Читать книгу Mistresses: Bound with Gold / Bought with Emeralds - Сандра Мартон, Katherine Garbera - Страница 11

‘HOW long have you been engaged?’ Regan croaked, sipping on her fresh glass of punch.

‘Nearly two months,’ preened Carolyn, looking adoringly up at the man at her side. In a pink taffeta shift overlaid with a black satin and lace Empire-line dress she looked the perfect accessory to her fiancé’s monochrome white shirt and black trousers. As a woman who had never had to work—and probably never would—she had plenty of time to devote to her appearance. ‘We got engaged in the second week of February, didn’t we, Jay Darling? Up here—on St Valentine’s Day!’

Regan choked, spluttering liquid back into her glass. That was only two days after her own encounter with ‘Adam’!

‘Sorry, a piece of fruit pulp must have gone down the wrong way,’ she said, as Chris gave her a light tap on the back.

At least Joshua hadn’t been engaged when he had ‘engaged’ himself to be entertained by one of Derek’s ‘friends’!

But he hadn’t just decided he wanted to get married and hunted out a wife within the space of two days. And if he had already been involved with Carolyn why hadn’t he looked to her to satisfy his libido instead of seeking casual sex with a stranger…or did he come from that chauvinistic school which divided the whole of womankind into only two types: those you slept with and those you married?

But, no—looking at the golden-blonde’s flushed cheeks, and the way she was leaning her breasts into Joshua’s side, her eyes avidly darting between the two males, Regan got the strong impression that in spite of her dewy, debutante looks Carolyn was no innocent virgin. And, anyway—Joshua was surely too intelligent to subscribe to such an outrageous double standard!

When she dared look at his face she found that he was staring down at her with a blistering contempt that caught her on the raw. She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin, proudly rejecting his disdain. Did he think she had come here expecting to run into him? Her eyes were violet pools of reflective scorn as she glared back at him. As a betrayed wife herself, she hated that he had forced her into a position where she felt like the iniquitous ‘other woman’.

‘OK now?’ asked Chris, solicitously rubbing her rigid spine.

Joshua’s nostrils flared at the sight of his brother’s petting hand.

‘Do you usually allow yourself to be pawed by men you’ve only just met, Mrs Frances?’ he drawled, his joking smile undercut by the venomous tone which suggested that she was in the habit of allowing liberties a great deal more obscene.

Regan’s drink trembled in her hand, and even Carolyn stopped preening long enough to look startled at his smiling ferocity.

Chris bristled, his hand dropping to clench by his side, as if he was contemplating planting it in Joshua’s cynical face. ‘Her name is Regan.’

‘I know what she calls herself.’ The drawl was even more mocking. ‘Mrs Frances and I are old acquaintances.’

Now old enemies, it seemed! Regan compressed her lips, bewildered by the depth of his anger.

‘That’s right,’ she agreed, smiling with sweet falsity, ‘but in spite of what he seems to want you to infer, Chris, as an “old acquaintance” Mr Wade knows full well that I’m not currently married—my husband died nearly a year ago.’

She was guiltily aware that it wasn’t the first time today she had used her status as a widow to invite the pity she had previously always shunned.

Only one other person recognised the ploy. ‘Ten months, actually, if my memory serves me correctly,’ said Joshua. He looked her slowly up and down. ‘From your outfit I take it that you’re still not sure whether you’re half in mourning or half out of it…’

Carolyn gave a high-pitched nervous giggle as Regan struggled not to throw her drink in his insulting face. His eyes glittered, and she knew he almost wanted her to do it. Didn’t he care that his thinly veiled hostility was bound to raise questions about their former relationship?

‘God, when did you become such an insensitive bastard!’ Chris swore, his arm curving protectively around Regan’s waist. ‘I’d have thought you, of all people, would know better than to taunt anyone about the tragedy in their life.’ He turned to Regan and fired out rapidly in a low voice, ‘Maybe you should know that my parents—Joshua’s father and stepmother—died in an arson attack on our house when Josh was seventeen. He got badly hurt saving my twin sisters and me, and then had to give up the career he’d planned to fight for custody of us kids, against our father’s scavenging relatives and business partners who wanted to plunder our inheritance. I guess he feels that all that gives him the monopoly on suffering, so that he can sneer at those who can’t match him for sheer angst—’

‘I haven’t asked you to apologise for me,’ grated Joshua. ‘Or speculate on my motives. You don’t have to dredge up every last detail of my personal history—’

‘I wasn’t apologising—you can damned well do that for yourself,’ Chris shot back, raking back a lock of darkbrown hair that had fallen over his forehead. ‘I was just letting you see what it feels like to have someone violate your privacy in public. It’s about time someone gave you a taste of your own medicine.’

