Kitabı oku: «Two-Week Wife»

CHAPTER ONE

‘ADAM,’ Bianca said in that softly persuasive voice he knew oh, so well. ‘I...er...I...um...Well, I have this little problem, you see, and I’m afraid I need your help...’

Adam’s stomach contracted. He turned slowly from where he’d been pouring himself a drink, the whisky decanter and glass still in his hands. He’d just walked in the door after one hell of a Saturday afternoon at Randwick races and wasn’t in the mood for one of Bianca’s ‘little problems.’

All sorts of possibilities flittered through his mind. She’d clobbered some poor bloke who’d patted or pinched her on the bottom—Bianca had one of those bottoms men could not resist.

Or she’d given all the housekeeping money away to a good cause. Again.

Or...His eyes darted swiftly around the unit. God, don’t tell me she’s brought home some starving stray dog or cat she’s found on the streets!

This she did with regular monotony, even though she knew the lease didn’t allow pets in their apartment block. It always fell to him in the end to take the damned bag of bones to the RSPCA, after which Bianca would glare balefully at him for days, as though he himself had personally murdered the wretched worm-ridden animal.

Relief flooded through him when the spacious and relatively uncluttered living room showed no sign of such a stray. Besides, Bianca wouldn’t be nervous about something like that, he finally realised. She would be defiant and rebellious.

And she was nervous. More than he could ever remember seeing her before.

His stomach tightened another notch.

Hell, he hoped she wasn’t pregnant by her latest beefcake boyfriend, and wanted him—her schnookhead flatmate and first best friend—to pay for an abortion.

Oh God, not that. Anything but that!

‘For pity’s sake, Bianca,’ he said, almost despairingly. ‘What have you done this time?’ Adam’s normally cool grey eyes projected total frustration as he glared at the woman he’d loved and hated for the past twenty-eight years.

No, not twenty-eight, he amended bitterly in his mind. Only twenty-three. He hadn’t met her till their first day at kindergarten together, when he’d been five.

He’d been blubbering in a corner of the classroom, all by himself, when this amazingly grown-up and self-assured four-year-old, with big blue eyes and a glossy black ponytail tied with a red ribbon, had put an arm around his shaking shoulders and told him not to worry. She’d look after him. She wasn’t at all scared because her mummy was a scripture teacher at this school and she’d been coming here for simply ages.

This little she-devil—who had been cleverly disguised as a guardian angel back then—had even known where the toilets were, which had been of real concern to him at that moment in time.

He’d been her devoted slave from that point.

He still was.

And she knew it!

He watched wryly as she made those big blue eyes look oh, so innocent. If there was one thing Bianca should not have been able to look these days, it was innocent. But she could, and it always made him melt.

‘It’s nothing bad, Adam,’ she said, as though butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. ‘Really.’

‘What about dangerous?’ he muttered drily. Bianca thrived on danger of the physical kind.

As a kid she’d been a tomboy and a thrill-seeker, always having to climb the highest tree in the yard, always having to play whatever sport the boys were playing and then become the best at it. She’d been able to run faster, throw further and jump higher than any of the boys in her class.

But that had all changed when she went to high school and puberty pulled her back on the field. Talent and determination alone hadn’t been able to compete with the boys once the sheer disadvantage of height, weight and size had become evident.

To Bianca’s chagrin, she had stopped growing at five feet three and a half, and she was burdened for ever with a very slender fine-boned figure. Even so, she’d fought to be allowed to play with the boys’ soccer team, going on to become their highest goalscorer each season.

‘You’re not going to try out for the Australian male soccer team now, are you?’ he asked, somewhat caustically.

Bianca was still into sport in a big way. And sportsmen. If there was one thing guaranteed to turn her on, it was broad shoulders and a bulging set of biceps. Brains didn’t come into it. Only brawn. She liked her men tall too, which was rather ironic considering her own lack of height.

Though six feet tall himself, with a far better body than Bianca gave him credit for, Adam knew he would never fulfil the criteria necessary to capture Bianca’s sexual interest. Nothing sparked when she looked at him. There was no chemistry—on her side.

Adam knew this because Bianca had told him so herself, with brutal but well-meant frankness, on the night she’d turned twenty-one and he’d wasted two dozen long-stemmed red roses in trying to woo her one last time. When he’d confessed he was crazy about her, she’d declared she loved him to death, but that it was the love a girl felt for a big brother or a best friend. She was sorry, but if he couldn’t accept that, then perhaps it would be better if he stayed out of her life.

She’d been right, of course. It would have been better if he’d stayed out of her life.

But he hadn’t. He just couldn’t. He remained her best friend, lending a fairly broad shoulder for her to cry on occasionally, and money when she was desperate enough to ask; Bianca had been brought up by her Scottish mother to ‘neither a borrower, nor a lender be’.

‘Don’t be silly.’ She pouted at him. She had pouting lips to go with that equally pouting bottom. ‘I don’t do things like that any more. I know I’m far too small to play with the really big boys.’

Only on the soccer field, he thought testily. It didn’t stop her playing with the really big boys in the bedroom. And the bigger the better, from what he could gather.

