Penny Jordan Blackmailing the Society Bride


  Blackmailing the Society Bride


  Blackmailing the Society Bride

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Begin Content

Blackmailing the Society Bride

Penny Jordan

Synopsis:

Marriage: Millionaire banker Marcus Canning has decided it's time to
become a father - and a husband....

Penniless: Lucy is facing crippling debts alone - having kicked out her
cheating, stealing ex-husband....

Wedded: Lucy knows she's been chosen by Marcus for convenience - but
she's always loved him and she can't resist his passionate lovemaking....

Sex: That's all it is for Marcus - until he discovers his wife is being
blackmailed by another man....

3

PENNY JORDAN has been writing for more than twenty years and has an
outstanding record: over 150 novels published, including the
phenomenally successful A Perfect Family, To Love, Honor and Betray, The
Perfect Sinner and Power Play, which hit the Sunday Times and New York
Times bestseller lists. Penny Jordan was born in Lancashire, England,
and now lives in rural Cheshire.

Don't miss the next books in Penny Jordan's hot new miniseries

Jet Set Wives

On sale August 2005:

Bedding His Virgin Mistress

#2481

On sale October 2005:

Expecting the Playboy's Heir

#2495

On sale December 2005:

Blackmailing the Society Bride

#2505

Available only from Harlequin Presents

4

If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this
book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to
the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any
payment for this "stripped book."

ISBN 0-373-12505-4 BLACKMAILING THE SOCIETY BRIDE First North American
Publication 2005. Copyright ©2005 by Penny Jordan.

All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or
utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any
electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission
of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road,
Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of
the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same
name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual
known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books U.S.A.

®and TM are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ®are
registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the
Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.

www.eHarlequin.com Printed in U.S.A.

5

'So what you're saying is that my ex-husband has damaged my business so
badly that it and I are both virtually bankrupt?'

Lucy stared at her solicitor. A deepening sense of sickening shock and
fear was gripping her, a feeling that the situation she was involved in
was so frightening and unbearable that it could not possibly be real.

But it was real. She was here, seated in front of Mr McVicar, while he
told her that her ex-husband had so badly damaged the reputation and
financial status of the event organisation company she had set up with
such enthusiasm and delight prior to their marriage that it was no
longer viable.

Nick had cheated her sexually and financially all through their brief
marriage...but then, hadn't she done some cheating herself? A guilty
conscience wasn't going to help her now, Lucy warned herself, as she
struggled with the massive weight of the problems she now faced.

'I've got some commissions for events for the rest of this year,' she
told the solicitor, crossing her fingers behind her back and hoping that
he wouldn't ask her how many, since in reality there were so few.
'Perhaps, in view of that, the bank.,.?'

Her solicitor shook his head. He liked his pretty young client, and felt
very sorry for her, but in his opinion her nature was too gentle for the
unforgiving world of business.

'I'm sorry, my dear,' he told her. 'As you've already

6

said yourself, several potential clients have cancelled then-events and
asked for their deposits back already, and I'm afraid... Well, let's
just say we live in a harsh world, where confidence is something no one
can put a price on.'

'And because of what Nick has done no one will have any confidence in
Pret a Party any more-is that what you mean?' Lucy asked him bitterly.
'Even though Nick is no longer a part of the business, or my life, and I
was the one who started it up in the first place?'

The solicitor's sympathetic look was all the answer she needed.

'I dare say I shouldn't blame clients for backing out. After all, I
suppose in their eyes if I was stupid enough to marry Nick then I can't
have much credibility,' Lucy said with bitter humour. That was certainly
what Marcus believed. She knew that well enough.

Marcus. If there was one person she would like to somehow magically
remove from her life and her memories for ever, that person wasn't Nick,
but Marcus.

'Is there nothing I can do to save the business?' She appealed to her
solicitor.

'If you could find a new partner-someone of probity and known financial
stature, whom people respect and trust, and who is willing to inject
enough capital to settle all Pret a Party's outstanding obligations...'

'But I intend to pay those off myself. I still have money in my trust
fund,' Lucy interrupted fiercely.

'Yes, of course. I realise that. But I'm afraid that clearing Pret a
Party's debts, whilst a very honourable thing to do, will not revive
client confidence in you, Lucy. Regrettably, the actions of your
ex-husband have damaged the reputation of the business virtually beyond
repair, and the fact that both your partners have left Pret a Party-'

'But that's because they both got married and have other

responsibilities now, that's all. Not because of anything else! Carly's
pregnant and has her son to look after, as well as working alongside
Ricardo with the orphanages he has set up, and Julia has a new baby to
look after-plus she's involved in the Foundation-'

'Of course.' Her solicitor soothed her sympathetically. "I know all
this, Lucy, but unfortunately the eyes of the outer and greater
world-the world from which you hope to attract new business-do not see
it. I really am sorry, my dear.' He paused. 'Have you thought of
approaching Marcus? He-'

'No! Never! And I absolutely and totally forbid you to say anything
about any of this to him, Mr McVicar.' Lucy spoke fiercely, standing up
so abruptly that she almost knocked over her chair. Panic and misery
gripped her by the throat as powerfully as though it were Marcus himself
closing his fingers around it. How he would love this. How he would love
telling her that he had warned her all along that this would happen. How
he would look down that aristocratic nose of his with those ice-cold
eyes while he ticked off a list of all that she had done wrong, all the
ways in which she had failed.

Sometimes, in the eyes of her family and Marcus, Lucy felt as though she
had spent the whole of her life failing. For a start she had been a girl
and not a boy, a daughter and not a son-a daughter to be married off and
not a son to be an heir. And, even though her parents had gone on to
have a son, Lucy had somehow always felt she had let them down by being
born first, and the wrong sex. Not that her parents had ever said that
she was a disappointment to them, but Lucy had been born with a
sensitive kind of nature and did not need to be told what people felt.
She had sensed her parents' disappointment-just as

8

in later years she had recognised Marcus's impatient irritation with her.

Not that anyone ever needed to guess what Marcus thought or felt. She
had never known anyone more capable of or uncompromising about saying
exactly what he thought and felt. And he had made it plain from the
first moment he had confronted Lucy across the large desk in his London
office that he did not approve of the fact that her late great-uncle had
left her such a large sum of money.

'I suppose that's why you agreed to be my trustee, is it?' Lucy had
accused him. 'Because you don't approve of me having the money and you
want to make life as difficult for me as possible!'

'That kind of remark merely confirms my concern about your late
great-uncle's mental state when he made his will,' had been Marcus's
caustic response.

'I suppose you were hoping he would leave his money to you?' Lucy had
shot back.

In response, Marcus had given her a look that had made her face burn,
and made her feel as though she wanted to crawl into a corner.

'Don't be so bloody infantile,' he had told her coldly.

Of course she hadn't realised then that Marcus had millions, if not
billions of his own, tucked away in the vaults of his family's merchant
bank, of which he was the CEO.

Mr McVicar watched her sympathetically. He knew perfectly well of the
tension and ill feeling that existed between his client and the
formidably wealthy banker her late great-uncle had appointed as trustee
for the money he had left her.

That money had nearly all gone now-swallowed up by the greed and
fraudulent actions of Lucy's ex-husband and the failure of her
once-successful small business.

But in his view there was still no one better placed to help her in her
present difficult situation than Marcus, whose business savvy was both
awesome and legendary. Mr McVicar himself had urged her not to agree to
her bank's request that she secure Pret a Party's finances by pledging
her inheritance, but she had refused to listen to him. Morally Lucy was
beyond reproach, but unfortunately she had been too gullible for her own
good, and she was paying the price for that now.

He returned to the problem at hand. 'If you could attract a wealthy
business partner who would be prepared to put money into the business,
then-'

'Actually, that's exactly what I've been doing.'

As soon as the words had left her mouth Lucy wondered what on earth she
was doing. Was it Mr McVicar's reference to Marcus that had prompted her
into lying to him and creating a fictional potential backer? Lucy closed
her eyes in helpless acknowledgement of her own vulnerability. Somehow
just hearing Marcus's name was enough to goad her into a fury of
defensiveness.

Mr McVicar looked both relieved and surprised.

'Well, that is really excellent news, Lucy. It puts a different
complexion on matters entirely,' he told her enthusiastically, looking
so pleased that her guilt increased uncomfortably. 'The very best
outcome one could have hoped for, in fact. But obviously it is something
we shall need to discuss. I think we should set up a meeting with your
proposed partner and his or her legal advisers just as soon as we can.
Oh, and of course we must let your bank know what is in the wind. I am
sure that they will be inclined to be far more flexible once they know
that fresh capital will be injected into Pret a Party. I also think it
would be a good idea to go public, even perhaps take a half-page
announcement in those papers most frequently read by your clients
stating once again that your ex-husband

10

now has no access to or involvement with any aspect of Pret a Party's
business, and that moreover you now have a new partner. That should do a
tremendous amount to offset the upsetting effect Nick's fraudulent
behaviour has had on the business.'

Lucy felt as though she were trapped in ever-deepening mud of a
particularly sticky and clinging consistency. Why on earth had she let
the thought of Marcus's disapproval propel her into such stupidity? What
on earth had she done? How could she admit now to Mr McVicar that she
had lied-and why?

'Er, I can't tell you who he is at the moment, Mr McVicar,' Lucy began
uncomfortably. 'It's all very much a secret. Negotiations
are...um...well, you know how it is...'

'Of course. But I must urge you to remember, Lucy, that time is very
much of the essence here.'

Nodding her head, Lucy made her escape as quickly as she could. How
could she have lied like that? It went against everything she believed
in. Now she felt sickeningly guilty and ashamed of herself, and she had
to blink away her self-pitying tears as she stood outside her
solicitor's Mayfair office in the bright autumn sunshine.

What on earth was she going to do? It would take a miracle to save her
now. Automatically, she turned the corner and hurried into Bond Street,
not bothering to glance into the windows of the expensive shops lining
the street. Designer labci clothes were not really her thing. She liked
vintage clothes, salvaged from street markets and family attics. Their
fabrics were so lush, the feel of them against her skin something she
treasured and loved: real silk and satin cashmere; sturdy wool; cool
cotton and linen. Man-made fibres might be more practical for modern-day
city living, but in many ways she was an old-fashioned

girl who craved a return to a quieter, more gentle way of life.

The truth was that secretly she would have loved nothing more than to
marry and produce a large brood of much-loved children whom she and her
husband would raise in an equally large and loved country house. She
envied her two best friends their happy marriages and new young families
more than they or anyone else knew-after all, she had her pride, just
like anyone else. It was that pride that had led her into setting up
Pret a Party in the first place. The very same pride that had just led
her into telling that stupid, stupid lie, she reminded herself miserably.

The magazines on a nearby newsstand caught her eye, and she stopped to
study them. To the forefront, as always, was A-List Life. Lucy started
to smile.

Its eccentric owner and editor Dorland Chesterfield had been such a good
friend to her, using Pret a Party to organise several of the events he
had hosted-events attended by the world's top celebrities. She might
even have considered turning to him for help to get her out of the mess
Nick had left her in were it not for the fact that she knew if there was
anything guaranteed to overwhelm his genuine kind-heartedness it was his
love of passing on gossip. The last thing she needed right now was to
have the story of her downfall spread over the pages of A-List Life.

Of course both her friends-now ex-partners in Pret a Party-had extremely
wealthy husbands, and both of them had in turn come to see her and
gently offered financial help, but Lucy could not accept it. For one
thing there was that wretched pride of hers, and for another it was not
just money she needed, but someone to work in the business with her.
Being given money to clear Pret a Party's debts was a kind gesture, but
she wanted-needed, in fact-to Prove that she was not the silly fool
everyone obviously

12

thought her, and that she could make a success of her business.

Yes, marrying Nick had been a mistake, and, yes, she had-as Marcus had
unmercifully pointed out to her- rushed into the marriage, but she'd had
her own reasons for doing that. Reasons she could never, ever allow
Marcus to discover.

She picked up a copy of A-List Life and handed over some coins, giving a
reciprocal smile to the newsstand vendor before turning to cross the
road. The sunlight glinting on her shoulder-length naturally blonde hair
caused the driver of a large, highly polished, diplomat-plated Mercedes
to slow down and study her appreciatively.

As she regained the pavement Lucy flipped open the magazine and quickly
checked the contents-more out of habit than anything else. It was over
three months now since Pret a Party had managed a large event of any
kind, never mind one glitzy enough to merit page-space in Dorland's
magazine, but to her astonishment she suddenly saw Pret a Party's name
beneath the words: A-List Life's Favourite Party of All Time.'

Bemused, she turned the pages, her eyes widening as she recognised the
photographs covering the entire mid-section of the magazine. They were
from the huge summer party Pret a Party had organised for A-List Life
the previous year.

Tears stung her eyes. It was so typical of Dorland to do something so
generous--and it was generous of him to republish those photographs,
even it" at the same time it was also a way of blowing his own trumpet.

Although at the time she had refused to admit it to anyone, she had
known then that her marriage had been a mistake, and she had known, too,
that Nick was being unfaithful. She had known that Nick was cheating on her,

yes, but she had not known that he was also defrauding her business and
her customers-even if her two best friends Carry and Julia had suspected
what was happening.

Out of concern for her they had kept their suspicions to themselves. Not
so Marcus. Lucy knew that she would never be able to forget the searing
humiliation of having to stand in front of Marcus whilst he listed with
cold fury the fraudulent activities Nick had been engaged in whilst in
charge of finances in Pret a Party.

'Why the hell did you marry him in the first place?' he had demanded
savagely, before adding, 'No, don't bother to tell me. I already know
the answer. Did it never occur to you that you could have sex with him
without marrying him?'

Lucy's face burned hotly now, just remembering how Marcus had looked at her,

'Perhaps I wanted more than sex,' she had countered. She had wanted
more, certainly, but she had not received it. But then, neither had she
given Nick more. And as for the sex... Her face burned again, but for a
different reason.

The Nick who had spoken so urgently and flatteringly of his desire for
her before their marriage had very quickly turned into a Nick who
derided and taunted her for her lack of sexual expertise and
desirability after it. And who could blame him? The effort of
maintaining the fantasy of hot, urgent longing for him with which she
had thrown herself into their relationship had proved too much for her
to sustain once they were married. Nick had taunted her for her sexual
inexperience, claiming that she was frigid and she turned him off, and
she had been in too much torment, compounded by her guilt and
self-loathing, to protest.

'More than sex? Really? And you actually thought you

14

would get more from someone like him?' he had demanded sarcastically.

'It's all very well for you to stand there and-and criticise me,' Lucy
had told him wildly. 'But I don't see that you are exactly having any
success with a long-term relationship!'

'Maybe that's because I haven't chosen to commit to one. I can certainly
assure you that when I do my commitment to it and my conviction about it
will be properly thought out and permanent. My decision won't be made
off the back of imagining myself in love following an alfresco holiday
shag.'

Lucy's hands tightened into impotent fists now, just remembering those
contemptuous words, and the manner in which they had been delivered,
with Marcus looking at her with that arrogant, obnoxious, Marcus look of
his.

She had tried to defend herself, of course. 'That was not-I was not-'she
had begun, but typically Marcus had refused to allow her to continue.
'Oh. come off it, Lucy,' he'd said harshly, 'we all know what happened.
After all, the photographs were plastered all over the celebrity gossip
rags. You, minus bikini top, draped all over Blayne, saying that you
were up for a good time and looking for everything that went with that."

'Goodness,' she had retaliated, in a brittle voice, 'you've actually
remembered the caption word for word. Did you have to practise repeating
it for very long to do that, Marcus?'

Of course she had regretted the idiotic quote recorded in the magazine.
But when you were jet lagged, and you'd packed in such a rush that you'd
omitted to pack matching bikini tops and bottoms, and you got caught out
and papped by some prowling paparazzi with nothing better to do and no
one better to photograph, you naturally did your

best to make a joke of your plight-especially when those same paparazzi
could sometimes be so important to the success of your business.

Not all celebrities, no matter what they might choose to say in public,
genuinely wanted to avoid those camera lenses. Many actively sought out
the events and parties where they would be spotted and photographed.
Thus, Lucy had felt she could not afford to offend the guy who had
snapped her, no matter what her own personal feelings.

If he'd seen her twenty-four hours later, then the photograph he would
have taken would have been a very different one. Then, after a decent
night's sleep and with the loan of a bikini from Jules, she would
probably have been in control enough to tell him truthfully that she was
simply taking a much-needed holiday from the mounting stress of running
a successful business.

Unfortunately the photographer had taken it into his head that her life
was far more interesting than it actually was, and from then on neither
he nor his camera had been very far from her side.

Nick had revelled in the attention. At the time she had taken that as a
sign that, unlike the other men she had dated, he would be able to cope
with her work and its effect on their personal life. She hadn't realised
that for Nick everything had its price-including photographs of them
together, if not actually having sex in a variety of exotic locations
then as close to it as was possible, given that she was wearing bikini
bottoms and he was wearing swimming shorts.

She had had no idea that she was being set up with a view to them being
taken until it was too late and they had been published. And by then she
and Nick were married-

Naturally in public she'd had to shrug off her real feelings and pretend
that she welcomed her new image as a

16

randy, any thing-goes, up-for-it and eager for sex party girl, only too
delighted to let the whole world see how much she wanted her new
husband. Even if by then that same new husband had been privately
calling her frigid and useless in bed, and spending more nights out of
their marriage bed than he was spending in it with her.

She looked at her watch a little bit anxiously. She had spent rather
longer with her solicitor than she had expected, and she was due to put
in an appearance at her great-aunt Alice's ninetieth birthday party this
afternoon.

Great-Aunt Alice lived in Knightsbridge, in a huge old-fashioned
apartment that was always freezing cold because, despite her wealth, she
refused to have the central heating on.

No one in the family ever wanted to visit her in winter, and even in
summer the wise visited equipped with extra layers in the form of
cardigans, pashminas and the like, to ward off the icy blasts which
Great-Aunt Alice insisted were necessary for good health and were the
reason she was still hale and hearty at ninety.

'Balls,' Lucy's younger cousin Johnny had always claimed. 'The reason
she's still alive is because she's too bloody mean to die. God knows, I
could do with my share of her millions.'

"What makes you think you'll get a share?' Lucy's brother Piers had
asked wryly.

'I'm bound to," Johnny had replied smugly. 'I'm her favourite.'

'Yah? Well, you certainly work hard enough at it,' Piers had mocked him.

Nineteen-year-old Johnny, with his slightly louche lifestyle, permanent
lack of money and winning ways, had a reputation within the family of
being someone who was constantly wheeling and dealing. Lucy suspected
that Marcus probably disapproved of Johnny almost as much as he did her.

Marcus! But she didn't disapprove of him, did she? And that was the
cause of, if not all, then surely most of the problems in her life. It
had, after all, been to escape from loving Marcus and the knowledge that
that love would never be returned that she had thrown herself into
Nick's arms. And it was because she still loved Marcus now, despite all
her attempts to stop doing so, that she treated him with hostility and
resentment. That was her shield, her only protection against the
potential humiliation of Marcus-or anyone else-ever discovering how she
felt about him.

19

'Goodness. It's actually warm in here!' Lucy removed the cashmere wrap
she had pulled on over her delicate silk chiffon dress the moment she
walked into Great-Aunt Alice's hallway.

'Yes, I bribed Johnson to put the heat on.' Her brother Piers grinned.

'You might have told me that before,' Lucy grumbled affectionately, as
she fanned herself with her hand to cool down her flushed face. 'How
warm did you tell him to make it? It's like a sauna in here. The flowers
I've bought Great-Aunt Alice will have wilted before she gets them.'

'Never mind your flowers-what about my chocolates?' Piers told her ruefully.

'Piers thought Johnson was probably still working in Fahrenheit,' Lucy's
father chipped in. 'So he told him to set the temperature gauge at
sixty-eight. None of us realised what had happened until Johnson came
back and said that the gauge only went to forty.'

Lucy joined in the good-natured laughter at her brother's expense, and
then suddenly froze as the door opened and Marcus walked in.

Was it her imagination or was there really a small, sharp silence-as
though not just she but everyone else was aware of just how formidable
and commanding Marcus was?

It wasn't only that he was tall-just nicely over six foot-or even that
he was sexily broad-shouldered and taut-muscled. It wasn't even that
combination of thick dark hair and striking ice-grey eyes which could
sometimes burn almost green.

So what was it about him that made not just her own sex but men as well
turn and look towards him'' Turn and look up to him, Lucy amended.

Could it have something to do with the fact that he ran the merchant
bank which had been in his family for so many generations? Because of
that he was in a position of great trust, responsible not just for the
present and future of his clients, but in many cases for the secrets of
their ancestors as well.

But even if one took away all of that-even if he had walked in as a
stranger off the street-women would still have turned their heads to
look at him and would have gone on looking, Lucy acknowledged. Because
Marcus was sexy. In fact, Marcus was very sexy. Her heart attempted to
do a high dive inside her chest, then realised it was attempting the
impossible and ended up crashing sickeningly to its floor. She gulped at
the glass of champagne Piers had handed to her as much for something to
do- some reason not to have to look at Marcus-as for Dutch courage.

He was wearing one of his customary hand-made plain dark suits, a
typical banker's white shirt with a blue stripe, and a red tie.

She took another gulp of her champagne.

'Want another?* Piers asked her.

Lucy shook her head. She wasn't much of a drinker anyway, and her work
meant that it was essential she kept a clear head in social situations,
so she had quickly learned to simply take a small sip from her glass and
then abandon it discreetly somewhere. The up side of this was that she
always had a clear head, but the down side was that her body was simply
not up to dealing with anything more

20

than one small glass of anything alcoholic. But right now the numbing
effect of a couple of glasses of champagne was probably just what she
needed to help her cope with Marcus's presence, intimidatingly up close,
if not exactly as personal as her foolish heart craved.

'Oh, good. Marcus has made it after all,' Lucy heard her mother
exclaiming to Lucy's great-uncle in a pleased voice. 'Charles, do go
over and ask him to join us.'

'Goodness, it is hot,' Lucy said wildly. 'I think I'd better go and get
these poor flowers into some water.'

Her heart was thumping its familiar message to her as she made her
escape, champagne glass in hand, heading for the rambling patchwork of
corridors and small rooms to the rear of the huge apartment which her
great-aunt still referred to as the servants' quarters.

How on earth did Johnson and Mrs Johnson, aided only by a daily, manage
to cope with looking after somewhere this size? Lucy wondered
sympathetically as she hurried down one of the corridors and into the
'flower room'. A row of vases had already been assembled on the worktop,
already filled with water, and Lucy unwrapped her own offering and
busied herself placing the flowers stem by stem into water.

Was she really so afraid of seeing Marcus? Her hands trembled. Did she
really need to ask herself that question? How old was she? Twenty-nine.
And how long had it been since she had come down from university and
looked at Marcus across the width of his desk and known...?

Tears suddenly blurred her vision.

Oh, yes, she had known then, immediately, that she had fallen in love
with him, but she had known with equal immediacy that he did not return
her feelings-that in fact, so far as he was concerned, her presence in
his life was

an inconvenience and an irritation he would far rather have been without.

She had been young enough then to dream her foolish dreams regardless,
to fantasise about things changing, about walking into Marcus's office
one day and having Marcus look at her as though he wanted to drag her
clothes off and possess her right there and then. She had whiled away
many an irascible lecture from Marcus by allowing herself the pleasure
of imagining him standing up and coming towards her. taking hold of her
and putting his desk, or sometimes his chair, more often than not both
of them, to the kind of erotic use for which they had definitely not
been designed.

But the reality was, of course, that she was the one who wanted to tear
his clothes off. And then one day she had looked at him and seen the way
he was looking at her And she had known that her foolish erotic
fantasies and her even more foolish romantic daydreams were just that.
Marcus did not either want or love her, and he was never going to do so.
That was when she had decided that she needed to find someone
else-because if she didn't one-day her feelings were going to get too
much for her and she was going to totally humiliate herself by declaring
them to Marcus.

A husband and then hopefully a family of her own would stop her from
doing that, surely? she'd thought. But she hadn't even managed to get
that right, had she? Her marriage had been a disaster-privately and
publicly. Very publicly.

-She wasn't the kind of person who wanted to be alone. She loved
children, and had known from a young age that she wanted her own.
Although she loved them both dearly, sometimes she felt wretchedly
envious of the love and happiness her two best friends had found with
their husbands.

22

And one day she knew Marcus would marry-and when he did... A shudder of
vicious pain savaged her emotions.

When he did, she made herself continue, she hoped to be protected from
what she knew she would feel by the contentment and love she had found
with another man and her family. How foolishly and dangerously she had
deluded herself.

She couldn't stay here in the flower room for ever, Lucy realised, and
with any luck Marcus might actually have already left by now. Giving her
flowers a final tweak, she turned to leave.

As soon as she opened the door into the drawing room the first person
she saw was her cousin Johnny, who grabbed her arm and announced
eagerly, 'Great-I've been looking for you. More champagne?' Without
waiting for her to respond, he took a glass from a passing waiter and
handed it to her.

'Must say the old girl isn't stinting with the champers. It must be
costing her a pretty penny to put this do on. Champers...waiters. Did
you organise it?'

'Yes,' Lucy said ruefully, remembering the hard bargain her great-aunt
had driven over costs, and how in the end she had given in and suggested
she give Great-Aunt Alice the business cost as her birthday present,
provided her great-aunt supplied the champagne, the hors d'oeuvres and
the waiters' wages. Which probably explained the lack of any food, Lucy
decided.

She tried not to look at Marcus, who was standing the full width of the
room away from her but facing towards her, and watching her, she could
see, with a very grim look tightening his mouth. She took a quick,
nervous, sustaining sip of her champagne, and then another. She couldn't
bear to think about what would happen if Marcus ever got to hear about
that idiotic lie she had told Mr.

McVicar. In the absence of a miracle, she was going have to dispose of
her supposed investor as speedily as she had invented him.

'Actually, Luce, there's something I need to discuss with you.'

'What?' Somehow or other Lucy managed to drag her attention away from
Marcus.

'I need to talk to you,' Johnny repeated patiently.

'You do?' Immediately Lucy was alert to her own prospective danger.
'Johnny, if it's a loan you're after,' she began warningly, 'I haven't
forgotten that you still owe me fifty pounds from last time. Even if you
have.'

'It isn't anything like that,' Johnny assured her earnestly. 'Fact is,
sweet cos, it just so happens that a business acquaintance of mine has
asked me if I would introduce you to him.'

'He has?' Lucy said cautiously.

'Mmm. Have another glass of champagne,' he added encouragingly, removing
Lucy's half-empty glass before she could refuse or protest and summoning
the still-circulating waiter so that he could hand her a fresh glass.

On the other side of the room Marcus's unwavering focus on her had
hardened into a grim-mouthed coldness that caused Lucy's hand to tremble
so much she almost spilt her champagne.

'If he's thinking of commissioning Pret a Paity to do an event for
him...' she began, trying to move round so that she couldn't see Marcus,
and failing as he moved ton.

'No, what he's got in mind is making an investment in Pret a Party.'

'What?' Now she did spill a few drops of her champagne, before managing
to take a steadying gulp of it.

'Oh. yes. He's a bit of an entrepreneur. He's made absolutely stacks of
money from this turnkey business he

24

owns. You know the kind of thing...' Johnny enlarged. 'He employs
cleaners, cooks, someone to wait in for the gas man, someone to collect
your cleaning-all that kind of stuff-for these rich City types who can't
afford the time to do it themselves. He saw the spread in A-List Life,
and heard that you're my cousin, and he said that Pret a Party is
exactly the kind of investment he's looking for. So I said I was seeing
you today and that I'd sound you out.'

'Johnny...' Her head was spinning, and it didn't occur to her to connect
that with her unfamiliar consumption of champagne.

'Why don't you let him talk to you and tell you what he's got in mind
himself? I could give him your office phone number...'

When she had reflected that she needed a miracle she'd never imagined
she would get one-and certainly not one of this potential magnitude. She
felt positively light-headed with relief, almost dizzy.

'Well, yes-okay, Johnny,' she agreed gratefully.

'Great.' Johnny looked at his watch, announcing, 'Lord, is that the
time? I've got to go. His name's Andrew Walker, by the way.'

She hadn't finished her champagne, but she put her glass on the tray as
the waiter went past, absent-mindedly picking up a fresh glass and
wincing slightly as she did so. She knew she shouldn't have worn these
high heels. Shoes were Julia's thing, not hers, and she had only been
persuaded into buying the strappy sandals with their far too high thin
heels because they were the perfect shade of cornflower-blue to wear
with one of her favourite dresses.

Unfortunately, though, they were not parquet-floor-friendly-especially
when that floor had been polished in the old-fashioned way and was as
slippery as an ice rink.

She looked round the room, but she couldn't see either

her parents or her brother, and she was just wondering if she could make
her own escape when suddenly Marcus was standing in front of her,
announcing grimly, 'Don't you think you've had enough?'

Enough of what? Lucy wanted to ask him. Enough of loving you? Enough of
wanting you and aching for you? Enough of dreaming of you whilst the man
I married because I couldn't have you slept in bed beside me ? Enough of
knowing that you are never ever going to love me? Oh, yes, she'd had
enough of that.

'Actually, Marcus, no-I don't.' The familiar pain was back, and it was
intensifying with every second she had to spend in his company. It
seared her and drove her, maddening her with its agonising ache so that
she barely knew what she was saying.

Marcus was looking at her with familiar contempt and irritation. Lucy
gasped in dismay as someone standing behind her accidentally bumped into
her. The combined vertiginous effects of stilettos and Marcus-induced
heartache was definitely not good for one's balance, Lucy thought
miserably, as Marcus gripped her arm firmly to steady her.

'Just how much champagne have you had?' Marcus demanded grimly.

'Not enough,' Lucy answered, with a flippancy she didn't feel.

Marcus was looking at her with a blend of irritation and impatience.
'You can hardly stand,' he told her critically.

'So what?' Lucy tossed her head. She was defying Marcus-baiting him, in
fact! What on earth was happening to her? She was winding him up, and
pushing her luck as she did so. She knew that, but somehow she couldn't
help herself. Somehow she needed to see that look of angry irritation
mixed with contempt in his eyes just to remind herself of the futility
of dreaming impossible dreams.

26

'Actually, I rather think I'd like some more champagne. I'm celebrating,
you see,' she heard herself telling him, uncharacteristically and
recklessly emptying her glass before he could remove it and then looking
round for the waiter with what she didn't realise was champagne-induced
vagueness. Her lips did feel slightly numb, it was true, but then so did
her toes, and they hadn't had any contact whatsoever with the champagne,
had they?

