Kitabı oku: «Wife For a Day», sayfa 3

All to myself. The whispered words sent of glow of sheer joy through every inch of Lily’s body, making her purr like a contented cat.

‘That’s fine by me.’

Lazily she let her fingers drift over the powerful muscles of his back and shoulders, sliding into the dark silk of his hair. Feeling its unexpected lack of length, the bluntness of the line at the base of his finely shaped skull, she frowned in sensual disapproval.

‘Why did you cut your hair?’ she complained softly.

‘Perhaps I thought it didn’t suit my new status as a married man.’

‘But if you knew how long I’ve dreamed of this moment, how I wanted to run my fingers through it…’

She suited action to the words.

‘Trace its path right down to your shoulders…’

The way his long body tensed, then jerked convulsively under her caress told her of the effect she was having, bringing a smile of dreamy triumph to her lips.

‘Along your back…’

Her forefinger trailed all the way down the strong, straight line of his spine and under the loosened trousers, moving teasingly over the tautly muscled buttocks.

‘Witch!’ Ronan growled. ‘You’re asking for trouble.’

‘Really?’

Lily rounded her eyes with mock surprise and shock.

‘Do you know?’ she murmured. ‘I think that’s exactly what I’m doing.’

Her wandering fingers moved to close over the waistband of his trousers. With Ronan’s willing help he was soon free of his only remaining clothing, a faintly shaken laugh escaping him as she explored his naked body without restraint.

Her hunger doubling with every second, she moved sinuously against his naked form, revelling in the abrasion of the curls of his body hair against her breasts, the warmth of his flat stomach next to hers. Lower still, the hard, heated force of his physical arousal lay like burning velvet against her thighs, making her yearn and ache with a hunger that could no longer be denied.

‘Ronan, please…’ she heard herself beg.

But Ronan had yet more skills in his repertoire, and he used them with the consummate artistry of genius, touching, stroking, kissing, taking tiny, sharp little bites at her skin. And when his knowing fingers found the warm, moist innermost core of her femininity she gasped out loud, twisting in total loss of control.

Frantic heat pulsed through her, radiating out from that aching spot deep at the heart of her being, and she knew nothing beyond that tiny focus, her whole thought process suspended in concentration on it. Each time she thought she could bear no more he found another variation on delight, another refinement of pleasure, and the intensity of her need increased until it was nearer to torture than rapture.

Only then did he slide over her, nudging her thighs apart with the hair-roughened strength of his. For a split second he hesitated, and she saw something flare in his darkened eyes that made her heart jolt in instinctive panic. But a second later the moment was forgotten as he entered her with a single fierce thrust, driving any chance of thought away for ever.

Lily lost her sense of time, of space, of being. She lost herself and became only one part of the whole they made together. Her hands clenched over the powerful muscles of his shoulders, her spine arching in desperate need to feel to the uttermost every urgent touch, every move of his body on hers. She was soaring higher and higher, spiralling wildly towards a blazing sun that would burn her up, leave her as nothing but ashes, and she didn’t care. All that mattered was reaching that peak of fulfilment.

As the final burning wave broke over her she heard a voice, ragged and hoarse, crying Ronan’s name out loud, and realised with a sense of shock that it was her own. The sound was so wild, so primitive she couldn’t recognise herself in it. Adrift on a heated sea of delight, she heard Ronan, too, cry out as he followed her into the oblivion of ecstasy.

But it wasn’t her name that was torn from his lips at the height of his passion. Nor was it any soft word of love nor expression of the pleasure that had possessed him. Instead it was a wild and husky sound that seemed to have been dragged from the depths of his soul.

‘Remember!’ he said. ‘Remember this, my Lily! Remember!’

Remember. Lily could only think hazily when the final storm had faded, ebbing slowly away like warm, sluggish waves lapping a sun-heated shore. Remember. How could she ever forget? How could there be any doubt that she would recall this first night of her marriage in every tiny detail?

Each moment of it was etched on to her brain, second by second, and while she lived nothing would ever erase them from her memory. Of course she would always remember. The whole experience had been totally unforgettable.

CHAPTER THREE

UNFORGETTABLE.

