Authors: Sandra Marton

The Tycoon's Bought Fiancée (7 page)

BOOK: The Tycoon's Bought Fiancée

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Don't say anything, a tiny voice within Stephanie's head whispered. He's baiting you, and he's dangerous. You're playing out of your league hereâ¦.

A tingle of excitement danced over her skin.

“Only,” she said, carefully and very deliberately, “only that you're the most arrogant, ill-mannered, self-centered male I've ever had the misfortune toâ”

She gasped as his hand closed around her wrist.

“Am I?”

His voice was low and rough. Stephanie felt as if she could hardly breathe. Her thoughts flew back to when her grandmother had still been alive. She'd been sent to live with her one summer. She was three, four, too young, anyway, to know the difference between honey that came from a jar and the stuff that oozed from a broken, bee-laden comb lying beneath Gramma's old pin oak.

“Leave it be, child,” Gramma had cried as she'd reached for the comb, but Stephanie had already brought it to her mouth. The moment was forever frozen in time: the candied kiss of the welling honey, and then the fierce, painful sting of the bee.

She thought of it now, that dizzying combination of sweetness and danger, as David bent toward her. Should she force herself to face him downâ¦or should she leap from her seat and run for her life, never mind that the plane was dipping and rising like a roller coaster, or that the flight attendant would probably call ahead and have the men in the white coats waiting.

No. Why should she run? There was nothing to be afraid of. What could happen here, in this public place?

Anything
. The word whispered through her like a hot wind.

David's eyes smoldered with heat. She could almost scent his anger on the air. No, she thought, her heart giving another giddy kick, not his anger. His masculinity. His awareness of her not as a foe but as a woman.

The plane was carrying them into a velvet darkness. As if from a great distance, she heard the disembodied voice of the captain requesting that all passengers be sure they were buckled in. The cabin lights blinked on and off, on and off, and she caught a glimpse of lightning zigzagging like flame outside the window.

Somewhere in the cabin behind her, a woman's voice rose in fear. Stephanie knew she ought to be afraid, too, of the storm raging just beyond the fragile shell of their aircraft, but the only storm she could think about was the one that had been building between David and her from the moment they'd met.

He undid his seat belt, his gaze never leaving her face. A soft whimper rose in her throat and it took all her strength to suppress it.

“Do you like playing games, Scarlett?” He moved closer; his thumb rolled across her bottom lip, the tip of it just insinuating itself into her mouth. He tasted of heat, of salt. Of passion. “That's what we've been doing all day, isn't it? Playing games.” His gaze fell to her mouth; she felt the hungry weight of it, like a caress, before his eyes met hers again. “No more games, Stephanie,” he said gruffly, and he kissed her.

She made no sound, moved not an inch. But the moan she'd managed to hold back moments ago slipped through the kiss. She felt a tremor pass through him and then he thrust one hand into her hair, tipped her head back, and parted her lips with his.

There was no time to think. All she could do was reactâand respond. Stephanie whimpered softly, wound her arms around David's neck, and opened her mouth to his kiss.

The lights in the cabin blinked out. Blackness engulfed them. The plane lifted, then dropped as if there were a hole in the sky. They were alone on the dark, wild sea of the heavens, and at its mercy.

Stephanie wasn't afraid. She felt the strength of David's arms as they encircled her, felt the racing pound of his heart against hers, and when his hand slid under the jacket of her suit and cupped her breast, she cried out in pleasure.

“Yes,” he whispered. “Oh, yes.”

She felt the nip of his teeth. Her head fell back as he pressed his lips to her throat and when he brought her hand to him, settled it against the powerful thrust of his arousal, she arched against him.

This was wrong. It was insane. She knew that, knew it well. But to stop what she felt, what David was making her feel, was impossible. His hunger was fierce, but so was hers. She had to assuage it, had to give in to it, had to touch and be touchedâ¦.

The lights in the cabin blazed on. The plane rocked one last time, then settled onto a steady course.

It was all Stephanie needed to return her to reality.

She gave a muffled cry and tried to break free, but David wouldn't let her. He clasped her face between his hands, his mouth hot and demanding on hersâ¦and despite everything, the cabin lights, and the voice of the captain assuring the passengers that they were okay, despite all that, she almost gave herself up again to the passion, the intoxication of this stranger's kiss.