'Celebrating what?' Marcus demanded tersely, his hold on her arm tightening.

'My miracle,' Lucy responded, forming the words very carefully.

She might have imagined it, but she thought Marcus actually swore
softly. 'The only miracle here is that you're still standing,' he muttered.

The waiter was almost level with her. She reached out to pick up a full
glass of champagne from the tray he was carrying, but Marcus got there
before she could lift the glass, the fingers of his free hand closing
hard on her own:

'Leave it where it is, Lucy,' he commanded her calmly.

'I'm thirsty,' Lucy protested. Thirsty for the nectar of his kiss,
thirsty for the feel of his mouth on her own, on her skin, everywhere,
whilst she drank in the taste of him. She looked at his hand, at his
long, strong fingers curled around her own. She wanted to put her other
hand on top of it, so that she could touch him. She wanted to lift his
hand to her mouth so that she could breathe in the scent of his skin as
she explored it with her lips and with her tongue. Longing burned
through her, leaping from nerve-ending to nerve-ending until she was
filled with it, possessed by it...

'I think it's time we left." The cool hardness of Marcus's voice chilled
her overheated thoughts.

'We?' she queried warily.

'Yes. We. I was just about to leave-and, unless you want the remainder
of your great-aunt's guests to witness the unedifying sight of you
sprawled on her parquet floor, I rather think you would be wise to leave
with me. In fact, I am going to insist on it.'

'You're my trustee, Marcus, not my guardian or my keeper.'

'Right now, I'm a man very close to the edge of his patience. And
besides, I need to talk to you about Pret a Party.'

Lucy stiffened defensively.

'If you're going to lecture me about Nick again-' she began, but Marcus
simply ignored her and continued as though she hadn't interrupted him.

'You may remember me mentioning some time ago that my sister Beatrice
wants to plan a surprise party for her husband's fiftieth birthday?'

'Yes,' Lucy agreed. Beatrice was Marcus's elder sister, and her husband
George was something very important in the mysterious highest echelons
of the civil service.

'I have to go and see Beatrice later this week, and she suggested that I
should take you along with me so that she can discuss her party with
you. I thought you might want to check your diary before we fix on a date.'

Lucy exhaled weakly. She was grateful to be given any business right
now-even if it meant having to spend time with Marcus in order to obtain it.

'I've got a fairly free week,' she responded, as nonchalantly as she
could. The truth was that she had a wholly free week; in fact the only
event she had coming up in the whole of the next month was a launch bash
for a sportswear manufacturer.

Somehow or other they had actually reached the door to the hallway,
where her great-aunt was already saying

28

goodbye to some of her other guests, and it was obvious that Marcus had
every intention of hauling her through it. If she dug in her heels,
would he literally drag her across the parquet?

'You're walking too fast,' she told him breathlessly, and then gave a
small startled 'oof of exhaled breath as he stopped so suddenly that she
cannoned straight into him.

She was standing body to body with Marcus, and he had one hand on her
arm whilst his other was pressed into the small of her back. She could
smell the faint lemony scent of his cologne, mixed with warm man scent.
Suddenly the back of her throat prickled treacherously with tears. How
many hours had she wasted after she had first smelled it on him haunting
the men's toiletries departments of upmarket stores? Sniffing and
testing and searching, hoping that she might recognise it and find out
just what it was he wore, so that she could buy some and put a little on
her pillows, so that she could wear it herself if necessary- anything
just to be able to feel closer to him. But she had never discovered what
it was.

Body to body with Marcus. If only by some miracle he would draw her
closer now, and bend his head and cover her mouth with his-if only, if
only...

'Marcus, dear boy-so good of you to come. And Lucy...'

Lucy could feel her face burning as Marcus stepped back from her but
still continued to hold on to her arm.

The almost flirtatious warmth of her voice as her great-aunt had greeted
Marcus chilled quite distinctly over her own name. Lucy noticed
cynically. Was there any woman on the surface of the earth who was
immune to Marcus's personal brand of male charm?

'A truly delightful occasion, Alice. Thank you for inviting me.'

'My dear boy, how could I not? After all, your family have been taking
care of our family's financial affairs since before the Peninsular War.
Of course there should have been food, but I'm afraid Lucy rather let me
down there.'

Lucy gasped in outrage.

'That- Ouch!' she protested as Marcus trod on her toes, then hustled her
out into the street-just as though she were a prisoner under armed
guard, Lucy decided indignantly.

'You do realise that you stood on my toes, don't you?' she objected, as
she breathed in the familiar scent of the sun-warmed city.

'Better my foot on your toes than your foot in your own mouth, don't you
think?' Marcus suggested.

It took Lucy several seconds to recognise what he was saying, but once
she had she glowered indignantly and told him, 'It was Great-Aunt Alice
herself who decided not to have any food. It was nothing to do with me.'

'You amaze me sometimes, you know, Lucy,' Marcus told her grimly. 'Has
no one ever told you that a little tact goes a long way towards oiling
the wheels of business and reputation?'

'You're a fine one to talk! You never bother using tact when you talk to
me, do you?'

'Some situations call for stronger measures,' Marcus answered grimly.

'If you mean my marriage-' Lucy began hotly, and then stopped.

Her marriage was just not something she felt safe discussing with
Marcus. The last thing she wanted was to have him probing into the whys
and wherefores of her relationship with Nick. There was no point in
allowing herself to be drawn into an argument she already knew she

was not going to win.

30

'You can let go of me now. Marcus,' Lucy hissed valiantly several
seconds later, when he was still holding on to her. But Marcus ignored
her, keeping a firm grip on her arm as he flagged down a taxi and then
opened the door for her, almost pushing her inside it. Lucy resentfully
moved as far away from him as she could as he sat down beside her.

'Where to, guv?" the taxi driver demanded.

'Wendover Square. Number twenty-one.'

'Arncott Street."

They had both spoken together.

'Make yer mind up,' the cabbie complained.

'Wendover Square,' Marcus repeated, before Lucy could speak, leaving her
to glower angrily at him.

'It would have been easier if he'd dropped me off first, Marcus."

'I want to talk to you,' Marcus told her coolly.

'So talk,' she said recklessly.

"In private,' Marcus informed her in a very gritty voice.

The taxi driver was turning into Wendover Square, its elegant Georgian
houses overlooking one of London's most attractive private squares.

Marcus's house-the same house his grandfather and his great-grandfather
had lived in, in fact all his ancestors right back to the Carring who
had first begun the bank in the days of the Peninsular War-had just
about the best position in the whole square. Four storeys high and
double fronted, with a proper back garden, it was a true family house,
and Lucy could see how impressed the cabbie was as he pulled up outside
it and unlocked the door for them.

'I do hope that whatever you want to say to me isn't going to take too
long, Marcus.' Lucy was trying to sound as businesslike as possible-a
difficult task when suddenly, for no discernible reason, her tongue
seemed to be

slipping and sliding over her words, and the motion of the taxi had made
her feel very dizzy indeed.

'No Mrs Crabtree?' she managed to articulate, when Marcus opened the
door and there was no sign of his housekeeper. As Lucy knew, the woman
treated her employer as though he were at the very most one step down
from god status.

'She's gone to stay with her daughter, to help look after her new baby.'

'Oh!' Lucy gave an exclamation of surprise as she semi-stumbled in the
hallway.

'I told you you'd had too much to drink,' Marcus said grimly. 'And
you're certainly in no fit state to go anywhere on your own.'

His accusation stung-and all the more so because it was just not true.
She didn't drink! But before she could say so, he was continuing curtly,
'You're out of touch, Lucy. The tipsy, thirty-something, Bridget
Jones-type female is over. The in thing now is the committed working
mother with two children and a husband-and if you don't believe me take
a look at your own friends. Carly and Julia are both married now, and
both mothers.'

As though she needed reminding of that! Lucy thought miserably.

'I am not thirty-anything,' she told him crossly instead. 'And, just in
case you had forgotten, I've been married.'

'Forgotten? How the hell could anyone forget that?'

'And I have not had too much to drink,' Lucy added forcefully.

The look Marcus gave her made her whole body burn, never mind just her face.

'No? Well, all I can say is that if this is the state you were in when
Nick Blayne picked you up, it's no wonder-'

32

'It's no wonder what?' Lucy stopped him. 'No wonder that I went to bed
with him? Well, for your information, I went to bed with him because-'

'Spare me your reminiscences about how much you loved him, Lucy,' Marcus
told her flatly. 'Blayne saw you coming and took advantage of
you-financially, emotionally, and for all I know sexually as well. He
used you, Lucy, and you let him. Couldn't you see what he was?' he
demanded in exasperation. 'I should have thought even a sixteen-year-old
virgin could have recognised that the man was a user.'

'Sixteen-year-old virgins probably have better eyesight than twenty-plus
unmarrieds,' Lucy retaliated flippantly. How many times had she used
flippancy as her defence against the powerful blasts of Marcus's
irritated broadsides? Surety more than enough to know how much they
increased his ire. But what else could she do? Without her protective
shield of nonchalance she might just break down into a sobbing wreck of
pleading female misery, and he would like that, even less!

'I loved Nick,' she lied wildly.

'Did you? Or did you just want to go to bed with him?'

'A girl doesn't have to marry a man in order to have sex with him these
days, Marcus. She doesn't even have to love him. All she needs to do is
simply do it.'

She could see the contempt flashing through his eyes as he looked at her.

"Have you any idea just how provocative that statement is? Or how
vulnerable you are?'

Lucy stared at him. 'What do you mean?'

'I mean that right now any man could get you into his bed.'

That was so not true!'

'No? Want me to prove it to you?'

'You couldn't,' Lucy objected recklessly.

'No?'

He reached for her so suddenly that she didn't even have time to think
about evading him, never mind actually do so. One minute she was
standing in his hallway, the next she was in Marcus's arms, held
securely against him. His mouth came down on her own, hard and sure, hot
with male pride and anger, and he took her half-parted lips in a
victor's kiss. And she didn't care, she didn't care one little bit. A
feeling far more potent than the bubbles from a thousand bottles of
champagne hit her emotions. He was kissing her. Marcus was kissing her.

Marcus was kissing her.

Marcus was kissing her!

35

'Oh. Mmm. Oh...' Greedily Lucy clung, both to the sensation and to the
man delivering it, reaching up to wrap her arms tightly around Marcus's
neck as she caved in to her own need. She had wanted him too much and
for too long to resist this...this miracle of miracles, she decided
headily, and she moved even closer to him, trying to ease the ache deep
inside her body by arching into him and moving her body against his.

'Oh, Marcus...' she sighed ecstatically, as she felt the unmistakable
surge of his erection pressing into her.

'Lucy...no!' He pushed her sharply away.

Bereft and stunned, she stared reproachfully at him.

'You see, this is exactly the kind of situation I've brought you here to
avoid,' he told her brusquely. 'If I'd let you make your own way home-'

'But what if I don't want to avoid it?' Lucy demanded provocatively.
'What if I want...' What on earth was she saying? Another minute and
she'd be telling Marcus that this was what she had been dreaming from
the first time she had stood opposite him in his office. Dreaming of,
lusting after, longing for...

'Never mind what you want,' Marcus told her acerbically. 'What you need
right now is to sleep off that champagne.'

Reddening and humiliated, Lucy started to walk towards the door. 'Well,
in that case I'd better go home, then, hadn't I?' she said petulantly.
The truth was that, whilst she wasn't drunk, the glass and a half of
champagne she'd

had was a whole glass more than she normally had to drink-on an empty
stomach, too. And there was no doubt that the combined effect of
Marcus's presence, the privacy of his house, plus the intensity of her
feelings for him were all working together to make her want to put into
practice the feverish lust-filled desires she had kept hidden for so
very long. However, dizzy with lust and longing though she was, she was
still in control enough to recognise that the best place for her right
now was somewhere with a comfortable bed and no Marcus.

"No way.' Marcus stopped her. 'You can sleep it off here. Come on-this way."

He had turned her round and was practically frogmarching her up the
stairs. Lucy recognised wrathfully. She tried to pull away from him, and
to her chagrin overbalanced on her spindly heels.

'Right-that's it,' Marcus announced, swinging her "up into his arms
before she could stop him as he climbed the last couple of stairs.

With her face buried against his shoulder, and her hand splayed out
across his shirt, perfectly able to feel the crisp male hair beneath it,
Lucy felt as though she had suddenly become a sort of sexual Lucy in
Wonderland, fallen into a magical fantasy world.

Still carrying her, Marcus strode down the landing and in true Hollywood
hero fashion pushed open a bedroom floor with one highly polished shoe.
How typical of Marcus that he would wear such traditional-looking shoes.
Lucy acknowledged, whilst her stomach muscles cramped in pleasure at the
exciting discovery that said shoes looked rather bigger than those worn
by her unmourned ex-husband. They must be at least, a size eleven, maybe
even larger...

The room they were in was obviously a guest room.

36

pristinely neat and decorated in a rather old-fashioned and very
unadventurous mix of traditional chintz and heavy inherited family
furniture.

Not that Lucy had very much inclination to study the furniture-not when
Marcus was sliding her down his body in such a delicious and
delirium-inducing way. Sliding her down his body and trying to step back
from her, she recognised. But she wasn't going to let him.

The shock of her own thoughts was a powerful adrenaline surge, filling
her with a determination that was turning her into someone she hardly
recognised. Someone who was demanding to know why she should not have
what she wanted; why she should not do as others did and simply take
what she wanted. Why she should not for once in her life simply put
herself and her own needs first.

She had never experienced anything so alluringly tempting, so
wonderfully empowering, so overwhelming irresistible. Why should she try
to resist it? Why shouldn't she seize this opportunity? Why shouldn't
she allow herself to seduce Marcus into taking her to bed? Why shouldn't
she do what other women did all the time instead of denying herself what
she so desperately wanted? Why should she always be the one to go
without? Why shouldn't she allow herself this one night?

And tomorrow? When she had to face Marcus's anger and rejection?

But this wasn't tomorrow. It was today. It was here and now. She was
already dealing with Marcus's rejection and had been for years. Why
shouldn't she sweeten it with the kind of memories that would burn
within the shrine of her most secret places for ever?

'Marcus... Marcus...' she whispered fiercely against his lips, and she
lifted her mouth to his, wriggling as close to him as she could,
oblivious to the fact that her movements

had caused the press-studs fastening her fragile silk dress to pop open
until she felt the unwanted presence of its small cap sleeves halfway
down her arms.

The unwanted intrusion of her dress and its unfamiliarly draped sleeves
was easily dealt with. She simply dropped her arms and let it slide down
to the floor, to pool round her feet, then stepped out of it. Thus
freed, she lifted her arms and wrapped them tightly round Marcus's neck,
standing in only one shoe, a thin silk camisole and matching
fluted-legged brief French knickers. Ridiculously, perhaps, one of the
first things she had done after Nick's betrayal and their subsequent
divorce was to go inside the Agent Provocateur shop she walked past most
days on her way to her office and treat herself to the kind of underwear
that every sensual woman had a right to enjoy-even if her husband had
labelled her as sexless.

Marcus was trying to say something to her. she realised, as she rubbed
her nose against the bare flesh of his throat with open sensual
pleasure, breathing in the scent of him. And she could feel his fingers
biting into the soft skin of her upper arms, too. But she was too lost
in the sheer wonder of the moment, and what was happening, to pay any
attention to what he might be trying to say. Why speak, after all, when
they could be doing this? Lucy decided giddily in adrenaline- and
love-fuelled need, as she created around herself the familiar fantasy
that had comforted her Marcus-deprived body for so long. The fantasy in
which Marcus just could not resist her and didn't even want to. Poor
Marcus. He was probably dreadfully uncomfortable in all those
clothes-that tie, that buttoned-up shirt-surely it behoved her to aid
him with their removal?

She tried for the tie first, her tongue-tip pressed firmly against her
teeth as she worked at the knot with eager fingers.

38

'Lucy!'

'Mmm?' She had worn a tie at school, as part of her uniform, so surely
unknotting this one...?

'Lucy...' Marcus's hands covered her own. Lucy looked up at him and gave
him an approving smile. Obviously he shared her own eagerness for him to
be rid of his clothes and wanted to help her. She intended to say as
much to him, but suddenly she became distracted as she looked at his
mouth, and then she couldn't look away again.

'Marcus.' She whispered his name in dizzy delight as she looked at it
and longed for it, touching her own tongue to her lips as her eyes
darkened with the heat of her own hunger for him.

Reaching up, she pressed her mouth tenderly against his. His lips felt
firm and strong, his flesh sensuously distracting and hunger-inducing as
she breathed tiny kisses against it, little nibbles that grew bolder as
each taste fuelled her need for more. Marcus's hands left her arms and
gripped her waist.

It was nice to be held so tightly, she acknowledged, but it would be
even nicer if he were to touch her breast. So much easier, surely, for
her to simply take his hand and place it against the warm swell of her
own flesh beneath the thin silk of her cami and hold it there whilst her
tongue darted excitedly against the closed line of his mouth, begging
for entrance to the pleasures that lay beyond them...

'Lucy!'

What was Marcus doing? He couldn't be pushing her away. Frantically she
reached out to him, then lost her balance and started to fall backwards
onto the bed behind her.

Immediately Marcus made a grab for her, but it was too late, and somehow
or other she was lying on the bed, with Marcus on top of her. The full
weight of his body was

pressing her down into the mattress and it felt so good. In fact it
felt, he felt like heaven...like everything good she had ever
experienced in the whole of her life, only ten times more than that. She
exhaled in delighted bliss and wrapped her arms tightly round his neck,
pressing her mouth against his, her lips parted invitingly.

She heard Marcus make a thick muffled sound. Surely not a groan? And
then his hands were in her hair, his fingers hard and warm against her
scalp as he held her head in sensual imprisonment and his mouth moved on
hers.

Had she imagined she knew what a kiss was? She had known nothing-less
than nothing, Lucy admitted, as the emotional champagne bubbles of
delight and disbelief exploded inside her and raced along her veins into
every part of her body. Most especially to those bits of her body that
were particularly receptive to the kind of pleasure Marcus was giving
her. Even her toes were curling, in a silent exclamation of thrilled awe.

So this was what it felt like to be truly aroused by and responsive to a
man. No wonder in times gone by mothers of impressionable daughters had
guarded them so ferociously. Already she was hooked on what Marcus was
giving her; already she wanted and needed more. His tongue-tip teased
the sensitivity of her lips with small, almost whip-like tormenting
caresses before suddenly hardening and thrusting deep into her mouth,
not just once but repeatedly, until her whole body was shuddering in
rhythmic response to those thrusts.

Dizzily Lucy reflected that she'd asked for one miracle but had actually
got two! Was that how it worked with this miracle thing? Once you had
tuned in to miracles, so to speak, did they just keep on coming? Little
miracles Popping up here, there and everywhere?

40

'Oh, I do so hope there will be more,' she whispered ecstatically as
Marcus released her mouth.

'What?' he demanded, looking down at her, all blazing impatience and
irritation and lethal male desire.

'More,' she repeated sweetly, giving him a beatific smile. 'I would like
more, Marcus. Much more,' she emphasised.

'You want more?' he repeated.

Why was he looking at her like that? As though he couldn't believe what
he was hearing? As though the hard pulse of his erection didn't exist?

Lucy wasn't going to let herself be dragged out of her fantasy.

'Oh, yes,' she agreed. Now that he had kissed her, and she had tasted
him, her body was so fixated on him that it would probably mount an
all-out rebellion if it was denied him now. She wanted him and she was
going to have him, she decided firmly. She deserved to have him.

'It's been such a long time, you see,' she told him. And it had. Such a
very, very long time since she had first looked at him and wanted him.
And now here was her very own personal miracle, making it possible for
her to have him. So of course she wanted more of them-and of him, too.
But right now she didn't have time to explain all of that to him because
right now...right now she had far more important and exciting things she
wanted to do.

She looked up into his eyes and then gave in to the temptation to stroke
her tongue-tip along the line of his throat. She heard him groan, felt
him shudder, and then his hands were on her body, as she had so much
longed for them to be, cupping her breasts whilst she tugged off his tie
and her fingers worked busily to unfasten the buttons of his shirt. The
pads of his thumbs were stroking her erect nipples, working the silk of
her camisole against

them until she moaned in helpless delight at the effect his deliberate
stroking of the fine silk against her sensitive flesh was having on her.

But she got her own back. She had unfastened his shirt and was free to
slide her hands inside it, palms flat against the hard muscle of his
chest. She lifted her head and kissed his collarbone, stringing tiny
kisses together in mute arousal. His fingers plucked erotically at one
nipple whilst her own urgent movements brought the other free of her
cami. She flicked her tongue-tip urgently against the small stone
hardness of Marcus's flat male nipples, tasting first one and then the
other, tormenting herself with the knowledge of the pleasure that lay
ahead of her when she allowed her hands and her mouth to move down over
his body.

Marcus bent his head and kissed her throat. His fingertip traced the
shape of her ear whilst his teeth nibbled gently on her lobe, and then
his mouth caressed the flesh just behind it. A spasm of intense pleasure
and longing shot through her, and she arched her back to bring her
breast fully into his hand, a small, keening moan bubbling in her
throat. Her toes curled, and automatically she opened her legs in eager
supplication.

Against her body she could feel the erect heat and hardness of Marcus's
own arousal, whilst what he was doing to that tiny spot of flesh was
practically bringing her to the point of orgasm all by itself.

His hand stroked her hip and then slid lower, finding the soft curve of
her bottom beneath the wide silky leg of her fluted French knickers.
Some women thought thongs were sexy, but right now Lucy felt that what
she was wearing and the access to all areas they gave Marcus was far
more alluring. Without any need to remove them, his hand had already
moved from her bottom to the soft silky curls

42

of hair between her legs, and his thumb was massaging slow circles
against her mound before his fingers started to tease her open.

Lucy moaned and writhed and lifted her body up to his hands, then gasped
as he stroked deftly into her wetness in the very same heartbeat as his
lips started to caress her tight nipple.

She felt as though a magical cord was somehow stretched from her breast
to her belly, and that what Marcus was doing to her was tightening it to
the point where she wanted to scream with urgent longing for him to do
more, to take her further, deeper.

'Marcus, I'm going to come,' she protested thickly. But instead of
heeding her warning and removing his clothes, so that he could slide
into her, he lifted his head and looked steadily at her whilst his
fingers moved more purposefully over her. Over her and into her.
Stroking her, teasing her, until she was so hot, and so wet, and so
wanting...

'I'm not coming until you're inside me,' she told him, panting out the
words as she struggled to hold back her orgasm, her fingers closing over
him through the fabric of his clothes and her body shuddering violently
in excitement as she realised how thick and strong he actually was.

He undressed with speedy efficiency, scarcely giving her time to enjoy
the pleasure of looking at his naked body-Then he undressed her as well,
and then positioned himself between her welcoming, eager thighs.

'Missionary position?' she huffed, pulling a small face.

"It's all we've got time for if you want me inside you when we come.'
Marcus told her rawly, before bending his head to kiss her naked breasts
in turn whilst he rubbed the hard hot head of his erection against her
clitoris until

she called out frantically to him, begging him to satisfy her.

Lucy felt her orgasm seize her in its seismic grip with his third
thrust, her muscles fastening round him to hold and caress him, to draw
from him the sharp, sweet juice of life itself.

She knew the moment she opened her eyes that she wasn't in her own bed.
But it was several seconds before she realised just whose bed she was
in-or rather whose bedroom, since the room she was in was obviously a
guest room. Marcus's guest room. In Marcus's Wendover Square house.

She gave a small despairing groan as the events of the previous
afternoon and evening formed images inside her head-images she was
forced to view without the protection of her earlier adrenaline-induced
armour.

What on earth had possessed her to behave like that? Granted, she loved
Marcus, and always would love him, but last night she had... She
swallowed uncomfortably whilst her whole body burned in the flames of
her own shocking memories.

She looked at her watch. Ten a.m.

She shot upright in the bed. It couldn't possibly be! She'd always woken
up at seven at the very latest-always. Even on her honeymoon.

But last night with Marcus she'd had the kind of sex, the quality of sex
that she most definitely had not had with Nick-either on her honeymoon
or at any other time.

Marcus? Where was he? She hauled up the duvet, holding it to cover her
naked breasts, even though some sixth sense told her that the house was
a Marcus-free zone. Her clothes, which she could blush-makingly remember
abandoning all over the place, had been thoughtfully retrieved

44

and neatly folded-although she couldn't see her knickers-and there was
an envelope propped up on the tallboy with her name written across it in
Marcus's imperious hand. Keeping the duvet wrapped around herself, she
got out of bed and padded over to the tallboy. Inside the envelope was a
piece of paper on which Marcus had written economically.

Your underwear is in the dryer. Don't leave without having some
breakfast-coffee, fruit, cereal, etc, in cupboards and fridge. Will be
in touch this p.m. re visit to Beatrice.

Her knickers were in the dryer! How domestic, how authoritarian-how Marcus.

And how lovely to know they would be clean. If she had one tiny little
hang-up, it was that she was almost too neat and tidy-and everything
that went with that, Lucy admitted as she hurried into the bathroom. But
then boarding school did that to a person, she reflected, as she stood
beneath the refreshing sting of the shower, lathering her skin and her hair.

The decor in Marcus's house might be slightly old-fashioned, but the
guest bathroom was well stocked with everything that an overnight
visitor minus her sponge bag might need. Lucy smiled approvingly when
she found a new toothbrush as well as toothpaste in the basket beside
the basin, along with a new comb, a small unopened jar of face cream and
even deodorant.

Fortunately her hair was naturally straight, so she had no need to do
anything other than wash and comb it, knowing that by the time she
reached her office it would have dried. And even more fortunately, given
the time and the

fact that she had a considerable amount of paperwork to attend to, she
could go straight there and change into a pair of jeans once she got
there. She always kept several changes of clothes there, just in case.

Her head had begun to ache unpleasantly-a combination of anxiety about
what Marcus might be likely to say to her about last night and lack of
caffeine, Lucy decided as she made her way downstairs in her silk dress
but minus her stiletto shoes.

Marcus's kitchen was, of course, immaculate. Having retrieved her
underwear from the laundry room and quickly put it on-no matter how
saucy it might be, she simply was not a 'no knickers' girl, Lucy decided
firmly- she hurried into the kitchen, desperately in need of a very
strong cup of coffee.

Ten minutes later, after going through every cupboard and finding only
decaf, she was forced to admit that there was an unbridgeable gap
between her idea of what constituted a proper breakfast drink and Marcus's.

Decaf. She screwed up her nose in distaste as she made herself a cup and
munched half-heartedly on a banana.

Those butterflies in her stomach weren't there just because she needed
her caffeine fix. They were there because last night she had seduced
Marcus. Because she had thrown herself at him-and onto him. Her face
started to burn, and not just with the guilty embarrassment she ought to
be feeling. Her mental self might feel guilt and shame and be dreading
having to face Marcus, but her physical self was positively crowing with
delight, reliving with relish every single intimate caress and kiss. It
certainly had no intention of feeling any kind of shame whatsoever.

But what about her emotional self? Lucy wondered sadly as she let
herself out of the house, carefully checking the door had locked behind
her before setting off to

46

walk the short distance to her Sloane Street office. Her emotional self
was caught between the two opposing forces of her mind and her body. Her
emotional self loved Marcus and yearned for him to love her back. Her
mental self said that it was simply not possible, and warned her of the
pain and humiliation she was coursing. Her physical self, on the other
hand, was still wallowing in the triumphant afterglow of sex with a
lover who had elevated the experience to a plane hitherto unknown to her
other than via fevered fantasies and lustful daydreams.

Add to all of that the fact that the thought of seeing Marcus again was
making her feel physically sick with apprehension, and it was no wonder
her head was pounding. Lucy decided as she hurried into the coffee shop
she regularly used to obtain her daytime caffeine fix. To her relief she
was the only customer.

'Your usual?' the girl behind the counter asked cheerfully.

'Please, Sarah-no, make that two,' Lucy told her. 'And a couple of
chocolate brownies as well."

Sarah gave her a wicked grin.

'Caffeine and carbs? It must have been a good night last night.'

The best-at least what I can remember of it,' Lucy agreed, rolling her
eyes and grinning back. But the truth was that the first bit of her
light-hearted response to Sarah's teasing was exactly that- -the truth.
It had been the best-and was likely to remain so, she reminded herself
grimly as she gathered up her double espressos and her brownies and
stepped back into the late-morning sunshine.

Marcus would certainly not want a rerun, and now that she had had her
fantasies come to life-now that she knew just how far short they had
fallen of the reality of the heaven of Marcus's arms around her.
Marcus's mouth on

hers, Marcus's lovemaking-she was going to have to spend the rest of her
life not just knowing she could never love anyone else but also knowing
that she was never going to want to have sex with anyone else.

It was a miserable thing to have to admit to herself as she hurried into
the building that housed Pret a Party's offices, pausing to exchange
smiles with Harry the doorman as she did so.

Once, Pret a Party's offices had been filled with the busy hum of
telephones ringing, clients calling, the laughter of her two best
friends and partners. But now they were empty and silent. Kicking the
door closed as she balanced her coffee, Lucy fought the temptation not
to think about how Marcus had kicked the bedroom door open last
night-and what had happened after he had.

Five minutes later, her dress exchanged for a tee shirt and a pair of
jeans, and her French knickers carefully parcelled up to be rewashed and
kept as a very personal souvenir, Lucy savoured the last delicious gulp
of coffee whilst she scrolled down her e-mails.

No new requests for Pret a Party's services, she saw gloomily. The only
commission she had pending was the sportswear manufacturer's launch of a
new football boot, which was to be held at a very trendy nightclub of
the type favoured by TV celebs, models, premier league footballers and
the like.

Everything was already in place for the launch, but while she drank her
second coffee Lucy brought up the worksheets for it to check them over.

She had based the whole event on the manufacturer's logo and colours,
playing on a 'team event' theme, since they were launching a football
boot. Cheerleaders dressed in a highly-sexed version of a football strip
would provide the main entertainment by chanting the client's name, a

48

new cocktail was going to be served, and Lucy had decided that the food
was going to be miniature portions of that favourite laddish treat-curry
and chips in a plastic carton.

When her telephone suddenly rang she stared at it apprehensively.
Marcus, it had to be! She picked up the receiver and flicked her tongue
nervously over her dry lips.

'May I speak to the Honourable Lucy Blayne, please?'

