AllFreeNovel
Share Us
'I see,' Cally said slowly. 'Yet another reason for you to need my urgent return.' She swallowed some hot coffee. 'Have you told her that we've been living apart?'
'I decided against that. After all, I'd only just told her that we were getting married. The news that I was a bachelor again so soon might have aroused her latent maternal instinct and brought her hurrying home to investigate, so I thought it best not to burden her.'
'Of course.' Her voice was tight. 'And now there's no necessity for embarrassing explanations. Because I'm back.' She paused. 'I presume I'm required to play the part of the loving and dutiful wife?'
'I certainly hope so,' he said silkily. 'But she's not arriving immediately, so you'll have plenty of time to rehearse. And you'll need it. When it comes to digging, my mother isn't solely interested in Mayan artefacts.'
Cally bit her lip. 'You certainly have everything worked out in advance.'
'If I had,' Nick said tersely, 'I would not have spent my wedding night alone last year.'
'I've only your word for it that you did,' Cally fired back
without thinking, and paused, appalled at her own indiscretion. Remembering too late that she'd forbidden herself any reference to Nick's infidelity with Vanessa Layton.
Oh, God, she groaned inwardly. I've just broken my own taboo. Now he's going to ask what I mean—and I don't know what to say. How to find an explanation that doesn't make me sound like some pathetic, jealous idiot.
'Are you crazy?' The grey eyes were like steel. 'My attention was fully occupied in looking for you, darling, not choosing a substitute bedmate. Besides, you're going to atone fully for any previous disappointment you caused me,' he added harshly.
Cally drank the rest of her coffee and put down the cup. She said, 'I—really don't need any further reminders.'
His smile was as hard as his gaze. 'In that case, shall we be leaving?'
As he pushed back his chair and rose she said bitterly, 'And let's not pretend I have a choice.'
She was aware of the envious glances following her as she walked at his side back to the inn to pay the bill.
She thought if you knew—if you only knew... And could have wept.
They travelled in silence. Cally sat with her hands folded in her lap, staring sightlessly through the windscreen, her thoughts caught on the same weary treadmill.
The car was her cage. The motorway her path to her own personal hell. And there was nothing more she could do. No argument—no appeal she could offer—carried any weight with him, as he'd made mockingly clear from the beginning.
Nick had bought her, and now he expected to see a return on his investment—however temporary.
She leaned back in her seat, closing her eyes, listening to the smooth hum of the motor, images from the past dissolving and reforming as the edges of her consciousness started to blur.
‘I suppose you know that you're trespassing?'
And her own reply, made defensive by guilt, as she stared down from the back of her horse at the tall young man confronting her on the path. I was just taking a shortcut across the edge of the wood. Sir Ranald never objected.'
'Unfortunately Sir Ranald's no longer around to express an opinion either way,' he said. 'But I am, and I came out after pigeon.' He indicated the gun he was carrying. 'Supposing I'd accidentally winged you instead? Or your horse? In future, sweetheart, take the long way round.' The strange silver-grey eyes flickered over her, absorbing the damp cotton shirt outlining her small breasts, her slender denim-clad thighs. He added quietly, 'You'll find it safer.'
And with another long, considering look he turned and vanished as abruptly as he 'd appeared, leaving Cally to lean forward on Baz's neck, gasping as if she'd been winded after a gallop, instead of merely taking a gentle hack across someone else's land as she 'd done so often before.
But never again, she swore as she clicked her tongue to Baz and they set off again. In future she'd give the Wylstone estate, and its new owner, a very wide berth.
And she'd meant it, Cally thought. From then on she'd scrupulously avoided any diversions through the dappled shade of the Home Wood.
And then she'd come in from shopping one day to find her grandfather entertaining a visitor in the drawing room.
'Ah, come in, my dear,' Robert Naylor had hailed her. 'Tempest, I don't think you've met my granddaughter, Caroline. Cally—this is poor Ranald's cousin. Sir Nicholas Tempest. He plans to live at Wylstone, so the rumours were wrong. We're going to have neighbours after all.'
'No, we haven't been formally introduced.' Nicholas Tempest's mouth was solemn as he shook hands with her, but the grey eyes were sparking with amusement. 'I came to ask your grandfather to dine with me next week,' he went on, his fingers still holding hers. 'I hope you'll be able to accompany him.'
