Merger By Matrimony (10 page)

‘No, of course not.'

‘This is all premature speculation anyway. Let's just get to the damned place and see how you feel about it then.' He accelerated as they cleared the outskirts of London and hit the motorway, and Destiny lapsed into silence, watching the scenery flash by. Summer was still holding its own and the blue, cloudless skies made everything seem crisp and fresh.

They were at the village before eleven, and Stephanie, who appeared to have drifted off into a light sleep, was revived at the sight of a few shops and the prospect of getting out of the car and stretching her legs. She launched into an animated conversation about what she'd used to do when she went to stay at the country manor, interrupting herself frequently to remark on the dullness of country life.

‘It must be an awful lot more peaceful than living in
London, though,' Destiny pointed out, liking the feeling of space and calm around her. The small village, with its pubs and little stone shops and parish church, had none of the threatening claustrophobia of London. And the air was much fresher. She had rolled down her window, ignoring Callum's comment about the air conditioning in the car, and closed her eyes briefly, enjoying the breeze through the window.

‘Stephanie isn't enamoured of peace,' he said drily, speaking about her as though she wasn't sitting next to him—and, in all fairness, Stephanie didn't object.

‘And are you?' Destiny asked, looking around her now with interest as the car slowed on the narrow lane and turned left up an avenue lined with trees. Ahead of them, a pair of massive wrought-iron gates were open, and beyond them lay fields and pastures. ‘Or do you prefer living in the fast lane, where you can stride around, giving orders to everyone and enjoying having the world bow down to you?'

Stephanie uttered an incoherent squeak of horror and looked around at Destiny, who grinned airily back at her.

‘Sorry,' she said politely. ‘I shouldn't have said that.'

‘Sorry? You? For having said something you shouldn't? Why? Why break habits of a lifetime?' But there was lazy amusement in his voice. ‘These are all part of the grounds. The sheep keep the grass down, but there are still six acres of lawned land. Look ahead. You can see the house coming into view.'

She leaned forward and watched as the impressive façade rose up ahead of them, like a matriarch surveying her domain. She had never seen anything quite like it before in her life. The fact that it belonged to her seemed unreal.

‘Did you bring a swimsuit?' Stephanie asked suddenly.
‘It's hot enough for us to swim and I could do with a tan. I can't bear English weather. All rain and fog and light drizzles.'

‘I don't possess a swimsuit,' Destiny told her.

‘Not at all?' Her stepcousin sounded horrified.

‘No.'

‘But how are you going to go into the pool? I'm sure I have a couple here, but you'd never fit into them!'

‘I shall have quite enough to do looking around, honestly.' The thought of trying to cram her huge frame into one of her stepcousin's swimsuits wasn't worth thinking about. She looked comical enough next to her as things stood.

In fact, as they all trooped into the overwhelming hall, she wondered whether two days was going to be long enough to see everything. Harold, a wizened middle-aged man with eyes that seemed permanently focused on his feet, welcomed them in and he and Callum conferred in hushed voices for a few minutes, while Destiny continued to stare open-mouthed around her. Stephanie, well accustomed to all the grandeur, stood unimpressed to one side and then, as soon as Harold had disappeared with the cases, announced that she wanted to go for a dip in the pool.
Just in case it decides to rain later. You know what the weather's like over here.

‘Sure you won't come with me and try on one of my swimsuits?' she asked kindly, and Destiny shook her head with a laugh.

‘I don't think that would work, do you?' She wanted to tell her stepcousin to run along and have a good time. Even though they were more or less the same age, Destiny felt decades older. There was something very young and childlike about Stephanie, something very
much in need of protection. Which brought her round to Callum.

He was standing, watching them with some amusement; and as soon as Stephanie had disappeared up the stairs, lightly running, he turned to her and said in a drawling voice, ‘It's hard to believe that you two are roughly the same age. You treat her as though she was your daughter.'

