Fiancee By Mistake Read online

  The Lycra that made her dress cling so closely also made it easy for him to ease the top down from her shoulders, the bra beneath as swiftly discarded. Pausing only to peel off his jumper and toss it aside, Sean came back to her again, dragging her up against him and deliberately moving his chest against the peaking tips of her nipples. His smile grew into a wide grin of triumph as he heard her sigh of uninhibited pleasure at the sensation of the roughness of his body hair against their tight sensitivity.

  'You are one sexy lady,' he murmured against her skin, trailing hot kisses down from the smooth roundness of one shoulder to the pink-flushed curves of her breasts. Slowly, tormentingly, his mouth moved lower, so that she was whimpering with need before it finally closed over one throbbing peak; drawing it into its moist heat.

  'Oh, God!'

  Leah's body arched upwards convulsively, her head flung back in total abandon as she offered herself to the delicious sensation. Sean's gentle tugging at her breast sent a pulse of white-hot excitement straight from its tip down to the very centre of her femininity.

  'Don't stop!' she begged, and felt his laughter feather warmly across her flesh.

  'I don't intend to.'

  His hands were tugging her skirt upwards, exposing the lacy tops of her stockings, the frivolous fastenings of her suspender belt. Automatically Leah raised herself to help him.

  When his questing fingers slid over her hip-bones and under the wisp of silk that was the only flimsy barrier left between him and her most intimate core, she cried out sharply, the sound of her voice clashing with the soft chiming of a clock somewhere in the room.

  'God, but you're ready for me,' he breathed. 'So ready. I can see that making love to you just once is never going to be enough for me. I'd want to do it again...'

  His fingers tangled in the damp curls, probed gently for a second, making her move uncontrollably.

  'And again...'

  Each word coincided with the stroke of the clock in the corner, creating a rhythm that forced itself through the fevered haze inside Leah's head. It pounded against her brain, refusing to be pushed away until, in spite of herself, she found she was counting along with them.

  Six... Seven

  'And again!'

  Eight... Nine...

  Nine! The final stroke slashed into her consciousness like a blade of ice, incising the passion from her thoughts with a single blow.

  Nine o'clock! There was something— She had promised— Oh, God, what was happening to her?

  'No!'

  It was a cry of shocked distress, so sharp, so shaken that even in his state of fevered desire Sean heard it and paused in confusion. Blue eyes dark and glazed with passion went to her face.

  'Sweetheart...'

  'I said no!'

  She wrenched herself up into a half-sitting position, shaking fingers going to her exposed breasts, then down to her skirt in an ineffectual attempt to cover herself. But when she realised that Sean's hands still lingered intimately at the top of her thighs she pushed them away with a violence that clearly surprised him.

  What had she done? How could she have let this happen? How could she have been so foolish as to let things go this far?

  Nine o'clock! She had promised Andy she would phone him at nine to let him know she had arrived safely at her mother's house.

  But she wasn't at her mother's, or anywhere near it. And she certainly wasn't safe! She was here, with a man she had met only a couple of hours before—a man she knew nothing about except for his appearances on her television set, a man she had let...

  'No!'

  This time it was a wail of distress and shame. How could she have forgotten? How could she have let him drive it from her mind?

  "This mustn't happen! It's wrong! So very wrong! I'm— I'm engaged to someone else!'

  She didn't know what she had expected his response to be. A protest, at least. Or perhaps some attempt at seductive persuasion—a few sultry kisses, a murmured. Forget him, darling, he's history. You and I are meant to be together.

  Instead, the man above her turned white with shock. The words were barely out of her mouth before he had snatched his hands away from her so swiftly that she might just have told him she was infected with some appalling disease.

  With a violent imprecation he levered himself up and away from her, his long body jack-knifing off the settee before he swung violently away towards the window.

  'Engaged!' she heard him fling at her with savage fury. 'Of course you're bloody engaged! You're not free, you deceitful little bitch!'

  'Sean...I'm sorry.'

