Slave To Love

‘Explain,’ he demanded at last. Nothing more, just that one very economical word which none the less said it all.

She studied him for a moment, completely in control of her outer self except for the slight trembling of her hands, which she clenched together tightly on her lap while she decided how best to tackle this.

He too was dressed for business, she noted inconsequentially, in one of his dark, fashionably cut suits that did so much to add to that air of power and success he carried around with him.

She would have felt much softer towards him if he had come barging in here looking like the devil, in creased clothes and with his silky hair mussed by worried fingers. But he hadn’t. Mac might have been concerned about her, but only in as much as he could not understand what was going on. His concern had not stopped him from having a good night’s sleep or making himself presentable for work this morning.

Which just went to prove how right she was about his feelings for her, she concluded.

‘It’s quite simple, Mac,’ she therefore informed him levelly. ‘I’ve moved out of your flat—’

‘I know that!’ he cut in deridingly. ‘Having arrived there at some ungodly hour this morning to find it strangely lacking any of your personal possessions!’

‘—because,’ she went on, as if he hadn’t interrupted, holding his slicing gaze with her own supremely calm one, ‘I have decided to conclude our relationship.’

He didn’t move for the space of several stuttering heartbeats, his stunned eyes fixed on her lovely composed features. Then, ‘You’ve what?’ he choked, and her stomach turned itself inside out as a strange kind of triumph grabbed hold of her.

She had actually managed to hit him right below the proverbial belt at last!

‘You heard me,’ she answered smoothly enough. ‘It’s over between us.’ Finished, finito, she added to herself cynically. No more.

Mac shook his jet-black head as if he needed to clear it. ‘Bunny...’ he murmured, the husky sound of his very personal pet name for her wrenching at something very vulnerable inside her. ‘What the hell is this?’

Genuine bewilderment had managed to cloud over his anger. His lightly tanned face was suddenly pale with surprise. A tightly clenched fist came out between them, the long, blunt-ended fingers uncurling slowly, as though it took a great effort to make the conciliatory gesture.

‘What have I done to bring this on?’ he asked.

Done? ‘Nothing,’ she said. Exactly nothing. And hardened her heart against the appealing picture he made standing there pleading with her like that. He had used this tactic before when she’d been angry with him—and had always won with it. But not this time. ‘I have simply decided that it is time to get out, Mac. Surely you above all people can understand that?’ It was a pointed dig at the long string of women who had preceded her in and out of his own life.

And he took it, by dropping the open hand, the long fingers clenching up again at the same moment that his mouth clenched also. ‘But why?’ he demanded. ‘And why like this? With no prior warning but just an empty flat for me to walk into!’

Had that hurt? She looked into his hard silver eyes and saw that it had. Mac probably brought the end to a relationship by sending a bunch of roses or a pretty bracelet of diamonds and a thank-you, which meant as little as the relationship itself had meant to him. Did he think that his way was any less hurtful than hers had been?

‘The relationship was going nowhere,’ she told him, ignoring the latter to answer the former because that deserved an answer; the latter did not.

His eyes narrowed assessingly at that. ‘And you—wanted it to go somewhere?’ he murmured softly.

Roberta smiled, seeing the trap even as he set it. ‘Oh, yes,’ she admitted, ever so ruefully. ‘I wanted it to.’

‘But you knew I wasn’t into marriage even before we began.’

‘Yes.’ Her soft blonde head nodded, then stayed lowered, from where she watched her fingers pleat and unpleat themselves on her lap. Yes, she thought heavily. She had known, but she had been foolish enough to hope otherwise.

‘We agreed to live together, nothing else,’ Mac said grimly.

That brought her head shooting back up, green eyes honing on to him. ‘But we didn’t live together, did we?’ she challenged. ‘You have your Berkshire home, where I am not welcome. Your Knightsbridge apartment, where I am not welcome. And you have your Chelsea flat, where I am supposed to know my place and keep to it!’

‘And when do I ever use the Knightsbridge place?’ he demanded furiously. ‘Or spend time in Berkshire, come to that?’ With a raking flick of his hand he dismissed that argument with the contempt he thought it deserved. ‘You know as well as I do,’ he went on gruffly, ‘that where you are is where I want to be, which knocks that excuse right on its crazy head.’

‘Unless you’re entertaining, of course.’ Despite the warming response she had experienced to his gruff confession about wanting to be where she was, Roberta kept her mind firmly fixed on the point in hand. ‘When you suddenly develop amnesia where I am concerned.’

‘Good grief!’ he gasped, eyes widening as understanding suddenly hit. ‘Do you mean to tell me that this is all because of Friday night?’ He made a sound that was both impatient and scornful.

