Wife By Contract, Mistress By Demand

MILLS & BOON

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CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

EPILOGUE

COMING NEXT MONTH

PROLOGUE

‘WHAT the hell do you think you’re doing?’

Gabriella raised long, sooty lashes to reveal eyes of so deep a blue they appeared violet, to look across the terrace at Rufus, the man she had fallen in love with a year ago when her mother had married his father, the man her eighteen-year-old heart desperately hoped would fall in love with her, too!

She had heard his hire-car arrive on the gravelled drive at the front of the Gresham family villa in Majorca. She forced down her nervousness and remained stretched out on her lounger soaking up the sun, rather than running to greet him as she wanted to do. Rufus, she had quickly learnt, was not a man that you ran after, but instead waited for him to come to you—even if he was the love of your life and just looking at him made your knees tremble with longing!

He stood in the doorway that led out onto the terrace, having removed the jacket to his light business suit in the intense heat of the early afternoon. His overlong hair was the colour of molasses, glinting golden in the sun, and his eyes—a piercing pale green, Gabriella knew—were hidden behind the black sunglasses he wore.

But his question, and that disapproving slant to his chiselled lips, were enough to tell her that he wasn’t at all pleased at finding her sunbathing alone on the terrace, in a bikini comprised of small scraps of orange material.

Deliberately so. Rufus had a habit of either treating her as an irritating child, or of totally ignoring her altogether. But she so much wanted him to recognize her as a desirable woman.

‘I’m working on my tan, Rufus, what does it look like I’m doing?’ She smiled, at the same time stretching languorously, arching the slenderness of her back, the movement forcing forward the fullness of her breasts, her nipples visibly aroused in her nervousness through the bikini’s orange fabric.

‘I can see that, damn it,’ she bit back scathingly. ‘For goodness’ sake put some clothes on, will you?’ he snapped as he stepped outside onto the terrace.

‘I’m topping up my tan, silly,’ she said poutingly. ‘And why should I bother putting clothes on when there’s no one around to see me but you?’ she added with tentative provocation.

It was one thing wanting Rufus to see her as a desirable woman, something else entirely actually maintaining this provocative pose!

The Gresham family villa, ‘Bougainvillea’, was perched alone on the side of the mountain overlooking the terraced village below, with a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree view of the Mediterranean.

Why bother, indeed? Rufus acknowledged impatiently, grateful for the black shield of his sunglasses that hid his emotions as his gaze swept slowly over Gabriella’s lithely perfect body, already tanned to a golden brown and glistening invitingly from the oil she had smoothed over her torso, arms and those long, long legs.

It was a beautifully slender body, without blemish, that only the very young possessed, and that would be hard for any man to resist.

And Rufus had had plenty of practice at doing exactly that since Gabriella had burst into his life a year ago, making no effort to hide her infatuated interest in him.

An interest, at thirty years of age, he’d had no intention of satisfying!

Or, at least, he hadn’t had any intention of satisfying until he’d walked out onto the terrace a few minutes ago and seen her lying there…

‘Anyone could have walked out here and—’

‘“Anyone” didn’t, you did,’ she reasoned cajolingly. ‘Besides, the women on the village beach won’t be wearing any more than this.’ She frowned.

The village beach, Rufus knew from past experience, would be full of families at this time of day, most of the women wearing bikinis, some even topless, yes—but they weren’t alone with the man they had been shamelessly infatuated with for the last year!

‘Where are your parents?’ he demanded harshly.

A little desperately, he acknowledged with inward self-impatience. At least the presence of his father and Gabriella’s mother, his stepmother, would alleviate this situation. Even if he still found Heather’s role as his stepmother almost as irritating as having this gloriously beautiful creature as his stepsister.

He was only here at all because he had stopped off to visit his father for a couple of days on his way back from a business trip to mainland Spain.