  It was all she could manage. A devastating ache had taken possession of her body so that she felt as if she was bruised all over. Her exposed breasts, their nipples still swollen from his attentions, were agonisingly sensitive to the cold air that had taken the place of his warm, caressing mouth. But there was a deeper, racking sense of loss that twisted her insides into bitter knots of despair.

  'I'm really sorry.'

  'You're sorry!' He whirled round, blue eyes blazing in the white mask that was his face, livid marks of rage etched around his nose and mouth. 'You're sorry! How the hell do you think I feel? I knew—'

  Once more he swore, viciously and fluently, a clenched fist slamming against his forehead as he shook his dark head in furious disbelief.

  'Of course you're bloody well engaged! But that didn't stop you, did it? Did it? So tell me...'

  Abruptly his voice had changed, but Leah found the deadly softness of the question even more unnerving than the violence of the fury that had gone before. The febrile glitter in his eyes terrified her, so that she shrank back against the cushions, recoiling as if his words had been actual blows.

  'Tell me, you greedy little two-timing bitch, just how many do you want?'

  As Leah frowned her incomprehension, unable to collect her shattered thoughts enough to even see what he was driving at, let alone answer him, he repeated the question. But this time he expanded it so that there could be no doubt as to exactly what insult he had meant to imply by it.

  'How many, my darling? Are you so insatiable that even two men are not enough for you?'

  CHAPTER FOUR

  'I'M ENGAGED to someone else!'

  The words pounded against Sean's skull, making him want to shake his head violently to drive away their ominous sound. Each repetition seemed to twist his conscience even more painfully than before.

  'I'm engaged.'

  Of course she was bloody well engaged! And he knew only too well just who her fiancé was—or rather had been, until a few short hours before.

  But, engaged or not, she was still off-limits. More than anyone, he knew how much this woman meant to his brother.

  'Sean...'

  With a violent movement he averted his eyes from where she lay on the settee, her long legs pale against the bronze cushions. Her breasts...

  'Cover yourself up!'

  His voice was harsh, thickened with the disgust he felt. He couldn't believe that he had ever found her beautiful, that she still seemed that way to him. Instead, he felt that, in some twisted reversal of the old fairy story, she should have become foul and disgusting in his eyes, as if he had kissed a princess and seen her turn into a grossly repellent, poisonous toad.

  But even worse than that was the guilt that assailed him. The knowledge that he had let himself be enticed into her carefully baited feminine trap. He had been so base, so foolish. Even now his body still throbbed with unappeased desire, making him ache right to his very soul.

  God, he'd thought he was a rational, reasonable sort of man, but it seemed that he was just as easily led by his most primitive instincts as anyone else.

  'I said, cover yourself up!' he flung at her when she didn't move. 'Do you think I want to see you lying there, flaunting yourself?'

  That got through to her. Those amazing eyes flashed furiously as she swung her legs to the floor, adjusting her dress as she did so.

  'I was not flaunting m
yself! What is this, Sean? Are you trying to claim that you had no part in what just happened? That I just led you on, and you were the poor, innocent party in my—'

  'Not innocent, no!' Sean flashed, swinging round to face her again, and then immediately wishing he hadn't.

  With her brown hair rumbled around her shoulders, her eyes wide and dark, she looked like some innocent schoolgirl. That effect was heightened by the fact that her makeup had all but vanished, her lipstick wiped off.

  Kissed off, his conscience reminded him, making him want to groan aloud at the memory of how that soft mouth had felt underneath his own, how willingly it had opened to the pressure of his lips, the taste of it still lingering on his tongue.

  'We were equals in desire, yes. But you were the one who didn't tell the truth. You lied...'

  'No! I never said anything that wasn't true!'

  'By omission, then!" Sean snapped. 'It amounts to the same thing. You were the one who neglected to inform me of the existence of your fiancé until it was almost too late!'

  'I know.'

