Claiming His Runaway Bride / High-Stakes Passion. Yvonne Lindsay

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      “You were wrong, old man,” he swore silently. “I am and I have everything you never were or ever had.”

      Yes, now they were back all would be well again.

      The pilot set the chopper down on the designated pad and Luc disembarked, turning to help Belinda from the cabin. They walked in silence toward the main house, which sprawled before them. Belinda halted beside him.

      “Is something wrong?” Luc asked, forcing himself not to scoop her up in his arms and carry her to the front door through his sheer will.

      “I’ve been here before?” she asked, her voice tentative.

      “Of course. Many times before our wedding.”

      “I should remember something, but I don’t. There’s…nothing there.”

      Luc sensed the frustration that held her in its grip and unbidden, felt a brief but undeniable pull of sympathy for her. The feeling left him as quickly as it had come.

      “Come into the house, perhaps something there will jog your memory.”

      He took her hand in his and felt a measure of relief when her slender fingers curled around his, almost as if she was frightened to take the next step without him at her side. A grim smile settled on his face, and the fingers of his other hand gripped the head of his custom-made cane, its solid weight against the palm of his hand a reminder of the disability that would forever remain a legacy of their short marriage.

      Whether she remembered again or not, he had her back at Tautara Lodge, where she belonged. As they crossed the threshold onto the New Zealand native parquet floor in the imposing cathedral-ceilinged entrance, Luc fought to hold back a roar of triumph. Nothing would interfere with his plans now.

      No one reneged on Luc Tanner and got away with it—least of all his beautiful wife.

      Two

      Belinda stared around her. She felt as if she’d been totally displaced in her world. Nothing about the ornate stained-glass and rimu wood-framed doors at the front entrance felt familiar, and as her heels clicked on the highly polished wooden floor the faint echo rang out as a taunting reminder of the echoes in her mind. Fleeting. Intangible. Lost in a moment.

      “Let me show you our suite.”

      “Our suite?”

      “Yes, I run Tautara Estate as a luxury lodge for overseas visitors. They pay handsomely for their privacy, I demand mine. Our rooms are to this side.”

      Luc led her through another set of panelled rimu doors and down a wide, high-ceilinged, carpeted corridor. To her left was a panel of floor-to-ceiling glass windows giving an exquisite view down through the valley, with Lake Taupo, sunlight glinting off its surface, far in the distance. The tranquil beauty of the scene lay in direct contrast to the nerves leaping and dancing in her stomach.

      At the end of the corridor Luc swiped a key card and thrust open the door. Belinda stifled a gasp at the stepdown lounge that spread before her. It was twice the size of her parents’ formal sitting room at their palatial St. Helier’s Bay home in Auckland. Twice the size and, by the looks of it, twice as expensively comfortable.

      She walked down the stairs ahead of Luc. Her hand stroked the fronds of the potted palms that guarded the base of the shallow stairs and trailed over the surface of the baby grand piano nestled in an alcove of the room to her left.

      “You play?” she asked.

      Her fingers grazed the cool ivory of the keys, sending a single discordant note to hover on the air.

      “After a fashion,” Luc answered noncommittally.

      Belinda lifted her head and met his gaze fully for the first time since they’d left the hospital.

      “Did you play for me?”

      Suddenly she needed to know. The piano was a beautiful instrument—an instrument of passion, capable of expressing deepest desires and yearnings even when words failed. As she waited for Luc’s response his eyes changed, deepening in colour, becoming the stormy green of a storm-tossed lake. The scar across his cheek paled and she noted the tension in the set of his jaw.

      “Luc?” she prompted.

      “Yes. I played for you,” he finally ground out.

      The light in his eyes changed again, reflecting a heat that flared to unexpected life from deep within her body. She saw the muscles working in his throat, the twin spots of colour that marked the slant of his cheek-bones—sensed the unleashed power of his body. Had he wooed her with music? Had she been seduced by the power of his long-fingered hands as they’d coaxed perfection from the keys of the baby grand? Had he then coaxed perfection from her?

      A shiver of longing played down her spine, and she felt her breathing slow, her blood thicken languidly in her veins.

      Belinda forced herself to break eye contact, to step further into the room with its luxurious fittings and deeply comfortable furnishings. Despite the value of each piece it was obviously a room that was used and enjoyed. Or at least it had been until they’d been hospitalised.

      “I’ll show you the rest of the suite.” Luc’s voice cut sharply across her thoughts.

      “Yes, that’s a good idea,” she replied as she followed him up the shallow stairs on the other side of the lounge, to the informal dining area and small but functional kitchen. “So you’re completely self-contained here,” Belinda observed as they passed through to another corridor.

      “We are.”

      Belinda couldn’t help but notice his subtle emphasis on the word “we.”

      Luc continued. “The lodge has its own gym and indoor pool, and you can see the tennis court through there.” He indicated a deep-set window that framed a vista out toward the back of the main section of the lodge where a full-size tennis court stood in readiness. “My office is located in the main section of the lodge.”

      “Do you have any guests here at the moment?”

      “No. Not since the accident.”

      Belinda furrowed her brow in confusion. “Is it your off season or something? Couldn’t your staff still have been able to provide their services and the full range of your facilities even while you were in hospital?”

      “Certainly they could. I wouldn’t employ them otherwise.”

      “Then why?”

      “This time had been booked up for personal reasons.”

      She hesitated, noting how his hand had tightened on the head of his cane. His limp seemed more pronounced.

      “Personal reasons?” she probed.

      “Our honeymoon, to be precise.”

      He bit the words out as if they were poison past his lips and Belinda flinched at his tone.

       Their honeymoon? СКАЧАТЬ