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www.millsandboon.co.uk
To Wanda, who makes me a better writer.
And to the Brainstorming Desirables and NZRomance
e-mail groups, who between them, can answer any
research question ever invented!
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Coming Next Month
One
The last person Jess Randall expected to see as she walked out of the arrival gate at Christchurch International Airport, was the man she was about to marry. “Gabriel. What are you doing here?”
“You’ve been living in L.A. for a year and that’s all you have to say?”
Flustered, she leaned forward to drop a quick kiss on his cheek. It felt unfamiliar, awkward. “Sorry, I was just surprised. Aren’t you busy with station work?”
“I wanted to talk to you about something. But first things first.” He bent his head and, without any prelude, kissed her full on the mouth.
Knocked completely off her bearings, she couldn’t do anything but clutch at his shirt in an effort to keep herself upright. Her heart was a staccato drumbeat in her ears, her blood a rush of thunder. And all around her burned a rough male heat that demanded everything she had.
It was the most intimate kiss they’d ever shared, the closest their bodies had ever come. And it made her nerves tighten in sheer panic. Not because she didn’t like it, but because she did.
“Welcome home,” he said, releasing her. The look in those green eyes was unmistakable—Gabriel Dumont was a man more than ready for his wedding night.
Legs not quite steady, she watched him pick up her bags. He led her through to the domestic part of the airport and across the road to the landing field used by smaller planes. The Jubilee, one of Angel Station’s two planes, sat waiting for them.
Fear—of Gabe’s expectations, but mostly of her own inexplicable response to his touch—had such a stranglehold on her that she was barely aware of hopping on board. Over the past year, she’d convinced herself that her marriage would be a calm, steady, business-like affair, never once considering what it might mean to be Gabriel’s wife in truth…to be touched and claimed in ways that obliterated the distance she needed to survive this bargain.
Her heart stuttered as he settled in beside her, taking the pilot’s seat. Taking control. A man who knew what he wanted and exactly how he wanted it, her fiancé was not someone who could ever be ignored.
Though he was tall and undeniably strong, his musculature was lean and powerful, not bulky. When he moved it was like watching a wild stallion in its prime; healthy and magnificent and proud. The faded burn scars on his left arm and back took nothing away from that—they possibly even contributed to the overwhelming sense of masculinity that surrounded him. Add in the pure green eyes and that sun-shot hair, and it almost seemed as if he’d become more beautiful in the year’s absence…more wrong for her.
Gabe might have the looks that stopped women in their tracks, but it was the same kind of beauty as that of a tiger in the wild—dangerous and definitely untouchable. Not for the first time, she wondered at the lunacy of her decision to marry a man she knew so little about, notwithstanding that she’d grown up as his neighbor.
“So, what did you learn in L.A.?” he asked, long after they were safely in the air.
Still unsettled by the effect of his kiss, she had to fight to keep her voice calm. “That I can paint.”
“We both knew that, Jess. It was why you went to the States in the first place.”
“True.” She’d wanted to study under renowned painter Genevieve Legraux. “What I meant was I found out I could paint on a level that might support a career.” It had been a startling discovery for a woman who’d spent her whole life helping her parents on their small sheep station, snatching only pieces of time for her art.
“Genevieve encouraged me to submit my work to some galleries.” She’d even dared send something to Richard Dusevic, an Auckland-based and very well connected gallery owner who could make or break an artist’s career.
“You didn’t mention that during my calls.”
She shrugged, her mind flicking back to those twice-weekly conversations. They’d lasted no more than a few minutes at most but had inevitably left her feeling lost and confused. “I wanted to show you the actual paintings.” Because she knew that Gabe took nothing on faith. “They should be arriving soon—I shipped them.”
The sun glinted off his hair as he nodded. “Will you miss Los Angeles?”
“No.” She looked out the window. They were passing over the patchwork quilt of the Canterbury Plains. Soon they’d be in the Mackenzie Country, a stunning piece of paradise hidden in the shadow of New Zealand’s Southern Alps and the only place she’d ever truly called home. “I needed to get out of here for a while but not for always. I’m back to stay.”
