Bedroom Bargains of Revenge: Bought for Revenge, Bedded for Pleasure / Bedded and Wedded for Revenge / The Italian Boss's Mistress of Revenge
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“Yes. He did.” Sally hitched herself onto the stool the housekeeper had vacated, trying to look casually relaxed.
“But he didn’t stay,” Jeanette pressed.
“No. He had to get back to Sydney. He was just calling to say he’ll probably be here next weekend.”
“I’ll let everyone know.” She fetched the breakfast items from the refrigerator while the frying pan was heating up and nodded to the coffee machine. “Pour yourself a cup. It’s freshly made, ready for you.”
“You spoil me, Jeannette.” Sally tossed her a smile as she moved to help herself to coffee.
“You’ve always been a good girl,” Jeannette said approvingly, then a pause before the probing comment, “Tim says Mr. Maguire is very taken with you.”
Her heart lifted at hearing the observation, but if Jack believed he had been taken by her … she savagely wished this pregnancy issue had never come up.
“I like him, too. Very much,” she answered.
It drew a look of anxious concern. “Do you think it will be all right, Sally? I mean … it’s sort of complicated with the property and all.”
It was a sobering point of view, and a valid one. What would happen if the relationship between her and Jack fell apart, if his interest in her was satisfied faster than Sally cared to think about? Like right now!
“I don’t know, Jeanette,” she answered, trying to quell a sudden rush of panic at the thought of being abandoned because she’d wanted him to love her. “Whatever happens between us, I don’t believe for a minute Jack would break the contract we’ve signed, so we can count on being here for the full year.” With him, or without him.
“Yes. There’s that. And who knows?” She threw Sally a hopeful smile. “Maybe it will work out very happily.”
That was well and truly a pipedream at the moment, but Sally couldn’t bring herself to throw a wet blanket over it. She was head-over-heels in love with the man. Even though he’d told her straight out that love and marriage was not on his agenda, people could and did change their minds. Last night, the deep connection she had felt with him had consumed any concern she might have had over doing something wrong. If he had felt it, too.
“Where did you have dinner?” Jeannette asked.
Relating that experience was easier than answering questions about Jack—questions she didn’t know the answers for anyway. The dinner at Kirkton Park and the showjumping filled the rest of the conversation over breakfast.
Then Jane rang, wanting to know if she’d scored for the World Cup, and she relived the excitement of her success for her sister. It kept playing through her mind whether or not to tell Jane everything that was happening. They’d never kept secrets from each other. Yet she didn’t want to hear a whole lot of worrywart stuff, which the confiding of her feelings for Jack Maguire would inevitably draw because of their mother’s poisonous view of the situation.
It was Jane who finally brought him up. “Do you know when to expect another visit from Jack?”
“He called this morning to say he’d probably come next weekend,” she answered, trying to sound matter-of-fact and feeling awkward about not sharing.
It was too new, she argued to herself. And it might have already ended for Jack. If he did come next weekend, and he left her still feeling like this about him, she would tell her sister then and deal with the gush of concern.
“Is it okay if I come to visit, too?” Jane asked. “I’d like to meet him on home ground.”
Sally’s chest instantly tightened. She didn’t want Jane watching over her with Jack. It would be inhibiting. Besides, there was Jack’s embargo on Jane’s visits, as well.
“You can be with me as often as you like, but he doesn’t want you here when he is, Jane,” she stated flatly. “He said so from the start. Maybe he’ll soften on that point as time goes on, but I think it’s too soon to try changing the conditions he laid down.”
A short, tense silence.
Sally felt miserably guilty for shutting Jane out, yet she didn’t want family issues intruding on what was a very private and personal new experience for her.
“Does he think I sided with Mum at the solicitor’s office?”
“I don’t know,” she answered quickly, too uncomfortable with the situation to discuss it. “I’ll talk to him about it when the right opportunity arises. Okay?”
“I don’t want to make trouble for you,” came the typically anxious reply.
