Excerpt About the Author Title Page 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 EPILOGUE Copyright

“Don’t be ridiculous. You know we’re not really married.”

“We are for the next fortnight. And I aim to enjoy the plusses as well as suffer the negatives.”

“Enjoy the plusses,” she echoed. “What do you mean by that?”

Adam wasn’t sure himself, but he was getting some pretty exciting ideas. “What do you think I mean? I might still not be in love with you, Bianca, but I still fancy you. Since I can’t have Sophie, or any of my other ‘blonde bimbos,’ I’ll make do with you.”

About the Author

MIRANDA LEE is Australian, living in New South Wales. Born and raised in the bush, she was boardingschool educated and briefly pursued a classical music career before moving to Sydney and embracing the world of computers. Happily married, with three daughters, she began writing when family commitments kept her at home. She likes to create stories that are believable, modern, fast-paced and sexy. Her interests include reading meaty sagas, doing word puzzles, gambling and going to the movies.

Two-Week Wife

Miranda Lee

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

‘ADAM,’ Bianca said in that softly persuasive voice he knew oh, so well. ‘I...er...I...um...Well, I have this little problem, you see, and I’m afraid I need your help...’

Adam’s stomach contracted. He turned slowly from where he’d been pouring himself a drink, the whisky decanter and glass still in his hands. He’d just walked in the door after one hell of a Saturday afternoon at Randwick races and wasn’t in the mood for one of Bianca’s ‘little problems.’

All sorts of possibilities flittered through his mind. She’d clobbered some poor bloke who’d patted or pinched her on the bottom—Bianca had one of those bottoms men could not resist.

Or she’d given all the housekeeping money away to a good cause. Again.

Or...His eyes darted swiftly around the unit. God, don’t tell me she’s brought home some starving stray dog or cat she’s found on the streets!

This she did with regular monotony, even though she knew the lease didn’t allow pets in their apartment block. It always fell to him in the end to take the damned bag of bones to the RSPCA, after which Bianca would glare balefully at him for days, as though he himself had personally murdered the wretched worm-ridden animal.

Relief flooded through him when the spacious and relatively uncluttered living room showed no sign of such a stray. Besides, Bianca wouldn’t be nervous about something like that, he finally realised. She would be defiant and rebellious.

And she was nervous. More than he could ever remember seeing her before.

His stomach tightened another notch.

Hell, he hoped she wasn’t pregnant by her latest beefcake boyfriend, and wanted him—her schnookhead flatmate and first best friend—to pay for an abortion.

Oh God, not that. Anything but that!

‘For pity’s sake, Bianca,’ he said, almost despairingly. ‘What have you done this time?’ Adam’s normally cool grey eyes projected total frustration as he glared at the woman he’d loved and hated for the past twenty-eight years.

No, not twenty-eight, he amended bitterly in his mind. Only twenty-three. He hadn’t met her till their first day at kindergarten together, when he’d been five.

He’d been blubbering in a corner of the classroom, all by himself, when this amazingly grown-up and self-assured four-year-old, with big blue eyes and a glossy black ponytail tied with a red ribbon, had put an arm around his shaking shoulders and told him not to worry. She’d look after him. She wasn’t at all scared because her mummy was a scripture teacher at this school and she’d been coming here for simply ages.

This little she-devil—who had been cleverly disguised as a guardian angel back then—had even known where the toilets were, which had been of real concern to him at that moment in time.

He’d been her devoted slave from that point.

He still was.

And she knew it!

He watched wryly as she made those big blue eyes look oh, so innocent. If there was one thing Bianca should not have been able to look these days, it was innocent. But she could, and it always made him melt.

‘It’s nothing bad, Adam,’ she said, as though butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. ‘Really.’

‘What about dangerous?’ he muttered drily. Bianca thrived on danger of the physical kind.

As a kid she’d been a tomboy and a thrill-seeker, always having to climb the highest tree in the yard, always having to play whatever sport the boys were playing and then become the best at it. She’d been able to run faster, throw further and jump higher than any of the boys in her class.

But that had all changed when she went to high school and puberty pulled her back on the field. Talent and determination alone hadn’t been able to compete with the boys once the sheer disadvantage of height, weight and size had become evident.

To Bianca’s chagrin, she had stopped growing at five feet three and a half, and she was burdened for ever with a very slender fine-boned figure. Even so, she’d fought to be allowed to play with the boys’ soccer team, going on to become their highest goalscorer each season.

‘You’re not going to try out for the Australian male soccer team now, are you?’ he asked, somewhat caustically.

