Marriage on the Rebound

by Michelle Reid

  The man nodded and glanced in his rearview mirror, and swerved neatly into the outer lane, taking a right turn at the next set of traffic lights, then a quick left, appearing to anyone who knew London well that he was taking them directly back to Rafe’s London address, his sharp gaze constantly checking his rearview mirror. But after a while he changed direction, sweeping them out of London and toward Heathrow.

  ‘You’ve just got time to change out of that suit before we board,’ Rafe told her when they’d booked into the first class departure lounge. And he handed her a flight bag before directing her to the ladies room.

  She nodded and went, coming back ten minutes later dressed in a soft cream cotton shirt and a pair of buff-coloured trousers that Mrs Clough must have packed for her, because she certainly hadn’t done it for herself.

  She found Rafe lounging by the wall not three feet away. He hadn’t changed, but, then, his outfit was not so obviously bridal. The red rose had gone from his lapel, though, and his face was wearing that harsh, implacable look she hadn’t seen at all that morning.

  His eyes glittered oddly as they glanced over her, sprinkling her with a strange sense of intimacy that she found unnerving simply because she did not understand it.

  Then he was reaching out to take the flight bag from her, and the odd look was gone. ‘We’re running late,’ he said, curving a hand around her arm to begin guiding her through the milling throng of fellow travellers. He was rushing, and she had to run to keep up with him as he strode towards the long row of departure gates linked by a moving pathway.

  They entered the plane via a connecting corridor. Their seats were the best in the first class section of the 747. Feeling slightly bewildered, and not a little harassed after all the rushing about, it felt to Shaan as if they’d only just got settled when the plane was in the air.

  And it was only then that she realised she had no idea where they were flying to. ‘W-where are we going?’ she questioned.

  ‘I wondered how long it would take you to ask that.’ Rafe’s smile was tight. ‘A long way,’ he answered. ‘To Hong Kong, to be exact.’

  Hong Kong? She blinked. ‘How long will that take us?’

  ‘Fifteen hours if we’re lucky, seventeen if we’re not.’ He hailed a passing hostess and ordered some soft drinks, then sat back, fishing in his jacket pocket for something. ‘Here, take these.’

  Automatically she held out her hand to receive the two small pills. ‘But…’

  ‘No buts,’ he said. ‘It’s a hell of a flight; better to sleep as much of it away as you possibly can.’

  The hostess returned with their drinks; she had a gentle smile and oriental eyes. Rafe took the drinks and held one of the glasses to Shaan’s lips. ‘Pop the pills, Shaan,’ he ordered flatly.

  Without bothering to argue, she did as he told her, then drank to wash them down.

  ‘And maybe it’s a good time to warn you that those two pills are the last you’re going to get,’ he informed her as she settled back into her seat with a sigh. She turned her head to look at him questioningly. ‘It’s time to begin standing on your own two feet, Shaan,’ he explained quietly. ‘Pill-popping only dulls problems; it doesn’t cure them.’

  ‘I never wanted the pills in the first place,’ she reminded him. ‘It’s you who’s been forcing them onto me.’

  ‘Well, not any more,’ he promised. ‘Now, tell me about your parents,’ he requested. ‘Your father was a Lebanese doctor, wasn’t he?’

  How did he know that? she wondered as she nodded in confirmation. ‘But he trained here in London,’ she informed him. ‘Which is where he met my mother. Sh-she was a nurse working at the same teaching hospital… They were killed,’ she murmured, a fine-boned hand drifting up to her throat to close over the little gold locket she always wore there. ‘By a car bomb in Beirut whilst they were out there working for an international aid agency.’

  ‘How old were you?’

  ‘Thirteen.’ She smiled sadly. ‘I was staying with my aunt and uncle at the time, so I simply—went on staying with them. They’ve been very good to me,’ she added on a soft sigh.

  ‘But you still miss your parents,’ he quietly concluded.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Shh,’ he murmured, when her dark eyes glazed over with a wall of warm moisture.

  He did a strange thing then. He reached up to gently take the gold locket from her fingers, lifted it up, brushed it against her lips like a kiss, and carefully lowered it back to her throat again.

