The Purchased Wife(30)

'Nothing to say?' she challenged.

'I will not answer these charges while you're so distressed,' he said flatly, then on a sigh when fresh tears welled he moved to pull her back to him again. 'Tell me about your half-brother,' he prompted huskily.

'He's the son my father wanted from my mother but never got.'

'So he's younger than you?'

She nodded. 'Nineteen. My mother was already pregnant with him when she left us. He lives with his father in Banff.'

'You were miserable being married to me. You needed a shoulder to cry on so you rang him up.'

'Someone I knew loved me.' She gave another nod, thereby missing Xander's infinitesimal wince. 'I didn't expect him to climb on the next plane to England to come and sort you out. He had no idea who he was dealing with. It was almost a relief when Hugo Vance refused him access to the house.'

'Why did he do that? If he's your brother of course he's welcome in our home!'

'Marcel wasn't on your very short accepted list.' Nell sat up and used the crumpled tissue to dab her eyes again. 'And he might only be nineteen but looks a lot older because he's big, six feet three already and built to suit-a heck of a sportsman; can white-water raft like you would not believe.'

'You're proud of him.'

'Mmm.' It was that simple and neat. 'I think Hugo Vance felt threatened by him.'

'How is it that you or your father have never so much as spoken his name to me?'

'My father refuses to have his name mentioned because he blames Marcel for stealing his wife away. He's still hurting. I've just got used to never mentioning him because that's the way it's always been. And anyway, you and I didn't have the kind of relationship that encouraged sharing secrets.'

A small silence followed while Nell dabbed at her eyes and Xander lost himself in deep thought. Then he hissed out a sigh. 'The irony of it,' he muttered.

Nell didn't find anything ironical in what had been said. 'Why was he driving your car?' he asked suddenly.

She gave a small shift with her hunched shoulders. 'Because I let him,' seemed excuse enough because the hell if she was going to admit that once she'd escaped Rosemere she then had a stupid change of heart and got so upset about it, Marcel had to drive because she wasn't fit to…

'OK...' said with such slow patience Nell knew that he knew she was fobbing him off. 'Explain to me, then, if he's so into playing your hero, why he ran away from the accident scene.'

'He didn't-and don't you dare speak of Marcel in that nasty tone!' She swung on him angrily.

'Now I know why I'm jealous,' Xander said bluntly.

Nell looked away again, refusing point blank to take up that comment. 'He wasn't licensed to drive here,' she admitted grudgingly. 'He wasn't used to our narrow, winding lanes,' and he wasn't used to driving such a small but very powerful car. 'When he lost control on the bend I thought we were both going to die .. .'

A hand arrived at the base of her spine, long fingers rubbing in a strangely painful, comforting stroke. 'But you didn't. . .' he said gruffly.

Nell shook her head. 'Marcel wasn't wearing his seat belt.' It was just another thing she'd felt guilty about. She'd been so stupidly upset she hadn't noticed he hadn't belted himself in. 'If you want irony,' she mumbled, 'when he was thrown out of the car he suffered barely a scratch.' She grimaced into the tissue. 'When I realised how bad things were for me I was scared for him. I convinced him to lift me into the driver's seat then begged him to leave. He wouldn't go. He was upset, angry with himself, scared for me-and I've never seen him look so young and helpless...' The hand at her spine rubbed again, she quivered on a sigh and swallowed fresh tears. 'He used my mobile phone to call an ambulance then stayed beside me until we heard it arrive then he hid in the woods until I was safely inside the ambulance. I was so worried about him, I got a nurse in A&E to call his mobile and reassure him I was absolutely fine.'

'I didn't know that.'

'Don't sound so surprised,' Nell flung out. 'You might be the control freak around here but I know how to get my own way when I need to. I picked a young student nurse with her romantic ideals still intact. She thought she was calling up my lover-she adored being a part of my wicked tryst.'

'You amaze me sometimes,' he laughed though it wasn't really a laugh. 'I truly believed you were the most open and honest person I know but you can lie with the best of them!' Her shrug told him she couldn't care less what he thought or believed.

'Where was he staying?' he bit out next. 'I had every hotel and pub for miles around carefully combed for him without getting back a single damn clue!'

'He was backpacking. He camped out in a farmer's field.' 'Enterprising of him.'

'He's very self-sufficient.'

'Matinee-idol material.' His hand left her back.

