The Unexpected Mistress

‘Laura,’ he murmured, drawing her imperceptibly closer.

‘Let me go! I told you!’ she moaned, wriggling away from the pressure of his hands and emerging hot and flustered because of the skin-tingling way they had slid down her arms. She moved back warily. ‘I don’t want you to touch me!’ she stormed. ‘Let’s get this straight! If you do force me out, I’ll come straight back in!’

His eyes danced with bright amusement. ‘I’d lock the door.’

‘I’d break a window!’ she retorted heatedly.

‘Do you intend your son to use the same point of entry?’

Laura ground her teeth in frustration. Her argument was futile and they both knew it. That didn’t help her temper much.

‘So you turn out a woman and a child, both of whom were born in this house! How do you think you’ll be treated by people in this village?’ she flared.

‘Like a leper. However, it’s not something that would disturb my sleep,’ he replied gravely.

No. It wouldn’t. Cassian never worried about the opinions of others. In her desperation she tried another tack. A last-ditch attempt to find a scrap of compassion in Cassian’s granite heart.

‘Adam is asthmatic. Emotional upsets can bring on an attack. Do you want his health on your conscience?’ she demanded.

‘That would be unpleasant for all of us,’ he admitted. ‘What do you suggest we do?’

Her mouth fell open. ‘What?’

Quite calmly, Cassian perched on the kitchen table, one long leg swinging freely and his steady gaze pinning Laura to the spot.

‘I’ve bought the house. I want to live in it. So do you. That suggests a conflict of interests. How do you propose we deal with the situation?’

She was astonished. She hadn’t expected negotiating tactics.

‘Tell Tony you’ve made a mistake! Get him to buy it back!’ she pleaded.

Cassian shook his head. ‘No use. He’ll have paid off his debtors to save himself from being beaten up again.’

‘Again?! What do you mean?’ She felt the colour drain from her face. ‘Where is he? What’s happened to him?’ she asked in agitation.

‘You’re surprisingly concerned, considering Tony’s indifference to you,’ he observed. ‘If I recall, he was the favoured child. He went from public school to university, whereas you were destined to leave school early. It never bothered him that your lives were unequal. You didn’t figure in his life at all.’

‘There was a crucial difference between Tony and me,’ she pointed out sharply.

‘Sure,’ Cassian scathed. ‘He was a selfish jerk. You were a doormat—’

‘I—I was…!’ OK. She was a doormat. He didn’t have to say so! ‘I was hardly in a position to demand my rights,’ she said stiltedly. ‘I had no blood ties with anyone in this house and you know that. It’s hardly surprising he had all the advantages. I was lucky—’

‘Lucky?’ he barked, leaping to his feet angrily.

‘Yes! They brought me up. I was fed and clothed—’

‘You were crushed,’ he snapped. His eyes blazed down at her, sapping her strength with their ferocity. ‘And you’re grateful because they offered you the basic human needs! Laura, they systematically browbeat you. They punished you for what your mother did to the oh-so-important George Morris, solicitor of this parish. They turned you into an obedient, colourless, cowering mouse, afraid of opening your mouth in case you said the wrong thing—!’

‘Don’t you criticise my family!’ she cried hotly. ‘It’s none of your business how we lived! I don’t care what you think of me…!’

She gulped. Because she did care. It upset her that he saw her as such a wimp. An obedient, colourless, cowering mouse! That was an awful description. Was she that pathetic?

Muddled, she stood there, her chest heaving, wondering why he was so angry and why she kept losing the composure which had always been such an integral part of her.

That was because he’d flung her into her worst nightmare. He was knocking away all her props. Leaving her with nothing. Perhaps she could plead with Tony herself…

‘Tony,’ she reminded him, her voice thin with panic. She sat down, shaking. ‘Just tell me what’s happened to him!’

Cassian felt like shaking her. She still saw justification in the way she’d been treated as a child. And yet cracks were beginning to appear in her armour. Rebellion simmered inside that tense body. She might have been taught to abhor passion but it was there, nevertheless and the thought excited him more than it should.

Inexplicably he’d wanted to press his lips on her pink, pouting mouth and her unavailability had only made the urge stronger. He couldn’t understand his reaction. He’d been celibate for a long time and many women had tried to steer him from his chosen path, using all the tricks in the book and then some.

Tricks he could deflect. This was something else. Whether he liked it or not, Laura was reaching something deeper in him without even knowing what she was doing.

Curbing his rampaging instincts, he set about hurrying her departure before her temptations proved his undoing. Women could be dynamite at the best of times. He dare not get tangled up with someone like Laura. That would be dangerous in the extreme for both of them.

Pity, he found himself musing recklessly. It was such a luscious, kissable mouth… And he hungered for it more than was wise.

Grimly Cassian subdued his lurching passions. He could be hard on himself when necessary. And this was essential.

‘I met Tony in Marrakesh—’ he began at a gallop.

‘Marrakesh!’ she exclaimed, as if it were the planet Mars.

He gave a faint smile. To her, it probably was.

‘Stupidly he’d swindled some thugs and they’d beaten him up. I got out the sticking plasters, let him stay for a while—’

‘You have a house in Marrakesh?’ she asked, wide-eyed.

Cassian perched on the table again. ‘No, I rented rooms. Tony hotbedded with Fee, a stripper, who I—’

‘What?’ Her eyes were even wider, her mouth now joining in the amazement. She was wonderfully transparent. ‘You…lived with a…stripper?!’

‘Two, actually.’ Before her jaw dropped any further and she did herself an injury, he added, ‘We weren’t cohabiting, I hasten to add. Same house, different rooms. Loads of space, no obligations to one another, come and go as you like…a perfect arrangement. No commitment, company when you want it, solitude when you don’t.’

‘But…strippers?’

Disapproval came from every line of her body. He decided she needed to have her judgement shaken up.

‘Don’t let the job fool you. Fee’s a sweetie, with a very strict moral code. Comes from Islington. You’d like her. Runs a shelter for sick animals in her spare time.’