Authors: Yvonne Whittal
'With
my
money behind it, you mean,'
Anton corrected harshly. 'The necessary papers were signed this
morning, and Avron Enterprises has now become a subsidiary company of DeVere
Enterprises.'
A shock of surprise rippled through Laura, but she was
more concerned at that moment with Camilla, whose beautiful face went
almost purple with rage.
'You fiend!' Camilla shouted when she managed to find her
voice. 'You knew I—'
'Yes, I knew you wanted to buy the company, and I went
along with your plans, making you believe that I was negotiating on
your behalf while in actual fact I was doing so for myself.' A cynical
smile curved his hard mouth. 'You wanted me to sign security for you
until Karl's estate was wound up, and I agreed, but while you were
congratulating yourself on your easy victory, I was having you
investigated.'
'How dare you have me investigated as though I were some
sort of criminal!' Camilla shouted at him, but Anton continued as if
she had not spoken.
'I received a report yesterday, and I found it extremely
interesting to discover that the bulk of Karl von Dissel's estate went
to his children by his first marriage.'
'Karl was a fool!'
'
You
were a fool, Camilla, to think
you could get away with it,' Anton contradicted icily. 'Or did you
think I would merely pay up and smile if you could get me to divorce
Laura and marry you before I found out the truth?'
'Even if you hadn't
married me I would have repaid every cent once the business was on its
feet,' Camilla argued.
'Really?' Anton smiled disdainfully. 'If you'd told me the
truth at the start I might have considered assisting you in starting a
business, but you lied to me, so what guarantee did I have that you
would have repaid me?'
Seeing Camilla with her composure shattered, Laura could
almost feel sorry for her, but Camilla rallied swiftly. 'Surely you
could have trusted me?' she demanded accusingly.
'Trusted you?' Anton laughed scornfully. 'You married Karl
for money and position. Now you have nothing except a meagre yearly
allowance and a title which is of no value in this country, so find
some other fool to give you the wealth you desire.'
'You're no better than I am!' she shrieked, realising that
she had lost, and the woman Laura had once thought beautiful became
ugly as she shed completely her cloak of poised dignity. 'You tricked
me right from the start!' she flung at Anton accusingly.
'Yes,' he admitted. 'You see, Camilla, I was one jump
ahead of you all the time, but now the time for playing games is over,
and I sincerely hope our paths never cross in future.'
'You're a fiend! A cruel, insensitive, hateful
fiend
!'
Camilla's lips were drawn back against her teeth in a snarl of rage,
her dark eyes shooting venomous darts as she turned on Laura and
shouted, 'You're
welcome
to him, do you hear?'
Laura flinched when she heard the front door slam behind
Camilla moments later, and then she felt Anton shaking with silent
laughter beside her. She stared up at him in stern, disapproving
silence, but his infectious laughter, like a low rumble in his throat,
finally made the corners of her mouth lift in a smile.
'She's right, you know. You
are
a
fiend,' she accused, turning into his arms. 'The nicest possible fiend,
though.'
'You're prejudiced,' he told her, tongue in cheek.
'Naturally,' she admitted, drawing his head down to hers.
'I love you, remember?'
Their lips met in a long, satisfying kiss that left her
flushed and breathless, and with eyes glittering as if the stars had
settled in them.
'You should be upstairs in bed waiting like a good girl
for your cocoa,' Anton admonished her lightly while his lips trailed
tantalisingly from her cheek to her throat.
'I know,' she whispered happily, 'but I heard a car
coming
up the drive, and when you stayed away so long I wondered if something
was wrong.'
'Laura…' His lips lingered for a moment where
he could feel the rapid beat of her pulse at the base of her throat,
then he raised his head and looked down at her with something close to
remorse in his eyes. 'I must have hurt you very much at times with my
reluctance to explain my motives for encouraging Camilla, but I would
like you to know that, despite what the newspapers said, our meetings
were purely business, and we were seldom alone, as those clever
photographers tried to imply.'
Laura winced inwardly at the memory of that evening when
he had invited Camilla home for dinner, but she brushed it aside and
smiled. 'We won't talk about it again.'
