Читать книгу The Earl Takes A Bride - Kathryn Jensen - Страница 8

Diane Fields, mother of three, aroused him.

She pushed all the right buttons, as one of his American friends so aptly put it.

She looked at him…and those soft, hazel eyes with a hint of playful sparkle melted his trousers. Worst of all, she made Thomas forget he was employed by Jacob von Austerand, King of Elbia, who had a temper to rival his own and wouldn’t be pleased to discover his trusted right-hand man was mentally undressing his wife’s sister. Particularly while he was on a royal mission.

Thomas had watched her house for two hours before the lights in the end rooms dimmed and he decided it was probably safe to approach. Nevertheless, he remained behind the wheel of the glistening ebony Benz—concealed behind the glazed windows looking out at Long Island Sound, his strong fingers coiling and uncoiling nervously around the leather-wrapped steering wheel.

He studied the front windows, following telltale wisps of shadows behind them. Was she in the living room or her own bedroom now? He couldn’t remember the exact floor plan of the little Cape Cod in this quaint Connecticut town—Nanticoke—a place reminiscent of Chichester on the sea-swept coast of England, where he’d been born.

Maybe he should wait a little longer?

He was stalling for time and he knew it. Thomas cursed softly under his breath and flung open the car door. Straightening all six feet five inches of his muscular body, he rose up out of the leather driver’s seat and quietly closed the door.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to see Diane, he told himself as he crossed the street. Lord knows he’d been thinking about the long-legged brunette off and on for more than a year and almost constantly for the past two days. Thomas remembered in disturbing detail the lovely contours of her face…and other intriguing parts of her body. Diane Fields was a good-looking woman with a no-nonsense attitude toward life he could appreciate. In her own way she was tougher than her sister, Jacob’s bride. Thomas had seen Diane stand up to Jacob on behalf of Allison before His Royal Highness married her. The woman was a force to be reckoned with. But apparently she was in trouble now.

As chief advisor and security officer to one of the most powerful figures in Europe, Thomas Denton Smythe had been dispatched to find out what kind of difficulty the king’s sister-in-law was in and how bad it might be. As unofficial royal troubleshooter, he was expected to get to the bottom of things.

Bottom.

Why had he thought of that unfortunately provocative word? He marched forward, smothering a groan. Her bottom, he mused as visions of Diane appeared in his mind, at angles best not dwelt upon.

As Thomas neared the driftwood-gray bungalow, another, fainter light from the interior of the house flicked off. He drew a deep breath and strode bravely across the lawn, already having decided on the side door that led from the driveway directly into kitchen. Logistically it made sense. He didn’t want to start off on the wrong foot by waking her children.

Her husband was another reason for using caution. Gary’s truck had been conspicuously absent when Thomas pulled up in the sleek black sedan across the street. Even though it was nearly nine o’clock at night, well past the time a construction worker knocked off for the day, there was still no sign of the man.

Before he knew it, Thomas was standing on the four-by-four cement slab outside her kitchen door. There was nothing to do but knock and get it over with.

He waited for her to answer, his arms folded over his chest, wearing the same suit he’d traveled in—impeccable Italian tailoring, but cut much wider than the traditional sleek Continental silhouette to allow for his broad shoulders and muscled chest. He had taken clothes for granted in his younger days. But working for Jacob demanded a certain image.

Hasty, rustling sounds came from behind the door. As if Diane was throwing on a robe…or searching for a weapon before she opened her door at night to a stranger. Now he was certain Gary wasn’t around.

Good, he thought. He wouldn’t have liked any man who had married Diane, but even with an open mind he hadn’t been impressed with Gary Fields. There was something about the fellow he didn’t trust.

The white eyelet curtains lifted a bare inch from the left side of the window in the door. An apprehensive fern-green eye appeared for an instant, a sweep of chocolate-brown bangs, then the curtains swung back into place. But the door didn’t open.

Thomas cleared his throat. “Diane, it’s Thomas Smythe, the king’s advisor. It’s important that I speak with you.”

That did the trick. He heard the latch open. The door jerked wide. Diane stood in a splash of fluorescent light, backed by her kitchen table and a sun-flower-yellow decor. She was wrapped in a pink chenille robe. Quickly she pulled it into place when it slipped off one shoulder. Her hair looked damp, as if she’d recently showered and had only bothered to towel dry it. Even from a few feet away, she smelled of strawberries. She smiled in welcome, but looked a little puzzled.

