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Mistress And Mother
LYNNE GRAHAM


Ex-wife, current mistress…and soon-to-be mother of his child!With their unexpected wedding-day split plastered across the newspaper headlines everyone wondered just what went wrong between Sholto Cristaldi and Molly Bannister – especially the groom! Now, four years later, Sholto’s ex-wife is back on his doorstep and he’s determined to get answers…and to claim his wedding night!Molly had vowed no pressure or price would ever persuade her to share Sholto's bed but she needs his help and so must acquiesce to his deal. But long nights in the billionaire’s bed leave Molly with more than she bargained for…and nine months to win back her husband!












is one of Mills & Boon’s most popular and bestselling novelists. Her writing was an instant success with readers worldwide. Since her first book, Bittersweet Passion, was published in 1987, she has gone from strength to strength and now has over ninety titles, which have sold more than thirty-five million copies, to her name.

In this special collection, we offer readers a chance to revisit favourite books or enjoy that rare treasure—a book by a favourite writer—they may have missed. In every case, seduction and passion with a gorgeous, irresistible man are guaranteed!







LYNNE GRAHAM was born in Northern Ireland and has been a keen Mills & Boon


reader since her teens. She is very happily married, with an understanding husband who has learned to cook since she started to write! Her five children keep her on her toes. She has a very large dog, which knocks everything over, a very small terrier, which barks a lot, and two cats. When time allows, Lynne is a keen gardener.


Mistress and Mother

Lynne Graham




www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


CHAPTER ONE

AS THE snow became a blinding white blur, the wipers struggled to keep a wedge of the car windscreen clear. Then, finally, the narrow, twisting road began to climb. Not much further now. Molly cut down another gear, praying that the tyres would keep a grip on the treacherously slippery gradient.

That petrol-pump attendant had warned her that it would be crazy to attempt the lake road in snow but Molly often flew in the face of sound advice. And her stubborn determination to reach Freddy’s isolated home had its deepest roots in guilt. She hadn’t gone to his funeral. Her fiancé, Donald, had offered to go with her as moral support but she still hadn’t been able to face such an ordeal.

The small car slid slowly back down the hill again. Molly gritted her teeth and started up it again. She was almost there. The house sat at the top of the hill overlooking the lake. Over four years had passed, but she still remembered that misty view of the moorland running down to the water’s edge. Her face stiffened and shadowed, fingers clenching round the wheel. She also remembered the slavish way she had tried to follow Sholto out of the room when a call had come for him. Freddy had caught her back, his wise old eyes almost pitying as he scanned her anxious, adoring face.

‘Don’t cling, my dear. It’ll put wings on his feet. You can’t tame a wild bird and keep it in a cage... Sholto isn’t a domesticated animal. This is all new to him. Hasten slowly.’

But she hadn’t listened, she conceded sickly, hadn’t seen, hadn’t been able to focus on anything but her own desperate need to be as close to Sholto as his skin. And the more he had stepped back from her, the harder she had pushed, not even knowing then, not even suspecting that Sholto’s heart could never, ever be hers. She wore another man’s ring now but remembrance still cramped her stomach and her tired legs trembled, the foot she had on the accelerator pressing down with sudden involuntary force.

She cried out in fright as the car slewed violently sideways and then skidded with unnatural, terrifying grace off the road. Her heartbeat thundered in her eardrums as she brought the hatchback to a shuddering halt, headlights gleaming out over the daunting expanse of dark water only yards away. Swallowing hard, she tried to reverse back up onto the road but the tyres spun on the boggy, snow-slick ground and the car stayed where it was.

Finally, she detached her seatbelt and climbed out into the teeth of the wind. She would walk up the hill. Dear heaven, she might have killed herself! The car might have kept right on going and the lake was deep.

Grabbing up her shoulder bag, shivering convulsively as the wind blew snow into her face and snatched up her long fall of russet hair to whip it across her eyes and mouth, she pulled up the hood of her light jacket and locked the car. It was well after eight. Freddy’s housekeeper wasn’t even expecting her and now Molly would have to ask her for a bed for the night into the bargain.

Stupid, stupid, Molly castigated herself as she toiled up the hill. Why avoid the funeral and then drive all the way to the Lake District just to collect the old vase which Freddy had left her and leave a few flowers at the cemetery? Her brother, Nigel, had been stunned when he’d realised she could have gone to the funeral and the scene which had followed that revelation had left Molly feeling sick with irrational guilt.

‘The perfect opportunity...and you didn’t take it?’ Nigel had condemned in disbelief. ‘But Sholto would’ve been there! You could’ve talked to him then.’

‘Don’t, Nigel...’ his wife, Lena, had begged, her strained eyes swimming with tears. ‘This isn’t Molly’s problem. It’s ours.’

‘Will you still feel like that when you and the kids have no roof over your heads?’ Nigel had demanded, the stress of recent months etched in his thin, boyish features. ‘What would it cost Molly to go and eat a bit of humble pie? I’d do it...but I can’t get near him!’

Now the snow was falling thicker and heavier, crunching over the sides of her shoes and freezing her feet. In no mood to dwell on her brother’s desperate financial problems, Molly dug icy hands into her pockets and plodded on up the hill. The dark, unadorned bulk of the house loomed just where the road dropped down again and she felt quite weak with relief. There were no lights visible but on a bad night like this an elderly woman might already be tucked up warm in her bed.

The freezing wind slashing with cruel efficiency through her inadequate clothing, Molly rushed to press the old-fashioned doorbell. A couple of endless minutes later, she hit it again, and then more quickly the third and the fourth time, dismay powering her as she stood back and peered up at the black, unrevealing windows in search of an encouraging chink of light.

She had assumed that the housekeeper would be here for at least another week. But maybe she didn’t live in. As that possibility occurred to Molly for the very first time, she could’ve kicked herself for blithely assuming that Freddy’s housekeeper lived on the premises. If the house was empty, she was in deep trouble. She might freeze to death spending the night in the car. She didn’t even have a travel rug to wrap around herself. When she had left home after lunch it had been a beautiful sunny day and she hadn’t paid the slightest heed to the weather forecast.

Panic firing her, Molly trudged round to the back of the house. Obviously there was nobody inside. She peered at the snow-covered ground, prowling up and down until she found a suitable stone. Fingers almost numb, she yanked off her jacket and wound it round her arm, her hand fiercely gripping the stone as she braced herself in front of the small window beside the back door. Taking a deep breath, she swung her arm up full force and smashed the pane. Stepping back, she breathed out in a rush, shook herself free of broken glass and dragged on her jacket again.

Reaching inside with great care, she undid the latch and the frame swung out. Planting her chilled hands on the stone sill, she hauled herself up with a groan of effort and crawled on her knees through the open window, slowly feeling her way onto the kitchen worktop. A startled yelp of pain escaped her as a splinter of glass pierced her knee. But even as she stilled in exasperated acknowledgement of her own foolishness she had the terrifying sense of something big moving fast towards her in the darkness.

As a pair of powerful hands snatched her up into midair, she screamed so hard she hurt her throat. Then she was hitting the stone floor face down, all the breath driven from her body by the impact, hands flailing in wild terror as a suffocating weight dug into her spine. Hard, imprisoning fingers raked down her arms to entrap her frantic hands and then as quickly loosened their grip and freed her again.

A burst of Italian invective assailed her ears at the same time as the knee braced on her back was removed and the fluorescent light above flickered on. Quivering with stark terror, Molly jerked up and rolled back against the cupboards like a cornered animal bracing itself for another attack. When her glazed eyes focused on the male standing over her, she simply stared, wide-eyed with disbelief.

‘Madre di Dio...I could have broken every bone in your body!’ Sholto raked down at her in driving condemnation.

