Fugitive Bride

About the Author

MIRANDA LEE is Australian, and lives near Sydney. Born and raised in the bush, she was boarding-school-educated, and briefly pursued a career in classical music before moving to Sydney and embracing the world of computers. Happily married, with three daughters, she began writing when family commitments kept her at home. She likes to create stories that are believable, modern, fast-paced and sexy. Her interests include meaty sagas, doing word puzzles, gambling and going to the movies.

Recent titles by the same author:

MASTER OF HER VIRTUE

CONTRACT WITH CONSEQUENCES

THE MAN EVERY WOMAN WANTS

NOT A MARRYING MAN

Did you know these are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

Fugitive Bride

Miranda Lee

www.millsandboon.co.uk

PROLOGUE

THE letter stood out because of its pink perfumed envelope.

Enid hesitated, then shrugged and opened it. As Gerard Woodward’s confidential secretary she had permission to open all mail which came to the office unless it was clearly marked ‘Private and Personal’. In fact, Gerard insisted upon it. He also insisted she decide and deal with everything not needing his individual attention. The head of Sunshine Enterprises did not want to be bothered with trivia.

Enid knew, however, from the first few words, that this was one letter she shouldn’t have opened. But the damage had been done and there was no going back. She scanned the brief note all the way through, her chest becoming tighter with each word.

Dear Gerard,

By the time you read this I will have left you. Don’t try to find me. You won’t succeed. Even if you do, I won’t come back to you, no matter what. Believe me when I say I never want to see you again. I overheard what you said to Steven last Sunday regarding your attitude towards love and marriage. And wives.

May God forgive you for what you’ve done to me, because I never will.

Leah

‘Dear God,’ Enid muttered.

She closed her eyes for a second, swivelled round in her chair and stood up. There was no use trying to hide her mistake in judgement. Gerard could not really blame her for opening the darned thing, though he might criticise her lack of feminine intuition. He would be really furious, however, at any delay in acquainting him with such a letter.

Gathering herself, she stepped up to the door which separated her office from her employer’s and gave it her usual precise tap-tap.

‘Yes,’ came the curt reply.

Enid straightened her spine and marshalled a confident expression.

Gerard was a difficult and demanding boss at the best of times, a workaholic with a perfectionist personality. Failure was anathema to him; success his God. The man who would be king of Queensland’s tourist industry was ruthless when crossed and given to caustic comments whenever anyone didn’t come up to his impossibly high standards.

Fortunately, Enid was a top secretary, totally competent, cool in a crisis and unflappable under fire. During the eight years she’d held this job it had been rare for her to provoke her boss into criticising her work performance.

On the one occasion when she had been on the end of Gerard’s cutting sarcasm Enid had been tempted to quit on the spot. She’d had a husband once with a nasty tongue and did not relish being on the end of anyone’s temper these days.

But she was forty-six years old, and didn’t fancy her chances on the open and very tough job market. Her qualifications were impeccable, but so were those of younger women who had more going for them than their secretarial skills.

Glamour had never been Enid’s strong hand, and she looked every minute of her age. So she’d bitten her tongue at the time, while reminding herself Gerard paid her well enough to put up with the occasional blast.

But she didn’t like the man. Not one bit.

Steeling herself against what was to come, she opened the door and stepped into the holy of holies.

He didn’t look up, his attention all on some photographs he was studying. No doubt some cute coastal town was about to be besieged by offers its inhabitants couldn’t refuse, after which their quiet, uncontaminated lives would never be the same again.

‘What is it, Enid?’ he said brusquely, still without looking up.

Enid almost relished giving him the damned thing. Serve him right, she thought.

‘This letter came in the morning mail, Gerard,’ she said coolly. ‘I thought you would want to read it straight away.’

Now she had his attention, his dark head snapping up, a frown not marring his disgustingly handsome face.

‘Who’s it from?’

‘Your wife.’

‘Leah?’ He could not have been more startled.