‘James wanted to go into Palma some time today to buy my mother something wildly extravagant for their anniversary, but they should be back in a couple of hours.’ Gabriella sat forward slightly, her violet-coloured eyes smokily inviting now as she looked up at him. ‘They waited in for you this morning, but when you didn’t arrive they checked with the airline and were told that your flight had been delayed for three hours. It’s Margarita’s afternoon off, too.’ She shrugged bare, glistening shoulders. ‘So I said I would stay here and wait for you.’

Damn, damn, damn. Not even the Gresham Majorcan cook and housekeeper was here to act as chaperone!

‘Don’t look so disapproving, Rufus.’ Gabriella looked a little uncertain as she obviously sensed his displeasure. ‘Or is it just that you’re feeling a little hot and dusty from travelling?’ she considered concernedly. ‘Why don’t you go for a swim?’ she suggested with that naturally husky voice that alone could send a shiver of awareness down Rufus’s spine.

Gabriella Maria Lucia Benito.

Daughter of Heather and the deceased Antonio Benito.

Apart from that deep violet of her eyes, Gabriella had inherited all of her colouring from her Italian father, her hair a glorious swathe of tumbling black curls that fell femininely down the long length of her spine, her skin naturally olive in complexion, but tanned a sleek mahogany from the weeks she had already spent at the villa.

But as far as Rufus was concerned, her mother, who had been living in rented accommodation with her young daughter and had had to work as James’s secretary in order to support them both, had only married his father because he was a millionaire many times over and the owner of the prestigious Gresham’s, a London-based store that had a worldwide reputation for exclusivity.

Heather’s daughter, the beautifully stunning, exotically sensual Gabriella, as far as Rufus was concerned, had just as calculatingly decided that he, James’s only son and heir, would make an equally suitable husband for her!

There was only one problem with that line of thinking—Rufus had little intention of ever marrying again. He had tried that once, only to discover that Angela was solely interested in the Gresham money, too, walking out after only a year of marriage, and leaving their two-month-old daughter behind when she did.

Their divorce, six months later, had been messy and very public, resulting in Rufus giving Angela half his vast personal fortune in order to maintain custody of the baby daughter he knew Angela had no interest in anyway.

And into that maelstrom had walked Gabriella Maria Lucia Benito, when his widowed father, obviously having learnt nothing at all from Rufus’s experience, had announced in the same breath that he intended both retiring as Chairman of Gresham’s, in favour of Rufus, and marrying the attractive fifty-year-old widow who had been his secretary—his secretary, for heaven’s sake; how clichéd was that?—for the last year, bringing with her a seventeen-year-old daughter from her previous marriage.

Tall, with a natural grace of movement, Gabriella, in her fitted tee shirts and tight, tight jeans, had taken one look at Rufus, it seemed, and thereafter done everything in her youthful power to tempt him into acknowledging her as a woman every time he visited his father at Gresham House in Surrey, her hungry violet gaze seeming to follow him everywhere.

But Rufus’s own experience with Angela—even if he ever did contemplate getting married again, which was highly unlikely, to give his now two-year-old daughter a mother—meant that Gabriella Maria Lucia Benito, no matter how alluring, would be the very last girl he would choose. One grasping gold-digger in the family—her mother!—was quite enough, thank you.

But, he decided with another sweeping glance at Gabriella she was without doubt a beautiful girl.

‘I think I might just take a dip in the pool,’ he murmured throatily, starting to unbutton his shirt. ‘The parents will be gone another couple of hours, you said…?’

‘Yes,’ Gabriella confirmed huskily, watching covertly as he stripped the shirt from his darkly tanned and muscled torso before unbuckling the belt on his trousers, unzipping them to drop them down onto the terrace exposing long and powerful legs.

The black fitted boxers he wore made more than adequate swimming trunks. But she blushed as she took in the dark hair on his chest, that moved down in a vee before thickening again, and her eyes widened as she saw the evidence of his arousal.

Rufus wanted her!

Gabriella swallowed hard, slightly breathless as her gaze returned to the hard, uncompromising planes of his face, those pale green eyes still hidden behind the dark glasses.

