Marriage on the Rebound

by Michelle Reid

  Angry with herself, she spun her back to him. ‘You were about to leave, I think,’ she prompted into the new stunning silence, in the vague hope that her dismissal would throw him off the scent.

  No chance.

  ‘That’s it, isn’t it?’ he breathed, putting all that sharp intelligence he was so renowned for into words. ‘It’s what all of this is really all about—not you and Piers, but me and Madeleine!’

  Madeleine! God—she physically shuddered at the damned, blasted name. ‘Will you just get out of here?’

  ‘Not until I get the truth out of you!’ He was suddenly standing right behind her again, making her nerves sting, making her heart ache, making the wretched tears burn at the back of her throat because she wanted so badly to just turn round and throw herself on him!

  Throw herself and lose herself. Find blissful relief in the illusion again.

  Rafe did it. It was Rafe who took hold of her, turned her, drew her into the tight confines of his arms and held her there while she tried desperately to struggle free.

  ‘Let go of me!’ she choked out wretchedly.

  ‘No,’ he grunted, tightening his grip. ‘I want the truth!’ he insisted. ‘Have you seen anything of Piers since you married me?’

  She wanted to lie and shout yes because she knew it would hurt him. No matter what he still felt for Madeleine, she knew now that she still had the power to hurt him with Piers.

  But she couldn’t lie, not any more; she’d had enough of all the lying! ‘I did tell you I hadn’t seen him!’ she snapped out in raking derision of the quick way he had jumped to all the wrong damned conclusions.

  It was a derision entirely wasted because he just ignored it. ‘But you saw me with Madeleine today,’ he persisted. ‘And on that one sighting you decided to leave me without even bothering to demand an explanation! Is that it?’

  ‘I did warn you, Rafe, that I would not live with Madeleine’s ghost hanging over me.’

  ‘And you think I could live any easier with Piers’ ghost hanging over me?’

  ‘You have no reason to see his ghost!’ she flashed at him bitterly. ‘Since I haven’t so much as mentioned him—never mind been secretly meeting him!’

  ‘It was no secret meeting.’ He denied that one.

  Shaan just shrugged within his grasp. ‘It doesn’t matter. You met her, I saw you, and now I can’t live with you any more. It really is as simple as that.’ She tried to get away from him.

  ‘The hell it is,’ he muttered. ‘It’s really as simple as—this…’

  ‘This’ being his mouth as it closed over her own again. ‘This’ being the well of helpless dark need that surged up over all the anger and hurt and self-contempt she was desperately trying to deal with, drowning it, smothering it, tossing her into that helpless vortex of desire she couldn’t seem to contain, no matter how badly he hurt her.

  ‘Do you kiss Madeleine that ruthlessly?’ she retorted as he drew away.

  She had said it to cut, but all it did was bring a strangely mocking smile to his kiss-warmed lips, and made his darkened eyes burn a trail from her own angrily accusing eyes to her mouth, where her lower lip visibly pulsed now with the power of his two heated kisses.

  ‘Madeleine,’ he mocked, ‘wouldn’t know real passion if it jumped out and bit her. Like this,’ he added softly, and took that pulsing lower lip into his mouth and sucked so sensually on it that she groaned in hateful pleasure. ‘Whereas you, my darling, just can’t live without it.’

  And he set out to make her face the humiliating truth in that remark by holding his mouth a mere fraction away from hers then simply waiting—waiting until she couldn’t stand it any longer and had to be the one who hungrily closed the gap.

  He had her then, and he knew it. The way her arms snaked up and round his neck confirmed it; the way her fingers scraped into his silky dark hair so she could keep that mouth clamped fiercely to her own confirmed it. And the way her slender body began to pulsate sensually against the hard length of his most definitely confirmed it.

  And the way he had to use brute strength to break the kiss and bodily put her away from him gave the ultimate confirmation.

  ‘I hate and despise you,’ she whispered in pained mortification as she literally shook from head to toe in sensual deprivation.

  ‘Strange emotion, hate,’ he drawled, mocking her with the hard triumph glinting in his eyes. ‘It has a nasty little habit of overwhelming everything, even love, in the end. Now, get your coat,’ he added, arrogantly turning his back on her. ‘We’re going home.’