“Thomas, I didn’t recognize you. Is something wrong? Are Allison and the babies all right? And Jacob?”

She would have kept rattling off questions at him if he hadn’t stepped into her kitchen, nearly filling it. And apparently startling the woman to silence. It was a reaction he often saw from strangers. The intimidation factor of his size was something he actively cultivated in certain situations. After all, he had been responsible for Jacob’s safety for many years, and now it was his duty to see to the entire royal family’s security.

Unfortunately, in this case, his physique and threatening scowl wouldn’t work in his favor.

With effort, he relaxed his shoulders, trying to make himself seem smaller, smiled and put on the charm he usually saved for visiting dignitaries and particularly bedworthy young women. “I’m sorry to arrive unannounced, Diane,” he lied in as soft a voice as his rumbling baritone could manage. “I’m in the States on several errands for Jacob, and I hoped you wouldn’t mind if I stopped by on my way through.”

She smiled up at him, unsurprised, as if people frequently dropped in on her at odd hours. “You’ve shaved off your beard.”

He chuckled. “Do I look very different?”

“Only for a moment,” she admitted. “At the window, in the dark. Not many men can make themselves look like James Bond just by shaving.”

He never went to films, but he was warmed by her comparison to a movie character she seemed to admire.

“Although,” she continued, “you’re probably head and shoulders taller than 007.”

He grinned, pleased. “Are the children still up?” he asked, knowing they weren’t.

“No.” She sighed. “They would have loved to see you again. Tommy took an immense liking to you. Maybe because you have the same name. He’s grown, you know. You’d be surprised how much, for a seven-year-old.”

Although she was smiling and chattering lightly, filling him in on accomplishments and changes in her three offspring—Tommy at seven, Annie, six and Gare, five—he could read an underlying tension in her nervous movements. Her fingers sought out unnecessary tasks—lining up the salt and pepper shakers on her table, straightening the kitchen towel hanging over the oven door handle. Another sign of anxiety revealed itself in the delicate lines around her pretty eyes and mouth.

He concentrated too long on her mouth, her elegantly shaped lips…and felt himself lean toward her.

She automatically fell back a step as if to make more space for him in the little room. “Do you have time for coffee? Or do you prefer tea?”

“Coffee would be great,” he said, although it hadn’t been at the top of his list of desires.

She spun around and busied herself with measuring grounds into the coffee maker, fetching milk from the refrigerator, digging two blue ceramic mugs from behind a collection of children’s plastic cups in the cupboard. She was offering him her best, though her mugs would have looked common beside the von Austerand’s fragile Sheffield bone china.

“May I help with—”

“No, no.” She cut him off with a wave of her hand as she transferred the sugar bowl and milk to the table. “Sit, sit. So, tell me how everyone is. Really,” she added breathlessly, sweeping damp brown tendrils out of her eyes. She looked suddenly very tired, holding herself together by threads as she swung back to the counter to watch coffee drip into the glass decanter. “Summer in Elbia…it must be lovely.”

“You’ve never been there, have you?” Thomas asked.

“To Elbia? To Europe?” She laughed. “Not likely. Do you realize the cost of foreign travel these da—” She caught herself, turned to blink at him and smile weakly. “Of course you don’t. Everything’s on the royal budget, isn’t it?”

“Most everything,” he admitted quietly.

“Must be nice,” she murmured, more to herself, he expected, than for his benefit. She sighed again. “Such an exotic world…far away…the stuff of dreams.”

The coffeemaker sputtered out its last drops of dark, fragrant liquid. A pungent aroma filled the kitchen, and Diane pulled herself out of her reverie to fill the mugs and bring them to the table. She sat down heavily, with a little inward sound that wasn’t quite a groan.

Thomas watched her as he lifted his steaming mug of black, unsweetened coffee to his lips. It was weak compared to the way he liked it. If they’d been together under different circumstances he’d have shown her how to make a strong European brew to his taste.

He hastily shook away the intimate thought as he watched her add two spoonfuls of sugar and a generous dollop of milk to her own mug. He reminded himself of his mission.

“You look well,” he said slowly.

Her eyes were fixed on her beverage. “Absolutely,” she said with a chipper lilt that didn’t come from the heart.

