Читать книгу Scandalous Bride - Diana Hamilton - Страница 6

CHAPTER ONE

‘OLIVIA MONROE killed her first husband then jumped into bed with her boss, the richest married rat in town!’

The male voice, thick with alcohol, penetrated the smoochy dance music and the nightclub chatter. Olivia stiffened in Nathan’s arms, flinching as she heard a woman shriek, ‘You can’t be serious, Hughie!’

‘Ask anyone—she’s been sleeping with my big brother for years and it’s not going to stop just because she’s got herself a solid gold meal-ticket for life, all legally tied up with wedding lines!’

‘The Olivia who married that scrummy, rich as a plum-cake Nathan Monroe? Their wedding made the front pages a couple of months ago—good grief! Does he know he’s been taken for a sucker?’ The woman was obviously loving every minute of it and Olivia felt sick, her feet rooting themselves to the minute dance-floor. The elegant, glittering surroundings suddenly felt tawdry.

Had Nathan heard?

Nathan had.

His big, hard body went still. He took an incisive step back, his arms falling to his sides as his hands made dangerous fists. She looked up into his harsh and beautiful face and shuddered, her skin crawling with fire and then ice.

Sometimes the inescapable intensity of what she felt for him frightened her. The inadmissible knowledge that she couldn’t live without him, the way her blood turned to a burning torrent when he walked into a room, the reckless way she’d given every last scrap of her future happiness into his keeping when, years ago, she’d solemnly and sensibly vowed she would never fall in love again.

And now the anger frightened her. Savage, black anger blazing in those steel-grey eyes, pulling the tanned flesh tight against his strong and elegant bones.

Instinctively, her eyes sifted through the swaying bodies, homing in on Hugh Caldwell. Running to fat, he looked older than his thirty-four years. For a split second her eyes clashed with his, dark brown and malicious, before he led his dance partner off the floor with a smirk on his dissolute face.

Olivia held her breath, shocked by the vile gossip Hugh was spreading. The sound of the music had faded, the noise people made when they were enjoying themselves ebbing out of her consciousness, and all she could hear was the thunderous beat of her heart and Nathan’s ice-cold threat, ‘I’ll kill the son of a bitch!’

‘Don’t.’ Her hand on the black sleeve of his dinner jacket stayed him. He swung round to face her, his shoulders wide and hard, intimidating. She took a deep breath. One of them had to remain cool and collected. She felt anything but. However, she’d spent long, lonely years perfecting her act.

‘Make a scene and you’ll give credence to his foul lies,’ she advised quickly. ‘Think about it.’

Of all the exclusive nightclubs in London why had Hugh Caldwell chosen this one? He’d been born with a chip on his shoulder and for the past thirty-four years it had been growing heavier by the day. She had always suspected he could be dangerous but hadn’t imagined he could stoop so low. The cold premonition of disaster feathered over her skin, making her shiver, but—

‘Ignore him, or sue. Or both,’ she said calmly, her mind frantically willing him to agree. He looked capable of tearing Hugh Caldwell limb from limb and taking savage pleasure from every moment.

She hated violence in any form. For one terrible day, the last day of her first husband’s life, she had known what physical violence really was. She had known that it had fatally poisoned their already weakened relationship and had opened her eyes to the fact that violence of another form, emotional violence, had been eroding their marriage almost from day one. ‘Don’t put yourself down on his level.’

That, mercifully, appeared to have the desired effect. She actually saw the battle to rein in his flaring anger. And saw him win. But then nothing ever defeated him, did it? She fought her own impulse to sag with relief, simply dipping her head coolly as he commanded, tight-lipped, ‘We’re leaving.’

And she walked out at his side, five feet three inches of dignity, her glossy black hair whispering against the tanned skin of her back where the sweeping cut of the elegant white dress left it bare. Her amethyst eyes were staring straight ahead and her sultry mouth was caught tight against her teeth in case the tremor of her lips gave her away.

But distressed tremors plagued her on the taxi ride back to the Chelsea mews cottage and she couldn’t relax enough to make them stop.

