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Never A Bride
Diana Hamilton
The Perfect Match… In Name Only!Jake Winters was every woman's fantasy - and, as his P.A., Claire had been groomed to become his perfect partner. She was the ideal assistant,hostess… and wife! Their wedding had been a mutually beneficial business arrangement; their marriage a paper affair.Claire had never felt like a real bride: she was just a beautiful possession to Jake, who seemed more interested in the seductive Lorella. Now Claire had made a big mistake: she'd fallen in love with her husband!
Never a Bride
Diana Hamilton
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE (#u94bb5219-62f5-58bf-b2f2-664043b295ea)
CHAPTER TWO (#u584943b3-0d34-5592-ae12-abf49d39338f)
CHAPTER THREE (#u72e52767-fa83-50df-9469-e74612f39184)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE
‘I‘M AT the London apartment, so it won’t be long before I can see you. Yes, Jake’s away... No, no I haven’t told him. We’ll discuss it when I see you. Must go now, darling, but see you soon, I promise.’ Claire Winter replaced the receiver, a tender smile softening the classical loveliness of her features before she felt her scalp tingle with warning, felt the skin on her face go stiff. She slowly turned on the silk brocade-covered sofa, her aquamarine eyes shocked by the accuracy of her precognition as they homed in on Jake’s narrowed grey gaze.
‘You’re in Rome,’ she babbled, and immediately hated herself for her inaccurate inanity, despised herself even more when her stupid remark gave him the excuse to hitch up one dark sardonic brow and drawl mockingly,
‘Kind of you to put me right. I actually thought I was in Mayfair.’
She watched him lever himself away from the door-frame where he’d been leaning, listening... How much of her telephone conversation had he heard...? And God, but he was beautiful. Every time she looked at him she was struck anew by his male magnificence. He was the dark stranger who haunted every woman’s secret dreams, a fantasy of masculine perfection come to life.
And he knew it. He had more sex appeal than was good for him, so his arrogance over the opposite sex was understandable. Every woman he met drooled over him, fell at his feet. Even her own mother looked at him with a definite sparkle in her eyes and she, more than most, had good reason to be wary of anything in trousers. He had the looks, the wealth, the power and personality to turn the sanest woman’s head.
She was firmly on her feet now, perfectly in control, presenting the image he expected—no, demanded. Cool, expensive, exquisitely groomed, her silky black hair cut stylishly short, the black and white heavy silk two-piece she was wearing emphasizing the elegant lines of her tall, slender body.
‘I didn’t expect you for at least another couple of days.’ She schooled her voice to coolness but couldn’t disguise the trace of accusation; it came through despite her best efforts and Jake picked it up, obviously, because he said drily,
‘So I gathered. Who were you phoning? Or is that a question a husband shouldn’t ask his wife?’
‘Liz,’ she answered, perhaps too quickly. Something made his narrowed grey eyes glitter. He didn’t believe she’d been talking to her mother.
Watching him walk further into the beautiful main room of their London apartment, shedding the jacket of his exquisitely tailored grey suit, she lifted her chin, her eyes stubborn, giving no hint of the alarm she felt at the way her heart was behaving so unusually. It was thundering around inside her chest, frightening her.
‘And how is she? Well?’ He hooked a finger in the knot of his tie and dragged it away from the collar of his crisp white shirt. ‘I find myself with two unexpectedly free days. Perhaps we should visit her? I could persuade her to divulge whatever it is you haven’t been able to bring yourself to tell me yet.’
So he had heard. And the unmasked derision in the look he sent her made her face turn to fire. And she felt too disoriented to invent something on the spur of the moment so she chose to attack, her slender fingers reaching unerringly for the folded newspaper on the rosewood coffee-table. She had opened it, spreading the newsprint on her lap far too many times throughout this long, quiet Sunday, knowing she shouldn’t yet unable to prevent it, like probing an aching tooth with her tongue.
The paper fell open to the right page, out of habit, she supposed, her eyes darkening as the now all too familiar photograph of her husband leap out of the grey print, his arms around a woman who was achingly, unfairly beautiful.
‘Stripping assets of the romantic kind?’ The letters of the caption danced beneath Claire’s eyes. ‘Multi-millionaire Jake Winter caught playing away from home with the darling of Roman society, the irresistible Principessa Lorella Giancetti.’
‘The paparazzi must have had a field day,’ she clipped, flicking the photograph with a pearly oval fingernail, her eyes frowning as she watched a tiny smile curl at the corners of his hard, beautiful mouth while he scanned the page, anger battering at the wall of her chest.
‘Jealous, Claire?’ Mocking grey eyes held hers for a second before lowering, drifting down over her elegantly clad body, the mockery still to be glimpsed, though shadowed by thickly tangled black lashes, because he was comparing her slender, definitely understated curves with the voluptuous ripeness of the principessa‘s body which was almost flowing out of the expensive skimpiness of the glamorous evening dress she’d been pictured wearing.
‘No.’ She made the denial both mentally and verbally. ‘Disappointed. Before we married we made certain commitments. One of which, if I remember correctly, promised complete discretion in the possible area of extra-marital affairs. This—’ she flicked the newsprint again ‘—can’t, by any stretch of the imagination, be called discreet.’
‘No.’ His frown was sudden and ferocious as he agreed. ‘I apologies.’ He tossed the paper aside, rocking back on his heels, the whippy muscles of his long, lean body held together with a tension that had to be down to the unpalatable fact of discovery, Claire decided with weary cynicism as she set about collecting his discarded jacket and tie, settling into mundane domesticity rather than meet his eyes. Eyes that stalked her every movement, as the ripple of awareness down her spine attested.
‘Apology accepted,’ she stated, her fingers curling into the soft mohair and silk fabric of his jacket. The warmth of it. His warmth. It made her voice shiver unaccountably as she tacked on quickly, ‘I suggest we forget it.’ Then she took herself in hand. She was nervous, that was all. And why shouldn’t she be? She had turned the tables, fending off his questions, his disbelief, with the printed evidence of his own misdemeanors. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t turn back to his own attack.
‘Can I get you something to eat? To drink?’ It was too late to go out to a restaurant and she’d had her own sparse supper hours ago. There was little food in the apartment. She hadn’t expected him. He unfailingly let her know where he would be, and when, so that she could be there for him, getting everything organized, oiling the wheels of his busy life. This evening’s deviation, colluding with that piece in the Press, his eavesdropping on that private phone conversation, had thrown her.
His lack of response forced her to turn, and she masked her reluctance with the lie, ‘You look tired.’
He didn’t, of course. He never did. Restless, energetic, he was never happier than when he was on the move, making things happen. At the age of thirty-seven and looking ten years younger, he was a millionaire several times over, his fortune made from asset-stripping—buying up large, moribund companies all over the world, splitting them into smaller, leaner, profitable components, selling some of them off as soon as they were viable but keeping the pick of the bunch, personally overseeing every last one of them. He had the energy, dynamism and enthusiasm of ten ordinary mortals and the enviable ability to switch off immediately.
As he was doing now. He was utterly relaxed as he sprawled out on one of the two matching sofas which flanked the hearth—the genuine Adam surround setting off a state-of-the-art coal-effect gas fire.
‘I ate on the plane, but I could use a drink.’ Relaxing, his eyes closed, he looked completely composed, but there was a tightness in his voice that made her drag her lower lip between her teeth. Was he still thinking about that phone call, turning it over in his mind? Hadn’t the photographic evidence of his own indiscretions thrown him off the scent?
Time to attack again, perhaps, before he started asking questions, demanding answers she wasn’t ready to give him.
Unusually, her fingers were shaking as she poured two fingers of the single malt he preferred into a glass and added just the right amount of bottled spring water. Her composure—one of the things he frankly admired about her—had been leaching away over the last few days. She was going to have to take herself in hand, think things through to find a logical, inevitable conclusion and act on it. That was something else she was good at. Usually.
And would be again. Starting as of now.
She hovered above him, patiently getting her breathing under control. His thick dark lashes lay heavily on those high, jutting cheekbones, softening them, and, like this, relaxed, the hard, arrogant line of his mouth was transformed into a thing of pure male beauty. Eminently kissable. Which, no doubt, the principessa had discovered, to her endless delight.
The lancing pain that sent her heart into spasm was an unwanted revelation. She hadn’t believed herself capable of such a reaction. They had been married for almost two years and she had often wondered how many women he’d bedded. No one could doubt his virility—it shouted through every line of his lean, tough body, blazed in the depths of his knowing grey eyes. But he had promised discretion—they both had—and he had broken his word. Maybe pain was a shattered promise, she thought bleakly, her hand tightening around the glass.
Leaning forward, she touched the cool surface to his artlessly open palm and watched him snap to full alertness in the disconcerting way he had. His hand closed around the glass, deliberately trapping her fingers, and she felt the little color she did have in her pale ivory skin wash out of her face.
He never touched her. He had always been almost painfully careful not to, not even accidentally. Not even when their coolly constructed ‘perfect marriage’ was on public display.
If she struggled to free her hand the whiskey would go all over the place, and there was no room for such indignities in their relationship. Aquamarine eyes battled with incisive grey until she saw the sudden flare of hard mockery and lowered her lids and he transferred his glass to his other hand, releasing hers, asking grimly, ‘Do you dislike being touched, per se, or is it only by me?’
‘I don’t think that question deserves a response, do you?’ she uttered calmly, forcing herself to retreat with slow and careful dignity to the opposite sofa and not fly headlong from the room as every cell in her body urged her to do. But as she sank into the comfortably upholstered depths nothing on earth could prevent her snapping out acidly, ‘I’m surprised you cut your Italian trip short. Wasn’t the principessa as irresistible as she’s made out to be?’
She was appalled at herself. They never quarreled. Never came near it. She didn’t know what was happening. And when he announced, with languid grace, ‘I couldn’t possibly comment, my dear,’ she wanted to hit him. Wanted it with an intensity that shook her to her soul.
‘What’s bugging you? I’d have marked you down as a woman who could handle a slice of unpleasant publicity with a sophisticated shrug of one superlatively elegant shoulder.’ He took a reflective sip of his drink, his narrowed eyes never leaving her. ‘We were pictured leaving the opera. If you’d been there—you were invited, remember—it wouldn’t have happened. And you would have enjoyed it. La Traviata. Juanita del Sorro sang Violetta. She was quite superb.’
‘I’m quite sure she was.’ Only by forcing herself to respond could she stop her teeth from audibly grinding together. Was he saying his public lapse from grace was all her fault? How dared he?
And of course he had expected her to be in Rome with him. Although he did a fair amount of business there they didn’t own an apartment in the city for her to turn into a home on the hoof. They always used the same small, privately run hotel near the Piazza Venezia where she acted—as was her part of the bargain—as PR officer, private secretary, mistress of the wardrobe, companion and sounding board. Everything she had been happy to be for the past two years.
The visit to Rome had been scheduled for months and she’d been looking forward to another all too brief trip to her favorite city until that phone call from the UK. Thankfully Jake had been out, so she’d had the Manhattan apartment to herself. If he’d been in she wouldn’t have been able to avoid his inevitable questions. She would have had to tell him the truth. And although she knew she owed it to him, that honesty within their relationship had been something they’d both decided on, right from the start, she knew she couldn’t face it, not quite yet.
And when he’d turned up, all fired up with the successful completion of yet another brilliant business deal, she’d dealt with the pressing emergency and had come up with a believable excuse for backing out of the Rome trip.
‘It’s the first time I’ve ever let you down, Jake, but would you mind if I skipped Rome? Say if you do. But suddenly I feel tired.’ She’d felt drainingly guilty at his swift look of concern and had had to force herself to add, ‘I could spend an extra, quiet day here, fly back to England and have the London apartment ready for when you get home from Rome.’
She had needed a few days’ grace, time to face up to the consequences of telling him the truth and what would be the inevitable ending of their marriage. But he’d returned two days ahead of schedule, and she didn’t know why, but she still hadn’t worked up enough courage to tell him. Just thinking about it made her ask now, suddenly in deadly earnest, ‘Jake—you and the principessa—is it serious?’
It had been part of the bargain, the let-out clause. If either of them, at any time during their paper marriage, met someone, felt serious enough about them to want a real marriage, then the other wouldn’t stand in their way. There would be an annulment, followed, if Jake was the one who wanted out, by a healthy financial settlement. If she invoked the clause she would forfeit the settlement, but she could live with that now. She wouldn’t give the lack of the kind of lifestyle she’d enjoyed during her marriage a second thought.
‘Of course not.’ He sounded as if he was on the point of yawning. And, moments later, did. He stood up, stretching, the fabric of his shirt pulled tight against his strong, lean torso. ‘I’m for bed. I’m surprised you weren’t tucked up hours ago, considering how desperately tired you were supposed to be.’
She ignored that, the acid tone, everything. She didn’t know why she felt so buoyant, as if she’d won a reprieve, when she should be feeling thwarted. If he’d told her he’d fallen in love, at last, found a woman he genuinely wanted to spend the rest of his life with—for all the right and natural reasons—then that would have created a way out for her.