So deep in shock, she was incapable of response, Molly’s huge green eyes clung to the six-foot-three male towering over her as if he were a terrifying apparition, her cheekbones prominent with stress, her complexion bone-white, her lips bloodlessly compressed.

With a stifled imprecation, Sholto dropped down into an athletic crouch and ran lean brown hands gently down over her limp arms and thighs. His startlingly handsome features clenched as he saw the blood seeping messily through the torn knee of her black tights. He completed his check for any further injury before he drew back.

Molly still couldn’t move. Slowly, she closed her eyes, meaning to open them again and see if he was still there but the impersonal touch of his beautifully shaped hands still lingered like the kiss of fire on her frozen flesh, blocking out all rational thought. Four years since she had seen him, not since that fateful night he had walked out on her to go to his cousin, Pandora. Her paralysis gave and she started to shake uncontrollably, the aftermath of choking fear and horror at his appearance combining to threaten a tidal wave of emotion.

‘What the hell were you playing at?’ Sholto bent down and scooped her up into his arms as if she weighed no more than a feather. ‘And what are you doing here at this hour of the night?’

Her teeth bit down on her tongue, releasing the sickly sweet tang of blood into her dry mouth. The pain helped, controlling the great lump blossoming in her throat, the acrid stinging at the back of her eyes. But it was nothing to the pain she remembered. That had been pain like a poisoned knife, slipping in on a cruel, teeth-clenching thrust and then teaching her that there was yet worse to come and that the human mind could suffer as much agony as the human body.

He was settling her down on a hard chair and abstractedly she recalled Freddy’s eccentric loathing of any form of soft comfort or cosiness. No central heating, wide-open windows even in winter, no clutter and not one single piece of unnecessary furniture. She had felt as if she was stepping back in time when she had first walked into this house all that time ago, Sholto’s fiancée coming to be introduced to Freddy, his elderly great-uncle.

There was a ripping sound as Sholto widened the tear in her tights to get a better look at her knee. Flinching, her spine pushing into the hard spindles of the chair-back, Molly came alive again, shaken green eyes flying wide on Sholto’s downbent dark head. The overhead light gave his thick black hair the iridescent sheen of silk.

‘It will hurt when I take the glass out,’ he informed her bluntly, sliding fluidly upright again and striding out of the bare little sitting room and into the connecting kitchen.

Molly stared into space, fighting to get a grip on herself again. First things first, that was Sholto. From his aristocratic English mother he had inherited deep reserve, innate practicality and a daunting, chilling self-discipline. But the other side of his ancestry, like his spectacular dark good looks, were pure volatile Italian. Below the ice seethed the fire but she had never ignited that fire, nor experienced the heat of its flames. His heart and his beautiful body hadn’t burned for her as she’d burned for him. Rejection, betrayal, unspeakable humiliation... she had experienced them all at his hands.

A long tremor ran through her. He returned with a bowl of disinfectant, the sharp scent stirring her over-sensitive stomach. He crossed the room, dominating it with his sheer size and presence, his every movement inherently graceful. The silence didn’t appear to be bothering him. If her descent had shocked him, he had yet to betray the fact...and how deeply ironic it was that she had cravenly stayed away from Freddy’s funeral to avoid Sholto only to end up plunging into a far more embarrassing and intimate meeting with him.

In the blink of an eye he had extracted the glass, cleaned away the blood and fixed a plaster to her cut. A male who had made pioneering, death-defying trips into some of the world’s most dangerous places would not find a cut knee much of a challenge. Or the unexpected arrival of an ex-wife. Molly chewed at her wobbling lower lip, still white as parchment. But then she had never been Sholto’s wife, not his real wife; within a day of the wedding he had made her a laughing stock in the world press.

As he sprang upright again, his impassive tawny eyes, fringed by luxuriant ebony lashes, rested on her. ‘I thought you were a burglar. I’m sorry I gave you a fright...but do you really have to look at me as if I’m a cobra about to strike?’

Her lashes fluttered down, delicate colour staining her cheekbones as her fingers tightened on the chair-arms. In the background she heard the clink of glass. A tumbler was held in front of her. Lifting an unsteady hand, she snatched at it. The brandy hit her aching throat and burned a fiery trail deep into her chilled flesh. Shock; she was still in shock.

‘Do you realise that you still haven’t uttered a single word?’ Sholto drawled with controlled impatience.

The tip of her tongue snaked out to moisten her taut lower lip. ‘You rather took my breath away...’ And as soon as the careless words left her lips her skin flared with such cringing embarrassment, she wanted to sink through the floor. Those had been the exact words she’d used when she’d first told him how much she loved him, rushing to confess what he himself could never have confessed even after he had asked her to marry him. Sholto didn’t tell lies but he was a master craftsman at evasion.

‘How did you get here? I was asleep but a car pulling in would certainly have awakened me.’

She gulped more of the brandy, trying to be cool about her desperate need for something to settle her jangling nerves. ‘My car skidded off the road at the foot of the hill. I walked the rest of the way. I thought Freddy’s housekeeper lived in—’

‘Dio...are you kidding? For thirty-odd years Mrs Mac rode out here every morning on her trusty bicycle. Freddy couldn’t have stood anything else. He was fanatical about his privacy. She ate in the kitchen. He ate in here. They only spoke when they had to.’

It was a fuller response than she had expected. She caught the faint roughening of pain in Sholto’s deep, dark voice, the Italian accent which thickened only in times of stress, the only barometer she had ever had to what went on deep down inside him. She bowed her head, knowing that aside of Pandora Stevenson the only human being alive who had ever got close to Sholto had been Freddy.

‘I rang the doorbell—’

‘It hasn’t worked for years.’

‘I couldn’t see a light.’

‘There wasn’t one on. I assume you’ve come up here to collect your legacy in person.’

‘I told the solicitor I’d come before this but...but something came up.’ She stared down at the tattered remnants of her tights, at her exposed knee with its childish plaster, feeling foolish, and awkward, the way she so often had in Sholto’s radius, and still not quite believing that she was actually here with him. Worse, taking part in a ludicrously inane conversation for two people who had parted in the most violent acrimony and never met face to face again.

‘I’m afraid you’ve had a wasted journey,’ Sholto delivered softly, and her head shot up. ‘The vase isn’t here. It’s being delivered to you by courier.’

Colour flooded her cheeks and then receded again, all that went unsaid in that assurance filling her with intense discomfiture. She hadn’t come when she had said she would, hadn’t bothered to ring in advance, had simply set off from home on an emotion-driven impulse because she had an uneasy conscience.

‘You look like death warmed up. I suggest that you take a hot bath,’ Sholto murmured.

Molly took the pointed invitation to escape with alacrity and rose in a rush. ‘Yes...I’m pretty cold and wet. The bathroom’s upstairs, isn’t it?’

She staggered slightly and then lurched past him like a fleeing fawn before the hands he put out to steady her could make contact.

‘Can you make it up there on your own?’ he enquired in her wake as he switched on the hall light, illuminating the stark narrow staircase with its worn runner.

‘Yes...thanks,’ she mumbled, and fled.

First left at the top of the stairs. She remembered that, teeth now free to chatter with cold and reaction. She also remembered, before she was married, creeping downstairs and standing outside the door of Freddy’s study, hearing the old man sigh worriedly and say, ‘She’s as sweet and innocent as a Labrador puppy, Sholto. A country girl with the bloom still on her cheeks. I can see the attraction. But does she have the slightest idea what she’s getting into and have you got the patience to stay the course?’

‘Not if she listens behind doors like the servants,’ Sholto had purred, whipping the door wide to entrap her with burning cheeks and guilty eyes. And he had laughed softly and drawn her forward. ‘Answer for yourself, cara. Have you the courage to take me on?’

