry?’ he asked eventually.

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Positive.’ She tipped her head up towards the sun. Now he probably thought she was one of those people who only ever ate in secret—the plump woman always refusing food in public, for fear of being considered greedy.

  ‘Me neither,’ he said suddenly, and something in his voice made her eyes snap open to see him staring at her with an expression of intense concentration. A look he usually reserved for when something was perplexing him in the office.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  He shook his head distractedly. ‘I wish we had a pool, that’s all. It’s too damn hot to think straight!’

  ‘Well, drinking wine and lying around in the sun isn’t exactly going to reduce our temperatures, is it?’ said Ursula sensibly. ‘I’ll go and make up some more lemon barley water—doctors are always telling us we should drink lots of fluid in hot weather. We just aren’t used to it in England.’

  ‘No,’ he agreed slowly. ‘I guess we aren’t.’

  Getting up from the lounger with any degree of grace was tricky in a swimsuit and sarong—especially for someone who had a big complex about her bottom. But even Amber—her gorgeous model sister—had once told her that there wasn’t a woman in the world who was completely happy with her bottom!

  Thankfully, the kitchen was much cooler. Ursula’s hands were shaking as she took the ice tray out of the freezer. She was trying to pop the cubes out when they spilt out of their container and scattered everywhere, slithering all over the kitchen floor.

  ‘Oh, sugar!’ she said aloud, and she was just about to grab a handful of kitchen roll to mop up when she heard Ross come into the kitchen behind her.

  She didn’t move; some instinct made her stay right where she was. She heard him come up behind her and then she started with a gratifying shock as he pressed an ice-cube right in between her shoulderblades. Ursula gasped as the delicious trickle of water began to drip icily down her back, and she swayed with pleasure.

  ‘Cooler now?’ he murmured, from close by her neck.

  Her voice sounded breathless. ‘What do you think?’

  He didn’t reply at first, just left his hand there until the ice had completely melted, and all that remained was the heat of his palm pressed against her back.

  Ursula shut her eyes tightly with pleasure, willing him
not to stop whatever it was he was about to do next. Because she had a very good idea what that might be...

  He turned her round towards him, looping his hands around her waist. ‘I am trying,’ he murmured, ‘to decide whether I have been unbelievably naive, or unbelievably stupid.’

  She didn’t dare speak, afraid that she would just blow it.

  ‘Ursula?’ he said softly. ‘Open your eyes and tell me. Do you feel this too? Something so strong that you can’t resist? Or want to resist?’

  Her eyes flew open in a mute plea, and he nodded.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, and then, ‘Yes,’ again as he bent his face to hers.

  It was a moment that she had dreamt of for as long as she had known him. Her guilty secret. A hopeless longing she had never thought would come true. But the reality totally overshadowed her fantasy and Ursula’s untapped sexuality exploded into life with Ross’s first kiss.

  At first it was just the lightest grazing of his mouth against hers. Gentle. Soft. Provocative. The brush of his lips tantalised—so that when that was no longer enough they began a mutual seeking. Their mouths opened to welcome one another, and Ursula had to grip onto his shoulders as she felt his tongue enter her mouth for the first time.

  His hands moved from her waist to her back, stretching out and splaying there, and his fingers became entwined in the wild tumble of her hair. Automatically, Ursula found herself moving closer, so that their bare knees collided like lovers. Her breasts flowered into life, hard and heavy, nipples peaked and pleasurably painful, as they thrust towards his skimpy little singlet.

  She clung onto his shoulders, afraid that she might fall, while desire flowed through her like lifeblood and she was rocked and devastated by its power. It set her skin tingling, and her pulse-points began a slow, primitive dance as expectation began to unfurl deep within her.

  Their eyelids fluttered open at exactly the same moment Ross’s eyes were darker than her dreams, and they seemed to glaze and then refocus. He looked dazed as he shook his head, like a man who had just witnessed something he couldn’t quite believe.

  And then he laughed, but it wasn’t the kind of laugh which had people demanding to know what the joke was.

  ‘Hell’s teeth,’ he swore softly, still shaking his head.

  Ursula stared at him in confusion, barely able to form the one-word question. ‘Ross?’

  ‘Now listen,’ he said softly. ‘It was stupid of me to suggest removing our clothes on an afternoon so sultry that I feel like I’m on the set of a play by Tennessee Williams.’ He drew in a deep, shuddering breath. ‘But just because we’ve shared an office compatibly for the last I-don’t-know-how-many years, and just because my wife has gone off to the other side of the world and my hormones are telling me that I’m missing a woman, doesn’t mean that I’m going to start something with you, Ursula O’Neil! Have you got that?’

  Ursula’s lashes flickered like a home movie. She saw the dazed look of outrage on his face and flinched. She was the novice in all this, but novelty could be a powerful leveller, and it gave her the strength to whisper softly, ‘Ross, aren’t you getting this a little out of proportion?’ She even managed a shrug. ‘We just had a kiss, that’s all.’

  There was a silence. ‘Just had a kiss?’ he repeated slowly. He knitted his brows together in a formidable line. ‘Really? Well, if that’s your idea of “just a kiss”, then I’d sure want to know what you’re like when you’re feeling wild.’ A deliberate pause. ‘Or maybe I should find out for myself.’ He sounded almost reckless. ‘What do you say to that, Ursula?’

  Without warning and without giving her a chance to answer he began to kiss her again, only this time something had changed.