  ‘No!’ Shaan protested on an upsurge of a completely new set of emotions as real horror at what he was suggesting ran like acid through her heated blood. ‘I’m not coming back to you, Rafe!’

  She would not live under Madeleine’s shadow any more!

  ‘You’re coming,’ he insisted.

  ‘But why?’ she cried. ‘When you know you don’t really want me there?’

  ‘You don’t know what I want,’ he derided with a contempt that actually managed to reach something wretched inside her—because he was right. She didn’t know—except that he still wanted her body, of course. For all his taunting love-play a moment ago, Rafe had not been able to hide his own desire as it sprang up to meet with hers. ‘But it’s time—damned well past time—you found out what it is I do want,’ he added grimly. ‘So you’ve got ten minutes to close this house up. Then we go home—if I have to tie you up and gag you to get you there,’ he added threateningly.

  And she believed he would do it, too. There was something about the hard resolve written in his tight expression that warned her he would.

  ‘Ten minutes,’ he repeated when she continued to stand there, trying to work out what he had in store for her when he did eventually get her home—besides the sex, of course, she acknowledged. That part was so stingingly obvious to both of them that it wasn’t even worth denying it.

  And maybe that was all he did want, she suggested to herself as she reluctantly left the room to go and do as he had ordered. Maybe it was all he ever wanted with any woman. And that included Madeleine, she decided on a small sting of pure female triumph over the other woman. Because, whatever hold Madeleine had over Rafe’s heart, she didn’t move him sexually; that much was clear from the way he had mocked her lack of passion just now.

  ‘I’m ready,’ she said stiffly, coming to stand at the living room doorway in time to catch him pocketing his mobile phone.

  The action made her frown, made her wonder just who he had been talking to. But it was clear from his closed expression that he was not going to enlighten her as he sent a swift glance around the room, which, Shaan realised, had already been made safe for their departure.

  Then he was walking towards her, one hand going proprietorially about her waist while the other went to switch off the overhead light.

  Her spine arched as he touched it, sending that now familiar prickle of awareness chasing through her.

  ‘Next time we come here,’ he murmured meaningfully, ‘it will be to welcome your aunt and uncle home.’

  Shaan said nothing. What could she say? That hand resting on her tingling spine knew it all anyway.

  She belonged to him. His sex slave, she mocked herself grimly. If he changed his mind and decided to take her here and now in this tiny hallway she would let him, and they both knew it.

  But, ‘I still hate you,’ she whispered as he closed the front door on them.

  ‘I know,’ he smiled. ‘Hell, isn’t it? Hating someone you can’t get enough of?’

  Was that empathy she heard there? she wondered dully. Did Rafe feel exactly the same way about her?

  The car journey to his home was completed in a grim kind of silence neither of them attempted to break. She wasn’t sure why, but he was very tense, getting more tense the closer they got to his Kensington home. And that in turn made her tense, as if she were having to armour herself against some unseen horror she was about to be forced into facing.
>
  As instincts went, she had to acknowledge that hers were working extremely well today, she noted as they pulled up beside another car parked in the driveway.

  She didn’t recognise it, but that didn’t stop her filling up inside with a dark sense of ill omen.

  ‘Someone else is here,’ she pointed out absolutely unnecessarily. ‘Who is it, do you think?’

  Rafe didn’t bother to answer, his lean face tightly closed as he climbed out of the car and came around to help her alight. Maintaining a grip on her arm, he unlocked the front door and guided her inside, then down his beautiful hallway to the sitting room door where he seemed to pause for a moment as if to gather himself.

  Then he was pushing the door open and grimly inviting her to precede him inside.

  And it was then, and only then, as her eyes locked on the man who stood waiting inside the room, that she realised what that pause had been about.

  Piers.

  Piers—looking stiff and uncomfortable, the expression in his classically handsome face very guarded to say the least as he flicked his wary blue gaze up to his brother then back to Shaan again.

  He didn’t speak. No one did. And behind her she could feel Rafe’s tension pulsing all over her as he stood there in the sudden clamouring silence, watching both of them.

