Marriage on the Rebound

‘Shaan.’ he said her name carefully.

She didn’t turn—couldn’t. She heard him, but couldn’t seem to respond. The heaviness had transported itself to her limbs now, dragging down on them, holding her like a huge block of wood pinned securely to the ground. And her head felt heavy, the very top of it feeling as though someone was pressing forever harder down on it, trying to push her into the carpet beneath her feet.

Rafe came over to her, the clean smell of soap strengthening as it came with him. It was a very strange feeling, this paralysing weightiness which was disabling everything but her senses. They still seemed to be working fine: her sense of smell, of hearing, even her sense of touch seemed intact, as he reached out to grasp her chin, lifting her face so he could study it.

She saw him frown, saw the grey eyes darken in concern. She saw that he had showered, his dark hair was lying slick against his head now. She saw he had changed into a pale blue shirt and casual linen trousers that fitted cleanly on his trim waist.

‘Are you going to faint, by any chance?’ he murmured enquiringly.

Yes, she thought, I think perhaps I am. And she closed her eyes at the exact same moment that she swayed towards him. He caught her, muttering and cursing as he lifted her into his arms, and once again she found herself being carried by this man who had ruined her life, through to the next room and over to a huge emperor-sized bed, where he laid her before disappearing into what could only be the bathroom, judging by the sound of water running again.

He came back with a glass of water and a facecloth. He put the glass down on the bedside table, then sat down on the bed beside her to apply the cloth to her clammy brow.

His touch was gentle, the cloth deliciously cool and refreshing; his thigh where it rested lightly against her own was strangely comforting.

‘You remind me of a doll,’ he informed her drily. ‘A rather fragile, very temperamental clockwork doll who’s had her key removed.’

Dragging open her eyes, she managed a weak smile for him.

He smiled too. It was a rare sight, something she had never seen him do before, and it changed the whole structure of his face, softening its aggressively male lines and adding an extra dimension to his persona that she found rather perturbing.

Why, she didn’t know, and she frowned as she closed her eyes again.

‘Here, I want you to take these…’

Her lashes flickered upwards to find that Rafe was now holding the glass of water in one hand and two small white pills in the palm of the other.

Shaan stared at them for a moment, then shook her head. ‘No,’ she refused. ‘I don’t want sleeping tablets.’

‘These are not sleeping tablets as such,’ he assured her. ‘They’re simply some very mild relaxants you can buy over the chemist’s counter without a prescription. I use them to get me through long plane journeys,’ he explained at her dubious expression. ‘You won’t sleep unless you want to, but they will help you to relax. You’re as strung up as piano wire, Shaan,’ he added gently, and touched the back of her hand.

It was shock. Not so much his touch, but the sudden realisation that both her hands were clenched into white-knuckled fists at her sides. Her arms were tense, her shoulders, her neck, her legs—all locked in a tension so strong that she was literally trembling under the pressure.

‘And anyway,’ he added softly, ‘you aren’t being given a choice…’

And before she could do anything about it he had pressed her chin downwards and popped the two pills into her mouth.

She almost choked on the water which quickly followed the pills. ‘Sorry,’ he apologised at her accusing look. ‘But you need to be bullied a bit right now. It will save you from having to think for yourself.’

Yes…she had to agree with that. Thinking meant hurting, and at the moment she was hurting enough—more than enough.

On a sigh that seemed to come from some deep, dark place in her, she let her eyes close again, shutting him out—wanting to shut it all out and just let the pills do whatever they were supposed to do.

It was shock—the delayed kind of shock you hear of people experiencing where they get hit by a car then get up and walk away, only to discover they should not have been walking anywhere because they were so badly injured.

That was what she had been doing since Rafe had arrived this morning to smash her whole world apart. She was one of the walking wounded, not quite ready yet to face what had really happened to her.

Which meant when she did find the courage to face it she was going to fall apart. And when that happened she could well find herself involved in a second accident. One which trapped her so completely that she would not be able to walk away even if she wanted to.

‘We shouldn’t be doing this, Rafe,’ she murmured worriedly. ‘It isn’t right. It isn’t—’

‘I thought we’d just decided that I was going to do all the thinking,’ his quiet voice interrupted. The hand still covering one of her clenched ones, squeezed gently. ‘Trust me, Shaan,’ he murmured. ‘And I promise you I won’t let you down.’

