One-Click Buy: November Harlequin Presents (43 page)

‘I let you go too easily the last time, and I've regretted it ever since. I've never been able to get you out of my mind. You've shadowed my days—haunted my dreams—and this afternoon in my bed reminded me of just why you have this effect on me. And it also told me that once would never be enough. I want so much more.'

Becca could only listen in dazed silence, struggling with the cruelly ambiguous feelings his words woke in her.

They should be complimentary. They should be what every woman dreamed of the man she loved saying to her. But she knew what he really meant and that destroyed any joy she might have wished she could find in what he was saying.

Money I'll give you but nothing else,
he had flung at her, and now here he was, offering her nothing—nothing more than the cold-blooded passion he had for her, the purely physical need that he openly admitted was all he felt.

‘And I know you feel it too. That's why I want you to stay. I'll make it worth your while. I'll give you anything you want—everything you want.'

I have a reputation for generosity to my mistresses.
The words spoken outside by the pool—was it only a few hours ago?—came back to haunt her. And that was all she would be—his mistress. His wife in name but his mistress in reality. Because as his wife she should be loved, cherished—and she might hope to stay with him for life. As his mistress…

‘How long?' she croaked out, her voice failing her. ‘How long would you want me to stay?'

‘For as long as it lasts. As long as it works. If we're both getting what we want out of this, then I don't see why it can't last…'

‘Until we get each other out of our systems?'

Becca prayed that her falsely airy voice hid the agony that was squeezing her heart deep inside.

She would never get what she wanted out of this. Never. There was no hope of that, because what she wanted—what she longed for—was for Andreas to love her just as much as she loved him. And as she had given him her heart without hesitation or restraint in almost the first moment she had met him—and again here, when she had realised that she still adored him—there was no hope of that adoration ever being reciprocated.

Money I'll give you—but nothing else. Not a damn thing else.

And yet her body cried out to her to accept—her body and her weak, foolish heart that begged her to take this, take the little he was offering and accept it. It was better than nothing. Better than having to turn now and walk away—knowing that if she did so there was no hope that he would ever let her back into his life again.

She couldn't do that. She had had to walk away from him once, and the moment that he had slammed the door behind her had almost killed her. She couldn't do it again.

I married you for sex—for that and nothing else.

And so when a weak, longing voice in the back of her mind whispered that Leander had said that Andreas had asked for her in the first few moments after he had regained consciousness—he had asked for her and perhaps…she pushed it away and made herself face the reality of what she was being offered.

And sex was all he wanted from her still. The thing that was different now was that she no longer had any illusions. She was no longer deceiving herself that Andreas loved her, she knew exactly where she stood, and in that knowledge was a desperate kind of strength.

In that moment the sun finally disappeared below the horizon, and the last rays of light fled the room completely so that there was only the small lamp in the corner to see by. And in the darkness it was easy to hide the way she was really feeling.

In the darkness she could step forward and put herself completely into Andreas' arms. With her face unseen, her eyes and their betraying message hidden, she could put her hand against the warm strength of his chest, whisper his name, the single word, ‘Yes,' and lift her face to his for his kiss.

And when his mouth came down hard on hers then all thought stopped, only feeling began. And that was when nothing else mattered. Only this man for whatever time she might have with him. She would take that. And she would never let herself dream of more.

T
HE
light of the full moon through the window made the bedroom almost as bright as day when Andreas finally gave up on any hope of sleeping and slid from the bed. Pulling on his jeans, he paused for a moment to look down at Becca's sleeping form, her body still curved as it had been when it had been pressed up against his, her face almost buried in the pillow.

She was completely out of it, lost in a world of total exhaustion, oblivious to anything. By rights he should feel that way too. The blazing passion between them had had full rein during the night, each hungry coming together more eager than the first, each tide of mounting pleasure stronger, each soaring, burning climax more mind-blowing than the one that had gone before. Never in his life had he known such pleasures, such delight in another person's body—in the gratification it could bring to every single one of his senses. And in the end it had been only exhaustion that had ended it. The exhaustion that had plunged Becca deep into the oblivion of sleep and left him lying awake and restless, staring at the ceiling as the moon rose high out in the bay.

At first he had had no idea why he too couldn't find the ease he needed in sleep. His body was sated, his clamouring senses quietened—for now anyway—but it was his mind that wouldn't let him rest.

It kept playing over and over again a snatch from the conversation that he had had with Becca days before. A set of words that were the reason for the way he was feeling, the cause of his unease.

‘How long?' Becca had said. ‘How long would you want me to stay?'

