From Mistresses To Wives?: Mistress to a Bachelor / His Mistress by Marriage / Accidental Mistress

The shrug was brief. ‘Tell it the way you see it. Whatever his faults, I’m fond of the old devil. Even more so of my grandmother. She’s devoted a lifetime to him. The least I can do is spend the occasional weekend.’ He paused, eyes veiled now as he regarded her. ‘I can’t force you to come with me, of course. That has to be up to you.’

‘But it will hardly do your image any good if I don’t.’

The sarcasm left him unmoved. ‘Probably not. Anyway, it’s been a long day. I’m going to bed. Don’t stay up too long. You look a bit washed out yourself.’

He was gone before she could comment. Not that there was a great deal she could have said other than to tell him the reason she looked washed out, as he so tactfully put it. Her pregnancy would certainly enhance his stature in Henry Prescott’s eyes, but how would he regard it himself? A baby was going to alter their whole way of living.

He was asleep when she finally went up, lying on his back, his breathing deep and even. Many men snored in that position, she’d heard, but she didn’t even have that much to find fault with.

The night was warm, and he’d pushed the duvet aside. Nude, as always in bed, his body gleamed like bronze in the soft light from the bedside lamp he’d left burning. Jessica studied the strong, clean lines, eyes traversing a route downwards over the broad chest with its tapering V of hair to the hard-packed midriff and narrowed hipline, the firmly muscled thighs enclosing the very essence of his masculinity.

Even dormant, he was well-endowed. She touched her tongue to lips gone dry at the image in her mind’s eye of how he looked when he was fully aroused. She wanted him desperately, but she wasn’t prepared to waken him. Not the way things were. He would have to know eventually, of course, but not yet. It was hardly as if she was going to give birth tomorrow.

Chapter Nine

CONCEALING the nausea which struck her every morning over the following couple of weeks wasn’t easy. Fortunately, it didn’t last long, and she was able to eat breakfast as normal. Zac appeared to notice nothing untoward, at any rate.

The doctor she finally signed on with confirmed the pregnancy, and arranged for her to start ante-natal clinic at twelve weeks. If he wondered why her husband hadn’t accompanied her, he kept the thought to himself. It was even possible, Jessica supposed, that he took the ‘Mrs’ as a self-bestowed title.

Zac hadn’t mentioned his grandparents again, and she had no intention of bringing the subject up. Her blood boiled whenever she thought about the way Henry Prescott had reacted to news of his son’s wrongdoing. Zac had obviously trodden a very dangerous line in holding out against the old man’s views as long as he had. As the major shareholder in the company still, his grandfather had to have been in a position to make life very difficult for him, to say the least. Some might say he could have walked away from it, but why should he land everything in his half-brother’s lap?

Life went on apace. They ate out most evenings, twice by invitation. While coping quite adequately on the surface with the hormonal changes taking place in her body, Jessica found the very thought of giving a dinner party of their own stressful. The dining room wasn’t big enough to hold more than six round the table in any real comfort, she protested when Zac said it was time they returned the hospitality, and she doubted her ability to prepare a meal of the standard expected anyway.

Zac shot down the first objection by saying they could split it into two parties, the second by suggesting a catering company could supply a meal all ready to serve on both occasions.

‘As a married man, it’s time I started returning the hospitality I’ve enjoyed as a bachelor,’ he said. ‘If you’re finding this place a bit too compact for comfort, we can always move somewhere larger.’

‘That wasn’t what I meant,’ Jessica denied. ‘I love it here! All right,’ she added on a sudden reckless surge, ‘Make it next Saturday, and I’ll even do the cooking myself!’

It was a Saturday today. They were lazing over coffee in the sitting room with the weekend newspapers and magazines. Zac studied her reflectively where she sat with feet curled up under her on the sofa.

‘Not all it’s cracked up to be, is it?’ he said on a wry note.

The green eyes lifted to his were cautious. ‘What isn’t?’

‘Marriage.’

Jessica felt her heart take a plunge. It was all she could do to keep her voice steady. ‘It depends on the expectations, I suppose. Ours wasn’t exactly what you might call a match made in heaven to start with.’

The expression that flitted across the firm masculine features was come and gone too quickly for definition. His voice was equally steady. ‘Maybe not. Still, it has its compensations. Although those are in pretty short supply at present. Nature’s way, I know,’ he added before she could voice the reply he obviously heard coming, ‘but no less frustrating for the average male.’

He returned to his paper, his face closed against her. Jessica resisted the urge to apologise for the dig. He was the one who’d started it, she excused herself.

The realisation that he’d taken her lack of response to him these last few nights to be due to her period was something of a surprise considering how far past her due date she was. Yet how many men kept an actual tally, if it came to that? If it had crossed his mind at all, he would probably have taken it that she had an irregular cycle.

Her failure to feel any degree of desire for him at present was explained in the book she’d bought on pregnancy. Some women suffered a lowering of libido in the initial stages, it seemed. In a normal marriage, with love to fall back on, it wouldn’t matter as much, but deprived of the only consolation he had for his loss of freedom, a healthy, virile man like Zac might find the temptation to look elsewhere for solace too great to resist.

