Long-Distance Marriage
Long-Distance Marriage
Sharon Kendrik
Mills & Boon are proud to present a thrilling digital collection of all Sharon Kendrick’s novels and novellas for us to celebrate the publication of her amazing 100th book! Many of these books are available as e books for the first time.Return to the marriage!Alessandra Walker and Cameron Calder had married in haste, with careers in tow and jobs in different cities. But they loved each other with a passion, and of course they'd make it workAnd they did. For a while every carefully planned meeting seemed like a honeymoon until suddenly it just didn't seem enough.Distrust and jealousy were threatening to split them apart until Alessandra discovered her husband's plan to save their marriage – a baby – but what would that mean for her career?
Dear Reader (#u5f4dddbc-3dc6-594c-bc06-c8b8a87b906b),
One hundred. Doesn’t matter how many times I say it, I still can’t believe that’s how many books I’ve written. It’s a fabulous feeling but more fabulous still is the news that Mills & Boon are issuing every single one of my backlist as digital titles. Wow. I can’t wait to share all my stories with you - which are as vivid to me now as when I wrote them.
There’s BOUGHT FOR HER HUSBAND, with its outrageously macho Greek hero and A SCANDAL, A SECRET AND A BABY featuring a very sexy Tuscan. THE SHEIKH’S HEIR proved so popular with readers that it spent two weeks on the USA Today charts and…well, I could go on, but I’ll leave you to discover them for yourselves.
I remember the first line of my very first book: “So you’ve come to Australia looking for a husband?” Actually, the heroine had gone to Australia to escape men, but guess what? She found a husband all the same! The man who inspired that book rang me up recently and when I told him I was beginning my 100
story and couldn’t decide what to write, he said, “Why don’t you go back to where it all started?”
So I did. And that’s how A ROYAL VOW OF CONVENIENCE was born. It opens in beautiful Queensland and moves to England and New York. It’s about a runaway princess and the enigmatic billionaire who is infuriated by her, yet who winds up rescuing her. But then, she goes and rescues him… Wouldn’t you know it?
I’ll end by saying how very grateful I am to have a career I love, and to thank each and every one of you who has supported me along the way. You really are very dear readers.
Love,
Sharon xxx
Mills & Boon are proud to present a thrilling digital collection of all Sharon Kendrick’s novels and novellas for us to celebrate the publication of her amazing and awesome 100th book! Sharon is known worldwide for her likeable, spirited heroines and her gorgeous, utterly masculine heroes.
SHARON KENDRICK once won a national writing competition, describing her ideal date: being flown to an exotic island by a gorgeous and powerful man. Little did she realise that she’d just wandered into her dream job! Today she writes for Mills & Boon, featuring her often stubborn but always to-die-for heroes and the women who bring them to their knees. She believes that the best books are those you never want to end. Just like life…
Long-Distance Marriage
Sharon Kendrick
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To Auntie Dodie (Mrs. Josephine Webb),
who gave me such fantastic holidays
when I was a child.
Contents
Cover (#ueacb092c-cf57-5a16-a9b4-cfb354b1d327)
Dear Reader (#u1ef8f6d4-09a3-5480-9155-ffc45af6ea0c)
About the Author (#uae7d8be7-c549-54f2-8547-55f4b2ab6005)
Title Page (#u4e63b356-f775-5c39-aaf9-2770744d71ca)
Dedication (#uf004a802-86fa-5898-a83d-381ef1de03e3)
CHAPTER ONE (#uaa9b97fd-b1f0-53cf-b7b4-5c426876251d)
CHAPTER TWO (#uc139bd33-0c32-5b2e-9f11-e1c713baf7bd)
CHAPTER THREE (#u7e365e9e-4bca-5aa3-a776-5bb817710adb)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#u5f4dddbc-3dc6-594c-bc06-c8b8a87b906b)
THE phone on Alessandra’s desk shrilled and she picked it up on the first ring with her usual brisk efficiency.
‘Yes?’ Always straight and to the point, Alessandra had acquired something of a reputation at Holloway Advertising for wasting neither words nor time. Once she had overheard two of the secretaries saying that she was as efficient as a robot, and had found it hard to believe that they were actually talking about her!
‘Alessandra—where the hell have you been all morning?’ came the voice of her boss, Andrew Holloway.
Long ago, Alessandra had recognised that Andrew had flair and imagination—it was just unfortunate that he was thoroughly convinced he was God’s gift to the opposite sex!
‘I wanted to deliver some artwork personally,’ explained Alessandra. ‘And I’ve only just got in.’
‘Well, I need to talk to you,’ said Andrew.
‘I’m afraid I’m busy right now,’ said Alessandra firmly as she surveyed her crowded desk and pulled a face at it. ‘Can’t it wait?’
‘It most certainly can,’ Andrew replied with satisfaction, and Alessandra got the distinct feeling that she’d been manipulated into something! ‘How about a drink after work?’
She sighed. ‘Andrew, I can’t. I have a heap of work to do before I leave, and—’ her voice instinctively softened into a soft purr as she glanced at the wedding photograph on her desk ‘—I have a husband at home waiting for me, remember?’
Well, that was a small white lie, she thought ruefully—Cameron wouldn’t be waiting at all. If there was one thing which was predictable about that gorgeous yet enigmatic husband of hers, it was that Cameron Calder waited for no one.
‘Alessandra—honey, please!’
Alessandra held back a smile. It amused her to hear her boss of three years still trying to turn the charm on like a tap! He never gave up! Never could understand why she hadn’t fallen into his arms like a ripe plum!
Yes, he was tall. Yes, he was hunky. Blond, blue-eyed and not short of a penny or two. The toast of London’s women and able to date just about anyone of his choice. Except for Alessandra. Oh, he’d asked her out often enough in the past, but she’d never accepted for the simple reason that she hadn’t been remotely interested in him. Alessandra had only ever gone out with one man.
And she’d married him.
She picked up the silver-framed photo taken after her wedding to Cameron. It had been a tiny ceremony. Neither of them had wanted a big wedding, each for their own reasons. Cameron’s parents were dead, and Alessandra’s lived in Italy. But Cameron was a powerful man with a lot of connections and, when they had been discussing wedding plans, he had turned to her and said, in that crisp, decisive way of his, ‘We either invite everyone or no one. A simple wedding or the whole works.’
There had been no contest for Alessandra. She’d had a few close girlfriends who wouldn’t be mortally offended if they didn’t get an invite.
And her family. Quite apart from the fact that they’d have been hard-pushed to find the air fares, she couldn’t exactly see them hitting it off with her husband-to-be. She’d tried to imagine the cool, enigmatic Cameron coping with her noisy, messy family, and failed.
She just hadn’t wanted to make a big deal out of the day—look how many people did that, and how many of them divorced soon after? She had been petrified of getting married in the first place—in fact, she had sworn that she never would marry. And she probably never would have done if she hadn’t met Cameron. She certainly couldn’t imagine anyone else changing her mind about something so important. But he had been so coolly persistent, and so damned gorgeous, that she just hadn’t been able to resist him!
‘A simple wedding,’ she had told him quietly.
Those blue-grey eyes had narrowed thoughtfully, a half-smile playing around the delectable curve of his lips. ‘But you do realise, Alessandra,’ he’d murmured softly, ‘that a simple wedding means just that? Registry office and two witnesses. No church or flowers or organ music. No big white dress and veil. I thought that’s what all women wanted?’
She had brought her chin up mutinously when she’d heard that, until she’d seen, from the soft light in his eyes, that he’d been teasing. She hadn’t taken the bait, just shaken her head. ‘None of that,’ she’d said firmly, wondering if she had imagined that he looked very slightly disappointed.
So she had gone ahead and bought a simple wedding dress and she hadn’t even opted for the conventional white or ivory. Instead she had chosen a short scarlet linen dress, which had clung flatteringly to her soft curves, and which had complemented the Italian colouring she had inherited from her mother, her glowing skin and huge dark eyes, her newly washed hair falling in a dark, silky cloud to her shoulders.
She had deliberately and untraditionally spent the night before the wedding with Cameron, and travelled with him to Marylebone Register Office. She had been unable to hide her surprise and pleasure when he had stopped the cab at a market stall and bought her the biggest bunch of scarlet roses she had ever seen. And then they had picked two witnesses off the street and married. But she had noticed that Cameron was oddly quiet after the brief ceremony.
Alessandra stared at the woman in the photo who stood smiling rather uncertainly at the camera, with the dashingly tall, dark figure of her new husband beside her. It was the only photograph of the day they had.
Uncertain? she wondered as she peered at it more closely. Had she been?
Well, yes. And she still was, to some extent, although she hid it superbly. She had never been lacking in confidence but Cameron was so gorgeous, and she was so in love with him, that sometimes she had to pinch herself to believe that they were married. That out of all the women he could have chosen he had chosen her. Because a strange thing had happened once they were legally married. She had found that it was very difficult to remain the cool, rather aloof woman he’d fallen in love with. Instead, she’d had to try very hard not to become the clingy kind of doting wife he would have despised.
As always when her thoughts turned to Cameron, she felt the tips of her breasts stinging with dangerous excitement beneath the thin silk of her blouse and she immediately slammed the photo back down on her desk. Damn the man! You’d think that six months of marriage might have cooled down that unbearable ache she felt at the pit of her stomach whenever she thought of him. Instead it seemed to have done the opposite. Cameron was like a drug; she just couldn’t get enough of him. Heavens, couldn’t she even think about her husband for a moment without necessarily getting extremely and sometimes embarrassingly turned on?
She remembered how, once, he had turned up unexpectedly at the office and taken her out to the Savoy for lunch. They’d just sat across the table staring and staring at one another, silent and sensual messages sizzling between them.
When the food had arrived they’d scarcely noticed and they’d hardly touched their first course when, as if by mutual assent, Cameron had firmly taken her by the hand, booked an extremely expensive room upstairs, and spent the rest of the lunch hour making mad, passionate love to her.
If only one of the damned secretaries at the advertising agency hadn’t noticed that she’d come back with her sweater on inside out! That hadn’t done her reputation a lot of good!
With an effort she forced thoughts of Cameron to the furthest corner of her mind and asked her boss, who was still hanging patiently on the end of the phone, ‘What’s so urgent about seeing me that it can’t wait until tomorrow?’
Again she could hear the satisfaction in Andrew’s voice. ‘Just that the head of a certain highly prestigious American motor company has approached me—’
‘Which company?’ Alessandra shot out quickly.
Andrew named the company and Alessandra gave a silent whistle. Prestigious indeed. If not yet one of the world’s biggest car producers then it was soon set to be. ‘And?’ she prompted, since Andrew had fallen silent, presumably to let the full import of his words hit her.
‘They want to meet us.’
‘You mean they’re thinking of using us?’ Alessandra asked in disbelief. The advertising agency which Andrew owned and which she worked for was original and competent—they’d walked off with a couple of the industry’s top awards for the last two years—but they were strictly small-time. Their clients were all small to medium-sized British companies, and there was no one international on their books; certainly nothing on the scale of the American motor company. She simply couldn’t imagine having a client of that size!
‘They loved your campaign for the low-calorie chocolate-chip cookie,’ Andrew told her levelly.
‘But surely not enough to give their account to a tiny British company?’ squeaked Alessandra in amazement, her customary savoir-faire momentarily deserting her.
Andrew was noncommittal. ‘Let’s just say they aren’t happy with who they have at the moment, and leave it at that. But they hinted strongly that their account might be up for grabs. It’s up to us to convince them that we can handle it; and not just handle it—handle it brilliantly!’
‘And do you think we can?’ asked Alessandra.
Andrew laughed. ‘Honey, for the kind of budget they’ll be offering we can place a hoarding on the moon if they want it—hell, I’ll even fly it there myself and put the damned thing up! Which is why—’ his voice dropped conspiratorially ‘—I need you there. You’re so easy on the eye—’
‘Andrew!’ Alessandra’s voice became distinctly chilly. She liked compliments on the way she looked from one man only, and that man was Cameron. ‘Give me a break!’
He laughed. ‘I’m kidding, honey, you know that! I want you there because you possess the most creative mind I’ve ever encountered together with a frighteningly cool logic which leaves most of us mere mortals open-mouthed with admiration. Is that better?’ He paused. ‘Come on, Alessandra—isn’t this what we’ve worked together towards for all this time? Isn’t this the kind of dream we thought would never come true? It’s the chance of a lifetime—surely you can see that?’
Alessandra stared at the receiver which she held in her slim pale hand. On the third finger of her left hand, next to her wedding band and completely dominating it, sat the enormous square-cut emerald which blazed in all its green, glorious fire. Cameron had given her the ring when she’d agreed to marry him.
They’d been in bed at the time. She remembered how his features had been carefully composed into a rather enigmatic look of satisfaction after he’d got his own way, and she’d told him rather gravely that, yes, she would marry him.
He’d waited until after they’d made love before producing the ring, pulling it casually from the pocket of his discarded trousers, like a magician producing a rabbit out of a hat.
Her breath had caught in her mouth as he’d placed the magnificent emerald on her finger and, in spite of her insistence that she cared for none of the trappings which came with matrimony, her eyes had widened like saucers. ‘Oh, but Cameron—it’s...exquisite,’ she’d breathed. ‘How did you know it would fit?’