On a sigh that signalled the end of her small burst of spirit, she retreated into malleable silence again.

Rafe remained where he was for a few moments longer, watching her. She could feel his eyes on her and wondered dully what it was he thought he was seeing. A pitiable creature called his brother’s jilted bride? Or that other Shaan, the one who had been so completely overwhelmed at their first meeting by his clear dislike of her that the person she really was had literally shrivelled up in his presence?

‘Do you dislike me so much because of Madeleine? Or because of my mixed blood?’ she heard herself ask, without really knowing she was going to say it.

Still, his response brought her eyes flicking open. ‘What—?’ he rasped. ‘Did I hear you correctly? Were you just accusing me of racial prejudice then?’

She hadn’t meant to offend him, yet seemingly that was exactly what she had done. ‘You hated to touch me,’ she reminded him. ‘Or even to look at me if you could avoid it. What else was I supposed to think?’

‘Well, not what you did think, that’s for damned well sure!’ He got up, and she felt oddly lost without him close to her. ‘You actually believed me crass enough to dislike your relationship with my brother because of your mixed race?’

He was obviously having difficulty taking that in.

She closed her eyes again, too trapped in this feeling of muscle-locked apathy to do much more than smile ruefully at his resentment.

Because the real point was, if it wasn’t her mixed race, then what was it he didn’t like about her? Because there was definitely something.

‘Get some rest,’ he said gruffly. ‘We’ll talk about it later.’

Yes, later, she agreed silently as her muscles began to slacken out of the tension-lock that shock had held them in. They could discuss all of that later…

CHAPTER THREE

‘IT’S all arranged.’

Rafe came into the drawing room with his now very familiar aggressive stride, making Shaan jump because it felt as if he had only just walked out before he was back again.

But then, he had not left her alone for more than a few minutes at a time during the last forty-eight hours. And every time she had found herself with a few moments’ respite from his aggressively dictatorial presence, it had always been with a terse assurance from him that he would be back in seconds, making sure she knew that she would not have time to sink into the brooding misery they both knew lurked beneath the fragile surface of her hazy existence.

‘We get married in the morning just before your aunt and uncle leave for their cruise.’

‘Oh.’ She went pale, the sudden sinking of her heart telling her that she should not be allowing this to happen.

Rafe glanced at her, grey eyes hardening when he saw the way her small white teeth began to press into the soft cushion of her full bottom lip. ‘Jemma has agreed to stand witness for you,’ he went on firmly. ‘She wants you to ring her; I said you would.’ A wryish twist touched his mouth. ‘She’s worrying in case I’m holding you here against your will, so you’ll have to assure her that I’m not—won’t you?’

A challenge; she was receptive enough to note the challenge in his voice on that last question. ‘I…’

‘Have you got anything suitably white to wear inside those suitcases we brought with us?’ he asked as she opened her mouth to answer the first real question he had asked her in forty-eight hours—only to find herself utterly thrown by the second one.

‘I…yes…n-no…I d-don’t know…’ She blinked, her still shocked mind having difficulty keeping up with him for half of the time—and as for the other half, he just didn’t allow her to keep up. ‘W-why…?’ she managed to ask.

‘To marry me in,’ he sighed, shoving his hands into his trouser pockets as he glared into her blank black eyes. ‘You ripped your wedding dress to shreds, if you remember?’

Yes, she remembered, and shuddered. She’d ripped her lovely dress to shreds in front of Rafe, had stood totally naked in front of Rafe. She had been physically sick in front of Rafe, had let him talk her into letting him take the place of his brother…

She’d let him construct a pack of lies for her family, let him bring her here to his house, which had been turned into a positive fortress within minutes of them arriving. The big iron gates had been locked to any visitors, and the small cluster of reporters who had collected outside them had been completely ignored.

He was, she was coming to learn, the most amazingly determined man when he set his mind on something. From the moment she’d conceded to his crazy suggestion in her bedroom two days ago, he had not given her a single opportunity to withdraw her agreement.

If she opened her eyes, he was there. It didn’t matter what time of the day or night it was, Rafe was always there. Sitting, standing, pacing about the room like a caged animal until she opened her eyes. Then the orders would begin. Get up, sit down. Drink this, eat that. Take a shower, get into bed, go to sleep.

