A Whirlwind Marriage

Marianne continued. “I’m your wife.”

“Dead right you’re my wife,” Zeke grated slowly. “So why don’t you start acting like it?”

“You arrogant—”

“You’re my wife, I’m your husband, so what’s got into you all of a sudden?”

Before she could answer, he had taken her mouth in a kiss that immediately ignited a response deep in the core of her. He only had to touch her and she melted for him. But she had to resist him, she had to make him understand….

HELEN BROOKS lives in Northamptonshire, England, and is married with three children. As she is a committed Christian, busy housewife and mother, her spare time is at a premium, but her hobbies include reading, swimming, gardening and walking her two energetic, inquisitive and very endearing young dogs. Her long-cherished aspiration to write became a reality when she put pen to paper on reaching the age of forty, and sent the result off to Harlequin Mills & Boon.

Look out for The Irresistible Tycoon

by Helen Brooks (#2256)

A Whirlwind Marriage

Helen Brooks

MILLS & BOON

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Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER ONE

ZEKE BUCHANAN glanced at his wife as he rose from the breakfast table, but although Marianne was aware of his gaze she didn’t raise her head from her contemplation of the contents of her coffee cup, not even when he stopped just behind her and rested his hands on her slender shoulders as he said, ‘You haven’t forgotten the Mortons are coming at seven?’

No, she hadn’t forgotten the Mortons. She steeled herself to show no reaction, either in her body or her voice, when she replied coolly, ‘No, of course not. Everything’s in order.’

‘Good.’ There was a moment’s hesitation, and then he bent and placed a swift kiss on the top of her blond head. ‘I probably won’t be home much before seven myself. I’m flying up to Stoke this morning to look at an old factory site I’m interested in, but I should be back by mid-afternoon if you need me.’

If I need you? Of course I need you, but that’s a concept that’s alien to you, isn’t it? She didn’t trust the bitterness not to show if she spoke, so she merely nodded without turning her head to look at him.

‘Goodbye, Marianne.’

His voice was cold now, and she replied in like vein when she said, ‘Goodbye, Zeke.’

And then the breakfast room door had shut behind him and she was alone. She sat absolutely still for a full minute, willing herself not to give way to the tears that were always threatening these days, and then she rose very slowly and walked across to the huge, south-facing window which took up most of one wall.

The vista beyond the glass was a breathtaking aerial view of half of London, or so it seemed. The penthouse, at the top of a high-rise block of luxury flats, had been tailormade for Zeke long before he had met her, more than two years ago. It was the last word in opulent living, from the massive drawing room regally decorated in blue and gold to the sumptuous master bedroom and its decadent en suite bathroom, which was black and silver and mirrored from floor to ceiling. And Marianne hated it. She loathed it.

She knew one of Zeke’s old girlfriends—a very successful and glamorous redhead by the exotic name of Liliana de Giraud, who was the interior designer to the rich and famous—had designed the penthouse, and once she had discovered that some twelve months ago her dislike of the brazen bachelor pad had turned to revulsion.

She had lost count of how many times she had asked Zeke to come with her to look at different properties—some apartments, some houses—but always he had fobbed her off with ‘tomorrow’. But tomorrow had never come.

She relaxed against the window for a moment, her forehead pressed against the cold glass, and then she straightened abruptly, drawing her shoulders back military-style and lifting her small chin determinedly.

None of that! she told herself silently. You’re not going to give in to the urge to run and hide. They were going through a bad patch, but that didn’t mean she had to fold under the pressure. She would come through this; she would. She had coped with the shock of her mother’s sudden death four years ago—she would cope with this. But, oh… She bit her lip hard. What she would give to talk to her mother now, just to be able to tell someone all of it. She felt she would go mad sometimes, cut off from the world in this ivory tower Zeke had created.

And then, as though in answer to the silent desperate plea, the telephone rang. Marianne let it ring until the answer-machine cut in. The only people who rang these days were Zeke, one or other of their social circle, or business acquaintances, and she didn’t feel like talking to any of those.

