“You owe me this much at least.”

His eyes were diamond-hard, his fingers inflexible on her waist.

Owed him what? The chance to show the world she hadn’t broken his heart? That he didn’t care how she’d trampled his pride? “You should be thanking me,” she said. “Our marriage would have been a mistake.”

“I thank heaven daily.” His hands tightened on her as he moved them into a turn, and she had to clutch at his shoulder to keep her balance.

He whirled her around a couple of times, making her giddy, his arms hauling her close. This time he didn’t slacken his hold. His lips close to her temple, he murmured, “Relax. I can’t do to you here what I’d like to do. You’re perfectly safe.”

“What you’d like to do?” she echoed, a shiver of apprehension mingled with strange excitement traveling down her spine.

He tilted his head back, allowing a few inches of space between their bodies as he looked down at her, shocking her with the animosity glittering in his eyes. “Wring your pretty, damned spoiled little neck,” he said, almost matter-of-factly.

DAPHNE CLAIR lives in subtropical New Zealand with her Dutch-born husband. They have five children. At eight years old she embarked on her first novel, about taming a tiger. This epic never reached a publisher, but metamorphosed male tigers still prowl the pages of her romances, of which she has written over thirty for Harlequin® and over fifty all told. Her other writing includes nonfiction, poetry and short stories, and she has won literary prizes in New Zealand and the United States.

Readers are invited to visit Daphne Clair’s Web site at www.daphneclair.com.

Claiming His Bride
Daphne Clair

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ONE

SORREL should have known that Blaize Tarnower would be at her cousin’s wedding.

Subconsciously she might have hoped that Elena and her parents wouldn’t invite him, or that he’d have the grace to decline.

But then he probably hadn’t expected her to be here. Possibly no one had told him that after four years Sorrel Kenyon had come home to New Zealand.

She hadn’t seen him inside the church, but while the bridal party posed on the steps for photographs, she turned to make her way to her parents’ car, and there he was, directly in her path.

Tall, dark, and not exactly handsome but certainly striking with his jutting cheekbones, commanding nose and firm mouth, he surveyed her with dispassionate steel-grey eyes.

The woman clinging to his arm looked inquiringly up at him. Peripherally Sorrel noticed her blue eyes, milk-and-roses complexion and perfect features, shaded from the summer sun by an elegant broad-brimmed hat that matched her eyes.

‘Sorrel,’ Blaize said, his deep voice even and almost bored. ‘So you actually made it to a wedding.’

Disconcerted at the subtle sting in his words, she didn’t immediately react.

The woman said, ‘Sorrel?’ Her blue gaze was curious beneath finely shaped brows, and maybe Sorrel imagined that the pink-tipped fingers tightened on the expensive cloth of Blaize’s suit. ‘Like a horse? For the colour of your hair?’

‘It’s a herb,’ Sorrel said mechanically, accustomed to people querying the origin of her name. Her jade-green eyes were still held by the enigmatic male gaze that she sensed was hiding animosity.

‘A bitter herb,’ Blaize’s voice was laced with underlying mockery, ‘though the flowers look sweet.’ Then, as if remembering the manners instilled in him by a meticulous mother and the most prestigious school in Wellington, he introduced her to his companion. ‘Sorrel Kenyon, Cherie. And this is Cherie Watson.’

For a moment Sorrel had thought he was using the French endearment, and an unwelcome pang attacked her heart.

Cherie placed a languid hand in the one Sorrel extended to her, almost immediately withdrawing it. ‘Nice to meet you.’

Sorrel smiled, her manners every bit as ingrained and practised as Blaize’s. ‘You too,’ she lied politely.

Blaize’s glance flicked her, a small movement at the corner of his mouth doubting her sincerity. He knew her far too well.

Cherie said suddenly, as if making a discovery, ‘You must be Blaize’s business partner’s daughter?’

Blaize answered for her. ‘Yes, Sorrel is Ian’s daughter.’ The grey gaze inspected her again, from the untameable auburn curls, over the amber silk suit with a nipped waist, and all the way to the high-heeled shoes she seldom wore now because most men didn’t equal Blaize’s height. ‘You’re looking…well.’

The faintest spark briefly lit his eyes, a tiny ember of desire, but it was enough to stop both Sorrel’s breathing and her heartbeat for a moment, until the blood came rushing back to her body and weakened her limbs. She took a secret, deliberately controlled breath to steady herself. ‘So are you.’

She couldn’t help looking her fill, taking in the small changes.

His cheeks looked leaner; perhaps he had lost a little weight, although he appeared fitter than ever, his body lithe and toned in the formal clothes that conformed to it superbly. His thick black hair was shorter, very disciplined, and his mouth was firmer than she remembered, uncompromising, but perhaps that and the coldness in his eyes were due to her presence.

He hadn’t forgiven her.

Again she felt that shaft of dismay. No more than she deserved, she supposed. A man who’d been left at the altar wasn’t likely to regard the woman who had done it in a charitable light, even after four years. Her own parents had not stopped blaming her for the embarrassment she’d caused all of them.

Cherie said, ‘I heard you were living overseas—Australia?’

She sounded almost accusing.

You’ve no need to worry, Sorrel could have told her. If Blaize had ever loved Sorrel at all, she had effectively put paid to any chance of a future with him. Instead she said, ‘I have been. But Elena is my favourite cousin.’

‘So you’re just visiting?’ Cherie persisted.

