Читать книгу: «The Bride Wore Scarlet»

PROLOGUE

ANNIE KINCAID was dying for Rupert to take her home. She just couldn’t wait to get out of this place. Normally she loved parties, but this one was giving her a headache.

The level of noise was nothing like as raucous as some of the thrashes she’d been to, so that wasn’t the problem. It wasn’t the soft music—Vivaldi, she thought—or the thrum of conversation, the occasional ripple of well-modulated laughter that was making her temples pound.

She pushed ineffectually and despairingly at the thick tendrils of wheat-gold crinkly hair which had escaped the chignon she’d so painstakingly created and felt a few more pins slither out onto the gorgeous Persian carpet.

‘You should get it cut—one of those new short, sharp styles,’ Rupert had once said, ‘It’s much too wild, makes you look like a bimbo instead of a nineties career woman.’

Just one of the niggles that that had piled up, until last night the pile had become a mountain of monstrous proportions.

They’d been at his ultra-modern Marylebone apartment, all steel and leather furniture and waxed wooden floor-blocks. Sitting over the trendy Thaistyle supper he’d had delivered from the restaurant round the corner—he always refused to let her cook for him, which annoyed her because she was good at it—she’d casually mentioned children.

‘I’d love a huge family. Well,’ she’d amended, seeing his sudden frown. ‘Three, at least. I never had brothers or sisters, and after my parents died I was brought up by a maiden aunt—the only relative I had. Aunt Tilly thought children were meant to be rarely seen and never—and I mean never—heard!’ Her comment, glossing over the loneliness and lovelessness of her childhood, had been meant to be joky, to ease away that frown.

If anything, the scowl on his bluntly good-looking face had intensified. ‘Talk sense, Annie. What are you—twenty-four? You’ve got your career to think of—’

‘A secretary,’ she had interrupted, to his obvious displeasure. ‘That’s all I am.’

She didn’t want to be a career woman; she wanted to be a mum, the builder and holder-together of a sprawling, happy family.

‘You could advance,’ Rupert had pointed out. ‘If you tried. If you got away from that tinpot import lot you’re with. Move to a decent company, aim for personal assistant to a top man. As a matter of fact, there’s a secretarial position coming vacant in the research department at the bank. I could swing an interview, maybe even pull a few strings. I do have some clout, you know. Work hard, and it could lead to better things—much better things. The only thing that’s holding you back is your attitude.’

He’d poured more wine into her glass. Had he thought it would soften her up, make her more mellow?

‘With both of us working after we’re married we could afford a seriously decent lifestyle. I don’t intend to become the sole provider, missing out on the good life, worrying myself half to death over school fees and fodder bills. Think about it. The job with the bank, that is. As for the other—’ he’d shrugged, dismissing her needs, ‘—we’ve got another fifteen years ahead of us before we need even consider starting a family.’

He’d pushed the wine towards her over the glass top of the table with the tip of his finger. And smiled his charming smile. The smile that had stopped her in her tracks when she’d first encountered it a few months ago.

Last night it hadn’t worked. It hadn’t really worked for weeks, come to think of it. And that was responsible for her headache tonight, the way she couldn’t be bothered to mingle, enjoy getting to know new people the way she usually did.

Sighing, she remembered the way she had exploded. Told him she didn’t want to work in a stuffy merchant bank until she was forty. And said that if he generously allowed her to have a child when she’d reached that venerable age then she’d be drawing her old-age pension before he or she had finished full-time education.

She didn’t want to be a career woman with a short, sharp hairstyle, thanks all the same!

She’d called him a selfish chauvinist, and a load of other unflattering names she hadn’t been aware she’d known, and stumped out

And she wouldn’t be with him at the party tonight, only he’d phoned her at work—her despised work, she reminded herself—and practically re-invented himself.

‘About last night, well, Annie, I apologise. I shouldn’t try to force my opinions on you. I love you just as you are, even when you’re at your most contrary! I suggest we talk things through, properly. We can go back to my place after the party and discuss everything sensibly.’

With being mad at him, and wondering if their engagement was a huge mistake, she had forgotten about the party his head of department was throwing to mark his imminent retirement.

She’d been wondering if he would have bothered to get in touch with her today if the party hadn’t been happening, and was sure of it when he went on, ‘Edward has invited the entire staff—at executive level, of course—and their partners. Wives, mostly. It wouldn’t do my career prospects much good if I failed to turn up. And they all know of our engagement so they’ll expect you to be there. The chief exec is very strong on stable marriages, and I guess that goes for engagements, too.’

She didn’t care what the stuffy old chief executive, whoever he was, thought. But she did care about Rupert, and even if they decided that their engagement had been a mistake she wouldn’t do a thing to harm him, or his career prospects. She knew how important his career was to him.

So she’d bitten her tongue and ignored his hackle-raising parting comments about taking the afternoon off, visiting a good hairdresser and buying a new dress.

‘Something sophisticated rather than the startling things you usually wear. Something that does justice to your figure, of course, but without being blatant’

So, for his sake, she’d agreed to be ready at eight, when he would call for her at the flat in Earl’s Court she shared with her best friend Cathy, and now she was wishing she had never come. Or at least that Rupert would collect her now, right this minute, and take her home.

