Читать книгу A Ruthless Passion - Robyn Donald - Страница 7

NICK waited in the foyer of the hotel until Glen and Mrs Courtald had left for their appointment with the lawyer. He despised subterfuge, but what he had to say to Cat was too important to risk any interruption—especially not from her mother or fiancé.

When he knocked on the suite door he noted with an odd remoteness that his pulse-rate was up. And when he heard her call, ‘Coming,’ in the low, husky voice she’d grow into when she’d learned what sex was all about, his gut clenched and a charge of male hunger hit him with the force of a bomb.

The door opened. Cat’s smoky blue eyes widened; colour surged through her exquisite skin before draining away. Her fingers tightened on the veil she’d been trying on—short and fluffy as befitted an eighteen-year-old bride.

‘N-Nick,’ she said unevenly. ‘This is a surprise.’

‘Ask me in,’ he said tersely.

She hesitated, then stepped back. ‘You’ve missed Glen—he and my mother have just gone.’

‘I didn’t come to see them,’ he said, walking into the suite Glen had reserved for the girl he was marrying the following day—the best hotel in Auckland, as befitted the bride of one of New Zealand’s top advertising men.

Its impersonal opulence should have overshadowed such a small person, yet in spite of her youth and her fragility Cat stood very erect, the ridiculous veil still perched on hair the polished red-brown of a chestnut, and although he sensed her unease, her gaze was direct and steady. ‘What do you want?’ she asked quietly.

Nick had had erotic dreams about that hair, and her slender body, and that ripe mouth, still innocent in spite of her engagement to his friend. Glen was being very careful with her, apparently content to wait until they were married before consummating their relationship.

Clamping down on a bitter, raw jealousy that astonished and infuriated him, Nick said bluntly, ‘Have you thought what marriage to Glen will involve?’

‘I might be only eighteen,’ she returned with a cool dignity he found both maddening and provocative, ‘but I’m not a total idiot. Yes, I know what marriage involves. I watch television, read newspapers and magazines and books, go to films, talk to people.’ She paused before adding with delicate sarcasm, ‘And my parents were married.’

Did she know that his hadn’t been? Possibly; Glen might have told her. ‘What people have you talked to? The pupils at that expensive boarding school you graduated from at the end of last year? What do they know?’

With a spark of temper she retorted, ‘As much as any kid who grows up on the streets, actually. Just because they come from a different socio-economic group doesn’t mean that the same problems don’t affect them.’ Small face hot with dismay, she went on swiftly, ‘I’m sorry—I didn’t mean that you—’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he interrupted. ‘I did grow up on the streets, but I’m talking about the realities of life as a very rich man’s trophy wife.’

Her cheeks stung as though he’d hit them. ‘I thought a trophy wife was someone who took the place of the real wife. Glen hasn’t dumped anyone for me.’

Nick bit back his first, lethal response. It was no use dragging in Morna’s private tragedy; besides, technically Cat was correct. Glen had never offered to marry the woman who’d been his lover for the past five years.

Instead, he said relentlessly, ‘Glen is going to expect you to run his house, to plan dinners, to organise parties, to meet and charm clients. Can you do that?’

‘I can try,’ she said, adding on a note of uncertainty that wrung his heart, ‘My mother will help me.’

‘Your mother is not well.’

A shadow darkened her features. How much pressure, Nick wondered savagely, had Cat’s charming, gentle, uncomplaining mother applied? Oh, nothing overt, but with her father dead, and his small annuity gone with him, Mrs Courtald must have seen Glen as the answer to all her prayers.

Cat said, ‘She’s—well enough.’ Her full, soft mouth, tantalisingly red, tightened. ‘And I’m a quick learner,’ she finished on a challenging note.

