In Want of a Wife? (17 page)

‘Good news and bad news on that front, as I’m pretty sure you’ll find out for yourself.’

‘Bad news?’

‘You have a habit of fixating on the worst-case scenario.’

‘It’s better than living in cloud cuckoo land!’ Lizzy said tartly. If only he knew that she was in danger of taking up permanent residence there, given half a chance!

Louis smiled wryly at her. Her hair had dried and was a riotous, tumbling mass streaming over her shoulders and his fingers itched to feel their silky length.

‘The good news is that I’ve managed to locate Freddy and your sister.’

‘Where?’

‘In Las Vegas.’

‘Las Vegas?’

‘Having a wild time as the newly married Mr and Mrs Freddy Dale.’

Lizzy held her head in her hands and groaned. Her parents might have acknowledged that Leigh and Maisie were the wild ones in the family, but Leigh eloping and getting married—thereby depriving her society-conscious mother of the thrill of a fluffy white wedding—would hit them hard. Even if they would never have been able to stretch to the fluffy white wedding.

‘I’ve made sure that they’re booked on the next flight back.’

‘How on earth did you manage to track them down?’

‘Freddy is anything but cunning when it comes to spending money. He obviously withdrew a large sum of cash, but promptly ran out of money a couple of days into their adventure and was forced to use his credit card. As I told you, it’s remarkably easy to track him down by following the trail of his spending.’

‘I can’t believe that Leigh could have been so
stupid.
I can’t
believe that anyone so clever could be so silly!’ She cupped her face in her hands and peered up at him. ‘Did you talk to either of them? Personally?’

‘Much to Freddy’s horror, I did,’ Louis said drily. ‘In fact, I spoke to
both
of them. It’s always wise to get a second opinion when it comes to Freddy and what his side of the story is.’

‘And …?’

‘And it’s all been sorted.’ Louis allowed himself a small smile of satisfaction at this. Everything had a solution, and this particular solution had come to him in a heartbeat, although it went against the stance he had always taken with Freddy. Not only had he bailed him out, but the engine was now turning to do rather more than hand him out pocket money as he saw fit. For the first time, he was doing the one thing he had resolutely refused to do over the years—he was handing Freddy his independence. And he felt pretty okay about that.

He also knew that his solution could only meet with approval from the woman sitting opposite him and he felt pretty okay about that as well.

It was a win-win situation.

‘What does
that
mean?’ But that sneaking, treacherous inclination to rely on him was creeping over her.

‘They want to set up a boutique-hotel halfway between here and Edinburgh, tailored to work hand-in-hand with Crossfeld—offering package holidays and complimentary golf at Crossfeld without the high prices, and also excursions into the city et cetera. Your sister’s degree in tourism and marketing should come in handy, but I’ve told her that there’s nothing doing unless she finishes her degree. It’ll be tough going for a while, but I have people who can hold their hands until it kicks off. And Freddy … He’s besotted with your sister and, reading between the lines, she doesn’t sound the kind of girl who will let him have any leeway. He needs a woman to keep him in check. I think he’s found one.’

‘Hold on. This is just going way too fast for me.’

‘Which bit of it?’

‘The bit where I try and figure out how the blissful, newly wedded couple go from young and broke to opening a boutique hotel.’

‘I am personally delegating sufficient funds to Freddy to enable him to set it up.’ Louis frowned because this was not the unquestioning relief and gratitude he had expected. But since when had Lizzy Sharp ever done the predictable? Still.

‘You mean you’re
giving
him money, and by extension giving my
sister
money?’

‘Is that a problem?’

‘After everything you said about my family? After the accusations you’ve thrown at them? How can you expect otherwise?’

L
OUIS
threw up his hands in a gesture of exasperation. ‘What ever happened to the graceful art of just saying
thank you?’

Lizzy, intent on building fortifications around herself, and eager to cling to any excuse to impose distance between them, looked at him sheepishly from under her lashes.