Sally sighed. “You won’t, Jane. You never do. Just be happy doing your nursing course. I’ll take care of everything at this end.”
The assurance was enough to settle the problem. Temporarily. Sally knew she’d have to deal with it eventually, but having time alone with Jack was a far more pressing need.
The week passed in a flurry of activity, each day raising the hope that everything was still all right between them because there’d been no cancellation of the changes to the master suite.
On Monday the new carpet was laid. It was a deep jade green—deeper than the shades of green on the cupboard doors in the dressing-room—and so plush it felt like velvet underfoot.
The bedroom furniture arrived on Tuesday. The style was French Provincial, mostly ivory with decorative scrolls picked out in gold—a king-size bed, two bedside tables, a very elegant coffee table accompanied by two armchairs upholstered in a diamond pattern of dark jade, a much paler green and ivory in silk brocade with gold braiding around the edges.
Wednesday brought a plasma television, which was installed on the wall to the right of the door leading to the ensuite rooms, taking the place where her mother’s dressing table had previously stood. Jack would have no use for a dressing-table, Sally thought, and the television suggested that he planned to visit frequently.
The rest of the furnishings came on Thursday: beautiful gold and ivory table lamps; bedlinen in dark-jade-green Egyptian cotton; a glorious bedspread in the same silk brocade used on the armchairs; a pile of rich cushions to decorate the bed. Dressing up the double glass doors that opened onto the pergola area outside were silk side curtains in the dark and light green, looped into a graceful drape with gold cord and tassles, an expanse of ivory organza in between, all hanging on a long gold rod with elaborate scrolls at both ends.
The whole effect was beautiful, but it was crowned by the magnificent painting that was carried in and positioned on the other side of the wall to the television set. Sally could hardly believe it was a real Monet—one of the great artist’s paintings of waterlilies—but it was. It really was. Had to be worth millions of dollars, and Jack had chosen to have it hung here!
This couldn’t be such a temporary thing for him. No-one would cart a Monet around frivolously. It complemented the furnishings perfectly, a wonderful highlight, but such a valuable painting had to mean he cared a great deal about wanting this to be a place that would give him a lot of pleasure, so surely he had to intend spending a lot of time at the property. With her.
He called that evening. “I’ll be flying in at six o’clock tomorrow,” he said without preamble.
“And I’ll be waiting to greet you with a glass of champagne,” she trilled back at him, overflowing with a bubbling excitement she couldn’t contain.
“Champagne?” he queried in an amused tone.
“Well, you don’t want a martini, and I think the newly decorated master suite deserves to be christened with champagne.”
“You like it?”
“I love it! They’ve done a wonderful job. And Jack … the Monet painting …it’s so beautiful I have to keep going in to look at it.”
He laughed. “One of my more extravagant investments. I’m glad you like it. I wanted you to enjoy it with me.”
Sharing …caring …for a moment Sally was lost in those blissful thoughts. Then she realised Jack was probably thinking of enjoying the painting with her from the bed in the master suite. Was expecting to do so. Why not, after last Saturday night? It was a reasonable expectation.
Yet somehow—maybe it was the incredibly valuable Monet painting—the feeling of Jack having deliberately set out to make the master suite a temptingly seductive place to be, sent a chill through her mind. Was he using all he was capable of giving to ensure having what he wanted—keeping her captivated for as long as he was enjoying the experience of her? And having given so much, did that remove any guilt he might have about leaving her and moving on when he’d had enough?
She didn’t really know how his mind worked. Except when he set a course of action, he followed it through with ruthless efficiency, doing whatever had to be done for the desired result. Easier not to care, he’d said, but there had to be caring behind the sheer drive of the man. Dark angel. Dark caring. Blackjack Maguire, taking over what his father had owned, what his father had put ahead of him … like her, the adopted daughter.
“Sally?”
“Yes?”
“What was that silence about?”
Boring straight in on her doubts, intent on stopping any retreat from him. It was too late to retreat anyway, Sally told herself, willing away the sense of being ruthlessly manipulated. “I was thinking … I’ve only been in your company for a few days.”
