The Bride Wore Scarlet

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It was going to be up to him to do something about it.

The opportunity to have a heart-to-heart with Enid came far more easily than Annie could have hoped for.

After taking Mark on one side—hustling him out of sight after a strained afternoon tea on the terrace—she’d pointed out that getting physical hadn’t been part of their agreement—she didn’t like touching, not even something relatively innocuous like holding hands, if she wasn’t serious and committed.

Mark thought she was mad, and she could have slapped him for the scornful derision on his face. Slapped herself, too, because who the heck did she think she was kidding?

The arrogant, bloody-minded Daniel Faber only had to touch her to make her want to do whatever he wanted her to do.

And the only thing she was serious about as far as he was concerned was the fierce and futile wish that they had never met. And committed? As if!

She and Mark had sat grumbling at each other on a bench behind a potting shed at the far end of the garden for much longer than either had realised.

‘Good Lord!’ Mark shot to his feet. ‘We’re meant to be changing for this evening’s bash.’ He grabbed her hand and tugged her upright, then dropped it. ‘Forgot. Look but don’t touch! Though I presume I’ll be allowed to dance with you later tonight? It would look a bit odd if we didn’t.’

‘Dance?’ She had to trot to keep up with his headlong pace. ‘Isn’t that a bit over the top for a family birthday party?’

‘You don’t know Ma’s parties! She’s a gregarious creature and is best friend to everyone in a ten-mile radius! And they’re all invited to celebrate her birthday. Hence the buffet. And the early start so those with young families can join the fun. After they go—around nine—it all begins to swing. At least we’ll have tomorrow to recover!’

Annie had already made up her mind to head back to London tomorrow. She’d phone for a taxi to ferry her to the nearest train station and Mark would be the last to know. She’d invent some pressing and urgent reason for not staying on, so as not to give offence to the Redways.

She really couldn’t endure another day pinned down beneath the insufferable censure of Daniel Faber’s smouldering eyes, she thought, hurrying along the corridor to her room, meeting Enid as she emerged from the bathroom opposite her doorway.

‘Oh.’ Enid did her best to smile, but Annie saw the lovely face go pale, heard her voice wobble as she said, ‘We all thought you and Mark had got lost. You were missing for so long.’

‘Just talking,’ Annie said breezily, knowing the other girl didn’t believe it, knowing that the other members of the family wouldn’t, either.

‘Oh.’ Again the wobbly attempt at a smile. ‘I’m sharing your bathroom. I hope you don’t mind. Staying overnight. Molly’s parties go on and on.’

This was the golden opportunity, and Annie meant to make full use of it. ‘It’s time we talked,’ she said soothingly. ‘My room, or yours?’

Hours later, Annie wondered if anyone would miss her if she slipped away from the increasingly noisy party and went to bed.

After her talk with Enid, when she’d seen comprehension and complicity suddenly gleam in the beautiful blue eyes, she had felt strangely elated, divorced from it all. Let them sort themselves out.

Mark had had no right to ask for her involvement, and she’d had no right to agree. But, one way or another, she’d be out of here tomorrow.

And the advice she’d given seemed to be working. Enid, bewitching in soft jade-green silk, had been dancing with the hunky son of one of the local farmers ever since the first tape had been slipped into the deck. She ignored Mark completely, giving every impression that she was having the time of her life.

‘Excuse me, Annie.’ As the tempo of the music changed into slow and smoochy, Mark released her from his half-hearted clasp and strode across the floor to claim the woman who was no longer showing the slightest interest in him and far too much in a younger, better-looking guy.

Annie inched towards the open double doors that led to the comparatively quiet hallway. She’d dressed as down as she could, given the stuff she’d brought with her, teaming a float white cotton skirt with a sleeveless black top which had a modest neckline—well, reasonably modest, she amended as she slipped over the parquet of the hall, heading for the staircase.

Mission accomplished, as far as Enid was concerned, and only a few more hours to go before she could make her excuses and leave. Thankfully, Daniel hadn’t asked her to dance. Being held close to that hard, sexy body, knowing that for some reason or other he held her in contempt, would have been purgatory.

