Reclaiming His Wife

She had just finished lighting a candle on the mantelpiece, replacing the one that had finally burned itself out, when a thud against the door jamb had her turning quickly.

Wearing the anorak he had casually thrown on to go outside, Jared was manoeuvring a large oval tin bath through the doorway.

‘I don’t believe this!’ Taylor laughed incredulously.

Seeing him trying to kick the rug aside with his booted foot, Taylor rushed to help him, dragging the table to one side and folding the rug clear of the space between the chair and the sofa so that he could set the hollow oval tub down in front of the fire.

‘There you are.’ He ran his hand around the tub’s interior, brushing out some foreign objects. ‘Every modern convenience.’

Still amazed, Taylor stared down at it. ‘How are we going to heat enough water to fill that?’

‘As your forebears did, darling. With one kettleful after another. Bath night, I believe, was every Friday or Saturday night.’

‘In front of the fire.’ Right now it sounded like pure luxury. In front of him.

Disconcerted, she uttered, ‘Did your grandparents use this? Did you?’ Try though she did, she couldn’t imagine him living quite so rustically.

He laughed, and said, confirming it, ‘Good heavens no! I didn’t. There was always the bathroom—certainly in my time. I’m not sure this was ever used. It did, however, come in useful for mixing potting compost and keeping goldfish outside in during the summer months.’

‘You’re joking!’ Horrified green eyes lifted from the ancient metal to meet those that were deep-set, dark and definitely laughing at her. ‘Thanks,’ she chided dryly, secretly amused.

Having to wait for each kettleful of water, it took some time to fill the bath to a practical level—until Jared found a large cauldron in the old pantry and started heating the water in that instead.

With the bath almost ready and steaming invitingly, Taylor went to fetch some of the toiletries she had brought with her; soap from the bathroom and, still in its paper bag, the bottle of fragrant bath foam she had purchased when she and Craig and another member of the crew had gone on a shopping expedition in Edinburgh a few days before.

She was glad Jared was upstairs, moving around in the master bedroom when she came back down because, intimate though they had been during their marriage and then shockingly—her cheeks burned as she thought about it— the previous night, she felt absurdly self-conscious in the present circumstances about undressing in front of him.

She quickly discarded her clothes and, sweeping her hair up and securing it with a large clasp she had brought down with her, she stepped nimbly into the water.

With her shoulders supported by one end of the bath and her long legs draped over the other, she was luxuriating with her eyes closed—breasts barely covered—in the scented bubbles when he strode back in.

She wasn’t sure if he had sat down or if he had gone back out of the room because she couldn’t hear him moving around and she felt too relaxed to open her eyes and look. There was no sound but the crackling of logs on the fire, the soft pup-pup of bubbles dispersing in the foam and a strange kind of fizzing she was straining her ears to identify.

Something cool and smooth skimmed her leg, and she gasped, drawing it up sharply, her eyes flying open to the realisation of Jared standing there above her, that it was the cool base of a crystal glass flute he had been trailing along her leg.

‘Champagne?’ she beamed, surprised.

‘I never travel without it.’

He had changed, she noticed, into a soft black shirt and black corduroys, an image, which, with his black hair and those glittering black eyes rocked her with its sexual impact.

‘You’re decadent,’ she accused in a voice that faltered, reaching up and taking the glass from him.

‘If you mean in the sense of being self-indulgent, then I can only admit to being entirely guilty of that,’ he accepted. ‘But if you mean in the sense that I’m morally corrupt, then no man could apologise for dispensing with his highest principles around you, Taylor.’

What did he mean by that exactly?

Guardedly, with loose strands curling damply against her face, she watched him retrieve his own glass from the mantelpiece then, with one easy stretch of his body, pick up the book he had been reading earlier and cross to the settee.

Was he, she wondered, in some way alluding to last night? Was he, like her, and in spite of everything he had said, somehow regretting what had happened?

Refusing to think about that, she savoured the champagne, considering, as she twisted the slim stem of the glass how ridiculous it seemed sipping the most expensive wine from what looked like incredibly valuable crystal while lying in a battered tin tub!

‘Why the Madonna smile?’

That deep voice sliced through her reverie, bringing her head round.

He was sitting with his book lying open on the palm of his hand, one long leg lying across the other, those thoughtful eyes watching her as a Roman emperor would have watched his naked and favourite slave girl, as though she amused and entertained him.

‘What were you thinking of?’

Head tilting, Taylor surveyed the leaping fire through the carved perfection of the crystal, noting the way the one filled and impregnated every last fine sculpted contour of the other.

‘Incongruities,’ she murmured, taking another sip.

‘Such as?’

‘This.’ She held up her glass. ‘And this.’ A toss of her chin indicated the bathtub. ‘You and I.’

‘You and—’ She couldn’t look at him sitting there with the book, still open, but transferred to his lap now. His left arm was stretched across the back of the settee. ‘What are you saying? That we’re that much of a mismatch? Out of harmony with one another? Incompatible?’ When she didn’t answer, but just went on sipping her champagne, he said, ‘There is one way, my love, where you and I certainly aren’t incompatible, and if you’re determined to make that sort of rash remark then I’ll just have to—’

She was both relieved—and surprised—when the phone on the little round table beside the settee started to ring. Just how they got on in bed was something of which she certainly didn’t need reminding!

It was a business call, she deduced almost immediately, discarding her glass on the other low table she just managed to reach behind her, before lying back and listening to the deep sensuality of his voice.

‘No, it’s switched off,’ he was saying, obviously referring to his mobile phone. ‘No, I shan’t be dealing with it. I’ve left Steve Shaunessy in charge.’