'No, we won't talk about it again,' he said sternly.
'We'll talk instead about the child you're going to have, shall we?'
Laura drew a sharp breath and stared up at him with a
measure of uncertainty mirrored in her eyes. 'You know?'
'Did you think I wouldn't?'
'But how?'
He smiled then, and a wave of heat swept up into her face
when he said: 'I haven't been married to you for four months without
learning certain things about you.'
Unable to sustain his glance, she buried her hot face
against him. 'Do you mind? About the baby, I mean?'
'Not if it pleases you to have my child,' he said simply,
and she flung her arms about his neck in a wild surge of happiness.
'Oh, Anton, Anton, I love you so much!'
His arms tightened about her, and he kissed her hard and
lingeringly on the mouth before he released her. 'I'll make you a fresh
mug of cocoa.'
'I don't really want anything to drink,' she said
unsteadily, her heartbeats quickening when she noticed a wicked gleam
in those steel-grey eyes.
'What do you want, then?'
'You,' she said impishly, then she was swung up into his
arms.
'You little witch,' he muttered laughingly, then she was
being carried from the living-room and up the stairs to their bedroom.
Sally forestalled them in the passage, however, and
demanded suspiciously, 'What's wrong with Aunty Laura?'
'Your Aunty Laura has a fever,' Anton announced without
hesitation, and Laura flushed hotly.
'Don't be silly, Anton,' she whispered admonishingly,
trying to free herself, but his arms merely tightened about her, and a
teasing intimacy lurked in the eyes that met hers.
'That's what you said downstairs, wasn't it?' he demanded
with mock innocence, and as her colour heightened he turned his
attention to Sally. 'By the way,' he told her, 'in a few months' time,
if all goes well, we're going to have a baby for you to look after.'
'Really?' Sally demanded, her bright, eager eyes seeking
Laura's. 'Really, Aunty Laura?'
'Yes, really,' Laura confirmed weakly.
'Oh, boy!' Sally announced with glee. 'Just wait till I
tell the kids at school!'
'Heaven help me,' Laura moaned under her breath.
'What do you want, Uncle Anton?' Sally demanded. 'A boy or
a girl?'
'It will be a boy,' he said at once, then his expression
grew stern. 'Now get to bed, young lady, and go to sleep.'
'Okay,' Sally agreed obediently. 'Goodnight.'
'Now, where were we?' Anton asked of no one in particular
when Sally disappeared into her room.
'Anton…' Laura began warningly.
'Oh, yes,' he said abruptly, walking with firm, purposeful
steps towards their bedroom and kicking the door shut behind him. 'I
have to do something about your fever, if I remember correctly.'
'Anton, what if it's a girl?' she asked helplessly as he
set
her
on her feet and removed her nightdress in between kisses.
'Then it will be a delightful change after three
generations of boys,' he smiled, drawing her against him, and after
that she had no further opportunity to discuss that particular subject.
Their desire for each other was intense and, for the first
time, Laura held nothing back. She gave as much as she received during
those moments of prolonged pleasure until the exquisite tension snapped
within her, and she was submerged in a wave of ecstasy that made her
cling to Anton weakly.
Content and happy, she lay in his arms with her head
pillowed on his shoulder. Could this be true? Or had it all been a
dream? she wondered as she lay listening to the rhythmic beat of his
heart. She was pleasantly tired, but she could not sleep, and somehow
she sensed that Anton too was lying awake.
His skin was warm and faintly damp when she moved her hand
across his hair-roughened chest. 'Darling…'
'Hm…?' He turned his head and brushed his lips
against her forehead.
'When did you know you loved me?'
He laughed softly as he turned to her and trailed a light,
caressing hand down along her thigh and up again to cup her breast. 'I
think I must have known the very first time I met you.'
'I don't believe you,' she said, staying his hand as
it
moved downwards once more across her stomach. 'You ignored me so
completely that I felt like an intruder on that one occasion when I
came here to Bellavista with Robert and Elizabeth.'
