Читать книгу The Bridegroom's Dilemma - Lindsay Armstrong - Страница 7

‘LOOK at this! I don’t believe it.’ The middle-aged man lowered his newspaper and stared at his companion. ‘Skye Belmont and Nick Hunter have broken off their engagement only three weeks before the wedding!’

‘Doesn’t surprise me,’ the second man sitting at the pavement café said thoughtfully as he stirred his cappuccino. ‘Two very high-profile people, big egos, no doubt.’ He shrugged.

‘One very beautiful, high-profile person and she doesn’t act as if she has a big ego,’ the first man said with a sigh. ‘You know, Skye Belmont is the one girl I’d leave everything for. Those wonderful, laughing blue eyes, gorgeous figure, skin like satin, curly hair—I reckon she’s a natural blonde—and her legs are something to die for.’

His friend looked amused. ‘Wouldn’t we all? And they did seem like the perfect couple, but you never can tell.’

‘If he’s hurt her…’ the first man said pugnaciously.

‘Could be the other way around.’

‘Not Skye. She’s such a honey!’

‘Oh, well, we’ll probably never know…’

‘Skye, you can’t sit there all day, darling.’

Skye Belmont stirred and looked around her bedroom. She flinched visibly as her gaze fell on her beautiful wedding dress hanging up outside the wardrobe door then she glanced up at her mother. ‘If you must know, Mum, I wish there was a handy hole in the ground for me to hide in!’

Her mother sat down on the end of the bed and said gently, ‘You were the one who broke it off, Skye. For a lot of very good reasons, you told me. And all this interest and publicity will die down. Don’t forget, it was inevitable. Are you not the most sought-after cook-show host in town? And is Nick not—‘

‘The most eligible bachelor in town,’ Skye finished for her mother wearily. She laid her head back and two tears trickled down her cheeks. ‘Don’t I know it.’

‘Skye, are you regretting it now?’ her mother asked anxiously.

‘No.’ Skye licked the salty moisture from her lip. ‘But just between you and me, Mum, even though I know I can’t live with him and—all the rest, I guess I might always miss him.’

Iris Belmont looked concerned. ‘There’s an old saying: The devil you know…’ She raised a delicate eyebrow at her daughter as she left the saying unfinished.

Skye smiled faintly. ‘If there’s someone who can cope with the devil in Nick, it’s not me.’

‘You’re on the front page this morning, Mr Hunter,’ Florence Daley said as she slapped a sheaf of newspapers in front of her boss.

Nick Hunter removed his feet from his desk, his hands from behind his head and sat up with a sigh. He was six feet two with straight, short, almost black hair and eyes. Beneath the dark grey shirt he wore with a jade-green tie and charcoal trousers, his shoulders were broad and there was an air of suppressed energy about him despite the fact that he’d been lounging with his feet up, so immobile and deep in thought.

The rest of him was lean, rangy and unobtrusively powerful, but the most arresting thing was his face. You never stopped to wonder whether he was handsome, Florence thought, because there was so much vitality, humour yet strength in it. When he laughed, it was almost impossible not to laugh with him. When he raised an eyebrow with utter arrogance at you, you immediately felt demolished. No wonder she hadn’t been able to cope, the poor kid…

‘I suppose the whole world is wondering what kind of a bastard I am to have ditched Skye?’ he drawled, breaking in on her reflections.

‘Yes,’ his secretary said severely.

‘Not you too, Flo!’ He eyed Florence injuredly. She was in her early sixties, she always displayed a very prim and proper demeanour and, as his father’s secretary originally, she had known him since he was sixteen.

‘Me too, I’m afraid,’ Florence agreed. ‘I love Skye and I thought you did as well.’

‘Loving Skye and marrying Skye,’ Nick Hunter said meditatively, ‘are two different things. By the way, it was she who gave me my marching orders.’

‘I wonder why?’ Florence said with unusual irony. And proceeded to tell him. ‘You’re never here, for one thing! It would be like being married to a long-distance telephone. And you’re always doing difficult, dangerous things you don’t have to do—she’d never know when the father of her children would turn up as a statistic! Plus…’ Florence paused then went on with unusual vehemence, ‘Too many women are attracted to you and make fools of themselves over you.’