How was it possible for her heart to sink with relief? Lucy wondered, as
she corrected her caller discreetly by responding. 'Lucy Cardrew speaking.*

'Oh, hi. It's Andrew Walker here-your cousin Johnny...'

Andrew Walker. The miracle who might be going to save Pret a Party and
what was left of her trust fund.

'Oh, yes-of course!'

"Look, I know it's short notice, but I'm going to be out of the country
from tomorrow, so I wondered if there was any chance that you might be
free for lunch today so that we could talk things over and set the ball
rolling, so to speak."

Lucy looked at her watch. It was gone twelve now.

'I could make a late lunch at half one?' she suggested.

'Great. Is the Brasserie in Pont Street okay for you?'

'Perfect,' Lucy confirmed. Pont Street was virtually round the corner
from her office, and the Brasserie was one of her favourite eateries.

'Excellent. I'll see you there at one-thirty, then."

Replacing the receiver, Lucy looked down at her jeans. She would have to
change them for something more suitable for a business lunch. The Armani
suit, probably-referred to by her friends as 'the armour', because Lucy
invariably wore it whenever she had a business meeting to attend. And
always when she went to see Marcus to ask him to release more money from
her trust fund.

49

At dead on one-thirty, fortified by two more cups of espresso and
armoured with the Armani, Lucy fought her way past the untidy jumble of
camera-toting, motorbike-riding paparazzi clustered boldly outside the
Brasserie, waiting for its celeb diners to arrive and leave, and pushed
open the door. She was immediately greeted with a welcoming smile from
the receptionist, who recognised her.

'I'm having lunch with a Mr Walker-Andrew Walker?'

'Mr Walker is already here and waiting at the table,' the mattre d'
informed her.

'Oh, Angelo, you're back! How lovely. Did you have a wonderful time in
Sydney with your son and grandchildren?' Lucy asked warmly.

'That boy-he is doing so well. He has his own restaurant now,' Angelo
informed her proudly as he escorted her past the other tables to one set
discreetly out of earshot of the others.

The man seated there stood up as she approached, extending his hand.
'Andrew Walker,' he introduced himself, and Lucy shook it and sat down.

'Hello Andrew-Lucy Cardvew."

He was a middle-aged man of middle height with an unremarkable face. He
was smartly if somewhat formally dressed, in a suit that-like those
Marcus wore-had obviously come from a bespoke tailor. The shirt had all
the hallmarks of its Jermyn Street origins, and his shoes were handmade
too. but whereas Marcus always looked completely at home and at ease in
the formality of his dark

50

business suits and handmade shirts, Andrew Walker looked rather
uncomfortable in his clothes, and they in turn looked new and somewhat
alien to him.

As he signalled to the waiter he told Lucy, 'Your cousin will have
already mentioned to you that I may be interested in investing in your
business?'

'Yes,' Lucy acknowledged, thanking the waiter for the menu he was
handing her and shaking her head when Andrew asked her what wine she
would like.

'Just water for me,' she told the waiter firmly.

Andrew didn't resume talking about his plans until after they had been
served with their food, and even then he kept his voice low and
conspiratorial as he leaned across the table to tell her firmly, 'I must
stress that at this stage it is imperative that you don't discuss my
approach to you with anyone else.'

'But my solicitor will have to know, surely?' Lucy protested.

'Ultimately, perhaps. Although I would prefer it if my own solicitor
drew up all the necessary agreements first.' He gave a small shrug. 'I
have discovered that the success of my existing business has resulted in
other people becoming very keen to find out what my future financial
moves will be. Any market can only sustain a certain amount of business.
How much business do you have in hand at the moment?'

'Very little,' Lucy told him honestly. 'I expect you know about the
financial problems the business has had to face following my divorce?'

'Of course.'

'I've got a big event coming up next month-the launch of a new football
boot-'

'And that kind of business is profitable?'

'Corporate business is hugely profitable compared with

private business.' Lucy explained. 'When I'm asked to organise an event
where the client wants access to my address book, in order to ensure
that they have enough A-list celebs at the event to assure them of
maximum press coverage, I can charge more than when I am organising a
private event, where the guest fist is supplied by the person giving the
event. Obviously any kind of launch is an event when the attendance of
the right kind of high-profile celebrities is a must. For this event,
for instance, the client is guaranteeing the attendance of the premier
league football star who is the face of their brand, and I have sent
invitations to everyone in my address book who is guaranteed to bring
the press to the event."

"Everyone" being...?'

Lucy gave a small shrug. 'Certain top-rank models and soap stars-the top
names, not the Sand Cisi-a smattering of It Girl-types and rock star
offspring, plus some of the more sociable dot-com millionaires. People
who are glamorous and newsworthy, kind who will add lustre to the event.'

'I see... So I take it that much of Pret a Party's market value lies in
its address book?"

'In some ways,' Lucy agreed.

'When it comes to organising food and drink, venues, flowers, that kind
of thing, who is responsible for choosing who will supply those?"

'Pret a Party,' Lucy told him promptly. 'I'm very strict about who I do
and don't use. Pret a Party's reputation has keen built on the quality
of everything we provide-and that includes the ancillary services we
use. whether they uro marquees or food.'

Mmm. Have you ever thought about selling the Pret a Party concept as a
franchise?"

'No.'

52

'Well, that is one of the areas I am very interested in us looking into
as business partners. It will be expensive to start with, of course,
until the franchisee revenue starts to come in. But what I have in mind
is to use the contacts I have already made via my turnkey business to
build up our own ancillary service agencies-so that we can supply our
franchisees with everything they need and the Pret a Party guarantee of
quality. We buy our own marquees and we provide the men to erect them.
We supply the waiters, the glasses and the drinks. We provide the
florists and the musicians and the cleaning staff-in fact, we supply
everything and anything else our franchisees and their clients may need.'

Lucy stared at him, her food forgotten. That's brilliant,' she told him,
her eyes shining. 'But it will cost a fortune...'

'Indeed it will. But I think the eventual return will make it a
worthwhile investment.'

Lucy didn't know what to say. The most she had been hoping for had been
an injection of capital to refloat the business so that she could build
it up again, but what Andrew Walker was talking about so
matter-of-factly was the creation of a whole business empire.

'As I've already said, I would like your assurance that what we are
discussing is kept strictly between the two of us at this stage.'

Lucy nodded her head.

'I'd like to get things moving as quickly as possible, but obviously
you're going to need time to think over my proposal. How would you feel
about us meeting up again when I get back from this trip?'

'That...That sounds fine,' Lucy managed to tell him, as she fought to
sound businesslike and professional rather than giddy with the delight
and relief she was actually feeling.

'Here's my card,' Andrew Walker told her. 'I have just bought a new
property in Holland Park. It's in the course of being renovated at the
moment, but once the renovations are finished I intend to throw a large
party there for my friends and my business contacts. If all goes as I
hope it will, that event will be organised by Pret a Party, and will be
a means of introducing our new joint venture to everyone.'

'Brilliant,' Lucy repeated, and meant it.

It was three o'clock before Lucy got back to her office, her head
buzzing with excited thoughts and plans. She could scarcely believe her
good luck, and all because Andrew had happened to see that spread about
Pret a Party in A-List Life,

The only down side to this wonderful piece of good luck was that she
wasn't going to be able to say anything about it to Marcus. Or at least
not just yet. It would be such a relief to know that she didn't have to
plead with him to change his mind and allow her to use what was left of"
her trust fund to clear Pret a Party's overdraft and give her some
much-needed working capital. She looked at the telephone. There was no
message from Marcus, despite the fact that he had said he would be in
touch with her. Had he changed his mind? Had he been thinking about last
night and decided that he simply never wanted to see her again, just in
case she tried to repeat her behaviour?

And if he did ring what was he likely to say?

She needed an espresso, Lucy decided.

Marcus frowned as he studied the view from his office window. His
father, grandfather, great-grandfather and all those who had gone before
them had occupied this office in their turn, and Marcus had known from
the moment he

54

had been old enough to know such things that one day he would have to
take over responsibility for the bank and its clients. His father's
death when Marcus had been only six years old had meant that Marcus had
been brought up by his mother and grandfather, who'd made sure that
Marcus was aware of how important the bank was, and the fact that he was
expected to dedicate his life to it. At twenty-one, fresh from
university, Marcus had resented that responsibility, and the way that
life had forced it on him, even while he had felt honour-bound to accept
it. His grandfather at nearly eighty had needed to be allowed to retire,
and he had a duty to take over from him.

And so he had put aside his dreams of travelling the world and focused
instead on doing what he had to do.

He was nearly six years older than Lucy, and the first time she had
walked into his office his feelings towards her had been a mixture of
irritation and impatience. Irritation because he'd had enough on his
plate without having to act as her trustee, and impatience because he
had seen in her eyes the dazed look of a young woman about to develop a
huge and unwanted crush on him.

Marcus did not consider himself to be vain. But he had had enough
relationships to know what the look Lucy had given him meant. He might
have had no choice other than to do what was expected of him and take
over the bank, but he had grimly and determinedly held on to what
independence he did have. Marriage, so far as he was concerned, was a
necessary evil he wanted to put off for as long as he could. One day,
yes, he would marry, and provide the bank with its future administrator,
but not yet And he certainly had no intention of ever allowing himself
to fall in love.

His mouth hardened. Marcus had seen at first hand the destruction
'falling in love' could cause. His own father

had fallen in love when Marcus was six, and he had left his
wife-Marcus's mother-abandoning her and his two children because of that
'love'. He had destroyed their family and left Marcus feeling betrayed
and bereft. And, since he had not been able to hate the father he had
loved so much, his six-year-old mind had turned its hatred on the
emotion that had caused him to leave instead.

Three weeks after he had left them Marcus's father had been killed in an
accident-along with his lover. Marcus had mourned him and promised
himself that he would never make the same mistake as his father. He
would never, ever allow himself to fall in love. Because of that he had
made sure that the women he dated, the women he slept with, were
sophisticated, slightly older than he was himself, often post-divorce
and pre-second marriage. Women who enjoyed sex and were socially aware,
women who understood the rules of the game as he chose to play it-women,
in short, who were the complete opposite of Lucy.

Over the years the initial irritation and impatience he had felt towards
Lucy had fused together to become a gut reaction which was activated
every time he saw her, and it had been intensified to the point where it
had been laced with incredulous disbelief and anger when she had married
Nick Blayne.

She was supposed to be an intelligent young woman. She must have been
able to see what Nick Blayne was. But she had obviously been too blinded
by 'love' to care. Love and lust, if the newspaper photographs he had
seen of her cavorting half naked with Blayne on the Caribbean island
where she had first met him were anything to go by.

Irritation, impatience, anger-and. if he was honest with himself,
perhaps a touch of guilt?

56

Guilt? What the hell did he have to feel guilty about? He hadn't been
responsible for her marrying Blayne, or the catastrophic events that had
followed. He had done everything within his power to stop Lucy
destroying her own financial security and allowing her now ex-husband to
plunder the trust fund, but she had refused to listen to him.

But, ridiculously, he did feel guilty. And for some reason that made him
feel even more intensely irritated and angry with Lucy.

He was, he reminded himself grimly, her trustee, and he was now
ruthlessly determined to protect what was left of her inheritance-from
Lucy herself, if that should prove necessary.

He was well aware that her original blushing, bashful self-consciousness
and virginal sexual curiosity about him had turned to resentment edged
with apprehension. He had made it clear to her that he was not going to
be persuaded into allowing her to remove what was left of her trust fund
to put into her ailing business, no matter how much pressure she put on
him to do so.

Pret a Party was suffering the natural death throes of a business ruined
by greed and mismanagement. The only thing that could save it now was a
massive injection of capital and a very firm hand grasping its control.
That had translated in Marcus's mind into his massive capital injection
and his firm hand, but whilst he could quite easily spare the money, he
could not spare the time to salvage the wreckage of Lucy's once
profitable business.

He had stood by and watched-first assessingly, then reluctantly and then
grudgingly admiringly-as she built up Pret a Party into a very nice
little business, even if she had continued to irritate him with her
almost aggressive

post-crush antagonism towards him and her refusal to listen to his advice.

But all that had been before last night! Taking Lucy to bed had been the
last thing on his mind when he had removed her from the party.

But he had done so. And now...

Marcus frowned heavily. He was almost thirty-five years old-an age by
which all his male ancestors had already been married and had fathered
the male heir who would ultimately take over the family bank. Since he
had never been in love, it was hard for Marcus to envisage what being
'in love' might feel like. His observations of love in others inclined
him to the view that he was better off not knowing. He had deliberately
chosen relationships which allowed him to avoid marriage, but at the
same time he had known that ultimately he must marry. And over this last
year he had become increasingly aware of his duty to the bank and to the
past. He needed a wife and he needed an heir.

Finding a wife would not be a problem, but finding the right kind of
wife-who would adapt to his way of life and understand the duties and
responsibilities it carried- could be one. Especially when the kind of
marriage he wanted was one based on practicality rather than emotion.
Especially when one considered his wish to father an heir.

It was time for him to find himself a woman. A woman with whom he was
both socially and sexually compatible. A woman, perhaps, like Lucy.

Lucy? Had he gone mad? She exasperated him as no other woman could, and
her marriage to Nick Blayne had only increased his impatient anger
towards her.

But last night she had enticed and aroused him as no other woman had.

The truth was that Lucy needed protecting from herself.

58

He would certainly be a far safer and more suitable husband for her than
another Nick Blayne. A marriage between them would benefit them both. He
needed a wife, and Lucy certainly needed a husband-if only to prevent
her from repeating the mistake she had made in marrying Blayne.

And Lucy loved children.

Actually, for them to marry one another was in many ways entirely
logical. She understood the world he lived in because it was also her
world. They both wanted children, and sexually he had sown all the wild
oats he wanted to sow-even if a part of him still mourned the loss of
his youthful dreams of travel and adventure.

His mind was made up, Marcus decided abruptly. He intended to marry
Lucy. And the sooner the better.

All he had to do now was find a way to convince her that she needed to
marry him. And Marcus thought he knew exactly how to do that.

The sensuality Lucy had displayed last night had surprised him, as had
the pleasurable intensity of her sexual response to him.. Lucy was a
woman with a warm sex drive, a woman currently without a sexual partner
in her life and quite dearly a woman who wanted one.

All he had to do was make her need work in his favour, Marcus decided
coolly. He walked over to his desk and picked up the telephone receiver.

The message light was flashing on her telephone when Lucy walked back
into the office. She had been longer at the coffee shop than she had
expected. Her heart slammed the length of her chest cavity before
skidding dangerously to a halt as she played the message and heard
Marcus's voice, telling her that he had arranged for them to visit his

sister and that he would pick her up from her office at four o'clock.

Four o'clock? It was ten to now, Lucy saw, panic-stricken.

Thirteen and a half minutes later she was on her way downstairs, her
hair combed, her lips glossed, and her heart thudding like a drum beat.
'There you are-come on. There's a traffic warden on the prowl and I
don't want to get a ticket.'

There was no time to object as Marcus took hold of her arm and hurried
over to the Bentley parked illegally outside the office block, opening
the passenger door for her so that she could scramble in whilst he
strode round to the driver's door.

The interior of the car smelled of leather and Marcus, and Lucy leaned
back in her seat and closed her eyes, breathing as slowly and carefully
as she could.

'Our flight leaves at six-which means you've just about got time to pack
if I drive you back to your flat now.'

'What? What flight? Where are we going?' Her eyes snapped open and she
lurched forward in her seat.

'To see Beatrice, of course,' Marcus told her patiently. 'Remember?
You're going to advise her about organising a party for George's fiftieth.'

'Your sister lives in Chelsea!' Lucy protested dizzily.

'Most of the time, yes. But she and George also have a villa in Majorca,
and that's where she is right now. She thought it would be a good idea
if you flew out to see her while she's there, so that she can discuss
George's party with you while he isn't around. She doesn't want him to
guess what's going on.'

Silently Lucy digested what he was saying to her. It was not
particularly unusual for clients to fly her out to all

60

manner of places, in order to consult her or to get her opinion of their
chosen venue for their event, but Marcus had said very clearly 'our
flight', which meant...

'You're going to Majorca as well?' she demanded.

'I have some family business I need to discuss with Beatrice, so she
suggested we might as well travel out together,' Marcus told her calmly.
'We'll be staying for a couple of days, so you'll need to pack a few
things.'

'And I'll have to get changed. I can't travel to Pahna wearing armour,'
Lucy protested.

'Armour?'

Lucy could feel herself going red at she recognised her slip-up.

'It's what I call my business suit,' she mumbled.

She could feel Marcus looking at her, but his only comment was a very
dry, 'Mmm."

Marcus turned into Sloane Square and then cut through a couple of narrow
back streets before finally bringing the Bentley to a halt in a
conveniently empty parking space right outside the block of flats where
she lived.

'I'll come up with you.'

It was a statement, not a question or an offer.

Wasn't Marcus going to say anything about last night? She had been
dreading seeing him all day, worrying about what he would say and how
she could respond.

She had told herself that the worst-case scenario would be if he had
simply guessed the truth and challenged her with it. She had even
rehearsed the scene mentally inside her head to prepare herself.

Marcus would say: You're in love with me, aren't you? Lucy: What?
Certainly not. What on earth makes you think that I could be?

Marcus-in that horrid dry voice he could use to such dramatic effect:
Last night?

Lucy-breezily, looking amused and nonchalant: Oh, that! Good heavens,
no. I just fancied a shag, that's all.

But evidently that wasn't going to be how it happened.

Leaving Marcus to follow her, Lucy hurried past the concierge with a
quick 'hello' and then up the stairs. Her flat was on the first floor,
and tiny, but at least she owned it outright and it wasn't a drain on
her finances-unlike the much grander flat Nick had insisted on them
renting during their marriage.

She unlocked the door and walked into the small hallway. The enclosed
and windowless space had been made larger and brighter by the addition
of two non-matching mirrors she had 'borrowed' from the attics at home.
A small table, also rescued from attic oblivion, which she had painted
cream just like the walls, stood under one of the mirrors. On it Lucy
had arranged not flowers, since she believed that every living thing
needed natural light and proper fresh air, but instead her precious Jo
Malone scented candles and a collection of glass candlesticks. Would
Marcus notice the tasteful effect of the arrangement as he followed her
into the hallway?

Beyond the hallway lay a tiny sitting room, furnished and decorated in
various shades of cream, and pin-neat.

'Before I do anything else I'm going to make myself a cup of coffee,'
Lucy told Marcus. 'Would you like a cup?'

'No, thanks. We don't have very much time, you know,' he reminded her.

'You're the one who's organised this, not me, and I'm not going anywhere
until I've had my caffeine fix,' Lucy informed him stubbornly, heading
for the kitchen.

62

'Fine! Where do you keep your passport, Lucy?'

'In the bureau behind the sofa,' Lucy told him from the kitchen.

Marcus opened the bureau and saw passports immediately. Two of them were
bundled together inside a rubber band. He snapped off the band and
opened the top one, and then wished that he hadn't. It was the passport
Lucy had had when she had been married, and the photograph inside it
showed a bright-eyed, happy-looking young woman. Her current passport,
though-the one she had obtained after her divorce, when she had reverted
to her maiden name-showed a thinner-faced young woman whose eyes held
stark pain and despair. What on earth had she seen in Nick Blayne? How
could she have loved him? Was it really 'loved'?

'Did you find the passport?' Lucy asked as she walked past him with her
coffee and pushed open her bedroom door. Lifting a small case from
beneath the bed onto it, she began methodically opening drawers and
placing what she thought she would need on her bed.

'Look-while you're doing that, why don't I pack your toiletries for you?"

Having Marcus safely out of the way and out of her line of vision,
instead of standing there watching her and making her think about last
night, was a very good idea, Lucy acknowledged. So she nodded her head
and handed him the bag she used for such necessities, exhaling slowly
when he had disappeared into her small bathroom.

Determinedly Lucy started to fold the Things she had put on the bed. and
place them into the flat packs she always used for travelling.

'Lucy, what about your pills?' Marcus called out the bathroom.

Her pills! Thank heavens he had reminded her. She had learned the hard
way never to go anywhere without her sun allergy pills.

'In the cabinet,' she called back. 'Second shelf down, right-hand side.'

She heard him opening the cabinet door as she placed the flat packs in
her case, and then he called out again, 'I can't find them.'

Putting down the pack she was holding, Lucy walked into the bathroom,
holding her breath when she was forced to squeeze past him to reach the
cabinet.

They're right here,' she told him, taking the allergy tablets from the
shelf.

'Those aren't contraceptive pills,' Marcus objected.

Contraceptive pills?

'No. I don't take contraceptive pills. I don't need to. I've never
needed to. Nick always used a condom. It was something he was obsessive
about. He told me that he never had and never would have sex without
wearing one.'

This wasn't a subject she wanted to discuss with Marcus in any way,
shape or form, Lucy recognised. But she couldn't help wondering if the
fact that Marcus had felt so good inside her last night had been because
he had been inside her skin to skin, and she had loved the intimacy of
knowing that.

As Lucy hurried back into the bedroom Marcus frowned. Last night, with
unprecedented recklessness, the last thing on his mind had been the need
for any kind of contraceptive or health precaution. He had to admit that
hearing Lucy's ex-husband had insisted on wearing a condom was very good
news.

He watched her whilst she finished her packing. He could feel his body
tightening, and a very specific ache gripping it. He wanted her.

64

He was supposed to be focusing on getting her to want him, not allowing
himself to want her. 'Ready?' he demanded tersely. Lucy gave an
unsmiling nod of assent.

65

Palma airport was always busy, and today was no exception. Lucy
struggled to dodge the mounds of luggage and keep up with Marcus who,
despite having their luggage to deal with, still somehow or other
managed to have a positively 'parting of the Red Sea' effect on the
crowds. They opened to allow him through, and then closed again, forcing
her to fight her way through.

Marcus had now reached the exit, where he was being approached by two
pretty girls wearing the uniforms of a certain car rental firm. Was it a
car they were hoping to persuade him to hire, or a date they were hoping
to be offered? Lucy wondered jealously as she finally caught up with him.

'I was just explaining to these ladies that the hotel will have sent a
car to collect us,' he told Lucy.

'The hotel? What hotel?' Lucy demanded as he started to walk towards the
waiting chauffeurs with their boards displaying clients' names. 'I
thought we were staying with Beatrice.'

'Did you? The villa's quite small and remote, and since Beatrice is
there to oversee some remedial work on the bathrooms I didn't think it
was a good idea for us to expect her to put us up. I've booked us into a
hotel instead. It's iil Dei a, very close to the Residencia, and
supposed to be even better. And don't worry about the bill. I shall be
Paying it. Ah, there's our driver.'

If she stood on her tiptoes, she could just about see the

66

smartly uniformed chauffeur holding up a placard that read 'Hotel
Boutique, Deia'.

Lucy knew Majorca quite well, since it had recently become very much one
of the 'in' places to stay, following on from various celebs buying
property in an exclusive enclave of villas and boutique hotels that had
sprung up on a previously undeveloped part of the island's coastline.
The Residencia had been the place to stay in this upmarket resort, and
from what she had heard the new Hotel Boutique was even more special.
Lucy had heard rave reviews from clients who had stayed there.

Outside the airport, the warmth of the night air wrapped round her like
soft cashmere as the chauffeur opened the doors of a large Mercedes
limousine for them.

Marcus slid into the seat next to her and the chauffeur closed the doors.

'Where exactly is Beatrice's villa?' she asked Marcus uncertainly as the
Mercedes joined the queue of traffic waiting to leave the airport.

'Up in the hills outside Palma.'

'But that's a long way from Deia,' Lucy objected. 'Wouldn't it have been
better for us to have stayed somewhere closer?'

'The Boutique has an excellent reputation, and I thought you'd prefer to
stay there.'

'How long will it take us to get there?' Lucy asked.

'Not that long. Why?'

'I need another caffeine fix. I'm desperate for a cup of coffee.'

And he was desperate for her, Marcus found himself thinking. 'Do you
want me to ask the driver to stop somewhere?'

Lucy shook her head. 'No, I'll wait.'

She was beginning to feel tired, and more than a little

bit headachy, but despite the comfort of the Mercedes she couldn't relax
properly-not with Marcus right there next to her.

The road climbed and turned, winding through the hills, and then started
to drop down again. Below them Lucy could see the lights of villas,
dotted either side of the river ravine, and below them the small harbour
itself. Pure, perfect picture-postcard stuff.

The Mercedes turned in to a narrow stone tunnel beyond which lay a paved
forecourt. Within seconds, or so it seemed, they were standing in the
jasmine-scented coolness of the foyer, a huge fan whirring above their
heads, traditional terracotta tiles underfoot, and the decor echoing the
very best of traditional Majorcan interiors. The white walls were warmed
by striking paintings and woven rugs in rich earthy colours.

'If you will follow Jose, he will show you to your suites.' The
receptionist smiled as she handed Marcus two key cards, and a very young
and very handsome young Majorcan appeared from out of nowhere to assist
them.

The lift was tucked away discreetly in a corner, and as it bore them
upwards Jose told them proudly, 'You have the best suites in the whole
hotel. The King of Spain himself, he has stayed there with his family.'

The lift stopped and Jose held the doors open, giving a small bow as he
encouraged her to step through ahead of him.

A short, wide corridor lay in front of her, its walls painted white and
hung with more paintings. Lucy was tempted to linger and inspect them
more closely, drawn by the richness of the oil paint, but her head was
pounding and she was desperate for coffee.

Only two doors opened off the corridor. Jose stopped at

68

the first of them and opened the door, inviting Lucy to step inside.

As she did so, her eyes widened in appreciation. In front of her was a
large room with a high ceiling, furnished with traditional dark, heavy
wooden furniture which included a huge four-poster bed. Floor-to-ceiling
wooden shutters filled one wall, and when Jose went to open them for her
Lucy gasped in delight. The shutters concealed glass patio doors beyond
which was a well-lit private terrace, complete with its own plunge pool,
and beyond that an uninterrupted view of the sea and sky.

'Thank you, Jose. I'll find my own way around everything.' Lucy smiled
and tipped him so that he could leave and show Marcus to his suite.

As soon as she had closed the door behind Jose, Lucy picked up the
telephone and hurriedly dialled Room Service. Only when she had ordered
her much-needed coffee did she start to study the suite properly.

A wooden screen that could be folded back separated the bedroom from an
integral, sensually luxurious, huge round bath, set into the floor right
in front of the patio windows so that one might lie in the bath and look
out across the terrace and beyond it.

The wall opposite the patio doors was completely mirrored, as was the
wall at right angles to it, and set against the right angle was an
all-glass shower cubicle, so that in effect one could bathe or shower
and see one's reflection in the mirrors at the same time.

She heard a knock on her bedroom door. Her coffee-Wonderful! But when
she went to open the door it was Marcus who was standing outside it.

'I've brought you this,' he told her, handing her a card key. 'I'm going
to ring Beatrice in a minute, and fix up a meeting with her for
tomorrow, but so far as dinner tonight

is concerned, there's supposed to be an excellent restaurant down by the
harbour. It's eight now, so if I book a table for ten...?'

'Yes. Fine,' Lucy agreed, exhaling in relief as she saw the waiter
coming down the corridor.

Ten minutes later, with her caffeine levels replenished, Lucy explored
the rest of her suite.

In addition to her open plan bedroom-cum-bathroom, she also had a
self-contained dressing room and a second bathroom, with another shower
plus bidet and lavatory.

She would have to change before she went out for dinner. A shower would
be speedier, but she just couldn't resist the temptation to wallow
self-indulgently in the bath.

Lucy lay soaking in the bubble-topped silky warm water of her bath,
luxuriating in the sensuality of the experience. She had left her
shutters open, so that she could enjoy the view out to sea should she
feel energetic enough to lift her head off the bath pillow. Instead,
though, she opened her eyes and looked towards the mirrored wall. There
was something irresistibly sensual about the combination of a huge bath
and a mirror in which one could see oneself using it. This was
definitely a suite for lovers.

Lovers. There was only one man she wanted as her lover. Only one man she
had ever wanted, full stop. And that man was Marcus.

Marcus.

Was his suite the same as her own? Was he right now lazing in a tub of
hot water, his body naked beneath the suds? A shiver of sensual pleasure
iced through her own heat, as pleasurable as ice-cream melted by hot
chocolate sauce-only a thousand times more so she suspected that Marcus
was more likely to prefer

70

a fierce shower to a lazy linger in a bath. And he still hadn't said a
word about last night.

Lucy closed her eyes and stroked the soapy water over her skin,
imagining that it was still last night and that Marcus was here with
her, touching her, stroking her. A wet heat that had nothing at all to
do with the water flooded her sex. This was getting dangerous. But she
couldn't resist the temptation to lie there and fantasise, to imagine
and remember. She closed her eyes...

She had almost fallen asleep in the bath! And look at the time! It was
gone nine o'clock. Reaching for the plug, Lucy stepped up out of the
bath and reached for one of the deliciously thick, fluffy towels. The
mirror threw back her reflection-white soap bubbles slithering silkily
down her body, covering her sex and then revealing it. She could feel
the hot beat of her own desire as it pulsed out its hungry message. Her
fingers touched her own body, stroking the foam from the swell of her
mound and then moving lower. She watched her own movements in the
mirrors, unable to look away. Her heart had started to race, a fierce
wanton urgency filling her. Slowly and delicately, her tongue-tip
pressed to her teeth, Lucy ran an experimental finger along her mound
and pressed lightly against her clitoris.

Marcus... Immediately her flesh swelled and glistened richly, her heart
pumping...

Somewhere outside the intensity of her concentration she heard a noise
that sounded like a door opening...

A door opening! Immediately she removed her hand and reached for a
towel, her face burning with self-conscious heat as she realised that
Marcus was standing in her bedroom.

How long had he been there? How much had he seen? Behind him she could
see what must be a connecting door

between the two suites. He must have knocked, but she had obviously been
too preoccupied to hear him. Her face burned with the knowledge of what
she had so nearly been preoccupied with!

'How much longer is it going to take you to get ready?' he asked her.
'Only it's nearly nine-thirty now.'

He, Lucy recognised dizzily, was already changed, wearing a pair of
light-coloured chinos with a darker-coloured top.

'I'm virtually there,' she replied, and then blushed vividly as she
realised just what connotation could be placed on her comment, and how
appropriate it had almost been. She did not dare look at Marcus as she
almost scurried past him and into her dressing room.