Dropping down onto the side of her lounger, the touch of his thigh searing hers, Rufus drawled, ‘Would you rub some oil on my back for me?’

Her hands shook slightly as she tipped some of the oil into her palms before moving to touch the broad width of his shoulders, loving the way his muscles tensed and flexed as she smoothed the oil into his skin, fingers softly kneading as she moved down the length of his spine.

Never, in her wildest fantasies about this man—and there had been a lot of those this last year!—had she ever thought he would allow her to be here like this with him, touching him, his hard strength making her tremble, a warmth between her thighs spreading as she felt the sexual tension between them grow.

‘Now the front.’ Rufus turned to lie back on the lounger, at last taking off those sunglasses to look up at Gabriella as she now sat beside him.

Gabriella rubbed the oil into his chest, her breath catching slightly in her throat as she felt herself captured by that totally assessing gaze as it moved over her.

‘Lower,’ he invited, seductively soft, one of his hands moving to rest on her thigh.

She could feel the warmth in her cheeks, her gaze avoiding his as she looked down at her tanned hands moving over his slightly paler skin, his stomach tautly muscled.

‘Lower, Gabriella,’ he urged throatily.

So much for showing Rufus how sophisticated she was, Gabriella thought nervously as her hands shook so much as she tipped more oil into them that she splashed some of the liquid onto his stomach and thighs.

‘Yes, there,’ he encouraged achingly.

Her touch was driving him insane, Rufus acknowledged. He breathed a short sigh of relief as her hands eventually moved down the long length of his legs. As it was, the featherlight touch of her fingers on his thighs and muscled calves did little to alleviate his ache, those caressing fingers on his legs increasing the need he had to make love to her.

But he shouldn’t…wouldn’t.

They had a couple of hours before the parents returned, Gabriella had said, and he intended touching her in the same way she had just touched him. Touching, but not taking.

‘Now you,’ he murmured gruffly as he moved to sit up and gently push Gabriella down on the lounger.

Rufus looked deeply into her eyes, taking his time as he rubbed the oil into his hands before moving them down to anoint her, Gabriella’s groan of pleasure caused a similar response in his own body.

Yes, he was going to enjoy touching this sleekly provocative young woman. Every inch of her!

Gabriella couldn’t look away from Rufus, totally enraptured by the sensations he was creating inside her as he caressed and massaged her with oil.

Just when she thought she couldn’t bear it any more Rufus pulled away from her, raising his head to look down at her, eyes dark with satisfaction.

‘Lower?’ he prompted throatily.

She could barely breathe, let alone speak, the brush of her lashes down against her cheek answer enough as Rufus tipped more oil on his hands to move down the slenderness of her waist.

Once again he held her gaze as he touched her, Gabriella’s thighs moved sensuously against him as he increased the rhythm of his caress, feeling her arousal deepening and increasing as she hurtled towards a pleasure she had never known before, arching against him as that heat spun out of control and wave after wave of sensation ripped through the whole of her body, sobbing low in her throat, her hands moving up as her fingers became entangled in his dark blond hair, holding him against her as those waves became a crescendo of feelings that had her clinging to Rufus in unashamed abandon.

She had never experienced anything like this in her life before, none of her romantic daydreams about Rufus having prepared her for the reality, for her completely uncontrolled response to his caresses.

She had never felt as happy before as she did at this moment, knew that Rufus couldn’t touch her in this way if he didn’t love her, too.

She smiled dreamily as she imagined a future with Rufus. As his wife. How surprised her mother and James were going to be when they told them the news. They—

‘Not bad, Gabriella,’ Rufus derided softly as he looked down at her, his eyes no longer hot with arousal but coolly assessing. ‘Very responsive, in fact,’he dismissed dryly as his gaze moved over her with clinical appreciation. ‘But I think you had better go and make yourself decent before the parents get back,’ he added mockingly. ‘We wouldn’t want to shock their sensibilities, now, would we?’

