beneath the silken skin of her throat as she swallowed. ‘Just after I graduated from university I developed leukaemia.’
His blood ran cold. ‘Go on.’
‘I needed a bone marrow transplant, but they couldn’t find one to suit.’ She spoke dispassionately, as though it had happened to some other woman. ‘In the end we discovered that Marc was a perfect match. If he hadn’t been, I’d have died.’
The ugly clutch of fear fading, Guy said slowly, ‘I see.’ It was outrageous, unbelievable that this lovely, vital woman had been threatened by death.
Lauren stopped to pick up a shell. Keeping her gaze on its pearly sheen and intricate spirals, she said, ‘After that, I hero-worshipped him a bit.’
‘I can understand that.’ The crispness of his tone hid, he hoped, the questions seething through his mind.
How had her doctors found that Marc Corbett was a bone marrow match? Common sense told him that the man had probably enrolled on the worldwide register—but why? And surely donors’ names were kept secret?
Lauren looked at him with eyes so translucent it seemed impossible for her to hide a thought. ‘He told me that when I got better he’d give me a job if I wanted one and if I was suitable; of course I was delighted, and when I got the all-clear I fronted up. I had to go through the same process as anyone else, but I got in, and ever since then we’ve had a sort of—well, closeness. I try not to impose on it, but he’s a darling, and so is his wife, Paige.’
Guy’s mouth curved in an ironic smile. He liked Marc Corbett and respected him, but darling wasn’t a word he’d have used to describe the man.
Once again she lifted limpid eyes to his. Her voice rang true, she was looking him straight in the face, but instincts honed in the cutthroat world he’d made his own told him she was lying. Or at the very least, only revealing part of the truth.
Coldly, clinically, he decided that if her story was a front for an affair, it had the advantage of originality. Even if it was true, she could still be Marc Corbett’s lover.
As for her obvious affection for Paige Corbett, it wouldn’t be the first—or the last—time a woman had an ongoing relationship with the husband of a friend.
Lauren wondered uneasily what was going on behind those fabulous features, gilded by sunlight. Did he believe her? And had it been enough to satisfy him?
She found herself wishing she could trust him with the whole truth. If it had just been herself she might have, but in the end it wasn’t her secret.
She said brightly, ‘It’s an old story, and not one I’d like to get around. Some people say that if you save someone’s life you’re responsible for them forever afterwards; I’d hate people to believe Marc gave me a job because of some quirk of genetic good fortune.’
‘I can understand that,’ Guy said with a smile that blended irony with a hint of self-derision.
Sunlight conjured a shimmer of mahogany fire from his black hair. He dragged out a wallet from his pocket, scribbled something on a page of a small diary, and tore it out to hand to her. ‘In case you need me,’ he said.
Their fingers touched, and Lauren’s heart jumped.
‘And just to remind you how it was with us—’ he said through his teeth, and covered the three paces that separated them, drawing her into his arms.
Every nerve speared by forbidden delight, Lauren froze. He looked down into her face, his own angrily intent. ‘No, you haven’t forgotten,’ he said in a raw voice.
And then he kissed her eyelids closed, his breath warm on her skin.
Pierced by erotic poignancy, Lauren’s defences crumbled into sand. This was what she’d been waiting for—this sense of rightness, of completeness…
His lips crushed hers in a kiss that obliterated all sense of time and space. Helplessly she melted into his arms and gave him everything he asked for, responding with feverish passion to his sensuous onslaught.
But although she wanted nothing more than to let this go on to its inevitable conclusion, she finally fought free of the consuming hunger to shake her head and drag her mouth from his, gasping hoarsely, ‘No!’
A fierce, possessive gleam fired his eyes. ‘But you were saying yes a moment ago.’
Even then she hovered on the brink of surrender until hard common sense forced its way through the mists of desire.
‘No,’ she repeated quietly, uncompromisingly, because she knew that she’d never be safe, that the only way to stop herself from falling headlong into infatuation was to end it now.
But oh, it was hard to say, with his strength and his heat seducing her, with the sexy, evocative aroma of his skin scrambling her brain, and his taste on her lips, in her mouth—when every cell in her body screamed for the release only he could give her.
His mouth hardened. ‘Why?’
‘Because I don’t want this.’ The lie hurt, and it hurt more that he knew it was a lie. ‘I find you very attractive,’ she hurried on, surprised at the clarity of each word, ‘but the idea of being married to you—if that’s what I am—is ridiculous. And I certainly don’t want an affair with you.’
She invested the final word with a flick of scorn, and saw it register on his face. He smiled, and as she shivered he freed her and stepped back.
‘Really?’ he said politely. ‘I can think of plenty of words to describe such a marriage, but ridiculous doesn’t come to mind. As for the affair— I thought we’d already had it.’
‘We spent a few days together,’ she corrected, gripped by intolerable anguish. Yet she had to send him out of her life. ‘I’m sorry, but a tropical fling is not expected to last beyond the tropics. I’ll always be grateful to you for saving my life, because I suspect that’s what you did.’
‘Stop right there,’ he advised with an inflection so deadly it chilled her into temporary paralysis. ‘If you’re telling me that you slept with me out of gratitude, I’ll just have to show you that you’re wrong. We made love because we wanted each other.’
‘Of course I did—we did!’ She struggled to clear her mind. ‘You know very well that I—that we—that it was mutual.’ She stopped and dragged in a jerky breath before finishing defiantly, ‘But it’s over.’
For a charged moment he surveyed her, his beautiful mouth hard against the chiselled angles of his face. Finally he drawled, ‘Then there’s nothing more to say,’ and turned away. ‘Goodbye, Lauren.’
Aching with a bleak sense of loss and pain, she watched him stride towards the thick row of trees that hid the helicopter pad. Fate and war had shackled them together until they could get free of this marriage.
Whatever she felt for Guy Bagaton couldn’t possibly be love; that involved much more than gratitude and great sex.
Only a loser would love a man who thought she was another man’s mistress, and she wasn’t a loser. She didn’t even know him.
Not really.
The