She didn’t understand herself. She managed a cool goodnight and took herself off to her own peaceful room, and decided she was being dog-in-the-manger about it. She didn’t want him to walk out on her. That was what it boiled down to. If their marriage ended—and it had to, of course—then she needed to be the one to do it. A matter of pride, perhaps?
She fell asleep not liking herself very much but feeling strangely comforted.
However, any feelings of comfort, undeserved or otherwise, flew straight out of the window the very next morning.
Jake, as always, was up before her, his energy making her feel tired. Breakfast was prepared—eggs and fruit and coffee.
‘All I could find. The cupboard is bare. Not to worry.’ He flashed her the sudden white grin that had the mega-watt power to make unwary females quake at the knees. ‘I’ve been making phone calls. Eat—’ he gestured to the table in the immaculate high-tech kitchen ‘—before the eggs get cold, and I’ll tell you what I’ve arranged.’
In this mood, he made her feel as if she was in the middle of a whirlwind. Not a morning person herself, she’d taught herself how to handle his restless energy by simply letting it wash over her head until she’d dragged herself together sufficiently to cope with it. She would watch him with sleep-drugged eyes, rarely taking in much of what he said. But this morning he shocked her into full and definitely unpleasant wakefulness as he told her, ‘As I said, I’ve made a couple of calls. As soon as we’ve eaten we’ll drive up and visit with Liz and Sal. I know you speak to your mother regularly—’ his eyes pinned her to her seat ‘—but she’s looking forward to seeing you. Us. And tomorrow we’ll go on from there to Litherton. I’ll leave you in Emma’s capable hands until I join you for Christmas. She’ll see you get all the rest you need. And feed you up. You’ve lost weight recently.’ His dark brows rose, as if inviting her to explain why, and she suddenly felt desperately conscious of her body, even though it was adequately concealed by her heavy peacock-blue satin robe.
She put down her fork, her throat clogging up. He wasn’t stupid—far from it. He knew something was going on. He’d walked in on that phone call and didn’t believe her swift assertion that she’d been talking to her mother. So he was going ahead, making sure he found out—or forced her to tell him.
There was no doubt about his genuine wish to visit Liz, see that she was comfortable, had everything she needed, find out from Sally Harding, her mother’s companion, if the elderly lady was as well as she always assured them she was. For Jake had been wonderful with her mother. Liz had never been physically strong and the hard life she’d had meant that her health had suffered, and her future care and downright cosseting had been offered as part of Jake’s side of the marriage bargain they’d made. It, and it alone, had been the factor that had made Claire agree to tie herself to what was, in fact, a purely business arrangement.
But there was more to the visit than that. He was suspicious, and had decided to manage and manipulate her. He’d try to get to the truth through Liz, and if he didn’t—or not completely—he had made other contingency plans. Shut her away at Litherton Court, the Winter family home, where his younger sister, Emma, would keep an eye on her until he turned up for the usual family Christmas.
Christmas was two weeks away.
She straightened her spine, lifted troubled sea-blue eyes to his and said quietly, ‘I have something to tell you.’
CHAPTER TWO
JAKE put his coffee-cup back on its saucer, the tiny click of the china sounding desperately loud in the hollow silence that had followed her statement, making her feel as if she was in a vacuum, the act of breathing impossible.
Her fingers twisting together nervously in her lap, she watched him go very still, the tension coming from him like a physical blow, making her helplessly nervous. Brimming with agitation, she lifted her eyes to his and saw an uncharacteristic look of wariness there, as if he, and not she, were the one who was trapped. And then it went, hard grey steel back in place, his mouth grim as he invited, ‘So? Tell me.’
Aware that she’d been holding her breath, Claire dragged in air. What she had to tell him meant the beginning of the end of their relationship. A dreadful, draining reluctance took her by the throat but she managed thickly, ‘Liz has news. She heard last week that an uncle had died and left her a fortune. It was totally unexpected. She hadn’t seen him in years. He never married and ended up as a complete recluse. Liz was the only relative he had. I met him once but don’t really remember him. I was seven.’
It had been shortly after her father had walked out on her mother and one bleak day Liz had dressed her in her best clothes and taken her to visit her great-uncle. A dreary journey entailing three separate bus rides, an even drearier welcome. Claire recalled only one thing about that meeting—the cynical way he had said, ‘Just because your mother was my sister, don’t come looking to me for hand-outs. It’s not my fault your husband chose to run away with another woman. It’s up to him to support his child, not me.’
They’d left at once. Her mother’s mouth had trembled as they’d walked through the cold rain to the bus-stop and Claire had clasped her hand, transmitting her sturdy love, feeling the fragile bones beneath the scratchy, hand-knitted gloves. But later, during the tedious journey home, Liz had brightened and told her, ‘You have to be sorry for him. He thought I was after his precious money when all I wanted was what was left of our family. He has no one but we have each other. That’s worth far more than any amount of money. We’re the lucky ones.’
‘In the end he must have decided to will everything to his niece,’ Claire told Jake reflectively. ‘He wasn’t the sort of man who would leave anything to charity, no matter how deserving.’
‘I’m pleased for her,’ Jake said warmly, but she saw the question deep in those unfathomable eyes of his before he voiced it. ‘And that is all you have to tell me?’
His long, lean fingers were drumming silently on the table-top. Her lashes swooped down, hiding her confusion. The way he was looking at her made her feel guilty even though she had nothing to feel guilty about. And when he slid in, his voice coldly silky, ‘You don’t want to tell me about the lover you were speaking to when I disturbed you last night? Don’t be shy about it; the eventuality was provided for in our agreement, with the accent being on discretion. I take it you are being discreet?’ she bit out with brittle haste,
‘Unlike you and that Italian!’ Shocked by the stab of pain that prompted the outburst, she reined in her temper and stressed with stony-voiced patience, ‘I was speaking to Liz—as I told you. She wanted to know if I’d given you her news yet.’
‘Oh, of course!’ he countered with heavy irony. ‘It’s always nice to hear good news—I fully understand her desperate urgency.’
‘Don’t be sarcastic!’ She snapped to her feet, the breakfast he’d prepared for her barely touched. He didn’t believe she’d been talking to her mother. He took lovers, so why shouldn’t she? That was the way he would look at it. ‘To Liz it is urgent. She wanted you to know so that you could stop the allowance you make her. Stop paying Sal’s wages—she can well afford to do that herself now. It was all I could do to prevent her from insisting that she repay every last penny you spent on Lark Cottage.’
‘I deeded Lark Cottage to her on our wedding-day,’ Jake said grimly, and stood up too, turning and walking through to the living-room. Claire followed, her eyes puzzled. For a moment she thought she’d glimpsed a flicker of pain in his eyes, as if it hurt him to think of Liz throwing the generosity of the past two years back in his face.
He had his back to her, his fists bunched into the pockets of his trousers, staring down at the quiet street from one of the tall sash windows that graced the elegant room. And although her softly slippered feet could have made no sound on the thick carpet he clearly knew she was there because he muttered tightly, ‘There’s no question of Liz repaying the cost of the cottage. And as for the comfortable living allowance I make her—that was part of our marriage agreement. I have no intention of going back on it.’
Claire walked slowly towards him, noting how tightly the muscles on his impressive shoulders were clenched. The allowance he’d made Liz over the past two years had been far more than merely comfortable. He’d been generous with his time, too, making sure they visited the elderly lady whenever they were in England, keeping in close contact by phone when they were not, making time in his packed schedule for them to take Liz and Sally Harding to the Italian lakes for ten days each spring, sending her books he thought she’d like to read. Little things, granted—set against his immense wealth—but meaning so much, and going far beyond the letter of the agreement they’d made.
She couldn’t bear him to think his generosity was being tossed back in his face. She couldn’t bear him to be hurt.
Not stopping to analyze the depth of her feelings or the impulse that made her move quickly to place her body in front of him, reach out to touch his perfectly hewn features, she said gently, ‘Liz would hate you to think she was ungrateful. It’s the last thing she’d want. But her pride is all she’s ever had, remember. And now she finds herself in a position to provide for herself she’s walking on air. Don’t try to deny her that.’
She wasn’t conscious of the way her cool fingertips were softly stroking his temple, the palm of her hand gently laid against the hardly sculpted side of his face, until he turned his head, his eyes holding hers with lancing intensity as his lips moved erotically against the suddenly unbearably sensitized palm of her hand. She gave a small, shaky gasp as wildfire sensations seared through her body and saw his hooded eyes grow speculative. She snatched her hand away.
Touching hadn’t been part of their contract. Non-consummation had been agreed on. She was too fastidious to contemplate sex without love and he wouldn’t want a sexual relationship, with all its inherent emotional complications, to put their down-to-earth and mutually beneficial partnership in jeopardy.
Was that why he had gone out of his way to avoid any physical contact—even the most innocent? Had he known something she had never even suspected—that his slightest touch would send her up in flames?
Praying she wouldn’t betray her humiliation with something as uncool as a blush, she stepped briskly back and squared her shoulders, summoned her normal, politely friendly tone and stated, ‘If we’re going on to Lither ton from Lark Cottage then I’d better throw a few things in a bag. But I warn you, much as I like your sister, don’t expect me to bury myself down there for the next two weeks. I’d be bored out of my skull.’
Not true. She and Jake had spent a wonderfully relaxing time at Litherton Court last Christmas, plus a gloriously lazy long weekend in the early autumn, but she wasn’t going to admit that she would be miserable if she didn’t see him for two whole weeks, because she wasn’t ready to admit it to herself.
And despite having been the last to speak she had the distinctly edgy feeling, as she swept out of the room, that she hadn’t had the last word.
Four hours later Liz said happily, ‘Oh, it’s lovely to see you!’ and stood on tiptoe to plant a kiss on Jake’s lean, hard cheek, smothered in the bulk of his sheepskin jacket as he hugged her, then turned to her daughter for her embrace. As Claire’s arms went round the tiny frame she thought, She’s not nearly as frail as she used to be, and felt tears of gratitude for all Jake had done sting behind her eyes and clog her throat.
‘Come along in, out of the cold. As soon as we heard your car come round the corner of the lane Sal went to put the kettle on. And your rooms are ready, so go along up if you want to freshen up before we snack.’
As the door closed on the cold grey mist of the December afternoon Jake’s height and breadth and alarmingly magnetic male presence filled the tiny, cheerful hall and Claire grabbed her suitcase, suddenly needing the quiet privacy of her room, space to breathe, away from that throat-grabbing presence. But Jake, shrugging out of his sheepskin, said, ‘I want a private word with you, Liz, before we do a damn thing.’
‘Does that dour tone tell me that Claire has at last got around to giving you my news?’ Faded blue eyes twinkled up into commanding grey slits. ‘I always think it’s bad taste to get excited over a legacy. But in Uncle Arnold case I think I can be excused. He never cared about anyone in the whole of his life and in the end no one cared about him.’ Her mouth drooped at the corners as she added, ‘Though I sent him a card each Christmas, keeping him up to date with whatever news there was, even after he...’
Her voice tailed away and Jake took her arm in a gentle but inescapable grip, urging her towards the door that led to the sitting-room, his voice firm as he told her, ‘Stop trying to soften me up. You’ve got some serious explaining to do. What are families for, if not to help each other when possible? I hope you’re not going to tell me you found what little help I gave a burden you’re delighted to shrug off?’
Although his words were tough his voice was soft around the edges as he ushered Liz into the sitting-room. Claire sighed briefly and mounted the stairs. The question of his allowance was something they’d have to thrash out between them and she was deeply thankful that she’d been able to persuade her mother that her decision to reimburse Jake fully for the purchase price of Lark Cottage, and everything in it, would have been seen as gross ingratitude, and hurtful.
She was thankful, too, that she’d made Jake promise never, in any circumstances, to divulge that his care of her mother had been the only reason she’d agreed to marry him.
As she reached her room and closed herself in with the cottage pine antiques, the lemon-yellow and grey and cream fabrics which picked out the main colors of the sunny sprigged wallpaper and the thick scatter rugs on the oak-boarded floor, her mouth twisted wryly as she remembered how appalled Liz had been, the first time they’d visited, when she had explained that, being modern and sophisticated, she and Jake had decided on separate rooms.
But Liz would be even more appalled, and permanently so, if she knew that her daughter’s marriage to the son-in-law she openly adored and respected was nothing but a business arrangement.
She hung her mulberry-coloured wool coat in the wardrobe, unpacked the few things she’d need for the two days Jake had said they would be spending here and allowed the tranquility of the cottage, set as it was on the outskirts of a tiny Shropshire village, to soothe her unaccustomed ruffled soul.
There really was nothing to get in a state about, she assured herself. She and Jake had agreed that their paper marriage would end when it was no longer useful. And as far as she was concerned its usefulness had ended with that legacy. And as for Jake, well, his unprecedented lack of discretion over the principessa affair had to signal that he wanted his freedom—even if he wasn’t fully aware of it yet.
