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Wife For a Day
Kate Walker
Lily remembered the day she'd met Ronan Guerin, and the instant compelling chemistry. She remembered their glorious wedding day, and what had followed– an unforgettable night of passion. But the morning after, Ronan had left, claiming he'd married her only to gain revenge on her brother!Lily had been devastated, especially when she discovered the supposed reason for Ronan's revenge– her brother owed him a lot of money. Then Ronan returned, looking for Lily's brother, and decided to stay in their marital home. Finally Lily was about to find out what the real problem was, and how Ronan really felt about her…
“So, do you really want to know why I married you?”
No! Lily’s heart pleaded with her to say it. To declare that, no, she didn’t want to know anything about it. Didn’t want to hear a word he had to say.
“It was the only way you would let me near you,” he said, so carelessly that for the space of a couple of heartbeats Lily didn’t quite register exactly what he meant. “And I wanted you so much that I was quite prepared…” He never finished the sentence.
“Get out, Ronan!”
“I told you you wouldn’t like the answer.”
No!
“But, Lily, if you want the whole truth it’s not me you should come to. If you want to know the whole story, then you should really ask your brother—if he’ll tell you….”
KATE WALKER was born in Nottinghamshire, U.K., but as she grew up in Yorkshire she has always felt that her roots were there. She met her husband at university and she originally worked as a children’s librarian, but after the birth of her son she returned to her old childhood love of writing. When she’s not working, she divides her time between her family, their three cats and her interests of embroidery, antiques, film and theater, and, of course, reading.
You can visit Kate’s Web site at www.kate-walker.com or e-mail her at kate@kate-walker.com.
Wife for a Day
Kate Walker
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER ONE
RONAN GUERIN looked down at the sleeping face of the woman in the bed and almost changed his mind about the whole thing.
Almost.
She looked so peaceful, so innocent, so damned beautiful. It was impossible not to recall the night he had just spent with her, the incandescent passion they had shared, and feel a pang of regret for the course he had started out on.
But then he remembered Rosalie, every bit as beautiful and just as innocent, and he hardened his heart. Firming his resolve, he reached out a hand and touched her shoulder gently.
‘Lily…’ he said softly.
At first there was no response. She was too deeply unconscious, too exhausted by a night in which sleep had been the last thing on their minds to hear. Refusing to let himself reconsider, to be weakened by the sight of her innocent appearance, he shook her slightly, watching as she gave a faint murmur and stirred, her eyes still closed.
‘Good morning, wife.’
Good morning, wife. The words reached Lily through the clouds of sleep that clogged her brain, making them sound vague and indistinct so that she frowned in drowsy confusion.
Wife?
It was as she moved languorously in the deep comfort of the bed, feeling the soft brush of the fine linen sheets on her naked body, that realisation struck home with the force of an arrow thudding straight into the heart of a target. Her eyes, wide and deep gold, flew open, meeting the steady, watchful gaze of the man who sat on the edge of the bed, his strong fingers still resting on her arm.
‘Ronan?’
Of course! How could she have forgotten, even for a second? How could sleep have wiped away the fact that this was the man to whom she had given her heart so completely that there was never a hope of getting it back—not that she wanted it. The man who, only the day before, had placed a gold wedding band on her finger as he vowed to love and honour her for the rest of his life.
Stretching luxuriously, she turned to face him.
‘Good morning, husband.’
Her smile, with its deliberate edge of sleepy sensuality, was directed straight into his intent blue-grey eyes, the angle of her head calculatedly provocative as it splayed the long blonde strands of her hair out around her heart-shaped face on the immaculate white pillows.
To her surprise, neither the smile nor the inviting gesture earned her the response she had anticipated. Instead, Ronan seemed strangely, almost worryingly distant. The strong-boned features under the silky dark chestnut hair were set in a way that made him look disturbingly remote and cold, light-years away from the ardent, passionate lover of the night before.
