Читать книгу The Banker's Convenient Wife - Линн Грэхем, LYNNE GRAHAM - Страница 6

A RIVER of bright guilty colour washed up Hilary’s throat and surged as high as her hairline.

Sexually intriguing? Hilary shifted on her seat. A woman with whom he had shared many intimacies? Naturally Roel would make that assumption. It would not occur to him that she could be anything other than a normal wife. After all their arrangement nearly four years back had been highly unusual in its terms.

‘You have a novel way of viewing things,’ she muttered awkwardly, fighting not to betray how uncomfortable she was.

‘You blush like an adolescent,’ Roel noted with husky amusement.

‘Absolutely only with you!’ Hilary shot back at him, infuriated by the suspicion that her face was hot enough to fry eggs on. As a teenager her habit of flushing to the roots of her hair when she got embarrassed had made her the butt of many jokes at school. Mercifully she had grown out of the affliction but not, it seemed, around Roel.

‘We can’t have been married long,’ Roel commented, his rich dark drawl roughening and slowing as he reached out and tugged her into his arms.

‘Don’t!’ Hilary yelped as though he had pushed a panic button.

An involuntary grin crossed Roel’s lean, darkly handsome face because, although she wasn’t much bigger than a doll, she had an extremely bossy streak. ‘Don’t worry…kissing my wife is unlikely to put me back into hospital—’

‘How do you know that?’ Hilary demanded jerkily, angling her blonde head back a little more out of reach. Yet her every physical prompting urged her just to throw herself at him and make hay while the sun, as it were, shone. ‘I just don’t think there should be any kissing…yet—’

‘Non c’e problema,’ Roel teased, in his element, reading the look of concern that his wife wore and more amused than ever by her fear that sexual activity might somehow be detrimental to his health. ‘Think of it as a useful experiment. It might even awaken lost memories, bella mia.’

‘Roel…’

But anticipation was rising at wicked speed inside Hilary: she didn’t want to stop him; she didn’t have the will-power to stop him; she couldn’t wait to experience what she had once been denied. And when his wide, sensual mouth tasted hers the pathways between every erogenous zone she possessed turned to liquid fire and blazed. Her heart thumped with mad, crazy excitement.

Long fingers sliding into her hair, he tilted her head back the better to gain access to her mouth. She leant back into the strong arm, bending her spine in the most encouraging way imaginable. He dipped his tongue between her readily parted lips and plundered the inner sweetness with a driving male hunger that took her by storm. Her body leapt into almost agonising life, pulses racing and nerve-endings quivering. Forbidden heat surged at the very heart of her. Defenceless against her own desire, she moaned low in her throat in response.

Dragging in a ragged breath of restraint, Roel released her. Ebony lashes veiling his gaze to a reserved flash of gold, he murmured without expression, ‘We’re home.’

Breathless and dazed by that unfamiliar explosion of passion, Hilary lowered her head and tried to get a grip on herself. Deep down inside her body in a private place that she wasn’t even used to thinking about, she was conscious of a wicked ache of disappointment. She had got carried away: he could have made love to her on the back seat of his limo and he probably knew it. Hilary was so ashamed of herself for encouraging him that she wondered how she would ever look him in the face again. She had behaved like a sex-starved groupie let loose on her idol. What on earth was she playing at? He had accepted her on trust and, to be worthy of that trust, she needed to keep a proper distance between them! When the chauffeur opened the door beside her, she scrambled out of the limo in haste and only then took a good look at her surroundings.

Home? Roel appeared to live in a vast stone mansion set within the seclusion of high screening walls. A middle-aged manservant was stationed beside the imposing entrance. The huge hall was adorned with classical statues, gilded furniture and a marble floor. She was intimidated by such grandeur, and her steps faltered.

‘Santo cielo…’

Roel’s roughened exclamation made Hilary spin round. Wearing a stark frown of disconcertion, he seemed to be staring at the handsome marble fireplace. Swift understanding gripped her. Something had surprised Roel. Something was different or at least not as he had expected. As he evidently had no memory of the change taking place, he would naturally feel disorientated, and when that happened within his own home it had to be that much more disturbing.