Bianca was still into sport in a big way. And sportsmen. If there was one thing guaranteed to turn her on, it was broad shoulders and a bulging set of biceps. Brains didn’t come into it. Only brawn. She liked her men tall too, which was rather ironic considering her own lack of height.

Though six feet tall himself, with a far better body than Bianca gave him credit for, Adam knew he would never fulfil the criteria necessary to capture Bianca’s sexual interest. Nothing sparked when she looked at him. There was no chemistry—on her side.

Adam knew this because Bianca had told him so herself, with brutal but well-meant frankness, on the night she’d turned twenty-one and he’d wasted two dozen long-stemmed red roses in trying to woo her one last time. When he’d confessed he was crazy about her, she’d declared she loved him to death, but that it was the love a girl felt for a big brother or a best friend. She was sorry, but if he couldn’t accept that, then perhaps it would be better if he stayed out of her life.

She’d been right, of course. It would have been better if he’d stayed out of her life.

But he hadn’t. He just couldn’t. He remained her best friend, lending a fairly broad shoulder for her to cry on occasionally, and money when she was desperate enough to ask; Bianca had been brought up by her Scottish mother to ‘neither a borrower, nor a lender be’.

‘Don’t be silly.’ She pouted at him. She had pouting lips to go with that equally pouting bottom. ‘I don’t do things like that any more. I know I’m far too small to play with the really big boys.’

Only on the soccer field, he thought testily. It didn’t stop her playing with the really big boys in the bedroom. And the bigger the better, from what he could gather.

‘I wouldn’t put anything past you, Bianca,’ he ground out as he slopped some much needed whisky into his glass.

‘You make me sound so...so...’

‘Crazy?’ he suggested bitingly. ‘Irresponsible? Impulsive?’ She was all of those things. Not to mention warm, wacky, wild and wonderful, he added to himself on a silent groan.

Lifting the glass to his lips, he downed a good gulp of straight Johnny Walker. It burnt a fiery path down his throat and into his knotted stomach.

Bianca’s beautiful lips pursed further, her blue eyes narrowing, giving her an exotic, oriental look. This was enhanced by her high cheekbones, and the way her long black hair was pulled back tightly from her face. Adam had often fantasised about her being his own private geisha girl, especially when she wore the colourful red and white flowered kimono dressing-gown he’d given her last Christmas.

Bloody stupid fantasy, he thought ruefully. Bianca was as far removed from a geisha girl as any female could get!

‘Just because you don’t know how to have fun, Adam,’ she tossed at him with haughty disdain.

He snorted and strode across the sable-coloured carpet, flopping down into his favourite brown leather armchair. ‘Is that what you think you’re doing when you keep changing direction in your life at the drop of a hat?’ he threw up at her. ‘Was it fun you were having when you came to me last year, stony broke and without a roof over your head? Was it fun earlier this year, after that loser of a boyfriend dumped you? Do you really find it fun having others pick up your pieces?’

‘I do not expect you or anyone else to pick up my pieces,’ she huffed and puffed. ‘And I’ll have you know that I’m the one who usually dumps my “losers of boyfriends,” not the other way around.’

‘At least we agree on one thing,’ he said drily. ‘They’ve all been bums so far.’

‘Maybe,’ she countered blithely. ‘But they all had very nice bums, those bums.’

‘You’d know, I suppose.’ He quaffed back half the whisky, congratulating himself on the offhandedness of his reply—especially when the image of his Bianca being intimate with any part of another man’s anatomy nearly killed him. ‘But we have digressed. Back to your present little problem. Out with it, Bianca. I’m not in the mood for any of your female manoeuvrings tonight.’

‘All right, then, you meanie. I was just trying to tell you nicely, to make you understand that I had no idea this would eventuate. When the situation first arose, I didn’t have to involve you personally at all, but something unexpected has happened and now I have no alternative.’

Adam didn’t have a clue as to what she was talking about. But he feared he would. Soon. Only too well.

Bianca sat down on the sofa-end nearest his chair and leant towards him with the most heartwarmingly pleading look on her lovely face. ‘Please don’t be mad at me, Adam,’ she said, in a voice which would have melted concrete.

For a split second Adam felt himself begin to go to mush, before cold, hard reality had him getting a firm handle on his ongoing weakness for this incorrigible creature. She was going to use him again, as she had used him for years.

No more, he vowed staunchly. No more!

‘Out with it, Bianca,’ he snapped. ‘No more bull. Just give me the facts, and I’ll decide if I’m going to be involved or not.’

