Rafe glanced at her, grey eyes hardening when he saw the way her small white teeth began to press into the soft cushion of her full bottom lip. ‘Jemma has agreed to stand witness for you,’ he went on firmly. ‘She wants you to ring her; I said you would.’ A wryish twist touched his mouth. ‘She’s worrying in case I’m holding you here against your will, so you’ll have to assure her that I’m not—won’t you?’
A challenge; she was receptive enough to note the challenge in his voice on that last question. ‘I…’
‘Have you got anything suitably white to wear inside those suitcases we brought with us?’ he asked as she opened her mouth to answer the first real question he had asked her in forty-eight hours—only to find herself utterly thrown by the second one.
‘I…yes…n-no…I d-don’t know…’ She blinked, her still shocked mind having difficulty keeping up with him for half of the time—and as for the other half, he just didn’t allow her to keep up. ‘W-why…?’ she managed to ask.
‘To marry me in,’ he sighed, shoving his hands into his trouser pockets as he glared into her blank black eyes. ‘You ripped your wedding dress to shreds, if you remember?’
Yes, she remembered, and shuddered. She’d ripped her lovely dress to shreds in front of Rafe, had stood totally naked in front of Rafe. She had been physically sick in front of Rafe, had let him talk her into letting him take the place of his brother…
She’d let him construct a pack of lies for her family, let him bring her here to his house, which had been turned into a positive fortress within minutes of them arriving. The big iron gates had been locked to any visitors, and the small cluster of reporters who had collected outside them had been completely ignored.
He was, she was coming to learn, the most amazingly determined man when he set his mind on something. From the moment she’d conceded to his crazy suggestion in her bedroom two days ago, he had not given her a single opportunity to withdraw her agreement.
If she opened her eyes, he was there. It didn’t matter what time of the day or night it was, Rafe was always there. Sitting, standing, pacing about the room like a caged animal until she opened her eyes. Then the orders would begin. Get up, sit down. Drink this, eat that. Take a shower, get into bed, go to sleep.
Quite simply he had taken her over, and in doing so demanded her full compliance to his every wish and command. And if he caught her brooding at any time he snapped her out of it with the guttural bark of his voice, almost cruel in his methods of keeping her mind off his brother.
Piers. A kind of anguished desolation washed over her, taking what little colour she had in her face along with it.
‘Shaan!’
The bark hit her eardrums, making her wince, grating along her nerve-ends as she forced her eyes back into focus to find him glaring at her, eyes like silver lasers boring into her, burning out everything else but the power of his presence.
‘White,’ he prompted. ‘I want you to marry me in white. Think. Have you got anything white in your suitcases?’
White. Her mind went white, a complete white-out, as she tried hard to remember what her lovely trousseau consisted of. Then she laughed, a high-pitched, slightly hysterical sound that hardened his face as he stood there glaring down at her.
‘A white silk nightdress and matching neglige´e,’ she said, and nodded, seeing herself as she had the day she’d tried it on in the exclusive West End lingerie shop. Soft and slinky, it had clung to the slender contours of her body, from the narrow bootlace straps which had seemed too fragile to hold up the two triangles of fine silk that had covered her breasts to her ankles.
She remembered the delicious tremor of anticipation she had experienced as she’d stood there looking at herself in the full-length mirror in the shop, seeing herself as Piers would see her—the white for purity, the silk for sensuality, its sheerness offering an enticing glimpse of her woman’s naked body waiting for him beneath. Breasts full and rounded, nipples duskily inviting. The flatness of her stomach and the narrowness of her waist. The seductive cling of the fabric around the swell of her hips and the hollow of her navel. And the velvety dark shadow at the juncture with her thighs which marked the embodiment of her womanhood.
‘I don’t suppose you’ll want me to wear that,’ she concluded, letting out another of those strained little laughs.
His frown blackened. ‘No, I don’t suppose I would,’ he agreed, and abruptly turned his back on her. ‘Ring Jemma,’ he commanded. ‘Get her to pick something suitable out for you to marry me in and bring it with her in the morning. God knows,’ he sighed, ‘neither you nor I dare step outside my blasted gates until this damned thing is over.’
Running a weary hand through his hair, he walked out of the room, leaving her to chew pensively on her bottom lip, because she had suddenly realised that this must be just as big an ordeal for him as it was for her.
Well, almost. He hadn’t lost someone he loved—he was just marrying someone he didn’t.
She rang Jemma as instructed, but reluctantly, because she still wasn’t ready to speak to anyone—Jemma perhaps least of all. Her friend was no fool. She’d been well aware of how blissfully and blindly in love Shaan had been with Piers.
‘What’s going on, Shaan?’ Jemma demanded the moment she knew who it was. ‘For God’s sake, love, what are you trying to do? You can’t replace one brother with the other! It’s a recipe for disaster!’
My life is a disaster, she thought tragically, and closed her eyes against the never far away threat of tears. ‘It’s what I want,’ she stated quietly. ‘It’s what we both want.’
‘But you don’t even like Rafe!’ Jemma cried, sounding angry and bewildered. ‘You even admitted to being a little afraid of him!’
‘I was afraid of the way he made me feel,’ she argued, thinking but it was close to the truth; she had always felt Rafe was a threat to her happiness.
‘Because you were falling in love with him?’
Love—what’s love? she wondered blankly. She was sure she didn’t know any more. ‘Yes,’ she replied.
‘And now you’re going to marry him instead of Piers,’ Jemma concluded.
‘Yes,’ she said again. ‘You should be relieved, not angry,’ she said, then added drily, ‘You always did hold Piers in contempt.’
‘He was devious.’ Jemma defended her opinion. ‘Someone who smiled as much as he did just had to be hiding something. But I never thought for one moment it would be another woman.’
That hurt, and Shaan flinched. ‘Which just goes to show what a lucky escape we all had, then, doesn’t it?’ she mocked rather bitterly, recalling—as no doubt Jemma was recalling—the headline on Mrs Clough’s daily newspaper which had said, DANVERS BROTHERS SWAP BRIDES IN SENSATIONAL LOVE TUSSLE!
What a joke, Shaan thought bitterly. And what a pack of lies for the sake of a catchy headline. Rafe didn’t love her, and Madeleine had never been his bride!
She was now Piers’ bride, though, Shann recalled dully. The article had said so: ‘Piers Danvers married Madeleine Steiner only an hour after he should have been marrying Shaan Saketa’.
Which meant that Piers must have been planning to let her down long before he bothered to tell her he no longer wanted her.
There had been more in the article, but Rafe had happened to walk into the kitchen then, and snatched the newspaper away from her. His black fury at Mrs Clough for bringing it into his house had been enough to turn the other woman white, while Shaan had just sat there shuddering in sick disgust at the depths of Piers’ deceit.
‘Do you think you’ll have time to pick something suitable out for me to wear tomorrow?’ she asked Jemma now, dragging her mind away from the only moment since this had all begun when she had been in real danger of breaking free from this numbing shock she was hiding behind.
