Lost In Love
Michelle Reid

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 ELEVEN

CHAPTER ONE

‘NO.’ MARNIE threw down her paintbrush and turned to find a rag to wipe the paint from her fingers. ‘I won’t do it,’ she refused. ‘And I don’t know how you have the gall to ask me!’

Her brother’s face was surly to say the least. ‘I’ve got to have it by tomorrow or I’ve had it!’ he cried. ‘There isn’t anyone else I know I can turn to. And if you asked him, he’d...’

‘I said no.’

They glared at each other across the width of her studio, Marnie with her arms folded across her chest in that stubborn, immovable way her brother knew only too well, her cool gaze refusing to so much as glance at the arm he had wrapped in a white linen sling or the vivid bruise he was wearing down one side of his face.

She made an impatient flick with her hand. ‘The last time you talked me into going begging to Guy, I had to stand there and endure a thirty-minute lecture on your weak character—and my own stupidity for pandering to it!’ she reminded Jamie. ‘I will not give him another chance to repeat that little scene—even if it does mean you having to face the music for a change!’

‘I can’t believe you’re going to let me down like this!’ Jamie cried. ‘We both know Guy is still crazy about you! He can’t refuse you a damned—’

‘Jamie—!’ she warned. Her relationship, hostile or otherwise, with Guy Frabosa was always a risky subject to get on to at the best of times, and her warning had her brother shifting uncomfortably where he stood.

‘Well, it’s true,’ he mumbled, unable to hold her gaze. ‘The last time it happened,’ he persisted none the less, ‘I admit it was my own stupid fault, and Guy was probably right to send me packing—but...’

‘It wasn’t you he sent packing,’ his sister angrily pointed out. ‘It was me! It wasn’t you who had to listen to him verbally annihilate your family, it was me! And it certainly was not you who had to stand there taking it all firmly in the face without a word to say in your defence,’ she concluded tightly. ‘It was most definitely me!’

‘Then let me try asking him—’

‘You?’ she scoffed, sending him a look fit to wither. Jamie was not one of Guy’s most favourite people. In fact, it could be said that Jamie was Guy’s least favourite person in the whole wide world! ‘You must be feeling desperate if you’re thinking of tackling the great man yourself,’ she derided. ‘He’s liable to make mincement out of you in thirty seconds flat—and you know it.’

‘But if you—’

‘No—!’

‘God, Marnie.’ Jamie sank heavily into a chair, defeat sending his thin frame hunching over in distress.

Marnie hardened her heart against the pathetic picture he presented, determined not to weaken this time. It was no use, she told herself firmly. Guy was right. It was time Jamie learned to sort out his own messes. In the four years since she and Guy had parted, Jamie had sent her to him on no less than three occasions to beg on his behalf. That last time had brought Guy’s well deserved wrath down on her head, and he had warned her then that the next time she came to him with her brother’s problems he would expect something back in return. She had understood instantly what he meant. And there was just no way—no way she was going to put herself in that position. Not even for her brother.

‘I’ll lose everything,’ Jamie murmured thickly.

‘Good,’ she said, not believing him for a moment. ‘Perhaps once you have lost it you’ll learn the importance of protecting what you had!’

‘How can you be so mean?’ he choked, lifting his wounded face from his uninjured hand to stare wretchedly at her. He just could not believe she was letting him down this time. ‘You’ve become hard, Marnie,’ he accused her, sending her the first look of dislike she had ever received from this only blood relative she had in the world. ‘This business with Guy has made you hard.’

‘Look...’ She sighed, softening slightly because Jamie was right, she had become hard—a necessary shell grown around herself for self-protection. But she didn’t want to hurt Jamie. She hated seeing anyone hurt. ‘I can probably lay my hands on—ten thousand pounds by tomorrow if that’s any good to you.’

‘A drop in the ocean,’ he mumbled ungratefully, and his sister flared all over again.

‘Then what do you expect me to do?’ she yelled. ‘Sell my damned soul for you?’ And that was what it would amount to if she went to Guy for money again. He would demand her soul as payment.

Her brother shook his head. ‘God, you make me feel like a heel.’

‘Well, that’s something, I suppose.’ She sighed. ‘Why can’t you think before you jump, Jamie?’ On a gesture of exasperation, she dropped down on the sofa beside him. ‘I mean,’ she went on, her violet gaze impatient as she studied him, ‘to drive a valuable car like that out on the road without insurance!’

The disgust in her voice made him flinch. ‘I was delivering it,’ he muttered defensively. ‘I didn’t expect a dirty great lorry to drive smack into the side of me!’

‘But isn’t that what insurance is for?’ his sister mocked scathingly. ‘To protect you against the unexpected?’

Her brother was a master at rebuilding very rare and very expensive old-model high-performance cars. It was probably his only saving grace—that and managing to catch and marry about the most sweetest creature on this earth. But this affinity he had with anything mechanical was something special. Marnie had seen him painstakingly take apart and put back together again everything from an old baby carriage to a vintage Rolls in his time.

‘Guy has a 1955 Jaguar XK140 Drophead similar to the one I smashed up.’ Never one to give up easily, Jamie was reminding her of a fact she had already remembered. ‘He might, if you asked him, consider selling it to me on a long-term loan.’

Guy had a whole fleet of fast cars. It was one of his grandes passions, possessing cars with an awesome power under their bonnets. As an ex-Formula One racing car driver and world champion himself, his love of speed had once excited Marnie beyond bearing. There had been something incredibly stimulating in dicing with death at one-hundred-plus miles per hour. Guy had taken her out several times to share that kind of exciting feeling with him, his dark face vibrant with life, eyes flashing, mouth stretched into a devilish smile as he glanced—too often for her peace of mind—at her wide-eyed and anxious expression as their speed increased on surge after surge of fierce growling power. The next best thing to sex, he called it. And it certainly left them both on a high which could only be assuaged in one all-consuming way.

‘Please, Marnie...’ Her brother’s voice shook with desperation. ‘You’ve got to help me out on this one!’

‘I can’t believe you drove a car of that value out on the roads without bothering to insure it!’ she snapped out angrily.

Jamie lifted his hands in an empty gesture. ‘It wasn’t that I didn’t bother, I just—forgot,’ he admitted. ‘You know what I’m like, sis, when I get engrossed in something.’ His blue eyes pleaded for understanding. ‘I tend to forget everything else!’

‘Including your responsibility to the poor fool who trusted you with his precious car!’

Jamie winced and she let out an impatient sigh. ‘The last time you got yourself in a mess, it was because you went over budget and omitted to warn your client that it was going to cost him several thousand more than you quoted!’

‘I don’t do half a job!’ he haughtily defended that particular criticism. ‘He wanted his car looking like new, so I rebuilt it to look like new.’

‘Then he refused to take delivery of it until you cut down the bill—which you refused to do. Which meant Guy had to step in and sort the mess out—yet again!’