Nick had listened to this attentively but his dark eyebrows shot up at the last two observations. He said, with a grin, ‘Flo, I do think you’re exaggerating there—’

But Florence was in the grip of high emotion and would not be denied. ‘Nor does it become you to joke about it, Nicholas Hunter,’ she snapped. ‘The trouble with you is you’ve always had everything handed to you on a platter and you’re too used to dominating the life out of everyone around you.’

‘Is that what you think? That I tried to dominate Skye?’

‘Wouldn’t put it past you.’

They gazed at each other until Florence reddened suddenly and looked away. ‘Sorry,’ she said stiffly, ‘it’s not my place—’

‘No.’ Nick waved a hand. ‘You’re perfectly entitled to speak your mind. If nothing else it’s brought one thing home to me. As I’m going to feature as the villain of the piece, it might be a good idea to leave town for a while.’

‘You’re still…you’re being flippant,’ Florence pointed out frustratedly. ‘Didn’t she mean anything to you?’

It was Nick’s turn to look away and for a moment there was something entirely serious, even dark about him. But he broke the moment with a faint smile, and said almost gently, ‘Flo, I will always love Skye in a way. But, for reasons that matter only to the two of us, we would not suit. Surely it’s better to have found this out before the wedding?’

‘You need to get away for a while, darling,’ Iris Belmont said to her daughter over dinner that same evening. ‘Doesn’t this series of the show close shortly for a recess? That usually gives you three months before you start taping the next series, or something like that.’

‘Yes. But there’s still work to be done on the next series, my new book…’ Skye inspected her meal then pushed her plate away. ‘Sorry, I’m not hungry, Mum.’

‘You could work on your new book anywhere,’ Iris pointed out. ‘You might make even pick up some new ideas for it.’

‘I guess so. Look—’ Skye stood up ‘—I’ll think about it,’ she promised. ‘In the meantime I’m going to have an early night. Please don’t worry about me. I’m…I’ll be fine!’

Famous last words, she thought as she lay on her bed in the house she’d grown up in and had retreated to after breaking her engagement. She had her own flat not that far away but, apart from being alone, which her mother had insisted she shouldn’t be, being prey to the media hadn’t recommended itself to her.

It was a blue room, her bedroom in her mother’s house. Blue to match her eyes, frilly and appropriate for a little girl but not much comfort for a woman who had loved and lost Nick Hunter.

She let her mind drift back to how they’d met over a year ago. Cooking had always been her passion, a passion passed onto her by her mother. After her father’s death when she was twenty, she and her mother had invested their inheritance into a small, chic restaurant that had taken off overnight.

And one of their regular clients, a television producer, had offered Skye a guest spot on a cooking program. Before she’d had time to pinch herself, she often thought, she had her own show that worked on a tried, not particularly original formula but it had worked amazingly well. She went into the home of a celebrity, took over the kitchen and cooked their favourite dishes for them.

What had puzzled her at first was the metamorphosis that came over her when she was in front of the cameras. She’d always been a reserved person, her teens had been plagued by shyness and she’d had a very sheltered childhood. Yet on the small screen she came across as bubbly, worldly, humorous and able to make people laugh—and before long, at twenty-two, she’d been unable to go to the supermarket without being recognized.

She’d discussed this paradox with her producer and he’d pointed out that by all accounts Rowan Atkinson was a shy, reserved person. He’d also told her that it was her passion for her subject that gave her her onair confidence. And assured her that the way she dealt with her celebrities flowed on from it.

Off-screen confidence in some areas had also gradually flowed from it, she’d found, although fame and constantly being recognized had proved to be a bit of a problem. On the other hand, fame and a relative amount of fortune had seen her able to hire help for the restaurant, although her mother still supervised it, and had seen her first cookbook leap off the shelves.

Then, one day, it was in Nick Hunter’s kitchen that she’d found herself doing a show. Of course she’d heard of him. His father was reputed to be one of the wealthiest men in the country. His mother was a renowned psychologist. His sister designed couturier clothes and lived in Paris. He himself was second-in-command of the vast empire his father had carved mainly from minerals.

He flew his own plane around the country, had a passion for motor racing as well as speedboats and competed as an amateur. In fact anything fast and racy, including women, often appeared in the same context as Nick Hunter.

