The Flawed Marriage

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MILLS & BOON

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Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

IT was cold and damp. The mist, which had been no more than tiny wisps veiling the highest peaks of the Lakeland mountains on her journey to the children’s home earlier that afternoon, had now descended as far as the road she was walking along, Amber noticed wearily. It was also growing dark; a strange eerie darkness, unlike the city twilight she was more accustomed to. She shivered, drawing her thin suede coat closer around her almost too angular body, her right leg dragging slightly as she tried to increase her walking pace. Her leg. She grimaced to herself as she glanced impotently at the limb she was fast coming to consider the author of all her misfortunes, including this latest unsuccessful attempt to obtain a job. She had been so full of hope when she set out from Birmingham this morning, buoying herself up during the long train ride by reminding herself of the excellence of her qualifications. Not only was she a fully qualified teacher, but she also had over a year’s nursing experience. Her eyes went involuntarily to her leg again. Six months now since the accident; six months! It seemed to Amber that six centuries separated the happy, fulfilled girl of twenty she had been from the bitter, maimed person she was now, and the irony of the whole thing was that it needn’t have happened at all.

She had been on her way to work at the time. Having qualified as a teacher, she had left university just in time to find herself a victim of local government education cuts, and so instead had decided to train as a nurse. Rob had been full of approval. He was on the point of finishing his own medical training—he wanted to go into private practice, though, which meant specialising, a costly business both in terms of money and time, but with Amber working as a nurse they should be able to bring the date of their wedding forward. That was what Amber had been thinking about as she walked to the large hospital on her way to work. She didn’t have to walk very far, living as she did in a nearby student nurses’ home, and her mind had been on Rob and his bombshell of the previous evening—that he intended to go out to Saudi Arabia to work for two years. He had been offered a plum job as assistant to an eminent plastic surgeon working in the Middle East, a chance he simply could not afford to pass up, as he had earnestly explained to Amber. She had been dismayed by his news. They had met at university and she had known that because of Rob’s chosen career it would be several years before they could marry, but she had visualised him specialising at one of the large Birmingham hospitals—not thousands of miles away.

She had noticed the bus stopping ahead of her as an automatic reflex action; the giggling children disgorged on to the pavement; the small yellow-raincoated little, girl stepping out behind the bus; the car speeding towards her. Her reaction had been automatic, and ridiculously unnecessary. The child—streetwise—had managed to avoid the skidding wheels of the car, and it was Amber, who had so recklessly gone to her rescue, who had been tossed like a rag doll to lie inert and unconscious in the road.

She had been lucky, or so they tried to convince her, but Amber didn’t consider a leg which because of its torn and destroyed muscles might never move properly again to be something to feel grateful for, and had said so, even when the surgeon told her gravely that she was lucky to have it, and that there had been talk of amputation. And there were also the scars; horrible, maiming scars, running along the slender length of her thigh and marring the slender perfection of her calf. At first she had refused to accept the truth; she would walk properly again. But it was six months now since the accident and she knew that no amount of willpower was ever going to restore her right leg to the lithe manoeuvrability it had once had. There was a slight chancé, Mr Savage, the consultant, had told her when she demanded to be told the truth; a very risky and highly technical operation only available in America, but it cost many thousands of pounds, and was not guaranteed to be successful, and then there would be the plastic surgery to remove her scars.

Rob had been understanding at first, but then there had been those evenings when he had not visited her; those conversations about the necessity of a successful society doctor having a glamorous, elegant wife. He hadn’t needed to labour the point. Amber had understood, and when she offered to call things off, he had agreed without protest. That night after he had gone had been the first time she had cried. She had never felt more alone in her life. Who did, she have to turn to? Her father had died when she was eight and her mother had remarried while Amber was at university. She liked her stepfather, but they weren’t a close family. Her mother was easily upset and had wept bitterly on the one occasion she had come to visit Amber in hospital. It had been impossible for her to go on working at the hospital; hence the necessity for her journey here today to the Lake District. The moment she had seen the advertisement for a junior housemother at a children’s home, her hopes had started to rise. They had been most enthusiastic over the telephone; right up until the moment they had seen her, in fact.

Like sharp knives she could clearly recall the interviewer’s voice, pitying but firm, as she explained that whoever got the job would need to be agile and tireless—looking after about twenty-five children ranging from thirteen downwards was a very demanding job. And not suitable for a cripple, Amber told herself bitterly.

She shivered suddenly as the mist reached out damp tendrils towards her. Who would guess that it was May? It was cold enough to be the middle of winter. Of course, it was pretty high up here, and if she hadn’t lingered to watch the trout in the mountain stream she wouldn’t have missed her bus, and there would have been no necessity for her to trudge down this seemingly endless road, although she distinctly remembered seeing a sign in the village on the way up announcing that it was merely a mile and a half to Inchmere House, the children’s home.