  ‘Go to sleep,’ he commanded gently.

  It was the last thing she remembered.

  * * *

  The lift she was travelling in suddenly dropped ten floors in as many seconds. Her eyes flew open, that awful sinking sensation leaving her stomach alive with butterflies. Then she just stared, completely bewildered as to where she was. It took several more troubled seconds to remember, then that now familiar feeling of desolation washed over her. If needed several more minutes of grim, taut stillness before she managed to contain it enough to take an interest in her surroundings.

  The cabin was in darkness, the distant hum of the plane’s powerful engines barely impinging on the quietness surrounding her. Someone had reclined her seat and covered her with a lightweight blanket, and a pillow had been positioned beneath her cheek. The shutters were down on the porthole windows, but it only took a glance in that direction to realise it was as dark outside as it was inside the plane.

  Turning her head slowly, she found herself looking directly into Rafe’s sleeping face. His unexpected closeness caught at her breath. For some reason she hadn’t expected him to be asleep. Over the last few days she had never seen him anything but aggressively alert, and she found it rather disconcerting to see him like this.

  Like her own, his seat was reclined, his dark head relaxed on his shoulders and facing her way. He had removed his jacket at some point during the flight and his tie had gone too. The top few buttons of his shirt had been tugged loose and the sleeve-cuffs rolled up to reveal the crisp, dark covering of hair on his tanned forearms. His hands lay in a loose link across the flatness of his stomach, the gold ring he had insisted she place on his left hand gleaming softly in the dimness.

  She glanced at her own hands, clasped in a similar way to his, and studied the matching ring she was wearing.

  Married, to a stranger.

  A wry smile touched her lips and she turned to look back at him. What did he think? she wondered. What did he really think about the crazy liaison they had embarked upon?

  His face told her nothing, as usual. Even in repose it still kept its thoughts to itself. Yet, with his winter-grey eyes hidden beneath lowered lashes that formed two shadowed arches against his high cheekbones, there was a gentler look to him, while those tough lines of aggressive determination were eased away by sleep. And his mouth looked softer, kinder, the lips forming a smooth bow shape that suddenly struck her as surprisingly sensual.

  Surprising because she had never thought of Rafe in that way before. But now she felt something begin to stir inside her, something like the fine brushing of fingertips on the lining of her stomach, and her heart gave a low, droning thud in response.

  No; she denied it and closed her eyes again, blocking it out—blocking him out. Rafe might have made himself virtually indispensable to her very existence at the moment, but she didn’t want to start feeling like that about him. It smacked too much of desperation.

  And her emotions were traumatised enough.

  Piers. A sigh whispered from her, saddened and pained.

  ‘Are you awake?’

  She opened her eyes again to find herself staring directly into Rafe’s, smoky grey and less probing in the darkness.

  Did he actually know the very moment she began thinking of his brother? she wondered. It was certainly uncanny the way he always managed to interrupt her thoughts before she had even got as far as conjuring up Piers’ smooth, handsome face.

  ‘Yes.’ She softly
stated the obvious. ‘How long?’ she asked him.

  He lifted an arm, eyes narrowing as they squinted at the luminous hands on his watch. ‘Eight hours, give or take,’ he informed her. ‘Not bad.’

  His hand came up, fingertips brushing a stray strand of black hair away from her cheek. The action startled her—not because he had touched her, but because that same fluttering sensation skittering around her stomach had made her flinch defensively away from it.

  She could not have offended him more if she’d suddenly started verbally attacking him, she realised on a rush of aching remorse. All hint of softness disappeared from his face, and in the next moment he was sitting up, his seat drawn into its upright position, and he had flicked on the overhead light.

  Shaan stayed where she was for a few moments longer, guilt squeezing at her chest. Then she sat up slowly. ‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured. ‘I—’

  ‘I suppose you’re ready for a drink.’ Cutting right through her apology, he pressed the call button for the hostess, and Shaan grimaced, acknowledging that perhaps she deserved it. Rafe had been nothing but steadfastly supportive towards her; it was only natural that he should like to believe he could touch her without her reacting so violently.