She’d been surprised, therefore, when he’d immediately divined her determination to be unimpressed by him behind the scenes. And more surprised when, by a mysterious process, he’d turned their on-air time into one of the best shows she’d ever done. Hilarious, warm and as if a certain chemistry existed between them as she showed him how to boil an egg.

She could even remember saying indignantly to her mother when they’d watched the show together, ‘How did he do that? He’s not the kind of man who impresses me at all.’

Her mother had looked quizzical. ‘He’s rather gorgeous, though. I mean physically,’ she’d amended hastily, discovering herself on the receiving end of a speaking look from her daughter.

‘He’s also a playboy if I’m not very much mistaken,’ Skye had said coolly.

‘Oh, to be sure. A right breaker of hearts, I have no doubt. Lucky you’re not an impressionable girl, Skye,’ Iris had added, but with a little twinkle in her eye that had caused her daughter to look affronted then start to laugh reluctantly.

‘OK—tall, dark and dangerously attractive,’ she’d conceded ruefully. ‘He still, well, puts my hackles up.’

What had further put her hackles up was to discover that the ratings for the Hunter show had been astronomical, causing her to be the blue-eyed girl of the station in more ways than one.

She’d remonstrated with herself over this state of mind. She was being ridiculous and, if anything, she should have bought the most expensive bottle of champagne she could find for Nick Hunter—only he’d got in first. With flowers and a lunch invitation.

Go! everyone had insisted. But what had made her go, she’d thought at the time, was a determination to prove to Nick that she could remain unimpressed by him.

Now, as she lay dry-eyed but miserable on her bed, she had to acknowledge that she’d probably been impressed from the first time his dark eyes had lingered on her. From the moment he’d unwound his tall, spare frame from a low armchair and run his fingers through his straight dark hair when she and the television crew had descended upon him.

And going to lunch with him that first time had definitely been a mistake, in hindsight, she also conceded.

Because he’d done nothing at all to cement her playboy image of him—the opposite if anything. He’d told her about his particular passion—for rocks, as it happened. He was a geologist, he told her, and, be they iron ore, gold, silver, tin or diamond-bearing rocks, he found them exceedingly fascinating. He’d also told her he was never happier than when he was prospecting, living in a tent somewhere.

Prepared for a sophisticated, seductive onslaught of some kind, she had relaxed unwittingly. Three hours later, she’d been unable to believe the time had passed so swiftly, or been so interesting.

And Nick Hunter had watched the slight confusion that came to her expression with a little glint of something she couldn’t identify at the time in his dark eyes.

Because he was aware that beneath her TV persona there lurked a different Skye Belmont; he had divined it at their first encounter when her beautiful sky-blue eyes had been distinctly cool. And, although he couldn’t put his finger on it, it had been enough to intrigue him. In what way could she be different underneath from all the other bright, worldly girls who littered his path? And if so—why?

Had Skye been privy to his thoughts at the time, she would have known that he also knew exactly how to reel her in… It was something she was later to throw up at him.

He’d ended the lunch on a friendly, casual note, made no reference to their meeting again and left her with an oddly intimate handshake. She hadn’t heard from him again for two months.

For the first week of those two months she’d been strangely insulated from just about everything, work included. Because she couldn’t get over how much she’d enjoyed Nick Hunter’s company, how ordinary it had been—yet not ordinary at all. He’d been witty, serious, he’d got her to talk about her opinions on books, films, politics, and had responded in kind. It had been like having lunch with a very good friend.

At the same time, though, there’d been this sudden awareness of him flowing through her. Not, at first, in a particularly sensual way but little things—such as how she liked that he was lean and rangy, she liked his hands and the way he smiled, his voice. It had only occurred to her after they’d parted that just once his dark eyes had rested on her in a way that was particularly adult.

It had been in the moment of confusion when she’d realized they’d spent three whole hours together. And that drifting gaze had, almost objectively, she thought later, seen through her clothes but, more, read her soul.

This discovery had caused her to shiver slightly for a reason she couldn’t explain, but the more she thought about it, the more she saw it as a danger sign—and the more everything about Nick Hunter started to plague her. Then the weeks had passed and her feeling of friendship, already eroded, had hardened into something she despised herself for but couldn’t help—sheer pique.

