Читать книгу A Wedding To Remember - Emma Darcy, Emma Darcy - Страница 5

THE ULTRA-MODERN office building in Chatswood was impressive, but Joanna was not certain it was an up-market move for Rory until she arrived on the floor occupied by his company. When they parted three years ago, he was managing everything himself with a casual staff of five. One glance at the layout of his present premises told her that his business had greatly expanded.

From the reception room, a glass-panelled wall revealed a veritable hive of industry. A huge open area was broken into partitioned computer cubicles with people busy in all of those she could see. At the far end was a row of more private offices for executive staff.

Joanna could not help marvelling over the evident success of Rory’s idea to provide qualitative as well as quantitative market research. Statistics, he had been convinced, did not supply an accurate enough picture. The reasons behind the statistics, why people did what they did, had to be known, as well. Apparently his theory had not only found many receptive ears, but had proven more accurate or effective in application than more traditional ways of collecting information.

Somehow that knowledge undermined Joanna’s confidence as she approached the receptionist’s desk. Rory had grown far past the situation they had known and lived together. Not that such a factor should affect her purpose in any way, Joanna sternly told herself. She had simply come to see him. However, it might not be as easy as she had first thought, given this new set-up.

“Good morning.” The receptionist looked at her with bright anticipation. She had the fresh young face of a woman barely out of her teens. Not someone with a lot of experience at fobbing off people, Joanna hoped.

“Good morning,” she returned, projecting a completely at-ease smile to cover her inner tension. It was almost afternoon. It had seemed best to arrive just before twelve o’clock, giving Rory time to finish his meeting but ensuring he had not yet gone out for lunch. Now she had to ascertain if her timing was right. “I’ve come to see Mr. Grayson,” she announced.

“Your name, please?” The receptionist glanced down at an appointment pad.

“I don’t have an appointment. Is he free at the moment? It’s a personal matter that won’t take long.”

This information earned a frown. “If you’ll give me your name, I’ll check with Mr. Grayson.”

And that would be the end of that, Joanna thought grimly. Giving her name was too risky. “I have a better idea,” she said, her eyes flashing with what she hoped looked like flirtatious mischief. “If you’ll lend me your pad and pen, I’ll write him a note and you can take it to him. I’m sure when he reads it he’ll make time to see me.”

The receptionist hesitated, clearly finding the suggestion irregular and the situation suspicious. Joanna confidently reached out for the items she’d asked for. Capitulation came after a few uncertain moments. As Joanna poised the pen to write, she could feel the young woman’s eyes roving over her in intense speculation.

Her mind was rife with questions. What were the best words to provoke Rory’s interest? Was the receptionist comparing her to some other woman in his personal life? Or—her heart clenched—his wife? Rory might have remarried. Why hadn’t she thought of that? And why did she feel such a cramp of revulsion at such an idea? She didn’t care what Rory did. He had killed her caring years ago.

An idea finally came to her, and she quickly wrote the words.

Success must feel sweet. Congratulations, Rory.

It was an objective comment, fair-minded, without rancour, hopefully ego-stroking enough to persuade Rory into seeing her for a moment or two. After all, the most sensible, rational thing to do was to expunge any lingering acrimony between them before moving on with their lives.

She added her signature, tore off the note page, folded it, handed it to the receptionist with a confident smile, put down the pen and turned aside as though considering sitting in one of the leather armchairs to wait.

She heard the receptionist leave the office. Nervous anticipation fluttered through Joanna’s stomach. She forcefully assured herself it had nothing to do with Rory or what he might think of her visit. It was perfectly natural to be on edge. The moment of truth and decision was at hand.

Now that she saw how well he had done for himself without her, Joanna was glad she had taken pains to look her best. Rory might scorn the superficiality of appearances, but Joanna didn’t care about that. Pride demanded that he see she was doing fine by herself. More than that. Another man found her a very desirable asset to his life, and not just any other man, either. A highly eligible and discriminating one.

