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Authors: Fiona Brand

BOOK: Cullen's Bride
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Cole groaned, and Cullen shot her a wary look.
“She can't cook,” Cole said bluntly.
“I didn't marry her for her cooking,” Cullen replied in a goading, rough-silk voice that made Cole go ominously blank.
Rachel could feel the close attention every single word was getting from the soldiers and her brothers. Helen's mouth dropped open. Every other conversation stopped as people tuned in to what was shaping up to be a brawl.
The look Cole and Cullen exchanged went on and on, the male aggression flowing with a tangible force. The soldiers bunched up behind Cullen, her brothers behind Cole. Then, so suddenly it felt as if someone had just flicked a switch, Cole nodded curtly, reached her in one long stride and kissed her on the cheek. Ethan, Nick and Doyle stepped forward, one by one, each kissing her cheek and quietly, curtly, offering their “services” if this marriage should fold.
“Keep in touch, Sis,” Cole growled, slanting Cullen another meaningful look; then he jerked his head at his brothers, and they all strode away.
“What was that all about?” Carter asked as he watched Cole drive away, followed by another car packed with Sinclair brothers.
Cullen didn't reply. He was too busy watching Cole. Seeing him off the premises, Rachel fumed to herself.
“This is a wedding,” she said with a delicate edge to her voice. Cullen's simmering metallic gaze swung back to hers. “My brother just gave me away—literally—to Cullen.”
Carter nodded, as if that were perfectly logical.
Rachel could see he might never fully understand her point of view.
Blade smiled grimly. “Got a sister, Carter?”
“You know I've got one.”
“Then just imagine her marrying a horny bastard like you, and you'll get the picture.”
“Oh, yeah,” Carter said, nodding, then,
“No way!”
Rachel handed her small bouquet of flowers to Helen. “You'd better have these. Although I don't know why any sane woman would want to get married.”
Ben turned to West and spoke in a considering voice. “Isn't the bride supposed to chuck those, West?”
West nodded sagely. “Aww, but you know how slow Carter is. I think she's afraid he might catch them, and then we'd be saddled with the job of finding Carter a wife.”
“Oh, very funny, guys,” Carter said He smiled at Helen, dazzling her with a maximum wattage, killer-beach-boy grin. “Don't you go wasting your time with either of these old married men, darlin.' They had their shot at domestic bliss, and the sad truth is, they were both too wild to be tamed. Now take me.” He planted a confiding hand on his broad chest. “I'm house-trained. I can do dishes, I pick up socks, I get takeout like you wouldn't believe, and,” Carter's voice dropped to a gravelly whisper as he delivered his clincher, “if you stroke me, I purr....”
“Ah, geez, Carter,” Ben groaned. “Give it a rest!”
Helen blinked at Carter's magnificence, then, without dragging her gaze from his flashing white teeth, mumbled, “I've got a present for you, Rachel. I'll get it.”
She backed off a few steps, then turned and hurried off down the uneven path
Cullen's arm slipped possessively around Rachel's waist. His eyes were narrowed, intense, wholly centred on her. Rachel's knees went weak when she identified his expression. He looked like that when he was making love. As if he were wild for her and couldn't get enough.
He gathered her in, his arm an iron bar at the small of her back, one hand gripping her nape. His mouth dropped on hers with the faintly cruel force of extreme arousal, parting her lips, forcing his entry in a kiss that claimed her completely and had her clinging to the lapels of his jacket. The furnace heat from his body burned through layers of clothing. When he finally lifted his mouth, Rachel had a fuzzy view of Helen standing nearby, holding on to a large parcel.
“Good luck,” she said, as she handed the parcel over. “Although somehow I don't think you're going to need it.”
Chapter 11
R
achel unpinned her small confection of a wedding hat as she walked up the steps and into Cullen's house. Her home.
She almost stumbled as the reality of her situation shifted into sharp focus. Up until this moment, she'd been solely concerned with the wedding; the future had been blurry, distant. Lifting her chin, she forced herself to survey her surroundings. She'd made her decision, and her needs were painfully simple: she wanted to love and be loved; she wanted babies; she wanted family; and she needed Cullen
She'd been inside his house twice now, once to make coffee while Cullen had dealt with Frank Trask, then again just two days ago to drop off a suitcase of clothes and several boxes of kitchen utensils and crockery.
The hallway was long and unexpectedly wide, as if whoever had built it had had an eye for grandeur. And in its day the house
had
been grand. It was certainly big enough. And oh, so empty.
Cullen strode in behind her, carrying more of her possessions, which they'd picked up en route from the church—another suitcase of clothing and a bag of perishables from her fridge. His gaze lingered on her, and he frowned. Ever since they'd left the church, he'd been frowning.
“You look tired,” he said. “I'll show you to your room.”
Your room. Not
our
room.
