His Virgin Wife: The Wedding in White / Caught in the Crossfire / The Virgin's Secret Marriage. Diana Palmer

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ so often enough.”

      “You started it,” she raged.

      He sighed. “Yes, I did,” he admitted after a minute. “This is all I’ve been able to think about since we went nightclubbing,” he confessed. “That was probably the most misguided thing I’ve done in recent years. It’s hard to put out a brushfire once it’s started. Or didn’t you notice?”

      She moved experimentally and felt him help her move away to a healthy distance, lying beside him on the long leather couch with her cheek on his shoulder. She looked at him quietly, curiously. His face was a little flushed, and his mouth was swollen from the hard, hungry kisses they’d shared. His shirt was open at the throat. His hair was disheveled. He looked as though he’d been making love, and probably so did she. She didn’t really mind. He looked sensual like that.

      “You’d better leave town,” he suggested with a wry smile. “You just went on the endangered list.”

      Her fingers spread on his shirt, but he caught and stilled them. “Stop that. I’m barely a step away from ravishment.”

      “How exciting,” she murmured.

      “You wouldn’t think so for the first few minutes,” he murmured skeptically. “And you wouldn’t be able to live with your conscience even if you did enjoy it eventually.”

      She grimaced. “I guess not. I’m not really cut out for passionate affairs.”

      “And I’m not cut out for happily ever after,” he said without looking at her.

      “Because of your family?” she asked.

      He drew in a long breath. She felt his chest rise and fall under her hand. “We could make a list. It wouldn’t change anything.” He looked at her rapt, soft face, and his hardened. “Despite everything,” he whispered huskily, “I would give everything I own to have you, just once.”

      She managed a faint smile. “Maybe you’d be disappointed.”

      He traced her mouth with a lazy finger. “Maybe you would, too.”

      “So it’s just as well, isn’t it?”

      “That’s what my mind says,” he agreed.

      She nuzzled against his shoulder and closed her eyes. “Isn’t there a poem about hopeless attraction?”

      “Hundreds,” he said.

      She felt his hand smoothing her hair, almost in a comforting gesture. She smiled. “That feels nice.”

      “You feel nice, lying against me like this,” he whispered. He bent and kissed her closed eyelids with breathless tenderness. “It was like this, the night of the wreck,” he added in a hushed tone. “I held you and comforted you, and wanted you until I ached.”

      “But I was seventeen.”

      “But you were seventeen.” He pressed a kiss on her forehead and put her aside so that he could get to his feet. “You haven’t changed much,” he added as he helped her up.

      “I’m older,” she pointed out.

      He laughed, and it had a hollow sound. “If you were a modern woman, we’d have fewer problems.”

      “But I’m not modern,” she replied sadly. “And that says it all.”

      A door opened and shut, and he glanced toward the closed door of the study. “That’ll be Romeo, I reckon,” he drawled with a glittery look at Natalie. “I don’t like the way he hangs around you.”

      “He likes me,” she said carelessly. “I like him, too. What’s wrong with that?”

      “He belongs to Vivian,” he returned, and he didn’t smile.

      She searched his hard face. “You can’t own people.”

      The eyebrow that wasn’t under the string of the eye patch lifted sardonically. “She won’t thank you for making a play for him.”

      She ached all over with frustration and misery, and she hated him for arousing her and pushing her away at the same time. It wasn’t logical, but then, she wasn’t thinking clearly. She didn’t mean what she said next, but she was so angry she couldn’t help herself. “What would you care if I did? You don’t like him. Maybe it would open her eyes.”

      “Don’t do it,” he warned in a low, threatening tone.

      “Or you’ll do what?” she challenged icily.

      He didn’t answer. They were enemies in the blink of an eye. He was furious, and it showed. He went to the door and opened it with a jerk, waiting for her to leave.

      She hesitated, but only for an instant. If that was the way he wanted it, all right! She went out the door without looking at him, without speaking, without knowing that she’d just altered the whole pattern of her life.

      Mack closed the door sharply behind her, and she grimaced before she went to the kitchen to see if Whit was there. He was. He’d just made coffee, in one of the expensive modern coffee machines that did it in seconds. He’d poured two cups, one for himself and one for Vivian.

      “Where’s the tray?” he asked, looking around.

      “I haven’t got a clue,” she admitted. She looked in cupboards, but she couldn’t find one.

      “Never mind,” he said. “I take mine black and she takes hers with cream. I can carry both cups if you’ll bring the cream, and we’ll forget the tray.”

      “Okay,” she said.

      He was gazing at her with an experienced eye, and it suddenly occurred to her that she must look pretty disheveled. She thought about taking a minute to repair her makeup before she went upstairs, but Whit was already out the door.

      She followed him up the staircase and into Vivian’s room. It hadn’t dawned on her, either, that Whit had been out in the wind and his hair was disheveled. When the two of them entered the room, Vivian put together Natalie’s swollen mouth and mussed hair and Whit’s mussed hair and came up with infidelity.

      “Go home,” she told Natalie in a vicious tone. “Go right now and don’t ever come back!”

      “Viv! What’s wrong?” she asked.

      “As if you don’t know!”

      Whit didn’t say anything, but he had a very strange look in his eyes. “You’d better go,” he said gently. “I’ll look after Viv.”

      Natalie looked at Vivian, but she turned her face away and refused to say another word. With resignation and bitter sadness, Natalie put down the cream and left the room.

      Nobody was around when she went out the front door. She’d made a clean sweep tonight. Mack and Vivian were both furious at her over Whit when she hadn’t meant to cause trouble. She hoped it would all blow over.

      For the moment, all she could think about was СКАЧАТЬ