So the fact that he caught her completely unprepared two months after their lunch, and not as the result of him getting in touch with her, didn’t help her much.

She tried, as she lay on her bed, to resist being transported back in time to that meeting but it was useless…

‘Going my way, lady?’

The voice was the voice of her rather bitter dreams but it brought her up short in the act of stepping into a lift in a smart city hotel, on her way to a cocktail party to celebrate the release of a new wine.

She turned slowly with her heart suddenly pounding, and Nick Hunter was standing behind her, all the lean length of him clad in black: black open-necked shirt, black trousers and with his straight dark hair flopping on his forehead.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said unoriginally, although she wasn’t unhappy with the lack of enthusiasm in her voice.

‘Mmm,’ he murmured, letting his gaze drift over her in that disturbing way he had, ‘and a very beautiful-looking you, Ms Belmont. But cool. Distinctly cool…’

The word seemed to dangle in the air between them as she looked down at herself in some confusion.

She wore a short, bias-cut dress with a vee neck in a floating silk georgette over a taffeta slip. The cap sleeves were unlined, the colour was a beautiful Prussian blue with a shadowy dusky pink pattern on it and she wore silver high-heeled sandals. Her long, slender legs were bare and her fair hair was in its natural curly bob to her shoulders. She wore a minimum of make-up and her lips were painted a dusky pink. All she carried was a tiny blue purse.

‘Should I be any different?’ she asked, having used the moment to banish the confusion and starch her soul against this man, as their gazes caught and held again.

He smiled, as if with inner amusement that she might not be adult enough to be privy to, and said, ‘I thought we were friends? We certainly seemed to be the last time we met.’

Skye blinked, conscious immediately of the trap she’d fallen into, and for a moment her expression defied description.

This time Nick Hunter laughed softly. But at the same time he possessed himself of her hand. ‘Look, I’ve been overseas. For quite a bit longer than I’d originally planned, I’m afraid. Would it be too much to hope that we’re going to the same cocktail party?’

Skye opened her mouth, shut it then said, ‘I’m going to the launch of this new wine. I don’t know about you.’

He laughed again and ushered her into the lift. ‘I am now.’

She stared at him. ‘Do you mean…?’

‘Precisely,’ he drawled. ‘I intend to come to the wine party with you.’

‘But if you haven’t got an invitation—and what about the one you were invited to anyway?’

‘I never seem to have any trouble getting into parties whether I’m invited or not,’ he commented gravely. ‘And the one I was going to will be deadly dull in comparison—’

‘So why…?’

‘Because you won’t be there,’ he finished softly.

Skye blushed and he watched the colour surge beneath her smooth skin, which had the effect of making her feel hotter than ever.

But as she cast around in her mind for a suitable rejoinder he grimaced, kissed her knuckles lightly and said, ‘Shall we be friends again?’

He was right. He was more than welcome at the cocktail party; the producers of the new wine were even old friends of his, and they lamented loudly that they hadn’t known he was in the country otherwise they’d have sent him an invitation.

And Skye watched, somewhat bemused, because Nick Hunter in action at a party was a sight to behold. Everyone seemed to know him and be delighted to see him. Including some very attractive women who hung on his every word.

But, after about an hour, he came back to Skye’s side and said for her ears alone, ‘I’ve had rather a good idea. Shall we go?’

She moistened her lips. ‘Where?’

He narrowed his eyes. ‘I wonder why I get the impression Skye Belmont has never lived a little dangerously?’

‘Believe me, I have,’ she countered. ‘Every time I go in front of a camera I might as well be white-water rafting down the Zambezi in crocodile-infested waters—that’s how nervous I get.’

His lips quirked and his eyes glinted with amusement. ‘You don’t show it.’

‘Perhaps not. I feel it all the same. The funny thing is, as soon as the cameras are rolling, I lose it. But—’ she shrugged her slim shoulders ‘—I am cautious by nature. So, before I make any commitment, how dangerously are you asking me to live at the moment, Nick Hunter?’ Her own eyes were a cool, amused blue.

His changed to reflect a glimmer of surprise but he was not to know that Skye had learnt a thing or two in the preceding hour. She had accurately perceived that he very quickly divested himself of women who could not hide their admiration of him.