Regan sensed unknown cross-currents and realised that while she might have been the catalyst for this confrontation she wasn’t the sole cause.

A muscle flickered in Joshua’s hard jaw. ‘Back off, Chris.’

‘Or what? You’ll cut off my allowance? I’m not a little boy any more, to be bribed into living my life the way you think I should. I’m ten years older than you were when you took over our father’s company. I’m a qualified doctor now, pal, and I earn my own damned living.’

A doctor? Somehow Regan hadn’t pictured the cocky young man in his designer white suit as anything but a frivolous playboy.

Perversely, as Chris heated up Joshua cooled down, withdrawing behind a rigid barrier of self-control. ‘I said, back off. This isn’t the time or place.’

Chris threw his hands up, palms out, in a gesture of contemptuous surrender. ‘Sure. Anything you say, bro. After all, you’re the boss. The head of the family. The man who makes all the decisions on behalf of the rest of us—purely for our own good, of course—and takes it for granted that we’ll fall in with his plans—’

‘Don’t, Chris!’ Surprisingly it was Carolyn who put the brake on the runaway tension. Her eyes were sparkling with suspicious moisture, her lower lip trembling. ‘This is supposed to be a party—I want everyone to be happy. Please, please don’t spoil it for me…’

Very effective, thought Regan as she watched both men fold like limp handkerchiefs to dry out the little-girl tears. She wondered if Carolyn practised that look in the mirror, then told herself not to be catty.

‘Maybe Regan and I will just take ourselves outside for a stroll,’ said Chris, grabbing her hand without even glancing at her for permission. ‘Or maybe we’ll take a row across the lake and I’ll show her what the gazebo is like in the moonlight.’

Regan decided that Joshua wasn’t the only one in the Wade family who took things for granted. She knew that whatever was going on, she didn’t want to be involved.

She wriggled her fingers free. ‘Thanks, but I get seasick in small boats.’

There was a tiny, startled silence, engulfed in the swirl of partying around them, then Joshua said smoothly, ‘I’m sure the good doctor can find some medication somewhere so that you won’t vomit on his romantic pretensions.’

Regan seethed. If he thought to push her into Chris’s arms to neutralise the threat she clearly presented, he had another think coming!

‘I prefer not to rely on chemicals to maintain my equilibrium.’

‘You don’t say?’ His eyebrows shot up in taunting disbelief and Regan fought not to blush as she was forcibly reminded of the alcohol that had been flowing in her bloodstream the night that they had spent in bed together, making love for hours on end…

She hadn’t been concerned about her equilibrium then; she had purely revelled in the explosive reaction of their mingled body chemistries. And they hadn’t just made love on the bed…there had been the chair, the floor, the bath: the cold, shiny surface of the big mirror slamming against her back and buttocks, frosted by the heat from her steamy, straining body as he knelt between her legs, so that when he pulled her down to mount him she was faced with a fleeting, graphic imprint of herself fading mistily against the glass…

She lost the battle against the wave of heat that swept through her body, clenching her hands around her glass as she felt her soft nipples peak against the white silk. She just hoped anyone who noticed would put it down to the chill of the punch sliding down her throat.

‘The lake’s as calm as a millpond,’ Chris was protesting.

‘And it only takes a few minutes to get across.’

‘Oh, come on, Chris, leave it alone.’ Carolyn unexpectedly came to Regan’s rescue. ‘Can’t you see she’s trying to let you down politely?’

‘And was succeeding, too, until you stuck your oar in,’ he sniped back.

‘So why aren’t you taking your rejection gracefully?’

‘Because maybe she was just leaving herself open to persuasion. Some women like their men to do the wooing.’

Carolyn stopped leaning on Joshua’s arm and put her hands on her hips. ‘I guess it all depends on what your definition of a man is. I’d say a real man is one who’s willing to respect that a woman is capable of saying exactly what she means,’ she struck back, leading Regan to revise her opinion of her as a total lightweight.

She threw back her head, her long hair shimmering like a veil over her shoulders. ‘It’s not as if you really wanted to row over there, anyway. You were just trying to get at Jay and me…’

Chris’s handsome face darkened at her carelessly provocative stance. ‘Don’t presume to tell me what I was trying to do—’

‘Maybe it’s you two who should step outside,’ murmured Joshua, but they didn’t appear to hear him as they continued their crackling exchange, and he turned to Regan, effectively cutting her off from the other two.

