AllFreeNovel
Share Us
'I get the message.' His voice was very dry. 'You think I'm looking for a cross between a performing chimpanzee and a modern-day Jezebel between the sheets, is that it?'
'Well, aren't you?' His cool composure was the last straw. 'From what I've heard—' She stopped abruptly, aware that she had been about to be less than tactful.
' 'From what you've heard'?' he repeated softly—so softly that she was fooled into thinking that he was unconcerned until she looked into his eyes. 'And what exactly have you heard, Katie?' he asked grimly, his voice quiet and even. 'And who from?'
'It isn't important.' She shrugged with a lightness she was far from feeling.
'The hell it isn't.' He moved the two steps to the fireplace in a moment, his face tight with controlled rage. 'Someone has been filling your mind with stories and I would like to know who.'
'It isn't like that.' She raised her gaze to his as she spoke, her hazel eyes jade-green in the dim light. 'And you have no right to question me like this, no right at all,' she added quietly as she forced herself to stand her ground and not flinch away from his rage. 'You're a millionaire and people are bound to be interested in your private life. It's human nature.'
'Jennifer…' He breathed the name between clenched teeth as he looked down into her face. 'Of course, I might have known.'
'I didn't say—'
'You didn't have to.' He nodded grimly. 'And you believed every word which came from such a reliable source?' he asked cuttingly, his voice icy and his narrowed eyes tight on her face.
'Look, this is ridiculous.' She sat down in the chair as her legs began to tremble, taking a deep breath as she did so and forcing her voice to remain calm. 'It doesn't matter one way or the other, does it? I can't marry you; you must know that. We barely know each other and, anyway, the whole thing is…immoral.'
' 'Immoral'?' he repeated savagely. She watched him take an almost visible hold on his emotions as he glared down at her, his eyes glittering hotly, and when he next spoke his voice was cool and controlled, only his eyes betraying his inner fury. 'Hardly, Katie,' he said softly. 'People marry for much less reason than we have, I do assure you. There are still countries where arranged marriages are the normal procedure and the rate of success is very high, much higher than in the Western world where so-called 'love' dominates the game.'
'You don't think it's right to marry for love?' she asked quietly, appalled by his cynicism.
'I didn't say that.' Something flickered in the back of his eyes and was gone. 'But love is a transient thing, all too often here today and gone tomorrow. If you married me I can assure you that I would never look at another woman and I would expect absolute fidelity from you in return. I can make you that promise in the cold light of day without any messy emotion gilding my words. You would gain immediate solvency for yourself and your father and my protection both physically and financially for you and yours for the rest of your life.'
'You really are serious,' she whispered slowly. She moistened suddenly dry lips with the tip of her tongue and as his eyes followed the gesture, a dark heat flaring briefly in their grey depths, she felt her stomach tighten in response to his desire. The full enormity of what marriage would mean, in all its intimacy, flooded her senses and she shut her eyes for a moment as its rawness overwhelmed her.
'Oh, I'm serious, Katie.' Her eyes snapped open to meet his cool, sardonic gaze and their eyes held for a full ten seconds before she broke the spell, lowering her head quickly as she took a shuddering breath. 'I've never been more so,' he added.
How could he be so cool, so unemotional about it? she asked herself weakly in the few seconds before she raised her head again. He was treating the whole thing almost like a business deal, a clinical merger. Even her father had more emotion than this man. And however he dressed the proposal up he was buying her as a breeding machine for his offspring. No more, no less.
She steeled herself to look at him calmly and keep her voice steady. 'I'm sorry, Carlton, but I can't accept your offer, generous though it is,' she said stiffly. 'And I'm sure you will be able to find someone far more suitable for the perpetuating of the Reef name.'
Her father would understand, he would, she told herself desperately as she met the cool grey gaze that was carefully blank. He wouldn't expect her to make such a sacrifice… would he? 'I really think I'd better go now,' she added uncomfortably when he still didn't speak. 'I'd like to visit Dad tonight.'
'Of course.' She could read nothing that indicated his feelings in either his face or voice; they could have been discussing the weather a few minutes previously instead of the joining together of their bodies and future in matrimony. 'Would you like me to drop you at the hospital or at the house?' he asked quietly as he walked across the room and opened the door, his body relaxed and controlled.
'The house, please.' She smiled nervously, but as he opened the door and stood for her to pass through the grey gaze didn't centre on her face. 'I want to pick up my car.'
The drive home was the sort of unmitigated nightmare Katie wouldn't have wished on her worst enemy and the tense, electric atmosphere in the car wasn't helped by her growing panic at the thought of what she had refused. They had been given a way out, something she had imagined impossible just days earlier, and she had thrown it away without even considering it.
She sneaked a quick glance at Car
lton's harsh, dark profile from under her eyelashes and her stomach churned painfully. But she'd had no choice. To marry him, to actually marry him? She couldn't.
She glanced at his large, capable hands on the steering-wheel, the dark body-hairs disappearing into his sleeves, and again that little thrill of something hot and alien shivered down her spine. What would it be like to be made love to by such a man?
She caught the thought firmly and locked it away before it could develop. She would never know. She didn't want to know. But even as she chastised herself the elusive smell of his aftershave was doing crazy things to her hormones.
'Goodbye, Katie.' He had left the car, intending to open her door, but she was too quick for him, almost falling out of the luxurious interior in her eagerness to escape before he could touch her. He paused to lean against the bonnet as she backed away towards the steps, his face cool and sardonic and his eyes veiled. 'The offer still stands, you know.' His voice was cold and formal. 'I'd prefer you to think about it for a day or so before you make a definite decision. It would be advantageous to both of us.'
'I—'
He interrupted her by dint of raising one very autocratic hand. 'Goodbye, Katie.' The dismissal was very definite.
She watched him slide back into the Mercedes as she stood at the bottom of the steps and although the air was already redolent with the tang of frost she still stood there long after the car had vanished, her mind whirling in a maelstrom of fear and excitement and confusion. Just a few days ago she had never heard of Carlton Reef. Her normal, safe little world had been ticking on in the same old way, no big highs and no lows.
She turned to look up at the house, mellow and lovingly familiar in the dusky light of the dying day. And now this could go, along with everything she had always thought of as theirs. She shook her head slowly. And she still wasn't convinced her father was going to get well. She put her hands up to her head, feeling as though it would burst with the force of her thoughts.
