The Pleasure King's Bride

He didn’t believe her.

She wasn’t a woman in grief.

He’d witnessed his mother’s grief after his father’s death. Christabel Valdez did not want her husband back. She wanted him, and be damned if he’d be driven away by a shadow.

* * *

Jared wiped the few remaining bits of shaving cream from his face and grimaced at the hard ruthlessness in the eyes reflected in the mirror. He’d been thinking, Nothing was going to come between him and Christabel Valdez tonight! But, of course, she would have her daughter with her, the daughter of the man she’d married.

He’d used the child.

Christabel may very well use her, too.

But he did have Vikki Chan on his side.

He smiled as he tossed the towel aside and picked up the bottle of cologne—Platinum Egoiste by Chanel. He might as well use every bit of ammunition he had in this war, because war it was. And he was sick to death of fighting shadows. He wanted hands-on combat. Action.

His body stirred in anticipation.

Vikki was right.

He would keep at it until he won.

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_5632c9ca-6ba3-5832-8c18-5524595573b7)

CHRISTABEL parked her four-wheel drive Cherokee at the end of the street that ran parallel to the old Picard property. There was no road in front of it, nothing to disturb the view it commanded over Roebuck Bay. The house itself was considered a historic landmark, built by Captain Trevor Picard in 1919, the owner of forty pearling luggers—so she’d read in the museum records.

This was where Jared lived.

He was in there waiting for her.

Christabel’s fingers stayed tightly curled around the steering wheel as she tried to steady her nerves. Ever since she’d accepted his invitation she’d been defying all the things she’d forbidden herself, wanting what he wanted, wanting to show him she did. She was twenty-seven years old and she’d never had a lover, only a husband who’d only ever cared about his own pleasure, never hers. She was sure Jared would be different.

“Is this it, Mummy?”

“Yes.” This was definitely it, Christabel decided as she answered her daughter.

“Then why aren’t we getting out?”

“Getting out now,” she answered.

Alighting from the driver’s seat and rounding the Cherokee to the passenger side, Christabel found her gaze drawn to the house where Jared chose to live. It was a big, solid old place. Other people with the accumulated wealth of the King Picard family might have torn it down and built something grander, more modern and impressive, and it would have meant nothing but a symbol of wealth.

Like the majestic old homestead she’d seen at King’s Eden, this house seemed to stand for endurance, for something lasting beyond any one person’s life and death.

It had been caringly maintained—the building, the garden. Caring...everywhere she looked...the precise paintwork on the house, the neatly trimmed bougainvillea, the lustrous clumps of ferns and tropical foliage...and the sharp realisation came that what was in front of her stood for things she could never share with Jared and what she was setting out to do was wrong.

Too wrong to go on with.

She shouldn’t have accepted this invitation, shouldn’t be here. Jared King was too good a man to be used and left, as though he was not worth more than a strictly lustful affair. Maybe that would be enough for him...but what if it wasn’t?

She stopped by the passenger door. Alicia was making an impatient face at her through the window. Should she get back in the Cherokee and drive away? How could she explain that to her daughter—such bad manners? Impossible. Yet to go ahead, dressed as she was...it was a tease, a deliberate sexual tease, meant to signal her willingness to end the torment of wanting. Jared would notice.

And she’d burn with embarrassment at the rampant wantonness that had led her into presenting such a provocative invitation to satisfy every physical desire they’d stirred in each other.

Alicia knocked on the window. “Come on, Mummy.”

She’d have to minimise the effect. Somehow. And leave as soon as she decently could. It had been wrong to give in to this...this raging temptation. She must never do it again. It wasn’t fair to him. He was wasting his time with her, time better spent looking for a woman who could embrace all that his life meant to him.

Best to break the connection after tonight. Or limit it more than she already had, make Jared understand it was not to be. Maybe she could lead into that this evening.

Taking a deep breath to calm the inner flood of agitation, she opened the door and released Alicia from her seat belt, glad she had her daughter to come between her and Jared and determined now not to accept any offer of a bed for Alicia when eight o’clock came. No time alone with him. She couldn’t risk it.