Destiny smiled indulgently. ‘Actually, sometimes I feel as though she is. She's so…
young
…in her ways.' She sighed and caught herself. ‘Anyway, the house. Should we start now? Looking around? Or do you need time to recover from the car drive? Oh. You may want to go and have a dip in the pool as well,' she added awkwardly. ‘I didn't think.'

‘No. Playing at being a sun lizard isn't my cup of tea.' He looked at her with a shuttered expression and realised, with a certain amount of confused irritation, that he would have been more than happy to play the sun lizard game if it involved watching her frolic around in a swimming pool with next to nothing on.

He would, he decided, have to speak to Stephanie. Whether he liked it or not, the doubts that had been swelling over the past few months about their relationship were rapidly crystallising into the unpleasantly concrete fact that their relationship was sagging. Sex, which had been satisfactory enough to start with, had been almost nonexistent for months now, and lately had disappeared altogether from the agenda. He could kid himself that his work left him exhausted, but who was he trying to fool? The blunt truth of the matter was that however fond he was of his fiancée, he no longer felt any sexual urges when he was around her.

Why else was he mentally stripping the woman in front
of him now? Wondering what that body of hers would look like uncovered? She was not his type. Too big, too forthright, too damned argumentative and clever. But she was on his mind more than he cared to think. Daydreaming and fantasising about her was obviously a symptom of the malaise in his own personal life.

Realising that he was staring at her, he frowned assertively and said in a clipped voice, ‘Right. The house. We'll start with the top and work our way down.'

Destiny vaguely wondered whether two days was going to be enough to complete this daunting task, but she obediently followed him towards the impressive staircase that coiled upwards like a snake. Halfway up, Stephanie came bouncing towards them, towel in hand and a broad smile on her face.

‘Off to begin the tour?' she said, pretending to yawn. ‘Sitting around the pool would be much more fun,' she said to them.

‘Maybe later,' Destiny said, in the sort of placatory voice she used with her children on the compound whenever they asked for something that was patently out of the question. It was the age-old delaying tactic of saying
in a minute,
when a child asked for another glass of juice. And as with a child, it worked, because Stephanie shrugged and grinned and disappeared with a cheerful,
Well, see you both later then
over her shoulder.

What on earth did Callum see in Stephanie? The enigma was enough to bring home to her just how lacking in experience she was. Oh, very experienced when it came to using her brains, and very mature in tackling the day-to-day rigours of living in a jungle, but as green as God's grass when it came to the emotional side of her life.

For goodness's sake, she was still a virgin! She and
Henri had indulged in some light-hearted fondling, but she, for one, had never felt any urge to carry the fondling through to its natural conclusion. Maybe
he
had. Or maybe, she thought, he, like Callum, was really only interested in women who acted like women and not women who were as independent as they were themselves. It was a depressing conclusion. She would never be harbouring these thoughts, she knew, if she hadn't come to this country, and she glared resentfully at the broad, masculine figure ascending the staircase ahead of her because, like it or not, he was the source of her confusion.

Right now, he was giving her a potted history of the house while she continued to scowl safely from behind. Only when they were at the top of the house did she manoeuvre her features into some semblance of politeness, even though she was too aware of him to find the task easy.

‘I hope,' he said, turning to her, hands thrust into his pockets, head slightly cocked to one side, ‘that I'm not giving you a load of information that you're already aware of.'

‘How on earth would I know anything about the history of British architecture?' Destiny snapped edgily.

‘You seem to know just about everything else. You speak more languages that any woman I've ever met; you practise medicine; you teach; you single-handedly fight off marauding tigers and crocodiles that have wandered from your river in search of some human dinner.'

‘It's not my fault you don't meet the right women,' she retorted sarcastically, instantly regretting her outburst, which wasn't fair because it stemmed from her own sudden lack of self-confidence in her femininity.

‘What are you trying to say? That Stephanie is the wrong woman for me?'

