Tamed By Her Husband

‘Is that what you’re doing?’ He slipped a hand into his trouser pocket, stretching the fabric across hips that were lean and hard. ‘Nothing?’ The disdain on his lips assured her he wasn’t too impressed with her answer.

She shrugged again, a careless gesture saying nothing—expressing everything. Everything he would expect from her, she thought bitterly.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the woman behind the flower stall studying them both, weighing them up, obviously considering them an item. The tall, dynamic-looking man and the equally tall blonde girl. She wondered if everyone considered them a couple; wondered if they could sense that underlying current of electricity that charged the air between them, a sexually charged awareness that had always been there—albeit unacknowledged by either of them—even before Kane had stormed out of her father’s office for good, refusing, unlike the other members of the board, to bend to Ranulph Bouvier’s will.

‘Where are you staying?’ Even as he asked it, Kane felt the tension building inside him, a tension every bit as keen as that that he sensed boiling around them.

The district she named was impressive, but he wouldn’t have expected anything less.

‘On holiday?’

Almost imperceptibly she appeared to hesitate before shaking her head.

‘Are you here alone?’ As his eyes roved over that gaunt, yet strikingly beautiful face, she seemed to be making her own silent assessment of his motives for asking.

‘Yes.’

So the boyfriend hadn’t lasted. ‘Now, why doesn’t that surprise me?’

‘I don’t know. Why doesn’t it?’

God! She was confident! What was she now? he wondered. Twenty-one? But then, even as a gangling adolescent she had had more poise than some women twice her age. He was surprised to realise how vividly he could remember that.

‘You have an apartment here?’

‘A house,’ she corrected. ‘It belongs to a friend of mine.’

‘I see.’

‘No, you don’t,’ she returned, hating his derogatory tone.

No, he didn’t, he thought, wondering why she was so shabbily dressed, wondering what had happened to her. But he didn’t want to pursue the point—didn’t want to discover, to his own unexpected annoyance, that there was a boyfriend after all.

‘So what happens when you’ve grown tired of doing nothing in Barcelona?’ His words were scathing. ‘Or isn’t that very likely?’

‘It’s likely.’ In contrast her tone was light, deliberately careless.

‘When?’ he asked roughly. ‘When something—or someone—more exciting comes along?’

Beneath the soft fabric of her top, Shannon’s chest lifted with the effort of stopping herself from throwing some caustic response right back at that arrogant, handsome face. She could feel the latent anger beneath that cool, imperturbable exterior, which she could see no reason for. She had been a fool and she had paid for it. But that was all in the past, so why did he seem hell-bent on constantly reminding her of it?

Now, in answer to his remark about something exciting coming along, she murmured, ‘It usually does,’ refusing to let him see through the invisible barrier she had erected around herself, to see the real Shannon Bouvier.

‘And have you never given any thought to the fact that your father might be wondering where his only daughter has got to?’ Through the seething noise around them his question came hard and disparaging. ‘Just once considered giving some thought to going home?’

Pain vied with the anger his judgemental tone gave rise to, a keen, cutting emotion she fought to suppress. Because, of course, she dreamed of nothing else. But Ranulph Bouvier had made it all too clear after that scandal she’d been involved in what he expected of his only daughter—and it wasn’t a life she wanted. She had more self-esteem leading the life she had been leading for the past two and a half years—of which people like Kane Falconer knew absolutely nothing—than she had under the weight of her father’s controlling millions.

‘No, Kane. I haven’t. And I don’t really think it’s any concern of yours, do you?’

‘With not a word about how he is? How things are back in England?’

A swift surge of anxiety darkened the bright blue of Shannon’s eyes. At first she had kept tabs on how things were at home, reading papers, pumping for information anyone who might be remotely connected with the company, with her father. But that was some time ago now, and for the past few months she hadn’t exactly been in a position to go chasing information…

Tentatively, she asked, ‘Have you been in touch with him?’ If he had, then it would surprise her. From the way he had thrown up his job and the company, there had been no love lost between him and Ranulph Bouvier—no going back.