‘It’s cute,’ he’d said when he’d snapped the cottage up just days before their wedding. ‘A London base for a time. I haven’t had a permanent home in England for years. A cute and private place to make memories before we move on. Like it, sweetheart?’

She’d loved it on sight. Loved the dolls’ house proportions, the cosy, secluded atmosphere, projecting that love into the wonderful memories they’d make together, not heeding the warnings about moving on, not even hearing them properly.

But now he wasn’t saying a thing. The distance between them was far more than a few feet of upholstery. The tension between them was making the small space a void.

He was a proud man with a streak of self-assurance a whole mile wide. A hard man. A brilliant wheeler-dealer, a key stock-market player, his mind had the cutting edge of a diamond.

No one took him for a ride, called him a sucker. That taunt would be eating up his mind. Perhaps even more than the evil slur on her character.

Olivia ached to touch him but didn’t dare. The dam would burst soon enough and the back of a London cab wasn’t the place to cope with it.

If only they’d stayed home tonight, she agonised futilely. But they’d been on the verge of their very first fight. One week back at work after their idyllic two-month honeymoon in the Bahamas, he had as good as demanded she hand in her resignation. He’d wanted to know why she hadn’t already done just that, and she had tried to explain her reluctance, put forward her own ideas, both of them getting more uptight by the moment until he’d pulled them away from the danger with that mind-shatteringly wicked grin of his.

‘Forget it, for now. We’ll eat out tonight, somewhere special. And go clubbing afterwards. Celebrate being married for two months and a week.’ His steely eyes had warmed in that special way, for her alone, and her insides had capered about, twisting with love for him as she’d hurried to change with no foreknowledge of how the evening would end...

After the taxi had drawn away the mews was quiet, the single street lamp accentuating the black shadows. Nathan opened the front door, de-activated the alarm system and stood aside, allowing her to walk through to the cottage-style sitting room in front of him. His silence and the tight cast of his features were ominous.

She switched on a parchment-shaded table lamp, dousing the main lights, preferring the subdued effect. The soft glow made the cottage antiques and the squashily upholstered twin sofas seem so safe and cosy—a much needed antidote to the arctic chill of the atmosphere Nathan was generating.

‘Were they foul lies?’ His voice abraded her.

A give-away flicker of pain darkened her eyes, but only a flicker; she had it under control even though she felt she was coming part, her flesh being painfully stripped from her bones by the knife-edge of his lack of trust

‘How can you even ask?’ Her voice was cool, masking her desperate hurt, her body in the understatedly sexy white dress taut and slim and proud. ‘Don’t you know me better than that—well enough to make the asking of such a question totally irrelevant and completely offensive?’

She lifted her chin higher, blanking out the shameful, hateful knowledge that not all of Hugh’s malicious gossip had been lies, and felt the deep ache of misery spread right through her as he answered tersely, ‘I only know what you choose to tell me.’

He turned his back on her, moving to a side table and sloshing two inches of malt whisky into a glass, draining it in one swallow, his mouth tight as he reminded her, ‘We saw each other, were poleaxed and were married three weeks later.’ He dragged in a sharp breath, his eyes holding hers, adding more slowly, ‘I never thought such a thing could happen to me.’

His lips curled wryly at the memory of that cataclysmic happening and her body leapt in ferocious response at the wonderful memories: the way they hadn’t been able to keep their hands off each other, the way they hadn’t been able to handle being apart, the glorious, fated inevitability of it all.

But then they were dragged back to the present, the brief bonding of shared and precious memories over.

‘Apart from the information that you are an only child and that your parents separated, I know two hard facts about your past,’ he stated. ‘First, you married when you were nineteen, his name was Max and he died six years later. Second, as a widow you became married to your career and that lasted for three years, until we met,’ he enumerated harshly.

‘Or am I wrong there? Does your career still come first? Is that why you won’t quit?’ His face tightened. ‘My work takes me all over the world—you know that. I want you with me, not stuck back here—you know that, too. Is being a PA to the head of Caldwell Engineering more important to you than being with me? Or does the attraction lie mainly with your boss, rather than the job itself?’