He’d given that smile then. That lazy, sexy smile which had first captivated her, though she’d tried her damnedest not to let it. It still made her heart pound like a runaway train.
‘I just knew.’ And there had been a glint of sexual promise in his eyes as he’d spoken more softly. ‘Just wait until I start buying you lingerie. That will fit you perfectly too. You see, my delectable Alessandra, I know every inch, every centimetre of your delicious body...it’s emblazoned on my mind,’ he’d finished on a sultry murmur as he’d traced a slow, provocative finger from throat to navel.
Alessandra had been so in love with him, so sexually excited by that look in his eyes, that she hadn’t dared touch him back, afraid to kiss him just at that moment because she was so emotionally overcome that she’d feared she would frighten him away! So instead she’d searched around for the kind of response he would expect from her, forcing her habitually serene smile to curve her lips into an almost Madonnalike expression.
‘When did you buy it?’ she queried, as casually as if she were asking him the time.
‘Is that all you can say?’ he replied, with a kind of stunned disbelief which became a sardonic laugh.
‘What would you like me to say?’ she asked evenly.
‘I suppose you do realise,’ he told her in a deliberately mocking tone, ‘that women have been trying to get me to marry them for years? And that a lot of those women would have been overwhelmed to get my ring on their finger?’
It was a very arrogant thing to say, and possibly the only man who could have got away with saying it was Cameron Calder. He was teasing her, yes—but Alessandra was wise enough to know that he had spoken the truth. She was also mature enough to recognise that it was her air of insouciance which attracted him to her. ‘And they would have fallen at your feet in gratitude, would they?’ she queried solemnly. ‘If they had been the recipient of this magnificent ring?’
Cameron gave her a look of bemused admiration as she mocked him back. ‘God, you’re so damned cool,’ he murmured appreciatively. ‘So damned unflappable. I’ve never met a woman like you in my life.’
She learnt another lesson then. Because that avid declaration made Alessandra relieved that she hadn’t given in to her desire to tell him that in a few short weeks he had become her entire world. Because that wasn’t the Alessandra Walker that the world, and Cameron, knew. And that was who he’d fallen in love with—the cool, serene, unflappable woman who could mock him back for his arrogance. He’d had enough of the other kind—the kind that couldn’t keep their hands off him, whose eyes told him he was their lord and master.
She looked up at him from beneath her thick black lashes and this time there was laughter in her eyes. ‘So when did you buy the ring?’ she queried again.
‘When I decided to marry you, of course.’ Cameron smiled.
Alessandra frowned. ‘You mean—when you decided to ask me?’ she corrected.
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘When I decided to marry you,’ he emphasised.
Some strange emotion quivered in the air. Her heart began to pound. ‘And when was that?’ she asked, suddenly breathless again.
He smiled, but it wasn’t a particularly warm smile. More wary than warm, and definitely bordering on the reluctant. He regarded her steadily. ‘The first time I met you,’ he said.
‘And you were that sure?’ asked Alessandra slowly. ‘So sure of me? So sure I’d say yes?’
‘Darling, do you want me to lie to you?’
She shook her head, her thick brown hair damp from the exertion of their lovemaking so that it hung in limp tendrils to her shoulders. ‘No, Cameron,’ she said quietly. ‘I don’t want you to lie to me.’
‘Then yes,’ he murmured. ‘I was that sure of you.’
‘Alessandra!’ Andrew’s voice cut into her reverie. ‘Are you still there?’
‘Yes, Andrew,’ she said thoughtfully, still gazing at the emerald on her finger. ‘I’m still here.’
‘So are you coming tonight or not?’
Alessandra hesitated, but suddenly it wasn’t a difficult decision to make at all. She glanced at the pale gold watch on her wrist. It had just gone six. Cameron would be on a flight somewhere over the Atlantic right now—he’d been in New York for a week on business. His plane was due in at nine, and then he would take a hire-car from the airport, so he wouldn’t be home until after ten. She had offered to drive to meet him, but he had been adamant that she wasn’t there to act as his chauffeur. And he was one of those men you couldn’t argue with, not once he’d made his mind up!
‘Yes, Andrew, I’ll come for a drink with you tonight,’ she said decisively. She hardly imagined that Cameron had been sitting alone in his hotel room every night for the past week, pining for her! He had friends and business acquaintances in the States he’d doubtless been having dinner with—so what was the difference?
‘And what about Superman?’ sniped Andrew childishly, rather unnervingly voicing her own thoughts. He and Cameron had never exactly hit it off, and neither man had made a secret of it. Alessandra, stuck in the middle, had kept her own counsel.
‘Won’t he object to his darling wife fraternising with men after work?’ added Andrew slyly. ‘You usually break the land-speed record getting home to him.’
Alessandra smiled to herself. Cameron? Superman? Mmm! She liked it! ‘I’m not going to reprimand you for your continued use of that ridiculous nickname you have for my husband, Andrew—because I’ve decided that it’s actually quite accurate. You’re absolutely right—he is a bit of a Superman.’ She sighed.
She could almost hear Andrew’s ego bristling indignantly down the phone. ‘Oh, and I’m not, I suppose?’
‘Different league, I’m afraid,’ she teased him smugly, secure in the knowledge that tonight she would be in the place she most wanted to be—in Cameron’s arms. With difficulty she dragged her mind back to the conversation. ‘Where are we meeting for a drink, and when?’
‘Henry’s Bar—at seven.’
‘Oh, Andrew, must we?’ She looked down, aghast, at the stone-coloured linen suit she was wearing with the apricot silk shirt beneath. Her outfit was elegant and smart, but it simply screamed ‘Office’! ‘It’s so dressy at Henry’s Bar.’
‘Their choice, honey. You know how impressive that place is.’
‘Pretentious, you mean.’ Alessandra sighed. ‘I guess I’ll just have to go home now and find something suitable to wear.’ She did keep a change of clothes in her office for emergencies, but it was strictly casual—cotton trousers and a cotton sweater and fresh underwear. Certainly much too casual for a drink at Henry’s Bar.
‘Why bother going home?’ said Andrew. ‘You’re two minutes from one of the finest dress shops in this city. Why not treat yourself?’
He was talking about a famous Italian designer who dressed most of Hollywood! ‘Because I—’ Alessandra halted, aware that what she had been about to say would sound so stupid. That she couldn’t afford it. Of course she could afford it! She was on, if not a fabulous salary, then an extremely good one. And, even though she had firmly refused Cameron’s offer of a generous dress allowance, she could still afford to buy in the exclusive shops which abounded in the area where she worked.
The trouble was that she had never before spent several months’ salary on just one gown! She loved good clothes, yes, and they were necessary to her high-powered job and sophisticated lifestyle, but there was a limit, and old habits died hard. It had been hard to learn to spend. Hard to disregard the parsimony which had been instilled in her by her upbringing—by watching her poverty-ridden and feckless parents fritter away whatever money did actually come into the house. Alessandra had vivid memories of wearing charity-shop clothes and shoes while her parents had thrown yet another uproarious party.
‘Alessandra—’ Andrew cut into her thoughts once more. ‘For heaven’s sake, go and buy a dress on the company.’
‘No.’
‘Yes.’ He laughed. ‘All right, then—as your boss I’m ordering you to! Look on it as part of your bonus for getting us this new client.’
‘And if we don’t win the account?’ asked Alessandra, ever practical.
‘Oh, we will, we will,’ said Andrew confidently. ‘We’re bound to, with you there!’
Alessandra took the lift up to the penthouse apartment and yawned. Her jaw ached from smiling and her feet were killing her. She’d stood at the counter of Henry’s Bar—standing at the counter was the place to be seen—and had dutifully drunk vintage champagne with the prospective American clients, who had listened to her ideas with enthusiasm.
‘We love your quirky British style,’ the older one, named Billy, had told her earnestly.
‘It sells,’ his colleague, whose eyes had been riveted to her cleavage all evening, had added. Alessandra had decided that, if they did win the account, she would not wear anything low-cut like this again; she couldn’t stand men leering at her like that. The irony was that she’d bought the dress because she had been sure that Cameron would love it. It was beautifully cut and he absolutely adored seeing her wear black.
But, in the changing room at the shop, she had been in such a hurry, so intent with swirling round and checking the back and the length and the shape of the garment, that she had allowed the sales girl’s opinion to sway her. And had ended up with, she realised, a spectacular dress, but one which exposed far more of her skin than usual. It drew attention to the heavy lushness of her breasts, the stark colour making her skin seem almost translucently creamy.
A fact which had obviously not been missed by the younger of the two Americans.
Alessandra had been reluctantly persuaded by Andrew to join them for an early supper after their drink, and so the four of them had moved on to the Savoy—and eaten a too rich combination of caviare, followed by lobster Thermidor, accompanied by still more champagne. Alessandra had felt full, tired and jaded, and she had eventually excused herself at nine-thirty by announcing that one very jet-lagged husband would be arriving from the States shortly, and she wanted to be at home to meet him. She’d felt her pulses stirring at the thought of seeing Cameron again soon.
‘Of course, of course,’ said Billy, beaming at her. ‘It’s been a great pleasure meeting you, Mrs—’
‘It’s Miss,’ corrected Alessandra quickly. ‘I’m still Alessandra Walker. I decided to keep my maiden name when I married.’
‘Really?’ queried the leerer, his eyes still hypnotised by the creamy swell of her breasts.
‘Yes,’ said Alessandra, standing up quickly, thinking that if she didn’t get away from his creepy stare she might say or do something rude which might jeopardise the account! ‘I’m well-known in the advertising world by that name, and so it seemed a pity to lose it.’
‘And it’s the modern way,’ agreed Billy, smiling. ‘In Canada, where two of my daughters live, it’s quite common to do so. Just so long as your husband doesn’t mind!’
Well, she wouldn’t exactly go so far as to say that. Cameron hadn’t objected when she’d told him she wasn’t planning to take his name, he’d just given her that coolly quizzical stare of his and then nodded without comment.
Andrew slipped her coat around her shoulders and gave them a little squeeze, which Alessandra guessed was his way of telling her that the evening had been a success, and Billy stood up, seeming eager to compensate for his partner’s blatantly obvious preoccupation with her body.
‘What kind of business was your husband doing in the States?’ he asked conversationally as he shook her hand.
Alessandra smiled. ‘It’s not really his business, more a kind of sideline. He has a factory here, in the north of England, and others in western Europe, but he dabbles in property for fun.’
‘For fun?’ expostulated Andrew. ‘I’d hardly call owning numerous apartments and a hotel on the East Side of Manhattan “fun”—or heaven help us all if he decides to get serious!’
Even Leerer’s interest had strayed from her bosom now, and Billy looked as eager as a dog who had scented a bone. ‘Really? Would I happen to know your husband, ma’am?’
Alessandra shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea. He’s quite well-known in England—’
‘Understatement of the year,’ interrupted Andrew drily. ‘His name is Cameron Calder.’
He might as well have said ‘the President of the United States’, Alessandra giggled to herself now as she pushed the key into the lock of the flat. For the two businessmen surely couldn’t have been more impressed! She’d had no idea that her husband was so well-known in New York for his entrepreneurial skills.
But then, how would she have known? Cameron had never once taken her to New York with him, and he certainly wasn’t the kind of man to boast. A man like Cameron didn’t need to boast, she thought longingly, a little sigh automatically escaping her lips as it hit her just how much she had missed him.
She closed the door of the flat behind her and yawned widely, dropping her wrap carelessly onto the back of the low sofa. She would change out of this clinging black number, run herself a deep, perfumed bath and then lie—literally, she thought with hungry amusement—in wait for her gorgeous husband.
It took a moment or two for her to register that there was a light shining from the direction of the bedroom. Surely she hadn’t been so careless as to have left it on this morning? Though she had been in a tearing hurry. She’d overslept after a troubled night of disturbed dreams, in which Cameron’s face kept appearing tantalisingly before her.
For a moment she froze as she heard a sound coming from the bedroom, but the fear fled immediately, for she recognised that much loved step at once. She pushed back her dark hair, which had been all mussed up by the wind, to see the tall, shadowy figure of her husband appear framed in the doorway, set against the soft glow of the lamp behind him. In the semidarkness, even more than usual, his body appeared all hard-packed muscle and power.
He snapped on the main-light switch and the room was flooded with a harsh glare. Alessandra’s welcoming smile died on her lips. Because she looked up into Cameron’s harsh, unwelcoming face and suddenly, inexplicably, she really was frightened.
CHAPTER TWO (#u5f4dddbc-3dc6-594c-bc06-c8b8a87b906b)
CAMERON studied Alessandra for a moment and something about the forbidding coldness in his eyes—an expression Alessandra had never seen there before—made her skin prickle with tiny goose-bumps. So that, instead of falling ecstatically into each other’s arms as they would normally have done, they stood surveying each other silently against the great expanse of the room. But there was no tenderness in his face and none of the softness which was usually there when he looked at her.
‘Hello, Alessandra,’ said Cameron eventually, but he didn’t move from where he was standing.
And pride kept her where she was. ‘Hello, Cameron,’ she said, and it came out far more coolly than she’d intended—but why shouldn’t it have done? There had been some odd, strained quality to his voice. ‘I—wasn’t expecting you back so soon.’
