Mistresses: Bound with Gold / Bought with Emeralds. Sandra Marton

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СКАЧАТЬ make clear and lifted her hot face. ‘It wasn’t actually my idea to come here tonight,’ she told him, her eyes daring him to take back anything he had said. She told him about Derek’s call regarding the e-mail. ‘Naturally, I thought it’d come from you,’ she said, thinking that a sleaze-bag made a rather unlikely cupid. ‘I thought you were making the first move.’

      Joshua’s response was a slight touch of colour on his hard cheekbones, but he was too smug at the serendipitous outcome and too intrigued by the puzzle to be truly embarrassed by his error—the supremely arrogant assumption that had prompted him to reveal his deepest emotions.

      ‘If he was responding to my private Internet address then he would have presumed so, too. I don’t know what’s on there at the moment because I don’t check my personal messages every day. Ryan’s always on my back about—’

      He broke off and backed out of her arms. ‘Excuse me a minute!’ He was a lot longer than a minute, but when he had finally hung up the phone and came back to her after his low-voiced conversation his eyes were glowing with dangerous amusement.

      ‘My son’s doing. It seems that Ryan suffers from a God complex.’ His ruefulness was an irresistible temptation.

      ‘I can’t imagine where he got that from!’ murmured Regan

      He quelled her with the lift of an eyebrow. ‘Apparently he cracked the password on my e-mail account some time back and decided to use it to set us up.’

      ‘But—how could he know about—? Or that we called each other Adam and Eve?’ she gulped.

      He ran a hand through his hair and slanted her a look that was charmingly abashed. ‘I had drink or three too many that night I lost my temper…after I found out you’d skipped out on me again,’ he confessed. ‘I got a little rowdy—and drunkenly maudlin, according to Ryan—in my lecture to him on the evils of doe-eyed women who lead men around by the uh—certain parts of their male anatomy. He says I mentioned that Derek Clarke had arranged for us to meet…and I also mentioned that we had jokingly appropriated our middle names…’

      ‘You mentioned an awful lot to an impressionable fifteen-year-old-boy,’ Regan said ominously.

      ‘Yes, well…’ Joshua shed his chagrin in a little spurt of paternal pride. ‘I suppose his super-intelligence filled in most of the gaps and the rest just took a little research—for example, your full name is bound to be on the database at Harriman Developments, and as you well know my son doesn’t see privacy laws as a barrier to his investigations. Give him a computer, a modem and enough time, and Ryan could well rule the world.’

      ‘But why?’ Regan said, not wanting to think that Ryan had intended for her to be hurt and humiliated by his father. ‘He knew that we parted on terrible terms.’

      Joshua sighed. ‘That was why. He thought it was his fault, and that, with Carolyn out of the picture, if he could just get us together, propinquity would do the rest—although he had a rather more basic term for it…’

      Regan put her hands over her still warm cheeks. ‘He must think I’m an awful tramp.’

      He took pity on her mortification and took her back in his arms to kiss the tip of her pink nose. ‘I think he thinks you’re a very sexy woman whom his father is crazy about. He said to tell you, by the way, that he never broke his promise to you—what he did was not “dumb and misguided”—it was extremely clever; it was keeping the hard copy evidence that did him in!’

      ‘Still, what if you hadn’t wanted to see me?’ she worried.

      His voice was warm with disbelief. ‘Darling, the boy watched me skewer you with a knife and then listened to me prose on about you for hours while I ploughed my way through half a bottle of Scotch. I assure you, he was in no doubt as to what I was going to do when I got my hands on you again.’

      ‘Throttle me?’

      His hands tightened around her waist as his mouth came down on hers. ‘Never let you go.’

      ‘Oh…’ Bliss was a warm mouth and a strong pair of arms.

      ‘So, does that mean you’re willing to accept my son?’ he murmured against her throat.

      ‘I’ve already accepted he’s your son,’ she replied, confused.

      ‘No, I mean…as your own. I think all the children of one family should call the same person Mother.’ He lifted his head as she stiffened in his encircling arms. ‘Did you think I wasn’t going to ask the woman I love to marry me? Especially one as elusive as you—what kind of idiot do you take me for?’

      Her small face was incandescent with joy. ‘I think you’re a pure genius. I guess that’s why I love you.’

      It was the first time she had said it out loud, but instead of the expected romantic response, Joshua raised a challenging eyebrow. ‘Prove it.’

      She laughed, and kicked off her shoes, and raced him into the bedroom. As she wrestled him playfully onto the bed he murmured, ‘The last time I entertained Eve in here, she was too proud to accept anything from me. I hope this time will be different.’

      ‘“Pride comes before a fall,”’ quoted Regan.

      He smiled. ‘Don’t I know it!’ He traced her kiss-swollen mouth with a gentle finger. ‘So…is your pride willing to be flexible for me tonight?’

      ‘Have you still got that gorgeous tennis bracelet?’ she teased.

      His eyes glinted. ‘You’re not really allergic to gold, are you?’ And when she shook her head he pulled out the bedside drawer and began dragging out boxes and shaking them open over her prone body—bracelets, necklaces, lockets, bangles, brooches falling in an extravagant rain over her black dress.

      ‘Josh!’ She sifted them through her fingers with a laughing protest.

      ‘Not enough?’ He produced more, until she was heaped with splendour and helpless with giggles.

      ‘I bought them all because you don’t have any jewellery and I wasn’t sure what you’d like best,’ he said with perfect seriousness. ‘I want to give you everything, you see,’ he said roughly. ‘Me—life, love, babies galore…everything that it’s in my power to give you.’ Then he took out one last item, a folded piece of creased tissue paper, and carefully unwrapped it, and she sat up, shedding the expensive baubles, to look at the thin, old-gold band plainly set with a straight row of three extremely modest diamonds.

      ‘It was my mother’s engagement ring, and her mother’s before her,’ he said. ‘Dad kept it for me after Mum died so I could give it in turn to my wife. But Clare thought it was too old-fashioned and the diamonds too small. And I never even considered showing it to Carolyn. For the last fifteen years, although I didn’t know it, I’ve been keeping it for you…’

      ‘It’s beautiful,’ said Regan shakily, imagining all the emotion invested in the cherished reminder of loves past.

      He slid it on her slender finger. ‘I knew it would suit you…’

      ‘Small, plain and simple?’ she taunted his ruthless pride.

      ‘Dainty, СКАЧАТЬ