Aware of the manservant’s covert scrutiny, Hilary hurried over to Roel, tucked a confiding hand into his arm and stretched up to whisper, ‘Let’s go upstairs…’

In the very act of wondering why one of his grandfather’s favourite paintings should be hanging in his grandson’s town house, Roel reacted to that breathy little feminine invitation as red-blooded males had done for centuries. The conundrum of the painting momentarily forgotten, he was startled by a desire to scoop his diminutive wife up and kiss her breathless for reading his mind with such accuracy. Was that how he usually acted around her? It shook him to acknowledge that he had no idea.

‘I just remembered something…you go on ahead,’ Hilary said when they reached the marble landing above. Pulling free, she then hurried back downstairs to speak to the manservant before he could disappear from view.

‘I’m sure you’re wondering who I am,’ Hilary began uncomfortably. ‘You are…?’

‘Umberto, signorina. I run the household and you are Mr Sabatino’s guest,’ the older man responded smoothly.

‘I’m not…actually, I’m Roel’s…er…wife, Hilary,’ she explained in an apologetic undertone.

Well-trained though Umberto was, he could not conceal his surprise.

‘Please ensure that no personal or business phone calls are put through to my husband.’

Umberto stiffened, his lips parting in an anxious way.

‘Don’t ignore my instructions,’ Hilary added, tilting her chin.

When she drew level with Roel again, he dealt her a keen appraisal and then, strong mouth quirking, he bent down and swept her up into his arms.

‘Roel?’ Hilary squawked, utterly taken aback by his behaviour. ‘What on earth are you doing?’

Striding across the elegant landing, Roel vented a husky, sexy laugh and deftly shouldered open the door of the master bedroom suite. ‘Ensuring that last-minute instructions to Umberto concerning dinner or whatever…won’t interrupt us again!’

‘Please put me down…’ Hilary pressed in an enervated rush. ‘You’re supposed to be resting, Roel.’

Roel lowered her down onto a massive bed with exaggerated care. ‘I have every intention of doing so…but only if I have company to do it with, cara.’

Hilary rolled over and off the other side of the bed. Her face was pink with embarrassment. ‘That wouldn’t be restful—’

Lean fingers jerked loose his silk tie, pulled it free and discarded it. Glinting golden eyes flared back at her in blatant challenge. ‘I don’t need to recall the last five years to know that I’m not a restful individual or given to lazing about doing nothing. If I’m not working, I require occupation—’

‘But not this,’ Hilary slotted in breathlessly. ‘You only think that you want to sleep with me but you don’t…not really, you don’t. You just want to make me feel more familiar—’

‘I can’t believe I married a woman who makes a three-act major production out of sex,’ Roel incised with biting derision.

‘I’m trying to think of you, that’s all.’ Hilary twisted her hands together in an unwittingly revealing gesture of stress. ‘This isn’t what you need right now—’

‘Allow me to decide that.’ But Roel had fallen still and his brilliant eyes no longer appeared to be focused on her. His wide sensual mouth twisted and then set into a grim line.

‘What is it?’ Hilary asked worriedly.

Roel glanced back at her, his stunning dark gaze bleak and bitter, hard cheekbones prominent below his olive skin. ‘Clemente, my grandfather, is dead…that’s why the Matisse painting is here in our home instead of at the castello. Am I right?’

As he spoke Hilary lost colour.

‘On this score, you don’t withhold information,’ Roel warned her icily.

Eyes stinging with tears of sympathy, Hilary nodded confirmation with pained reluctance. ‘Yes, I’m sorry. Your grandfather died four years ago—’

‘How did he die?’ Roel demanded.

‘A heart attack. I believe it was very sudden,’ Hilary proffered, grateful that she at least knew that much and praying that he would ask for no other details.

Roel swung away from her and strode over to the tall windows. His powerful shoulders were rigid with tension below the expensive cloth of his jacket. He was closing her out and she knew it. He had mentally dismissed her from his presence as surely as if he had slammed a door in her face.

‘Roel…’ she murmured, aching with a compassion she was afraid to show for fear of offending.

‘Go check the dinner menu,’ he advised very drily.

Hilary’s troubled gaze sparked and she stood taller. ‘I couldn’t care less about stuff like that. Don’t push me away. I was very close to my gran and I was devastated when she passed away—’

‘Some of us choose not to parade private emotions,’ Roel whipped back.

‘OK…OK!’ Hilary threw up both hands in a peacemaking gesture, expressive brows raised at his vehemence.

Face pale and tight with discomfiture, for he could not have rejected her attempt to offer comfort more clearly, she spun round and walked out of the room.