‘I’m sorry, Gerard. It wasn’t marked “Private”, and there was no reason for me not to open it.’ She came forward and handed the note across to him, thanking her lucky stars that the simple white paper it was written on was not as fancy as the pink envelope.

Butterflies crowded in Enid’s stomach as her boss’s piercing blue eyes immediately dropped to the note. She watched him read the ‘Dear John’ letter, watched as he tried to absorb his wife’s rejection of him as a man and a husband.

A small shred of sympathy twisted Enid’s heart. For she knew this had to be killing him. Gerard so hated to fail in anything.

Losing in a business deal was bad enough.

Losing his wife was something else…

Who would have believed it of Leah? To all appearances she was such a soft, trusting soul, a mere child when compared to her cynical and streetwise husband. Just twenty-one to his very sophisticated thirty-three. A babe in the woods. A lovely yet naive girl whom Gerard had clearly thought he could mould and train to be the sort of wife who would never give him any trouble: the type who stayed home and filled the roles of mother, lover and hostess to perfection, who never complained when he was late for dinner or had to fly away on business at a moment’s notice, the type who loved her husband to distraction and blindly believed he loved her back, simply because he told her so.

Enid had cynically watched her employer play his own roles to perfection so far. He’d been the perfect courtier, the perfect fiancé, the perfect new husband. Nothing had been too good for his bride. He’d showered her with every luxury money could provide. He’d seemingly showered her with his personal attention as well… up to a point.

Not that they’d been married long. Just over nine months.

Enid had been waiting for the rot to set in, for Gerard to show his true colours. And it seemed he had.

For ages he just sat there and stared at the paper. When his hands started shaking, he crumpled the note into a crushed ball and leapt to his feet, his face flushing angrily.

‘You read this?’ he growled, glaring at Enid.

She nodded.

He swore, then whirled to stalk over to the far window which overlooked the Brisbane river. But he didn’t look at the view. With hands still shaking, he unfolded the crushed note and read it again.

Suddenly he spun back to face Enid, his blue eyes glittering as they did when he got the bit between his teeth over something and was about to run with it.

‘Do you have the envelope this came in?’

Enid nodded again, but she was quaking in her sensible shoes. One look at that envelope and he might question her discretion in opening it.

‘Get it for me,’ he snapped. ‘And get Burt Lathom on the phone.’

Enid’s eyes rounded. Burt Lathom was a private investigator Gerard used sometimes when he needed to find some dirt on one of his competitors. The man was thorough and usually came through with the goods.

‘Well, don’t just stand there gawking at me,’ Gerard snarled. ‘That won’t bring Leah back, will it?’

‘But… she said she didn’t want to come back,’ Enid was driven to protest for a fellow female.

‘The only thing Leah wants,’ Gerard ground out with his usual one-eyed stubbornness, ‘is to be my wife. Unfortunately, she has totally misunderstood some things I said to a man who was distressed over his divorce at the time. When Burt finds her I’ll make her see that. Now hop to it, woman. Time is a-wasting. I have an important business dinner this coming Saturday night and my wife is going to be there, by my side, as usual!’

Enid had no choice but to do as she was told, but she did so resentfully, hoping all the while that Burt Lathom would be unsuccessful. Leah was a sweet girl and deserved better than to be hoodwinked by the likes of Gerard Woodward.

Handsome he might be. And clever. And rich. But there wasn’t a soft-hearted cell in his entire body. He was a ruthless predator who was incapable of really loving a woman. He was a user and a manipulator. A conscienceless cynic.

Unfortunately, Leah loved him. Even Enid had seen that. She fairly glowed whenever he looked at her. In all likelihood she still loved him, despite that letter.

Enid prayed Gerard would never find his fugitive bride. For God knows what would happen to her, if and when he did.

CHAPTER ONE

SIX months.

Leah leant against the mast of the old pearling lugger, dragged in a deep breath of sea air, then let it out slowly.

Six months…

Time to relax at last, perhaps? Time to stop looking over her shoulder and expecting Gerard to be standing there?