So their days were numbered, the last hours ticking away, and it truly didn’t matter, did it? she asked herself as she sank down on the window-seat and gazed down on the garden that, even at this dead time of year, was her mother’s pride and joy.
With a sense of inevitability, the tying up of loose ends, her mind slid back over the years, looking at everything that had happened, taking her to the point when she had agreed to marry Jake.
The foundations had been laid in her childhood. She barely remembered her father because he’d gone by the time her seventh birthday came around. Apparently, he had never wanted the responsibility of children and Liz had been thirty-eight when Claire was born. Liz had never been physically strong and after the birth she had had to give up her job working for a florist, pushing even more responsibility on to the man who hadn’t wanted it in the first place.
So no, she wouldn’t recognize her father now if she passed him in the street, but she could remember the build-up of tension as the weekends approached, when her father, a company rep, would be home. Recall how her mother had seemed frightened of him, of his sudden bursts of temper, his long sulks.
Once, long after he’d disappeared, and the eventual divorce, Claire had asked her mother why she had stayed with him as long as she had. Liz had looked blank, as if such a thought had never entered her head, and simply imparted that she’d made her marriage vows in good faith and, having made them, wouldn’t be the one to break them. It was then Claire had realised that her father had taken a naïve, trusting, loving soul and turned her into a doormat, and she had made a private vow never to allow it to happen to her.
When her husband had walked out on them Liz had had to find work to support them. She’d brought a child into the world and loved her devotedly, and no way was that child to be deprived of decent food and respectable clothes. They’d moved to a small flat because Liz couldn’t afford the rent on the house they lived in, but somehow there had always been treats—a coach trip to the coast each summer, a birthday party to which all her friends were invited, a visit to the local theater for the Christmas pantomime.
All at the expense of her health, Claire had realized years later.
Never strong, Liz had taken only part-time menial work because while her daughter was at school she’d insisted on being there when Claire came home. So she had often been exploited, poorly paid, having no qualifications which might have opened more lucrative, less physically grueling doors for her.
After gaining her secretarial qualifications and a year’s practical experience, Claire had joined a top-quality agency because she could earn more that way, insisted that Liz give up all her part-time jobs, and had been filling in for Jake’s personal secretary—the one who went everywhere with him, and who was recovering after an appendectomy—when Liz had had a heart attack.
Claire had been out of her mind with worry. Just as she had begun earning enough to allow her mother to take life more easily, fate had dealt this blow.
Jake had been wonderful, far more sympathetic and supportive than her ephemeral position as a temp could have led her to expect. He had insisted on waiting with her through that dreadful night at the hospital when she hadn’t expected her mother to survive the attack, metaphorically holding her hand and, somehow, drawing her whole life story out of her.
And later, when her mother’s recovery had been assured—this time, so her consultant had warned—Jake had broken the news that his personal secretary had decided to call it a day. Her fiancé apparently took a dim view of the unsocial hours she was often called upon to work, the times—many of them—when she had to be out of the country, dancing attendance on her employer.
‘I’ve a proposition to put to you,’ he had told her. And now, without even having to try, she had total recall of every last inflexion of his voice, the way the pale afternoon winter sunlight had been streaming through the long sash windows of the London apartment, shining his raven-wing hair, highlighting the taut, olive-toned skin on his jutting cheekbones, throwing those enigmatic grey eyes into deepest shadow.
He’d waved aside the bunch of faxed reports she’d just brought through from the study. ‘Sit down, put that sharp brain of yours into receiving mode, and listen.’
She’d sat, the slight smile his choice of words had brought to flickering life quickly fading because she couldn’t put her concern over Liz’s future to the back of her mind as a good secretary should.
The excellent salary she was earning through the agency meant that her mother no longer had any pressing financial worries. On the other hand, working for the agency meant that she often had to travel to distant parts of the country, and that, in turn, meant there was no one to keep an eye on Liz, see that she ate properly, took the regular periods of rest that were so important to her long-term recovery.
And she wouldn’t put it past her, as soon as she was back on her feet, to trundle out to find some kind of job. Liz had her pride, didn’t want to be a burden, was inclined to mutter on about Claire being able to spend some of her hard-earned salary on herself instead of using it to support her parent in idleness.
‘As I’ve told you, Anthea won’t be coming back, which leaves me, again, without a permanent personal secretary,’ Jake growled. ‘They come weighed down with all the right qualifications and good intentions, and before you know it they find some lame excuse or other to quit.’
So a disgruntled fiance, Anthea’s love-life, was considered to be a lame excuse, was it? Controlling the upward twitch of her mouth, Claire pushed her own worries out of her mind and concentrated on his.
While she sat, composed and still, he paced the floor, displaying all that restless energy she had grown to admire, and marvel at. He smacked a fist into the open palm of his other hand and grated, ‘They know what’s required and receive a blinding salary to compensate for any minor inconveniences! And God knows, I’m not a monster to work for, am I, Claire?’ He glared at her, his brows bunched, as if he couldn’t believe anyone fortunate enough to work for him would ever willingly depart—for any reason under the sun—and she clamped her teeth tightly together to control the grin that threatened to break out and gave him back a soothing, if necessarily tight-lipped smile, a confirming shake of her head.
Not a monster, never that. Demanding, brilliant, restless, capable of long, sustained bursts of energy that left lesser mortals feeling drained and giddy, sometimes impossible and sometimes staggeringly, generously thoughtful and kind. But never a monster.
‘Any suggestions?’ He had come to a standstill, hovering over her, his hands now bunched into his trouser pockets.
Disregarding the bluntly aggressive tone, she lifted cool eyes to meet the piercing blaze of his and replied calmly, ‘Hire someone who’s not interested in a love-life. A widow-woman, say, well into her fifties.’ She was trying very hard to keep a straight face. ‘Or, better still, a man. A man with a family to support, who would be grateful for a spectacular salary and the opportunity to escape the kids from time to time.’ A touch of bitterness there? she wondered. Memories of the way her own father had been?
‘Would a man take charge of my laundry, cook the occasional meal, buy my socks?’ he scorned. ‘And would your putative widow-woman have the stamina to keep up with my schedules?’
His smile was tight, almost feral, as he swept her suggestions aside. Then, with one of the mood swings she had come to expect, he dropped on to the opposite sofa, swinging one immaculately trousered leg over the other, tipping his head on one side as he gave her a long, considering look, before saying with languid smoothness, ‘Having wiped out the options, I want you to consider my proposition. Take the job; work for me. Permanently. And, to ensure you don’t dredge up some flimsy excuse to terminate your employment, I will marry you.’
Marriage! Her stomach muscles shivered, then clenched. She had expected him to offer her a permanent position, had been reluctantly prepared to turn it down because if she was on the other side of the globe with him who would keep an eye on Liz—but marriage! That was the last thing she’d expected him to offer! Quite out of the question!
‘And before you verbalize what’s written on your face,’ his voice came through the whirlpool of her thoughts, silky soft yet carrying the core of that iron will of his, ‘listen, absorb and contemplate. Firstly,’ he ticked off on a lean, long forefinger, ‘the marriage will not be consummated. To the outside world it will appear the perfect match, but privately you will function as my personal secretary. No more, no less. Your salary will be paid in the form of an allowance—and you won’t find me ungenerous. Secondly, you will enjoy the financial security, the luxury, my wife would naturally expect. In return, I will have the loyalty and continuity of service I need.’
‘This is crazy!’ Ignoring the fluttery sensations that invaded her insides, Claire fixed him with a cool, sea-blue stare. ‘I won’t pretend I wouldn’t jump at the job offer if it didn’t mean leaving Liz to her own devices, but you don’t need to tie yourself down to that extent, surely? When you find someone suitable you could insist on a watertight contract.’
‘In which a clever lawyer could find any number of leaks!’ He shook his head, leaning forward a little, his superbly hewn features softening with an obvious need to understand. ‘We get along well together and I can’t fault your work—the past few weeks have demonstrated that. And during that night when you feared you would lose Liz—and I’ll come to her in a moment—you were open enough to tell me of her disastrous marriage, confide that her experience, plus the way you’d seen quite a high proportion of your friends’ marriages go down the drain, had put you off ever making that commitment yourself. So tell me, where do you find the problem in my proposed business agreement?’
‘You,’ she said with stark honesty. Then wondered why her mouth had gone dry. Avoiding his eyes, she flicked her tongue over her lips and made herself elaborate, ‘Who you are, what you are.’ She didn’t need to go further, tell him what he already had to know—that with his looks, all that sexy charisma, his wealth and staggering power he could have the pick of any woman he fancied. Instead she said primly, ‘I can’t believe you’re a stranger to the opposite sex. And I can’t believe the day won’t dawn when you’ll fall in love and want a real marriage, a family to enjoy the empire you’ve created. And when that day does arrive I’ll be the first to go, with nothing but the dubious honor of being the first, and discarded, Mrs Jake Winter.’
Hearing the rising note of bitterness in her voice and not having any way of understanding it, she slumped back against the soft cushions and waited to hear how he’d get out of that. And she went into a state of shock, or something very like it, when he simply turned the power of his wide white smile on her, explaining lightly, ‘I won’t even try to pretend I’m a stranger to your sex. However, much as I enjoy female company I know myself well enough to avoid making any long-term emotional commitments. To make a marriage happy, secure and stable you have to work at it. I wouldn’t find the time. My business gives me all the challenge I can handle. It’s as addictive and demanding as playing chess at the highest level—I’m not looking for anything more. I could handle a paper marriage—I’ve neither the time nor the inclination to work at a proper one. Inevitably I’d get bored and restless. And, as I’ve experienced, paid secretaries and housekeepers can be a pain. I need someone who will be emotionally undemanding, always there when needed, wherever I happen to be. I hate hotel life as a general rule, so have my own apartments in most of the major capitals around the world, and I need someone there to organize some kind of home life as well as business breakfasts, lunches or dinners, put on her secretary hat when needed and, as I mentioned—’ his grin was sapping all her strength ‘—buy my socks. Or whatever. And as far as I’m concerned, unless and until I make a family of my own—which, at this moment in time, I can’t see myself ever contemplating—any children my sister and her husband might have would become my heirs. And I suppose there should be an opt-out clause,’ he clipped, his change of tone suddenly making her see how seriously he was taking this plethora of alarming nonsense. ‘In the unlikely event of my deciding I wanted to be free to remarry, you would receive a substantial settlement in money and property. If you wanted out, for the same reason, then I wouldn’t stand in your way. You would, however, forfeit the settlement.’
The smile he gave her was chilling, sending shivers riding down the length of her spine, and, shifting uneasily against the cushions, she was about to decline his offer politely when he forestalled her, knocking the breath out of her lungs as he added, ‘About Liz. As an added and, in my opinion—having spoken at length to her consultant—necessary inducement, I guarantee to keep her in comfort for the rest of her life. In a house of her own and your choosing, with a resident companion—medically trained—to keep an eye on her health and well being, keep her company, do all the little jobs around the place she shouldn’t be allowed to tackle. Think about it, Claire. Think carefully, and give me your answer in the morning.’
He stood up, terminating the crazy interview, and Claire, her legs feeling unbelievably unsteady, tottered off to the study, finishing up there and driving home in a daze, not able to bring herself to say goodnight to him because everything inside her head had gone on hold.
It was the promise he had made regarding Liz’s future that tipped the balance. True, the actual job he was offering was a challenge that was difficult to resist, and she could live with the marriage part of it. She would look at it as a strange type of job description, the utter sterility of the relationship a secret between Jake and herself. But it was the thought that her mother would at last be able to relax, live a life of comfort and ease, having a cosy home of her own and the lush country garden she had always dreamed of—with the added bonus that wherever Claire found herself she would know that Liz had someone close at hand to keep her from being lonely, watch that she didn’t overtire herself, make her go for regular check-ups—that brought Claire to Jake’s London apartment, an acceptance of his offer of marriage firmly lodged in her head.
Jake received her acceptance with a calm, ‘Thank you. You won’t regret it,’ but persuading Liz to accept his charity was a different matter.
She had met Jake, of course and, although bemused by the suddenness of it, was delighted by the prospect of the marriage. Her darling girl had fallen in love with a man who would care for her, provide handsomely for her, for the rest of her life. What mother could ask for more? But living on charity was something else altogether.
Not until Jake was brought in to fight Claire’s corner were matters resolved. He simply told her, ‘In three weeks’ time I am marrying your daughter. That makes you, like it or not, part of my family. And what type of man—especially one who has more money than he can count—leaves a valued member of his family to mooch around in a mediocre flat in an unlovely London backstreet?’
And so Lark Cottage was found, furnished with every comfort and convenience, Sally Harding, an ex-nurse, forthright but kind, employed, everything—even their paper marriage—running smoothly until now. Until her mother’s legacy had set her free.
