Bachelor's Wife (9 page)

'Not for much longer, if I have my way,' she fumed.

'Relax, Perry my dear,' said Nash blandly. 'We have plenty of time in which to discuss the ending of what for me has been a blissful six years of married life.'.

He'd done it again! His dry humour had made her want to laugh. Though she quickly sobered, her lips refusing to twitch at his intimation that six years without her was all a man could ask for. And that annoyed her too, that following on from wanting to laugh, she should feel—piqued? It was ridiculous. Good heavens! Those six years, apart from losing Ralph, had been quite blissful for her too, hadn't they?

'There's no need for your life to be any less blissful now than it was before,' she began. 'As soon as...' only to be stopped by Nash briefly touching her hand.

'I refuse to have our digestions ruined by discussing something that will only take a few minutes and can well wait until after we've eaten,' he said decisively. And at her questioning look, 'You being you, Perry, I don't for a minute doubt we'd be able to have a straightforward discussion on the matter without you becoming—er—heated.'

Reminiscently he rubbed the side of his face, deliberately provoking the memory that the last time they had discussed the subject, she had hit him. And when it wasn't funny at all, she had the hardest work in the world to hold down a gurgle of laughter.

'Tell me about yourself, Perry Bethia Grainger,' he said after a moment. 'Just when did the—casually-dressed female I married emerge from her chrysalis?'

Loath to talk about herself—it went without saying that he had led a far more exciting life—she found Nash a master in drawing people out. So much so snippets of her life before that fateful meeting with him that day came, hesitatingly at first, from her.

'So you, never knew your father?' Nash inserted when she had told him of her father's death when she was a baby, and her mother's death when she was seventeen, 'No,' she replied, and remembering the way he had spoken of his father six years ago and recalling the feeling she had had then that there must have been a deep love between father and son, she defended, not thinking herself in need of pity if that was what that look in his eyes meant, 'But I didn't miss out on a father's love, if that's what you're thinking.'

The look she had thought pitying went from him, his expression was now mockingly enquiring, just as though, she thought crossly, he was assuming she had taken up with some sugar-daddy as a father replacement figure.

'No?' he queried, his sardonically quirking lips telling her she had read his thoughts correctly.

'No,' she said tightly, only just keeping her anger in check, though not her tongue, as the heat of the moment forced her on. 'My mother married Ralph when I was five. Ralph gave me more love than a lot of girls get from their true father. He...'

'I thought you had a hate thing going with him?' Nash interrupted sharply. ''That's the impression you gave me. Or was the family love only from his side?'

As she remembered clearly that she had wanted him to think exactly as he had, the heat went from her. It might be as well to discontinue this topic before it went any farther, she thought, but at that moment the love she had for Ralph chose to rise up, and she could no more deny how dear he had been to her than fly.

'I—yes, I did give you that impression, I know,' she confessed. And even though Ralph had been dead six years her eyes misted over as she choked, 'But he was the dearest man to me. I missed him very much when he died.'

Nash didn't go into why had she let him think what he had, but said, 'That was a month after our marriage, I think you said,' and there was a warm note in his voice that had her thinking he was remembering the love he had felt for his own father and how he had felt at the time of losing him.

And suddenly she found an empathy flowing between them. She raised her eyes, saw her senses had not played her false. The encouraging curve to Nash's mouth, the compassion in his eyes both worked on her sensitivities of the moment, and she found herself telling him:

'I was so mixed up then, confused. Ralph and I were friends as well as step-relatives. Even after my mother's death I hadn't felt so alone. There'd been a lot to arrange as well as the worry of what to do about the house we were living in. I knew I couldn't afford to keep it on,' she said, forgetting entirely that only a month earlier Nash had given her five thousand pounds. But he didn't interrupt to remind her, and she went on, 'I wasn't earning very much then. So I was in a bit of a state in not only knowing I would have to find a flat, leave the house and get rid of a houseful of furniture, but worst of  all there would be no Ralph to come home to.'

Whether Nash was touched by her revelation of that awful time she had experienced as a young eighteen-year-old, she didn't stop to wonder. But she knew the empathy she had felt was still there when his hand came across the pristine white tablecloth and rested lightly over hers.

