Two-Week Wife. Miranda Lee

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СКАЧАТЬ stay here. That’s no trouble, Bianca. I don’t mind. I’m hardly here these days anyway, and there are two beds in your room, aren’t there?’

      ‘That’s the problem,’ she muttered.

      Adam blinked his confusion. ‘The beds in your room are a problem?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘Because Mum won’t be expecting me to occupy one, that’s why.’

      ‘You’ve lost me, Bianca.’

      Her sigh was expressive. ‘It’s like this, Adam. Mum thinks we’re married. Naturally she’ll be expecting me to be sleeping in your bed. And she’ll also expect you to be around a bit more than you have been lately. God knows what you’ve been up to. If I didn’t know better I’d think you were avoiding me.’

      ‘She...thinks...we’re...married,’ he repeated slowly, his eyes narrowing with each word.

      ‘Don’t look at me like that, Adam. I didn’t mean any harm. Honestly. But when I was over there in May she looked so darned ill. Try to understand ...I thought she was going to die!

      ‘I knew she’d always wanted to see me settled—preferably with you—so I told her what would make her happy. I said we were engaged and going to be married. Then after I came back and she kept hanging in there I had no alternative but to follow through. So I sent her some selective photos from Michelle’s wedding and said it was ours.’

      Adam was shaking his head in utter disbelief. ‘How, in God’s name, did you pull that off? You weren’t even wearing white that day!’

      ‘My bridesmaid dress was pale pink and could easily pass for a wedding dress. Besides, Mum wouldn’t have expected me to have a traditional wedding with a big white dress. And you looked suitably bridegroomy in your best man outfit.

      ‘Luckily with it being your sister’s wedding, all your family were there. And on top of that, we had a lot of shots taken together, being partners for the day. Mum thought you looked very handsome, by the way. Oh, and remember those queen-sized sheets she sent, and which I gave you for your bed? They...er....they were our wedding present.’

      Adam’s hand clenched tightly around the glass he was holding. Fury that she would perpetrate this fiasco without even consulting him had his blood bubbling with heated anger along his veins. Naturally she hadn’t expected to get caught. She’d probably thought her poor mum would safely pass away before her outrageous lies came to light.

      That was always the way with Bianca. She never thought things through to all their possible eventualities and consequences. She always just plunged into some mad caper or other, without worrying or working out how it might affect others.

      Never had this been more evident than on the occasion she’d come to him at the age of seventeen and asked him to relieve her of her virginity. Not for reasons of romance, mind. Simply out of curiosity. And she was tired, she’d said, of being the only girl in her group who hadn’t done it. Tired of having to defend her lack of male admirers.

      Back then, boys hadn’t gone for Bianca all that much. Of course, she’d always thought it was because of her lack of boobs, but that hadn’t been so at all. It had simply been because they were used to treating her like a mate, not an object of male desire.

      He’d been the only boy in school who’d fancied her like mad. And she’d known it. What she hadn’t known, when she’d asked this favour of him, was that he’d been a virgin too, back then. A bit of an embarrassment, really, being a male virgin at eighteen. His mates had used to rag him about it all the time.

      He cringed now to think of the total mess he’d made of ‘relieving’ Bianca of her virginity—and himself of his own. He’d been so bloody nervous. Terrified, in fact. He’d been scared of hurting her, scared of coming too soon, scared of not being able to get the damned condom on properly.

      The act itself had turned into an absolute disaster, with most of his fears coming to pass. In the end, he had hurt her, and it had all been over too soon. As for the damned condom...he had no idea how that had eventually assumed its rightful position. No doubt more by accident than design.

      What should have been the most marvellous moment of his life had deteriorated into being the most embarrassing and definitely the most humiliating.

      He could still recall the various expressions on her face during the ten-second event. Pain had been followed by a few moments of frowning frustration, culminating in something even worse... relief when the act had come to a very rapid conclusion, obviously without her experiencing one single moment of pleasure, let alone satisfaction.

      Afterwards she’d been uncharacteristically silent, and he’d skulked off home feeling utterly crushed and totally deflated.

      The only good to come out of that night had been that the experience had seemed to turn Bianca off sex for the next few years. She’d probably concluded it wasn’t worth bothering about, till a supermacho martial arts instructor, whose class she’d enrolled in during her last year at uni, had taken her uninterest in him as the ultimate challenge and then proceeded to show her that sex was nothing like what she’d experienced that night. He’d apparendy been a fantastic lover, with a body any girl would drool over and a technique to match.

      From that moment she’d been hooked—not only on the pleasures of the flesh, but on that sort of male. After Mr Black Belt, she was programmed to believe that arousal and satisfaction were synonymous with an ultra-fit, muscle-bound body and a super-stud mentality.

      Adam had always wanted the opportunity to show Bianca he was no longer the sexual klutz he’d been at eighteen, but she would never give him that opportunity. Her mind was fixed against him, her preconceptions set in concrete. He’d thought he’d come to terms with this, but now he realised he hadn’t. Not for a moment.

      He wanted her now more than ever, and could not bear the thought of spending a single second in the same bed as her without being able to touch her.

      Which was what she would surely ask of him if he agreed to go along with this masquerade of a marriage. She would expect him to allow her to climb into his bed every night for the duration of her mother’s stay. And she would also expect him not to lay a single hand on her.

      Such a prospect was beyond the pale. He would not do it. He was a man, not a mouse, and it was high time Bianca recognised that fact.

      Uncurling his white-knuckled fingers, he placed the empty glass down on a side-table and stood up.

      ‘No, Bianca,’ he said, his face stony, his voice quite cold. ‘No.’

      And he stalked off down the hallway towards his room.

      CHAPTER TWO

      ‘WHAT do you mean...no?’ she shouted after him as he disappeared down the hallway.

      ‘I mean no!’ he called back over his shoulder. ‘I won’t go along with it. You married us, Bianca. Now you’ll just have to divorce us.’

      Bianca gaped after him for a moment before snapping her mouth shut. Exasperation mixed with irritation as she rolled her eyes. She’d had a feeling he was going to be difficult about this. And she’d damned well been right!

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