Quite simply he had taken her over, and in doing so demanded her full compliance to his every wish and command. And if he caught her brooding at any time he snapped her out of it with the guttural bark of his voice, almost cruel in his methods of keeping her mind off his brother.

Piers. A kind of anguished desolation washed over her, taking what little colour she had in her face along with it.

‘Shaan!’

The bark hit her eardrums, making her wince, grating along her nerve-ends as she forced her eyes back into focus to find him glaring at her, eyes like silver lasers boring into her, burning out everything else but the power of his presence.

‘White,’ he prompted. ‘I want you to marry me in white. Think. Have you got anything white in your suitcases?’

White. Her mind went white, a complete white-out, as she tried hard to remember what her lovely trousseau consisted of. Then she laughed, a high-pitched, slightly hysterical sound that hardened his face as he stood there glaring down at her.

‘A white silk nightdress and matching neglige´e,’ she said, and nodded, seeing herself as she had the day she’d tried it on in the exclusive West End lingerie shop. Soft and slinky, it had clung to the slender contours of her body, from the narrow bootlace straps which had seemed too fragile to hold up the two triangles of fine silk that had covered her breasts to her ankles.

She remembered the delicious tremor of anticipation she had experienced as she’d stood there looking at herself in the full-length mirror in the shop, seeing herself as Piers would see her—the white for purity, the silk for sensuality, its sheerness offering an enticing glimpse of her woman’s naked body waiting for him beneath. Breasts full and rounded, nipples duskily inviting. The flatness of her stomach and the narrowness of her waist. The seductive cling of the fabric around the swell of her hips and the hollow of her navel. And the velvety dark shadow at the juncture with her thighs which marked the embodiment of her womanhood.

‘I don’t suppose you’ll want me to wear that,’ she concluded, letting out another of those strained little laughs.

His frown blackened. ‘No, I don’t suppose I would,’ he agreed, and abruptly turned his back on her. ‘Ring Jemma,’ he commanded. ‘Get her to pick something suitable out for you to marry me in and bring it with her in the morning. God knows,’ he sighed, ‘neither you nor I dare step outside my blasted gates until this damned thing is over.’

Running a weary hand through his hair, he walked out of the room, leaving her to chew pensively on her bottom lip, because she had suddenly realised that this must be just as big an ordeal for him as it was for her.

Well, almost. He hadn’t lost someone he loved—he was just marrying someone he didn’t.

She rang Jemma as instructed, but reluctantly, because she still wasn’t ready to speak to anyone—Jemma perhaps least of all. Her friend was no fool. She’d been well aware of how blissfully and blindly in love Shaan had been with Piers.

‘What’s going on, Shaan?’ Jemma demanded the moment she knew who it was. ‘For God’s sake, love, what are you trying to do? You can’t replace one brother with the other! It’s a recipe for disaster!’

My life is a disaster, she thought tragically, and closed her eyes against the never far away threat of tears. ‘It’s what I want,’ she stated quietly. ‘It’s what we both want.’

‘But you don’t even like Rafe!’ Jemma cried, sounding angry and bewildered. ‘You even admitted to being a little afraid of him!’

‘I was afraid of the way he made me feel,’ she argued, thinking but it was close to the truth; she had always felt Rafe was a threat to her happiness.

‘Because you were falling in love with him?’

Love—what’s love? she wondered blankly. She was sure she didn’t know any more. ‘Yes,’ she replied.

‘And now you’re going to marry him instead of Piers,’ Jemma concluded.

‘Yes,’ she said again. ‘You should be relieved, not angry,’ she said, then added drily, ‘You always did hold Piers in contempt.’

‘He was devious.’ Jemma defended her opinion. ‘Someone who smiled as much as he did just had to be hiding something. But I never thought for one moment it would be another woman.’

That hurt, and Shaan flinched. ‘Which just goes to show what a lucky escape we all had, then, doesn’t it?’ she mocked rather bitterly, recalling—as no doubt Jemma was recalling—the headline on Mrs Clough’s daily newspaper which had said, DANVERS BROTHERS SWAP BRIDES IN SENSATIONAL LOVE TUSSLE!

