The Bride Wore Scarlet

She would dearly love the antagonism between them to be over. But would all the stinging tension that made the air fizz around them whenever they were near each other disappear, too?

With the departure of antagonism would there be nothing left? Or would whatever it was that made the atmosphere sizzle still be there, to be built upon?

Suddenly she wanted to be able to build something with this man. She felt it like a keen ache, deep inside her. Which only went to show what a fool she was.

Daniel Faber could have his pick. And the type of woman he would choose would be elegant, quite certainly beautiful, and more than likely out of the top social drawer.

He wouldn’t choose a nobody like her, not in a thousand years. A nobody with nothing going for her but a bunch of wild hair and a liking for loud clothes.

She sighed and focused her eyes on the rhythmic sweep of the windscreen wipers, then shot him a frowning glance. She’d been so deeply entrenched in her thoughts she hadn’t stopped to wonder why it was taking him so long to find a place to park up.

The car was climbing up a steep, narrow lane, the headlights carving a path through the heavy rain. ‘Where on earth are we going?’ she demanded as he negotiated a sharp bend carefully, then turned the car onto an even narrower, steeper track, where the hedgerows were so high and heavy with water they hung down, scraping the sides of the vehicle with dark, leafy fingers.

‘Relax. Almost there.’

That didn’t answer her question. She slewed round in her seat, trying to read something from his face. He was concentrating, his features very controlled. ‘You said you wanted to talk,’ she pointed out warily. ‘What’s wrong with now? So far you’ve said nothing.’

He stopped the car. The powerful headlights illuminated a small stone cottage in a raggedy patch of garden, separated from the unmade track by a crooked gate. And then he switched off lights and ignition and there was just the darkness and the beating rain and the rapid thud of sudden anxiety as it pulsed chaotically through her veins.

It got worse as he produced a torch from somewhere and flicked it on. ‘Sorry about the weather. We’ll have to make a run for it. I’ll be right behind you with the torch, so you’ll be OK if you watch your step.’

‘Make a run for what?’ Annie folded her arms across her chest. She was going nowhere. She was stopping exactly where she was.

‘For the cottage, of course.’ Impatience tinged his voice. ‘I don’t intend spending the night in the car.’

The night? The whole night?

‘You have to be joking!’ Distrust made her voice sharp and a current of something—fear or manic excitement, she didn’t know which—shot through her veins, making her stomach clench. ‘Either that or I’ve missed the point entirely.’

‘No joke, Annie,’ he drawled, reaching into the rear of the car for a holdall. ‘We’ve fallen madly in lust and have sloped away to spend the night in my private bolt-hole—that’s the point of the exercise.’

‘You can’t mean it!’ Annie wailed in shocked outrage. What type of woman did he think she was? Had he marked her unhidden response to both of the times they’d kissed? Given her ten out of ten for effort and decided he was on a winner?

The whole idea terrified her. To her endless shame she just knew that if he’d decided to seduce her, her reckless body would aid and abet him in any way it could!

She wasn’t into one-night stands!

‘Of course not,’ Daniel stated. ‘It’s the impression that counts. Mark won’t be able to believe we spent the night together making polite conversation.’ He pocketed the ignition keys. ‘Coming? Or do I have to carry you?’

He was out of the car and opening the door at her side before she got her head straight. Mark had persuaded her to be his guest to give the impression they were an item. Daniel had abducted her to give Mark the impression she was anybody’s!

She slid out of the car, into the sluicing rain, her body on automatic pilot. She’d go with him because he wasn’t a threat. He didn’t lust after her, he’d said as much.

‘You can’t make Mark marry Enid,’ she muttered, the rainwater cooling her overheated brain. ‘You can’t abduct every girl he brings home. You can’t run his life for him.’

‘He doesn’t bring his women home; he keeps them discreetly under wraps.’ He unlocked the cottage door and after a moment’s hesitation she walked in, drenched by the downpour, dripping onto the coir matting that covered the floor of the small room revealed as he flicked on the overhead light. ‘The fact that he brought you home indicates that it’s more serious than his usual short-lived affairs. I don’t want to see Mark get romantically involved with someone like you.’