  Then something vital seemed to crack wide open inside her, stopping her breath and holding her pinned like a weighted piece of wood to the spot while her mind came to terms with what Rafe was doing here.

  Making the jilter face the jilted.

  And, from somewhere within the stunning tension holding all three of them captive, Shaan reacted. ‘Well, well,’ she drawled. ‘Both Danvers brothers. This is nice. All we need now is for Madeleine to appear and we can do a bit of bride-swapping.’

  Piers flinched. ‘Don’t, Shaan,’ he mumbled uncomfortably.

  Don’t? she thought furiously. So what would he prefer I do—fall into a fit of broken-hearted hysterics? ‘I don’t need this,’ she muttered, spinning back to the doorway.

  But Rafe stood solidly in her way. ‘You’re staying,’ he insisted, using his hands on her shoulders to keep her there. ‘You said you couldn’t live a lie any longer, so we’re going to see if you can live any better with the truth.’

  The truth?

  ‘Do you honestly think I’m about to believe a single thing Piers has to say?’ she demanded bitterly.

  ‘You will if he values his position in this family,’ Rafe stated grimly—and that was said for Piers’ benefit, not Shaan’s. ‘He knows why he’s here, and he knows what’s at stake here.’ His eyes, gone stone-grey with resolve, fixed on her own accusing ones. ‘So you stay,’ he repeated. ‘You listen. Then he goes and we talk.’

  With that arrogant proclamation, Rafe unclipped his hands from her shoulders then turned and walked out of the room, firmly closing the door behind him.

  And the new silence throbbed with a pulsing reluctance on both sides.

  It was Piers who decided to break it. ‘I think the unspoken implication there was that I leave horizontally if I dare to upset you,’ he suggested drily.

  It was an attempt on his part to make light of it all. But Shaan was in no mood for his unique brand of wit, as her icy expression told him when she turned round to face him.

  He saw it and acknowledged it with a rueful little grimace. ‘Don’t find me funny any more, Shaan?’ he quizzed.

  ‘No,’ she replied ‘And neither do I have anything to say to you,’ she tagged on coolly.

  ‘I didn’t think you would.’ Another grimace. ‘But big brother insisted—or at least,’ he added, ‘he maintains that I have a lot to say to you.’

  ‘Well, I have no wish to hear it,’ she countered stiffly. ‘In fact, I’ll even make it easy for you, Piers, and tell you that you did me a favour walking out on me the way that you did.’

  ‘Because you got Rafe instead of me?’

  Her chin came up. ‘I adore him,’ she declared with absolute honesty. ‘Within a week of being with him, I’d even forgotten what you looked like.’

  He winced at that. ‘So, what’s new?’ he said, on a sigh that took with it every vestige of humour. ‘Rafe has been upstaging me all my life, so having you fall out of love with me to fall in love with him is no real surprise, Shaan. In fact,’ he added grimly, ‘I always expected it.’

  ‘What is that supposed to imply?’ She frowned, not following where he seemed to be leading.

  ‘Just what it said.’ And with a small shrug of his elegant shoulders he turned to walk over to the window. It was dark outside, so dark he surely couldn’t see much further than the paved terrace. Yet Piers managed to fix his gaze on something out there.

  ‘All my life I’ve been in competition with Rafe over something,’ he told her heavily. ‘When I was younger, I was competing for my father’s approval, to be an equally worthy son—the unattainable,’ he mocked, ‘since everyone including myself knew I could never be to him what good old Rafe was. His first-born.’ He said it drily. The big, tough, incredibly clever one. It was the same at school,’ he added, thrusting his hands into his trouser pockets, while Shaan quietly moved over to the nearest chair and lowered herself into it. She was interested in what he was saying—despite not wanting to be.

  ‘I attended the same schools where good old Rafe had been before me and left behind him the kind of legacy that was almost impossible to live up to—though I tried,’ he confessed, with yet more of that grim self-mockery. ‘I did at least try to compete with the damned legend—and failed again.’ He huffed out a gruff bark of laughter. ‘It was the same at work. Rafe Danvers the super-heavyweight versus Piers the lightweight…’

  Shaan found herself beginning to feel just a little sorry for him, because he was right and she couldn’t even lie and say that he wasn’t. Piers was classed as the weaker, less effective brother. The easier one to be around because he didn’t strike awe into all who met him.