Her startled eyes betrayed surprise at his hard stance. She straightened her spine, then rocked her shoulders slightly from side to side in the characteristic gesture which usually preceded defiance or outright rebellion. Her chin shot up. Her eyes flashed and her mouth tightened. ‘There’s no need to take that tone.’

‘I’ll best be the judge of that, thank you. Now just spit it out, woman!’

‘Very well. It’s to do with my mother.’

‘What about your mother?’ Adam frowned. Bianca’s mum was a widow and had gone back to Scotland to live several years before. She’d been very lonely after her husband had been killed in a drag-racing accident.

Bianca was her only child and not much company once she’d finished university and had started flitting round the world on never-ending backpacking holidays. She only returned long enough to pick up a few months’ work, thereby saving up enough to be off again.

Mrs Peterson had several brothers and sisters back in Scotland, so it had made sense for her to return to her homeland. Then, six months ago in May, she’d been diagnosed with breast cancer.

‘Is she worse?’ he asked worriedly. ‘Do you need some more money to go and see her again?’

‘No to both those questions. Which is just as well. I haven’t finished paying you back for the last ticket to Edinburgh you bought me.’

True, he thought ruefully. Which was the only reason she’d stayed in one job and one place for so long. No doubt as soon as her debt was paid she’d be off again on some new adventure, trekking through the Himalayas or skiing down the mountain slopes of St Moritz.

‘No, Mum’s much better,’ Bianca was saying. ‘And there’s every chance that the cancer won’t come back.’

‘Then what’s the problem? I don’t understand.’ ‘She’s coming out here for a fortnight’s visit, that’s what. Her plane touches down next Saturday afternoon—a week from today. Her brothers and sisters all pitched in and bought her a return flight to Sydney.’

‘Well, what’s the problem in that? You should be thrilled. Oh, I see...you want her to stay here. That’s no trouble, Bianca. I don’t mind. I’m hardly here these days anyway, and there are two beds in your room, aren’t there?’

‘That’s the problem,’ she muttered.

Adam blinked his confusion. ‘The beds in your room are a problem?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘Because Mum won’t be expecting me to occupy one, that’s why.’

‘You’ve lost me, Bianca.’

Her sigh was expressive. ‘It’s like this, Adam. Mum thinks we’re married. Naturally she’ll be expecting me to be sleeping in your bed. And she’ll also expect you to be around a bit more than you have been lately. God knows what you’ve been up to. If I didn’t know better I’d think you were avoiding me.’

‘She...thinks...we’re...married,’ he repeated slowly, his eyes narrowing with each word.

‘Don’t look at me like that, Adam. I didn’t mean any harm. Honestly. But when I was over there in May she looked so darned ill. Try to understand ...I thought she was going to die!

‘I knew she’d always wanted to see me settled—preferably with you—so I told her what would make her happy. I said we were engaged and going to be married. Then after I came back and she kept hanging in there I had no alternative but to follow through. So I sent her some selective photos from Michelle’s wedding and said it was ours.’

Adam was shaking his head in utter disbelief. ‘How, in God’s name, did you pull that off? You weren’t even wearing white that day!’

‘My bridesmaid dress was pale pink and could easily pass for a wedding dress. Besides, Mum wouldn’t have expected me to have a traditional wedding with a big white dress. And you looked suitably bridegroomy in your best man outfit.

‘Luckily with it being your sister’s wedding, all your family were there. And on top of that, we had a lot of shots taken together, being partners for the day. Mum thought you looked very handsome, by the way. Oh, and remember those queen-sized sheets she sent, and which I gave you for your bed? They...er....they were our wedding present.’

Adam’s hand clenched tightly around the glass he was holding. Fury that she would perpetrate this fiasco without even consulting him had his blood bubbling with heated anger along his veins. Naturally she hadn’t expected to get caught. She’d probably thought her poor mum would safely pass away before her outrageous lies came to light.

That was always the way with Bianca. She never thought things through to all their possible eventualities and consequences. She always just plunged into some mad caper or other, without worrying or working out how it might affect others.

Never had this been more evident than on the occasion she’d come to him at the age of seventeen and asked him to relieve her of her virginity. Not for reasons of romance, mind. Simply out of curiosity. And she was tired, she’d said, of being the only girl in her group who hadn’t done it. Tired of having to defend her lack of male admirers.

Back then, boys hadn’t gone for Bianca all that much. Of course, she’d always thought it was because of her lack of boobs, but that hadn’t been so at all. It had simply been because they were used to treating her like a mate, not an object of male desire.