“Time has nothing to do with the connection we have, Sally,” he asserted confidently.
The connection.
He did feel it.
A dark burden lifted from her soul.
No matter what was hidden in the dark recesses of Jack’s mind, the connection between them was real. And there could be no going back to maintaining a distance from him. Besides, she wanted to go forward, regardless of what happened further down the track.
“Six o’clock,” she said, reminding him there was physical time involved.
He laughed as though that had no real relevance.
“I’ll bring a bottle of French champagne and we can toast the Monet together.”
“I’ll have the flute glasses ready. And an ice bucket.”
On the coffee table in the master suite. Her heartbeat instantly accelerated at the thought. Was that too bold of her? No. What was the use of pretending she didn’t want to spend every minute with him, anywhere, any time?
“I’ll be living for the moment.” His voice purred contentedly in her ear. “Good night, Sally.”
“Good night to you, too,” she answered, knowing she’d be living for the moment, as well.
Maybe this pleasure in each other wouldn’t last, but as long as it did, she wasn’t about to turn away from it.
CHAPTER TEN
IT WAS different, flying into the valley property this time. As the lush green pastures and the pristine white fences came into view, Jack felt a far more personal connection to the place. The sense of being an outsider, just coming in to take what he’d paid for, was no longer in play.
He didn’t belong at this property but it belonged to him. He’d walked all over it, been accepted by the staff, and he was now well entrenched in the world that had once been his father’s private domain. Mine now, he thought with satisfaction. And so was Sally—the daughter his father had prized far more than his son.
It had been a bad moment last week when he’d realised he’d forgotten to use a condom. He’d had one in his wallet and it had been recklessly stupid of him not to keep control of what he was doing. Still, Sally was not a conniving bitch like her mother, and her being on the pill had saved him from a costly accident. Lady Ellen had been right about a pregnancy. He couldn’t—wouldn’t—walk away from his own child. Just as well Sally was as keen as he to avoid that consequence.
He smiled over her delight in the selections he’d made for the master bedroom suite. The re-styling had been for her—his vision of her occupying it with him—but the Monet definitely made it his. Every time she looked at it, he would possess a piece of her mind.
His smile took on a twist of irony over the strong streak of possessiveness she had tapped in him. No other woman had got to him so deeply. Was it a psychological thing, rising out of the fact she’d had what he’d wanted all these years with his father, so having her balanced the ledger in some primal fashion?
Whatever … she certainly stirred something that was pushing him beyond the normal pattern of his experience with women. She wasn’t simply a peripheral pleasure to be enjoyed when he had the time and inclination. It was difficult to banish her from his mind, even when he was doing business.
He hoped she was thinking of him just as much. The idea of her having a more powerful pull on him than he had on her was unacceptable. Holding the controlling hand and capitalising on it had made him the man he was, and he wasn’t about to lose his grip on how he ran his world.
This current obsession with Sally Maguire would ease as time went on. It was tied in with what he’d never had with his father. She embodied the need that had never been answered—couldn’t ever be answered now. But it felt good to have her. He just had to keep a reasonable perspective on the situation.
Though reason was swallowed up by a surge of desire when he saw her emerge from the house to meet and greet him. Her head was tilted towards the incoming helicopter, her hair a glorious riot of red-gold curls, lit by the setting sun. She wore a snug black top, outlining the lush thrust of her beautiful breasts, and a white skirt with a deep black border. The wind from the whirling blades wrapped the fabric around her long, shapely legs—legs that had wrapped themselves around him in uninhibited passion.
The muscles around his groin tightened. He grabbed the cooler bag containing the bottle of Veuve Clicquot, ready to alight from the helicopter as soon as it landed. He couldn’t wait a second later than he had to, the need to feel her body against his again racing through his veins.
She was smiling—not the polite smile she’d put on for his first visit. This was a smile of joyous welcome, a champagne smile that shot bubbles of exhilaration through Jack’s brain and put a huge grin on his face as he leapt from his seat and strode towards her.
