Wife For a Day

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If his behaviour had been incomprehensible before, now it was totally beyond belief, making her shake her head in bewilderment.

‘Why did you marry me if…?’

She couldn’t continue, transfixed by a sudden wild, savage look in those translucent eyes. But the dangerous light that froze her tongue was belied by the indolent way he lifted his broad shoulders in a dismissive shrug.

‘Don’t ask, Lily,’ he warned. ‘You wouldn’t like the answer.’

Whatever bitter satisfaction he might derive from telling her the whole story, he had promised himself that that would be Cornwell’s job. Let Davey explain things, if he dared. Let him face up to just what it meant to have his sister’s life ruined, her future lying in tatters, because of his own wicked behaviour.

‘It’s not the answer that worries me!’ Lily retorted. ‘It’s the question and the fact that you’ve forced me to ask it.’

Dear God, please let him not see how much that last comment had affected her! Her stomach churned sickeningly, her head spinning dreadfully.

It was the casual lack of emotion that hurt more than anything. The way that he had kept the level of his voice relaxed, conversational, while hers came and went like a badly tuned radio.

Was this really the man she had promised to love and honour for the rest of her life? The man who had vowed the same to her only the day before.

Behind her a clock struck ten-thirty, and a cold, sharp knife stabbed at her with the memory of the way that at just this time twenty-four hours ago she had been coming back from the hair-dresser’s with Hannah, laughing and excited, her heart light with anticipation of the happiness ahead of her.

But she had felt nervous too, the full importance of what she was about to do always at the forefront of her mind. She hadn’t gone into her marriage lightly, while Ronan…

“‘Don’t ask” just isn’t good enough!’

Anger giving her a strength she hadn’t known she possessed, she pushed his hand away and got to her feet in a rush, flames blazing in the golden depths of her eyes.

‘You made certain vows yesterday, and so did I. I meant those vows, Ronan! Every single word of them! I wanted to love you and live with you, have your children…’

Had she finally got through to him? Certainly there seemed to be a change in his set expression, his head going back sharply, heavy lids hooding those steely eyes.

‘And I thought you meant them too! If you didn’t—if you got me here under false pretences—then the least you can do is give me some sort of an explanation. You owe me that if nothing else.’

‘I owe…!’

The dangerous undertone was positively terrifying, but Lily couldn’t afford to let herself be affected by it. She felt as if she was fighting for her life, which, in a way, she was. She was fighting for the life she had believed she was going to have, her future as a married woman—as Ronan’s wife.

‘I want an answer, Ronan!’

This time his gaze actually dropped from her face, as if he could no longer bear her furiously injured glare. Those slate coloured eyes lowered, slanted downwards, and then suddenly held, as if transfixed.

‘Ronan!’

‘Cover yourself up.’ It sounded thick and raw.

‘What?’

‘I said cover yourself up!’

It was only when his hands came out, closing on the front of the mint-green robe and yanking the two sides of it together, that she realised how her unthinking movement in leaping to her feet had wrenched at the already insecurely fastened garment, pulling it apart. Her neck and shoulders, the soft curves of her breasts were exposed to his darkened gaze, the creamy skin flushed, like her face, with a mixture of confusion and tension.

‘You may have distracted me that way last night,’ Ronan grated. ‘But not this time.’

‘And I may have let you paw me then,’ Lily flung back, pulling away from him as violently as she could while still preserving some small degree of modesty. ‘But never again!’

The memory of the feel of those beautifully shaped hands on her skin, on all the intimate pleasure spots on her body made her feel nauseous, and she struggled to erase all the hurt and distress from her voice, thankful to hear it sound as cold and brittle as she could wish.

‘Last night you didn’t call it pawing,’ Ronan told her with a cruel smile. ‘Last night you wanted all I could give you. You begged…’

‘Last night I believed that we were married!’

‘So you did.’ Ronan nodded coldly. ‘And that’s the real bottom line in all this, isn’t it, my darling?’

His tone took the words to a point a million miles away from an endearment.

‘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.