‘So I see.’ His mouth curved disdainfully as he took in the low-cut black dress which emphasised the creamy thrust of her breasts and skimmed down closely over her narrow waist and hips to finish midthigh, making the most of every inch of her long, slender legs. She could see a spark of hunger in his blue-grey eyes vying for dominance with a definite expression of contempt.
With a kind of derisive snort, he strode over to the drinks cabinet and poured two glasses of wine from the bottle which he had obviously opened earlier and which lay cooling in an ice bucket. Had he been planning some kind of celebration? she wondered fleetingly.
And just how long had he been home? A slight desperation crept into her veins as she saw that his grim face showed no sign of relaxing. He silently moved towards her and held out a glass of Chablis. It was her favourite wine, and he had chosen one of the finest vintages, but suddenly the thought of drinking it sickened her to the stomach.
He continued to regard her unsmilingly and an angry pulse began to beat at the base of her throat. Just what right did he think he had to stand there and offer her wine, while that condemning look tightened the features of his arrogant face? As if she were some kind of criminal!
‘I don’t want any wine,’ she said shortly.
‘No,’ he answered curtly, and his mouth curved with scorn this time as he put both the untouched glasses back down. ‘I shouldn’t imagine that you do—I can smell it on your breath as it is.’
She’d had a total of three glasses of champagne all evening, hardly enough to qualify her for the drunk of the year that he was making her sound like! But she had no intention of justifying her behaviour to him. She would not be treated as though she were on trial. She stared him full in the face, her dark eyes sparking angry fire, feeling more furious than she could ever remember feeling in her life.
And yet she was achingly aware of his slanting blue-grey eyes, with the dark brows which matched the thick, naturally ruffled hair. She hadn’t seen him for just one week and it took every bit of concentration she possessed not to stare at that magnificent muscular physique, imagining him naked... hating herself for wanting him, even though he was behaving in this inexplicably hostile way towards her.
‘You’re obviously jet-lagged—’ she began, prepared to be conciliatory, but he interrupted her with a seemingly casual query.
‘New dress?’
Now why were her cheeks growing pink? ‘Yes.’ She lifted her chin defiantly. ‘You know darned well it is.’
His experienced eyes had obviously assessed the quality and the superb cut of the gown which clung to the streamlined curves of her body, and that direct scrutiny made her skin tingle, the fires of lust and anger igniting in her veins.
‘You aren’t usually quite so generous with yourself,’ he remarked, in a seemingly offhand way which spoke volumes.
Enough was enough! Alessandra decided to tell him the truth. That way she would have nothing to feel guilty about. Because she could just imagine how she’d feel if she lied and told him she’d purchased the gown herself, only for Andrew to let slip that it was a bonus, bought by the company.
Oh, why the hell had she let him talk her into it? What had, at the time, seemed a perfectly reasonable action was fast developing into something else entirely. But she wasn’t going to feel guilty. For she had absolutely nothing to feel guilty about.
‘No, you’re right,’ she answered coolly. ‘I’m not normally quite so generous with myself.’
‘But on this occasion you were?’ he persisted in that impartially analytical manner she’d only ever heard him use at work. ‘I’m intrigued to know why.’
‘I didn’t actually buy it—’ she began.
But he interrupted her with a clipped demand. Then just who did?’
‘The company.’
‘The company?’ he echoed softly, his deep voice full of sarcasm, the blue-grey eyes narrowing unfathomably. ‘Really?’
‘Yes, really!’ she snapped.
He elevated his dark, beautifully shaped eyebrows. ‘How very extraordinary. I must say that I’ve never considered buying any of my staff dresses,’ he emphasised deliberately. ‘Particularly exorbitantly priced dresses which do rather more to reveal than to conceal. Dresses which are designed solely with the intention of turning a man on.’ He looked directly into her eyes, his handsome face cold with arrogant enquiry. ‘But presumably that’s what Andrew had in mind?’
‘Andrew had nothing to do with it!’ she retorted furiously.
‘No?’ He clearly didn’t believe a word she was saying. ‘He just paid the bill, did he?’
‘Oh, I’m not talking to you when you’re in this kind of mood!’ she retorted, and made to whirl away, but he stayed her with one hand on her bare arm which, in spite of her rage, had her senses dancing in frantic plea for more of his touch. She turned her face up to him, her eyes wide in silent appeal. ‘Cameron...?’ she said, on a whisper.
But there wasn’t a flicker of answering emotion on his face. ‘And did Andrew help you choose it—honey?’ He mimicked Andrew’s nickname for her softly, his voice roughed with an intimidating menace which was completely alien to her.
‘Wh-what are you talking about?’ she stumbled, meeting the blaze of fury in his eyes.
‘Try listening to the answering machine,’ he suggested silkily, and his hand dropped from her arm.
The cessation of his touch was strangely disconcerting and Alessandra walked on her high, spindly heels towards the answering machine like a robot, aware, and yet trying not to be aware, that those cool blue-grey eyes never left her.
She pressed the message button and Andrew’s disembodied voice echoed around the flat.
‘Alessandra—are you there? It’s ten o’clock, and I want to check you’re home safely, honey—so ring me as soon as you get in—if this message ever reaches you!’
Damn Andrew and his stupid nicknames! Alessandra swiftly turned round, suddenly frightened again. This wasn’t how she had wanted Cameron’s homecoming to be—not at all. ‘I can explain—’ she began, but he shook his head and walked towards her with a stealthy intent which set her heart pounding.
‘So did Andrew help you choose it?’ he asked again, standing just inches away from her. ‘Did he like the fact that it fits so closely? So that when your nipples are hard—like now—they press against the silk and you might as well be wearing nothing at all?’ he demanded brutally.
It seemed pointless telling him that he, and only be, had that effect on her—with Cameron around her nipples seemed to be almost permanently erect. She could tell by the look on his face that he wouldn’t listen.
‘So tell me,’ he continued, and Alessandra knew, from the cruel pleasure she saw carved on his features, that he knew precisely the effect he was having on her. ‘Are you wearing any panties underneath that thing? Are you supposed to?’ His eyes glittered. ‘What did Andrew say?’
Alessandra felt the pooling of desire deep at the fork of her body, her senses so inflamed that the pride she normally possessed had suddenly vanished. So that, instead of storming out of the room and away from his vile accusations, she found herself unable to move, her skin on fire, despising herself, and yet yearning for what she knew could be the only possible conclusion to this angry confrontation.
‘May I?’ he asked conversationally as his long fingers slithered the silk of the dress all the way up her thigh until her tiny black bikini pants were revealed. ‘Oh,’ he said neutrally. ‘You are wearing some.’ His finger skimmed along the centre of them and Alessandra gasped with shock and pleasure. ‘And so wet too.’ He removed his hand, and she could have wept with frustration.
‘But you aren’t going to be wearing them for very much longer, are you, my delectable love?’ he continued remorselessly, and he reached down again, this time with both hands, and decisively pulled the delicate fabric apart with one swift, sure movement, so that it made a tiny rasping sound as it tore, and the panties slid slowly down her legs to the floor.
Alessandra followed as he took her into his arms and pushed her to the ground and at last, at long last, began to kiss her. She wanted to be angry with him but she was so in love with the man, the passion he’d aroused in her so pent up inside, that she decided to forgive him this one monstrous display of jealousy, and she began to kiss him back. Hard.
‘Cameron,’ she moaned against his mouth. ‘Oh, Cameron—’
But he kissed her into silence, his fingers delving into her wetness until she could bear it no longer and she found herself unbuckling his belt and unzipping his trousers with a brutal haste which rivalled his treatment of her panties.
She heard him give a low moan as he pushed her hand away to finish freeing himself and then he moved above her and ground into her, as hard as she’d ever felt him, and she almost fainted with the sheer physical pleasure of it.
Some corner of her mind wanted to keep something back, to show him that she still had some element of control, but she was aroused to such a fever pitch that she came almost immediately, and she heard him give a soft laugh of triumph, as he felt her flesh convulse around him, before uttering his own helpless sigh of release.
They lay on the carpet, both labouring for breath, and shame chilled her as surely as if she’d had a bucket of icy water thrown all over her. Because, now that her traitorous body had been satisfied, her dignity and pride had returned—and how! ‘Get off me—you brute!’ She tried to push him off her.
But he was having none of it. He rose lithely to his feet and quickly zipped up his trousers, then bent and scooped her up into his arms and stared down at her.
She didn’t want to look him full in the face, but Cameron could be so mesmerising sometimes that it was impossible to resist him. It was difficult for Alessandra to read his expression, though certainly some of the harshness of earlier had disappeared. Nevertheless, it was still impossible to tell what he was thinking.
Even when he had first told her that he loved her she had found his expression unreadable. Even then. He was the kind of man who always held something back and it both frustrated and fascinated her. He was like an absorbing puzzle that was impossible to solve. It had been one of the things which had attracted her to him in the first place and, conversely, what had always made her the tiniest bit wary of him.
He was heading towards the bedroom and she began to drum angrily on his chest. ‘Put me down!’ she demanded, and punched her fists against the fine silk of his shirt.
‘No.’
‘I’ll shout for the police!’
‘It’s a little late in the day for that, wouldn’t you say?’ he observed, somewhat bitterly.
‘No, it damn well isn’t!’ she retorted hotly.
‘Shout away, then,’ he said calmly, but there was an odd note to his voice. ‘And cry what? Assault?’
She heard the slight shudder of self-disgust which distorted his voice and, being scrupulously fair, she shook her head so that her hair moved against him in a dark, silken cloud. ‘I wouldn’t do that, Cameron,’ she said quietly. ‘Because it would be a lie. That was no assault.’
‘Enticement, then.’ He lowered her onto the bed and leaned over her, his eyes suddenly tender. ‘I’m sorry, darling.’
She forced herself not to melt immediately under the impact of that soft stare, rolled away from him to the edge of the bed, and kicked her high heels off across the bedroom carpet, not caring where they landed. She sat up and began to unclip her black stockings from the silky suspender belt and peel them down over her long legs. ‘It’s all very well saying sorry afterwards!’ she told him crossly. ‘You behaved outrageously!’ She forced herself to give him a baleful glare.
‘I agree,’ he said gravely.
He was trying to look contrite, and there was something so little-boyish about his expression that Alessandra had the greatest difficulty not standing up and flinging her arms around his neck. But something made her continue with her indignation. ‘Is that all you can say?’ she demanded.
He began to unbutton his silk shirt. ‘What do you want me to say?’ He shrugged lightly. ‘I’ve already said I’m sorry.’
‘Oh, and that makes it all right, does it? One word and I’m supposed to forget all about it?’
‘That rather depends on you,’ he told her calmly, his eyes looking more grey than blue in the soft light from the lamp. ‘You can make a big issue out of it if you wish. We could carry on the argument for weeks—if that’s what you really want.’ He finished unbuttoning the shirt to reveal his lightly tanned, muscle-packed chest, and, for the first time since they’d met, Alessandra failed to swoon at the sight of him, she was so mad.
‘Me?’ she spluttered, with indignation. ‘Make a big issue out of it?’
‘Uh-huh.’ Now the trousers had come off, revealing the silken boxer shorts he always wore, which clung to his hard buttocks and always made her realise just how powerfully muscled those long, hair-roughened legs of his were.
She tried, unsuccessfully, to unzip the back of her dress.
‘Here,’ he said smoothly. ‘Let me.’
He always helped her undress and it would have been foolish not to let him, but he slid the zip down with such practised ease that for the first time in her life she almost exploded with rage. ‘I suppose you could unzip a woman’s dress and undo her bra at the same time—even if you were blindfolded!’ she accused hotly.
He stood there and gave her that lazy, mocking smile of his. ‘Is that an invitation?’ he queried softly. ‘Do you want me to try?’
Most men, thought Alessandra resentfully, would have looked ridiculous wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts if they still had their socks on. So how come her sexy husband still managed to look good enough to eat?
‘No, I don’t want you to try!’ she raged on. ‘You’ve had more practice at it than almost any man in the world, I should imagine!’
‘Darling—’
‘Don’t you “darling” me!’
His face was suddenly serious. ‘The only practice I’ve had in the last three years—and that has been considerable—has been undressing you, my love.’
Alessandra frowned suspiciously. ‘But you’ve only known me eight months—’
‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘And married for six of them.’
‘B-but...’ she stuttered, the implication of what he’d just told her hitting her with all the force of a sledgehammer. It was something that she had never dared ask him in the brief courtship before their wedding. She had assumed that up until the time he’d met her he had been sleeping with one of the many women who used to leave long and frankly embarrassing messages on his answering machine.
Why, one of them—a famous cover girl—had actually turned up at his office and begged him not to go through with the marriage, within full earshot of his secretary, who had rather indiscreetly told Alessandra about it afterwards. And you didn’t get that kind of devotion from that kind of stunner if you weren’t physically involved with them, surely?
‘But that means that you were... that you didn’t...’ She fumbled around, searching for a delicate way to say it, but failed. ‘For two whole years?’ she yelled eventually.
‘I think what you’re trying to say—’ he began teasingly.
‘Don’t you dare patronise me!’
He shook his dark head. ‘I wouldn’t dream of patronising you. I was putting into words what you seemed reluctant to—merely confirming that I was celibate for two years before I met you.’