He was so vibrantly handsome. Sally felt her whole body tingling from the rush of pleasure at seeing him again, thrilling to the eagerness in his step which surely telegraphed his desire to be with her, the smile on his face leaving no doubt as to his pleasure in seeing her, too, the bright sparkling blue of his eyes, no darkness at all because she was bringing sunshine into his life—a wild giddy thought that made her feel wonderful.
“Hi!” he said, holding up the cooler bag he carried. “I trust you have the glasses ready.”
She laughed with sheer happiness at the togetherness they were about to share. “And the ice bucket,” she assured him.
“Good girl!” His free arm swung around her waist and scooped her along with him as he headed for the house. “I’ve been looking forward to this moment all day.”
“So have I.” The words tripped straight off her tongue. Impossible to pretend anything else. He was hugging her close to his side, the warmth of his body lighting a glow in hers, the brush of his thighs shooting quivers of excitement right down to her toes. She loved the female feel of being physically linked to this man.
He rubbed his cheek against her hair. If she’d been a cat she would have purred. As it was, it felt as though her heart was beating in her throat. She put her arm around his waist, snuggling closer, gloatingly glad now that she’d had the foresight to ask Jeanette to prepare a dinner that could be simply heated up when they were ready for it, giving the housekeeper and her husband the evening off in their own cottage. However embarrassingly obvious it had been that she wanted to be alone with Jack no longer mattered, not with this glorious sense of anticipation buzzing through her body.
“What about your bag?” she asked, suddenly remembering Graham wasn’t here to collect it from the helicopter and they had already stepped into the foyer.
“Bill will drop it off here. We’ll leave the door open for him. He’ll close it as he goes,” came the quick reply.
Jack didn’t so much as pause in his step. Neither did she, content to be swept across the foyer, down the hall to the master suite, shutting out the outside world, sharing his urgency, revelling in it. She’d left the door to it open so he could see all the marvellous changes to the bedroom straightaway, but he made no immediate comment on the redecorating.
“Ah! Glasses on the table,” he said with satisfaction, as though the rest of the room rated no attention at all, taking Sally with him as he made a beeline for the coffee table.
“Jack, do you like what’s been done?” she cried, wanting to hear his approval.
He set the cooler bag down next to the ice bucket and turned to her, both arms drawing her into his embrace, his eyes blazing with an intensity that was focused entirely on her. “You like it so it must be right, and I don’t care about anything else.”
She didn’t think about that statement right then, not for days afterwards. She heard the raw passion in his voice, saw naked desire burning in his eyes, and her heart was a wild thing, beating like a bongo drum, intent on driving a primitive dance to some ultimate end.
His mouth crashed down on hers with a ravaging hunger that instantly ignited a fierce need to feed it. She kissed him back with a wanton savagery that would have stunned her with disbelief in a saner moment, their tongues duelling for more and more intense sensation, teeth scraping, lips meshing in a mad need to taste everything there was to taste.
Her arms were locked around his neck, her breasts crushed to his chest, her stomach furrowed by the hard erection pressing against it. One of his hands was spread around the back of her skull, fingers entwined in her hair, tugging it to shift the position of her head as he broke from her mouth to rain hotly possessive kisses around her face, her ears, her eyelids, her temples, and she was kissing him, too, his cheek, his neck, laying claim to him, fastening on the pulse at the base of his throat as he clutched her head to hold her there, under his chin, holding her to the beat of his heart.
“I want you so badly, it can’t wait,” he muttered, and the vibration of his need echoed her own.
“No, it can’t wait,” she heard herself agree.