‘You know as well as I do that Guy made on the deal in the end,’ Jamie derided that accusation. ‘The crafty devil bought the damned car from the man at less than it was worth, and put it into his own collection! It cost me fifteen thousand pounds to put that car back together, of which I saw only ten!’

‘And two thousand of that I lent to you and never saw again!’

‘OK—OK...’ Jamie sighed, making a weary retreat by getting up from the sofa to lope over to the window where a bright June sun was beginning to ruin what light she had left of the morning to paint by. ‘So, I’m a lousy businessman. You don’t have to rub it in.’

Marnie looked at him in impatient sympathy. He was quite right. He was a lousy businessman. He was like the proverbial absent-minded professor when he got his head beneath the bonnet of a new challenge. But she’d thought he’d got himself together in the business department over the last year since Clare had taken over that side of things for him.

She frowned at that last thought, wondering why Clare hadn’t made sure his insurance was up to date. It wasn’t like her sister-in-law to forget something as basic as that.

‘If you won’t help me, Marnie,’ Jamie murmured into the dull silence that was throbbing all around them, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do. The guy is threatening nasty reprisals if I don’t come up with his money.’

‘Oh, Jamie!’ she sighed, leaning forward to rub her forehead with a hand.

‘But that’s not all...’

No? she wondered cynically. Could there be more?

‘It’s Clare,’ he said.

‘Clare?’ Her head shot away from her hand.

‘She’s—she’s pregnant again.’

‘What—already?’ Instant concern darkened his sister’s eyes, her face going pale as she stared at him. ‘Isn’t it a bit too soon?’ she whispered.

‘Yes,’ he sighed, turning to look at her, then, sighing again, he came back to throw himself down next to her. ‘Too damn soon for anyone’s peace of mind...’

Marnie swallowed, her anger with her brother evaporating with this new and far more worrying concern. Clare had gone through what could only be described as a woman’s worst nightmare, having lost her first baby right on the three-month borderline the experts liked to call safe. Safe. She scorned it bitterly. There was no such thing as safe during a nine-month-long confinement. Fate and Mother Nature saw to that.

The doctors had warned them not to rush straight into trying for another. ‘Give your body time to heal,’ they’d advised. ‘And your hearts time to grieve.’

‘How—how far is she?’ She could hardly speak for the hard lump which had formed in her throat.

‘Two months.’ Jamie glanced at her, his thin face strained. ‘Marnie... You have to understand now that this has all come at a bad time for me. I can’t afford to let Clare know about this.’ He dropped his head, giving his sandy hair a frustrated tug. ‘She’s worried half out of her mind as it is, wondering, frightened...’

She swallowed, nodding, unable to say a single word.

‘If you could just find it in yourself to help me out of this one—I swear to you, Marnie,’ he promised huskily, ‘I swear on the—’

‘Don’t say it!’ she rasped, her hand shaking as it snapped out to grip tightly at his wrist. ‘Don’t even think it!’

‘God, no!’ he groaned, shuddering when he realised just what he had been going to say. ‘Hell—I don’t know what’s happening to me,’ he choked. ‘I can’t think straight for worrying about Clare, never mind this mess with the Jag. I—’

‘Is this why you weren’t insured?’ she asked with sudden insight. ‘Has Clare stopped doing all the clerical work since she suspected she was pregnant?’

Jamie nodded. ‘God,’ he went on distractedly, ‘it was bad enough me having to walk into the flat with this arm in a sling, and my face in this kind of mess—she almost fainted in fright!’ A ragged sigh shot from him. ‘I didn’t dare tell her she’d forgotten to renew my insurance! She’d have...’ His voice trailed off, and they both sat, their hearts thumping heavily in their breasts.

‘All right,’ Marnie murmured huskily. ‘I’ll go and see Guy today.’

Jamie’s relief was so palpable that it was almost worth it—almost. Jamie had no idea—couldn’t know what this was going to cost her.

‘Listen, tell Guy I’ve found a brilliant MG K3 Magnette!’ he said urgently, trying his best to make up for putting her in this position. ‘Tell—tell him he can have it for his collection when it’s finished,’ he offered. ‘It isn’t as good as the one he’s already got, and it won’t cover the debt I’ll owe him, but...’ he swallowed, emotion thickening his voice ‘...I’ll pay him back every penny this time, Marnie. That’s a promise. And thank you—thank you for doing this for me this one last time.’

‘I’m doing it for Clare, not for you.’ Why she’d said that Marnie wasn’t about to analyse, but the way her brother’s face paled she knew the remark had cut—as, perhaps, it had meant to. But at this moment Marnie found she hated every single one of the male race.

‘I know that,’ he said, getting up. ‘I know both you and Guy don’t think my neck worth saving.’

‘That’s not true, and you know it,’ Marnie sighed, softening her manner slightly. ‘But I do think it’s about time you took care of your own affairs properly, Jamie—and by that I mean yourself, and not leaving it all to Clare.’

‘I mean to from now on.’ He sounded so determined that Marnie was surprised into believing him. ‘After all, she’s going to have enough on her plate with—everything else.’

He was by the door, eager to leave now he’d got that promise from Marnie. ‘Will—will you give me a call as soon as you’ve spoken to Guy?’ It was tentatively said, but insistent all the same, and Marine glanced sharply at him.

‘That urgent, huh?’ she drawled.

He nodded and flushed. ‘The man is riding on my back,’ he admitted.

Just as you are riding on mine, Marnie thought as she watched him go. Then took back that thought with a bitter twist to her tensely held mouth. It was unworthy. She loved her brother, and for once the mess he was in was not of his own making but poor Clare’s.

Clare...her eyes clouded over as she thought of her pretty little sister-in-law and the minefield of anxieties she must be negotiating right now. And Jamie was right; Clare was not in any fit condition to take any more stress.

Even if it meant Marnie placing herself in the hands of the enemy!

A shiver rippled through her, leaving her cold even though the sun was warm in the room, the unwanted memories managing to crawl through the thick protective casing she wore around herself, sending her blue eyes bleak as the artist in her began to construct his image in front of her.

Guy, she thought achingly, unable to stop the picture from building. A big man, but lean and muscular, with the kind of naturally tanned skin that enhanced his dark good looks. His chocolate-brown eyes always made exciting promises, and that lazy, sexy smile he used to save for her alone could... She gave an inner sigh that stayed just this side of pain. Her dark Italian love, she remembered wistfully. The only man who had ever managed to get her soul to leave her body and soar on an eddying wave of pure exquisite feeling.

Guy was a man of the earth and air, with banked-down fires inside him that would flare and turn the blood to sizzling, spitting flames.

He was the kind of man whose charismatic power over the opposite sex had given him an arrogance few would deny him. His huge ego was well deserved—along with his colourful reputation. Guy was a man’s idea of a man—the kind of man who walked right out of a woman’s foolish dreams. And a selfish, cruel and faithless swine! she reminded herself bitterly. He saw what he wanted, and took it with all the fire and passion in his hot Latin nature—just as he had seen and taken her! In his arrogance, he’d made her fall in love with him, then ruthlessly and callously thrown that love right back in her face! She would never forgive him for that. Never.