She was going to go through with it. For only the second time in his life Nick braced himself as a shaft of panic overturned the processes of his cool, incisive brain. Reasserting control, he asked with cutting scorn, ‘Why are you marrying him, Cat? If it’s money—’

‘It is not money!’ Indignation woke those sleepy eyes to fiery alertness, jutted the small, pointed chin. Coldly she retorted, ‘Glen’s an attractive, exciting man, kind and thoughtful and fun to be with—’

‘And twenty years older than you.’

Her chin jutted even further. ‘So? I like older men.’

‘Because you want a father to replace the one you’ve just lost,’ he said brutally; he was doing this all wrong and he didn’t know how to rescue the situation. ‘But Glen is not yet forty, and he’s no father figure. He’s going to want to sleep with you, Cat—’

‘Don’t call me that!’

‘Why not? You’re like a cat, sweet and kittenish when everything’s going your way, but I can see the feline in you. Glen can’t—he thinks you’re docile and obedient and playful. He’s a virile man, experienced and vigorous. Have you thought of what it will be like to make love to him?’

Once again the colour drained from her face. Her lashes fell as she said angrily, ‘I’m going to be the best wife I can possibly be to him—’

‘Even though you want me?’ Nick demanded.

Head down, face averted, she was shaking her head, the folds of tulle swinging in soft waves. ‘No,’ she said fiercely. ‘I love Glen.’

‘But you want me,’ Nick repeated, sliding his hand beneath her chin, lifting her face. Mouth trembling, she looked at him with desolate, hungry eyes.

‘Cancel the wedding now,’ he pressed quietly, struggling to leash the ruthless passion that clamoured through every cell in his body, urging him to pick her up and carry her into the bedroom and there lay claim to her in the most primitive, effective way, stamp her with his possession, make her shrink with horror at the thought of any other man touching her. ‘Cat, you can’t marry Glen,’ he said steadily, pouring his considerable power to persuade into his deep voice, into his expression. ‘Cancel the wedding— I’ll help you with the arrangements. It will be difficult, but we’ll cope.’

He almost had her. He could feel her hunger, feel her urge to surrender—until her lashes dropped and her mouth tightened, and she said, ‘And then what, Nick?’

His hand dropped to his side. ‘I can help you,’ he repeated, knowing as he said it that she wasn’t going to give in on such a vague promise—and angry because he could offer her nothing more. Glen might be prepared to take advantage of a girl straight from school, but Nick knew she wasn’t ready for marriage to anyone, much less the passion that hardened his body the moment he touched her.

She closed her eyes; when her lashes lifted the blue irises were smooth and opaque as enamel. ‘I don’t know what this—thing—is between us, but it can’t mean anything because I don’t know you. We only met three days ago. I do know Glen, and I not only love him, I respect him. I couldn’t put him through the pain of such a public humiliation because of something that I don’t understand and don’t trust.’ She looked at Nick directly. ‘I’d have thought that as his closest friend and his protégé, you’d be ashamed even to suggest it.’

His demons unleashed by three sleepless nights and an intense, aching frustration, Nick kissed her startled mouth, forcing it open. Her scent, sweet and womanly, filled his head with narcotic fumes; he tried to drop his arms, lift his head and step back, but he couldn’t move, overthrown by a ferocious, dangerous pleasure.

She didn’t resist; after a few rigid seconds she yielded, her body sinking against his, her mouth softening beneath his.

So this, he thought dimly, was paradise…

When she stiffened and tried to push him away he let her go, only then aware that somebody was knocking on the door.

Huge, shamed eyes slid away from his. Cat pressed her hand against her mouth, then with sudden, deliberate violence wiped his kiss off. ‘Get out,’ she whispered. ‘Just get out of here, and never come back. I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man in the world.’

Nick leaned over and straightened the crushed tulle of her veil. Amazingly his hands remained gentle, although he’d never felt so much like smashing everything in his life to bits.

‘I don’t remember offering you marriage. Think of that kiss when you’re in bed with Glen,’ he said savagely, and turned and walked out, striding without a backward look past the hotel maid who waited there.