The sage-green knit suit she wore had border stripes of peach on the sleeves, the tunic and around the hem of the skirt. The effect was soft, feminine and elegant. The colour picked up the grey-green of her eyes, and she had matched the exact shade of sage in her high-heeled pumps and leather handbag.

She had spent an hour washing and blow-drying her long blonde hair so that it fell in soft waves around her shoulders, and her feathery fringe had a sweeping flyaway look on both sides of her face. Her make-up was faultless, a touch of silvery green on her eyelids, a grey pencil line to increase interest in the shape and width of her eyes, a subtle shading of blusher highlighting her cheekbones and a deeper shade of peach emphasising the sensual curves of her full-lipped mouth.

Although she was almost ten years older than when she had first met Rory, Joanna prided herself on having a dignity and sophistication that more than made up for any fresh-faced prettiness she might have lost. She had also regained her best weight. Rory could not fling the accusation of being anorexic at her now. The firm roundness of her curves attested to her good health and well-being.

Not that she had ever been truly anorexic. The emotional stress of the divorce had simply robbed her of any appetite. It was hard to enjoy food or anything else when all one could feel was a soul-tearing sense of failure. But she had survived and risen above all that. If she could finally put Rory behind her today, she could feel whole again, her own person, free to accept Brad as the man to share her future with.

Joanna swung around expectantly as she heard the receptionist entering her office. The young woman stood at her opened door, eyeing Joanna with blatant curiosity as she said, “Mr. Grayson will see you now. I’ll take you to him.”

“Thank you,” Joanna replied, more loudly than she meant to.

The prospect of facing Rory, now that it was upon her, had an appalling effect. Her pulse leapt into a wild beat that throbbed through her temples, making her head feel like a buzz-saw. Her stomach could have been a pancake being flipped over by a deft chef who enjoyed showing off his dexterity. Her legs, as she followed the receptionist, alternated between wooden pegs and quivering jelly. It took a supreme act of will to force her mind into reciting, Rory means nothing to me. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

They walked the whole length of the cubicled area, eyes looking up, assessing Joanna as she passed by. Rory’s office was in the corner at the far end, and it was a relief to Joanna to reach it. The receptionist ushered her inside. Joanna was vaguely aware of the door being closed behind her, ensuring the privacy of the meeting, but the man in front of her claimed her attention with such devastating impact that she knew instantly she had been a fool to come.

“Joanna...” he said softly, as though he took pleasure in the sound of her name, not a trace of surprise in his voice or his eyes.

“Rory...” she managed to reply, her voice a bare, husky whisper.

He made no move towards her, gave no invitation for her to sit down and be at ease. Joanna was not really aware of the omission of standard politeness. She stared at him, and he stared right back at her in a silence that swirled with the painful bitterness of unfulfilled dreams and hopes and desires.

Joanna had never seen Rory like this, so elegantly dressed in a finely tailored three-piece suit, the sheen of some silk mixture in the cloth. Its subtle blue-grey colour and the blue and gold silk tie picked up the intense blueness of his eyes. His thick black hair had been stylishly layered to its natural waves, the riotous curls cut out of existence. It was a tamed image of the young man she had known and married, yet she sensed a self-assurance with it, an aura of control that was more dangerous than any overt rebellion against social standards.

This was a man who knew who he was, who used outer trappings to his advantage because it suited his purpose to be seen as a successful businessman. It had nothing to do with ego or status. The flash of cynicism in his eyes as he noted her surprise told Joanna that. Underneath his suit and haircut, he was still the Rory who thought for himself, disdaining any influence by others.

Even his casual pose reflected that. If he’d wanted to impress her with his new affluence, he probably would have been sitting in the high-backed leather chair behind the expensive executive desk, but he was half sitting on the front edge of the desk, one leg stretched down to the floor, the other hitched up, dangling carelessly.