‘Hi, Marianne. Long time no talkie! This is Pat—Patricia—in case you haven’t guessed, and as I’m up in town for a day or two I thought I’d—’

Pat’s voice was cut off as Marianne lifted the receiver and said breathlessly, ‘Pat? Oh, Pat. It’s so lovely to hear your voice.’

‘Is it? You only had to pick up the phone any day to hear it, Annie,’ Pat said with a chuckle to soften the admonishment.

Marianne blinked and then found herself smiling. The same old straightforward Pat. It was her friend’s habit of plain speaking that had got under Zeke’s skin even before he had met Pat, and the two had never hit it off. Pat was right, though; she should have contacted her before this, Marianne told herself silently. But with all that was happening between Zeke and herself she had felt—ridiculously, perhaps—that it would be a betrayal of her husband. She didn’t feel like that any more. Not since last night.

‘You’re in town?’ Marianne said now. ‘Can we meet up for lunch or something?’

‘Great. Do you want me to come round to the apartment?’ Pat asked briskly.

Marianne glanced round the suffocatingly exquisite interior and shut her eyes tightly for a second before she said, ‘No, we’ll eat out. My treat. There’s a great little French place a few blocks away: Rochelle’s, in St Martin’s Street. I’ll meet you there at twelve if that’s okay?’

‘Terrific. See you then. And, Annie—?’

‘Yes?’ she asked carefully.

‘Are you all right?’

Marianne took a deep breath and said quietly, ‘No, no I’m not all right, Pat.’

‘Didn’t think you were. Twelve, then.’ And in characteristic fashion the phone went dead.

Oh, Pat. Marianne replaced the receiver and stood staring at the telephone for some moments as a great flood of relief and expectation swept through her. She hadn’t realised just how much she needed Pat’s down-to-earth common sense and no-frills approach to life until this very second, but now she couldn’t wait to see her.

She glanced at the small gold wristwatch Zeke had given her for her twenty-first birthday, a few months after she had married him. Eight o’clock. Four hours to go. But suddenly the day which had stretched endlessly in front of her just minutes before had been transformed.

A long, hot soak in the bath. Marianne nodded to the thought, and, leaving the breakfast table just as it was, walked through to one of the two guest bedrooms which both had their own en suites.

She rarely used the master bedroom’s en suite—even though it boasted an Olympian Jacuzzi bath—unless Zeke was around, and then she only did it to avoid yet another row. She couldn’t quite explain it, but the flamboyant, lavish black-and-silver bathroom always seemed to emphasise everything that was wrong in their marriage and just how far they had grown apart in two years.

She was still in her silk nightie and négligé, and now she discarded the flimsy wisps of material on the floor as she ran herself a bath liberally doused with expensive oils.

Once in the warm, silky water she lay back with a soft sigh, and for the first time in months allowed her mind to drift back to how it had been when she had first told Pat about Zeke. In spite of the direness of her present situation a small smile played round her mouth as she recalled Pat’s words.

‘And all this has happened in the eight weeks I’ve been in Canada?’ Pat’s voice had been distinctly miffed. ‘But nothing ever happens in Bridgeton, Annie.’

‘What can I say?’ She’d been smiling as she’d taken in her friend’s woebegone face. ‘He came, he saw, he conquered. Zeke’s like that.’

‘And he’s rich and good-looking?’ It had been almost a wail. ‘Tell me he’s got a brother, please.’

‘Oh, Pat.’ She had been openly laughing, but as she’d stared into the pretty face of her best friend—the girl she’d grown up with and who lived just a few hundred yards away—she’d admitted to a secret feeling of amazement herself.

That Zeke Buchanan, millionaire property developer and entrepreneur extraordinaire, should have fallen in love with her was something fairy tales were made of. And it had all happened so quickly.

She’d glanced down at the enormous cluster of diamonds on the third finger of her left hand and felt the same giddy rush of excitement as when Zeke had placed it there seven days before.

