A Woman Of Passion. Anne Mather

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       CHAPTER TWO

      MATTHEW AITKEN lounged behind the wheel of the dust-smeared Range Rover, waiting for his assistant, Lucas Cord, to emerge from the arrivals hall. He was getting impatient. The plane from New York had landed more than twenty minutes ago, and as Fleur had been booked into a first-class seat her luggage should have been cleared some time ago.

      It was hot where he was sitting. There was little shade at this time of day and, despite the air-conditioning in the vehicle, which had been working fairly adequately on the journey to the airport, a prolonged period of waiting was causing the heat to rise. The annoying thing was that he wouldn’t have been here at all if his phone hadn’t been out of order. He’d discovered that when he’d tried to call New York that morning, and as he needed to speak to his publisher rather urgently he’d had no choice but to try elsewhere.

      In consequence, it had made sense to continue on to the airport. Lucas had offered to make the call for him, but he’d wanted to speak to Marilyn himself. It was so much easier to deal with the matter personally. And the delay in the completion of the manuscript was his problem.

      All the same, he disliked giving Fleur the impression that he had nothing better to do than come and meet her. It wasn’t as if he was even eager to have her here. But she was still his sister-in-law, even if his brother was no longer around. Chase’s death at the age of forty-two had been such a bitter blow.

      Which, of course, was why the latest manuscript hadn’t been completed. Although it was eight weeks now since Chase’s fall, he was finding it hard to work. Dammit, he thought irritably, what had Chase been thinking of to attack his opponent so recklessly? It wasn’t as if he was an amateur. He’d been playing polo for almost thirty years.

      Fleur, of course, had been devastated. When he’d seen her at the funeral, he hadn’t doubted that it was a blow to her, too. She had been dressed all in black and oozing tears, and he’d had to feel sympathy for her. For the first time in his life, he’d pitied her. He couldn’t believe even she could have wanted Chase dead.

      But as he sat there in the Range Rover, with sweat dampening the shirt on his back and his bare thighs sticking to the leather seat, he couldn’t help remembering that he hadn’t always felt so charitably towards her. He’d been only sixteen when his brother had brought Fleur to live with them. The fact that she had still been married to her first husband at that time hadn’t sat too happily with their father either, but Chase had been mad about her, and somehow they’d all settled down.

      It was just as well his own mother hadn’t been around, Matthew reflected drily. Emily Aitken had died of a rare form of cancer when he was ten, and until Fleur had come to live at the ranch their housekeeper, Rosa Cortez, had been both wife and mother to the three men.

      Fleur had changed all that. In no time at all she was giving Rosa orders, telling his father what to do, and bullying Chase into doing whatever she wanted. His father hadn’t liked it but he was a mild man, more at home with temperamental horses than temperamental women, and at least he could escape into the stables whenever he felt like it.

      Of course, the horses their father bred were what had enabled Chase to become the successful sportsman he had been. The Aitken Stud was famous throughout the United States, and enthusiasts came from as far afield as Argentina and Europe to buy the spirited stallions he produced. It was a lucrative business, and for all Matthew had been so young, he had had no doubt that Chase’s wealth had been a goodly part of his allure. Fleur had liked spending his money too much to have been attracted to a poor man, and he’d sometimes wondered what her first husband must have been like, and whether he had been wealthy, too.

      Fortunately, during the early years of their marriage, he, Matthew, had spent most of his time away. College, and then university, had enabled him to avoid the image of his big brother being turned from a laughing, confident man into a grovelling supplicant. Whatever Fleur had, Chase had certainly been hooked on it, and Matthew had preferred to stay out of their way whenever he was at home.

      He had been twenty-two when Fleur tried to seduce him. He remembered the occasion vividly. Chase had been away, playing a match in Buenos Aires, and his father had been attending the horse sales in Kentucky. Matthew wouldn’t have been there at all had it not been for the fact that he was attending an interview the following day in Tallahassee. The editor of the Tallahassee Chronicle was looking for a junior reporter, and Matthew had been hoping to get the job.

      At first he hadn’t believed what was happening. When Fleur had come to his room, he’d assumed there really must be something wrong. It was when she had complained of being so lonely and started to shed her satin wrap that he’d comprehended. And, although his hot young body had been burning, he’d succeeded in throwing her out.

      However, he hadn’t been able to hide the fact that she’d aroused him, and Fleur had seen his weakness as a challenge. At every opportunity she’d let him see how willing she was to be with him, touching him with clinging hands, bestowing longing looks.

      Matthew had been sickened by it. It wasn’t as if there had been any shortage of women his own age, ready and willing to satisfy his every need. But not his brother’s wife, he’d assured himself disgustedly. Dear God, he’d thought, if he ever got that desperate, he’d go out and buy a gun.

      Not that his attitude had deterred Fleur. On the contrary, she’d seemed to find his resistance very appealing. It became a point of honour with her to succeed, and not until he threatened to tell Chase did her provocation cease.

      Of course, that was a dozen years ago now, and Matthew had long stopped worrying about his brother. His own career—first as a newspaper columnist, and then as an overseas reporter working for an agency based in New York—had broadened his mind, and he was no longer surprised by anything people did. Working in war-tom Lebanon and South-east Asia, he’d become inured to man’s inhumanities to man. The problem of a sex-hungry sister-in-law seemed small indeed, when compared to the struggle between life and death.

      Besides, in his absence, Fleur and Chase had appeared to reconcile any differences they might have had. They had both grown older, for one thing, and Matthew’s different lifestyle had reinforced the barriers between them.

      Then, five years ago, Matthew had written his first novel. A lot of it had been based on his own experiences in Beirut, and, to his amazement, it had been an immediate success. Film rights had been optioned; in paperback it sold almost five million copies. He’d become an overnight celebrity—and he’d found he didn’t like it.

      That was when he had had the notion of moving out of the United States. He’d always liked the islands of the Caribbean, and the casual lifestyle of Barbados suited him far better than the hectic social round of living in New York had ever done. When his second book was completed, he had it written into the contract that he was not available for subsequent publicity. He preferred his anonymity. He didn’t want to become a media hack.

      But, to his astonishment, СКАЧАТЬ