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One hand behind her head, he dragged her to him, then, tangling his fingers in the fiery mass of her hair, he hooked the thumb of his free hand under her chin. He dipped his head.
He felt her trembling as he moved his lips across her mouth before accepting the irresistible invitation of her soft, parted lips and plundering the soft, moist sweetness within.
The moment his mouth covered hers Mari’s mind stopped functioning and the rest of her nervous system went into overdrive. Then she was kissing him back with combative hunger she had not known existed. Above the thundering of her heartbeat she heard a distant moan and didn’t associate the raw, needy sound with her.
From somewhere, some small sane corner of her fevered brain, she found the strength to resist. She pushed hard against his chest and the kiss stopped almost as abruptly as it had begun. She staggered back, her breasts rising and falling in agitation.
‘I hate you,’ she shot out, wiping the back of her hand symbolically across her mouth.
He stood there looking down at her, managing to look insultingly cool. Could he really turn it on and off like that...?
‘So nothing has changed.’
Still shaking while he continued to act as though nothing much had just happened, she smoothed a hand over her hair, appalled, deeply ashamed and most of all bewildered at the wanton way she had responded. ‘You kissed me!’
If she’d known that that was going to be the price of the last word Mari would have swallowed her pride and bolted when she had the chance!
‘I’m not going to get a honeymoon. I think the least you owe me is a kiss,’ he drawled while silently cursing his lack of control.
Cursing because she was the sort of woman with whom one taste was not enough, she was the sort of woman who, before a man knew it, he could not function with or without. She was the sort of woman he had spent his life avoiding.
‘I wish I had hit you!’ she fired back.
‘The day is young.’
‘And you’re in a hurry,’ she reminded him.
She watched as he turned his cuff and glanced down at the metal-banded watch wrapped around his wrist. ‘I am,’ he agreed. ‘Just one question, I’m curious. Do you think it was worth it?’
‘Worth what?’
‘Worth what is going to happen next.’ He shook his head and looked incredulously at her. ‘You really haven’t thought your little revenge plan through, have you?’ When she continued to look blank he elevated a dark brow. ‘You just told people we were an item and you’re pregnant. It won’t stop there. There will be consequences beyond a bad moment in my sooo perfect life.’ She carried on looking confused so he spelled it out. ‘For you.’
She lifted her chin but he could see the uncertainty she couldn’t hide in her eyes.
‘What consequences?’ she scoffed uneasily.
He didn’t reply immediately; instead he left a space for her anxiety to climb.
There was amused contempt in the eyes that brushed her face. ‘How many phones do you think caught part or all of your little drama? You have your five minutes of fame.’
A look of horror slowly spread across her face. ‘I don’t want it.’
‘Tough. It’s not optional.’
Her pallor exaggerated the sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her small straight nose.
He remembered those freckles.
‘I almost feel sorry for you.’
‘I don’t need your pity,’ she flared back, eyes flashing.
One dark brow lifted. ‘I said almost. I save my sympathy for those who deserve it. You chose to have an affair with a married man.’ He disposed of her historical gripe with a dismissive click of his long fingers. ‘You chose to make a spectacle of yourself in public, your brother chose to drink and get behind the wheel of a car. Instead of bleating, perhaps you should both man up.’
Of their own volition his dark eyes dropped. Anything less manlike than her heaving breasts outlined beneath the blue fabric that moulded them lovingly would have been hard to imagine. He didn’t waste his time analysing the lustful surge of his body; he was working too hard at ignoring it.
‘I chose,’ she said, emphasising the word, ‘to make a spectacle of you, and in that I’d say I have been very successful.’ Almost mastering her struggle to appear indifferent, she shrugged and took the slim phone from her pocket.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Ringing for a taxi.’ Eyes hard, she sketched a saccharine-sweet smile. ‘I think I’ve imposed enough on your hospitality.’
He strolled to the door, pausing with his hand on the handle. ‘Your shoes are on the windowsill, and your hat.’
‘I don’t have a hat.’
His eyes went to her hair before, face set, he removed his gaze from the fascinating flame-red curls. ‘Of course you don’t. That would mean you stand the tiny risk of not being the centre of attention when you walk into a room.’
The suggestion that she wanted attention was so unexpected she struggled to think of a suitable response.
‘I’d book your taxi for the east gate if you really don’t want that fame...but you’re only delaying the inevitable, sweetheart.’
With that parting shot he left without a backward glance.
* * *
The hospital car park was full. Mari drove around three times before she finally found herself a space in an overflow area, or almost a space. The one she backed her old Beetle into was so narrow that to get out she had to breathe in to squeeze her way between the car and wall, managing to scrape her knees against the brick wall as she did so.
Without a lot of interest she viewed the damage, the nuisance value of her torn trousers barely registering against the oppressive weight of the real disasters she was dealing with—some of her own making. At times it felt as if she were drowning...but mostly she managed to tread water.