‘All I had in mind was you doing something you’ve done for me before—cooking me dinner,’ he said. ‘Which was not dangerous at all, if you remember. And I happen to have a refrigerator stuffed with food—but you know how hopeless I am in the kitchen,’ he added helplessly.

Skye’s lips twitched. ‘Ah. But I was paid for that.’

‘Then could you consider this?’ He glanced around. ‘Little bites of food on toothpicks always leave me the same way. Starving,’ he said simply.

‘You could go to a restaurant,’ she pointed out.

‘When I know the best cook in town? That would be sacrilege,’ he said softly. ‘But, I give you my word, I’ll deliver you home all safe and sound.’

Skye hesitated but she couldn’t help laughing at his expression, which was an entirely false mixture of pleading and mournfulness. ‘OK.’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t know why I don’t always go out armed with an apron!’

‘This…’ he paused, looking somewhat put out ‘…happens to you often?’

‘Being lured to a man’s house under the guise of cooking him dinner? All the time.’

‘So I wasn’t being in the least original?’

‘Not one bit!’ she said blithely.

‘Bloody hell,’ he murmured. ‘I must be slipping. How often do you accept?’

‘Very seldom,’ she said seriously. ‘But you did boost my ratings the last time I cooked for you so I owe you one, Mr Hunter. Besides, I’d like to use you in my next cookbook.’

He looked comically put out this time. ‘As in how, Ms Belmont?’

‘As in what your favourite foods are, particularly with an international flavour, including favourite little restaurants you might have around the world. You can tell me all about it while I cook.’ She watched him serenely.

‘So this is very definitely a quid pro quo?’

‘Definitely.’

He shook his head. ‘You’re a hard woman, Skye. OK, I accept. Let’s go.’ Once more he took her hand and led her out.

For the next three months she often cooked him meals, although they never made any prior arrangements. He would simply ring her at work or at home and if she wasn’t free he’d say, ‘Bad luck. Maybe next time?’ And she’d agree without giving any intimation that it was getting harder and harder for her to be just a good friend of Nick Hunter’s.

Harder, also, to live with the thought that the last thing he would respond to was being pinned down in any way. It struck her, too, that the Skye Belmont she was presenting to Nick Hunter was her public persona, not the true girl who lurked beneath the surface and was a more serious, not-necessarily-admiring-of-the-worldliness-of-his-world girl.

Then things changed dramatically one evening. She was cooking roast beef for him. In the act of beating the ingredients for Yorkshire pudding at the same time as she was telling him about her last show, which had been a behind-the-scenes disaster, she realized he was unusually quiet.

‘Am I talking too much?’ she said lightly. ‘I guess you had to be there to see the humour of it. Nothing came out right.’

He was sitting at the kitchen counter twirling a glass of wine in his fingers. The sun was setting, flooding his beautiful apartment and its views of Sydney Harbour with a golden radiance. And he didn’t answer but only allowed his dark gaze to drift over her in a way it had once before. This time there was something darker about it, though.

She stopped beating. ‘Nick—is something wrong?’ she asked uncertainly.

He smiled but with an effort. ‘You could say so.’

‘What? Tell me?’ she whispered.

‘I don’t know if this is on your agenda, Skye, but—even watching you make Yorkshire pudding is driving me out of my mind.’

She blinked, her mouth fell open and all she could say hoarsely was, ‘Why?’

‘Because I’d very much like to be kissing you.’

Several reactions hit her. Relief, disbelief and a sudden inner trembling. ‘Oh. I thought it was something serious.’ She stopped and blushed as he looked at her ironically. ‘Well, you know what I mean—’

‘No. I’m not at all sure what you mean, Skye.’

Her hands were all floury and she rubbed her forehead agitatedly, transferring some of the flour to it. ‘I was thinking of an illness or… I didn’t think you saw me like that. That’s what I meant.’

‘Then we shared the same dilemma.’

Skye sat down on a stool rather abruptly. ‘Surely— I wasn’t that good at covering it up?’

A fleeting frown came to his dark eyes. ‘You tried to?’ he hazarded.

‘Oh, yes,’ she said simply. ‘I learnt my lesson the first time you took me to lunch.’

