In Bed With...Collection. Emma Darcy

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СКАЧАТЬ and willing than she was and he was a fool for not seeing it.

      The blistering thoughts left an awkward silence after Elizabeth had stopped saying whatever she had said. Sam didn’t know if some comment was expected of her. She had none to make anyway. None Elizabeth would want to hear.

      With a sigh, Elizabeth released her hold and fossicked in the silver bag hanging from her wrist. “I’ve brought you Nathan’s gift for being Miranda’s bridesmaid.” She lifted out a purple velvet box and set it on the dressing-table.

      Sam wrenched her mind out of its dark brooding and stared down at the box. No one had ever given her jewellery. A new horse, a new saddle, a motorbike, helicopter-flying lessons…all the birthday presents she’d ever requested had been aimed at what she wanted to do with her life, not at embellishing her femininity.

      “I wasn’t expecting anything,” she half protested.

      “It’s traditional for the groom to thank the bridesmaid this way,” Elizabeth explained.

      “Well, never having been a bridesmaid…” She opened the box somewhat nervously, hoping Nathan hadn’t spent a lot of money on her, and gasped at the beautiful pearl pendant on a fine gold chain, accompanied by matching pearl earrings. “I can’t accept this!”

      “Nonsense! It’s the perfect complement for your dress.” Elizabeth removed the delicate necklace and hung it around Sam’s throat, proceeding to fasten it there.

      “My ears aren’t pierced.” She’d tried it once in an attempt to compete with the procession of Barbie doll women Tommy favoured, but it had been a miserable failure, the holes getting badly infected, despite her taking every care.

      “They’re clip-ons,” Elizabeth informed her. “Made especially for you. Put them on, Sam. I want to see the complete effect.”

      Realising argument would be futile since Elizabeth had probably chosen the set herself, Sam fumbled them onto her almost nonexistent earlobes and tried to shut her mind to what such lustrous pearls would cost a normal buyer. To the King family it wouldn’t be so much, with their ownership of the pearl farm in Broome, not to mention mining interests in gold and diamonds, as well as their legendary stake in the cattle industry and Tommy’s enterprises.

      Their wealth had never bothered her, never really touched her…until now. She’d always earned her keep at King’s Eden, working on the cattle station and in more recent years, at Tommy’s resort. Still, if this was Nathan’s idea of a gift for her, a memento of his wedding and the part she played in it, there really was no other option but to accept it.

      “Perfect!” Elizabeth declared, her dark eyes twinkling intense satisfaction as Sam lowered her hands, revealing this fabulous last polish to her appearance. “You have such dainty ears. You should show them off more.”

      “Pixie ears,” Sam replied with a grimace, remembering the teasing she’d suffered at school. “These earrings will probably kill me by the end of the day.”

      “Ah, but they set off your face and neck beautifully. Leave them on. You look absolutely perfect now. Luminous and alluring.”

      She would never have attached such words to herself, yet the pearls did make a difference, adding a glow that seemed to make the lilac satin and even her copper hair more lustrous.

      “The beautician should be finished with Miranda in another ten minutes,” Elizabeth said, checking her watch. “Better go along to her room then. She’ll need help with her dress and veil. I’m just going to check on Nathan and Tommy. Make sure they’re on schedule.”

      She was at the door before Sam found wits enough to say, “Thank you for…for everything, Elizabeth.”

      Her eyes locked onto Sam’s once more. “Promise me…” She hesitated, grimaced. “I guess it’s too much to ask.”

      “Please…ask.”

      A heavy sigh. Her eyes softened, pleading for understanding. “Don’t take this unkindly. I mean it for the best, believe me. I don’t think anyone enjoys the bickering that goes on between you and Tommy. He baits, you bite. You bait, he bites. Do you think you could let all that ride today? Nathan’s wedding day? I know it’s a habit you’ve got into but it’s childish and I wish…”

      She shook her head, pained at having to make the apologetic request. Then with an earnest look and an appealing smile, she added, “The elegant woman I see before me doesn’t have to compete with anyone. Carry that thought with you, Sam. Win respect…for being a woman.”

      Childish…The accusation burned through Sam for several minutes after Elizabeth had left. The worst of it was having to acknowledge the tit-for-tat game had started in their teens, probably a childish bid on her part to gain and hold Tommy’s attention. But it had been fun in those days. It hadn’t developed bite until after the horse-breaking incident, his furious resentment of her action stirring resentment in her. And sickening disappointment.

      Since then…ten years of bickering, with the pattern of behaviour between them so deeply set, Sam didn’t know if she could stop it. In some perverse way, it had felt like a bond of intimacy between them, a running commentary on each other’s lives that none of his simpering women could share because it went so far back and held so much famil-iarity…

      But she didn’t want to be his kid sister.

      With despairing anguish clutching her heart, Sam turned to look again at the woman in the mirror. Not one trace of a childish spitfire in that woman. Elegant, luminous, alluring…could she be her today? Would Tommy treat her differently, see in her a woman he wanted in his bed, making love instead of making war?

      Sam took a deep breath and made a fierce resolution.

      Today, no matter how hard it might be to keep it up, she would be that woman, inside and out. She would hold that image in her mind and live up to it. Not because Elizabeth had asked her to. Not because it was Nathan’s wedding. Because suddenly, she saw it as her only hope to change the ground between her and Tommy, and if it didn’t work…perhaps nothing ever would.

       CHAPTER TWO

      HAD SHE been too hard?

      Elizabeth fretted over the question as she headed towards Nathan’s quarters. She had never considered Sam fragile, more a fighter, a survivor against any odds, always bouncing back with a stubborn determination to win out in the end. But she was fighting the wrong fight with Tommy. And sometimes, Elizabeth firmly told herself, one had to be cruel to be kind.

      All the same, it troubled her that Sam had looked so…vulnerable. Somehow it evoked the sense of its being make or break time for these two—the son who could always make her laugh and lift her spirits, and the child-girl-woman who’d become a thorn in his side instead of the smile in his heart. What should have turned out right for both of them had taken a wrong twist and Elizabeth wasn’t sure if her interference could correct it.

      After years of observing them at loggerheads, she had come to the conclusion that pride wouldn’t allow them to change their attitudes. Maybe it was too late and the mutual sniping had killed what might have been. Laid it to waste. She’d tried to tell them, lecturing them on lost opportunities, time going past that could СКАЧАТЬ