'Confused as you were, you couldn't believe you'd recently stood in front of a registrar and married a stranger?' Perry smiled softly at him, silently amazed that he should understand. She nodded her agreement. 'It was then you sent for a copy of the certificate; You needed to prove to yourself it had really happened, that you weren't going round the bend?'

Nash putting it into words—so exactly on beam, it had a smile coming from her for him and his insight into how she had been at the time.

'Yes,' she agreed quietly. And as he took his hand from hers, her mind grew full of that time in her eighteenth year, and her smile faded as she recalled the money Nash had given her, money she had given to Ralph, dear dead Ralph. 'I needn't have married you, taken your money at all,' she said bleakly, her thoughts so taken up with Ralph, she was barely aware in that sad moment of her thoughts of what she was saying.

But Nash was aware, and, she realised a moment later, blade-sharp when it came to analysing even half-given information.

 'The money was for your stepfather,' he guessed shrewdly, but kept his voice low as though knowing the slightest suggestion of hardness would have her lips sealed.

'I...' she began—and only then came alive to what conclusions he could draw. Talking about her stepfather as she had been and then referring to the marriage and the money in the same breath... She shook her head, confirmation of what she had known all along there— Nash Devereux was much too sharp for her.

'Ralph was in debt,' he pressed, a calculating look appearing in his eyes that had her reacting coldly.

'It's all water under the bridge now, isn't it?' she said stiffly, intending to tell him nothing more, heartily wishing she had never told him anything.

'So he was,' Nash prodded, obviously not ready to leave the matter there despite the look on her face that told him he had heard all he was going to from her. 'That's why it was so important for you to have a well-heeled husband,' he went on, all the warmth he had shown her vanishing promptly, ejected by the swift coldness that came to him as he pressed, 'You couldn't think of any other way to get the money to settle his debts, so you opted for a rich husband.'

Perry stayed mute, the line of her mouth stubborn. He could think what the hell he liked, he wasn't getting another word out of her!

He kept his eyes on her as he waited for her reply, the stubborn mulish look in the green eyes that glared back silently saying he would have a long wait. Another second ticked by, then he was biting into her:

'Or was it Ralph's idea that you get yourself a rich husband?' Green eyes sparked dangerously, but she said nothing. 'Did this man you state so confidently loved you as if you were his own—did he love you so well he thought up the bright idea that you sell yourself to...'

Something inside her broke to have this swine of a man denigrating the affection she knew her stepfather had for her. 'He did love me,' she blazed, 'he did! He would have been horrified if he'd known how I got the money I gave him.' In her fury she was totally unaware what she had just confirmed as she raged on: 'And for your information, I didn't go to the marriage bureau to find a husband, but because I had an appointment with the woman who ran it—Ralph's sister.'

She saw his eyes narrow as in a flash he had dissected that piece of information. 'You intended asking her for the money?' he questioned rapidly, and while Perry was gasping at the quickness of his brain, she was also reeling that in her fury she had told him as much as she had.

Stubbornness entered her face again. But Nash now had everything he wanted toknow. He smiled, a smile she took no pleasure from and didn't believe in either.

'You knew from her locked office that she had no intention of keeping her appointment with you,' he said, neatly tying up any loose ends. 'You knew you wouldn't be getting a penny from her. But as soon as I mentioned the sum I was prepared to pay for a bride without strings, you just had to consider throwing in with me.'

    Perry tossed him a look of hearty dislike which bounced

right off him as he smiled that insincere smile and suggested that since she had finished her coffee would she like more.

Startled, she looked down into her empty coffee cup. Her boeuf bourguignon had been delicious, but she had no recollection of eating the next course or emptying her coffee cup.

'No, thank you,' she said woodenly.

'In that case, if you're ready, we'll go.'

'But—but we haven't discussed the divorce yet,' she protested, about to remind him that that was the only reason she had come out with him anyway.

'You're not home yet,' he said before she could add  another word.

Perry got to her feet; her face mutinous as Nash took her arm to escort her from the dining room.

'I should like to go straight home,' she said abruptly as he handed her into his sleek car.

'Yours or mine?' was the mocking reply.

