Secret Wedding. Emma Richmond

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СКАЧАТЬ he led the way upstairs and along to a room, put her belongings tidily inside. ‘I hope you’ll be comfortable.’

      ‘I’m sure I shall.’

      ‘Your bathroom is through there,’ he added, with a nod towards a door recessed beside the wardrobe. ‘Goodnight.’

      ‘Goodnight,’ she whispered, but he’d already gone. Slumping down on the side of the bed, she stared blankly at nothing, felt her eyelids droop, and roused herself to go and wash, slip into her nightie and climb thankfully between the sheets. Things would look better when she’d had a sleep. Tiredness had heightened her senses, interpreted things wrongly—that’s all it was.

      But it wasn’t, because she was woken with a start at seven-thirty by what sounded like the clattering of tin cans. And she had no more clarity of thought than three and a half hours previously. Hands behind her head, she lay for a moment in the beautiful bedroom and tried to understand something she had laughed about in others. Instant impact, instant attraction—to a man who was so arrogantly sure of himself—it was frightening.

      Another few hours’ sleep would have been nice, she thought ruefully, but if she didn’t get up, would that be another black mark against her?

      Reluctant to face him, she nevertheless showered and dressed in comfortable long shorts and a T-shirt. Her cap of hair still damp, she made her way downstairs. It was a beautiful house—small, and interesting. She vaguely remembered Nerina saying that her brother had bought two houses that backed onto each other. Two front doors, she had laughed, two different addresses.

      Searching for the dining room, she entered a short, glassed-in walkway, creating one side of a quadrangle, she saw, and encompassing what, in England, would have been the back garden—or two back gardens, if it was indeed two houses back to back. A tree, a fountain and a lounger casually abandoned on the flagstones. The patch of sky she could see was a bright, unclouded blue.

      Hearing the soft pad of footsteps behind her, she tensed, slowly turned, felt the same alarming sensations as earlier.

      ‘Breakfast is this way,’ he informed her quietly.

      With searching eyes that were kept carefully empty, a face that showed no emotion, she nodded and followed him to the dining room. Coffee and warm rolls had been set out for her.

      ‘Across the passage. We’ll talk when you’ve eaten.’ He left as quietly as he’d arrived.

      Talk about what? The rules of the house? Letting out a breath which she hadn’t been aware she’d been holding, she poured her coffee, eased her dry throat. He was a man who jangled nerves, reproved with a look, made her feel tense and defensive, babble apologies for deeds not even recognised. The sort of man she had never encountered before. The same aura of authority clung to him this morning as it had the night before, and she wanted to go home.

      Two cups of coffee and a massacred roll later, she stood, tried for composure, and walked into the room across the passage. He was standing at the window, staring out. A man of enormous power.

      He looked as though he’d been out caulking a hull or something. Cream trousers with what looked like a tar stain across one knee, dark blue workshirt, cuffs rolled back to reveal powerful forearms, long-fingered hands, broad shoulders and a well-muscled back, as though he were no stranger to manual labour. A strong neck, an even stronger chin. Stubborn and forthright uncompromising. But then you would have to be uncompromising to amass the fortune that Nerina said he’d amassed.

      Well, Gillan hadn’t amassed a fortune, but she could be pretty uncompromising when she chose, especially where her own identity was concerned, and that was what she must think of. Her own identity. All else was folly.

      ‘Shall we clear the decks?’ she asked, with a brightness that rang false even to herself.

      He made a small movement, then turned. Folding his arms across his chest, he stared at her, his blue eyes direct. ‘By all means. I’m certainly an advocate of plain speaking.’

      ‘Very well. Nerina lives with you?’

      He gave a small nod.

      ‘And she invited me without your consent?’

      ‘Without my knowledge,’ he corrected her.

      ‘So I gathered, and yet she said. . .’

      ‘Yes?’ he invited, that small, cynical smile playing about his mouth. ‘She said. . .?’

      Ignoring his query, a speculative frown in her eyes, she murmured, ‘And she only told you minutes before disappearing off to Sicily?’

      He nodded.

      ‘Why?’ she wondered musingly. ‘She didn’t say it would be your house I would be staying in—didn’t say very much about you at all, except that you valued your privacy, went. . .’ Went your own way, she mentally completed as she remembered what else Nerina had said. And she could believe that; he looked the sort of man who thought his way was the only way.

      With a bewildered little shake of her head, she continued, ‘She certainly didn’t say you wouldn’t want me here. In fact, she intimated that you would welcome me with open arms!’ With a small, very unamused smile, she added, ‘But the arms weren’t open, were they?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘So why, knowing what your reaction would be, did she invite me?’

      ‘You really don’t know?’

      Puzzled, searching a face that gave nothing away, she shook her head.

      ‘Then you had best ask her, hadn’t you?’ he suggested smoothly. ‘When she rings you, as no doubt she will.’

      ‘But I won’t be here, will I?’ she argued, in tones that were creepingly derisive.

      ‘Won’t you?’

      ‘No, I’ll be on the next flight out. Going home.’

      ‘And who will tell Nerina?’ he asked somewhat drily.

      ‘You will.’

      ‘No,’ he denied, and his voice was soft, magnetic.

      ‘But you don’t want me here—have made it abundantly clear how you feel.’

      ‘Yes,’ he agreed bluntly. No hesitation, no concern for offended sensibilities, and she gave a twisted smile, hastily moved her eyes away from a mouth that was—seductive.

      ‘And I certainly don’t wish to stay in a house where I’m not wanted.’ With another brief laugh, she murmured, ‘She invited me for a little holiday, said—’

      ‘Then you must certainly have a little holiday,’ he said in tones that dripped honey. ‘On Gozo.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘Gozo. Malta’s sister island.’

      ‘I know what Gozo is! I just meant—’

      ‘That you didn’t want to go?’ So at ease, so in control, he walked across to the roll-top СКАЧАТЬ