  The rest of the journey was an ordeal. Mainly because she found she couldn’t sleep any more of the long hours away, and had to sit quietly beside Rafe while he immersed himself in paperwork. He had produced a briefcase that Shaan had not noticed him bringing with him until he’d pulled it out from beneath his seat. And, other than to join her for the odd light refreshment to break up the tedium, he proceeded to ignore her for the rest of the journey.

  She only just managed to contain the next nervous start, when he suddenly reached across her, his warm body brushing against hers as he flicked the cover away from the window. ‘If you want to see one of the most spectacular sights you’re ever likely to see, then look out there,’ he suggested, moving smoothly back into his own seat.

  Her eyelashes fluttered, a moment’s blank incomprehension holding her completely still while she fielded the light tingles the innocent brush of his body had activated in her. No, she told herself confusedly. It was surprise which had caused the sensation, not—

  ‘Shaan?’ he prompted.

  She sucked in a shaky breath and pulled herself together, glancing to her right—then she gasped.

  The sun was shining, and below them the waters of the famous Victoria Harbour glistened gold in the bright light. And stretching as far as she could see stood the buildings. Tall, individual things, of all shapes and sizes, packed in tightly, one on top of the other, yet exuding a strange kind of beauty that excited the senses.

  ‘Meet Hong Kong,’ Rafe said quietly. ‘The undeclared jewel of the south China seas. Anything that is worth anything is traded here. For a tiny outcrop of rock, it wields more corporate power than most of the world’s governments would dare to admit.’

  She could believe it, Shaan thought as she stared in awe at the kind of skyline that could give Manhattan a run for its money.

  ‘Over six million people live and work in that tiny plot of land,’ he continued. ‘And on some days you can believe it,’ he added drily. ‘Yet, having said that, I have been coming here almost all my adult life, and I’ve yet to see a scrap of paper on the floor or a hint of vandalism anywhere. Hong Kong is proud of itself and its achievements, and the people reflect that pride in the way they care for their city.

  ‘They have a transport system that puts London to shame, whether it be the old-fashioned trams that run packed to the gunnels for hardly any charge at all, or the Star Ferry which connects Hong Kong itself with the Kowloon peninsula, or the underground system, efficient, spotlessly clean and beautifully air-conditioned. In other words, you can go anywhere with the minimum of effort—so long as you don’t go by road,’ he added ruefully.

  ‘But that really wasn’t what I meant when I suggested you look,’ he said as the plane banked suddenly, then flattened out again. ‘I was actually meaning—this…’

  His timing was perfect. Her hand went out. It was purely instinctive to want to grab hold of something, and it happened to be Rafe’s arm as she let out a sharp gasp in utter dismay. ‘My God, Rafe,’ she breathed. ‘We can’t be more than ten feet from the tops of those buildings!’

  ‘Hair-raising, isn’t it?’ He grinned, watching her expressive face instead of the view of Kowloon that seemed to come up to meet them as they flew in. ‘They consider it the most dangerous airport approach in the world, yet its safety record is impeccable. We’ll make it, never fear,’ he assured her softly.

  It was then that she realised just how fiercely her nails were curling into his arm, and on a sudden flush of colour she unclipped them. ‘I’m so sorry.’ she mumbled. ‘I just didn’t—’

  In answer, Rafe took hold of her hand, placed it back on his arm and held it there. ‘I thought you knew, Shaan,’ he murmured. ‘You can cling to me as fiercely as you like. It’s what I’m here for. It’s what I want.’

  Her lungs drew in air on a soft gasp at the expression in his eyes. But, no; she denied it, shaking her head. Rafe didn’t want her—couldn’t want her. They might be married, but it was no ordinary marriage. It was simply an exercise in saving face. She couldn’t bear it to be otherwise. Not now, not yet. Maybe never…

  CHAPTER FOUR

  OUTSIDE, the humidity hit Shaan like a hot, wet blanket being slapped into her face.

