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And I’m very rich, he thought, his lips curling into a grimace of self-disgust. ‘Just what would I have to do, Elise, to make you find me unacceptable as a husband?’
‘Why are you acting as though I’m the one who’s done something wrong?’
‘You’re right,’ he admitted heavily. He had been guilty of twisting the facts to fit. On the surface Elise had seemed to be the perfect wife and mother, and he hadn’t looked any deeper than the surface. ‘This is my fault. I really don’t think I’m the marrying kind.’
An ugly look of astonished fury contorted Elise’s face as she saw her gold-lined future vanishing. ‘Are you jilting me?’
‘Yes, I suppose I am.’
* * *
Seb had made any number of bad calls in his life but he might, he realised as he closed the door behind him a few painful minutes later, just have been saved making the worst one yet.
In theory a wife who didn’t give a damn what you did so long as you kept her in big houses, designer handbags and diamonds was a certain type of man’s perfect wife, and he had thought he was that man.
It turned out he wasn’t.
Logic told him he had no real right to feel distaste at having her priorities spelled out so starkly. He could accept many things in a marriage or the lack of them, but it turned out mutual respect was not one of them.
CHAPTER THREE (#u44e78751-169f-5476-9236-732847501399)
‘SEB!’ HER HEELS loud on the ancient stone of the narrow corridor, Fleur Defoe hurried to catch up with the tall figure of her brother.
As she got level with him he turned his head to growl an impatient, ‘Not now, Fleur.’
His sister caught his arm, breathless and brimming with curiosity and concern. ‘What’s going on?’
A faint ironic smile touched his lips, lightening the grimness of his taut hard-boned expression as he reluctantly paused and eased his shoulders against the lime-washed wall.
‘I wish I knew.’
Had she read about the wedding and thought why not...or had something happened, a trigger of some sort? He did not discount the possibility she was acting for a third party. It wasn’t as if he had any shortage of enemies... More than one would not be unhappy if his royal connection was severed.
‘People are asking questions, Seb.’
His dark brows lifted as he sketched a quick cynical smile. ‘And providing more than a few answers.’
‘They’re asking if there’s going to be a wedding.’
He levered himself away from the wall and speculated out loud. ‘Or she might simply be insane.’
‘What?’ asked Fleur, who was trotting to keep up with him as he strode out, dragging the tie from around his neck as he did so.
‘No, there isn’t going to be a wedding.’
‘Are you all right?’ Fleur couldn’t decide whether she was relieved or disturbed that her handsome brother looked more abstracted than heartbroken.
‘Fine.’ Was it coincidental that the Far East deal was at a delicate stage in the negotiations? The royal family were relatively broad-minded and progressive but by their nature nervous of scandal...and half a dozen members of that family had been sitting out there watching that debacle.
He struggled not to replay the scene, knowing that anger was an indulgence he could not afford. He needed a clear head if he was going to at least salvage the deal of a lifetime, and for that he needed the facts, needed to know there were no fresh little surprises waiting... Afterwards he could throttle the redhead, or maybe kiss her, he mused, thinking of that mouth and feeling a strong slug of lust.
An image of her face drifted into his head. It had surprised him over the years how well he remembered it, how deep an impression it had made, though not as it turned out as deep as the one he had apparently made on her...
‘How did you meet?’
‘Meet who?’ he said, only half listening to his sister, who was trying to keep up with him.
‘Mari, Mark’s sister.’
In the act of dragging a hand across his hair he stopped midgesture and swung back. His sister, two steps behind, dug in her heels to avoid a collision and looked up expectantly at him.
The furrow between his dark, strongly delineated brows deepened. ‘Last month’s boyfriend Mark...?’
His forehead pleated in concentration as he brought to mind the features of the young man in question. Fleur’s boyfriends were pretty interchangeable. This one had been particularly painfully eager to please and say the right thing. Trading on a boyish smile that probably had an appreciative audience, he’d made a pretty inept attempt to sell his latest business venture.
