Modern Romance Collection: July Books 5 - 8. Natalie Anderson

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СКАЧАТЬ all over. ‘That’s great. We can make this work, can’t we, Sabrina?’

      She met his earnest gaze, noticed the beads of moisture along his upper lip. ‘Everyone needs to work at marriage.’

      ‘That’s true,’ he said, acting as though her clenched response were actually wisdom and not desperation. ‘Would you like to come with me while I tell my father?’

      ‘I’ll wait here.’ She caught his arm as he turned to go. ‘Aren’t you forgetting something?’

      He looked bemused.

      ‘A kiss?’ She had been half joking but Luis’s expression became serious.

      ‘Of course.’ He took her shoulders and leaned in.

      Sabrina closed her eyes and held her breath. The brush of his lips across her mouth hardly constituted a kiss. She opened her eyes and endured an awkward pause.

      ‘We really should go and tell the families together, present a united front.’

      ‘You go ahead. I’ll... I’ll just take a moment.’ A moment to appreciate that she was marrying a man whose kiss had had absolutely no effect on her—unlike the response a kiss from his brother had drawn. She expelled a long sigh, her glance drifting to the ring on her finger.

      Her dark eyes flickered wide as the full implication of its presence there sank in, or rather seeped out from the pit of her stomach until her entire body was ice cold.

      Now it was just a matter of waiting for someone to realise how not up to the task she was.

      She stood there breathing through the moment of sheer panic, willing calmness to flow through her body.

      Then her chin lifted. ‘Time to step up, Sabrina.’

      * * *

      ‘For a woman who is about to live every little girl’s dream, you don’t sound very happy.’

      He was here, of course he was here. She must have done something very bad in a previous life and she was paying for it now.

      Heart thudding heavily, she turned around just as Sebastian appeared, a dark shadow surrounded by the darker shadow of the undergrowth.

      ‘Happiness is not a right and I am not a little girl.’

      He stopped being shadow and stepped forward into the light.

      At some point since he’d left the table he had discarded his jacket, his unfastened tie hung around his neck and the top three buttons of his shirt were open. She could see the faint shadow of dark chest hair and it made her insides quiver.

      Stop, she told herself firmly. There was no point wanting something you couldn’t have. And she should be glad of it; he’d have used her as he used all women, except, maybe she wanted to be used?

      Unwilling to deal with the sight of him standing there, the sheer physicality of his presence, she took refuge in spitting anger.

      ‘How long have you been standing there?’ If he had seen the awful, miserable proposal she would die.

      ‘Relax,’ he drawled. ‘It’s not like I saw you making mad, passionate love in the shrubbery.’ His eyes drifted over her head to the stone wall with clematis clinging to it. ‘Or up against the wall.’

      The suggestive rasp in his voice sent a deep shudder through Sabrina’s body. ‘How dare you spy on me?’ she squeaked, making the mistake of telling herself she wouldn’t think about the wall. So obviously that was all she could think of...being pressed up against it, his hands on her body, on her skin.

      ‘Spy? I almost drifted off. How was I to know my brother would not bother to go more than two steps from the back door to propose?’ The indents between his eyebrows deepened as his dark brows drew together in a straight line above his heavy-lidded eyes. ‘If that actually constituted a proposal!’

      His flaying scorn at least threw cold water on the fantasy images in her head.

      ‘Your brother is worth ten of you!’

      ‘Oh, more, angel, much, much more.’

      ‘And just because he treats me with some respect and doesn’t grope me.’

      ‘If memory serves, you groped me right back.’

      She compressed her lips. ‘Go to hell!’

      ‘Language...’

      ‘What can I say? I was taught by nuns.’

      ‘They must be very proud of how you’ve turned out. Actually, hell is a bit warm for me at this time of year. I thought Paris, you know what they say, Paris in the springtime...though it’s bit late for that.’

      His contemptuous attitude stung. ‘I wouldn’t expect you to understand the concept of duty. I wouldn’t expect you to understand anything except your own selfish—’ Breathing hard, she broke off. ‘I have no idea why I’m even trying. Have you ever in your life done anything that wasn’t selfish?’

      ‘My lifestyle is not the issue. It’s the thought of yours that is scaring you. You can see the rest of your life stretching out in front of you and you don’t like it. This is your choice, cara, so don’t blame me!’

      Her chin went up and she took a step towards him. ‘My life will be a hell of a lot more fulfilling than yours, unless of course you count chasing anything in a skirt fulfilling. And I will have a husband I can respect!’

      He clenched his jaw, the tension causing a quiver of muscles under the surface of his skin as he held his breath until the stab of pain that felt like a dull blade sliding between his ribs became a manageable dull ache.

      Acknowledging it as jealousy would take him to a place he didn’t want to go, so instead he turned his frustration on the woman standing there.

      ‘And Luis is going to respect you right back. Every girl’s dream, I suppose, but then a crown is worth a few compromises.’ Even as he tossed the accusation at her he recognised the unfairness of it. He was probably one of the few people in a position to understand how trapped she was. ‘I pity you.’

      She clenched her teeth. ‘Don’t you dare feel sorry for me!’ she blazed up at him, her dark eyes flashing.

      ‘I don’t feel sorry for you! I feel...’ The waste of it, he thought, his eyes sinking to her mouth. All that passion and fire and, despite the alarm bells ringing in his head, he stepped in closer. The moment coincided with the lights from the room that had illuminated the paved area where they stood being switched off.

      The moon was behind a cloud and the darkness was total.

      Sabrina blinked in the darkness. It was like being wrapped in inky velvet. A thrill of illicit excitement made her stomach clench and raised a rash of goosebumps on her skin.

      She made herself think past her thudding heart, recognising the danger. Darkness gave a sense of anonymity; people did things in the darkness that they would not in the light. Except for Sebastian, who did what he liked, when he liked.

      What СКАЧАТЬ