“Are you?”
Picking up the edge in his tone, she turned from the window. “What kind of a question is that? We’re getting married…unless you’ve changed your mind?” Maybe he’d actually fallen in love with one of those sensual, confident women who graced his bed in an ever-changing parade. Her hands curled into fists at the thought.
“I’m ready.” He made a small adjustment to the controls. “It’s you I’m worried about.”
“I promised I’d return ready for marriage. And I have.” Shell-shocked by the twin blows of her father’s death and the foreclosure of Randall Station, she hadn’t had the strength to be anyone’s wife twelve months ago, much less that of a man like Gabriel.
“Damon and Kayla have separated.”
Her mind couldn’t make sense of the words. “What? But I thought you said Kayla was pregnant.”
“Heavily. Your boyfriend walked out on her three months ago.”
It was a slap. “Damon is my friend, nothing more.” Her fists tightened hard enough to hurt.
“No matter how much you wish otherwise?” He glanced at her, eyes so icy she could see nothing except her own reflection.
“Yes. No matter how much I wish otherwise,” she admitted, in spite of her humiliation. “He never loved me, not like he loves Kayla.”
“Doesn’t much seem like it. The boy’s running around with anything in possession of a pair of breasts.”
The blunt words brought heat to her cheeks. “He’s hardly a boy. He’s the same age as me.” And twenty-six was plenty old enough to grow up and grow up hard.
“He’s acting like a child right now.” Gabe ignored her statement. At thirty-five, he was nine years older and the gap was never more apparent than at times such as this.
“How did it happen?” she asked, white noise crashing through her mind. “And why didn’t you tell me before?”
He gave her an odd look. “Didn’t Damon?”
“What?” She tucked her hair behind her ears. “No, we haven’t talked since I left.”
“Never?”
“No,” she lied, trying not to think of that single phone call Damon had made from a bar four months ago. He’d been drunk, but he’d said things no married man should have said…things she shouldn’t have listened to. “Is it looking bad?”
“Rumor is they’re heading for divorce.”
“Poor Kayla.”
“Hypocrisy, Jess? I didn’t expect that from you.”
Her cheeks blazed anew. “No matter what you think, I wouldn’t wish that kind of pain on any woman. Unless…did she ask for the separation?”
“Not from the way she’s looking.”
“I can’t believe Damon would walk out on his marriage.”
“Maybe he finally realized what he’d given up.” There was no mistaking the challenge in Gabe’s voice. “What are you going to do?”
“Do?” She was still reeling from the implications of his first sentence.
“We’re getting married tomorrow and I plan on us staying that way. So if you’re intending on chasing off after Damon, you sure as hell better tell me now.”
Jess took a shuddering breath and let it out again. “How am I supposed to make any kind of decision right this second?”
“The same way you decided to marry me and use my money to go to L.A.”
“Don’t you throw that in my face! You agreed to me leaving the area for a year.”
Tanned skin pulled tight over the ruthless angle of his jaw. “Answer the damn question. Do you want to get married or not?”
In truth, she didn’t really have a choice. If she backed out, she’d lose her last fragile grip on the land that had once been Randall Station. “How much to buy back Randall?” Gabe had never particularly wanted it. The only reason he’d stepped in during the foreclosure was because she’d gone to him begging. But that didn’t change the fact that he now owned it. Owned her.
He snorted. “You didn’t have that kind of money then and you don’t have it now. Neither does Damon.”
Both undeniable facts. She also owed Gabe for the year in L.A.—a year she’d so desperately needed to grow up. And growing up was exactly what she’d done. She might love Damon, but she’d made a promise to her father on his deathbed and she would keep it. A Randall would always remain on Randall land. “I’ll marry you.”
“You’ll be signing a pre-nup.”
She heard the unsaid statement loud and clear. “I won’t be trying to get the land back in a divorce. You bought it free and clear.” And in doing so, he’d saved it from the developers who would have destroyed it completely.