He’d been watching her, though. Leaning against an open windowframe at one end of the buffet. His brooding eyes had never left her. It had given her the shakes.

Although the night was warm, she shivered. She wouldn’t be able to relax until she was back in her own small home where she could hole up and forget her second encounter with Daniel Faber. It had had a traumatic effect on her. Which was crazy.

‘Annie—I want a word with you.’ An inescapable hand clamped around her arm. The touch burnt her skin. She didn’t have to turn to know who it was.

Air rushed out of her lungs, making her heart pound, and she had to fight to breathe it back in again.

‘Loose me,’ she commanded thickly, wondering what it was about this one man that could have such an effect on her.

Daniel’s fingers tightened. ‘You know you don’t mean that.’

He swung her round to face him and he was smiling. He frightened her—or, to be more precise about it, she frightened herself. Her whole body ached to be held close to his, for him to lower that fabulously sensual mouth and kiss her again...

‘But that can wait. You and I need to talk.’

Wait until when? What did he mean? Annie’s eyes cast desperately around. She was in some kind of a trap and there was no one to let her out The remaining guests were in the huge drawing room, cleared of furniture for this evening, dancing or standing in groups talking, eating and drinking. Even if she screamed her lungs out no one would hear her above the music.

‘Annie?’ A gentle shake, his fingers soft on her flesh now, had her fiercely deriding herself for being such a fool. She’d accused him of overreacting before and now she was doing the same.

‘Well?’ She couldn’t say more. Her tongue felt thick.

‘Not here. The noise coming from that room is enough to shake the whole house.’

He slipped a gentle arm around her, and that was her undoing. The smile in his eyes, in his voice, the unexpected gentleness made her whole body quiver as he walked her towards the open main door.

She couldn’t think straight, so how could she walk straight? She leant against his body, sighing as his arm tightened around her waist, his strength supporting her, feeling like a thief because she was stealing a few moments of heaven that he had no idea he was giving...

CHAPTER TWO

THE night air was close and sticky as they walked out of the main door and onto the floodlit drive. A sudden gust of hot wind lifted the flirty hems of Annie’s skirt around her knees and pressed the fine cotton against her tummy. There seemed no respite from the heat, even outdoors. And the way Daniel’s presence made her blood scorch through her veins wasn’t helping.

Annie struggled ineffectually with her flyaway skirts and moments later the first few heavy drops of rain fell.

‘The wind makes a habit of wrapping your skirts around your waist to tease the male sex—what did you barter to get the elements on side?’ Daniel murmured with throaty amusement as another gust lifted the floaty fabric towards the heavens.

Uncalled for. Annie rooted her feet in the gravel, hoping the shadows would hide her furious blush, and Daniel said, ‘We’re in for a storm. My car’s around somewhere in this lot.’

He took her hand in his warm grasp, long fingers wrapping around hers, and tugged her through the guests’ parked vehicles until he located his Jaguar, the silver paintwork gleaming under the security lights.

They were tucked inside just a fraction of a second before the heavens opened. ‘Right,’ Daniel said, and fired the ignition.

‘What are you doing?’ She turned to look at him, big, bemused eyes dominating her face, then relaxed back against the leather upholstery, reassured by the flicker of a smile caught in the lights from the dashboard.

‘Moving to where we won’t be disturbed. Fasten your seatbelt.’

Just for a few yards? Annie shrugged and complied. She supposed it did make sense. The ferocity of the rainstorm made visibility almost nil, the wipers barely coping with the sudden deluge. And of course he would want to move his car out of the way of those of the guests who would soon be departing—and it would be a good idea to talk.

Maybe he’d come to his senses and decided his treatment of her had been way over the top. And she would be able to tell him exactly why she’d mistaken him for Rupert at that other party eight months ago.

Clearly there had been some misunderstanding—a misreading of the situation. No man in his right mind could take so decisively and implacably against a woman merely because she’d flung herself at him, kissing him wildly before realising her mistake and taking to her heels! And there was nothing whatsoever wrong with Daniel Faber’s mind!