‘The final straw,’ she conceded. ‘That’s all.’

But he wasn’t listening. ‘I can’t believe it!’ he was muttering. ‘You’re just bloody miffed because I didn’t dance attendance on you all night long!’

‘You didn’t dance attendance at all, the way I remember it.’

‘I had other duties to attend to!’ he snapped. ‘It was Lulu’s night. And she, therefore, had first call on my attention!’

‘She got it, Mac,’ Roberta drily assured. ‘She certainly got it! The full, central and undivided attention of most of the room all night—at my damned expense due to your lack of support for me!’

‘Lulu said something to upset you?’ he asked sharply, really beginning to catch on at last. His eyes darkened, the anger leaving him to be replaced with another look of urgent appeal. ‘Listen, Bunny—’ he leaned towards her again ‘—if Lulu—or any of my family—offended you at the party the other night, then I apologise for them. They’re all so damned—’

Roberta suddenly shot to her feet. ‘They didn’t offend me, Mac. You did! You do it every time you pretend I don’t exist as far as they are concerned! If once—just once—you had come to my side, forced them to accept me for what I am supposed to be to you, then they would have done—and you know it!’ She sucked in a short breath, disgusted with him and herself for putting up with it all for so long. ‘Well—’ She tried to put a brake on her temper, but it didn’t work. Now that it had been let loose it did not want to retreat again. ‘I refuse to hide in the cupboard like your guilty skeleton any longer! I have done nothing—nothing—to be ashamed of. Yet your family—through you—’ she angrily made clear ‘—has sunk my self-esteem to such a level that it can’t sink any lower! And yes—’ she nodded tightly ‘—I’ve had enough!’ The lot, everything she had been bottling up all weekend, was spilling out in one furious wave. ‘More than enough! I will not allow myself to be trodden under your rotten family’s feet for another day! So you can take yourself—and your selfish idea of a relationship—and just get out of here!’

‘Finished?’ he clipped.

‘Yes,’ she said, and sat down with a bump, drawing air into her lungs in an effort to control herself. She had been determined not to lose her temper with him, to finish this with all the cool aplomb that a man like Mac would expect from a woman of her supposed sophistication. But that was the trouble, she conceded angrily. She wasn’t really sophisticated at all! She was just a love-vulnerable fool called Roberta Chandler, forced into playing an alien role because she couldn’t control her feelings for this man!

And to have him she’d had to play it his way—right down the damned line!

‘So you want out.’

‘Not want,’ she corrected, ‘I have out.’

‘Or marriage,’ he derided, shoving himself away from the desk.

‘Oh, no.’ She denied that instantly. ‘You see, that was another thing I discovered on Friday night. I discovered that I have no wish to become a member of your rude and selfish family. But I do want marriage!’ she added quickly, when he flashed her a look that said he might be considering throttling her for that particular insult. ‘And since it obviously isn’t going to be to you—’ her slender shoulders lifted and fell in a shrug ‘—then I must cut my losses and look around for someone else.’

‘Even though it’s me you love?’

Oh, that hurt, and it showed in the way she winced. But she lifted her chin to him, green eyes holding on to his. ‘And who do you love, Mac?’ she challenged quietly.

He swung away, obviously not prepared to answer that one. ‘I learned the wedding lesson the first time around,’ he muttered evasively, going to stand at the window with his hands shoved into his trouser pockets. ‘I have no intention of putting myself through that kind of hell again.’

‘I can understand that,’ Roberta acknowledged fairly. ‘But whatever hell your marriage was to you, Mac, you did gain something very precious from it. You gained Lulu, whom you so obviously love and adore—a daughter who loves and adores you in return. Do you think I don’t want to experience that kind of bond with a child of my own?’ she appealed to the rigid set of his back. ‘Do you honestly think that, just because you see your duty to the human race fulfilled in Lulu, I must accept that it can never happen to me because I love you and therefore must concede to your dictum?’

‘You’re jealous of Lulu!’ he swung around to declare.

‘I am not jealous of Lulu!’ she denied, storming to her feet again as the taunt hit a raw nerve. ‘But I am jealous of what you and Lulu have, that I can never have if I don’t cut myself free from you!’

‘But you’re only twenty-five years old, dammit!’ he rasped. ‘You’ve got years ahead of you to plan things like home and family!’

She felt herself go icy cold. ‘Leave it until you decide that you’ve had enough of me, do you mean?’

The colour drained from his face, his thickly curling lashes flickering down to hide his eyes from her as he turned back to the window. And Roberta smiled bleakly to herself as her heart flipped over, then lay struggling like a dying fish in her breast. She had just knocked the nail right on top of its indisputable head.