A whirlwind romance. Everyone, everyone was talking about it—the whole village had been agog that a girl from their little backwater should have caught a big fish from the capital. But she had. He loved her and she loved him, more than life itself.

She’d raised misty eyes to Pat’s fascinated face as her friend had said, ‘I want to hear every little morsel, all right? From the first time you laid eyes on him until he put that great whopper of a ring on your finger. Everything, mind! There was little old me thinking I was having a good time in Canada when instead it was all happening at home! I can’t believe it. I really can’t believe it. That’ll teach me to go camping in the mountains for weeks on end—the most I saw was a moose and the rear end of a bear.’

‘But you did have a good time?’

‘I thought I had.’ Pat’s face had been comical. ‘But compared to you… So, come on, spill the beans.’

‘There isn’t really much to tell.’ They had been standing on the doorstep of her father’s rambling old house, and she had drawn Pat into the hall before leading the way through to the large country kitchen at the back of the aged property. There she had said, ‘Zeke came to have a look at that land on the outskirts of the village, Farnon’s Farm, that’s been designated for housing and a new school and so on. He was driving through the main street—in his Ferrari,’ she’d added as she turned round from putting the kettle on and dimpled at Pat, who’d given an envious groan, ‘when he saw me leaving the village shop.’

‘And?’

Marianne had turned back to fix the coffee tray and Pat had grabbed hold of her arms as she’d said, ‘Leave the flipping coffee, for goodness’ sake, Annie, and tell me!’ determinedly pushing her down in one of the straight-backed chairs placed neatly round the huge old kitchen table.

‘And he stopped and introduced himself and we chatted for a while, and then he asked me out to dinner that night,’ Marianne had said matter-of-factly, clasping her hands together in her lap. ‘And then we just started seeing each other.’

And she had been transported into another realm, another dimension, a place where even the most ordinary, mundane aspects of living took on a thrilling quality because Zeke loved her.

‘You jammy, jammy thing.’ Pat had exhaled very slowly. ‘But I have to say if anyone deserves a decent break it’s you, Annie. There’s not many girls with your intelligence and looks that would have given up the chance of university and spreading their wings to keep house for their father, not to mention taking on the job as general dogsbody at the surgery.’

‘It’s not like that. I enjoy what I do,’ Marianne had responded quickly as she’d stood up to make the coffee.

‘Hmph!’ The exclamation had said it all.

The two girls had been bosom friends from when they could toddle, and the fact that they were both only children and their birthdays were just days apart had meant they had tackled all the important childhood milestones together.

Nursery school, big school, youth club—the two of them had braved each one hand in hand, and Pat, more than anyone else in the world, knew how hard it had been when Marianne’s beloved mother had died horribly suddenly of a brain haemorrhage just as Marianne had been set to leave for university two years before.

Josh Kirby, Marianne’s father, had been devastated, and she had had to bear the added weight of seeing her normally cool and composed doctor father go to pieces on top of her own consuming grief.

Marianne’s mother had been receptionist, secretary and—as Pat had pointed out—general dogsbody in Josh’s small but busy surgery, which was situated in the front of their house, and Marianne had known what she had to do within days of her mother’s passing.

She had put all thoughts of university on hold and made things as normal and easy as she could for her grief-stricken father, stepping quietly and efficiently into her mother’s shoes both domestically and in the surgery. And she had had her reward over the next twenty-four months as she’d watched her father’s pain and anguish diminish and he’d slowly come to terms with his loss.

Marianne hadn’t regretted her decision to stay, not for a minute—a second—but it had been hard sometimes when she’d heard Pat and other members of their set talking about all they’d done and seen when they came home for the holidays, whilst she’d been stuck in Bridgeton where the most exciting thing that happened was Ned Riley getting drunk on a Friday night and dancing his way home.

But then Zeke had happened. Zeke Buchanan, with his jet-black hair and smoky grey eyes that had had the power to melt her with just one glance.