Sholto Cristaldi had been born into one of Italy’s most formidable business dynasties. At eighteen he had come into a vast inheritance. She pictured him now, downstairs, as she ran water into the iron claw-footed bath, her breath misting in the punishingly cold air. Tight black jeans sheathing his long, long legs, a thick cream sweater accentuating his olive-toned skin, luxuriant black hair and magnetic dark eyes. He had the kind of raw physical impact that hit the unwary like a car crash.

What was he doing here in Freddy’s bare little house? Sholto had staff to do everything, half a dozen luxurious residences scattered across the globe and a jet-set lifestyle that came as naturally to him as breathing. Shivering, she removed her damp clothes and sank down into the warm water.

Maybe, if she prayed very, very hard, Sholto would be magically gone when she had finished her bath. Cowardice, complete cowardice... But she was terrified of exposing her emotions to a male so frighteningly accomplished at concealing his own. She needed to be polite and distant but what she really wanted to do was scream, ‘Why did you do it? Why did you marry me and then go back to her?’

But she was afraid that she already knew why. Afterwards... when it had been all over...only then had she begun to recall and suspect the true meaning of the sly whispers and innuendos that had once gone over her innocent head. Appalled comprehension had come too late, much, much too late for her to protect herself from hurt and harm. Little country girl, naive and blindly trusting and head over heels in love.

With a flying knock, the bathroom door opened and her head jerked round in shock.

‘I thought you might appreciate something warm and dry to wear.’ With a graceful hand, Sholto cast a couple of folded garments down on the chair by the door.

‘Get out!’ Molly gasped in horror, whipping protective arms over the embarrassing fullness of her breasts and diving lower in the water, feeling fat and ugly, thinking of Pandora in sudden tearing anguish, slim and slender as a willow wand, without a single ounce of superfluous flesh.

The minute the door closed, Molly scrambled hurriedly out of the bath. Drying herself, she looked in the small mirror above the sink. Tangled hair the colour of autumn leaves fell round her shoulders, framing a heart-shaped face with smudged river-green eyes. Outstandingly ordinary. She was lucky Sholto had recognised her. On their wedding day, she had been rakethin and her hair had been tinted white-blonde and cut very, very short like a boy’s. Living up to Sholto with Pandora’s haunting presence in the background had driven her to strange and increasingly desperate measures.

His jeans and sweater drowned her five-foot-four-inch frame. After anchoring the jeans to her waist with the belt of her skirt, she rolled up the legs several times. The green sweater fell to her knees. Her shoes were so sodden there was no way she could put them on again. She looked like a refugee from a disaster.

Downstairs, the sitting room was empty. She draped her damp clothes over a chair-back and set her shoes by the hearth to dry. From the study next door, she heard a faint noise like a drawer closing and she went into the kitchen. A rough board had been wedged into the aperture of the broken window, blocking out the icy blast of the wind. She set the big kettle on the range. She would make coffee. That was civilised. She wouldn’t let the hatred and the pain and the bitterness out. She would match his sublime indifference if it killed her.

But what about her brother, Nigel, and that wretched loan? Molly grimaced. Four years ago, shortly before their wedding, Sholto had given Nigel a simply huge loan. He had used the money to turn their late grandfather’s small market garden into a modern garden centre. But late last year her brother had got into debt and he had fallen behind with the loan. Sholto’s bankers had refused to allow Nigel any more time in which to make good those missed payments and indeed were now threatening to repossess both his home and his business.

Until now Molly had been extremely reluctant to make a direct appeal to Sholto on her brother’s behalf. Nigel was grasping at straws in his naive conviction that his sister could somehow work a miracle for him and his family. Molly had had no wish to raise false hopes, or, if she was honest, to lay her pride on the line for nothing, for she was certain that Sholto wouldn’t pay the slightest heed to anything she said. However, having found herself under the same roof as Sholto, she knew she wouldn’t be able to look her brother in the face again if she didn’t at least try to persuade Sholto to listen to her.

She pressed the study door open. Sholto was standing looking out of the uncurtained window at the snow, an expression of such grim bleakness etched into his bold, sun-bronzed features that she wished she had left him alone. He studied the beakers on the little tin tray. His wide, sensual mouth hardened, tawny eyes cynically raking her flushed face.

‘The answer is no,’ he breathed with ice-cold clarity.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ But Molly was most terribly afraid that she did and that he was an entire step, if not a complete flight of stairs, ahead of her.

‘When you lie, you can’t meet my eyes. I used to think that was incredibly sweet.’ The cynical laugh he used to crown the admission made her squirm.

Molly’s hands shook slightly as she set the tray down on the cluttered Victorian desk that half filled a small room already packed tight with bookshelves and an old swivel chair. Lifting one of the beakers, she turned on her heel.

‘Sit down, Molly.’ Sholto spun out the swivel chair with deliberate purpose.

She hovered. ‘Look, I—’

‘Sit down,’ he said again, innate authority in every measured syllable.

Molly gave an awkward face-saving shrug. ‘OK...fine.’

Sholto braced a lean hip against the edge of the desk and stared down at her, much too close for comfort. ‘How did you find out I was here?’

Molly blinked in confusion. ‘I hadn’t the slightest idea you would be here.’

‘Why drive several hundred miles to collect that vase...indeed, why come at all when the solicitor told you that it could be delivered?’ Sholto enquired very drily.

Molly dropped her head and stared a hole in the worn rug. ‘I wanted to call in at the cemetery and leave some flowers,’ she admitted uncomfortably.

The silence stretched.

‘I don’t believe you, Molly. Your brother has made repeated attempts to contact me. And now, at the eleventh hour, when he is facing repossession, you show up right on my doorstep—’

‘Freddy’s doorstep!’ Chagrin and anger combined in her contradiction as she realised where his suspicions lay. ‘If you must know, I refused to approach you when Nigel asked me to because I knew it wouldn’t do any good and I didn’t see why I should make a fool of myself just for your amusement!’

‘Go home and tell your brother that he is extremely lucky not to be facing fraud charges,’ Sholto delivered with silken emphasis. ‘And, believe it or not, he does owe that generosity in part to my former relationship with you.’

Molly leapt up, coffee slopping out of the beaker she still clutched tightly in one hand. ‘Fraud?’ she repeated incredulously. ‘What on earth are you accusing Nigel of doing?’

Long, sure fingers detached hers from the beaker and set it safely aside. He gazed down at her shocked and angry face and then dense lashes dropped low on his hard, dark eyes.

‘Sholto?’ Her wary gaze clung to his lean, dark features. Cheekbones to die for were bisected by a fine-boned, aristocratic blade of a nose and matched by a mouth as passionate and wilful as sin. Her heart turned over inside her breast and then beat out a helplessly accelerated tattoo. Almost sick with shame at her response to his sheer animal attraction, she dropped her head again.

‘What I’m saying is that when I make a business loan on exceptionally generous terms I don’t expect the recipient to plunge a good percentage of the funds I made available into renovating and extending his house and running a top-of-the-range Mercedes!’

Molly’s expressive face fell by a mile and slowly she sat down again, seeming to have shrunk in stature even as he spoke. ‘But the house is part of the property...and he sold the Merc a couple of months back,’ she muttered tautly, uncertainly. ‘Was using some of the money that way...fraud?’

‘Yes.’ The confirmation was level and unemotional. ‘As a businessman, Nigel’s not a paying proposition and I don’t intend to lose any more money on the enterprise. If I chose not to prosecute, it was more for my own benefit than yours. Prosecuting your brother could only have invited the kind of press attention which I most dislike.’

His inhuman cool made her shiver. Molly bit the inside of her lip, a great weariness engulfing her as her thumb absently toyed with Donald’s ring, rubbing it as if it might yet be a good-luck talisman. She genuinely hadn’t realised that Nigel had misused what was clearly a substantial part of the loan. Nobody had shared that salient and shameful little fact with her.

‘I think he must have got carried away...having all that money,’ she whispered, and then said with greater force, ‘Sholto—?’

