Kissed by Moonlight, page 4
“That’s precisely what I’d like to know. What’s it all about, David? Why did you marry me?”
But suddenly she knew why. She could read it in his eyes. He no longer regarded her as a child; moreover, she excited him as a woman.
He could hold a pause longer than she could. It was apparent that he was waiting for her to elaborate on what she’d said, and so she did. She was so steamed up she couldn’t have kept her tongue still for another second.
“How silly of you to think of me in that way, David. The one woman you couldn’t have except by marrying her. Not that I’m really any different than your other women. You could have used your charm; I’m sure it would have worked. But it was a question of conscience, wasn’t it? I was too near home.” She knew she was saying too much. His eyes were impaling her and his face had gone savagely white. But it was like running at great speed down a steep hill, once started she couldn’t stop. “You want me. I can feel the vibrations of your lust reaching out to me right now. You’re hungry for me. That’s why you married me. But you’ll never have me. Never, never, never. Go to her. I don’t care.”
“Am I supposed to read any sense in this outburst?” he said, his narrowed eyes hard and unyielding on hers. His fingers wound around her wrists so tightly she thought he must stop her pulse beat. His voice cracked against her cheek with the fury of a whip. “Go to her, you say? Who are you talking about? Explain yourself.”
“The woman who was on your bed when I came in,” she informed him scornfully, refusing to be intimidated by his strength.
“What woman?”
“What woman do you think? A woman with black hair wearing black satin pajamas. I didn’t stop to ask her name.”
His breath sucked in harshly. “That sounds as if it could be Justine Hyland.”
“Sounds as if it could be?” she screamed at him. “Do you mean there’s more than one black-haired woman who could be waiting for you on your bed?”
“No, it’s got to be Justine. But she wasn’t there at my invitation and she’s never been waiting for me before.”
“Oh yes? Do you expect me to believe that?”
“It’s the truth. You little fool, don’t you see that you’ve been set up? Justine did it so that you would lose your temper and behave in exactly the hot-headed way you are doing.”
“She wouldn’t have had time. She didn’t know I was coming,” she protested, quavering, doubtful.
“It’s typical of Justine’s scheming brain.” Did she detect a glitter of laughter in his eyes, as if he applauded the woman’s audacity? “How much notice do you think she’d need? Word obviously got to her the moment we arrived, which would give her ample time to get up here and give you the reception she did. Think about it. You’ve got all night.”
Without another word he dropped her wrists, turned, and walked toward the door.
“Where are you going?” she asked with a stirring of panic and possibly regret.
“You’ve all night to think about that too.”
The door slammed shut after him.
Chapter Three
She flung herself down on the bed. Even in her anguish she was squeamish enough to choose the other bed, the one without the scent of the other woman’s perfume lingering on the spread. The thought of lying where that woman had lain filled her with revulsion.
She closed her eyes, but all she could see was the set of David’s dark, concerned face – the swift searching look in his eyes as he tried to find a cause for her behavior, and then that look changing to cold anger and icy contempt.
She would not listen to him ... would not listen to reason, even. All she’d been able to think of was that sensuous snake of a woman in her seductive black satin pajamas. Had she – what was her name? Justine? – set Petrina up? It was possible. The word that David had brought a wife with him would have swept through the hotel like wildfire. Did Justine work in the hotel? It seemed more credible that she was involved in the hotel in some way than that David was indulging in an affair with a guest. Had a colleague raced to tell her that David had returned, bringing a bride with him? And had she decided to do the woman scorned routine and dash along to his room to give the bride an unpleasant reception? She would have nothing to lose. If the story had turned out to be untrue, if her informant had been 'mistaken or was playing a joke on her, Justine would have been there to give David a warm welcome.
Perhaps she was giving him that warm welcome at this very moment, stroking her hands over the muscled virility of his lean body, tempting him to laugh with her at the childish hot-headedness of the silly little girl he’d married.