How to proceed? Thomas felt a little desperate. “I…we, that is, wondered…”

An arrow of suspicion shot through her eyes as they rose to meet his. “So that’s what this is.” She sounded hurt, and he kicked himself for not handling the situation more tactfully.

“Now, Diane—”

“You’ve come to spy on me,” she accused with a touch of dry humor.

“I’m sorry if I’m intruding,” Thomas whispered gruffly. “Jacob and Allison are worried about you and the children. They’ve received phone calls from Florida. Your parents believe you’re having problems of some sort but won’t tell them what it’s all about.”

The touch of anger in Diane’s eyes softened. She set her mug down a little too hard, and coffee sloshed over the lip onto the tabletop. “It’s nothing they can do anything about. I didn’t want to burden anyone unnecessarily.”

“I see.”

She gave him a look that could only have come from deep sorrow. Whatever had happened must have been pretty awful.

He set down his own mug firmly, hiked himself up even straighter in his chair and spread his huge hands over hers on the table in front of him. “If it’s that serious, Mrs. Fields, your family should be told.”

“It’s nothing that I can’t— It’s just that—” Something seemed to catch in her throat. A watery glaze covered her eyes, and she looked away from him.

Was she going to cry? He would never have thought it possible. Diane the fighter. Diane the veritable tigress when it came to chasing off the press in the days just after her sister’s marriage to Jacob, when no one in either family could go anywhere without a trail of reporters yapping like hyenas at their heels. He’d seen her run off a journalist and his photographer with a broom when the pair had tried to corner her children with questions in their own backyard.

And here she was, an emotional disaster, on the verge—unless he was mistaken—of breaking down entirely. He didn’t have a clue what to do.

“Diane, let them help.”

She pulled herself up and stood to face him as he rose from the table. The top of her head only reached the shoulder of his suit jacket. “I’m just tired. Days are pretty long around here. I should go to bed now.”

“Tell me what has happened,” he said, emphasizing each word.

She looked up at him, a spark of proud fire momentarily brightening her sad eyes. “Please go.”

“You are not leaving this room, and I’m not leaving this house until you tell me what’s going on.”

“Why does it matter?” Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “It’s the possibility of scandal, isn’t it? If the press hears the king of Elbia’s sister-in-law is bereft of a husband and can’t pay her electric bill, they’ll have a field day. Won’t they?”

Thomas’s heart stopped. So that was it. “Gary’s…left you and the children?” he asked hesitantly.

“Gone…flown the coop…absconded with a floozy from the office…good riddance.” She fluttered a hand carelessly in the air, but the gesture didn’t fool him a bit.

“Dear girl, I’m so sorry,” he muttered, trying to recover from his shock and think of something…anything appropriate to say.

“Well, I’m not,” Diane said in a quiet voice just short of cracking. “It’s been a long time coming. I should have insisted years ago…didn’t…couldn’t find a way to—”

The last ounce of strength drained from her. She turned with a choking sob and rushed toward the doorway into the living room.

Thomas cut her off with one enormous stride. She ran smack into his chest with her bowed head. His big arms immediately wrapped around her, pinning her there. She struggled for exactly half of one second, then went limp in his bear hug of an embrace.

Neither of them said a thing. But now that Thomas had her in his arms, her trembling body flush against his, he wasn’t sure what to do with her.

She didn’t push or squirm or indicate she needed space, oxygen or even words of solace from him. She seemed content just to remain where she was.

It was at that moment he became aware of an embarrassing development. Down below his belt. He felt himself move, extend, become…firm.

Thomas squeezed his eyes shut and willed himself to remember he was duty bound to Jacob to protect, defend and honor the members of his family. Desire wasn’t supposed to enter the equation. That meant not responding to Diane as if she were a beautiful, soft, desperately overworked woman who might welcome a man. That meant switching off his hormones for one bloody hour, finding out what he needed to know, mending whatever was broken the best he could…and getting the hell out.

If he played his cards right and there were no technical delays at the airport, he could be on the royal jet and headed back toward Europe in a matter of hours.

But at the moment a woman was weeping on his chest. Probably ruining his new suit jacket, he thought regretfully. He had paid an exclusive tailor in Florence to make it for him, at the cost of more lire than his recent week on the Riviera with a sultry French actress. In retrospect, the suit had seemed the better deal.