Sorrel hesitated. Her job in Melbourne was interesting and she liked the city, liked Australia, but always there was the tug of home.

When her plane had taken a sweeping turn over Cook Strait, giving a breathtaking view of the rugged Marlborough Sounds with the bush growing down to the water, and then honed in between the hills to the notoriously tricky runway at Wellington, she’d felt tears prickling at her eyes, a rush of memories entering her mind. Bush walks without fear of snakes; beaches where sharks seldom bothered the swimmers, and children ran barefoot in the sand; steep, winding streets with houses perched on impossible slopes in crazy tiers, looking down on the white wakes of the inter-island ferries as they headed out of the harbour.

‘I may stay,’ she said now, possessed by a perverse impulse, ‘if I can get a job.’ Hearing her own words, she realised that in the back of her mind she’d been considering the move ever since she’d landed, shaken by that wave of homesickness.

‘What sort of job are you looking for?’ Blaize asked, forcing her to turn to him.

‘I haven’t begun to look yet. I only arrived a couple of days ago.’ Just in time to visit Elena, join in the flurry of preparation, and satisfy herself that the younger girl knew what she was doing.

‘Your parents told me you’ve been working in a department store.’

‘I’m in charge of the women’s fashion section.’

‘A pretty high-powered job, they said.’

‘Yes, but if I’m to move up further it would be into administration, and I like having my own department—being hands-on.’ She was making conversation, plugging the awkward silence with small talk. Changing the subject, she asked, ‘How are your parents?’

‘Very well,’ Blaize answered. ‘Dad’s enjoying his retirement.’ Paul Tarnower had handed over his business partnership after a health scare some years back, leaving his son to carry on the home appliance manufacturing company with Sorrel’s father. ‘They’re on a European cruise right now.’

‘I know. My mother’s quite envious.’

Cherie tugged at Blaize’s arm. ‘Darling, shouldn’t we be congratulating the happy couple?’

The bridal party was moving down the steps into the crowd of well-wishers.

‘I guess so.’ Blaize gave Sorrel a formal nod. ‘Excuse us?’

As they moved away Sorrel became conscious of covert glances directed at her. Many of the guests had been invited to her own aborted wedding to Blaize, in this very church. She’d exchanged a word or two with some of them, braving their veiled curiosity and stiff smiles. But her cousin would understand if she reserved her congratulations for a more private time.

Sorrel was grateful that Elena had accepted her preference not to be a bridal attendant. Probably she had been aware of the potential irony.

Of all the people left in the lurch by Sorrel’s disastrously late change of heart, only Elena, still in the lavender lace bridesmaid’s dress that they had chosen along with Sorrel’s wedding gown, had at least tried to understand and sympathise. So when she’d sent an invitation along with a personal plea to be there on her special day, Sorrel had found it impossible to refuse.

Resuming her interrupted path to the car, she was joined by her parents, and with a sense of relief climbed into the back seat for the short journey to the reception lounge.

‘A pretty wedding,’ her mother said. Checking her appearance in the mirror behind the sun visor, she adjusted her hat, exclusively designed to match the equally smart aqua dress that draped her over-slim figure. ‘Thank goodness nothing went wrong, but then Elena was always a sensible girl.’

Wincing, Sorrel reminded herself not to be hypersensitive, but the comparison was implicit. Even her father had muttered something earlier about hoping this wedding would proceed without a hitch.

She wanted to ask how long Blaize had been seeing Cherie Watson, and what their relationship was. Mentally she practised inquiring in a detached, mildly interested tone. But, dreading the inevitable reproach that would accompany the information, she held her tongue. Four years ago she had forfeited any right to inquire into Blaize’s private life.

Instead, she gazed out at the harbour as the car followed the road curving around Oriental Bay.

The windy city was notorious for the southerlies that swept up from the choppy waters of the Strait and buffeted the hills. But today the air was clear and still, the sun casting a soft light over buildings huddled close together between the hills and the shimmering blue water.

No place was as beautiful as Wellington on a fine day.

At the reception lounge it was a relief to find that she and her parents had been seated two tables away from Blaize, but although he had his back to her he was within her line of sight. She couldn’t block out the view of his dark head, often bent close to the blonde one next to him.

When the speeches started she saw Blaize drape an arm along the back of Cherie’s chair, his fingers touching her shoulder, while his other hand toyed with a wineglass between toasts.

Sorrel wished she were anywhere but here. Only for Elena’s sake could she endure it. And pride would keep her here for a decent length of time. She wasn’t going to sneak off as though ashamed of being seen.

She transferred her gaze to her mother, noticing that Rhoda had eaten almost nothing. Surely she was overdoing the constant dieting that seemed to have brought her close to the point of emaciation?

The man next to Sorrel was a friend of the groom. Someone had undoubtedly seated them adjacently so they could be company for each other since he too was alone. Considerate of Elena or her mother, but also vaguely humiliating, underlining Sorrel’s lack of a partner.

He was a pleasant enough man, quite good-looking in a chunky, stolid way, and they managed to contrive the usual small talk. Once the formalities were dealt with and the three-piece orchestra began to play, other couples following the bride and groom on to the floor, he asked if she’d like to dance.

He turned out to be a good dancer, with a surprisingly dashing style. After the first sedate waltz, when the music livened up and some of the older people left the floor, he initiated some adventurous moves, and Sorrel was able to enjoy herself.

She glimpsed Blaize, Cherie’s pale arms wrapped about his neck as she gazed adoringly at him while he returned a lazy smile, his eyelids lowered. They looked like a besotted couple.