Married. The word hung in her mind. She and David were married, and she had no idea what he expected in a wife.
Oh, dear heaven, what had she done? Why hadn’t she let David tell her who Justine was, and then she wouldn’t be battling against supposition?
She swung her legs off the bed and crossed the narrow strip to the other bed. With shaking hands she smoothed the bedspread back to its immaculate untouched image, as if by pressing out the wrinkles she could evict from her mind that black-haired woman with her slinky hips and her sneering red splash of a mouth.
Before she went back to her own bed, she wandered out into the sitting room in the forlorn hope that perhaps David had made a bed for himself there. He wasn’t there – neither was he on the balcony.
She’d been a fool to boil up like that, sending David away, depriving herself of his arms on her wedding night, Causing pain and humiliation to them both. If only he had stayed. She might not have had his love, but he, had he only known it, would have had all of hers.
He had to sleep somewhere. Someone would know they’d slept apart on their wedding night. As she saw it, he had two courses open to him. He would either go straight to Justine, or he would get another room allocated for himself. Someone – Justine, the receptionist, a chambermaid – would talk. It was too good a morsel not to be divulged.
Light was trailing across the sky before the release of sleep came, and even then her dreams must have been troubled because twice her eyes flicked open with a start to realize that the noise that had awakened her was her own whimpering. Eventually she must have dropped off into a sleep that was so deep that it seemed nothing could rouse her. But something did. This time it was not her own sobs that woke her, but a hand biting cruelly into her shoulder.
She recoiled sharply, and then David’s voice sliced into her awareness. “I’m not going to strike you, if that’s what you’re afraid of. I’ve brought your morning coffee.” He set it down on the bedside table and subjected her to a long critical appraisal. “You look ghastly. Your mascara’s run and you’ve got two black eyes.”
Despite her brightly colored hair, which looked more golden than copper in the polishing rays of the morning sun, her eyelashes were naturally dark and silky. Sometimes she used a smudge of coloring on her eyelids, but she had never used mascara in her life. The two black eyes David spoke of were the bruising shadows her night of stress and remorse had given to her.
Had there been the tiniest glimmer of kindness or forgiveness in his face, she would have let it all come spilling out, everything about the terrible night she’d spent and how she realized how silly she’d been and that she loved him and would he please give her another chance. But no way could she make this plea while he looked at her with such icy contempt.
What a gullible fool she had been. She had played right into Justine’s hands. She remembered with horror the words of abuse she’d flung at him last night. She’d taunted him, said that he’d only married her to possess her and vowed that he never would. Couldn’t he look at her now and see that her eyes were rescinding that statement? She had spoken impetuously in her wild rage, spoken against every inclination of her heart and of her body, which had ached for him then even as she sent him away, which ached for him now, even as he looked at her with eyes full of cold distaste.
She was going to fight Justine, although she didn’t know how. She knew that she was at a severe disadvantage. Although it was a new game to her, Justine would be an accomplished hand at this sort of thing. There was little she could do at the moment because she wasn’t calm enough. If she tried to tell him all that was in her heart, she would never be able to contain her tears. David despised tears. Tears were a child’s way of manipulating a situation; they demonstrated an inability to cope. This wasn’t a game for juveniles. It would hardly serve her purpose to prove that she was a child. It was a woman’s game, and she must compete as a woman. That barred her from telling David that the black under her eyes was shadow and not yesterday’s mascara.
She yawned. “I forgot to remove my makeup.”
“You also forgot to take off your dress,” he said, his eyes full of scorn.
That hadn’t been very clever of her. Her eyes wandered away from his, swept across the untouched supper cart and fell unhappily on the unwrinkled smoothness of the other bed. “David, I know why you’re attacking me, and I don’t blame you.”
The blue eyes were enigmatic as they surveyed her beneath a sarcastically lifted brow. “That’s magnanimous of you.”
“Please don’t talk down to me. I won’t grovel, David. I’m trying to be fair. Make things right for you. I know I can’t undo what happened last night –”
He cut in snidely to say, “Don’t you mean what didn’t happen?”