Diane made no sound, moved not a muscle. Nevertheless he knew she was crying by the bucketful.

“Mrs. Fields,” he said, “I’m good at fixing things. Let me help.” Although he’d meant to be gentle, even paternal, his words came out clipped, tense, businesslike.

If she hadn’t been moving before, now she was suddenly as still as granite, hardly breathing, taut from her tiny bare feet to the top of her shampoo-fresh head. “Help?” she whispered hoarsely. She looked up at him with incredible sadness. “You silly man, this isn’t a matter of diplomacy or rescuing Jacob from a mob of overenthusiastic paparazzi.”

“I realize that,” he began, employing his best diplomatic tone nevertheless. “But perhaps there is a way to work things out between you and your husband.”

“No, there isn’t.” She ducked out of his arms and began pacing the vinyl flooring. “I know it was the right thing to do, signing those papers, but I can’t bear to think how my kids are going to suffer.”

Thomas frowned, feeling something like panic tug at his gut. “What papers?” Did she mean separation papers? Or was she already divorced? He couldn’t walk out without something more exact to report to Jacob. But he also wanted to know, for himself.

“Mr. Fields is where now?” The words came out casually enough, but the muscles in his shoulders and arms bunched, as if prepped for battle with the man who had broken the heart of this amazing woman.

“I don’t know and I can’t say that I really care.” She smiled grimly at him.

Thomas stared at Diane, hesitant to push further. Seeing her in such anguish was devastating to him, although he didn’t understand why. Over the years he had hardened himself to the pain of others. He held little sympathy for anyone who wasn’t part of the royal family or the inner circle of the court. The von Austerands had, in every sense but one—blood—become his family.

After all his own parents had deserted him—each in their own way. He had been barely five years old when his mother had left his father, the Earl of Sussex, his two brothers and him. At six he’d been shipped off to a boarding school by his aristocratic father. Who had bloody well cared about him then?

The troubles of strangers were of no consequence to him. And Diane, though related by marriage to Jacob, was in all other ways a stranger. Yet, watching her suffer the rejection of the father of her children, he felt truly and deeply moved.

“I’m sorry,” Thomas began slowly. “He’s a fool to have left you.”

She gave him a tiny, appreciative shake of her head.

“If it’s money you’re worried about, there are ways to track down a deadbeat father and force him to do his share. It’s the law in this country.”

“I know. I’d just rather do this on my own. They’re my kids. He wouldn’t have left if he’d loved them.”

Thomas winced. Had his mother not loved him and his brothers?

Diane pulled the chenille belt tighter around her waist to close an enticing gap over her chest that Thomas was having difficulty pretending wasn’t there.

“I suppose not,” he said, mourning the view now blocked by fuzzy tufts of fabric.

Diane cast him an irritated glance. “You’re not going to leave, are you.” It was a statement.

“Not until I have something more to tell Jacob.”

She whirled toward the living room and disappeared around the corner. He found her digging through a stack of mail scattered across the coffee table among crayons, dried-up bits of modeling clay and miniature dinosaurs in molded multicolored plastic.

She came up with a long white envelope and thrust it at him. “Here. This tells all. Read and relay as much as you like to my concerned family.”

Her robe slipped open again.

He ached to kiss her. There. Right there between her beautiful breasts.

But she was holding the envelope out to him. Waiting.

Reminding himself of his duty for the hundredth time, Thomas took it from her, extracted its contents and unfolded a five-page document. “It’s a divorce settlement—legally signed, dated, notarized.” He looked up at her, but whatever emotions he expected to see in her eyes were absent. She’d pulled herself together in the time it had taken him to scan the agreement.

“You’ve accepted sole custody of the children and released your husband of all financial responsibilities?” He didn’t understand. “Why, Diane? Did he coerce you into signing this?”

“No,” she said. “I’m the one who filed for divorce and had the papers drawn up.”

“And your lawyer…he didn’t—”

“He advised me against releasing Gary from his obligations to the children. He said I had grounds to demand support plus a large settlement for emotional injury due to his desertion.”

“But you ignored his advice.”

She looked him squarely in the eyes. “I don’t want anything to do with Gary Fields. The children and I are better off without him.”