He got up and came round the counter so he was standing in front of her and he put his fingers beneath her chin to tilt it so he could look into her eyes. ‘Didn’t that put you off?’ he asked sombrely, not attempting to deny the charge.

‘Unfortunately, the other thing about you is that you’re such fun to be with and I really enjoy your company.’

‘We’ve never been anywhere or done anything other—than this.’ He glanced around the kitchen.

She shrugged slightly.

‘So—may I kiss you, Skye Belmont?’

A faint smile trembled on her lips. ‘You know, Nick, I didn’t think you were the kind who waited to be asked.’

‘There could be a lot of things you don’t know about me, Skye,’ he said, and took her in his arms.

How true, Skye thought, lying on her bed. Things that he had never intended her to get to know, either. But the sheer magic of being kissed by and intimate with Nick Hunter had claimed all her senses, including her common sense.

It had been a revelation. He’d made love to her with a mixture of laughter and intensity that had been breathtaking. Just to see his hands was enough to make her stop in her tracks and go hot and cold at the memories of how he’d handled her body, how he’d made her feel like silk and velvet, how protective his whipcord strength had been, how much pleasure he’d brought to her. How they’d laughed at the oddest things while they were lying in each other’s arms.

And the way his dark gaze drifted over her, often in public, had the same effect. So that she knew he would take her to his apartment very soon, whatever they were doing, and slide her clothes off, paying meticulous attention to all her most sensitive, erogenous zones until she could barely speak. Then he’d take her to bed and their bodies would unite in a way that spoke for itself.

It struck her that if she’d once thought he was tall, dark and dangerous she now thought he was tall, dark and to die for.

Then, any hidden doubts she might have had had been allayed one day when he’d propped his head on his hand, drawn his other hand across her breasts with a touch so light yet at the same time electrifying, and said, ‘I think we ought to do something to formalize this state of affairs, Ms Belmont.’

‘Oh?’ She’d smiled dreamily. ‘Don’t tell me. You’re thinking of hiring me as your full-time cook?’

‘On the contrary, I’m thinking of asking you to marry me.’

Skye had opened her eyes wide and sat up suddenly. ‘What…?’ She’d had some trouble with her voice. ‘What do you mean?’

He’d eyed her quizzically. ‘What do you think I mean?’

‘But—’ she’d groped for his hand and held it tight between hers ‘—I didn’t know you felt like that…’ She’d trailed off, and the sheer surprise had still been in her eyes.

‘Skye—why do you think I keep doing this?’ He’d freed his hand and pulled her into his arms. ‘For that matter, we keep doing this,’ he’d said into her hair.

She’d trembled in his arms.

‘Don’t tell me—’ he’d raised his head and looked into her eyes quite wickedly, ‘—you’ve only been toying with me, Skye Belmont?’

Because the opposite had sometimes occurred to her, because, while it wasn’t in her to toy with anyone in this way but the same might not be said of him, by reputation anyway, she’d actually gasped and looked so thunderstruck, he’d started to laugh.

‘Are you serious?’ she’d demanded then.

‘Of course. What plans did you have for us?’

It was a question that had suddenly revealed all her hidden fears to her. Fears that she hadn’t been able to look in the face because his effect on her had been so powerful… Would they go on being lovers until the gloss wore off and a new woman replaced her?

How stable could a relationship be when they lived it inside a bubble—their daily lives were not in the slightest altered by it? He came and went, often with little or no explanation. She did the same, often doing the show interstate. They didn’t spend much time together at all that wasn’t spent in passionate lovemaking—or, it struck her with some irony, her cooking for him. Now this.

She’d looked around his bedroom and licked her lips. ‘I…didn’t have any plans, actually.’

‘Then I think it might be time to start making them,’ he’d said wryly. ‘Will you marry me, Skye? I promise it’s not only your cooking I love about you.’

That had done it. She’d lain back in his arms, overcome not only by him but the fact that this offer of marriage had to banish all her fears. Surely? ‘Yes.’ And then, in the grip of love and excitement such as she’d never known, she’d kissed him. ‘Yes, please.’

That had been six months ago, she recalled. He’d bought her an engagement ring of Tanzanite, an exquisite violet blue stone that was the colour of her eyes, surrounded by diamonds. She’d met his parents and his sister and been welcomed with open arms, although she’d thought his mother had looked at her with secret surprise.