Memories of the indulgence of that night brought a rush of colour to her cheeks, and her tongue slipped out to smooth over the soft curve of her lower lip, as if she could still taste the burning kisses he had pressed there. A hot rush of sexual awareness mixed with a heady sense of very female triumph flooded every nerve as she saw the indigo gaze drop to follow the slight movement.
‘Husband,’ she murmured again, savouring the sound of the word.
Her body still ached faintly, and there were one or two tender spots on her skin, but she didn’t care. The pleasure she had experienced last night had been so totally new to her, so mind-blowing in its intensity, that she had been hard put to it to believe that she could feel it and not shatter into a thousand tiny pieces.
And it was something she very much wanted to enjoy all over again.
As she believed Ronan would too. In fact, when she had finally drifted into exhausted and satiated sleep, she had been convinced that she would wake to find herself firmly enclosed by the strength of his arms. That he would greet her with gentle kisses, rouse her body to demanding life, as he had done so easily the night before, his own muscular frame heating, tensing, hardening in matching response.
Which was why it was so disconcerting to find him now sitting beside her, looking so cool and indifferent—and fully dressed.
‘What time is it?’ she asked in some concern, recalling the flight they were due to make that day.
‘Just after nine.’
‘So early! Then what are you doing out of bed?’
Her full mouth formed a petulant moue of disapproval as she took in the clothes he was wearing. They were hardly suitable for someone about to set out on a long-haul trip to the tropical island he had promised would be their honeymoon destination. The immaculately tailored suit in a light grey silk, white shirt and conservative tie only added to her confusion, aggravating the sense of alienation she had experienced earlier.
‘Our plane doesn’t leave until three!’ she protested. ‘We’ve hours yet.’
Lily reached out and stroked his hand where it lay, broad and strong, with long, square-tipped fingers, on the pristine whiteness of the quilt cover.
‘Come back to bed,’ she murmured, her low voice pitched to entice.
An adamant shake of his gleaming dark auburn head was Ronan’s only response. His disturbingly shadowed gaze was fixed on the thick gold band that gleamed bright and new on her slender finger.
‘No?’
Incredulity sharpened her voice, giving a disbelieving lift to the single syllable. Was this the same man who had been so physically demanding, so insatiable throughout the night? The same Ronan as the one who had allowed her no rest until they were both limp with exhaustion, unable to move, even to breathe properly?
‘What is it, darling?’ Deliberately she lowered her voice to a husky whisper. ‘Have you gone off me already?’
That got a reaction, but not the one she had expected.
With a jerky movement, Ronan lifted his head so that his eyes once more met hers full on. Coolest sea-blue locked with the almost amber warmth of Lily’s perplexed gaze, and something deep in those eyes, some shadow darkening their limpid clearness, made her shiver in intuitive apprehension.
‘Gone off you?’ he echoed, his voice sounding as if it came from a throat that was painfully raw. ‘Never that!’
As if to emphasise the words, he accompanied them with a look so sensually appreciative, so blatantly carnal, that it was almost a physical caress in itself. But, just as Lily was about to relax back into the comfortable warmth of her sleepy sexuality, the realisation of a cold edge to that look, a glitter of something disturbing in his eyes was like the splash of icy water in her face, bringing all her defences to red alert before he even spoke again.
‘You turn me on just by existing, lady,’ he declared with disturbing harshness. ‘And you know it. I only have to look at you to want you so much that I feel I might die if I don’t have you. But that’s a penance I have to endure.’
‘Penance!’
That first tiny prickle of unease had now become a raging tide of discomfort. Every nerve stung with a tension that was like the pins and needles of blood returning to a numbed limb, but magnified a hundredfold.
‘I don’t understand!’
She couldn’t hide the tremor of her voice as she pushed herself upright in a panic, feeling far too vulnerable lying down.
‘Ronan? What is it?’