She threw him a look as she slithered out of her black silk dress. She hurled the wretched outfit against the wall and quickly wrapped her towelling robe around her. ‘I don’t believe you!’
He shrugged, a humourless kind of smile curving his mouth as he turned to drop his shorts and socks into the washing basket, so that he stood before her proudly and unashamedly naked. ‘That, of course, is your privilege, Alessandra.’
He said it with the finality of someone who was closing a subject they hadn’t particularly wanted opened in the first place, but Alessandra wasn’t giving up that easily.
‘You must admit it is a little implausible,’ she said.
‘Oh? You think that while you spent the first twenty-four years of your life as a virgin, and so were obviously celibate, it’s impossible for a man to be, too?’
Alessandra picked up her hairbrush and dragged it through her thick, shoulder-length hair which was so darkly brown that in some lights, like now, it looked almost black. ‘Some men, perhaps,’ she said deliberately.
‘But not me?’ he guessed correctly.
She nodded, reluctant to drop the subject, still angry at the ease with which he had seduced her after virtually accusing her of infidelity with Andrew! But also because, she realised, Cameron was speaking much more openly than was usual for him. And, because he was a man who was cautious about showing his true feelings, she wanted him to continue. ‘No, not you,’ she agreed with some defiance.
‘Perhaps you’d care to elaborate?’ he suggested silkily.
Alessandra hugged her robe to her chest, her breasts suddenly tingling beneath the thick cloth—and only because the brute had slid his eyes over them in a proprietorial and caressing stare! ‘Just that you are a man with certain—appetites,’ she began delicately, furious when he threw back his dark head and began to laugh.
‘Certain “appetites”?’ he repeated. ‘Goodness me, Alessandra, what a gloriously archaic turn of phrase! Perhaps you should have termed it “carnal desires”—that’s even more expressive, isn’t it?’
‘Well, if you want me to put it crudely—’
‘Oh, I do. I most certainly do.’
‘You like sex, don’t you, Cameron?’ she told him bluntly. ‘Lots and lots and lots of it!’
‘I don’t just like it,’ he said softly. ‘I love it And so do you, sweetheart. You may have been a late starter, Alessandra, but you sure took to it in a big way. I’ve never met a woman who gets as easily turned on as you do.’
‘And I’ve never met a man who would rip his wife’s clothes off and throw her to the floor and make her...make her...’
‘Tremble ecstatically in his arms?’ he put in with sardonic humour, but then he saw her mouth begin to tremble and he was by her side in an instant, enfolding her in the strong, warm circle of his arms as she began to shake with emotion.
‘Sweetheart, sweetheart,’ he pleaded. ‘Don’t get upset. Please. I shouldn’t have done it. You’re right I’m a brute. A selfish, arrogant and unthinking brute. But I love you.’
‘No, you’re not!’ she raged. ‘And I love you too! I just don’t understand why you...why you...’
He sat down on the bed and gently drew her down beside him. ‘I don’t understand myself,’ he told her softly. ‘You bring out something in me that no woman has ever done before and sometimes I’m not sure that I like it very much.’
He sighed as she stared at him with confused eyes. ‘All damned week long I’ve been aching for you. I didn’t want to be away from you. I’d planned my homecoming to the last detail, how it would be.’
‘But you came home early,’ she protested. ‘And didn’t tell me.’
‘I wanted to surprise you.’
‘But I rang the airline, and they confirmed that you were still booked on the later flight.’
‘I didn’t use the ticket.’
‘But then, how—?’
‘I bought myself a plane,’ he said, and then gave a little shrug as though he realised how unbelievable his statement must sound. Like a little boy saying that he’d bought a toy car.
Alessandra stared at him in disbelief. ‘You’ve done what?’
‘It’s a small Lear jet,’ he added, though he might have been speaking in Chinese for all that Alessandra understood. ‘So it’s just as capable of crossing the Atlantic as it is of taking me up to Manchester.’
Her dark eyes were still like saucers. ‘Cameron—why?’
‘Why not?’
‘Because people don’t just go around buying planes.’
‘Some do. I do. We do,’ he corrected. ‘We can afford it.’
‘But—’
He shook his dark head firmly. ‘No buts. It matters to me that I don’t see very much of you. My factory is in Manchester. Your job is in London. You won’t change—’
‘Don’t make it sound as though it’s something as insignificant as me forgetting to put the milk bottles out!’ she objected with a slight frown. ‘Why should I change? My job happens to be very important to me!’
‘Yes, Alessandra, I know. You’ve made that abundantly clear to me.’
‘But of course you, as the man, expect me, as the woman, to just up sticks and move to Manchester, just like that?’
‘It’s not exactly the back of beyond, you know. And we do have advertising agencies up north.’
She shook her head. ‘But none where I’d be given the same kind of variety and responsibility that I have at Holloway’s. Andrew has hinted that the joint managing directorship might be mine next year. I’ve worked hard for my promotion, Cameron.’ She turned wide dark eyes up at him in appeal. ‘Please don’t ask me to throw it all away,’ she finished quietly, not sure of what she would say if he insisted.
‘I’m not.’
‘Because this is the woman you fell in love with,’ she told him, stabbing her finger emphatically against her breastbone, the dark fire from her eyes challenging him to dare to deny it. ‘Me! The career woman. Not someone who would cave in just because of love—’
‘Just?’ He fixed her with a questioning look.
‘I want that promotion,’ she said stubbornly, but her stubbornness was born out of fear. Fear that if she changed too much, that if she allowed Cameron to simply slot her into his life as easily as a peg into a hole, he would no longer love her.
‘And you shall have your promotion if Andrew chooses to give it to you—because I shan’t try to stop you. My only stipulation is that he stops calling you “honey”!’ And he gave her the careless smile which had first so captivated her. ‘Darling, don’t let’s fight. That’s the main reason why I bought the plane. It’s supposed to make our lives easier. This way I won’t have the bother and the wait and the inconvenience of scheduled flights—can come and go as the fancy takes me.’
‘And always expect me to be waiting for you like the good little wife?’ she queried, knowing that she was spoiling his news but some insecure demon inside her spurring her on.
‘That isn’t what I said,’ he replied evenly.
‘But that’s the truth of it, isn’t it?’ she responded. ‘If it isn’t, then what else prompted that ugly little scene when I walked in tonight? Just because I was late coming in, before you were even expected?’
‘Like I said, I’d planned my homecoming to the last detail.’
“The wine?’
‘The wine,’ he agreed. ‘Low lights. There was to be some soft music. Corny—’
‘But effective,’ she interrupted drily. ‘With the scene all set for...’
‘Seduction,’ he supplied, an unholy glint in his eyes. ‘Mmm.’
‘But there was no seduction, was there, Cameron?’ she asked him quietly. Because, now that her senses had calmed down, it appalled her to remember how she’d reacted to him. ‘Just some rather basic sex...’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Please don’t tell me you didn’t enjoy it,’ he put in with brutal softness, ‘when I watched you shuddering and felt you climax beneath me...’
Alessandra met his questioning blue gaze full-on. ‘Oh, yes—I enjoyed it. And, yes, I climaxed. I always do—if that’s the only criterion by which you gauge satisfaction.’ She made to turn away but he put one hand on her shoulder, very gently, and sighed.
‘It isn’t. And, believe me, I certainly hadn’t intended to act like that.’
‘Then why did you?’ she asked in a small voice.
‘Because...’ He shook his head as he put his free hand on her other shoulder and moved her closer to him. ‘Because you do something to me, Alessandra. Don’t you know that? You make me respond in a certain way; or, rather, I can never predict or control how I’m going to respond to you. You perplex me. You excite me. You make me crazy. When I heard Andrew’s message on the answering machine—’
She decided that the time had come to get rid of all this nonsense once and for all. ‘But he’s always called me “honey”—since I first met him.’
‘And I don’t like it. Strictly as a chauvinistic, jealous and possessive husband.’
‘Is that what you are?’ she teased softly, and he smiled.
‘Sometimes, yes. With you, yes.’ She saw a brief but distinct tightening of his mouth. ‘I just don’t like Andrew’s familiarity. Okay?’
‘I don’t happen to like it very much myself,’ admitted Alessandra. ‘I guess I just put up with it.’
‘Then don’t put up with it! Tell him you don’t like it!’ His face darkened. ‘Try asserting yourself with him as you seem to do so successfully with me!’
She felt weary. They seemed to be going round and round in circles. She nodded. ‘Okay, I’ll tell him.’ She put a tentative hand up to smooth a lock of dark hair off his forehead. ‘But you must know by now that Andrew means nothing to me, Cameron.’
‘No?’ He let his hands fall from her shoulders and drew his dark brows together as his eyes briefly flew to the discarded black garment which lay in a silky heap on the carpet. ‘He just buys you sexy dresses and speaks to you like a girlfriend instead of a colleague
’
‘You’re surely not jealous of Andrew?’ she asked incredulously. ‘Not you?’
‘Why not? When you walked in here tonight—with your hair all wild and your cheeks all rosy—’
‘It’s a cold night,’ she pointed out.
‘Wearing that sexy bit of nonsense which he’d bought for you—’
‘I was the one who chose it, remember?’
‘To wear for him? On an evening out with him? How would you define that, then, Alessandra? Subliminal attraction?’
‘Oh, don’t be so absurd!’ In the past she had sometimes despaired of Cameron’s coolness, his unflappability, but now that he actually was displaying the kind of passionate temper she’d always secretly longed for she found she didn’t like it one bit!
‘I’m telling you how I felt,’ he said, ‘You wanted to know.’
‘Go on,’ she said in a small voice, thinking that maybe it had been a good thing that they’d never delved too deeply into their feelings before. She felt as though they’d opened up Pandora’s box and were regretting it by the second!
‘Yes, it was irrational,’ he continued. ‘But I told you—something about you makes me act without reason, without thought. I started to imagine Andrew making love to you—’
‘That’s absolutely ridiculous!’ she scoffed.
‘Is it? Are you telling me that he wouldn’t like to?’
‘I wouldn’t like to, Cameron—that’s the difference!’
‘And I found myself,’ he went on, as though she hadn’t spoken, ‘wanting to tear the clothes from your body—’
‘Which you did—’
‘And to take you right there and then.’
‘Which you also did!’
‘And for which I’ve apologised—for the sentiment, at least, if not for the act itself. And isn’t it about time that you stopped being hypocritical and admitted that it was exciting and that it turned you on? Or are you denying that, Alessandra?’
She shook her head. ‘No, I’m not denying it. It’s just that... that...’ Her voice tailed off.
‘That what?’ he prompted softly.
‘It just wasn’t very—loving, that’s all,’ she sighed, looking up into the intense eyes which were now a soft, smoky grey.
‘Sometimes sex isn’t loving,’ he told her gently. ‘And sometimes it isn’t meant to be. If you like, I can show you just how loving it can be.’ And he began to massage the small of her back rhythmically.
She wanted to wriggle with pleasure, to relax into it, to make the slow walk down whichever sensual path he planned to take her. But two capitulations in one evening would be too big a dent in her pride.
‘I have work in the morning,’ she said stubbornly.
“So do I.’
‘And I need a shower,’ she reminded him pointedly.
‘So do I,’ he murmured with a smile as he drew her to her feet. He slowly untied her robe, slipped his hands inside and cupped her naked, peaking breasts.
‘Cameron...’ she objected on a shuddering gasp as he bent his dark head to take one aching tip into his mouth.
‘What?’ he murmured softly, his breath warm against her skin. ‘What is it, my darling?’
She couldn’t remember. ‘Oh, Cameron...
CHAPTER THREE (#u5f4dddbc-3dc6-594c-bc06-c8b8a87b906b)
CAMERON spent most of the night making up for the week he had been away. He made love to Alessandra over and over again. Almost as though...as though he was asserting his sexual mastery over her. As though he was trying to imprint himself on her mind, to prove to her that he was the only man for her.
He doesn’t have to prove anything, was Alessandra’s last, drowsy thought before she fell into a dreamless sleep.
She stretched like a cat as she awoke to the most pleasurable feeling imaginable. She was half-asleep and warm, and delectable sensations began to fizzle over her skin. Cameron’s hands were on her breasts, circling each one in turn, inciting the tips into pointy little peaks which ached like crazy.
‘Oh,’ she sighed disappointedly as he moved his hand away, then almost purred with pleasure as he trickled it slowly and enticingly down over her flat stomach until he’d found where she ached for him most.
‘Mmm,’ he said with pleasure, and slowly began to kiss her.
‘Mmm,’ she echoed as her fingers trailed down to capture his rock-hard arousal, only then to move her hand away reluctantly as she remembered the time.
‘Don’t stop,’ he urged huskily.
He was speaking to the converted. ‘But it’s late,’ she murmured on a half-hearted protest
‘Do you want to get up?’
‘No.’
‘Well, we won’t, then,’ he whispered, and she gave a gasp of pleasure as he entered her.
The alarm rang and rang.