Gritting her teeth against the nagging pain from her torn muscles, she kept on walking. Pain was something she had grown used to living with. The doctors had prescribed various drugs, but she had refused them. Sometimes she thought the only thing that kept her going was her constant battle not to give in. She had been so full of hope this morning. The job would have provided her with a means of earning her living and a roof over her head, both important considerations, as since leaving the hospital she had been depleting her small savings on the rent of a shabby, chilly room in a Birmingham boarding house, and the necessities of day-to-day living.

She could have turned to her mother, but pride had prevented her; the same pride which had forced her to smile and look pleased when her mother announced her stepfather’s plans for retirement in Spain. In another two weeks they would be gone, and then she would be completely on her own.

Weak tears of self-pity welled in her eyes and she dashed them away angrily. It was pointless thinking about what was past; she could never have lived with her parents anyway, even if they had offered her a home. But she had to get a job; some means of earning money—any means of earning money!

Like an Eldorado the surgeon’s words lured her on; the memory of his advice that there was an operation which could restore her leg to full strength, the frail hope she had clung to in the weeks after Rob’s defection; weeks when she battled daily with a swamping sense of rejection and bitterness, telling herself that once restored to her old self she would show Rob what he had lost by deserting her when she needed him most! Her hands curled into her palms, bitterness etched in the magnificent tawny eyes which had given rise to her unusual name. Tiger eyes, Rob had lovingly called them, going on to whisper passionately that he loved them just as he loved everything about her. But no one would whisper words of love to her now! She shuddered suddenly with cold, the sleek length of her dark gold hair plastered to her neck by the damp air, her too thin body telling its own story of illness and neglect.

Rob. She closed her eyes momentarily, overwhelmed by weakness. How she longed for him at this moment—the warmth of his arms; the sweet tenderness of his kisses—a tenderness which had promised to ripen into passion, but time and circumstances had always been against them. Amber refused to have her first experience of total possession spoiled by being rushed or being conducted unromantically. Rob had laughed at her, but he hadn’t argued. They had been planning to go away together for a week’s holiday before the Saudi business came up, and she had bought, in anticipation of the holiday, brief wisps of underwear, and a soft, feminine nightdress that had been far too expensive, but irresistible.

Lost in the past, she didn’t hear the warning sound heralding the approach of a car, and her first intimation of its intrusion was the loud blaring of its horn.

Time rolled back and she was held fast, transfixed in the beam of powerful fog lights, frozen and unable to move, her face a pale, fearful oval caught in the powerful lights for a brief second before the car swerved across the road and up the banking, and the engine was suddenly cut.

The sudden cessation of sound broke through her wall of terror, and moving awkwardly, Amber stumbled to the side of the road. Behind her she heard a car door open, and brisk hard footsteps. Impelled by a fierce urgency to escape, she pressed on, almost running, her cry of pain as hard fingers grasped her shoulder swallowed up by the curling mist.

‘What the hell’s the matter with you? Why didn’t you move? Got a death wish, have you?’

The harsh male voice filled her senses, rasping against over-sensitised nerves. Her assailant was practically shaking her, her damp hair falling against her face, concealing it from him. With a sudden impatient movement he grasped it, pushing it away and forcing her face up.

‘My God!’ he breathed sardonically when he saw her too finely drawn features and the cheekbones made prominent by lack of nourishing food. ‘What a waif and stray it is! What were you trying to do? Seek oblivion under my car wheels?”

‘And if I was?’ Amber flared at him, suddenly too angry to bother denying his mocking comment.

‘Then you’re a fool,’ came the crisp retort. ‘Life is for living, little miss waif and stray, not for throwing away. That’s something you learn early up here amongst the mountains. Not local, are you?’ he asked, giving her unsuitable coat and city shoes a dry and cursory glance. ‘What are you doing up here? Hired one of the holiday cottages and had a tiff with the boy-friend?’

Amber’s chin tilted defiantly, and she longed for the mist to lift and the dark landscape to be illuminated so that she could let this insufferable stranger see the contempt in her eyes.

‘Nothing so juvenile. No man is worth killing oneself for.’

‘So what are you doing up here? Taking a quiet stroll?’

The sarcastic retort stung.

‘If you must know, I was looking for a job—at the children’s home.’

‘And because you didn’t get it you decided to fling yourself under my wheels. Bit drastic, wasn’t it?’