‘You make it sound like I— All right, yes,’ she admitted with a rueful grimace. ‘He didn’t last long. He started getting way too serious so I cooled things. She, Mari, is his twin, which is kind of cool.’
‘You have met?’
Fleur shook her head. ‘No, but he has photos of them, and that hair is pretty unmistakable, but why,’ she puzzled, ‘are you asking me? You must know that if you’re...’
Seb clenched his jaw and bellowed, ‘I’m not sleeping with her!’
‘Seriously?’ She encountered her brother’s stony look and held up her hands in an attitude of defeat. ‘Fine, I believe you.’
Which might, he reflected grimly, make her the only one.
‘Why not?’
He slowed his step slightly and flung over his shoulder, ‘Why not what?’
‘Aren’t you sleeping with her? She is kind of incredible looking.’
‘Until a few minutes ago I was engaged and I have only met the mad woman once, six years ago.’
Fleur’s eyes widened. ‘Six...! Wow, you must have made an impression! What did you do?’
Not nearly as much as he’d have liked to.
‘She acted as though she hated you, Seb.’
‘You noticed that, too, did you?’
‘It didn’t seem likely you were together. She’s not really your type, is she?’
The disappointment in her voice struck a nerve. ‘Sane, you mean,’ he cut back, adding with a satiric bite, ‘Are there any mental-health problems in your boyfriend’s family?’
‘He’s not my boyfriend but actually he— They don’t know. They were found on a church doorstep when they were babies. It was a big headline at the time—he had cuttings.’
‘They don’t know who their parents are?’ He filed away the information; it might be useful but he doubted it.
Fleur shook her head. ‘No, they’ve only got each other, a bit like us.’
* * *
The men’s voices penetrated the fog that cushioned Mari’s thoughts. It was confusing but comforting. She knew that any second it would clear; she also knew that she didn’t want it to.
‘So she’s awake?’
Mari kept her eyes shut, but she could see the flicker of light through the delicate skin of her eyelids. She wished someone would open a window—the scent of chrysanthemums and incense hung uncomfortably heavily in the still air. The man who had spoken had a very deep voice. If it had a colour it would be rich, night-sky blue-black, and the tactile quality in it made the hairs on her nape tingle.
‘Oh, yes, it was just a faint, no serious damage. She landed on someone’s hat.’
‘Thanks, I can deal from here.’
‘You sure, Seb? I could stay...’
The rest of the interchange was too softly spoken for her to catch, but the sound of a door opening and closing sent a soft tickling rush of cooler air across her face.
‘You might as well get up. I know you’re faking it.’
The voice sounded bored. Mari felt her indignation stir lazily; she wasn’t faking anything.
‘What am I doing here?’
And where was here?
She slowly turned in the direction of the voice, realising her head was cushioned on a hard and dusty pillow thing. Teeth gritted, she prised her eyelids apart. They felt as though she had weights attached to her eyelashes. It took several blinks to bring the face of the man who spoke into focus. The only other person in the room, he was standing in front of a deep window, the sun shining through the stained glass behind him and surrounding his face with a halo of blue flickering light.
Even without the light show it was an incredible face. The combination of the starkly drawn lines of a broad, high forehead, aristocratic cheekbones and sensually sculpted mouth was arresting, but it was the hard, brooding quality in his stare that almost tipped her into panic.
‘You took the words right out of my mouth,’ he drawled.
Then the panic made sense. It came rushing back in full relentless detail without the protective cushion of adrenaline-heated anger.
She had done it. She really had! Oh, God!
Wasn’t she meant to be feeling great or at least vindicated? Seeing the villain on the receiving end of the tit-for-tat payback wasn’t as satisfying as she’d imagined.
Struggling to channel calm, she moistened her lips with her tongue and cleared her throat. ‘Shouldn’t you be getting married?’ The aura of masculinity he projected was even more pronounced in the enclosed space of this room. It had a skin-prickling quality that was very disturbing on more than one level.
‘I should be, yes.’
She dragged her eyes off the small V of brown skin where the top button of his shirt had come adrift along with his tie, feeling pretty disgusted with her indiscriminate hormones. ‘You mean you’re not...?’