He hadn’t found her yet.

Which still surprised her.

Admittedly, she’d planned her escape well, had known how imperative it was not to leave anything for him to go on. She’d taken nothing which belonged to her life as Mrs Gerard Woodward. Not her gleaming white Porsche. None of the glamorous clothes hanging in her massive walk-in wardrobe. Certainly none of her credit cards.

Only cash. And then only as much as she needed.

Leah had wanted nothing from her marriage except escape.

She hadn’t gone home to Hidden Bay, not even for a moment, because that would have been the first place Gerard would look. She’d fled to Townsville where her brothers had organised for her to help a friend take a racing boat to Indonesia, after which she’d crewed on another racing boat, returning it to its rich owners on the Riviera.

Now she was back in Australia, but in a place Gerard would not think to look.

Leah closed her eyes momentarily, a tremor racing through her. She might have physically escaped, but it would be a long time before she found emotional escape. Gerard was out of sight, but would he ever be dispelled from her mind? Or ejected from her traitorous body?

She still dreamt of him at night, disturbing dreams in which Gerard was inevitably making love to her as only he could. She would always wake just as the act was being consummated, leaving her hot and trembling from a desire as real as the dream had seemed.

How long, she agonised, before the fires Gerard had carefully and callously stoked within her were extinguished? How long before she stopped needing what he’d made her addicted to? Him, every night in her bed. Him, making her respond, even when she didn’t want to.

Leah shuddered at the memory of her appalling weakness for the man, even after her shocking discovery that Sunday.

How could she have let him make love to her that night when she’d known what he was? Worse, how could she have found pleasure in it?

She shuddered again, despising herself anew. It was wicked for a man to have such power over a woman. There again, Gerard was wicked.

Leah sighed. He’d looked anything but wicked that day eighteen months ago when he’d come striding down the pier at Hidden Bay, wearing dazzlingly white shorts and T-shirt, perfect foils for his deeply olive skin and jet-black hair. Perfect vehicles to display his tall, superbly muscled body.

Leah was not to learn till after their marriage how hard Gerard worked on that body, witnessing herself the gruelling daily weight routine he put himself through in his private gym to achieve such physical perfection.

He didn’t have to work on his face, however. It had been born perfect, with classically sculptured features, a mouth to die for and come-to-bed blue eyes.

Leah would never forget the instant lurching in her stomach when she’d looked up and seen that handsome face for the first time…

‘Hi, there,’ he said, coming to a halt near the prow of her brothers’ fishing charter boat and giving her a very slow and sexually charged once-over. ‘You for hire, honey?’

She just gaped at him, colour flooding up her throat and into her cheeks.

‘The boat, darling,’ he drawled, his eyes gleaming with wry amusement. ‘I meant the boat.’

‘Oh.’ She straightened from where she’d been swabbing the deck with a mop and bucket.

Of course he meant the boat! How could she have possibly imagined a man like him meant otherwise, even for a moment? Good grief, she must look a sight, with perspiration running down her face, her hair half falling down, and her shorts and top soggy from the water she’d been sloshing around in somewhat of a temper.

‘Hot and bothered’ did not begin to describe her at that moment, her discomfort not helped by this amazingly good-looking man who kept staring at her.

Not at her flushed face, however. At her…

A panicky downward glance confirmed that one of her braless breasts was clearly outlined against a patch of damp cotton, the startlingly erect nipple making a real exhibition of itself.

Embarrassment snapped Leah’s hands together across her chest, the inadequately shielding handle of the mop clasped between them.

‘Yes, it is,’ she said, hating her high-pitched voice. ‘But Mike and Pete aren’t here at the moment.’

‘Mike and Pete?’

Leah gulped down the lump in her throat and gathered a modicum of composure. ‘My brothers. They own the boat. They should be back soon. They went trail-bike riding with some mates early this morning.’ Which was the only time to go, before the heat of the day. If living on the Queensland coast had one major drawback it was the sometimes debilitating humidity.

‘And left you to do all the dirty work, I see.’