It was sheer exasperation that made her retort crossly, ‘Oh, don’t be so ridiculous! I wasn’t throwing myself under your wheels at all. If you must know I…’ She stopped abruptly, remembering how she had just stood frozen in the beam of his lights, and changed her tack, to say accusingly, ‘You shouldn’t have been driving so fast. You could have caused an accident. Drivers never think of pedestrians.’ A trace of bitterness crept unknowingly into her voice. ‘They don’t care what risks they take with other people’s lives, and when they do, they get away scot free…’

‘What are you implying? That I owe you compensation? You’ve been watching too much American television, lady, and you’ve got it wrong. The car has to actually touch you before you can claim.’

‘And even then you don’t always get anything,’ Amber said coolly, remembering her own inability to claim compensation from the driver who had injured her, despite the fact that he had been speeding, because he had not been properly insured.

She remembered that she was not wearing a watch, and that the last train for her connection left the village at eight-thirty. She had no idea what time it was now. She had left the home at seven and seemed to have been walking for hours.

‘Could you tell me the time, please?’ she asked quickly. ‘I have a train to catch.’

She saw the glint of gold on a lean male wrist clad in a dark jacket which seemed to be of a leather fabric, although because of his dark clothes, Amber could make out very little of her companion’s appearance apart from the fact that he was tall, with dark hair.

‘Just gone eight,’ he told her laconically.

Eight! She tried to fight down a sense of panic. She only had a few pounds in her purse. If she missed her connection she would have to wait until morning, which meant finding somewhere to stay.

‘Thank you. I must go…’ Without waiting to see his reaction she started to hurry down the road, for once not concerned with what the man watching her might think of her ungainly gait.

She heard the car door slam seconds after she had left him, and knew from the brevity of time which had elapsed that he had not spent much time watching her, and an irrational feeling of resentment filled her. He might at least have offered to run her into the village, even if it was in the opposite direction to that he was taking.

But why should he? Perhaps if she had been the girl she used to be he might have found her attractive enough to have offered her a lift—but then the girl she had been would not have needed one.

She was so intent on hurrying, so deep in her thoughts, that she didn’t hear the soft purr of the car engine untl it drew level with her, and the now familiar hard voice drawled, ‘Get in. I’ll take you to the station.’

The passenger door was thrust open, the interior light coming on to reveal the opulent luxury of cream hide seats and a thick matching carpet. The light which illuminated the car interior also revealed the features of its owner, and Amber caught her breath in mingled awe and uncertainty.

Handsome wasn’t the word it was possible to use in connection with this man, she admitted as she limped awkwardly towards the open door. Striking, sensually compelling; intensely male; these were the words with which to describe the hooded grey eyes which swept her with predatory intentness, assessing and dismissing her feminine appeal, the aquiline profile turned autocratically towards her.

‘You’re limping.’ The words held none of the pity she had grown accustomed to and withdrawn from in the long dark days since her accident, and just as she registered that fact he leaned across the passenger seat, long fingers grasping her wrist as she was pulled effortlessly into the warm interior of the car, and the door firmly closed behind her, rather as though she were an irritating child unable to fend for herself.

‘How did it happen?’

He was watching her intently, the cool grey gaze sending frissons of awareness flickering her body. The old Amber would have described him as a very male and attractive man, but the new embittered Amber saw only the hard purpose in the depths of the grey eyes fixed upon her, white face, and knew a shuddering desire to escape from the too intimate environs of the car and the disturbing proximity of its owner. Only the knowledge that without his offer of a lift she could well miss her train prevented her from quitting the car immediately. As always when her limp was mentioned she stiffened involuntarily, her face closing up, the huge golden eyes shadowed and shuttered.

‘An accident,’ she told him tonelessly. ‘Do you live locally?’

‘Relatively speaking. What sort of accident?’ he asked smoothly, refusing to allow her to change the subject.

‘I was hit by a car—driven too fast.’

‘Which makes your carelessness of a few moments ago all the more foolhardy.’

‘Only if you happen to be a speed-crazed maniac,’ Amber snapped back.

The dark eyebrows rose, reinforcing the almost demonic features of the man opposite her, his mouth curling downwards sardonically as he scrutinised her.

‘Speed-crazed? Oh, I hardly think so,’ he offered. ‘Forty isn’t considered excessive on these roads—not when one knows them.’

Which meant that he must live locally, Amber reflected, even though he hadn’t answered her earlier question.

‘Even in thick fog?’ she demanded, refusing to cede victory.

‘A little mist,’ her companion scoffed, deftly navigating a series of tortuous hairpin bends. ‘You said you were up here for an interview for a job. Why? You aren’t a local.’

‘I wasn’t aware that was another prerequisite,’ Amber began sarcastically, a little dismayed by the alert, ‘Another? Why, what was the other?’ that he fired at her.

Exhaustion and depression forced down her guard, allowing a little of the bitterness she normally kept bottled up inside her to spill over her iron control.

‘Can’t you guess? I should have thought a man of your perception would have realised immediately. As you so sapiently mentioned earlier, I limp.’