Olivia shivered uncontrollably, despising herself for that small betrayal. They had come full circle, right back to where the disastrous evening had started. But, worse than that, he had taken the gossip on board, beginning to question her relationship with her boss, James Caldwell.

She watched numbly as he dragged his black tie away from his shirt, tossing it onto one of the sofas, his jacket following a scant second later. And then he turned and met her wide and wounded eyes.

Even as he held her gaze his expressive mouth softened. His brow furrowing, he dragged taut fingers through his midnight-dark hair. ‘God, I’m sorry, Livvy. Come here.’

She went into his arms willingly, as she always would, the inescapable tug of the wicked chemistry that had sprung to inexorable life between them the moment they’d met working its unending magic.

His arms enfolded her with savage passion, pulling her slender curves into his hard, lean frame, his voice thick and raw with contrition as he bent his dark head and covered her neck with scalding kisses. ‘Forgive me?’

‘Anything...’ Every inch of her body leaping in wild response, she found his mouth and kissed it. Hard. ‘I don’t want us to fight,’ she breathed raggedly. ‘Not us, not ever.’ And she fell apart, as she always did, when he caressed her cheekbones with his large, gentle hands. Slowly, and erotically, he eased her lips apart, sliding his tongue into the moist and receptive softness of her mouth, making her want him, hotly, hungrily. Her hands flew to his shirt buttons, dragging them apart, glorying in the heated hardness of his arousal as it thrust against the softness of her tummy. But...

‘Livvy, no. Not now.’ His voice shook but his hands were rock-steady and just as implacable as he took hers and eased them away, stepping back, putting distance between them, an empty distance that made her ache. ‘We have to work out what to do.’

Do? Her pulses were beating erratically and she couldn’t think straight. It took his, ‘About the low-life back there. From what he said I gathered he’s related to your boss. We’ll sue. No one bad-mouths my wife and gets away with it...’ to bring her mind back on track.

She gave him a small, wobbly smile, pushing her tumbled hair back from her face. ‘There were plenty of witnesses,’ she granted, dropping gracefully onto a chintzy sofa. ‘You could go ahead and sue for slander, if you think it’s worth the trouble.’

‘Trouble!’ he repeated from behind her, his voice tight. ‘He calls my wife a—’

‘I know what he said,’ she put in quickly. Her face was white with strain. She couldn’t bear to have him pick over it. The guilt was too much to live with. She couldn’t bear it if it started haunting her dreams again, doing its utmost to impinge on every aspect of her waking life, coming between them and, inevitably, sullying what she and Nathan had together.

Hurriedly pulling herself together, she stated with a calmness she was far from feeling, ‘Hugh Caldwell has a vicious streak, a foul tongue. No one takes anything he says seriously.’ Not even when there’s a grain of truth in the murky mess? The unwelcome thought came unbidden and she thrust it aside, saying quickly, ‘Which is why he has no friends, simply a few dubious acquaintances who sponge off him.’ Then she added, quirkily, trying to take some of the weight out of the atmosphere, ‘I gather he was a terrible disappointment to his parents.’

Deep silence. And then she heard the clink of glasses. He walked round, handed her a small whisky, took his own and dropped down onto the end of the sofa, angled into the corner, facing her, his clever eyes intent. He leaned forward, his hands between his spread knees, his glass held loosely in one hand.

‘Tell me about him. He’s your boss’s brother? He works for the company?’

‘If you could call what he does work.’ She tried to answer lightly, even though she felt she had been tied down in the witness-box, that every word she said would be carefully measured and weighed.

But at least she was on marginally safer ground now that his immediate attention had been deflected away from court action whereby, even though the lies would be refuted, the grain of truth would be revealed, painting her guilty as sin.

‘His job title is sales director, but his job actually appears to consist of long, boozy lunches with anyone angling for a free meal.’ She took a small sip from her glass, grateful for the warmth, the tiny measure of Dutch courage. She needed it. Hugh Caldwell’s vicious tongue was not going to spoil everything for her. She wouldn’t let it!