‘I wouldn’t put anything past you, Bianca,’ he ground out as he slopped some much needed whisky into his glass.

‘You make me sound so...so...’

‘Crazy?’ he suggested bitingly. ‘Irresponsible? Impulsive?’ She was all of those things. Not to mention warm, wacky, wild and wonderful, he added to himself on a silent groan.

Lifting the glass to his lips, he downed a good gulp of straight Johnny Walker. It burnt a fiery path down his throat and into his knotted stomach.

Bianca’s beautiful lips pursed further, her blue eyes narrowing, giving her an exotic, oriental look. This was enhanced by her high cheekbones, and the way her long black hair was pulled back tightly from her face. Adam had often fantasised about her being his own private geisha girl, especially when she wore the colourful red and white flowered kimono dressing-gown he’d given her last Christmas.

Bloody stupid fantasy, he thought ruefully. Bianca was as far removed from a geisha girl as any female could get!

‘Just because you don’t know how to have fun, Adam,’ she tossed at him with haughty disdain.

He snorted and strode across the sable-coloured carpet, flopping down into his favourite brown leather armchair. ‘Is that what you think you’re doing when you keep changing direction in your life at the drop of a hat?’ he threw up at her. ‘Was it fun you were having when you came to me last year, stony broke and without a roof over your head? Was it fun earlier this year, after that loser of a boyfriend dumped you? Do you really find it fun having others pick up your pieces?’

‘I do not expect you or anyone else to pick up my pieces,’ she huffed and puffed. ‘And I’ll have you know that I’m the one who usually dumps my “losers of boyfriends,” not the other way around.’

‘At least we agree on one thing,’ he said drily. ‘They’ve all been bums so far.’

‘Maybe,’ she countered blithely. ‘But they all had very nice bums, those bums.’

‘You’d know, I suppose.’ He quaffed back half the whisky, congratulating himself on the offhandedness of his reply—especially when the image of his Bianca being intimate with any part of another man’s anatomy nearly killed him. ‘But we have digressed. Back to your present little problem. Out with it, Bianca. I’m not in the mood for any of your female manoeuvrings tonight.’

‘All right, then, you meanie. I was just trying to tell you nicely, to make you understand that I had no idea this would eventuate. When the situation first arose, I didn’t have to involve you personally at all, but something unexpected has happened and now I have no alternative.’

Adam didn’t have a clue as to what she was talking about. But he feared he would. Soon. Only too well.

Bianca sat down on the sofa-end nearest his chair and leant towards him with the most heartwarmingly pleading look on her lovely face. ‘Please don’t be mad at me, Adam,’ she said, in a voice which would have melted concrete.

For a split second Adam felt himself begin to go to mush, before cold, hard reality had him getting a firm handle on his ongoing weakness for this incorrigible creature. She was going to use him again, as she had used him for years.

No more, he vowed staunchly. No more!

‘Out with it, Bianca,’ he snapped. ‘No more bull. Just give me the facts, and I’ll decide if I’m going to be involved or not.’

Her startled eyes betrayed surprise at his hard stance. She straightened her spine, then rocked her shoulders slightly from side to side in the characteristic gesture which usually preceded defiance or outright rebellion. Her chin shot up. Her eyes flashed and her mouth tightened. ‘There’s no need to take that tone.’

‘I’ll best be the judge of that, thank you. Now just spit it out, woman!’

‘Very well. It’s to do with my mother.’

‘What about your mother?’ Adam frowned. Bianca’s mum was a widow and had gone back to Scotland to live several years before. She’d been very lonely after her husband had been killed in a drag-racing accident.

Bianca was her only child and not much company once she’d finished university and had started flitting round the world on never-ending backpacking holidays. She only returned long enough to pick up a few months’ work, thereby saving up enough to be off again.

Mrs Peterson had several brothers and sisters back in Scotland, so it had made sense for her to return to her homeland. Then, six months ago in May, she’d been diagnosed with breast cancer.

‘Is she worse?’ he asked worriedly. ‘Do you need some more money to go and see her again?’

‘No to both those questions. Which is just as well. I haven’t finished paying you back for the last ticket to Edinburgh you bought me.’

True, he thought ruefully. Which was the only reason she’d stayed in one job and one place for so long. No doubt as soon as her debt was paid she’d be off again on some new adventure, trekking through the Himalayas or skiing down the mountain slopes of St Moritz.

‘No, Mum’s much better,’ Bianca was saying. ‘And there’s every chance that the cancer won’t come back.’

‘Then what’s the problem? I don’t understand.’ ‘She’s coming out here for a fortnight’s visit, that’s what. Her plane touches down next Saturday afternoon—a week from today. Her brothers and sisters all pitched in and bought her a return flight to Sydney.’

‘Well, what’s the problem in that? You should be thrilled. Oh, I see...you want her to stay here. That’s no trouble, Bianca. I don’t mind. I’m hardly here these days anyway, and there are two beds in your room, aren’t there?’

‘That’s the problem,’ she muttered.

Adam blinked his confusion. ‘The beds in your room are a problem?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘Because Mum won’t be expecting me to occupy one, that’s why.’

‘You’ve lost me, Bianca.’