'You
were
an intruder,' he agreed
instantly. 'You intruded into my waking and sleeping thoughts to such
an extent that I became determined to keep you out. Fortunately a
distance of over fourteen hundred kilometres separated us, and I made a
point of staying out of the way when you came down to Cape Town on your
occasional visits, but fate eventually threw us together, and I knew
then that I wanted you. I tried to think of a way to keep you here, and
Sally's hysterical obsession finally offered the solution to my
problem.'
'Marriage,' she concluded with a sigh, recalling how
frightened she had been at the prospect of marrying this man she now
loved so much.
'Marriage, yes,' Anton repeated. 'Graham practically
suggested it, and although I found the idea as distasteful as you did
at the time, I knew it would be the only way I could have you.'
'How you must have hated me!'
'Hate is a very strong word,' he said after a thoughtful
pause. 'I disliked what you were doing to me, it made me feel
uncomfortable, but I wanted you and, as a result, I disliked myself a
little bit more each time I made love to you. I tried to stay away from
home as much as possible, but when you were at Gordon's Bay with Sally
I knew I had to find some excuse to go with you. I remembered your
birthday, and rushed out there like an excited schoolboy at the first
available opportunity.' He groaned suddenly and buried his face against
her throat. 'My behaviour sickened me at times, but I couldn't help
myself.'
'Those few days together at the cottage,' Laura whispered,
sliding her fingers lovingly through his crisp, dark hair, and pressing
her lips against his temple. 'They were something special, weren't
they?'
'You certainly made them so.'
'I was trying to show you, in the only way I thought you
would understand, that I loved you, but when we returned to Bellavista
everything somehow settled back into the same unhappy pattern.'
'Camilla had come back,' he said with the old harshness in
his voice. 'When she contacted me a few hours after her arrival, I knew
I had to do something about her… and quickly. It didn't take
me long to discover what she was up to, and when she became interested
in Avron Enterprises, her motives for looking me up became crystal
clear. She was power-hungry, and she wanted it either through me, or
through a company of her own. She knew she couldn't succeed either way
without me, so she turned on the old charm, and I pretended to fall for
it in order to teach her a lesson she wouldn't forget in a hurry.'
'I understand, although I don't entirely approve,' Laura
whispered into the darkness. 'I could have murdered both you and
Camilla that night you invited her to dinner, and then you still had
the gall to stay away hours before you returned home, reeking of her
perfume.'
'That was quite a night, one way and another,' Anton
laughed mockingly as he kissed her hard on the mouth, then he seemed to
sober, and she felt him grow tense beside her in the darkness. 'God,
Laura, you've certainly brought out the best and the worst in me since
we've been married, and I'll never forget that night when I searched
the mountain for you. I knew then what Friedrich must have felt like
when he searched for his Dora, and if I'd found you dead, they could
have buried me as well.'
'Anton…' She tried to speak, but couldn't, and
instead she held him close with all the strength in her slender arms.
'I can't tell you what I felt like when I found you lying
there in the mist,' he groaned against her breast.
'Why didn't you say something when you came in to see me
later that night?'
'I tried to, but you seemed determined to offer me my
freedom, so I took myself off and drove about for hours in a reckless
fury.'
So it had not been Camilla he had rushed off to in such a
hurry, she realised as he switched on the light and lit a cigarette.
'Afterwards,' he went on, blowing a cloud of smoke towards
the ceiling, 'when I heard about your visits to Alex Muir's flat, I thought I'd discovered the reason for your
desire to be free.'
'What idiots we've been!' she sighed.
'Alex Muir has a very discerning eye. It was all there in
the portrait, and it's here before me now.' There was an unmistakable
light in his eyes as he looked down into hers. 'Why have you never
looked at me like this before?'
'How could I bare my soul to you when you'd made it so
clear that you had no need of my love? That you had only contempt for
it, and that—in your own words—you never wanted
your intelligence insulted by the mention of the word "love" between
us?'
'I recall that incident.' Anton's jaw hardened at the
memory. 'It was on our wedding night. You'd said you hated me, and,
dammit
,
it had hurt coming from you while I was feeling like an utter cad after
having taken you by force.'