  ‘Come on.’ Rafe took her arm as she paused, having to fight to drag the thick, humid air into her lungs. ‘There’s a limo waiting; let’s get inside it before we melt.’

  Once they were inside, the car moved off with a silent smoothness and Shaan let her head fall back against the soft leather cushions. She felt like a limp rag, whilst Rafe looked as alert and as fresh as he had when he’d escorted her out of his house this morning—or had it been yesterday morning? She couldn’t remember, hadn’t taken the trouble to find out what the time difference was.

  ‘What time is it?’ she asked, totally disorientated.

  ‘Almost noon,’ he said. ‘Local time,’ he clarified when he caught her expression. ‘About four in the morning to us.’

  No wonder she felt dead on her feet! Her eyes were having difficulty even focusing, they felt so tired.

  The car battled its way through the snarling traffic and into a tunnel which she assumed was taking them beneath the water to Hong Kong itself. Then they were moving along the rows of tall buildings where the modem splendour of plate glass and forged steel stood alongside old and crumbling colonial stone.

  There seemed to be no rhyme nor reason as to why one building plot had been transformed into a plate glass towerblock while the one beside it bore the resemblance of a slum. Yet between them both, they only added to the charm of the city which was already beginning to spark her interest.

  They pulled up outside the elegant-looking place with a porticoed entrance and white uniformed porters waiting to jump to open the car doors for them.

  ‘Welcome, Mr Danvers, Mrs Danvers.’ The young Chinese man who bowed to them surprised Shaan with his personal knowledge of who they were, but it did not seem to surprise Rafe at all.

  ‘My wife is exhausted, Lee,’ he said with the brisk informality of one who came here a lot. ‘Are we in my usual suite?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ With a snap of his fingers, Lee had two more porters running to get their luggage from the boot of the limo. ‘If you will follow me, we will deal with the formalities.’ With a jaunty lilt to his stride, he moved off in front of them, leaving Shaan feeling slightly overawed by all the special treatment as she followed mutely behind, with Rafe’s hand possessively on her arm. She had always known he was important—after all, he was head of the great Danvers Corporation. But she thought this kind of treatment was reserved for government dignitaries and film stars only!

  Signing in took mere seconds, then Lee was leading them off towards the lifts and politely inviting them to precede him in
side before he stepped in with them and set the lift moving.

  Shaan felt so tired she was in danger of wilting. And, indeed, when Rafe’s arm came about her shoulders to urge her against him, she didn’t bother to struggle; it was that necessary to let him take at least some of her weight for her.

  ‘Hang on a little longer,’ he murmured understandingly. ‘Then you can have a nice long shower to freshen you up before we go in search of lunch.’

  Lunch? ‘All I want to do is fall into bed,’ she told him on a stifled yawn.

  ‘No can do, I’m afraid,’ he refused. ‘The best way to combat jet lag is by fighting it. Get through the rest of today without sleep and you’ll feel a whole lot better for it tomorrow. Trust me,’ he added at her protesting look.

  ‘Trust me’. His favourite two words, she thought as she subsided wearily against him. A small smile touched his mouth as he watched her, but there was no hint of softening. That solid chin of his still jutted out in stubborn determination, and she let out a stifled sigh. ‘One day soon I’m going to put a stop to your bullying, Rafe,’ she promised him on another yawn.

  ‘Really?’ he said. ‘Good. I’ll look forward to it.’

  Shaan glanced up at him, looking for the expression that should have gone with that disturbingly sanguine tone, but, as usual, his face told her nothing.

  The man was an enigma, she decided. A total enigma.

  Their room was a luxurious suite, with a rich rose carpet and creamy damask furnishings. She barely had time to take in the spacious sitting room, with its soft, curving settees and elegant dining table complete with candelabra, before Rafe had hold of her arm again. Lee was dismissed, and Rafe took her through another door.

  It was a bedroom, furnished in the same soft colours but with a huge double bed covered with a creamy satin quilt.

  ‘The bathroom is through there,’ Rafe indicated with a nod of his dark head. ‘Go and take a shower, wake yourself up, while I check on the bags.’