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Sharon Kendrik
Mills & Boon are proud to present a thrilling digital collection of all Sharon Kendrick’s novels and novellas for us to celebrate the publication of her amazing 100th book! Many of these books are available as e books for the first time.Return to the marriage!Alessandra Walker and Cameron Calder had married in haste, with careers in tow and jobs in different cities. But they loved each other with a passion, and of course they'd make it workAnd they did. For a while every carefully planned meeting seemed like a honeymoon until suddenly it just didn't seem enough.Distrust and jealousy were threatening to split them apart until Alessandra discovered her husband's plan to save their marriage – a baby – but what would that mean for her career?
Dear Reader (#u5f4dddbc-3dc6-594c-bc06-c8b8a87b906b),
One hundred. Doesn’t matter how many times I say it, I still can’t believe that’s how many books I’ve written. It’s a fabulous feeling but more fabulous still is the news that Mills & Boon are issuing every single one of my backlist as digital titles. Wow. I can’t wait to share all my stories with you - which are as vivid to me now as when I wrote them.
There’s BOUGHT FOR HER HUSBAND, with its outrageously macho Greek hero and A SCANDAL, A SECRET AND A BABY featuring a very sexy Tuscan. THE SHEIKH’S HEIR proved so popular with readers that it spent two weeks on the USA Today charts and…well, I could go on, but I’ll leave you to discover them for yourselves.
I remember the first line of my very first book: “So you’ve come to Australia looking for a husband?” Actually, the heroine had gone to Australia to escape men, but guess what? She found a husband all the same! The man who inspired that book rang me up recently and when I told him I was beginning my 100
story and couldn’t decide what to write, he said, “Why don’t you go back to where it all started?”
So I did. And that’s how A ROYAL VOW OF CONVENIENCE was born. It opens in beautiful Queensland and moves to England and New York. It’s about a runaway princess and the enigmatic billionaire who is infuriated by her, yet who winds up rescuing her. But then, she goes and rescues him… Wouldn’t you know it?
I’ll end by saying how very grateful I am to have a career I love, and to thank each and every one of you who has supported me along the way. You really are very dear readers.
Love,
Sharon xxx
Mills & Boon are proud to present a thrilling digital collection of all Sharon Kendrick’s novels and novellas for us to celebrate the publication of her amazing and awesome 100th book! Sharon is known worldwide for her likeable, spirited heroines and her gorgeous, utterly masculine heroes.
SHARON KENDRICK once won a national writing competition, describing her ideal date: being flown to an exotic island by a gorgeous and powerful man. Little did she realise that she’d just wandered into her dream job! Today she writes for Mills & Boon, featuring her often stubborn but always to-die-for heroes and the women who bring them to their knees. She believes that the best books are those you never want to end. Just like life…
Long-Distance Marriage
Sharon Kendrick
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To Auntie Dodie (Mrs. Josephine Webb),
who gave me such fantastic holidays
when I was a child.
Contents
Cover (#ueacb092c-cf57-5a16-a9b4-cfb354b1d327)
Dear Reader (#u1ef8f6d4-09a3-5480-9155-ffc45af6ea0c)
About the Author (#uae7d8be7-c549-54f2-8547-55f4b2ab6005)
Title Page (#u4e63b356-f775-5c39-aaf9-2770744d71ca)
Dedication (#uf004a802-86fa-5898-a83d-381ef1de03e3)
CHAPTER ONE (#uaa9b97fd-b1f0-53cf-b7b4-5c426876251d)
CHAPTER TWO (#uc139bd33-0c32-5b2e-9f11-e1c713baf7bd)
CHAPTER THREE (#u7e365e9e-4bca-5aa3-a776-5bb817710adb)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#u5f4dddbc-3dc6-594c-bc06-c8b8a87b906b)
THE phone on Alessandra’s desk shrilled and she picked it up on the first ring with her usual brisk efficiency.
‘Yes?’ Always straight and to the point, Alessandra had acquired something of a reputation at Holloway Advertising for wasting neither words nor time. Once she had overheard two of the secretaries saying that she was as efficient as a robot, and had found it hard to believe that they were actually talking about her!
‘Alessandra—where the hell have you been all morning?’ came the voice of her boss, Andrew Holloway.
Long ago, Alessandra had recognised that Andrew had flair and imagination—it was just unfortunate that he was thoroughly convinced he was God’s gift to the opposite sex!
‘I wanted to deliver some artwork personally,’ explained Alessandra. ‘And I’ve only just got in.’
‘Well, I need to talk to you,’ said Andrew.
‘I’m afraid I’m busy right now,’ said Alessandra firmly as she surveyed her crowded desk and pulled a face at it. ‘Can’t it wait?’
‘It most certainly can,’ Andrew replied with satisfaction, and Alessandra got the distinct feeling that she’d been manipulated into something! ‘How about a drink after work?’
She sighed. ‘Andrew, I can’t. I have a heap of work to do before I leave, and—’ her voice instinctively softened into a soft purr as she glanced at the wedding photograph on her desk ‘—I have a husband at home waiting for me, remember?’
Well, that was a small white lie, she thought ruefully—Cameron wouldn’t be waiting at all. If there was one thing which was predictable about that gorgeous yet enigmatic husband of hers, it was that Cameron Calder waited for no one.
‘Alessandra—honey, please!’
Alessandra held back a smile. It amused her to hear her boss of three years still trying to turn the charm on like a tap! He never gave up! Never could understand why she hadn’t fallen into his arms like a ripe plum!
Yes, he was tall. Yes, he was hunky. Blond, blue-eyed and not short of a penny or two. The toast of London’s women and able to date just about anyone of his choice. Except for Alessandra. Oh, he’d asked her out often enough in the past, but she’d never accepted for the simple reason that she hadn’t been remotely interested in him. Alessandra had only ever gone out with one man.
And she’d married him.
She picked up the silver-framed photo taken after her wedding to Cameron. It had been a tiny ceremony. Neither of them had wanted a big wedding, each for their own reasons. Cameron’s parents were dead, and Alessandra’s lived in Italy. But Cameron was a powerful man with a lot of connections and, when they had been discussing wedding plans, he had turned to her and said, in that crisp, decisive way of his, ‘We either invite everyone or no one. A simple wedding or the whole works.’
There had been no contest for Alessandra. She’d had a few close girlfriends who wouldn’t be mortally offended if they didn’t get an invite.
And her family. Quite apart from the fact that they’d have been hard-pushed to find the air fares, she couldn’t exactly see them hitting it off with her husband-to-be. She’d tried to imagine the cool, enigmatic Cameron coping with her noisy, messy family, and failed.
She just hadn’t wanted to make a big deal out of the day—look how many people did that, and how many of them divorced soon after? She had been petrified of getting married in the first place—in fact, she had sworn that she never would marry. And she probably never would have done if she hadn’t met Cameron. She certainly couldn’t imagine anyone else changing her mind about something so important. But he had been so coolly persistent, and so damned gorgeous, that she just hadn’t been able to resist him!
‘A simple wedding,’ she had told him quietly.
Those blue-grey eyes had narrowed thoughtfully, a half-smile playing around the delectable curve of his lips. ‘But you do realise, Alessandra,’ he’d murmured softly, ‘that a simple wedding means just that? Registry office and two witnesses. No church or flowers or organ music. No big white dress and veil. I thought that’s what all women wanted?’
She had brought her chin up mutinously when she’d heard that, until she’d seen, from the soft light in his eyes, that he’d been teasing. She hadn’t taken the bait, just shaken her head. ‘None of that,’ she’d said firmly, wondering if she had imagined that he looked very slightly disappointed.
So she had gone ahead and bought a simple wedding dress and she hadn’t even opted for the conventional white or ivory. Instead she had chosen a short scarlet linen dress, which had clung flatteringly to her soft curves, and which had complemented the Italian colouring she had inherited from her mother, her glowing skin and huge dark eyes, her newly washed hair falling in a dark, silky cloud to her shoulders.
She had deliberately and untraditionally spent the night before the wedding with Cameron, and travelled with him to Marylebone Register Office. She had been unable to hide her surprise and pleasure when he had stopped the cab at a market stall and bought her the biggest bunch of scarlet roses she had ever seen. And then they had picked two witnesses off the street and married. But she had noticed that Cameron was oddly quiet after the brief ceremony.
Alessandra stared at the woman in the photo who stood smiling rather uncertainly at the camera, with the dashingly tall, dark figure of her new husband beside her. It was the only photograph of the day they had.
Uncertain? she wondered as she peered at it more closely. Had she been?
Well, yes. And she still was, to some extent, although she hid it superbly. She had never been lacking in confidence but Cameron was so gorgeous, and she was so in love with him, that sometimes she had to pinch herself to believe that they were married. That out of all the women he could have chosen he had chosen her. Because a strange thing had happened once they were legally married. She had found that it was very difficult to remain the cool, rather aloof woman he’d fallen in love with. Instead, she’d had to try very hard not to become the clingy kind of doting wife he would have despised.
As always when her thoughts turned to Cameron, she felt the tips of her breasts stinging with dangerous excitement beneath the thin silk of her blouse and she immediately slammed the photo back down on her desk. Damn the man! You’d think that six months of marriage might have cooled down that unbearable ache she felt at the pit of her stomach whenever she thought of him. Instead it seemed to have done the opposite. Cameron was like a drug; she just couldn’t get enough of him. Heavens, couldn’t she even think about her husband for a moment without necessarily getting extremely and sometimes embarrassingly turned on?
She remembered how, once, he had turned up unexpectedly at the office and taken her out to the Savoy for lunch. They’d just sat across the table staring and staring at one another, silent and sensual messages sizzling between them.
When the food had arrived they’d scarcely noticed and they’d hardly touched their first course when, as if by mutual assent, Cameron had firmly taken her by the hand, booked an extremely expensive room upstairs, and spent the rest of the lunch hour making mad, passionate love to her.
If only one of the damned secretaries at the advertising agency hadn’t noticed that she’d come back with her sweater on inside out! That hadn’t done her reputation a lot of good!
With an effort she forced thoughts of Cameron to the furthest corner of her mind and asked her boss, who was still hanging patiently on the end of the phone, ‘What’s so urgent about seeing me that it can’t wait until tomorrow?’
Again she could hear the satisfaction in Andrew’s voice. ‘Just that the head of a certain highly prestigious American motor company has approached me—’
‘Which company?’ Alessandra shot out quickly.
Andrew named the company and Alessandra gave a silent whistle. Prestigious indeed. If not yet one of the world’s biggest car producers then it was soon set to be. ‘And?’ she prompted, since Andrew had fallen silent, presumably to let the full import of his words hit her.
‘They want to meet us.’
‘You mean they’re thinking of using us?’ Alessandra asked in disbelief. The advertising agency which Andrew owned and which she worked for was original and competent—they’d walked off with a couple of the industry’s top awards for the last two years—but they were strictly small-time. Their clients were all small to medium-sized British companies, and there was no one international on their books; certainly nothing on the scale of the American motor company. She simply couldn’t imagine having a client of that size!
‘They loved your campaign for the low-calorie chocolate-chip cookie,’ Andrew told her levelly.
‘But surely not enough to give their account to a tiny British company?’ squeaked Alessandra in amazement, her customary savoir-faire momentarily deserting her.
Andrew was noncommittal. ‘Let’s just say they aren’t happy with who they have at the moment, and leave it at that. But they hinted strongly that their account might be up for grabs. It’s up to us to convince them that we can handle it; and not just handle it—handle it brilliantly!’
‘And do you think we can?’ asked Alessandra.
Andrew laughed. ‘Honey, for the kind of budget they’ll be offering we can place a hoarding on the moon if they want it—hell, I’ll even fly it there myself and put the damned thing up! Which is why—’ his voice dropped conspiratorially ‘—I need you there. You’re so easy on the eye—’
‘Andrew!’ Alessandra’s voice became distinctly chilly. She liked compliments on the way she looked from one man only, and that man was Cameron. ‘Give me a break!’
He laughed. ‘I’m kidding, honey, you know that! I want you there because you possess the most creative mind I’ve ever encountered together with a frighteningly cool logic which leaves most of us mere mortals open-mouthed with admiration. Is that better?’ He paused. ‘Come on, Alessandra—isn’t this what we’ve worked together towards for all this time? Isn’t this the kind of dream we thought would never come true? It’s the chance of a lifetime—surely you can see that?’
Alessandra stared at the receiver which she held in her slim pale hand. On the third finger of her left hand, next to her wedding band and completely dominating it, sat the enormous square-cut emerald which blazed in all its green, glorious fire. Cameron had given her the ring when she’d agreed to marry him.
They’d been in bed at the time. She remembered how his features had been carefully composed into a rather enigmatic look of satisfaction after he’d got his own way, and she’d told him rather gravely that, yes, she would marry him.
He’d waited until after they’d made love before producing the ring, pulling it casually from the pocket of his discarded trousers, like a magician producing a rabbit out of a hat.
Her breath had caught in her mouth as he’d placed the magnificent emerald on her finger and, in spite of her insistence that she cared for none of the trappings which came with matrimony, her eyes had widened like saucers. ‘Oh, but Cameron—it’s...exquisite,’ she’d breathed. ‘How did you know it would fit?’
He’d given that smile then. That lazy, sexy smile which had first captivated her, though she’d tried her damnedest not to let it. It still made her heart pound like a runaway train.