Four years ago, Guy had hurt her so deeply that she had prayed never to set eyes on him again. But with his usual arrogance he had refused to allow her that one small relief. And, four years on, they now shared a different kind of relationship, one which had them tiptoeing around each other like wary adversaries, using their tongues instead of their bodies to strike sparks off each other. Hostile yet close—oddly close. In the four long years since she and Guy had split up in a blaze of pain and anger, he had not allowed her to cut him out of her life. Guy possessed a tenacity which surprised her somewhat. For a man who was able to get whatever he wished at the simple click of his fingers, it seemed odd to her that he should still want her. She was, after all, one of his few failures in life, and his ego did not usually like being reminded of those.

Now, and for the first time in a long time, she sensed her own vulnerability, and another smile touched her mouth—one full of rueful whimsy this time. Guy had always predicted that Jamie would be the source of her inevitable downfall.

It seemed that his years of patience were about to bear fruit.

She glanced across the mad clutter of her busy studio room to where the telephone sat innocent and inert on the small table by the door, and slowly, carefully she steadied her emotions, settled her features into their normal cool, calm mask, and readied herself for what was to come. For Jamie might be placing her on a plate for Guy, but it did not mean she was going to sit still on it!

With these defiant thoughts to accompany her across the room, Marnie lifted the receiver off its rest and began to dial the never-to-be-forgotten number of il signor Guy Frabosa’s London home.

CHAPTER TWO

HE WASN’T there.

‘Typical,’ Marnie muttered as she replaced the receiver, ‘just damned typical!’ feeling all that careful mental preparation going frustratingly to waste.

Guy might live in London, have his business base there, but the very nature of that business kept him constantly on the move, personally overseeing every aspect of the conglomerate of companies he had inherited from his abdicating father on Guy’s own retirement from motor racing. And it took several calls to different numbers suggested to her before she eventually tracked him down, in Edinburgh of all places.

She was put through to a plastic-sounding female voice who seemed about as approachable as a polar bear. ‘Mr Frabosa is in conference,’ came the uncompromising block to Marie’s request to speak to him. ‘He does not wish to be disturbed.’

Is that so? mused Marnie, the woman’s frigid tone putting a mulish glint into her blue eyes. For the last hour she had been passed from pillar to post in her attempt to contact Guy, and in the end she had only got the Edinburgh information by pulling rank on the frosty-voiced female blocking her request. It wasn’t often that Marnie laid claim to her married title, but she felt no qualms about doing so when she thought the moment warranted it. She had more than earned the right, after all.

And it seemed the same tactic was required again! ‘Just inform him that Mrs Frabosa wishes to speak to him, will you?’ she said coldly, and gained the expected result as the woman stammered through a nervous apology and went off to inform Guy of his caller.

For the next five minutes, she hung on the line with only the intermittent crackle of static to tell her she was still connected while she waited for Guy to come dutifully to the phone.

He didn’t.

Instead she got the plastic voice again, sounding flustered. ‘Mr Frabosa sends his apologies, Mrs Frabosa, but asks if he could call you back as soon as he returns to London?’

Marnie’s lips tightened. ‘When will that be exactly?’ she asked.

‘The day after tomorrow, Mrs Frabosa.’

The day after tomorrow. Marnie paused for a moment to consider her next move. The very fact that she was calling him must in itself tell Guy that she needed to speak to him urgently, since it was such a rare occurrence. It was typical, she irritably supposed, for him to make her wait. He always had liked to annoy her by stretching her patience to its limits.

Well, two could play at this game, she decided, as sly calculation joined the sense of mutiny. ‘Then tell him thank you, but it doesn’t matter,’ she announced, and calmly replaced the receiver.

She knew Guy, she knew him well.

It took just three minutes for him to get back to her. And, just to annoy him, she waited until she had counted six hollow rings before she lifted the receiver and casually chanted her name.

‘Sometimes, cara, you try my patience just a little too far.’

The deep velvet tones of his voice swimming so smoothly down the line had her closing her eyes and clenching her teeth in an effort to stop herself responding to the sheer beauty of it. Loving or hating this man, he still had the power to move her sexually.

‘Hello, Guy. How are you?’ Of the people who knew him in England—his adopted country since his father emigrated here some decades ago—most called him Guy with a hard G. Marnie, on the other hand, had always preferred the European pronunciation, and the way the softer-sounding ‘ghee’ slid so sensually off the tongue. And Guy loved it. He said just hearing her say his name was enough to make his body respond to the promise it seemed to offer. Once upon a time she would say his name just to witness that unhidden burning response. Now she said it to annoy him because he was well aware it held no invitation any more.

‘I am well, Marnie,’ he politely replied, before going on to wryly mock, ‘Right up until I heard you wished to speak to me, that is.’

‘Poor darling,’ she mourned, quite falsely. ‘What a troublesome ex-wife you have.’

‘Is that what you’re going to be?’ he enquired. ‘Troublesome?’

‘Probably,’ she admitted, keeping her voice light. It always paid to be in control around Guy; he was just too quick to turn the slightest sign of weakness to his own advantage. And the advantage was going to be with him all too soon enough. ‘It’s rather important that I see you today. Can it be arranged?’

‘Not unless you can get to Edinburgh,’ he told her bluntly. ‘I will be stuck here for at least another two days.’

Marnie suppressed an impatient sigh. Could Jamie’s problem wait that long? Going by the sense of urgency her brother had brought in with him that afternoon, the answer was no, it would not wait.

Marnie chewed on her bottom lip, considering calling his bluff a second time and just severing the conversation with a light, ‘Shame, but no matter, forget I even called,’ kind of reply. It had worked several times in the past. They might be divorced, but not with Guy’s blessing. He had fought her all the way, until she had turned totally ruthless and used her trump card against him. But he made no secret of the fact that he was quite willing to do almost anything for her but die at her feet, and usually when she snapped her fingers he came running.

Then she remembered Clare, and any idea of playing cat and mouse with Guy on this one slid quietly and irrevocably from her mind.

‘I suppose you have your plane up there with you?’ she said.

‘Correct, my love,’ he said quite happily. Guy liked to thwart her when possible. She allowed it to happen so rarely that he tended to wallow in the few occasions when it did occur. ‘Of course,’ he went on, his velvet voice smoothly mocking, ‘if the idea of flying shuttle up here is totally abhorrent to you, then I think I can put Sunday afternoon aside for you...’

And what about Saturday? she wondered, feeling the biting discomfort of evil suspicion creep insidiously through her blood. Today was Wednesday. He said he was stuck up there for two days. That brought him to Friday. That could only mean one thing in Guy’s book, for he had this—unbroken little rule about never spending Saturday alone! He most probably had her with him now! Her suspicious mind took her on another step. After all, hadn’t she personal experience of Guy’s passions? One night without a woman and he wasn’t fit to know!