‘It’s called off—wasn’t that the idea?’ He raised an eyebrow.
She brought her lashes down to shield herself from his hard interrogative stare. Was it? Beyond inflicting the humiliation he had not thought twice about subjecting her to, had she thought much at all...? She’d had a vague mental image of sweeping out, leaving him a crushed man...or at least one recognising that he had no right interfering in the lives of the Jones twins. Refusing to acknowledge the strong element of compulsion involved, she moved her resentful blue gaze up the long, lean, muscle-packed length of him.
Yeah, that really worked well!
It was hard to imagine anyone looking less crushed, and it wasn’t just his tungsten physique. The man was cold steel through and through. Aware her glance was becoming a full-on stare slash drool, she took a deep breath and pulled herself into a sitting position. Both hands on her hair, she brushed the flaming strands back from her face and swung her legs over the edge of the couch.
‘Not really.’
‘So what exactly did you expect to happen?’
She shrugged and dodged his stare, thinking, Good question, Mari.
A muscle clenched in his lean cheek as he fought to retain a grip on his temper. ‘So you hadn’t thought that far ahead?’
‘It never occurred to me that she’d let someone as rich as you get away.’ She heard his sharp intake of breath and looked up, projecting wary defiance. ‘I’m not sorry.’
‘So you said, but that could change.’ His conversational tone did not hide the warning. Mari hugged herself to ward off the sudden chill in the room.
He had not thought she could go any paler but she did. Her skin had a translucent quality that was fascinating...or was that just him? He pushed away the thought—admitting there were any chinks in his control would have been admitting a weakness. Even in his teens, while his contemporaries were making fools of themselves over girls, Seb had always prided himself on the fact women only pushed the buttons he wanted them to—he was no longer a teenager.
Her rounded chin with the suggestion of a cleft lifted another defiant notch as she met his stare head-on, her dramatic eyes glittering with defiance.
‘Is that a threat?’
Seb watched one feathery brow arch. All her features had a clear-cut delicate quality except for her mouth, and that was just plain tempting.
‘Oh, that was, by the way, a rhetorical question. I’m not stupid. If you’re going to have me arrested just get on with it.’
Seb looked at the hands she held out towards him crossed at the wrists. ‘Handcuffs aren’t really my style,’ he drawled. ‘But maybe yours?’
What was his style?
The question and the image that drifted into her head brought with them a rush of scorching heat.
Where had that come from?
Feeling the shamed warmth flame in her cheeks, she wrenched her stare clear of his hands and his long elegant fingers that continued to exert an unhealthy fascination for her. Her lashes provided a protective screen of sorts as she rubbed her wrists while the illicit images kept popping into her head—in none of them was she fighting against the imprisonment of those strong fingers.
‘You have a disgusting mind.’ It takes one, Mari, to know one. ‘I knew you’d be a bully!’
What hadn’t been so obvious until this moment was that she was capable of such carnal thoughts. If they’d involved any other man but him Mari would have been quite relieved—it would have knocked on the head her growing conviction that, if not frigid, she had asexual leanings. As it was, a life of celibacy was infinitely preferable to being attracted to men like him... Were there any men like him?
‘Being proved right seems to make you happy, though some might call it a lucky break. You might have pulled your little stunt and then discovered I was actually a kind and warm-hearted person. Actually I feel quite flattered that I made such an impression on you six years ago.’
She laughed, a hard, scornful sound, and put her bare feet on the floor. ‘I remember you the same way people remember a bad dose of food poisoning.’ Her hair fell forward in a rippling wave that caught and held his fascinated gaze as she checked out under the couch, adding accusingly, ‘Where are my shoes? I want to go home.’
‘And it’s that simple?’
Mari struggled to hide the flash of fear that sent a chill through her body. ‘You can’t stop me!’ She caught her full lower lip between her teeth and looked up at him through her lashes, hating the quiver of uncertainty in her voice.
‘I think you owe me some sort of explanation at least, don’t you?’