“No!” Stephanie slammed her fists against his chest, tore her mouth from his. “Stop it,” she said, her voice trembling, and David blinked his eyes, like a man awakening from a deep dream.

He drew back and stared into the flushed face of this woman he'd met only hours before. Her eyes were huge and glazed; her mouth was swollen from his kisses and her hair had come undone so that dark strands curled lightly around her face.

“You're despicable,” she hissed as she twisted away from him, as far as she could get.

A muscle knotted in David's cheek. He sat back, his hands curled tightly around the armrests of his seat. Despicable? Crazy might be a better word.

“Mrs. Willinghamâ¦” he said.

Mrs. Willingham? He really
was
crazy, addressing a woman he'd damn near ravaged with such formality. And what was he going to say to her? I'm sorry? Hell, he was not Not sorry, not apologetic, not any of those things because she'd wanted what had happened as much as he had.

“Ladies and gentlemen.” The amplified voice of the flight attendant interrupted his thoughts. “The captain has asked me to tell you that we are on our approach to Dulles and we should be on the ground in just a few minutes.”

A thin cheer of relief rose from the passengers. David felt like cheering, too, but it had nothing to do with having survived the storm. He'd survived something else entirely.

He was a man who'd known his fair share of women. Okay, more than his fair share, some would say. He was not a stranger to the fever that could flare like wildfire between two consenting adults.

But nothing like this had ever happened to him before. If the lights hadn't come on, if Stephanie hadn't stopped him, he'd have taken her there, in the darkness. In the hot little universe they'd created. He'd have ripped off her panties, buried himself deep in her heat untilâuntilâ¦

He'd been out of control, and he knew it. And it scared the hell out of him.

Lifeâhis lifeâwas all about control. Control of the self. It was how he'd gone from being a kid enduring life in a foster home to a man with a law degree and a well-regarded practice. He'd only made that one slip, when he'd let himself think he was in love, let himself trust a woman who wasn't to be trustedâ¦.

The plane touched down with a thump. There was scattered applause, a few whistles, but David was already on his feet, reaching for his garment bag, making his way up the aisle to the door.

“Sir? Mr. Chambers?” The flight attendant smiled and sent a darting look over his shoulder. “Isn't your wifeâ”

“She isn't my wife,” David said fiercely. “She isn't anything, not to me.”

He left the flight attendant's voice behind him, left everything behind him. Whatever it was that had happened to him in that airplane cabin was over. And he sure as hell was never going to think about it again.

CHAPTER FIVE

T
HERE were few certainties in life.

Stephanie knew that. It was, in fact, the very first certainty.

The others ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous.

For instance, she knew that a pair of cardinals would rebuild the old nest deep within the shelter of the rhododendron outside the back door, come every spring.

They were there now, on this bright, warm morning, the male in his bright plumage chirping encouragement to the female as she flew off for more twigs.

“I don't know that it's the same pair, ma'am,” the gardener had said when he'd found her watching them that first spring, seven long years ago. “Might be younguns of the first two what built that nest.”

It didn't matter. If it was a new generation doing the building, that only made what was happening all the sweeter. Somebody, even if that somebody had wings and feathers, believed in home and family.

And then there were the other constants, the ones that were not so pleasant.

The way the good townsfolk of Willingham Corners looked at her whenever she drove into town. Not that it was very different from how they'd always looked at her, the men with sly smiles that made her skin crawl, the women with condemnation tightening their mouths.

Well, that was surely going to change, and soon. Smirks would replace the smiles, and the looks of condemnation would be replaced by ones that said morality had, at last, triumphed.

Stephanie glanced at the dining room table, and the letter lying on it. Oh, yes. Just wait until the town heard about that.

They'd probably celebrate.

Stephanie Willingham, Mrs. Avery Willingham, was going to lose the roof over her head and the ground under her feet. She was going to lose everything.

Everythingâincluding the one thing that mattered, that she had bartered her soul to possess.

She should have known Avery would renege on his promise. His word had never been any goodâanother of life's little certainties, Stephanie thought with a bitter smile, but one she'd only learned after they'd made their unholy bargain.

There wasn't even any point in telling herself that the documents Avery's sister had produced were forgeries. It would have given Avery as much pleasure to have arranged the situation as it had given Clare to hint at it. It was the cruelty of the thing that had convinced her, the “joint tenancy” provisions carefully devised to make Clare Avery's heirâand to leave Stephanie with absolutely nothing.