‘And I also suppose you are entertaining one of your ladies up there?’

‘Am I?’ he murmured in a maddeningly unrevealing drawl.

‘If I make the effort to get to Edinburgh, Guy,’ she went on tightly, ‘it will not be to play gooseberry to your latest fancy piece!’

‘Darling,’ he drawled, silky-voiced, refusing to be riled by her frankly aggravating tone, ‘if you can take so much trouble just to share my company, then I will make sure I am free.’

Which still told her exactly nothing! ‘And the poor fool who is living under the mistaken belief that she will be enjoying your full attention—what happens to her?’

‘Why?’ he countered. ‘Are you expecting to stay with me all night?’ He sounded insufferably at ease, mildly surprised, and horribly mocking. ‘If that is the case, darling, then I most certainly will make sure I am free.’

Marnie’s lips tightened. ‘If you’re still hankering after that, Guy,’ she told him witheringly, ‘then I feel sorry for you. I happen to be rather fastidious about the men who share my bed. One cannot be too careful these days.’

‘Bitch,’ he said. ‘Take care, Marnie, that one day I don’t decide to prove to you just how weak your aversion to me actually is, because you would never forgive yourself for surrendering to this—now, what was it you once called me?’ He was playing the silky snake now, slithering along her nerve-ends with that lethal weapon of a tongue of his. ‘A middle-aged has-been putting himself out for voluntary stud? Quaint,’ he drawled. ‘Very quaint.’

Marnie had the grace to wince at the hard reminder of those particular words. She had flung some terrible things at him four years ago. Unforgivable things, most of them. But she had been hurting so badly at the time, while he had been so calm, so utterly gentle with her that she had simply exploded, wanting to rile his sleeping devil with terrible insults and bitter accusations. She had not succeeded. All she had achieved was to make him walk abruptly away from her. It was either that or hit her, she knew that now. But four years ago his turning his back on her at that moment had hurt almost as much as everything else he had done to her.

‘It isn’t my fault you crave variety,’ she put in waspishly to hide her own discomfort.

‘It is that same “craving”, as you so sweetly put it,’ he countered, ‘that made our nights such—exquisite adventures.’

‘And I was so endearingly naïve, wasn’t I?’ Her full bottom lip curled in derision. ‘Such a pathetically gullible thing, and so willing to let you walk all over me.’

‘Look.’ His patience suddenly snapped. ‘I really have no more time to give to this kind of verbal battle today. If you called me up just to fill in a few spare moments trying to irritate me, then I think I should inform you that you have managed it. Now,’ he said curtly, ‘do you come up to Edinburgh or do we sever this conversation before it deteriorates into a real slanging match?’

‘I’ll check the times of the shuttle and let your secretary know my arrival time,’ she muttered, backing down. It would do her cause no good to have put him in one of his black moods before she’d even got to see him. Things were going to be difficult enough as it was.

‘I think I should also mention at this juncture that if this has anything to do with that brother of yours then you will be wasting your time taking that shuttle,’ he warned.

‘I’ll see you later,’ she said, and heard his sigh of impatience as she quickly replaced the receiver.

* * *

Jamie must have been standing by the telephone waiting for her to call, because he answered it on the first ring. ‘Clare’s resting upstairs,’ he explained. ‘I didn’t want the telephone to disturb her. Have you spoken to Guy?’

‘He’s in Edinburgh,’ she informed him. ‘I’m on my way up to see him right now.’

‘Thanks for doing this for me, Marnie,’ he murmured gruffly. ‘I know how much you hate going to him for anything, and believe me, I wouldn’t have asked you to do it this time if it weren’t for Clare...’

‘How is she?’ Marnie enquired concernedly.

‘Tense,’ her brother clipped. ‘Over-bright. Pretending she’s worrying about nothing, when really she’s so afraid of doing the wrong thing that she barely makes a move without giving it careful consideration first.’

‘Yes,’ murmured Marnie, well aware of all Clare’s painful heart-searching after that first miscarriage. She could understand how a woman must inevitably put the blame upon herself. Common sense and all the doctors in the world might tell you that it was just one of those natural tragedies that happened in life, but no matter how hard you tried you could never quite convince yourself of that. The feelings of guilt still tormented you day and night.

‘If we can just get her through this next vital month, then maybe she’ll begin to believe it’s going to be all right this time...’

‘Well, give her my love,’ Marnie said. ‘And just make sure you don’t give her anything else to worry about.’

‘I’m not a complete fool, Marnie,’ her brother said tightly. ‘I do know when I’m standing right on the bottom line.’

Well, that was something, Marnie supposed on an inner sigh. Perhaps—perhaps, she considered hopefully, this double crisis could just be the making of her scatter-brained, preoccupied brother. ‘I’ll give you a call the moment Guy decides what he’s going to do about it all,’ she assured him. ‘You just take good care of Clare.’

‘I intend to,’ he said firmly. ‘And—thanks again for doing this for me.’

‘Don’t thank me, Jamie,’ Marnie sighed a little wearily. ‘Thank Guy—if he agrees to help you out of this one.’

* * *

No one knowing only the Marnie Western-Frabosa who was the beautiful but very Bohemian-styled artist usually dressed in a paint smudged T-shirt and faded jeans would recognise her in the elegant creature who came gracefully through the Arrivals gate at Edinburgh Airport late that same afternoon.

To the man whose lazy black eyes followed her progress across the busy concourse she represented everything he desired in a woman. The first time he had ever set eyes on her had been enough to make his jaded senses throb with a need to possess, solely and totally. Five long and eventful years had passed by since then, and he still could not control that dragging clutch at his loins simply gazing at her caused.

Her skin was pure peaches and cream, so perfect, it fascinated. Her hair, long and finely spun, had been twisted in a knot on top of her head today, but the severity of the style could not dim the thousand and one different shades of reds and golds running through it. It shimmered in the overhead lights. Hers was a rich and golden beauty, made more enchanting by the pure oval of her softly featured face. Her eyes were blue—the shade of blue that could blaze purple with passion or icy grey with anger. Her nose was small and straight—with just the slightest tendency to look haughty when she lifted her chin a certain defiant way. And her mouth...he studied her mouth, lifted slightly at the corners at the moment by some rueful thought she was considering—that mouth had to be the most sensually evocative mouth he had ever seen. The fact that he knew it felt and tasted even more exciting than it looked did not ease the slow burn at present taking place low in his gut.

She was wearing purple, a colour that had always suited her. It was nothing but a simple off-the-peg cotton jersey dress, but it did wonderful things for her figure, hugging the curving shape of her body from neck to hip to just above the curve of her slender knees, leaving little work left to the imagination. And long, slender legs he knew from experience did not stop until they reached her waist brought her onwards towards him with an inbuilt sensual grace which put a smouldering glint in his hooded eyes.

Marnie saw the gleam as she made eye-to-eye contact with the darkly handsome and dangerously charismatic Guy Frabosa.