The hand resting on his raised thigh held her note. He lifted it, drawing her attention to what she had written.

“I can’t believe you care whether or not I find success sweet. What do you want of me, Joanna?”

His mouth curved into a sensual little smile as his gaze dropped to rove down her body, making her uncomfortably aware of his intimate knowledge of it and the pleasure he had once taken in giving her pleasure. Her skin tingled as though he had caressed it, and her lungs stopped breathing as his eyes bored through the figure-hugging knit fabric, remembering the shape of her, the feel of her, all the secrets of her femininity that were no secret to him.

“You’re wrong on both counts,” she said quickly. “I am glad your ideas worked out so well. And I don’t want anything of you, Rory.”

His eyes lingered for a moment on the heave of her breasts before lifting to hers, a direct challenge in their vivid blueness. He raised one of his rakishly arched eyebrows, a mocking invitation for her to explain why she was here.

“I wanted to see you,” she blurted out, her cheeks stinging with a rush of heat she could not control.

His mouth twisted with irony. “You thought the best way was to remind me of what you believed meant more to me than our marriage?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t come to rake over old arguments.”

“Does success make me sweeter for you, Joanna?”

“No.” Her cheeks burnt even more fiercely at his insulting suggestion. “I’m not chasing after you, Rory.”

He gave a harsh laugh. “Of course not. A woman of principle like yourself wouldn’t bend that far. I was the one who did the chasing after you. It was you who showed me to your mother’s door, demanding that I never darken it again.”

He let the memory simmer between them before he added, “I simply find it intriguing that you now darken mine. Do you want the money you so proudly and bitterly refused from me then?”

The sting of this reminder evoked the passionate hatred of him she had felt that night. He had come with a cheque, offering her repayment of all the money it had cost her to support him while he was trying to make a go of his fledgling business. As though money could buy back her love after he had betrayed it with Bernice!

She glared at him with stormy eyes. “I didn’t marry you for money and I didn’t divorce you for money. I came to tell you I’m getting married to someone else.”

She saw his jaw tighten, saw the taunting light fade from his eyes, leaving them empty of all expression. There was a crackle of paper as his fingers crunched her note into a tight ball in his hand. He stood up, tall and straight and suddenly formidable in the clothes of his successful thrust into the world of commerce. He stepped around his desk and pointedly dropped the screwed-up paper into a bin. Then he faced her with a viciously mocking smile.

“So what can I do for you, Joanna? Write you a reference? To whom it may concern? I have known Joanna Harding intimately for a period of...now, how long was it, exactly? As I recall, you were nineteen when I—”

“Stop it, Rory!”

“Something wrong with my memory?”

“I don’t need a reference.” She lifted her chin in disdain of his demeaning summary of their time together. “Brad thinks I’m wonderful as I am.”

“Brad...” He drawled the name as though measuring it for destruction. “Now where have I heard Brad before? Oh, yes! He was the wet-behind-the-ears hero in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, wasn’t he?”

Joanna dragged in a deep breath to calm her churning insides. Her eyes flashed scorn at the cruel injustice of Rory’s attitude. “I thought we could be civilised after all this time apart.”

He laughed at her, his eyes glittering with primitive violence. “I have never felt civilised around you, Joanna.”

“I thought we could let bygones be bygones,” she persisted, clutching at dignity as a defence against the way his eyes were stripping her bare, reminding her of the wildness he had tapped in her sexuality, the mad mating they had once revelled in without any inhibitions.

“Can you forget what we had together?” he taunted.

“I wanted to wish you well, Rory,” she forced out in determination to have done with this chaotically disturbing scene.

“How magnanimous of you! Is it better with Brad?”

The cheap shot goaded her into retaliating. “There’s more to life than sex, Rory Grayson. It’s a pity you haven’t found that out. It means that whatever relationships you have will always fail.”

