Wedding Nights: Woman to Wed?

Reaction set in after she had replaced the receiver, though. It was gone twelve now; would he expect her to provide him with lunch? All she had been intending to have was some left-over soup and fresh fruit. And what exactly, anyway, did he mean by saying that he wanted to live as part of a family? Hopefully, and if the hours that Tim worked were anything to go by, she wasn’t going to have to see too much of him, and when she did …

Tonight, when they discussed the terms of his stay with her, she would just have to make it plain that as far as she was concerned the less contact there was between them the better.

CHAPTER FIVE

IT WAS almost one o’clock when Brad finally arrived. Opening the boot of his car, he removed a couple of suitcases and carried them into the house.

‘Is it OK if I take these straight up?’ he asked Claire tersely.

A little taken aback by his abrupt manner, Claire nodded.

Was he, like her, having second thoughts about the wisdom of moving in with her? she wondered as she waited downstairs for him to return.

‘I’m sorry I didn’t make our original time,’ he apologised as he came back down again. ‘There was a slight problem at the office. They had a break-in last night and although no stock was stolen we lost an extremely expensive piece of computer equipment.’ His frown deepened.’ It looks very much like whoever broke in knew exactly what they were going for …’

‘But what about the on-site security guards?’ Claire asked him. ‘Surely they must—?’

‘What security guards?’ Brad queried with dry emphasis. ‘It seems that for reasons of economy the security guards had been cut down from the original four to just one, and he was in another part of the site when the break-in took place. False economy, as it turned out …’

Claire winced as she heard the irritation in his voice, her mind going anxiously and immediately to Tim. She sincerely hoped that the blame for what had happened wouldn’t fall onto his shoulders; technically he was not in charge of the site which housed the office and distribution centre …

‘At least no one was hurt,’ was the only comment Claire could think of to make.

‘Somebody, no,’ Brad agreed, ‘but something, yes.’ His voice had become a few degrees colder and very much harder as he told her, ‘Ultimately our overall profits and, through them, the feasibility of the British side of our business are bound to be hurt by the cost of replacing the stolen equipment—even if our insurers pay out it will result in an increase in our premium, plus the business lost through the loss of the equipment …’

He shook his head, his frown lifting slightly as he added, ‘However, none of this is your concern …’

‘Tim is very conscientious,’ Claire felt bound to point out to him in defence of her brother-in-law, her voice dropping huskily. ‘Irene’s concerned about him. We both are. He’s been working such long hours recently and the stress—’

‘You’re obviously very fond of him,’ Brad interrupted her.

‘Yes, very,’ Claire confirmed protectively, missing the quick, frowning glance he gave her.

Sally’s postcard lay face down on the table next to him and he read it without meaning to. Who was the man in whom Claire only had a share? Was it Tim? Claire was certainly very close to him and very protective of him.

He liked Tim well enough—he was obviously a kind-hearted man although a little on the weak side—but the thought of him being Claire’s lover filled him with such a surge of angry antagonism that he knew that if Tim had actually been there …

Hey … ease back, he warned himself. You’re not here to get involved. Just because she’s alone and vulnerable, just because it sounds like her marriage wasn’t much of a marriage at all … just because she makes you feel as horny as hell and when you touch her all you can think of is taking her to bed, that doesn’t mean …

‘I … I’m not sure exactly what arrangements you want to come to as regards meals and so on,’ he heard Claire saying. ‘We haven’t discussed … Irene did intimate that you wanted to live somewhere en famille …’

‘Yes. Yes, I do,’ Brad agreed, struggling to suppress an alluring vision of sharing breakfast with her, of watching her move about the kitchen, her hair still damp from her shower, her face free of make-up, her body tantalisingly naked beneath her robe.

When she stood next to him he would be able to smell the clean, fresh, feminine scent of her skin, the exposed V of the valley between her breasts headily close to him—so close that if he turned his head he would be able to reach up and pull her down onto his lap, burying his face … his mouth … in that deliciously fragranced, womanly secret place.

Was he experiencing some hormonal overload which resulted in thoughts more appropriate to one’s teenage years than to one’s present maturity? Brad wondered grimly.

‘You’ll want me to prepare dinner for you in the evening?’ Claire was persisting.

‘Ultimately, yes,’ Brad agreed, ‘but initially I’ll probably be working into the evening so I’ll grab something to eat myself …’

He was frowning again, remembering Tim’s defensiveness over the problems he was having in meeting their high standards. It was Brad’s view that Tim simply wasn’t assertive enough, but he didn’t want to make over-hasty judgements.

He had known all along that the task his uncles had forced on him wasn’t going to be easy, but now … And getting involved with Claire, when she was Tim’s family and when she obviously felt so strongly about him … One thing he did know, though, he recognised, was that if she and Tim were lovers then it couldn’t be a very passionate relationship.

‘Is that everything?’ he heard Claire asking him. ‘Have you anything else to bring in from the car?’

‘Er … yes … as a matter of fact there is something. I’ll just go and get it …’

He was only gone a few moments, returning with what looked like a very expensive balled-up cashmere sweater, which he was carrying very carefully.

‘Er … we … I … we found this in the boiler room. Looks like it’s been abandoned by its mother, and I …’

The cashmere bundle started to move, a surprisingly strong mewing sound emerging from it.

‘It’s a cat,’ Claire protested.

‘A kitten,’ Brad corrected her, opening the cashmere to reveal its occupant. ‘Not even six weeks old yet, I guess … Too young to survive on her own, anyway, that’s for sure …’

‘Her?’ Claire questioned.

‘Well, I don’t know for certain, but she’s so pretty I guess I thought she had to be female,’ Brad confessed, both his face and his voice softening as he gently extracted the kitten from his sweater and showed her to Claire.

Her first thought was that the animal was so small that she was almost afraid to touch her; her second was that, as Brad had said, she was extraordinarily pretty—a little fluffy tabby with white socks and huge, brave eyes.

‘John didn’t like animals,’ she heard herself saying uncertainly. ‘He would never allow them in the house … He thought—’

‘He thought.’ Brad stopped her. ‘But what do you think, Claire?’

Claire could see the anger in his eyes although she couldn’t understand the cause of it.

‘This was John’s home,’ she reminded him with quiet dignity, ‘and I—’

‘And you what? You were just a visitor here? But it’s your home now, isn’t it? Your home, but perhaps not, after all, a home—the home for this little one. What she needs isn’t just somewhere where she’s permitted as a visitor; what she needs is somewhere where she’s wanted and loved …’

For some reason his words hurt her, uncovering a wound that she had not even acknowledged was there before, Claire realised.

Without being aware of what she was doing she had stretched out her hands and taken the kitten from him. The creature felt as light as thistledown but surprisingly warm, and as Claire held her she suddenly heard the most extraordinary noise. It took her several seconds to realise what it was and when she did she exclaimed, enchanted, ‘She’s purring!’

‘She obviously likes you,’ Brad told her.

‘I’ll have to keep her out of the drawing room,’ Claire heard herself saying crooningly as she held the kitten protectively.

‘She probably can’t lap properly yet,’ Brad was warning her. ‘You’ll have to feed her with an eye-dropper for a while. Cat formula will be best … We reared three of them that way. The kids found them in an old barn. Skin and bone, they were. I never thought they’d live …’ He smiled reminiscently to himself, remembering his sister Mary-Beth’s determination to save them.

He had been terrified that they weren’t going to survive. It had been the first time since their parents’ death that she had taken an interest in anything.

Claire started to put the kitten down and immediately she wailed in protest.