Sired by an Italian father to a French mother, brought up from the age of ten in England, then having spent most of his adult life frequenting most of the major countries in the world, Guy should have considered himself very cosmopolitan, yet he considered himself Italian to the very last drop of blood in his veins. And perhaps he was right to do so, since it was the Italian side of his breeding that burned through him like a warning beacon to any woman receptive to sheer male virility.

Of course, he, in his conceit, did pander to it, using the liquid smoothness of his Italian accent as one of his most effective weapons, refusing stubbornly to allow it to give way to his superb grasp of the English language, so the ‘r’s rolled off his tongue like purrs, sexy enough to make any woman quiver.

He was tall, powerfully built yet surprisingly lithe with it. A figure to hang fine clothes on, good quality hand-made clothes with a cut to suit the man—exclusive. His Latin black hair had given way to silver at the temples but that only added to his attraction rather than diminished it. For a thirty-nine-year-old man who had lived every single one of those years to its fullest potential, Guy still packed a fair punch in the solar plexus. He was one of those lucky men who improved with the years—like fine wine, he matured instead of ageing. Eyes of a dark, dark brown were generally lazily sensual, but could, if he wanted them to, harden to cold black pebbles which could freeze out the most tenacious foe. His nose was long and thin—not slim, thin, with a tendency to flare at the nostrils. Arrogant, and, like the rock-hard set of his chin, a direct warning to the ruthless streak in his character. Whereas his mouth by contrast was truly sensual, a very expressive tool he used to convey his moods, thin and tight when angry, sardonically twisted when mildly amused, a wide and attractive frame to perfect white teeth when touched into full-blown laughter, and soft, full and passionate when sexually aroused.

Then there was that other mouth, the one he saved for Marnie alone. The one he was wearing right at this moment as he watched her approach him through the mill of commuter bodies.

It was the half-soft, half-twisted, half-smiling mouth that said he didn’t really know how to feel about her, and really never had.

That, Marnie thought as she carefully doused down her own inevitable response to this first glimpse of him—that deep and all-consuming inner recognition of her body’s perfect master—was and always had been her most powerful weapon over Guy: his inability to decide just where she fitted into his life. He had once thought he’d done it, fitted her neatly into the box marked ‘wife’, of the forbearing and dutiful kind. Blindly besotted, safely caught and netted—only to find out, when he tried testing the springs of his trap, that he had made the biggest mistake of his life.

She reached him, waited calmly for his dark eyes to make their slow and lazy climb of her body from soft purple suede shoes to the scoop-necked top of her simple dress. Then they lifted to wryly take in the proud tilt to her chin, her mouth, heart-shaped and slightly mocking, along the straight line of her small nose until at last clashing with the full and striking blueness of her eyes.

The muscles around her stomach quivered. Standing this close to him, it was impossible not to respond to the raw beauty of Guy’s face.

‘Marnie,’ he murmured.

‘Hello, Guy,’ she quietly replied, smiling a little, because even though she hated him she loved him, if it was possible to feel the two emotions at the same time.

He knew it too, which put that look of rueful irony in his eyes as he took another step to close the gap between them. Guy was Italian enough to express a greeting with a kiss on both cheeks, and Marnie had long since given up trying to deter him. So she stood calmly waiting for the embrace with no thought of drawing back.

His hands lifted to gently curve the lightly padded bones at her shoulders, and he leaned forward, brushing his mouth across one softly perfumed cheek then the other. Then, just as she was about to take that vital step back so that she could smile at him with studied indifference, he outmanoeuvred her, holding her firmly in front of him, eyes flashing wickedly just before his mouth came to cover hers in a hot and hungry kiss which took no account of how public he was being, or how blithely he had overstepped the invisible line she had drawn between them four years ago.

It took several long, turbulent seconds for her to realise just what he was doing, but by then it was too late; shock had already sent her arching into the familiar hardness of his body, and her mouth—parting on a gasp of surprise—was suddenly consumed by the feel and taste of him, remembering, and she quivered, the sheer horror of what was happening sending her eyes wide to stare in mute protest into the flashing triumph in his. Then his dark lashes were lowering sensually over his eyes, and he was giving himself up to the sheer pleasure of the kiss, drawing her even closer to him, forcing her to acknowledge the damning evidence of her own response when her breasts swelled and hardened, aroused by the crushing pressure of his chest.

‘You have no idea how much I needed that,’ he murmured with heavy satisfaction when at last he allowed their mouths to separate.

She jerked angrily away from him, dazed by the unexpected onslaught, and dizzy with the sight and sound and smell of him. She was trembling all over, and guilty heat ran up her cheeks. Guy had not affected her like this for years.

OK, she reasoned with herself as she struggled to pull herself together. So the bitterness she used to feel towards him had slowly faded, but she had never expected this—this swamp of feeling to overtake her! She slid a shaking hand across her mouth in a useless attempt to wipe away the lingering throb of his kiss, glancing up at him through her lashes with dark, angry eyes. ‘God, Guy,’ she whispered huskily. ‘Sometimes you behave like a—’

‘I do hope, cara,’ he interrupted lazily, ‘that you are not about to deny your own response to that kiss.’ He quirked an eyebrow at her, daring her with the taunting mockery in his gaze to do just that. ‘Nor mine to you,’ he added silkily. ‘For, while you bow your head in that oh, so demure way and make believe you are too fastidious to enjoy a kiss from me, you are also glaring in the general direction where your own twin proofs still peak in recognition of their master... You really should wear more concealing undergarments, Marnie, my love, if you do not wish to be so—exposed, as they say.’

‘God, I hate you!’

‘I know,’ he drawled, unrepentant.

‘Does it give you some kind of perverted kick to embarrass me this way?’

‘Oh, it gives me all kinds of kicks to see you knocked off balance now and then.’ The curt remark was accompanied by his abrupt withdrawal from her, leaving her standing alone, trying hard not to sway dizzily. The angry heat in her cheeks told him he had easily won that round. ‘Come,’ he said, suddenly cool and aloof. ‘We have business to discuss. I have a car waiting outside.’

With that, he took her arm in a possessive hold, and, keeping her close to his side, led her towards the airport exit.

‘No luggage?’ he enquired a few steps further on.

She shook her head. ‘I was hoping to catch the last shuttle back to London.’

‘Which leaves in about—one hour,’ he informed her with dry sarcasm. ‘Rather optimistic of you, to believe we can talk and get back here in that time, don’t you think?’

‘An hour?’ She stopped to stare at him in horror. It had never occurred to her to check the times of the London shuttle! She had just automatically assumed they ran day and night—the way the trains did.

‘What will you do now?’ Guy murmured provokingly. ‘Stuck here in this strange city with a man you say you hate!’

‘I’ll most probably survive,’ she threw back tartly, ‘since the man in question can’t possibly hurt me more than he has already!’

His mouth tightened, but he said nothing, pulling her along beside him as he strode through the exit doors. The waiting car was long and dark and chauffeur-driven. Guy politely saw her seated before sliding in beside her, and almost before the door had closed them in they were moving smoothly away from the kerb.