So tell him the truth, her inner voice urged. He was hardly going to look on the news with disfavour, taking his grandfather’s views into account. Except that she hated the mere thought of those views having any kind of bearing on his reaction, she admitted wryly.

At least his assumption gave her a few days’ breathing space. If her urges failed to return to normal, she would just have to put on an act. As Zac himself had pointed out, women had no physical evidence of arousal to produce.

Despite their differences, the day passed pleasantly enough. Zac had booked theatre tickets for the evening, followed by a late supper at Quaglino’s. The last thing Jessica felt like was eating at that hour, but she made a valiant effort. The least she could do, she considered, when he’d gone to such trouble to arrange things.

‘This time last year, I’d have thought myself lucky to be treated to supper at the local fish bar,’ she commented, not entirely in jest. ‘I certainly never imagined myself in a place like this. You’re used to it, of course.’

Zac gave a light shrug. ‘I wouldn’t call it one of my regular haunts. Left to my own devices, I’d plump for a good pub meal washed down with a pint of best bitter.’

‘Were you often?’ she asked. ‘Left to your own devices, I mean.’

The shrug came again. ‘You can’t burn the candle at both ends every night of the week, and still turn in an adequate performance during the day. Anyway, I’m past dancing the night away. Vertically, at any rate,’ he tagged on with the wicked sparkle Jessica had so missed these past weeks.

‘Do men ever think of anything else?’ she teased, responding to the sudden uplift in her own spirits as she looked into the grey eyes lit by the soft glow from the table lamp.

He studied her for a moment before answering, taking in the peach-skinned oval of her face within its frame of chestnut spirals. His smile played havoc on her heart strings.

‘Depends on the incentive. I’d defy any man to look at you and think about cricket scores.’

Desire rocketed through her: all the stronger, it seemed, for the hiatus. It brought both relief and dismay. The former because she’d been afraid of never regaining the feeling, the latter because she’d led him to believe her unavailable for the present.

‘Look at me like that, and I’m liable to forget where we are,’ he said softly. ‘I think I’d better call for the bill. And no, I haven’t forgotten,’ he added.

Jessica fought a battle with herself in the taxi going back to the mews. All she had to do was admit the truth. The baby wasn’t going to go away; she wouldn’t want it to go away! Tell him now and get it over with, then they could continue from there. The marriage might not be perfect, but how many were?

The words just wouldn’t come. Even when he took her by the hand and led her straight upstairs on reaching the house, she found it impossible. She clung to him as he kissed her, blotting out everything but the here and now.

They undressed each other, one garment at a time. Jessica pressed her legs together instinctively when he slid his hands down over her smooth curves, but he made no attempt to touch her there, caressing the rounded hemispheres of her behind as his lips followed the line of her jaw to reach the tender lobe of her ear.

The shudder running through her was no pretence. She closed a hand about him, seeking to give him the same pleasure he was giving her. He said something guttural under his breath as she began the movement, his whole body rigid with tension.

‘Not yet,’ he murmured against her skin.

She desisted at once in recognition of how close to climaxing he’d come at her mere touch. Her hands slid behind the dark head as he moved on down the line of her throat to find her breast, her fingers curling into the thickness of his hair at the exquisite sensation engendered by his flickering tongue. She was taking everything and giving nothing—and all because of her reluctance to tell him what he had a right to know. She should do it now. This moment!

She didn’t, because her mouth still refused to form the words. The thought itself faded as Zac laid her on the bed and began kissing his way down the full length of her body. Jessica had never realised just how many erogenous zones the body possessed until now, and he knew them all. By the time he finished with her she couldn’t have found the strength to lift a finger.

It took his disappearance into the bathroom to bring her back to life. Lying there in the darkness, she tried to sort out her tangled emotions. Tonight Zac had proved himself capable of a selflessness that stirred her to the depths. For a man to sublimate his own needs that way, there surely had to be some feeling other than just the physical on his part. Whether it was enough to survive the realisation that his altruism had been unnecessary was something else.

She turned out the bedside lights before he came back to bed, steeling herself when he slid in beside her. She’d tried out a dozen ways of saying it over the last few minutes, but when it came to the crunch she found herself tongue-tied still.

Zac drew her to him to kiss the tip of her nose. The brush of silk against her lower body proclaimed his use of pyjamas trousers.

‘A temporary measure only,’ he said on a humorous note.

Leaving an arm about her, he turned onto his back. Jessica yearned to press her lips to his bare chest, to feel the flat hard muscle beneath the wiry curl of hair and fill her nostrils with his clean masculine scent. She didn’t because it wouldn’t be fair. Not while he was still labouring under the same illusion.

It was a long time before she slept.

Sarah’s call on the Sunday morning was answered by Zac. His response to her greeting was easy enough, his reaction to the invitation that Jessica gathered was being issued surprisingly lacking in reticence.