Paying the price he’d demanded—marriage—hadn’t seemed like such a sacrifice then. Especially since she’d believed that the marriage would ask nothing from her in terms of emotional commitment, allowing her to keep body and soul safe. Protected. It had never crossed her mind that Gabe might not permit her that distance.
Until he’d kissed her.
“My lawyer will bring over the papers tomorrow morning.”
“Fine.” Gabriel’s money itself had never been the thing she was after. It was losing the right to step foot on the very land she’d been entrusted to hold that she couldn’t bear.
Silence filled the cockpit. Dropping her head against the seat, she tried to think past the painful knot in her throat. Damon was separated. A small, selfish part of her, the part that had loved Damon forever, wanted to tell Gabe to call off the wedding. But she’d stopped lying to herself a long time ago. Even if Damon was acting like a single man again, he’d never once seen her as anything other than his best friend.
To counter that logic her mind insisted on remembering Damon’s unexpected phone call, the things he’d said. Swallowing, she fought back with the knowledge that he’d been drinking. He hadn’t meant it. Any of it. She couldn’t afford to think otherwise.
“What’s with the weight loss?” Gabe’s sharp question cut through the air like a knife.
“It just happened.” A combination of grief, shock and the stress of those first few months in a strange city. “I thought you’d be pleased.” Because his women had always been long-limbed, slender beauties. Even now she was short and not quite skinny.
“I’m not marrying you for your body.”
She bit her lower lip. “No.” Despite that devastating kiss, she knew too well that rich, successful and extremely attractive Gabriel Dumont wasn’t marrying her for her body. Nor was he marrying her for her wit or her confirmed knowledge of station life. No, Gabriel was marrying her for one simple, practical reason: unlike every other woman who’d ever crossed his path, she had no romantic illusions about him.
She didn’t want or expect him to love her, not now, not ever. And that made her imminently suitable to marry a man who had no ability to love, and didn’t want to be bothered with a wife who’d disrupt his life with dreams of romance. “I got a dress in L.A. For the wedding,” she said, in an effort to fill the emptiness between them.
Gabriel wasn’t buying Jess’s apparent calm. “Not the least bit hesitant?”
“You gave me a year. I’m ready now.”
I need to find out who I am before I become Mrs. Dumont for the rest of my life…I never learned to stand up for myself and I know I’ll have that with you. If I don’t, you’ll destroy me without meaning to.
Her desperate plea the night they’d made the decision to marry slammed into his mind. The sheltered only daughter of late-in-life parents, she’d still been floundering three months after the loss of her single remaining parent—her father. Yet she’d had the courage to say to Gabe’s face what many never would—that he was quite capable of destroying a softer, less powerful personality with the unforgiving pragmatism of his own.
The woman beside him sounded nothing like the broken girl of twelve months ago…except for that underlying thread of courage. “Good,” he said, not certain he liked that quiet hint of steel. He’d chosen Jess because he’d known she’d ask less than nothing from him. All she cared about was keeping the former Randall Station in her family.
“You,” she said, stopped, then restarted. “You didn’t find another woman?”
“I want you to be my wife, Jess. I want you to live on Angel Station, take my name and bear my children.” He made sure she heard the determination in his voice—he’d made his choice and he’d stick with it.
The fact she felt nothing for him didn’t faze him in the least. He’d decided long ago that love would play no part in any marriage of his. “Unlike Damon, I’ve kept it in my pants since we got engaged.”
“Are you going to throw his name into every conversation we have?”
He glanced over at the unexpected rebuke to catch her with her eyes narrowed and her arms folded. It amused him. She might have grown up a little but Jess was still a featherweight in comparison to him. “Who do you want to invite to the wedding?”
She gave a frustrated sigh and thrust a hand through her hair, sending red curls every which way. He found his eyes lingering on the fiery strands. That was one thing about Jess that hadn’t changed—that wild, silky mass of hair so incongruous with her quiet, undemanding personality.
“I’d like to keep it small and if we invite some people from Kowhai,” she named the nearest town, “and not others, it’ll cause hard feelings. How about we limit it to the station folk?”
