Sinful Nights: The Six-Month Marriage / Injured Innocent / Loving. PENNY JORDAN

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СКАЧАТЬ to an awkward seventeen-year-old who had never been anywhere, but it could hardly compare with some of the restaurants Alan had taken her to. Alan was something of a gourmet and discovering new eating places was one of his hobbies. He also liked to be seen in the right places, unlike Blake who had little concern for appearances or being seen to do the ‘right thing’, Sapphire acknowledged. Neither did Blake make a sacred ritual out of eating as Alan did. Frowning Sapphire tried to dispel the vague feeling that somehow she was being disloyal to Alan by comparing him with Blake. They were two completely different men who could not be compared, and of the two …

      ‘We’re here.’

      The curt comment broke across her thoughts. Blake stopped the car and in the darkness Sapphire felt him studying her. Her muscles tensed automatically and defensively, although she couldn’t have said why.

      ‘I won’t have you thinking about him while you’re with me,’ he told her tersely. ‘I won’t have it Sapphire, do you understand?’

      She was far too taken aback by the tone of his voice to make any immediate comment. How had Blake known she was thinking about Alan? And why should he object? His attitude fanned the embers of resentment that had been burning in her all day.

      ‘You don’t own my thoughts Blake,’ she told him mockingly, ‘and if I choose to think about the man I love that’s my affair. You can’t stop me.’

      ‘You think not?’

      The headlights from another car turning into the car-park illuminated the interior of the BMW briefly and Sapphire was struck by the white tension of Blake’s face. Did getting her father’s land mean so very much to him? Fear feathered lightly along her spine.

      ‘Don’t push me too hard Sapphire,’ he warned, as he unfastened his seat belt. ‘I am only human.’

      ‘You could have fooled me.’ She muttered the words flippantly beneath her breath, but he caught them, leaning across to grasp her forearms while she was still fastened into her seat.

      ‘Could I? Then perhaps this will convince you just how human I can be, and not to rely too heavily on your own judgment.’ The words carried a thread of bitterness Sapphire couldn’t decipher but there was nothing cryptic about the pressure of Blake’s mouth against her own, hard and determined as his hands pressed her back into her seat.

      It was a kiss of anger and bitterness, even she could recognise that, and yet it called out to something deep inside her; some shadowing of pain she hadn’t known still existed and which suddenly became a fierce ache, leaping to meet and respond to the anger she could feel inside Blake.

      The result was a devastation of her senses; a complete reversal of everything she had ever thought about herself and her own sexuality; her physical response to Blake so intense and overwhelming that it succeeded in blocking everything else out.

      Without her being aware of how it had happened her arms were round his neck, her fingers stroking the thick softness of his hair, and yet it was pain she wanted him to feel—not pleasure, and it was anger she wanted to show him as she returned the fierce intensity of his kiss, and not love.

      ‘You want me.’ It was Blake’s thick utterance of the words that brought her back to reality. That, and her own bitter mental acknowledgement that somehow he had aroused her, had touched a deep core of need inside her that none of Alan’s gentle caresses had ever revealed.

      ‘I want Alan,’ she lied curtly, ‘but since he’s not here …’

      Blake withdrew from her immediately as she had known he would. His pride would never allow him to be a substitute for someone else, but what did surprise Sapphire was that he believed her. But then he could not, as she could, compare her reaction to him with her reaction to Alan. She did love Alan. What she had just experienced in Blake’s arms; that bitter tension that had made her body ache and her eyes sting with suppressed tears was just something left over from the past, that was all.

      ‘Are we going to eat, or do you want to spend the rest of the evening in the car?’

      The harsh words rasped over too-sensitive nerves. Sapphire pushed Blake’s hand away as he reached out to help her with her seat belt, and knew by the tension in his body that she had annoyed him. How on earth were they supposed to live together, supposedly as man and wife, preserving the fiction that they had been reconciled when they reacted so explosively to one another? If only she hadn’t made that stupid comment to her father, but he had looked so ill … and he had been so pleased, almost as though she had given him a reason to go on fighting to live. And so she had.

      The restaurant was just as attractive as she remembered. The old barn had been sensitively restored, and while the atmosphere was not one of luxurious glamour there was something about it that Sapphire found more appealing than any of Alan’s favourite haunts.

      The Head Waiter recognised Blake immediately and they were swiftly shown to a table for two.

      The restaurant wasn’t a large one, the proprietors preferring not to expand and risk losing their excellent reputation. As they studied their menus, Sapphire glanced covertly round the room, wondering if she would recognise any of their fellow diners. A couple sat at one table talking and Sapphire stiffened as she recognised Miranda.

      Four years ago this woman had been her husband’s mistress, and she was still as beautiful as ever Sapphire recognised, and still obviously bemusing the opposite sex if her table companion’s expression was anything to go by. Just as Sapphire was about to look away, she raised her head, her eyes narrowing as they met Sapphire’s. Conscious that she was staring Sapphire tried to look away and found that she could not. A familiar nausea started to well up inside her, and she fought it down. She was over all that now. She wasn’t going to let it happen again, and yet against her will her mind kept on relaying to her mental images of Blake and Miranda together, of Blake’s long-legged, narrow-hipped body making love to Miranda’s, in all the ways it had never made love to hers. The menu dropped from her fingers as she tried to stem the flood of images. She was over this; she had been over it for years … She knew now that most of her anguish sprang not from the fact that Blake and Miranda had been lovers, but rather from the knowledge that he had desired Miranda as intensely as he had not desired her. If Blake had made love to her she would not have suffered this torment; she and Miranda would have met as equals; as women, not as adult and child.

      ‘Sapphire?’

      She realised that Blake was talking to her; watching her and her face closed up. How much had she already given away? She glanced desperately at him but he was looking at Miranda.

      Sapphire followed his look, tensing as she saw the other couple stand up and head towards them.

      ‘Blake.’ Miranda’s companion held out his hand to Blake, who rose to shake it, but it was at Sapphire that he looked.

      ‘Sapphire.’ Miranda’s greeting to her was coolly mocking. ‘You’ve barely changed.’

      The words were designed to hurt, but Sapphire chose to turn the barb back on its sender. ‘In four years?’ she murmured, ‘How flattering. I must confess I barely recognised you.’

      A blatant lie, but she could always use it to explain away her too lengthy scrutiny of the other woman. And she had aged, Sapphire noted now. Although she was still very beautiful, she was now more obviously a woman well into her thirties. She must be a year or two older than Blake. Her companion was in his forties, and although he looked pleasant enough, physically he could СКАЧАТЬ