“Big trees, aren’t they, Mummy?” Alicia commented, looking up at them as Christabel lifted her out of the vehicle.

“Older than any others in Broome, I’d imagine,” she replied, struggling for an air of normality as she, too, looked up at them.

The native gum trees had been planted in a row along this side of the house, just within the white picket fence that surrounded the property. The width of their huge white and grey trunks and the spread of the branches testified to the number of years they had stood, while undoubtedly other such trees had been cut down in the past to provide building materials for the township. They were also a testament to a family who looked after what they had, who valued deep roots, who were given to long-term commitment as naturally as they breathed.

“I like this place,” Alicia declared, happily taking Christabel’s hand for the walk around to the front gate.

Her little face beamed excited anticipation and excess energy poured into an occasional skip to her step, making Christabel smile over the uninhibited pleasure being so naturally expressed. Alicia looked very cute in a lime green shift she’d selected herself from a hanging rack at the markets, and simple little sandals with seashells sewn on the straps. To Christabel’s mind, it was much better for her daughter not to be a designer-clad little miss, filled with a pompous sense of her own importance.

She wished her own appearance was as artless, acutely aware that the cotton-knit weave of her dress clung to her curves before flaring into a flirty little skirt that ended mid-thigh. It was definitely a sexy garment, sleeveless, its low round neckline dipping to the swell of her breasts. She wore no bra and only a minimal G-string, not wanting to break the slinky feel of the soft fabric. Its dark red colour hid the nakedness underneath, but the obvious shape of her breasts and the smooth line of hip and thigh suggested it.

Despite the heat, she had left her hair down, readily touchable, rippling around her shoulders in a loose fall to her waist. Her bare feet were slipped into black strappy sandals, easily slipped out of, as well. On a black leather thong around her neck hung a copper sun disk, split in two and joined by a crescent moon from which dangled uneven strings of triangles—all in copper, which had swirls of dark red through its polished surface. It was her own design and she liked the elemental nature of it.

She had been feeling very elemental as she had chosen what to wear...and not wear. It was what she had wanted to feel, a woman meeting a man, intent on revelling in the most basic level there was between them. Totally pagan and primitive, she’d told herself on a wave of mad exultation, indulging the wicked sense of throwing all caution to the winds and having what she wanted, regardless of consequences.

It was only too easy to fool herself into believing she had a right to this. The right of a woman. Being a mother should not mean she had to suppress her own sexuality, and she had never wanted a man as much as she wanted Jared King.

“Looks like a storm coming, Mummy.”

Jolted from her intense inner reverie, Christabel looked out over Roebuck Bay. Black clouds were looming ominously above the horizon. No romantic moonrise tonight, she thought wryly. Not that she’d come for romance. In fact, a quick tropical storm was more in keeping with the kind of relationship she’d envisaged with Jared...a storm that would blow over and just be a part of the past when she moved on.

Could it be so?

Was she worrying needlessly?

Or would it leave wreckage in its wake?

“We’d better get inside before it starts,” she said, quickening her pace, aware of how swiftly storms swept in here.

“Can we watch it from the veranda?” Alicia asked eagerly, always fascinated by the lightning show that usually preceded the deluge of heavy rain. She’d seen quite a lot of it this summer, although it wasn’t called summer here. It was simply the wet season and the rest of the year was the dry. The lightning was always spectacular, and Alicia found it more exciting than frightening.

“I guess so,” she answered, reasoning Jared would want to please her daughter, given his ready offer of honey prawns and chocolate chip ice-cream.

They arrived at the front gate. Christabel reached over it to work the catch on the other side. To her frustration, it seemed to be stuck. She released Alicia’s hand to give herself leverage for a stronger tug, even while thinking this physical obstacle was a sign she was trespassing where she shouldn’t go. The gate didn’t want to let her in. It was protecting the people it was built to protect.