“Nobody else?”
“No,” Jess said, wondering if she was imagining the renewed edge in his tone. “Do people…?”
“Some have been guessing since they heard you were coming back and going straight to Angel.” He reached to flip a switch and she was transfixed by the pure strength under the golden-brown of his skin. “After the wedding is early enough to confirm the rumors.”
Jess nodded, unable to stop thinking that soon Gabe’s hands would be touching far more intimate things than the controls of a plane. The thought threatened to reawaken her earlier panic but she forced it down. The day she let that panic show was the day she lost any hope of making this marriage work. Gabriel would never respect a weak woman. “That’ll make it easier.”
“Four p.m. tomorrow all right for you?”
Her throat was so dry she had to cough lightly to clear it. “Okay.” There was no reason to wait—they’d made their bargain on a rainy night a year ago.
Now it was time for her to pay up.
Two
“I’ve put your things in the guest bedroom for tonight.” Gabe braced his hands on the verandah railing on either side of her, the masculine heat of his chest searing her back.
Her stomach twisted though she knew full well he would never force her. Gabe might be ruthless, but if she said no, he’d back off. And all talk of marriage would end. She’d be escorted off the station with no invitation to ever return.
“Only tonight?” she asked, focusing on the distant grandeur of the Alps. Located in the basin beneath those magnificent behemoths, the Mackenzie stunned even in the final grip of winter. But the aching beauty of her homeland couldn’t calm her at this moment. “You can’t mean us to…so soon?”
“We’re going to be married, Jess.”
“I know. But we can’t—”
“I was upfront with you about wanting children.”
It took every ounce of her courage to continue in the face of his intractable will. “I’m just saying we need time to get used to each other that way.”
“What way?” The words were spoken against the sensitive skin of her neck, his breath a hot caress.
Desire flashed through her bloodstream, a shock that threatened to turn her world upside down. “You know what I’m trying to say.”
“I’ve been celibate for a year.” A flat declaration. “If you want more time, find another man.”
“I can’t believe you said that.” She tried to turn but he refused to allow it. “You’re telling me you’ll call off the wedding if I don’t agree to have sex with you straight away?”
His body was an inescapable trap around hers. “Think about it, Jess. Why are we marrying? You want to keep the Randall land in your family and I’m thirty-five, at a stage in my life where I want children to ensure Angel Station’s future.
“Essentially, we’re marrying to provide heirs for both of us. If you’re not willing to do what it takes to create them, what’s the point? Either we start as we mean to go on or we don’t start at all.”
It was a brutally practical depiction of their bargain, heartbreaking in its truth. And it made her furious. Why couldn’t he have even tried to soften things this one time, when she most needed it? “I’m a virgin, Gabe. So if I make a few mistakes tomorrow, you’ll have to excuse me.”
He went completely, utterly motionless behind her. “What did you say?”
She was at once proud for having caught him off-guard, and more than a touch nervous about her admission. “You heard me.”
“Are you telling me Damon never tried anything?”
If he’d had been any other man, she’d have thought the question a deliberate attempt to rub salt into still-open wounds. But sly maliciousness wasn’t Gabe’s style—he attacked head on. “No.”
“And you didn’t find another lover?” He answered his own query before she could say anything. “Of course not. You were waiting for Damon to fall in love with you.”
His cruel guess cut far too close to the mark. “We both know that didn’t happen, so I’m rather less experienced than you might be used to.” The understatement of the century. Gabe’s women had always had sensuality oozing from their pores, a silent, dark knowledge in their eyes.
“Fine. I’ll train you myself.”
Stunned, she swiveled in his arms. “That had better have been a joke.”
He bent his head until his lips were a hairsbreadth from hers. “I thought you knew—I don’t have a sense of humor.” His kiss was nothing soft, nothing gentle. Pure male arrogance and resolve, he made her open her mouth for him and when she did, he took her.
No mercy. No holds barred.
