‘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 sound of the helicopter’s rotor blades drove her to shelter beneath the overhanging branches of one of the great trees bordering the champagne curve of the beach. As she listened to the machine carry Guy away from her, she found herself thinking of all the ways she did know him…
Perhaps when people had forgotten about the war in Sant’Rosa, it might be safe to see him again. Without all this other baggage cluttering up their relationship, they could perhaps meet as ordinary people.
No. She’d sent him away.
And she’d do it again. When she’d asked her mother why, of all the people in the world, Marc’s bone marrow matched hers, Isabel’s admission of adultery had been shattering enough, but what had appalled her was her mother’s response when Lauren began to ask if her father knew.
After the first two tentative words her mother had interrupted fiercely, ‘He does now. Don’t ever speak to him about it. The stress could kill him.’
Lauren didn’t know how her parents had worked through this rough patch, but their love had held them together through the trauma.
When the steady thump-thump-thump of the rotors had died away, she went back inside and rang London.
‘How’s Dad?’
‘He’s fine,’ her mother said reassuringly. ‘How are you, darling?’
‘Fine too, but I’ve had an unsettling visit from the man who got me out of Sant’Rosa.’
Censoring heavily, she told her mother why Guy had come, ending with, ‘I think I’ll come home as soon as I can.’
‘No,’ Isabel said firmly. ‘You need that holiday, Lauren—your health isn’t anything to take lightly.’
‘I feel perfectly normal again,’ Lauren assured her. Well, apart from worrying about journalists, the marriage, and obsessing about Guy. ‘But if some reporter finds out about this wretched marriage they’ll probably come looking for you.’
After a silence in which her mother absorbed the implications, Isabel responded with even more firmness, ‘So we will just ignore them.’
Lauren said bleakly, ‘They might start digging around.’
The hesitation at the other end of the line revealed that her mother had already thought of that. ‘They won’t find anything,’ Isabel said finally, her voice taut but confident. ‘If this false marriage does come to light, it will be a three days’ wonder. Ah, darling—your father’s just come in.’
Lauren waited tensely, smiling as her father’s voice echoed across the world. ‘Stay there,’ he commanded. ‘By the way, what’s the man who got you off Sant’Rosa like?’
‘Forceful and formidable,’ Lauren said lightly. And judgemental.
‘Would I like him?’
She laughed. ‘Yes, I think you would. You like Marc, don’t you?’
‘Very much,’ he said gruffly. ‘Mind you, Marc saved your life, but then, this man might have too. When this bit of a fuss is over, I’d like to shake his hand. Stay there and finish your holiday, Lauren. I want to see colour in your cheeks when you come back.’
‘Yes, Daddy,’ she said in mock obedience, and heard him guffaw and say goodbye.
He endured his condition like a soldier, gallantly fighting the limitations it put on his life. She said her goodbyes to her mother, and with stinging eyes rang through to the person who handled her travel arrangements. Whatever her parents said, if the marriage ceremony with Guy ended up in the media she wanted to be at home, not stuck on the other side of the world.
Frowning at the skyline of Singapore through the hotel window, Guy swore succinctly under his breath.
The man on the other end of the telephone said drily, ‘At school I used to envy you the ability to swear in five languages. Now I can swear in twenty. But I still can’t pull the birds like you.’
In a level, cold voice Guy said, ‘Bloody tabloids.’
‘They have a place in life.’
‘Bottom feeders. Any idea when it’s due to break?’
He could almost hear his friend shrug. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said succinctly. ‘They’ve got a tasty little piece—the dramatic circumstances of the marriage and that it might turn out to be legal, as well as the insinuation she might be Corbett’s mistress. He’s always good for copy, and it’s always a coup to get the sights on someone as news-worthy and cunning at avoiding we poor hacks as you are. Naturally they want to make the most of it.’
‘Naturally,’ Guy said lethally, fighting back the urge to kill someone. ‘How did you find this out?’
‘I have friends in high places,’ his friend the war corespondent said airily, adding with a muffled snort of laughter, ‘Or low places.’
‘OK, Sean, thanks a lot. I owe you.’
‘Don’t worry, I owe you more. After all, you once saved my miserable life.’
‘Forget it,’ Guy said briefly, and hung up.
He stood for a long time frowning into space before reaching for the telephone again. With the time distance it would be eight in the evening in New Zealand.
As he dialled a number he recalled the way the sun had shone through the window of Marc Corbett’s house, collecting in Lauren’s hair so that it fell like a river of molten obsidian around her face, somehow giving a soft, pearly glow to her milk-white skin.
Skin like satin against his hand…
As Mrs Oliver wasn’t in the house, Lauren picked up the receiver. ‘Hello,’ she said carefully above