‘And your boss—his brother, right?—puts up with it?’ He sounded disbelieving and she couldn’t blame him. He didn’t know the full story.

‘James. Yes, he puts up with it.’ Unknowingly, her voice had softened, the strained lines of her face easing under the influence of a tiny smile.

She admired James Caldwell and would do almost anything for him. Their relationship had many levels. He had helped her when she’d been emotionally bankrupt. Her loyalty, both personal and in her capacity as his PA, was absolute.

‘Why?’ The question was blunt, the expression she surprised at the back of his brooding eyes smacked of aggression, and something else. Suspicion. Olivia sighed wretchedly and set her glass aside.

‘Family duty, perhaps. Who’s to tell?’ She shrugged her slim shoulders, knowing that whatever she said about James Caldwell would only fuel the embers of the argument they’d had much earlier. After hearing that wretched man’s evil gossip, Nathan’s desire to see her quit her job would be set in stone.

‘Hugh is six years younger than James and he’s always resented James for being the first-born, the brainy, good-looking son. Add to that the fact that James took over the reins of Caldwell Engineering when their father had a massive stroke ten years ago and pulled it from the bottom of the league to the top. Plus, when James’s godfather died he left him a huge private fortune. Mix that lot up with a hefty dose of sexual jealousy—Hugh took a girlfriend home and she and James promptly fell in love and married six months later—and you have a recipe for resentment and spite.’

‘So because he’s the underdog in the Caldwell setup, a loser, he spread malicious lies about his brother,’ Nathan said, his astute eyes pinning her down. ‘That figures. But why involve you?’

Olivia sucked in a sharp little breath. Her skin was burning beneath the cool white fabric of her dress. She would have given anything if they could have put the clock back, decided to stay home tonight, as she told him quietly, ‘Just before I was promoted to James’s PA, Hugh made a heavy pass. I was married—Max was still alive—but that didn’t make any difference, not to him! Needless to say, I told him where he could go. He’s probably hated me ever since.’

She tried to make it sound like nothing much, because if Nathan knew what had really happened he wouldn’t rest until he’d exacted every last scrap of retribution.

But even though she’d tried to make light of the revolting incident, to pretend it hadn’t been important, Nathan slapped his untouched glass down on the coffee-table and jerked to his feet. After pacing the room, he swung round to face her at last.

‘So that excuses everything, does it?’ he demanded. ‘Just because he habitually loses out we must all turn a blind eye to the vicious lies he spreads all over the place.’ There was no warmth in his eyes, his rawly sensual mouth pulled back against his teeth with grinding frustration. ‘You don’t have to put it into words. I can read your every thought. So confirm it for me, Liwy—you don’t want to take this any further. Right?’

Her violet eyes were dark compared with the pallor of her face. She met him head-on. ‘I don’t see the point. As long as you don’t believe his lies, I simply don’t see the point. He’s an unimportant, vindictive little man and no one with an ounce of sense takes him seriously.’ She stood up, weariness washing through her, making her sway. ‘I’ll talk to James about it on Monday. Ask his opinion.’

And she felt her breath make a solid, painful lump in her throat as he lashed back, ‘At the same time you hand in your resignation? Why should his opinion be more important than mine?’

Love him to pieces she certainly did, but that didn’t mean she could excuse unfairness. The question of her resignation was far from settled, and he knew it. It was what their first fight had been about; did he think she’d forgotten?

But now wasn’t the time to re-introduce that contentious subject so she simply pointed out, ‘Ordinarily, of course not. But he is involved. And there’s his wife to consider. I think they should be consulted before you start shouting for litigation, don’t you?’ She raked a hand through her hair, sick of the subject. ‘I’m tired; I’m going to bed.’

And, for the first time in their wildly passionate relationship, he didn’t follow, just watched the unknowingly sexy sway of her body with hard, assessing eyes.

Olivia, lying awake in the soft, king-sized bed some twenty minutes later, wondered desperately if things would ever be the same between them again, or if Hugh’s vile tongue had sown the seeds of suspicion, seeds that would grow and spread, smothering all that had been so bright and beautiful between them, turning all that consuming passion to dust.