Nobody was talking to her and most of the guests looked decidedly stuffy, and some of the women were giving her disapproving looks. She wanted to sit down with Rupert and discuss their future in privacy.

Disorientated by her moments of introspection, she absent-mindedly took another glass of white wine from one of the circulating white-coated waiters. Rupert had abandoned her shortly after their arrival, obviously preferring to talk shop with his colleagues rather than circulate with her.

Or perhaps it had something to do with the dress she was wearing? The choice had been a small rebellion, but important to her. She’d already had her coat on when he’d picked her up, and he had probably been too flattered by her unusual punctuality, thinking she was being careful not to annoy him, to ask if she was wearing something he considered suitable.

Was her stubborn determination to wear what pleased her and not what he wanted her to wear responsible for the way he was ignoring her?

She enjoyed wearing the scarlet silk; it was her favourite. Usually it gave her bags of self-confidence. The halter top dipped low between her full breasts, without exposing too much naked flesh but giving the impression that at any moment it might, and the short, full skirt gave her a feeling of freedom that the svelte little black sheaths all the other women seemed to be wearing like a uniform never could.

And the deep shade of scarlet flattered her unusual colouring, the rich gold hair and her contrasting purply-coloured eyes framed by entirely natural dark lashes and brows.

Besides, to give herself her due, she had struggled for hours to tame her hair. Cut it she would not, not for Rupert or anyone else, and now it was intent on escaping the battery of pins she and—eventually—Cathy had fenced it in with.

Rare melancholy tugged her spirits down. She drank her fresh wine, partly for something to do and partly to console herself. It went straight to her head, reminding her that she’d had nothing to eat since a light salad lunch.

Where in the world had Rupert got to?

She scanned the crowd that filled the impressively large living room of the Hampstead home of the retiring head of department for Rupert’s tall, wideshouldered figure. Most of the men looked alike, in dark dinner jackets, some fatter, some shorter, but none taller.

It was difficult to see, anyway—the smoke-filled atmosphere, the tight knots of guests who broke away from each other, dispersing only to form another knot somewhere else with other people—and her eyes didn’t seem to be functioning too well. Everything seemed suddenly out of focus, which didn’t help locate her lost fiancé.

Either she needed to see an optician, or the lights were too dim, or the glasses of wine she had so heedlessly swallowed had been too strong. Whatever, she suddenly desperately wanted to find him, make it up—wanted to recapture that sense of joy in being really needed by someone which she’d experienced when he’d asked her to marry him.

And then she saw him. The back view of his tall, elegantly made figure slipping out through the French windows that someone must have opened for overdue ventilation.

She put her empty glass down on the small table she seemed to have spent the whole evening with and began to weave her way through the crowded room, accidentally bumping into a pin-thin woman wearing black silk crepe, pearls and a frosty expression.

Annie, smiling seraphically, apologised profusely and wove on her way, only one thing on her mind; to find Rupert and say sorry for the vile names she’d called him last night. He surely didn’t mean to try to change her, turn her into someone alien—hadn’t he said he loved her just as she was?

Perhaps if she could persuade him that his constant fault-finding was ruining their relationship they could get comfortably back on track again. Annie liked the feeling of being loved and wanted; she’d had precious little of it during her growing-up years.

It was past time, she thought as she slid through the French windows, that they tried to recapture what they seemed to have lost in their relationship just lately.

There was a paved terrace. He was standing at the far end; she could just make out his darker outline against the dark December night. It was cold, starless—too cold to stand around suddenly, unexpectedly assailed by second thoughts.

She drew in a deep breath and, scarlet skirts flying, ran across the terrace and flung herself into his arms.

Daniel Faber slipped through the open French windows, stuffed his hands into the pockets of his narrow-fitting trousers and walked to the far end of the terrace.

He needed out of that room. Elegant as it undoubtedly was, it was also stuffy and overcrowded. The sharp December night air was just what he needed.

He drew a litre or two into his grateful lungs and flexed his wide shoulders beneath the smooth silk and alpaca of his superbly tailored dinner jacket. He felt himself begin to relax.

Besides, with him out of the way the others might start to have fun. It couldn’t be easy to relax when their chief executive was around. Especially when opinions and betting odds couldn’t be openly bandied around in his presence. Everyone was eager to know who would be promoted to the vacant position of Head of Futures when Edward Ker finally retired early in the New Year.

The only two viable contenders were Rupert Glover and Andrew Makepeace. Glover, he felt, had the surer instinct, and an impeccable track record within the bank. Makepeace, though, was steadier, committed to his work and, just as importantly, committed to that pleasant, round-faced wife of his and their two small children. Committed family men made sound employees.

Glover was a horse of a different colour. Until fairly recently he’d been known as a womaniser—an endless procession of empty-headed bimbos going through his bedroom, apparently.

But a few months ago he’d announced his engagement, surprising everyone. Daniel’s PA had passed the information on—Daniel insisted on keeping abreast of internal gossip, keeping his finger on the collective pulse of his staff.