  To his consternation, Sean came close to regretting the harshness of his tirade when he saw her reaction. Saw the betraying shimmer in her eyes, the way her small white teeth dug into the softness of her lower lip. Close, but not close enough. Because as his words died away he came hard up against the other unsavoury fact that his anger had pushed to the back of his mind.

  It wasn't just Pete that she had been prepared to betray.

  Not only had she walked out on his brother, leaving him emotionally shattered, but she had already transferred her affections, such as they were, to another man entirely.

  'But it isn't exactly a firm engagement I mean—'

  'I don't want to know what you mean!' Sean roared furiously, clenching his hands tightly and shoving them into the pockets of his jeans, not trusting himself to resist the temptation to use them.

  Deep inside, he was prey to a darkly primitive urge to grab her and shake her to within an inch of her life, and the realisation that he could be so totally uncivilised, in thought at least, shocked him to the core of his being.

  He knew only too well just how far from 'firm' her engagement was. Hadn't he had to pick up the pieces of his brother, metaphorically at least, that she had left behind? Pete had been shattered, close to breaking point if the rawness of his voice had been anything to go by. But this little madam had flounced off to her new lover without even a backward glance.

  To my mind any engagement is as binding as it comes, second only to actual marriage vows. So what was I to you? A little diversion while en route to something more interesting?'

  'No! Never that. I—I just don't know what came over me.'

  'Oh, I do, darling.'

  He laced the endearment with an acid that turned it into the worst form of insult, and knew that it had hit home as he saw her wince unhappily. The surprisingly vulnerable reaction did uncomfortable things to his guts, and he had to clamp down hard on the weak response in order to be able to glare into those wide violet eyes.

  'I know exactly what got into you. It's a very simple, straightforward word. A four-letter word, in fact—in both senses of the term. A basic word for a very basic feeling. I'll spell it out for you, shall I, sweetheart? It's called lust, pure and simple—though there was nothing in the remotest bit pure about your behaviour just now.'

  'And you, I suppose, were inspired by the purest love?' Leah flashed up at him. That dark, proud head had gone back, her chin coming up defiantly. Even the pansy eyes burned with molten-gold flares of anger.

  'Never that!'

  'Never that!' she echoed, a new contempt shading her retort.

  That earlier disconcerting vulnerability had been stripped away, and in its place was a very different persona. Sean strongly suspected that at last he was seeing the real woman, the one who had been hidden under the carefully cultivated veneer of defencelessness.

  He was forced to wonder whether she had ever shown this other, harder side of herself to Pete. Privately he doubted it. His brother had always described his fiancée in terms of sweetness and light. But then Pete had always been a sucker for a beautiful face and a soft voice.

  As he had himself, a brutally realistic voice at the back of his thoughts reminded him sharply.

  'No, never that!' she repeated. 'Your motivation was every bit as base as you accuse me of being.'

  The acid in her attack matched his own in bitterness.

  'But I suppose it's fine for a man to feel such things! A woman who feels physical desire—sexual passion—isn't quite nice, quite feminine, is she? And if she dares to show the way that she feels, then she's what—an insatiable tart?'

  So she hadn't liked his own outspoken accusation, Sean registered with grim satisfaction.

  'You're the one who's engaged to someone else. And in my book, anyone—man or woman—who indulges in "sexual passion"...' Deliberately he quoted her own words back at her, each word seeming to be formed in ice.

  As he spoke, Marnie's face floated before his mind's eye and wouldn't be pushed away, no matter how hard he tried. His efforts to drive the unwanted image from his thoughts made his tone even harsher as he went on.

  'While committed to someone else, whether firmly or otherwise, is—yes—guilty of behaviour of the lowest kind.'

  That had caught her on the raw, he noted with some satisfaction, seeing the yellow flames burning in those amazing eyes.

  'And what gives you the right to be so bloody sanctimonious about everything?"

  She was ramming on the battered shoes as she spoke, not even looking at her feet, her attention fixed firmly on his face.

