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No longer able to fight the compulsion, his eyes dropped, moving in a slow sweep that took in every aspect of her from the glorious flaming head of Pre-Raphaelite curls that framed her perfectly oval face to the length of her endless legs to the sleek, sinuous curves in between. Everything was accentuated by a dress that was probably illegal in several countries...or was that the body?
It was the lust that slammed through him—hard to imagine a less appropriate response in the circumstances—that brought reality like a boomerang rushing back to hit him squarely in the gut. He reacted to the weakness with an explosive rush of anger.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ As he flung out the question in the periphery of his vision he sensed movement coming from the row that was reserved for the royal party. Hell, this was a disaster. Where was Security and where had they been when she had strolled in?
Her smile, sheer, silky provocation, caused him to take an involuntary step forward, fury for a fatal split second blanking logic.
‘Now you know what it feels like!’ Mari flung with a bravado she was not feeling... Actually she was feeling really weird.
The last thing Mari saw before the dancing black dots joined up and for the first time in her life she fainted was those dark implacable eyes staring with skin-peeling intensity at her.
Before she hit the ground, Seb had been pretty sure that the graceful fainting stunt was just as phoney as the rest of her performance.
But she wasn’t moving... If she had knocked herself out, he thought grimly, it would deprive him of the pleasure of making her choke on her words, though not even a full retraction would fix the damage she had just caused.
He had spent years making the Defoe name stand for something, a brand that inspired confidence, and now in a matter of seconds this woman had destroyed it.
Ironic really that he had thought his parents’ absence—they had not been willing to interrupt their world cruise for their son’s wedding—would guarantee a drama-free day.
Seconds ticked and the entire place collectively held its breath, until Seb lost his fight against the instinct to react—someone had to do something!
Did it have to be you? asked the voice in his head.
It was just as well that his grandfather was not here.
One arm under her legs, the other around her back, he heaved her into his arms, wondering how many phones were capturing the moment. The action seemed to break the group paralysis in the place, and as people started shifting in their seats it was filled with a low buzz of conversation that drowned out the soft groan of the woman in his arms.
As her head fitted itself into the angle of his shoulder her crazy cloud of fiery red hair went just about everywhere. He spat a tendril out of his mouth and, eyes flat with suppressed fury, turned his head to look at her face, marvelling than anything that looked so beautiful could cause so much damage.
Her blue-veined eyelids fluttered but stayed sealed, and with another little groan she said a name that sounded like Mark.
Another victim...?
Amazingly, unconscious she looked almost vulnerable, a million miles from the vindictive drama queen of moments before.
Why the hell had she done it?
‘Now you know what it feels like’ suggested simple payback. Seb understood the attraction of revenge, but who waited six years? The possibilities ran through his head as he strode, the cynosure of all eyes, up the aisle towards his bride, the white-hot burning anger he struggled to contain battering at the insides of his skull, his arms full of crazy, delusional or plain evil but definitely sweet-smelling redheaded witch.
‘Keep still!’ he growled under his breath as she squirmed up against him, turning her body so that her breasts flattened against his chest.
When he came level with Elise his iron expression softened. He felt a stab of guilt that he hadn’t given her a second thought, which made him a selfish bastard.
Poor Elise—if this was hard for him he could only imagine how she was feeling under her veil. If there was ever a moment when he would have excused a tantrum this was it, but she was conducting herself with a dignity that contrasted starkly with that of the woman who had just smashed the reputation he had spent years rebuilding. A sound of mingled disbelief and self-disgust vibrated in his throat because half his mind was occupied imagining her naked.
‘Sorry.’ His soft apology coincided with an audible lull in the buzz of conversation. There might have been someone in the most distant corner who hadn’t heard the word, which would undoubtedly be construed as an admission of guilt, but he doubted it.
His jaw clenched. Perfect! Feeling frustration closing in on him, he glanced down at the cause and found a pair of glazed blue eyes looking up at him.
‘I’m not sorry,’ she whispered before the dark lashes framing them came down in a fluttering curtain against her smooth, very pale cheek. Then with a soft murmur, she burrowed in closer.
You will be, Seb thought, struggling to focus on anger rather than his indiscriminate hormones, which were acting independent of his brain to the squirmy, sensationally packaged softness in his arms.
Even without looking he could feel Elise’s dagger stare behind her veil, and who could blame her? Certainly not him. He wasn’t always as appreciative as he ought to be of her composure. He sent up a silent apology for ever having wished she’d show just a little more spontaneity, just occasionally. Ninety-nine out of a hundred women in her place would be having hysterics right now.
‘Door, Jake...?’
His best man, who had been standing there, blinked as though emerging from a trance and grabbed the door to his right to allow Seb to pass through.
‘Look after Elise,’ Seb said as he went through. ‘Take her...someplace, tell her I won’t be long, oh, and send for—’
‘Ahead of you there. We have three medics here. Anything else?’
‘Any of them a psychiatrist?’ Seb muttered, and responded to the handclasp on his shoulder with a nod. ‘Is there somewhere, Father, that I can...?’