  ‘The only person,’ he went on, ‘I felt with an absolute certainty cared more for me than she did for my brother was Madeleine. She was mine.’ His voice was gruff with possession. ‘Had always been mine from the first moment we met each other at some silly teenage party at the age of fifteen. When Madeleine looked at me,’ he declared huskily, ‘she saw no one else. Not any other man but me. Mine!’ he repeated. ‘Yet, in the end, even Madeleine betrayed me with Rafe.’

  Shaan’s heart squeezed with an aching empathy because, no matter what Piers had put her through, she could understand what that must have meant to him—simply because she knew how painful that particular betrayal felt.

  ‘Rafe would have nothing to do with her, of course.’ Her head shot up, eyes widening in disbelief on the back of Piers’ fair head. He must know—surely—that Rafe was in love with Madeleine?

  Seemingly, he didn’t. ‘He just wouldn’t do that to me—though it’s taken me these last few months of Madeleine’s constant nagging to make me acknowledge that fact,’ he confessed, with no conception of what Shaan was thinking. ‘I’d become so used to blaming Rafe for every failure in my life, you see, that it just didn’t occur to me that really he was the only person who truly loved me. Truly cared about me and my feelings and would never betray me…’

  Oh, I wish that were true, Shaan thought heavily. How she wished it were all true. For Piers’ sake.

  Because she knew that, no matter how she had been treated by both Danvers brothers, Piers had worse coming to him if he was now seeing his brother as the noble knight in this terrible farce they were all taking part in.

  Had he never heard of Lancelot and Guinevere?

  ‘But before I let myself see all of this you happened,’ he continued. ‘With you, I saw my chance to make Rafe hurt as I believed he had made me hurt. And I’m sorry, Shaan.’ At last he turned to face her. ‘But I went for it without giving a single thought to how my actions were going to hurt you until it was too late to do anything about it.’

  ‘Me?’ Shaan
frowned, having completely lost the thread of this. ‘But why should you think that I could give you the power to hurt Rafe in any way?’

  He frowned too, as though her question had thrown him. ‘We all saw it, Shaan,’ he proclaimed, as if that should make it all clearer. ‘Every one of us that was involved in that bit of bulldozing we did at work the day we all bumped into you. We all stood there and watched in stunned disbelief the great man himself fall like a ton of bricks for the little typist from his own typing pool!’

  He let out a grim crack of laughter while Shaan came slowly to her feet as the full, ghastly extent of Piers’ revenge plan on his brother began to take shape in her head.

  ‘You mean…?’ She had to stop to swallow, having difficulty pushing words through the sudden bank of anger beginning to pulse inside her. ‘You mean, you singled me out and made me fall in love with you simply because you believed you were stealing something that Rafe wanted for himself?’

  He didn’t answer—didn’t need to—because it was all so horribly clear now.

  Piers had cynically used her, played on her feelings, coolly stretched the whole farce out to their actual wedding day before deciding to put a stop to it—and all because he’d believed he was getting one back at Rafe?

  ‘But Rafe was never in love with me, you cruel, crass, blind fool, Piers!’ she spat at him angrily. ‘You put me through all of that for nothing!’

  ‘Of course he is,’ he maintained—and had the damned gall to start grinning at her! ‘It was the buzz of the year around the executive offices! Rafe of all people,’ he murmured with cruel, dry satire, ‘losing touch with his usual impregnable cool while he bit Jack Mellor’s head off and scrambled around looking for an excuse to send him off to apologise to you so he could discover who you were without being too obvious about it!’

  He let out a rueful laugh, his blue eyes alight with enjoyment at the memory of the whole novel experience. ‘If he hadn’t been flying off to Hong Kong that same day, he would have been laying siege at your door, Shaan, I’m telling you,’ he insisted. ‘He was hit that hard and that badly.’