He really was jealous. Nell smiled into the now crumpled tissue. Then he uttered another one of those sighs and tried to pull her back down to him but Nell refused to go.

'I want to go to Rosemere,' she announced.

'I want you here with me.'

Just like that, quietly spoken but deadly serious. Nell turned to look at him and found those jet-glossed eyes roaming over her with blatant messages.

It wasn't fair. She looked away again as a whole gamut of weak sensations went sweeping through her. 'I'll stay married to you until the baby comes.'

'Thank you,' he said.

'But afterwards we get a divorce.'

'You need another tissue, agape mou. That one is just about done.'

'I'm being serious!'

'So am I. You are about to start weeping again and that tissue has mopped up too many tears as it is.'

And those tears just returned all the harder. 'I can't seem to switch them off,' she sobbed.

'Come here.' This time he refused to take no for an answer so she landed in the crook of his arm. 'You are just in need of some tender loving care right now.'

'Not from you.'

'Yes, from me. Who else have you got?' It was so brutally frank that she winced.

'Tell me why the call you made to Marcel today was traced to Paris.'

'He's been staying with the French side of his family. I knew he was flying back to Banff today so I wanted to catch him and doubly reassure him that I was OK before he left.'

'Was he reassured?'

Nell nodded but kept her mouth clamped tightly shut as to how she had given that reassurance.

'I would like to have listened in on that call,' Xander drawled with lazy amusement.

He knew, the beast. He knew she'd convinced Marcel that she was gloriously, happily in love with her husband.

'I thought you had meetings to attend,' she prompted. 'I am attending to you.'

'Well, I can-'

'Remain right where you are.' Tightening the hold he had on her, he rose up until he had her pinned to the bed. 'I am the control freak,' he murmured huskily. 'Be controlled or watch me get upset.'

Green eyes searched gently mocking dark ones. He was gorgeous-irresistible. He kissed her lightly on both corners of her vulnerable mouth, on the warm, soft, tear-swollen bottom lip then tracked a whole line of soft kisses along her jaw until he reached that sensitive spot by her ear. Things she did not want to happen started to happen. Nell quivered out a sigh of discontent. He caught it, tasted it with his tongue and she felt the blunt jut of his desire thicken against her thigh.

'No,' she said. 'I don't want-'

To do this, she was going to say but the moment she opened her mouth to speak the gentle dart of his tongue stole the rest away. With the arrival of his fingers across her cheekbones he deepened that kiss, making love to her mouth with a slow tenderness that had her shifting restlessly beneath his weight. Each time he paused he looked deep into the conflict taking place in her eyes, if she tried to say anything he returned to the kiss until eventually she forgot what it was she wanted to protest about. Her fingers shifted, relaxing out of the tense fists she had them clenched in to begin a slow foray across the leanness of his taut hips to his waist and eventually with a slow, shuddering sigh over warm flesh covered by cool white shirting to his shoulders, his neck and with a final convulsive move buried them in his hair.

She was lost, his for the taking. The duvet was pushed aside.

The only time he allowed her to think was those few too brief seconds he required to remove the rest of her clothes and even then the moment she showed signs of protesting he was back again, smothering out everything but him and what he was doing and how he was making her feel. His own clothes disappeared by degrees, she didn't even notice until the manoeuvre was over and she was being overwhelmed by the fully naked male. He made love to her breasts, so acutely receptive that she stretched into a lithe, sensual arch, toes and fingers curling in drowning pleasure that earned her yet another deep kiss to her mouth. And he was trembling, she liked that. Her restless hands crowded each muscular flex and quiver until, 'Touch me,' he groaned and she did, closing her fingers around smooth silk on steel and felt him throb and thicken then lost touch with her breathing when his long fingers tested the wetness between her thighs.

Bright rainbows of colour began to dance on her senses, and he answered them with a thick, hoarse growl. His heart was pounding, hers was pounding, as he eased his weight between her spread thighs then made that smooth drive into her, and she opened her eyes to look at his harsh look of hungry passion etched on his face.

'I don't want to love you this badly,' she confided on a sad little whisper.

He lost control. She'd never known him do it so thoroughly before so the difference between smooth, slick, sophisticated lover and a man lost in the wild, throbbing beat of his desire was startling. All she could do was hang on for dear life as he drove the two of them to the edge then over it in a wild, hot charge that threw him into a paroxysm of gasps and shudders that just seemed to go on and on.