He had taken time out to allay her parents’ fears about Freddy and his reputation. He had taken time out to phone Nicholas and extricate the real story of what had happened, even though there must have been a part of him that was glad of the outcome of the misunderstandings, however deviously it had been made to come to pass. He had from all accounts dismissed Jessica, proving that, whatever he thought about the suitability of marriage between social equals, he still had his own standards. He had found Leigh and Freddy.

There was no necessity for him to have done that, just as there had been no necessity for him to have intervened in any of the myriad situations that had afflicted the Sharp family. And, not only had he intervened with Freddy, he had set him up with a means to a livelihood that included her sister, his wife after a whirlwind romance that could probably be entered into the Guinness Book of Records as the shortest in history.

It was no wonder that he was staring at her now as though she was something strange from another planet.

A wave of pure mortification swept over her. Had love displaced all traces of common civility?

‘You’re right,’ Lizzy said quietly. ‘And I’m sorry. I can’t thank you enough for everything you’ve done.’

Louis narrowed his eyes on her face. Strangely, her softly murmured and clearly sincere capitulation left him cold. It was too polite, too distant. He realised that he wanted neither of those things.

‘Yes. I’m a miracle worker.’

‘Do you really think that Leigh and Freddy have a chance of making a go of this marriage of theirs?’

‘Who knows?’ Louis shrugged and looked at her broodingly from under his lashes. ‘Does my opinion matter?’

‘You’re going to be handing over a great deal of money to them.’ Did his opinion matter? Yes, it did, more than he could imagine possible. She tried to seek refuge behind her hastily erected defences once again, but the quizzical, penetrating expression on his face left her flailing.

Lizzy ducked her head and didn’t say anything.

‘Maybe the time is right for Freddy to do whatever he has to do with an inheritance that has been restricted because I didn’t trust him to know how to use it. Maybe I think your sister would use it more wisely than he would.’

‘You don’t even know Leigh. What if she turns out to be one of those gold-diggers you’ve spent so much time telling me about?’

‘What if?’

‘You wouldn’t object?’ She tried to inject scathing cynicism into her voice but instead the scathing cynicism bore a remarkable resemblance to genuine curiosity. ‘I mean, she could have manoeuvred Freddy into a situation of … of marriage.’

‘By kidnapping him and transporting him to Las Vegas, before getting him drunk and forcing him into the nearest Elvis chapel? And all this using a crystal ball so that she could
predict my putting some money their way so that they could set up a business of their own …?’

‘That’s exactly what you would have thought not that long ago!’ Lizzy told him with spirit. ‘More or less.’

Without the obvious exaggeration, Louis grudgingly admitted to himself that she had a point. Life had been a hell of a lot more straightforward when he had been thinking in clichés.

‘True,’ he conceded with a wry smile.

‘Don’t tell me that you’re agreeing with me?’ Lizzy said uncertainly.

‘I’m big enough Are you?’

‘Am I what?’ A vision of unchartered, dangerous territory loomed in front of her like an endless ocean, full of currents that led to places she couldn’t imagine, and loaded with perils against which she had no suitable armour.

‘Big enough to admit to mistakes.’

‘What kind of mistakes?’ Lizzy asked suspiciously. Louis looked away to stifle a grin, because this was the Lizzy that he knew: not the one who caved in but the one who stubbornly stood firm in the face of whatever disapproving winds happened to be blowing in her direction. This was the Lizzy astride the way-too-powerful motorcycle, telling him exactly what she thought of him, never mind who he was, how much he earned, how many valuable paintings hung on his walls or how many houses he happened to own dotted all over the globe.

‘I want to hear you admit that I’m not the bad guy you thought I was,’ he encouraged her, enjoying the flame of colour that spread across her cheeks.

She made an inarticulate sound and looked at him with lofty superiority which, judging from his expression, he wasn’t buying.

‘You labelled me a snob.’

‘You
are
a snob. Just look at your apartment! ‘

‘Admit it, Lizzy.’

‘Okay, so you’re not all bad, I guess. I suppose.’

