A Secret Seduction: A Secret Until Now / A Sinful Seduction / Secrets of a Shy Socialite

Her shrill accusations might not have touched him but this last quiet comment did. ‘I’m not married now.’

Was that meant to make her feel better? Or was it a lie to get her into bed? Angel told herself she didn’t want to know; all she wanted was to get out of here and away from him.

‘Now, why doesn’t that surprise me?’ she drawled. ‘I really hope she took you for a lot of money...’ His bank balance was probably the only vulnerable area he had, she thought bitterly.

‘She’s dead.’

The blunt pronouncement drew a gasp from Angel, who immediately felt like a total bitch. So this was what it felt like to have the rug pulled out from under your feet.

During the ensuing silence the mortified colour flew to her cheeks and then receded. What was she meant to say that didn’t sound trite and insincere?

‘Oh!’

Before she had said anything more the uniformed employee who had brought her the chair reappeared, this time carrying a tray with a cafetière and coffee cups, and at a nod from Alex he placed it on the table.

The young man spoke in Greek and Alex Arlov responded in the same language.

Questions flying around in her head, Angel watched as he poured the coffee and pushed one her way without asking. Had he loved his wife?

His expression wasn’t giving any clues and in her book a man who loved his wife was not unfaithful. But that’s just me, the idealist, she thought with a wry grimace.

‘Do you want sugar?’

Angel, who hadn’t been aware she’d been stirring the coffee, put the spoon down with a clatter in the saucer and shook her head. ‘No, I don’t take it.’

He had slept around, but she supposed that some men did and some women put up with infidelity or didn’t know. It was weird to her— Actually, no, it was utterly abhorrent, but marriage meant different things to different people.

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know about your wife or I wouldn’t have said...what I did.’ Then, aware that her comment might come across as hypocritical, she added, ‘Even if it is true.’

Had the poor woman lived her life in ignorant bliss, or turned a blind eye, or had she known and cared and suffered the humiliation...? Angel didn’t know which scenario was worse.

She tore her eyes from his handsome patrician profile and thought how hellish it must be to be married to a man that other women lusted after. That was one hell she was never going to know about.

Marriage to any man was not on the cards for her. These days, when it was easy to live together—and even easier to drift apart—it seemed to Angel that desire to raise a family was one of the main reasons that couples made their relationship official.

For her there would be no more children. There had been a time when the knowledge had made her sad...angry...filled with a ‘why me?’ self-pity, but now she had reached a stage of why not me? She had accepted it, and could not imagine a man or a circumstance that would make her walk down the aisle.

She had not discounted the possibility in the future of a man, someone nice who Jasmine liked, someone who didn’t make any demands. She could live without head-banging sex but a hug would be nice, and stability. She could remember craving boring stability when she was a child and envying her friends who had complained about the boredom of the things she had longed for.

The expressions scudding like clouds across her face made him wonder what thoughts were responsible for putting that pensive look in her eyes. Then, catching himself wondering, he experienced a flash of irritation.

It seemed a good moment to remind himself that he wanted to bed her, not know how her mind worked.

‘I seem to have put a damper on the conversation.’

Her green eyes lifted from the contemplation of the untouched swirling liquid. ‘Sorry if I’m not amusing you.’ Presumably, she brooded, he was one of those men who expected women to tie themselves into knots being interesting and amusing. ‘And we were not having a conversation.’ Her eyes lowered towards her coffee and lifted again suddenly. It was as if her resolve not to show any interest broke at the last moment. ‘Was it... Your wife... Did she... Did it happen recently?’

‘No, it didn’t.’

When he offered no further information Angel took a sip of the coffee and looked at him over the rim of her cup. ‘It must be hard bringing up children alone...?’ she murmured, trying hard not to look like someone who had a stake in his response.

Was Jasmine an only child or did she have half siblings? The brother or sister that Angel had always felt vaguely guilty for not supplying. Siblings looked out for one another when things got tough. If she vanished... Angel gave herself a sharp internal shake. Nothing was going to happen to her, and if it did she had things organised. But a father had not featured in those arrangements.

Of course, if it turned out he had his own family he might not be interested in pursuing a relationship with Jasmine anyway. His loss, though from a selfish point of view it would make life simpler. She felt a stab of guilt. This wasn’t about simple, this was about what was best for Jasmine, and if that involved allowing her father to be part of her life she would move heaven and earth to make it happen. He was right; she was no innocent victim. If she hadn’t thrown herself at him the way she had none of this would have happened.