'It's a long, steep walk down to the harbour, so I've asked the hotel to
provide us with a car and a driver,' Marcus announced as they walked
into the foyer together, and Lucy glanced down at her
strappy-sandal-shod feet. The same sandals she had been wearing
yesterday. The same sandals one of which she had left on his stairs, and
then found placed neatly with its twin this morning, alongside her
clothes...

She wasn't normally a fan of high-heeled shoes, but the dress she was
wearing had a pretty handkerchief hem and demanded equally pretty footwear.

From the hotel, the road to the harbour wound down alongside the river,
the wooded slopes broken up by the lights of a scattering of expensive
luxury villas,

The harbour itself was tiny, and predictably filled with sleek
expensive-looking yachts-just as the restaurants fronting onto the
harbour were filled with equally sleek and expensive-looking diners.

This was very much Notting-Hill-on-Sea territory, Lucy thought ruefully.
Within seconds of leaving their car and

72

taking less than half a dozen steps, she had seen at least half a dozen
famous faces amongst the groups of people already seated at the tables
set up outside the restaurants and bars.

'The place I've booked us into has a reputation for serving top-quality
fish dishes,' Marcus told her. 'And, knowing how much you like fish, I
thought you might prefer that to a more traditional tapas bar.'

'Yes, I would,' Lucy agreed, as she stiffed a small yawn.

'Sleepy?'

'No, not really. I think my bath must have made me feel tired,' Lucy
responded without thinking, and then felt her whole body start to burn
as she tensed, dreading hearing Marcus say that he knew exactly why she
might be feeling tired.

There was really no reason for her to feel embarrassed about something
so natural. Heavens, she didn't know any women of her own age who were
not prepared to trade opinions on the latest vibrator. But somehow the
fact that Marcus might have seen her almost engaged in such a very
intimate and personal act of self-pleasure made her feel acutely
embarrassed. Especially after last night. Oh, yes, especially after last
night. Now he might think that it was her desire for him that had
prompted her to such a course of action.

He might think it, but she actually knew it, Lucy admitted to herself,
as Marcus guided her between the packed tables and into the restaurant
itself,

Typically, Marcus had managed to secure them a table with just about the
best view of the harbour possible, and he had been right about the food
as well, Lucy saw, when her own meal was placed in front her. Her mouth
started to water. Pan-fried scallops with an Asian fusion-style

warm salad. Marcus, she noted, had chosen a thick tuna

steak.

'More wine?'

Lucy shook her head firmly. She was already on her second glass, and
beginning to feel pleasantly relaxed. She didn't need or want any more.

Marcus had only had two glasses himself, although she noticed that,
unlike her, he did not nod his head when the waiter asked if they wanted
coffee.

'Espresso?' he commented after she had given her order. 'You'll never
sleep.'

'Watch me,' Lucy answered flippantly, and then went bright red. Heavens,
Marcus was going to think she was propositioning him if she kept on
saying idiotic things like that.

Watch her? Oh, he would love to... And not only watch, either.

'What time did you say we were seeing Beatrice tomorrow?' Lucy asked
Marcus hastily, trying to sound businesslike and efficient.

'She's going to ring me in the morning to confirm,' Marcus told her as
he glanced at his watch. 'I don't want to rush you, but the car should
be back for us any minute now.'

Her coffee had arrived and Lucy drank it greedily, relishing both its
smell and its taste, while Marcus summoned' their waiter and asked for
the bill.

She certainly wasn't going to risk having another bath after what had
happened earlier, Lucy decided as she locked her suite door and stepped
out of her sandals. Instead she would make do with a shower. She yawned
sleepily. After last night, and then Marcus walking in on her and

74

almost finding her touching herself, she should have been : on edge all
evening, but instead she had actually felt very relaxed-so relaxed, in
fact, that on a couple of occasions she had even laughed. Marcus had
proved to be an unexpectedly entertaining and interesting dinner
companion, and she had been sorry when the evening had come to an
end-and not just because, given the choice, she would have so much
preferred to end it in Marcus's arms, in Marcus's bed.

She undressed quickly and pulled on the complimentary bathrobe before
tidying away her clothes and heading for the shower.

She had just stepped out of it and towelled herself her dry when she
heard a knock on her patio window. She realised that Marcus was standing
outside, beckoning to her. Like her, he too was wearing a bathrobe, but
whereas on her it fell to the floor and trailed behind her, on Marcus it
only just covered his knees. The sight of the bare tanned flesh of his
legs made the muscles in her lower body clench in unmistakable need.

Fighting down her reaction, she went to open the door, pulling her own
robe protectively around her as she did so. Marcus had obviously walked
across from his own suite, she recognised, and she realised that they
actually shared the terrace, which ran the full length of both suites.

'Marcus, I was just about to go to bed,' she protested.

He ignored her, taking hold of her arm and commanding, 'Come and look at
this,' as he drew her towards the stone parapet that edged the terrace.

'Look at what?' she demanded, and then stood still, a soft 'Oh!' of
pleasure escaping from her lips as down below their hotel, at one of the
villas, fireworks exploded in a burst of scarlet stars.

'Fireworks,' she whispered, entranced.

'I remembered how much you like them.' Marcus smiled.

'They're magical-like champagne in the sky,' Lucy responded softly.
'Someone must be celebrating something.'

As he wanted to celebrate her, Marcus thought. But in a far more private
and intimate way. He would gladly create sexual fireworks for her if she
would just allow him.

Another burst of stars followed the first one, this time a shower of
sparkling silver and white against the night dark sky.

She looked as excited and enthralled as a small child, Marcus reflected,
as she hung onto the stone balustrade and watched. But she wasn't a child.

Lucy could feel Marcus standing behind her, the warmth of his body
taking the chill of the evening breeze from hers and making her want to
lean back against him...skin to skin...whilst the fireworks lit the sky
and her own desire exploded inside her. She looked down. Marcus was
leaning forward to get a better view of the fireworks, his hands either
side of her own, so that she was enclosed between his body and the parapet.

A burst of gold and crimson exploded into the darkness before falling
back to earth...

'Oh, Marcus...' Without thinking, she turned round. He was so close to
her. So very close.

'Marcus...' She looked up at his mouth and swallowed.

Oh, God, but she wanted him.

'They've finished now. I'd better go in,' she told him jerkily, almost
pushing him out of her way in her desperate need to get away from him
before she did something even more stupid than she had done already.

She was in so much of a rush that she didn't realise he had followed her
inside her suite and was closing the patio door until it was too late.

76

She couldn't even move when he began to walk towards her, her mouth
suddenly too dry for her to speak and her legs too weak for her to move.

In complete silence he took hold of her hand and drew her with him
toward the bath and then past it, until they were standing in front of
the mirror. Just where she had been standing earlier, when he had...

The colour came and went in her face as he took her in his arms and
started to kiss her, holding her face in his hands whilst he brushed her
trembling lips over and over again with his own, until she had forgotten
everything but her own need to have his mouth on her now, longer and
harder. Her own hands rose to cover his shoulders, her fingers digging
deep into the muscles as she shuddered fiercely beneath the sudden
thrusting possession of his tongue. She felt his hands on her body,
pushing the robe off her shoulders, and immediately she dropped her arms
so that she could step out of it.

Very slowly Marcus turned her round and drew her back against himself,
so that she was facing the mirror and he was standing behind her. His
hands skimmed her body, stroking her skin, cupping her breasts, whilst
her nipples pushed eagerly against his touch and his mouth teased the
sensitive pleasure spot just behind her ear.

Her whole body arched as the breath left her lungs in a sob of erotic
longing. Helplessly Lucy closed her eyes- half shocked by the sight of
her own naked arousal and the erotic movement of Marcus's hands over her
body, and half so aroused by it that she wanted him to take her there
and then. To bend her forward until she could rest her hands against the
mirror, whilst her hair tumbled round her face and Marcus spread open
her thighs, sliding his hands up to her hips whilst he plunged into the
female heart of

her in a position that was so sensually, shockingly, eternally primitive
and immediate.

She was wet, so very wet, and hot and aching, her muscles quivering in
anticipation of the pleasure and satisfaction her body craved.

'Open your eyes, Lucy, and look in the mirror.'

Very slowly, she did so.

Marcus caressed her naked shoulders, his hands sliding down to cup her
breasts whilst he kissed her throat. The sensation of the slightly rough
pads of his fingertips against the exquisite sensitivity of her tight
nipples made her cry out and arch her back, to bring her breasts closer
to his caress while she pressed her buttocks back against him in eager,
urgent movement.

'Is that good?'

His voice sounded thicker, deeper, sending a message to her own senses
like a note running along a wire. He was plucking erotically at her
nipples, his tanned skin a contrast to her own pale softness and the
dark hot flush of her engorged flesh.

His hands moved lower down, over her ribcage, lower... Lucy sighed and
squirmed, closing her eyes in anticipation of the pleasure to come.

'No...open your eyes and watch me,' Marcus insisted thickly.

He was stroking her sex. Lucy couldn't remove her aroused gaze from the
movement of his hands. Her heart started to hammer against the wall of
her chest as slowly and deliberately he folded back the soft flesh-just
as she herself had done earlier. She looked into the mirror and saw in
his eyes that he had seen her, had known what she was thinking. What she
had been wanting. What she had been on the verge of doing....

78

Isn't this better?' he demanded softly. 'Why pleasure yourself, Lucy,
when I can do it for you?'

His mouth caressed the magic spot just below her ear and her whole body
convulsed.

'Did you know that the nerve-endings in this spot here are directly
connected to your nerve-endings right here?' she heard him whisper in
her ear, as he kissed her skin again and stroked his fingers over the
eager, dark pink wetness of her sex, rubbed his thumb-tip slowly over
her clitoris.

Once. Twice. And then faster. Until she was breathing frantically fast
and her whole body was shuddering in the grip of orgasm.

She couldn't move. She couldn't even stand. She felt boneless,
weightless...and pleasured. Pleasured, but not satisfied, she knew, as
Marcus swung her up into his arms and carried her over to the bed.

Only when he had placed her on it and removed his own robe, only when
her reckless longing had directed her fingers to reach out and stroke
the length of his erection and back again, and she had allowed herself
to enjoy the delicious pleasure touching him had relayed via her
fingertips to each and every one of her senses, did she think to say
uncertainly, 'Marcus, I don't think we should be doing this...'

'Why ever not? You enjoyed it last night, didn't you?'

Enjoyed it? Of course she'd enjoyed it. But that wasn't the issue, or
the point she was trying to make.

And yet she was murmuring dizzily, 'Oh, yes, I did.'

'And so did I. So there's no problem, is there?'

'No, I don't suppose there is,' Lucy agreed weakly.

How could there be any kind of problem when Marcus was touching her like
this? Kissing her like this? 'Mmm,' she sighed happily against his
mouth, and she reached up and wrapped her arms tightly around him.

79

Lucy looked at the pillow next to her own. It was still squashed from
having Marcus's sleeping head lying on it. She reached out and tenderly
traced the indentation, a smile of soft happiness curving her mouth.
Last night had been so wonderful-and what had made it even more
wonderful had been falling asleep cuddled up next to Marcus, free to
snuggle in against him and breathe in the scent of him. She had woken up
several times during the night, just for the pleasure of reassuring
herself that he was still there.

But he wasn't always going to be 'still there', was he? She had no idea
what had prompted Marcus to indulge in this brief and unexpected sexual
adventure with her, but she knew already how much it was going to hurt
when he grew tired of it-and of her. She didn't want Marcus for a brief
fling. She wanted him for life. Despair swamped her earlier euphoria.

'Come on, sleepyhead, wake up. I've ordered breakfast, and it will be
here any minute.'

Marcus! Lucy shot upright in the bed, and then blushed and reached for
the protection of the duvet to cover her bare breasts, all too aware of
the amused and quizzical look in Marcus's eyes. He sat down beside her,
firmly removed her 'protection', and bent his head to kiss first one
nipple and then -the other. Then he murmured appreciatively, 'Maybe I
should phone Room Service and tell them to delay breakfast.'

'Mmm,' Lucy agreed weakly, and then grabbed for the duvet again when
there was a knock on the door.

80

'I'll get them to take our breakfast through my suite onto the terrace,'
Marcus offered, leaving the bed to go and close the shutters for her.
'But don't you dare go back to sleep.'

Sleep! That was the last thing she felt like doing, Lucy thought as she
headed for the shower.

'I was just about to come and make sure you hadn't gone back to sleep,'
Marcus told her ten minutes later, when she opened the shutters and
walked through the patio doors onto the terrace.

'I've ordered coffee for you,' he continued. 'And fruit juice, and
poached eggs with tomatoes and mushrooms. There's some toast as well.'

'A cooked breakfast? Yuck.' Lucy shuddered as she sat down and
immediately looked longingly at the coffee pot.

Marcus was already pouring coffee for her, and she breathed in its rich
aroma whilst her tastebuds prepared themselves for their morning surge
of caffeine. Marcus, she noticed, was drinking green tea.

'The body needs protein in the morning,' Marcus told her firmly, as he
removed the cover from his own breakfast. 'It can't function properly
without it.'

'Oh, thank you, Dr Atkins,' Lucy retorted sourly as she reached for her
coffee. But the eggs did look appetising. She reached out and pinched a
mushroom from Marcus's plate.

'Eat,' Marcus commanded, handing her her own breakfast. 'As soon as
we've finished breakfast I'll go and ring Beatrice and check what time
she's expecting to meet up with us,' he added, as she tucked into her
eggs and realised just how hungry she actually was. 'But first there is
something I want to discuss with you.'

Lucy had to put down her coffee cup because her hand

had started to tremble. Here it was-the demand for an explanation she
had been dreading so much.

'If it's about last night...and...and the day before...' she

began defensively.

'It is,' Marcus agreed. 'It seems to me, Lucy, that it would be a very
good idea if you and I were to get married.'

Had she heard him correctly? Was he trying to make some kind of joke?
'Married? You mean, as in to one another?' she asked him cautiously.

'Of course I mean as in to one another.'

'But-but, Marcus...why? I mean, why would you- we-want to do that? I
mean, you don't even like me very much!' Lucy blurted out, too shocked
not to be honest.

'I think that you and I would be very well suited to one another.'

Lucy reached for her coffee cup and took a deep gulp. He hadn't said
that he did like her, she noticed. And he certainly hadn't said that he
loved her.

'We share a similar background, and I suspect a very similar outlook on
life. We both, I think, want children, and, despite the ending of your
marriage to Nick, I believe that, like me, you think of commitment made
to another person via marriage as one that is made for life--for better
or for worse, in a relationship to which one is totally committed.
Because make no mistake-if we do marry, I shall be committed completely
and totally to our marriage, and to you and to our children, and I shall
expect the same commitment from you.'

Total and complete commitment from Marcus to her? Was she dreaming?

'But-but...'

'But what?' Marcus demanded coolly. "As the last two

82

days have proved, we are exceptionally sexually compatible.'

'But people don't get married just because they are having good sex
together!' Lucy protested. 'You can't want to marry me because of that,
Marcus.'

'There are other reasons,' he agreed.

'What other reasons?'

'I'll be thirty-five in December,' Marcus told her calmly. 'All the men
in my family-my father, my grandfather, my great-grandfather and back
beyond that-married before they were thirty-five. It's a family
tradition, and one I have no intention of breaking.'

Did he mean that if she refused him he would find someone else who wouldn't?

She thought about how it would feel, being married to Marcus without
being loved by him when she loved him so much. It would hurt-and very
badly. Then she thought about how she would feel seeing Marcus married
to someone else because he wanted to be married before his thirty-fifth
birthday.

There just wasn't any comparison. She could not bear the thought of
seeing Marcus married to someone else when she could have been married
to him herself.

'And we have to be aware of the fact that, since you don't take the pill
and I haven't been using any form of contraception, you might already
have conceived my child,' Marcus reminded her. 'I know how much you love
children, Lucy, but I don't think you'd want to be a single mother-and I
certainly wouldn't allow you to bring up my child without me being a
part of its life. It would be far more practical for us to get married.'

Practical! She didn't want practical. She wanted undying love, and
promises that she would be showered with kisses day and night.

But Marcus didn't love her, Lucy reminded herself sternly. Just as Nick
hadn't loved her-and look what had happened there.

She couldn't marry him. And she couldn't not marry him.

She hadn't loved Nick, had she? But she did love Marcus-and besides,
Marcus was a completely different man from Nick. Marcus had stated
unequivocally that their marriage would be a permanent commitment, and
that meant it would be exactly that. And she wanted that. She wanted it
so very badly. She wanted to wake up every morning in a bed she shared
with him, she wanted to conceive his children, and she wanted to grow
old with him.

Love could grow, couldn't it? And Marcus did want her. Unlike Nick,
Marcus wanted to have sex with her. Unlike Nick, Marcus enjoyed having
sex with her-he had said so.

'Marcus, if we were to...to become a couple, don't you think that people
might think it rather odd and ask questions?'

"Why should they? And if they do I shall simply tell them that I had
always planned to marry you, and that since Blayne beat me to it first
time round I'm making sure I don't lose you to anyone else."

Tears stung the backs of her eyes. If only that was the truth.

'So, are you willing to accept my proposal? I promise you that I think a
marriage between us will work very well, Lucy, and I shall certainly do
everything within my power to ensure that it does.'

I don't know. I'm so confused...'

Marcus sounded more as though he were chairing a business meeting than
proposing to her. But then to him

84

no doubt their marriage was a kind of business arrangement, she thought
sadly.

'Perhaps I should take you back to bed,' Marcus murmured softly. 'That
might help make up your mind.'

Her insides melted, then somehow she was nodding her head, and Marcus
was saying coolly, 'Good, so it's agreed, then. We won't say anything
official until I've had a chance to speak to your father-and besides,
I'd prefer us to wait until we return to London to choose your ring.
There is a family betrothal ring-so astoundingly ugly, according to my
mother, that she threatened not to marry my father unless he allowed her
to choose something for herself-but personally, I think that for an
engaged couple to opt for a ring of their own choosing invests it with
something more personal and shared than the passing-down of a family ring-'

'I agree with you.' Lucy stopped him dizzily. Was this really happening?
Was she really sitting here over breakfast with Marcus, talking about
their marriage and her engagement ring, having just spent a wonderful
night in bed with him?

'We're virtually in October now,' Marcus continued. 'My birthday is in
early December, so I'd like to be married before the end of November if
possible. Just a small affair-if that's all right with you?'

'Oh, yes. Of course. A simple register office ceremony...'

'No.' Marcus shook his head, silencing her. 'No, I'd prefer a church
service, Lucy. After all, I think we're both agreed that we are making a
lifetime commitment to one another-I certainly view our marriage as a
permanent commitment. Since you and Blayne didn't marry in church, there
is, in my opinion, no moral or legal reason why we should not do so. And
even if the actual wedding

has to be in a register office I'd like a church blessing, if possible.
I imagine the Brompton Oratory would be the best choice. You'll want to
be married from your parents' London home, and since that is in
Knightsbridge...'

Lucy stared at him. The Oratory was the church of choice for lots of
society brides and their mothers, and very grand.

Marcus was looking at his watch.

it's nearly eleven now, and we're meeting Beatrice at twelve-thirty in
Palma to have lunch with her. So that only leaves us half an hour to get
ready-besides which, I'd better give her a ring and remind her. She's
got possibly the worst memory of anyone I know.'

They both stood up, and then on some impulse she didn't want to
investigate too closely Lucy put her hand on Marcus's arm and tugged at
the sleeve of his robe, so that he bent his head towards her. Raising
herself up on her tiptoes, she pressed her mouth to his and kissed him
softly.

She could feel the rigidity of his muscles, and her face burned as she
released him and stepped back from him.

Marcus watched her through narrowed eyes. It was one thing for her to
want him, but he wasn't sure how he felt about the intensity with which
he wanted her back. It would suit his purposes very nicely for her to
lose control in his arms, but he certainly did not want his own
self-control to be breached-and he didn't like having to admit that it
could be-especially not by Lucy.

Even so, he couldn't afford to risk alienating her at this stage by
appearing to reject her.

Lucy exhaled in shock as Marcus reached for her and threw her back into
his arms.

How and when had Marcus's hands slipped inside her robe to her naked
skin? she wondered blissfully, when she

86

suddenly realised that the sensation of his mouth on hers wasn't the
only sensual pleasure she was experiencing.

Instinctively she moved closer to him, and discovered to her delight
that he was aroused and hard. She made a small sound of female pleasure
and approval as she pressed even closer-and then reluctantly she
remembered Beatrice.

'You said we should get ready to meet your sister,' she reminded him,
the words semi-mumbled beneath the increasing passion of his kiss.

To hell with Beatrice,' she heard him respond thickly, but he started to
release her, giving her one last hard kiss as he did so, acknowledging,
'Yes, you're right. We'd better make a move.' She was going to marry
Marcus. She still couldn't take it in.

They had arrived in Palma five minutes earlier, having been driven there
by the hotel's chauffeur service.

'I thought we'd be going to Beatrice's villa to discuss the party,' Lucy
commented.

'Beatrice suggested we meet up for lunch instead,' Marcus answered. 'The
restaurant's just down here.'

Lucy knew Palma quite well, and the restaurant in front of them was one
that was patronised by wealthy locals and visitors alike. Knowing how
elegantly and expensively Marcus's elder sister dressed, Lucy had
decided to wear something a little bit more formal than she would
normally have chosen-and now that she had seen where they were to have
lunch she was glad of that fact. Her linen skirt with its row of pretty
eyelet details just above the hem, teamed with a white strappy top worn
under a crunchy cotton-linen asymmetrically styled cardigan-type jacket,
had been a good choice; virtually every other woman in

the restaurant seemed to be wearing a combination of very stylish linens
and cottons, in that smart way that continental women seemed to be able
to adopt so easily.

'Beatrice obviously hasn't arrived yet, but we may as well go straight
to our table and wait for her there-unless you want a drink in the bar
first?' Marcus suggested.

'No, let's go straight to the table,' Lucy told him. She didn't want him
thinking that she couldn't get through half a day without an alcoholic
drink, especially when it wasn't true. Coffee, now-well, that was different.

They had been waiting for about five minutes when the restaurant door
opened and Marcus's sister came hurrying in. Tall and dark-haired, like
Marcus, she was wearing black linen pants and an oatmeal-coloured cotton
top, her hair drawn back off her face, her large Oliver's People
sunglasses perched on top of her head.

'Marcus!' she exclaimed as she hurried over and kissed him. 'I am so
sorry I'm late. And Lucy-how very kind of you to give up your time like
this.'

'We haven't ordered anything yet, Bea. Would you like something to
drink?' Marcus asked, as the waiter drew out her chair for her.

'Oh, yes-a spritzer, please. I'm driving. That's why I was late. I
couldn't find anywhere to park. What's the weather like at home? When I
spoke to Mother the other day she said it was raining. I'm going to have
to stay out here until half term, and the wretched plumber says now that
he can't get the tiles we ordered, which means that when Boffy and Izzy
come out for their half term break we'll only have one bathroom.'

Lucy already knew that-contrary to her rather formidable
appearance-Beatrice was something of a 'dizzy brunette', but it still
bemused her to hear Beatrice expressing such sentiments when the only
reason Lucy was here

88

was so that they could talk about George's surprise birthday party
without him knowing.

'I can definitely recommend the food here, Lucy,' Beatrice told her.
'Especially the fish. Although perhaps not the bouillabaisse-it is
rather an acquired taste.'

The menus arrived, and while Marcus and Beatrice talked, or rather
Beatrice talked and Marcus listened, Lucy studied hers.

'Have you had any thoughts about George's party, Beatrice?' Lucy asked,
once the waiter had taken their orders.

'What? Oh, not really. George wants something small- just a few family
and friends. He has this thing about castles, and he did wonder if we
might hire one somewhere. What do you think?'

'Well, that's certainly possible,' Lucy agreed, mentally rolling her eyes.

Their food had arrived, and Lucy eyed her plate hungrily. It must be all
the sex she was having that was giving her such a good appetite, she
decided, and then went bright red as the thought of sex and appetite
somehow led to thoughts of those two elements combined together, and all
the ways that Marcus might satisfy her hunger for him.

'Goodness, Lucy, you look quite flushed. Are you all right? It is warm
in here. I think we can talk more about George's party once I'm back in
London. After all, I've got until next year, and right now these
wretched workmen have got me in such a state I can't think about
anything else.'

They had all finished eating, and Marcus turned to Lucy and asked
calmly, 'What about pudding?'

'Not for me. But I would love an espresso.'

'An espresso? Lucy, my dear, is that wise? All that caffeine in your
system will have you chattering non-stop for the rest of the day.'

Lucy had to bite the inside of her cheek to stop herself from giggling,
and then she made the mistake of looking at Marcus. He looked every bit
as amused as she felt, and when he gave her a small, rueful and very
private smile Lucy felt as though she had been handed the keys to
heaven. She and Marcus were sharing an intimate moment of understanding
and humour, just as though they were really in a proper relationship.

Suddenly Lucy felt as though she could touch the sky and reach for
anything-even one day, perhaps, Marcus's love.

'I can't wait to ring Mother and tell her that I've seen you both,'
Beatrice announced twenty minutes later, after they had walked her back
to her car. She then not only hugged Lucy but also kissed her
affectionately as well, before saying meaningfully, 'Mother is going to
be so pleased. She's always had a soft spot for Lucy...'

'Marcus, I think Beatrice has guessed about us,' Lucy warned him after
they had waved goodbye to her.

'I should hope so, after all the hints I dropped,' Marcus agreed dryly.

'What? You said we weren't going to tell anyone yet!'

'I haven't told her. I've just dropped a few hints. Knowing Beatrice the
way I do, it won't be very long before she's convinced herself that she
guessed about us ages ago-and that should help to ease away any
uncomfortable questions about the speed with which things have happened.'

It would also place another barrier in the way of Lucy changing her mind
and backing out of marrying him, Marcus reflected cynically.

'We've got another hour before the hotel chauffeur is due to pick us up.
How about a walk?'

90

'Lovely,' Lucy told him, and meant it.

What she hadn't been prepared for was that Marcus would choose to walk
in the direction of a very expensive-looking jewellers and then draw her
towards its windows. 'See anything you like?' he asked.

'I thought you said we wouldn't get a ring until we get home?'

'Yes, of course-for one thing I thought you might want to choose a stone
and then a setting-but I wasn't thinking of a ring right now, Lucy.
You've just agreed to be my wife, and, whilst your engagement ring will
be a public acknowledgement of that fact, I would like to celebrate it
with something rather more personal-a pair of earrings, perhaps?
Something like those?' he added, indicating the very pair of diamond
studs Lucy hadn't been able to stop gazing at.

'Marcus, you don't have to buy me anything,' she protested.

'That's right. I don't have to,' he agreed blandly as he rang the bell
for admittance to the shop. 'But I do want to.'

They were inside the shop-all thick carpets, glass display cases, the
quiet and very serious hum of air-conditioning and wealth, and
immaculately groomed young male and female sales assistants.

As soon as Marcus told one of them what he wanted, they were taken to a
small private room and offered comfortable seats.

'Perhaps you would care for a drink-water, coffee?' the sales assistant
offered.

'Oh, coffee please.' Lucy thanked him. ignoring the way Marcus lifted
his eyebrow. 'Okay, so you don't do caffeine,' she hissed, as soon as
they were alone. 'But I do.'

'Caffeine and champagne,' Marcus agreed dryly.

The salesman was returning, carrying Lucy's coffee and accompanied by an
older, obviously more senior member of the shop's staff. It was too late
for Lucy to defend herself on the champagne charge.

'You have an excellent eye if I may say so, senora,' the senior salesman
told Lucy approvingly as he spread the roll of fabric he was carrying on
top of the immaculate glass and then placed the earrings on it.

'These stones are excellent quality, and without any blemish. They are D
quality, which means they have exceptional clarity and purity. They are
one and a half carats each, and set in platinum.'

And they would cost a fortune, Lucy recognised, as she mentally said
goodbye to them.

'They are lovely,' she began 'But-'

'Why don't you try them on?' Marcus overrode her.

Reluctantly, Lucy did so, and then looked at her reflection in the
mirror the salesman gave her. The stones burned with blue-white fire and
were, as he had said, of exceptional purity.

'Please excuse me a moment,' the salesman murmured, getting up and
leaving the room.

'Marcus, you mustn't buy me these,' Lucy told him as soon as they were
alone.

'Why not? Don't you like them? Personally, I think they suit you very well.'

Not like them? Was he kidding? No woman could possibly not like diamonds
such as these.

'Of course I like them. But that isn't the point.'

'No? Then what is?' he challenged her.

'The cost, of course. Marcus, these are going to be dreadfully
expensive.' She looked so worried, with her forehead creased in that
small frown and her eyes shadowed with anxiety, that it actually made
him frown himself.

92

She was the first woman he had ever bought jewellery for who had begged
him not to do so because of its cost.

The salesman had returned, carrying a small square box.

'We'll take the earrings. My fiancée loves them,' Marcus announced coolly.

The salesman beamed. 'Ah, senor, you will not regret their purchase, I
do assure you. They will more than keep their value. And it occurs to me
that you might like to see this bangle, which has the same quality of
stones, but of only one carat each. The bangle itself is made of
platinum and white gold. The design is modern but delicate,' he
enthused, removing the bangle from its box so that they could see it.

Once again Lucy found that she was holding her breath. The bangle was
beautiful, simple and elegant, its simple curving lines set with three
diamonds all offset from one another.

'Try it on,' Marcus urged her.

Lucy shook her head. 'No,' she told him firmly, standing up with a
determination that rather astonished her. 'It is beautiful,' she agreed,
turning to the salesman. 'But I don't wear very much jewellery, other
than my watch. The earrings are more than enough.'

Lucy waited discreetly in the main part of the shop whilst Marcus paid
for her earrings, then automatically fell into step beside him as they
walked back outside into the late-afternoon sunshine. She longed to move
closer to him, to slip her arm through his, or even better for him to
take her hand in his. But of course he did no such thing. A small,
unexpectedly sharp pang of pain seized her.

'Thank you for my earrings, Marcus,' she told him quietly, fighting back
her longing to turn towards him and kiss him. 'They are beautiful, but
really you shouldn't have.'

She watched as he gave a dismissive, almost uncaring shrug. 'Of course I
should. Is there anything else you'd like to look at? Only our car
should be here in another few minutes.'

Lucy shook her head. If she was honest, what she wanted to do right now,
more than anything else, was to go back to their hotel so that she could
be on her own with Marcus.