If she had had any hope of salvation earlier, when she had run after him, it had died a slow and painful death. If any such illusion had bolstered her up, giving her the determination to jump up on the bonnet of the Mercedes, then there was none left now. It had all evaporated like mist before the sun, leaving her weak and defenceless, vulnerable to anything he might choose to throw at her.

But rationally she had to know. She couldn’t accept it as the truth unless she heard it from his own mouth. And so, in spite of herself, and against the pleading protests of her wounded heart, she found herself nodding, forming a whispered, ‘Yes,’ with parched lips.

There was no way he could tell her the truth. Not when she looked at him with those big golden eyes, seeming for all the world like a wounded fawn trapped by the hounds and totally at the end of its tether. Silently he cursed her missing brother, wishing with all his heart that he could get his hands around Davey Cornwell’s throat and press hard.

But he had to say something. Something monstrous enough to make her let him go and stop her coming after him—for her own sake as much as for his own.

‘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 completed the sentence. Without even forming a rational thought, Lily lifted her hand and lashed out violently. The crack of her palm making painful contact with his cheek sounded disturbingly loud and brutal, its echoes seeming to linger in the sudden silence that followed.

Ronan swallowed hard, just once, then directed that fiendish smile straight into her blazing eyes.

‘I told you you wouldn’t like the answer.’

‘You bastard!’ It was low, fiercely controlled, filled with all the malevolence she could summon up.

Just for a second a flare of something dangerous in his eyes made her fearful of retribution, but then abruptly he seemed to recollect himself, and shook his head slightly.

‘I think I deserved that,’ he said, with a shocking calmness that rocked her sense of reality. ‘Do you feel better now?’

‘I could hardly feel any worse!’

At this moment she couldn’t even see why she had ever loved him, or convinced herself that she did. Because surely she must have been bitterly mistaken, totally self-deceiving. Surely she could never have cared for a man like this.

But the Ronan she had met and fallen in love with hadn’t been like this.

No!

Ruthlessly she crushed down the weak thought, refusing to let it take root in her mind. The Ronan she had believed herself in love with and the fiend who now stood before her were one and the same man. To think anything else was to weaken herself, to give him a chance to hurt her all over again. ‘Get out, Ronan,’ she said, and was glad to hear that her voice was as coolly controlled as his own. He could be in no doubt as to the strength of her conviction.

And to judge by his expression he knew only too well that she meant what she said.

‘Get out and don’t come back.’

‘If you remember, that was what I had planned in the first place. You were the one who dragged me back.’

‘Well, I’d rather die than do any such thing now. All I want is to see the back of you, once and for all.’

‘Which suits me fine. Goodbye, Lily, I wish I could say it’s been fun.’

He sketched a small, mocking bow before turning on his heel.

Mutely Lily watched him go, past knowing what she felt, torn between relief and bitter despair. He was almost at the door when he paused and slowly turned back.

‘You were right, of course, darling. I am a bastard. But perhaps you should ask yourself how I came to be that way.’

‘I don’t care! I don’t want to know—I don’t want to know anything about you! For one thing, how would I be able to tell what was the truth and what was lies?’

‘The truth.’ It was a harshly cynical laugh, totally devoid of humour. ‘Oh, yes, the truth. Well, Lily my love, if you want the whole truth it’s not me you should come to. You see, that question you were so upset about is only one small part of things. If you want to know the whole story then you really should ask your brother—if he’ll tell you. Now this time I really am going.’

And this time she let him go. She had to. There was nothing else that she could do.

As she stood and watched him walk away, saw him climb into his car and start the engine with a roar that spoke of a mood far removed from his usual calm control, the clock in the hallway struck the hour again.

Lily dug her teeth down hard into her bottom lip, refusing to let the tears fall until Ronan was out of sight.

It was twelve o’clock. At this time yesterday she had stood on the steps of the church, smiling and happy, her brand-new husband at her side. She had been his wife for just twenty-four hours and now it was all over.

High above her head, the sun was shining in the clear blue sky. It was a perfect spring day. A perfect day on which to start what should have been a perfect married life. Instead it was the day that marked the end of her marriage before it had even begun.

