Lost In Love

And what about Saturday? she wondered, feeling the biting discomfort of evil suspicion creep insidiously through her blood. Today was Wednesday. He said he was stuck up there for two days. That brought him to Friday. That could only mean one thing in Guy’s book, for he had this—unbroken little rule about never spending Saturday alone! He most probably had her with him now! Her suspicious mind took her on another step. After all, hadn’t she personal experience of Guy’s passions? One night without a woman and he wasn’t fit to know!

‘And I also suppose you are entertaining one of your ladies up there?’

‘Am I?’ he murmured in a maddeningly unrevealing drawl.

‘If I make the effort to get to Edinburgh, Guy,’ she went on tightly, ‘it will not be to play gooseberry to your latest fancy piece!’

‘Darling,’ he drawled, silky-voiced, refusing to be riled by her frankly aggravating tone, ‘if you can take so much trouble just to share my company, then I will make sure I am free.’

Which still told her exactly nothing! ‘And the poor fool who is living under the mistaken belief that she will be enjoying your full attention—what happens to her?’

‘Why?’ he countered. ‘Are you expecting to stay with me all night?’ He sounded insufferably at ease, mildly surprised, and horribly mocking. ‘If that is the case, darling, then I most certainly will make sure I am free.’

Marnie’s lips tightened. ‘If you’re still hankering after that, Guy,’ she told him witheringly, ‘then I feel sorry for you. I happen to be rather fastidious about the men who share my bed. One cannot be too careful these days.’

‘Bitch,’ he said. ‘Take care, Marnie, that one day I don’t decide to prove to you just how weak your aversion to me actually is, because you would never forgive yourself for surrendering to this—now, what was it you once called me?’ He was playing the silky snake now, slithering along her nerve-ends with that lethal weapon of a tongue of his. ‘A middle-aged has-been putting himself out for voluntary stud? Quaint,’ he drawled. ‘Very quaint.’

Marnie had the grace to wince at the hard reminder of those particular words. She had flung some terrible things at him four years ago. Unforgivable things, most of them. But she had been hurting so badly at the time, while he had been so calm, so utterly gentle with her that she had simply exploded, wanting to rile his sleeping devil with terrible insults and bitter accusations. She had not succeeded. All she had achieved was to make him walk abruptly away from her. It was either that or hit her, she knew that now. But four years ago his turning his back on her at that moment had hurt almost as much as everything else he had done to her.

‘It isn’t my fault you crave variety,’ she put in waspishly to hide her own discomfort.

‘It is that same “craving”, as you so sweetly put it,’ he countered, ‘that made our nights such—exquisite adventures.’

‘And I was so endearingly naïve, wasn’t I?’ Her full bottom lip curled in derision. ‘Such a pathetically gullible thing, and so willing to let you walk all over me.’

‘Look.’ His patience suddenly snapped. ‘I really have no more time to give to this kind of verbal battle today. If you called me up just to fill in a few spare moments trying to irritate me, then I think I should inform you that you have managed it. Now,’ he said curtly, ‘do you come up to Edinburgh or do we sever this conversation before it deteriorates into a real slanging match?’

‘I’ll check the times of the shuttle and let your secretary know my arrival time,’ she muttered, backing down. It would do her cause no good to have put him in one of his black moods before she’d even got to see him. Things were going to be difficult enough as it was.

‘I think I should also mention at this juncture that if this has anything to do with that brother of yours then you will be wasting your time taking that shuttle,’ he warned.

‘I’ll see you later,’ she said, and heard his sigh of impatience as she quickly replaced the receiver.

* * *

Jamie must have been standing by the telephone waiting for her to call, because he answered it on the first ring. ‘Clare’s resting upstairs,’ he explained. ‘I didn’t want the telephone to disturb her. Have you spoken to Guy?’

‘He’s in Edinburgh,’ she informed him. ‘I’m on my way up to see him right now.’

‘Thanks for doing this for me, Marnie,’ he murmured gruffly. ‘I know how much you hate going to him for anything, and believe me, I wouldn’t have asked you to do it this time if it weren’t for Clare...’

‘How is she?’ Marnie enquired concernedly.