Leah didn’t like the criticism in the stranger’s words. No one was allowed to criticise her brothers except herself! ‘Not at all,’ she defended. ‘They work hard and deserve a morning off. It’s just that I have an aversion to washing floors. Any other cleaning job I’ll do quite willingly. But not floors.’

‘In that case I promise never to ask you to wash my floors.’ He smiled widely at her, his blue eyes dancing.

Leah found herself smiling back, even while her heart fluttered and her stomach flipped over. Never had a man affected her like this. There again, never had a man like this come to Hidden Bay before.

They didn’t call the bay ‘Hidden’ for nothing. The pear-shaped cove was well disguised from the sea by overlapping headlands, high hills and thick vegetation. A small community of whalers had settled there a hundred years before, the protected bay a perfect sanctuary for their boats during the cyclone season.

Nowadays it only boasted about two hundred permanent residents. The electricity had finally been connected a few years back, and last year they’d celebrated the first sealed road leading out of the place, finally giving the world access without having to use a four-wheel drive.

Despite such stunning progress, not many outsiders knew of Hidden Bay’s existence, and those who did guarded its location like a guilty secret. There were several families from down south who came up for their holidays during the cooler months, putting up with the lack of facilities in exchange for no pollution, warm waters and perfect peace and quiet. They’d begun arriving last week.

Despite his casual gear, the man standing before Leah didn’t look as if he was attached to those intrepid holidaymakers, who were salt-of-the-earth types, people who liked nothing better than to sit around a campfire after a lazy day fishing, drinking a tinnie or two and discussing the ones who’d got away.

Leah suspected this fellow was used to more sophisticated pastimes. There was something about the cut and grooming of his thick black wavy hair which shouted money. That gold watch on his wrist looked very expensive as well, as did the wraparound sunglasses dangling from his left hand.

She wondered what on earth he was doing here, and why he wanted to hire her brothers’ boat. There seemed only one likely explanation.

‘I suppose you want Mike and Pete to take you deep-sea fishing,’ she said, more of a statement than a question. They did get the odd marlin-manic millionaire finding his way to their boat charter business, hoping that the less-fished waters would provide some spectacular catches. But in truth the ocean just off Hidden Bay rarely gave up its really big fish. But there were loads of coral trout, red emperor and snapper to be had.

‘No, I’m not interested in fishing,’ he said.

‘Well, we don’t do holiday cruises, if that’s what you’re looking for. Only fishing charters.’

‘That’s all right. I don’t want a holiday cruise, either,’ he said, his gaze travelling over her from head to toe a second time.

Leah had always had to put up with a degree of male attention, being tall, blonde and pretty, with a good figure. Normally she didn’t mind, except when the male in question was being really objectionable. Her over-protective older brothers, however, always went ballistic.

Ever since their parents had passed away they’d assumed the roles of her guardians with a vengeance, being incredibly strict for two modern lads who thought nothing of the fact that they were both sleeping with their girlfriends—both of whom weren’t much older than Leah.

If a local lad had the temerity to ask their kid sister out, he was issued with such dire warnings that Leah’s relationships with the opposite sex never lasted long. Never got off the ground, really.

She was a week short of twenty and still a virgin.

Not that she minded her inexperience. She’d never thought she was missing out on anything. In truth, she’d never felt the slightest inclination to go beyond kissing and hand-holding with any male.

Till now…

‘Well, what do you want, then?’ she asked, mildly exasperated and more than a little agitated by the alien feelings flooding through her.

‘Just to have a good look around the bay,’ he said coolly, even while his eyes kept eating her up. ‘I’d heard about this place, but had no idea it had such hidden… treasures.’

Leah could hardly believe the messages he was sending, both with his smouldering blue gaze and this last astonishing double entendre. She stared back at him, beyond blushing now, beyond anything but savouring the seductive thought that this incredibly handsome, suave, sexy, assured man seemed to be finding her as irresistibly attractive as she found him.