‘You’ve never so much as hinted to me before that you felt like this,’ Mac muttered after a long, heavy moment.

‘I was waiting for you to show enough interest in my feelings to wonder,’ she murmured shakily. ‘But you never have, have you?’

Even she heard the contempt in her voice, aimed entirely at herself for her own powers of self-delusion, and Mac’s shoulders shifted on a gesture of discomfort as he picked up on it too.

‘But that really is not the main issue here.’ Grimly she shifted things back on to the right track. ‘The issue being that I am no longer willing to have a hole-and-corner affair with a man who can’t even acknowledge me for what I am supposed to be to him, in front of those people he cares for, because he is ashamed of me.’

‘Now that’s a downright bloody lie!’ Mac barked, spinning around to lance her with a murderous look. ‘You know what you are without my having to spell it out for you!’ he bit out angrily. ‘You are beautiful, you are bright, you are enchanting to be with, and you’re damned fantastic in bed! And any man would be proud to call you his—including me! So stop coming on to me as though I treat you like some dirty secret I keep swept beneath the carpet, because it just isn’t true!’

‘Isn’t it?’

‘No, it bloody well isn’t,’ he growled, advancing on her with wrathful intent gleaming in his eyes. ‘You are the first woman in ten years that I’ve given my complete loyalty to!’ he reminded her as he reached her.

‘But I gave you a whole lot more than that.’ She had been referring to her love but, typical Mac, he completely misunderstood her.

‘Yes!’ he hissed. ‘And I have never ceased to be grateful for the honour of being your first lover!’ he mocked her cuttingly. ‘But if you think I am going to pay for it by being cornered into marrying you, then you have another think coming!’

‘But I told you,’ she reminded him, ‘I don’t want to marry you.’

‘Then what the hell do you want?’ he shouted.

‘Out,’ she said simply. ‘I just want out.’

‘God in heaven, woman—no!’ he rasped, and reached for her, his fingers digging into her shoulders as he tugged her up against him. ‘No,’ he repeated, and brought his mouth down hard upon her own.

She had been doing fine until then, Roberta thought wretchedly as Mac began a ruthless plundering of her mouth. She had been managing to hold all these traitorous feelings right at bay—until he’d touched her. And now—now...

She groaned, trying desperately to pull away from him before her clamouring senses got the better of her. But he was big and strong and hungry, and the angry aggression in him answered a softer feminine need inside her to be mastered by his superior will. Her lips parted to the demanding pressure of his mouth without his having to try hard to make it, and on the sensual caress of his tongue she yielded—yielded like a weak little kitten to the superior dominance of the big, powerful cat.

‘If I’d been here,’ he muttered against her clinging mouth, ‘you wouldn’t have got as far as packing your damned lipstick!’ He moved his hands in a possessive gesture down her body. ‘We would have been doing this in two seconds flat instead, and any talk of leaving me would have flown right out of the nearest window!’

She couldn’t deny it. Her senses were on fire already. He was angry, which only heightened her awareness of him. And he was a little frightened; she could tell by the tremor in his fingers as they moved over her, by the way his voice had deepened into thick huskiness as he spoke, all of which touched that softer part of her that she had tried so hard to lock away.

He kissed her deeply, his body straining against her, moving with a hot and hungry need that made her own flesh burn, her senses throb and the breath leave her lungs on low, anguished little sobs while she tried so hard to fight her own feelings as much as his heated seduction.

But to no avail. And it was Mac who brought it all to an end, pushing her to arm’s length then holding her there while he studied her through hard, narrowed eyes, his own breathing no steadier than her own as she stood there swaying dizzily.

‘Where did you go this weekend?’ he demanded.

‘Jenny’s,’ she answered, having to fight not to fling herself back into his arms.

‘Bitch!’ he rasped. ‘Did Joel take you there?’

‘I...’ She lifted a trembling hand to push her hair away from her face, still too dazed to think clearly. ‘I w-went after he dropped me off,’ she lied, but the hesitation had damned her, and Joel too.

Mac’s face turned to granite. ‘That’s brotherly loyalty for you!’ he muttered tightly.

‘What he did he did for me!’ Roberta insisted. ‘That doesn’t make him disloyal to you.’

‘It doesn’t?’ he jeered. ‘In my book it makes him a bloody traitor!’ Grabbing hold of her chin, he lifted it threateningly. ‘Where else has he been deceiving me, I wonder?’ he grated. ‘With you, perhaps? Has my kid brother been trying his luck with you, Roberta? Is that what this is really all about?’

Angrily she pulled away from him. ‘That is a disgraceful thing to suggest!’

‘No more disgraceful than the insults you’ve been throwing at me since I came in here,’ he defended. ‘Joel fancies you. He always has, and don’t try telling me otherwise.’