‘When Frank pointed you out from across the room and ordered Carolyn to introduce us he suggested I get to know you—since you’re apparently going to be spending some of your time in the site office at Palm Cove while I’m familiarising myself with the operation there.’ Regan’s hands went clammy with dismay as he continued smoothly, ’So, tell me…how does a university drop-out with no qualifications keep herself such a cushy job in the legal department of a company than runs such a lean, mean operation?’

‘I didn’t sleep my way there, if that’s what you’re implying!’ she flared.

‘Trading favours? But you do it so well…’ he taunted, lifting a hand to rub his jaw.

Regan caught her breath as the gold and jade winked mockingly in the light.

‘What’s the matter?’ He tilted his strong wrist, looking down at it in mock surprise. ‘Ahh, you’re admiring my cufflinks—attractive, aren’t they? And, as far as my investigations show, definitely a one-off.’

The hair rose on the back of Regan’s neck. Investigations?

‘Also unique is the fact that they were given to me by a woman,’ he murmured. ‘Except for my sisters, women rarely give me gifts, and never expensive jewellery. As a wealthy man it’s considered my prerogative to give rather than to receive.’

Had he no shame?

‘How you can have the gall to wear them around Carolyn, I don’t know,’ she whispered raggedly.

He shrugged, seemingly unconcerned at their proximity to his fiancée. ‘But then you don’t know me at all, do you? I didn’t keep my family together against all the odds, and fight off the wolves that almost tore my father’s corporation to pieces by being sweet-natured, mild and forgiving. As it happens, I was running late tonight and in a hurry to dress. I just scooped up the first things that came to hand…’

In spite of his logic she still didn’t entirely believe him. ‘You knew I might be here tonight,’ she accused him.

His cynical eyes hooded. ‘Let’s say I thought it too much of a coincidence that you should be sneaking around the property, spying on me, if you didn’t intend to make some kind of contact.’

Shades of Ryan and his James Bond!

‘I wasn’t spying on you. I was just taking an innocent stroll in the gardens! If you think I was pleased to see you, you must be crazy!’ she choked.

His mouth thinned. ‘If it was so innocent why did you run? That’s the second time you’ve disappeared on me, but now that I know who and what you are, you won’t find it so easy to elude me in future. I’m sure Frank will prove even more informative if I flatter him about his charming protégée. A distant relative, I think he said…?’

‘Yes, and when you marry Carolyn that means you and I will also be relations,’ she pointed out with sweet relish.

But he turned even that point against her. ‘You and I have already established our relations. You obviously think that entitles you to special consideration.’

‘Do I?’ Regan fenced, uncertain of his meaning.

He flicked at finger at her glass. ‘You’re running on empty again. Shall we revisit the bar together?’ He cupped her elbow in his hand and turned his sleek head. ‘Regan and I are going to get another drink. Shall I get you a glass of something, Carolyn?’

‘Preferably water or punch,’ Chris tacked on sharply.

Carolyn paused to give him a fierce look before she tossed Joshua a glittering smile. ‘I’d rather have a glass of champagne.’

‘That is so typical! Go ahead, then. Put your own selfish desires first, just as you always do—’

‘I think you really should have something non-alcoholic,’ interrupted Joshua, with a gentleness that sent tingles up and down Regan’s spine. On this subject at least the two men seemed united in their opinion. She looked curiously at Carolyn, wondering if that high-strung air indicated an addictive personality.

‘Oh, all right,’ she was saying, with a pretty pout in his direction. ‘If you say I should, Jay Darling…’

‘No need to overdo it,’ sniped Chris, and they were off again, arguing the point.

The clamp on Regan’s elbow tightened and she found herself thrust reluctantly into motion.

‘But I don’t want anything else to drink,’ she protested, dragging her steps as he manoeuvred through the crowd.

‘You can keep me company.’

She tried to look back over her shoulder. ‘Aren’t you afraid to leave them alone together without someone to play referee—they might kill each other or something?’

A whimsical smile touched his lips. ‘Or something.’

He didn’t seem very worried. Stupid to think that anyone would be allowed to steal anything from this man.

That was why it was imperative that Regan get access to the Palm Cove advertising accounts before his auditors did. Bad enough that Michael had stolen from his employer through a fictitious printing company, but Regan had no desire to be tarred with the same dishonest brush if she was discovered trying to repay the money he had embezzled all those months ago.