Oh, yes, the documents were legitimate. It was Avery's final giftâwhich only emphasized the last certainty.

Men were a bunch of double-dealing bastards.

They'd lie to get what they wanted and then fix it so that their promises were worth about as much as they were.

Stephanie put her hand to her forehead. Except for Paul. Paul was different, and not just because he was her brother. Paul was kind, and caring; he'd always been there for her, when she was little. No one else had been. Not her father, whom she'd never known. Not her mother, who'd wandered out of her children's lives like a wisp of smoke.

And not Avery. God, certainly not Avery.

Stephanie put her back to the window and looked down blindly into the cup of rapidly cooling coffee cradled between her palms. Avery, with his talk of being the father she'd never had. With his compassionate giftsâthe food basket on Thanksgiving, the visits to the specialists for Paul, the big box of books she'd hungered for but couldn't afford to buy. And then the greatest gift of all, the one she'd believed would be the start of a better life, for her and for Paulâ¦a year's tuition for Miss Carol's Secretarial School.

“It's too much, Mr. Willingham,” Stephanie had said. “I can't let you do this.”

“Sure you can, darlin'.” Avery had put a beefy arm around her shoulders in fatherly fashion. “You learn to type, take dictation, an' I'll give you a job, workin' for me.”

Working for him, Stephanie thought, and shuddered.

Oh, how he'd hooked her. Set out a lure she couldn't resist and reeled her in like a fish all ready for the skillet.

How could she have been so naive? So stupid? So pathetically, painfully dumb?

Not that the answers mattered anymore. It was true, fate had intervened. Paul had become more and more withdrawn but still, it was she who'd agreed to make a contract with the devil.

There was no one to blame but herselfâ¦

Just as she was to blame for what had happened two weeks ago, on what should have been a pleasant, peaceful Sunday afternoon.

Stephanie shut her eyes against the humiliating memory. That she'd let a stranger do those things to herâthat she'd let
any
man do those things to herâwas inconceivable. None of it made sense. She knew what men were and what they wanted. What they always wanted, whether they were old and fat, like Avery, or young and handsome, like David Chambers.

Sex. That was what men wanted. And sex wasâit wasâ¦

Stephanie shuddered again, despite the warmth of the morning sun on her shoulders. Sweat. Grasping hands. Hot breath on your face and wet lips smothering you, and the feel of bile rising in the back of your throatâ¦

Except, it hadn't been like that with David. When he'd kissed her. Touched her. Cupped her breast and made her moan. She could still remember the taste of him, the feel of his mouth, warm against hers, his kiss hinting at pleasures she'd never imaginedâ¦

“Missus Willingham?”

Stephanie spun around. Mrs. Cross stood in the doorway. The straw hat she wore for marketing days was on her head; her suitcase was in her hand.

“I'm leavin',” she said coldly. “Thought I'd let you know.”

Stephanie nodded. “I understand. I'm sorry I haven't been able to pay you the last few weeks, butâ”

“Wouldn't stay under this roof, money or no money,” the housekeeper said. “Town knows what you are now, missus, what with Mr. Avery fixin' things for all to see.”

Coffee sloshed over the rim of Stephanie's cup and onto her hand, but she didn't so much as blink.

“I'll send you a check for what I owe you, Mrs. Cross.” Her voice was clear and steady. She'd be damnedâ
damned
âif she'd break down now. “You may have to wait for your money, but you'll get it all, I promise.”

“Don't want nothin' from you, missus.”

Mrs. Cross turned on her heel and marched off. Stephanie didn't move as she listened to the housekeeper's footsteps stomp the length of the marbled hall, but after the front door slammed shut, she pulled a chair out from the table and sank down into it.

“And a good thing you don't, Mrs. Cross,” she whispered shakily, “because I don't have anything left to give.”

Her eyes burned with unshed tears. She blinked hard, then drew a deep breath.

“All right,” she said briskly, and scrubbed her hands over her face.

What was done, was done. There was no sense in brooding over things, or in playing a game of “What if?” What was it her mother used to say? It was hard to remember; it seemed such a long, long time agoâ¦

“No use cryin' over spilled milk, Steffie. Just mop it up an' get on with your life.”