‘Tense,’ her brother clipped. ‘Over-bright. Pretending she’s worrying about nothing, when really she’s so afraid of doing the wrong thing that she barely makes a move without giving it careful consideration first.’

‘Yes,’ murmured Marnie, well aware of all Clare’s painful heart-searching after that first miscarriage. She could understand how a woman must inevitably put the blame upon herself. Common sense and all the doctors in the world might tell you that it was just one of those natural tragedies that happened in life, but no matter how hard you tried you could never quite convince yourself of that. The feelings of guilt still tormented you day and night.

‘If we can just get her through this next vital month, then maybe she’ll begin to believe it’s going to be all right this time...’

‘Well, give her my love,’ Marnie said. ‘And just make sure you don’t give her anything else to worry about.’

‘I’m not a complete fool, Marnie,’ her brother said tightly. ‘I do know when I’m standing right on the bottom line.’

Well, that was something, Marnie supposed on an inner sigh. Perhaps—perhaps, she considered hopefully, this double crisis could just be the making of her scatter-brained, preoccupied brother. ‘I’ll give you a call the moment Guy decides what he’s going to do about it all,’ she assured him. ‘You just take good care of Clare.’

‘I intend to,’ he said firmly. ‘And—thanks again for doing this for me.’

‘Don’t thank me, Jamie,’ Marnie sighed a little wearily. ‘Thank Guy—if he agrees to help you out of this one.’

* * *

No one knowing only the Marnie Western-Frabosa who was the beautiful but very Bohemian-styled artist usually dressed in a paint smudged T-shirt and faded jeans would recognise her in the elegant creature who came gracefully through the Arrivals gate at Edinburgh Airport late that same afternoon.

To the man whose lazy black eyes followed her progress across the busy concourse she represented everything he desired in a woman. The first time he had ever set eyes on her had been enough to make his jaded senses throb with a need to possess, solely and totally. Five long and eventful years had passed by since then, and he still could not control that dragging clutch at his loins simply gazing at her caused.

Her skin was pure peaches and cream, so perfect, it fascinated. Her hair, long and finely spun, had been twisted in a knot on top of her head today, but the severity of the style could not dim the thousand and one different shades of reds and golds running through it. It shimmered in the overhead lights. Hers was a rich and golden beauty, made more enchanting by the pure oval of her softly featured face. Her eyes were blue—the shade of blue that could blaze purple with passion or icy grey with anger. Her nose was small and straight—with just the slightest tendency to look haughty when she lifted her chin a certain defiant way. And her mouth...he studied her mouth, lifted slightly at the corners at the moment by some rueful thought she was considering—that mouth had to be the most sensually evocative mouth he had ever seen. The fact that he knew it felt and tasted even more exciting than it looked did not ease the slow burn at present taking place low in his gut.

She was wearing purple, a colour that had always suited her. It was nothing but a simple off-the-peg cotton jersey dress, but it did wonderful things for her figure, hugging the curving shape of her body from neck to hip to just above the curve of her slender knees, leaving little work left to the imagination. And long, slender legs he knew from experience did not stop until they reached her waist brought her onwards towards him with an inbuilt sensual grace which put a smouldering glint in his hooded eyes.

Marnie saw the gleam as she made eye-to-eye contact with the darkly handsome and dangerously charismatic Guy Frabosa.

Sired by an Italian father to a French mother, brought up from the age of ten in England, then having spent most of his adult life frequenting most of the major countries in the world, Guy should have considered himself very cosmopolitan, yet he considered himself Italian to the very last drop of blood in his veins. And perhaps he was right to do so, since it was the Italian side of his breeding that burned through him like a warning beacon to any woman receptive to sheer male virility.

Of course, he, in his conceit, did pander to it, using the liquid smoothness of his Italian accent as one of his most effective weapons, refusing stubbornly to allow it to give way to his superb grasp of the English language, so the ‘r’s rolled off his tongue like purrs, sexy enough to make any woman quiver.