Someone like her! Hateful, snobbish wretch! ‘He isn’t!’ she defended hotly, but he wasn’t listening, had turned his back on her while he pulled a mobile phone from a side pocket and keyed in numbers. His voice was smooth, laid-back when it was eventually answered.

‘It’s me, Ma. Annie and I decided we wanted to get to know each other better. So we’re spending the night at the cottage—tomorrow and Monday, too. I’ll drive her back to town when I go in on Tuesday morning. Let Mark know what’s happening, will you? And Ma? Tell him sorry, will you? Tell him it’s just one of those things; it just happened.’

Annie stared at his wide shoulders, the hard muscle and bone clearly delineated beneath the clinging wet fabric of his shirt. How dared he give those nice people—his parents—such a bad impression of her? She wanted to leap on him, tear the phone away and tell his mother there wasn’t an atom of truth in what the wretch was saying, beg her to ask Mark to come and rescue her!

But, as if reading her intention, he turned, the coldness of his raking glance effectively freezing her to the spot. ‘Really?’ One dark brow slid upwards now, meeting the damp black hair that fell over his brow. He was obviously surprised by what his mother was telling him. ‘Well, it’s about time he opened his eyes, I guess.’

He was grinning as he cut the connection and repocketed the instrument. ‘Mark and Enid were last seen escaping the party, creeping into the privacy of the library, hand in hand. He must have discovered that he prefers quality over quantity.’ His grin was slowly wiped away as his eyes made a slow, insulting inventory of her voluptuous curves. Her wet clothes were cocking a defiant snook at modesty, and his eyes were hooded, his face all hard lines.

Annie shook with temper, deep misery and a hateful frisson of sexual awareness. He did lust after her, despite what he’d said. She could see it in the shadowed smouldering eyes, the lines that suddenly bracketed that long, sensual mouth, the jerk of a muscle at the side of his hard jaw.

But his latest vile insults armoured her, didn’t they? Involuntarily, her teeth chattered, and his mouth curled in slow, mocking response. ‘Tough luck, Annie. Still, some you lose, some you win.’ He shrugged impressive shoulders. ‘You’re on the loose again, but don’t try to get your claws into me. The way you responded in my arms earlier told me you wouldn’t be averse to ditching Mark and moving on and up the ladder of financial security.’

Daniel turned and tugged the sage-green heavy linen curtains over the window, shutting out the stormy night. For some reason he was unable to look at her pale, bewildered face. Annie Kincaid was surely in the wrong profession. Her acting ability—quite apart from the way she looked—would have taken her far.

He mentally squashed the unwelcome desire to take her in his arms, soothe the look of hurt from those alluring pansy-purple eyes, putting the urge down to twelve months of celibacy. He had no intention on following up, taking what this sexy little gold-digger would doubtless offer, given half an opportunity.

At one time, after he’d learned that she’d dumped Glover, he’d been severely tempted to find her—if only to stop the regularly occurring dreams he’d had. Tormenting dreams of her naked body in his arms, writhing beneath him as they took their aborted wild encounter of that December night to its natural conclusion.

Dreams that had left him edgy, tense, strangely aware for the very first time of an emptiness in his life.

Fortunately, common sense had ruled his hormones. He hadn’t known, then, that she’d been working for Mark, had bewitched him, too. Obviously she’d seen Mark as the better prospect, had dropped Rupert Glover flat. That he, Daniel Faber, had failed to follow up on her unspoken yet explicit invitation would have been written off with a shrug of those pretty shoulders.

Annie watched him, too wet and miserable to try to change his opinion of her. It didn’t really matter what he thought of her. But would Mark believe her when she tried to explain what Daniel had misguidedly done? Or would he believe what his brother had deliberately set out to make him believe?

‘How can I face Mark after this?’ she asked thinly, and saw him turn back to her, his face blank. ‘Embarrassing won’t begin to cover it. He is my boss—’