‘Don’t embarrass me, Molly. I have no time for anyone who tries to rip me off,’ he informed her flatly. ‘Nigel used that loan as if it was his personal piggybank and still contrived to run up debts everywhere. If his problems had resulted from any other cause, I might have rescheduled the loan, but only a fool throws good money after bad...and I am not a fool.’

Having absorbed that intimidating tone of absolute finality, Molly wouldn’t have been surprised to discover that Sholto had just laid her down and walked over her as if she were a carpet for his arrogant feet; she felt as if he had. Intense mortification filled her. His detachment was somehow horribly humiliating. They might never have had a relationship. He seemed to have wiped it out of his mind as if it had never been.

He had realised their mistake before the ink was dry on the marriage licence. Desperate to hit back in any way she could, she had tried to divorce him for adultery. Instead she had found herself having an annulment forced on her because their marriage had not been consummated. The tabloid newspapers had had an ecstatic field day with that titillating revelation. SHOLTO DITCHES FRIGID BRIDE, had run one unforgettable headline. His lawyers had chewed her up and spat out her self-esteem in so many battered pieces.

‘When did you get engaged?’ Sholto demanded now with startling abruptness.

Like a woman in a dream, Molly glanced down at the tiny solitaire still so new and fresh to her finger. It had belonged to Donald’s mother. ‘See how you like the feel of it,’ Donald had suggested wryly, neither romance nor passion having the slightest thing to do with their friendship. But at this moment, quite unbearably, she was recalling another opulent emerald and diamond engagement ring, the one which Sholto had given her, and the feelings she had had then...her wild excitement, the joy, the sheer floodtide of love. Her stomach lurching sickly at the memory, she stood up.

‘Where do I sleep?’ she asked baldly.

The silence lay as thick and heavy as the blanket of snow outside.

‘Door facing you at the top of the stairs,’ Sholto responded in a voice as polished and smooth as silk.

She reached the door.

‘Who is he, your fiancé?’ he murmured intently.

She didn’t turn her head. ‘You met him once but you probably won’t remember him. Donald Seaton.’

‘Your stepfather’s curate?’ Sholto gritted in a tone of explosive incredulity.

‘I’ve known him a long time and he’s a very special person,’ Molly retorted, stiff with resentment and bitter chagrin. ‘Goodnight, Sholto. I’ll sort out something about the car first thing in the morning. It’s not damaged but I may need a tow to get it back on the road.’

‘Dio...you’re planning to marry a guy you used to call Donald Duck?’

Molly yanked the door shut so fast, it closed with a resounding slam. Donald... He’d been out when she’d tried to ring him earlier. She should phone him to tell him where she was. She glanced round the hall. There was no sign of the telephone she recalled. She checked the sitting room and then hovered uneasily outside the study door again. Taking a deep breath and resisting the temptation to knock, she opened it.

Sholto swung round, shimmering dark eyes alighting on her in a look as shockingly physical as a ringing slap across the face. ‘Dio mio...what now?’

Molly was as taken aback by his temper as by his sudden rudeness. ‘I was looking for the phone.’

‘Freddy had it disconnected when he went into hospital.’

‘Could I use your mobile?’

Sholto expelled his breath in a slow hiss. ‘Who do you have to call?’

‘Donald.’

Sholto’s hand froze halfway towards the mobile phone lying on the desk and then, with a soft, oddly chilling laugh, he grabbed it up and tossed it carelessly into her hands. ‘Be my guest,’ he said without any expression at all, and strode out of the room.

Donald answered the phone only after it had rung a dozen times. Molly told him where she was and what had happened. He made soothing sounds.

‘Sholto’s here too!’ The admission exploded out of her with quite unnecessary force.

‘I’m glad to hear that you’re not up there alone in this weather,’ Donald admitted after a brief pause for thought. ‘And I imagine a man who’s been up Everest can take some snow in his stride! I expect he’ll help you with your car too.’

Molly’s teeth clenched. ‘Somehow I don’t see Sholto digging out my car, Donald. Don’t you think you’re being just a little insensitive?’ Her strained voice shook.

‘I wish you hadn’t asked that question, Molly. I also wish you didn’t sound so upset.’ Donald sighed. ‘It’s an overreaction after this length of time. You would be far better occupied mending fences with Sholto.’

‘Mending fences?’ Molly echoed shrilly.

‘Infinitely wiser than continuing to brood and hold spite,’ Donald told her with characteristic candour. ‘Leave the past where it belongs, Molly. You’ll feel a whole lot better if you do, and if you were to make a special effort to forgive Sholto...’

Molly clamped a hand across her mouth like a gag, not trusting herself to speak.

‘I expect the concept fills you with horror but I honestly believe that that act of forgiveness would resolve much of what you’re feeling right now,’ Donald continued with determination. ‘Take that extra step, Molly. Ultimately it will bring you the peace of mind you need.’

For the first time ever, Donald had let her down. He did not, could not comprehend the torment she was in! To be faced with Sholto again, to be slaughtered by his galling, inhuman indifference—it was ripping her apart. Anger, contempt, hostility she could’ve borne far more easily—but not his lack of response, which suggested she had been a mere inconvenient hiccup in his life, an aberration swiftly forgotten when he had taken her heart, broken it and somehow held the remains ever since. Poor, foolish, pathetic Molly still hopelessly, obsessively hooked on a male who had branded her with a craving and a need that she still fought with every breath that she drew!

In her flying exit from the study, she almost tripped over Sholto. ‘Here!’ she gasped, shoving the mobile phone at him in feverish rejection and then pounding up the stairs two at a time before he could see the tears of rage and self-loathing in her eyes.


CHAPTER TWO

IN A tempest of stormy emotion, Molly switched on the lamp beside the massive Victorian double bed. The bed looked like a ship forcibly squeezed into a too small bottle. The carved mahogany headboard stopped only a foot short of the ceiling and the bed itself was so high, she suspected it enjoyed the benefit of more than one mattress.

A snug little fire glowed in the cast-iron grate on the facing wall. She frowned in surprise, only then noticing the suitcase sitting below the window. How very kind of Sholto to give her the room he had clearly planned to occupy himself! So considerate, so incredibly decent all of a sudden!

Snatching up the case with a shaking hand, she plonked it out on the landing. Forgive him? She tore at the jeans, wrenched at the sweater and then slowly, painfully dug her fingers into the garment, bringing it up to her face and breathing in deep. The elusive scent of him engulfed her like a dangerously addictive drug and, hating herself and hating him for being able to exert that evocative power over her even after so long, she flung the sweater aside, horribly ashamed of her lack of control.

Naturally Donald was not worried about her being alone here with Sholto. Sholto might have an exceedingly dangerous reputation with women but Donald and indeed the whole world knew that the one woman Sholto Cristaldi had cheerfully contrived to keep his lustful hands off was Molly! Even when she and Sholto had been engaged he had not made one single serious attempt at seduction.

Deeply humiliated by that awareness, Molly climbed naked into the big bed. She sank into what felt like layer upon layer of feathers. To think that all those years ago she had actually been grateful for what she’d naively seen as Sholto’s respectful restraint! But Sholto simply hadn’t wanted her enough. And it was also possible, although she cringed at the same suspicion, that all the time he had had another far more satisfying outlet for his sexual needs.

She heard light steps on the stairs, the soft thud of the bathroom door and then she dug her head frantically under the pillow, muffling her ears with two determined hands. Temptation pulled at her and she resisted it. Donald was right. How could she ever go forward if she couldn’t overcome this pitiful fascination with a male who had long since given his heart to another woman? And that woman might not be his wife, she might indeed not even be his lover, but she still held Sholto more securely than any prison bars of steel.

Molly reared up with a startled squawk as the bedding she had wrapped around her was suddenly wrenched sideways and redistributed. The bedside lamp was on again and momentarily she was blinded by the light. ‘What on earth...?’