It was two days since the event that had triggered the media storm and by some miracle Mark hadn’t discovered what she’d done. That was the plus in what had been a nightmare weekend. Sebastian, with his sinister predictions of consequences, had been proved horribly right.
Mari was paying big time for her moment of madness.
She had been horrified when she had got out of the taxi to find a local reporter and photographer waiting. Head bent, she had not responded to the battery of questions or appeals for a quote.
Ironic now that she had thought that was bad—an hour later the duo had been joined by a dozen more from the nationals.
She had closed her curtains, ignored the notes shoved under the doors and turned off her phone, but she hadn’t been able to resist the masochistic impulse to go online. There she had discovered the predictable photos posted on numerous sites, and unlike most of the comments, which had been almost universally negative, some had been flattering, especially the one that had gone viral of Sebastian looking impossibly handsome and noble carrying her looking like some sort of ginger Sleeping Beauty up the aisle.
On a lighter note she had discovered an amusingly written piece, which included a detailed, itemised and hilariously inaccurate breakdown of how much her outfit had cost on the—it turned out—much-read fashion blog of the woman who Mari had almost forgotten had admired her outfit on the way into church.
This had spawned several much darker spin-offs that itemised not only how much her clothes had cost but how much she had cost! It seemed that according to ‘experts’ very few of her body parts were the ones she had been born with! She’d had a nose job, cheek and lip implants...opinion was split on her breasts!
It was universally agreed that Sebastian had footed the bill to turn her into his perfect woman.
The phrase had been picked up by a Sunday tabloid that recognised headline gold when they saw it. They had put the words above two shots of her, one in the supposedly ultraexpensive wedding outfit, the other taken Saturday morning when, bleary eyed in her pyjamas, her hair a wild mess and looking slightly demented, she had opened the door and faced a battery of flashes.
But she had taken control and stopped acting like a victim. The turning point had come about two o’clock that morning when she had found herself reaching for the tablet on her bedside table. What else was there to do when you couldn’t sleep but to get up to date with the latest vile names people were calling you and what awful things they were saying about you? The tablet propped on her lap, she had stopped and asked herself, What are you doing, Mari?
She could not control what people wrote but that didn’t mean she had to read it! The light at the end of the tunnel was that presumably there would come a time when people would get bored with talking about her breasts. Until then she was going to walk around with her head held high.
And that morning, when the number of press outside the building where she lived had decreased, it looked as if she had survived the worst, or so she’d thought.
But the hits kept coming!
She lifted her chin. As tempting as it was to just give up and admit defeat, it wasn’t an option. Mark needed her support. She pushed a strand of hair that had escaped the loose plait that hung down her back and glanced down... All dressed up, or in this case down, and nowhere to go.
But that might work to her advantage, she reflected, viewing her typical workday outfit of narrow-legged tailored trousers, teamed with leather pumps and a classic white shirt that she had put on this morning when she’d thought today was going to be a normal workday.
Still the professional look might make the doctors inclined to be more forthcoming with information than when she was wearing a T-shirt and jeans. Either way she needed more information than they had so far given her, and Mark, who had been deeply depressed last night, had responded to all her questions with a defeatist shrug. It hadn’t helped that she’d been really late, having changed taxis three times to avoid being followed to the hospital by the press—at least hospital security protected him.
She fingered the knot of the red silk scarf she wore tied around her throat while she dabbed a tissue to the blood seeping through the superficial break in the skin.
Finding herself unexpectedly free, she had hoped to catch the doctors after their morning rounds, but with the congestion in town and the time it had taken her to park that looked less likely. Still, it was worth a try. Throwing her plait over her shoulder, she started to jog.
People stared, but Mari decided that she could cope with a few raised eyebrows after the past few days. She kept up the energetic pace until she was outside the ward, then, consciously smoothing the frown lines from her brow along with the self-pitying thoughts before struggling hard to channel cheerful and optimistic, she advanced, passing the empty nurses’ station en route to the side room where her brother had been since he had been transferred from the high dependency unit.
Her mood improved fractionally when she saw a group of suited figures—the doctors were still in the ward. As she approached, trying to identify her brother’s consultant the men appeared not to notice her, then one turned and she froze, doing what she later suspected had looked like a ‘rabbit in the headlights’ impression.
He tilted his head in an attitude of distant recognition and Mari’s shaky-kneed trepidation evaporated in a flash of white-hot fury. In a heartbeat she reached the group bristling antagonism and hostility, her decision that if she ever met him again she would be cool and disinterested blasted away in the silent explosion of anger.
‘What are you doing here?’ Possibilities zipped through her mind. Had he assumed that Mark was behind her actions and he’d come to confront him?
The small group fell silent, aware of the undercurrents but politely pretending they weren’t.
‘Miss Jones, twice in three days. Aren’t I the lucky one? How delightful.’ He turned to the other men. ‘Does everyone know Miss Jones?’
