The weight had almost yanked her shoulder from its socket, but she’d die before she’d admit it or accept his help. ‘I’m fine, thank you.’
He stood aside as she exited the flat door sideways, not making allowances for the bulk of the bag as she eased past him carefully.
‘Sure you don’t need help?’
‘Yes,’ she said shortly, requiring all her breath to negotiate the last flight of stairs. They passed one of her neighbours, whose plucked brows almost vanished into her hairline when she saw Seb.
‘Moving on, are we?’
‘A holiday,’ Mari puffed.
‘I don’t think she believed you,’ Seb said in a voice that echoed spookily down the stairwell.
‘Shh, she’ll hear you,’ Mari hissed as she prepared to swap shoulders, resting her bag for a moment on the step long enough to give him ample opportunity to repeat his offer of help. She’d refuse, but it would be nice to have the option. When he didn’t, she gritted her teeth and wished she hadn’t packed the books or the pair of boots.
‘The reporters knocked on every door in the building. I think they offered money for—’
His lip curled. ‘Dirt.’
She turned her head; he was standing two steps behind her.
‘I was surprised,’ he admitted, stepping down one step and pausing just one above her.
Too close...too close... Struggling to pacify the panicky voice in her head, she took a jolting backward step.
‘Really? I thought knocking on doors and buying stories was par for the course?’
‘It is, which is why I was surprised when I didn’t get to read the lurid details, both fictional and true, of your love affairs in the tabloids. Anyone would think you have a blemish-free past.’ The humourless smile that tugged the corners of his mouth upwards faded as his hooded gaze slid covetously over the curves of her athletically slim body. She had an innate sensuality that had to make every man she met think about taking her to bed—he had.
Still was thinking, said the voice in his head.
The difference was he wasn’t going to act on it, despite the sizzle whenever they were in near proximity. This might be a long eighteen months.
It didn’t matter how hard they dug, she didn’t have a past, at least not the sort he was talking about, but Mari was not about to admit her embarrassing lack of lovers to him. She turned her head quickly. Trust issues aside, she had suspected for some time that she simply wasn’t very highly sexed. With Adrian she had been in love with the idea of it, the romance of it, which was why having her illusions shattered had been such a big deal.
She’d trusted him and he’d betrayed her and rejected her. She’d prefer to stay single than risk feeling that way again.
‘Some of us are discreet.’
‘Yeah, I had a grandstand view of your amazing discretion in the cathedral,’ he drawled, replaying the scene in his head and feeling the acrid aftertaste of anger and humiliation all over again.
Mari clamped her lips together. She was pretty sick of having her nose rubbed in it. It wasn’t as if she needed reminding she had set in motion the events that had led her to this place and this moment. ‘Are you going to bring that up often? Just so that I know.’
‘You’re right.’ Anger was a waste of energy and an indulgence; he needed to take a less negative approach. ‘I’m not in the best of moods.’
Astonished by the admission, Mari didn’t say anything.
‘After a long absence, my parents have made the news.’
The story dug up from years back by an enterprising hack told of another bride left standing at the altar. His father had been the groom, his mother the ‘other’ woman, and his father had jilted his new bride just as Seb had done.
The only downside to this story from a journalistic point of view had been that the woman left at the altar had not gone on to lead a tragic life, but instead had been inconveniently happy combining a career as a respected trauma doctor with marriage and four children.
‘Today might be better if you remind yourself that a marriage of convenience is a hell of a lot better than one of inconvenience, and there are a lot of those out there,’ he mused, fighting the impulse to grab the damned bag off her as she staggered awkwardly down a step. All she had to do was ask, but she didn’t, and with a bloody-minded stubbornness she made it to the poky communal hallway where she paused.
He correctly interpreted her hesitation. ‘There were no reporters outside when I arrived.’
Still she hesitated, raising herself up on tiptoe to peer through the dusty pane of glass high up on the door.
‘Are you sure?’ If she was seen leaving complete with luggage and Seb, she could only imagine how they would spin it. Ironically nothing could be as strange, or crazy, as the truth!
With a grunt of irritation he snatched the bag from her and strode out through the door.
Left with little choice Mari followed him, relieved that no one jumped out of the shadows wielding a camera. He walked straight to the car parked by the kerb. It was an enormous four-wheel drive with blacked-out windows.
‘You’re driving?’
‘I like driving, unless you want to?’
She shook her head.
‘So what did your brother think of our arrangement?’ Being a brother himself, his opinion of a man who allowed his sister to fight his battles was not positive.
‘I don’t ask my brother’s approval for my decisions.’
Neatly dodged, he thought, observing her neat, peachy behind as she bent, ignoring the passenger door and getting into the back seat.
‘Aren’t you going to ask me where we’re going?’
She had been about to, but she responded to a perverse impulse and said instead, ‘One register office is much the same as any other.’
She saw his eyes narrow in the rear-view mirror. ‘Life is going to be a lot easier if you lose the victim act,’ he drawled.
Not replying, she turned her head and looked out of the window.
‘The silent treatment works for me. It’s peaceful, but I’ve never known a woman who can keep it buttoned for more than five minutes.’
Mari clamped her lips over a retort and contented herself with slinging him a fulminating look of dislike in the rear-view mirror.
‘Fifteen, I’m impressed,’ Seb admitted as he drew up in front of a red-brick building.
She ignored him and looked up at the building. ‘So this is it, then?’
He glanced over his shoulder. ‘We’re five minutes early.