But his father had been particularly warm and welcoming of his prospective daughter-in-law, and she’d formed the impression that Richard Hunter had decided she would be good for his son.

Nick had met her mother and charmed her thoroughly. Although, again, Skye had sensed some reservations in her mother. All Iris had ever put into words, however, had been the fact that she sensed Nick Hunter might be more complicated than met the eye.

And they had become an item, Skye Belmont and Nick Hunter—a celebrity couple. Once again her ratings had skyrocketed and she’d continually had to field questions about Nick, how they’d got together, what their plans were, what the wedding would be like, her dress, the cake—would she make it herself?—their honeymoon plans, how many children they wanted.

And that, she thought sadly, lying on her bed, was when the rot had started.

Or it was the catalyst, more accurately, that had made her see she was marrying a man she adored to go to bed with, but there was not a whole lot more between them than there ever had been…

It had started out as a laughing discussion, three weeks before their wedding, on all the questions people asked her.

‘While I seem to be an open book to the whole world,’ she said with a grin, ‘you are this mysterious figure they all hunger and thirst to know about. I can’t believe people’s preoccupation with you, or things like how many children we plan to have!’ She grimaced.

‘Well, I hope you don’t plan to rush in and have an army,’ he replied ruefully.

Her feeling of laughter deserted her for some reason. ‘I don’t intend to do either but—we are going to have kids, aren’t we, Nick?’

‘All in good time.’

She was cooking for him again, breakfast this time—bacon, eggs, mushrooms and tomato. She had on a yellow silk robe with nothing underneath it and all he wore was a pair of shorts. They hadn’t been up long. He was reading the newspaper at the kitchen counter while she cooked.

‘What do you mean, “All in good time”?’

He looked up briefly. ‘You’re barely twenty-four, Skye.’

‘And you’re thirty-two, Nick,’ she countered. ‘Look, I don’t want to have them immediately but by the time I’m twenty-five I’m sure I shall. I will also—’ she stopped, took a deep breath and looked around ‘—want a proper married life. I’d like my own home one day and a husband who doesn’t spend half his life away from me, doing things I don’t much care for anyway.’

‘Such as?’ He said it quietly but she divined a dangerous little glint in his eyes.

‘If you must know I find your social world incredibly shallow at times. I can’t stand motor racing, speedboat racing—and all the groupies who go with them—and I don’t think the way you have to travel overseas so frequently is conducive to a happy life.’

‘Then why are we getting married?’

‘Because I thought it would change,’ she said intensely. ‘But I now see that out of bed we might as well inhabit different planets. Especially if you’ve got something against us having children!’

‘I didn’t say that—’

‘You might just as well have, Nick; I can tell when you have reservations—about anything.’

He closed the paper at last and stood up to lean his shoulders against a cupboard. ‘What is so wrong about wanting us to learn to live with each other before we set about populating the earth, Skye?’

She gasped. ‘That’s as good as saying you don’t…you’ll make your marriage vows but on the understanding you can break them!’

‘It happens,’ he said roughly. ‘It happens to people with the best of intentions. By the way,’ he added pointedly, ‘I don’t quibble about your work which also takes you round the country, nor have I laid down any ultimatums that you’ll have to stop and devote yourself to me once we’re married.’

She was speechless.

Something he took advantage of. ‘As for going overseas, I’ll never be able to help that. It comes with the job, but…’ he paused significantly ‘…if you are not burdened down with babies, you could always come too.’

Shock lit her eyes. ‘You really don’t want kids, do you, Nick?’ she whispered. ‘At least tell me why?’

He stood very still for about half a minute, his dark gaze resting on her pale face. Then he said, ‘Perhaps I know myself well enough to know—how hard I find it to be tied down.’

‘So why—you asked me this—why are we getting married?’

His lips twisted. ‘I hadn’t figured you for such a conventional homebody, Skye.’

‘Not even,’ she said huskily, and put out a hand to support herself against the fridge, ‘when all I’ve done is be at home with you?’ She stared at the bacon and eggs then lifted her gaze to him. ‘Could there be anything more homely than this?’

‘In a sense,’ he said dryly, ‘that’s been part of the problem. You seem so happy just to be at home.’