A small lash of pain sliced through Rachel's carefully managed serenity as she watched Cullen off-load the bag of groceries on the floor. When they'd stood together in church exchanging vows, the emotion flowing between them had been a tangible thing. And later, outside, when he'd held her and kissed her, she'd almost forgotten that their marriage was a sham She'd come close to forgetting her own name.
Cullen turned toward her, and Rachel drew in her breath at the purpose in his light gaze. She had the definite impression he was going to touch her, maybe place his arm around her waist and help her upstairs. But even as she watched, a subtle change took place, a closing out of emotion, and she realised he was deliberately distancing himself from her. His gaze glittered over her again; then he picked up the suitcase he'd just brought in and started up the stairs.
Abruptly, tiredness overwhelmed Rachel. She reached to steady herself against the rich wood panelling of the wall. She'd been running on nerves and little else lately. There had been so much to do, to arrange. So much to block from her mind so she could continue to function in a normal, rational way. She should have been prepared for Cullen's coolness. Despite that kiss outside the church, he'd made his position clear when he'd proposed this marriage.
Squaring her jaw, she kicked off her shoes and forced herself to move.
Cullen wasn't in the first room she came to. There was nothing in there. Like the rest of the house, the bedroom was bare. Sterile. He wasn't in the room opposite, either, although there was evidence of his occupation in the large, neatly made bed with his beret and uniform jacket slung over the end of it. She heard water splashing into a basin, then Cullen appeared at what must be the bathroom door.
He watched her critically as she padded toward him. Her chin came up in automatic response. There was a brooding tension about Cullen, an air of suppressed fury that she was at a loss to understand. Or maybe it was just the short hair. He'd looked dangerous and untamed with long hair; now he looked even harder, more remote.
Rachel didn't like the change. It emphasised his air of control. He wore the veneer of civilisation as comfortably as he wore the primitive, muscular beauty of his body, deepening the distance between them in a way that sent panic flaring through her.
He was no longer wearing his wedding ring.
The absence of the gold band shoved reality at her again. She hadn't known whether he would wear the ring or not. Some men simply objected to wearing jewellery of any kind But the ring had been important to her; it had been a claiming of her own, a message that she hadn't given up on a real marriage.
She must have signalled her distress, made some kind of sound, because Cullen uttered a low, succinct oath and covered the distance between them His arms came around her as he eased her in close against the hard, solid warmth of his body.
Time passed, and he continued to hold her. Rachel let her head sink against his shoulder and wrapped her arms around his lean waist while she listened to the heavy, regular beat of his heart. Eventually he drew away.
“I'm a damned fool,” he said quietly. “You're pregnant, you've worked yourself into the ground organising the wedding, and now you're dead on your feet. Why don't you lie down while I bring the rest of your stuff in? Your room's down there” He nodded at the far end of the corridor. “Take a nap. I'll make a start on dinner ”
Dazed and still tingling with the warmth of Cullen's embrace, Rachel reached the doorway to her room. And stopped.
The rest of the house was bare, but over the past few days Cullen must have worked night and day in this room. The wood floor was polished to a high sheen and partially covered by a large Turkish rug in warm, muted colours. The walls were painted a similar tawny colour to the one she'd used in her flat, and the multipaned sash windows were draped in filmy muslin. There was a bed. A romantic dream of a four-poster constructed from black wrought iron and hung with delicate folds of mosquito netting. Her suitcase sat on an antique chest at the foot of the bed. There was other furniture too: a dresser and dressing table, bedside tables—all with the glow of valuable antiques.
“How did you know?” she demanded.
“About the bed?” Cullen was directly behind her, his voice a velvety rumble just above her right ear. “Helen gave me a decorating magazine. She said you'd wanted the four-poster for the flat but it wouldn't fit.”
“So you got it for me. Why?” she asked, weariness fading as she faced him.
Again the puzzling air of tightly condensed fury, of emotion locked beneath adamantine control. “I wanted you to be...comfortable.”
“This is more than just comfortable.” It was sumptuous, expensive and, under the circumstances, impractically extravagant. “But then, you can afford it, can't you? You're a member of the
Lombard
family.”
“My mother was a Lombard,” he conceded.
Rachel inhaled sharply at his deliberate evasion. There was, she decided, no point in being subtle. If she wanted information she would have to prise it out of him. “Okay, you're
related
to the Lombards. What I want to know is why you're letting this town put you through hell when you could pay someone to take care of everything for you?”
For a tense interval she thought Cullen wasn't going to answer, then he said bluntly, “It's my property, my responsibility. I'll be damned if I'll back away from it because the people of Riverbend are squeamish about a Logan being back in residence. I could hire a manager. I've got access to funds, but I've never wanted the money for myself. As far as I'm concerned, it all still belongs to Celeste.”
“If she's dead, then she must have left it to you.”
“Celeste didn't acknowledge me at any stage. and the Lombard family wasn't aware of my existence until after she died. 1 was sixteen when they first contacted me, and by then I'd lived in more places than I could remember.” His mouth twisted. “And dealt with agendas that swung from the pure profit motive to saving my soul. The Lombards wanted me because I was Celeste's son. All I wanted was out.”