His expression changed, a bleak fatigue drawing older lines on his face. “Wrong, Joanna,” he said flatly. “I happen to be very good at relationships. Genuine relationships. Not ones that are screwed up by expectations that can’t always be met when you want them met.”

Shock turned into anger as Joanna digested Rory’s perception of what had gone wrong in their marriage. He was blaming her for its failure, as though he hadn’t contributed a hundredfold to the breakdown of any healing communication between them.

“Have you fathered any children I don’t know about?” she fired at him with bitter venom. “Or do all your casual bed mates have convenient miscarriages?”

“Does your mother still ride a broomstick?” he shot back at her. “Force-feed you with poison pellets of hatred for me?”

“Leave my mother out of this!”

“Then leave my alleged affairs out, as well!”

“Right! Pardon me for mentioning them. They have long since ceased to be any of my business.”

“Why don’t you admit your real reason for coming, Joanna? Have a bit of self-honesty for once.”

“I’ve already told you,” she snapped.

He shook his head. “Hypocritical nonsense. You came to see if you were free of me. Because you weren’t sure. And you had to know. A last throw of the dice before you married Brad. So let me clear your mind for you.”

“How?” The word slipped out before she realised it was an admission.

Rory seized the opening, a look of dangerous dev-ilment replacing the derisive challenge of a few moments ago. He started walking towards her, unshakeable purpose in every step. “A kiss for the bride-to-be,” he said with a smile that torpedoed her stand of indifference to him.

“No.” Her hand fluttered up to her throat as she frantically fought a rush of panic.

“A wish-you-well kiss from your ex-husband,” Rory went on. “Make of it what you will, but kissed you certainly shall be.”

She took a defensive step backwards.

“What have you to fear if you’re free of me, Joanna?” he taunted. “Call it a gesture of final release. A graceful goodbye, demonstrating that bygones really are bygones and there’s not a thing left between us. Not a jot. Not a speck. Not a molecule of feeling. Prove it to me that there’s nothing left.”

He was using her own words against her, all so irrefutably reasonable that it robbed her of any grounds to protest. She swallowed hard and came up with a burst of defiance. “I don’t have to prove anything to you!”

“Then prove it to yourself.”

He took the hand at her throat and placed it on his shoulder as he slid his other arm around her waist and scooped her hard against the long, lean power of his body. Joanna was shocked into passivity by a rush of warm feeling, a sense of rightness that seemed so treacherous she trembled in fear of what it meant. Long-standing familiarity, her mind screamed, fiercely rejecting any other cause for the sensation of being where she belonged.

Then his lips were on hers, gently grazing, not forcing any rough mastery over her, allowing her a choice of accepting his kiss or evading it. Rory had always been good at kissing, but his expertise in every act of love had aroused only hostility in her towards the end of their marriage. She told herself it was only curiosity that compelled her lips to move to the persuasive pressure of his, to open to the seductive caress of his tongue. She closed her eyes, needing to concentrate on examining the feelings he stirred now, to sort them out to her satisfaction, to prove...

All coherent thought was lost as Rory deepened the kiss, and Joanna’s mind flooded with vibrant sensation. It was an invasion of all her deeply nursed defences against him, a shattering of bitterly held convictions, and it ignited a wild urge to make him experience the same inner turbulence.

Her mouth claimed his with a passionate intensity that sparked a response from him that spun them both out of any semblance of control. Her fingers dug into his hair, holding his head to hers. His hand splayed over the small of her back, arching her into intimate knowledge of the desire she was stirring.

A mad wave of exultation swept through Joanna. She wanted to goad him as he had goaded her, make him burn with the memories of all there had been between them, get under his skin in a way that defeated all the clever reasoning he could come up with.

She moved her body against his in deliberate incitement, recklessly uncaring of any consequences. An animal sound growled from his throat as he wrenched his mouth from hers. She opened her eyes to meet the raw blaze of searing questions in his, and whatever he read in them brought a heave of satisfaction and fast, decisive action.