‘I asked you a question.’
‘I have been visiting your brother.’
Wildly Mari looked past him, just able to make out her brother propped up in bed through the obscured glass panels.
‘You know the hospital administrator, Mr Parkinson, and head of—’
Mari, ignoring the other men, cut him off before he made any further introductions.
‘If you think you can obviate your guilt by bringing him a bunch of grapes, think again.’
‘I do not feel guilty.’
‘And that makes you a prize p—’ She bit back the insult, struggling to get a grip on her temper. Not easy when every time she looked at this man standing there so elegant, projecting an effortless aura of cool command, so infuriatingly complacent and so sure, so damned up himself...! ‘I would be grateful if you’d keep the hell away from my brother.’
The words were coated with ice, but Seb could almost see the flames licking just below the surface. Previously he had always discounted the red-haired temper thing as an example of an urban myth.
‘Isn’t that his choice, not yours?’ Was she equally passionate in bed...? A nerve beside his mouth clenched as he struggled to tear his eyes from the plump curve of her lips.
The sort of woman you avoid, Seb, remember.
Mari, who was stabbing a shaky, accusing finger towards his broad chest, didn’t notice the darkening of his eyes. She was too busy coping with the tingling aftershocks following the initial electrical charge that had taken away her breath in that first moment of recognition. She looked anywhere, everywhere but his mouth.
On top of everything else she could not deal with that kiss; the fact he’d kissed her or, most disturbing, that she’d liked it!
‘If you have upset him so help me...’ You’ll what, Mari? Frustration gnawed at her as an overwhelming tidal wave of helplessness washed over her. Control in every part of her life seemed to be slipping through her fingers like sand.
‘He seemed in a pretty positive frame of mind when I left him.’
She willed herself not to react to the provocation she saw in his silky smile as he continued to meet her spitting hostility and suspicion with a pleasant civility that probably made her look totally demented to the watching group—maybe she was! It was hard to call her behaviour over the past few days balanced and rational.
He wouldn’t have been human if he hadn’t taken a certain amount of malicious satisfaction from the knowledge he wasn’t the only one having his life turned into a circus. At least he had the means, the expertise and experience to cushion himself and his family to a great extent from press intrusion, a luxury Mari Jones did not have.
Seb knew how fickle and unpredictable public opinion could be, so it was no major surprise that, by and large, coverage had mostly been pretty negative towards Mari Jones, but the toxic level of vitriol aimed her way had surprised him. He by comparison had for once escaped relatively lightly, partly due to the fact that Elise, who had wasted little time selling her ‘jilted bride’ sob story to the highest bidder, had chosen to play the victim and given a very inventive account of the woman who had stolen him from her.
His critical narrowed glance stilled on the smudges under her eyes that stood out darkly against her pallor before he looked away, reminding himself that any sleepless night she had she had more than earned—in making him the monster she had made herself the victim.
‘How about you, Mari? Are you having a good day?’
Mari lifted her chin. She could hear the malicious mockery in his voice, even if no one else could.
She gazed up at him, feeling a loathing that she had not known she was capable of. ‘I told myself it couldn’t get worse but here you are...’
Mari hadn’t been spared his presence. Even on the rare occasions she had managed to drift off into a light troubled sleep he’d been there every night. She was grateful that the details of those feverish dreams had slipped away but the snatches that lingered left a heavy visceral sensation of discomfort in the pit of her stomach.
‘Well, this has been delightful catching up, Miss Jones,’ he said with false sincerity designed to aggravate and annoy. The regret he expressed as he glanced towards the suits who had tactfully moved out of hearing distance was equally false and teeth clenching. ‘I’d love to stay and chat but I’m afraid...’
Mari watched, a hundred insults unsaid as he calmly strolled away without a backward glance, the message clear in the set of his broad shoulders: she was dismissed. She was unimportant; she didn’t even register on his radar.
Do you want to?
Ignoring this unhelpful intrusion from her mind, she stood there fighting a self-destructive impulse to chase after him. As much as she really wanted the last word, she knew it would come at a price.
Even thinking about the price last time sent her pulse racing. She had precious little dignity left, so she didn’t want to throw away what she had for the satisfaction of telling him what she thought of him.
Gathering her wits, she stood for a few moments after the group, with Seb’s dark head clearly visible above the heads of the shorter men, had vanished through a swinging door.
Hiding her trepidation under a cheery smile, she stepped into her brother’s room. ‘Hello, how are you feeling?’
The previous day Mark’s mood had see-sawed between apathy and anger, so it was an intense relief to see the animation in his face.
‘So you look better.’ If her voice sounded too bright Mark didn’t notice.
‘I am feeling quite good... Take a look at this, Mari.’
Mari took a seat and began to flick through the glossy brochure that he handed her.
‘Do you see what it says about this place? Just look at the statistics, Mari.’ Eagerly he watched her face. ‘Impressive or what?’