Gabriella blinked up at him frowningly, her eyes dark smudges of purple, not quite sure of him now. Rufus had just caressed her in a way no one else ever had, had taken her to a climax beyond her wildest dreams. Admittedly, they hadn’t made love, but surely the intimacy they had just shared had to mean something to him—

‘I think I’ll go for that swim now.’ He stood up, stretching languidly. ‘And then I think I’d like something to eat,’ he added dismissively.

He would like something to eat? They had just made love—well…Rufus had just touched her!—so how could he just calmly start talking about food as if—?

‘What’s the matter, Gabriella?’ Rufus looked down at her with those coldly assessing eyes, his mouth twisted derisively. ‘Not satisfied yet?’ he mocked throatily. ‘Well, give me a chance to have a swim and something to eat, and maybe I’ll be in the mood for more of the same—’

‘Why are you being like this?’ Gabriella sounded pained, tears swimming in the deep purple of her eyes.

‘Like what?’ Rufus came back tersely, not falling for those tears; Angela had shed ones just like them every time she hadn’t been able to get her own way during the total of eighteen months they had been together. Crocodile tears, totally deceptive, totally false.

Gabriella blinked dazedly. ‘But we just—’

‘No, Gabriella, you just,’he corrected hardly. ‘You’ve been wanting me to touch you for the last year, and now I’ve done so…’ he shrugged ‘…so what are you complaining about?’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t understand…’

‘Gabriella, I’ve been stuck in an airport and an airplane for a total of seven hours,’ he reminded impatiently, determined not to be swayed by the bewilderment in those deep purple eyes. ‘I’m tired and I’m hungry,’he snapped. ‘If you want any more from me then you’re going to have to wait until I’ve satisfied at least one of my other appetites!’

She reached up to readjust her bikini top before answering him. ‘But I thought—’ She shook her head. ‘I thought you and I—’

‘Thought what?’ Rufus’s patience snapped completely. ‘That you would seduce me—as you’ve been trying so hard to do this last year!’ he added scathingly. ‘And that I would then ask you to marry me, that I would behave like the lovesick fool my father has over your money-grasping mother? Well, think again, Gabriella,’ he bit out coldly. ‘I’ve already given all that I have to give where you’re concerned!’ His top lip curled back sneeringly. ‘If you want a repeat performance, perhaps I’ll be willing to oblige. But later, not now.’

Gabriella stared up at him tearfully.

She loved this man. Had thought his response meant he’d loved her in return. But his response, it seemed, had only been physical. A physical response he’d had complete control over as he’d taken her to climax, his comments since meaning to humiliate her—and succeeding.

Worse, he had called her mother money-grasping—her wonderful mother, who had known such misery when married to Gabriella’s father, and deserved every moment of the happiness she had now found with James.

‘Rufus, you can’t seriously believe that my mother…She loves your father very much!’ she protested, wondering what that made her if Rufus could believe those things about her mother.

‘Oh, give me a break!’he scorned hardly. ‘It’s easy to love someone when they’re worth the millions my father is.’

‘But she really loves him!’ Gabriella defended heatedly.

‘Of course she does,’ he sneered. ‘Enough to accept him giving her a hundred thousand pounds to pay off her debts before they were even married, anyway. A little excessive for a dress allowance, wouldn’t you say?’ he added scathingly.

‘What?’ Gabriella gasped, standing up. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Oh, come on, Gabriella,’ he sighed wearily. ‘Just accept that I know about the money and the debts, and let’s move on, shall we?’

She really didn’t know what he was talking about, was sure there had to be some sort of mistake. Her mother would never—‘You’re just bitter and twisted, Rufus, because everyone knows that Angela only married you for—’ She broke off, realizing she had gone too far as she saw Rufus’s face darken ominously. He seemed to loom over her now, his green eyes so pale they looked silver.

‘Yes?’ he prompted softly, dangerously. ‘Angela only married me for…?’

