Two-Week Wife

Adam had always wanted the opportunity to show Bianca he was no longer the sexual klutz he’d been at eighteen, but she would never give him that opportunity. Her mind was fixed against him, her preconceptions set in concrete. He’d thought he’d come to terms with this, but now he realised he hadn’t. Not for a moment.

He wanted her now more than ever, and could not bear the thought of spending a single second in the same bed as her without being able to touch her.

Which was what she would surely ask of him if he agreed to go along with this masquerade of a marriage. She would expect him to allow her to climb into his bed every night for the duration of her mother’s stay. And she would also expect him not to lay a single hand on her.

Such a prospect was beyond the pale. He would not do it. He was a man, not a mouse, and it was high time Bianca recognised that fact.

Uncurling his white-knuckled fingers, he placed the empty glass down on a side-table and stood up.

‘No, Bianca,’ he said, his face stony, his voice quite cold. ‘No.’

And he stalked off down the hallway towards his room.

CHAPTER TWO

‘WHAT do you mean...no?’ she shouted after him as he disappeared down the hallway.

‘I mean no!’ he called back over his shoulder. ‘I won’t go along with it. You married us, Bianca. Now you’ll just have to divorce us.’

Bianca gaped after him for a moment before snapping her mouth shut. Exasperation mixed with irritation as she rolled her eyes. She’d had a feeling he was going to be difficult about this. And she’d damned well been right!

Underneath, however, she still felt confident she could bring him round. Michelle always said she could twist Adam around her little finger. Bianca wasn’t fond of that phrase, but she could not deny there was some truth in it. Just as there was some truth in Michelle’s belief that her brother was still in love with his old schoolfriend.

Bianca sometimes felt guilty about taking advantage of Adam’s lingering and largely unrequited passion for her. She’d shamelessly used his affection for her in the past. She supposed she was still doing it to a degree.

Though, to be fair to herself, she’d warned him never to hope things would change. She loved him to death but she did not desire him. It was as simple as that.

Actually, now that she thought about it, she wasn’t so sure Adam was in love with her any more. There’d been a steady stream of girlfriends paraded through this place since she’d come to live here a year ago—all blonde bimbo types, with legs that went up to their armpits and busts which made Bianca go green with envy. If he was pining after her, then he was making a darned good fist of hiding it.

This realisation piqued her somewhat. She’d become used to the notion that Adam was still in love with her. It had become a secret balm to soothe her battered ego on occasions, to reassure her that she was worthy of being loved, that there was more to her than being just the flighty piece of goods several men had called her.

Bianca frowned dissatisfaction at this train of thought. It seemed she just wasn’t ready yet to give up Adam’s status as her secret admirer. Knowing he was always there for her was the one steadying factor in her life—he was a rock she could rely on when all else failed.

A type of panic began to set in. She could not bear the thought that he might one day cut her out of his life. For ever. She’d be lost without him. Yet if he wasn’t in love with her any more, then it was bound to happen one day...

Maybe he isn’t still madly in love with me, she amended in desperation. But he does care about me.

Just as she cared about him. Deeply. He’d touched something in her from that first day at kindergarten, when she’d spied him in a corner crying his heart out. All during their school days she’d felt compelled to look after him, for he’d been such a sweetie. And such a hopeless nerd of a boy!

Around sixteen, he’d shot up suddenly—all gangly legs, long, greasy hair and pimples. Talk about unattractive! By their last year at school he’d improved somewhat in looks, but by then he’d become shy and awkward around girls. One day she’d overheard several of his so-called mates taunting him over his lack of success with the opposite sex. They’d called him cruel names and made him look small.

Bianca had felt sorry for him, so sorry that she’d decided to sacrifice her own virginity for the sake of his. It was the least she could do, she’d felt, for her very best friend.

Oddly enough, she still could not think of that night without being besieged by the most confused feelings. He’d been absolutely hopeless at it. And it had hurt like hell. Yet, for all that, she’d been unbearably moved by the experience—had had to battle hard not to cry afterwards. There had been something so incredibly sweet about his appalling nerves, not to mention the look on his face.