Her sigh was expressive. ‘It’s like this, Adam. Mum thinks we’re married. Naturally she’ll be expecting me to be sleeping in your bed. And she’ll also expect you to be around a bit more than you have been lately. God knows what you’ve been up to. If I didn’t know better I’d think you were avoiding me.’

‘She...thinks...we’re...married,’ he repeated slowly, his eyes narrowing with each word.

‘Don’t look at me like that, Adam. I didn’t mean any harm. Honestly. But when I was over there in May she looked so darned ill. Try to understand ...I thought she was going to die!

‘I knew she’d always wanted to see me settled—preferably with you—so I told her what would make her happy. I said we were engaged and going to be married. Then after I came back and she kept hanging in there I had no alternative but to follow through. So I sent her some selective photos from Michelle’s wedding and said it was ours.’

Adam was shaking his head in utter disbelief. ‘How, in God’s name, did you pull that off? You weren’t even wearing white that day!’

‘My bridesmaid dress was pale pink and could easily pass for a wedding dress. Besides, Mum wouldn’t have expected me to have a traditional wedding with a big white dress. And you looked suitably bridegroomy in your best man outfit.

‘Luckily with it being your sister’s wedding, all your family were there. And on top of that, we had a lot of shots taken together, being partners for the day. Mum thought you looked very handsome, by the way. Oh, and remember those queen-sized sheets she sent, and which I gave you for your bed? They...er....they were our wedding present.’

Adam’s hand clenched tightly around the glass he was holding. Fury that she would perpetrate this fiasco without even consulting him had his blood bubbling with heated anger along his veins. Naturally she hadn’t expected to get caught. She’d probably thought her poor mum would safely pass away before her outrageous lies came to light.

That was always the way with Bianca. She never thought things through to all their possible eventualities and consequences. She always just plunged into some mad caper or other, without worrying or working out how it might affect others.

Never had this been more evident than on the occasion she’d come to him at the age of seventeen and asked him to relieve her of her virginity. Not for reasons of romance, mind. Simply out of curiosity. And she was tired, she’d said, of being the only girl in her group who hadn’t done it. Tired of having to defend her lack of male admirers.

Back then, boys hadn’t gone for Bianca all that much. Of course, she’d always thought it was because of her lack of boobs, but that hadn’t been so at all. It had simply been because they were used to treating her like a mate, not an object of male desire.

He’d been the only boy in school who’d fancied her like mad. And she’d known it. What she hadn’t known, when she’d asked this favour of him, was that he’d been a virgin too, back then. A bit of an embarrassment, really, being a male virgin at eighteen. His mates had used to rag him about it all the time.

He cringed now to think of the total mess he’d made of ‘relieving’ Bianca of her virginity—and himself of his own. He’d been so bloody nervous. Terrified, in fact. He’d been scared of hurting her, scared of coming too soon, scared of not being able to get the damned condom on properly.

The act itself had turned into an absolute disaster, with most of his fears coming to pass. In the end, he had hurt her, and it had all been over too soon. As for the damned condom...he had no idea how that had eventually assumed its rightful position. No doubt more by accident than design.

What should have been the most marvellous moment of his life had deteriorated into being the most embarrassing and definitely the most humiliating.

He could still recall the various expressions on her face during the ten-second event. Pain had been followed by a few moments of frowning frustration, culminating in something even worse... relief when the act had come to a very rapid conclusion, obviously without her experiencing one single moment of pleasure, let alone satisfaction.

Afterwards she’d been uncharacteristically silent, and he’d skulked off home feeling utterly crushed and totally deflated.

The only good to come out of that night had been that the experience had seemed to turn Bianca off sex for the next few years. She’d probably concluded it wasn’t worth bothering about, till a supermacho martial arts instructor, whose class she’d enrolled in during her last year at uni, had taken her uninterest in him as the ultimate challenge and then proceeded to show her that sex was nothing like what she’d experienced that night. He’d apparendy been a fantastic lover, with a body any girl would drool over and a technique to match.

From that moment she’d been hooked—not only on the pleasures of the flesh, but on that sort of male. After Mr Black Belt, she was programmed to believe that arousal and satisfaction were synonymous with an ultra-fit, muscle-bound body and a super-stud mentality.

Adam had always wanted the opportunity to show Bianca he was no longer the sexual klutz he’d been at eighteen, but she would never give him that opportunity. Her mind was fixed against him, her preconceptions set in concrete. He’d thought he’d come to terms with this, but now he realised he hadn’t. Not for a moment.

He wanted her now more than ever, and could not bear the thought of spending a single second in the same bed as her without being able to touch her.

Which was what she would surely ask of him if he agreed to go along with this masquerade of a marriage. She would expect him to allow her to climb into his bed every night for the duration of her mother’s stay. And she would also expect him not to lay a single hand on her.

Such a prospect was beyond the pale. He would not do it. He was a man, not a mouse, and it was high time Bianca recognised that fact.

Uncurling his white-knuckled fingers, he placed the empty glass down on a side-table and stood up.

‘No, Bianca,’ he said, his face stony, his voice quite cold. ‘No.’

And he stalked off down the hallway towards his room.