‘No,' she mumbled, wishing, yet again, that she had controlled her feelings instead of letting him push her into another uncharacteristic response. ‘It's very interesting finding out about the house. It's just that knowing about baroque developments in architecture during the Stuart Period isn't exactly handy when you're living in the wilds of Panama. Unless,' she added with a weak stab of humour, ‘I intend puzzling those marauding crocodiles into submission.'

He smiled at her, very, very slowly, and she felt as though she had been touched because his smile was so like a physical caress. Her breathing thickened and she looked away quickly. Stephanie was sunbathing downstairs, and wanting to touch this man in front of her was so shocking and so inappropriate that it took her breath away.

For the next couple of hours she meekly followed him from room to room and tried to pretend that he was no more than a tour guide. It helped if she imagined him as a short, fat, bald tour guide.

She didn't glance once at him, which wasn't difficult because there was enough to see in the myriad rooms. From one of them she looked out, and down below she could see the diminutive figure of her stepcousin languidly lying on a poolside deckchair, eyes closed and arms resting over the sides of the chair.

Callum came to stand next to her and immediately the hairs on her arms stood on end.

‘What sort of woman do you think would be right for me, then?' he murmured, without looking at her.

During his brisk, factual tour, she had managed to keep everything nicely under control, but now she felt every nerve and pulse in her body stirring and making her feel hot and uncomfortable.

‘I think Stephanie's a lovely person.'

‘That's not what I asked.'

‘You're engaged to my stepcousin. Of course she's the right woman for you.' She didn't dare look at him, but she could feel that he had turned to her and was looking at
her,
and she folded her arms. Her fingernails pressed into her skin.

‘You don't believe that. You know you don't.'

‘Why are you asking me these questions?' she flung at him, spinning to face him. ‘Why does it matter what I think?'

‘I'm interested, that's all. I'm not a fool. I've noticed the way you look at us when we're in the same room, seen the expression on your face—as though you're mystified at what I see in her.'

Oh, good Lord. Had she been
that
transparent?

‘Maybe you're right,' he said softly, so softly that she wanted to groan. Her body was responding to his nearness, to the low, velvety tone of his voice, to the depths of his eyes resting on her, the way it would have responded if she was standing next to an open fire. An open fire that was slowly but steadily melting her.

The wetness she felt between her legs was such an unknown experience that at first she wasn't even aware of it and, when she was, she was horrified.

This
was lust. It bore no resemblance whatsoever to the affection and the tenderness and the light-hearted, detached curiosity she had felt when Henri had occasionally kissed her on the mouth, after a bit of alcohol and under the embrace of a hot starry night. This was like being hit by a sledgehammer.

‘Who knows? Do you think I might need a more challenging type of woman?'

‘
I
don't know what you need,' she squeaked.

‘True. Really, how do any of us know what we need unless we try it out first? Test the water, so to speak?' Then he did something so unexpected and so shocking that for a few seconds her body froze. He touched her. Just with one finger, on her mouth, tracing it, but the touch was so erotic that the ache between her legs shot through the rest of her body like a fast-moving virus. Her breasts actually seemed to hurt and she could feel the pupils in her eyes dilate.

‘No!' She pulled back, shaking, and spun round on her heels, staring down at her feet and breathing heavily, while he lounged against the window sill. ‘Please,' she whispered, still staring at her feet, ‘let's just see the rest of the house. Please.'

Callum didn't answer immediately. He couldn't. He was too busy trying to get his vocal cords into gear. Eventually, more in an attempt to repress the powerful and bloody primal urge he had felt for her than anything else, he said, ‘Sure. And if I manage to make it boring enough, who knows? You might just find it useful in boring unwanted animals to death.'

You could never be boring, she wanted to say, but she didn't. He had touched her mouth with his finger and he now felt sorry for her because he must be able to see how inordinately she'd responded. Like the gauche, unsophisticated primitive that she was. He felt sorry for her and was now trying to put her out of her misery by restoring some light-hearted humour between them. For that she felt both grateful and mortified at the same time.