Dragging her attention back to her own partner, Sorrel forced a smile to her lips and, exaggerating the swing of her hips, concentrated on the rhythm.

They were being noticed. People gave them extra space and cast admiring looks. Sorrel caught the turn of Blaize’s head, the quick flare of seeming disapproval in his eyes.

Defiantly she laughed, giving her partner the benefit of it, and did a little improvisation of her own, lifting her arms in a teasing pirouette away, wiggling her behind, and throwing a provocative glance over her shoulder before dancing back to him.

He laughed too, grabbed her close, and twirled them round before loosening his hold, hands lightly on her waist while they continued the dance.

The music ended, and she tossed wayward curls from her eyes and tucked the unruly strands behind her ear as she and her partner returned to their seats. The other chairs were empty, her mother and father chatting with Elena’s parents at the top table.

Slightly out of breath, she said, ‘That was fun.’

‘We’re good together.’ He grinned at her. ‘Want to try again?’

‘Let me have a breather first.’

‘Drink?’ he offered. ‘What would you like?’

She asked for a dry white wine, and he went off to jostle through the crowd about the bar.

Sorrel toyed with a hibiscus flower laid among greenery in the centre of the table, a frilled pink trumpet with one proud crimson stamen growing erect from its ruby heart, the end trimmed with tiny fine filaments holding the pollen. A few yellow grains speckled the white linen cloth as she turned the flower in her fingers.

‘Are you going to tuck it behind your ear?’

Blaize’s voice startled her into looking up. He stood with one hand in the pocket of his perfectly cut trousers, the other holding a glass half filled with red wine. ‘Which side?’ he inquired idly, looking down at her, his eyes under thick black lashes gleaming, speculative.

‘I can never remember which side means what.’

‘Right for “I’m taken” and left for “I’m free and available”, I believe.’

‘I’m not available.’ She let the flower drop back onto the table. ‘Anyway, pink isn’t my colour.’ Deciding to carry the battle into the enemy camp, she said, ‘It would suit Cherie—which side would she wear her flower on?’

‘You’d have to ask her…if you’re interested.’

‘Idle curiosity.’ Letting her attention apparently wander beyond him, she asked, ‘Where is Cherie, anyway?’

‘Touching up her makeup in the ladies’ room.’ His gaze lingered for a moment or two on Sorrel’s mouth, making her conscious that her own lipstick had probably disappeared with the meal and the numerous toasts that had followed.

The orchestra struck a chord, briefly distracting him. Then he looked back at her and, oddly abrupt, said, ‘Would you care to dance?’

‘With you?’ She was startled.

His mouth twitched. ‘Who else?’ He cast a glance around them. There was no sign of her erstwhile partner. ‘Of course with me.’ A note of asperity had entered his voice. ‘In case you hadn’t noticed, a number of people are waiting to see how we react to each other. It might help to kill their curiosity if we don’t make a big deal of this.’

Of their first meeting since the cancelled wedding, he meant. Maybe he was right; if they appeared casually friendly any gossip would quickly languish for lack of fuel.

‘Someone’s bringing me a drink,’ she demurred.

‘The guy with the fancy footwork?’ He sounded disparaging. ‘I’m sure he’ll wait.’ Putting his own glass down on the table, he reached for her wrist and tugged her from her chair. ‘We might as well get this over with.’

His grip was strong and he ignored her momentary instinctive resistance to his high-handedness, taking her with him towards the dance floor.

‘Charming!’ she said. ‘I’ve had more irresistible invitations.’

Surprisingly, he gave a crack of laughter that turned to a wolfish grin as he enfolded her with one arm, holding her hand close to his chest, and began moving to the music. ‘You owe me this much at least.’ His eyes were diamond-hard, his fingers inflexible on her waist.

Owed him what? The chance to show the world she hadn’t broken his heart? That he didn’t care how she’d trampled his pride? ‘Does it matter that much what anyone says?’

‘It might matter to the people who care about us. But maybe that isn’t a consideration for you.’

Everything he said seemed barbed. ‘You should be thanking me,’ she said. ‘Our marriage would have been a mistake.’

‘I thank heaven daily.’ His hands tightened on her as he moved them into a turn, and she had to clutch at his shoulder to keep her balance.

She flashed him a look, fierce and defensive.

‘Smile,’ he said. ‘We’re on show.’

Sorrel bared her teeth at him, then said contradictorily, ‘I can’t smile to order. And don’t tell me what to do!’

To her annoyance he laughed again. Surely he wasn’t enjoying this?

He whirled her round a couple of times, making her giddy, his arm hauling her close. This time he didn’t slacken his hold. His lips close to her temple, he murmured, ‘Relax. I can’t do to you here what I’d like to do. You’re perfectly safe.’

‘What you’d like to do?’ she echoed, a shiver of apprehension mingled with strange excitement travelling down her spine.

He tilted his head back, allowing a few inches of space between their bodies as he looked down at her, shocking her with the animosity glittering in his eyes. ‘Wring your pretty, damned spoilt little neck,’ he said, almost matter-of-factly.

Her eyes widened, her lips parting, and she missed a step.

Immediately he pulled her back to him, so that she was acutely conscious of the strength and warmth of his body, the movement of the muscles in his thighs as he picked up the rhythm again and she blindly, automatically followed.

There was an unbearable familiarity about being held in his arms, following his lead on a dance floor. Reminding her how terribly she’d missed him for months…years.

