A Marriage Betrayed

His mouth possessed hers in a frenzy of passion, igniting a response that rushed into being, spreading through her like wildfire, an uncontrollable force, taking her over, thrumming to a beat of its own. Heat pulsed from him, suffusing her entire body, exciting an almost excruciating awareness of hard flesh and muscle imprinting themselves on her. His kiss plundered and destroyed her previous knowledge of what a kiss could be, arousing a compulsive need to cast all limits aside and plummet into more and more enticing levels of melding together.

The break came as swiftly and as shockingly as the enforced connection. He tore his mouth from hers. His hands encircled her upper arms, holding her away from him as he stepped back. Dazed by the abrupt withdrawal and still helplessly churning with the sensations he’d stirred, Kristy looked at him in blank incomprehension.

His dark eyes glittered with malevolent triumph. “You see?” he said, removing his grasp, lifting his hands away as though the touch of her was distasteful to him. “I feel nothing for you. Absolutely nothing.”

It was a barefaced lie.

He was not unaffected by her, nor what had passed between them. His breathing was visibly faster and even as he swung on his heel and turned his back to her, Kristy was recalling all too acutely the burgeoning of his erection, proving he had been physically moved. Besides, how could such passion be generated out of nothing?

Though that raised the thorny question of how could she have been so deeply affected when ostensibly there was nothing between them but a misunderstanding. Worse, a case of mistaken identity! A painful flush scorched up her neck and burnt her cheeks. He had been abusing another woman, while here she was, deeply shaken by a vulnerability she couldn’t explain.

Nevertheless, explanations were in order. In very fast order, too, given the volatile nature of feelings running riot here. She had to correct his conviction she was someone he had known before. That was at the heart of this whole wretched mix-up.

“The reason there is nothing is because there was nothing in the first place,” Kristy said shakily.

He whirled around, his face contorted with furious resentment. His eyes stabbed black daggers at her. “Don’t make a fool of yourself by stating the obvious.”

Still hopelessly unsettled by the turbulence he’d aroused, Kristy couldn’t stop her own temper from flaring. “You’re deliberately trying to provoke me!”

He did not deny it. He made no reply at all but his eyes kept accusing her of dark, nameless crimes.

Kristy struggled to get herself under control. “What has happened is quite simple,” she stated once again, determined to make him listen, no matter what he said. “You see...”

“I know what has happened,” he cut in emphatically.

Kristy let the interruption fly past her. “...you’re making a mistake about me. You think I’m someone else....”

He gave a cynical laugh.

“I’m not the same woman who...”

“No. Most decidedly not. As far as I’m concerned, you’ve been dead for the last two years. I wish you were. It would be better if you were dead.”

Kristy almost stamped her foot in frustration at his refusal to listen. “Will you give me one chance...”

“Absolutely not,” he bit out with venom. “No more chances. You don’t deserve any chances.”

They were talking at cross-purposes. Trying to explain the true situation was obviously a futile exercise. His mind was set on one idea and he wasn’t in the mood to listen to her.

“Fine,” Kristy agreed with some asperity. Since he was not open to reason, it was best for her to give up and walk away. “Please excuse me. I’m going back to my room.”

He waved a disdainful dismissal. “Do that.”

“And locking the door.” So he couldn’t storm after her.

“Good!” He looked satisfied.

“I’m leaving Paris tomorrow.” That gave him a deadline if he could calm down enough to hear her side of this crazy business.

“Excellent!”

Kristy burned over his intransigence. “I’m never coming back,” she declared.

That should finish it for him, she thought. He could consider her dead forever. For some reason, that hurt deep down inside her, but she steadfastly buried the hurt. If it was what he wanted, this meeting with him definitely had no future. Best for her to forget it had ever happened.

His eyes narrowed suspiciously, as though he didn’t believe her. “What do you want from me?” he demanded.

Kristy’s chin lifted in proud rejection of him and all that might have come of this encounter if he could have accepted that things were different to what he thought they were. “Nothing!” she declared in snapping defiance of his suspicions about her. “Absolutely nothing!”

Having delivered the most affirmative exit line she could think of, she swung on her heel and strode for the interconnecting door. She had her hand on the knob, ready to sweep the door shut behind her when his voice cracked out again in harsh command.

“wait!”

She’d had enough. She’d done her best. He wouldn’t listen. He was only upsetting her further and further. So she did not wait. She did not so much as glance back at him. With her head held high, she marched into the suite she had been given and swiftly shut the door on him. One firm twist of the treacherous key and the lock clicked into place.

And that, thought Kristy, was that!

CHAPTER FOUR

KRISTY steamed up and down the luxurious sitting room, totally unaware and unappreciative of her rich and elegant surroundings. Her mind was in a ferment. What an aggravating man! What a positively infuriating man! Interfering with her life just because he thought she was someone else, turning her inside out with his confusing words and actions, making her feel things she had never felt before!