She had believed Cindy when the other woman had sobbed that she hadn’t known about the thefts. Cindy had willingly helped him cheat on his wife but she hadn’t known—or evidently been bright enough to ask—how he had managed to finance his dual lifestyle. She had been horrified when, a few weeks ago, she had stumbled on the evidence of his activities, along with a stash of money, hidden in her garage. Afraid of the consequences to herself and her son if she went to the police, she had flung herself on the mercy of Michael’s ‘clever’ wife, who knew the ins and outs of the law and surely wouldn’t want to endure a public scandal, or condemn her husband’s natural child to grow up in poverty, under the shadow of his father’s crime…?

The child that should have been Regan’s…

She was sick with shame at the way that Michael had abused Sir Frank’s personal and professional trust. He would never have been in a position to do either if Regan hadn’t introduced the two men. Sir Frank put great stock in his reputation for integrity and honest dealing, and she knew what a deleterious effect the belated discovery of embezzlement would have on his pride, not to mention his pocket, if it was uncovered by a close audit during the sale of his company. Determined that would never happen, Regan had used the information on the hidden disk to tot up the exact amount of Michael’s theft and worked out a way to pay it back, hopefully without anyone ever knowing it had been gone. It had taken all the cash that Cindy had found, plus every spare cent that Regan could rake up from the sale of her former home and possessions, to get enough to square the accounts. All she needed now was the time and opportunity to put her plan into action.

‘This isn’t the bar!’ she said, suddenly realising that Joshua had opened a door and was dragging her into an empty room.

A lamp shone on the desk, and twin pendant lights hanging from the high ceiling revealed the button-backed leather chairs and walls of bookshelves of the library.

She spun around as Joshua backed against the door, closing it with a definitive click. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

‘I thought you might like a little more privacy for this discussion.’

‘Then you thought wrong! We have nothing more to discuss.’

‘On the contrary. We have a great deal to settle.’ He folded his arms across his chest. ‘First up, you can stop flirting with my brother.’

Her jaw dropped. ‘I was not flirting!’

‘I can read body language as well as the next man…you were leaning into him as he talked, giving him a close-up of those sultry little smiles and big violet eyes—’

‘We were having a conversation. It was difficult to hear him over the music. Anyway, I didn’t know he was your brother—’

‘Ignorance is no defence in law, as you should know better than most. Stay away from Chris. Second: how much?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘How much were you going to demand from me to keep your mouth shut?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about! You’re being deliberately insulting—’

‘And you’re being deliberately obtuse. It won’t work. You’re a very bright lady, as Frank was at such pains to point out to me. Keen to make the most of your abilities. An eager opportunist. So…how much?’

Her slender bosom heaved. ‘You think I’m here to blackmail you?’

His eyes flickered down to the rippling white silk and back up to her blazing eyes. ‘It’s a reasonable assumption. You found out who I was—who I’m engaged to—and figured that you were in a perfect position to threaten to disrupt my wedding plans unless I agreed to pay you soothing amounts of cash.’

That was the height of irony, considering what she had come up here to do, but she couldn’t help the guilty blush that stained her throat and cheeks as she launched on the offensive.

‘What a very active imagination you must have!’ she scoffed. ‘I suppose you think that I somehow pushed Hazel down that hill in order to get myself invited up here…’

He tilted his head against the door, exposing the scars above his Nehru collar. ‘You know exactly how imaginative I can be, Eve,’ he drawled in a rusty voice that scratched at her frayed nerves. ‘But, no, I don’t think you were behind Hazel’s accident. As I said, you’re an opportunist—you take an existing situation and turn it to your advantage.’

‘Well, I’m sorry to disappoint your paranoid fantasies, but I had no idea who you were until a few minutes ago,’ she gritted. ‘And now that I do know it makes not one iota of difference to me. I have no interest in you either as Adam or as Joshua Wade.’

To her fury, he grinned. ‘You were interested in me every which way that night in the apartment…’

‘I treat all my one-night stands like that!’

‘That must make for an extremely exhausting social life…and an extremely expensive one.’ He unfolded his arms to lightly adjust his cufflinks, one after the other, watching her pupils contract nervously. ‘You left a gift on my pillow but you didn’t take mine to you. Was it your intention to make me feel like a toyboy?’

She felt a wicked surge of angry satisfaction and sleeked her hair back behind her ears like a fastidious little cat. ‘Oh, dear, how demeaning for you,’ she sympathised.

His eyes slitted. ‘Actually, I found the thought rather…stimulating.’ He pushed off the door and came softly towards her. ‘Didn’t you like the bracelet? I know you looked at it while I was in the shower.’