Around them other dancers passed by in a blur. Sorrel forced her vocal cords into speech. ‘I know things must have been difficult for you at the time, but you’ve had four years to get over it.’

‘Oh, I’m over it,’ he assured her. ‘You surely don’t imagine I’ve been nursing a broken heart all this time?’

She’d never supposed his heart was broken at all, but she was aware his pride would have suffered. Four years ago his profile in the business and social world had already been high. He’d brought new, fresh ideas and enthusiasm to a firm that was already a byword in New Zealand’s commercial world. And the fact that he was young, single and belonged to a wealthy family was fodder for the more gossipy publications.

‘I’m sure there was no shortage of willing females to help you mend it,’ she said, adding, ‘if your heart suffered so much as a crack.’

Blaize’s expression changed; his eyes narrowed so that she couldn’t read them. ‘You’re right, of course.’ His tone was clipped, neutral. ‘In the scheme of things it hardly rates, at this distance.’

‘Then why are you sniping at me? And why do you want to…wring my neck?’

‘A figure of speech. No man likes to be made a fool of.’

‘I didn’t mean to do that.’

‘You could have told me earlier,’ he said, ‘if you had doubts.’

‘I know. I’ve said I’m sorry.’

She’d said it in a letter too, after she’d fled the scene, knowing that her parents and Elena—and Blaize—would have to deal with the mess she was leaving behind. A letter he had never responded to, not that she’d really expected it. She had asked him to try to forgive her, not expecting that either. But she hadn’t thought he would hold a grudge all this time.

She had never seen Blaize as her enemy, and it hurt that he seemed to bear her active ill will. ‘Do you hate me?’ she asked, her voice low.

‘Hate you?’ The scornful sound he made was clearly an indication that she wasn’t even worthy of that. ‘Of course not.’ But there was no comfort in the denial. ‘Hatred is a waste of energy.’

Implying that he had more important things to spend his on. The small ache in her heart sharpened. Silly, because she’d certainly brought this deliberate indifference on herself.

‘Besides,’ Blaize said, ‘if you’re going to stay, we’re bound to come in contact now and then. It would make life uncomfortable all round if we couldn’t stand the sight of each other.’

‘I never said I couldn’t stand the sight of you!’

A sardonic curve twisted his lips. ‘You just didn’t think you could stand it across the breakfast table for the rest of your life?’

‘You know it was a lot more complicated than that.’

‘I have no idea how complicated it was. Or wasn’t. Your letter didn’t give me much to go on. Dear Blaize, sorry, goodbye.’

‘That’s not fair! And not true!’ She’d spent hours agonising over what to write.

‘Oh, I grant you there were more words, but in essence that’s what they said.’

She’d found it hard to express her emotions, muddled as they were, but she’d become increasingly panicky as the wedding approached. And when she tried to tell her mother about her growing doubts Rhoda Kenyon had brushed them aside, assuring her that she too had suffered bridal jitters but they meant nothing, that she’d never regretted marrying Sorrel’s father. ‘You’ll be all right on the day,’ she’d asserted.

But Sorrel hadn’t been. And at the eleventh hour she had finally found the courage to say so.

CHAPTER TWO

‘I WASN’T ready for marriage,’ Sorrel said. ‘I was too young.’

‘I suppose so,’ Blaize conceded, with the first hint of understanding he’d shown. ‘I didn’t realise how immature you were.’

‘I know I shouldn’t have left it so late,’ she said. Foolishly, she’d hesitated to upset everyone—Blaize, her parents and his.

Her indecision was compounded by the fact that she’d known the Tarnowers all her life, and all her life the two families had tacitly expected a wedding. Although, being six years older than Sorrel, Blaize had taken little notice of her when they were children. As a boy he had tolerated her, and for a while she’d adored him, trotting at his heels whenever they were together, while their parents looked on with amusement. Even at the stage when she and her friends had little time for boys, Blaize had been old enough not to be counted among that despised tribe, and with the first stirrings of puberty he’d been the object of her innocent fantasies.

And then she had grown up…

‘We were friends for so long…’ she said. ‘Couldn’t we…?’

‘We can’t go back,’ Blaize said. ‘We’re not children any more.’

‘Well, as adults, can’t we put the past behind us? For our families’ sakes, if nothing else?’ He seemed concerned about them.

He looked away from her, manoeuvring them through a gap in the dancers. When he met her eyes again, his were veiled, unreadable. ‘Of course. I can safely promise to keep my hands off you.’

He’d said his threat was a figure of speech and she believed him. Yet there was an astringency in his voice that disturbed her.

The music stopped, and after a moment Blaize released his hold.

‘Thank you,’ she said.

He inclined his head and she tried not to read irony into the gesture. ‘I’ll see you back to your table.’

He didn’t touch her again, and as she resumed her chair and took the glass her previous partner handed to her, Blaize exchanged greetings with her parents, who had also returned to the table.

‘Sorrel tells me she may be staying on,’ he said casually, ‘if she can find a job in Wellington.’

Her mother swept her a look of surprise. ‘You didn’t say anything to us!’

‘I haven’t made up my mind,’ Sorrel said quickly.

‘Well.’ Rhoda sounded approving. ‘It’s time you came home.’

‘High time,’ Ian concurred. ‘It would be nice to have our baby girl back.’

Useless to argue with the description. She was their only child and her father would always see her as his baby, she supposed.

‘Sorry if I let the cat out of the bag,’ Blaize said.

