…’
God, how she hated him, Lissa thought feeling the nauseous loathing rise up inside her. She wanted to scream and cry … to tear that smooth smile from his face with her nails. She hated him … hated him … Her attention was deflected from her own inner turmoil when she heard Joel saying calmly, ‘No Lissa, I don’t think the best thing for the girls is for them to be constantly shuttled between us, as though we were divorced parents. Children, especially children such as Louise and Emma who had already suffered the loss of their parents, need security and stability, and in an attempt to give them both, I’ve decided that what I need is not a nanny, but a wife.’
Lissa could only stare at him, but hard on the heels of her shock came the knowledge that if he did marry, she would lose her nieces, because surely a judge was bound to favour the suit of a man who had not only wealth but also a wife, above the claims of a girl, struggling alone on a little more than adequate salary.
‘No comment?’ she heard Joel saying, the words reaching her through a fog of thoughts. ‘You don’t want to know the identity of my wife-to-be?’
‘Why should I?’ Lissa managed to croak the denial. ‘It’s nothing to do with me?’
‘On the contrary,’ Joel assured her with smooth silkiness. ‘It has everything to do with you my dear. You see, I’ve decided that the very best solution to Louise and Emma’s problem would be for you and I to marry thus uniting both their guardians and providing them with a stable background.’
Lissa barely heard his last words. ‘You and I …?’ She stared at him, the colour leaving her face on an ebb tide of shock. ‘No, I …’
‘Lissa, neither of us are foolish teenagers any longer.’
‘We don’t love one another … we don’t even like one another,’ Lissa interrupted harshly. ‘How can you even think of a marriage between us?’
‘Oh quite easily.’ He was smiling at her in a way that told her that little though he might like her, he found the shape of her sexually desirable. Shock hit her on a tidal wave, swamping her. Joel desired her.
‘You see,’ he mocked her softly, ‘we could have a lot more in common than you think. There is no need for our marriage to be a sterile one Lissa. On the contrary …’
Lissa felt as though she were drowning in some whirlpool far too frenzied for her to fight. ‘But you’ve always avoided marriage,’ she whispered huskily, ‘I remember Amanda once saying that she thought you’d never marry.’
‘At one time I thought that myself,’ he agreed laconically, ‘but that was before John died.’
‘And if I refuse …?’ What did she mean ‘if’. Of course she was going to refuse … but a thought had taken possession of her brain … the seed of an idea, that at last she might have found a way to make Joel pay for all the agony and shame he had caused her.
‘Then I’ll have to look around for someone else,’ he told her calmly. ‘Make no mistake about it Lissa. For the girls’ sake I intend to marry. I should prefer that my wife is you, but if you refuse, then I shall simply marry someone else.’
‘And I’ll lose the girls.’ She breathed the words softly, but he heard them and shrugged.
‘The choice is yours. I’m not, after all, asking you to make any sacrifice I’m not prepared to make myself. We’ll both be giving up our freedom … and one thing more Lissa.’ He came towards her standing only feet away, but making no move to reach out and touch her. She felt almost suffocated by his proximity but refused to step back, making herself endure it. ‘Our marriage will not be an empty legal bond only, but very real, in every sense of the word.’
‘But I don’t want you.’ She said it through stiff lips forcing them to frame the words, half of her praying that he would take back his proposal; and the other half, the bitter, angry half hoping that he would not.
‘How can you know that,’ he taunted softly. ‘We haven’t been lovers yet.’
Nor ever will be, the bitter half of her exulted. Let him marry her … let him think he was going to have it all his own way, but when she lay in his bed and in his arms she would be as cold as ice; as devoid of the ability to give and take pleasure as she had always been, since he had destroyed the feminine core of her. Ignoring all the urgings of common sense Lissa faced him, praying that he wouldn’t see the bitterness in her eyes, and that he wouldn’t guess exactly why she was marrying him. He was using her affection for the girls to force her into this marriage … a marriage she was sure that would not stop him continuing with his many affairs, but what he did not know was that she was also going to use him … as the instrument of her revenge.
‘Very well Joel … I agree to marry you.’
She was surprised to see the heated flicker of triumph burn dark gold in his eyes. He took a step towards her and she backed away, but before either of them could speak the door burst open and the elder of their nieces came rushing in.
‘Auntie Lissa … Auntie Lissa … I heard you talking.’ The petite four year old ran up to Lissa, clinging tightly to her legs, the blonde head buried in her skirt. ‘Are you going to stay here for ever,’ Louise demanded when Lissa bent down to pick her up. ‘I want you to … so does Emma …’
‘Yes, Louise, she’s going to stay here for ever,’ Lissa heard Joel saying from a distance, and just for a moment she felt a twinge of apprehension at the deep note of triumph in his voice, but then she banished it, telling herself she was imagining things. She was the one who should be feeling triumphant. She had got her nieces, and she had also got the means of repaying Joel for all the years of anguish and pain he had caused her. He might think their marriage was going to be a ‘normal’ one, but she knew different.
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