Marianne shivered suddenly, reaching forward and turning on the hot tap although the water wasn’t really cool—the chill came from within rather than from without. Once the water was steaming, and as hot as she could stand it, she relaxed again, and almost immediately she was back in Bridgeton in that long hot summer of two years before.

‘I hope he knows how lucky he is, your Zeke.’ Pat had smiled at her and she’d smiled back. ‘You’re one in a million, and I don’t just mean your looks either. You’re nice inside, Annie, where it really counts.’

‘You couldn’t be just a tiny bit prejudiced, could you?’

She remembered she’d laughed softly before she’d said, passing Pat a mug of steaming coffee, ‘And you will be my bridesmaid?’

‘Just try and stop me.’ Pat had wrinkled her small snub nose appreciatively as she’d drawn in the heady aroma of rich coffee beans. ‘Have you set a date yet?’

She’d taken a deep breath. She hadn’t been sure of how Pat would react to the news. ‘The second Saturday in October.’

‘Next year, you mean.’

‘This year.’

‘This year?’ Pat had jerked up straighter, shooting coffee all over her white top, chosen specifically to show off her deep Canadian tan. ‘But that’s only—’

‘Six weeks away. Yes, I know.’ She had forced a smile. Everyone, everyone had behaved as though she was planning to do something immoral rather than marry the man she loved. ‘Zeke doesn’t want to wait and neither do I. He can afford to pay to have everything brought swiftly together. He’s booked the reception at this wonderful London hotel, and the cars and the flowers and everything. And the church in the village is free, so…’

‘But your dress. My dress?’

‘That’s no problem. Zeke’s on first-name terms with several designers, and one of them—’ she’d mentioned a name that had brought Pat’s green eyes opening wider ‘—has just finished a special collection for a show in Paris all to do with weddings. One of the dresses—oh, Pat, you ought to see it—is just gorgeous, and he’s agreed to do your dress, too. So you see, everything is sorted.’

Pat’s lips had still been agape and she’d suddenly become aware of it, shutting her mouth with a little snap as she’d leant back in her seat with her eyes glued on Marianne’s face. ‘And you are sure, you’re absolutely sure this is what you want?’ she’d asked slowly.

‘Absolutely.’

‘I hate to be the original wet blanket, but have you considered that little phrase, “Marry in haste, repent at leisure”?’ Pat had asked almost apologetically.

‘No need.’ Her voice had been firm. ‘I’ve never been more sure about anything in my life than I am about marrying Zeke.’

Marianne sat up straight suddenly, swishing the water into a foamy wave that sloshed over the side of the bath onto the ankle-deep carpeting below. And she had been sure, one hundred per cent sure, that she and Zeke were going to be blissfully content and happy ever after, she told herself, wrapping a massive fluffy bath sheet round her sarong-style and padding through to the master bedroom.

Once seated at her dressing table, she glanced at the row of costly perfume bottles and the set of mother-of-pearl jewellery boxes dripping with expensive items of jewellery without really seeing them, her mind winging back in time again.

She had repeated that conversation with Pat to Zeke word for word when he’d arrived to take her out to dinner later the same day.

Since the first afternoon they had met Zeke had insisted on driving down from London to her home village on the outskirts of Tunbridge Wells every evening, claiming that the thirty-plus miles from his offices in Lewisham barely gave the Ferrari time for a workout.

And she hadn’t tried to dissuade him too hard, she admitted to herself now, in spite of worrying about him dashing backwards and forwards each day. She had needed to see him every evening, to feel his strong arms about her, his lips on hers. He had been like a drug, a sensual, handsome, powerful and wildly intoxicating drug. He still was. Although now she understood that the very thing you craved above all else could carry a crushing price with it.

She should have known, from his reaction when she had innocently prattled on about Pat, that a serpent was rearing its head in her Garden of Eden.

‘So, our bridesmaid tried to warn you off me?’ Zeke had asked with dry amusement, his smoky grey eyes creasing at the edges as he’d smiled at her briefly before concentrating on the country road along which they’d been travelling. ‘I’ll have to have a word with her some time.’