The advice still held. She had to get on with her life, put aside what the town thought, what Avery had doneâ¦ put aside, as well, all memories of whatever it was that had happened between her and David Chambers. He wasn't even worth thinking about. For all his looks and money and charm, he was nothing but another member of the brotherhood, a lying, sneaking, self-centered, testosterone-impaired, no-account ratâand the only good news about that Sunday was that it was over, and she'd never see the man's face again.

Stephanie swiped her hand across her eyes one last time, then reached for the letter from Clare's attorneys. Not that she needed to read it. She'd paced the floor with it the last ten days; its message was embedded in her brain.

Dear Mrs. Willingham: Please be advised that it is the wish of our client, Clare Willingham, that you vacate her property no later than Friday the thirteenth.

“Such a propitious date, don't you think?” Clare had purred, when she'd phoned to have the pleasure of delivering the news, firsthand.

Stephanie's throat constricted. She cleared it, then read the next sentence aloud into the silence of the room.

“Please be advised that the stipend paid to your account will cease as of that date, as well.”

That was the phrase that had made her begin to tremble.

That was when she'd known she was lost.

She'd tried fighting it. Months ago, as soon as Clare had started dropping hints that Stephanie's days at Seven Oaks were limited, she'd gone to see Amos Turner, who had a law office in town.

“I don't give a damn about the house,” she'd told him. “I only want what's rightfully mine. Avery promised to put a specified amount of money into my checking account each month.”

“How much?” Turner asked with an oily smile.

Stephanie took a deep breath. “Twenty-five hundred dollars.”

The lawyer smiled. “My, my, my,” he purred, “that surely is a lot of money for a man to provide his wife as an allowance.”

“It wasn't an allowance.”

“No? What was it then, my dear?”

Payment. Payment for selling her soulâ¦

“I don't see how that's germane, Mr. Turner,” she said coolly.

Turner's beady eyes glistened. “Must be nice, havin' such a value put on yourself,” he said, tilting back his chair so that his fat belly protruded like an island in a sea of shiny black worsted.

Stephanie flushed but she refused to give an inch. What was the point? The town had made up its mind about her a long time ago.

“Bet you earned every bit of that money, too,” he'd said, and she'd looked him squarely in the eye and assured him that he was damned right. She had.

Such brave talk, she thought now. Her mouth trembled. And so useless. Turner had folded like an accordion after a meeting with Clare and, she had no doubt, with Clare's checkbook. Judge Parker had proved no obstacle to the proceedings, either.

And so it was over. She had nothing. No roof over her head, no moneyâand no way to pay for Paul's care.

Panic sent her heart thump-thumping in her chest.

There had to be something she could do. She was Avery's widow, wasn't she? A widow had certain rights. Sure, the Willinghams owned this town, but they didn't rule the world.

Stephanie rose to her feet. She'd met an attorney once, at one of the dinner parties she'd hosted for Avery. The man didn't practice here, he practicedâ¦where? Washington. That was it. What was his name?

Hustle? Fussell?

Russell. That was it. Jack Russell, like the breed of dog. She'd blurted that out when they'd been introduced, and Avery's arm had tightened around her waist and he'd pinched her, where no one could see. She'd tried to stammer out an apology but Russell had bowed over her hand and assured her, in a drawl thicker than hers, that he had no objection to being compared to a handsome, feisty little terrier, especially when the comparison was made by such a beautiful woman.

Russell had smiled at her the entire evening. Not the way other men did. His smile had been kind, and generous, and tinged, she'd thought, with a little sadness.

“If this old ogre ever mistreats you, my dear,” he'd said, kissing her cheek at evening's end, when she and Avery stood at the ornate front door to bid their guests goodnight, “you just give me a call and I'll come to your rescue.”

Avery had laughed in that way that made her skin crawl just to remember it.

“Not to worry,” he'd said. “I know exactly how to treat a gal like this.”

Stephanie blocked out the memory and hurried to the library, where Avery had kept his address book. There was no point in thinking about the past. It was the present that mattered and perhaps, if she were very, very lucky, Jack Russell could help her face that present and survive it.

She leafed through the book, found Russell's name and a Washington, D.C., telephone number.

“No use crying over spilled milk, Steffie,” she whispered.

Then she took a deep breath and reached for the telephone.

* * *

Life had taught David a series of lessons.

Red wine was better than white.

Old Porsches were better than new ones.

Springtime in the nation's capitol was glorious.

BOOK: The Tycoon's Bought Fiancée

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