‘I just knew.’ And there had been a glint of sexual promise in his eyes as he’d spoken more softly. ‘Just wait until I start buying you lingerie. That will fit you perfectly too. You see, my delectable Alessandra, I know every inch, every centimetre of your delicious body...it’s emblazoned on my mind,’ he’d finished on a sultry murmur as he’d traced a slow, provocative finger from throat to navel.
Alessandra had been so in love with him, so sexually excited by that look in his eyes, that she hadn’t dared touch him back, afraid to kiss him just at that moment because she was so emotionally overcome that she’d feared she would frighten him away! So instead she’d searched around for the kind of response he would expect from her, forcing her habitually serene smile to curve her lips into an almost Madonnalike expression.
‘When did you buy it?’ she queried, as casually as if she were asking him the time.
‘Is that all you can say?’ he replied, with a kind of stunned disbelief which became a sardonic laugh.
‘What would you like me to say?’ she asked evenly.
‘I suppose you do realise,’ he told her in a deliberately mocking tone, ‘that women have been trying to get me to marry them for years? And that a lot of those women would have been overwhelmed to get my ring on their finger?’
It was a very arrogant thing to say, and possibly the only man who could have got away with saying it was Cameron Calder. He was teasing her, yes—but Alessandra was wise enough to know that he had spoken the truth. She was also mature enough to recognise that it was her air of insouciance which attracted him to her. ‘And they would have fallen at your feet in gratitude, would they?’ she queried solemnly. ‘If they had been the recipient of this magnificent ring?’
Cameron gave her a look of bemused admiration as she mocked him back. ‘God, you’re so damned cool,’ he murmured appreciatively. ‘So damned unflappable. I’ve never met a woman like you in my life.’
She learnt another lesson then. Because that avid declaration made Alessandra relieved that she hadn’t given in to her desire to tell him that in a few short weeks he had become her entire world. Because that wasn’t the Alessandra Walker that the world, and Cameron, knew. And that was who he’d fallen in love with—the cool, serene, unflappable woman who could mock him back for his arrogance. He’d had enough of the other kind—the kind that couldn’t keep their hands off him, whose eyes told him he was their lord and master.
She looked up at him from beneath her thick black lashes and this time there was laughter in her eyes. ‘So when did you buy the ring?’ she queried again.
‘When I decided to marry you, of course.’ Cameron smiled.
Alessandra frowned. ‘You mean—when you decided to ask me?’ she corrected.
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘When I decided to marry you,’ he emphasised.
Some strange emotion quivered in the air. Her heart began to pound. ‘And when was that?’ she asked, suddenly breathless again.
He smiled, but it wasn’t a particularly warm smile. More wary than warm, and definitely bordering on the reluctant. He regarded her steadily. ‘The first time I met you,’ he said.
‘And you were that sure?’ asked Alessandra slowly. ‘So sure of me? So sure I’d say yes?’
‘Darling, do you want me to lie to you?’
She shook her head, her thick brown hair damp from the exertion of their lovemaking so that it hung in limp tendrils to her shoulders. ‘No, Cameron,’ she said quietly. ‘I don’t want you to lie to me.’
‘Then yes,’ he murmured. ‘I was that sure of you.’
‘Alessandra!’ Andrew’s voice cut into her reverie. ‘Are you still there?’
‘Yes, Andrew,’ she said thoughtfully, still gazing at the emerald on her finger. ‘I’m still here.’
‘So are you coming tonight or not?’
Alessandra hesitated, but suddenly it wasn’t a difficult decision to make at all. She glanced at the pale gold watch on her wrist. It had just gone six. Cameron would be on a flight somewhere over the Atlantic right now—he’d been in New York for a week on business. His plane was due in at nine, and then he would take a hire-car from the airport, so he wouldn’t be home until after ten. She had offered to drive to meet him, but he had been adamant that she wasn’t there to act as his chauffeur. And he was one of those men you couldn’t argue with, not once he’d made his mind up!
‘Yes, Andrew, I’ll come for a drink with you tonight,’ she said decisively. She hardly imagined that Cameron had been sitting alone in his hotel room every night for the past week, pining for her! He had friends and business acquaintances in the States he’d doubtless been having dinner with—so what was the difference?
‘And what about Superman?’ sniped Andrew childishly, rather unnervingly voicing her own thoughts. He and Cameron had never exactly hit it off, and neither man had made a secret of it. Alessandra, stuck in the middle, had kept her own counsel.
‘Won’t he object to his darling wife fraternising with men after work?’ added Andrew slyly. ‘You usually break the land-speed record getting home to him.’
Alessandra smiled to herself. Cameron? Superman? Mmm! She liked it! ‘I’m not going to reprimand you for your continued use of that ridiculous nickname you have for my husband, Andrew—because I’ve decided that it’s actually quite accurate. You’re absolutely right—he is a bit of a Superman.’ She sighed.
She could almost hear Andrew’s ego bristling indignantly down the phone. ‘Oh, and I’m not, I suppose?’
‘Different league, I’m afraid,’ she teased him smugly, secure in the knowledge that tonight she would be in the place she most wanted to be—in Cameron’s arms. With difficulty she dragged her mind back to the conversation. ‘Where are we meeting for a drink, and when?’
‘Henry’s Bar—at seven.’
‘Oh, Andrew, must we?’ She looked down, aghast, at the stone-coloured linen suit she was wearing with the apricot silk shirt beneath. Her outfit was elegant and smart, but it simply screamed ‘Office’! ‘It’s so dressy at Henry’s Bar.’
‘Their choice, honey. You know how impressive that place is.’
‘Pretentious, you mean.’ Alessandra sighed. ‘I guess I’ll just have to go home now and find something suitable to wear.’ She did keep a change of clothes in her office for emergencies, but it was strictly casual—cotton trousers and a cotton sweater and fresh underwear. Certainly much too casual for a drink at Henry’s Bar.
‘Why bother going home?’ said Andrew. ‘You’re two minutes from one of the finest dress shops in this city. Why not treat yourself?’
He was talking about a famous Italian designer who dressed most of Hollywood! ‘Because I—’ Alessandra halted, aware that what she had been about to say would sound so stupid. That she couldn’t afford it. Of course she could afford it! She was on, if not a fabulous salary, then an extremely good one. And, even though she had firmly refused Cameron’s offer of a generous dress allowance, she could still afford to buy in the exclusive shops which abounded in the area where she worked.
The trouble was that she had never before spent several months’ salary on just one gown! She loved good clothes, yes, and they were necessary to her high-powered job and sophisticated lifestyle, but there was a limit, and old habits died hard. It had been hard to learn to spend. Hard to disregard the parsimony which had been instilled in her by her upbringing—by watching her poverty-ridden and feckless parents fritter away whatever money did actually come into the house. Alessandra had vivid memories of wearing charity-shop clothes and shoes while her parents had thrown yet another uproarious party.
‘Alessandra—’ Andrew cut into her thoughts once more. ‘For heaven’s sake, go and buy a dress on the company.’
‘No.’
‘Yes.’ He laughed. ‘All right, then—as your boss I’m ordering you to! Look on it as part of your bonus for getting us this new client.’
‘And if we don’t win the account?’ asked Alessandra, ever practical.
‘Oh, we will, we will,’ said Andrew confidently. ‘We’re bound to, with you there!’
Alessandra took the lift up to the penthouse apartment and yawned. Her jaw ached from smiling and her feet were killing her. She’d stood at the counter of Henry’s Bar—standing at the counter was the place to be seen—and had dutifully drunk vintage champagne with the prospective American clients, who had listened to her ideas with enthusiasm.
‘We love your quirky British style,’ the older one, named Billy, had told her earnestly.
‘It sells,’ his colleague, whose eyes had been riveted to her cleavage all evening, had added. Alessandra had decided that, if they did win the account, she would not wear anything low-cut like this again; she couldn’t stand men leering at her like that. The irony was that she’d bought the dress because she had been sure that Cameron would love it. It was beautifully cut and he absolutely adored seeing her wear black.
But, in the changing room at the shop, she had been in such a hurry, so intent with swirling round and checking the back and the length and the shape of the garment, that she had allowed the sales girl’s opinion to sway her. And had ended up with, she realised, a spectacular dress, but one which exposed far more of her skin than usual. It drew attention to the heavy lushness of her breasts, the stark colour making her skin seem almost translucently creamy.
A fact which had obviously not been missed by the younger of the two Americans.
Alessandra had been reluctantly persuaded by Andrew to join them for an early supper after their drink, and so the four of them had moved on to the Savoy—and eaten a too rich combination of caviare, followed by lobster Thermidor, accompanied by still more champagne. Alessandra had felt full, tired and jaded, and she had eventually excused herself at nine-thirty by announcing that one very jet-lagged husband would be arriving from the States shortly, and she wanted to be at home to meet him. She’d felt her pulses stirring at the thought of seeing Cameron again soon.
‘Of course, of course,’ said Billy, beaming at her. ‘It’s been a great pleasure meeting you, Mrs—’
‘It’s Miss,’ corrected Alessandra quickly. ‘I’m still Alessandra Walker. I decided to keep my maiden name when I married.’
‘Really?’ queried the leerer, his eyes still hypnotised by the creamy swell of her breasts.
‘Yes,’ said Alessandra, standing up quickly, thinking that if she didn’t get away from his creepy stare she might say or do something rude which might jeopardise the account! ‘I’m well-known in the advertising world by that name, and so it seemed a pity to lose it.’
‘And it’s the modern way,’ agreed Billy, smiling. ‘In Canada, where two of my daughters live, it’s quite common to do so. Just so long as your husband doesn’t mind!’
Well, she wouldn’t exactly go so far as to say that. Cameron hadn’t objected when she’d told him she wasn’t planning to take his name, he’d just given her that coolly quizzical stare of his and then nodded without comment.
Andrew slipped her coat around her shoulders and gave them a little squeeze, which Alessandra guessed was his way of telling her that the evening had been a success, and Billy stood up, seeming eager to compensate for his partner’s blatantly obvious preoccupation with her body.
‘What kind of business was your husband doing in the States?’ he asked conversationally as he shook her hand.
Alessandra smiled. ‘It’s not really his business, more a kind of sideline. He has a factory here, in the north of England, and others in western Europe, but he dabbles in property for fun.’
‘For fun?’ expostulated Andrew. ‘I’d hardly call owning numerous apartments and a hotel on the East Side of Manhattan “fun”—or heaven help us all if he decides to get serious!’
Even Leerer’s interest had strayed from her bosom now, and Billy looked as eager as a dog who had scented a bone. ‘Really? Would I happen to know your husband, ma’am?’
Alessandra shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea. He’s quite well-known in England—’
‘Understatement of the year,’ interrupted Andrew drily. ‘His name is Cameron Calder.’
He might as well have said ‘the President of the United States’, Alessandra giggled to herself now as she pushed the key into the lock of the flat. For the two businessmen surely couldn’t have been more impressed! She’d had no idea that her husband was so well-known in New York for his entrepreneurial skills.
But then, how would she have known? Cameron had never once taken her to New York with him, and he certainly wasn’t the kind of man to boast. A man like Cameron didn’t need to boast, she thought longingly, a little sigh automatically escaping her lips as it hit her just how much she had missed him.
She closed the door of the flat behind her and yawned widely, dropping her wrap carelessly onto the back of the low sofa. She would change out of this clinging black number, run herself a deep, perfumed bath and then lie—literally, she thought with hungry amusement—in wait for her gorgeous husband.
It took a moment or two for her to register that there was a light shining from the direction of the bedroom. Surely she hadn’t been so careless as to have left it on this morning? Though she had been in a tearing hurry. She’d overslept after a troubled night of disturbed dreams, in which Cameron’s face kept appearing tantalisingly before her.
For a moment she froze as she heard a sound coming from the bedroom, but the fear fled immediately, for she recognised that much loved step at once. She pushed back her dark hair, which had been all mussed up by the wind, to see the tall, shadowy figure of her husband appear framed in the doorway, set against the soft glow of the lamp behind him. In the semidarkness, even more than usual, his body appeared all hard-packed muscle and power.
He snapped on the main-light switch and the room was flooded with a harsh glare. Alessandra’s welcoming smile died on her lips. Because she looked up into Cameron’s harsh, unwelcoming face and suddenly, inexplicably, she really was frightened.
CHAPTER TWO (#u5f4dddbc-3dc6-594c-bc06-c8b8a87b906b)
CAMERON studied Alessandra for a moment and something about the forbidding coldness in his eyes—an expression Alessandra had never seen there before—made her skin prickle with tiny goose-bumps. So that, instead of falling ecstatically into each other’s arms as they would normally have done, they stood surveying each other silently against the great expanse of the room. But there was no tenderness in his face and none of the softness which was usually there when he looked at her.
‘Hello, Alessandra,’ said Cameron eventually, but he didn’t move from where he was standing.
And pride kept her where she was. ‘Hello, Cameron,’ she said, and it came out far more coolly than she’d intended—but why shouldn’t it have done? There had been some odd, strained quality to his voice. ‘I—wasn’t expecting you back so soon.’
‘So I see.’ His mouth curved disdainfully as he took in the low-cut black dress which emphasised the creamy thrust of her breasts and skimmed down closely over her narrow waist and hips to finish midthigh, making the most of every inch of her long, slender legs. She could see a spark of hunger in his blue-grey eyes vying for dominance with a definite expression of contempt.