'Don't be funny,' she answered cuttingly.

But his remark had unnerved her, and it was with anxious eyes that she watched the direction he steered the car. Just one wrong turn, she thought, and Nash Devereux might yet wind up on the receiving end of his second blow dealt by a woman's hand!

CHAPTER SIX

BUT Perry found her fears that he intended they should go to his place unfounded. And so fixedly had she been watching the route he was taking that they arrived at her flat with the matter of the divorce still unresolved.

Nash turned off the engine, but she had no intention of moving until the item of conversation he had said would only take a few minutes was satisfactorily agreed on.

'We'll talk in your flat,' he stated with that disgusting self-confidence of his.

'We won't...' was as far she got before he was slipping quickly, effortlessly from behind the wheel and was round at her side of the car helping her out.

He really was the limit! she fumed, ready to hit him with something heavy if once in her flat he suggested she gave him coffee.

'Nice place you have here,' he remarked on entering her sitting room for the second time that evening. 'Shall I light the gas fire for you? It's still cold for this time of year, isn't it?'

I'll brain him yet! Perry was thinking as, with anger building up inside, she watched the loose-limbed way he strolled over to her gas fire and put a match to it.

'Now,' he said, that mocking smile doing nothing for her blood pressure, 'shall we sit down and discuss the subject that by the look of you is threatening to have you blowing a gasket?'

It's not the subject, she wanted to retort, it's you. But that he now seemed ready to get down to business had a calming effect on her as she chose to sit down on the settee, keeping a lid tightly shut when her anger would have erupted again when he ignored the easy chair facing her and opted to join her on the settee.

'Why is the divorce suddenly so urgent?' he enquired, coming straight to the point, and adding before she could remind him, 'I know you intend marrying again—but you never did get around to giving me the reason for such haste.'

'I...' she began, not wanting to be amused at his mocking reference to the slap he had received for an answer the time before. She controlled her lips that wanted to curve upwards as she wondered what chance she had got of a quiet divorce if she refused to answer him this time. She looked at him and knew from the way he was quietly waiting that she would have to tell him before he would begin to get down to discussing the serious business of the divorce,

'Well—if you must know,' she said, hating him for making her confess, 'Er—Trevor—Trevor doesn't know yet that I've been—that I'm married.'

There was no mockery at all in Nash as his eyes pierced through her. 'Doesn't know...'

'I've tried to tell him,' Perry quickly jumped in, pink with guilt and sensing censure with a few unpleasant comments thrown in, 'but—but—well, his mother has such a thing about divorce,' she defended, 'she'll spoil everything between us if she knows.' She grew flustered that what she had said in no way explained why she hadn't told the person it concerned most. She tried again. 'Trevor won't mind when I explain everything to him,' she said, more in hope than in justification. 'It's just that I would rather tell him when it's all over—when I'm free, if you see what I mean.'

Nash was streets ahead of her, she could see that. 'He
has
asked you to marry him?' he asked bluntly.

The question, the look that went with it that said he didn't think much of any girl who would let a man get that far and still nurse the secret she was nursing, had her colour going high again.

'I—well,' she said, trying to vindicate herself even while knowing she had no defence, 'well, Trevor said he was only thinking about asking me to marry him,' she tried, and saw that Nash, being a man of instant decisions, didn't look to think much of Trevor either since he appeared to be a man who waffled before he made up his mind, and found she was having to defend Trevor as well as herself. 'With his mother so against divorce and.... and Trevor as well—for himself, that is,' she said. Then, hating to be so much on the defensive, she threw her hands up in an Oh, dammit! gesture.

'This has nothing to do with you and me,' she said agitatedly. 'The other night Trevor asked me to marry him. I didn't mean to say yes without telling him, but I must have done because we were supposed to go out tonight to celebrate. I was definitely going to tell him tonight, but...'

'But I rang,' said Nash, his look softening in the face of her obvious agitation. 'So you decided you would see me first and hope to be able to tell the doting Trevor the next time you saw him that at least the divorce was under way?'

Perry saw his smile was genuine this time. 'Oh, Nash,' she sighed, not meaning to sound so utterly fed up as she did, ''I've been in such a panic!'