The word seared inside Lily’s head, making her feel chilled to the bone. If the nightmare into which she had woken was all that remained of her married life, how could she ever survive with those scenes of overwhelming passion engraved on her soul?

But she had to come out of her memories because Ronan had said something she hadn’t heard, let alone understood, and she could only blink at him in blank incomprehension.

‘I think we’d better talk indoors.’

Talk? Lily eyed him with wary suspicion.

‘Talk’ sounded hopeful. It made it seem as if there was some room for discussion, not just the unequivocal ultimatum he had handed out at the start.

But ‘indoors’ meant going into the house, and that meant getting down from her position on the car. That might be decidedly incongruous, possibly even close to looking ridiculous, but if it stopped him driving off, as he had obviously intended, then it was her only small advantage, and right now she intended to hang on to it.

‘Is there anything to talk about?’ she questioned edgily. ‘I mean, you present me with a fait accompli and then you say we can negotiate…’

She broke off sharply as she saw his dark head move in fierce negation, the coppery strands catching the sun with a disturbingly attractive effect.

‘No negotiation,’ he declared adamantly. ‘I just want you to listen…’

‘Then I’m not moving! You can talk to me right here.’

She tried to sit up straighter, needing to outface him. But the unwary movement on the polished metal proved her undoing. The silky robe gave her no grip, so that she had to put her hands down flat in order to stop herself from sliding ignominiously off on to the ground.

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’

Ronan’s fury was expressed in a darkly eloquent stream of violent curses as he strode forward sharply.

Lily had no time to guess at his plan, or to prepare herself in any way. An awkward, fearful squawk of protest escaped her as one arm closed around her shoulders, the other slid under her thighs, and she was lifted bodily from the car.

‘Ronan! Put me down!’

Her wild objection went unheeded. He simply tightened his grip, clamping his arms around her with the bruising effect of steel bands until she was incapable of movement, as he marched towards the house.

‘I never did carry you over the threshold,’ he muttered, the sardonic humour scraping her nerves raw as she, too, recognised in his actions the black parody of the old-fashioned tradition of the groom carrying his bride into their first marital home. Ronan kicked open the nearest door, striding into the elegant green and gold living room and dumping her unceremoniously into an armchair.

‘Now—oh, no you don’t!’

He reacted swiftly when she would have got to her feet in an attempt at escape. One strong hand fastened punishingly on her shoulder again, pushing her back into the chair and holding her there.

‘What sort of joke is this, Ronan? It’s not funny, believe me. I—’

‘No joke,’ he insisted harshly. ‘Do I look like I’m laughing?’

If the truth be told, Ronan reflected inwardly, humour had never been further from his mind. He just wanted this whole thing over and done with.

He had never expected her to fight so hard, or for so long. He had thought that by now he would be well away from Edgerton, his mission accomplished, leaving the shattered pieces of his so-called marriage well behind for Davey Cornwell to pick up, if he ever resurfaced.

Instead, he was still here, unable to get away. Lily seemed to have entwined herself around his life like a clinging vine, and, what was worse, he actually found himself starting to feel sorry for her. He had to get a grip on himself. Pity was an emotion he couldn’t afford to let himself experience.

‘Answer me one thing.’ The conflict he was enduring inside made his voice even harsher than he had intended. ‘Were you telling the truth when you said you liked this house?’

The abrupt change of tack totally nonplussed Lily. Even though she could see no reason for the question she could only answer it straight.

‘Of course. I love it; it’s quite beautiful. But…’

Ronan dismissed her confused question with an imperious wave of his free hand.

‘Then it’s yours.’

Hearing that, Lily felt that if she hadn’t been sitting down already she might actually have fallen. The ground seemed to have crumbled away beneath her feet, leaving her with nothing firm enough on which to stand.

‘But it must be worth a fortune!’

‘Something like that,’ Ronan agreed with supreme indifference. ‘But I knew that if I actually went ahead and married you there would be legal repercussions. I accept that I shall have to support—’

‘I don’t want your money! You know that’s not why I married you!’

‘Well, it’s all that’s on offer. There’s nothing else.’

‘But why?’

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.’