With a kind of derisive snort, he strode over to the drinks cabinet and poured two glasses of wine from the bottle which he had obviously opened earlier and which lay cooling in an ice bucket. Had he been planning some kind of celebration? she wondered fleetingly.
And just how long had he been home? A slight desperation crept into her veins as she saw that his grim face showed no sign of relaxing. He silently moved towards her and held out a glass of Chablis. It was her favourite wine, and he had chosen one of the finest vintages, but suddenly the thought of drinking it sickened her to the stomach.
He continued to regard her unsmilingly and an angry pulse began to beat at the base of her throat. Just what right did he think he had to stand there and offer her wine, while that condemning look tightened the features of his arrogant face? As if she were some kind of criminal!
‘I don’t want any wine,’ she said shortly.
‘No,’ he answered curtly, and his mouth curved with scorn this time as he put both the untouched glasses back down. ‘I shouldn’t imagine that you do—I can smell it on your breath as it is.’
She’d had a total of three glasses of champagne all evening, hardly enough to qualify her for the drunk of the year that he was making her sound like! But she had no intention of justifying her behaviour to him. She would not be treated as though she were on trial. She stared him full in the face, her dark eyes sparking angry fire, feeling more furious than she could ever remember feeling in her life.
And yet she was achingly aware of his slanting blue-grey eyes, with the dark brows which matched the thick, naturally ruffled hair. She hadn’t seen him for just one week and it took every bit of concentration she possessed not to stare at that magnificent muscular physique, imagining him naked... hating herself for wanting him, even though he was behaving in this inexplicably hostile way towards her.
‘You’re obviously jet-lagged—’ she began, prepared to be conciliatory, but he interrupted her with a seemingly casual query.
‘New dress?’
Now why were her cheeks growing pink? ‘Yes.’ She lifted her chin defiantly. ‘You know darned well it is.’
His experienced eyes had obviously assessed the quality and the superb cut of the gown which clung to the streamlined curves of her body, and that direct scrutiny made her skin tingle, the fires of lust and anger igniting in her veins.
‘You aren’t usually quite so generous with yourself,’ he remarked, in a seemingly offhand way which spoke volumes.
Enough was enough! Alessandra decided to tell him the truth. That way she would have nothing to feel guilty about. Because she could just imagine how she’d feel if she lied and told him she’d purchased the gown herself, only for Andrew to let slip that it was a bonus, bought by the company.
Oh, why the hell had she let him talk her into it? What had, at the time, seemed a perfectly reasonable action was fast developing into something else entirely. But she wasn’t going to feel guilty. For she had absolutely nothing to feel guilty about.
‘No, you’re right,’ she answered coolly. ‘I’m not normally quite so generous with myself.’
‘But on this occasion you were?’ he persisted in that impartially analytical manner she’d only ever heard him use at work. ‘I’m intrigued to know why.’
‘I didn’t actually buy it—’ she began.
But he interrupted her with a clipped demand. Then just who did?’
‘The company.’
‘The company?’ he echoed softly, his deep voice full of sarcasm, the blue-grey eyes narrowing unfathomably. ‘Really?’
‘Yes, really!’ she snapped.
He elevated his dark, beautifully shaped eyebrows. ‘How very extraordinary. I must say that I’ve never considered buying any of my staff dresses,’ he emphasised deliberately. ‘Particularly exorbitantly priced dresses which do rather more to reveal than to conceal. Dresses which are designed solely with the intention of turning a man on.’ He looked directly into her eyes, his handsome face cold with arrogant enquiry. ‘But presumably that’s what Andrew had in mind?’
‘Andrew had nothing to do with it!’ she retorted furiously.
‘No?’ He clearly didn’t believe a word she was saying. ‘He just paid the bill, did he?’
‘Oh, I’m not talking to you when you’re in this kind of mood!’ she retorted, and made to whirl away, but he stayed her with one hand on her bare arm which, in spite of her rage, had her senses dancing in frantic plea for more of his touch. She turned her face up to him, her eyes wide in silent appeal. ‘Cameron...?’ she said, on a whisper.
But there wasn’t a flicker of answering emotion on his face. ‘And did Andrew help you choose it—honey?’ He mimicked Andrew’s nickname for her softly, his voice roughed with an intimidating menace which was completely alien to her.
‘Wh-what are you talking about?’ she stumbled, meeting the blaze of fury in his eyes.
‘Try listening to the answering machine,’ he suggested silkily, and his hand dropped from her arm.
The cessation of his touch was strangely disconcerting and Alessandra walked on her high, spindly heels towards the answering machine like a robot, aware, and yet trying not to be aware, that those cool blue-grey eyes never left her.
She pressed the message button and Andrew’s disembodied voice echoed around the flat.
‘Alessandra—are you there? It’s ten o’clock, and I want to check you’re home safely, honey—so ring me as soon as you get in—if this message ever reaches you!’
Damn Andrew and his stupid nicknames! Alessandra swiftly turned round, suddenly frightened again. This wasn’t how she had wanted Cameron’s homecoming to be—not at all. ‘I can explain—’ she began, but he shook his head and walked towards her with a stealthy intent which set her heart pounding.
‘So did Andrew help you choose it?’ he asked again, standing just inches away from her. ‘Did he like the fact that it fits so closely? So that when your nipples are hard—like now—they press against the silk and you might as well be wearing nothing at all?’ he demanded brutally.
It seemed pointless telling him that he, and only be, had that effect on her—with Cameron around her nipples seemed to be almost permanently erect. She could tell by the look on his face that he wouldn’t listen.
‘So tell me,’ he continued, and Alessandra knew, from the cruel pleasure she saw carved on his features, that he knew precisely the effect he was having on her. ‘Are you wearing any panties underneath that thing? Are you supposed to?’ His eyes glittered. ‘What did Andrew say?’
Alessandra felt the pooling of desire deep at the fork of her body, her senses so inflamed that the pride she normally possessed had suddenly vanished. So that, instead of storming out of the room and away from his vile accusations, she found herself unable to move, her skin on fire, despising herself, and yet yearning for what she knew could be the only possible conclusion to this angry confrontation.
‘May I?’ he asked conversationally as his long fingers slithered the silk of the dress all the way up her thigh until her tiny black bikini pants were revealed. ‘Oh,’ he said neutrally. ‘You are wearing some.’ His finger skimmed along the centre of them and Alessandra gasped with shock and pleasure. ‘And so wet too.’ He removed his hand, and she could have wept with frustration.
‘But you aren’t going to be wearing them for very much longer, are you, my delectable love?’ he continued remorselessly, and he reached down again, this time with both hands, and decisively pulled the delicate fabric apart with one swift, sure movement, so that it made a tiny rasping sound as it tore, and the panties slid slowly down her legs to the floor.
Alessandra followed as he took her into his arms and pushed her to the ground and at last, at long last, began to kiss her. She wanted to be angry with him but she was so in love with the man, the passion he’d aroused in her so pent up inside, that she decided to forgive him this one monstrous display of jealousy, and she began to kiss him back. Hard.
‘Cameron,’ she moaned against his mouth. ‘Oh, Cameron—’
But he kissed her into silence, his fingers delving into her wetness until she could bear it no longer and she found herself unbuckling his belt and unzipping his trousers with a brutal haste which rivalled his treatment of her panties.
She heard him give a low moan as he pushed her hand away to finish freeing himself and then he moved above her and ground into her, as hard as she’d ever felt him, and she almost fainted with the sheer physical pleasure of it.
Some corner of her mind wanted to keep something back, to show him that she still had some element of control, but she was aroused to such a fever pitch that she came almost immediately, and she heard him give a soft laugh of triumph, as he felt her flesh convulse around him, before uttering his own helpless sigh of release.
They lay on the carpet, both labouring for breath, and shame chilled her as surely as if she’d had a bucket of icy water thrown all over her. Because, now that her traitorous body had been satisfied, her dignity and pride had returned—and how! ‘Get off me—you brute!’ She tried to push him off her.
But he was having none of it. He rose lithely to his feet and quickly zipped up his trousers, then bent and scooped her up into his arms and stared down at her.
She didn’t want to look him full in the face, but Cameron could be so mesmerising sometimes that it was impossible to resist him. It was difficult for Alessandra to read his expression, though certainly some of the harshness of earlier had disappeared. Nevertheless, it was still impossible to tell what he was thinking.
Even when he had first told her that he loved her she had found his expression unreadable. Even then. He was the kind of man who always held something back and it both frustrated and fascinated her. He was like an absorbing puzzle that was impossible to solve. It had been one of the things which had attracted her to him in the first place and, conversely, what had always made her the tiniest bit wary of him.
He was heading towards the bedroom and she began to drum angrily on his chest. ‘Put me down!’ she demanded, and punched her fists against the fine silk of his shirt.
‘No.’
‘I’ll shout for the police!’
‘It’s a little late in the day for that, wouldn’t you say?’ he observed, somewhat bitterly.
‘No, it damn well isn’t!’ she retorted hotly.
‘Shout away, then,’ he said calmly, but there was an odd note to his voice. ‘And cry what? Assault?’
She heard the slight shudder of self-disgust which distorted his voice and, being scrupulously fair, she shook her head so that her hair moved against him in a dark, silken cloud. ‘I wouldn’t do that, Cameron,’ she said quietly. ‘Because it would be a lie. That was no assault.’
‘Enticement, then.’ He lowered her onto the bed and leaned over her, his eyes suddenly tender. ‘I’m sorry, darling.’
She forced herself not to melt immediately under the impact of that soft stare, rolled away from him to the edge of the bed, and kicked her high heels off across the bedroom carpet, not caring where they landed. She sat up and began to unclip her black stockings from the silky suspender belt and peel them down over her long legs. ‘It’s all very well saying sorry afterwards!’ she told him crossly. ‘You behaved outrageously!’ She forced herself to give him a baleful glare.
‘I agree,’ he said gravely.
He was trying to look contrite, and there was something so little-boyish about his expression that Alessandra had the greatest difficulty not standing up and flinging her arms around his neck. But something made her continue with her indignation. ‘Is that all you can say?’ she demanded.
He began to unbutton his silk shirt. ‘What do you want me to say?’ He shrugged lightly. ‘I’ve already said I’m sorry.’
‘Oh, and that makes it all right, does it? One word and I’m supposed to forget all about it?’
‘That rather depends on you,’ he told her calmly, his eyes looking more grey than blue in the soft light from the lamp. ‘You can make a big issue out of it if you wish. We could carry on the argument for weeks—if that’s what you really want.’ He finished unbuttoning the shirt to reveal his lightly tanned, muscle-packed chest, and, for the first time since they’d met, Alessandra failed to swoon at the sight of him, she was so mad.
‘Me?’ she spluttered, with indignation. ‘Make a big issue out of it?’
‘Uh-huh.’ Now the trousers had come off, revealing the silken boxer shorts he always wore, which clung to his hard buttocks and always made her realise just how powerfully muscled those long, hair-roughened legs of his were.
She tried, unsuccessfully, to unzip the back of her dress.
‘Here,’ he said smoothly. ‘Let me.’
He always helped her undress and it would have been foolish not to let him, but he slid the zip down with such practised ease that for the first time in her life she almost exploded with rage. ‘I suppose you could unzip a woman’s dress and undo her bra at the same time—even if you were blindfolded!’ she accused hotly.
He stood there and gave her that lazy, mocking smile of his. ‘Is that an invitation?’ he queried softly. ‘Do you want me to try?’
Most men, thought Alessandra resentfully, would have looked ridiculous wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts if they still had their socks on. So how come her sexy husband still managed to look good enough to eat?
‘No, I don’t want you to try!’ she raged on. ‘You’ve had more practice at it than almost any man in the world, I should imagine!’
‘Darling—’
‘Don’t you “darling” me!’
His face was suddenly serious. ‘The only practice I’ve had in the last three years—and that has been considerable—has been undressing you, my love.’
Alessandra frowned suspiciously. ‘But you’ve only known me eight months—’
‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘And married for six of them.’
‘B-but...’ she stuttered, the implication of what he’d just told her hitting her with all the force of a sledgehammer. It was something that she had never dared ask him in the brief courtship before their wedding. She had assumed that up until the time he’d met her he had been sleeping with one of the many women who used to leave long and frankly embarrassing messages on his answering machine.
Why, one of them—a famous cover girl—had actually turned up at his office and begged him not to go through with the marriage, within full earshot of his secretary, who had rather indiscreetly told Alessandra about it afterwards. And you didn’t get that kind of devotion from that kind of stunner if you weren’t physically involved with them, surely?
‘But that means that you were... that you didn’t...’ She fumbled around, searching for a delicate way to say it, but failed. ‘For two whole years?’ she yelled eventually.
‘I think what you’re trying to say—’ he began teasingly.
‘Don’t you dare patronise me!’
He shook his dark head. ‘I wouldn’t dream of patronising you. I was putting into words what you seemed reluctant to—merely confirming that I was celibate for two years before I met you.’
She threw him a look as she slithered out of her black silk dress. She hurled the wretched outfit against the wall and quickly wrapped her towelling robe around her. ‘I don’t believe you!’
He shrugged, a humourless kind of smile curving his mouth as he turned to drop his shorts and socks into the washing basket, so that he stood before her proudly and unashamedly naked. ‘That, of course, is your privilege, Alessandra.’