CHAPTER THREE

‘I‘M GOING to have to find somewhere to stay overnight,’ Marnie sighed, still irritated because she had been so stupid as to not check the times of the return shuttle back to London. A couple of hours of Guy’s company was all she ever allowed herself at one swallow. The mere idea of spending a whole evening in his proximity was enough to make her voice sound pettish as she added, ‘And I’m hungry; I missed my lunch today and you—’ ‘

‘Do be quiet, Marnie,’ Guy cut in, sending her a look of such flat derision that her cheeks actually flushed at it. ‘You know as well as I do that I will have made any necessary arrangements. I am nothing if not competent, Marnie—nothing if not that...’

She glared at him balefully, hating him with her eyes for his ever-present sarcasm. Oh, yes, she agreed, Guy was competent, all right. So competent, in fact, that it had taken her almost a year to find out that he was cheating on her with another woman. And she would not have found out then if Jamie hadn’t opened his mouth over something he’d thought completely innocent at the time.

Jamie. She shivered suddenly. God, how Guy hated her brother for that bit of indiscretion. He had vowed once never to forgive him. Just as she had vowed never to forgive Guy.

‘Cold?’ he murmured, noting the small shiver.

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘Just...’ Her lips closed over what she had been going to say, and she turned her face away from him with a small non-committal shrug. She could feel the sharpness of his gaze on her and tensed slightly, waiting for him to prompt her into finishing the sentence. The silence between them grew fraught, shortening her breathing and making her heart beat faster. There was so much bitterness between them, so much dissension, she didn’t know whether she could actually go through with this.

‘Easy, Marnie...’ Guy’s hand reached out to cover her own, and it was only as the warm brown fingers closed gently over hers that she realised she was sitting with her hands locked into a white-knuckled clench. ‘It cannot be this bad, surely?’ he murmured huskily.

Oh, yes, it could, she thought silently. I hate you and you hate Jamie and Jamie hates himself. It couldn’t be much worse! ‘Guy,’ she began tentatively, ‘about Jamie...’

‘No.’ He removed his hand, and at the same time removed the caring expression from his face. And Marnie felt her heart sink as he leaned back and closed his eyes, effectively shutting her out. It was an old habit of his, and one she knew well. If Guy wished to defer a discussion he simply gave you no room to speak. On a soft sigh, she subsided, accepting that it was no use her trying to force the issue. Even if she tried, he would completely ignore her. It was the way of the man, hard, stubborn, despotic to a certain extent. He played at life by his own set of rules and principles and never allowed anyone to dictate to him.

Besides his undeniably fantastic looks, Guy was a brilliant businessman, a wildly exciting athlete and a dynamic lover. True to his Latin blood, he possessed charm in abundance, arrogance by the ton, energy enough to satisfy six women, and money enough to keep them all in luxury while he did so.

It was that same surfeit of money in the family which gave him the means to indulge his second most favourite passion: that for racing cars. It was a passion that had taken him all over the world to race, living the kind of life that automatically went along with it, his striking good looks and innate charm making sexual conquests so easy for him that by the time he met her Guy had grown cynical beyond belief about the opposite sex.

He had just passed his thirty-fourth birthday by then, and retired from racing on a blaze of glory by winning his second world championship crown, to take up the reins of business from his father ‘so the old man can go and tend to his roses,’ as Guy so drolly liked to put it.

Papa Frabosa...a small frown pulled at her smooth brow. It was ages since she’d seen him. And not because of her break-up with his son, she reminded herself grimly. No, not even that had been able to break the loving bond she and Roberto had forged during her short foray into their lives. But he liked to keep to his Berkshire home these days, since the small stroke several months ago, and Marnie had refused to so much as set foot on the estate since she’d left Guy. The place resurrected too many painful memories.

Opening her mouth to ask him about how his father was, she turned her head to look at him—and immediately forgot all about Roberto Frabosa when she found herself gazing at Guy’s lean, dark profile.

Such a beautiful man, she observed with an ache. A man with everything going for him. Too much for her to cope with. That dynamic character of his needed far more stimulation than an ordinary little artist girl had been able to offer him. She was at least ten years too young for him, ten years behind him in experience—a lesson she had learned the hard way, and had no desire to repeat even though she knew without a single doubt that if she said to him right now, and with no prior warning, that she wanted to be his wife again, Guy would take her back without question. He loved her in his own way, with passion and with spirit. But not in the way she needed to be loved—faithfully. His need to supplement his physical desires with other women had driven a stake so deeply into her heart that the wound still bled profusely—four years on.

He didn’t know, of course, just how deeply he had hurt her. He only knew the small amount she had allowed him to know—and to be fair to him he had never forgiven himself for hurting her that much. His sense of remorse and the knowledge that he had no defence for his behaviour had kept him coming back to her throughout the years in the bleak hope that she might one day learn to forgive him and perhaps take him back. He was a Catholic by religion, and, although they had not married in the Catholic faith, and their divorce had been quite legal, Guy had never accepted it as so. ‘One life, one wife’ was his motto, and she was it. Guy had refused to melt out of her life, and with his usual stubbornness had refused to let her do the melting. So they’d gone on over the years, sharing a strange kind of relationship that hovered somewhere between very close friends and bitter adversaries. He lived in hope that one day she might find it in her to forgive him, and she lived in the hope that one day she would force him to accept that she would not—which was why she did all the bitter biting, and he allowed her to get away with it.

A penance, he’d described it once. A penance for his sins, like the four years they had spent apart. He quite readily accepted it all as deserved. ‘You’ll forgive me one day, Marnie,’ he told her once when one of his many seduction scenes had been foiled—by the skin of her chattering teeth! ‘I will allow you some more time—but not much more,’ he’d warned. ‘Because time is slowly running out for both of us. Papa wants to hold his grandson in his arms before he dies, and I mean to see that he does.’

‘Then don’t look to me to provide it!’ she flashed with enough bitter venom to whiten his face. ‘You would do better, Guy, finding yourself the kind of wife who doesn’t mind sharing you, because this one has no intention of going through that kind of hell again!’

‘And I have already vowed to you that it would not happen again!’ he said haughtily. Guy always became haughty when on the defensive; he hated it so much. ‘That one time was a mistake, one which—’

‘One which was more than enough for me!’ she’d cut him off before he’d got started—as she always did when he tried to explain. ‘Why can’t you get it into your thick head that I don’t love you any more?’ she’d added ruthlessly, yet felt no satisfaction in the way his expression had closed her out, the flicker of pain she’d glimpsed in him managing only to hurt her too.

That was all of five months ago, and since then she’d steered well clear of Guy. But now here she was, driving with him through the streets of Edinburgh knowing with a dull sinking feeling inside that this time he held all the cards, and she had nothing but her pride—if he allowed her to keep it, that was, which was no real certainty.

‘We have arrived,’ his quiet voice broke into her thoughts, and she turned to glance at the porticoed entrance to one of the city’s most exclusive hotels.