‘This way.’
Seb followed the priest into a small anteroom. By the time he had laid the unconscious redhead on the small couch there, Jake arrived with a guest in tow who he introduced as—
‘Tom, Lucy’s fiancé—he’s a trauma surgeon.’
Seb, who had little interest in the man’s credentials, took his eyes off the girl long enough to shake the man’s hand. ‘Do you mind taking a look?’ He turned to his best man. ‘Jake, where is Elise?’
‘How far along is the pregnancy?’
Seb’s attention swung back to the other man, his jaw clenched as he fought for control. Get used to it, Seb, this won’t be the first time. If he lost control this woman would win...as if she hadn’t already?
‘I really wouldn’t know. This woman is—’ about to say she was a complete and total stranger, he stopped and finished sharply ‘—delusional.’
Not hanging around to see if he was believed, he turned to Jake, who responded to his interrogative look with, ‘First left down the stairs, third door on the r...no, left.’
It was actually the right.
The room he entered was larger and less sparsely furnished than the one he had just left.
His bride, her veil thrown back, was standing looking lovely in front of a stained-glass window. Her mother, a woman he had never warmed to, sat in a chair. She stopped speaking when he walked in, but the word lawyer hung in the air.
‘Sandra...’ He tipped his head in acknowledgement.
‘I have never been so humiliated in my life!’ she responded in a voice that never failed to jar on him.
Tell me about it, he thought, turning to his bride-to-be.
He watched her struggle to produce a brittle smile.
‘You’re a star,’ he said warmly. ‘First thing, none of what she said was true.’
The older woman snorted.
‘Mother, that is not being helpful.’ Elise held up a hand, a pained expression flickering across her face before the smile was back in place. ‘Please, Seb, there is really no need for explanations. I thought you realised that. I have total faith in your ability to make this...unpleasantness go away.’
‘Everyone has their price.’
His glance flickered towards the older woman. ‘Thank you for that contribution, Sandra.’ His sarcasm sailed right over the woman’s head. ‘I have done nothing to pay for.’
‘Mother, Sebastian is more than capable of dealing with this.’
‘He allowed it to happen.’
Seb ignored the shrill accusation from the older woman.
‘Do you believe me, Elise?’
Her eyes slid from his. ‘I think it’s totally irrelevant whether this woman’s accusations are true or false, Sebastian.’
‘You are taking the possibility I got another woman pregnant and deserted her remarkably well,’ he drawled.
‘Would you prefer I acted the hurt victim?’ A small confident smile curved her lips as she asked the question.
He looked at the hand she had laid on his arm, and after a moment she removed it. The flush on her cheeks penetrating her perfect make-up, she gave a tight smile.
‘Look, I know you share my dislike of...messy emotional scenes, but the way you’re acting anyone would think you wanted me to make a scene.’
Good question. Well, do you, Seb?
‘I could but where would that get either of us? I’m a realist—we both are. We need to get back in there, put a brave face on it and show the world that we’re a team.’
As locker-room motivational speeches went, it wasn’t bad.
‘This is about damage limitation, but these things happen. Mother’s right, just keep her quiet.’
Feeling like someone who was seeing something that had been there all along, he shook his head as though the action would clear his vision. It didn’t.
‘How do you expect me to do that?’
The serene mask slipped and she yelled, ‘Oh, for God’s sake, don’t be so dense! Throw some bloody money at her—you’ve got enough! This is my day, and I refuse...’ She took a deep breath and lowered her voice to a soft steely murmur as she clarified it. ‘I totally refuse to let anything or anyone ruin it, especially some little tramp you got pregnant!’
‘So let me get this straight—you will ignore my indiscretions and you expect I will return the favour?’
She blinked, her eyes widening in an attitude of exasperated surprise as she chided impatiently, ‘Well, obviously, Sebastian. I didn’t think that needed spelling out.’
His reflective smile was filled with self-mockery. ‘I think perhaps I did.’ He turned to the older woman. ‘Do you mind leaving us?’
‘I’m not—’
‘Get out.’ In a business setting the soft menace in his voice would not have surprised anyone—he was preceded by his reputation—but the women he addressed reacted with open-mouthed shock.
He waited for her to leave the room before he turned to his fiancée, searching her face. ‘You’re not in love with me?’
‘Are you saying that I don’t satisfy you in bed?’
‘I’m not referring to your competence in the bedroom. I’m talking about...’ He paused. It was a subject he was even less qualified than Elise to discuss. ‘It was not a criticism, just a fact, and I’m not in love with you either—that was never a problem—but it turns out I want more than you can give me.’ He did not want slavish devotion or mad, undying passion, but at the bare minimum he wanted a wife who gave a damn if she thought he was fooling around.
‘Something more... A threesome? Or...I’m very broad-minded, Sebastian.’
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 (#ulink_962eeb44-cb22-56e6-91b3-b9f2d1cd669a)
‘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.