“No doubt,” Thomas agreed. “But still—”

“Don’t say another word,” she warned, shaking a finger at him as if he were one of her brood. “It’s done. Now all I have to do is figure out how to survive on pride…because there sure isn’t a lot of money coming into this household.”

She started pacing again, this time crisscrossing the oval, braided rug that nearly covered the living room floor. “Listen, Thomas, I wasn’t trying to hide anything from Ally and Jacob…or from my parents. Or embarrass anyone. I just didn’t want them to worry, you know? I had decided to wait until I was sure of the end result. I didn’t know until yesterday’s mail that Gary had signed the divorce papers.”

“But he did.”

“In a heartbeat.” She laughed dryly, shaking her head. “He never loved me, not really. I don’t think even I know what love is. I was a good wife to him, but now it’s finished. And I’m glad, I really am. Neither of us was happy.”

“I understand.” What still didn’t make sense to him was why she hadn’t fought for what was rightfully hers. She couldn’t possibly support three children on the money she made from her in-home day care business.

She looked up at him from beneath thick, dark lashes. “Sorry, you don’t deserve to get dumped on like this. You’re just the messenger, right?”

Her fingertips were lightly smoothing the vee of skin between her throat and breasts, unconsciously opening the robe again. He followed their teasing pattern, wishing she’d stop doing that. He was having enough trouble giving a damn about wayward husbands and legal documents. He imagined how her long, delicate fingers would feel sliding down his bare chest, across his belly, descending to—

“We hadn’t been intimate for a long time,” she continued, more to herself than to him. “Sex just didn’t seem very important to Gary.”

Personally, he couldn’t imagine any man not wanting to be intimate with Diane. “Most married men are interested in sex, no matter what else they may say. They just search for a suitable outlet…which may or may not be their wife.”

“Outlet. How harmless sounding,” she murmured, nibbling thoughtfully at her bottom lip. “Is that all we women are to men?”

He put a hand out to touch her shoulder consolingly but thought better of it and drew his curled fingers away. “Of course not, not where a real man is concerned.” But he had a flash of guilt for the women he’d used in the past. Did it matter that they’d used him, as well? For his money, for the gifts, for an entry into glamorous royal functions and a leg up in society? Maybe he wasn’t totally innocent, either. “I just meant,” he added slowly, “that Gary’s character isn’t of a caliber to match yours. He didn’t deserve you.”

She looked at him strangely, as if trying to decide how seriously she should take his compliment. She had stopped keeping track of her robe’s antics: one creamy shoulder was bare.

Thomas turned away and stared out the front window at the Benz, parked in a shadowy patch between two streetlights. He drew a deep breath, recentered himself, told himself sternly that his reason for being here was Jacob…not his lovely, tempting sister-in-law.

“May I tell your sister and the king what I’ve learned tonight?” he asked, his voice restored to its formal, controlled chest rumble.

She didn’t answer right away. “Of course. But before you return to Elbia I will have called Allison and spoken with her. I realize they will need to know. I’ll also call my parents.”

“The children—” he began, but she cut him off.

“Gary never spent much time with them. They obviously miss him, but his absence isn’t a big change for them. The money will be tight for a while, but I’ll figure out what to do.” She sounded confident.

“You’re sure?”

She gave him a sunbeam of a smile. “Of course. I’m a survivor, Thomas. If you knew me better, you’d understand that.”

He nodded but decided to try one last time. “I have the authority to give you a blank check—”

“Somehow I guessed you would have. Tell Jacob for me, No, but thank you. We’ll manage.”

There was nothing more he could do. Right? He’d learned the truth and offered assistance, which had been politely refused. If he telephoned the pilot at JFK, he might still make it back to Elbia by midday tomorrow.

“If you’re sure,” he said, taking her hand in a gesture calculated to be gentle, friendly, consoling.

“I’m sure,” Diane whispered.

Then she ruined everything.

She stepped up to him, rose onto her toes and kissed him lightly on the ridge of his jaw. A feather of a kiss from a woman who had the charity to respond with graciousness toward others despite her own immeasurable grief and disappointment.

“Thank you for coming, Thomas,” she whispered. She undoubtedly didn’t intend for her breast to brush against his arm as she withdrew. But it did.

He marched to the car, cursing his body for betraying him. One little kiss, one accidental touch, one bare shoulder…and his hormones were bouncing around inside of him like blasted Ping-Pong balls. Now there was no way he could leave for home tonight.