He helped her alight, as always the complete gentleman in public, his hand lightly cupping her elbow as they walked inside and led the way to the waiting lift. Neither of them spoke a single word; neither of them felt inclined to. It was the calm before the storm, with both of them conserving their energies for what they knew was to come.

The lift doors closed then opened again several seconds later. Guy guided her out on to the quiet landing and towards a pair of rather imposing white-painted doors, a key dangling casually from his fingers.

She shuddered—she couldn’t help it—and he glanced sharply at her, his mouth tightening into a stubborn line because he knew exactly what she was thinking, and his fingers tightened on her arm as if in confirmation of her fear that this time—this time there would be no compromises, no escape for her.

The suite was more a mini-apartment, with several doors leading off from a small hallway. Guy pushed open one of the doors and indicated that she should precede him into a large and luxuriously furnished sitting-room.

‘Nice,’ she drawled, impressed.

‘Adequate,’ dismissed the man who had spent most of his life living out of a suitcase. He possessed a real contempt of hotels now. He much preferred his rambling country home in Berkshire, or his beautiful apartment in London. ‘Sit down and I’ll mix us both a drink,’ he invited.

Moving with the lean grace Marnie always associated with him, Guy went over to the small bar and began opening cupboard doors while she hovered for a moment, wondering on a sudden swell of panic if she should just turn right around and get out of here while she still could.

Then she remembered Jamie’s bruised and swollen face, and that linen sling around his broken arm. And she remembered Clare, and the desire to run and save her own skin faded away.

For Clare’s peace of mind it was worth it, she told herself as a memory so painful that it clenched at her chest struck her. Stress was a dangerous state of mind—could even kill if left to run wild. She would do almost anything to ensure her sister-in-law never had to experience it.

With a grim setting of her lips, she moved across the room and sat down in one of the soft-cushioned armchairs.

‘Here.’ Guy handed her a tall glass filled almost to the rim with a clear sparkling liquid. ‘Dry martini with lots of soda,’ he informed her, going to sit in the other chair while she smiled wryly at the sardonic tone he had used. It had always amused him that she disliked the taste of alcohol in any form. A dry martini well watered down was just about her limit.

The ice cubes clinked against the side of the glass as Guy took a sip at his own gin and tonic. Then, ‘OK, Marnie,’ he said briskly. ‘Let me have it. What’s that stupid brother of yours done now that could make you come to me for help?’

‘How do you know it’s Jamie who needs your help?’ she flashed indignantly, annoyed that he wasn’t even giving her a chance to work up to mentioning Jamie, and forgetting that she had already given him a clue in the car. ‘I could be here on my own behalf, you know, but typical of you: you immediately jump to your own conclusions and—’

‘Are you here for your own sake?’ he cut in smoothly.

‘No...’ Marnie wriggled uncomfortably where she sat. ‘But you could at least give me a chance to explain before you—’

‘Then it has to be for Jamie,’ he said, ignoring her indignation. ‘I warned you, Marnie,’ he inserted grimly, ignoring all the rest, ‘not to bring your brother’s troubles to me again, and I meant it.’

‘This time it’s different, though,’ she told him, her mouth thin and tight because, no matter how sure she was that she was doing the right thing, she didn’t have to like it, ‘or I wouldn’t have involved you at all, but this time it’s Clare I’m worried about, and...’

‘Clare?’ he repeated sharply. His eyes suddenly narrowed and went hard. ‘What’s he done to her?’ he demanded harshly.

‘Nothing!’ Marnie denied, resenting his condemning tone. ‘He worships the ground she walks on and you know it. Of course Jamie hasn’t done anything to hurt Clare—how could you even think such a thing?’

‘I worshipped the ground you walked on and look how badly I hurt you,’ he pointed out.

‘No, you didn’t,’ she denied that deridingly. ‘You worshipped my body, and when it wasn’t available for you you just went out and found a substitute for it. So don’t you dare try putting Jamie into the same selfish mould as you exist in! He loves Clare,’ she stated tightly, ‘loves as in lifelong caring and fidelity—something you’ve never felt for anyone in your whole life!’

‘Finished?’ he clipped.

‘Yes.’ She subsided at the angry glint now glowing in his narrowed eyes.

‘Then if Jamie is this—caring of Clare, why have you been forced to come to me to beg help for her?’

‘Because...’ She sucked in a deep breath, trying to get a grasp on her growling temper. He could always do it. One minute in his company and he could always rile her until she didn’t know what she was saying! ‘She’s pregnant,’ she said.

‘What—already?’ Guy made a sound of grinding impatience. ‘I don’t call that damned caring of your brother, Marnie,’ he muttered angrily. ‘I call it downright irresponsible!’

So do I, she thought, but held the words back. Guy didn’t need any help in finding faults with her brother. He had an unerring ability to just pluck them out of the air like rabbits from a magician’s hat!

‘What’s the matter with her?’ he went on grimly. ‘Is she ill—does she need money for medical care?’ Already he was fishing inside jacket pocket for his cheque-book, his glass discarded so he could write out a cheque for whatever amount Marnie wished to demand from him.

And she was tempted—oh, so severely tempted to just let it go at that and name a figure which would probably choke him at the size of it but would not stop him giving it to her because it was for little Clare, whom he’d always had a soft spot for and therefore would do anything for.

But that would not be right—nor fair, she acknowledged heavily. If he was going to help them out, then he had a right to know the truth.

‘Wait a mintue,’ she said, swallowing because the truth was going to be that much harder to tell now he’d all but convinced himself Clare was in dire need of his financial asistance. ‘You haven’t heard it all, and I would rather you did before you agreed to anything. Clare is pregnant, but not in any danger of losing this one just yet, though it is the fear that it may happen which made me come to you.’

‘Jamie,’ he said, sitting back, the cheque-book thrown contemptuously aside.

She nodded, deciding it was time to stop prevaricating. He deserved that after the way he had reacted to the thought of Clare’s needing his help. It even warmed her to know that Guy could be so generous to someone he barely knew.

‘He’s just completed the reconstruction of a 1955 Jaguar XK 140 Drophead,’ she began.

‘I have one of those!’ Guy’s mood instantly changed to one of glowing enthusiasm. ‘I wonder if he managed to solve the problem with the—?’

‘While he was delivering it to the owner yesterday...’ she interrupted him a trifle impatiently; it was typical of him to be so easily diverted by the name of a precious car ‘...a lorry coming in the other direction skidded on a patch of oil and ploughed straight into him. The Jaguar was written off.’

‘What—totally?’ He was horrifed.

‘It went up in flames,’ she informed him grimly.

‘Bloody stupid—anyone seriously hurt?’

‘In general, my brother lives a charmed life,’ Marnie sighed. ‘No, not seriously,’ she confirmed. ‘Jamie managed to climb out of the tangled mess just before it caught fire with nothing more than a bruised face and a broken arm for his trouble.’

‘That beaufiful car,’ Guy murmured in the mournful tone of the true car fanatic. ‘Jamie must be sick.’

