AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘Patty,’ Sally said helpfully.
‘Patty, that’s right. I’ve asked her to take your job as of tomorrow, darling.’ His teeth flashed in a quick smile. ‘You see? Everything has been taken care of.’
‘And we’ve even managed to put together a shower for you,’ Sally said brightly.
Hannah turned pale. ‘A shower? A bridal shower?’
Sally smiled. ‘It won’t be a surprise, but then, they never really are, are they? A girl always knows she’s going to have a shower when she leaves to get married.’
There was a silence. Hannah looked from her friend’s shining face to Grant’s glittering eyes. It was like being swept forward by a tidal wave, she thought; there was no way back and no way to turn.
‘Would you excuse us for a minute please, Sally?’ Grant said, and, without waiting for the girl’s answer, he drew Hannah into his office and quietly closed the door. Once they were alone, he let go of her. ‘You were about to sign the contract when that phone call interrupted us.’
‘That’s not exactly the way it happened,’ Hannah said stiffly. She waited for him to say something, but he didn’t. After a moment, she touched the tip of her tongue to her lips. ‘Did you plan it this way? Getting Sally involved, so that the whole office would know and—’
‘The contract,’ he said, holding a pen out to her.
Hannah caught her breath. ‘Grant—look, I know I agreed to—to…’ She swallowed. ‘But now I—I’m not certain——’
‘Sign it, Hannah.’
His face was hard, his gaze unswerving. She waited a moment, then snatched the pen from his hand, stalked to the table where the contract lay waiting, and scrawled her name. When she was done, she tossed down the pen and turned towards him, her expression shuttered and cool.
‘Satisfied?’ she said.
A lazy smile spread across Grant’s face. ‘Very,’ he said. Slowly, his eyes never leaving hers, he reached out and gathered her into his arms. ‘Very,’ he whispered, and then he drew her close and kissed her.
It was a long, unhurried kiss, a kiss that she knew was meant as confirmation of his power over her. It was nothing more than a pretence of passion, and yet Hannah felt the earth drop away from beneath her feet, felt the room spin around her. Heat shimmied through her blood, touching her everywhere with a sweet, fierce pleasure.
A discreet knock on the closed door drove them apart. ‘Hannah?’
It was Sally. Hannah swayed on her feet, her only link to the planet the harsh pressure of Grant’s hands on her forearms.
‘I’ll see you later,’ he murmured.
She swung away from him, heart racing, and wrenched open the door.
‘The party,’ Sally began, and Hannah nodded and followed her into the hall and towards the lunch room and a celebration that was, in the best of circumstances, an ordeal to be endured, but was a special hell now that it was in her honour.
At least she didn’t have to make any small talk. Sally did it all for her, chattering away non-stop about the fun of planning the last-minute shower, about how thrilled all the secretaries were, about how handsome Grant was.
Hannah kept nodding and smiling, but she wasn’t really listening. She was thinking about how Grant had trapped her, wrapping her in a web of silk so fine no one but she would ever know it was there.
But she could survive that. When all of this was finally over, she would have what she wanted. A child. That was why she’d entered into this bizarre pact, after all.
Sally tugged at her sleeve. ‘Wait until you see the nightgown we bought you.’ She giggled. ‘I m not supposed to tell you, but it’s really something! It’s white and sheer, cut down to here and up to there——’
And Grant would never see it. It was little compensation, Hannah thought as she fixed a smile to her face and entered the lunch room, but it was something.
And it would have to do.
CHAPTER EIGHT
MARILYN HOWE plucked a microscopic bit of lint from Hannah’s shell-pink skirt and sighed with pleasure.
‘You’re beautiful,’ she said happily. ‘Absolutely beautiful.’
Hannah looked into the mirror that ran the length of one wall in the Howe guest room. A stranger looked back at her, a stranger whose shiny chestnut hair fell loose to her shoulders, whose face was pale, whose doubt-filled eyes seemed enormous without their usual oversized glasses.
‘I hardly recognise myself,’ she murmured.
She looked so different, she thought uneasily. The emerald ring, flashing on her finger each time she moved her hand; the lovely, incredibly expensive pink dress that clung to her body with stylish grace; the contact lenses Marilyn had talked her into trying… All of it added up to a woman Hannah had never seen before.