‘It doesn’t matter.’ Sorrel shrugged. But she was dismayed at the premature disclosure.

Blaize chatted for a minute longer with Rhoda and Ian, then went to join Cherie, who sat with her head bowed at their table, while three people across from her apparently shared a joke. At Blaize’s approach she turned and smiled, holding out a hand. Blaize took it in his and retained it, seating himself close by her.

Sorrel looked away.

The bride and groom took the floor again, dancing close together.

Regarding the dreamy happiness on Elena’s face, Sorrel felt a lump rise in her throat, accompanied by a sharp envy. Her cousin was the same age Sorrel had been on her own planned wedding day—just over twenty-one—and Elena had known her new husband for only nine months, yet she seemed certain of the rightness of their marriage. What would it be like to fall in love with a stranger and know you wanted to spend your life with him?

Elena, as Sorrel’s mother said, had always been a sensible girl—level-headed, practical, even cautious. But she was surely taking a huge risk now. Sorrel wished her well, passionately. Since first seeing Elena as a tiny, solemn-faced newborn, she had felt protective of her little cousin. Elena had been the nearest thing to a sister she’d ever had. Sorrel was fond of Elena’s two younger brothers too, but the girls shared a special bond that had only strengthened as they grew older.

And Blaize, she supposed, had been the nearest thing to a brother of her own. He too was a sole child, although he had cousins living nearby and was close to them, especially in their teenage years, when he’d seemed to prefer their company above anyone’s. But he and Sorrel had also spent a lot of time at each other’s homes. The Kenyon and Tarnower families had been linked by ties of both business and friendship since early in the previous century.

Ian Kenyon and Paul Tarnower, the eldest sons, had taken over Kenyon and Tarnower Limited from their fathers, and expected to hand it on to their own children. Expected, once Ian realised he was not going to have a son, to see their children, married to each other, produce more Kenyon-Tarnowers to carry on the tradition.

‘Dance again?’ The man beside her broke into her thoughts.

She hesitated, lifting her glass for another sip of her drink. More of their table companions returned and sat down, but didn’t block her view of Cherie’s pretty profile flirtatiously turned up towards Blaize, nor his answering grin as his palm cupped her shoulder. They were almost within kissing distance.

Wrenching her gaze away, Sorrel took a bigger gulp of wine than she’d meant to and nearly choked on it. ‘Yes,’ she said hoarsely. ‘Let’s dance.’

But somehow the pleasure had gone out of it. She endured the evening until the bride and groom left, after she and Elena had snatched a few private moments and an affectionate hug.

When her parents suggested they leave she was only too glad to comply, making sure her table mate didn’t have a chance to suggest seeing her again as she said goodnight and thanked him for his company.

And that was that, she told herself bleakly when she had thankfully reached her own room, scarcely changed since she’d deserted her old life and the family home. Fervently she hoped for Elena’s continued happiness, but it did throw her own past and present into stark relief by contrast.

What, after all, had she accomplished by running away?

Independence, of course. Unbuttoning the jacket of her suit, she brushed aside the moment of self-pity and disillusionment. She didn’t need a man to live a successful life.

After taking the first job that offered when she arrived in Melbourne—serving behind the counter in a huge department store—she now had her own department and her own staff. She had transformed a rather stuffy section appealing mostly to a wealthy middle-aged clientele by adding lively, funky but good-quality clothes that drew in younger customers. Last year her employers had staved off a head-hunting attempt by considerably increasing her salary, but lately she’d been feeling restless, a little bored.

She unzipped her skirt and found a hanger. Glimpsing herself in the full-length mirror of the wardrobe, she saw her cheeks were slightly flushed, her eyes more green than usual, and glowing.

One thing about meeting Blaize again—he’d got her adrenaline going. She felt more alive and stimulated than she had in years.

Anger did that, she supposed. Maybe she wasn’t entitled, but his smouldering sarcasm had woken a like response in her.

All very well for him to lay the whole blame at her door, but if he’d really cared for her, surely he’d have noticed something was amiss in the days leading up to their wedding?

Or perhaps in his supreme self-confidence he’d simply never given a thought to the possibility that she might not want to marry him. After all, there had been no shortage of other willing candidates.

Which brought her back to Cherie Watson. Who certainly looked willing enough. And was Blaize ready to contemplate marriage again? He was over thirty now, perhaps looking to have children while he was still young enough to enjoy them.

When they’d been engaged they’d both taken it for granted they’d have a family. ‘No hurry,’ he’d said. ‘When you’re ready.’

She couldn’t accuse him of being overbearing. He’d consulted her about everything—where they would live, how she wanted the house they’d chosen decorated, whether she wanted to continue in her job as a junior in a government publications operation. ‘If you prefer to stay home I don’t mind,’ he assured her. ‘I can afford to keep us both.’

‘What would I do all day? Of course I’ll keep working.’

‘Sure,’ he had agreed readily enough. ‘Whatever makes you happy.’

His laid-back air, suggesting not so much a burning desire to make her happy as simply a tolerant attitude to whatever she chose to do, would have been envied by many women. No doubt she’d been unreasonable in finding it vaguely disturbing. Certainly she’d had no wish to be tied to a jealous, possessive husband.

But neither did she want a distant one who didn’t mind what she did so long as she kept his home to a certain standard, entertained his business associates adequately, and provided him in due course with the requisite number and gender of children to continue the family name and business and prove his virility.