She continued steadfastly, endeavoring to ignore the interruption as she paid the full price of his condemnation with inner remorse and shame. “I would like to do all in my power to make amends now.”
“My little Pet.” The insult of the endearment, because it was not said in a caressing voice, was carried a step further as his stripping glance sensuously stroked her body. “Are you inviting me into your bed? Making yourself available to me now?”
She held on to her anger, although not without great difficulty. She could feel it steaming up inside. She knew that he was humiliating her because she had humiliated him last night. By accepting it she was, in a small way, making atonement.
“If that’s what you want, yes. I was thinking more of appearances though. If we ruffled the other bed up, it would look as though you’d slept there. And we could toss some food about on the plates, to make it appear as though we’d eaten some of it.”
“And pour the champagne down the bath outlet? You’re bothering about nothing. The maid will think we were too hungry for other things to waste time on food, too intoxicated with one another to require drink. As for my bed not being slept in, doesn’t that suggest a full night of mad, passionate debauchery in your bed?”
She bit hard on her lip, She must not retaliate. She must remain seemingly sweet and docile while he played his cat-and-mouse game, and then she would not blame herself, as she had blamed herself for last night. If he demanded recompense, he could have it.
Her good intentions crumbled as he made a move toward her. She flinched away instinctively.
“I was only going to hand you your coffee, which you haven’t touched yet. Still, it will be cold by now, so I won’t. What did you think I was going to do, Pet-rina? This?” His hand moved around to locate the tag on her zip. She felt a stroking movement down her spine and her dress lost its cling.
He assisted her arms out and the material fell away and curled around her hips. He lifted her out of it; she felt like a doll. It was wrong, all wrong. The look on his face as he continued to undress her in this cold, calculating way made it distasteful. His mouth ought not to have been held steady in this grim expression, but should have tantalized and excited her as it brushed gently and searchingly over her face and neck, whispering her name between kisses. The tender warmth of his expression should have tempted her into a crazy vortex of feeling and heightened awareness, instead of which the cold savagery of his movements washed over her in icy waves, provoking panic in her throat and turning her body into a resisting block of frigidity.
Her thoughts were locked in argument with her emotions. Her mind instilled its wish to remain passive, but her body could not make the pretense and stiffened in rejection. It would not be used like this and it repelled him.
“I knew it! This is exactly how I expected you to act. Although I must admit,” he said in a cool and sneering drawl, “I thought you were going to call my bluff. I was wondering how far I would have to go before I had to repel you.”
Then, and only then, did it occur to her that his mocking eyes had never left her face; his impersonal hands had removed her clothes without touching her body.
“You are despicable,” she said, drawing a harsh breath.
“I would have had to agree with you if I’d taken you up on your offer. Not that there was much risk of that. I’ve never been so hard up that I’ve had to take an unwilling woman to bed, and I’m not likely to change my habits now. I merely wanted to prove that to you.”
“All right, point taken.”
“Is it? Has it got through to you that the big jealous act you put on last night was unnecessary?”
It wasn’t an act, her brain screamed. “I was jeal –”
He interrupted. “All you had to say to me was that you’d married me to get out of a tight corner but that you couldn’t go through with the full marriage commitment, and I would have understood. After all, I did offer you this ... bargain.”
So that’s what he thought. He thought she’d cheated him, lied to him. “I didn’t –”
“I’m not the sex-starved fiend you seem to have labeled me. Did you want to say something? Tell me over breakfast. Right now I suggest you take a shower. A cold one. You look as if you need cooling off. Join me in the dining room as soon as you’re ready.”
“I’m not hungry. If you don’t mind, I’ll skip breakfast,” she said, speaking quickly in her desperation to complete a full sentence, and felt silly when her words fell into the lengthy pause he allowed.
At full effective length he said, “Oh, but I do mind. You are my wife and I want you by my side.”
