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How had she ever thought of Andrew Walker’s face as nondescript and pleasant? Now, as he came towards her, she could see the real Andrew Walker instead of the kindly mask he had hidden behind.
Dorland had been right. This was a very bad man. Fear pooled in her stomach and her muscles tightened round it.
Exactly the same feelings of sick disbelief and fear she had experienced when she had first learned of Nick’s treachery were coiling through her stomach now. And, exactly as it had been then, her first thought was that she wished desperately that Marcus were her to help her. Her second was that she was equally desperately glad that he wasn’t here to witness her stupidity.
And yet she was still unable to stop herself from repeating shakily, ‘I do know all about how you and your partners make your money, and why you want Prêt a Party.’
‘You know, Lucy, you really shouldn’t listen to gossip from jealous and unreliable sources,’ Andrew Walker told her evenly. ‘Why don’t you take my advice and think a little bit harder about our offer, and about letting Marcus Carring become your partner? That wouldn’t be a very good move, and my colleagues would certainly not be pleased were you to do that. After all, as I just said, nothing is certain in this life—especially not marriage. You’ve been married once already, and—’
‘I won’t listen to any more.’ Lucy stopped him passionately. ‘There isn’t any point in you trying to pressure me by offering me money. I don’t want it and I won’t change my mind.’
‘Are you sure you’re doing the right thing marrying Carring, Lucy?’
His question caught her off guard.
‘Yes, of course I’m sure,’ she lied. ‘I love him.’ That much at least was the truth. ‘In fact I’ve always loved him,’ she added defiantly.
She could see that her declaration had not pleased him. He doubtless knew that he would not be able to deceive and bully Marcus the way he had tried to do her.
‘I’d advise you to think very carefully about what I’ve just said,’ he told her sharply. ‘Oh, and I wouldn’t tell Marcus Carring about our conversation if I were you—for your own sake and for his.’ Andrew Walker ignored her attempted reply to that, and stepped past her to open the office door. ‘I shall be in touch.’
He’d gone. He’d actually gone. Lucy felt sick with relief. When she attempted to stand to go and lock her office door, to make sure he couldn’t come back, her legs simply would not support her.
She would have to close down Prêt a Party completely now, she decided shakily. She couldn’t think of any other way to protect both herself and her business.
When Marcus questioned why she was giving up the business she had fought so hard to keep going, she would simply have to tell him that she had been giving the matter a great deal of thought and that she wanted to concentrate on them—their marriage and their future together.
Lie to him, in other words.
The sick feeling in the pit of her stomach increased.
But what other choice did she have? How could she tell him the truth now? If she told him he would stand there and look at her the way he had when she’d had to tell him that Nick had not just been unfaithful to her but that he had also defrauded the business. With angry disbelief, with irritation and with contempt. She just did not think she could bear that.
‘It’s supposed to be bad luck for you to see me in my outfit before we get married, you know,’ Lucy reproached Marcus.
Marcus had just let them both into his house, having picked up Lucy from her parents’ home earlier.
‘You aren’t in your wedding outfit,’ he pointed out. ‘At least, not unless you’ve changed your mind and you intend to marry me wearing jeans.’
‘Don’t be silly. I’m not wearing the dress now, but I was when you came round.’
‘I didn’t see you in it, though,’ Marcus assured her, but Lucy could see that he had his fingers crossed behind his back, and she couldn’t help but smile, albeit a little bit wanly. These last few weeks had been so stressful.
‘Cheer up—it will soon be over now,’ Marcus told her, as though he had somehow guessed how she felt. ‘And then once we’re on honeymoon you’ll be able to relax.’
Lucy exhaled heavily and told him emphatically, ‘I can’t wait.’
There was a small potent silence during which her colour rose. She saw the way Marcus was looking at her, and then he said obliquely, ‘No, I don’t think I can either.’
Silently they both looked at one another.
‘It’s been a very long few weeks,’ Lucy told him breathlessly. The look she had seen in his eyes was causing her heart to jerk about inside her chest as though he was holding it on a string.
As he stood watching her Marcus was suddenly aware of a most peculiar emotion filling him and driving him. A need—a compulsion, almost—to take Lucy in his arms and keep her there, whilst he…
He shook his head, trying to dispel the unfamiliar emotions that were gripping him. ‘Why don’t we…?’ he began slowly, and then frowned as they were interrupted by the sound of the doorbell being rung. He went to open the door and, while Lucy watched, took a package from the waiting courier and signed for it.