She had seen that kind of marriage among her parents’ friends and associates. Seen desperate, unhappy women trying to fill their lives with empty activity while their husbands were immersed in business, scarcely noticing their wives. Or couples who seemed virtually strangers, going through the motions of social interaction with others when they had nothing to say to each other, and nothing to hold them together once their children left home, except habit and a desire to keep up appearances.

The prospect of following the pattern, entering an emotionally sterile marriage, terrified her.

Sometimes she’d thought it couldn’t come to that, with her and Blaize. He surely felt something for her, if only a lifelong fondness. But the closer their wedding had approached, the more distance there seemed to be between them. When he kissed her and held her she could forget her fears and doubts, persuade herself he truly loved her. But there was less and less opportunity for that as the preparations seemed to take up all her time—choosing her gown and the bridesmaids’ dresses, consulting over the guest list and the form of the ceremony, fittings, showers, rehearsals, helping her mother with details like music, flowers, the design of the invitations.

She’d been exhausted long before the day, a bundle of jumping nerves and increasing doubts. Only the fact that it was Blaize, whom she’d known all her life and loved ever since she could remember, whom she was marrying, had kept her from running away from it all much earlier.

And disastrously, she had wrecked everything in the end. Blaize was no longer her fiancé, or even her friend.

Standing under a cool shower, Sorrel shut her eyes and tried to wash away the memories, but behind her closed lids disturbing pictures played of the old Blaize who had regarded her with lazy warmth in his smile and fondness in his eyes, and of the new Blaize whose smile was almost cruel, and whose eyes were hard as granite when he looked at her.

Blaize was right about the inevitability of their meeting again. They had always moved in the same circle, shared friends and interests—it was one of the reasons that everyone had thought them so well suited. And it had been a major cause of Sorrel’s staying away so long.

The Friday following Elena’s wedding, Sorrel attended the opening of an exhibition of Pacific design at a gallery owned by a family friend. She was studying a draped length of screen-printed natural silk featuring a modern interpretation of a traditional Cook Islands pattern, when she became conscious of a tall male figure beside her. Some sixth sense warned her before she turned her head and saw Blaize looking down at her, one hand negligently in his pocket.

‘What are you doing here?’ she asked.

His brows rose a fraction. ‘Studying the exhibits,’ he drawled, his leisurely gaze slipping over her sleeveless cream dress, perfectly plain but for a gold chain belt, and lingering on the slit neckline. ‘It’s an interesting show.’

Until now she’d thought the dress quite modest. But he was standing close, and with his height she had no doubt he could see a good deal more cleavage than her mirror had shown.

She took a deep breath, hoping it would dispel an incipient blush, but his eyes mercilessly took note of the rise and fall of her breasts and, when his gaze returned to her face, held a glint of heartless amusement.

‘Where’s Cherie?’ she asked.

The amusement sharpened into something else. ‘She may be along later. She had another engagement.’

Engagement. The word struck like a knell in her mind. Stupid. Even if Blaize and Cherie were engaged it shouldn’t make any difference to her.

She turned away from him, taking the few steps to the next piece in the show, a smoothly carved free-form shape in some light wood.

Blaize was at her elbow again. ‘Are you alone?’

‘Yes.’ She didn’t look at him. ‘My parents had a dinner invitation tonight.’

‘I suppose you’ve lost touch with your old friends.’

She shrugged. ‘Not all of them. I still have friends if I need them.’

A small boy darted away from his parents and reached up to touch the wood sculpture. His mother swooped on him, and Blaize moved aside to give her room, his sleeve brushing Sorrel’s bare arm. She smelled the wool of his lightweight suit, and lemon-wood aftershave—the same one he’d always worn—and was swept by an unexpected wave of longing.

‘Sorry!’ the young woman gasped, struggling with her protesting offspring.

‘No problem.’ Blaize briefly laid a hand on Sorrel’s waist and moved them out of the way, steering her towards a glass case protecting a jade pendant on a fine gold chain.

The polished green stone gleamed under a carefully placed spotlight. ‘The colour of your eyes,’ Blaize said softly.

She looked up at him, startled at the comment, but it was a moment before he met her gaze. Then he blinked as if he had to clear his head. ‘You wouldn’t think it would be hard enough to use for weapons.’

In pre-European times Maori craftsmen using stone tools had formed the green stone they called pounamu into adzes and short, sharp-edged battle clubs, some delicately decorated with carved patterns.

‘It took patience,’ Sorrel said. Sometimes years of work went into fashioning a lethal patu, or an ornament to be hung from an ear or strung on a cord about the neck. ‘And skill.’

‘Didn’t the women add the final finish by rubbing the greenstone against their thighs? Dedicated helpmeets.’

Sorrel gave a thin smile. ‘These days women have better things to do.’

He laughed. ‘By the way, how’s the job-hunting going?’

‘I haven’t decided yet if I’m staying.’ She returned her attention to the intricate whorls of the jade pendant.

‘Are you in a relationship over there?’ Blaize asked. ‘Let me guess—you’re having second thoughts and it would be simpler to just not return. You could write him a letter instead.’

Sorrel flared at him. ‘I’m not in a relationship! And don’t jump to conclusions about what I’d do.’

She moved away but he followed. ‘You told me at Elena and Cam’s wedding that you weren’t free,’ he reminded her. ‘And as for what you’d do if you wanted out, your track record speaks for itself.’

‘I said I wasn’t available,’ she argued. ‘It’s not the same thing.’