‘I want you, Lily,’ Ronan persisted, as if she hadn’t spoken. Each word was so cold, so clipped that Lily flinched away from them as if they were actually formed in ice as they fell on the sensitive skin of her exposed neck and shoulders. ‘But I’ll never have you again—ever. It was good while it lasted—perhaps the best—but now it’s over. I only waited until you were awake so that I could say goodbye.’
‘G-Goodbye!’
It couldn’t be true! She couldn’t have heard right. Either that or this was some appalling sick joke, one that she didn’t like at all. But she would never have believed that Ronan could be so hatefully cruel.
‘This isn’t funny, Ronan!’
‘Funny?’
His intonation said it all, Ronan knew. There was no need for further elucidation. But still he wanted to spell it out to her, setting out the details with a precise pedantry that made it plain his intent was to spare her nothing. He wanted her to know exactly what was happening, to understand what the experience of pain was truly like.
‘This is no joke, my darling. No joke at all. Believe me, I never felt further from laughter; I couldn’t be more serious. Our marriage, such as it was, is over—done with. I’m leaving today and I’m never coming back.’
He got to his feet, the easy, indolent movement somehow shocking when Lily contrasted it with the whirling frenzy inside her head.
‘I’ll let you decide when to serve the divorce papers.’
‘But…’
‘And now, if you’ll excuse me…’ The carefully formal politeness underlined the ruthless determination to give her no quarter at all. ‘I have a long drive ahead of me.’
As he strolled to the door Lily could only stare after him in stunned confusion. But even as her golden eyes were fixed on his retreating back her thoughts were turned inward, reviewing the events of the previous day—their wedding day—trying to see how the glorious happiness she had experienced then could have brought her to the emotional horror of this moment.
How was it possible that what had seemed like the realisation of her greatest dream could have changed so swiftly into the nightmare of knowing that that fulfilment now lay shattered at her feet?
How could she not have suspected anything? Surely there must have been some clue. Some moment when Ronan had let slip the careful mask of the happy bridegroom, the veneer of a man anticipating his marriage with the same sort of excitement and delight that had filled her own heart, and revealed his true feelings.
Because it had to have been a mask, she now saw. He could never have felt for her the way she had believed he did and then turn round and do this. And yet he had never seemed to be pretending. Certainly, she had never suspected for a moment that his feelings were anything but totally sincere.
So when had it all fallen apart?
No, it couldn’t be true! She had to be dreaming. She was trapped in a nightmare from which she desperately wished she could wake.
Frantically she pinched at her hand, her arm, praying that the small, self-inflicted pain would break through the trance that held her and force her into consciousness. But nothing happened. There was nothing to happen. She was wide awake, this private hell only too real.
And yesterday she had thought she had it all. That she’d found the true love she had looked for all her life.
Yesterday had been quite perfect. In fact the one tiny flaw she could remember had been the silly upset over Ronan’s hair…
‘Well, are you ready to take the longest walk of your life?’
George Halliday grinned down at Lily as he spoke, one hand adjusting the fall of his elaborate cravat. Above the silky material, his lined face was already beginning to redden in the unexpected warmth of early April sunlight.
‘The longest walk, Uncle George?’
Lily smiled enquiringly up at the man who wasn’t really her uncle but had acquired the name as an honorary title after years of friendship. George had held the market stall next to hers when she had first started out in her florist’s business. He had been there to help when she had moved her business into a small, rented shop, and he was the closest thing to a genuine relation she had had for years. So he had been the obvious choice to turn to when, with her wedding so very close, she had been unable to track down her missing brother and had been forced to look elsewhere for someone to escort her down the aisle.
‘I thought that was supposed to be the walk to the scaffold.’
‘Tradition might have it that way, my dear, but I can’t see it. I reckon that particular stroll must just fly by! But this one! Well, that’s a different kettle of fish altogether. Too much time to think. With every step you take you’re wondering whether you’ve done the right thing. He loves me…he loves me not…’
He mimed slow, stately steps forward with each phrase.
‘Oh, Uncle George! I don’t have to think, I know! I love Ronan more than life itself, and he loves me.’