He was tall, powerfully built yet surprisingly lithe with it. A figure to hang fine clothes on, good quality hand-made clothes with a cut to suit the man—exclusive. His Latin black hair had given way to silver at the temples but that only added to his attraction rather than diminished it. For a thirty-nine-year-old man who had lived every single one of those years to its fullest potential, Guy still packed a fair punch in the solar plexus. He was one of those lucky men who improved with the years—like fine wine, he matured instead of ageing. Eyes of a dark, dark brown were generally lazily sensual, but could, if he wanted them to, harden to cold black pebbles which could freeze out the most tenacious foe. His nose was long and thin—not slim, thin, with a tendency to flare at the nostrils. Arrogant, and, like the rock-hard set of his chin, a direct warning to the ruthless streak in his character. Whereas his mouth by contrast was truly sensual, a very expressive tool he used to convey his moods, thin and tight when angry, sardonically twisted when mildly amused, a wide and attractive frame to perfect white teeth when touched into full-blown laughter, and soft, full and passionate when sexually aroused.

Then there was that other mouth, the one he saved for Marnie alone. The one he was wearing right at this moment as he watched her approach him through the mill of commuter bodies.

It was the half-soft, half-twisted, half-smiling mouth that said he didn’t really know how to feel about her, and really never had.

That, Marnie thought as she carefully doused down her own inevitable response to this first glimpse of him—that deep and all-consuming inner recognition of her body’s perfect master—was and always had been her most powerful weapon over Guy: his inability to decide just where she fitted into his life. He had once thought he’d done it, fitted her neatly into the box marked ‘wife’, of the forbearing and dutiful kind. Blindly besotted, safely caught and netted—only to find out, when he tried testing the springs of his trap, that he had made the biggest mistake of his life.

She reached him, waited calmly for his dark eyes to make their slow and lazy climb of her body from soft purple suede shoes to the scoop-necked top of her simple dress. Then they lifted to wryly take in the proud tilt to her chin, her mouth, heart-shaped and slightly mocking, along the straight line of her small nose until at last clashing with the full and striking blueness of her eyes.

The muscles around her stomach quivered. Standing this close to him, it was impossible not to respond to the raw beauty of Guy’s face.

‘Marnie,’ he murmured.

‘Hello, Guy,’ she quietly replied, smiling a little, because even though she hated him she loved him, if it was possible to feel the two emotions at the same time.

He knew it too, which put that look of rueful irony in his eyes as he took another step to close the gap between them. Guy was Italian enough to express a greeting with a kiss on both cheeks, and Marnie had long since given up trying to deter him. So she stood calmly waiting for the embrace with no thought of drawing back.

His hands lifted to gently curve the lightly padded bones at her shoulders, and he leaned forward, brushing his mouth across one softly perfumed cheek then the other. Then, just as she was about to take that vital step back so that she could smile at him with studied indifference, he outmanoeuvred her, holding her firmly in front of him, eyes flashing wickedly just before his mouth came to cover hers in a hot and hungry kiss which took no account of how public he was being, or how blithely he had overstepped the invisible line she had drawn between them four years ago.

It took several long, turbulent seconds for her to realise just what he was doing, but by then it was too late; shock had already sent her arching into the familiar hardness of his body, and her mouth—parting on a gasp of surprise—was suddenly consumed by the feel and taste of him, remembering, and she quivered, the sheer horror of what was happening sending her eyes wide to stare in mute protest into the flashing triumph in his. Then his dark lashes were lowering sensually over his eyes, and he was giving himself up to the sheer pleasure of the kiss, drawing her even closer to him, forcing her to acknowledge the damning evidence of her own response when her breasts swelled and hardened, aroused by the crushing pressure of his chest.

‘You have no idea how much I needed that,’ he murmured with heavy satisfaction when at last he allowed their mouths to separate.

She jerked angrily away from him, dazed by the unexpected onslaught, and dizzy with the sight and sound and smell of him. She was trembling all over, and guilty heat ran up her cheeks. Guy had not affected her like this for years.