For a moment he said nothing, staring at an intricate Maori carving with glowing paua shell insets that hung against a white wall. ‘So…no boyfriend?’

‘I don’t need a man.’

He turned to her then, eyes glimmering with sudden speculation. ‘You’re not telling me you’ve lived like a nun all these years?’

She faced him squarely. ‘I’m not telling you anything. How I live my life is my own affair and certainly nothing to do with you!’

A flicker of expression crossed his face, his mouth momentarily drawing into a narrow line. Then he shrugged. ‘Fair enough.’

Another couple paused nearby and Blaize took Sorrel’s arm again until they stood before a trickling waterfall where several pieces of statuary and pottery had been arranged on slabs of stone.

A tall, gaunt-looking woman with grey hair floating about the shoulders of a flowing lime-green chiffon dress accosted them. ‘Sorrel! My dear girl, how long have you been back? And Blaize too! Are you two together again? How nice—I always thought you belonged with each other.’ She had the carrying voice of an ageing and slightly deaf stage actress.

‘No, we’re not!’ Sorrel said quickly. ‘We just happened to bump into each other here. I came home for my cousin Elena’s wedding.’

‘Elena…oh, yes, the little dark girl. But she’s a child, surely!’

Sorrel smiled. ‘Not any more.’

‘Oh, the wings of time!’ Augusta Dollimore clasped her hands dramatically, then said briskly, ‘Well, sometime we must catch up, dear, and you can tell me all about Australia. I won’t interrupt your little tête-à-tête.’ She patted Sorrel’s arm and gave Blaize a roguish look. ‘Don’t let her slip away from you this time!’

Sorrel protested, ‘We’re not having a—’

But she was gone, wafting away to buttonhole someone else.

Sorrel let fly a forceful word under her breath, but Blaize’s mouth wore a reluctant grin. ‘You know Gus never listens to a word anyone says, and she’s incurably romantic. That’s probably why the country is littered with her ex-husbands.’

‘The woman’s a menace,’ Sorrel muttered. Augusta knew everyone, and made it her mission to keep them all informed of each other’s doings. Except that she frequently got things wrong. ‘She’ll be telling people we…that we’re…’

‘A couple? It’s just gossip. Nobody takes her seriously.’

‘Aren’t you worried that Cherie might wonder if there’s something in it? I don’t think it would be a good idea for her to arrive and see us talking,’ she said.

His brows drew together for a moment. ‘In a place as public as this?’ He looked around them. ‘Cherie’s not a fool.’

Implying that Sorrel was, for even raising the possibility of upsetting his girlfriend.

‘And you’re not a woman,’ Sorrel retorted. Hadn’t he picked up Cherie’s tacit signals? This is my man—keep off the grass.

‘You noticed,’ Blaize said.

For a second she was confused. ‘Didn’t you?’

‘That I’m a man?’ His brows lifted. ‘Are we talking about the same thing?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I was thinking about Cherie.’

‘Bad joke,’ he conceded. ‘What about her?’

‘She’s very pretty.’ If he hadn’t seen her possessiveness and insecurity, Sorrel wasn’t going to point them out to him. ‘Have you known each other long?’

‘About six months. She did some interior design for us when we renovated our offices—your father didn’t mention it? Why are you so interested?’

‘I’m not, particularly,’ she denied. ‘I was just trying to carry on a normal conversation.’

‘Difficult, isn’t it?’ he said pleasantly.

‘You’re making it so.’

He paused. ‘Forgive me, Sorrel. I can’t help feeling you got off lightly. You didn’t have to deal with the aftermath of your dramatic exit. I was an object of interest for months.’

And he couldn’t escape as she had. His father’s precarious health and his commitment to the family business had tied him. ‘I’m sure no one blamed you.’

‘No, they pitied me,’ he said, and his acrid tone told her how he’d hated that. ‘Except for a few who seemed to assume I’d either beaten or betrayed you.’

Her mouth opened in protest. ‘No!’

He gave her a mirthless smile. ‘Since they weren’t told any reason, they invented one. I did the same. For a while I was convinced you’d found someone else.’

‘It was nothing like that!’

‘Then what the hell was it? You still haven’t given me an explanation.’

‘I told you, I was too young.’

‘You didn’t say so when we got engaged. I thought you were expecting a ring when you turned twenty-one.’

She had been. Everyone had been waiting for Blaize to propose—their parents, their friends…

‘I didn’t want that kind of marriage,’ she said flatly.

He frowned. ‘What—’

His cell phone trilled, and he swore and pulled it from his pocket. ‘Yes?’ he barked into the machine. His voice changed immediately. ‘Cherie…’

Sorrel took her chance of escape, murmuring an excuse before she turned tail and moved rapidly through the crowd to the exit. She had seen most of the show and earlier paid her respects to the gallery owner. There was no need to stay any longer.

Outside she paused, breathing in the night air and orienting herself. There was a taxi stand not far off but no cabs on the rank. She walked over and waited, idly watching the traffic pass until a car drew up close to the curb and the passenger door opened.

She had already stepped forward when she saw there was no lighted sign on the roof. As she hesitated, Blaize said, ‘I’ll give you a lift, Sorrel.’

‘I’m waiting for a cab, thanks.’

‘It’s Friday night—you could be here for ages and that’s not safe.’

‘I’m all right—’

‘Get in! Or I’ll stay here until a cab comes along.’

Reluctantly Sorrel capitulated, climbing into the seat and closing the door. ‘Thank you, but there’s no need for this,’ she said. ‘There are plenty of people about.’