An impatient rapping on the bedroom door had Claire dragging her eyes from the window-pane. The winter darkness had descended. She’d been looking at nothing. Blinking, she watched Jake enter the room, his impressive height and sheer physical presence seeming to diminish everything in it. His features were expressionless, yet his eyes pierced her, his voice harsh as he said, ‘Liz is presiding over the tea-table, staring with longing at the teapot. As is Sal. Might I suggest you join us and put them out of their misery?’
She rose slowly to her feet. She’d lost count of time. Eating her share of one of Sal’s massive teas—three different types of dainty sandwiches, mountainous sponge cakes, slab cake, a wild selection of home-made biscuits—was not, at the moment, very appealing.
She sighed, and he heard it. His eyes narrowed. He made an ‘after you’ gesture as she reached the door and his tone when he spoke, silk cloaking iron, rasped on her strangely jangled nerves.
‘Liz’s delight in finding herself so unexpectedly and independently wealthy was so transparent, I hadn’t the heart to insist that she continue to live off my allowance. However,’ he added, his mouth straightening in a grim line, ‘that doesn’t give you an opt-out, grounds for terminating our agreement. Only one thing can do that, so don’t you ever forget it.’
CHAPTER THREE
“ONLY one thing”. The only opt-out Jake would accept was if one or other of them fell in love.
Claire fastened her seat belt as Jake slid into the driver’s seat. She didn’t look at him, concentrated instead on waving goodbye to Liz and Sal, doing her best to look relaxed and cheerful.
For some reason the couple of days they’d spent at Lark Cottage had been a strain. Normally, it was no such thing. Claire valued any time she was able to spend with Liz, and her pretend marriage hadn’t been a problem before because Jake had the ability to make everyone relax. When it suited him, that was. And it always suited him when he was around Liz.
So she couldn’t put her edginess down to him, or only obliquely. The only reason she’d agreed to marry him had been to secure her mother’s future welfare. But, for him, the fact that he’d no longer be supporting Liz didn’t count. He’d made that abundantly clear. And what troubled her was the stupid, surging relief she’d felt when he’d slept it out!
‘Still adamant about not staying on at Lither ton until I join you for Christmas?’ Jake asked tautly as he smoothly negotiated the big car through the tangled network of narrow country lanes that would, in around twenty minutes, bring them to the Winter family home.
She shrugged, biting down on her lip, staring fixedly ahead. She was all churned up inside, her emotions warring. She didn’t want to stay on at Lither ton without him; she had already acknowledged that much. And when she’d believed that Liz’s legacy would inevitably lead to the end of their marriage she had been—well, ‘disconsolate’ was the word she thought she was looking for.
It would be madness to allow herself to become dependent on his company. Sooner or later the marriage would end, and probably sooner, if his indiscreet relationship with the principessa was anything to go by.
Without being aware of it she had allowed herself to be drawn into the false security of dependency. It was time she did something about it. And so she told him with a lightness she was far from feeling, ‘No, I’ve had second thoughts. Long walks in the fresh air, coming back to roaring log fires and Emma’s marvellous cooking—just what I need.’ And she cursed herself for feeling so miserable because she’d done the right thing, committed herself to two whole weeks without him. Which only went to show how uncomfortably real the danger was becoming.
She opened her eyes very wide at the look of frowning suspicion he darted her then closed them on a spasm of unadulterated pain when he returned his attention back to the road and told her, ‘Good. I’m glad you’ve seen sense. There’d be no point in your kicking around on your own in London. I’ll be in Rome, plunging into some rather exciting unfinished business.’
The voluptuous principessa, of course. And did he have to be so crude about it? Any other time he would have wanted her there with him, arranging meetings, sitting in on them wearing her secretarial hat, acting as a sounding board for his involved thought-processes as they shared a nightcap together back at the hotel.
But not this time. And she didn’t have to be a mind-reader to know why.
Half reluctantly, she turned her head and allowed her eyes to dwell briefly on his savagely handsome profile. Was he aware that the rot had set in, that his indiscretions were pointing the way to the final break-up, that he had at last found a woman for whom he was happy to throw caution out of the window?
She looked quickly away again, misery darkening her eyes. In agreeing to stay on with his sister and her husband she had done exactly the right thing. The process of weaning herself away from him was about to begin.
* * *
Litherton Court had been in the Winter family for generations. The sturdy stone house, built in the reign of Elizabeth Tudor, looked particularly lovely on this bright, crisp morning, Claire thought as she emerged from the copse, looking down on the house in its smooth green hollow of land.
Sunlight glittered on the tiny panes set in elegant mullions and made the pale building stone look warm and mellow. Claire wondered, not for the first time, how Jake could have turned his back on the property, handing it and the vast estates over to Emma when she’d married Frank.
But it was impossible to imagine the restless, dynamic Jake Winter settling down to run a country estate, she acknowledged, pushing her hands deeper into the pockets of her sheepskin coat. And that being the case, what could be more natural than his handing over his inheritance when Emma married? When he had been twenty-five and already a force to be reckoned with in the business world, and Emma a sheltered eighteen, their parents had been killed in a motorway pile-up. The double blow had traumatised them both, particularly Emma. It had taken her a long time to get over it and Jake had become very protective of her. Until the advent of the principessa Claire had believed that Emma was the only female under sixty Jake had any tenderness or respect for. The way women had always thrown themselves at him had made him cynical. So did he know he was ready to fall in love, ready to make a lasting, worthwhile commitment? An expert at second-guessing other people’s moves, correctly judging their motivations, had he recognized his own slip for what it was—a willingness, in the case of this one special woman, to give the world at large advance notice of his intentions?
If it had been a slip then it had been a deliberate one. No one could ever accuse him of being a man who didn’t know what he was doing. During the two years of their marriage he must have had the occasional short-lived affair; he was too virilely male not to have done. But there had never been a breath of scandal, never a hint.
So this was different.
Her fine brows knotted together, she set her booted feet on the downward track, heading back towards the house. How many times during the five days since he had left for Rome had she worried away at the conjectures that kept rearing up inside her head? Was he with Lorella Giancotti now, at this very moment? Was he explaining about his paper marriage—something that had been their secret up until now? Making plans, promising to get an annulment very soon, asking her to marry him?
With a savage spurt of temper she kicked out at the loose stones in her path, sending them skittering. The decisions he made about his private life didn’t matter, did they? She had entered into marriage for purely practical reasons, with her eyes wide open. In spite of his offhanded denials, she had always known that this was on the cards, accepted that he would fall in love one day and ask her for an annulment. So why did she feel as if her whole world was falling apart?
Because the breakdown of their marriage would mean the end of her job, she answered herself staunchly as she unlatched the gate in the high stone wall that surrounded the gardens proper, keeping them separate from the rest of the estate.
Relief poured through her like a flood of sweet warm water and she whistled cheerfully for the two young Labradors and the pensioned-off sheepdog who had accompanied her on her morning walk, smiling as they bounded towards her. She had heard Emma say that she could never have too many dogs and they seemed to be all over the house, curled up in armchairs and sofas, heaps of them on the rug in front of the Aga, basking in the warmth. And because Frank was devoted to his prettily plump wife he tolerated them cheerfully.
Ushering the dogs through the gate, she closed it securely behind her, feeling light-hearted for the first time in days.
She loved her job, thrived on the challenges and hassles, the praise Jake gave so generously, the companionship that inevitably built up when you worked so closely with someone you admired and respected. But she certainly couldn’t keep it after they separated. It would look very odd to the rest of the world if she were to continue to work for her ex-husband after he remarried.
So the prospect of losing her job had to be responsible for the bleak mood she’d been in ever since she’d seen that photograph and realized the implications behind his first ever indiscretion. And before that, even, beginning when Liz had told her about that legacy and she’d thought—wrongly, as it happened—that Jake would terminate their agreement because the conditions were no longer being met and he, above anything, was an honorable man.
And the relief that she had worked it all out must have shown on her face because when she walked into the big, cosy kitchen Emma, heating milk on the Aga to add to the mid-morning coffee, turned and said, ‘What’s happened to cheer you up? You’ve been looking like a wet Sunday since Jake left. I said you were missing the brute but Frank thought you were sickening for something.’
Claire didn’t like to think she was so transparent, but she hid her unease with a smiling shrug and offered, ‘Fresh air and exercise does wonders! It’s a beautiful morning and you don’t feel the cold if you keep moving. The dogs enjoyed it, too.’
Thankfully, the mention of dogs deflected her, as it had been meant to do. Emma petted and crooned over the dogs which had just returned, sitting at her feet, pink tongues lolling. Claire rescued the milk.
She and Emma had taken an instant liking to each other the first time they’d met. Jake had insisted she spend that first Christmas here. They’d just got ‘engaged’—one of the shortest on record—and he’d brought her down to meet the only family he had. And last Christmas they’d been here as a married couple, he giving the same reason she had for their preference for separate rooms, and they would be here together again this year. For the very last time, she expected.
Jake always spent the festive season at Lither ton, and was openly impatient for Emma to provide him with nieces and nephews for him to spoil and play with. But Emma was in no hurry to oblige. She had her dogs and her husband, not to mention the absorbing business of running the big estate like clockwork, with the occasional input from Frank, who was Jake’s personal accountant, handling his impressively massive portfolio.
Claire deeply regretted being unable to let her sister-in-law get really close. Emma was open and bright and bubbly and would have liked nothing better than to have long heart-to-heart chats with her brother’s wife, but Claire, recognizing the dangers in that, put on an act of reserve and refused to be drawn. No one but she and Jake knew what a sham their marriage was. They both wanted to keep it that way.
‘There’s just the two of us today,’ Emma remarked as Claire finished making the coffee. ‘Frank’s spending the day with Liz. He’d have asked you along too, but they’ll be spending the time talking investments. Boring!’ She pretended an exaggerated yawn and Claire’s mouth twisted in a wry smile. One of the first things Jake had done after they’d arrived at Lither ton was to tell Frank of Liz’s newly acquired wealth.
‘At the moment it’s swilling around in her bank account. I want you to go and see her. You can do better than that for her.’ His tone had implied ‘or else’, and that was typical of the type of man he was. Claire pushed him quickly out of her mind and the wall-mounted phone rang.
She was already—more or less successfully—thinking of her marriage in the past tense so when she realised Emma was talking to Jake the shock made her stomach curl up in a ball and turn to ice. And they were obviously talking about her, because Emma was saying, ‘No. Only to do some Christmas shopping. She borrowed one of the cars and took off for the day.’
Claire watched the puzzled frown gather between her sister-in-law’s eyes and just knew he was checking up on her. He was still suspicious about the phone call he’d interrupted, and that made her coldly angry because who was he to poke and pry into her affairs when his was splashed all over the papers? He would want their marriage to end when the time was right for him. He wouldn’t want her jumping the gun, painting him in the guise of a cuckolded husband!
‘Of course I didn’t go with her,’ Emma was saying, running out of patience. ‘I always get mine done early, you know that. No. No— Look, she’s right here; ask her yourself.’
She handed Claire the receiver with an upward hunch of her shoulders and Claire managed coolly, ‘Ask me what?’
The tiny ensuing silence was electrifying and, for no reason that she could fathom, her heart began to beat like a drum gone out of control; then cold anger took over as he told her without an atom of shame, ‘Just checking up on how my wife spends her time. Get all your shopping done, did you? Or perhaps you forgot something vital? Find you have to spend yet another day in town?’
If theirs had been a normal marriage she would have thought he was harboring deep suspicions, half believing she was seeing someone else, was blisteringly jealous. As it was, she knew he was simply anxious not to be made to look a fool.
She hated it when they were like this together. Up until his return from Rome they had got along fine, becoming really close companions. Squashing the impulse to reassure him, because getting back on to a best friends footing again would only make the inevitable break-up much more difficult, she gushed, ‘Now however did you guess? Such a bore! Was there anything else you wanted to check up on, or can I go? My coffee’s getting cold.’
‘No, you may not go.’ The tone of his voice set all the nerves in her body on edge. It was the tone she had heard him use when dealing out reprimands to underlings who had earned his displeasure. He had never used it to her before. And now that clipped, arrogant voice was telling her, ‘I’m buying a property in Have ling. The agent will deliver the keys to you in the morning. As soon as he does, I want you to drive over there and wait for me. I should arrive around lunchtime. Got that?’
She answered, ‘Yes,’ but was talking to silence. Her face went red. He’d put the phone down, just like that! How dared he treat her as if she were a mere employee he’d suddenly lost patience with?
But an employee was all she was, all she had ever been, she reminded herself with a swift return to rationality, and maybe the brisk arrogance he’d used on her for the very first time was his way of easing them apart, phasing out the strange but special relationship they’d had.
‘What was that all about?’ Emma wanted to know. ‘I’ve never heard him so snappy—someone been giving him a bad time?’ She was cutting fruit cake and suddenly looked deadly serious. ‘You? Before he left he asked me to keep an eye on you,’ she went on slowly, as if thinking things out and not liking the conclusions she was reaching. ‘He said he was worried about you. You’d got overtired, I must make sure you had plenty of rest and didn’t go racketing round on your own. But just then he sounded on edge, as if there was a lot more to it than that. Is there?’
