Brazilian Escape: Playing the Dutiful Wife / Dante: Claiming His Secret Love-Child. Carol Marinelli

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СКАЧАТЬ although it felt like a dream somehow it was real. Meg realised that he had been right—she had no idea how she’d got through her life without this.

      Without him.

      ‘Shouldn’t we be regretting this by now?’ Meg asked.

      They were lying in a very rumpled bed and it was morning. Her body ached with the most delicious hurt, but Niklas had assured her for this morning’s lesson she would need only her mouth.

      ‘What’s to regret?’ He turned on the bed and looked over to her.

      He didn’t do happiness, but he felt the first rays of it today. He liked waking up to her, and the rest was mere detail that he would soon sort out.

      ‘You live in Brazil and I live in Australia …’

      ‘As we both know, there are planes …’ He looked across the pillow. ‘Do you worry about everything?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘I think you do.’

      ‘I don’t.’

      ‘So how shall we tell your parents?’

      He saw her slight grimace.

      ‘They might be pleased for you.’

      As the real world invaded so too did confusion. ‘I doubt it. It will be a terrible shock.’ She thought for a moment. ‘I think once they get used to the idea they’ll be pleased.’ And then she swallowed nervously. ‘I think.’

      He smiled at her worried face. ‘First of all you need to get used to the idea.’

      ‘I don’t know much about you.’

      ‘There isn’t much to know,’ Niklas said.

      She rather doubted that.

      ‘I don’t have family, as I said, so you have avoided having a mother-in-law. I hear from friends they can sometimes be a problem, so that’s an unexpected bonus for you!’

      He could be so flippant about things that were important, Meg thought, and there was so much she wanted to find out about him. She wondered how he had survived without a family, for a start, how he had made such a success of himself from nothing—because clearly he had. But unlike their wedding some things, Meg guessed, had to be taken more slowly—she couldn’t just sit up and fire a thousand questions at him. Somehow she knew it wasn’t something he would talk about easily, but she tried. ‘What was it like, though?’ Meg asked. ‘Growing up in an orphanage?’

      ‘There were many orphanages,’ he said. ‘I was moved around a lot.’ Perhaps he realised he wasn’t answering her question, because he added, ‘I don’t know, really. I try not to think about it.’

      ‘But …’

      He halted her. ‘We’re married Meg. But that doesn’t mean we need every piece of each other. Let’s just enjoy what we have, huh?’

      So if he didn’t want to talk about himself she’d start with the easier stuff instead. ‘You live in São Paulo?’

      ‘I have an apartment there,’ Niklas said. ‘If I am working in Europe I tend to stay at my house in Villefranche-sur-Mer. And now I guess I’ll have to look for somewhere in Sydney …’ His smile was wicked. ‘If your father gets really cross, maybe I can ask if he knows any good houses—if he would be able to help …’

      Meg started to laugh, because it sounded as if he did understand where she was coming from. Niklas was right—a nice big commission would certainly go a long way towards appeasing her father. She realised that the shock would wear off eventually, and that her rather shallow parents would be delighted to find somewhere for their rich new son-in-law to live.

      As Meg lay there, and the sun started to work its way through the chink in the curtains, she started to realise that this was the happiest she had been in her life. But even with that knowledge there was one part about last night that had been unjustifiably reckless.

      ‘I’ll go on the pill …’ she said. ‘If it isn’t already too late.’

      He had said this wasn’t for ever, and the wedding ring that had seemed a solution yesterday was less than one now.

      ‘If last night brings far-reaching consequences you will both be taken care of.’

      ‘For a while?’

      He looked over and knew that, unlike most women, Meg wasn’t talking about money. But his bank account was the only thing not tainted by his past.

      ‘For a while,’ Niklas said. ‘I promise you—we’ll be arguing within weeks, we’ll be driving each other insane—and not with lust …’ He smiled in all the wrong places, but he made her smile back. ‘You’ll be glad to see the back of me.’

      She doubted it.

      ‘I’m hard work,’ he warned.

      But worth it.

      Though she was going on the pill.

      And then he looked over to her again, and for as long as it was like this she could adore him.

      ‘I am going to write to the airline tomorrow and thank them for not having a first-class seat,’ he said.

      ‘I might write and thank them too.’

      ‘It will be okay,’ he told her. ‘Soon I will ring Carla and I will have her re-schedule things. Then we will meet with your parents and I will tell them.’ He grinned at her horrified expression.

      ‘I’ll speak to my parents.’

      ‘No,’ Niklas said. ‘Because you will start apologising and doubting and I am a better negotiator.’

      ‘Negotiator?’

      ‘How long do you want off for our honeymoon?’ Niklas said. ‘Of course you will want to give them notice—you don’t want to just walk out—but for now we should have some time together. Maybe I’ll take you to the mountains …’ There was no gap between them now, so he pulled her across. ‘And I will also tell them that we will have a big wedding in a few weeks.’

      ‘I’m happy with the wedding we had.’

      ‘Don’t you want a big one?’

      Her hand slid down beneath the sheet and she loved it that he laughed, not understanding that laughter was actually rare for him. Then her mouth followed her hands, and he lay there as she inexpertly woke another part of him.

      ‘Don’t you want a proper wedding, with family and dancing?’

      ‘I hate dancing …’ She kissed all the way down his length and she felt his hand in her hair, gently lifting her to where he wanted more attention.

      ‘I do too.’

      ‘I thought all Brazilians could dance?’

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