The Billionaire's Bride of Innocence

But that wasn’t going to happen, was it? came the voice of brutal honesty. And you’re never going to leave him. Not now that you want him again.

Megan had never imagined that she would actually cry. She’d been beyond tears for some time now. But suddenly, there they were, flooding her eyes, her one single tissue totally inadequate to mop up the flood.

James came to the rescue with a clean white handkerchief before putting a tender arm around her shoulders.

‘What a silly billy you are,’ he said gently. ‘Weddings are happy occasions, not sad.’

‘I…I want to go home,’ she cried. ‘Please take me home.’

James sighed. ‘I can’t, Megan. Not yet. Look, I promise we won’t stay late but I can’t just up and leave. Hugh is one of my best friends. You know that.’

The arrival overhead of a helicopter hired by the media drowned out the rest of her weeping. Fortunately, it didn’t come low enough to ruin hairdos and blow hats off, but it was still quite noisy, the minister having to talk louder and louder. The helicopter finally left just after Hugh and Kathryn were pronounced man and wife, by which time Megan had stopped crying. But the release of emotion had left her feeling totally drained.

She only just managed to get through the next few hours, though she did hide in one of the luxurious powder rooms for a while. Megan had always found making idle conversation difficult when faced with people she didn’t know, which meant most of the guests at this wedding. There was also a measure of guilt when faced with the few people she did know, especially Russell and Nicole. She felt terrible that she’d rejected all of their social invitations over the last few months, and never invited them back.

More guilt followed when they were so nice to her.

And all the while she was cripplingly aware of James, and the physical effect he was suddenly having on her. Even when he wasn’t by her side, she found herself watching him. Jealousy raised its ugly head whenever she saw him chatting to other women—attractive women.

It came to her suddenly that maybe her handsome husband—the one who didn’t love her—might not have been as frustrated as she’d imagined these past three months. Maybe he hadn’t been working when he came home so late every other night. Maybe he’d been having sex with one or more of the many beautiful women whom he met on a daily basis. Running an advertising and management agency brought him into constant contact with actresses and models, most of them beautiful and glamorous, all of them sophisticated women-of-the-world. He wouldn’t have any trouble finding a casual bed-partner.

When James finally said his goodbyes to the happy couple, Megan was more than ready to leave, her jealousy by then bubbling up inside her like a rumbling volcano.

She wanted to erupt, wanted to throw angry accusations at him. Wanted to tell him that she knew he didn’t love her, that he’d only married her to have children. She wanted to start a fight.

She almost did. They’d stopped at a set of traffic lights and she actually turned towards him, her mouth opening to launch into her tirade.

If only James hadn’t chosen that moment to bend over and kiss her. Not sweetly but hungrily, his right hand cupping her chin, keeping her mouth captive beneath his onslaught.

If Megan had been in any doubt earlier that her desire for James had been well and truly revived, then his kiss quickly cemented that realisation. The kiss went on and on, James’s head only lifting when the car behind them beeped impatiently.

‘Keep your skirt on,’ he muttered, his mouth still hovering close to her lips. ‘I’m busy, kissing my wife.’ And then he kissed her again, ignoring the now blaring horn, ignoring the other driver’s verbal abuse as he was forced to angle past their still stationary vehicle.

By the time James stopped kissing her, Megan’s volcanic anger had been replaced by a desire so intense that it threatened what was left of her sanity. This was even worse than she’d feared, much worse. This wasn’t just wanting to be made love to. This was a craving so strong that it would not be denied.

Her skin crawled with the need to be touched. Her body ached to be filled. At that moment nothing else mattered. Not the fact that he didn’t love her, or that he’d probably been unfaithful.

Thank goodness that she’d had the forethought to go on the Pill!

When more cars started to honk their horns at them, James sighed and turned his attention back to the steering wheel.

The drive home saved her. Or was it the last vestiges of her pride that came to the rescue? Whatever, by the time James went through the gates of the six-bedroom mansion he’d bought shortly after their marriage, Megan had managed to get some control over her treacherously weak flesh.