OK, she reasoned with herself as she struggled to pull herself together. So the bitterness she used to feel towards him had slowly faded, but she had never expected this—this swamp of feeling to overtake her! She slid a shaking hand across her mouth in a useless attempt to wipe away the lingering throb of his kiss, glancing up at him through her lashes with dark, angry eyes. ‘God, Guy,’ she whispered huskily. ‘Sometimes you behave like a—’

‘I do hope, cara,’ he interrupted lazily, ‘that you are not about to deny your own response to that kiss.’ He quirked an eyebrow at her, daring her with the taunting mockery in his gaze to do just that. ‘Nor mine to you,’ he added silkily. ‘For, while you bow your head in that oh, so demure way and make believe you are too fastidious to enjoy a kiss from me, you are also glaring in the general direction where your own twin proofs still peak in recognition of their master... You really should wear more concealing undergarments, Marnie, my love, if you do not wish to be so—exposed, as they say.’

‘God, I hate you!’

‘I know,’ he drawled, unrepentant.

‘Does it give you some kind of perverted kick to embarrass me this way?’

‘Oh, it gives me all kinds of kicks to see you knocked off balance now and then.’ The curt remark was accompanied by his abrupt withdrawal from her, leaving her standing alone, trying hard not to sway dizzily. The angry heat in her cheeks told him he had easily won that round. ‘Come,’ he said, suddenly cool and aloof. ‘We have business to discuss. I have a car waiting outside.’

With that, he took her arm in a possessive hold, and, keeping her close to his side, led her towards the airport exit.

‘No luggage?’ he enquired a few steps further on.

She shook her head. ‘I was hoping to catch the last shuttle back to London.’

‘Which leaves in about—one hour,’ he informed her with dry sarcasm. ‘Rather optimistic of you, to believe we can talk and get back here in that time, don’t you think?’

‘An hour?’ She stopped to stare at him in horror. It had never occurred to her to check the times of the London shuttle! She had just automatically assumed they ran day and night—the way the trains did.

‘What will you do now?’ Guy murmured provokingly. ‘Stuck here in this strange city with a man you say you hate!’

‘I’ll most probably survive,’ she threw back tartly, ‘since the man in question can’t possibly hurt me more than he has already!’

His mouth tightened, but he said nothing, pulling her along beside him as he strode through the exit doors. The waiting car was long and dark and chauffeur-driven. Guy politely saw her seated before sliding in beside her, and almost before the door had closed them in they were moving smoothly away from the kerb.

CHAPTER THREE

‘I‘M GOING to have to find somewhere to stay overnight,’ Marnie sighed, still irritated because she had been so stupid as to not check the times of the return shuttle back to London. A couple of hours of Guy’s company was all she ever allowed herself at one swallow. The mere idea of spending a whole evening in his proximity was enough to make her voice sound pettish as she added, ‘And I’m hungry; I missed my lunch today and you—’ ‘

‘Do be quiet, Marnie,’ Guy cut in, sending her a look of such flat derision that her cheeks actually flushed at it. ‘You know as well as I do that I will have made any necessary arrangements. I am nothing if not competent, Marnie—nothing if not that...’

She glared at him balefully, hating him with her eyes for his ever-present sarcasm. Oh, yes, she agreed, Guy was competent, all right. So competent, in fact, that it had taken her almost a year to find out that he was cheating on her with another woman. And she would not have found out then if Jamie hadn’t opened his mouth over something he’d thought completely innocent at the time.

Jamie. She shivered suddenly. God, how Guy hated her brother for that bit of indiscretion. He had vowed once never to forgive him. Just as she had vowed never to forgive Guy.

‘Cold?’ he murmured, noting the small shiver.

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘Just...’ Her lips closed over what she had been going to say, and she turned her face away from him with a small non-committal shrug. She could feel the sharpness of his gaze on her and tensed slightly, waiting for him to prompt her into finishing the sentence. The silence between them grew fraught, shortening her breathing and making her heart beat faster. There was so much bitterness between them, so much dissension, she didn’t know whether she could actually go through with this.

‘Easy, Marnie...’ Guy’s hand reached out to cover her own, and it was only as the warm brown fingers closed gently over hers that she realised she was sitting with her hands locked into a white-knuckled clench. ‘It cannot be this bad, surely?’ he murmured huskily.

Oh, yes, it could, she thought silently. I hate you and you hate Jamie and Jamie hates himself. It couldn’t be much worse! ‘Guy,’ she began tentatively, ‘about Jamie...’