She sighed in heavy exasperation, knowing she might as well give in with reasonable grace and come first as last. “Please don’t leave me to find my own way down to the dining room. Please wait for me.”
A grim smile came to his lips. “Yes, all right. Don’t be long.”
“I won’t,” she promised.
Was that it? Had she somehow found the key? She had told him she wasn’t going to grovel, but something about the set of his face had replied, “We’ll see about that.” Was he going to make her grovel every step of the way?
She pulled her robe on, and with its soft folds about her her dignity returned. As she walked toward the bathroom she felt a certain satisfaction in knowing that his eyes could not resist following her. The feel of them boring into her back gave her spirits a lift. He had chosen to punish her by remaining impervious. But perhaps he’d punished himself as well, because he wasn’t as impervious as he tried to make out.
Unpacking was another of last night’s omissions. After a cool, invigorating shower, she dragged a cream dress from her suitcase, giving thanks for the uncrushable quality of the material. It was built on the skimpy lines of a sun dress, with shoelace shoulder straps. She confined her makeup to a dab of moisturizing lotion, brushed the tangles out of her hair, and joined David on the balcony, where he had chosen to wait for her.
Last night, in the total darkness, she had looked out at nothing, thrilling to the sound of the sea, supposing it was wearing itself out on the rocks beneath the balcony.
Actually, the sea was further away than she had thought, separated from the building not only by a narrow strip of sand but also by the hotel swimming pool, which was edged with brightly colored loungers under the shade of garish umbrellas or trees that looked artificial, as if they’d been uprooted from their natural setting, as indeed they had, and planted there for effect.
“You don’t like it?” David said, observing her face.
“It’s not to my taste,” she admitted.
“The general public disagrees with you,” he informed her gravely.
She shrugged her shoulders in disdain.
“What’s that meant to imply?”
“Merely what I said before – that you are loyal to your employer.”
“My employer?” he said, frowning.
Replying to his tone of query and ignoring that prohibitive frown, she said, “The man you work for. The opportunist who took advantage of my father’s misfortune to make his own fortune.”
“You’re not being fair. There’s no middle course, Petrina. It’s either up or down. If he hadn’t learned something from your father’s mistakes, then he would have gone down too.”
“How can you defend him? He’s nothing but an unscrupulous profiteer without taste or finer feelings.”
“I admit it does look as though he took advantage of the situation to make an exorbitant profit, but there’s more to it than that. Someone had to step in with a salvaging plan. There would have been little to choose from, whoever had come in.”
She stubbornly refused to believe that. “If only he hadn’t tried to reach too high,” she said bitterly. “Ambition is a virus. It kills.”
“It wasn’t ambition that killed your father – failure did,” he pointed out somberly.
She awarded him a brief glance. She didn’t want him to see the look on her face, to let him know by the flicker of intelligence that crossed her features that he was right. Ambition had been the breath of life to her father, his inspiration and mainstay – failure had been the executioner.
“I don’t suppose this one hotel will make much difference,” she said haughtily.
He grabbed her by the shoulders and swung her around so he could look deep into her eyes, as though willing her to understand something she was unconsciously rejecting.
“You’re hurting me,” she said, but her plea went unnoticed and his hands retained their hold.
“It’s not one hotel. It had to be an extravagant plan of salvation or it wouldn’t have worked. The Hotel León is the premier hotel in a hotel complex served by shops and bars and all the other vulgar amenities that pull in the tourists. The greedy opportunist, the profiteer you despise so much, has pandered to the ostentatious whims and predilections of the paying public. Forget your father’s dream. That died three years ago. Three years, do you hear? It’s taken three years of blood and sweat to achieve what’s taken its place. Three years to build Chimera up to what it is now, and this is only the beginning.” One hand released itself from her shoulder and clamped on to her chin. He twisted her face around to make her look down at the colorful gaudiness of the swimming pool scene. “This is the reality of Chimera. Accept it.”