‘For as long as it lasts. As long as it works. If we're both getting what we want out of this, then I don't see why it can't last…'

‘Until we get each other out of our systems?'

The problem was, he reflected as he slipped out of the door and headed downstairs, he doubted that he would ever get Becca out of his system, no matter how hard he tried.

And God knew he had tried!

It had been a week now since she had agreed to stay, and every day it had seemed that instead of his appetite for her being blunted, it had grown until there wasn't a moment of his day, a single second in the night, even in his sleep, when his mind wasn't full of thoughts of her. It was worse than when he had thrown her out on the day of their wedding. At least then he had had no sight of her to remind him of how beautiful she was, no touch to bring home to him how fabulous she felt, no kiss to fill his mouth with her own essential taste. Instead, now she was always there, setting his senses on red alert, making him hungry again even in the moment of his greatest satisfaction.

If he had known that it would be like this, then just as he had told her to stay he might have hesitated, knowing that he was being a fool to himself to even consider it. He should have realised then that this would never be over, not for him; that he was only risking his peace of mind, his sanity, to take her back into his life again, knowing that one day she would walk out of it again.

She had been so determined to leave just as soon as she had the money she needed. She'd been on her feet and almost heading out the door when he had known that he could not let her go. He had wanted to have her, to hold her—and so he had damn nearly ordered her to stay.

‘To have and to hold from this day forward until death us do part…'
The lines from the wedding service haunted him as he made his way into his office, but he pushed them away, refusing to let them settle in his thoughts.

There was no till death us do part with Becca—she'd made that only too plain a year ago, when she had married him simply for his money while all the time conducting a passionate affair with Roy Stanton.

But now that Stanton was out of the picture…

Stanton
was
out of the picture, wasn't he? He had to be now that he had fathered Becca's sister's child.

Roy Stanton. The name tasted like acid in his mouth, making him want to spit as he unlocked the bottom drawer in his desk and yanked it open.

The file was still there. So often he had meant to take it out and shred it, burn the contents, but he had never quite managed to do it. Tonight he felt he could. He had to if he was to have a hope of moving forward.

Tossing it on the desk, he flung open the folder, flicked on a lamp and stared down at the photographs. It was a year since he had last seen them but they still had the effect of hitting him like a punch in his guts. The man he didn't know, though the investigator he had hired had told him that that was indeed Roy Stanton. And the woman's face was hidden so that she could be anyone. He had tried to convince himself that the investigator had been mistaken, that she was someone other than Becca. But the ring was the killer blow. There was no mistaking the ring on her hand.

It was the ring that had marked the betrothal of his great-grandmother to his great-grandfather, and had been passed down to him to give to his own future bride. He had put it on her finger himself when she had first agreed to marry him.

‘What are those?'

The question came from behind him, making him start, spin round in shock. Becca stood in the doorway, her face pale, her eyes wide and her white cotton nightdress still floating round her from the effects of her movement, making her look like some ethereal spirit that haunted his home.

‘Nothing important.'

His answer would be more convincing, Becca told herself, if it hadn't been so swift, so uneven, so blatantly obviously defensive in every way. Just the way he spoke and the look in those dark, dark eyes gave away the fact that whatever was in the file he had been looking at was very far from ‘nothing important'.

‘Just something I planned on shredding.'

‘At three in the morning?'

‘I couldn't sleep.'

‘Neither could I—not after you left the bed.'

Of course, that wasn't the truth. She didn't know how long she'd lain there, alternately listening to Andreas tossing and turning, and knowing that he was lying far too still, trying so hard not to wake her. She didn't know what kept him from sleeping, and she'd been afraid to ask.

What if the week of total sensual indulgence had been enough for him? What if that was long enough to get her out of his system so that he was no longer getting what he had declared he wanted? Had his ardour cooled so fast that he was lying awake, wondering how to tell her?

When he'd crept from the room, she tried so hard to convince herself that wondering how to tell her wasn't Andreas' way. If he'd tired of her, he would tell her straight, no hesitation, no cushioning the blow. But even knowing that hadn't provided any comfort. In fact, it had only made things so much worse. If he wasn't trying to think of a way to tell her
that,
then what else was going through his mind to keep him on edge throughout the darkest hours?

She hadn't been able to stay where she was, with the space beside her in the bed growing colder with every second that passed. The feeling had reminded her too closely of the way she had felt when she had gone home after the disaster of their wedding day and had had to try to fall asleep in the bed that she had once shared with Andreas, knowing that she would never, ever sleep with him again. And so she had pulled on her nightdress and crept down the stairs after him.