If it was a guess then her expression as she backed away from him on unsteady legs would have been all he needed to confirm its accuracy. Her brief burst of triumph dwindled to renewed panic as he continued.

‘Because that’s my problem with all this, you see. What you did doesn’t quite jell with the image of you as a greedy, blackmailing opportunist, does it?’ He prowled around the desk after her. ‘You had those lovely baubles within your grasp and you deliberately let them slip through your fingers. Why, instead of waiting to accept your due reward, did you creep out and leave me to wake up alone? Apart from anything else, it’s extremely bad manners.’

Regan backed into a swivel chair and nearly fell over.

‘I’m sorry if I offended your sense of etiquette.’

‘I don’t think so. I think it was some kind of planned strategy on your part.’ He steadied the swinging chair with his hands as she retreated behind it. ‘After all, you didn’t conjure those cufflinks out of thin air.’

‘Will you stop stalking me?’ she shrilled, almost at the end of her tether.

He was relentless. ‘If you’ll tell me exactly what’s going on?’

‘Nothing’s going on,’ she denied hectically. ‘This is all just an unfortunate coincidence.’ She glanced towards the door.

‘Don’t bother. You wouldn’t make it,’ he warned her.

Her hip bumped the corner of the desk and she winced, rubbing at her bruised thigh. ‘How dare you harass me like this? If you don’t open that door people are going to wonder what we’re doing in here—’

‘No one saw us come in, and given the crowd out there I doubt if we’ll be missed.’

‘Even by Carolyn?’ She drew herself up to her full height, deciding the only remaining defence was attack. ‘It’s not as if you’re in any position to criticise my motives. What about your behaviour? You wouldn’t have any reason to fear blackmail if you didn’t know you’d done something utterly reprehensible.’ A mist of red covered her vision as she got to the crux of her inner anger. ‘You virtually bounced out of bed with me to rush up here and propose to her!’

His grey eyes went dark. ‘I owed Carolyn no sexual fidelity on the night that you and I slept together,’ he said grimly.

‘Don’t play with semantics!’ she cried. ‘What about emotional fidelity? You must have been intending to ask her—’

His mouth twisted. ‘Actually, no. I had not in the least thought of getting married again when I drove up here that day…’

Her feet suddenly felt nailed to the spot. ‘Again? You’ve been married before?’

‘I’m thirty-six. It would be more surprising if I hadn’t had a previous serious relationship, wouldn’t it?’ he queried, taking advantage of her stunned expression to move closer.

This new facet of him threw all her previous assumptions into disarray. ‘What did you do? Dump her when you discovered she’d married you purely for your money?’ she said, using deliberate cruelty to distance herself from the odd feeling of melancholy that invaded her bones.

The twist of his mouth turned into a cold smile. ‘Actually, yes. And it was worth every cent it took to pay her off!’

She swallowed. On top of all the other blows Chris had mentioned, Joshua had taken a king-hit to his pride—if not his heart.

‘That must have been difficult for you?’

‘She was the loser, not I. I was a rich man then, but I’ve become a lot richer in the last fifteen years.’

‘But money doesn’t necessarily buy you happiness,’ protested Regan.

He looked at her, his eyes full of silvery satisfaction. ‘What makes you think I was talking about money?’

‘I—well, you’re wealthy, and—I just assumed…’

Her voice tailed off and he said silkily, ‘It’s dangerous to make assumptions when you don’t have all the facts. You seem to make a habit of it.

‘The fact is that I do have some experience of courtship,’ he said, when she failed to respond. ‘And I assure you I wasn’t even close to courting Carolyn when I took you to bed.’ His tone became even silkier as he echoed her earlier thoughts. ‘Or rather, when we took each other in all those assorted places…’

‘Are you saying you proposed on the spur of the moment? I don’t believe you!’ she said coldly, trying to freeze out the hot flood of excitement his words had provoked. ‘You don’t strike me as a man who ever does anything on impulse.’

‘I’m not—that’s what makes the impulse I’m having right now all the more disturbing,’ he mused darkly, making her suddenly aware that all the time they had been talking he had been drifting inexorably closer.

His brooding expression looked faintly murderous, and Regan clutched her hands to her vulnerable throat as he loomed over her. ‘What impulse?’

He lifted a hand and she flinched, but all he did was stroke his finger down one dark wing of glossy hair where it swept behind her delicate ear.

‘You don’t really want to know.’ His finger lingered in the crease just behind her naked earlobe. He seemed to have a perfect genius for homing in on the most sensitive points on her body, thought Regan shakily—ones that even she hadn’t known were sensitive until he roused them to glorious life.

