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How had her doctors found that Marc Corbett was a bone marrow match? Common sense told him that the man had probably enrolled on the worldwide register—but why? And surely donors’ names were kept secret?
Lauren looked at him with eyes so translucent it seemed impossible for her to hide a thought. ‘He told me that when I got better he’d give me a job if I wanted one and if I was suitable; of course I was delighted, and when I got the all-clear I fronted up. I had to go through the same process as anyone else, but I got in, and ever since then we’ve had a sort of—well, closeness. I try not to impose on it, but he’s a darling, and so is his wife, Paige.’
Guy’s mouth curved in an ironic smile. He liked Marc Corbett and respected him, but darling wasn’t a word he’d have used to describe the man.
Once again she lifted limpid eyes to his. Her voice rang true, she was looking him straight in the face, but instincts honed in the cutthroat world he’d made his own told him she was lying. Or at the very least, only revealing part of the truth.
Coldly, clinically, he decided that if her story was a front for an affair, it had the advantage of originality. Even if it was true, she could still be Marc Corbett’s lover.
As for her obvious affection for Paige Corbett, it wouldn’t be the first—or the last—time a woman had an ongoing relationship with the husband of a friend.
Lauren wondered uneasily what was going on behind those fabulous features, gilded by sunlight. Did he believe her? And had it been enough to satisfy him?
She found herself wishing she could trust him with the whole truth. If it had just been herself she might have, but in the end it wasn’t her secret.
She said brightly, ‘It’s an old story, and not one I’d like to get around. Some people say that if you save someone’s life you’re responsible for them forever afterwards; I’d hate people to believe Marc gave me a job because of some quirk of genetic good fortune.’
‘I can understand that,’ Guy said with a smile that blended irony with a hint of self-derision.
Sunlight conjured a shimmer of mahogany fire from his black hair. He dragged out a wallet from his pocket, scribbled something on a page of a small diary, and tore it out to hand to her. ‘In case you need me,’ he said.
Their fingers touched, and Lauren’s heart jumped.
‘And just to remind you how it was with us—’ he said through his teeth, and covered the three paces that separated them, drawing her into his arms.
Every nerve speared by forbidden delight, Lauren froze. He looked down into her face, his own angrily intent. ‘No, you haven’t forgotten,’ he said in a raw voice.
And then he kissed her eyelids closed, his breath warm on her skin.
Pierced by erotic poignancy, Lauren’s defences crumbled into sand. This was what she’d been waiting for—this sense of rightness, of completeness…
His lips crushed hers in a kiss that obliterated all sense of time and space. Helplessly she melted into his arms and gave him everything he asked for, responding with feverish passion to his sensuous onslaught.
But although she wanted nothing more than to let this go on to its inevitable conclusion, she finally fought free of the consuming hunger to shake her head and drag her mouth from his, gasping hoarsely, ‘No!’
A fierce, possessive gleam fired his eyes. ‘But you were saying yes a moment ago.’
Even then she hovered on the brink of surrender until hard common sense forced its way through the mists of desire.
‘No,’ she repeated quietly, uncompromisingly, because she knew that she’d never be safe, that the only way to stop herself from falling headlong into infatuation was to end it now.
But oh, it was hard to say, with his strength and his heat seducing her, with the sexy, evocative aroma of his skin scrambling her brain, and his taste on her lips, in her mouth—when every cell in her body screamed for the release only he could give her.
His mouth hardened. ‘Why?’
‘Because I don’t want this.’ The lie hurt, and it hurt more that he knew it was a lie. ‘I find you very attractive,’ she hurried on, surprised at the clarity of each word, ‘but the idea of being married to you—if that’s what I am—is ridiculous. And I certainly don’t want an affair with you.’
She invested the final word with a flick of scorn, and saw it register on his face. He smiled, and as she shivered he freed her and stepped back.
‘Really?’ he said politely. ‘I can think of plenty of words to describe such a marriage, but ridiculous doesn’t come to mind. As for the affair— I thought we’d already had it.’
‘We spent a few days together,’ she corrected, gripped by intolerable anguish. Yet she had to send him out of her life. ‘I’m sorry, but a tropical fling is not expected to last beyond the tropics. I’ll always be grateful to you for saving my life, because I suspect that’s what you did.’
‘Stop right there,’ he advised with an inflection so deadly it chilled her into temporary paralysis. ‘If you’re telling me that you slept with me out of gratitude, I’ll just have to show you that you’re wrong. We made love because we wanted each other.’
