High Society (15 page)

And practical men did not cry. They found solutions instead.

‘Silas...’

He stopped swimming in mid-stroke and rolled over to float and look up to where Julia was standing at the edge of the pool, wearing a sleekly fitting swimsuit that dipped to a deep V at the front.

‘I thought I’d come and join you.’ She held out her arms and told him, ‘Catch me.’

The feel of her body in his arms as she slid into the water brought his aching tension into full-on hard urgency. She had pulled free of him and started to swim away from him, but she was nowhere near as powerful or skilled a swimmer as he was himself.

Taking a deep breath, Silas kicked down with a powerful enough stroke to carry him underwater towards her. His fingers closing round her ankles, he pulled her down to him.

The scent of the night air combined with the silky warmth of the water and the touch of Silas’s hands on her body would once have been enough to have her virtually orgasming at the very thought of the pleasure in store for her, Julia thought bleakly as she closed her eyes, but she was helplessly aware of the empty nothingness that numbed her.

Wrapped tightly against Silas, she felt the powerful upward surge of their bodies as he kicked down and sent them up to the surface whilst her breath escaped in a stream of small bubbles.

Silas was kissing her, and mechanically she responded, her lips parting obediently, her eyes closing, her body as still as the soft air as his free hand gently caressed her and then closed over her breast.

Immediately she broke away from him, and swam towards the shallower end of the pool where she could stand up.

Silas followed her, taking her back in his arms. His body felt warm and heavy against her own, and a small shiver of something that wasn’t either despair or pain flickered to life inside her. Hope or uncertainty? Did she really want to know which?

Determinedly she pressed closer to him, refusing to allow herself to draw back from the hard pulse of his erection. Instead she made herself draw a mental picture of his hardness, drawing it with the love and happiness she could remember but not feel. Warm, amorous mental brushstrokes of delight and excitement created a mental image of firmly muscled maleness, fleshed in skin that shaded from creamy olive to arousal-flushed deep rosy red, ridged and veined to bring it to three-dimensional power and life instead of flatness.

Inside her head she imagined herself touching it, stroking and kissing it, licking its shiny tight head. And all the time she was giving herself a mantra. This is Silas. This is Silas. This is Silas...

And this was Silas who was pulling her so close to him, slipping the straps of her swimsuit from her shoulders and baring her breasts and the protruding stiffness of her nipples to the soft glowing light, Silas bending his head to kiss her.

She flung her own arms round him and returned his kiss with passionate desperation. He broke the kiss, his hands cupping her breasts and his mouth caressing first one and then the other, bathing her cooling skin in delicious wet heat whilst Julia waited, checking and monitoring herself, tensing herself against the flash of memory she was dreading and the surge of fear and loathing it would bring with it.

Silas was guiding her out of the pool towards the comfortably cushioned loungers. Picking her up, he placed her gently on one of them, then reached for a towel and began to dry her with it, removing her swimsuit as he did so. Each touch of his hands was a caress that he made deliberately increasingly intimate, until her body was moving helplessly against his touch. He was taking her to a place she was afraid of going because of what she might find there, but she couldn’t stop him because her own body didn’t want her to stop him.

He had removed his own swimming shorts and her gaze fastened eagerly on his erection as it strained impatiently from the thickness of his body hair.

He knelt over her and she reached out to touch him, but he evaded her, parting her legs with his hand and bending his head over her. His lips brushed the sensitive flesh on the inside of her thighs and delight rippled through her. His tongue stroked upwards, and of her own accord she stretched wider to meet it, sighing happily in aroused anticipation as he folded back the fleshy outer lips of her sex and stroked the full length of her with his tongue-tip. Beneath its urgent stroke she could feel her clitoris swelling and pulsing. She cried out to him, joyfully giving herself over to sensation, the fear that had stolen away her sexual sense of self swept away by the sheer intensity of what she was feeling.

There were no hidden demons, no dark places, waiting to destroy her. There was only this, and Silas, and an overwhelming need to share with him her joy in the pleasure he was giving her.

* * *

‘That was wonderful.’ Her voice trembled and her eyes were wet with tears of completion and relief.