‘Most women deck themselves in jewellery when they dress up—you don’t seem to wear any…’

‘I’m allergic to gold,’ she said flippantly, thinking that lying was beginning to become second nature.

His eyebrows lifted over disbelieving eyes. ‘As well as diamonds?’ he mocked. ‘You don’t even wear a watch.’

‘It broke—I haven’t got round to replacing it yet.’ Even a cheap time-piece took second place to digging herself out of a mountain of debt.

The door to the library suddenly swung open and Regan jerked guiltily away from Joshua’s touch.

‘Hello, what are you two doing in here?’ Hazel Harriman’s head ducked around the door, her innocent brown eyes travelling from one face to the other.

‘Checking on the silver, Hazel?’ grinned Joshua easily.

‘Well, you know what Frank’s like about his blessed first editions! He should have locked the door if he didn’t want anyone coming in here, but he thinks that would be implying he can’t trust his neighbours.’ She opened the door wider and came further into the room, a picture of grace and dignity in her powder-blue chiffon and pearls, in spite of the wooden crutch propped under her right arm.

‘Are you talking about the wedding? I hope you’re not going to interfere as well, Joshua. I already have enough on my plate with Frank poking his nose in!’

‘I wouldn’t dream of it. I’m very happy to leave it all in your gracious hands,’ he replied. ‘Would you like to sit down and rest that leg?’

‘No, thanks, I’ve been sitting down all night. A little exercise is good for me—whatever Frank has to say!’

Joshua smiled. ‘He suggested that Regan and I get to know each other, but it turns out that we’ve met before…’

Hazel’s eyes brightened with enquiry. ‘Oh, really? Where?’

Joshua opened his mouth, and Regan didn’t trust the bland look on his face. Was he about to conduct some advance damage control?

‘It was only just the once—and not at all memorable,’ she cut in quickly. ‘Which is why Joshua’s name didn’t ring a bell when Sir Frank mentioned who Carolyn was going to marry.’

‘Oh, well, at least you’re not total strangers, so that makes everything much more cosy for all of us,’ Hazel approved complacently.

‘Indeed.’ Joshua’s blandness was even more pronounced.

‘Frank is very keen for Regan to feel at home. I know he feels guilty that he didn’t do more for you when Michael was killed—’

Regan was agonisingly conscious of Joshua’s sharpened interest. ‘Oh, really—he did more than enough for us when Michael was alive.’

But Hazel was unstoppable. ‘It’s such a tragic waste when people die with so much of life ahead of them,’ she sighed.

‘How long were you married?’

In front of Hazel, Regan couldn’t flatly refuse to satisfy Joshua’s curiosity, as he very well knew! ‘Just over four years.’

‘You must have married young?’

‘I was twenty,’ she admitted, with the thin end of her patience.

‘The same age that I was when I married the first time,’ he commented. ‘How old was your husband?’

‘Four years older than me. How old was your wife?’ Regan retaliated, before realising that it was hardly a polite question to ask in front of his future mother-in-law.

‘Twenty-four.’ He tipped his head in acknowledgment of her slight blink of shock. ‘I wonder how many other uncanny coincidences lurk in our pasts. Children?’

Her flinch was barely perceptible, except to a hawkish gaze. ‘No.’

‘A mutual decision?’ he murmured.

‘Isn’t that what marriage is about?’ she snapped.

Hazel’s forehead wrinkled. ‘I remember Michael telling me one day when he dropped in here with Frank after showing some buyers around the site that he definitely didn’t want to be tied down with children until you were both well established in your respective careers. He felt very strongly about it. And, of course, he was so very keen for you to graduate as soon as ever you could, Regan. He joked that he wanted a wife to be proud of, one that he could boast about at the country club!’

It had been no joke. Image had been everything to Michael. And the demands of her full-time study, her part-time job and the chores around the house with which he was always too busy to assist had ensured she rarely had the time to keep tabs on his whereabouts. Even though she had begun to yearn for a baby, Michael had flatly refused to even discuss it.

‘And what did he envisage you doing while he was busy boasting about you in the bar of the country club?’ asked Joshua with painfully acute perception.

‘If you don’t mind I’d rather not talk about it,’ she said, casting a bleak look at Hazel, who instantly leapt to her aid.

‘Of course you don’t want to, dear,’ she said, patting her hand. ‘No sense in dwelling on what can’t be changed. It’s time to put the past behind you and think of the future. Speaking of which, Joshua—do you know where Carolyn is? I need to consult her about supper but I haven’t been able to track her down—not that that’s so very surprising in this crush! The naughty girl didn’t tell me she’d been so casual with the invitations.’