‘Of course I did—we did!’ She struggled to clear her mind. ‘You know very well that I—that we—that it was mutual.’ She stopped and dragged in a jerky breath before finishing defiantly, ‘But it’s over.’
For a charged moment he surveyed her, his beautiful mouth hard against the chiselled angles of his face. Finally he drawled, ‘Then there’s nothing more to say,’ and turned away. ‘Goodbye, Lauren.’
Aching with a bleak sense of loss and pain, she watched him stride towards the thick row of trees that hid the helicopter pad. Fate and war had shackled them together until they could get free of this marriage.
Whatever she felt for Guy Bagaton couldn’t possibly be love; that involved much more than gratitude and great sex.
Only a loser would love a man who thought she was another man’s mistress, and she wasn’t a loser. She didn’t even know him.
Not really.
The sound of the helicopter’s rotor blades drove her to shelter beneath the overhanging branches of one of the great trees bordering the champagne curve of the beach. As she listened to the machine carry Guy away from her, she found herself thinking of all the ways she did know him…
Perhaps when people had forgotten about the war in Sant’Rosa, it might be safe to see him again. Without all this other baggage cluttering up their relationship, they could perhaps meet as ordinary people.
No. She’d sent him away.
And she’d do it again. When she’d asked her mother why, of all the people in the world, Marc’s bone marrow matched hers, Isabel’s admission of adultery had been shattering enough, but what had appalled her was her mother’s response when Lauren began to ask if her father knew.
After the first two tentative words her mother had interrupted fiercely, ‘He does now. Don’t ever speak to him about it. The stress could kill him.’
Lauren didn’t know how her parents had worked through this rough patch, but their love had held them together through the trauma.
When the steady thump-thump-thump of the rotors had died away, she went back inside and rang London.
‘How’s Dad?’
‘He’s fine,’ her mother said reassuringly. ‘How are you, darling?’
‘Fine too, but I’ve had an unsettling visit from the man who got me out of Sant’Rosa.’
Censoring heavily, she told her mother why Guy had come, ending with, ‘I think I’ll come home as soon as I can.’
‘No,’ Isabel said firmly. ‘You need that holiday, Lauren—your health isn’t anything to take lightly.’
‘I feel perfectly normal again,’ Lauren assured her. Well, apart from worrying about journalists, the marriage, and obsessing about Guy. ‘But if some reporter finds out about this wretched marriage they’ll probably come looking for you.’
After a silence in which her mother absorbed the implications, Isabel responded with even more firmness, ‘So we will just ignore them.’
Lauren said bleakly, ‘They might start digging around.’
The hesitation at the other end of the line revealed that her mother had already thought of that. ‘They won’t find anything,’ Isabel said finally, her voice taut but confident. ‘If this false marriage does come to light, it will be a three days’ wonder. Ah, darling—your father’s just come in.’
Lauren waited tensely, smiling as her father’s voice echoed across the world. ‘Stay there,’ he commanded. ‘By the way, what’s the man who got you off Sant’Rosa like?’
‘Forceful and formidable,’ Lauren said lightly. And judgemental.
‘Would I like him?’
She laughed. ‘Yes, I think you would. You like Marc, don’t you?’
‘Very much,’ he said gruffly. ‘Mind you, Marc saved your life, but then, this man might have too. When this bit of a fuss is over, I’d like to shake his hand. Stay there and finish your holiday, Lauren. I want to see colour in your cheeks when you come back.’
‘Yes, Daddy,’ she said in mock obedience, and heard him guffaw and say goodbye.
He endured his condition like a soldier, gallantly fighting the limitations it put on his life. She said her goodbyes to her mother, and with stinging eyes rang through to the person who handled her travel arrangements. Whatever her parents said, if the marriage ceremony with Guy ended up in the media she wanted to be at home, not stuck on the other side of the world.
Frowning at the skyline of Singapore through the hotel window, Guy swore succinctly under his breath.
The man on the other end of the telephone said drily, ‘At school I used to envy you the ability to swear in five languages. Now I can swear in twenty. But I still can’t pull the birds like you.’
In a level, cold voice Guy said, ‘Bloody tabloids.’
‘They have a place in life.’
‘Bottom feeders. Any idea when it’s due to break?’
He could almost hear his friend shrug. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said succinctly. ‘They’ve got a tasty little piece—the dramatic circumstances of the marriage and that it might turn out to be legal, as well as the insinuation she might be Corbett’s mistress. He’s always good for copy, and it’s always a coup to get the sights on someone as news-worthy and cunning at avoiding we poor hacks as you are. Naturally they want to make the most of it.’