‘You can say that again.’ Lily sighed despondently, recalling the way she had felt when she had first set eyes on his tall, lean frame, the stunning bone structure of his face, the striking steel blue of his eyes under the burnished colour of his hair.

‘And as something of a local entrepreneur yourself…’

‘Entrepreneur! Oh, come on!’ Lily scoffed, rather more emphatically than she’d actually meant because she was trying to distract her thoughts from the painful path they were following.

She didn’t want to think about Ronan. Didn’t want to recall how he had affected her right from the start, the forceful impact of his potent masculinity going straight to her heart like an arrow speeding to the gold on a target.

‘And how many other local women do you know who have set themselves up in business on one small market stall and within six years earned a reputation as the best flower arranger—sorry, floral designer—in the county?’ Hannah enquired reprovingly.

That was how she’d first met Ronan, Lily recalled miserably. She had been asked to do the flowers at the wedding of the only daughter of a wealthy local industrialist. As a business associate of Frank Hodgson, Ronan had been amongst the guests. They had been introduced by the bride’s mother, he had asked her to dance, and the rest, with a sort of inevitability, had been history.

‘I’ve been lucky.’

‘Lucky!’ her friend snorted. ‘Lily, luck had nothing to do with it. Talent and sheer determined hard work is more like it. You pulled yourself up again after a loss that would have floored most people—particularly considering you weren’t even out of your teens when it happened—and you’ve gone on to make a real success of your life. And you brought up Davey too, while you did so. If anyone deserves some happiness now, it’s you. I thought you had found it with Ronan.’

Hannah’s face changed, her normally smiling expression becoming hard and hostile.

‘If I could get my hands on him…’

‘Hannah, please!’ Lily put in hastily.

They had been over and over the story of Ronan’s desertion until she was sick to death of it, and they were no nearer an answer than they had ever been.

At least in the past few weeks she had learned if not to adjust then to find a way of living with what had happened. The wounds Ronan had inflicted on her were too deep, too agonising to be anywhere close to healing, but by throwing herself into her work she had found a way of distracting herself from the pain.

‘I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t even want to think…’

Luckily, at that moment they were interrupted by the sound of a knock, and Heather, her junior assistant, put her head round the door.

‘A visitor for you, Lily. Personal, he said.’

‘Personal, he said.’ Lily’s heart leapt so painfully that her breath tangled in her throat. Could it be? Was it possible?

She didn’t know whether she was hopeful or fearful, how she would feel or what she could say if it did turn out to be Ronan. But she was still struggling for some degree of composure when her already shaky mental state was knocked even further off balance as her visitor appeared in the doorway.

Not Ronan. This man had hair as fair as her own, but with a silvery cast where hers was pure gold, falling to his shoulders in a long, straggly tangle. Eyes a darker brown than her amber, looking even more so in contrast to the unhealthy pallor of thin cheeks that were all planes and shadows. A tall, gangling frame just emerging into full manhood from adolescence, but so painfully thin that her heart clenched in distress at the sight.

‘Davey!’

He was the last person she had expected to see, and all the pain of the missing three years sounded in her voice.

Davey caught it, and his mouth twisted as he shuffled awkwardly from one foot to another.

‘Hi, Sis! Surprised to see me?’ It was faintly cocky, more than half defiant, as if he was unsure of his welcome.

‘Surprised…’ Lily’s voice was choked and uneven. ‘Oh, Davey!’

Released from the numbing sense of shock into which his appearance had thrown her, she got to her feet and rushed to his side, her arms going out to enclose him in a warm, welcoming hug. She couldn’t help wincing in distress as she felt just how little flesh there was on his tall, delicate frame.

Whatever Davey had been doing, clearly he hadn’t achieved the success he had dreamed of. It was obvious that he hadn’t been eating properly for quite some time.

‘It’s been so long! Where’ve you been? I’ve missed you so much!’

‘Missed you too.’

The reluctance with which Davey submitted to her hug made it plain that he was embarrassed by the display of emotion in front of Hannah. In deference to his feelings, Lily eased up, releasing him even though her own instinct was to hold him tight and never let him go. Hannah was not so sensitive to his feelings.