The ache that had begun earlier in her bedroom, when he had kissed her,
had gradually but very determinedly been increasing in intensity all the
time she had been with him, and it was now an urgent pulsing female need
that was overriding any other desire she might have had. She wanted
Marcus and she wanted him desperately, eagerly, completely and utterly.
And, what was more, that wanting had nothing whatsoever to do with the
diamonds or anything else he might buy her.

'How do you feel about having dinner here on the terrace this evening?
We can go out, if you like, or dine in the hotel restaurant. But I
thought in view of the fact that we shall be returning to London
tomorrow morning, in our new role as an engaged couple, this evening
might be a good opportunity to discuss any concerns you might have about
the future.'

'Dinner on the terrace sounds wonderful,' Lucy told Marcus truthfully,
They were in her suite, having just returned from Palma.

'We're going to have to talk about Pret a Party, and how you visualise
its future at some stage,' Marcus continued.

Pret a Party! Lucy realised with shock that she had barely given her
business a thought since she had Marcus had stepped onto their flight to
Palma.

94

'Oh, you don't-' She began immediately to reassure Marcus that he did
not need to worry that she would be expecting him to rescue her ailing
business from debt, and then stopped. Andrew Walker had said that he
didn't want her to mention their discussion to anyone at this stage, and
until he actually came back to her with a firm offer there wasn't really
anything to discuss, was there? If she told Marcus now that her problems
with her business were over, that Pret a Party had a potential investor,
and then had to tell him that she had been let down, she was going to
look very silly and gullible. Just as she had done when Nick had cheated
her. She could still remember how angry and contemptuous Marcus had been
then. She didn't want that to happen a second time.

"Must we talk about Pret a Party tonight?' Lucy asked him. 'Only...'

'Only what?" Marcus probed.

'Only I thought that tonight could be for...us,' Lucy whispered,
pink-cheeked. She could feel her blush deepening as she saw the way he
was looking at her.

'For us? Well, it certainly might be a good idea if we discuss some of
the practical issues we need to sort out.'

Disappointment filled her. That was not what she had meant at all.

'Practical issues?' Did he mean things like contraception? Lucy wondered
uncertainly. If so, she would have to find the words to tell him that
she relished the experience of feeling him inside her without anything
between them so much that she would prefer it if she made herself
responsible for that side of things and took the contraceptive pill.

'Yes. Practical issues,' Marcus repeated. 'Such as where we are going to
live. I'd prefer to keep my Wendover

Square house as our London home. After all, it's been in my family for
nearly two hundred years.'

'It is a lovely house,' Lucy agreed, 'especially with the garden. But
I'll want to redecorate it. And I'll definitely want an espresso-maker
in the kitchen,' she added teasingly.

'The decorating I do not have a problem with,' Marcus returned dryly.
The espresso machine might require some in-depth discussion and a
compromise. Perhaps even some compensation. But I like the idea of us
looking for a house in the country,' he continued.

'Mmm, I'd like that too. Though I'll want to continue to work, Marcus.'

'Of course. So shall I,' he agreed drolly, before looking at his watch
and telling her, 'But remember, since we have been having sex without
contraception, you could already be pregnant. Running a business and
caring for a new baby wouldn't be easy. Look, it's six o'clock now and I
need a shower. Why don't I go to my own suite, order dinner for eight,
have a shower, get changed, make a couple of phone calls and then meet
you outside on the terrace at, say, seven-thirty?'

'Perfect,' Lucy told him, although she was disappointed when he walked
over to the communicating door, opened it and walked through it without
kissing her before he left.

She would have a shower herself, she decided. Then a small smile curled
her mouth as she glanced towards the bath. The thought of enjoying a
long lazy soak was very tempting, especially with her memories of the
erotic pleasure it had led to later.

She hadn't brought any 'occasion'-type clothes with her, which was
another reason to prefer having dinner on their own terrace.

She reached for the telephone and pressed the numbers

96

for Room Service, so that she could order some coffee, then closed the
shutters and pulled out the folding door that enabled her to close off
the shower and bathroom area from the rest of the bedroom. Being
surprised in the bath by Marcus was one thing; having one of the waiters
walk in whilst she was in the shower was something else again-and
something that she most definitely did not want to happen.

It didn't take her long to shower. She loved the luxury of thick, fluffy
and constantly replenished hotel towels and bathrobes, she reflected, as
she dried herself and then smoothed her body with delicious-smelling
lotion before pulling on her robe and folding back the sliding doors.

Her coffee had arrived, and she went over to the occasional table to
pour it, pausing with a small frown when she saw the dark green,
gold-embossed gift-wrapped box lying on the table next to the coffee
tray, beside the complimentary hand-made chocolates provided by the
hotel. She recognised the name embossed on the ribbon immediately. It
was the name of the jewellers they had been in that afternoon.

This hadn't been provided by the hotel, Lucy reflected, as she picked up
the box and started to unwrap it. And it was too large to contain her
earrings. Her suspicions turned to certainty when she removed the
wrapping paper and opened it to find inside the bangle they had been
shown in the shop.

Marcus had bought it for her? As well as the earrings? He really was
spoiling her. Materially, yes, he was spoiling her. But she would much
rather have been spoiled by his love.

In the end they decided that they might as well stay in their robes for
dinner. There was no one to see them, after all, and besides, it added a
special intimacy to their evening. Lucy looked down at the bangle she
was now wearing- The moon was bathing the terrace in its cool sharp
light. Lucy picked up one of her prawns and dipped it in mayonnaise,
licking her fingers after she had finished eating it, and then smiling.

'What's the smile for?' Marcus asked.

'I was just thinking about that scene in Henry Fielding's Tom Jones-you
know, the sex and food one...'

'Oh, yes? Is that a hint?'

Lucy shook her head. 'Certainly not,' she retorted self-consciously, but
when he stood up and started to walk very purposefully towards her, her
heart did a backflip in giddy excitement and anticipation.

But when he stopped in front of her it wasn't to take her in his arms,
as she had been hoping. Instead he produced the small box that contained
her earrings.

'I should have given you these.'

He sounded so abrupt and cold that Lucy frowned. He might have said that
he wanted to marry her, but he certainly wasn't behaving as though he did.

'You shouldn't have got me this as well,' she told him, touching her
bangle. 'The earrings are more than enough.' As she spoke she reached
for the box, but to her surprise Marcus shook his head and reached for
her hand, pulling her firmly to her feet.

She had to hold her breath as he carefully inserted the earrings into
her earlobes. Not because she was afraid he might be too rough, but
because she was afraid that she might betray to him just how she felt
about him. The sensation of his warm breath on her bare skin was so
sensuously erotic that it made her whole body melt with longing for him.
She knew that she was trembling inside with the intensity of her
feelings, and that very soon she would be trembling outwardly as well.

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The earrings were in place, and, had he loved her, this surely should
have been the moment when Marcus bent his head and kissed her-a truly
special and intimate moment they would both remember for ever-but
instead he was moving away from her.

And then, so suddenly, so shockingly that her whole body thrilled
erotically, he came back to her, pushing the robe off her shoulders with
hard knowing hands that kept her arms straight so that it could fall
away completely, while he kissed her so fiercely that she could feel the
heavy, erratic thud of his heartbeat as though it were throbbing inside
her own chest.

The only sound to break the silence was the acceleration of their
combined breathing, and then, as abruptly as he had taken hold of her,
Marcus released her mouth and began to caress her eagerly responsive flesh.

Moonlight celebrated the beauty of her naked body, The terrace was
private enough for Lucy to know that they could not be overlooked, and
there was something gloriously erotic and exciting about standing naked
in the moonlight as Marcus caressed her skin with delicate fingertips,
brushing his lips against her throat.

'You're wet,' Marcus murmured thickly as his fingers dipped into her sex.

'You made me like that,' Lucy answered him shakily. After all, it was true.

Marcus looked at the night-dark peaks of her nipples and then bent his
head to suckle erotically on one of them, whilst his fingers stroked
deeper and more firmly. Still caressing her, he arched Lucy back against
his arm so that her whole body was offered up to him.

He could feel her moving urgently against him as her desire quickened.

'Marcus,' Lucy moaned, 'I think I'm going to come..."

'Good,' he told her thickly, as he lifted his mouth from her breast to
her lips. 'I want you to.'

'I want you inside me,' Lucy begged.

'Later. Don't talk now,' he told her. 'Just enjoy.' Don't talk. Lucy
closed her eyes and gasped as her body tightened and pleasure began to
shudder through her.

101

'Marcus, are you sure we're doing the right thing?'

They had just returned from visiting her parents, who were overjoyed
about the fact that they were to marry, and yet despite the delight with
which everyone had greeted the news of their engagement, since they had
returned to London Lucy had begun to be gripped by an increasingly
intense feeling of sadness and foreboding.

Her vision was clouded with emotional tears as the October sunshine
shone in through the windows of the pretty breakfast room overlooking
Marcus's garden and bounced off the facets of her engagement ring. She
had fallen in love with the simple rectangular diamond with its emerald
cut facets the moment she had seen it, and when Marcus had picked it up
and said quietly, 'I rather like this one, but of course it must be your
choice,' she had been so thrilled she had almost cried with happiness.
She had been happy-then!

In Majorca, swept away on a tide of sex and fantasy, she had felt as
though anything was possible-even Marcus coming to love her-but now,
back in London, certain realities were refusing to go away.

'What exactly do you mean?' Marcus demanded. He was frowning at her with
that familiar blend of impatience and irritation that always cramped her
stomach and squeezed her heart with pain. 'I should have thought from
the response we've had from our families to the news of our impending
marriage that it is obvious that we are very much doing the right
thing.' He stood up and strode to the window, and Lucy gripped her mug
of coffee with tense fingers. It was clear that he didn't want to
continue the discussion, but she needed to. She needed... She needed his
love, she admitted helplessly. And in the absence of that she needed
some kind of acknowledgement of her own fears, and his reassurance that
there was nothing for her to fear. She needed hope, and the belief that
he could grow to love her. But she couldn't tell him any of those
things, she admitted painfully, because she knew that he wouldn't
understand her needs and that he would be irritated by

them.

'Our families assume that...that we care about one another,' she told
him carefully instead. 'They don't know the truth. And I don't know if
a...a relationship-a marriage-without love can survive.'

'Love?' Marcus shook his head, his expression darkening. 'Why is
everyone so obsessed by this delusion that what they call love is
something of any value? It isn't,' he told her harshly. 'You should know
that. After all, you married Blayne because you loved him, and look
where that got you.

'You and I have the kind of practical reasons for marrying one another
that are far more important than love. I need and want a wife who
understands my way of life and who shares my desire for children-I
certainly do not want to be the first Carring not to produce an heir or
heiress. Sexually, as we have both already shown, we are compatible. You
want children, and you are not the kind of woman who would want them
outside a committed relationship. You married once for so-called love,
Lucy. I should have thought you were intelligent enough to recognise
that that was a mistake, and not want to repeat it.'

'But what if one day you fall in love with someone else, Marcus?'

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'Fall in love?' He looked at her as though she had suggested he murder
his own mother. 'Haven't you listened to anything I've been saying? So
far as I am concerned sexual love is merely a cloak to cover juvenile
and selfish-self-obsessed!-emotional folly, allied to lust. My father
fell in love, or so he claimed, when he left my mother. He abandoned her
and us because of that love, and if it hadn't been for the accident that
killed him he would have destroyed the bank as well as my mother's
happiness. I saw then what love was, and I swore that I would never ever
allow myself to indulge in such a thing.'

But you were six years old! Lucy wanted to protest. But wisely she
refrained from doing so. She had had no idea that Marcus held such
strong and bitter views about love, or that he was so antagonistic
toward it.

Her coffee had gone cold, but she still kept her hands wrapped around
her mug, as though she was trying to seek warmth and comfort from it.

'What is it?' he demanded when he looked at her and saw the despair in
her eyes.

She shook her head. 'I...I'm not sure we should get married, Marcus.'

'It's too late for second thoughts now,' he told her sharply. 'For one
thing your mother is busily planning the wedding, and for another...' He
paused and then reminded her, 'Let's not forget that you could already
be carrying my child. We are getting married, Lucy,' he reinforced
calmly. 'And nothing is going to change that.'

Just as nothing was going to change the way he felt about love, or his
antagonism towards it, Lucy recognised with despair. How could she have
deceived herself into believing that he would grow to love her? Marcus
would never love her. Marcus didn't want to love her. He didn't want to
love anyone.

'I want to talk to you about Pret a Party,' he continued briskly.

Lucy tensed. She didn't want to talk to Marcus about her business. She
had had a letter from Andrew Walker, reiterating that he didn't want her
to discuss their meeting with anyone and explaining that he was still
out of the country on business and would be in touch with her on his
return. Of course there should be no secrets between husband and wife,
but she had given her word and she had no intention of breaking it-and
besides...Nick's betrayal of her trust had left a painful scar. She knew
that Marcus would never cheat her financially, but her growing
insecurity about the future of their marriage made her want to hold on
tightly to the security of Pret a Party. If at some future date Marcus
chose to decide that their marriage wasn't working with the clockwork
efficiency that he had decided that it should, she might need her
business-not just to support herself financially, but to validate her as
a person.

'I've decided that the simplest way to deal with the current situation
would be for me to inject enough capital into the business to clear its
debts,' he said.

'No! No-I don't want you to do that.'

Lucy could see that her outburst had surprised him.

'Why not? Less than two months ago you begged me to let you utilise what
was left of your trust fund to put into the company.'

'That was different,' she told him stubbornly. 'That was my money, not
yours. And besides...' She bit her lip. She couldn't tell him about
Andrew Walker-not yet-and even if she did she suspected that he would
not understand why she felt able to accept both financial assistance and
financial involvement from someone else, but not from him. Having one
husband involved in her business and virtually destroying it, and her,
had taught her a harsh lesson. It wasn't one she wanted to repeat.

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Marcus frowned as he looked at her. It was obvious to him that Lucy was
having second thoughts about their marriage. Was it because, despite all
that he had done to her, she still loved Nick Blayne? And why was she
rejecting his offer to pay off Pret a Party's debts?

'Lucy...'

She stopped him fiercely. 'Pret a Party is my responsibility, Marcus,
and I want to keep it that way.'

Her responsibility and her salvation, perhaps, should he ever decide to
end their marriage.

A feeling of intense inner aloneness filled her. Sometimes it seemed as
though her whole emotional life involved keeping painful secrets she
could not share with anyone else. She badly wanted to cry, but of course
she must not do so. Her two best friends had been so lucky, finding men
who were their soul mates and true partners- men with whom they could
share every part of their lives and themselves, from their most mundane
thoughts to those that were most sacred and private to them. But not
her. She never had and now would never be able to share her innermost
longings and feelings with anyone.

She gave a small shiver. Marriage to Marcus would mean closing the door
on the deepest of her feelings and shutting them away for ever. But she
knew she simply wasn't strong enough to let him walk away from her and
find someone else. The pain would simply be too much for her to bear.
And, as Marcus himself kept reminding her, it could already be too late
for her to back out of their coming marriage. She might already have
conceived.

Lucy looked at her watch. Marcus would be in Edinburgh by now. He had
said that he would only be away for a couple of days, but already she
was missing him.

Tonight was the launch of the new football boot-the last of Pret a
Party's major events. She was pleased with the response she had received
to the invitations she had sent out, and even Dorland was going to be
there. Although corporate events, no matter how lavish, were not really
his style.

Her mobile rang, jerking her out of her thoughts, and her heart leapt
when she saw that it was Marcus who was calling.

Although she wasn't officially living with him yet, she was spending
more nights in Marcus's bed than she was her own.

'Has your mother sent out the wedding invitations yet?' he asked.

'They went out yesterday,' Lucy told him. Her mother had spent several
afternoons cloistered in the Holy Grail of stationery requisites that
was the basement of Smythson's Sloane Street premises, poring over
samples of wedding stationery. 'Although she's telephoned people as
well, in view of the lack of time. You do realise just how many guests
are going to be at our wedding, don't you, Marcus?' she cautioned him.

'Two hundred and rising at the last count-and that isn't including my
second cousins four times removed from Nova Scotia-at least according to
my mother and Beatrice,' he relied promptly.

'What? No, Marcus.' Lucy panicked. 'It's more like-'

'Two hundred each. That is to say, my mother is planning on inviting two
hundred guests, whilst I understand your mother can't get her list down
under two hundred and fifty.'

'Oh, Marcus,' Lucy wailed. 'We said we wanted a quiet wedding.'

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'Talk to your mother-apparently that is a quiet wedding,' Marcus told
her dryly.

Lucy sighed. 'Thank goodness it isn't summer. Ma said the other night
that if it had been she thought it would have been a good idea to tent
over the gardens in your square.'

'Yes, I've seen it done.'

'So have I, and I know exactly what hard work it is. Anyway, I thought
we both agreed that we just want a simple wedding breakfast, somewhere
like the Lanesborough-not five hundred people and a ballroom at the Ritz.'

'Well, maybe we do, but we aren't our mothers. Stop worrying about it,'
Marcus advised her, 'and let them get on with it and enjoy themselves. I
don't want you too worn out to enjoy our honeymoon.'

Lucy could feel her face starting to burn.

'If I am, that won't be because of the wedding preparations,' she told
him valiantly.

'Shagged out already?' Marcus asked her directly.

'Totally,' Lucy agreed lightly. There was no point in wishing he had
spoken more lovingly. 'When will you be back?'

'Oh, not so shagged out that you don't want more?'

'I was asking because of the christening,' Lucy told him in a dignified
voice.

'Uh-huh? Well, don't worry, I haven't forgotten that we're driving down
to the christening on Thursday.'

Julia and Silas were having their three-month-old son christened at the
weekend, and Lucy had been asked to be one of his godmothers along with
Carly, the third member of their trio.

Although Silas was based in New York, he and Julia

spent as much time as they could in England, mainly because of Julia's
elderly grandfather, and the christening was being held in a small
village close to his stately home.

'I'd better go; take care of yourself,' Marcus told her calmly, before
ending the call.

No I love you; no do you love me... But then, how could there be? Marcus
didn't love her.

'I'm going now, Mrs Crabtree,' Lucy called out to the housekeeper,
forcing back the threatening tears clogging her throat.

Marcus's housekeeper had made it plain that she welcomed the idea of
Marcus being married, and she and Lucy had spent several very happy
afternoons discussing how best to renovate the slightly old-fashioned
kitchen.

'There's a parcel just arrived for you, Lucy,' she called back.

'Oh?' Lucy hurried into the kitchen and stared at the large box sitting
on the table.

There was a note attached to it, in Marcus's handwriting.

Hope that this will make our mornings together worth waking up to.

Slightly pink-cheeked, Lucy started to open it. Marcus had already
ensured that she thought he was worth waking up to, and it was difficult
to imagine how he could make their mornings any more of a sexual
pleasure than they already were.

But she realised that had been wrong as she opened the box to reveal not
some outre sexual toy, but an espresso coffee machine.

'Oh, Marcus!' she whispered, suddenly overwhelmed by the emotions she
had been trying to suppress.

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'He said as how you were missing your espresso in the morning,' Mrs
Crabtree told Lucy with a wide smile.

She desperately wanted to ring him and thank him, but she contented
herself instead with simply texting him-in case he was already with his
client.

Lucy exhaled slowly in relief. It looked very much as though the evening
was going to be the success her corporate clients had hoped for. Having
half a dozen Premier League football stars here had certainly been a
good draw, and the models and It Girls clustered around them were making
heavy inroads into the orange and red striped cocktail invented to match
the orange and red flash on the new football boots being promoted.

If so far as the female guests were concerned the footballers were the
main attraction, then her clients were equally delighted by the number
of media people attending, and had told her so.

The cheerleaders had done their bit and been wildly applauded, and even
her tongue-in-cheek curry and chips mini-suppers had been greeted with
enthusiasm-especially by the footballers.

'Lucy!'

'Dorland.' Lucy smiled affectionately as the magazine owner and editor
took hold of her arm and guided her to one of the tables.

'You're a very naughty girl not telling me about you and Marcus,' he
told her, wagging his finger in front of her. 'I had to read about your
engagement in The Times.'

Lucy gave what she hoped was a convincing laugh. 'Blame Marcus for that,
Dorland, not me. But you are coming to the wedding, aren't you?'

His expression softened. 'Of course.'

Lucy had insisted that Dorland was to be invited as a guest, even though
her mother had not totally approved.

'Lovely stiffie by the way, sweetie. Very grand. It has pride of place
on my mantelpiece.'

Lucy giggled. These days, 'stiffie' didn't mean 'upmarket invitation' to
her.

'Lucy, there's something I want to talk to you about,' Dorland added,
suddenly looking unfamiliarly serious. 'Come here and sit down for a
minute.'

'What's wrong?' Lucy asked him, as soon as they were tucked away in a
corner.

'One of my snappers mentioned that he'd seen you having lunch at the
Pont Street Brasserie the other week with Andrew Walker.'

Lucy could feel herself starting to colour up guiltily. What bad luck.
She had seen the paparazzi outside the Brasserie, and she should have
guessed she would be spotted. Dorland had eyes and ears everywhere.

'He knows my cousin,' she answered as casually as she could, but Dorland
was shaking his head.

'He's a really bad guy, Lucy. Don't get involved with him.'

The shock of Dorland looking so serious and saying something so
appalling made her stare at him uneasily. 'What do you mean?'

'How much do you know about him?' Dorland asked her.

'He's a very successful entrepreneur who has built up a turnkey business
based in London supplying concierge services for wealthy people who
don't have time to sort out their own domestic support services.'

'That's the legitimate tip of the iceberg of his business,' Dorland told
her flatly. 'The truth is that he works for a group of Eastern European
mafia-type thugs, fronting a

110

money-laundering exercise. The workers he uses in his turnkey business
are mostly illegals, brought into this country to work in fear for their
lives. The poor sods have to pay thousands to get into this country in
the first place, and then when they get here they're told that they can
be sent back at any minute if the authorities find out about them. So
they're forced to work for next to nothing and housed like battery chickens.

'And that isn't the worst of it. Young women-girls- sometimes sold by
their families, sometimes just stolen, are sold into prostitution and
passed from owner to owner. What he's involved in is the cruellest
business in the world. He traffics in human misery and degradation. And,
by the way, Andrew Walker isn't even his real name.'

'How can you know all this?' Lucy protested.

'I know because last year he approached me with an offer to buy his way
into A-List Life. He said that he was looking for somewhere to invest
the profits from his turnkey business. He talked about taking A-List
Life into Europe and even Russia. I admit for while I was tempted, and
not just because of the money he was talking about- which was
phenomenal. But once I started looking a little deeper and asking
questions all sorts of stuff started crawling out of the woodwork.

'The reason he wanted to buy into A-List Life was because he's looking
for ways and means to launder the money he's making from trading in
refugees and prostitutes. He told me about an idea he'd had for us to
employ our own A-List Life girls as "hostesses" at celeb events. The way
he described it, it sounded perfectly above board and respectable.'
Dorland shook his head. 'It wasn't. What he meant, of course, was that
he wanted to use A-List Life to supply upmarket prostitutes.'

With every word Dorland spoke, Lucy's heart was hammering harder.

'I'm not going to pry into your personal business affairs, Lucy, but I
know how these people work-they offer of a terrific business deal made
in secret and kept that way. If that's why you were having lunch with
him, then take my advice and don't get involved.'

'But if he's as bad as you say, why haven't the authorities done
anything about it?' Lucy asked Dorland unhappily.

'Probably because he's too clever for them to prove anything. The only
reason I know is because I asked around- and I asked the right people.
London has its share of Russian oligarchs, some of whom I happen to
know, and they know people who know other people, et cetera. They aren't
involved in any way with him, or what he does, but they have contacts
who have contacts, and they know the people he does business with. And I
was told-don't get involved. He and those he works for play very dirty.
Have you told Marcus about lunching with him?'

Lucy shook her head.

'No. And I...I couldn't. Not now.'

'No. He definitely wouldn't like it,' Dorland agreed.

'We only had a meeting, that was all,' Lucy stressed. 'Nothing more.'

'Well, if I were you, Lucy, I'd make sure that there aren't any more
meetings. And I'd also make sure that Walker knows you aren't interested
in any proposals he may put to you, either now or at any time in the
future. It's none of my business, I know that, but I've always had a bit
of soft spot for Pret a Party and for you. You've got class, Lucy, and I
like that. I admire what you did with Pret a Party, even if things
haven't worked out. But it's just the kind of outfit he's looking for,
and once he drags

112

you down into the dirt with him I'm afraid you'll have the devil's own
job getting out of it again. These people know how to keep their victims
trapped and dependent on them, and like as not they'll drag Marcus down
with you.'

Lucy looked at the letter she had just finished checking. It was to
Andrew Walker, telling him that since she was shortly to get married she
had decided against going ahead with the business venture they had
discussed. Her husband was going to become her new business partner, she
had added, untruthfully.

She signed it, then folded it carefully and put it in the envelope she
had already addressed.

Just to make sure that Andrew Walker did receive it she was going to the
post office with it right now, so that she could send it for guaranteed
delivery.

She gave a small shudder as she sealed the envelope. Thank heavens
Dorland had alerted her to the real nature of Andrew Walker's business.
She just wished that the authorities could do something to prevent him
from continuing with his evil trade. But when she had said as much to
Dorland, Dorland had shaken his head and told her grimly, 'Removing him
wouldn't solve the problem. There will be a hundred or more other men
all too willing to take his place. Illegal workers are big business, and
men like Walker get a double pay-off-firstly when the poor devils pay
for what they believe is going to be their freedom in another country,
and secondly when they have to pay over most of their wages to buy the
silence of the very people responsible for them being there. They can't
win, and men like Walker can't lose. And that's why it's so hard for the
authorities to do anything. Their victims are too afraid to say anything.'

And Pret a Party would have been an ideal moneylaundering vehicle for
them, Lucy recognised. All the more so because it was so
labour-intensive, and in a way that used casual labour.

Thank goodness she hadn't told Marcus about it. He would probably have
been too worldly aware to fall into the trap she had, and she could just
imagine what he would have had to say about the situation if he'd known
how easily she had fallen for Andrew Walker's smooth words. No doubt he
would have also immediately reminded her that she had already proved her
naiveté once, by marrying Nick and letting him defraud her, and that
there was no need for her to compound her folly.

Marcus. He would be back later this afternoon, and then tomorrow they
were driving down to the country for the christening.

Marcus. Didn't she already have enough to worry about without this added
problem of Andrew Walker and the trap he had set for her?

'You're very quiet.'

'Am I?' Lucy gave Marcus a too-bright smile, glad of the glaring
sunlight that meant she could hide behind her sunglasses as Marcus drove
them towards the motorway, en route to the christening. They were going
down a couple of days early so that Lucy, Carly and Julia could have
some time together before the other guests arrived, and Lucy was really
looking forward to seeing her two oldest friends.

Marcus had booked them into a small manorhouse hotel, teasing her that
they could 'practise for their honeymoon,' which they were actually
taking in the Caribbean.

She had missed him desperately while he had been away, but last night
when he had returned she had felt so

114

on edge about the Andrew Walker business, and so guilty, that she had
just not been able to relax with him.

Not even in bed.

'How did the football boot do go?'

'Oh, fine.' Lucy could feel her face burning, simply because of the
association between that event, Dorland's revelations and her own guilt.

Marcus frowned as he listened to her. Something had changed while he had
been away. Lucy had changed, he thought grimly. Why? Because she was
still having second thoughts about their marriage? His mouth hardened.
He had no intentions of giving her up. Not to anyone. And if her doubts
were being caused by a longing for Nick Blayne, he was most certainly
not giving her up. Couldn't she see how much better off she would be
with him?

'I've spoken to McVicar and told him that I intend to make a cash
injection into Pret a Party's bank account sufficient to clear any
outstanding debts, and the bank overdraft, plus allow for a small amount
of working capital.'

'No!'

Lucy realised that her instinctive objection had been louder than she
had anticipated, but she pressed on doggedly. 'I've already told you
that I don't want you to do that. I have enough left in my own trust
fund to do almost all of it, Marcus.'

Marcus's mouth thinned, whilst Lucy's face burned from her anguished
dread of Marcus reminding her of what a fool she had been over Nick. But
how could she tell anyone, and most especially Marcus, that she had felt
so guilty about marrying Nick when she didn't love him that she had felt
unable to question anything he did?

'I realise that you are so rich it doesn't matter if you have to pay off
my debts for me, Marcus, but I don't want

you to do that. I'd rather pay them off myself. I don't want to feel
financially indebted to you over my business.'

'Very well, then. If you feel like that, why don't I join you in Pret a
Party as a partner? We could be-'

Sleeping partners, he had been about to say. But before he could do so
Lucy burst out sharply, 'No! No. I don't want that.'

Why? Marcus wanted to ask her. But he could see how upset and angry she
was getting, and he was afraid... He was afraid, Marcus acknowledged, on
a sudden unfamiliar surge of shock that gripped his belly in sharp
talons and caused a pain he had never previously experienced.

He was afraid of losing her, he recognised. Did she still love Blayne,
despite the appalling way in which her ex-husband had treated her?
Blayne had left her for another woman, but was Lucy hoping that one day
he might come back? Did she think that by hanging on to Pret a Party she
might one day entice him to return?

What was happening? She had seemed happy to be with him, happy about
their future-and certainly happy with him in bed. Had seemed... But last
night she had stood stiffly in his arms until he had let her go, and
now, today, she was behaving though he was the last person she wanted to
be with.

On a coruscating surge of pain, he recognised that Lucy's refusal to
allow him to help was actually hurting him. How could that be? Why could
it be?

Lucy pressed her fingers to her aching temples. She wished desperately
that their relationship were different, that she could confide in Marcus
and tell him all about Andrew Walker and his approach to her. But she
couldn't.

'We're leaving the motorway at the next junction,' she heard Marcus
telling her after a while, adding, 'The hotel is only a few miles
further on. I thought we'd go there

116

first, and leave our things. What time did you say Julia and Silas are
expecting us?'

'Any time after two, Jules said. So there's no immediate rush.' Would he
recognise that she was trying to hint to him that she would welcome some
time alone with him before they went to see Jules and Silas and the new
baby? It could be an opportunity for her to make some small amends for
last night, to show both him and herself that her inability to respond
to him then wasn't some kind of ominous portent. Lucy hoped so. For his
sake or for her own?

'It looks as though they're going to be lucky with the weather too,' she
added inanely. 'The forecast is good for the whole weekend.'

'This is our exit junction,' Marcus told her.