CHAPTER FOUR

‘ASK your brother…ask your brother…’

Ronan’s parting shot became a nagging refrain in Lily’s thoughts over the next four days.

‘That question…is only one small part of things. If you want to know the whole story then you really should ask your brother—if he’ll tell you.’

She would if she could. But she had no idea where Davey was, or even if he was still in the country.

When she and Ronan had set the date for their ill-fated wedding, she had done everything she could to track down her missing brother, but with no success. All leads had turned into dead-ends, and his former friends were as much in the dark as to his whereabouts as she was. It was as if Davey had vanished off the face of the earth.

The absence of her brother from her life had been a source of distress to Lily for over three years now. Ever since the day of his seventeenth birthday, when she had returned home to find his room uncharacteristically neat and tidy, his wardrobe empty of the jeans and tee shirts that were the only clothes he wore. But it had been when she had discovered that his guitar had gone that she knew things were serious.

Davey’s beloved Gibson Les Paul, paid for with the earnings from many hours of paper rounds, Saturday jobs and, in the last year, lessons that he had given to other young aspiring musicians, was like a part of him. If he had it with him, then it meant he wasn’t coming back in the near future.

And if she had had any doubts or hopes left, then the note she found on her own pillow had dispelled them all: “Gone to make my name and fortune. Look out for me on the telly very soon!”

And he had signed it, as he now signed everything, scorning the family name he thought too childish for a would-be rock star, with the single initial ‘D’.

Second only to her parents’ untimely deaths, Davey’s desertion had hit her hard. With time, the pain of his abrupt departure had only faded into an aching sense of loss, not vanished altogether, and she lived with the feeling of there being a gap in her life that no one else could fill.

And Ronan had known that. Known it and yet kept his thoughts on the matter to himself.

Because now, with one of those bitter ironies that haunted her thoughts by day and kept her from sleep by night, it seemed that Ronan was the one person who had had any contact with her brother in the time since he had left home.

‘If you want to know the whole story then you really should ask your brother…’

It could mean only one thing. Davey, wild, foolish Davey, had done something to bring down Ronan’s fury on his head, spark off this burning need to hurt and destroy. But what could be so bad that it had resulted in such a terrible revenge?

Just what had Davey done?

She would have to start her investigations all over again. Go back and check every lead, every contact, however vague. Once more she would have to try and find her errant brother, but this time her search would be so much more important. It would be given that added edge by the devouring need to find out just how he had become involved with Ronan and what had happened as a result.

But first there was something else she had to do, something she dreaded but knew she couldn’t avoid. She couldn’t hide away here in this house for the rest of her life. Sooner or later the news would leak out that her marriage had failed before it had even begun, and she could just imagine what sort of stories would be concocted to explain her personal tragedy.

The longer she waited before showing her face, the worse it would become, and she had always believed that if she had something unpleasant to do it was best to get it over and done with.

She gave herself the week of what should have been her honeymoon to hide away in the lovely house. To lick her wounds and weep the tears she vowed she would never show in public. And when that week was up she gathered together the shattered remnants of her self-control, cobbling them together into the closest she could come to a sort of armour to put around herself, and prepared to face the world again.

But she wouldn’t have been human if she hadn’t felt the need for some support, a back-up team to help her over the worst. And so, acting quickly before her nerve failed her completely, she dialled her best friend’s number first.

‘Hannah? It’s Lily. I’m afraid I’ve got some really bad news…’

She could only hope that the story would be a nine-day wonder.

That hope was not to be fulfilled. Four weeks after her return to work, the small town was still buzzing with the story of the marriage that had never been.

‘It’s not fair!’ Lily complained to Hannah, when her friend called at the shop on her way home from the school where she taught History. ‘You’d think something else would have happened by now to take the heat off me.’

‘But that’s just the point,’ her friend commiserated dryly. ‘Nothing does happen here, so your misfortune was God’s gift to the local gossips. And really you can hardly blame them. After all, Edgerton had never seen such excitement as there was over your wedding. You’ve got to admit that Ronan isn’t exactly typical of the sort of man we see around here.’