  'You were no damn— Oh!'

  It was a cry of shock. Finding the rough treatment positively the last straw, the elderly leather of her shoes had finally given way, splitting all along the side of the right foot.

  'Here!'

  Sean's response was instinctive, automatic, as was the way he moved forward. Firm fingers closed over hers, his other hand going to support her elbow as he pulled her upright.

  Expecting resistance, he pulled harder than she had obviously anticipated, making her sway against his chest, one of her hands coming up to steady herself on his shoulder.

  The sensual mixture of flowers and spice that was her perfume assailed his senses, the air it floated on seeming to be still warm from the heat of her flushed skin. The soft brush of her velvet-covered breasts against the wall of his chest was almost more than he could bear.

  'Oh, God!'

  He didn't know if he had actually said the words out loud or simply let the exclamation escape inside his thoughts. But, a second later, looking into the pansy-dark pools of her eyes told him that no words needed to have been spoken.

  She knew anyway. Knew that he had only to touch her and his body reacted, tightening, swelling in a need he could not disguise. But this time there was no matching response in her own face, no softening in her body, only a freezing into stiff coldness that had more of a sobering effect than the coldest of showers had ever done in the past.

  'I'm fine now, thank you,' she said, and the clipped, curt delivery made a nonsense of the last two polite words. 'So if you'll just...'

  Deliberately she let the purple gaze drop to where his hand still held hers. It was as if the ice in her tone had been injected into his bloodstream so that he couldn't release her quickly enough, unable to bear the burning pain of being so completely frozen out.

  'And now, seeing as it's only too plain that you don't want me here any more than I want to stay, perhaps you'll let me phone a garage.'

  For a split second or two Sean was actually tempted. If she could get her car back on the road then she would go, and leave him in peace. He could get himself back under control and rid his mind of the hateful mixture of hunger and guilt that had preyed on him ever since he had first seen her.

  But almost immediately he rejected the thought. That wasn't how things were meant to go.

  He had
promised Pete that he would hold onto this woman until his brother could get here to talk to her, and he planned on keeping that promise. Though when the young fool finally arrived he was fully determined to take him to one side and hand but a few home truths about his so-called fiancée. Pete would hate him for it, but he knew he couldn't live with himself if he let his brother persist in his blind self-delusion.

  But until he could do that he had to make sure that she stayed in the cottage. And so...

  'Sorry,' he drawled, making it plain he felt no such thing. 'No can do. There's no phone.'

  'No phone!' Her consternation was obvious, her eyes wide as she stared round the room, testing the truth of his declaration. 'But there has to be!'

  Sean shook his head, privately thanking his lucky stars that the telephone was hidden away in the tiny room the estate agent had described laughably as 'the study', with the door firmly shut.

  'But I have to ring—'

  'Your fiancé? Or perhaps you have some other poor sucker lined up waiting for a call? Either way, I'm sure they'd be only too pleased to know that you're stranded in some remote cottage with—what was it? God's gift to women?—and no hope of getting out for at least twenty-four hours, if not more.'

  'If you must know, I wanted to phone my family. I—'

  She broke off, all colour leaching from her cheeks as she registered what he'd said.

  'Twenty-four hours! You can't be serious!'

  'Never more so, sweetheart. Did you notice anything about the weather on the way here? You couldn't have been totally unaware of the fact that snowfall like that will block the roads in minutes, let alone the hour or so we've been inside. But, no—I suppose you had too much on your mind to register that.'

  Deliberately he let his eyes slide to the settee, lingering on the crushed and disordered cushions where only minutes before they had lain together, limbs intimately entwined. Once more he felt a twist of reaction torment his nerves at the recollection of her unrestrained response.

  'But if you doubt my word you only have to look out of the window to see the truth of the situation.'

  'We can't be trapped!'

  She went to the window, staring out at the white drifts piling up against the walls, the skeletal outlines of the trees, branches weighted down close to breaking point. Her expression was almost as bleak as the landscape outside.