As at the airport, Jess froze. But this time, the kiss didn’t end in a hard flash. It was an inferno and she found herself clinging to him without knowing how she’d gotten there, her body pressed to his, her mind awash in unadulterated need. When he did release her, it was only so she could gasp in a breath. Then he claimed her again.
And her thoughts scattered like a million grains of sand under a thundering surf.
Gabe took his time tasting Jess, enjoying the lush softness of her mouth. There was no doubt in his mind that she was responding to him on a primal level. It was exactly what he’d set out to achieve. Jess might love another man but she was going to be screaming her husband’s name in bed.
What he’d never expected was the exquisite pleasure she gave him in return. That didn’t make him happy. Passion had a way of sabotaging the best laid plans, of pushing things off-kilter. In choosing Jess, he’d made the deliberate decision to steer clear of desire. But here she was, wildfire in his arms.
Breaking the kiss, he watched her try to regain control, her breasts rubbing against his chest as she took several ragged breaths. Her lips were wet, her eyes closed and her body pliant. It was tempting to initiate another kiss but he had no intention of ceding power in this arena. Or any other.
Her eyes opened.
Rubbing his thumb over her lower lip, he dropped his other hand to rest on the curve of her hip. “We’ll have no problems in bed.”
The sweetly feminine submissiveness disappeared in a split-second. “Let me go. You’ve proved your point.”
Releasing her, he stepped back and dropped his eyes to the pebbled hardness of her nipples. A flush streaked up her neck but she didn’t make any effort to cover them. Stubborn. He’d delight in taming her. “Get some sleep. It’ll be a busy day tomorrow. And Jess, remember, I’m not a man who lets go of what’s mine.”
Mrs. Croft, the cook and housekeeper for the main house on Angel Station, was bustling about in the kitchen by the time Jess came downstairs at around seven the next morning.
“What’s with the sleeping in, Jess my girl?” The older woman bussed her on the cheek. A friend of Jess’s mother, she’d known Jess a long time.
Jess rubbed at her face, skin tingling from the cold water she’d used to wash it. “Blame it on the time change. Where’s Gabe?” She tried and failed in her attempt not to think about the ruthlessness with which he’d demonstrated her susceptibility to him last night. She shouldn’t have been surprised. Gabe had a reputation as an iron-willed adversary in business. Why had she supposed he’d be any different as a husband?
“Gone to check on the stock with Jim.” Mrs. C. named the foreman. “The man doesn’t seem to realize it’s his wedding day and he should be nervous.”
Jess almost laughed at the idea of Gabe being nervous about anything. Except today, she had no laughter in her. “Is there anything I can do to help you?” Maybe keeping busy would stop the thoughts pinwheeling through her mind.
The older woman waved away the offer. “Just sit and eat some breakfast. Then you’ll be free to pretty yourself up for the wedding.”
Jess ate the food that was put in front of her, but had anyone asked her what she’d eaten, she wouldn’t have been able to tell them. Her mind was too full of other things. The heart of her, the part that had loved Damon forever, kept insisting that she was making a terrible mistake, that she should walk away from this wedding. Maybe Damon…
No.
Kayla was pregnant. Jess wouldn’t be able to live with herself if something happened to either mother or child because of her actions. And the truth was, Damon had had more than two decades to fall in love with Jess. He’d always chosen someone else.
What about that phone call? The madness in her whispered again. Don’t you remember what he—Stop! Screaming silently at her self, she pushed aside the empty plate. “I think I’ll go for a walk to clear my head.”
Mrs. C. nodded. “Gabe’s out by the east barn.”
Smiling, Jess thanked her, walked outside and headed west. After last night, her husband-to-be was the last person she wanted to see. Because in those few explosive moments on the verandah, he’d destroyed everything she thought she knew about herself. What kind of a woman loved one man and kissed another with such passionate need?
Two of the sheepdogs ran past, then returned to circle her before deciding to lead the way. The interruption was precisely what she’d needed. Taking a deep, deep breath of the crisp morning air, she focused her attention on the untamed splendor of the land around her—tussock-covered hills dotted with sheep, hardy wildflowers more beautiful than any cultured garden and over it all, an endless blue sky.