They were lying side by side on the sun lounger, and Silas leaned over her, gently kissing the tears from her face before brushing her mouth with his own.

It had been wonderful, he acknowledged, wonderful, wondrous, and perfect. He just wanted to lie like this, holding her and giving thanks for what she was and what she had given him, for the rest of his life.

Earlier, when he had entered her, complying with her achingly sweet urgent demands for him to thrust deeper and faster, he had been flooded with the most profound sense of awe and humbleness. And when, seconds later, he had spilled himself hotly into her, that feeling had become ever more intense and meaningful.

She was his soul mate, the only woman who could ever move him to such heights; without her his life would be meaningless and empty. Was this what people meant when they said they loved someone? Was this awesome, intense experience what love was? Was this...
love
? Was he
in love
?

CHAPTER ELEVEN

J
ULIA
smiled contentedly as she slipped her feet into the funky shoes Silas had pointed out to her earlier in the week when they had been in Marbella.

Then she had laughed and refused to be tempted, but this morning she had weakened, and decided to slip into Marbella whilst Silas was catching up with some work—a necessity, he had claimed, now that they had been in Spain for over six weeks.

Technically there would have been time for them both to return to their respective homes and spend some time there before the beginning of November, when Julia had to leave for Dubai and the post-Ramadan party, but Silas had felt that it made sense for them to stay in Marbella, where neither of them was likely to be put in the uncomfortable position of having to lie to anyone about the fact that they were already married. Plus they would have the added advantage of being together.

How could she have argued with that when she loved being with Silas so very much? When, in fact, being together with him just went on getting better and better? Not even the pleasure of trying on such beautiful shoes could come anywhere near matching the dazzling, breathtaking happiness being married to Silas gave her. Just thinking about it filled her with a fizzing, bubbling joy that had to be the emotional equivalent of the world’s very best champagne. She had never known anything like it. She woke up each morning with her heart dancing in eager delight, and she fell asleep in bed every night knowing that all she wanted in the world was contained in the man lying there with her.

Emotionally she felt as though she were living on a different plane, and every bit of her radiated with the happiness she felt. It awed her that after all the men she had met and dated who had not been right, Silas—who was—had been there in her life all the time. Wisely she acknowledged that what she had suffered because of Nick had actually helped her to see just how fortunate she was to have what she had found with Silas. She felt so incredibly blessed and fortunate. She knew that Silas felt Nick should be pursued and punished via the courts for what he had attempted to do to her, but she knew too that he understood and accepted that she would not do so for Lucy’s sake.

Silas. She had already been away from him for far too long and she was missing him. She looked down at her feet. The shoes were lovely. And then out of the corner of her eye she saw a small display on the other side of the shop. Tiny, perfect replicas of the shoes she was trying on, made for little baby feet.

Her heart skipped a beat and then gave a rapid flurry of small, excited and eager thuds. Her eyes were misty with emotion. Silas’s baby; their baby. If she felt deliriously happy now, how on earth was she going to feel when ultimately she conceived Silas’s child?

She went up to the tiny shoes and touched them with a tender fingertip. How very sweet they were.

‘You want?’ the salesgirl asked, but Julia shook her head.

‘Not yet,’ she told her, as she handed her the shoes she did want to buy.

Not yet—but maybe soon? Silas would want an heir and her grandfather would be delighted if she were to make him a great-grandfather, especially now.

Julia smiled at her taxi driver when he pulled up outside the main entrance to the Alfonso, tipping him generously and considering whether or not to go into the club and order a cool drink or to hurry back to the villa to see Silas.

Did she even need to think about it? Of course not.

She didn’t bother trying the front door of the villa, going instead to the small half-hidden gate that opened into the garden, just in case Silas had finished working and was sitting by the pool.

When she saw that he wasn’t, she crossed the patio and opened the patio door, then stopped in shock as she heard a female voice she recognised saying, with cool sharpness, ‘Silas, I can’t believe that you’ve done this.’

‘And I can’t believe that you’ve flown all the way from New York to tell me that, Mother,’ Julia heard Silas respond, equally coolly.

What was Silas’s mother doing here? And what did she mean?