So this would be a good opportunity to sort it all out, wouldn’t it?

She would dearly love the antagonism between them to be over. But would all the stinging tension that made the air fizz around them whenever they were near each other disappear, too?

With the departure of antagonism would there be nothing left? Or would whatever it was that made the atmosphere sizzle still be there, to be built upon?

Suddenly she wanted to be able to build something with this man. She felt it like a keen ache, deep inside her. Which only went to show what a fool she was.

Daniel Faber could have his pick. And the type of woman he would choose would be elegant, quite certainly beautiful, and more than likely out of the top social drawer.

He wouldn’t choose a nobody like her, not in a thousand years. A nobody with nothing going for her but a bunch of wild hair and a liking for loud clothes.

She sighed and focused her eyes on the rhythmic sweep of the windscreen wipers, then shot him a frowning glance. She’d been so deeply entrenched in her thoughts she hadn’t stopped to wonder why it was taking him so long to find a place to park up.

The car was climbing up a steep, narrow lane, the headlights carving a path through the heavy rain. ‘Where on earth are we going?’ she demanded as he negotiated a sharp bend carefully, then turned the car onto an even narrower, steeper track, where the hedgerows were so high and heavy with water they hung down, scraping the sides of the vehicle with dark, leafy fingers.

‘Relax. Almost there.’

That didn’t answer her question. She slewed round in her seat, trying to read something from his face. He was concentrating, his features very controlled. ‘You said you wanted to talk,’ she pointed out warily. ‘What’s wrong with now? So far you’ve said nothing.’

He stopped the car. The powerful headlights illuminated a small stone cottage in a raggedy patch of garden, separated from the unmade track by a crooked gate. And then he switched off lights and ignition and there was just the darkness and the beating rain and the rapid thud of sudden anxiety as it pulsed chaotically through her veins.

It got worse as he produced a torch from somewhere and flicked it on. ‘Sorry about the weather. We’ll have to make a run for it. I’ll be right behind you with the torch, so you’ll be OK if you watch your step.’

‘Make a run for what?’ Annie folded her arms across her chest. She was going nowhere. She was stopping exactly where she was.

‘For the cottage, of course.’ Impatience tinged his voice. ‘I don’t intend spending the night in the car.’

The night? The whole night?

‘You have to be joking!’ Distrust made her voice sharp and a current of something—fear or manic excitement, she didn’t know which—shot through her veins, making her stomach clench. ‘Either that or I’ve missed the point entirely.’

‘No joke, Annie,’ he drawled, reaching into the rear of the car for a holdall. ‘We’ve fallen madly in lust and have sloped away to spend the night in my private bolt-hole—that’s the point of the exercise.’

‘You can’t mean it!’ Annie wailed in shocked outrage. What type of woman did he think she was? Had he marked her unhidden response to both of the times they’d kissed? Given her ten out of ten for effort and decided he was on a winner?

The whole idea terrified her. To her endless shame she just knew that if he’d decided to seduce her, her reckless body would aid and abet him in any way it could!

She wasn’t into one-night stands!

‘Of course not,’ Daniel stated. ‘It’s the impression that counts. Mark won’t be able to believe we spent the night together making polite conversation.’ He pocketed the ignition keys. ‘Coming? Or do I have to carry you?’

He was out of the car and opening the door at her side before she got her head straight. Mark had persuaded her to be his guest to give the impression they were an item. Daniel had abducted her to give Mark the impression she was anybody’s!

She slid out of the car, into the sluicing rain, her body on automatic pilot. She’d go with him because he wasn’t a threat. He didn’t lust after her, he’d said as much.

‘You can’t make Mark marry Enid,’ she muttered, the rainwater cooling her overheated brain. ‘You can’t abduct every girl he brings home. You can’t run his life for him.’

‘He doesn’t bring his women home; he keeps them discreetly under wraps.’ He unlocked the cottage door and after a moment’s hesitation she walked in, drenched by the downpour, dripping onto the coir matting that covered the floor of the small room revealed as he flicked on the overhead light. ‘The fact that he brought you home indicates that it’s more serious than his usual short-lived affairs. I don’t want to see Mark get romantically involved with someone like you.’