The smile disappeared from his mouth, but his eyes were kind as he studied her sad face. 'Come here,' he said softly.

Uncertain, the insecurity in her found comfort when he put an arm around her and she felt the side of her face against his shoulder. She sighed and needed the solidness of a hard shoulder at that moment.

'Poor little Perry,' he murmured.

'I've been so worried, so miserable,' she confessed. 'I rang your office nearly two weeks ago and was told you'd that day left for the States, so I wrote that night and rushed home every day to see if there was any answer in the post.'

'And panicked again when you saw in the paper that I was hoping to be reconciled with my wife,' he said softly in her ear, his other hand coming to stroke the side of her face, causing alarm bells to give the faintest suggestion of a tinkle. ''I'll bet you nearly fell off your bike when you opened up the paper,' he teased gently, his breath warm on her ear, his teasing quieting any alarms as her mouth winged upwards.

'Why did you do it, Nash? I mean, only your solicitor and Lydia knew you were married anyway, didn't they?' She tried to move out of his arm, but his hold was firm. But she didn't panic that he wasn't letting her go. Nash wasn't the sort to attempt rape, and she could soon tell him to cut it out if he tried any funny business. 'Why
did
you suddenly announce it to the world?' she questioned.

She felt him shrug, before he answered casually, 'A culmination of reasons, possibly. I'd just stepped from a plane, tired after working flat out, not wanting to be met by the press or—anyone.' Did that mean that the lovely Elvira Newman pictured—clinging to him was on her way out? It sounded very much like it, though there was no time for her to speculate further, for he was going on, 'But since I wanted to look in on the office I arranged to meet the press there hoping to call it a day afterwards. At my office, tired like I said, probably feeling anti-climax now that a tough assignment had been satisfactorily completed after hard days that went on into the nights, and jaded most likely, I flipped through my mail and came across one letter marked "Strictly Private and Confidential".'

'Mine,' she put in needlessly.

'Private and confidential correspondence I deal with regularly,' Nash told her. 'It was the "Strictly" that had me opening it.'

'Before you saw the press?'

She felt the muscles of his face move against hers, realised there must be a grin on his face, and felt her heart go thump as she realised too that his face was warm against

hers, cheek to cheek! And she hadn't felt him move! Quickly she moved her face away, turning to see his satisfied smile, a glimmer of pure reminiscent devilment in his eyes.

'Your letter intrigued me—had tiredness leaving as I read what you'd written.'

'I wouldn't have thought the few lines I wrote were all that stimulating,' said Perry, trying desperately to recall word for word what she had finally penned, and wishing too late that she had made a copy.

 'It was what you didn't write I found fascinating,' Nash informed her. 'It didn't matter to me who knew I was married—but it didn't take any master-mind to read that it did to you.'

'So you told the press you were hoping for a reconciliation—just to frighten the life out of me,' she said, catchingon quickly.

'That wasn't my intention,' he denied. 'Though I did think you had a shake-up coming.'

'Why what had I done?' she asked aggressively. 'It wasn't as though I was like your other women, was it—I didn't want anything from you but...'

'But your freedom,' he ended, then fully enlightened her. 'It was your dishonesty that had me doing what I did.'

'Dishonesty?'

'You've just revealed that you remember the way I regard women, how other women appear to me. You must have known I didn't want a divorce, that the marriage didn't bother me, that if it had I would have done something about it long ago. Yet you didn't have that much honesty to give me your real reason for wanting a divorce—"if it's all right with you" you wrote, "I should like to be free. Would you let me know as soon as possible if you are agreeable to a divorce?" Well, I wasn't, so I took the least bothersome way to tell you I wasn't.'

'Thanks for nothing!' snapped Perry, ready to fly at him. Then remembering something had to ask, 'Though I suppose I should thank you that you kept my name out of the paper—why did you, by the way?'

'Blame it on my soft old heart,' said the man who must, she thought, have the hardest heart of any man she had ever met, the very devil dancing in his eyes. 'You certainly won't credit me with any gentlemanly instinct for not wanting the eighteen-year-old I remembered, regardless of the dishonesty she was practising, to receive some of the type of hounding by the press I've suffered in my day.'