Her soft mouth fell open as her vision slowly cleared. Sholto reclined like an indolent tiger against the backdrop of the pillows beside her own. The soft glow of the lamp gleamed over wide brown shoulders and powerful pectoral muscles hazed with curling black hair. Something clenched low in her stomach and all of a sudden she felt like someone hurtling down in a runaway lift, made utterly helpless by disbelief and paralysis.

‘This is the only bed in the house,’ Sholto said softly.

‘It...it can’t be,’ Molly whispered weakly.

‘Freddy had a horror of visitors who might expect to stay overnight. The other bedroom has not a single stick of furniture,’ Sholto informed her, stretching with a long, languorous shifting of limbs. ‘Downstairs there are several hard wooden chairs. On a night as cold as this, I am not prepared to sit up until dawn in any one of them.’

Belatedly becoming conscious that she was exposing a rather bountiful amount of bosom. Molly snatched the linen sheet all the way to her shoulders. ‘You’re not sharing this bed with me!’

An ebony brow climbed. ‘Now why is it that I am experiencing a strong sense of déjà vu?’

Thoroughly unnerved by that leading question, Molly felt the burn as a slow, painful flush of appalled comprehension crawled up her throat.

‘Sì...I have it now...the wedding night we never had,’ Sholto supplied for himself in the same considering tone from which any hint of emotion had been ruthlessly erased. ‘All those weeks and weeks of anticipation and then? Nothing...Something of an anticlimax, cara.’

Molly’s heart sank like a concrete block inside her. In an involuntary flash she recalled that night, his murderously quiet but cold fury when she had tried to lock him out of the bedroom, her hysterical anger and tears. In a sharp, defensive movement, she turned her head away, fiercely burying the memory deep and shutting it back out of her mind again.

‘If you turn your back, I’ll get up and get dressed again. I have no objection to spending the night in a chair,’ she stated stiffly, hoping to shame him into making that move himself.

‘Turn my back?’ Sholto repeated with flaring incredulity. ‘Molly, are you fifteen or twenty-four?’

As her cheeks flared with fresh embarrassment, she cursed her fair skin and set her teeth together. ‘I’m not wearing anything.’

‘Neither am I but I am not so overcome by conceit that I imagine that one flash of my unclothed body will incite you to insatiable lust.’

‘Don’t make fun of me!’ she bit out tautly.

‘Dio, cara...’ Sholto purred like a big, indolent cat basking at his leisure in the sunshine. ‘Are you afraid that I might not be able to control myself if I have a glimpse of naked female flesh?’

‘Of course not but—’

‘Then what are you worried about?’

Molly’s fingers tightened on the bedding. ‘We can’t possibly sleep in the same bed It wouldn’t be right.’

‘Who’s going to know?’ Sholto prompted very drily.

‘I would know! That’s not the point. The point is—’

‘That you’re the most frightfully stuffy little prig and you ought to be ashamed of yourself. What do you think I’m going to do...jump you as soon as the light goes out?’

Sick with mortification, Molly dragged her stricken gaze from glittering eyes that shone pure lambent gold. ‘No.’

‘Or maybe it’s yourself that you don’t trust. Am I the one in danger?’ Sholto enquired even more drily.

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Molly found herself sinking back below the bedding by slow, almost involuntary degrees until the back of her head rested on the pillows again. Abruptly the blankets at his side of the bed were thrust back. Out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed his long, golden-skinned back view as he sprang out of bed. The door opened. She rolled over, feverishly grateful that he was leaving, and then, suddenly, without any warning whatsoever, desperately disappointed. She shut her eyes tightly, fearfully aware that she was no longer in control of her own emotional reactions.

A soft bundle of cloth landed beside her cheek. ‘What?’

‘A T-shirt, cara...and I’ll put on something too, shall I?’ Sholto proffered with deeply sardonic bite.

It was an unexpected compromise and not one she should accept. But the prospect of sitting blue with cold for hours on end in that cheerless ice-box of a room downstairs was far from tempting. She snatched the garment below the covers, rustled about like a hamster burrowing into cotton wool and pulled the T-shirt over her head, smoothing it down over her hips with careful hands. The bed shifted as Sholto’s weight came down on it again. Molly lay rigid as a marble pillar, knowing that every scrap of common sense she possessed urged retreat but somehow not flexing a toe to leave the bed, even though she was now decently covered.

A prig. Well, yes, she probably was. The accusation stung but, in all honesty, could not be denied.

She had no memory of her own father. He had died when she was a baby and her mother had married the Reverend George Gilpin two years later. Her stepfather had been a strict disciplinarian with a cold puritanical outlook. Molly had been raised in a stiflingly inhibited household where any display of naked flesh was viewed as indecent and where any reference to the physical intimacy between a man and a woman was joylessly linked only to procreation and the married state.

Sholto had no such inhibitions but then he had not been introduced to the facts of life by a mother who had clearly considered the whole process pretty disgusting. Nor had he been told that it was a woman’s duty just to put up with what she didn’t like. And when Molly had once foolishly blurted out that it felt like heaven to be in Sholto’s arms her late mother had surveyed her with distaste and had implied that she would find nothing heavenly about the ultimate act of intimacy.

Uneasy with the sexual tenor of her thoughts, Molly turned over on her side, trying very hard not to be aware of the perceptible heat emanating from the large male frame lying very little distance from her. It was like a test, she told herself bracingly—a test of whether or not she had grown at all since that annulment. Sholto had once seemed the answer to every adolescent prayer she had ever had and she had behaved like a starstruck teenager until the hurt and the humiliation had come and woken her up to hard reality.

Yet she had still never managed to forget him. Memories haunted her—he haunted her. The nagging sense of bitter loss still lingered. Yet what had she actually lost? Their entire relationship had been a cruel charade. So how could she still be attracted to him? His looks had a lot to do with it, she told herself in growing desperation. It was incredibly hard to be indifferent to a drop-dead gorgeous male whom you had once passionately loved.

Sholto shifted in a restive movement and she tensed, feeling the dangerous valley in the centre of the mattress beckoning and clinging with grim death to the safe slope on her side.

‘There’s just you and me and a blizzard outside,’ he murmured in an almost savouring tone.

She supposed he was enjoying even the small challenge provided by the bad weather. He would’ve relished the challenge of staying alive out in the blizzard even more. Freddy had once told her that Sholto had a great need to prove himself in taxing physical environments because only in that field could he find a genuine challenge and yet start level and equal with other men.

So Sholto had gone deep-sea diving in shark-infested waters, conquered mountains and travelled deep into the jungles of Indonesia on scientific expeditions, his restive vitality finding an outlet in exploration and discovery from an early age. But then that was what he did for amusement, light relief from the even tougher challenge of keeping Cristaldi Investments Inc. at the top of the international money league. That was why, the more she thought about it, it was all the more extraordinary to find Sholto in the wintry depths of the Lake District apparently doing nothing.

‘What are you doing up here?’ she suddenly whispered, opening her eyes to see the flames of the fire dancing shadows on the walls and ceiling, making the room unexpectedly light and bright.

‘Freddy left half a century of family correspondence for me to sort out and I wanted to see the place one last time before I sold it.’

Molly thrust her cheek into the pillow, wishing she hadn’t opened a conversation, wishing she could just fall asleep.

‘And now, for your sake, I’m very glad that I did,’ Sholto added with silken emphasis.

‘My sake?’ she queried, wondering if she had heard him right.

‘You’re making a very big mistake with Donald.’

Disconcerted and then inflamed by that cool, measured assurance, Molly flopped flat and stared up at the ceiling, her tension pronounced. ‘You don’t know him and it’s none of—’

‘He’ll complete the job your mother and your stepfather started. You’ll be baking buns and smiling when you feel like screaming for the rest of your days...that is if you don’t end up cracking up under the strain of living a lie because you’re not in love with him.’