He didn't speak much until they had travelled for several miles down
pretty country lanes and through several small villages, other than to
say casually, 'This is a very pretty part of the country-and convenient
for London. It might be worthwhile considering it as a possibility for
househunting. What do you think?'

'I do love it down here,' Lucy admitted. 'I used to come and stay with
Jules during our school holidays, and I've always thought it was
somewhere I'd like to live.'

'Here's our hotel.'

Crunchy gravel and autumn leaves, smoke from chimneys drifting like pale
grey silk across a sharp blue sky, the scent of woodsmoke and fresh air:
what could be more evocative of an English country house? Lucy
reflected, as she stood beside the car and watched the deer in the park
beyond the house as they stared back with huge soft Bambi eyes.

In the reception hall the smell of beeswax mingled with lavender and
rose pot pourri. The smiling receptionist,

dressed in a tweed skirt, cashmere and pearls, might have been the
house's gracious owner and hostess as she explained that they had been
given a suite in the barn conversion, separate from the main hotel.

'I think you'll like it. But do come over and have a look.'

As they crossed the courtyard Lucy could see where part of the original
moat to the house had been turned into a pond, complete with two swans
and a bevy of eager ducks.

'They've adopted us,' the receptionist explained with a smile. 'We have
peacocks too, by the way, do please don't be alarmed when you hear
them-some people don't care for the noise, but personally I think their
beauty more than compensates for it.'

The stable block was a long two-storey building, with its own sunny
entrance hall and a set of wide stairs.

'We have two suites downstairs and two upstairs. We've put you upstairs.'

Dutifully Lucy and Marcus followed her to the galleried landing and
waited whilst she unlocked one of two doors with a heavy old-fashioned key.

Beyond the door lay a narrow short corridor, and beyond that an enormous
bedroom with a huge bed and a proper fireplace.

'The suite has two bathrooms-one either side of the bed,' she explained,
indicating the two doors. 'The sofas here in the bedroom convert into
extra beds for families, and through here...' She led them to a door
next to the fireplace and opened it, to show a pretty
sitting-cum-breakfast room with a balcony and views over the countryside.

'Well?' Marcus asked Lucy.

'It's lovely,' she told the receptionist warmly.

118

'Good, I'm glad you like it. I'll get someone to help you with your
luggage.'

'Marcus, this is gorgeous,' Lucy told him as soon as they were alone.
'Very romantic. Especially with the fire.' She moved towards him. She
had been so on edge and filled with guilt last night, following
Dorland's revelations, that she had not dared let him hold her in case
she broke down and sobbed the whole thing out on his shoulder. But right
now she was aching for him so much. Why didn't she just put the whole
sorry episode of Andrew Walker behind her and enjoy being with Marcus
instead?

'Mmm. Look, we'd better get a move on. It took us slightly longer to get
here than I expected.'

Marcus was turning way from her, ignoring her subtle hint that she would
like him to take her to bed. She recognised the signs easily. After all
she had experienced them often enough at Nick's hands.

119

'Lucy!'

Lucy forced herself to smile as Julia hugged her tightly, and grinned.

'You're here! Oh, I am so excited. And Marcus too. Let me see the ring.
Oh, Lucy! Of course Silas insists that he always felt there were some
pretty strong undercurrents going on between you and Marcus-don't you,
darling?' Julia appealed to her husband.

'Well, let's just say that your sex doesn't always have an exclusive
hold on intuition, does it, son?' Silas addressed the blue-wrapped
bundle he was holding mock-solemnly. 'Actually it was Lucy who gave the
game away, to be honest. It's so rare to see you getting wound up about
anything or anyone, Lucy, that I couldn't help but wonder if there was
something else going on when you kept on insisting that you hated
Marcus. And, as we all know...'

'Hatred is akin to love,' Julia chimed in with Silas, and they exchanged
amused looks.

Lucy could feel her face starting to burn. Hastily she reached out her
arms and begged, 'Silas, please let me hold my new godson-to-be.'

'He's heavy, Lucy,' Julia warned her, suddenly all proud mother, wanting
them to recognise her still tiny son's promise of adult male strength to
come.

'Carry rang just before you arrived, by the way. She and Ricardo should
be here soon. You know that they've rented a house in the village for
the weekend?'

'Yes, she e-mailed to tell me.'

120

'I'd have liked to offer you all room here, but we've already got my
family, and Silas's descending on Gramps tomorrow. Are you sure my son
isn't getting too heavy for you?' she demanded. They were all standing
in the large, slightly draughty drawing room Julia had taken them to,
and, sensing that her friend was already eager for the return of her
baby, Lucy smiled down at him, stroking his cheek gently with her finger
as she walked over to Julia and handed him back.

Marcus was standing with Silas, supposedly listening to what Silas was
saying about the current situation with the dollar, but he couldn't stop
himself from watching her. Julia might be baby Nat's mother, but it was
Lucy, with her doting, blissed-out expression, whose face was that of a
traditional radiant Madonna-all soft, beatific love. There was a feeling
in his heart as though it were being wrenched apart by two giant fists.
Angrily he struggled to suppress it.

As she handed Nat back to Julia, Lucy couldn't help reflecting
desolately that if Marcus continued to behave as coldly towards her as
he had done earlier, in their hotel suite, then if she wasn't already
pregnant she would probably never hold a child of her own. What was it
about her that made her so undesirable and so undesired by the very men
who were supposed to want her? First Nick and now Marcus. She looked
over to where Marcus was standing with Silas, the two men deep in
conversation.

'Lucy, come and sit down,' Julia invited, patting the empty space on the
sofa next to her.

'I'm so glad about you and Marcus.' She beamed as Lucy obeyed her
instruction. 'I know how unhappy Nick made you, and I've felt so guilty
about that because you met him through me. Marcus will-' She broke off as a

large Mercedes swept past the window, then exclaimed happily, 'Oh, good,
that will be Carly and Ricardo.'

Five minutes later the large room was full of the sound of warmly
excited female voices as the three women exchanged news and gossip.

'Just look at how much he's grown,' Lucy exclaimed in awe as she admired
Carly and Ricardo's son before adding, 'And look at you, too, Carly-six
months pregnant and yet you look as stunning and elegant as ever.'

With so much to say to one another, and two adorable babies to admire,
Lucy started to relax, her earlier forced smile giving way to one that
was far more natural. So much so, in fact, that when Marcus came over to
where she was seated with Carly and Julia and the children, and placed a
hand on her shoulder, she had to tense her whole body to stop herself
from leaning into him and letting him see how much he meant to her.

'I am so looking forward to the wedding, Lucy,' Carly announced
excitedly. 'After all, you're the only one of the three of us to have a
proper regulation do.'

'Oh, yes, I'm looking forward to it, too,' Julia chimed in. 'When did
you first realise you loved Lucy, Marcus?' she asked him.

Lucy immediately dipped her head, so her hair swung forward to conceal
her expression.

'Not soon enough,' Marcus responded calmly. 'If I had, she would never
have been allowed to marry Blayne.'

Everyone laughed, and Lucy let her pent-up breath leak away in shaky
relief. What had she been afraid he might say? That he didn't love her
at all? Marcus was far too cerebral to make a slip like that.

'That was a very pleasant evening.' 'I'm glad you enjoyed it,' Lucy
replied as the lights of

122

Julia's grandfather's house were left behind them and Marcus's Bentley
purred softly onto the main road.

'I'm even more convinced now, if we are going to think of buying a house
outside London, that this would be a good area to consider. What do you
think?'

'Like I said before, it is a very pretty part of the country,' Lucy
agreed. 'And Julia did say that she and Silas are hoping that ultimately
they will be spending more time here. Of course when Julia's grandfather
dies Silas will inherit the title and the house, but they both want
their children to grow up knowing their English heritage as well as
their American heritage.'

She leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes. It had been a good
evening, with the three men getting on as well as the women did
themselves. There had even been whole moments when she had almost
managed to persuade herself that she and Marcus were a normal soon-to-be
married couple.

She certainly wished that they were. Just as she wished that right now
they were going back to their hotel suite as genuine lovers who just
couldn't wait to be alone together.

Lucy had fallen asleep within minutes of them leaving her friends, and
as he brought the car to a halt in the hotel car park Marcus turned in
his seat to look at her. He would be glad when she was safely married to
him and he could once again focus his attention on the bank, instead of
constantly having to be on his guard in case Lucy tried to change her
mind and refuse to go through with their marriage.

He reached out and touched her arm, saying calmly, 'Lucy-wake up. We're
here.'

'Marcus?' Emotion illuminated her whole face as she looked back at him.
Suddenly Marcus felt as though he

had been kicked in the chest and deprived of the ability to breathe.
Something-a feeling-a need-roared through him, threatening to blast
apart the fixed standing stones of his beliefs.

Oblivious to what was happening to him, Lucy continued sleepily, 'I was
just dreaming about you and...'

'And?' Marcus probed, his voice rusty as he fought back an unfamiliar
urge to take hold of her and go on holding her, so that he could satisfy
his need to physically experience the reality of her.

'Nothing.' Lucy shook her head, but she could feel her face going a
betraying shade of pink. It was obvious that Marcus had guessed just
what she had been dreaming, too, because all of sudden there was a very
definite gleam in his eyes.

'Do I take it from that pretty pink flush that it was the kind of dream
I would enjoy turning into reality?' he asked, as his own body responded
to the desire he could see in her eyes.

It took Lucy several speeded-up heartbeats to recognise that Marcus was
actually flirting with her, and several more to take a deep breath,
jettison her pride and answer him boldly. 'Well, I would certainly enjoy
you doing so, Marcus. Marcus!' she protested breathlessly, as suddenly
he kissed her so fiercely that she could hardly breathe.

'Come on,' he commanded, releasing her and then getting out of the car
and going round to open the passenger door for her.

Their journey from the car to their suite was accomplished in between so
many kisses that Lucy felt half delirious with desire by the time they
reached their room. Holding her within one arm, Marcus continued to kiss
her while he inserted the key in the lock and turned the handle.

A fire was burning in the hearth, the maid had been up

124

and closed the curtains, and the room itself smelled of pine logs and
warmth and intimacy.

'Marcus...' she whispered eagerly.

'Mmm?'

'Hurry.'

'Like this, do you mean?'

He was touching her, despite the fact that they were both still fully
dressed, so that her whole body convulsed.

'My clothes...' she protested, wanting to be rid of them. But her body
was telling Marcus that it didn't want to wait-and, he realised
fiercely, neither did his own.

He took her quickly and hotly, there and then, in the shadowy bedroom,
compelled and driven by his need to possess her and make her his in a
way that was totally outside anything he had ever previously experienced.

She loved what he was doing-and the way he was doing it, Lucy thought
dizzily as she wrapped her legs around him and felt the swift surges of
pleasure grip her. Later there would be time to undress, to pleasure one
another more slowly and thoroughly, but right now this was exactly what
she wanted and how she wanted it. How she wanted him.

She still couldn't fully take it in that that a few weeks from now she
would actually be Marcus's wife. Lucy took a gulp of her espresso and
reminded herself sternly that the reason she was here in her office was
to work, and not to think about the many and varied pleasures of
becoming Mrs Marcus Carring. Pleasures which, right now, were
suppressing the doubts that had been tormenting her. It was, after all,
an undeniable truth that those pleasures were so many and so varied that
it was almost impossible for her not to fantasise about them. And so...

Hastily she forced herself to concentrate on what she

was supposed to be doing-namely, updating her client files and dealing
with her other paperwork. The slow trickle of new business had now
become a sporadic drip- little more than sympathy and family-generated
events. Which was a problem, of course, so far as securing enough future
income to finance her Pret a Party debts was concerned, but not so much
of a problem when she thought of the amount of time it would free up for
her to get used to being married. In fact, if it wasn't for the wretched
debts Nick had left her, she could have been very happy, slowly
rebuilding her business on a much smaller and more containable scale.

Lucy had another gulp of her favourite caffeine fix and idly scanned the
huge double-page spread of photographs from Nat's christening which,
true to form, Dorland had used as his centrepiece for that week's A-List
Life. There was one especially good photograph of her holding her new
godson, with Marcus standing at her side.

Marcus. She was doing the right thing in marrying him, she told herself
firmly.

There was a loud knock on her half-open office door and she swung round
eagerly, hoping to see Marcus, although he had told her that he was
driving to Manchester today to see a client.

'Lucy. Good, I hoped you would be here.'

Andrew Walker.

Lucy stared at her unexpected and definitely unwanted visitor in
apprehensive dismay, unable to say anything more than an uncomfortable,
'Oh! Andrew. You did get my letter, didn't you?'

'Yes, Lucy. I got your letter,' he confirmed, walking past her to stand
in front of the window, so that her expression was plainly revealed to
him whilst he was just a fuzzy dark blur against the sunlit windows.

126

'I was very sorry to learn that you no longer wanted to proceed with our
plans. In fact I was so disappointed that I thought I'd come and see you
to see if I could find a way to persuade you to change your mind.'

Was she imagining it, or was there a subtle threat in those calmly
spoken words? Lucy could feel the sharp hammer-blows of her heartbeat as
it mirrored her fear.

'I explained in my letter, Andrew. I'm getting married and-'

'Yes, indeed. To Marcus Carring, I believe.'

'Yes,' Lucy acknowledged. 'Yes. And once we are married Marcus wants to
become my partner in Pret a Party.' That should convince Andrew Walker
that it wasn't just her he had to contend with now, even if she was in
reality fibbing to him.

'Really?'

There was something in the way Andrew Walker was looking at her that
made Lucy feel afraid.

'You know, my dear, you are turning down a wonderful business
opportunity here. And as for allowing your husband to be to become your
partner... One never knows these days what the future of a marriage will
be. Modern marriages are such very flimsy constructions at the best of
times, don't you think? A sensible woman might think it a good idea to
maintain her own financial independence from her husband.'

Lucy only just managed to stop herself from gasping out loud. Had Andrew
Walker somehow read her mind? What he had just said echoed everything
she had been saying to herself.

'My partners and I are prepared to make you a very generous offer to buy
into Pret a Party, Lucy, and I can give you my assurance that everything
will be dealt with very discreetly. The cash could be paid into an overseas

bank of your choice, should you want that, and no one apart from
ourselves need ever know anything about the whole transaction.'

If she hadn't known the truth about him she would have been very tempted
to accept what he was offering her, Lucy recognised. Because, despite
the fact that Marcus physically desired her, her fear that without love
their marriage could not survive would not go away. It was that fear
that had prevented her from accepting Marcus's offer of finance and his
suggestion that he came into the business, and that fear, too, that made
her want to keep Pret a Party under her own control and not share it
with a husband.

But Andrew Walker's statement had reminded her of everything Dorland had
said to her.

'No, I suppose they needn't-including those poor wretches whose lives
you've ruined to get the money in the first place,' she burst out
impetuously. 'I know all about why you want Pret a Party, you know-and
what you're doing.'

There was a small, tight silence and then Andrew Walker said sharply,
'Do you indeed?'

She had made another mistake, Lucy realised. And a very bad one.

How had she ever thought of Andrew Walker's face as nondescript and
pleasant? Now, as he came towards her, she could see the real Andrew
Walker instead of the kindly mask he had hidden behind.

Dorland had been right. This was a very bad man. Fear pooled in her
stomach and her muscles tightened round it.

Exactly the same feelings of sick disbelief and fear she had experienced
when she had first learned of Nick's treachery were coiling through her
stomach now. And, exactly as it had been then, her first thought was
that she wished desperately that Marcus were her to help her. Her

128

second was that she was equally desperately glad that he wasn't here to
witness her stupidity.

And yet she was still unable to stop herself from repeating shakily, 'I
do know all about how you and your partners make your money, and why you
want Pret a Party.'

'You know, Lucy, you really shouldn't listen to gossip from jealous and
unreliable sources,' Andrew Walker told her evenly. 'Why don't you take
my advice and think a little bit harder about our offer, and about
letting Marcus Carring become your partner? That wouldn't be a very good
move, and my colleagues would certainly not be pleased were you to do
that. After all, as I just said, nothing is certain in this
life-especially not marriage. You've been married once already, and-'

'I won't listen to any more.' Lucy stopped him passionately. 'There
isn't any point in you trying to pressure me by offering me money. I
don't want it and I won't change my mind.'

'Are you sure you're doing the right thing marrying Carring, Lucy?'

His question caught her off guard.

'Yes, of course I'm sure,' she lied. 'I love him.' That much at least
was the truth. 'In fact I've always loved him,' she added defiantly.

She could see that her declaration had not pleased him. He doubtless
knew that he would not be able to deceive and bully Marcus the way he
had tried to do her.

'I'd advise you to think very carefully about what I've just said,' he
told her sharply. 'Oh, and I wouldn't tell Marcus Carring about our
conversation if I were you-for your own sake and for his.' Andrew Walker
ignored her attempted reply to that, and stepped past her to open the
office door. 'I shall be in touch.'

He'd gone. He'd actually gone. Lucy felt sick with relief. When she
attempted to stand to go and lock her office door, to make sure he
couldn't come back, her legs simply would not support her.

She would have to close down Pret a Party completely now, she decided
shakily. She couldn't think of any other way to protect both herself and
her business.

When Marcus questioned why she was giving up the business she had fought
so hard to keep going, she would simply have to tell him that she had
been giving the matter a great deal of thought and that she wanted to
concentrate on them-their marriage and their future together.

Lie to him. in other words.

The sick feeling in the pit of her stomach increased.

But what other choice did she have? How could she tell him the truth
now? If she told him he would stand there and look at her the way he had
when she'd had to tell him that Nick had not just been unfaithful to her
but that he had also defrauded the business. With angry disbelief, with
irritation and with contempt. She just did not think she could bear that.

'It's supposed to be bad luck for you to see me in my outfit before we
get married, you know,' Lucy reproached Marcus.

Marcus had just let them both into his house, having picked up Lucy from
her parents' home earlier.

'You aren't in your wedding outfit,' he pointed out. 'At least, not
unless you've changed your mind and you intend to marry me wearing jeans.'

'Don't be silly. I'm not wearing the dress now, but I was when you came
round.'

'I didn't see you in it, though,' Marcus assured her, but Lucy could see
that he had his fingers crossed behind his

130

back, and she couldn't help but smile, albeit a little bit wanly. These
last few weeks had been so stressful.

'Cheer up-it will soon be over now,' Marcus told her as though he had
somehow guessed how she felt. 'And then once we're on honeymoon you'll
be able to relax.'

Lucy exhaled heavily and told him emphatically, 'I can't wait.'

There was a small potent silence during which her colour rose. She saw
the way Marcus was looking at her, and then he said obliquely, 'No, I
don't think I can either.'

Silently they both looked at one another.

'It's been a very long few weeks,' Lucy told him breathlessly. The look
she had seen in his eyes was causing her heart to jerk about inside her
chest as though he was holding it on a string.

As he stood watching her Marcus was suddenly aware of a most peculiar
emotion filling him and driving him. A need-a compulsion, almost-to take
Lucy in his arms and keep her there, whilst he...

He shook his head, trying to dispel the unfamiliar emotions that were
gripping him. 'Why don't we...?' he began slowly, and then frowned as
they were interrupted by the sound of the doorbell being rung. He went
to open the door and, while Lucy watched, took a package from the
waiting courier and signed for it.

'Do you want to make us both a drink while I check to see what this is?'
he asked her.

She just couldn't resist the temptation to look at him, Lucy admitted to
herself as she lingered to watch him as he began to open the package.
When he did so, removing the contents and studying them, a couple of
photographs slid free and fell onto the floor.

Automatically Lucy went to pick them up.

'No-don't touch them. Leave them.'

The harshness of his grim command instantly reminded her of the old
Marcus. 'What-?' she began, and then stopped as she stared down at the
floor and the photograph that was lying there face upwards.

She had heard of the expression 'her blood ran cold", but she had never
until that moment imagined she might experience it as a physical
sensation-as though the warmth of her blood was draining away to be.
replaced with something that felt like ice.

'Marcus...' Her voice a shocked, disbelieving whisper of anguish, she
looked from the photograph to his unreadable face and then back to the
photograph again.

On it her own face stared back at her: her mouth smiling, her eyes open,
alight with excitement and delight. And the reason for that delight was...

She looked at the photograph again and her stomach heaved. Her body was
naked, her arms and legs spread, held down by four sets of male hands,
whilst a fifth man was positioned between her spread legs, obviously
having sex with her.

Like someone in a trance, she bent down and picked up the other photograph.

'Lucy! No!'

Marcus made a lunge to stop her, but he was still holding the contents
of the package. Ignoring him as though she hadn't even heard him, Lucy
turned over the second photograph. This one was even worse. A woman had
joined the men-a woman wearing a dildo-and she- they-she and the
men-were all doing the most vile things to and with one another. And she
was eagerly and willingly participating in it all.

She looked at what Marcus was holding. More photographs and a video.
There was a picture of her on the front

132

of the video-naked, her legs spread. The caption on it read: Lucy Loves
Lickin' Lust. Watch her in action!

Lucy felt her stomach heave.

She ran to the bathroom and was immediately and violently sick.
Shivering with disgust, she clung to the basin and turned on the taps,
washing her face and then cleaning her teeth. She wanted to tear off her
clothes and stand under the hottest, hardest shower she could find. She
wanted to scrub at her skin and somehow remove the filth she could
almost feel clinging to her.

'Lucy.'

Marcus was standing in the open doorway to the bathroom, an expression
in his eyes that she distantly thought looked like pain, but which she
knew must be disgust.

'It isn't me,' she told him, slowly and carefully, fixing her gaze on
the far wall so that she didn't have to look at him and see in his eyes
what she knew would be there. If he had looked at her before with
irritation and contempt, that was nothing to how he would be looking at
her now. 'I know it looks like me, but it isn't.'

Silence.

What had she expected? That he would sweep her up into his arms and tell
her that he loved her? After seeing that?

'You won't want to marry me now, of course. How could you?' She was
amazed at how calm and accepting she sounded. How reasoning and
distanced from the wild, shrieking agony of pain and disbelief inside her.

'I'd better go home and tell everyone.' How was she managing to sound so
polite? So much as though she were attending a formal tea party at her
great-aunt's rather than experiencing, enduring what she was going through?

She certainly felt as cold as though she were at her

great-aunt's, she admitted, as her teeth started to chatter and rigours
of icy cold gripped her body.

'Lucy.'

Marcus's hands felt so warm as they cupped her face, and his body was so
reassuringly close, even though she hadn't even seen him cross the space
between them.

'Please don't,' she begged him piteously, as her body caved in to her
shock and tears welled in her eyes to roll down her face. 'Please don't
make it harder for me, Marcus. I know what you must be thinking, and how
you must feel.'

'Do you?' he demanded, so savagely that she flinched. 'No, I don't think
you do,' he told her harshly, 'I don't think you can know how I feel
knowing that you have been exposed to this kind of...of filth. That you
have been dragged into it and degraded by it.'

'Marcus, I haven't. It isn't me. Please believe me. It isn't.' She
couldn't hold back the words any longer, even though she knew he would
not and could not possibly believe her. Not with the evidence of those
horrible photographs.

She could see how darkly he was frowning at her, probably thinking she
was compounding her guilt by lying about it.

'I know it isn't you,' he said, with an almost dismissive shrug. 'It's
obvious that it couldn't possibly be you. How could it be?'

He believed her?

'You...you know that it isn't me?" Lucy repeated cautiously, afraid to
trust in her own hearing.

'Yes, of course I know it isn't you,' Marcus replied, with familiar
sharp impatience.

'But how? How can you know?' Lucy asked him shakily.

134

'Apart from anything else, you have a small but very identifying mole,
high up on the outside of your left thigh,' Marcus told her calmly. 'And
whoever posed for the body shots for this-this abomination doesn't.'

'Oh!'

How very weird that the most important thing in her whole life should
hang on the existence of one tiny brown mole; that something not much
larger than a pinhead could make the difference between happiness for
the rest of her life or misery until she died-between trust and doubt,
between truth and lies, between being married to Marcus and being
rejected by him.

'It's obvious that someone has superimposed your face on the body of
someone else.'

'But someone else without my mole,' Lucy said, as lightly as she could.

Marcus was frowning at her now.

'The mole is simply a confirmation of what I already know, Lucy,' he
told her coolly. 'My own judgement is all I need to know that you could
never be the woman depicted in those photographs.'

To Marcus's own disbelief he realised that he wanted to reach for her
and hold her; that he wanted to tell her he would kill, breath by
breath, painfully and slowly, whoever was responsible for what had
happened; that he wanted to tell her that he knew not just with his
intellect but also with his heart, with the deepest part of himself,
that she would never ever indulge in the kind of scenario the
photographs depicted. He wanted to tell her that he knew that she was a
sensualist, a woman who loved the intimacy of one-to-one lovemaking, a
woman who celebrated her womanhood in the act of sharing pleasure with
just one man.

But how could he be feeling like this? He did not feel

things. He thought through his decisions logically and calmly. He did
not 'sense' them. He did not allow his emotions to sway his judgement.
And, most of all, he did not allow himself to feel his heart turning
over inside his chest in a roll of raw agony because Lucy's pain was his
pain. Because if he did, then that meant-

Angrily he slammed the door against the knowledge he did not want to accept.

'But why would anyone want to do such a thing?' Lucy was asking, giving
him something logical to focus on and deal with. 'Never mind send
those...those things to you?'

'It's probably just someone's idea of a joke,' Marcus told her, intent
on refusing to analyse what was happening to him inside his head. No,
not his head but his heart- that part of him that he had told himself,
when he had finally accepted that his father had deserted them, would in
future only be allowed to operate physically, never emotionally.

'A joke?'

'Yes, it happens all the time." He shrugged his shoulders. 'Young idiots
like your cousin Johnny, for instance, who have nothing better to do and-'

'But, Marcus, something like this isn't a joke,' Lucy protested.

'Look, let's just forget about it, shall we?' Marcus told her briskly.
'After all, we've both recognised it for what it is-at best a stupid,
senseless and very tasteless joke, and at worst a malicious attempt to
damage our relationship.'

'But who would do a thing like that?' Lucy asked, worry crinkling her
forehead.

'Who knows? The best thing we can do now is to ignore it and to forget
it,' Marcus repeated. But he knew he wasn't being entirely open with her.

136

He was grimly aware that only this morning he had heard that the woman
Nick Blayne had left Lucy for had ended their relationship and thrown
him out, and that he was now virtually penniless.

There was no note with the package, but Marcus suspected that the video
and the accompanying photographs were the beginnings of a clumsy attempt
to blackmail him into paying for the 'master' copies. It was the kind of
thing that had Nick Blayne's grubby mark all over it, but Marcus didn't
want to upset Lucy by telling her so.

Or because he was concerned that if she knew that Blayne was free again
she might be tempted to go back to him?

'Marcus?'

Tears of reaction were rolling down Lucy's face. Her thoughts were a
jumbled mass of fear and confusion, plus intense relief that Marcus had
reacted in the way that he had. A wave of gratitude and love for him
surged through her, filling her eyes with fresh tears.

'It's all right, Lucy. It's all right,' Marcus told her gruffly.

'I'm not crying because I'm upset,' Lucy managed to tell him. 'I'm just
crying because I'm so happy that you didn't think it was me.'

Marcus wasn't aware of moving, only of holding her in his arms whilst
her whole body shuddered with reaction.

'Oh-but, Marcus, if you hadn't known about my mole...'

'Lucy, look at me.'

'My mascara's run and my nose is red,' she objected, sniffing.

'True,' Marcus agreed wryly, but his expression was warmer than she
could even remember seeing it. 'But I can still recognise you, Lucy. And
even if you had not had

your mole I would still have known that the body in those photographs
and in those situations could never have belonged to you.'

'How could you know that?'

'Because I know you,' Marcus answered her, simply and truthfully.

And it was true. He did know, at the most primitive and deepest level of
his being, that Lucy could never and would never be the girl in those
photographs.

And now he was beginning to know now something else as well; its message
was being thumped out to him via the heavy thud of his own heartbeat.

But he still wasn't ready to give in. His desire to marry Lucy came from
logic and not love. Came now? Or had originally come?

Lucy give him a small, tremulous half-smile, which wobbled slightly
despite her best efforts to prevent it from doing so. 'So you still want
to marry me, then?'

Marcus arched one eyebrow and told her dryly, 'Of course. It would take
a far braver man than I to disappoint a mother who has planned a wedding
breakfast for five hundred people.'

'I did tell her that we only wanted a quiet wedding,' Lucy assured him.

'Five hundred, five thousand, or five-frankly, my dear, I don't give a
tuppenny ha'penny damn how many guests there are. All I care about is
that you're there, Lucy.'

'Because you're nearly thirty-five and you want an heir?' She held her
breath, hoping against hope that by some miracle he would deny her
comment and declare that he loved her.

'Of course,' he agreed immediately.

Her foolish hope leaked away, leaving her starved of its comfort and
filled with pain.

138

'I'm going to take you back to your parents' place now,' he told her.

'Marcus!' Lucy protested.

'I mean it, Lucy. You can't stay here, tonight of all nights. We both
know that.'

And he knew that if he touched her he might just not be able to let her
go, Marcus was forced to acknowledge.

139

Lucy had refused point blank to wear a white wedding dress, and had been
on the point of giving up finding anything suitable in the short time
she'd had available when she had seen a Vera Wang dress in Harrods, in
ecru silk. Wonder of wonders, it had fitted her.

The long sheath-like gown had a tight-fitting corset-style bodice, a
detachable skirt, and a fishtail demi-train. In order to satisfy family
tradition a copy had been made of its matching close-fitting
bolero-style jacket from a piece of antique family lace.

She hadn't wanted to wear a veil either, but in the end had agreed to
wear a small pillbox-style hat with a very small 'almost' veil.

The promise of heavy-duty wedding-style cream lilies with appropriate
greenery, a positive phalanx of pages and bridesmaids of assorted junior
ranks from both their families, and the pomp and circumstance of the
Oratory and Handel's music had been enough to soothe her mother's
maternal angst about her not looking like a 'real' bride.

Marcus knew that she had entered the church from the excited rustle of
movement that seethed along the pews behind him, and to his own
astonishment felt compelled to turn and watch her as she walked down the
aisle towards him.

He felt his body tighten and his heart lurch in a reaction he had been
determined no woman would ever arouse in him-least of all Lucy.

140

It had really happened. She and Marcus really were married, Lucy
realised dizzily as the Bishop intoned mellif-luously, 'You may kiss the
bride."

And Marcus leaned towards her and then did just that. A cool and very
distant brushing of his lips against hers that filled her eyes with
painful despair and made her hand tremble within his.

