ignored the voice and the desire that twisted inside him, and reminded himself this was a business deal. You let business get personal and it never ended well.
‘Come on.’ The idea of a shower and bed was appealing; the idea of a bed with Mari in it... He saw red hair spread out against the white sheet framing a face that... He clenched his jaw against the thought, but not before his body hardened. ‘It’s this way. Watch your step.’ He jerked his head towards the house.
Ignoring the gesture—did the man think she was some sort of puppy dog to be brought to heel?—Mari shook her head and struggled to maintain her defiant attitude as he crossed the gravel towards her, his long-legged stride bringing him there in seconds.
The resentful words exploded from her before the testosterone he was oozing made her tongue stick to the roof of her mouth, a situation she been experiencing all day.
‘You’ve been pushing me around all day.’
Not in the literal sense. It had almost seemed at times as though he had gone out of his way to avoid touching her. Even at the joke of a marriage ceremony when the registrar had said he could kiss the bride, Seb had barely even brushed his lips with hers, leaving her looking and feeling like a total fool.
The aggravating part of the situation was she had been letting him, and it was not a good precedent to set for the next eighteen months with a man as bossy and controlling as Seb.
She folded her arms across her chest. ‘I’ve had enough. You’re a control freak, and I’m not going another step until you tell me where we are.’
‘Don’t be childish. All you had to do was ask, but you were too busy playing the victim and giving me the stink eye.’
‘I’m amazed you noticed. You haven’t looked up from that damned tablet the whole way.’
‘Feeling neglected, were we?’
‘Not at all,’ she retorted haughtily. ‘It was an education to see what delightful manners years of inbreeding and the best school can achieve.’ It had gone pitch-black again, but his answering hiss made her decide to move on. She’d made her point, although she’d forgotten what it was as he’d taken a step towards her, not touching but awfully close...too close. ‘I’m asking now.’
Now that he was close to losing his temper she sounded maddeningly calm. She had accused him of bad manners, yet she had responded to any question with a mutter and barely said a word the entire way here; filthy looks and her ramrod-straight back—he doubted her shoulder blades had made contact with a chair back at any point—were all that had been given him.
‘Fine, but indoors.’ He glanced up as a cloud drifted like smoke across the moon. ‘There’s a storm coming.’
‘And you can tell that how?’
Before she could pour further scorn on his confident prediction there was a distant roll of thunder. So instead she flung him a disgruntled glare and directed her gaze at the sinister outline of the stone building they stood before. It rose out of the forest, making her think of a haunted mansion in a Gothic romance. Did that make her the spunky but vulnerable heroine...?
She almost laughed at the thought. She was none of the above!
‘I think I’d feel safer out here. There is no way that place is a hotel.’ The place looked very Gothic, and a little shiver slid a clammy path down her spine.
‘No,’ he agreed with infuriating placidity. ‘It’s not.’
‘It looks like the set of a vampire movie!’
Despite himself Seb’s lips twitched. ‘It was a monastery.’
Her voice rose to an indignant squeak. ‘You’ve brought me to a monastery?’
‘Obviously it is no longer a monastery. It was for a short time, I believe, a school, and now it is my grandmother’s home. Her family came from this area of Spain originally and her twin sister still lives close by. After she was widowed she returned here.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘I thought you knew all about the special bond between twins, and my grandmother and Aunt Marguerite are identical.’
‘You know what I mean—why in God’s name would you bring me to your grandmother’s house?’
‘Because it is her birthday tomorrow,’ he told her calmly. ‘She has been unwell, she is my last living grandparent and I promised to see her.’ In as much as there had been a female influence after he had come to live in England, the tough, outspoken old lady who took a delight in being awkward had been it.
‘Oh, God!’ The idea of being dropped into the middle of a family gathering filled Mari with utter horror she didn’t even try to disguise. ‘Is your entire family here?’
What had he been thinking?
What was I thinking? She pushed away the rush of panicked rejection and focused on a mental image of Mark in a wheelchair. After a moment her sense of purpose reasserted itself and the panic receded.
Many people coped with disability—one of her friends had lost her sight and gone on to not only marry and have a gorgeous child but win a medal for her country in the International Swimming Championships. She was an inspiration, but Mark... No, her brother would not react well.
And how, she wondered, was Sebastian’s family going to react to her? How was he going to explain the presence of this new wife? God, but that sounded so weird to think. Would she ever be able to say it out loud?
‘No, they aren’t here.’
‘That’s something, I suppose.’ Before he stepped back into the shadow there was something in his face that made her probe. ‘But they, your mum and dad, I mean, they were at the wedding?’ And presumably had filled Granny in on the scandalous proceedings, and just when she thought the situation could not get weirder or more awkward.
‘My parents are presently enjoying a world cruise. They were not at my wedding and will not be here.’
The undercurrent in his voice made her say, ‘I’m sorry.’
He flicked her a look, opened his mouth and closed it again. She was lifting her shoulders and rolling them to stretch the kinks that tied up her spine after the journey. Seb was struck by the almost feline quality in the sinuous way she moved. He took a deep breath as heat seared through his body, as merciless as a blade. Then he launched into a response designed to dampen her empathy.
‘My grandparents on both sides played a larger part in my life than my parents.’ He clenched his jaw and taunted softly, ‘Aren’t you going to say, well, at least you had parents?’
‘I had parents. Everyone does. The difference is I could walk past them in the street and not know them. They wouldn’t know me. I look sometimes and wonder if... When I was little I told people my dad was a war hero and my mother was a nurse.’ She stopped, hit by the sheer strangeness and odd intimacy of this encounter, standing in the dark with this man—a man she barely knew but was married to, a man who she had considered her enemy before she knew his name—talking about families.
A