He said it with the finality of someone who was closing a subject they hadn’t particularly wanted opened in the first place, but Alessandra wasn’t giving up that easily.
‘You must admit it is a little implausible,’ she said.
‘Oh? You think that while you spent the first twenty-four years of your life as a virgin, and so were obviously celibate, it’s impossible for a man to be, too?’
Alessandra picked up her hairbrush and dragged it through her thick, shoulder-length hair which was so darkly brown that in some lights, like now, it looked almost black. ‘Some men, perhaps,’ she said deliberately.
‘But not me?’ he guessed correctly.
She nodded, reluctant to drop the subject, still angry at the ease with which he had seduced her after virtually accusing her of infidelity with Andrew! But also because, she realised, Cameron was speaking much more openly than was usual for him. And, because he was a man who was cautious about showing his true feelings, she wanted him to continue. ‘No, not you,’ she agreed with some defiance.
‘Perhaps you’d care to elaborate?’ he suggested silkily.
Alessandra hugged her robe to her chest, her breasts suddenly tingling beneath the thick cloth—and only because the brute had slid his eyes over them in a proprietorial and caressing stare! ‘Just that you are a man with certain—appetites,’ she began delicately, furious when he threw back his dark head and began to laugh.
‘Certain “appetites”?’ he repeated. ‘Goodness me, Alessandra, what a gloriously archaic turn of phrase! Perhaps you should have termed it “carnal desires”—that’s even more expressive, isn’t it?’
‘Well, if you want me to put it crudely—’
‘Oh, I do. I most certainly do.’
‘You like sex, don’t you, Cameron?’ she told him bluntly. ‘Lots and lots and lots of it!’
‘I don’t just like it,’ he said softly. ‘I love it And so do you, sweetheart. You may have been a late starter, Alessandra, but you sure took to it in a big way. I’ve never met a woman who gets as easily turned on as you do.’
‘And I’ve never met a man who would rip his wife’s clothes off and throw her to the floor and make her...make her...’
‘Tremble ecstatically in his arms?’ he put in with sardonic humour, but then he saw her mouth begin to tremble and he was by her side in an instant, enfolding her in the strong, warm circle of his arms as she began to shake with emotion.
‘Sweetheart, sweetheart,’ he pleaded. ‘Don’t get upset. Please. I shouldn’t have done it. You’re right I’m a brute. A selfish, arrogant and unthinking brute. But I love you.’
‘No, you’re not!’ she raged. ‘And I love you too! I just don’t understand why you...why you...’
He sat down on the bed and gently drew her down beside him. ‘I don’t understand myself,’ he told her softly. ‘You bring out something in me that no woman has ever done before and sometimes I’m not sure that I like it very much.’
He sighed as she stared at him with confused eyes. ‘All damned week long I’ve been aching for you. I didn’t want to be away from you. I’d planned my homecoming to the last detail, how it would be.’
‘But you came home early,’ she protested. ‘And didn’t tell me.’
‘I wanted to surprise you.’
‘But I rang the airline, and they confirmed that you were still booked on the later flight.’
‘I didn’t use the ticket.’
‘But then, how—?’
‘I bought myself a plane,’ he said, and then gave a little shrug as though he realised how unbelievable his statement must sound. Like a little boy saying that he’d bought a toy car.
Alessandra stared at him in disbelief. ‘You’ve done what?’
‘It’s a small Lear jet,’ he added, though he might have been speaking in Chinese for all that Alessandra understood. ‘So it’s just as capable of crossing the Atlantic as it is of taking me up to Manchester.’
Her dark eyes were still like saucers. ‘Cameron—why?’
‘Why not?’
‘Because people don’t just go around buying planes.’
‘Some do. I do. We do,’ he corrected. ‘We can afford it.’
‘But—’
He shook his dark head firmly. ‘No buts. It matters to me that I don’t see very much of you. My factory is in Manchester. Your job is in London. You won’t change—’
‘Don’t make it sound as though it’s something as insignificant as me forgetting to put the milk bottles out!’ she objected with a slight frown. ‘Why should I change? My job happens to be very important to me!’
‘Yes, Alessandra, I know. You’ve made that abundantly clear to me.’
‘But of course you, as the man, expect me, as the woman, to just up sticks and move to Manchester, just like that?’
‘It’s not exactly the back of beyond, you know. And we do have advertising agencies up north.’
She shook her head. ‘But none where I’d be given the same kind of variety and responsibility that I have at Holloway’s. Andrew has hinted that the joint managing directorship might be mine next year. I’ve worked hard for my promotion, Cameron.’ She turned wide dark eyes up at him in appeal. ‘Please don’t ask me to throw it all away,’ she finished quietly, not sure of what she would say if he insisted.
‘I’m not.’
‘Because this is the woman you fell in love with,’ she told him, stabbing her finger emphatically against her breastbone, the dark fire from her eyes challenging him to dare to deny it. ‘Me! The career woman. Not someone who would cave in just because of love—’
‘Just?’ He fixed her with a questioning look.
‘I want that promotion,’ she said stubbornly, but her stubbornness was born out of fear. Fear that if she changed too much, that if she allowed Cameron to simply slot her into his life as easily as a peg into a hole, he would no longer love her.
‘And you shall have your promotion if Andrew chooses to give it to you—because I shan’t try to stop you. My only stipulation is that he stops calling you “honey”!’ And he gave her the careless smile which had first so captivated her. ‘Darling, don’t let’s fight. That’s the main reason why I bought the plane. It’s supposed to make our lives easier. This way I won’t have the bother and the wait and the inconvenience of scheduled flights—can come and go as the fancy takes me.’
‘And always expect me to be waiting for you like the good little wife?’ she queried, knowing that she was spoiling his news but some insecure demon inside her spurring her on.
‘That isn’t what I said,’ he replied evenly.
‘But that’s the truth of it, isn’t it?’ she responded. ‘If it isn’t, then what else prompted that ugly little scene when I walked in tonight? Just because I was late coming in, before you were even expected?’
‘Like I said, I’d planned my homecoming to the last detail.’
“The wine?’
‘The wine,’ he agreed. ‘Low lights. There was to be some soft music. Corny—’
‘But effective,’ she interrupted drily. ‘With the scene all set for...’
‘Seduction,’ he supplied, an unholy glint in his eyes. ‘Mmm.’
‘But there was no seduction, was there, Cameron?’ she asked him quietly. Because, now that her senses had calmed down, it appalled her to remember how she’d reacted to him. ‘Just some rather basic sex...’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Please don’t tell me you didn’t enjoy it,’ he put in with brutal softness, ‘when I watched you shuddering and felt you climax beneath me...’
Alessandra met his questioning blue gaze full-on. ‘Oh, yes—I enjoyed it. And, yes, I climaxed. I always do—if that’s the only criterion by which you gauge satisfaction.’ She made to turn away but he put one hand on her shoulder, very gently, and sighed.
‘It isn’t. And, believe me, I certainly hadn’t intended to act like that.’
‘Then why did you?’ she asked in a small voice.
‘Because...’ He shook his head as he put his free hand on her other shoulder and moved her closer to him. ‘Because you do something to me, Alessandra. Don’t you know that? You make me respond in a certain way; or, rather, I can never predict or control how I’m going to respond to you. You perplex me. You excite me. You make me crazy. When I heard Andrew’s message on the answering machine—’
She decided that the time had come to get rid of all this nonsense once and for all. ‘But he’s always called me “honey”—since I first met him.’
‘And I don’t like it. Strictly as a chauvinistic, jealous and possessive husband.’
‘Is that what you are?’ she teased softly, and he smiled.
‘Sometimes, yes. With you, yes.’ She saw a brief but distinct tightening of his mouth. ‘I just don’t like Andrew’s familiarity. Okay?’
‘I don’t happen to like it very much myself,’ admitted Alessandra. ‘I guess I just put up with it.’
‘Then don’t put up with it! Tell him you don’t like it!’ His face darkened. ‘Try asserting yourself with him as you seem to do so successfully with me!’
She felt weary. They seemed to be going round and round in circles. She nodded. ‘Okay, I’ll tell him.’ She put a tentative hand up to smooth a lock of dark hair off his forehead. ‘But you must know by now that Andrew means nothing to me, Cameron.’
‘No?’ He let his hands fall from her shoulders and drew his dark brows together as his eyes briefly flew to the discarded black garment which lay in a silky heap on the carpet. ‘He just buys you sexy dresses and speaks to you like a girlfriend instead of a colleague
’
‘You’re surely not jealous of Andrew?’ she asked incredulously. ‘Not you?’
‘Why not? When you walked in here tonight—with your hair all wild and your cheeks all rosy—’
‘It’s a cold night,’ she pointed out.
‘Wearing that sexy bit of nonsense which he’d bought for you—’
‘I was the one who chose it, remember?’
‘To wear for him? On an evening out with him? How would you define that, then, Alessandra? Subliminal attraction?’
‘Oh, don’t be so absurd!’ In the past she had sometimes despaired of Cameron’s coolness, his unflappability, but now that he actually was displaying the kind of passionate temper she’d always secretly longed for she found she didn’t like it one bit!
‘I’m telling you how I felt,’ he said, ‘You wanted to know.’
‘Go on,’ she said in a small voice, thinking that maybe it had been a good thing that they’d never delved too deeply into their feelings before. She felt as though they’d opened up Pandora’s box and were regretting it by the second!
‘Yes, it was irrational,’ he continued. ‘But I told you—something about you makes me act without reason, without thought. I started to imagine Andrew making love to you—’
‘That’s absolutely ridiculous!’ she scoffed.
‘Is it? Are you telling me that he wouldn’t like to?’
‘I wouldn’t like to, Cameron—that’s the difference!’
‘And I found myself,’ he went on, as though she hadn’t spoken, ‘wanting to tear the clothes from your body—’
‘Which you did—’
‘And to take you right there and then.’
‘Which you also did!’
‘And for which I’ve apologised—for the sentiment, at least, if not for the act itself. And isn’t it about time that you stopped being hypocritical and admitted that it was exciting and that it turned you on? Or are you denying that, Alessandra?’
She shook her head. ‘No, I’m not denying it. It’s just that... that...’ Her voice tailed off.
‘That what?’ he prompted softly.
‘It just wasn’t very—loving, that’s all,’ she sighed, looking up into the intense eyes which were now a soft, smoky grey.
‘Sometimes sex isn’t loving,’ he told her gently. ‘And sometimes it isn’t meant to be. If you like, I can show you just how loving it can be.’ And he began to massage the small of her back rhythmically.
She wanted to wriggle with pleasure, to relax into it, to make the slow walk down whichever sensual path he planned to take her. But two capitulations in one evening would be too big a dent in her pride.
‘I have work in the morning,’ she said stubbornly.
“So do I.’
‘And I need a shower,’ she reminded him pointedly.
‘So do I,’ he murmured with a smile as he drew her to her feet. He slowly untied her robe, slipped his hands inside and cupped her naked, peaking breasts.
‘Cameron...’ she objected on a shuddering gasp as he bent his dark head to take one aching tip into his mouth.
‘What?’ he murmured softly, his breath warm against her skin. ‘What is it, my darling?’
She couldn’t remember. ‘Oh, Cameron...
CHAPTER THREE (#u5f4dddbc-3dc6-594c-bc06-c8b8a87b906b)
CAMERON spent most of the night making up for the week he had been away. He made love to Alessandra over and over again. Almost as though...as though he was asserting his sexual mastery over her. As though he was trying to imprint himself on her mind, to prove to her that he was the only man for her.
He doesn’t have to prove anything, was Alessandra’s last, drowsy thought before she fell into a dreamless sleep.
She stretched like a cat as she awoke to the most pleasurable feeling imaginable. She was half-asleep and warm, and delectable sensations began to fizzle over her skin. Cameron’s hands were on her breasts, circling each one in turn, inciting the tips into pointy little peaks which ached like crazy.
‘Oh,’ she sighed disappointedly as he moved his hand away, then almost purred with pleasure as he trickled it slowly and enticingly down over her flat stomach until he’d found where she ached for him most.
‘Mmm,’ he said with pleasure, and slowly began to kiss her.
‘Mmm,’ she echoed as her fingers trailed down to capture his rock-hard arousal, only then to move her hand away reluctantly as she remembered the time.
‘Don’t stop,’ he urged huskily.
He was speaking to the converted. ‘But it’s late,’ she murmured on a half-hearted protest
‘Do you want to get up?’
‘No.’
‘Well, we won’t, then,’ he whispered, and she gave a gasp of pleasure as he entered her.
The alarm rang and rang.
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Шэрон Кендрик
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Mills & Boon are proud to present a thrilling digital collection of all Sharon Kendrick’s novels and novellas for us to celebrate the publication of her amazing 100th book! Many of these books are available as e books for the first time.Return to the marriage!Alessandra Walker and Cameron Calder had married in haste, with careers in tow and jobs in different cities. But they loved each other with a passion, and of course they′d make it workAnd they did. For a while every carefully planned meeting seemed like a honeymoon until suddenly it just didn′t seem enough.Distrust and jealousy were threatening to split them apart until Alessandra discovered her husband′s plan to save their marriage – a baby – but what would that mean for her career?