‘Of course I haven’t. Julia’s mother wanted to talk to me face-to-face about the wedding plans, so I flew to London to meet her. She wanted to know if I thought she had missed anyone off the guest list and who else I might want to invite. She’s trying to keep the list down to five hundred names because Amberley Church is so small.’

When Silas did not respond to her dryly given information she continued briskly, ‘She also told me that you and Julia were here in Marbella—Julia, it seems, keeps in better contact with her mother than you do with yours. And, since I was already in England, I decided that I might as well fly home via Spain so that I could find out what exactly is going on.’

‘You know what’s going on,’ Julia heard Silas retort dismissively. ‘Julia and I are getting married.’

‘Where is Julia?’

‘In town. Buying shoes.’

Julia winced a little as she heard his mother sigh. She had always secretly suspected that Silas’s mother thought of her as foolish and lightweight, and her sigh seemed to confirm that.

‘Silas, I had hoped for better than this.’

Julia felt her heart take a high dive and plunge downwards with sickening speed. It was worse than she had feared. Silas’s mother did not think she was good enough to marry him.

‘There is no better wife for me than Julia,’ Silas answered curtly, his defence of her making Julia’s heart soar up again.

‘I meant better
from
you, not better for you,’ his mother responded immediately, causing Julia to go into semi-shock. ‘And you know that. When you informed me on Julia’s eighteenth birthday that you planned to marry her not because you loved her but because from a practical point of view she was the perfect wife for you, I told you what I thought.’

‘You said that you didn’t believe Julia would accept me,’ Silas agreed.

His mother’s visit had come as a total surprise, adding more complications to what was already a very delicately balanced situation. He and Julia were married, but as yet no one knew. Julia naturally wanted to tell her mother and grandfather before they went public, and equally naturally she wanted to do it in person. Silas had given consideration to flying back to England before they went to Dubai, but at the moment he was reluctant to share Julia with anyone else at all. Plus, he had wanted to see her restored to her pre-Blayne sunny happiness before plunging them both into the emotional storm the news that they had married in secret was bound to cause—especially with Julia’s mother.

And then there had been that final consideration to make him hold back—that sharp, thorny, and very steep belief journey he had had to make from his denial that love was a concept even worth including in his calculations to admitting that it was a force that had rewritten his emotional and mental rule book.

Admitting to himself that he loved Julia had been the hardest thing he had ever had to do, and doing so had left him feeling acutely exposed and vulnerable. He needed more time to get accustomed to this new aspect to his personality, to feel comfortable with it and himself before he could go public and start telling the world that he was passionately in love with his wife. And he was damn certain that the first person he was going to tell was not going to be his mother. Especially not when those three small words he had been mentally sweating over for the last four weeks, whilst he imagined himself whispering them to Julia, had not actually been said yet.

Nope; so far as his mother was going to know, the status quo was exactly as he had told her it was going to be all those years ago.

But there was one thing he could safely say.

‘Julia
is
the perfect wife for me.’ Perfect in every way, but most of all in the joy she had brought into his life and the love he had for her.

Outside in the hallway, hidden from their view, Julia battled fiercely with her own feelings. Silas’s mother’s revelations had shocked and hurt her. But perhaps there was more of Silas’s practicality in her than either of them had realised. Either that or his attitude had begun to change the way she thought herself, she decided bleakly. Because honesty compelled her to admit that Silas had never said that he loved her. She had simply assumed that he must because of her own feelings for him—and because it had never occurred to her that he would marry her for any other reason.

Now she could see that she had been hopelessly naïve. So what was she going to do now? Throw an emotional tantrum and blurt out that she loved him? Demand a divorce because he didn’t love her?

But what was love? Did it always and only have to be the hearts and flowers outward trappings of romance familiar to everyone? Couldn’t it sometimes be something else? Perhaps...something like a practical man protecting the woman who was his wife. Like that same man scrupulously ensuring that he secured her future and that of their children. Like that same man giving a high priority to their shared sexual pleasure. Were these things not in their own way a form of love? Or was she deluding herself? Trust and honesty were to be the foundations of their marriage, Silas had told her. She had accepted that she could trust him. Could she accept the sharp bite of his honesty as well?