‘Do you fancy a nightcap?’ James asked as they both climbed out of his car.

‘No, nothing,’ Megan replied quickly. ‘The thing is, James, I have this terrible headache. I’m going to take some tablets and go straight up to bed.’

He stared at her over the bonnet of the car, his dark eyes not happy. ‘A headache,’ he said slowly.

Megan didn’t say a word.

‘You do realise this can’t continue, Megan.’

‘Yes,’ she replied tautly, then looked away from his probing gaze.

‘We’ll talk in the morning. Before I go to work. Make some decisions about our future.’

Her eyes flew back to his. Maybe he was going to make it easy for her and ask for a divorce himself. Maybe he’d finally lost patience with her. Part of her hoped so.

But not the part which tormented her for hours that night as she lay in their marital bed, her back to James, pretending to be asleep when all the while she was wide-awake.

In the end she could bear it no longer. Rising quietly, she drew the matching silk robe over her nightie and made her way downstairs and out onto the back terrace. The moon was up, moonlight dancing on the water of the swimming pool as she hurried past it down to her studio, shivering in the cool night air as she went.

Once inside what had once been the pool house, she turned on the lights and the air-conditioning and made her way over to the easel that was set up under the skylight which James had had put in for her. Lifting the dust sheet off the canvas, she studied the painting she’d been working on for ages.

It was not what she wanted to work on tonight. Tonight, she would work on something very different indeed.

Quickly she replaced the canvas with an empty one, hiding the other painting in a cupboard. After that, she sat down on the stool in front of the easel and began to mix her paints, every now and then glancing up at herself in the long mirror which hung on the wall opposite.

Could she capture that look on canvas? she wondered.

What did it matter if she couldn’t? No one would ever see this painting, or the other one, but herself.

Chapter Two

JAMES emerged from the bathroom and stood there for a long moment, glowering at the king-sized bed which dominated the elegantly furnished master bedroom and which, at that moment, looked as if it had been in the path of a herd of stampeding elephants.

The dishevelled state of the sheets and pillows wasn’t the result of a night of satisfying lovemaking with his wife, something he’d been hoping for when he’d kissed her in the car last night and she’d responded like the Megan of old.

Instead, the moment they arrived home from Hugh’s wedding, she’d claimed a headache and bolted for bed straight away, although it hadn’t been late, only about eight-thirty. Then, soon after he’d finally come to bed around eleven, she’d upped and fled the room altogether, leaving him to toss and turn, the meagre hours of sleep he’d managed to get being peppered with darkly erotic, highly arousing dreams. He’d woken this morning and even after a fifteen-minute cold shower he’d felt extremely frustrated.

Tightening his tie, James marched across the plush cream carpet and flung open the French doors which led out onto the sun-drenched balcony. Dark brows bunched together, he gripped the curved railing top and peered down at the pool house which sat at the far end of the swimming pool.

He couldn’t see inside the pool house. But he knew she was in there, painting.

When he’d had the pool house converted into an art studio for Megan, James had imagined he was doing the right thing, giving his emotionally fragile young wife something to distract her from her grief. She’d taken losing their baby very hard, even harder than he had.

James had never anticipated that she would end up spending all day, every day in there—and now every other night as well.

What he’d thought might be good therapy had become an obsession. Hell, she wouldn’t even let him look at any of her work. Goodness knew why. She didn’t seem to want to share any part of her life with him any more. It was the bed part, however, which bothered James the most.

Megan’s doctor had said to be patient; that Megan was an especially sensitive young woman; that he couldn’t expect her to want sex for a little while.

Well, he’d been more than patient in his opinion, and a ‘little while’ had turned into three long months. James had coped. Just. What he could not cope with was the constant delay in trying for another child. He was already thirty-six years old, older than he’d planned to be when he became a father.

Becoming a dad was what James wanted most in the world these days, but it was almost impossible if your wife never let you make love to her.

James sympathised with Megan. He really did. But running away from life was no answer. You had to face up to things, then move on.