‘Naturally,’ Guy said lethally, fighting back the urge to kill someone. ‘How did you find this out?’
‘I have friends in high places,’ his friend the war corespondent said airily, adding with a muffled snort of laughter, ‘Or low places.’
‘OK, Sean, thanks a lot. I owe you.’
‘Don’t worry, I owe you more. After all, you once saved my miserable life.’
‘Forget it,’ Guy said briefly, and hung up.
He stood for a long time frowning into space before reaching for the telephone again. With the time distance it would be eight in the evening in New Zealand.
As he dialled a number he recalled the way the sun had shone through the window of Marc Corbett’s house, collecting in Lauren’s hair so that it fell like a river of molten obsidian around her face, somehow giving a soft, pearly glow to her milk-white skin.
Skin like satin against his hand…
As Mrs Oliver wasn’t in the house, Lauren picked up the receiver. ‘Hello,’ she said carefully above the noisy thud of her heart.
‘Can anyone overhear what we’re saying?’
Guy! ‘No.’ Marc had made sure the communications system was incapable of being bugged. Cold foreboding knotted her inside. ‘What’s happened?’
‘I have it on good authority that the news of our marriage is about to explode onto the front pages.’ He waited while her hand clenched on the receiver, then asked sharply, ‘Are you there?’
‘Yes.’ She said crisply, ‘Thank you for telling me. I’ll ring my parents straight away and let them know.’
‘Do they know about the marriage?’
‘Yes.’
‘Sensible of you to tell them,’ he said calmly. ‘When do you go home?’
‘I’m leaving tomorrow.’
He asked for the details of her airline and arrival time, then said, ‘I suggest you change your booking to get off the flight in Rome.’
‘That’s being paranoid,’ she said brusquely. ‘I’ll be fine. No one will be expecting me anyway—the airline won’t tell anyone when I’m due in, and my parents are the only other people who know. They’re certainly not going to confide in any nice, inquisitive journalist.’
‘Fair enough,’ he said calmly. ‘Have a safe flight home.’
And he hung up.
Blinking back stupid, unnecessary tears, Lauren put down the receiver. She felt like an animal in hiding, every sense strained to the point of pain while wolves closed in on her.
CHAPTER SEVEN (#u88f76df3-e888-5052-864b-e224043d63bd)
BUT even though Lauren had prepared herself mentally and emotionally on the long flight, the pack of photographers and reporters that greeted her at Heathrow both shocked and scared her. Light exploded in her face as they bayed her name and took photographs.
‘Look this way, Lauren!’ ‘Hi, Lauren—can you tell us about this marriage to—?’ ‘Lauren, Lauren, over here!’ until command and shouted comment blended into a din that mercifully blocked out individual yells.
Shaking inwardly, she clamped her lips together, tuning them out while she searched for the quickest route through the milling mass. And then salvation arrived, in the form of two burly men stamped with the indefinable mark of security personnel.
‘This way, please, Ms Porter,’ the largest and most solid one said in her ear while the other commandeered her luggage trolley as a shield.
Locking every muscle against a cowardly impulse to run, she allowed herself to be escorted away from the hordes and along a corridor. They stopped outside a door and the one in front held it open.
Bewildered, Lauren went through.
And stopped as the door closed behind her and Guy Bagaton rose to his feet, big and vital and ablaze with raw power. Her heart jumping in incredulous joy, she managed to say in a brittle voice, ‘Oh—hello. I gather that the news has broken?’
‘This morning.’ He sounded as fed up as he looked, but his size and that indefinable air of competence and authority was hugely reassuring.
Shivering, she rubbed her arms; the impersonal room reminded her sharply of that other room a world away when she and this man had exchanged the vows that now bound them in a false relationship.
‘I see,’ she said unevenly. ‘I expected interest, but nothing like that pandemonium. How did they know I was coming in today?’
With cold contempt he said, ‘There’s always someone who’ll spill the beans.’ Eyes as bright and burnished as fool’s gold narrowed. ‘You look tired. Didn’t you get any sleep on the flight?’
‘Not a lot.’ And now her head was pounding, excitement and shock producing a wild mixture of sensations: intense relief, because she trusted him to deal with any situation, and a fierce sensual charge honed by absence. ‘The plane was seething with high school students embarking on a year’s exchange in Europe. They settled down for an hour here and there.’
‘I see. Come on, let’s go.’ Still frowning, he took her arm and steered her towards a boarding bridge.
Although a debilitating combination of exhaustion and astonishment tempted her to let him take over, she croaked, ‘What’s happening? Where are we going?’