‘I believe she was with Chris, near the conservatory.’

‘Oh.’ Hazel’s beringed fingers moved up to play restlessly with her string of pearls, her smile dimming. ‘I didn’t realise he was going to be here—I thought he was on duty this weekend.’

‘He apparently swapped with someone else. He’s staying the night with me at Palm Cove.’

‘I’ll go and look for Carolyn, if you like,’ offered Regan, seizing on the excuse to escape her forced interrogation.

‘We’ll all go,’ Joshua was swift to respond, and as he gently shepherded the women before him he leaned close to the back of Regan’s head and whispered, ‘I meant what I said: stay away from my brother; he needs no encouragement to flirt. If you do stir up any trouble, you’ll have me to deal with…’

It was easier said than done. In the huge house and grounds it should have been easy to avoid someone, but Christopher Wade seemed to have developed a built-in radar that had him gravitating towards Regan with dismaying regularity—usually when Joshua and Carolyn were somewhere in the vicinity—combined with a thick-skinned good humour that refused to allow her to politely shake him off.

Later, when the guests were beginning to thin out, Regan sought her hostess out and asked if she could help with any of the clearing up before she slipped away to bed.

‘Oh, heavens, no. The caterers will deal with most of the debris and Alice has an army of helpers coming in in the morning to help tidy up the house and gardens. You go off and have a good rest. And don’t worry about getting up too early in the morning—we usually have breakfast at nine on a Saturday, but tomorrow I’ve told Alice to give us a brunch at eleven so we can all have a good lie-in.’

But when she tried to fade up the stairs Chris was there, dogging her heels.

‘I’ll walk you to your room.’

‘I’m not likely to get lost!’

‘No, but you could be waylaid by a gang of ghostly bandits. A creaking old rabbit warren like this could harbour all sorts of nefarious characters lurking amongst the shadows.’

‘Yes, and I think I’m looking at one of them right now,’ said Regan wryly as they walked along the hall, their footsteps muffled on the runner which ran the length of the polished floorboards. With his white suit glowing brighter every time they passed one of the glass wall-lamps, he made a very stylish ghost.

‘I’ll have you know that as a doctor I have an impac—an impeccable character,’ he enunciated carefully.

‘You’ve also had too much to drink,’ she realised, as they came to a halt beside her door.

He laid his right hand on his heart. ‘Alas, it’s true. I cannot tell a lie. I’m tanked to the gills.’ He used his other hand to open her door with a flourish. ‘Would you like me to come in and check for bogeymen under your bed?’

‘I wouldn’t like you to get your nice suit dirty,’ she said, stepping over the threshold to switch on the light, and turning with her body square in the door to prevent him following.

‘I could take it off.’ He began to unbutton the jacket.

‘Goodnight, Chris.’

‘Yes, push off, Chris. You’ve gone as far as either of you intend to go,’ came a midnight-dark voice from behind him. ‘So cut the clowning and take a hike back down the stairs where you belong. They’re serving coffee on the back terrace. You might want a cup or three.’

Chris turned with a fat chuckle. ‘Well, surprise, surprise! Look who’s here. Keeping tabs on me, bro?’

Joshua’s gaze was steely and calm, his stance relaxed and yet also finely balanced. ‘Always.’

Chris snickered, even as he obeyed the silent command. ‘Night, Regan.’ He gave her a sloppy salute as he turned away. “Ware the bogeyman!’

Regan watched him go with puzzled eyes, wondering what he was so smug about, what it was he thought he had achieved. She cast a fleeting look at Joshua, not quite meeting his eyes.

‘Well…goodnight.’

She closed the door in his face, but she had only a few seconds to savour her small victory before it flew open again, and Joshua strolled in with an arrogance that immediately made her vibrate with outrage.

‘You could have knocked!’

‘Why? We both know you wouldn’t have opened it.’ He walked around the room, looking at the white flounced cover on the single bed, the half-open wardrobe displaying her small collection of clothes on hangers, the array of toiletries neatly arranged on the mirrored dressing table.

‘Perhaps because I didn’t want to let you in,’ she said with withering sarcasm, watching his profile as he picked up a paperback from beside the bed. ‘Would you mind not handling my things?’

He turned the book over with careful deliberation, stroking his fingers across the covers, touching every inch of the available surface before he just as deliberately set it down, satisfied he had delivered his silent message. He would handle whatever he liked, whenever he liked…

Including her? Regan felt a quiver of guilty excitement.