Then they were pulling off their clothes, helping each other get naked as fast as possible, craving the feel of flesh against flesh, the heat, the intimacy, the man-woman togetherness their bodies were demanding. And, oh, it was so good, so gloriously right. Sally stood on tiptoes to press herself more totally against the hard, hot muscularity of his maleness, wanting to melt into him. She loved this man, loved him, loved him, loved him, wanted all of him so much…
He hooked a hand under her bottom, lifted her off her feet and strode to the bed, stood her down for a moment as he hurled off the silk bedspread, the heap of decorative cushions flying away with it. He laid her on the green sheet, her head on a green pillow, and the word “Yes” hissed from his lips, and his eyes glittered exultantly as he loomed over her, and she moved her legs to make room for him, curling them around his hips as he moved into position to answer the urgent yearning driving both of them.
Her body arched in sheer ecstacy as he plunged deep inside her and the same word “Yes” tore from her throat. Her inner muscles convulsed joyously around him as he bent to kiss her again, and kept kissing her, their mouths wildly matching the thrusting that sought every possible peak of sensation they could create together, intensely possessive, incredibly exciting and finally exploding into a meltdown that left them clutching each other in a fierce embrace, holding onto the blissful oneness as their hearts gradually slowed and their bodies wallowed in relaxed contentment.
Jack carried her with him as he rolled onto his back, and he stroked her skin and her hair as she lay sprawled over him, too limp to do anything but feel the rise and fall of his chest as his breathing returned to a normal rhythm. She didn’t even think. Her mind was basking in a haze of pleasure.
“Happy?” Jack eventually asked, his voice furred with his own pleasure.
“Mmmm …” It was a hum of delicious euphoria.
“I think this is champagne time.”
“Mmmm …”
She had enough happy bubbles in her brain, but if he wanted to add more, she had no objection.
“You stay right here,” he said, gently shifting her onto the pillow as he eased out from under her, pausing to fan the long riotous curls of her hair out around her face, smiling at the effect as he did so, his eyes twinkling satisfaction. “Don’t move,” he instructed, then quickly flung himself off the bed and headed for the coffee table.
She felt too languorous to move, anyway. Besides, her attention was instantly captivated by the back view of his completely unadorned physique. He looked even better without clothes, male perfection to her eyes, broad shoulders, lean hips, taut cheeky butt, strongly muscular arms and legs, though not bulging out of proportion. She imagined he worked out to keep fit but was not a gym junky, absorbed in building himself up. His smooth olive skin gleamed with good health, and she looked forward to stroking it, consciously feeling its texture when he returned to the bed.
She watched him take the bottle from the cooler bag, pop the cork with a deft efficiency that suggested he was well practised at the art. The idea that he had celebrated having sex with other women, just like this, took the lovely fizz out of the moment, but Sally quickly told herself not to let anything spoil what was good between them right now.
He filled the two glasses with the expertise of a champagne connoisseur—no overflow—propped the bottle in the ice-bucket, then turned with a glass in each hand, grinning at the sight of her waiting for him exactly where he’d placed her, lying in totally naked abandonment.
A weird little wave of self-consciousness prompted the comment, “You haven’t even looked at the Monet, Jack.”
It didn’t draw a glance now, either. His gaze did not waver from her, his eyes drinking her in from head to foot and back again as he strolled towards the bed. “You far outshine any painting, Sally. A vibrant living work of art.”
The warm appreciation in his voice, the pleasure twinkling in his eyes, instantly dispelled her unease about how she looked to him. “Can I move now?” she asked.
He laughed. “As long as it’s not away from me.”
“I can’t drink champagne lying down.”
As she hitched herself up into a sitting position, he set the filled glasses on the bedside table and piled pillows behind her. “Comfortable?” he said teasingly.
“Yes, thanks, but you’ve left no pillows for you.”
His gaze flicked down to her breasts. “Oh, I think I can find the perfect softness for me.”
Aware of her nipples stiffening into hard bullets, Sally looked down, too, then couldn’t stop herself from checking out Jack’s sexual equipment, remembering how wonderfully powerful it had felt inside her. Like the rest of him, perfect masculinity, she thought, and the urge to touch was too tempting to resist. She leaned over and ran her fingertips lightly over the soft velvet skin, awed that it could become so hard and strong.
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