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Confusion made her head spin. He’d talked about wanting her, making their marriage a real one, in a voice so devoid of emotion he might have been reading a shopping list. Then calmly suggested they have breakfast!
She had never felt less like eating in her life!
‘That wasn’t part of the agreement,’ she said through her teeth, anger running through her because he’d picked up the message her treacherous body had transmitted and was using it to his own advantage, so confident of getting wh
at he wanted he hadn’t felt the need to dress up his statement with even the smallest inflexion of emotion!
‘Eating?’
His lazy smile infuriated her. ‘You know damn well I didn’t mean that! Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten the agreement we made—we’ve been married less than twenty-four hours and already you’ve given me advance notice that you’re doing everything you can to break it.’
‘Not everything, sweetheart. I haven’t even begun to try.’ Amusement softened his voice, sent shivers down her spine. ‘I only have to come near you and something cataclysmic happens. But I’ve promised you I won’t push it, that I’ll wait until you’re ready to admit it, face up to what you want.’ His slow smile threatened to crumble her bones. ‘We’ll put the whole thing on the back burner and get to that coffee before it’s stone-cold. I know I need it, even if you don’t.’
He opened the door and stood aside for her to exit, and after a moment’s hesitation she did, her head spinning. Putting the troubled subject on one side, as he’d so laconically suggested, was out of the question. She was going to have to restate the ground rules again, loud and clear.
But how to do it effectively when he’d made it perfectly clear that he knew darn well how he could make her respond to his daunting sexuality without even trying, humiliating her so completely that her brain had dried up to the size and consistency of a shrivelled walnut?
It wasn’t until she’d followed him outside to where he’d elected they should eat breakfast—a teak table set beneath the shade of an ancient pear tree—that the answer came to her.
She pulled out a chair and sat, watching him narrowly. He’d wrapped a padded cosy around the cafetiére and the coffee was still hot and aromatic. She accepted the cup he passed her and stated, ‘We have an agreement. You’ve already been paid for your part in it, so I expect you to keep to the letter of it, not pocket the money and then decide you can do as you please.’
On one level she was proud of her clipped tone, the restatement of how she viewed their relationship—such as it was. On another she felt the unease of emptiness, the feeling that she was throwing away something of importance, something that could enrich her life.
She looked at the strong black coffee she needed so badly and knew she wouldn’t be able to swallow a single mouthful. Her throat was too tight, painfully constricted. But there was one more thing to be said.
‘You want to have sex to spice up the coming twelve months. Forget it.’ She folded her arms across her diaphram, her small chin stubborn. ‘I’m not an inanimate toy for you to play with, Mr Cole. I have feelings.’
‘I know you have, Mrs Cole,’ he said softly. ‘It’s simply a question of when you’re going to take them off the rein.’
Uncomfortably flustered by the honeyed softness of his voice, the mesmeric, wickedly intimate gleam of his golden eyes, his use of her married title, she compressed her lips to stop them trembling and reminded herself of the other woman. Of Chloe.
And she said harshly, ‘You know nothing about me. But I think I’ve been around you long enough to recognise at least one genuine emotion. You’re in love with your friend’s sister, Chloe Abbot. As a prospective husband for his sister your friend wouldn’t rate you very highly—about zero on a scale of one to ten, I’d imagine. I guess that’s why you agreed to go through a marriage ceremony with me. The money. In a year’s time you won’t be empty handed. You could even use the bulk of it to help her start up in business, go in as her partner. Fine. But don’t look to me to provide you with sex while you’re waiting.’
CHAPTER NINE
SILENTLY Jethro cursed himself. His plan hadn’t included putting his cards on the table this soon. He’d probably blown his chances. His only excuse was that the relief of realising that she wasn’t one of the sisterhood of gold-diggers he had momentarily believed she might be had addled his brain.
Add to that his compelling physical reaction to her—her tell-tale trembling response to his earlier light caresses when he’d massaged the knots of tension from her shoulders—and his self-discipline, his will-power, had been kicked into touch.
So he’d blown it, made his intentions known far too soon. And she’d got this weird idea in her head concerning himself and Chloe!
For a guy who was reputed to have one of the keenest business brains on the planet he was making one hell of a mess of wooing his wife!
His wife.
Hunger for her clawed at him until the need to reach for her, crush her body to his, kiss her until she darn well had to admit that she felt far more than the indifference she feigned so badly was imperative. Then he’d take her to bed, make love to her until she understood that there was an incandescent beauty to the act of sex that could lead to other things. Like love. And trust.
The physical alchemy between them was earth-shattering. She was doing her damnedest to deny it but he could recognise a woman’s sexual response and knew he could easily make her admit it. Heat gathered inside him. He could take her in his arms and make her lose herself, forget whatever it was that made her lock her emotions away in a cage.
But she looked so uptight, her arms wrapped around her slender body, the dappled sunlight slanting between the heavy leaf canopy making her look like a creature of the air, insubstantial as the morning mist. Her coffee was untouched and there was a haunted look in her deep blue eyes that told him she would do anything to be able to walk away. It touched him deeply.
He loved her, for pity’s sake! And love for her, and caring for her, won the day. There was no way he was going to put the cart before the horse, make her admit that she wanted him physically before she was ready to trust her future happiness to him. Love came first; it had to. And trust.
There was no going back, so he had to find a way to limit the damage he’d done, and then go forward. He told her gently, ‘You’re barking up the wrong tree if you think I’m in love with Chloe. I’ve always looked on her as a kid sister, and that’s the gospel truth.’
Her eyes flicked in his direction. Disbelieving? Suspicious? He had earned her mistrust and he was going to have to deal with it, say something more positive. Nevertheless, there was an up side to her misconceptions about Chloe’s place in his affections.
She had instinctively tuned in to his love for his sister. Chloe was all the family he had. His father was dead and their mother hadn’t been seen since she’d left shortly after Chloe’s birth. He’d worried over the little minx when she’d appeared intent on throwing herself off the rails, lectured her, cajoled her, rejoiced with her when she’d finally got herself together and started to make something of her life. And Allie had picked up the vibes, which meant she was beginning to read him, get interested in him as a person in his own right and not merely a means to an end.
