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СКАЧАТЬ date was one thing, kissing someone he had known for years and was currently married to was another. Their paper marriage would be incinerated, obliterated if he gave in to the temptation to kiss her again. One taste of her mouth had already unleashed something feral inside him, something he wasn’t sure he could control for too much longer.

      Calling on every bit of willpower he possessed, Logan dropped his hand from her face and took a step back. ‘I’m sorry, Layla, but this can’t happen. I made the rules for a reason.’

      Her gaze reminded him of the still surface of a lake. Calm. Controlled. But there was a faint ripple of disappointment around the edges. ‘Okey-dokey.’ Her words and tone were flippant given the topic under discussion. So too her overly bright, breezy smile. ‘We’ll leave it at that, then.’ She moved across the room to where the champagne bottle was and topped up her glass. She turned and held her glass up in a toast, her expression faintly mocking. ‘Long live the rules.’

      Logan ground his teeth so hard he mentally apologised to his dentist. ‘Listen—I’m not doing this to insult you. It’s not personal.’

      ‘Isn’t it?’ Her eyes were glittering as brightly as the diamonds on her left hand next to her wedding ring. Not glittering with tears but with anger.

      He let out a slowly controlled breath, anchoring his hands on his hips like he was about to deliver an important lecture. Which he was, but he suspected he was the one who needed to hear it most. ‘Think about it. If we were to have a normal relationship, it would be much more complicated to end it when the year was up. This way we can get an annulment and leave it at that. No harm done.’ He dropped his hands from his hips. ‘I’m not saying it will be an easy year. But we’re both mature adults, and I want us to remain friends at the end of it.’

      She rolled her lips together, her arms crossed, with her champagne glass tilted at a threatening-to-spill angle. ‘What have you told your brother about us? Does he know it’s just a paper marriage?’

      Logan folded back the cuffs of his shirt for something to do with his hands. ‘I haven’t spoken to him yet. He hasn’t answered any of my calls or texts or emails.’ Which, unfortunately, wasn’t unusual when Robbie was on one of his gambling sprees.

      ‘But what will you tell him?’

      It was a question Logan had been asking himself for the last few days. He hadn’t been able to contact his younger brother to talk about anything, much less his sudden marriage to Layla Campbell, the housekeeper’s great-niece. ‘He will have seen the will by now but I’m hoping he’ll accept our marriage as the real deal. It’s not as if you and I are complete strangers and he knows my grandfather always had a soft spot for you.’

      ‘It might be tricky convincing Robbie we’re a genuine couple when he comes home to Bellbrae sometime. You know what he’s like—he often arrives unannounced. If we’re sleeping on opposite sides of the castle it will look kind of odd.’

      Logan could see her point. His brother might be immature and reckless but he wasn’t a total fool. It wouldn’t take Robbie long to pick up on any irregularities in Logan’s relationship with Layla, and their living arrangements in particular. ‘We could move into the west tower. The large suite that has the connecting bedrooms.’ He would be far closer to her than he’d intended—sleeping with just a door between them.

      A door he would keep locked—literally and mentally.

      ‘Fine,’ Layla said, draining her glass. ‘But can I make a request?’

      ‘Sure.’

      She put her glass down and faced him squarely. ‘When we’re pretending to be happily married to Robbie and anyone else, will you use terms of endearment or just call me Layla?’

      ‘What would you prefer?’

      ‘You can call me anything but babe.’ She gave a faint shudder as if even saying the word upset her.

      ‘Why not babe?’

      A hard light came into her eyes and her expression set like fast-acting glue. ‘Someone I used to know used it a lot. I’ve loathed it ever since.’

      Before Logan could ask her to elaborate, she turned and walked out of the room, leaving him with just the lingering fragrance of her perfume.

       CHAPTER FIVE

      ARGH! WHY HAD she drunk that second glass of champagne? Their beach wedding had got to her, that was why. She had been swept away by the romantic setting, swept away by Logan’s kiss. The kiss that had sent shivers up and down her spine and driven silly ideas into her head. Ideas of him wanting things to go further, him wanting her. Not just physically but intellectually and emotionally.

      But he had drawn a line in the sand. Do Not Cross.

      Layla plonked herself down on the bed in her room with a despondent sigh. She’d made a class-A fool of herself, practically begging Logan to kiss her. Shame washed through her at how gauche she had been—how unworldly and foolish to think he might want to tweak the rules on their relationship.

      But his kiss had been so…so genuine. So authentic. So powerfully passionate she could feel it on her lips even now. She only had to close her eyes and she was back there on the warm grainy sand, with the waves washing against the shore with their fringe of white lace, and Logan’s mouth clamped to hers as if he never wanted to let her go. The need he had stirred in her was still humming in her body—a faint background ache she couldn’t ignore.

      Layla hitched up the hem of her dress and wriggled her feet and curled her toes. The white jagged scars on her left leg a jarring reminder of her past. The past that contained memories she wished she could forget. Painful memories that were embedded so deeply into her brain she still had nightmares.

      Babe. The word she loathed because her father had used it to address her mother in love and hate and everything in between. The word her father had said in the moments before the car had slammed into the tree.

      Layla pushed herself off the bed and walked over to the windows overlooking the beach. She hugged her arms around her body, trying to contain the disturbing images that flashed into her brain every time she thought of the accident. Accident? What a misnomer that was. It had been no accident. Her father had wanted to kill them all and had just about succeeded in doing so. He and her mother had died at the scene but Layla had been saved by a passing motorist—an off-duty nurse who had controlled the bleeding until the paramedics had arrived. Lucky Layla. That was what she’d heard the medical staff call her at the hospital.

      Why, then, didn’t she feel it?

      Layla blinked away the past and focussed on the beach below. The turquoise water beckoned but she hadn’t swum since rehab after the accident. And you could hardly call that swimming. She wasn’t sure she could even do it anymore. And she couldn’t imagine doing it without a body suit on, because going out in public with her scars on show drew too many stares, too many pitying looks, too many intrusive questions.

      But on a whim she still couldn’t explain, she had bought a swimsuit when she’d bought her wedding dress. It was a strapless emerald-green one-piece with a ruched panel in the front and a matching sarong. It was still in her suitcase—she hadn’t bothered unpacking it—because taking it out would be admitting СКАЧАТЬ