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Diana Hamilton
The Perfect Match… In Name Only!Jake Winters was every woman's fantasy - and, as his P.A., Claire had been groomed to become his perfect partner. She was the ideal assistant,hostess… and wife! Their wedding had been a mutually beneficial business arrangement; their marriage a paper affair.Claire had never felt like a real bride: she was just a beautiful possession to Jake, who seemed more interested in the seductive Lorella. Now Claire had made a big mistake: she'd fallen in love with her husband!
Never a Bride
Diana Hamilton
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE (#u94bb5219-62f5-58bf-b2f2-664043b295ea)
CHAPTER TWO (#u584943b3-0d34-5592-ae12-abf49d39338f)
CHAPTER THREE (#u72e52767-fa83-50df-9469-e74612f39184)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE
‘I‘M AT the London apartment, so it won’t be long before I can see you. Yes, Jake’s away... No, no I haven’t told him. We’ll discuss it when I see you. Must go now, darling, but see you soon, I promise.’ Claire Winter replaced the receiver, a tender smile softening the classical loveliness of her features before she felt her scalp tingle with warning, felt the skin on her face go stiff. She slowly turned on the silk brocade-covered sofa, her aquamarine eyes shocked by the accuracy of her precognition as they homed in on Jake’s narrowed grey gaze.
‘You’re in Rome,’ she babbled, and immediately hated herself for her inaccurate inanity, despised herself even more when her stupid remark gave him the excuse to hitch up one dark sardonic brow and drawl mockingly,
‘Kind of you to put me right. I actually thought I was in Mayfair.’
She watched him lever himself away from the door-frame where he’d been leaning, listening... How much of her telephone conversation had he heard...? And God, but he was beautiful. Every time she looked at him she was struck anew by his male magnificence. He was the dark stranger who haunted every woman’s secret dreams, a fantasy of masculine perfection come to life.
And he knew it. He had more sex appeal than was good for him, so his arrogance over the opposite sex was understandable. Every woman he met drooled over him, fell at his feet. Even her own mother looked at him with a definite sparkle in her eyes and she, more than most, had good reason to be wary of anything in trousers. He had the looks, the wealth, the power and personality to turn the sanest woman’s head.
She was firmly on her feet now, perfectly in control, presenting the image he expected—no, demanded. Cool, expensive, exquisitely groomed, her silky black hair cut stylishly short, the black and white heavy silk two-piece she was wearing emphasizing the elegant lines of her tall, slender body.
‘I didn’t expect you for at least another couple of days.’ She schooled her voice to coolness but couldn’t disguise the trace of accusation; it came through despite her best efforts and Jake picked it up, obviously, because he said drily,
‘So I gathered. Who were you phoning? Or is that a question a husband shouldn’t ask his wife?’
‘Liz,’ she answered, perhaps too quickly. Something made his narrowed grey eyes glitter. He didn’t believe she’d been talking to her mother.
Watching him walk further into the beautiful main room of their London apartment, shedding the jacket of his exquisitely tailored grey suit, she lifted her chin, her eyes stubborn, giving no hint of the alarm she felt at the way her heart was behaving so unusually. It was thundering around inside her chest, frightening her.
‘And how is she? Well?’ He hooked a finger in the knot of his tie and dragged it away from the collar of his crisp white shirt. ‘I find myself with two unexpectedly free days. Perhaps we should visit her? I could persuade her to divulge whatever it is you haven’t been able to bring yourself to tell me yet.’
So he had heard. And the unmasked derision in the look he sent her made her face turn to fire. And she felt too disoriented to invent something on the spur of the moment so she chose to attack, her slender fingers reaching unerringly for the folded newspaper on the rosewood coffee-table. She had opened it, spreading the newsprint on her lap far too many times throughout this long, quiet Sunday, knowing she shouldn’t yet unable to prevent it, like probing an aching tooth with her tongue.
The paper fell open to the right page, out of habit, she supposed, her eyes darkening as the now all too familiar photograph of her husband leap out of the grey print, his arms around a woman who was achingly, unfairly beautiful.
‘Stripping assets of the romantic kind?’ The letters of the caption danced beneath Claire’s eyes. ‘Multi-millionaire Jake Winter caught playing away from home with the darling of Roman society, the irresistible Principessa Lorella Giancetti.’
‘The paparazzi must have had a field day,’ she clipped, flicking the photograph with a pearly oval fingernail, her eyes frowning as she watched a tiny smile curl at the corners of his hard, beautiful mouth while he scanned the page, anger battering at the wall of her chest.
‘Jealous, Claire?’ Mocking grey eyes held hers for a second before lowering, drifting down over her elegantly clad body, the mockery still to be glimpsed, though shadowed by thickly tangled black lashes, because he was comparing her slender, definitely understated curves with the voluptuous ripeness of the principessa‘s body which was almost flowing out of the expensive skimpiness of the glamorous evening dress she’d been pictured wearing.
‘No.’ She made the denial both mentally and verbally. ‘Disappointed. Before we married we made certain commitments. One of which, if I remember correctly, promised complete discretion in the possible area of extra-marital affairs. This—’ she flicked the newsprint again ‘—can’t, by any stretch of the imagination, be called discreet.’
‘No.’ His frown was sudden and ferocious as he agreed. ‘I apologies.’ He tossed the paper aside, rocking back on his heels, the whippy muscles of his long, lean body held together with a tension that had to be down to the unpalatable fact of discovery, Claire decided with weary cynicism as she set about collecting his discarded jacket and tie, settling into mundane domesticity rather than meet his eyes. Eyes that stalked her every movement, as the ripple of awareness down her spine attested.
‘Apology accepted,’ she stated, her fingers curling into the soft mohair and silk fabric of his jacket. The warmth of it. His warmth. It made her voice shiver unaccountably as she tacked on quickly, ‘I suggest we forget it.’ Then she took herself in hand. She was nervous, that was all. And why shouldn’t she be? She had turned the tables, fending off his questions, his disbelief, with the printed evidence of his own misdemeanors. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t turn back to his own attack.
‘Can I get you something to eat? To drink?’ It was too late to go out to a restaurant and she’d had her own sparse supper hours ago. There was little food in the apartment. She hadn’t expected him. He unfailingly let her know where he would be, and when, so that she could be there for him, getting everything organized, oiling the wheels of his busy life. This evening’s deviation, colluding with that piece in the Press, his eavesdropping on that private phone conversation, had thrown her.
His lack of response forced her to turn, and she masked her reluctance with the lie, ‘You look tired.’
He didn’t, of course. He never did. Restless, energetic, he was never happier than when he was on the move, making things happen. At the age of thirty-seven and looking ten years younger, he was a millionaire several times over, his fortune made from asset-stripping—buying up large, moribund companies all over the world, splitting them into smaller, leaner, profitable components, selling some of them off as soon as they were viable but keeping the pick of the bunch, personally overseeing every last one of them. He had the energy, dynamism and enthusiasm of ten ordinary mortals and the enviable ability to switch off immediately.
As he was doing now. He was utterly relaxed as he sprawled out on one of the two matching sofas which flanked the hearth—the genuine Adam surround setting off a state-of-the-art coal-effect gas fire.
‘I ate on the plane, but I could use a drink.’ Relaxing, his eyes closed, he looked completely composed, but there was a tightness in his voice that made her drag her lower lip between her teeth. Was he still thinking about that phone call, turning it over in his mind? Hadn’t the photographic evidence of his own indiscretions thrown him off the scent?
Time to attack again, perhaps, before he started asking questions, demanding answers she wasn’t ready to give him.
Unusually, her fingers were shaking as she poured two fingers of the single malt he preferred into a glass and added just the right amount of bottled spring water. Her composure—one of the things he frankly admired about her—had been leaching away over the last few days. She was going to have to take herself in hand, think things through to find a logical, inevitable conclusion and act on it. That was something else she was good at. Usually.
And would be again. Starting as of now.
She hovered above him, patiently getting her breathing under control. His thick dark lashes lay heavily on those high, jutting cheekbones, softening them, and, like this, relaxed, the hard, arrogant line of his mouth was transformed into a thing of pure male beauty. Eminently kissable. Which, no doubt, the principessa had discovered, to her endless delight.
The lancing pain that sent her heart into spasm was an unwanted revelation. She hadn’t believed herself capable of such a reaction. They had been married for almost two years and she had often wondered how many women he’d bedded. No one could doubt his virility—it shouted through every line of his lean, tough body, blazed in the depths of his knowing grey eyes. But he had promised discretion—they both had—and he had broken his word. Maybe pain was a shattered promise, she thought bleakly, her hand tightening around the glass.
Leaning forward, she touched the cool surface to his artlessly open palm and watched him snap to full alertness in the disconcerting way he had. His hand closed around the glass, deliberately trapping her fingers, and she felt the little color she did have in her pale ivory skin wash out of her face.
He never touched her. He had always been almost painfully careful not to, not even accidentally. Not even when their coolly constructed ‘perfect marriage’ was on public display.
If she struggled to free her hand the whiskey would go all over the place, and there was no room for such indignities in their relationship. Aquamarine eyes battled with incisive grey until she saw the sudden flare of hard mockery and lowered her lids and he transferred his glass to his other hand, releasing hers, asking grimly, ‘Do you dislike being touched, per se, or is it only by me?’
‘I don’t think that question deserves a response, do you?’ she uttered calmly, forcing herself to retreat with slow and careful dignity to the opposite sofa and not fly headlong from the room as every cell in her body urged her to do. But as she sank into the comfortably upholstered depths nothing on earth could prevent her snapping out acidly, ‘I’m surprised you cut your Italian trip short. Wasn’t the principessa as irresistible as she’s made out to be?’
She was appalled at herself. They never quarreled. Never came near it. She didn’t know what was happening. And when he announced, with languid grace, ‘I couldn’t possibly comment, my dear,’ she wanted to hit him. Wanted it with an intensity that shook her to her soul.
‘What’s bugging you? I’d have marked you down as a woman who could handle a slice of unpleasant publicity with a sophisticated shrug of one superlatively elegant shoulder.’ He took a reflective sip of his drink, his narrowed eyes never leaving her. ‘We were pictured leaving the opera. If you’d been there—you were invited, remember—it wouldn’t have happened. And you would have enjoyed it. La Traviata. Juanita del Sorro sang Violetta. She was quite superb.’
‘I’m quite sure she was.’ Only by forcing herself to respond could she stop her teeth from audibly grinding together. Was he saying his public lapse from grace was all her fault? How dared he?
And of course he had expected her to be in Rome with him. Although he did a fair amount of business there they didn’t own an apartment in the city for her to turn into a home on the hoof. They always used the same small, privately run hotel near the Piazza Venezia where she acted—as was her part of the bargain—as PR officer, private secretary, mistress of the wardrobe, companion and sounding board. Everything she had been happy to be for the past two years.
The visit to Rome had been scheduled for months and she’d been looking forward to another all too brief trip to her favorite city until that phone call from the UK. Thankfully Jake had been out, so she’d had the Manhattan apartment to herself. If he’d been in she wouldn’t have been able to avoid his inevitable questions. She would have had to tell him the truth. And although she knew she owed it to him, that honesty within their relationship had been something they’d both decided on, right from the start, she knew she couldn’t face it, not quite yet.
And when he’d turned up, all fired up with the successful completion of yet another brilliant business deal, she’d dealt with the pressing emergency and had come up with a believable excuse for backing out of the Rome trip.
‘It’s the first time I’ve ever let you down, Jake, but would you mind if I skipped Rome? Say if you do. But suddenly I feel tired.’ She’d felt drainingly guilty at his swift look of concern and had had to force herself to add, ‘I could spend an extra, quiet day here, fly back to England and have the London apartment ready for when you get home from Rome.’
She had needed a few days’ grace, time to face up to the consequences of telling him the truth and what would be the inevitable ending of their marriage. But he’d returned two days ahead of schedule, and she didn’t know why, but she still hadn’t worked up enough courage to tell him. Just thinking about it made her ask now, suddenly in deadly earnest, ‘Jake—you and the principessa—is it serious?’
It had been part of the bargain, the let-out clause. If either of them, at any time during their paper marriage, met someone, felt serious enough about them to want a real marriage, then the other wouldn’t stand in their way. There would be an annulment, followed, if Jake was the one who wanted out, by a healthy financial settlement. If she invoked the clause she would forfeit the settlement, but she could live with that now. She wouldn’t give the lack of the kind of lifestyle she’d enjoyed during her marriage a second thought.
‘Of course not.’ He sounded as if he was on the point of yawning. And, moments later, did. He stood up, stretching, the fabric of his shirt pulled tight against his strong, lean torso. ‘I’m for bed. I’m surprised you weren’t tucked up hours ago, considering how desperately tired you were supposed to be.’
She ignored that, the acid tone, everything. She didn’t know why she felt so buoyant, as if she’d won a reprieve, when she should be feeling thwarted. If he’d told her he’d fallen in love, at last, found a woman he genuinely wanted to spend the rest of his life with—for all the right and natural reasons—then that would have created a way out for her.