‘Do you want to make us both a drink while I check to see what this is?’ he asked her.
She just couldn’t resist the temptation to look at him, Lucy admitted to herself as she lingered to watch him as he began to open the package. When he did so, removing the contents and studying them, a couple of photographs slid free and fell onto the floor.
Automatically Lucy went to pick them up.
‘No—don’t touch them. Leave them.’
The harshness of his grim command instantly reminded her of the old Marcus. ‘What—?’ she began, and then stopped as she stared down at the floor and the photograph that was lying there face upwards.
She had heard of the expression ‘her blood ran cold’, but she had never until that moment imagined she might experience it as a physical sensation—as though the warmth of her blood was draining away to be replaced with something that felt like ice.
‘Marcus…’ Her voice a shocked, disbelieving whisper of anguish, she looked from the photograph to his unreadable face and then back to the photograph again.
On it her own face stared back at her: her mouth smiling, her eyes open, alight with excitement and delight. And the reason for that delight was…
She looked at the photograph again and her stomach heaved. Her body was naked, her arms and legs spread, held down by four sets of male hands, whilst a fifth man was positioned between her spread legs, obviously having sex with her.
Like someone in a trance, she bent down and picked up the other photograph.
‘Lucy! No!’
Marcus made a lunge to stop her, but he was still holding the contents of the package. Ignoring him as though she hadn’t even heard him, Lucy turned over the second photograph. This one was even worse. A woman had joined the men—a woman wearing a dildo—and she—they—she and the men—were all doing the most vile things to and with one another. And she was eagerly and willingly participating in it all.
She looked at what Marcus was holding. More photographs and a video. There was a picture of her on the front of the video—naked, her legs spread. The caption on it read: Lucy Loves Lickin’ Lust. Watch her in action!
Lucy felt her stomach heave.
She ran to the bathroom and was immediately and violently sick. Shivering with disgust, she clung to the basin and turned on the taps, washing her face and then cleaning her teeth. She wanted to tear off her clothes and stand under the hottest, hardest shower she could find. She wanted to scrub at her skin and somehow remove the filth she could almost feel clinging to her.
‘Lucy.’
Marcus was standing in the open doorway to the bathroom, an expression in his eyes that she distantly thought looked like pain, but which she knew must be disgust.
‘It isn’t me,’ she told him, slowly and carefully, fixing her gaze on the fa
r wall so that she didn’t have to look at him and see in his eyes what she knew would be there. If he had looked at her before with irritation and contempt, that was nothing to how he would be looking at her now. ‘I know it looks like me, but it isn’t.’
Silence.
What had she expected? That he would sweep her up into his arms and tell her that he loved her? After seeing that?
‘You won’t want to marry me now, of course. How could you?’ She was amazed at how calm and accepting she sounded. How reasoning and distanced from the wild, shrieking agony of pain and disbelief inside her.
‘I’d better go home and tell everyone.’ How was she managing to sound so polite? So much as though she were attending a formal tea party at her great-aunt’s rather than experiencing, enduring what she was going through?
She certainly felt as cold as though she were at her great-aunt’s, she admitted, as her teeth started to chatter and rigours of icy cold gripped her body.
‘Lucy.’
Marcus’s hands felt so warm as they cupped her face, and his body was so reassuringly close, even though she hadn’t even seen him cross the space between them.
‘Please don’t,’ she begged him piteously, as her body caved in to her shock and tears welled in her eyes to roll down her face. ‘Please don’t make it harder for me, Marcus. I know what you must be thinking, and how you must feel.’
‘Do you?’ he demanded, so savagely that she flinched. ‘No, I don’t think you do,’ he told her harshly. ‘I don’t think you can know how I feel knowing that you have been exposed to this kind of…of filth. That you have been dragged into it and degraded by it.’
‘Marcus, I haven’t. It isn’t me. Please believe me. It isn’t.’ She couldn’t hold back the words any longer, even though she knew he would not and could not possibly believe her. Not with the evidence of those horrible photographs.
She could see how darkly he was frowning at her, probably thinking she was compounding her guilt by lying about it.