Handel's musical paean of triumphal joy rang out as they walked together
back down the aisle and then out into the crisp sunshine of the November
afternoon, to be bombarded with rose petals by their well-wishers and
guests before being swept off in a cavalcade of shiny black limousines
to the imposing building built originally by a grateful nation for its
hero, the Duke of Wellington, for the wedding breakfast.

'Are you sure you aren't disappointed that we didn't book into a hotel
for tonight?' Marcus asked.

They were standing in his bedroom at the Wendover Square house-now their
bedroom. It still smelled just faintly of its refurbishments-a sort of
new paint, new fabric and new carpet smell, all mingled together.

'No, I'm not disappointed at all,' Lucy reassured him. 'After all, we're
flying off to the Caribbean on honeymoon tomorrow, and besides...'

'Besides what?' he demanded.

Lucy shook her head. They might be married, and she might be his wife,
but that didn't mean she felt she could tell him that she didn't care
where they were just so long as they were together, and that anyway his
house had now become inextricably linked in her emotions with the wonder
of the first night she had spent there and the joy of what it had led
her to.

'Nothing,' she fibbed, before admitting ruefully, 'I did

feel a bit of an idiot coming back here in the taxi still wearing my
wedding dress, though. Why did you want me to keep it on?'

The look he was giving her made her whole face colour up.

'Because I want to have the pleasure of taking it off, of course. All
those tiny buttons down the back have been tantalising me for hours,'
Marcus told her truthfully, 'and the sooner the better, I think.
Certainly before we make use of our very sensuous new en suite bathroom.'

'You were the one who suggested it,' she reminded him a little
defensively. Her parents-very much of the old school-had shaken their
heads over the waste of so much expensive London floor space on a mere
bathroom.

'Mmm. I've got very fond memories of the bathroom in our suite at the
hotel in Deia.'

As part of the refurbishment of Marcus's house they had expanded
Marcus's already large bedroom to include a new dressing room made from
one of the smaller bedrooms, plus a huge and very luxurious en suite
bathroom which combined the best of modern, clean bathroom lines-all
chrome and limestone and marble-with the sensual luxury of a large
semi-sunken bath along with a separate wet room area and, of course,
plenty of mirrors.

'Mrs Crabtree said that she would leave us a cold supper, and there is
some champagne on ice downstairs. Don't run away while I go and get it.'

'Run away? Marcus, have you seen how narrow this skirt is? I can't run
anywhere in it. In fact, I can barely walk.'

He wasn't gone very long-just long enough for her to glance round their
bedroom and admire the clean fresh lines of its new decor.

142

'Here you are,' he told her, handing her a glass of the champagne he had
just poured.

'I'm not sure that I should.' Lucy demurred, remembering Great-Aunt
Alice's birthday party.

'I am-you most definitely should. To us,' Marco toasted her firmly.

'To us,' Lucy whispered back, shivering with delight as Marcus leaned
forward and kissed her. She could taste the champagne on his mouth, and
somehow that gave an added intimacy to their kiss.

As he released her she took another sip of her champagne, and then put
the glass down. She was far too excited to need any champagne-induced
euphoria.

Marcus had removed his jacket and pulled off his cravat.

'When I watched you coming down the aisle to me today. Lucy, I thought I
had never seen you looking more beautiful.'

'Oh, Marcus!' Lucy bit her lip, determined not to let him know that she
would have rather have heard him say that he loved her.

He kissed her again, more passionately this time, and then said thickly.
'Now, exactly where do I start with this dress?'

'I'll take the jacket off first, shall I?' Lucy suggested. 'Ma wants to
keep the lace and have some of it sewn on a christening robe for us, so
I daren't damage it." She blushed again as she saw the look in Marcus's
eyes.

'The skirt is Velcroed to the bodice, so it might be an idea to unfasten
the buttons on it first and then I can just step out of it. The bodice
is a sort of corset thing as well, you see.'

She was babbling, Lucy recognised, and all because of how she felt at
the thought of conceiving Marcus's child-and she did not know yet
whether or not she had already done so this month!

Marcus had moved behind her and was slowly unfastening the two dozen
tiny buttons closing her skirt and train.

When he had eventually completed his task, and unhooked the skirt and
train from the low-waisted corset-like bodice of her gown, she was left
standing there in high heels, cream silk stockings fastened to a
suspender belt that matched her gown, and a tiny pair of knickers.

'I know it all looks a bit obvious,' she told him, gesturing towards her
body. 'But it wasn't my idea...' His face, she noticed, was slightly
flushed-from bending down to gather up some of the rose petals that had
fallen inside her gown?

But he didn't make any response to her slightly nervous comment.

Instead he dropped down on one knee in front of her and started to kiss
his way around the bare flesh at top of her stocking, pausing to slowly
unclip her suspenders and then roll the fine silk down her leg,
following it with the caress of his lips.

When he lifted her foot free of her shoe and then slid off her stocking,
holding her foot firmly and then kissing her instep, Lucy exhaled
tremulously in delirious lust.

The other stocking and her suspender belt were removed equally
sensually. But Marcus hadn't finished. He slid his hands inside her
knickers, pulling them down to reveal her new wax-not a
summer-holiday-style Brazilian, but instead a small heart shape of silky
blonde hair, something the beautician had told her was a favourite with
a lot of brides.

'Mmm...pretty. Very nice,' he commented. 'But not as nice as this.' And
then, while his hands held the top of her

144

legs, his tongue probed delicately between the rose-petals-cented lips
of her sex and stroked lingeringly along the whole length of her
opening, right up to the now swollen and eagerly pulsing jut of flesh
that was her clitoris.

Lucy moaned out aloud and buried her fingers in his hair as shuddering
waves of pleasure gripped her.

'Who needs champagne when they can have nectar?' Marcus told her
thickly, after his tongue had stroked her to a sweetly urgent climax.

It had still been light when they had arrived at the house, but by the
time they finally made it onto the big bed it was quite definitely
dark-and she was quite definitely eagerly willing to consummate their
marriage. He thrust slowly and deeply into her and her muscles closed
lovingly round him, her body making him its prisoner-just as he had made
her love his.

Tired?*

"Just a bit,' Lucy admitted, as they stepped out of their taxi and into
the cool haven of Mustique's Sugar House Hotel.

The long flight from England in November to the warmth of the Caribbean,
on top of yesterday's wedding and the long night of passion they had
shared, had left her feeling slightly weary, Lucy acknowledged. Weary
and disappointed-because nothing had changed-because Marcus, although a
wonderfully sensual lover, did not love her.

Mustique was somewhere she had never previously visited, and she had
been delighted, if somewhat surprised, that Marcus had chosen such a
romantic venue for their honeymoon. A tropical darkness had already
descended on the island in the short time since their plane had landed.
and a handful of guests drifted through the foyer in a very

relaxed manner as Marcus signed them in and waited for their room keys.

'Mrs Carring?'

'She means you,' Marcus told Lucy wryly as a smiling girl approached Lucy.

Blushing slightly, Lucy returned her smile.

'We have a complimentary gift pack of vouchers for you, for treatments
at our spa facility.' As Lucy thanked her and took the envelope, the
girl added, her smile deepening, 'I can recommend our couples massage,
which is a massage that is given to you both at the same time in the
privacy of your own room.'

'If all the girls are as pretty as she was, then no way are you going to
be having a complimentary massage,' Lucy informed Marcus pithily ten
minutes later, when they were alone in their suite.

'Aha-now you sound like a wife,' Marcus told her. 'Are you hungry? Would
you like to eat now, or later? The hotel provides an unpacking and
pressing service...'

'I'd like a shower. But more than anything else I'd love-"

"Some coffee,' Marcus finished for her. 'I'll order it for you, shall I?
And perhaps we can have an exploratory walk whilst they unpack for us?'

'Mmm. Oh, Marcus, come and look at this,' Lucy exclaimed, 'it's a pillow
menu. You can choose your own pillow.'

Ten minutes later they were walking hand in hand through the Great Room
of the hotel. Built around an old coral warehouse and a sugar null, the
hotel had been refurbished recently to a wonderful standard of luxury.

Their own master suite in the main hotel was furnished in the style of
the eighteenth century- the bed hung with voile, the furniture elegantly
styled and painted a soft,

146

rubbed off-white. A large freestanding double-ended hip-shaped bath and
a private plunge pool added to the romantic luxury, and as they explored
the gardens and stopped to admire the beach that lay beyond Lucy could
well understand why this luxurious hotel was so very prestigious, and so
loved by its guests. By the time they returned to their suite, via the
privacy of the night-cloaked gardens and several impromptu stops to
exchange kisses, their cases had been unpacked for them.

'Perhaps just a Room Service meal tonight?' Lucy suggested, stifling a
small yawn.

'Good idea,' Marcus agreed.

'Oh, Marcus, this is brilliant...' Lucy sighed happily as she leaned
back against him in their plunge pool, her body between his spread legs,
her head pressed against his chest, with his arms wrapped around her and
his hands cupping her naked breasts.

'Mmm, absolutely,' he agreed, nuzzling the sensitive spot just below her
ear and making her shudder so hard that the water shuddered with her.

'You don't think anyone can see us, do you?' she whispered to him
several seconds later, as they lay naked together in the water and
Marcus teased her eagerly expectant body with all the touches he knew it
loved.

'No...but we can go inside, if you want.'

'No, I like it here,' Lucy told him. 'There's something so nice about
lying naked in the water and the sun.'

'Mmm, something very nice,' Marcus agreed, as he took advantage of her
nudity to enjoy unlimited access to her body whilst encouraging her to
do the same with his.

She had woken up this morning to Marcus stroking teasing fingers against
her breast whilst feathering kisses on her closed eyelids, and they had
gone from there on a slow journey offoreplay that had ended up with her
abandoning herself willingly and completely to his thrusting possession.
Now, scarcely a couple of hours later, her desire for him was already an
urgent clamouring force.

Sliding away from him, Lucy slowly stroked her hand down over his body
to embrace his erection,

Marcus watched whilst she focused on his pleasure, wondering if she knew
just how much of her was attributable not to what she was doing but to
the look of erotic delight in her eyes as she did so. Even her own body
was registering its pleasure in what &he was doing, her nipples
lightening and her breasts lifting slightly. Beneath the water he could
see how the lips of her sex were swelling and flushing.

'Marcus, we can't-not here." Lucy protested as he reached for her. but
it was too late, and as Marcus positioned her over the erection she had
just been caressing she straddled him and sank slowly onto it,
luxuriating in the erotic intensity of taking him into her, centimetre
by centimetre, her slick muscles and flesh gripping and caressing him.
He groaned fiercely and reached for her hips, pulling her down hard
against him whilst he thrust into her, over and over again, then lifted
his hand to place it over her mouth when she screamed out in wild
ecstasy before sinking down on top of him in quivering release.

*I can't believe we're on our way home,' Lucy sighed, as they left the
small plane which had brought them from Mustique.

'We've got a few hours yet before we pick up our connecting flight for
London. Is there anything you want to do?'

Lucy shook her head. 'I'll go and get myself some magazines and a book.'

148

'I've got couple of calls to make, so I'll go and order you some coffee,
shall I?' Marcus offered.

'Mmm-please.' Lucy thanked him. Lucy was standing in the queue waiting
to pay for her purchases when she saw him. The blood drained out of her
face and she whispered, horrified, 'Nick!'

And, even though she knew he could not possibly have heard her, he
turned his head and looked straight at her, abandoning the woman he was
with to come over to her.

Immediately she shrank back from him, not wanting him anywhere near her.

'Well, well-if it isn't my ex-wife. Here on your own, are you?' he
taunted her.

'No, actually, I'm with Marcus,' Lucy told him coldly. She badly wanted
to ignore him, but he was standing right next to her now, and unless she
abandoned the books she was holding and walked away she would have to
stay where she was in the queue.

'Carring?'

She could see that Nick wasn't at all pleased-that in fact he looked
distinctly put out.

'Yes, Marcus,' Lucy repeated. 'He and I are married now.' She couldn't
resist the small happy boast.

'He married you?' Nick demanded sharply. 'How on earth did you persuade
him to do that? Pregnant, are you? I thought he'd dump you the moment he
saw the little wedding present Andrew and I sent him. Perhaps he has his
own reasons for going ahead, does he? But if he thinks he'll force
Andrew into paying more for Pret a Party, then-'

'You sent those photographs?' Lucy cut him off, white-faced.

'Mmm...good, weren't they?' he mocked her. 'Especially that one of you
smiling like you were really having a good time.'

She mustn't let him see how shocked and upset she was, Lucy decided
frantically. Nor must she let him guess how frightened it made her feel
to know that he was working with Andrew Walker, and that the two of them
had tried to destroy her marriage before it had even begun.

She felt as though she was being subjected to a sensation not unlike the
centre of gravity beneath her feet physically shifting, as though there
had been a minor earth tremor. It scared her sick to recognise how far
Andrew Walker was prepared to go to get Pret a Party.

'You really should have accepted Andrew's offer, Lucy,' Nick was telling
her. 'He isn't at all pleased with you, you know. He wants Pret a Party,
and believe me he will get it-one way or another."

Several equally horrible suspicions were thrusting into her awareness
like ice picks.

'How do you know Andrew Walker?' she demanded.

'What's that got to do with you? Let's just say that I do know him, and
that I recommended to him that he look into investing in Pret a Party,"
Nick boasted. 'It's perfect for his needs.'

'Those needs being laundering money stolen from refugees who live in
fear of him, you mean?' Lucy challenged Nick furiously.

'My, my-we have been nosey, haven't we? Be careful that nose of yours
doesn't get chopped off for being stuck into places it has no right to
be, Lucy. And think about this: you had already agreed verbally to a
partnership with Andrew, so you are just as involved in what goes on as
the rest of us.'

'No. We only discussed a partnership-and then I didn't know the truth.'

150

'But can you prove that?' Nick taunted her, 'I'm sure Andrew would be
able to prove that you did if he felt he needed to. He means to have
Pret a Party, Lucy, and he wants it without Carring being involved in
it. Andrew will get what he wants. He always does.'

She was beginning to feel sick again, and she knew she couldn't bear
another minute of Nick's company. He made her feel so vulnerable and
afraid. But she must not let him, she told herself.

Where was Lucy? Marcus left the coffee shop and went to look for her.

It was easy for him to pick her out from amongst the other
travellers-and easy, too, for him to recognise the man standing so close
to her, obviously engaged in a very intimate conversation with her.

Nick Blayne. What the hell...?

He could feel the anger sheeting though him. Lucy was his now. Marcus
started to move towards them, but at that moment Lucy put down the books
she was holding and started to walk away from Nick, heading for the
coffee shop. When Marcus looked away from her, to where Nick Blayne had
been, the other man had disappeared.

He caught up with Lucy just as she reached the coffee shop. She looked
shocked and very distressed,

'What's happened?' he demanded tersely. So tersely that Lucy almost
shrank from him. 'You look as though you've seen a ghost.'

Or an ex-husband.

'I'm just hot and tired, that's all.' Lucy could barely think straight,
never mind speak, because of her own panic and fear. Nick knew Andrew
Walker. Nick had told Andrew Walker about her and Pret a Party. Nick and
Andrew Walker were responsible for those photographs,

that video. Andrew Walker had wanted to stop Marcus marrying her because
he wanted Pret a Party.

She hadn't said a word about seeing Blayne. Had he told her that he was
free again? Was she wishing that she were too? Had they made
arrangements to meet up somewhere-in London, for instance? They had
certainly had time.

'That's our flight they've just called,' Marcus announced.

'Marcus...' Lucy desperately wanted to tell him what had happened, to
appeal to him for help.

'Yes.'

She bit her lip. 'Nothing.' How could she involve him? How could she
tell him what a fool she had been? How could she tell him about the
seedy and immoral nature of what she had so nearly become involved in?
And what if, because of her foolishness, those dark forces and
everything that went with them should seep into their own lives? Into
Marcus's business life? Marcus was a man of honour and probity-Marcus
was the total opposite of the Andrew Walkers of this world.

She felt sick and shaky, and so very, very afraid.

'Lucy. What a naughty girl you've been, not returning my calls.'

Lucy tried to stand up, but Andrew Walker had placed a hard hand on her
shoulder, pushing her back into her chair. How had he got into the
office? She had locked the door. She always locked the door when she had
to be here now.

He waved a key under her nose, as though he had guessed what she was
thinking.

'How fortunate that Nick remembered he had a spare

152

II

key to the office here. He's back in London, by the way. Has he been in
touch with you yet?'

Lucy didn't speak. She didn't trust herself to do so.

'Nick very much wants to see you,' he continued. 'In fact he has told me
in confidence how much he regrets the break-up of your marriage. I must
say that it is a pity he is no longer involved in Pret a Party.'

He released her shoulder and pulled up a chair, straddling it to sit in
front of her, blocking her pathway to the door-which she suspected he
had probably locked anyway.

'Now, about Pret a Party, Lucy.'

'I'm closing Pret a Party down,' Lucy told him immediately. All she had
been able to think about since their return from honeymoon had been how
to solve the problem she had unwittingly brought on herself. In the end
she had decided that the best way was simply to make sure that Pret a
Party no longer existed. 'You'll have to look for something else.'

'Oh, no. I'm afraid we can't allow you to do that. You see, Pret a Party
is just so perfect for our needs. It really was very foolish of Nick to
give up his involvement in it, and of course he knows that himself now.
Indeed, it strikes me that he may very well have a claim on
re-establishing his role in Pret a Party-after all, there was never any
formal cessation of the contract between you, was there?'

'Nick left me.'

'A mistake he now regrets,' Andrew Walker told her smoothly.

'I won't be dragged into what you're doing, and I shall-'

He was shaking his head.

'Lucy, I don't think you properly understand. We want Pret a Party, and
we want you as well. After all, without

you it isn't very much use to us, you know. It's your name that makes it
what it is.'

'No. I won't agree-and you can't make me.'

'Oh, dear. I'm afraid I am going to have to disillusion you there. We
very much can make you. How do you feel about your husband, Lucy? Do you
love him? You wouldn't want to see him hurt, would you? And he could be
hurt-very badly hurt, too-if you don't do what we want.'

'You're just saying that,' Lucy protested. 'You're just trying to
frighten me and threaten me-'

'Where is Marcus at the moment, Lucy? Do you know?'

Stubbornly she refused to answer him. Andrew Walker sighed gently.

'He's in Leeds, isn't he? Why don't you telephone him? You know his
mobile number, don't you?'

'He's gone to see a client,' Lucy told him stiffly. 'I don't want to
disturb him.'

'He may have gone to Leeds to see a client, but unfortunately he didn't
make the appointment. He's had a small...accident, you see.'

He saw her expression and laughed.

'I'm going to be very generous to you, Lucy. I'm going now, and I'm
going to give you twenty-four hours to think things over. You're a
sensible woman, and I'm sure you're going to realise very quickly that
it's in your own interests to accept what we're offering you. See you
tomorrow- same place, same time.'

Andrew Walker had gone, leaving only the smell of his aftershave behind
to mingle with the scent of her own fear.

155

Lucy felt sick. She was struggling to breathe properly. Her fingers
trembled so much as she reached for the telephone to ring Marcus that it
took her several attempts to do so.

When the call rang out unanswered she panicked, and then tried to
reassure herself that he had simply put his calls on divert. But then,
shockingly, she heard a strange male voice demanding, 'Who is it?'

Automatically she checked the number she had dialled, just in case it
was wrong. It wasn't.

'I want to speak to Marcus-my husband.'

'Ai want to speak to Marcus-mai 'usband.' The man mimicked her cruelly.
'Well, there ain't no Marcus 'ere.'

'But you've got his mobile! How-? Where-?'

To her dismay the line went dead-and remained dead even though she tried
over and over again to get her call answered.

Marcus's mobile had obviously been stolen-but that didn't mean anything
had happened to Marcus himself, she tried to reassure herself. Mobile
phones went missing all the time.

Even so... Frantically she rang the bank and asked to be put through to
Marcus's PA, demanding to know who exactly Marcus had been going to see
and how she could get in touch with her husband.

'Have you tried his mobile?' Jerome asked her.

'Yes, but...but a stranger answered. Jerome, I think it may have been
stolen, and I'm worried about Marcus.'

'Calm down.' He immediately soothed her. 'I'm sure

there's a perfectly reasonable explanation. I'll get in touch with the
client and then I'll ring you back.'

Five minutes crawled by, agonisingly slowly, and then another five. And
then Lucy couldn't bear to wait any more.

This time she dialled Jerome's number direct, only to find that his line
was busy. Because he was trying to get in touch with her? Immediately
Lucy hung up, and curled herself into a small tight ball of anguished
fear. If anything had happened to Marcus then it was her fault. Because
of her and Pret a Party...because of her marriage to Nick...

Her telephone started to ring. She stared at it for several seconds,
almost too afraid to answer it, then frantically reached for the
receiver, clutching it when she heard Jerome's voice saying sharply, 'Lucy?'

'Yes, it's me. Have you spoken to Marcus?'

'Yes...'

. There was a note in his voice that immediately set alarm bells ringing
in her head. ". 'What is it? Where is he?' she demanded fiercely.

'There's been a bit of an incident, but he's all right, Lucy-'

'What do you mean? What kind of incident? Jerome, where is he?'

'Leeds General Hospital.'

'What! Why? What's happened to him? I'm going to see him. I-'

'Lucy, calm down. Marcus is fine. He told me to tell you that he'll be
home tomorrow, as planned.'

'I want to speak to him! I want to see him...'

She could hear Jerome exhaling.

'I'm afraid that you can't, Lucy. Not right now. Marcus is in
Casualty-no, it's all right, there's nothing seriously wrong with
him-just a few bruises and scratches.

156

Although from the sound of it, it could have been much worse if the crew
of a cruising police car hadn't spotted what was happening and scared
off the young thugs who had set about him. However, the medics want to
check him over-just to be on the safe side.'

'Jerome, please... I want to know now exactly what happened,' Lucy
demanded, as she fought back the fear his words had caused her and tried
to think and speak coherently.

'Marcus was mugged by a group of youths--Eastern Europeans, he thinks.
According to the police they might be illegal immigrants, but since they
weren't able to apprehend any of them they can't confirm that. They were
obviously after his wallet and his mobile-both of which they took, along
with his watch. And of course Marcus, being Marcus, didn't make it easy
for them. Fortunately the police arrived before things got too out of
hand. Marcus said explicitly that I was to tell you not to worry and
that he will ring you as soon as he can. Like I said, he's in Casualty
at the moment, being patched up.'

'I'm going to Leeds right now to see him,' Lucy told the PA.

"No, Lucy,' Jerome said firmly. 'Marcus anticipated that you would say
that, and he told me to tell you there's no need. He'll be back tomorrow
evening, as planned.'

Please let this not be happening, Lucy prayed after she had replaced the
telephone receiver. Please let it all be only a horrible nightmare that
isn't really happening at all.

But it was happening-and it was happening because of her. Marcus had
been attacked and robbed simply because he was married to her.

She was too distraught to cry, too filled with fear for Marcus to do
anything other than stay where she was, unable to so much as move, as
she focused on waiting to hear his voice.

Not even the familiar dull ache that told her she had again not
conceived his child could break through that anxiety.

The seconds and then the minutes ticked by-half an hour-an hour-an hour
and a quarter-and then the phone rang.

Lucy snatched up the receiver, 'Marcus?'

'Yes, it's me.'

The relief of hearing his voice totally overwhelmed her. She was shaking
so much with reaction she could hardly speak.

'What happened? Are you all right? I want to come to Leeds.'

'I was mugged, I'm fine, and there's no point in you coming to Leeds.
I'll be back tomorrow evening,'

'Where are you? The hospital?'

'I'm in a taxi on the way to see my client. The hospital have given me a
clean bill of health, and apart from a bit of bruising I'm okay. Stop
worrying, Lucy. Things like this happen all the time, so let's not make
an unnecessary drama out of it, shall we?'

She could hear the impatience in his voice. She tried to breathe deeply,
and gulped in air on a shuddering intake of breath that almost choked her.

'Look, I've got to go,' she could hear Marcus saying. 'I'm using a
temporary pay-as-you-go mobile-all I've had time to get. I'll ring you
tonight.'

'Promise me that you really are all right,' Lucy demanded emotionally.

'I really am all right,' Marcus assured her calmly.

158

This time it wasn't shock with which she reacted to Andrew Walker's
appearance in her office, but instead a blend of sick despair and
exhaustion.

She had been awake all night, worrying and thinking, and it showed in
Lucy's face as she turned to face her tormentor.

"I do hope you've given some serious thought to what I said to you
yesterday, Lucy,' he told her smoothly. 'But just in case you didn't
take me seriously, I've brought along a few photographs for you to look
at.' Lucy flinched as he leaned over her and laid them out neatly on her
desk. They were slightly out of focus, as though they had been taken in
a hurry and not by an expert, but they were still plain enough to send a
shock of sick recoil hammering through her body.

Marcus being punched and then kicked as he lay on the ground surrounded
by his four assailants.

Lucy only just managed not to cry out as she saw from one photograph a
boot being aimed at his face, and then in another the murderous gleam of
sunlight on a sharp knife.

This time Marcus was lucky. The police arrived in time to stop him from
suffering anything more than a few cuts and bruises. Next time he won't
be so lucky, Lucy. And there will be a next time.'

Very deliberately he reached into his pocket and withdrew a mobile
phone-Marcus's phone, Lucy realised, as a sick, sweating trembling took
hold of her.

'This time all I asked for was his telephone as proof that my orders had
been carried out, but next time-'

'Stop it,' Lucy implored him. 'You can't get away with this. The police
will catch the men responsible...'

Andrew Walker laughed.

'No way. Those gutter vermin know exactly how to

slink away into their sewers, and they know what will happen to them if
they dare to betray me. One word to the authorities and they'll be
deported-if they live that long.' Lucy shuddered. She couldn't doubt any
more that his threats were real-and enforceable. She had to do something
to protect Marcus, and she knew there was only one thing she could do.
Tears filled her eyes. The only thing

* she could do was the one thing she most wanted not to have to. But she
had no choice. Marcus's safety was more important to her than her own
happiness.

'It's up to you, Lucy,' Andrew Walker was telling her, with horrible
fake affability. 'A partnership with you and

Pret a Party and Carring remains perfectly safe...'

Lucy managed a small uncaring shrug. She had gone

Cover and over this so many times last night. She knew exactly what she
had to do to save Marcus. She could save Marcus-but she couldn't save
her marriage as well. Hot tears burned her throat raw, but she refused
to think about her own despair.

'You can't blackmail me through Marcus,' she told him dismissively. 'I
don't want him hurt, naturally, but frankly I wish I'd never married
him. I knew it was a mistake the moment I saw Nick again.'

-, Well, that much was true. But not in the way she was implying to
Andrew Walker.

": The reason she had known her marriage to Marcus was a mistake was
because Nick had revealed to her the danger she had put Marcus in-and
Andrew Walker was underlining that right now.

She could see Andrew Walker was frowning, and sensed that he did not
believe her. Panic twisted her insides. Very

Well, then, she would just have to make sure that she convinced him.

'I realised when I saw Nick at the airport that it was

160

him I loved,' she lied. 'I've told Marcus that, and I've told him I want
a separation.'

Andrew Walker still wore a frown.

'Well, this is a surprise. And one that I am sure will delight Nick?if
it is true.'

'It is true. But I doubt that it will delight Nick. Why should it? He
doesn't love me,' Lucy told him.

That much was true. Nick wasn't capable of loving anyone other than himself.

'Nonsense. He adores you.'

'I don't want to talk about Nick,' Lucy told him. 'Ultimately, of
course, I shall divorce Marcus, but in the meantime I shall probably
leave the country and go and live somewhere else.'

'Isn't that all very hasty and unnecessary?' Andrew Walker cautioned
her. 'I must admit that you have surprised me-if you're telling me the
truth.'

'Why should I lie?' Lucy challenged him, hoping it wasn't as obvious to
him as it was to her. 'I don't love Marcus. I don't want him hurt,
particularly, but I don't want to be involved in what you're planning
for Pret a Party-and nothing you do to Marcus will change that.' she
told Andrew Walker shakily. 'Because I won't be.'

'Why don't you wait until you've spoken to Nick before you come to a
decision about that. Lucy?'

Andrew Walker was smiling almost paternally at her now.

Speak to Nick? She'd rather die! Maybe she would even die... But Andrew
Walker had already told her that they needed her name for Pret a Party,
which meant they needed her alive. But not Marcus. They didn't need
Marcus to be alive. Marcus...

'McVicar rang me this afternoon, whilst I was on my way back from Leeds.
He told me that you've been in touch with him to ask if Blayne could
still be considered an employee in Pret a Party since he did not sign a
termination agreement,' Marcus announced coolly.

Were you hoping that he was still involved, Lucy? When I saw you with
him at the airport, was that a chance meeting or a planned one? Do you
want him as a partner in your bed? Instead of me?

No, that was nonsense. Okay, so after the fuss she had made over the
telephone he was surprised that Lucy was behaving so distantly to him
now that he was home, but he wasn't really going to let himself think he
was actually disappointed by her lack of reaction to his return, was he?
And he certainly wasn't going to allow himself to think that her
coolness towards him hurt.

Coffee spilled from the mug Lucy was holding onto the new limestone
kitchen floor. Her heart was jerking in uncomfortable, uncoordinated,
irregular beats that were making her feel nauseous.

'I simply wanted to know what the situation was,' she defended herself.

'Why didn't you ask me?'

'You're my husband, not my solicitor,' She couldn't bear the sight of
the bruises on Marcus's face, and was ; terrified of breaking down in
front of him and telling him what was going on.

Mr McVicar had assured her that there was no way Nick could claim to
have any ongoing involvement in Pret a Party, but she still felt
desperately afraid and worried. For herself, but most of all for Marcus.

'Has it been decided what we're doing for Christmas yet?' he asked,
deliberately changing the subject.

'I spoke to my mother yesterday morning. She's spoken

162

to your mother, and to Beatrice, and Beatrice has suggested that we all
get together.'

'Where-not in this wretched castle she wants to hire for George's
birthday, I trust?'

When once she would have laughed, now Lucy could only manage the
paltriest of wan smiles, Marcus noticed bitterly.

Why? Because secretly she was thinking she wanted to spend her Christmas
with Blayne? The pain that thought caused him was almost beyond bearing.
Where had it come from and what did it mean?

She still hadn't said a word to him about seeing Blayne, and Marcus
wondered how much contact there had been between them since then.