She didn’t understand herself. She managed a cool goodnight and took herself off to her own peaceful room, and decided she was being dog-in-the-manger about it. She didn’t want him to walk out on her. That was what it boiled down to. If their marriage ended—and it had to, of course—then she needed to be the one to do it. A matter of pride, perhaps?
She fell asleep not liking herself very much but feeling strangely comforted.
However, any feelings of comfort, undeserved or otherwise, flew straight out of the window the very next morning.
Jake, as always, was up before her, his energy making her feel tired. Breakfast was prepared—eggs and fruit and coffee.
‘All I could find. The cupboard is bare. Not to worry.’ He flashed her the sudden white grin that had the mega-watt power to make unwary females quake at the knees. ‘I’ve been making phone calls. Eat—’ he gestured to the table in the immaculate high-tech kitchen ‘—before the eggs get cold, and I’ll tell you what I’ve arranged.’
In this mood, he made her feel as if she was in the middle of a whirlwind. Not a morning person herself, she’d taught herself how to handle his restless energy by simply letting it wash over her head until she’d dragged herself together sufficiently to cope with it. She would watch him with sleep-drugged eyes, rarely taking in much of what he said. But this morning he shocked her into full and definitely unpleasant wakefulness as he told her, ‘As I said, I’ve made a couple of calls. As soon as we’ve eaten we’ll drive up and visit with Liz and Sal. I know you speak to your mother regularly—’ his eyes pinned her to her seat ‘—but she’s looking forward to seeing you. Us. And tomorrow we’ll go on from there to Litherton. I’ll leave you in Emma’s capable hands until I join you for Christmas. She’ll see you get all the rest you need. And feed you up. You’ve lost weight recently.’ His dark brows rose, as if inviting her to explain why, and she suddenly felt desperately conscious of her body, even though it was adequately concealed by her heavy peacock-blue satin robe.
She put down her fork, her throat clogging up. He wasn’t stupid—far from it. He knew something was going on. He’d walked in on that phone call and didn’t believe her swift assertion that she’d been talking to her mother. So he was going ahead, making sure he found out—or forced her to tell him.
There was no doubt about his genuine wish to visit Liz, see that she was comfortable, had everything she needed, find out from Sally Harding, her mother’s companion, if the elderly lady was as well as she always assured them she was. For Jake had been wonderful with her mother. Liz had never been physically strong and the hard life she’d had meant that her health had suffered, and her future care and downright cosseting had been offered as part of Jake’s side of the marriage bargain they’d made. It, and it alone, had been the factor that had made Claire agree to tie herself to what was, in fact, a purely business arrangement.
But there was more to the visit than that. He was suspicious, and had decided to manage and manipulate her. He’d try to get to the truth through Liz, and if he didn’t—or not completely—he had made other contingency plans. Shut her away at Litherton Court, the Winter family home, where his younger sister, Emma, would keep an eye on her until he turned up for the usual family Christmas.
Christmas was two weeks away.
She straightened her spine, lifted troubled sea-blue eyes to his and said quietly, ‘I have something to tell you.’
CHAPTER TWO
JAKE put his coffee-cup back on its saucer, the tiny click of the china sounding desperately loud in the hollow silence that had followed her statement, making her feel as if she was in a vacuum, the act of breathing impossible.
Her fingers twisting together nervously in her lap, she watched him go very still, the tension coming from him like a physical blow, making her helplessly nervous. Brimming with agitation, she lifted her eyes to his and saw an uncharacteristic look of wariness there, as if he, and not she, were the one who was trapped. And then it went, hard grey steel back in place, his mouth grim as he invited, ‘So? Tell me.’
Aware that she’d been holding her breath, Claire dragged in air. What she had to tell him meant the beginning of the end of their relationship. A dreadful, draining reluctance took her by the throat but she managed thickly, ‘Liz has news. She heard last week that an uncle had died and left her a fortune. It was totally unexpected. She hadn’t seen him in years. He never married and ended up as a complete recluse. Liz was the only relative he had. I met him once but don’t really remember him. I was seven.’
It had been shortly after her father had walked out on her mother and one bleak day Liz had dressed her in her best clothes and taken her to visit her great-uncle. A dreary journey entailing three separate bus rides, an even drearier welcome. Claire recalled only one thing about that meeting—the cynical way he had said, ‘Just because your mother was my sister, don’t come looking to me for hand-outs. It’s not my fault your husband chose to run away with another woman. It’s up to him to support his child, not me.’
They’d left at once. Her mother’s mouth had trembled as they’d walked through the cold rain to the bus-stop and Claire had clasped her hand, transmitting her sturdy love, feeling the fragile bones beneath the scratchy, hand-knitted gloves. But later, during the tedious journey home, Liz had brightened and told her, ‘You have to be sorry for him. He thought I was after his precious money when all I wanted was what was left of our family. He has no one but we have each other. That’s worth far more than any amount of money. We’re the lucky ones.’
‘In the end he must have decided to will everything to his niece,’ Claire told Jake reflectively. ‘He wasn’t the sort of man who would leave anything to charity, no matter how deserving.’
‘I’m pleased for her,’ Jake said warmly, but she saw the question deep in those unfathomable eyes of his before he voiced it. ‘And that is all you have to tell me?’
His long, lean fingers were drumming silently on the table-top. Her lashes swooped down, hiding her confusion. The way he was looking at her made her feel guilty even though she had nothing to feel guilty about. And when he slid in, his voice coldly silky, ‘You don’t want to tell me about the lover you were speaking to when I disturbed you last night? Don’t be shy about it; the eventuality was provided for in our agreement, with the accent being on discretion. I take it you are being discreet?’ she bit out with brittle haste,
‘Unlike you and that Italian!’ Shocked by the stab of pain that prompted the outburst, she reined in her temper and stressed with stony-voiced patience, ‘I was speaking to Liz—as I told you. She wanted to know if I’d given you her news yet.’
‘Oh, of course!’ he countered with heavy irony. ‘It’s always nice to hear good news—I fully understand her desperate urgency.’
‘Don’t be sarcastic!’ She snapped to her feet, the breakfast he’d prepared for her barely touched. He didn’t believe she’d been talking to her mother. He took lovers, so why shouldn’t she? That was the way he would look at it. ‘To Liz it is urgent. She wanted you to know so that you could stop the allowance you make her. Stop paying Sal’s wages—she can well afford to do that herself now. It was all I could do to prevent her from insisting that she repay every last penny you spent on Lark Cottage.’
‘I deeded Lark Cottage to her on our wedding-day,’ Jake said grimly, and stood up too, turning and walking through to the living-room. Claire followed, her eyes puzzled. For a moment she thought she’d glimpsed a flicker of pain in his eyes, as if it hurt him to think of Liz throwing the generosity of the past two years back in his face.
He had his back to her, his fists bunched into the pockets of his trousers, staring down at the quiet street from one of the tall sash windows that graced the elegant room. And although her softly slippered feet could have made no sound on the thick carpet he clearly knew she was there because he muttered tightly, ‘There’s no question of Liz repaying the cost of the cottage. And as for the comfortable living allowance I make her—that was part of our marriage agreement. I have no intention of going back on it.’
Claire walked slowly towards him, noting how tightly the muscles on his impressive shoulders were clenched. The allowance he’d made Liz over the past two years had been far more than merely comfortable. He’d been generous with his time, too, making sure they visited the elderly lady whenever they were in England, keeping in close contact by phone when they were not, making time in his packed schedule for them to take Liz and Sally Harding to the Italian lakes for ten days each spring, sending her books he thought she’d like to read. Little things, granted—set against his immense wealth—but meaning so much, and going far beyond the letter of the agreement they’d made.
She couldn’t bear him to think his generosity was being tossed back in his face. She couldn’t bear him to be hurt.
Not stopping to analyze the depth of her feelings or the impulse that made her move quickly to place her body in front of him, reach out to touch his perfectly hewn features, she said gently, ‘Liz would hate you to think she was ungrateful. It’s the last thing she’d want. But her pride is all she’s ever had, remember. And now she finds herself in a position to provide for herself she’s walking on air. Don’t try to deny her that.’
She wasn’t conscious of the way her cool fingertips were softly stroking his temple, the palm of her hand gently laid against the hardly sculpted side of his face, until he turned his head, his eyes holding hers with lancing intensity as his lips moved erotically against the suddenly unbearably sensitized palm of her hand. She gave a small, shaky gasp as wildfire sensations seared through her body and saw his hooded eyes grow speculative. She snatched her hand away.
Touching hadn’t been part of their contract. Non-consummation had been agreed on. She was too fastidious to contemplate sex without love and he wouldn’t want a sexual relationship, with all its inherent emotional complications, to put their down-to-earth and mutually beneficial partnership in jeopardy.
Was that why he had gone out of his way to avoid any physical contact—even the most innocent? Had he known something she had never even suspected—that his slightest touch would send her up in flames?
Praying she wouldn’t betray her humiliation with something as uncool as a blush, she stepped briskly back and squared her shoulders, summoned her normal, politely friendly tone and stated, ‘If we’re going on to Lither ton from Lark Cottage then I’d better throw a few things in a bag. But I warn you, much as I like your sister, don’t expect me to bury myself down there for the next two weeks. I’d be bored out of my skull.’
Not true. She and Jake had spent a wonderfully relaxing time at Litherton Court last Christmas, plus a gloriously lazy long weekend in the early autumn, but she wasn’t going to admit that she would be miserable if she didn’t see him for two whole weeks, because she wasn’t ready to admit it to herself.
And despite having been the last to speak she had the distinctly edgy feeling, as she swept out of the room, that she hadn’t had the last word.
Four hours later Liz said happily, ‘Oh, it’s lovely to see you!’ and stood on tiptoe to plant a kiss on Jake’s lean, hard cheek, smothered in the bulk of his sheepskin jacket as he hugged her, then turned to her daughter for her embrace. As Claire’s arms went round the tiny frame she thought, She’s not nearly as frail as she used to be, and felt tears of gratitude for all Jake had done sting behind her eyes and clog her throat.
‘Come along in, out of the cold. As soon as we heard your car come round the corner of the lane Sal went to put the kettle on. And your rooms are ready, so go along up if you want to freshen up before we snack.’
As the door closed on the cold grey mist of the December afternoon Jake’s height and breadth and alarmingly magnetic male presence filled the tiny, cheerful hall and Claire grabbed her suitcase, suddenly needing the quiet privacy of her room, space to breathe, away from that throat-grabbing presence. But Jake, shrugging out of his sheepskin, said, ‘I want a private word with you, Liz, before we do a damn thing.’
‘Does that dour tone tell me that Claire has at last got around to giving you my news?’ Faded blue eyes twinkled up into commanding grey slits. ‘I always think it’s bad taste to get excited over a legacy. But in Uncle Arnold case I think I can be excused. He never cared about anyone in the whole of his life and in the end no one cared about him.’ Her mouth drooped at the corners as she added, ‘Though I sent him a card each Christmas, keeping him up to date with whatever news there was, even after he...’
Her voice tailed away and Jake took her arm in a gentle but inescapable grip, urging her towards the door that led to the sitting-room, his voice firm as he told her, ‘Stop trying to soften me up. You’ve got some serious explaining to do. What are families for, if not to help each other when possible? I hope you’re not going to tell me you found what little help I gave a burden you’re delighted to shrug off?’
Although his words were tough his voice was soft around the edges as he ushered Liz into the sitting-room. Claire sighed briefly and mounted the stairs. The question of his allowance was something they’d have to thrash out between them and she was deeply thankful that she’d been able to persuade her mother that her decision to reimburse Jake fully for the purchase price of Lark Cottage, and everything in it, would have been seen as gross ingratitude, and hurtful.
She was thankful, too, that she’d made Jake promise never, in any circumstances, to divulge that his care of her mother had been the only reason she’d agreed to marry him.
As she reached her room and closed herself in with the cottage pine antiques, the lemon-yellow and grey and cream fabrics which picked out the main colors of the sunny sprigged wallpaper and the thick scatter rugs on the oak-boarded floor, her mouth twisted wryly as she remembered how appalled Liz had been, the first time they’d visited, when she had explained that, being modern and sophisticated, she and Jake had decided on separate rooms.
But Liz would be even more appalled, and permanently so, if she knew that her daughter’s marriage to the son-in-law she openly adored and respected was nothing but a business arrangement.
She hung her mulberry-coloured wool coat in the wardrobe, unpacked the few things she’d need for the two days Jake had said they would be spending here and allowed the tranquility of the cottage, set as it was on the outskirts of a tiny Shropshire village, to soothe her unaccustomed ruffled soul.
There really was nothing to get in a state about, she assured herself. She and Jake had agreed that their paper marriage would end when it was no longer useful. And as far as she was concerned its usefulness had ended with that legacy. And as for Jake, well, his unprecedented lack of discretion over the principessa affair had to signal that he wanted his freedom—even if he wasn’t fully aware of it yet.