Bianca tried to blot out the disturbing memory as she launched herself up from the sofa and raced after Adam down the hallway.

Of course there’d been something incredibly sweet about it, she dismissed with irritable impatience. Adam was an incredibly sweet person. Thank God. And as such, he could not keep saying no to her once she pointed out how much the truth would distress her mother. He liked her mother, almost as much as her mother liked him.

Bianca made it into his bedroom just in time to see him slam the en suite bathroom’s door shut. She heard the lock snap into place, followed by the sound of the shower being turned on full.

Pummelling on the door didn’t seem like a good idea, so she decided to wait patiently for his return. Meanwhile she picked up the clothes he’d strewn around the room in his anger.

Bianca shook her head in disbelief as she hung up his shirt and trousers. Messiness was as unlike him as his outburst of anger. The adult Adam was a quiet, coolly controlled individual—a highly intelligent but rather reserved man who liked order and tidiness. He was a maths lecturer at Sydney University, and his chief hobby was working out mathematically based systems for winning money at the races.

With some success apparently, since he was now driving a new BMW. His salary alone would not have provided that, and his family had no more money than hers.

She was tucking a sock into each shoe when the bathroom door was wrenched open. A cloud of steam emerged first, through which strode Adam, swathed from neck to ankle in his favourite red towelling robe which was as huge as it was thick.

Amazingly cold grey eyes settled on her as he sashed it tightly around his waist. ‘That won’t work either,’ he said brusquely.

‘What?’

‘Picking up after me. Sweet-talking’s a waste of time too. You’ve overstepped the mark, Bianca, and I’m not going to save your butt this time. Your mother will probably live for donkey’s years and I’m not going to be permanently saddled with the ridiculous role of pretending to be your long-suffering husband.’

‘R-ridiculous!’ she spluttered. ‘Long-suffering?’

A coating of dry amusement brought a gleam to his steely gaze. ‘You don’t honestly think any sane man would want to be your real husband, do you? Only a fool or a masochist would volunteer for that job.’

Bianca blinked her shock. This was her sweet Adam talking to her like this? And looking at her like that?

‘You look surprised, darling,’ he went on with chilling indifference as he casually raked his hands through his wet dark hair. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve believed all that rubbish my sister’s been feeding you all these years about my still being in love with you?’

Bianca’s mouth fell inelegantly open. Adam’s laugh scraped down her spine like chalk on a blackboard.

‘Michelle’s such a romantic,’ he said, his voice as cynically amused as his eyes. ‘I admit I had the most awful crush on you all through school. I even clung to my warped passion through our university days. But I finally outgrew it—for which I have you to thank, Bianca.

‘You really made me see the truth that night you turned twenty-one. I was wasting my time wanting you. So I turned my futile fantasies from fiction to fact with another female later that evening, and frankly I haven’t looked back since.’

Bianca was stung to the quick by his words. And by the images they evoked. ‘You mean I wasted my guilt on you that night?’ she burst out angrily. ‘There I was, thinking I’d broken your heart, when in truth you were off...you were off...’ She huffed and puffed to stop herself saying the crudity which had sprung onto the tip of her tongue.

‘I was off making some other more grateful girl happy?’ he suggested sarcastically.

‘Who was it?’ she demanded to know, her mind racing along with her heart. ‘Not that awful Tracy. My God, she’d sleep with anyone, that trollop!’

‘Thank you for the compliment, darling. But, no, it wasn’t Tracy. It was Laura.’

Laura!

Bianca was speechless. Laura had not been one of their group. She’d been a friend of a friend of a friend, who’d somehow been at her party by accident. Thirty if she was a day, but an absolutely stunning blonde with an absolutely stunning figure.

‘I don’t believe you!’ she choked out, hurt beyond belief by this almost ancient betrayal of his so-called love for her.

‘Don’t you? Poor Bianca.’ His smile was not at all sweet. ‘Has someone stolen your lollipop, darling? Won’t naughty Adam play the game any more?’

Her mouth returned to its earlier goldfish imitation.

Adam reached out and flicked her chin upwards, so her teeth snapped together. His eyes were narrowed and cruel-looking. He was nothing at all like the Adam she knew and loved.