‘I won’t leave a woman standing about alone at night in the city.’

‘Oh… You make it your mission in life to pick up every woman you see on a street corner?’

He cast her a withering glance, not bothering to respond to that. ‘I assume you were on your way home?’

‘Yes. What about you? Did Cherie stand you up?’

He flung another look at her, weaving his way into the stream of traffic. ‘It wasn’t a date. She couldn’t make it after all.’

He drove in brooding silence for a while, and a glance at him showed an austere profile, and a frown on his brow. She supposed he was disappointed. Presumably he and Cherie weren’t living together, or he’d have been sure of seeing her later.

Striving for some kind of normality, she said, ‘Did you like the show?’

‘Never mind the show. What did you mean by that interesting remark before we were interrupted?’

‘What remark?’ she stalled.

‘About “that kind of marriage”. What kind of marriage did you imagine we would have?’

They were climbing a steep, curved street. On the narrow pathway beside the road a pair of lovers strolled, arms about each other.

Sorrel said, ‘More of a merger than a marriage.’ As the car passed, the couple on the path paused under a street light and kissed.

Blaize made a scornful sound of disbelief. ‘Is that how you thought of it?’

‘Didn’t you? Let’s face it, our parents had been planning it since we—well, since I was in my cradle.’

Ominously he said, ‘Are you telling me your parents forced you?’

‘No, of course not! But you know how it was. We just sort of drifted into it because everyone took it for granted that someday it would happen.’

‘I don’t drift into important decisions,’ Blaize objected. ‘I wanted to marry you, and I thought you were grown up enough to make a logical decision too.’

Logical? She almost laughed aloud. ‘I did,’ she told him, ‘when I decided not to go through with it.

‘A bit late.’

‘Better late than never. Or rather, better than even later…after we’d tied the knot.’

Below them the city lights winked and sparkled, and the water yawned black and still within the curved arms of the harbour. Blaize said, ‘I didn’t look on it as a business merger, Sorrel. We knew each other so well, and—I thought—enjoyed each other’s company so much, marriage seemed a natural progression. I looked forward to spending the rest of my life with you. To making love with you. In case you doubted it, from when you were in your teens I found you very attractive.’

Everything he said only confirmed her conviction that she’d done the right thing. ‘You weren’t in love with me.’

‘In love?’ He seemed to consider that. ‘I’d been in love, several times—an emotional high that didn’t last.’

So he’d decided a cool-headed bargain was a better basis for a permanent relationship. Had she been unreasonable, hankering for something more? ‘All those times it wasn’t real then, was it?’

‘What we had, you and I, was real—or so I thought. More real than some flash-in-the-pan love affair.’

‘A passionless marriage?’ Her mouth twisted.

‘Passionless?’ He was looking through the wind-screen, negotiating another tricky curve. ‘What gave you that idea? I just told you I was looking forward to our lovemaking.’

And he’d been willing to wait until they were married. So had she, though it had crossed her mind once or twice that his fortitude was unusual. Even her parents wouldn’t have been terribly shocked if she and Blaize had been sleeping together, but Sorrel wouldn’t have been comfortable doing so under their roof, and although since he’d turned twenty Blaize had his own bachelor apartment, he’d never invited her to stay the night.

Admittedly he’d wanted the wedding to take place only a couple of months after slipping the diamond engagement ring on her finger, but as their eventual marriage had been tacitly accepted for so long the engagement was only a formality.

While their mothers plunged into a whirlwind of planning, carrying Sorrel along with them, Blaize’s kisses had become increasingly exciting and frequently left her aroused and frustrated, her only consolation the glitter in his eyes and the reluctance with which he put her away from him before leaving her. But he had always been in control, never asking for more than kisses, his hands exploring the contours of her body but not intruding inside her clothes.

Sorrel supposed he’d known, or at least guessed, that she was a virgin. She had briefly dated other young men but been serious about none of them. At the back of her mind she’d been aware she was destined to be Blaize’s bride, and it would have seemed like cheating to give herself to anyone else.

Presumably he’d had no such scruples. She was sure his experience had far outweighed hers.

Four years ago she had accepted that as a fact of life. Why should the thought now arouse an intense resentment? She felt her nails digging into the soft skin of her palms, and carefully relaxed her hands.

If Blaize seemed unable to let go of the past, he wasn’t alone. Since seeing him again she’d found a whole Pandora’s box of conflicting emotions seething in her soul.

But she didn’t want to quarrel—to start flinging accusations, exchanging recriminations. It would get them nowhere and only add fuel to the smouldering ashes of the past.

‘I’m sure making love with you would have been a pleasant experience,’ she said, trying to borrow some of his objectivity. ‘You do everything well, don’t you?’

‘I’ve never claimed perfection.’

‘I guess it just comes naturally to you.’ And that wouldn’t help—sarcasm wasn’t calculated to smooth troubled waters.

‘Obviously not,’ he rejoined harshly. ‘Since you found me wanting.’

‘Not you,’ she said. ‘The…situation. I should never have let things go so far.’ Hope had kept her procrastinating—hope for some sign that like her, Blaize was falling deeper in love every day. That their marriage would be more than a pragmatic personal merger, not very much different from a business one, with the added fillip of sex. But the closest he’d ever come was a careless ‘Love you, hon,’ as he left her after a date. And instead of becoming closer during their engagement, she’d felt they were growing further and further apart.

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