So their days were numbered, the last hours ticking away, and it truly didn’t matter, did it? she asked herself as she sank down on the window-seat and gazed down on the garden that, even at this dead time of year, was her mother’s pride and joy.
With a sense of inevitability, the tying up of loose ends, her mind slid back over the years, looking at everything that had happened, taking her to the point when she had agreed to marry Jake.
The foundations had been laid in her childhood. She barely remembered her father because he’d gone by the time her seventh birthday came around. Apparently, he had never wanted the responsibility of children and Liz had been thirty-eight when Claire was born. Liz had never been physically strong and after the birth she had had to give up her job working for a florist, pushing even more responsibility on to the man who hadn’t wanted it in the first place.
So no, she wouldn’t recognize her father now if she passed him in the street, but she could remember the build-up of tension as the weekends approached, when her father, a company rep, would be home. Recall how her mother had seemed frightened of him, of his sudden bursts of temper, his long sulks.
Once, long after he’d disappeared, and the eventual divorce, Claire had asked her mother why she had stayed with him as long as she had. Liz had looked blank, as if such a thought had never entered her head, and simply imparted that she’d made her marriage vows in good faith and, having made them, wouldn’t be the one to break them. It was then Claire had realised that her father had taken a naïve, trusting, loving soul and turned her into a doormat, and she had made a private vow never to allow it to happen to her.
When her husband had walked out on them Liz had had to find work to support them. She’d brought a child into the world and loved her devotedly, and no way was that child to be deprived of decent food and respectable clothes. They’d moved to a small flat because Liz couldn’t afford the rent on the house they lived in, but somehow there had always been treats—a coach trip to the coast each summer, a birthday party to which all her friends were invited, a visit to the local theater for the Christmas pantomime.
All at the expense of her health, Claire had realized years later.
Never strong, Liz had taken only part-time menial work because while her daughter was at school she’d insisted on being there when Claire came home. So she had often been exploited, poorly paid, having no qualifications which might have opened more lucrative, less physically grueling doors for her.
After gaining her secretarial qualifications and a year’s practical experience, Claire had joined a top-quality agency because she could earn more that way, insisted that Liz give up all her part-time jobs, and had been filling in for Jake’s personal secretary—the one who went everywhere with him, and who was recovering after an appendectomy—when Liz had had a heart attack.
Claire had been out of her mind with worry. Just as she had begun earning enough to allow her mother to take life more easily, fate had dealt this blow.
Jake had been wonderful, far more sympathetic and supportive than her ephemeral position as a temp could have led her to expect. He had insisted on waiting with her through that dreadful night at the hospital when she hadn’t expected her mother to survive the attack, metaphorically holding her hand and, somehow, drawing her whole life story out of her.
And later, when her mother’s recovery had been assured—this time, so her consultant had warned—Jake had broken the news that his personal secretary had decided to call it a day. Her fiancé apparently took a dim view of the unsocial hours she was often called upon to work, the times—many of them—when she had to be out of the country, dancing attendance on her employer.
‘I’ve a proposition to put to you,’ he had told her. And now, without even having to try, she had total recall of every last inflexion of his voice, the way the pale afternoon winter sunlight had been streaming through the long sash windows of the London apartment, shining his raven-wing hair, highlighting the taut, olive-toned skin on his jutting cheekbones, throwing those enigmatic grey eyes into deepest shadow.
He’d waved aside the bunch of faxed reports she’d just brought through from the study. ‘Sit down, put that sharp brain of yours into receiving mode, and listen.’
She’d sat, the slight smile his choice of words had brought to flickering life quickly fading because she couldn’t put her concern over Liz’s future to the back of her mind as a good secretary should.
The excellent salary she was earning through the agency meant that her mother no longer had any pressing financial worries. On the other hand, working for the agency meant that she often had to travel to distant parts of the country, and that, in turn, meant there was no one to keep an eye on Liz, see that she ate properly, took the regular periods of rest that were so important to her long-term recovery.
And she wouldn’t put it past her, as soon as she was back on her feet, to trundle out to find some kind of job. Liz had her pride, didn’t want to be a burden, was inclined to mutter on about Claire being able to spend some of her hard-earned salary on herself instead of using it to support her parent in idleness.
‘As I’ve told you, Anthea won’t be coming back, which leaves me, again, without a permanent personal secretary,’ Jake growled. ‘They come weighed down with all the right qualifications and good intentions, and before you know it they find some lame excuse or other to quit.’
So a disgruntled fiance, Anthea’s love-life, was considered to be a lame excuse, was it? Controlling the upward twitch of her mouth, Claire pushed her own worries out of her mind and concentrated on his.
While she sat, composed and still, he paced the floor, displaying all that restless energy she had grown to admire, and marvel at. He smacked a fist into the open palm of his other hand and grated, ‘They know what’s required and receive a blinding salary to compensate for any minor inconveniences! And God knows, I’m not a monster to work for, am I, Claire?’ He glared at her, his brows bunched, as if he couldn’t believe anyone fortunate enough to work for him would ever willingly depart—for any reason under the sun—and she clamped her teeth tightly together to control the grin that threatened to break out and gave him back a soothing, if necessarily tight-lipped smile, a confirming shake of her head.
Not a monster, never that. Demanding, brilliant, restless, capable of long, sustained bursts of energy that left lesser mortals feeling drained and giddy, sometimes impossible and sometimes staggeringly, generously thoughtful and kind. But never a monster.
‘Any suggestions?’ He had come to a standstill, hovering over her, his hands now bunched into his trouser pockets.
Disregarding the bluntly aggressive tone, she lifted cool eyes to meet the piercing blaze of his and replied calmly, ‘Hire someone who’s not interested in a love-life. A widow-woman, say, well into her fifties.’ She was trying very hard to keep a straight face. ‘Or, better still, a man. A man with a family to support, who would be grateful for a spectacular salary and the opportunity to escape the kids from time to time.’ A touch of bitterness there? she wondered. Memories of the way her own father had been?
‘Would a man take charge of my laundry, cook the occasional meal, buy my socks?’ he scorned. ‘And would your putative widow-woman have the stamina to keep up with my schedules?’
His smile was tight, almost feral, as he swept her suggestions aside. Then, with one of the mood swings she had come to expect, he dropped on to the opposite sofa, swinging one immaculately trousered leg over the other, tipping his head on one side as he gave her a long, considering look, before saying with languid smoothness, ‘Having wiped out the options, I want you to consider my proposition. Take the job; work for me. Permanently. And, to ensure you don’t dredge up some flimsy excuse to terminate your employment, I will marry you.’
Marriage! Her stomach muscles shivered, then clenched. She had expected him to offer her a permanent position, had been reluctantly prepared to turn it down because if she was on the other side of the globe with him who would keep an eye on Liz—but marriage! That was the last thing she’d expected him to offer! Quite out of the question!
‘And before you verbalize what’s written on your face,’ his voice came through the whirlpool of her thoughts, silky soft yet carrying the core of that iron will of his, ‘listen, absorb and contemplate. Firstly,’ he ticked off on a lean, long forefinger, ‘the marriage will not be consummated. To the outside world it will appear the perfect match, but privately you will function as my personal secretary. No more, no less. Your salary will be paid in the form of an allowance—and you won’t find me ungenerous. Secondly, you will enjoy the financial security, the luxury, my wife would naturally expect. In return, I will have the loyalty and continuity of service I need.’
‘This is crazy!’ Ignoring the fluttery sensations that invaded her insides, Claire fixed him with a cool, sea-blue stare. ‘I won’t pretend I wouldn’t jump at the job offer if it didn’t mean leaving Liz to her own devices, but you don’t need to tie yourself down to that extent, surely? When you find someone suitable you could insist on a watertight contract.’
‘In which a clever lawyer could find any number of leaks!’ He shook his head, leaning forward a little, his superbly hewn features softening with an obvious need to understand. ‘We get along well together and I can’t fault your work—the past few weeks have demonstrated that. And during that night when you feared you would lose Liz—and I’ll come to her in a moment—you were open enough to tell me of her disastrous marriage, confide that her experience, plus the way you’d seen quite a high proportion of your friends’ marriages go down the drain, had put you off ever making that commitment yourself. So tell me, where do you find the problem in my proposed business agreement?’
‘You,’ she said with stark honesty. Then wondered why her mouth had gone dry. Avoiding his eyes, she flicked her tongue over her lips and made herself elaborate, ‘Who you are, what you are.’ She didn’t need to go further, tell him what he already had to know—that with his looks, all that sexy charisma, his wealth and staggering power he could have the pick of any woman he fancied. Instead she said primly, ‘I can’t believe you’re a stranger to the opposite sex. And I can’t believe the day won’t dawn when you’ll fall in love and want a real marriage, a family to enjoy the empire you’ve created. And when that day does arrive I’ll be the first to go, with nothing but the dubious honor of being the first, and discarded, Mrs Jake Winter.’
Hearing the rising note of bitterness in her voice and not having any way of understanding it, she slumped back against the soft cushions and waited to hear how he’d get out of that. And she went into a state of shock, or something very like it, when he simply turned the power of his wide white smile on her, explaining lightly, ‘I won’t even try to pretend I’m a stranger to your sex. However, much as I enjoy female company I know myself well enough to avoid making any long-term emotional commitments. To make a marriage happy, secure and stable you have to work at it. I wouldn’t find the time. My business gives me all the challenge I can handle. It’s as addictive and demanding as playing chess at the highest level—I’m not looking for anything more. I could handle a paper marriage—I’ve neither the time nor the inclination to work at a proper one. Inevitably I’d get bored and restless. And, as I’ve experienced, paid secretaries and housekeepers can be a pain. I need someone who will be emotionally undemanding, always there when needed, wherever I happen to be. I hate hotel life as a general rule, so have my own apartments in most of the major capitals around the world, and I need someone there to organize some kind of home life as well as business breakfasts, lunches or dinners, put on her secretary hat when needed and, as I mentioned—’ his grin was sapping all her strength ‘—buy my socks. Or whatever. And as far as I’m concerned, unless and until I make a family of my own—which, at this moment in time, I can’t see myself ever contemplating—any children my sister and her husband might have would become my heirs. And I suppose there should be an opt-out clause,’ he clipped, his change of tone suddenly making her see how seriously he was taking this plethora of alarming nonsense. ‘In the unlikely event of my deciding I wanted to be free to remarry, you would receive a substantial settlement in money and property. If you wanted out, for the same reason, then I wouldn’t stand in your way. You would, however, forfeit the settlement.’
The smile he gave her was chilling, sending shivers riding down the length of her spine, and, shifting uneasily against the cushions, she was about to decline his offer politely when he forestalled her, knocking the breath out of her lungs as he added, ‘About Liz. As an added and, in my opinion—having spoken at length to her consultant—necessary inducement, I guarantee to keep her in comfort for the rest of her life. In a house of her own and your choosing, with a resident companion—medically trained—to keep an eye on her health and well being, keep her company, do all the little jobs around the place she shouldn’t be allowed to tackle. Think about it, Claire. Think carefully, and give me your answer in the morning.’
He stood up, terminating the crazy interview, and Claire, her legs feeling unbelievably unsteady, tottered off to the study, finishing up there and driving home in a daze, not able to bring herself to say goodnight to him because everything inside her head had gone on hold.
It was the promise he had made regarding Liz’s future that tipped the balance. True, the actual job he was offering was a challenge that was difficult to resist, and she could live with the marriage part of it. She would look at it as a strange type of job description, the utter sterility of the relationship a secret between Jake and herself. But it was the thought that her mother would at last be able to relax, live a life of comfort and ease, having a cosy home of her own and the lush country garden she had always dreamed of—with the added bonus that wherever Claire found herself she would know that Liz had someone close at hand to keep her from being lonely, watch that she didn’t overtire herself, make her go for regular check-ups—that brought Claire to Jake’s London apartment, an acceptance of his offer of marriage firmly lodged in her head.
Jake received her acceptance with a calm, ‘Thank you. You won’t regret it,’ but persuading Liz to accept his charity was a different matter.
She had met Jake, of course and, although bemused by the suddenness of it, was delighted by the prospect of the marriage. Her darling girl had fallen in love with a man who would care for her, provide handsomely for her, for the rest of her life. What mother could ask for more? But living on charity was something else altogether.
Not until Jake was brought in to fight Claire’s corner were matters resolved. He simply told her, ‘In three weeks’ time I am marrying your daughter. That makes you, like it or not, part of my family. And what type of man—especially one who has more money than he can count—leaves a valued member of his family to mooch around in a mediocre flat in an unlovely London backstreet?’
And so Lark Cottage was found, furnished with every comfort and convenience, Sally Harding, an ex-nurse, forthright but kind, employed, everything—even their paper marriage—running smoothly until now. Until her mother’s legacy had set her free.