His second in command. A big Irishman, Taylor remembered from the days when she had played hostess to Jared’s business colleagues and their wives. Steve was clever, astute. Trustworthy. She hadn’t forgotten, either, the sympathy she had seen in the man’s eyes when he had looked at her sometimes, and had been sure that he was thinking what she had guessed they must all have been thinking—everyone who knew, that was—that she was only a young and callow substitute who Jared had married in place of someone else.

‘Get Steve to deal with it,’ he went on, with no mention that he was on leave, with whom, or how long he intended to be away, which only emphasised that, as head of a thriving company, he was answerable to no one.

He was speaking to a woman—probably his secretary— Taylor decided, simply from that certain tone he always used with the opposite sex. Just like everything else about him, his voice had the most profound effect on women. And Taylor Adams was no exception, she thought, resenting the way that, even now, when her spirits had plummeted just from remembering how she had felt during their marriage, when she had felt betrayed and second best, those deep tones were arousing her, grazing over her senses the way his shirt would graze her naked body, or his chest hair rasp against the sudden aching tightness of her breasts…

‘No. Don’t call me here again.’

Catching that impatient, dismissive note in his voice, mentally she shook herself out of her dangerous reverie before the phone clattered back onto its rest.

‘Enjoying yourself?’

She tensed, hearing his book snap closed.

‘It’s heaven,’ she lied, staring up at the rather jaded emulsion of the ceiling, trying not to sound as though something had been wrenched out of her gut just from imagining him with another woman, pretending to herself that she didn’t care, so that with even more feigned brightness she was adding, ‘The Victorians certainly had some things right.’

He made a cynical sound down his nostrils. ‘Yes—if you had servants to lug in all the water—fill the darn thing for you.’

He had a point there, she thought, silently sympathising with their plight.

A light movement of her shoulder disturbed the water, revealing the proud taut curvature of her breasts. ‘I could go along with that.’

He gave a soft, almost humourless chuckle. ‘As a Victorian? I don’t think so. Times were pretty harsh—especially for a woman. I’m afraid your talents as a make-up artist, dearest, would probably never have seen the light of day. In fact your hopes of any sort of a career would almost certainly have had to be shelved in favour of housekeeping. And you would have had all my children, Taylor, and liked it, with very little say in the matter.’

Damp tendrils framed her face as she studied him through the dark fringes of her lashes. Was he deliberately trying to provoke her into a response?

‘There was always abstinence,’ she reminded him pointedly, just in case he was, and saw one thick eyebrow arch in silent scepticism. ‘Or would you,’ she challenged, feeling antagonistic without any substantial reason, ‘have exercised your legal right and beaten me if I’d said no?’

He seemed to consider this with some amusement for a moment. ‘That would have been my prerogative.’ His gaze, sliding over the caramel silk of her hair was suddenly burning with a dark intensity, conveying an overtly sensual message that matched the fevered heat beneath her skin. With slow and candid appreciation those febrile eyes roamed over the defiant tilt of her pointed chin, touching on her wet shoulders before coming to rest on her small and gleaming breasts. ‘I don’t think though,’ he breathed, his voice suddenly low and husky, ‘that any flaying of that tender flesh would ever have been necessary. I don’t think there ever was or will be a time when either of us could have said—or could say—no. Which is why you’re a fool if you imagine you can deny either of us, Taylor. Nature has a way of mocking us—and all the more for our efforts to contradict her, darling.’

As it had when she had got pregnant?

Unwillingly her mind skittered back to that time. Usually she would have been horrified at the thought of conceiving an unwanted child, at using no protection, but she had let him that night, too ensnared by the bitter-sweet aftermath of their quarrel to retain any measure of common sense. Getting pregnant was the last thing she had wanted, but Nature had had other ideas, opening her womb to his seed and forcing her—despite her worries, her resistance and the threat of breaking up—or perhaps, as he had suggested, because of all of those things—to accept that her body had selected this man as its mate and master, and that her genes would be melded with his, no matter what the cost.

Hurting, angry with herself, with him, and with the forces of nature—or whatever had destined that she should be marooned here with him—she pushed herself up out of the water and grabbed the big fluffy towel from the arm of the chair just within her reach, foam cascading down over her glistening nakedness.

Keeping her back to him, quickly she proceeded to dry herself, her slim shoulders tense from the uncomfortable knowledge that he was watching her. She could sense his dark, almost tangible gaze travelling down over each vertebrae of her slender back to her tapering waist and tight neat bottom.

‘My robe?’ Unable to see it anywhere as she finished drying herself, she thrust her feet into a pair of open-toed mules and, with the damp towel draped around her, made a move towards the door, realising she must have left it upstairs.

‘No you don’t.’ Jared’s hard command stalled her. He was already getting to his feet. ‘You’ll catch your death of cold.’

He was back within a couple of minutes, striding over to warm the garment in front of the fire.

‘Here.’

Discarding the towel, wishing he wasn’t so close, Taylor slipped her arms into the robe he was holding out for her. The sleeves were still cold, but the body of it was nicely warm and she gave a delicious little shudder as she pulled it around her. However, on reaching for the belt, her fingers almost entwined with his and quickly she withdrew them, standing stock-still as his arms looped under hers so that he could tie the sash around her tiny waist.

He was looking over her shoulder, concentrating on what he was doing, while Taylor could hardly trust herself to breathe. She could hear his slow and steady breathing, feel its warmth against her hair, could envisage the thickness of those heavy lashes veiling his eyes. He smelled nice too, she noted, not daring to inhale too deeply that potent and very masculine scent that was all his own. But when a slight turn of her head brought her cheek into shocking contact with the rough texture of his jaw, something inside her snapped and all the resolve in the world couldn’t hold back the sound that escaped her like a soft purr, or stop her from sinking back against him.

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