  She didn’t know what he did that was so different—she was too dazzled by the kiss to analyse it—but he seemed to go out of his way to demonstrate his erotic mastery. She found herself snaking her arms up around his neck and clinging to him like a limpet, making little moans which were midway between pleasure and protest as he continued his sweet, relentless onslaught.

  His hand reached down to cup her breast, a thumb lazily grazing the hard nub of her nipple, and she jerked back with intense pleasure as if she’d been stung, gasping his name in euphoric protest.

  And it was then that he stopped. Only this time he stopped completely, his hands falling like stones away from her body, his face wiped clean of all reaction. While she felt as though he’d taken her emotions and sent them scorching out of the stratosphere.

  Shakily, Ursula reached her hands out behind her and gripped onto the work surface, seriously worried that her knees might give way from underneath her, and she saw from the brief tightening of his mouth that her distracted response had not escaped him.

  His eyes chipped a question at her. ‘You’ve been kissed before?’

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Ross!’ Ursula laughed shakily. ‘Of course I’ve been kissed before! Just because I’m inexperienced doesn’t mean I’ve spent my life in a convent! Or did you imagine that all spinsters—?’

  ‘Please don’t use that word!’ he bit out.

  ‘What—convent?’ she flared sarcastically.

  ‘Spinster!’ he growled.

  ‘Why not? It’s true! Women who are thought unlikely to marry are still called that—look it up in the dictionary if you don’t believe me!’

  ‘Rubbish! It’s outdated, and it has insulting associations, that’s why.’ He regarded her steadily. ‘You’ve been kissed before,’ he repeated, only this time he seemed to be seeking an explanation.

  ‘Yes, I have! Of course I have, Ross—I’m twenty-eight years old, for heaven’s sake! I’ve had my share of tongues forced down my throat at parties!’ She shuddered at the memory, and wondered how much more to tell him—whether the truth would make his ego insufferably large.

  Yet this was a man who had remained steady and calm when his wife had just upped and left—a man who had not let pride stand in the way of his daughter’s welfare. Didn’t a man like that deserve the truth? ‘But never like that,’ she observed slowly. ‘I’ve never been kissed like that before.’

  ‘No. I could tell.’ His voice was a sultry caress. ‘You seemed to give it everything you’d got.’

  ‘well so did you!’

  He regarded her thoughtfully. ‘You know—I still don’t seem to have regained my appetite,’ he said at last. ‘I think maybe I might do some work this afternoon.’

  So that was that. A fantasy fulfilled and smashed to smithereens in the space of minutes. Well, Ursula had had years of practice at putting on a cheerful face. She’d nursed her sick mother and managed to walk the tightrope between hope and despair. And in the midst of it all had been Amber’s frightened face, asking whether Mother would ever get better.

  ‘Good idea!’ she responded brightly. ‘I think I’ll go and buy some shoes for Amber’s wedding.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  AMBER and Finn’s wedding took place in rural Ireland, in the greenest spot that Ursula had ever seen. Amber had booked the Black Bollier for the reception—a fine hotel and restaurant, run by the most eccentric man that most people would encounter in a lifetime.

  It was an extra-special wedding—made even more so by Finn’s dramatic recovery from an illness which for a brief spell had had him hovering between life and death. His brush with mortality had only reinforced his and Amber’s commitment to hang onto the most important things in life, and their relationship was the most precious thing of all.

  Amber wore the wedding gown which their mother had bought for them all those years ago. The same gown which Luke Goodwin had traced for his bride, whose mother had designed it. A dress which linked so many lives...

  Ursula had to gulp back her tears as she stared at her sister in her wedding-day finery, remembering the pigtailed little girl whose tears she had dried, whose cuts she had tended. She looked exquisite, her tall, model-girl figure set off to advantage by the simple cut of the ivory silk-satin dress. She wore her hair pi
led up on top of her head, and the silk tulle of the veil fell past her shoulders like a drift of snow.

  Amber had always looked lovely on her modelling assignments, but today there was something which added an extra dimension to her beauty—she glowed with the inner radiance of every bride.

  Ursula had helped her dress for the ceremony—calming her sister down and telling her that yes, indeed, she was the luckiest person in the whole world.

  And Amber—who had been blessed with the kind of beauty which could have taken her to the very top of her profession if she hadn’t fallen in love on the way—had turned to her sister and said, ‘Imagine that I love Finn as much as I do, Ursula. And that he loves me just as much!’

  ‘I don’t have to imagine it,’ Ursula told her sister gently. ‘It’s there for anyone with eyes in their head to see...!’ Her voice trailed off with a sigh; she was still unable to shift the memory of that unexpected and very sexy encounter with Ross.

  She had spent the last few days alternating between trying to pretend that it had never happened and telling herself that it was no big deal. Women were kissed all the time—sometimes even by their boss! And that was okay. Hardly a crime. It had been a sizzling and sultry day, and their bodies had simply been reacting to the primitive throb of that heat—at least, that was what Ursula kept telling herself.

  But at least here in Ireland there was no need for a charade. No need for her to pretend that it hadn’t been the single most sensational experience of her life to date. She wondered what it would have been like if he had not stopped. Oh, Lord...how she wondered...

  Amber frowned. ‘You are all right, aren’t you, Ursula?’

  Which was when Ursula realised that there was a need to maintain the pretence. Especially today of all days. Amber would only worry if she thought her sister was falling even deeper for a man who was still married. A man like Ross...