She pressed her fingers to her temples. Her head felt as if it would explode with all the unanswered questions swirling round in it, and there were not going to be any of the answers she wanted until she told him.

‘We didn’t have any children.’

They had planned to have a family but not immediately. Of course, it had seemed as if they would have all the time in the world, then all too soon they had had none. A blessing, Emma, struggling to come to terms with the rapid progress of her illness, had said, but as her denial had turned to deep depression she had become angry and blamed him for... Well, pretty much everything, until it had reached the point when she had turned her head to the wall when he walked into the room.

The doctors had sympathised and called it transference. His wife, they said, was transferring all the guilt she felt for concealing her illness when they married onto to him, and as they had predicted the phase passed. But to his way of thinking what followed was harder. Emma had been consumed with guilt. The precious time they’d had left together had been dominated by it.

Angel lowered her eyes but not before he glimpsed the moisture lingering there and her expression. He reacted to the sympathy he loathed using a tried-and-tested method to kill off the pity that made his skin crawl.

‘Turn down the empathy, Angel. I’m not a candidate for a sympathy shag,’ he drawled.

Her appalled eyes flew to his face, suddenly minus their emotional moisture. ‘You are a candidate for a kick,’ she retorted, adding in a conversational tone, ‘You really can be vile.’ She was almost immediately hit by a wave of remorse, so added, ‘I am genuinely sorry about your wife.’

‘But I’m vile—a rodent, yes, I get that.’ The tension vanishing from his manner along with her sympathy, he produced a mocking grin. ‘I’m enjoying living down to your expectations of me. Relax,’ he advised, ‘I do not require a shoulder to cry on.’ Though a warm breast to lay his head against would not be rejected. The one in question rose and fell revealing a glitter of something shiny in the deep valley.

‘I was not about to offer one.’ Offering anything to the only man you had ever fantasised about lying naked beneath was something to be actively avoided. She swallowed hard and dropped her gaze, wishing she had not thought about being naked. ‘And I have no expectations.’

‘But some curiosity.’ The speculation was pretty much proved when she couldn’t meet his eyes. ‘Don’t feel bad. Everyone wants to ask. Few do—death is one of those subjects that people tiptoe around. Emma died of MS, an aggressive form she had been ill with for some time.’

Angel could only marvel that he could sound so detached while revealing this tragic sequence of events. For all the emotion he was displaying he could have been recounting the story of a stranger’s life.

‘It was lucky we had no children.’ He sketched a sardonic smile. ‘Now your turn...?’

She got that he rejected sympathy—hard not to—but she felt it anyway, a strong surge of empathy that she couldn’t repress. She would have felt the same for anyone in his situation; the difference was she hadn’t spent the past six years hating anyone. Not to do so, even briefly, felt odd...uncomfortable, and required some major mental readjustment.

‘One.’ She couldn’t pretend that Jasmine didn’t exist.

He stiffened. ‘In most countries that is all a person can have at one time.’ The joke, it seemed, was on him. Why the hell hadn’t she just told him she was married up front?

Why didn’t you consider the possibility, Alex?

Her bewildered-sounding response cut across his inner dialogue. ‘One...?’

‘You’re not wearing a ring,’ he clenched out, feeling cheated.

Anchoring her hair against a sudden flurry of wind, she followed the direction of his gaze and drew the hand down to look at it, turning it over as she blew away the errant raven strands that immediately plastered themselves across her face. She was of the school of thought that said less was more when it came to jewellery and she rarely wore rings when working. Her hand went to her neck where she wore her father’s signet ring on a chain. Her brother had inherited a Scottish estate complete with castle, and she, being a woman, had got only the ring. She didn’t resent it half as much as her brother felt guilty about it.

‘Why should I...?’ She stopped as the penny dropped. ‘God, not a husband! I have a child, a daughter.’

This was only slightly less astonishing to him than her having a husband. His eyes went to the fingers that were rubbing the chain she wore around her neck. Through her fingers he recognised the disc he had initially taken for a pendant nestled between her breasts as a ring.

‘You have a baby?’ His eyes drifted down her slim body and he felt a kick of lust that made his strong-boned features clench.