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‘Are you ready?’ Sander asked Ruby, in the cold, distant voice he always used when he spoke to her.
Ruby looked down at the jeans and loose-fitting sweater she was wearing, the jeans tucked into the boots her sister had given her for Christmas. No doubt Sander was more used to the company of stunning-looking women dressed in designer clothes and jewels—women who had probably spent hours primping and preening themselves to impress him. A small forlorn ache came from nowhere to pierce her heart. Pretty clothes, never mind designer clothes, were a luxury she simply couldn’t afford, and they would have been impractical for her life even if she could.
‘Yes, we’re ready. Boys, go and get your duffel coats,’ she instructed, turning back into the hall to get the case she had packed, and almost being knocked over by the twins as they rushed by.
It was Sander’s fingers closing round her arm that saved her from stumbling, but the shock of the physical contact with him froze her into immobility, making her feel far more in danger of losing her balance than the twins’ dash past her had done.
Her arm felt thin and frail, in direct contrast to the sturdiness of the twins’ limbs, he thought. And her face was pinched, as though she didn’t always get enough to eat. A question hovered inside his head…an awareness of deprivation that he pushed away from himself.
Although he was standing behind her she could still smell the scent of his cologne, and feel the warmth coming off his body. Inside her head an image formed of the way he had kissed her such a short time ago. Panic and fear clawed at her stomach, adding to her existing tension. She saw Sander’s gaze drop to her mouth and her whole body began to tremble.
It would be so easy to give in to the desire clawing at him—so easy to take her as quickly and wantonly as the way she was offering herself to him. His body wanted that. It wanted the heat of her eager muscles wrapped greedily round it, riding his deepening thrusts. It wanted the swift, savage release her body promised.
It might, but did he really want the kind of cheap, tawdry thrill a woman like her peddled—had been peddling the night they had met?
Ruby’s small anguished moan as she pulled free of him brought him back to reality.
‘Is this your only case?’ he demanded, looking away from her to the shabby case on the hall floor.
Ruby nodded her head, and Sander’s mouth twisted with contempt. Of course she would want to underline her poverty to him. Marriage to him was her access to a brand new bank account, filled with money. No doubt she was already planning her first spending spree. He remembered how much delight his mother had always taken in spending his father’s money, buying herself couture clothes and expensive jewellery. As a child he’d thought her so beautiful, too dazzled by her glamorous exterior to recognise the corruption that it concealed.
Sander was tempted to ignore the hint Ruby was plainly intending to give him and let her travel to the island with the single shabby case, but that would mean punishing his sons as well as her, he suspected—and besides, he had no wish to make his marriage the subject of speculation and gossip, which it would be if Ruby didn’t have a wardrobe commensurate with his own wealth and position.
‘Our marriage will take place this Friday,’ he told her. ‘On Saturday we fly to the island. You’ve done as I instructed with regard to the birth control pill, I trust?’
‘Yes,’ Ruby confirmed.
‘Can you prove it?’
Ruby was outraged that he should doubt her, but scorched pride had her fumbling angrily with the clasp of her handbag, both her hands shaking with the force of her emotions as she delved into her bag and produced the foil-backed pack of pills, quite plainly showing the empty spaces from the pills she had already taken.
If she had hoped to shame Sander into an apology she soon recognised that one would not be forthcoming. A curt nod of his head was the only response he seemed willing to give her before he continued cynically,
‘And, having fulfilled your obligation, you now expect me to fulfil what you no doubt consider to be mine, I expect? To furnish you with the wherewithal to replace your single suitcase with a full set of new ones and clothes with which to fill them.’
The open cynicism in his voice burned Ruby’s already scorched pride like salt poured into an open wound. ‘Your only obligation to me is to be a good father to the twins.’
‘No,’ he corrected her coldly, ‘that is my obligation to them.’ He didn’t like her response. It wasn’t the one he had expected. It didn’t match the profile he had mentally drawn up for her. Somehow she had managed to stray from the script he had written. The one in which she revealed herself to be an unworthy mother, leaving him holding the high ground and the moral right to continue to despise her. ‘There is no need to be self-sacrificing.’ Her resistance to the role he had cast for her made him feel all the more determined to prove himself right. ‘As my wife, naturally you must present an appropriate appearance—although I must caution you against buying clothes of the type you were wearing the night you propositioned me. It is the role of my wife you will be playing in future. Not the role of a whore.’
Ruby had no words to refute his contemptuous insult, but she wasn’t going to accept his charity. ‘We already have plenty of clothes. We don’t need any more,’ she insisted vehemently.
She was daring to try to reject what he knew to be the truth about her. She must be taught a lesson that would ensure that she did not do so again. She would wear clothes bought with his money, so that they would both know just what she was. He might be forced to marry her in order to be able to lay legal claim to his sons, but he wasn’t going to let her forget that she belonged to that group of women all too willing to sell their bodies to any man rich enough to provide them with the lifestyle of designer clothes and easy money they craved.
‘Plenty of clothes?’ he taunted her. ‘In one case? When there are three of you? My sons and my wife will be dressed in a manner appropriate to their station in life, and not—’
‘Not what?’ Ruby challenged him.
‘Do you really need me to answer that question?’ was his silkily derisory response.
The shabby case was in the boot of a very expensive and luxurious-looking car, the twins were safely strapped into their seats, her decision had already been made—and yet now that it came to it Ruby wavered on the front doorstep, looking back into the house.
‘Where’s your coat?’
Sander’s question distracted her.
‘I don’t need one,’ she fibbed. The truth was that she didn’t have a proper winter coat, but she wasn’t going to tell Sander that—not after what he’d already said. He was waiting, holding the car door open for her. Shivering in the easterly March wind, Ruby locked the front door. Her head pounding painfully, she got into the car. Its interior smelled of expensive leather, very different from the smell inside the taxi that had transported them back to Sander’s hotel that fateful night…
Her mouth went dry.