It wasn’t fair!

He wasn’t fair!

None of what had happened since she had arrived here in this damnable hotel was fair!

Kristy felt like picking up things and throwing them. Her gaze balefully targeted the vase of roses. But he would not have ordered them. He hated the woman he thought she was. No, the vase of red roses was the hotel management’s idea to help the resolution of a delicate situation. Except it wasn’t delicate! It was downright hopeless!

Why did they all think she was someone else?

Why?

Kristy marched into the marble bathroom and examined her reflection in the mirror there. It was a most uncomfortable feeling to think there was someone else who looked exactly like her. Was there such a thing as a perfect double? She had heard of movie stars who had look-alike stand-ins, but they weren’t perfect doubles. Surely a man who had been her double’s lover would see some differences if there were any, even though it had been two years since he had been with her. A close resemblance might fool hotel staff, but a lover of intimate acquaintance?

Kristy stared at her reflection in bitter frustration.

Who are you there on the other side of the mirror?

Why did you walk out on him without a word?

I would not have done that.

I’m different from you. I’d never do such a heartless thing to someone who loved me. Or was it wounded pride on his part, losing a possession he’d believed was his. Either way, you must have been a callous creature to dump him like that. But why can’t he see I’m different?

Her hand lifted to trace her features. Was every line exactly the same? The shape of her face, her mouth, her nose, her eyes? And what about colouring? Were her eyes exactly the same clear blue? The blue of cornflowers? Was her hair precisely the same unusual shade of apricot gold? How could it be so? Surely it was impossible. Yet...how else could he make such a mistake?

Kristy shook her head in pained bewilderment. The whole thing was a nightmare. She wrenched her gaze off her reflection in the mirror and left the bathroom. She paused in the dressing-room, eyeing her canvas carryall.

She should pick it up and get out of here. It was the sensible thing to do. Get out of this suite, out of this hotel, right out of this nightmarish situation. Then she would be just herself again, on her way to Geneva, precisely as she had planned before letting herself be sidetracked by a sentimental impulse.

On her way to Geneva . . .

Kristy’s heart stopped dead as her mind performed a double loop. Her mission was to search the Red Cross records for some trace of the family she had lost twenty-five years ago. What if she hadn’t been the only survivor of the earthquake? What if she had a sister—an identical twin sister!—who’d also survived? Or who hadn’t even been in the same place at the same time?

Family—real family!

Her stilled heart burst into rapid pumping.

The answers she wanted might be right here. With the man in the suite next door. Having a twin made more sense out of everyone’s conviction she was someone else. If it was true.

Her mind whirled, struck by the set of eene coincidences... the man who knew staying in this hotel, being actually in the lobby when she had entered for the first and probably the last time in her life... Betty and John bringing her here after their deaths...an impulse... guided by feelings for the very people who might have inadvertently separated her from a twin sister.

Kristy rubbed at her forehead. It ached, as did her heart, carrying the burden of too many thoughts and too many feelings. There was only one way to sort them out. She had to talk to the man again, whether he wanted it or not. Besides, he probably needed a resolution as much as she did.

Too agitated to wait for a longer cooling-off period for him, Kristy headed for the dangerous door again. Nothing was going to put her off her purpose this time, not insults, not threats, not even physical abuse, though she didn’t believe he’d try that again.

She knocked to give him warning, then twisted the key in the lock and thrust the door open. “Monsieur . . .” she called commandingly, determined not to be deterred from asking the questions that had to be asked and answered.

No reply.

She stepped into his sitting room and called again, shooting her gaze around as much as she could see of his suite. It appeared as empty as when she’d first entered and there was no response to her call. She waited, riven by dreadful tension. Perhaps he was in the bathroom. She listened hard. No sound. There was an empty feel to the place, not even a remote sense of his strong presence.

Kristy stood blankly for several minutes, robbed of her purpose and at a total loss what to do next. He wasn’t here. She didn’t know his name. The hotel management was so hung up on discretion, it was most unlikely they’d just give it to her. Apart from which, since the mix-up was still in force, they’d probably think such an inquiry was another little joke on her part.

Her best course, she finally decided, was to wait a few hours and see if he came back. It was midafternoon now. If he was occupying this suite, he’d probably return to it to change for dinner. On the other hand, he might have washed his hands of her and gone off with the beautiful brunette.

It was a depressing thought.

Kristy brooded over the strong pull he’d had on her, then sternly told herself he wouldn’t want to have anything to do with the twin of a woman who’d dumped him. Maybe they shared the same chemistry. That would help to explain the extraordinary feelings he stirred in her.

Despondently she returned to her suite, relocking the connecting door. She needed his name, but that could wait, too. If she failed to make any further contact with him today, she would tackle the hotel management tomorrow morning, argue her case, and demand co-operation. No way would she countenance losing this link to a possible sister.

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