“They didn't claim guardianship?”
“They tried. But by the time they got the paperwork done, I was long gone. Gray Lombard, Blade's older brother, tracked me down eventually, but by then I was seventeen and working with a construction crew. When he realised I wasn't going to go back with him, he left. Gray used to turn up periodically, checking on me, and when I was being held in the cells at Fairley, he bailed me out. I didn't call him. I don't know how he found out what was going on.” Cullen lifted his shoulders. “For Gray, I agreed to meet with my grandparents, and I accepted the only thing I did want. The Lombards have some heavy-duty connections with the military. Gray pulled some strings, and I went into the army, eventually following both him and Blade into the SAS.”
Rachel listened numbly to Cullen's clipped series of statements clearly outlining how ruthlessly single-minded he'd been, even at seventeen. He'd held off a powerful, charismatic family and extracted what he wanted from them. Then she grasped what he
hadn't
said. “You used Lombard money to do all this.” Cullen would wade through burning oil before he would use any of his mother's money for himself. But he'd broken that tenet for her. And the baby.
Cullen eyed her with a trace of wariness. “This farm, this house, are not what you're used to—”
“You're right,” she returned. “I'm used to an Auckland flat, noise and smog and too much traffic. I'm certainly not used to that!” She gestured to one of the windows, at the view of wild country sweeping mto endless hills, of the sunset refracting off a distant, glittering fall of water, of a raw granite face rising out of darkness into light.
“It's quiet here.” he agreed. “I'll give you that much. It's also lonely. I'm gone most days—all day. The nearest neighbour used to be Alistair Carson, but since he died, nobody's shown any interest in living in the shack he used to call home. You could visit your brother, but that's still a twenty-minute drive. On horseback, a good hour's ride.” His gaze finally centred on her. “Not that you'll be riding.”
Rachel's breath caught at the curt statement. She wasn't planning on riding, either, but she resented Cullen setting hmits. So far they were playing by his rules, but no way was she going to be a doormat for any man. “I'll be working most days,” she retorted crisply. “I imagine I'll get all the social contact I'll ever need at the salon.”
Cullen's eyes narrowed, and suddenly the sense of tightly leashed control evaporated. He looked like he was spoiling for a fight.
Rachel's hands curled into fists Ever since she'd met Cullen Logan, her life had gone from lonely and unsatisfactory to sheer, utter chaos. She was miserable without him. She was miserable
with
him. She was pregnant. A fight would be just fine by her.
Just when it looked like she was going to get her wish, awareness of how he was reacting dawned in Cullen's gaze His hands bunched, released, and he went abruptly, oddly pale. Then Rachel was staring at his broad back as he strode out into the hallway. A door thumped closed. His bedroom.
She let out a breath that shook with temper and nerves, and discovered she was still holding her wedding hat. Grimacing at what she'd done to the expensive scrap of silk and gauze, she tossed it on top of her suitcase and began to pace. Her heart was pumping flat-out, and she was pretty sure she needed to break something, but, like the childhood temper tantrums, she'd left that behaviour behind when she was three.
His door opened a few minutes later. This time Cullen's step was louder, and she knew he'd changed into jeans and riding boots. When his footsteps faded, her nervous tension went with it, and she flopped down on the bed and stared at the ceiling, letting the swimmy feeling of exhaustion have its way with her. But along with stillness came the doubts.
She was married to a stranger.
Her sheer lack of knowledge about Cullen was daunting. He obviously had enough money to make a few phone calls and have some of the most expensive, exclusive retail shops in the country jump through hoops for him. He could probably make this whole empty barn of a house look like a decorator's paradise if he wanted.
That he'd decorated her room and nothing else jarred. She felt set apart—like a princess stashed in a tower—as if he wanted to shield her from anything unpleasant, even from the fact that she was living in his house. As much as she loved the room, she didn't like the sense of being separated from Cullen in such a way. It was what her family had always done to her, and she resented it fiercely.
Then there was the whole marriage thing. The possibility that, despite separate rooms, Cullen might share her bed at some stage. She knew the battering force of his sexuality, the mind-numbing pleasure of his touch, but she also knew that wouldn't be enough. If they were going to make love again, she needed him to feel something for her. She needed him to want to be with her. And, most of all, she needed some kind of real commitment from him.
 
When Rachel awoke it was full dark. Light filtered into her room from the hallway. She could hear distant kitchen noises: the chink of crockery, water hissing into a sink.
Pushing herself upright, she fumbled for the lamp on the bedside table, located the switch and flooded the room with a mellow glow. Her watch said it was eight. She'd slept for a good two hours.
When she'd changed out of her creased wedding suit and into snug jeans, a warm shirt and her favourite dark red sweater, she found the bathroom, splashed water on her face, then made her way downstairs to the kitchen.

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