‘Well, right now, Silas, my concern is not how perfect a wife Julia will make you, but how happy a woman you will make her. I intend to wait for her to return, and when she does I intend to make sure that you have not pressured the poor girl in some way into agreeing to marry you...’

Julia took a deep breath, and then, before she could change her mind, she stepped out of the shadows and into the room, saying lightly, ‘I’m afraid I’ve been eavesdropping. I got back a few minutes ago, and didn’t want to break up your mother-and-son chat, but...’ Was her smile everything he wanted it to be? Calm and serene and very much that of a woman who admired the man who wanted to marry her because it was practical to do so?

‘I have to say, mother-in-law-to-be, that everything Silas has said makes perfectly good sense to me. In fact I totally share his feelings. I think we have more than enough in common to make our marriage work very well.’

‘But you are not in love with him?’

‘Being in love is not necessarily a prerequisite for a good marriage,’ Julia answered Silas’s mother firmly.

So far Silas hadn’t said a single word, and when she looked at him she was surprised to see that he was looking back at her almost blankly, as though somehow what she had said was unwelcome to him.

Automatically she moved closer to him and reached for his hand, before saying huskily, ‘Silas, I think we should tell your mother the truth.’

She
knew
that he loved her?

‘The truth?’

‘Yes,’ Julia agreed, facing her mother-in-law determinedly as she said quietly, ‘We haven’t told anyone else yet, but actually Silas and I are already married.’

Julia watched as Silas’s mother’s gaze dropped suspiciously to her stomach and then lifted to Silas’s face before switching back to her, and her own face grew pink as she read all the unspoken messages those three looks contained.

‘No, he did not
have
to marry me,’ Julia burst out indignantly, speaking the unspeakable as only she could, Silas decided ruefully.

His mother might have wrongly assumed that they had married in such haste because they had discovered that Julia was pregnant, but he doubted that she was likely to guess the real truth—which was, as Silas himself had only just come to recognise, that he had rushed Julia into marriage because quite simply he loved her and wanted to tie her to him in every single way that he could.

* * *

‘You might have backed me up when I told your mother that you didn’t marry me because I was pregnant, instead of laughing,’ Julia complained crossly to Silas as he poured her a cup of tea.

It was just over an hour since they had returned from seeing Silas’s mother off on her homeward flight, and Julia had begun to feel very tired.

‘I was in shock,’ Silas told her dryly.

‘
You
were in shock?’

‘I hadn’t realised that you had such a practical turn of mind.’

Julia knew immediately what he meant.

‘Well, I could hardly tell your mother that I wanted to marry you because you are quite simply the world’s best shag, could I?’ she asked lightly.

No way was she going to spoil what they had by bursting into tears and begging Silas to say that he loved her.

‘Maybe not in those exact words,’ Silas conceded. ‘Although I dare say she would not have been averse to hearing that you feel passionately about me.’ He knew that he certainly wouldn’t.

‘I do. Like I just said, I feel passionate about you being the most wonderfully orgasmic shag.’

Why did that make him ache inside with pain instead of with delight? Why was he suddenly feeling that sex on its own wasn’t enough, and that he craved a connection with her that went deeper and was more profound?

‘You don’t think she’ll say anything to Ma or Gramps, do you?’

‘About shagging?’

‘No. Silas, you know what I mean. Your mother won’t tell them that we’re married?’

‘No. Although I must admit I don’t really understand why you actually told
her
.’

‘I thought from the way she was acting that she might actually drag me back to New York with her to save me from you,’ Julia told him lightly.

‘And you didn’t want that?’

No! I want to spend the rest of my life with you and I can’t bear the thought of living any other way, Julia thought. But of course she couldn’t say that to him.

‘Not really. Did you?’

‘What? And miss being woken up every morning by you holding a one-to-one conversation with my penis? What do you think?’

‘I think that the best place to drink a cup of tea is in bed.’ Her world might have come crashing down around her, but, Julia reminded herself sturdily, no one else was going to know that.

‘Mmm, nice thought—but maybe later,’ Silas told her lightly, immediately standing up. ‘I’ve got some e-mails to send...’

‘To Aimee?’ she challenged jealously.