He scooped Joanna off her feet and had her hugged against his chest in a whirl of male strength that left her gasping. He was heading for the door before she could collect her wits, then to compound the shock of what was happening the door opened and a woman stood there, gaping at them.

“You’ll have to stand aside, Monique. You’re in my way,” Rory instructed.

Monique either defied him or was too stunned to obey. She was a gorgeous brunette, with a beautiful face framed by cascades of wild curls and a fantastic figure poured into a brilliant fuchsia suit. She was not the kind of woman who was used to being told to stand aside, Joanna thought, particularly by men. Her look of utter bewilderment caused Joanna’s eyes to narrow suspiciously. Where did this woman fit into Rory’s life?

It shocked Joanna to realise she felt as jealous of Rory as he must have felt about her with Brad. It had to be a hangover of possessiveness from their marriage. It couldn’t have anything to do with loving.

“What are you doing?” the brunette finally found voice enough to ask.

“I’m abducting my ex-wife. Move aside and let us pass,” came the firm command from Rory.

Monique backed out, looking dazedly at Joanna as Rory carried her from the office. “Your ex-wife,” she repeated limply, then fired herself with purpose. “What about our dinner tomorrow night?”

“My apologies. There’s no telling how long I’ll be gone. Wife-napping is a time-consuming business,” Rory tossed at her without the slightest hesitation as he set off striding past the row of computer cubicles.

Joanna felt a totally wanton sense of elation at this dismissal of the beautiful brunette’s claims on him until she noticed the commotion Rory’s progress was causing amongst his employees. Heads were popping up everywhere.

“Put me down,” she commanded, taking swift stock of her position, which was extremely ambivalent, to say the least.

He ignored her and raised his voice to all those agog with interest. “One thing I want done while I’m away, and you can all get onto it. I want that Kawowski of Matchmakers Incorporated found and pinned down to a contract. We’ve never lost a customer yet, and we’re not going to start now. Is that clear?”

There was a chorus of “yes, sir”, while Joanna writhed between guilt and embarrassment. Impossible to admit to her fabrication about Mr. Kawowski in front of all these people, yet how could she let them waste so much time in looking for someone who didn’t exist? The dilemma was too much for her to cope with, and in the overall picture it was a minor detail. They would soon find out there was no such person.

“Let me go, Rory!” she cried, trying to push out of his hold.

His arms tightened around her, clamping her against him. “You and I need to be together, Joanna.”

“You can’t kidnap me. You’ve got no right! I’m not your wife any more.”

“The divorce was your idea, not mine.”

“That’s irrelevant. I won’t let you carry me off. Call the police!” she demanded of the onlookers.

“Yes, call the police!” Rory agreed. “But give me half an hour’s head start first. I’ll give them a merry chase after that. If I can’t get the story spread across the newspapers for all the world and Brad to read, my name’s not Rory Grayson.”

Joanna had sudden visions of Brad at his conference, with all his respected peers, being severely embarrassed by sensational tabloid stories about the woman he wanted to marry. “Don’t call the police!” she yelled.

“You heard the lady. Don’t call the police,” Rory reiterated strongly.

She thumped him on the back in furious frustration. “You’re ruining my life again.”

“Well, we might as well be ruined together,” he blithely replied. “That’s only fair. Will someone please open the door for me and summon an elevator?”

With the way cleared ahead of him, he strode into the reception room with Joanna still in his captivity.

“Mr. Grayson!” the young woman behind the desk called after him, her voice on the edge of hysteria. She had never witnessed such a scene before and was totally lost as to how to act. She wrung her hands. “Your appointments, Mr. Grayson! What will I do?”

“Postpone them until further notice.”

“But what will I say?”

“Say I’m off for the dirtiest weekend that any man could hope to have. That’ll satisfy everybody.”

He swept into the waiting elevator, pressed a button and grinned with wicked satisfaction as the doors slid shut.