‘And because of that you were turned down for the job?’

Although all his concentration was on the road and the powerful car, Amber felt his sideways glance, probing the thin skin barely covering her emotional scars.

‘Although my qualifications were good, as a junior housemistress they wanted something more mobile.’

‘Junior housemistress? That would have been a living-in position, surely, and a time-consuming one.’ She felt him looking at her ringless fingers and guessed the mental assessment he was making. Single, and likely to remain so through circumstances rather than choice: an object of pity and derision.

‘So what will you do now?’

Cold and shaken by her experience both at the interview and afterwards, Amber made an attempt to shrug unconcernedly and failed pitifully.

‘I don’t know. God knows I wish I did,’ she muttered under her breath, not intending the words to be overheard, but his hearing was obviously as acute as a predatory hunter’s, because his head swivelled towards her, and the car slid to a smooth halt in a small layby, across the bridge from the village. Thinking that he had taken her as far as he meant to, Amber reached for the door handle, but he stopped her, reaching across her body to grasp her hand. Amber shrank from him instinctively. She had learned in hospital that although she might be an object of medical interest and curiosity to the young doctors clustering daily around her bed, as a desirable and attractive woman she no longer existed; pity rather than admiration was what she read in their eyes; a pity that she had seen time and time again in the months that had followed. From taking the vibrant beauty which had been a facet of her personality before the accident for granted, she had retreated into a world where her beauty had been dimmed by pain and loss of self-confidence. If Rob could no longer find her attractive how could any man? Unwittingly over the weeks she had adopted the mien and shrinking manners of a girl who knows herself unattractive to men, and so she shrank now; not from any fear that her companion might touch her but from his assumption that she might want him to do so and the humiliation of rejection which must surely follow.

‘What’s the matter?’

There was a fine thread of amusement woven into the conventional words, a smile deepening the attractive grooves either side of a mouth which looked as though it didn’t smile often enough. ‘Having second thoughts about the wisdom of accepting a lift? Too late, fair maiden,’ he mocked. ‘I have you within my toils now, and there’s no one to stop me having my wicked way with you. Tell me about your life before this accident,’ he demanded with an abrupt change of front.

‘What on earth for? Look, I must go, otherwise I’ll miss my train.’ Amber reached again for the door handle, only to find the door immovable beneath her urgent fingers.

‘I’ve locked it.’ He motioned towards the highly technical-looking dashboard. ‘And I won’t unlock it until you’ve answered my questions.’

‘But why? What possible interest could you have in me?’

’The very natural one of a prospective employer,’ came the totally unexpected reply. ‘I need someone to look after my son.’

‘How old is he?’ Ridiculously it was the first question which came into her mind.

‘Six.’

‘But why should you want to employ me? Before this evening we hadn’t even met. I don’t even know your name…’

‘That’s easily remedied. I’m Joel Sinclair. I live about eight miles away from here.’

‘And you need someone to look after your son. Surely a fully trained nanny would be better? And your wife…’

He was shaking his head.

‘I’ve made up my mind that you’ll be ideal. What’s your name?’

Hesitantly, hardly daring to believe that the day might after all have have some benefit for her, Amber told him.

‘Amber? Because of your eyes, of course.’

She blinked at him, surprised that he had noticed. Rob had been going out with her for over a month before he had made the connection.

‘Mr Sinclair, are you sure? About this job, I mean?’ she asked formally. ‘You aren’t just…’ she fumbled for the right words, hating the thought that he might have offered her the job on impulse because of some misguided feeling of pity.

‘Sorry for you?’ His face hardened. ‘When you get to know me better you’ll learn that there isn’t room in my life for such unnecessary emotions.’

‘Well, hadn’t I better meet your son before we settle anything? I mean, he might not…’ She was glancing down at her leg, and she saw that he too was looking at the frail limb.

‘Oh, he’ll like you all right,’ came the response. ‘So, do I take it you’re prepared to accept the job?’

A tiny frown touched Amber’s forehead. He seemed to be treating the whole affair far too lightly. After all, what did he know about her, apart from what she had told him? What did she know about him, come to that? She moistened her lips, darting a quick glance up at him, dismayed to find him watching her with sardonic amusement.

‘It all seems so… so unconventional. I mean, you’ve just met me and you offer me the job of taking care of your son without asking for references, without…’

‘I know all I want to know,’ he told her, cutting her short, ‘In fact, Amber Douglas, you’re something in the nature of a gift from the gods.’ His laughter shocked and hurt her, although she tried to conceal it. Rob had thought her a gift from the gods once, but not in the same terms as Joel Sinclair, who only saw in her twisted leg a flaw which would probably make her pathetically grateful for his offer of a job.