‘And that would be because …?’

Lizzy glared at him but her heart wasn’t in it. Really, her stomach was doing strange, flippy things and her eyes were all over him even though they didn’t want to be. Even though they really should be focusing on anything but that beautiful face of his, and that body that was as lean, as powerful and as muscular as the most highly trained and toned athlete.

‘I’ve already said thank you for everything you’ve done on behalf of Rose and Nicholas, and Leigh and Freddy,’ she told him primly. But there was something in the atmosphere between them that was sending shivers through her, making her acutely aware of his proximity.

The silence that greeted this remark thrummed between them like a live electric current.

‘You’re looking at me,’ she said in a choked voice. ‘Don’t look at me.’

‘Why shouldn’t I look at you?’

‘I don’t know what else you want me to say.’

‘Of course you do.’ Seemingly of its own volition, his hand reached out to brush the side of her face and Lizzy’s breath caught painfully in her throat.

This might be just a simple gesture to him, but she was in love with him, and simple gestures like that became buried deep inside her like unexploded mines, waiting to detonate at some point in time when she would least expect it. She just couldn’t give in. But neither could she seem to resist.

Her eyelids fluttered and she sat on her hands.

‘You seem to have had an effect on me,’ Louis murmured, half to himself, in such a soft voice that she had to strain with every ounce of her being to hear what he had said.

‘What kind of effect?’

‘You were right when you said that only a short time ago I would have suspected your sister of manoeuvring Freddy into
a situation with the hope of money coming his way. You were right when you thought that I would have made no attempt to reconcile Nicholas and your sister because I had approached that relationship with the preconceived idea that she was on the lookout for a man with money. But that was then and this is now. I want you, Lizzy Sharp, and I want you to admit that it’s mutual.’

Lizzy chewed her lip. The word ‘want’ sent an icy shiver down her spine. But the word ‘regret’ was even more scary. Making love to him that first time had been the most wonderful experience in her very inexperienced world, and to walk away from the opportunity of making love to him again was scary. A rush of wild, restless energy raced through her. She didn’t want to think or work out the rights and wrongs of the situation, she just wanted to leap in, eyes wide open, and take whatever she could while it was there. Was that a sin? More than Rose and Leigh, she knew the rules of the game; however much he claimed to have changed, his change wouldn’t run that deep, not when it came to his own personal life.

‘Is that why you helped me?’ she asked on a whisper. ‘Because you wanted to get into my good graces so that I would agree to climb into bed with you?’

There was just the shadow of hesitation before he strenuously denied any such thing, just sufficient pause for her to know the answer to her question.

She squeezed her eyes tightly shut and pulled him to her. ‘Okay. You win. I want you and I want you to make love to me, no strings attached.’

For Louis, ‘no strings attached’ should have brought a smile of triumph to his lips, but instead he felt a stirring of dissatisfaction. But the sweet smell of her was overpowering and, in one easy, fluid movement, he lifted her from the chair and carried her towards his bedroom while she clung to him with her hands clasped around his neck and her eyes closed.

The bed was still rumpled from where she had been
sleeping on it only a short while before. ‘Open your eyes,’ he commanded, moving to close the shutters and then switching on the Tiffany lamp on the chest of drawers so that a riot of light and shadow broke through the darkness in the bedroom. ‘I want you to look at me. I don’t want you to act as though this is just something that’s happening to you. I want you to dive in and feel and see
everything …’

He got rid of his shirt, tossing it on the floor, and then he pulled his belt through the loops of his trousers while he walked towards her. ‘I could tie you up,’ he said, dangling the belt from one finger and then laughing at her shocked expression. ‘Maybe we’ll leave that experience for another time …’

Lizzy’s entire nervous system quickened at the prospect of that. The thought of being tied up by Louis Jumeau, at the mercy of whatever he wanted to do to her willing body, carried the thrill of the forbidden. And, while her body responded to those images in her head, her mind played with that throw-away remark:
another time …

When he had disposed of all his clothing, he moved to stand directly in front of her, proudly and impressively naked. The ache between her thighs became ever more insistent as he curled his fingers into her hair and guided her to his erection. She felt his sharp intake of breath as her mouth curved around it and she began caressing it, using her mouth and her hands, touching him everywhere and loving the way his body was responding.