Molly breathed in so deep, it felt as if she had a balloon inflating inside her lungs. ‘How the heck would you know?’ she splintered before she could swallow back the outraged demand and contrive a calmer response.

‘Who would know better?’ Sholto drawled with galling cool. ‘You were crazy about me once. All seething, heaving passion, jealousy and possessiveness...the whole lot quivering like a stick of dynamite waiting for a match beneath that deceptively quiet surface of yours. Dangerously volatile but with considerable promise of excitement, I used to think.’

‘How dare you talk about me like that?’ Her voice shook with incredulous censure as she lifted herself up on one elbow.

‘Careful,’ Sholto warned lazily, brilliant eyes arrowing over her flushed and furious face before skimming down to the T-shirt which was falling off one slim shoulder. ‘You are revealing bare skin...’

Sitting up in one driven motion, Molly snatched at the recalcitrant neckline and hauled it up again. ‘I am extremely fond of Donald.’

‘It’ll take more than that to sustain a marriage. Still, I expect your stepfather approves. He’ll be in his element with a son-in-law he can patronise and bully.’

‘Just because he didn’t like you—’

‘Donald’s far too old for you and he can’t have the slightest idea of what you’re really like.’

‘Stop talking about me as if I’m some sort of freak!’ Molly blazed back at him, her hands knotting into fists. ‘I trust Donald. I know him! He’ll never, ever let me down or deceive me.’

‘And I did? Is that what you think?’

Molly froze as if he had slapped her, face falling, stark vulnerability etched in her wide green eyes. The silence pounded. It was like being trapped inside a dark tunnel, hearing the threatening thunder of an approaching train. Unwarily, she clashed with Sholto’s blazing golden look of challenge and her throat closed over, stomach twisting sickly.

Lowering her lashes, she blocked him out. Somehow they had strayed into very dangerous territory. Wary now, petrified of betraying the extent of her emotional turmoil, she started to lie down again, every nerve jangling. ‘I’m tired...I’m going to sleep.’

‘You think I’m about to say “Goodnight and sweet dreams”?’ Sholto slid across the bed, closing the gap between them in one smooth, purposeful movement. ‘Listen to yourself. You’re talking like a painfully well brought up little girl at a rowdy pyjama party.’

‘Sholto...this stupid argument has gone far enough.’

A scorching smile flashed across his savagely handsome features as he looked down at her anxious face. A teasing forefinger slowly spiralled into the tumbled strands of gleaming russet hair spilling across the pillow. ‘But I haven’t even begun yet, cara.’

Molly blinked up at him in complete bemusement. That devastating smile that squeezed her heart tight, so rare and once so precious, the playful fingers toying with her hair... Rational thought blurred, her breath shortening in her throat.

‘Begun what?’ She stared up at him in bewildered enquiry.

‘If you’ve forgotten what it was like between us, you need a reminder,’ Sholto spelt out softly as he lowered his dark, arrogant head.

Her brow furrowed in confusion, her uncertain eyes locking with his. He had spectacular eyes, deep-set and dark gold, spiked by dense black lashes, and the intensity of that smouldering gaze held her entrapped. She could not believe he was going to kiss her for why should he do such a thing? And then he did. That wide, sensual mouth slowly drifted down onto hers like something out of a dream, so that when he took her softly parted lips and let the tip of his tongue slide erotically between them she was without defence and utterly unprepared for the devastating charge of excitement that engulfed her.

In shock, she meant to push him away. Her hand lifted and braced against a broad, muscular shoulder that was smooth as satin but infinitely more tactile and tempting. For an instant her mind warred with her body, telling her no...no, not right, not allowed...yet her fingers only flexed against that warm brown skin, touching, almost clenching into a move of denial but somehow not quite making it. And as quickly that moment of choice and awareness was lost. For Molly, time had stopped dead in its tracks and gone into reverse.

He slid a strong arm beneath her and lifted her up to him to let his tongue drive deep between her lips in passionate demand. A shaken gasp was torn from her as he made love to her mouth with wicked, wild expertise, ruthlessly ravishing the sensitive interior until she was hot and dizzy and clutching at him, her blood pounding terrifyingly fast in her veins.

‘No comparison, is there, cara?’ A husky, almost chilling laugh sent a responsive shiver down her spine but all she knew was that it was heaven to be in his arms again, shy fingers free to dart into the luxuriant black silk of his hair where it grew low and slightly too long at the nape of his neck.

‘Sholto...?’ she muttered unevenly, her mind struggling to get a grip.

His hand moved against the firm curve of her breast, which was shielded only by the fine cotton. Her eyes squeezed shut as her nipples peaked into hard, aching little buds, depriving her of breath and voice simultaneously. Repossessing her mouth with passionate hunger, he hooked long fingers deftly into the wide neckline of the T-shirt and tugged it down out of his path.

As his sure hands shaped her swelling breasts, a kind of exquisite agony consumed Molly. His thumbs flicked over the taut peaks, making her strain up to him and moan in shock at the power of that sensation. His mouth followed the slender, arching column of her throat, lingered to toy with racing pulse-points and traced a teasing path of hot, darting kisses over her quivering flesh before capturing an urgently sensitive pink crest with ruthless deliberation. She cried out, then fought just to breathe, heart hammering at an insane rate as her fingers bit fiercely into his shoulders.

His tongue swirled and teased with erotic expertise and then he nipped the taut, swollen tip with his teeth, hotly suckling while she writhed and whimpered, shock piling on sensual shock to overwhelm her. Liquid fire flared and burned unbearably between her trembling thighs. As he shifted his long, lithe body to mete out the same treatment to the other pouting peak, he parted her shivering legs with his knee and gently pinned her down.

‘Dio...you have the most exquisitely sexy body,’ Sholto intoned thickly, sinking appreciative hands beneath the generous curve of her hips and plundering her lips afresh.

When lean fingers skimmed through the damp tangle of chestnut curls guarding the apex of her thighs she went rigid and then gasped out loud and writhed as he found her secret place. Frantic heat flashed through her and then centred on the pulsing ache at the very heart of her. Wildly out of control from that moment on, she twisted helplessly in passion’s thrall, tormented by sensation and choking, blinding waves of ever heightening excitement.

Sholto pressed her down and spread her beneath him when she was at a mindless, wordless peak of intolerable arousal. For a split second, he hesitated and her eyes opened, catching the raw satisfaction stamped in his darkly flushed features before he pushed back her thighs and entered her with a single driving thrust. Pain and pleasure linked as she cried out in bitter-sweet shock at that powerful invasion and he covered her mouth fiercely with his again in a stormy brand of possession.

It was wild; it was like nothing she had ever imagined. Overwhelming hunger and need clawed at her even in the wake of that stabbing pain. She wanted, needed, craved every urgently sexual move of his hot, hard, demanding body on hers. She was flying up into the sun, every fibre of her being ablaze with screaming desperation. He plunged into her faster and faster, forcing her higher and higher until the fierce heat and the even fiercer ache collided deep inside her and sent her sobbing and shuddering into an explosive release.

The world was still spinning when she opened her eyes again. A daze of unfamiliar languorous contentment kept her limp and still. Sholto’s arms were still tight around her, his big, powerful body damp and heavy on hers. He lifted his tousled dark head and stared down at her, not a muscle moving on his lean, dark face, brilliant eyes impenetrable.

‘Thanks,’ he drawled without any expression at all. ‘You were everything I ever hoped you would be.’


CHAPTER THREE

IN ONE lithe movement, Sholto released Molly from his weight and sprang out of bed. Utterly unselfconscious, he stretched, firelight gleaming over his damp golden skin and playing over the whipcord muscles flexing in his back. In the thunderous silence, he pulled on a pair of black briefs and reached for his jeans with complete cool.