'I didn't mean to be dishonest,' she told him, her anger going at his consideration in keeping her name to himself, forgetful for the moment, that he would have saved her a lot more nagging worry had he not said anything to the press at all. 'I've told you I  was in a panic, worried about Trevor, his mother.'

'I'll forgive you.' said Nash magnanimously, 'just as you forgave me for laughing in my office on Friday when I had you perched on my desk.'

'Why did you?' she asked, taken out of her stride, and remembering then that he had suggested he might tell her the next time he saw her. Remembering too that she had said then that there would be no next time—did he always get his own way?

'Call it relief from utter boredom.' The corners of his mouth curved upwards and, finding it infectious, Perry had the hardest work in keeping her mouth from following suit as he explained, 'I've already told you you're a new type to me. Perhaps I've dated too many of the same kind of woman, but there you were, not the least interested in me or my pocket. Spitting fire and ready to bash my head in—and do you know something, Perry?' his voice softened, a seductive quality entering. 'Beautiful as you are, like other women of my acquaintance, I knew then I could never be bored with you around.'

'I...' she began, and realising full well that this sort of talk was getting nothing settled in the way of the divorce, felt herself becoming spellbound by the seductive way he was speaking. 'I ... I think,' she said, trying to shake free of the hypnotic hold she seemed to be in, 'I think we ought—should . . .'

'Do you want to know what I think?' Nash asked softly, his look going from her eyes to her mouth.

'No,' came from her, sounding nowhere near as firm as it was meant to. Then something inside her was disobeying what her brain was telling her to do, to get up from the settee and sit somewhere else as his hand came to her face, his fingers stroking her fine skin. 'Wh-what do you think?' she found herself asking huskily.

He smiled, and if there was triumph lurking in that smile at the transfixed look of her, the husky note in her voice, then she missed it as she swallowed and looked down.

'I think,' he murmured, 'that the least you owe me for keeping your name out of the papers is—a kiss.'

'I—you kissed me on Friday,' she reminded him, her heart going crazy, all thought of Trevor forgotten. Never had she realised one could be seduced with so much ease; she barely realised it now.

'Exactly. It was I who did the kissing.'

Getting to know Nash as she was, Perry knew then that nothing further was going to be discussed until she had complied with his request. Though what they had to discuss was starting to grow dimmer and dimmer in her mind.

'Very well,' she said, and, determined to treat the matter lightly, good sense demanded it, 'Pucker up!'

Nash stayed still, making no move to meet her half way as she leaned forward ready to salute his mouth briefly with hers. She hesitated a few inches away from him, looked straight into warm grey eyes that were so near, and a choking sensation hitting her dropped her eyes to that equally warm waiting mouth.

A thrill of excitement shot through her the moment her mouth touched his. Quickly she pulled back, her eyes wide as she looked into his face that was still so close.

'And now,' he said softly, 'I think it's up to me to apologise in kind for being the cause of adding to the worry and panic you were already suffering before I spoke to the journalists.'

'There's...' no need, she had been going to add, but the rest of it was lost as he claimed her lips with his and fireworks went off in her head that never had she known a man's mouth to be so at once inviting, tempting and, for her sins, so irresistible.

His kiss deepened, both arms holding her securely, tightening when some inner instinct, common sense gone, had her trying to be free. 'Relax,' he instructed quietly, taking his mouth from hers only briefly. 'Nothing is going to happen you don't want to happen.'

His lips on her once more, the warm masculine smell of him, sharp, clean, in her nostrils, had her hands gripping tightly on to his shoulders as she strove desperately to control the wild urges his kisses aroused.

'No!' she protested hoarsely when his lips left hers to transfer to her throat, to kiss across her collarbone and to the hidden swell beneath her dress. Her flesh tingled just before he obeyed and transferred his mouth back to her own, his hands caressing in delicious stroking sensation on her bare arms, moving to her spine, pressing her to him.

For mind-blowing moments his lips left hers to lightly kiss her flushed cheeks, to trail kisses to her ears." And then his hands were in her hair, taking all appearance of sophistication from her as her shining honey-gold hair cascaded over her shoulders..