But now she wished that she'd never done so. The look on Andreas' face, the sense of withdrawal that had hooded his eyes, tightened his jaw, worried her even more than his restlessness had done. There was something very wrong here and she couldn't begin to guess what.

And being in this room with him like this, in this incomprehensible mood, brought back unhappy memories of the way that he had confronted her here, on the night of their wedding.

‘Then I should take you back there. I'm sure I can think of a way of helping us both to sleep.'

It was smoothly done. Almost convincing. But Becca's nerves were already on red alert, and, hypersensitive as she was to everything about Andreas, she caught the faint unevenness of his tone, the way his gaze had flicked to the file on the table and then away again.

There had been a file on the desk then too. In fact, she wasn't sure that it wasn't the same file.

‘What
is
that?'

‘Just business…'

His hand went out to close the file, but, alerted by his tone, Becca was there before him. Grabbing at it to get it from him, she sent it flying, the file, and the photographs it contained, falling wildly to the floor.

‘Oh, I'm sorry…let me…Oh…'

On her knees beside the desk, she froze, staring down at the photographs in each hand.

‘Who's this with Macy—and why do you have a picture of my sister?'

‘Give them to me…'

Andreas had crouched down beside her, reaching for the pictures, but then he too froze, staring at her in blank confusion.

‘What did you say?'

‘Who's this?'

The look in his eyes made fear clutch at her heart. Just what was happening?

‘No—the rest of it. “Who's this with…?”' he prompted.

‘With Macy?'

Was that what he wanted? Or something else?

‘If you want the man's name then I can't…'

‘You don't recognise him?'

If the look in his eyes had been bad, then the raw urgency in his voice made her tremble.

‘No—I—Andreas, what is this—what are you asking—what is this picture?'

He didn't answer but just held out his hand to take the photos from her. Then he gave her the other hand and helped her to her feet. All in total silence. When she was upright, he spread the photos on the desk and focused the beam of the lamp directly on them.

And waited.

This was important. No words needed to be used to tell her that. Andreas' silence and that wary, watching stance of his meant that she had to give the right answer. But what
was
the right answer?

There was only one way she could go with this.

The truth.

‘I don't know what you want me to say, Andreas, but I'll tell you what I see.'

She touched the photograph lightly, her fingertip resting on the image of the slender, dark-haired woman.

‘That's Macy—my half-sister—and that building behind her is where she has her flat. Or, rather, had her flat. Since she discovered she was expecting Daisy, she moved in with me and…'

Her voice trailed off as realisation dawned and suddenly she was looking at the picture again, knowing just when it had to have been taken.

‘Are you telling me that that…' a wave of her hand indicated the man in the picture, small and slim and with a boyishly handsome but weak, self-indulgent-looking face ‘…is Roy Stanton?'

And that was the moment when she knew that something had really changed. Because when she looked into Andreas' eyes as she spoke the words she saw none of the anger, none of the hostility that her use of that name had always created, but instead there was a stunned expression in their darkness. And she could almost have sworn that there were new shadows under his eyes, giving them a bruised, exhausted look.

‘How do you know that's your sister?' he asked now and his voice was so husky and raw that it made her wince. ‘You can't see her face.'

‘No, but I know the T-shirt she's wearing—and the shoes. Macy just
loves
the highest heels she can find. Of course, from the back she could almost be me but there's…'

The impact of what she'd said dried her throat, taking the words from her. In the half-light Andreas' face looked drawn and haggard, and that stunned look had given way to one of real horror.

‘Is that what you thought, Andreas? Is that what—what someone told you?'

Once more she looked down at the photograph, seeing it this time as he might have seen it, if someone had told him that she was the woman in the picture.

A woman who had flung herself into the arms of the man with her. Into Roy Stanton's arms. A woman who had her own arms up and around his neck, one hand almost buried in the man's fair hair as she pressed her lips against his in an ardent, passionate kiss.

Almost buried. Because there was one finger that could be seen only too clearly. And on that finger was…

‘She's wearing my ring!' Becca exclaimed.

‘Forgive me.'

The words came together almost in unison, so that Andreas' voice clashed with hers in the same moment that she spoke. And for a second she couldn't quite register what he had said. But as she paused, a small, confused frown creasing the space between her brows, he spoke again, and this time there could be no doubt about what he said.

‘Forgive me for ever doubting you. For thinking that she could be you. For believing you could be capable of marrying me for what you could get when really you were…'

He choked off the end of the sentence, too shaken to go any further.