Molly sat up with an uncoordinated jerk and stared. Uncertainly, she cleared her dry throat. ‘Sholto...?’

‘I’ll take the chair downstairs now,’ he told her as he yanked up the zip on his jeans with a fluid twist of his lean hips.

‘What...?’ It was a dulled whisper of incomprehension. Molly was in too much turmoil to be able to reason with any clarity.

Sholto slid his arms into a silk shirt, buttoned it with deft fingers and tugged on a black sweater. Then he strolled to the end of the bed and curved lean, strong hands round the omate footboard. He surveyed her rigid figure in the centre of the tangled bedding, his attention lingering on her wildly mussed hair, dazed eyes and swollen pink mouth. ‘Dio...I’ve waited a long time to see you like this,’ he confided softly.

This time Molly felt his cold menace. It was like the diamond-bright glitter of icy snow crystals freezing her shrinking flesh.

‘And you made it so damned easy for me, I should be ashamed of myself for taking advantage of a trusting virgin...but I’m not ashamed,’ Sholto asserted without a flicker of conscience as he watched her face slowly drain of colour. ‘I paid for that pleasure four years ago when I married you. Do you actually recall that wedding ceremony, Molly? Do you even remember the promises you made then? And do you also recall packing your bags that same night and running home to hide behind your parents?’

Molly was shaking, still so much in shock at what she had allowed to happen between them that she could barely credit that there could be even worse to come. ‘A-are you saying,’ she framed jerkily. ‘th-that you deliberately chose to make love to me?’

‘Lovemaking is what you would have had on our wedding night,’ Sholto responded with sardonic bite. ‘Tonight you had sex.’

Cringing from that demeaning description of their intimacy and in no state to guard her speech, Molly muttered shakily, ‘I thought you got carried away...like I did.’

An unexpected and very faint suggestion of colour briefly accentuated the slant of Sholto’s hard cheekbones but a cynical black brow flared. ‘Do you really think that’s likely?’

A deep dark flush scored her cheeks. She hunched her shoulders over her raised knees, her stomach churning. How could she have imagined for one moment that Sholto could have been responding to her non-existent sex appeal? And, of course, a male of his experience didn’t simply surrender to temptation and lose control like an impetuous, unthinking teenager. But the mere idea that Sholto had climbed with cold-blooded calculation into the bed for the express and sole purpose of depriving her of her virginity made Molly feel sick and incredibly degraded.

‘I don’t understand,’ she confessed unevenly, clasping her trembling hands round her knees, not wanting to understand but knowing that she needed to know why, why and on what possible grounds Sholto should have decided that she deserved such a retribution.

She watched his long, beautifully shaped fingers flex on the footboard, the knuckles briefly showing the white of bone through the brown skin. ‘I find it incredible that you shouldn’t understand,’ he admitted, his Italian accent roughening his vowel sounds. ‘Now where do I start? Perhaps the desire for revenge was born when I found myself being threatened by the police for trying to approach my runaway wife.’

‘The police?’ she echoed, her head shooting up again in astonishment.

‘Your stepfather called them. I was warned off for causing a public disturbance. Now I don’t believe it was my fault that the paparazzi were encamped outside your parents’ house or that they went crazy when I arrived... but somehow I received the blame.’ The chill of his accusing appraisal, the hardening of his strong facial bones told her how outraged he had been by the experience.

Molly had known about that visit he had made but she hadn’t known about the interference of the police. Dismay on his behalf briefly assailed her. No, that hadn’t been fair but physical force wouldn’t have persuaded her to see him then and, in any case, she hadn’t been staying with her parents at the time. She had known better than to turn to her stepfather or her mother for sympathy when her marriage had gone so horrendously and publicly wrong.

‘The desire for revenge might well have died a natural death once I came to the conclusion that I had had a lucky escape,’ Sholto continued with brutal candour. ‘But it was what you did to my cousin, Pandora, that I could never forgive or forget’

‘Pandora?’ Molly breathed in a sick undertone, barely able to get her vocal cords round that name.

‘The Press tore her apart. She was tied to the stake by the tabloids and burned like a witch. People cut her dead; friends stopped calling. She was even spat at in the street,’ Sholto recited grittily. ‘Pandora, the man-hungry, promiscuous bitch, who supposedly stole the groom from Molly, the poor martyred little bride...that’s how she was portrayed. And why did that happen? Because you told a bunch of filthy lies to a journalist!’

‘I didn’t!’ Molly protested, a choking sob building in her throat, but she turned her head away even as she said it. She hadn’t been the one to do the talking but she knew who had. Outraged on her behalf, Jenna, her then best friend, had passed on her indiscreet confidences about Molly and Sholto to an eager reporter. Molly hadn’t given Jenna permission to do that, nor would she have, but she could not deny that at the time she had experienced a bitter satisfaction when Pandora was vilified by the Press for her role in the break-up of their marriage.

‘You let loose the whole media circus,’ Sholto condemned, swinging restively away from the bed.

‘No, you did that,’ Molly contradicted him, her voice low and tremulous as she bowed her pounding head over her knees. ‘You did that when you were photographed leaving Pandora’s apartment at dawn the day after our wedding.’

‘You were my wife. I had the right to expect some degree of trust and loyalty from you,’ Sholto drawled with chilling bite from the fireplace.

She could barely absorb what he was telling her because he had utterly devastated her with the cruel reality of what had lain behind his seduction. Molly had never really accepted that Sholto could be as ruthless as he had always been painted and only now did she appreciate that in the years since the annulment she had learnt to partially excuse him for the terrible pain he had caused her. Somewhere in the back of her mind she had begun to believe that he might well have married her in a desperate, possibly even praiseworthy attempt to break off his relationship with Pandora, but that he had ultimately found himself unable to sustain such a deception when Pandora had refused to let go.

‘You got what you deserved,’ she murmured painfully ‘Exactly what you deserved. I used to think that maybe you couldn’t help yourself and now you’ve taught me differently. I did trust you and that was stupid but I would rather go through life being stupid than become a cold, unfeeling—’

‘Dio...never, ever unfeeling,’ Sholto interposed with silken emphasis from the door. ‘But revenge is a dish best eaten cold and I really could not stomach the idea of you marrying Donald and producing a host of little portly, pigeon-toed children. What did that clod do to deserve my wedding night? Well, if he takes you now, cara, let him do so knowing that you were mine first!’

Molly shuddered with appalled distaste. Sholto gazed back at her, golden eyes ablaze with challenge. He was quite unashamed of the primitive sentiments he had just expressed. And that was yet another revelation to Molly. Four years ago, she had married an unprincipled savage without knowing it, indeed had fondly believed that Sholto was the very last word in laid-back cool and control.

As the door closed she stared into the smouldering heart of the fire, conscious of the shadows now gathering in the corners. The flames had died down like the counterfeit passion and soon there would be nothing left but ashes. Sholto was a prince of deception and he had run rings round her with his sexual charisma. He had done it in the name of revenge and suddenly Molly was desperately grateful that she did not love Donald and that he did not love her.

Donald would be disappointed but not hurt when she returned his ring. He had only proposed at the weekend and he had urged her to think very, very carefully before she gave him her final answer. She had lain awake last night and then had put on the ring when she got up, resolving to tell Donald of her decision when she returned from this trip. But that now seemed a lifetime ago and Sholto had just smashed what she might have had with Donald. She was deeply ashamed of her own physical weakness. A woman who could so easily and foolishly succumb to the sexual allure of one man had no business at all even considering a serious relationship with another.

A cheap one-night stand. That was what she had made of herself. He had even dared to censure her for what Pandora had suffered! But then, albeit unwittingly, she had attacked and hurt the woman he loved. Indeed, tonight Sholto had taught her what real hatred was and it was not the weak illusion that she had hidden behind to conserve her own pride. But she still found it incredible that Sholto could blame her for their broken marriage, could question her loyalty and trust. For, hysterical or not on their wedding night, she had made her feelings quite clear...