An impatient rapping on the bedroom door had Claire dragging her eyes from the window-pane. The winter darkness had descended. She’d been looking at nothing. Blinking, she watched Jake enter the room, his impressive height and sheer physical presence seeming to diminish everything in it. His features were expressionless, yet his eyes pierced her, his voice harsh as he said, ‘Liz is presiding over the tea-table, staring with longing at the teapot. As is Sal. Might I suggest you join us and put them out of their misery?’
She rose slowly to her feet. She’d lost count of time. Eating her share of one of Sal’s massive teas—three different types of dainty sandwiches, mountainous sponge cakes, slab cake, a wild selection of home-made biscuits—was not, at the moment, very appealing.
She sighed, and he heard it. His eyes narrowed. He made an ‘after you’ gesture as she reached the door and his tone when he spoke, silk cloaking iron, rasped on her strangely jangled nerves.
‘Liz’s delight in finding herself so unexpectedly and independently wealthy was so transparent, I hadn’t the heart to insist that she continue to live off my allowance. However,’ he added, his mouth straightening in a grim line, ‘that doesn’t give you an opt-out, grounds for terminating our agreement. Only one thing can do that, so don’t you ever forget it.’
CHAPTER THREE
“ONLY one thing”. The only opt-out Jake would accept was if one or other of them fell in love.
Claire fastened her seat belt as Jake slid into the driver’s seat. She didn’t look at him, concentrated instead on waving goodbye to Liz and Sal, doing her best to look relaxed and cheerful.
For some reason the couple of days they’d spent at Lark Cottage had been a strain. Normally, it was no such thing. Claire valued any time she was able to spend with Liz, and her pretend marriage hadn’t been a problem before because Jake had the ability to make everyone relax. When it suited him, that was. And it always suited him when he was around Liz.
So she couldn’t put her edginess down to him, or only obliquely. The only reason she’d agreed to marry him had been to secure her mother’s future welfare. But, for him, the fact that he’d no longer be supporting Liz didn’t count. He’d made that abundantly clear. And what troubled her was the stupid, surging relief she’d felt when he’d slept it out!
‘Still adamant about not staying on at Lither ton until I join you for Christmas?’ Jake asked tautly as he smoothly negotiated the big car through the tangled network of narrow country lanes that would, in around twenty minutes, bring them to the Winter family home.
She shrugged, biting down on her lip, staring fixedly ahead. She was all churned up inside, her emotions warring. She didn’t want to stay on at Lither ton without him; she had already acknowledged that much. And when she’d believed that Liz’s legacy would inevitably lead to the end of their marriage she had been—well, ‘disconsolate’ was the word she thought she was looking for.
It would be madness to allow herself to become dependent on his company. Sooner or later the marriage would end, and probably sooner, if his indiscreet relationship with the principessa was anything to go by.
Without being aware of it she had allowed herself to be drawn into the false security of dependency. It was time she did something about it. And so she told him with a lightness she was far from feeling, ‘No, I’ve had second thoughts. Long walks in the fresh air, coming back to roaring log fires and Emma’s marvellous cooking—just what I need.’ And she cursed herself for feeling so miserable because she’d done the right thing, committed herself to two whole weeks without him. Which only went to show how uncomfortably real the danger was becoming.
She opened her eyes very wide at the look of frowning suspicion he darted her then closed them on a spasm of unadulterated pain when he returned his attention back to the road and told her, ‘Good. I’m glad you’ve seen sense. There’d be no point in your kicking around on your own in London. I’ll be in Rome, plunging into some rather exciting unfinished business.’
The voluptuous principessa, of course. And did he have to be so crude about it? Any other time he would have wanted her there with him, arranging meetings, sitting in on them wearing her secretarial hat, acting as a sounding board for his involved thought-processes as they shared a nightcap together back at the hotel.
But not this time. And she didn’t have to be a mind-reader to know why.
Half reluctantly, she turned her head and allowed her eyes to dwell briefly on his savagely handsome profile. Was he aware that the rot had set in, that his indiscretions were pointing the way to the final break-up, that he had at last found a woman for whom he was happy to throw caution out of the window?
She looked quickly away again, misery darkening her eyes. In agreeing to stay on with his sister and her husband she had done exactly the right thing. The process of weaning herself away from him was about to begin.
* * *
Litherton Court had been in the Winter family for generations. The sturdy stone house, built in the reign of Elizabeth Tudor, looked particularly lovely on this bright, crisp morning, Claire thought as she emerged from the copse, looking down on the house in its smooth green hollow of land.
Sunlight glittered on the tiny panes set in elegant mullions and made the pale building stone look warm and mellow. Claire wondered, not for the first time, how Jake could have turned his back on the property, handing it and the vast estates over to Emma when she’d married Frank.
But it was impossible to imagine the restless, dynamic Jake Winter settling down to run a country estate, she acknowledged, pushing her hands deeper into the pockets of her sheepskin coat. And that being the case, what could be more natural than his handing over his inheritance when Emma married? When he had been twenty-five and already a force to be reckoned with in the business world, and Emma a sheltered eighteen, their parents had been killed in a motorway pile-up. The double blow had traumatised them both, particularly Emma. It had taken her a long time to get over it and Jake had become very protective of her. Until the advent of the principessa Claire had believed that Emma was the only female under sixty Jake had any tenderness or respect for. The way women had always thrown themselves at him had made him cynical. So did he know he was ready to fall in love, ready to make a lasting, worthwhile commitment? An expert at second-guessing other people’s moves, correctly judging their motivations, had he recognized his own slip for what it was—a willingness, in the case of this one special woman, to give the world at large advance notice of his intentions?
If it had been a slip then it had been a deliberate one. No one could ever accuse him of being a man who didn’t know what he was doing. During the two years of their marriage he must have had the occasional short-lived affair; he was too virilely male not to have done. But there had never been a breath of scandal, never a hint.
So this was different.
Her fine brows knotted together, she set her booted feet on the downward track, heading back towards the house. How many times during the five days since he had left for Rome had she worried away at the conjectures that kept rearing up inside her head? Was he with Lorella Giancotti now, at this very moment? Was he explaining about his paper marriage—something that had been their secret up until now? Making plans, promising to get an annulment very soon, asking her to marry him?
With a savage spurt of temper she kicked out at the loose stones in her path, sending them skittering. The decisions he made about his private life didn’t matter, did they? She had entered into marriage for purely practical reasons, with her eyes wide open. In spite of his offhanded denials, she had always known that this was on the cards, accepted that he would fall in love one day and ask her for an annulment. So why did she feel as if her whole world was falling apart?
Because the breakdown of their marriage would mean the end of her job, she answered herself staunchly as she unlatched the gate in the high stone wall that surrounded the gardens proper, keeping them separate from the rest of the estate.
Relief poured through her like a flood of sweet warm water and she whistled cheerfully for the two young Labradors and the pensioned-off sheepdog who had accompanied her on her morning walk, smiling as they bounded towards her. She had heard Emma say that she could never have too many dogs and they seemed to be all over the house, curled up in armchairs and sofas, heaps of them on the rug in front of the Aga, basking in the warmth. And because Frank was devoted to his prettily plump wife he tolerated them cheerfully.
Ushering the dogs through the gate, she closed it securely behind her, feeling light-hearted for the first time in days.
She loved her job, thrived on the challenges and hassles, the praise Jake gave so generously, the companionship that inevitably built up when you worked so closely with someone you admired and respected. But she certainly couldn’t keep it after they separated. It would look very odd to the rest of the world if she were to continue to work for her ex-husband after he remarried.
So the prospect of losing her job had to be responsible for the bleak mood she’d been in ever since she’d seen that photograph and realized the implications behind his first ever indiscretion. And before that, even, beginning when Liz had told her about that legacy and she’d thought—wrongly, as it happened—that Jake would terminate their agreement because the conditions were no longer being met and he, above anything, was an honorable man.
And the relief that she had worked it all out must have shown on her face because when she walked into the big, cosy kitchen Emma, heating milk on the Aga to add to the mid-morning coffee, turned and said, ‘What’s happened to cheer you up? You’ve been looking like a wet Sunday since Jake left. I said you were missing the brute but Frank thought you were sickening for something.’
Claire didn’t like to think she was so transparent, but she hid her unease with a smiling shrug and offered, ‘Fresh air and exercise does wonders! It’s a beautiful morning and you don’t feel the cold if you keep moving. The dogs enjoyed it, too.’
Thankfully, the mention of dogs deflected her, as it had been meant to do. Emma petted and crooned over the dogs which had just returned, sitting at her feet, pink tongues lolling. Claire rescued the milk.
She and Emma had taken an instant liking to each other the first time they’d met. Jake had insisted she spend that first Christmas here. They’d just got ‘engaged’—one of the shortest on record—and he’d brought her down to meet the only family he had. And last Christmas they’d been here as a married couple, he giving the same reason she had for their preference for separate rooms, and they would be here together again this year. For the very last time, she expected.
Jake always spent the festive season at Lither ton, and was openly impatient for Emma to provide him with nieces and nephews for him to spoil and play with. But Emma was in no hurry to oblige. She had her dogs and her husband, not to mention the absorbing business of running the big estate like clockwork, with the occasional input from Frank, who was Jake’s personal accountant, handling his impressively massive portfolio.
Claire deeply regretted being unable to let her sister-in-law get really close. Emma was open and bright and bubbly and would have liked nothing better than to have long heart-to-heart chats with her brother’s wife, but Claire, recognizing the dangers in that, put on an act of reserve and refused to be drawn. No one but she and Jake knew what a sham their marriage was. They both wanted to keep it that way.
‘There’s just the two of us today,’ Emma remarked as Claire finished making the coffee. ‘Frank’s spending the day with Liz. He’d have asked you along too, but they’ll be spending the time talking investments. Boring!’ She pretended an exaggerated yawn and Claire’s mouth twisted in a wry smile. One of the first things Jake had done after they’d arrived at Lither ton was to tell Frank of Liz’s newly acquired wealth.
‘At the moment it’s swilling around in her bank account. I want you to go and see her. You can do better than that for her.’ His tone had implied ‘or else’, and that was typical of the type of man he was. Claire pushed him quickly out of her mind and the wall-mounted phone rang.
She was already—more or less successfully—thinking of her marriage in the past tense so when she realised Emma was talking to Jake the shock made her stomach curl up in a ball and turn to ice. And they were obviously talking about her, because Emma was saying, ‘No. Only to do some Christmas shopping. She borrowed one of the cars and took off for the day.’
Claire watched the puzzled frown gather between her sister-in-law’s eyes and just knew he was checking up on her. He was still suspicious about the phone call he’d interrupted, and that made her coldly angry because who was he to poke and pry into her affairs when his was splashed all over the papers? He would want their marriage to end when the time was right for him. He wouldn’t want her jumping the gun, painting him in the guise of a cuckolded husband!
‘Of course I didn’t go with her,’ Emma was saying, running out of patience. ‘I always get mine done early, you know that. No. No— Look, she’s right here; ask her yourself.’
She handed Claire the receiver with an upward hunch of her shoulders and Claire managed coolly, ‘Ask me what?’
The tiny ensuing silence was electrifying and, for no reason that she could fathom, her heart began to beat like a drum gone out of control; then cold anger took over as he told her without an atom of shame, ‘Just checking up on how my wife spends her time. Get all your shopping done, did you? Or perhaps you forgot something vital? Find you have to spend yet another day in town?’
If theirs had been a normal marriage she would have thought he was harboring deep suspicions, half believing she was seeing someone else, was blisteringly jealous. As it was, she knew he was simply anxious not to be made to look a fool.
She hated it when they were like this together. Up until his return from Rome they had got along fine, becoming really close companions. Squashing the impulse to reassure him, because getting back on to a best friends footing again would only make the inevitable break-up much more difficult, she gushed, ‘Now however did you guess? Such a bore! Was there anything else you wanted to check up on, or can I go? My coffee’s getting cold.’
‘No, you may not go.’ The tone of his voice set all the nerves in her body on edge. It was the tone she had heard him use when dealing out reprimands to underlings who had earned his displeasure. He had never used it to her before. And now that clipped, arrogant voice was telling her, ‘I’m buying a property in Have ling. The agent will deliver the keys to you in the morning. As soon as he does, I want you to drive over there and wait for me. I should arrive around lunchtime. Got that?’
She answered, ‘Yes,’ but was talking to silence. Her face went red. He’d put the phone down, just like that! How dared he treat her as if she were a mere employee he’d suddenly lost patience with?
But an employee was all she was, all she had ever been, she reminded herself with a swift return to rationality, and maybe the brisk arrogance he’d used on her for the very first time was his way of easing them apart, phasing out the strange but special relationship they’d had.
‘What was that all about?’ Emma wanted to know. ‘I’ve never heard him so snappy—someone been giving him a bad time?’ She was cutting fruit cake and suddenly looked deadly serious. ‘You? Before he left he asked me to keep an eye on you,’ she went on slowly, as if thinking things out and not liking the conclusions she was reaching. ‘He said he was worried about you. You’d got overtired, I must make sure you had plenty of rest and didn’t go racketing round on your own. But just then he sounded on edge, as if there was a lot more to it than that. Is there?’
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