‘No.’ He removed his hand, and at the same time removed the caring expression from his face. And Marnie felt her heart sink as he leaned back and closed his eyes, effectively shutting her out. It was an old habit of his, and one she knew well. If Guy wished to defer a discussion he simply gave you no room to speak. On a soft sigh, she subsided, accepting that it was no use her trying to force the issue. Even if she tried, he would completely ignore her. It was the way of the man, hard, stubborn, despotic to a certain extent. He played at life by his own set of rules and principles and never allowed anyone to dictate to him.

Besides his undeniably fantastic looks, Guy was a brilliant businessman, a wildly exciting athlete and a dynamic lover. True to his Latin blood, he possessed charm in abundance, arrogance by the ton, energy enough to satisfy six women, and money enough to keep them all in luxury while he did so.

It was that same surfeit of money in the family which gave him the means to indulge his second most favourite passion: that for racing cars. It was a passion that had taken him all over the world to race, living the kind of life that automatically went along with it, his striking good looks and innate charm making sexual conquests so easy for him that by the time he met her Guy had grown cynical beyond belief about the opposite sex.

He had just passed his thirty-fourth birthday by then, and retired from racing on a blaze of glory by winning his second world championship crown, to take up the reins of business from his father ‘so the old man can go and tend to his roses,’ as Guy so drolly liked to put it.

Papa Frabosa...a small frown pulled at her smooth brow. It was ages since she’d seen him. And not because of her break-up with his son, she reminded herself grimly. No, not even that had been able to break the loving bond she and Roberto had forged during her short foray into their lives. But he liked to keep to his Berkshire home these days, since the small stroke several months ago, and Marnie had refused to so much as set foot on the estate since she’d left Guy. The place resurrected too many painful memories.

Opening her mouth to ask him about how his father was, she turned her head to look at him—and immediately forgot all about Roberto Frabosa when she found herself gazing at Guy’s lean, dark profile.

Such a beautiful man, she observed with an ache. A man with everything going for him. Too much for her to cope with. That dynamic character of his needed far more stimulation than an ordinary little artist girl had been able to offer him. She was at least ten years too young for him, ten years behind him in experience—a lesson she had learned the hard way, and had no desire to repeat even though she knew without a single doubt that if she said to him right now, and with no prior warning, that she wanted to be his wife again, Guy would take her back without question. He loved her in his own way, with passion and with spirit. But not in the way she needed to be loved—faithfully. His need to supplement his physical desires with other women had driven a stake so deeply into her heart that the wound still bled profusely—four years on.

He didn’t know, of course, just how deeply he had hurt her. He only knew the small amount she had allowed him to know—and to be fair to him he had never forgiven himself for hurting her that much. His sense of remorse and the knowledge that he had no defence for his behaviour had kept him coming back to her throughout the years in the bleak hope that she might one day learn to forgive him and perhaps take him back. He was a Catholic by religion, and, although they had not married in the Catholic faith, and their divorce had been quite legal, Guy had never accepted it as so. ‘One life, one wife’ was his motto, and she was it. Guy had refused to melt out of her life, and with his usual stubbornness had refused to let her do the melting. So they’d gone on over the years, sharing a strange kind of relationship that hovered somewhere between very close friends and bitter adversaries. He lived in hope that one day she might find it in her to forgive him, and she lived in the hope that one day she would force him to accept that she would not—which was why she did all the bitter biting, and he allowed her to get away with it.

A penance, he’d described it once. A penance for his sins, like the four years they had spent apart. He quite readily accepted it all as deserved. ‘You’ll forgive me one day, Marnie,’ he told her once when one of his many seduction scenes had been foiled—by the skin of her chattering teeth! ‘I will allow you some more time—but not much more,’ he’d warned. ‘Because time is slowly running out for both of us. Papa wants to hold his grandson in his arms before he dies, and I mean to see that he does.’

‘Then don’t look to me to provide it!’ she flashed with enough bitter venom to whiten his face. ‘You would do better, Guy, finding yourself the kind of wife who doesn’t mind sharing you, because this one has no intention of going through that kind of hell again!’