The realisation was terrifying, but then, everything about this day was terrifying, for in just a little while she would become Grant’s wife.
Hannah MacLean. Mrs Grant MacLean. Oh, God…
‘Are you all right, Hannah?’
Hannah blinked and looked into the glass. No, she thought, while her heart galloped wildly, no, I’m not all right. I feel as if I’ve made a pact with the devil.
‘Hannah? Do you want to sit down for a minute? Shall I send for Grant?’
‘No!’ Hannah drew a deep breath and forced a smile to her lips. ‘I’m fine. Really. Just—just—’
‘Last-minute nerves.’ Marilyn smiled, too. ‘Sure. I felt the same way.’
‘Did you?’ Hannah asked softly.
The other woman nodded and slipped her arm around Hannah’s shoulders. ‘I was scared stiff,’ she said as they made their way slowly towards the door, ‘and positive I was going to pass out the minute I heard the Bridal March begin.’ She smiled. ‘But then I saw Bob waiting at the altar, and all I could think about was that in just a little while we’d be husband and wife.’ She gave Hannah a quick hug as they stepped into the hall. ‘You just wait until you get yourself a look at that handsome brother of mine, honey. All your worries will fly away.’
But it didn’t happen quite that way. If anything, that first glimpse of Grant, standing straight and tall at the far end of the room, only made Hannah’s heart race even faster. He looked so forbidding, so remote and powerful. She wanted to turn and run away, to keep running and never come back.
But his eyes held her fast, those cool grey eyes; they locked on hers and seemed to draw her forward so that she walked slowly towards him while the strains of Lohengrin played softly on the grand piano in the sunroom. And then she was there, standing before him, her breathing quick and shallow.
Grant held out his hand.
‘Hannah,’ he said softly.
There was still time to run—but she lifted her chin and put her ice-cold hand in his. His fingers closed over hers, and the warmth of his touch surged through her. He drew her forward until she was standing close beside him, and then he smiled and something happened deep within her heart, something that was beyond description or comprehension, something that was dangerous and exciting, and all she could think of was that it was a damned good thing that theirs was going to be a celibate relationship.
It had been useless, arguing against a honeymoon.
‘Is there somewhere special you’d like to go?’ Grant had asked, and when she’d shaken her head he’d tossed off a list of possibilities as casually as if they were simply names on a shopping list. ‘Spain? France? Italy? Perhaps something exotic. Japan—I’ve always wanted to see the Yasukuni Shrine.’
Hannah had listened with growing unease. Those places were all so far away, she’d thought. Her acquiescence to Grant’s proposal, the wedding plans—all of that was unreal enough. Surely she’d feel even more estranged in such foreign surroundings?
‘Or perhaps someplace warm,’ he’d mused, when she hadn’t answered. ‘Mexico. The Caribbean.’
‘Mexico,’ she’d said quickly, automatically choosing the one that was closest to home. She’d never been there, but she knew people who
had. Sally had returned from Acapulco with stories about crowds and music and days crammed with activities organised by the hotel social staff. It had sounded awful to Hannah, who much preferred being left to her own devices when she went on holiday. But this wasn’t a holiday, it was a make-believe honeymoon with a man she barely knew. In those circumstances, days jammed with carefully arranged happenings sounded like a good idea.
‘Fine,’ he’d answered, and that had been the end of the discussion.
But as soon as their plane landed Hannah got the uneasy feeling that whatever lay ahead would not in any way resemble the vacations Sally or any of the other girls had described.
A long white limousine drove them to a sprawling series of pastel buildings tucked into a lush, tree-lined cove where an azure sea foamed whitely against a pale beach. A smiling bellman collected their luggage, then led them to a suite at least twice the size of Hannah’s flat back in San Francisco. The sitting-room was exquisitely appointed, the bathroom was a wonder of black and rose marble, the bedroom—the bedroom was like something out of a fairy-tale, all white organdie, pale blue eyelet cotton, and tropical flowers. It was the kind of room women dreamed about, the sort you saw in perfume ads. All it lacked was a centrepiece, a pair of lovers locked in each other’s arms.
‘Well? What do you think?’
She turned quickly. Grant was standing in the doorway of the bedroom, watching her, his eyes unreadable behind dark aviator lenses, his hands tucked into the pockets of his casual chino trousers.