What a joke, Shaan thought bitterly. And what a pack of lies for the sake of a catchy headline. Rafe didn’t love her, and Madeleine had never been his bride!

She was now Piers’ bride, though, Shann recalled dully. The article had said so: ‘Piers Danvers married Madeleine Steiner only an hour after he should have been marrying Shaan Saketa’.

Which meant that Piers must have been planning to let her down long before he bothered to tell her he no longer wanted her.

There had been more in the article, but Rafe had happened to walk into the kitchen then, and snatched the newspaper away from her. His black fury at Mrs Clough for bringing it into his house had been enough to turn the other woman white, while Shaan had just sat there shuddering in sick disgust at the depths of Piers’ deceit.

‘Do you think you’ll have time to pick something suitable out for me to wear tomorrow?’ she asked Jemma now, dragging her mind away from the only moment since this had all begun when she had been in real danger of breaking free from this numbing shock she was hiding behind.

Rafe had stopped her; he had bodily lifted her off the kitchen chair and marched her into his study, then dumped her down in front of a PC, switched it on and shoved a handwritten twenty-page document in front of her. ‘You can type, can’t you?’ He’d mocked her look of bewilderment. ‘So—type. I need it by lunchtime.’

‘Yes, of course I will.’ Jemma’s voice seemed to reach her from some totally alien place outside her muddled thought patterns. ‘But I wish you’d take a little time out to think about this before doing it,’ she added worriedly. ‘You could be jumping straight out of the frying pan into the fire—have you thought of that?’

Of course she had. When Rafe gave her the chance to think for herself, that was. And that had definitely not been yesterday, when he’d heaped piles of work on her, she recalled ruefully.

But thinking didn’t help. Nothing helped. She simply did not care what happened to her. So, ‘I love him,’ she claimed, the reality of the words meaning nothing to her any more. ‘He’s what I want. Don’t spoil it for me, Jemma.’

‘All right.’ Jemma’s sigh was long-suffering but her manner softened a little when she added, ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

Jemma’s choice was a Mondi suit in the severely tailored style that particular design house had made its own in recent years. The skirt was daringly short and needleslim, and the matching jacket moulded Shaan’s slender figure to low on her hips and was fastened with gold military buttons to match the military braiding around the sleeve-cuffs and the collar. There was no blouse. The fitted style of the jacket left no room for a blouse, and the shortness of the skirt seemed to add an alarming length to her slender legs, which were encased in the sheerest white silk.

‘Too short?’ she asked Jemma pensively, giving a self-conscious tug at the skirt-hem.

‘Are you joking?’ Jemma scoffed, standing beside Shaan to view the finished product in the full-length mirror. ‘Rafe’ll need holding back when he sees you in this. You look fabulous, Shaan,’ she added softly. ‘Utterly stunning.’

But Shaan didn’t feel stunning. She felt as if she was looking at a total stranger. As if that girl, with the big brown empty eyes and jet-black hair swept sleekly away from her face into a silken knot on the crown of her head, was someone else entirely.

In fact the only thing she did recognise, which said it really was herself standing there, was the fine gold chain around her throat, with its heart-shaped locket suspended from it, which held photographs of her parents’ beloved faces.

Cold fingers tremored up to gently touch the familiar locket, and suddenly tears were flooding to blur out the reflection.

‘Why the tears?’

With a small start she blinked the moisture away, long lashes flickering down and upwards as she brought her gaze into focus on Jemma’s grave face in the mirror.

‘I thought brides were allowed to be weepy,’ she parried.

‘Sure,’ Jemma agreed. ‘They’re even allowed to look all pale and tantalisingly ethereal.’ Her voice was loaded with mockery. ‘All you have to do now is smile and I might even begin to believe that you really want this.’

‘Don’t,’ Shaan pleaded hoarsely, hooding her too revealing eyes. ‘Don’t probe, Jemma. I don’t think I’m up to it right now.’

‘Why?’ her best friend demanded. ‘Because you know deep down inside that this—marriage, for want of a better word for it,’ she tossed off tartly, ‘won’t stand up to scrutiny?’

Shaan’s heart fluttered in her breast—the first sign she’d had for days that life actually still existed inside her—as a moment’s desperation welled up.