‘You could say that,’ Marnie agreed. ‘The car wasn’t insured.’

That dragged Guy surely back on course. He stared at her in blank amazement, then looked appalled, then just downright disgusted. ‘How much?’ he snapped.

She told him, he swore loudly and she grimaced, entirely in sympathy with him.

‘And I suppose he’s hoping that good old Guy will come up with the readies to bail him out.’ His tone was scathing to say the least. ‘Well, you can just go back and tell him that it’s no go this time, Marnie! I have just about had enough of that reckless brother of yours and his stupid—’

‘You’ve missed the point,’ she put in quietly, catching his attention before his Italian temperament ran away with him.

‘What point?’ he demanded.

‘Clare,’ she reminded him.

‘Clare?’ Guy looked blank for a moment, then went as pale as a ghost. ‘She wasn’t in the car with him, was she?’ he choked.

‘No!’ Marnie quickly assured him. ‘No—that wasn’t the point I was trying to make. But—Guy,’ she appealed to him for understanding, ‘she’s pregnant and she shouldn’t be! It was already a big enough shock for her to have Jamie come home with his face all bruised and his arm in a sling—how do you think she’s going to react when she finds out she forgot to renew his insurance policy and that they’ve now got to find upwards of fifty thousand pounds to compensate the owner of the car?’

Silence. Guy was staring at her through hard, angry eyes as he let all of it really sink in, and Marnie sat there staring back with her lovely blue eyes wide in anxious appeal, hoping that just this once—this one last time—he would come up trumps for her and help them out without demanding anything back in return.

‘He promises to pay you back—Guy,’ she added quickly, when he continued to say nothing, ‘he—he said to tell you he’s managed to acquire an MG K3 Magnette and you can have that as a down-payment. And he’s—’

‘A damned fool if he thinks I would accept anything from him!’ Guy cut in impatiently. ‘And I warned you, Marnie, quite distinctly, the last time you came begging to me on his behalf, that I had done more than enough for the man who wrecked our marriage,’ he reminded her forcefully.

‘Jamie didn’t wreck our marriage,’ she said wearily. ‘You did that all on your own.’

The dark head shook grimly. ‘We would still be together,’ stated the man who had always preferred to scatter blame around like raindrops so long as none of it stuck to himself, ‘living together—loving together, if your stupid brother hadn’t stuck his nose into my affairs.’

‘”Affairs” being the operative word,’ she derided.

‘Damn you, Marnie!’ Angrily, he climbed out of his chair, frustration making him run a hand through the thick, sleek blackness of his hair. ‘I didn’t mean it in that way—and you know it!’ He turned to glare down at her, then sucked in a deep, calming breath. ‘Your brother was directly responsible for—’

‘I don’t want to discuss it.’ It was her turn to cut him short—as she always did when he attempted to bring up the past. ‘It’s all just dead news now.’

‘Not while I’m still breathing, it is not,’ he bit out. ‘We still have unfinished business, you and I,’ he went on to warn, wagging a long finger at her in a way which was consciously gauged to infuriate her. ‘And, until you are prepared to give me a fair hearing, it will remain unfinished. Just remember that as you sit there hating me with your beautiful eyes. For one day I will make you listen, and then it will be you doing the apologising and I taking revenge!’

‘Oh, yes.’ The scorn in her voice derided him outright. ‘As I think I’ve already said, I don’t want to talk about it. I came here today to—’

‘Beg for more money for your useless brother,’ Guy tartly supplied for her.

‘No,’ she angrily denied that. ‘To beg for Clare!’ She too came to her feet, irritation and frustration in every line of her slender frame. ‘I was as determined as you are not to bail Jamie out of any more of his disasters,’ she snapped. ‘I told him this time and in no uncertain terms that I would not involve you again! But—God,’ she sighed, lifting her strained eyes to his, ‘this is different, Guy, you’ve got to see that? This time it isn’t just you and me and Jamie we’re fighting about; it involves Clare! Sweet, gentle Clare who has never wished harm on anyone in her entire life! You can’t turn your back on her, Guy, surely? Not just to gain your sweet revenge over Jamie?’

He was going to refuse, she could see it in the grim, hard cut of his tightly held mouth, and panic began to shimmer inside her. ‘Please, Guy.’ She lifted a trembling hand to clutch pleadingly at the bunching muscles in his upper arm. ‘Please...’ she begged.

He looked long and hard into the deep blue of her pleading eyes, his own so dark and disturbing that Marnie’s insides began to churn with an old memory so sweet and aching that she wanted to cry out against it. Once she had drowned in that look, placed all her vulnerable love and trust in its meaning what it appeared to tell her.

She watched him glance down to where her hand clutched at him, his beautiful eyelashes forming a thick, sweeping arch against his strong cheekbones. Watched the hardness ease from his mouth as he lifted his gaze back to her own, and suddenly the silence between them began to throb with tension—a raw sexual tension that had no right to show itself at this vital moment! Marnie moved, her tingling fingers flexing slightly in an effort to dispel the unwanted sensation, her tongue flicking in agitation across the fullness of her suddenly dry lips, her breathing slow and heavy.

Guy saw it all, every revealing thing she was experiencing at this new kind of physical closeness, and something unfathomable passed across his face...a further darkening of those rich brown eyes that had her holding her breath in dear hope that her plea was reaching him.

‘Please...’ she repeated huskily. ‘Put your prejudices aside this one last time—for Clare’s sake?’

He hesitated visibly—long enough to make hope flare into her eyes—only to have him dip his dark head a little closer to her own as he countered softly but with a ruthlessness that left her in no doubt at all to his meaning, ‘And you, Marnie? Are you prepared to put your own prejudices aside, for sweet Clare’s sake?’

Her thudding heart sank, her body went cold, and she stood very still, staring into the utterly uncompromising set of his lean, dark features, wondering why she had actually had the gall to convince herself that she could win him round this one last time. Guy had, after all, told her in no uncertain terms not to come begging to him again unless she was prepared to pay the price. She had never known him say anything without carrying it through. It was what made him the man he was today, this stubborn unwillingness of his to compromise over anything—even the way he conducted his life, she reminded herself grimly. Married or not, Guy had always refused to answer to anyone but himself.

Unclipping her hand from his arm, she took a shaky step back from him, then turned away so she wouldn’t have to witness the flare of triumph her answer would put in his eyes. ‘Yes,’ she whispered, ‘I’m prepared to do that.’

Oddly, and surprisingly since she had just conceded to him what he had been trying to get her to do for four long years now, instead of thrusting his triumph down her throat, Guy too turned away, going to stand over by the window.

‘How prepared?’ he persisted, not turning to face her with the final challenge, his back a rigid bulk of taut muscle for her to stare bleakly upon.

‘Whatever it takes,’ she promised flatly. ‘Whatever it is you want in return.’

‘You.’ He turned his head, his expression as cool and uncompromising as she had ever known it. ‘I want you back.’

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