There had been something, the slightest inflexion in his deep voice, that had suggested he wasn’t quite so amused by Pat’s cautionary advice as he’d seemed to be, and Marianne had glanced at the hard, handsome profile for a moment before she’d said, ‘She didn’t mean anything by it, Zeke. Pat’s just a little protective of me, I guess, since Mum died.’

‘She doesn’t need to be,’ he had answered lightly, but still with the slight edge to his voice. ‘I’m all the protection you need.’

She didn’t need any protection—she was more than capable of taking care of herself!

The words had hovered on her lips but she’d bitten them back—probably a grave mistake in hindsight, she thought now—but she’d been unwilling to spoil the lovely summer evening by prolonging what had suddenly become an awkward conversation. Their first awkward conversation.

‘Pat will see how it is the moment she meets you,’ she had said instead, as she listened to the voice of love telling her he had raced down from London after a hectic, long day—he was always at his office by seven in the morning—and she couldn’t expect him not to be a little tetchy now and again. And perhaps she’d been unwise to repeat the conversation with Pat. But she’d thought he’d laugh at the ridiculous notion that their love could waver, like she had. Still, men viewed these things differently, especially strong, decisive, capable men like Zeke.

She’d known he was as resilient and tough as they came; he’d had to be with the background he had come from. Abandoned by his single parent mother when he was just a few months old, he had spent most of his childhood in and out of foster homes, with two attempts at adoption failing. But he’d had a brilliant mind and an even more formidable will, and at the age of eighteen—armed with four grade A A-levels—he had decided to put himself through university, studying every day and working every night and weekend to pay his way.

Three years later he had emerged into the world again with a first-class degree, and after two years of working all hours of the day and night he had earnt himself enough capital to start his own business.

That had been the start of a spectacularly swift climb to wealth and power which had made him—at the age of thirty-five—one of the richest men in his field.

Wise investments, shrewd business deals, ruthless takeovers and a reputation that he wasn’t someone to mess with had assured him of a place at the very top of the tree, and if she hadn’t seen the real Zeke—the tender, ardent lover and fascinating intellectual—he would have scared her to death.

But all she’d known at their first meeting, in the village street on a sunny July afternoon full of the scents of summer, was that the most amazing, magnetic man she had ever met wanted to take her out to dinner. And, at direct variance with her shy, reserved, gentle nature, she had answered eagerly in the affirmative. And so it had begun.

The sudden jarring call of the telephone cut in on her thoughts, and more out of habit than anything she rose and padded through to the breakfast room, where the answer-machine was situated.

‘Marianne?’ It was Zeke’s voice, impatient and slightly irritated. ‘Pick up the phone.’

Her hand was actually halfway to the receiver when she stopped herself. Why did she always do what he said? she asked herself as her stomach lurched and trembled. She was a full-grown woman with a mind of her own. She didn’t have to pick up the phone if she didn’t want to.

‘Marianne?’ The deep dark voice was definitely terse now, and she pictured him in her mind’s eye, frowning at the inoffensive plastic that had dared to thwart him. ‘Hell, I haven’t got time for this. Are you in the bath or something? Look, I just wanted to check you’ve remembered to order that pâté Gerald Morton likes so much, the one from Harrods. I was going to remind you last night, but with all that happened—’ He stopped abruptly. ‘Anyway, get them to send some round if you haven’t done so already.’

She waited for a word of goodbye, something, anything, but there was just the sound of the receiver being replaced.

‘Damn Gerald Morton’s pâté.’ It was soft at first, and then she said it louder, her voice shaking, ‘Damn the rotten pâté!’ Their marriage was falling apart and he was worrying about a dinner party!

Purposefully now, she walked through to the beautiful drawing room to stand in front of the ornate fireplace above which hung their huge wedding portrait.

She ignored the young, glowing-faced girl on Zeke’s arm and stared instead at the tall dark figure of her husband, at the midnight-black hair cut severely short, which just emphasised his rugged appeal tenfold when added to the harsh, handsome face, the jawline square and uncompromising.