‘I did warn you not to flirt with Chris. It seems that you chose to deal with the consequences…’

‘You also said he didn’t need encouragement!’ she pointed out tartly. ‘I didn’t invite him up here, you know—he followed me. And in spite of everything Hazel said, I’m virtually a paid employee—I can’t start off my first day by insulting the brother of the groom—’

He spun around on his heel and rapped out, ‘You’re a little ahead of yourself. I’m not actually a bridegroom until my wedding day.’

He was playing with words again. She bravely stood her ground as he invaded her personal space. ‘He was very persistent. I couldn’t get rid of him without being rude. What was I supposed to do?’

‘Be rude…be very, very rude…’ His hand came up to cup the side of her throat, his thumb extending under the point of her chin. ‘I don’t like him touching you. I find I really—don’t like it an extraordinary amount…’

She swallowed, feeling the pressure of the ball of his thumb against her larynx and the heavy throb of blood at her pulse-point. ‘You shouldn’t be here,’ she murmured thickly, her voice vibrating in the cup of his palm. ‘The door is open…anyone could look in.’

‘We’re not doing anything wrong…’

Yet.

The unspoken qualification lingered in the air.

His eyes dropped to her mouth. Her lips parted. His head sank, his breath a hot streak of sensation across her cheek.

‘Say my name…’

‘What?’

He inhaled the scent of her skin. ‘I want to hear you say my name…’

‘Joshua.’ It was a mere sough of wind across her tingling lips.

His head sank further, the pressure on her throat increased and her mouth tilted up like a flower to the brilliant incandescence of the sun, and he groaned.

‘Damn and blast!’ His lips were hard against her forehead for a fleeting instant before his hands were gripping her shoulders, setting her firmly away. ‘No! We’re not going to do this.’ There was a sheen of perspiration on his forehead and upper lip as he stared down into her dazed violet eyes and ground out savagely, ‘You’re a complication I really don’t need right now!’

Stricken, she writhed out of his implacably gentle grip and lifted the shield of her pride. ‘Join the club, buster!’

There was a rustle from the hallway and they looked across just in time to see Carolyn drooping wearily past.

‘Carolyn?’ Joshua was at the door with startling speed.

She halted, her golden eyes curiously blank, not even seeming to register that her fiancé was coming out of another woman’s bedroom. ‘What?’

His voice gentled to a note that caused Regan physical pain. ‘Are you all right?’

‘No, I’m not all right.’ Her pouty mouth turned down sullenly. ‘I’m tired. I’m going to bed.’

‘But not all your guests have left—’

‘God, you sound just like Granny!’ she snapped. Then she put a hand on her flat stomach. ‘I don’t feel very well, OK?’

‘Do you think you’re going to be sick?’

‘Of course I’m not going to be sick!’ Two patches of pink stood out on her cheeks. ‘Tomorrow, when I get up in the morning, that’s when I’ll probably be sick, and I’ll feel rotten for half the day.’ Her eyes glittered with tears, this time genuine, and her voice was shrill. ‘Oh, God, I hate this—it’s all such a ghastly mess! If there were any justice in the world men would have to go through this, too!’

She dashed away down the hall towards her room at the far end, and when Regan would have gone after her she found a strong arm barring her way.

‘No, let her go. She’ll probably throw herself on the bed, have a good cry, and feel the better for it.’

After his tender tone, it seemed awfully callous. ‘But she says she doesn’t feel well.’ She remembered her earlier suspicions. ‘Perhaps she’s had too much to drink—in which case she might need someone there.’

‘She’s not ill and she’s not drunk.’

‘Not ill? But—’ Suddenly it hit her, nearly knocking her to the floor. She clutched at the door handle for balance and stared up at him as her mind made the conscious leap from instinct to understanding. That Empire-line dress and the many-layered look Carolyn had worn to dinner would cover a multitude of sins!

‘My God!’ Her voice cracked. ‘That’s why you two are in such a rush to get married! Carolyn’s pregnant, isn’t she? Isn’t she?’

His face was like granite, his voice tight with the effort of control as he lowered his voice. ‘Yes, she’s pregnant, but Hazel doesn’t know about it yet…that’s the way Carolyn wants it. So, for her sake, promise me you’ll keep quiet?’

‘You weren’t courting her, and you didn’t owe her fidelity, but you did go to bed with her—unless you’re going to claim it’s a virgin birth! You heartless, hypocritical, lying, lascivious beast!’

This time when she slammed the door thunderously in his face it stayed shut.