Her mother, aware of all the details of Rufus’s marriage and divorce, had thought it best if they never talked about it, and now Gabriella had thrown it in Rufus’s own face!

But he had insulted her mother, for goodness’ sake, and his accusations were totally untrue. There was no way her mother could have had debts of a hundred thousand pounds!

She shook her head. ‘Not all women are like Angela—’

‘Aren’t they?’ Rufus cut in confrontationally. ‘Do you deny the fact that you’ve done nothing but throw yourself at me for the last year?’

Her cheeks burned at his obvious derision; she was still slightly dazed by the way he had turned on her after the physical intimacy they had just shared.

And, yes, she had been unashamedly besotted with him for the last year, from the very first moment she’d seen him, in fact, but that was because she had fallen in love with him, not for the reason he seemed to be implying.

Implying?

After the things he had accused her mother of he wasn’t implying anything, was clearly stating that her only interest in him was the same as her gold-digging mother’s had been where his father was concerned—his millions!

Rufus eyed her derisively. ‘Do you deny that you also stayed here deliberately today with the idea of seducing me?’

Gabriella knew she couldn’t deny that either, but that was only because—because—

Because he had remained totally immune to all her other attempts to show him how much in love with him she was!

And now she knew the reason he had remained immune—because he believed her mother had only married his father for his money, and believed she only wanted him for the same reason!

She shook her head firmly. ‘I don’t believe a word you’ve said about my mother.’

‘Then ask her, Gabriella,’ he challenged scathingly. ‘Just ask her.’ He gave a mocking shake of his head. ‘I have no idea why my father bothered to marry Heather at all when he was already paying for it—’ Rufus broke off abruptly as Gabriella’s hand landed hard against his cheek.

Rufus reached up and grasped her wrist, his face dangerously close to hers now, his eyes glowing with an icy heat, the mark of Gabriella’s hand starting to show red on one rigid cheek. ‘Do that again, Gabriella, and I promise you’ll regret it,’ he grated between clenched teeth.

Her eyes blazed deeply purple as she glared right back at him, breathing hard in her agitation. ‘I hate you!’

‘Good,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘Perhaps in future this will teach you to leave me out of your quest for a rich husband!’

‘I wouldn’t come near you again if you were the last man on earth!’ she assured him emotionally.

‘How original!’ Rufus scorned.

‘You bastard!’ Gabriella told him with feeling. ‘You’re an absolute bastard and I hate you!’ She turned and ran into the villa.

Rufus stood poised on the edge of the pool for several furious minutes before turning sharply and diving deep into the water, relishing the coolness as he began to swim the length of the pool.

Gabriella hated him.

Good.

So why didn’t it feel as satisfying as he’d imagined?

CHAPTER ONE

FIVE years later, as she gazed across the lawyer’s office at Rufus Gabriella knew that she still hated him!

‘If I could get straight on to the terms of Mr Gresham’s will…?’ David Brewster prompted politely once they were seated.

‘Go ahead,’ Rufus instructed tersely.

He didn’t want her here, Gabriella knew. Or his cousin Toby, if the way the two men had greeted each other a few minutes ago was anything to go by. On that she could agree with him however, after what Toby had done.

But although she knew Rufus wouldn’t believe her, she really wished she weren’t here.

Given a choice, she would rather James hadn’t died at all. She’d much rather he were still here giving her the fatherly advice and love that she had found so invaluable since her mother’s death a year ago.

James had been devastated after Heather was killed in a car crash last year, and never really seemed to fully recover from the blow. He had suffered a heart attack six months later, and then another, fatal one, a month ago.

No, given a choice Gabriella would rather have had both James and Heather still alive than being summoned to this lawyer’s office—as must Rufus and Toby have been—at this time, on this day, for a meeting about James’s will.

She and Rufus hadn’t spoken at all since they had arrived separately. As they hadn’t spoken for the last five years. As they wouldn’t ever speak again once this last link with James was severed.