He’d taken his PA’s comments on board—the addendum that the token of an engagement ring was probably the only way the bank’s Lothario could get the woman in question between the sheets and that the engagement would be lucky to last the week out

But it had lasted three months. It looked as if Glover had finally decided he’d sown enough wild oats. And, seeing the fiancée in question tonight, Daniel could understand why.

Glover hadn’t introduced her, but Daniel had asked around and discovered that the startlingly gorgeous figure in red—standing out like a vibrant oriental poppy amidst the svelte and understated sober colours of the other women—was the fabled fiancée. He could understand why the younger man had kept her under wraps.

That glorious hair—a pity she’d tried, unsuccessfully as it happened, to squash it flat against her shapely head—those pouting scarlet lips and come-to-bed pansy-purple eyes, the voluptuous figure flaunted by that outrageously sexy dress. A combination tailor-made to make any red-blooded male think of steamy nights of passion and a nursery full of babies.

He grinned ruefully at his own lusting thoughts, strong, even teeth gleaming in the darkness. With such a woman for a wife Glover would keep to the straight and narrow, his nose rammed tight against the grindstone. So the odds on his promotion were growing shorter.

And maybe it was time Daniel followed his own rules, settled down to raise a family. He was thirty-six already—time, perhaps. It would certainly make his parents happy. Trouble was, he’d yet to meet the woman he could bear to spend the rest of his life with.

The cold air was seeping through his clothing, cooling his skin. He’d give Ker’s thrash another twenty minutes then take his leave. And if he could get to the fabled fiancée without being waylaid by sycophants, he’d introduce himself, discover if her voice was as sultry and exciting as her appearance.

He turned to head back in, then his feet froze to the paving slabs. Talk of the devil!

Briefly illuminated in the light from the French windows the Fabled Fiancée paused, the freshening wind catching the gossamer-fine short skirt of her dress, whisking it upwards in a swirl of scarlet, displaying more of those endless, shapely legs, a tantalisingly brief glimpse of scarlet panties.

Desire kicked fiercely deep in his abdomen. He controlled it. High time he settled down, he mocked himself, if he got horny at the sight of a pair of nicely rounded thighs separated by an intriguing scarlet triangle.

Red for danger.

Just how dangerous he was to discover, as flying feet on impossibly high heels propelled that curvy body right up to him and into his arms.

His nemesis exploded from the dark night in a rusde of silk, a cloud of some heady, musky perfume, a halo of wild tumbling golden hair and a sweetly soft body pressed close to his—a delightful, insistent closeness that rocked him back on his heels, making his arms go out to fold tightly about her, making his head spin, his senses reel.

He could feel the pulsing beat of her heart beneath the seductive, pouting breasts that were so voluptuously pressed against the unyielding rock-hardness of his chest, could feel the warmth of her belly as she wriggled against his pelvis, feel himself harden with startling immediacy, feel his control do a runner as her arms curled up around his neck, pulling his head down to hers.

He didn’t need any urging. As his mouth homed in unerringly on the moist pout of her lips instinct slammed the door of his mind on the harsh reminder that this was Glover’s woman.

The kiss—the fevered stroke and counter-stroke, the delving, subtle exploration, the moist, receptive sweetness of her, the small slender hands curving now to shape his skull, his own hands moving instinctively to take what he craved; the glorious weight and urgent softness of the breasts that literally peaked into the seeking palms of his hands—made his mind explode in wild psychedelic patterns of light.

This was elemental, untamed woman. And he wanted her—wanted her here, now, again and again.

The sinuous movement of her body against his made him shake with the fiery desperation of his need. Then the small cry she gave, almost of shock, handed him back enough control to still the caressing movements of his hands, to control the urgency of his need to uncover those desire-swollen globes and suckle her.

The small hands were pushing determinedly at his chest, and a slow gleam of brightness as the moon broke through the cloud cover showed him wide dark eyes drenched with shocked understanding.

For a moment her body quivered in his arms, and then she turned and sped away as quickly as she’d come to him, leaving him to spend the next ten minutes getting himself back in control, castigating himself bitterly for being such a goddammed fool.

Thirty-six years old and he’d reacted to her initial embrace like a sixteen-year-old adolescent overdosed on testosterone. Wryly, he guessed his body was trying to tell him something—like it was high time he entered a long-term relationship, preferably marriage?

And far from envying young Glover his choice of a future wife, he pitied him now. What the hell had she thought she was doing? Offering him partial use of her admittedly gorgeous body in the hope that having had a taster he’d promote her fiancé to head of department in the confident expectation of getting payment in full on delivery?

The unmistakable look of shock in those lovely eyes must have been brought on by the knowledge that they were both reaching the point of no return. That she’d been good and ready for him he had no doubt. His experience wasn’t vast, but deep enough to know the signs. Had Rupert Glover’s future wife been afraid she might deliver the goods before he’d been teased enough, been driven wild enough by contemplating the pay-off to promote her future husband over his rival?

He felt sorry for the poor devil!