Someone like her! Hateful, snobbish wretch! ‘He isn’t!’ she defended hotly, but he wasn’t listening, had turned his back on her while he pulled a mobile phone from a side pocket and keyed in numbers. His voice was smooth, laid-back when it was eventually answered.

‘It’s me, Ma. Annie and I decided we wanted to get to know each other better. So we’re spending the night at the cottage—tomorrow and Monday, too. I’ll drive her back to town when I go in on Tuesday morning. Let Mark know what’s happening, will you? And Ma? Tell him sorry, will you? Tell him it’s just one of those things; it just happened.’

Annie stared at his wide shoulders, the hard muscle and bone clearly delineated beneath the clinging wet fabric of his shirt. How dared he give those nice people—his parents—such a bad impression of her? She wanted to leap on him, tear the phone away and tell his mother there wasn’t an atom of truth in what the wretch was saying, beg her to ask Mark to come and rescue her!

But, as if reading her intention, he turned, the coldness of his raking glance effectively freezing her to the spot. ‘Really?’ One dark brow slid upwards now, meeting the damp black hair that fell over his brow. He was obviously surprised by what his mother was telling him. ‘Well, it’s about time he opened his eyes, I guess.’

He was grinning as he cut the connection and repocketed the instrument. ‘Mark and Enid were last seen escaping the party, creeping into the privacy of the library, hand in hand. He must have discovered that he prefers quality over quantity.’ His grin was slowly wiped away as his eyes made a slow, insulting inventory of her voluptuous curves. Her wet clothes were cocking a defiant snook at modesty, and his eyes were hooded, his face all hard lines.

Annie shook with temper, deep misery and a hateful frisson of sexual awareness. He did lust after her, despite what he’d said. She could see it in the shadowed smouldering eyes, the lines that suddenly bracketed that long, sensual mouth, the jerk of a muscle at the side of his hard jaw.

But his latest vile insults armoured her, didn’t they? Involuntarily, her teeth chattered, and his mouth curled in slow, mocking response. ‘Tough luck, Annie. Still, some you lose, some you win.’ He shrugged impressive shoulders. ‘You’re on the loose again, but don’t try to get your claws into me. The way you responded in my arms earlier told me you wouldn’t be averse to ditching Mark and moving on and up the ladder of financial security.’

Daniel turned and tugged the sage-green heavy linen curtains over the window, shutting out the stormy night. For some reason he was unable to look at her pale, bewildered face. Annie Kincaid was surely in the wrong profession. Her acting ability—quite apart from the way she looked—would have taken her far.

He mentally squashed the unwelcome desire to take her in his arms, soothe the look of hurt from those alluring pansy-purple eyes, putting the urge down to twelve months of celibacy. He had no intention on following up, taking what this sexy little gold-digger would doubtless offer, given half an opportunity.

At one time, after he’d learned that she’d dumped Glover, he’d been severely tempted to find her—if only to stop the regularly occurring dreams he’d had. Tormenting dreams of her naked body in his arms, writhing beneath him as they took their aborted wild encounter of that December night to its natural conclusion.

Dreams that had left him edgy, tense, strangely aware for the very first time of an emptiness in his life.

Fortunately, common sense had ruled his hormones. He hadn’t known, then, that she’d been working for Mark, had bewitched him, too. Obviously she’d seen Mark as the better prospect, had dropped Rupert Glover flat. That he, Daniel Faber, had failed to follow up on her unspoken yet explicit invitation would have been written off with a shrug of those pretty shoulders.

Annie watched him, too wet and miserable to try to change his opinion of her. It didn’t really matter what he thought of her. But would Mark believe her when she tried to explain what Daniel had misguidedly done? Or would he believe what his brother had deliberately set out to make him believe?

‘How can I face Mark after this?’ she asked thinly, and saw him turn back to her, his face blank. ‘Embarrassing won’t begin to cover it. He is my boss—’