‘Forget it,’ he rasped. ‘As you said, what you do is none of my business.’ He slipped his other hand in his pocket, glancing over his shoulder at the pedestrian-packed thoroughfare, his jaw set like the hard, grim face of a rock.

He had wanted to say more. He could feel the words choking him as the traffic was choking the streets, because the marchers were at the top of La Rambla now. He could hear them chanting, people shouting, fuelling the aggravation produced by the demonstrators, and he had to raise his own voice to make himself heard.

‘What is this all in aid of?’ It was a rhetorical question. He had already asked it of the MD at the meeting earlier, a satisfactory conclusion of negotiations that had secured him the development of further luxury apartments along the Côted’ Azur.

‘They want fairness. Understanding,’ she answered quietly.

Was she appealing to him for those things? he wondered. Was that why she was looking at him as if he was some inexorable tyrant, because she thought he was treating her unfairly? Failing to understand her? The combination of her husky voice with her fair and fragile loveliness was touching the most elemental core of his masculinity, stirring him to the angry realisation that he was no less affected by her than every other man she must have known. Oh, he understood all right! Understood that Ranulph Bouvier was killing himself over the loss of his only child, while his self-centred, pleasure-seeking daughter was jet-setting round the world, enjoying herself, looking—as she had just admitted herself—solely for excitement. And yet when he had mentioned her going home, he could almost imagine he had seen pain beneath the rebellion in those baby-blue eyes…

‘Perhaps they’re going the wrong way about it,’ he declared loudly over the din. ‘They’re hardly likely to engender sympathy by stopping tired people getting home from work.’

Patches of colour suffused the pale yet flawless skin across her cheekbones. ‘Nor will they if they lie down and put up with everything the establishment dishes out!’

As she had refused to do? The thought rose unbidden in his mind, because, however she had behaved, there was no doubt that Ranulph Bouvier had ruled her with a will of iron, as he did everyone under him—his household staff, his work colleagues, his management. And, looking at the slender girl who stirred him in ways he was ashamed to admit to, and whose rebellious nature seemed too strong for her worryingly fragile appearance, he couldn’t help but understand how smothered she must have felt by it.

‘I’m surprised you aren’t there—’ Kane’s chin jerked upwards ‘—leading the procession.’

‘I might have been, only I had—’ Her attention was distracted by something farther along the street.

Kane followed her gaze to where a group of young men were shouting and pushing one another outside one of the cafés.

‘Only you had what?’ he prompted, and then, unable to hold back the derision, ‘Something more exciting to do?’

For a few seconds those blue eyes of hers seemed to darken—impale him. ‘Yes, that’s right,’ she returned with a defiant toss of her head, her smile artificially sweet. ‘I was—’

Something shot past them at shoulder level; an empty cola can, falling onto the ground behind her with a hollow clatter. It sent flares of danger shooting through Kane’s blood.

‘I think it’s time we got out of here,’ he urged.

Surprisingly, though, she shrugged away the hand clutching her elbow. ‘I don’t think I need—’ she started to say, but her sentence was punctuated by a small cry as a piece of jagged wood glanced across her forehead. ‘Ohh!’

As she crumpled, Kane’s arm shot out around her bare middle. He couldn’t contain the vehement little oath as he caught her, holding her upright. She felt as light as a sparrow against his own strength. ‘Are you all right?’

For a few split seconds everything looked as squidgy as the liquid in a plastic water bottle.

‘Shannon!’ Kane’s worried command fell hazily across her semi-dazed senses, like a shaft of light through a long, dark tunnel. She nodded and heard his heavily drawn sigh of relief.

‘Now will you listen to me?’ He sounded angry again, which was much more in keeping.

‘Why are you angry? You’re always angry with me.’ The words escaped her as if she had had too much to drink. Perhaps, she thought, this was what they meant by punch-drunk.

‘Shut up and walk. You can walk, can’t you?’