When she angled her body so that she could raise her eyes to his face, she saw that his head was flung back. The rise and fall of his broad chest sent a surge of heat pouring through her, pooling between her legs until she was aching to be touched.

Just then he looked down at her. His black eyes were hot and slumberous.

‘I like watching you do that,’ he said gruffly. He gently eased her off him and slid into bed with her. ‘Your turn. I
want you to undress very, very slowly. I don’t want to miss a thing.’

Lizzy blushed and laughed under her breath, but she was already so turned on that taking off her clothes while he watched—propped up on one elbow, getting her to twist this way and that as each item of clothing fell to the floor—filled her with a heady wantonness.

She sashayed towards him when he crooked his finger and when he parted her legs with his hand she obeyed instinctively, her whole body trembling as he brought her towards him and positioned her so that he could taste her. She felt the exploratory push of his tongue as it slid along the moist cleft between her legs and she was panting as he complemented the action with his fingers so that she was bombarded with sensations that made it almost painful for her to breathe.

Her body was on fire when she eventually joined him on the bed, and she squirmed and writhed as he paid attention to her breasts, caressing them with his hands and licking her stiffened nipples until she wanted to scream.

Was it because she now recognised her love for him that made the experience so much
more?
She couldn’t get close enough to him, and this time when their bodies could take no more he was prepared, reaching over to the drawer of his bedside table, taking care of contraception. This was, of course, incredibly responsible but it still made her feel cheap in some way—and she knew why. She would have loved nothing more than to conceive his child.

How awful was that?

If he could read her mind, she was sure that he would run screaming to the hills.

But he couldn’t, and just in case those sharp eyes of his picked up any unconscious messages in her eyes she kept them lightly closed, grinding against his hard body. Then she wrapped her legs around his waist as he thrust into her
and began moving in a rhythm that made her body sing in immediate response.

She couldn’t understand how it was that he could be so damned good without having feelings for her, knowing just when to slacken his pace and when to pick it up. But then he was a male; making love was easy business for them. It wasn’t an emotional rollercoaster-ride mired in all sorts of tangled feelings.

He might seem to know her body with the intimacy of someone who cared, but he was an expert. Other women probably thought exactly the same as she was thinking now when he started touching them. She wondered how many had fallen in love with him—even when he had played his noble trump-card and told them that he wasn’t in it for the long haul, thereby leaving his conscience crystal-clear for when he disappeared over the horizon. Had Jessica fallen in love with him and then actually thought that he might commit to her because of their familial ties, because he happened to be her brother’s closest friend?

‘What’s going through your head?’ Louis asked, facing her on his side, and stroked some of her hair away from her face. ‘I like the way you don’t wear make-up.’

‘You like the novelty of me.’ Lizzy gathered herself sufficiently to face him and smile.

Louis wasn’t sure whether he cared for that, but he was too damned content just at the moment to question it. And, anyway, she probably had a point. Everything about her was refreshing, and it wasn’t just the fact that she wore no make-up. He found that he wanted to do things for her, unprompted and often without much hope of gratitude. It was strange but it was invigorating, and he supposed you could have called that the attraction of novelty. He just hadn’t realised that his pallet had become so jaded.

‘I come from a different class,’ she said. ‘Ordinary middle-class people who have spent their lives trying to achieve some
financial security. Fat lot of good it did them in the end, with Dad and his crazy investments.’ But that was something she would think about another time. It was just too big to take on along with everything else that had been going on in her life recently. ‘I look different, I talk different and I work with underprivileged kids. I bet coming to my school was an eye-opener for you. I live in a completely different world to you. In fact, we might as well have been born on different planets.’