‘So you thought you’d be able to live your old life while I stayed put and kept the home fires burning?’

‘You haven’t seemed to mind until now,’ he pointed out.

She swallowed a great lump in her throat. ‘It doesn’t make sense. One moment you tell me you didn’t suspect I was such a conventional homebody—’

‘Ah, but that’s the operative word. I didn’t think you were conventional. You’re very successful, Skye,’ he said meditatively. ‘You’re very cool and confident, not at all, one would have thought, a clinger.’

‘Who’s talking about clinging?’ she managed to say although there were tears of anger and sorrow in her eyes. ‘I was talking about being in love and sharing—our lives. However, you’re right in one sense. I did mislead you.’

He raised a sceptical eyebrow at her.

‘Skye Belmont, as you see her on television, is not the real me. It’s something I don’t fully understand myself and perhaps, with you, I’ve extended that persona. I think I always knew when you let me dangle for two months…’ She stopped and shrugged. ‘Well, that I should be all cool and confident.’

‘That’s not how you are in bed.’

‘No,’ she said thoughtfully, although something felt as if it was frozen inside her—her heart? she wondered.

‘Perhaps that is something we should take into account before we do anything—drastic,’ he drawled.

‘How good we are in bed?’ She swallowed again as his dark gaze drifted down her robe, resting on the outline of her nipples beneath the thin yellow silk then the slenderness of her waist bound by the sash and finally to the curve of her hips—hips, he often told her, like perfect peaches on a slender stem. ‘No, Nick,’ she said hoarsely. ‘For months I’ve…used that to…to blind myself to everything else.’

His gaze was sardonic as it reached her eyes again. ‘Then what do you propose? Isn’t it a little late, Skye,’ he said with sudden savage impatience, ‘to have this dramatic awakening? Do you know what would happen if we did go back to bed?’

She closed her eyes. ‘I’m sorry but I just can’t do it.’

‘Sorry?’ he repeated. ‘You’re the one with a wedding dress in your cupboard, a cake you made yourself, all your new honeymoon clothes, two bridesmaids—’

‘Stop it,’ she whispered, appalled. ‘You’re the one who has just told me you’re going to resist us having children to the nth degree.’

‘Skye, if it makes you happy, have them,’ he said wearily.

‘No, thank you, Nick. Not with you.’

‘Look, this has blown out of all proportion and I can’t believe you’ve made love to me time and time again with such joy—when all this was on your mind.’ He raked a hand through his hair and set his teeth. ‘When all these shortcomings of mine were niggling away at you!’

‘Neither can I,’ she said with a deadly sort of calm. ‘And I am sorry I didn’t understand and…look this in the face earlier. Goodbye, Nick.’ She pulled her engagement ring off and laid it on the counter.

‘Keep it,’ he said dryly. ‘Who knows? It might bring you some comfort when you’re not in my bed, just loving it.’

Her eyes registered the sheer hurt of his words but she drew on a reserve of strength she hadn’t known she possessed, and left the ring lying on the counter. ‘Would you announce it? I think we’d be better doing that otherwise there’ll be endless speculation.’

He laughed and picked up the ring to turn it between his long fingers. ‘There’s still going to be endless speculation, Skye, but if that’s what you really want?’

‘Yes. Thank you. I’ll go now.’

His eyes captured hers. ‘There’s no reason we couldn’t still be lovers. We’re pretty good at that, whatever we may lack for marriage.’

She bit her lip to stop herself from crying out in anguish and he stood watching her attentively, the stuff her dreams were made of, until she’d run into the reality of Nick Hunter. It was as if every time they’d made love or laughed together passed before her eyes, as if she were drowning, she thought torturedly.

But remember this, she told herself. Remember his last words to you.

‘Not any more,’ she murmured, and turned away.

The simple announcement had been in the paper the next morning. Today, she mused. Had she hoped there would be some attempt on his part to mend things? Of course. Had she hoped a lonesome night such as she had passed last night would change him? Yes.

But no olive branch had come. Only a few formal lines on page three of the paper together with a photo of them in happier times. So it really was over and the sooner she came to grips with it, the better. Nick Hunter was not for her.

She would go away, as soon as she could arrange it. She would take the cake to a hospital and she would even donate her wedding dress to charity…