‘My name’s Gerard, by the way,’ he said, climbing over onto the deck of the boat and holding out his large tanned hand. ‘Gerard Woodward.’

‘Leah,’ she returned breathlessly, and placed her own slender and slightly shaking fingers within the confines of his longer and much stronger grip. ‘Leah… um… um…’ Panic set in as her befuddled brain blankly scoured her memory for her own silly surname!

‘Leah Um-Um,’ he said teasingly. ‘What an interesting name.’

The blush rushed back, hotter than ever.

‘It’s White,’ she blurted out at last. ‘Leah White.’ Dear Heaven, but why did she have to make a fool of herself in front of him?

‘Well, Leah White,’ he said, his smile soft and warm, ‘I think that’s a very nice name and suits you admirably. But Woodward would be better.’

‘Woodward?’

‘That’s my name. Have you forgotten it already? What fun it will be to tell our children that when their mother met their father she forgot her own name, and then his.’

‘Our children?’ she choked out.

‘You do want children, don’t you?’ he asked, for all the world as if it was a serious question.

‘I… I…’

His smile became both admiring and indulgent as he lifted her fingers to his mouth. ‘I can see I’ll have to make all the important decisions in our marriage. But that’s all right by me,’ he murmured as he kissed each fingertip in turn. ‘I’ve always believed that a man is head of his family and king of his castle.’

Leah snatched her hand away from him. ‘You’re crazy as a loon!’

‘Not at all,’ he returned, without turning a hair. ‘In fact, I could give you a hundred references testifying to my sanity. But I appreciate I am rushing you a little. I promise to slow down if you promise to have dinner with me tonight. Ah… these must be your brothers now. Mike and Pete, did you say?’

She nodded dumbly, and watched while he charmed her two normally wary big brothers as effortlessly as he had charmed her.

He explained he was a property developer from Brisbane who was interested in buying some land in the area—with a view to building a small but exclusive resort. Any quibbles or qualms the boys raised about such a development were quickly waylaid by Gerard’s ready reassurances. Anything he built would fit right into the environment and not spoil the area. It would also bring some much needed money into the local community. He would guarantee it!

By the end of the day neither Mike nor Pete made any objection whatsoever when Gerard politely asked their permission to take Leah to dinner. He wasn’t given a single warning. Not one!

As it turned out, he didn’t need one. For he didn’t lay a finger on Leah, just a small peck goodnight on her cheek.

She lay awake into the wee small hours, thinking of him…

And so began their whirlwind courtship, Gerard sweeping Leah off to the altar barely three months after their first meeting.

She went to his bed on their wedding night still a virgin.

Not that she’d wanted to be. The moment she’d set eyes on Gerard he’d stirred a sensuality in her she hadn’t known she possessed. But he’d wanted to wait, he’d told her.

At the time she’d thought that was so sweet. Now she realised it was all part of his Prince Charming act. In reality he’d probably had some other woman on the side, catering to his carnal needs, while he made silly Leah wait. By the time the wedding had come along she’d been consumed by the most excruciating sexual tension, a ready slave for whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted it.

Prince Charming indeed! He was the devil incarnate!

Leah sometimes wondered what would have happened if she hadn’t decided to go for a walk in the garden that fateful night, if she’d never overheard that appalling conversation. The realisation that she would still be going along blithely and blindly as Mrs Gerard Woodward brought mixed feelings. Maybe it would have been better if she’d never found out. She’d been happy, hadn’t she?

Not entirely, she was forced to concede. Oh, yes, Gerard had given her everything she could possibly want. He’d spoiled her outrageously.

And it had been wonderful for a while. Gerard had swept her into a world she hardly knew existed, a sophisticated glamorous world of designer gowns, dinner parties and decadently expensive restaurants. She’d been agog with excitement over it all for the first few months.

But eventually her privileged and pampered lifestyle had begun to pall a little. She’d become bored with having nothing to fill her days but dress-fittings and hair appointments. Her only activity had been to make herself beautiful for the evenings she spent with her husband.