‘If you go to her, I won’t be here when you come back!’ she had told him, shooting the last bolt on her pride with that ultimatum because she had not been able to credit, had not been able to believe until he’d actually walked out the door that any male would leave a sobbing and already distraught bride to go to another woman on his wedding night.

And Sholto had made his choice. Indeed, Sholto had made his choice without hesitation. If he had come in search of her afterwards...well, it had already been too late. When Molly had seen that photo of him emerging from Pandora’s apartment block at dawn, had been faced with the humiliating public proof that he had spent the whole night with his cousin, she had never wanted to set eyes on Sholto again. The agony of that betrayal had been too immense.

And yet they had started out with such apparent promise, she conceded painfully, struggling not to let the memories flood back, for the last thing she needed now was to wallow in the distant past. But somehow the temptation to recall a happier time was irresistible.

She had first met Sholto on one of those hot, still summer afternoons when anything physical felt like an outrageous effort. She had been coasting her bike down the hill, her basket full of eggs from the village shop, when a black sports car had suddenly shot out of a leafy lane in front of her. Her frantic evasive manoeuvres had sent her flying head first into the hedge. When the world had righted itself again, Sholto had got out of the car and was helping her disentangle herself from the brambles, exclaiming about the scratches on her bare arms and apologising.

A languid female voice had drifted from the sports car. ‘Ask her where the Hendersons live...’

Sholto had stridden back to the car and wrenched open the driver’s door. After a terse exchange, a tall, beautiful blonde with a sullen mouth had reluctantly emerged. ‘I’m sorry you came off your bike but you really should’ve been looking where you were going—’

‘You were driving like a bat out of hell,’ Sholto interposed, looking at the blonde with icy reproof.

For an instant Sholto and Pandora stood side by side, and together, as Molly got her first really good look at them, they took her breath away. One so dark and one so fair and both of them possessed of that compelling kind of physical beauty which turned heads and fascinated. Never had Molly been more horribly conscious of a face bare of make-up, hair tangled by the breeze and a faded summer dress that had seen better days.

‘The Hendersons,’ Pandora repeated impatiently.

‘You’ll have to excuse my cousin. Pandora. She’s not very good with strangers,’ Sholto murmured wryly as he extended a lean hand to Molly. ‘Sholto Cristaldi. Where were you heading when we interrupted your journey?’

‘Home.’ Her uncertain gaze collided with shimmering dark golden eyes as she clasped his hand. And he didn’t let go again. He kept on holding her hand, a faint frown-line etched between his aristocratic brows as he stared intently down at her until a deep flush of self-consciousness coloured her cheeks and she tugged her own fingers clumsily free.

‘Sholto, we’re late!’ Pandora snapped.

‘What’s your name?’ Sholto asked, as if his cousin had neither spoken nor even existed.

‘Molly...Molly Bannister.’

‘Molly,’ he repeated softly, his slow, utterly devastating smile flashing out to leave her weak at the knees. While he crouched down over her bike, examining the bent wheel and the messy debris of broken eggs, she just stared down at him in complete fascination, feverishly, childishly wishing that she had legs that ran all the way up to her armpits, smaller breasts, slimmer hips and last but not least a face that would launch a thousand ships.

In short she would’ve sold her soul at that moment to have the looks to attract a male of Sholto’s calibre. But she had no expectation of such a miracle taking place. Sholto, with his lazy, well-bred drawl, supreme sophistication and exquisitely cut casual clothes, had all the glamour of a film star and seemed just as unattainable.

‘I think the first thing we need to do is replace the eggs,’ Sholto stated with deadly seriousness as he sprang lithely upright again.

‘Give her some money for them, for heaven’s sake!’ Pandora urged incredulously.

‘You don’t need to replace them,’ Molly said hurriedly. ‘And I certainly don’t want any money—’

‘And then we need to take you and your bike home,’ Sholto continued smoothly, as good at ignoring Molly’s objections as he apparently was at blocking out the increasingly angry interruptions coming from his cousin. ‘Where do the Hendersons live?’

‘You go up the hill, through the village and about a hundred yards further on there’s a big set of gates on the left—’

‘We’ll drop my cousin off first...since she’s in such a hurry,’ Sholto murmured softly. ‘But I’m afraid you’ll find it a frightful squeeze in what passes for a back seat in this car.’

‘I don’t need a lift... I wouldn’t dream of it. I can walk home from here!’ she gabbled in a rush, hideously conscious of Pandora’s outraged stare at the idea of her even getting into their car.

But Sholto won out. Taking charge of the steering wheel, he dropped his cousin off at the Hendersons’ Edwardian mansion and ushered Molly into the passenger seat in her stead.

‘Explain that we had an accident and offer my apologies,’ he instructed a frozenly furious Pandora.

Then he drove Molly back to the village shop, replaced the eggs, parked the car beside her damaged bike and proceeded to walk her and the bike home to the vicarage. It was a mile-long walk and she wished it were five miles longer. Sholto and Pandora had been invited to what he called a ‘house party’ at the Hendersons’ and Molly tried to behave as if she regularly met people who just flew in from New York on Concorde and drove down to the country in a flashy sports car for the weekend.

She never expected to see him again after he parted from her at the vicarage gates. She was astonished when his hostess phoned that evening and asked her if she would like to come up and play tennis the following afternoon. Although the Hendersons allowed the annual church fête to be held in the grounds of their impressive home, they were not in the habit of inviting their more humble neighbours to socialise with them.

Molly knew that she could only owe that invitation to Sholto. Indeed, he carelessly confirmed the fact when he came to pick her up. She was less comfortable with the admission when she witnessed the extraordinary deference shown to him by his hosts.

The haughty Hendersons fawned on Sholto as if he were visiting royalty and Sholto did not appear to notice anything amiss in their excessive eagerness to please. That he was accustomed to that sort of attention was obvious but his manners were faultless and that day Molly was blissfully ignorant both of Sholto’s immense wealth and of the way that same wealth could affect other people.

It was far too hot for tennis but the heat didn’t bother Sholto, so nobody dared to complain. Molly ran herself into the ground during a very athletic game of mixed doubles and thoroughly enjoyed herself until she saw her reflection in a window afterwards and cringed at the sight of her wet hair, shiny nose and hot cheeks. Sholto paused behind her, even then able to read her like a book. ‘You look gorgeous, cara. Women who think of nothing but their appearance are very poor company.’

Cousin Pandora spent the afternoon sitting cool as a cucumber on the sidelines and flirting like mad with two different men. She barely looked at Molly but Molly had already realised that Pandora had little time for her own sex. Only the day before she had seen Sholto treat Pandora like a spoilt and wilful kid sister. At that stage, she didn’t see the other woman as even a cloud on her horizon...and she was utterly overwhelmed by Sholto’s apparent interest in her...

Molly woke with a start. The events of the previous night flooded back and she could not believe that she had actually slept. It was already after ten. Scrambling out of bed, she pulled back the curtains. Some time during the night she had heard driving rain lash the window. It was no longer raining and the snow had gone as quickly as it had come.

The skirt and sweater which she had left downstairs now lay on the chair, and with them a new pair of black tights. Where had Sholto got the tights from? She recalled the shop at the garage where she had stopped for petrol the night before. She stiffened at the awareness that he had entered the room while she slept but she was grateful not to be forced to go downstairs in his clothes.

Crossing the landing to the bathroom, she ran a shallow bath. She told herself that it was her imagination telling her that she could still smell Sholto on her skin. Imagination and guilt, she reflected painfully, lathering herself with soap and wishing she could as easily wash away the incredibly intimate ache she could still feel, the starkly unavoidable reminder of his possession.




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