‘You’re crazy if you believe that,’ she sighed, shakily trying to pull herself together.

‘Not crazy,’ he denied. ‘Just aware of what’s going on around me. Joel always did want you for himself, and the only reason he has never made a serious move on you before is because I threatened to knock his block off if he ever did.’

‘Then why throw us together the other night, if you really believe that?’ Roberta cried in angry amazement.

‘Because I thought his respect for me meant more to him than his desire for you,’ Mac stated. ‘But I’m beginning to see that I was wrong.’

‘Wrong about a lot of things, if you honestly believe either Joel or myself would do such an underhand thing as to play you false!’ Roberta cried.

‘Whatever.’ Mac just shrugged all of that aside, his attention suddenly fixed on the gold watch gleaming at his wrist. ‘I’ll be putting him straight before too long.’ Grimly he turned and strode towards the door. ‘I’ll come down and collect you after work,’ he informed her curtly. ‘Then we’ll go to Jenny’s together to move your things back to Chelsea.’

‘I’m not coming back to you, Mac,’ she told him, looking pale but adamant.

He turned to lance her with a look, the contempt she read in his eyes totally new to her and hurtful. ‘Do I have to come back there and repeat the lesson?’ he demanded, putting shamed colour into her cheeks as he flicked his eyes insolently over the way she was still standing there, shaking in the aftermath of his last assault. ‘I could take you here and now on this floor if I wanted to, and you know it,’ he jeered, ‘so stop trying to draw things out. You’ve made your protest and it has been duly noted. Now we return to the status quo.’

‘No!’ she protested. ‘Mac—’

‘Six o’clock,’ he clipped out, arrogantly cutting across any protest she had been about to make before he slammed out of the room.

Roberta stood staring at the closed door, bubbling with anger and frustration, wondering just how he had managed to turn the whole thing round to suit himself like that.

Easy, a small voice taunted in her head. You made it easy for him by falling so easily into his arms!

‘Damn,’ she exploded softly, then heard another door beyond her own slam shut, and cursed again.

Joel’s office door. True to his word, Mac had gone to take the rest of his anger out on Joel. Guiltily aware that she had well and truly dropped Joel in it with her stupid tongue, she dropped heavily back into her chair, wondering grimly if she would still have a job by the end of this horrible morning.

CHAPTER THREE

JOEL was waiting for him when Mac strode into his office.

‘Loyal brother you are,’ he barked.

‘Loyal lover are you,’ Joel returned the insult. ‘I wouldn’t subject my worst enemy to what you subjected Roberta to on Friday night, and that’s the truth,’ he said, then lazed back in his chair to watch curiously as two strips of guilty colour washed across Mac’s high cheekbones.

‘Roberta can fight her own battles without your needing to play the shining knight!’ he muttered.

‘Turned my PA to pulp, have we?’ Joel mocked that argument. Roberta could no more fight Mac and win than she could win against a head-on collision with a double-decker bus. ‘So now you thought you’d try pulverising me. Well, sorry, big brother, but I refuse to play. You’re a fool, if you want to hear the truth—which I don’t for one minute think you do. Roberta is one in a million, and you’ve let her slip right through your selfish fingers because you care more for keeping the damned peace on the home front than you care for her.’

‘Don’t sermonise over me,’ Mac grated. ‘Not after the way you’ve played me for a fool all weekend. How many times did I call you up?’

‘Oh, about ten,’ Joel answered carelessly. ‘Pity you didn’t stop phoning and start driving, isn’t it? You might just have caught her between moves then. Ah...’ he breathed as Mac stiffened. ‘So Roberta pointed out the same error, did she? You’ve got to give it to that girl—’ he smiled ‘—she’s honest to the last full-stop.’

‘I had other commitments this weekend,’ Mac defended himself gruffly. ‘She knew that, and if she cared she would have understood.’

‘Like you understood how humiliating it was for her to be palmed off on your kid brother at your daughter’s birthday party?’

‘Oh, go to hell, Joel,’ Mac sighed, running a hand around the back of his neck then throwing himself into a chair. ‘You know how sensitive Lulu is about me and her mother. It was her night; I had to put her feelings first.’

‘Then why invite Roberta at all?’

‘Why did she have to accept?’ Mac shot back, and Joel sucked in a short breath, the handsome lines of his face hardening as he stared at his brother.

‘You bastard,’ he breathed. ‘You were covering yourself! Playing a let’s-keep-everyone-happy game so that Solomon Maclaine could feel comfortable with his conscience! My God,’ he muttered as he threw himself forward in his chair and glared at Mac, ‘you really are a selfish swine, aren’t you?’

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