'No.' Lucy gave him a rueful look. 'Mother is talking about us all going
to Framlingdene and staying there.'

Framlingdene was the National Trust Property that had originally been
the country seat of Lucy's father's family. The family had retained the
right to use a suite of rooms there.

'Will there be enough room for all of us?'

'No, not really. I think it would be better if we simply stayed here in
London. We normally have a big family party at Great-Aunt Alice's on
Boxing Day, since she's got the space, and I imagine we could all have
dinner there quite easily.'

'Well, it certainly makes more sense than driving up to Yorkshire.
Lucy-is something wrong?'

His question shocked and surprised Marcus almost as much as it obviously
did Lucy. Since when had he wanted to talk about emotions?

Lucy's colour came and went whilst she struggled between truth and
fear-and love.

In the end, love won out.

'No, of course not. Why should there be?"

'No particular reason-other than that you don't exactly look like a
glowing newly married,' Marcus heard himself saying curtly.

"Glowing newly marrieds are normally glowing because they are in love
with one another,' Lucy told him lightly. 'And we aren't.'

She would have to tell him soon that she wanted to end their marriage.
Soon, but not yet. Please, just let her have a little more time with
him. One birthday, one Christmas...she would tell him before the New
Year, she promised herself.

Lucy hesitated outside the jeweller's. It was Marcus's birthday today,
and tonight they were going out for dinner with his family. She had
already bought him a new silk tie, and she certainly couldn't afford to
buy him one of the expensive watches displayed in the window in front her.

Besides, he would replace his stolen Roles himself in due course. It had
been insured.

Even so... There was a discreet sign in the window saying that they also
sold good quality 'previous owner" watches.

She could always go in and enquire.

Half an hour later she was back on the pavement outside the shop,
huddling into her coat to protect herself from the icy blast of the
wind, the Rolex watch on which she had just spent virtually every penny
she had in her bank account safely tucked in her handbag.

It was exactly the same model as the watch Marcus had had stolen, and
she was thrilled to be able to give it to him for his birthday. Would he
keep it for ever? Even after they were divorced? The pain caught her
breath and held her immobile in its grip.

164

They were going for dinner at the Carlton Towers-mainly because in
Marcus's opinion they served the best steak in London.

Marcus arrived home just as Lucy stepped out of the shower. By the time
he had reached the bedroom she had wrapped herself in a towel and was
seated on their bed, his watch carefully gift wrapped beside her.

'What's this?' he demanded as she handed it to him.

'Your birthday present.'

'I thought I had that this morning.'

'Your tie? Yes, I know. But this is something extra,' Lucy told him huskily.

She was beginning to have an effect on him that wasn't what he had
planned, Marcus acknowledged as he sat down beside her and unwrapped his
present.

He wasn't sure what he had been expecting. But when he removed the paper
and saw the familiar Rolex box he was surprised.

'It isn't new, I'm afraid. I couldn't... But it's just like the one you
lost.'

It wasn't--not quite-because the one he had lost had originally belonged
to his father. But he didn't tell her that. Instead he put the watch on
without a word, and then took hold of her and kissed her fiercely.

It seemed to have been such a long time since he had kissed her like
this-even though in reality they had only been back from their honeymoon
a fortnight. And if he had not made love to her as passionately since
their return then that was very probably down to the fact that she had
not encouraged him to do so. Lucy had that brief thought, and then she
stopped thinking about anything as he rolled her down onto the bed
beneath him and kept on kissing her.

Yearningly Lucy kissed him back. She loved him so very much...

'You two are late. What kept you?' Lucy's mother asked, when Lucy and
Marcus hurried into the restaurant of the Carlton Towers hotel.

Automatically Lucy looked at Marcus. Thank goodness it was too dark in
here for anyone else to notice the look Marcus was giving her.

'Marcus, you've got your watch back.' Beatrice announced halfway through
dinner.

'Actually, no. Lucy gave me this for my birthday.'

Again he looked at her, and this time Lucy suspected that Beatrice had
seen the gleam in his eyes, and had guessed exactly what the giving of
the gift had led to, because she suddenly grinned and said quietly to
Lucy, 'Aha-now I think I know why we weren't the last to arrive for
once. I thought it was unlike my normally prompt brother to be late.'

It was gone midnight when they finally got home.

'Only another three weeks to Christmas,' Lucy said sleepily.

"Mmra. Early in the New Year would be a good time for us to start
looking for that country house we've been thinking about, I suspect.'

Lucy's heart missed a beat. Early in the New Year their marriage would
be as good as over, thanks to Nick and Andrew Walker.

'What's wrong?' Marcus asked her sharply.

'Nothing. What makes you think there is?'

'Oh, I don't know. Maybe the fact that the emotional temperature has
just dropped by ten degrees might have something to do with it,' Marcus
responded, his voice every bit as cool. 'Something's on your mind. Lucy.'

'Nothing is on my mind. I'm just tired, that's all,' she lied.

166

'I want to get this business of Pret a Party's debts sorted out before
the New Year,' Marcus announced. 'I think we should go and see McVicar
together and-'

'No!'

'Why not?'

'I've already told you. Pret a Party is my business and I want to keep
it that way. And-and I don't want to be bullied into doing something I
don't want to do!'

Marcus didn't say a word. He didn't need to. The look he gave her said
it all.

Lucy wanted to plead with him to understand, but how could she do that?
Dorland had not been joking when he had said to her that Andrew Walker
was a bad man. People's happiness, people's lives meant nothing to him,
or to those he worked for; she knew that. Ending her marriage to Marcus
was the only way she had of protecting him. It was like...it was like
performing an amputation to save a person's life, she told herself. But
whilst Marcus would survive that amputation, and probably go on to make
a perfectly happy life for himself without her in it, she knew that
losing him would leave her bereft for the rest of her life.

Only a week now and it would be Christmas. All the Knightsbridge shops
and of course the big stores--Harrods and Harvey Nicks-had been
flaunting their Christmas finery for weeks. Lucy had done all her
shopping-her cards were posted, and her presents wrapped. Mrs Crabtree
had taken some extra holiday so that she could spend more time with her
daughter and her grandchildren, and Lucy had been enjoying showing off
her domesticity to Marcus via her cooking-even if he had turned the
tables on her by cooking for her last night.

He hadn't mentioned Pret a Party again, but there was a tension between
them that hurt her-though at the same time she was clinging to every
second of the time she had with him.

At least he was still making love to her-every night, in fact-with skill
and passion and determination. But not, of course, with love.

The doorbell rang as she was on her way through the hall. Automatically
she went to answer it, and then froze as she saw Nick standing on the steps.

She tried to close the door, but Nick pushed it open and stepped into
the hall, telling her sullenly, 'What are you doing? I thought you'd be
pleased to see me. Andrew said you would be when he told me to come round.'

Andrew Walker had sent him here? Why was she not surprised?

'Nick, you shouldn't have come here,' she protested. 'If Marcus saw you...'

'He isn't here, is he?'

'No, he's at work. But if he were here-'

'But he isn't,' Nick cut her off. His earlier sullenness had been
replaced by the slick, facile falsity of what Nick considered to be
charm and what she knew to be a shallow pretence of it.

'You know, Lucy, Andrew's right-we did rush into divorcing without
giving our marriage a proper chance. I admit that I was a bit
thoughtless, and selfish...'

Had Andrew Walker made him repeat those words until he had them off pat?
Lucy wondered cynically. They certainly didn't ring true, and neither
did they accord with the look of patronising conceit she could see in
Nick's eyes as he looked at her.

'I'm not surprised you regret marrying Carring. I suppose when you
compare him to me, you're bound to find

168

him wanting--especially in bed.' He smirked. 'Bed is my speciality,
after all-remember?'

Lucy longed to tell him that all she remembered of his so-called
speciality was how barren and empty it had been, in every single way,
but of course she could not do so.

'You were my first lover,' she told him quietly instead.

'Yeah, and I guess you took it for granted that all men would be as good
as me-right? Silly little Lucy.' He shook his head mock-playfully. 'But
never mind. Pretty soon you and I can start making up for lost time. In
fact...' He looked towards the stairs. 'Why don't we start right now,
eh? Why don't I take you upstairs and give you a very special Christmas
present?'

Lucy wanted to scream at him to leave before she was physically sick.
But if she caused him to think that she loved Marcus then she would be
putting Marcus in very great danger-and giving Andrew Walker something
to blackmail her with.

'Not here,' she demurred, trying to look regretful. 'Perhaps if I came
to you...' Never in a thousand years.

'Came to me? How about I make you come for me, Lucy? And it wouldn't
take long, would it? I can see in your eyes how much you want me. Come
on...'

Nick was reaching for her hand and pulling her towards him. She could
smell the too-strong scent of his cologne, overpoweringly unpleasant
after the familiarly of Marcus's cool freshness.

'Nick-no! I was just on my way out...to meet my mother,' she fibbed.

'Andrew told me to give you a message from him,' he told her, abruptly
releasing her. 'You told him that you planned to leave Carring, but
you're still living here with him.'

'I can't just walk out,' Lucy protested.

'No...' Nick gave a speculative look around the hallway. 'I dare say you
want to make sure you get a nice fat slice of his millions before you
leave, and I don't blame you for that.'

'Yes. That's...that's exactly what I'm planning to do,' Lucy agreed
untruthfully. 'And I can't meet up with Andrew at the moment, Nick.
Marcus might get suspicious. In fact he's already suspicious because I
won't let him become a partner in Pret a Party.'

'Well, Andrew's getting very impatient-and so are the men he represents.
Andrew said to tell you that if you don't get rid of Marcus voluntarily,
then he's going to have to make arrangements to do it for you. Oh, and
he said to tell you not to even think about telling Carring what's
happening, because that will be as good as signing his death warrant.'

Lucy had no idea how long it was since Nick had left. And she didn't
know either that her body was cramped and stiff from sitting on the
stairs, her arms locked tightly around her knees as though she were
trying to stanch a wound that would not stop bleeding. She did
know-vaguely- that it must have gone dark outside, because the hallway
was in darkness.

Dissociated thoughts and images jumbled together inside her head. The
first night she and Marcus had been to bed together; the fact that this
weekend they had planned to go and look for a Christmas tree-Lucy wanted
a real one and, although he had grimaced, Marcus had given in and
promised to take her out to get one. The espresso machine he had bought
her-the thrill it had given her the first time she had woken up beside
him here in this house, as his wife; the pleasure it gave her just to
look at him

170

and watch him and the pain it gave her too, as she stored every second
of time she had with him with the greed that only the deprived and
starving knew.

Soon now all that would be over. It had to be. Otherwise...

171

'What!'

'You heard me, Marcus,' Lucy repeated shakily. 'I want a divorce.'

She could see how shocked he was, how unbelieving and how white-faced
with anger, even in the soft lighting of their bedroom.

'We've only been married a month.'

He couldn't believe the intensity of the pain ripping him apart.

'I know. I've counted every day of it. Every hour,' Lucy told him
truthfully. 'It isn't working, Marcus. And I won't-I can't-stay in a
marriage that doesn't make me happy. I'll find somewhere to live, and
then we can start divorce proceedings...'

'No!'

Lucy looked up at him.

'I warned you when we married that I was making a lifetime commitment to
you, Lucy, and that I expected the same commitment back from you. There
won't be any divorce,' Marcus told her furiously.

He wasn't going to let her go. Not ever. She was his and he loved her.

He loved her? He loved Lucy?

But that wasn't possible. He had sworn years ago that he was not going
to allow himself to fall in love. It was as though there was a
vulnerable fault inside him, similar to those responsible for causing
earthquakes, and his emotions-those emotions he had buried and denied
and stubbornly

172

refused to acknowledge could exist--were causing so much pressure within
him that they simply could not be controlled.

Pain, grief, jealousy, and a determination never to let her go exploded
inside him with a subterranean force that sent a mighty surge of love
and need roaring through him crashing through every barrier he had
erected against them.

He loved Lucy!

His passionate refusal caused Lucy to waver between wild hope and
joy-and the stark, horrifying reality of what his refusal meant. She
hadn't expected this kind of reaction from him. She had expected him to
tell her to pack her things and leave straight away.

'All right, don't divorce me, then,' she told him, making herself scowl
and shrug, and keeping her voice cold and sharp. 'But you can't stop me
leaving you, Marcus, and that is exactly what I intend to do. So far as
I am concerned, our marriage is over.'

Marcus struggled to suppress an unfamiliar desire to break
something-because something inside him was breaking. His heart?

He had known ever since they had come back from honeymoon that Lucy
wasn't happy, and he had believed he knew why. But he had not known then
what his own feelings were. He did now! Why should he let Blayne take
her from him and ruin her life a second time? She was so much better off
with him-even if she was too besotted with her ex-husband to see that
herself. One day she would thank him for what he was doing; one day she
would come to realise, as he saw with such blinding clarity himself now,
that they were meant for one another. He wanted to reason with her, to
plead with her, but the unfamiliarity of dealing with such intense
emotions was too much for him-He could feel jealousy, burning too high
and too hot. It

burst out of him in a slew of bitter, angry words as he warned her savagely:

'Don't think I don't know what all this is about, Lucy. Because I do. I
know exactly what's been going on behind my back.'

Marcus knew? Her heart was hammering. He couldn't, could he?

'It's Blayne, isn't it?'

He heard her give a small, betraying gasp of shocked admission.

'I saw you with him at the airport.'

Marcus had seen that? And he thought...

'That was a coincidence!'

What else could she say? Lucy wondered, as she struggled to grasp what
Marcus was saying to her. Initially she had thought he meant he knew
about Pret a Party and Andrew Walker, but now she realised that Marcus
thought she wanted to end their marriage because she was still in love
with Nick. And wasn't it better that he should continue to think that,
rather than have him become suspicious and start to ask questions she
could not answer?

'A very unhappy coincidence-as I believe your common sense would tell
you if only you would let it,' Marcus was continuing bitterly. 'Surely
you can't have forgotten what he did to you?'

'It's different now,' Lucy told him. How true that was. 'He's changed.'
And how untrue that.

'He's changed? But have you, Lucy? Are you sure you really know what you
want? After all, in my bed you wanted me...'

'No!'

Yes. Yes...

'I thought I did, but I didn't. Not really.'

Yes, really-now and for ever. Only you and always you,

174

Marcus. This is killing me, and I can't bear it. I love you so much.

'You're lying, and what's more I intend to prove it to you.'

Marcus could hardly believe what he was saying and doing. He was a man
out of control, driven mad by love.

He had reached for Lucy before she could stop him. dragging her against
his body whilst his mouth took and then savaged hers in a kiss of
furious male anger.

Downstairs, the Christmas tree they had bought at the weekend, and which
Lucy had spent all day yesterday dressing, shimmered in the window, its
lights twinkling softly with promise and hope. Upstairs, in the bedroom
above it, there was no promise and no hope. Only a man and a woman
locked together in an embrace devoid of both, and the savagery of
Marcus's anger.

Lucy felt Marcus's hands tugging at her clothes whilst she stood
motionless and numb with despair.

She heard the sound of fabric tearing as he wrenched a button from its
fastening, saw the dark burn of colour staining his skin as his hands
gripped the soft flesh of her bare arms.

'Have you been to bed with him since we've been married, Lucy? Have you?''

Please, God, let her say no,

'No.' At least there she could be honest.

'Not yet? But you intend to? Is that it?' Why was he torturing himself
like this?

Not ever. Never. Ever again. Not with anyone if it can't be with you, my
dearest, only love. 'Nick...'

'Stop it. I don't want to hear his name," Marcus told her thickly,
crushing his mouth over hers to silence the words he did not want to
hear in the only way he could.

Lucy trembled-not with cold, and not with fear either,

she recognised. Even though it would have been very easy to be afraid of
Marcus in this mood.

But how could she fear what she longed for so much? How could she fear
what she craved so desperately? One last time. One last memory. One last
sip from the chalice of bittersweet desire.

She could feel the edge of the bed behind her, she could feel, too,
Marcus pushing her down against it, his removal of her remaining clothes
and his own almost brutally efficient.

'I can make you want me, Lucy,' he warned her. 'And I shall do so.'

'No.'

Yes. Yes, Marcus, do it...do it now. Take me now. I want you.

He had never taken her like this before, in an angry passion that burned
and seared, but she was still responding to him. Her flesh, her
emotions. Her whole self was still welcoming and wanting him, ignoring
his dark rage, discarding it like the shell of something sweetly craved,
focusing instead on what lay within it, on what she wanted within it,
taking her, transforming her, holding her in thrall to it as her body
held him in thrall to her, if only for those few precious seconds out of
time.

'No!' The raw denial was dragged from his lungs to burst between the
sounds of their breathing, the bed moving.

What the hell was he doing? Sweat beaded Marcus's forehead as he fought
against the hot tide of his own rage, pushing it back heartbeat by
heartbeat, as he superimposed over his savage image of Lucy with Nick
Blayne a softer, gentler image of just Lucy herself.

He must not-would not give way to his furious bitter pain.

176

'Yes!'

She was not going to let him go now. Not when he had brought her so
close. Not when, within a heartbeat, she could take the base metal of
his anger and, like some fabled alchemist, turn it into the pure gold of
shared need and equally shared fulfilment. Lucy clung to him and refused
to let him go, holding him with her will and her muscles, mentally and
physically, as he tried to withdraw from her, moving with him, against
him, on to him, slowly and rhythmically, creating a physical tune that
soothed her aching need and stoked the sweet hot fires of his desire as
well as her own. In this she would have her way-and she would have him.
For now if not for ever, Lucy knew, as she tightened her muscles around
him and drew from him the response she needed him to give.

Marcus watched Lucy, broodingly aware of how thin and fragile she
looked, her face too fine-drawn and her neck so slender it looked almost
too delicate to support the drooping weight of her head.

He had reiterated to her that he would not divorce her, and he had
demanded from her too a commitment not to say anything about her desire
to end their marriage to any members of their families over Christmas.

'Have you forgotten that there could be a child?' he had demanded harshly.

'There won't be,' Lucy had told him. But she wasn't sure if that was
true. They had had sex since her last period after all.

Marcus had seen the tears bleeding from her eyes then, and he had seen
them there again on Christmas Eve, when they had gone to Midnight Mass
with her parents and his mother.

On Christmas Day they had joined Lucy's family for

lunch, and so had his mother, Lucy's great-aunt, and his sister Beatrice
and her family. Lucy had barely spoken or eaten, and Marcus had seen the
surreptitious looks all the other women had given her, obviously sharing
his own knowledge that she was too thin and too sad to be a happily
married new bride.

The Christmas presents they had bought one another still lay beneath the
tree unopened. He had declared that it was pointless for them to open
them, causing Lucy to run out of the room in tears.

He wanted so desperately to keep her with him; to take her by the hand
and make her look into the future; to see how happy they could be if
only she would accept his love and reject Blayne.

He loved her so damn much.

Did he? Surely if he loved her, really loved her. then happiness, her
desires, her tears, should matter more to him than his own?

They did, he insisted stubbornly. That was why...

That was why he was trying to force her to stay with him, was it? That
was the measure of his love for her, was it?

Blayne would destroy her, He would hurt her again and again; he was just
using her...

And he hadn't hurt her? He hadn't used her? He hadn't almost taken her
by force physically and he wasn't now trying to do so emotionally?

Lucy looked at Marcus.

. 'We ought to leave. You know what Great-Aunt Alice is like.'

They were due to attend her great-aunt's traditional Boxing Day family
get-together.

Lucy was wearing a soft velvet dress in a mossy green. It had lace cuffs
and she was wearing a little lacy cardigan

178

thing embroidered with pink rosebuds over it, Marcus noticed.

She looked wonderful-and heartbreakingly fragile.

'Lucy?'

He saw the apprehension in her eyes as she looked at him and he hated
himself. 'I've been thinking...'

He was going to say that he wanted them to try again, that he wanted
their marriage to continue, that she meant so much to him he could not
give her up. Bittersweet tears filled Lucy's eyes. If only she could go
to him and tell him how much those words meant...

Marcus took a deep breath. He had made up his mind and he wasn't going
to falter now. He had to prove his love to himself and to Lucy by
putting her needs first, by accepting that she must have free choice.

'You're right. It's pointless allowing our marriage to continue. As soon
as we get into the New Year I'll instruct my solicitor to start divorce
proceedings...'

Because I love you enough to let you go. Because that's what love is.
It's more than a person's own feelings-it's putting the one they love
first. And I do love you, my Lucy. So very-, very much.

He was going to divorce her!

Lucy's stomach churned and she felt acutely sick.

But this was what she wanted.

No, not what she wanted. This was what she had to have in order to
protect him.

'Lucy, you're shivering.'

'I'm cold,' she answered her mother truthfully.

'Cold? But it's lovely and warm in here. Are you all right?'

'I'm fine.'

I'm dying inside and I will never, ever be all right again. Marcus is
leaving me-for ever.

'Lucy!' Lucy managed to force a smile as Johnny came swaggering over,
bringing a pretty, shy-looking girl with him.

'Meet Tia. Tia-this is my cousin, Lucy. Want some champagne. Lucy?" he
offered, showing her the bottle he was holding.

Lucy shuddered sickly. She couldn't even drink coffee any more, she felt
so unwell, never mind champagne. And besides, champagne reminded her of
that first night she had spent with Marcus.

'Have you heard about Andrew Walker being the mastermind behind some
gang trafficking in immigrant workers?' Johnny asked, continuing
blithely without waiting for her to reply. 'Apparently the police have
been watching him for months, and now they've got the whole gang. They
were involved in all sorts of dodgy scams-money laundering,
prostitution, extortion. I'd no idea he was involved in that kind of
thing. Dessie Arlington told me. His father's a barrister, and he was
saying that the likelihood is that he'll probably end up spending the
rest of his life in prison, along with the rest of the gang-I say, Lucy?
Lucy!'

It was Marcus who caught her just before she hit the floor. Marcus too
who insisted tersely that nothing was wrong, she just hadn't been
feeling very well lately. But Lucy wasn't aware of that because she was
still in a dead faint.

When she came round, several seconds later, she was lying on her
great-aunt's parquet floor with Marcus crouched down beside her.

'It's all right, Lucy. You fainted, that's all.'

'Marcus, I feel sick,' she managed to whisper to him. 'Please don't
leave me.'

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An hour later she was tucked up in one of her great-aunt's spare beds,
in a large chilly bedroom, while her own mother, Marcus's mother and
Beatrice all vied with one another to say excitedly that they had had
their suspicions but of course hadn't wanted to say so.

Lucy lay motionless in the cold bed, trying to come to terms with what
her great-aunt's doctor, summoned from his house around the corner, had
just told her.

A baby. She was having Marcus's baby. Why hadn't she guessed?

'Of course I was just the same,' Lucy heard her mother pronouncing.
'Just the same with both Lucy and Piers. So I had already guessed.'

'Well, I felt sure the moment I saw Lucy at Midnight Mass,' Marcus's
mother insisted, not to be outdone. 'She had that unmistakable look
about her.'

Lucy closed her eyes and let the tears seep out from under her eyelids.
She felt so tired, so shocked...and Johnny's comment about Andrew Walker
had-

Andrew Walker!

She struggled to sit up.

'Lucy, dear, do lie down.'

'Where's Marcus?' she demanded.

'Dr Holland said that you were to have a rest and that you must eat a
little more.

'A good nourishing soup is what she needs,'

'Chicken broth.'

'Oh, yes. Nanny always used to say that chicken broth cured anything.'

Miserably, Lucy closed her eyes and let sleep claim her. The next time
she woke up Marcus was seated beside the bed.

'Oh, Marcus...'

More tears. It must be her hormones. Marcus was holding one of her hands
with both of his own.

"Marcus, we're going to have a baby.'

'Yes, I know.'

Still more tears.

'How do you feel about it?' he asked her.

Lucy looked at him.

'I'm glad that I'm having your baby. How do you feel about it?'

'I feel that I want to take you in my arms and hold you there for ever,'
he told her simply. 'I love you.'

'Marcus!' Lucy stared at him in disbelief. Surely she must be imagining
she had just heard him say those words?

'You love me?' she said shakily. 'But...'

'Yes, I love you, Lucy. Even if I've been too much of a fool to
recognise what was happening to me, never mind admit it. I love you so
much. I want to beg you to let me show you how much. I know you'd rather
be with Blayne-'

'No! Never!' Lucy interrupted emphatically. 'I still can't believe that
you love me, Marcus. I knew you wanted me in bed...' Her face suddenly
turned pink. 'Nick might have said that I was sexless and boring because
I was a virgin, but you made me feel like a woman, Marcus.'

She looked longingly at him, and then said huskily, 'Oh, Marcus, I don't
want to divorce you-and I certainly don't want to be with Nick.' She
gave a small shudder. 'It gave me such a shock when I saw him at the
airport. I hoped that he hadn't seen me, but then he came over and he
said-' She broke off and bit her lip.

'I'm glad it's just you here with me,' she told him. 'I felt so tired
when our mothers and Beatrice were here. They all said that they had
guessed-but I hadn't. I thought I felt so sick all the time because..."

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'Because of Andrew Walker?' Marcus prompted her.

'Oh, Marcus! I haven't told you... I haven't explained...'

'It's all right, Lucy. I know what's been going on. At least, I think I
do,' he told her gently. 'I've just been having a long talk with your
cousin Johnny, and he told me about how Walker asked him to introduce
you to him, and how he wanted to invest in Pret a Party.'

Is he really going to go to prison for a long time?'

'A very long time, according to George. It seems that the authorities
have known what he's been up to for a while, but they've had to wait to
get enough information together to convict him and the other members of
the gang.'

'George? What does he know about it? I thought he was a civil servant.'

'He is-he's a mandarin in the Home Office. That's the department
responsible for granting work visas and immigration documents,' he added
dryly.

Lucy gave him an old-fashioned look.

'I do know that. I'm not dumb. Marcus, I've been so scared. Andrew
Walker wanted Pret a Party so that he could use it to launder money and
give work to the illegal immigrants he was bringing into the country.
Nick was involved as well...' Lucy shuddered.

'Why didn't you tell me? Was it because you wanted to protect Blayne?'

Lucy shook her head. 'I don't care what happens to Nick,' she told him,
bluntly and truthfully. 'I should never have married him, Marcus. I only
did because...'

'Because what?'

'Because I loved you so much and you didn't want me, and I was scared
that I might do something silly, like burst into your office and beg you
to make love to me. I thought that if I had a husband it would make me
start behaving

like an adult and not like a teenager with a silly crush. And besides,
I'd felt such an idiot still being a virgin, because I didn't want to do
it with anyone else but you... Marcus?' she whispered shakily. 'You're
crying.'

'Lucy, Lucy." He was holding her tightly, his voice muffled against her
hair as he rocked her in his arms.

'Well, you wouldn't have liked me still being a virgin,' she told him
practically. 'Nick didn't. And marrying Nick didn't work at all-it just
made me want you even more. And when Nick didn't want to have sex with
me I was glad.'

'Lucy, why didn't you tell me about Walker?'

'It didn't seem important. Not at first. And then...then it was too
late. I didn't realise what he was involved In or what was going to
happen until Dorland told me-and even then I just thought that once I'd
told Andrew Walker I wasn't interested in a partnership with him... But
he wanted Pret a Party, and he told me that he wasn't going to let
anything or anyone stand in his way. Not even you...especially not you.

'He knew about Pret a Party before Johnny told him, too. Nick had told
him. When Nick saw me at the airport when we came back off honeymoon, he
told me that Andrew Walker and he had sent that video. Oh, Marcus. I was
so frightened.'

'And I saw you with Blayne and I thought...'

'I would have thought the same thing.' Lucy tried to comfort him when
she saw how angry with himself he looked.

'I thought you'd decided that you wanted him and not me,' Marcus told
her ruefully.

'No. Like I said, I never wanted him.'

'And you married him because of me,' Marcus couldn't stop himself from
saying bleakly.

184

'Yes, I did,' Lucy admitted. 'And that was a dreadful thing for me to
do, Marcus, because I was cheating on him just as he went on to cheat on
me. I knew I could never love Nick the way I do you when I married him.
I met Nick and he seemed to like me and I just thought... But it never
worked, and that was my fault. Because I never loved him. I just married
him because I didn't want to be a nuisance to you. And then I wanted to
protect you from Andrew Walker. He told me that he'd arranged for you to
be mugged in Leeds. He said that he would kill you unless I left you and
let him have a partnership in Pret a Party... Oh, don't* Marcus,' Lucy
protested as she saw the shine of emotion in his eyes. 'Please don't...'

'Lucy, I'm the one who is supposed to protect you. Not the other way
around. Oh, Lucy, Lucy, my sweet little love.'

'Your love?' Lucy repeated wonderingly.

'My love-my one and only and for ever love,' Marcus agreed tenderly.
'And before we go any further just let me tell you one thing. Regardless
of anything else-Andrew Walker, Nick Blayne, even our baby-I love you. I
know that now. And I know too that I always will love you. Nothing can
ever change that, and nothing will ever change that.'

'Oh, Marcus!'

185

EPILOGUE

One year later.

'So, Let me propose a toast, to my wife, Lucy, Business Woman of the
Year, mother of my son-and holder of my heart,' Marcus added in a lower,
deeper voice that only Lucy could hear as all around them everyone else
raised their glasses and cheered.

'I would never have had the courage to set up a new business if it
hadn't been for you, Marcus,' Lucy told him lovingly.

'Don't underestimate yourself, Lucy. You are an extremely talented
woman. Junior Pret a Party proves that.'

'I wonder what Andrew Walker would think if he knew how I'd used his
idea,' Lucy said mischievously. 'It had never occurred to me before he
suggested it to even think of franchising event hire, and yet really it
was so obvious. And with a baby of my own, I could see that there was a
real need for women to help one another organising children's parties
and christenings, and for passing on not just their expertise but also
practical things, like marquees, clothes, party costumes, everything. It
just makes so much sense for mothers to gather together and share the
cost of everything they need for parties and to plan them together in a
group. That way every child within that group gets the party they want
and every mother knows she has a team of supporters she can turn to.'

'And all for a very modest annual payment.'

'Well, it was a real brainwave of yours to ask Carry and

186

Ricardo to get involved, and Julia and Silas. With the charity funding
Ricardo and Silas give us, and the young people from Ricardo's
orphanages who we help to train as nursery and ancillary workers, we're
not just providing parties for children but we're providing education
and work as well.'

'Like I said you are a very clever woman,' Marcus repeated.

'I was certainly clever enough to fall in love with you.' Lucy agreed.