Her lashes flickered again, and a brief glimpse of that desperation revealed itself to Jemma. On a gasp, she spun Shaan around to give her a small shake. ‘For goodness’ sake!’ she said fiercely. ‘What the hell is really going on here?’

The bedroom door opened, and as if Rafe could actually sense that Shaan’s courage was beginning to fail her he walked arrogantly into the room, his silver-hard gaze flashing from one tense female face to the other.

Shaan went hot, then cold, staring at him through a hazy mist which wasn’t entirely due to her lingering tears. Rafe was wearing a simple dark business suit over a plain white shirt and dark silk tie. Nothing special. Yet there was something about him—the red rose he wore in his lapel maybe—which seemed to make a statement of possession in itself, that trapped the air in her lungs and sent a prickling sense of awareness tripping though her.

‘Shaan, you look beautiful,’ he murmured brusquely. ‘Shall we go?’

Like a woman in a trance, she nodded mutely and walked obediently towards him, feeling Jemma’s silent, pleading, helpless protest following behind her in urgent waves but unable to stop herself.

In a few mad days, Rafe had made himself so indispensable to her that she could deny him nothing. He was the rock she clung to in the storm-wrecked destruction that had taken place inside her.

As if he knew it, he took her hand as soon as she was in reach, drawing it firmly into the crook of his arm and holding it there with his own hand.

There, you’re safe now, the gesture seemed to say, and she lifted her bruised eyes to his and smiled—albeit weakly, but it was a smile.

She didn’t hear the soft gasp her friend uttered when she saw that smile, nor did she see the hard look of triumph Rafe sent Jemma, because she had already lowered her head and was lost in that hazy world of nothing, relying totally on this man beside her for her very survival.

It was a brief civil ceremony—a relief to Shaan, who didn’t think she could have coped with anything more. Her aunt and uncle were there. They hugged and kissed her and told her to be happy, but she saw the look in their eyes and knew they were still suffering a similar shock to herself over what had happened.

Jemma was more direct. She took hold of her friend’s shoulders and made her look directly at her, taking her chance while Rafe stood across the room talking grimly to a man he had briefly introduced as, ‘Saul, my second in command.’

‘Anything,’ Jemma said urgently. ‘If for any reason you need me for anything—you just call and I’ll come. Understand?’

Shaan nodded, her eyes huge and dark and empty in her pale face. ‘Thank you.’ She leaned forward to brush a kiss across Jemma’s warm cheek. ‘Please don’t worry about me, Jem,’ she pleaded as she drew away again. ‘Rafe will look after me.’

‘Will he?’ Jemma’s sceptical gaze lifted to take in the man in question. ‘He better had, or the Danvers family will have me to contend with.’

Shaan managed to smile at that, recognising the threat for what it was—a weak one, since Jemma was in no position to do the Danvers family any harm. But the meaning was clear—Jemma was not fooled. She was puzzled, but not fooled, and she considered the Danvers family had done enough to her friend without hurting her any more.

There was no wedding breakfast. Rafe rushed her straight into a waiting limousine the moment they left the register office. He said it was because they had a plane to catch, but Shaan had to wonder if he was rushing her away because he knew their deception would not hold up to any real scrutiny.

And the irritating press didn’t help. Their flashbulbs had been exploding in their faces from the moment they had stepped out of Rafe’s house, and hadn’t stopped since. By the time the chauffeur-driven limousine sped away from the kerb, Shaan was wilting with fatigue, the act of playing the blissful bride having drained her to the very dregs.

‘All right?’ Rafe enquired, his hand covering her cold ones where they lay together on her lap.

She nodded, sighing as she leaned back into the soft, squashy leather seat. ‘Will our picture be splashed all over the papers again tomorrow?’ Her tone alone said she didn’t relish the idea.

‘That depends,’ he replied, ‘on whether there’s a disaster between now and then. We are classed as expendable news.’ He answered the puzzled look she sent him. ‘The juicy fill-in to help sell their rags if nothing better comes along—vulgar, isn’t it?’

‘How do you live under such constant notoriety?’ she asked with a small shudder.

‘I don’t—usually,’ he replied, and she shuddered again, in bleak recognition this time that it was her fault that he was having to endure it now.