He’d been the only boy in school who’d fancied her like mad. And she’d known it. What she hadn’t known, when she’d asked this favour of him, was that he’d been a virgin too, back then. A bit of an embarrassment, really, being a male virgin at eighteen. His mates had used to rag him about it all the time.

He cringed now to think of the total mess he’d made of ‘relieving’ Bianca of her virginity—and himself of his own. He’d been so bloody nervous. Terrified, in fact. He’d been scared of hurting her, scared of coming too soon, scared of not being able to get the damned condom on properly.

The act itself had turned into an absolute disaster, with most of his fears coming to pass. In the end, he had hurt her, and it had all been over too soon. As for the damned condom...he had no idea how that had eventually assumed its rightful position. No doubt more by accident than design.

What should have been the most marvellous moment of his life had deteriorated into being the most embarrassing and definitely the most humiliating.

He could still recall the various expressions on her face during the ten-second event. Pain had been followed by a few moments of frowning frustration, culminating in something even worse... relief when the act had come to a very rapid conclusion, obviously without her experiencing one single moment of pleasure, let alone satisfaction.

Afterwards she’d been uncharacteristically silent, and he’d skulked off home feeling utterly crushed and totally deflated.

The only good to come out of that night had been that the experience had seemed to turn Bianca off sex for the next few years. She’d probably concluded it wasn’t worth bothering about, till a supermacho martial arts instructor, whose class she’d enrolled in during her last year at uni, had taken her uninterest in him as the ultimate challenge and then proceeded to show her that sex was nothing like what she’d experienced that night. He’d apparendy been a fantastic lover, with a body any girl would drool over and a technique to match.

From that moment she’d been hooked—not only on the pleasures of the flesh, but on that sort of male. After Mr Black Belt, she was programmed to believe that arousal and satisfaction were synonymous with an ultra-fit, muscle-bound body and a super-stud mentality.

Adam had always wanted the opportunity to show Bianca he was no longer the sexual klutz he’d been at eighteen, but she would never give him that opportunity. Her mind was fixed against him, her preconceptions set in concrete. He’d thought he’d come to terms with this, but now he realised he hadn’t. Not for a moment.

He wanted her now more than ever, and could not bear the thought of spending a single second in the same bed as her without being able to touch her.

Which was what she would surely ask of him if he agreed to go along with this masquerade of a marriage. She would expect him to allow her to climb into his bed every night for the duration of her mother’s stay. And she would also expect him not to lay a single hand on her.

Such a prospect was beyond the pale. He would not do it. He was a man, not a mouse, and it was high time Bianca recognised that fact.

Uncurling his white-knuckled fingers, he placed the empty glass down on a side-table and stood up.

‘No, Bianca,’ he said, his face stony, his voice quite cold. ‘No.’

And he stalked off down the hallway towards his room.

CHAPTER TWO

‘WHAT do you mean...no?’ she shouted after him as he disappeared down the hallway.

‘I mean no!’ he called back over his shoulder. ‘I won’t go along with it. You married us, Bianca. Now you’ll just have to divorce us.’

Bianca gaped after him for a moment before snapping her mouth shut. Exasperation mixed with irritation as she rolled her eyes. She’d had a feeling he was going to be difficult about this. And she’d damned well been right!

Underneath, however, she still felt confident she could bring him round. Michelle always said she could twist Adam around her little finger. Bianca wasn’t fond of that phrase, but she could not deny there was some truth in it. Just as there was some truth in Michelle’s belief that her brother was still in love with his old schoolfriend.

Bianca sometimes felt guilty about taking advantage of Adam’s lingering and largely unrequited passion for her. She’d shamelessly used his affection for her in the past. She supposed she was still doing it to a degree.

Though, to be fair to herself, she’d warned him never to hope things would change. She loved him to death but she did not desire him. It was as simple as that.

Actually, now that she thought about it, she wasn’t so sure Adam was in love with her any more. There’d been a steady stream of girlfriends paraded through this place since she’d come to live here a year ago—all blonde bimbo types, with legs that went up to their armpits and busts which made Bianca go green with envy. If he was pining after her, then he was making a darned good fist of hiding it.

This realisation piqued her somewhat. She’d become used to the notion that Adam was still in love with her. It had become a secret balm to soothe her battered ego on occasions, to reassure her that she was worthy of being loved, that there was more to her than being just the flighty piece of goods several men had called her.

Bianca frowned dissatisfaction at this train of thought. It seemed she just wasn’t ready yet to give up Adam’s status as her secret admirer. Knowing he was always there for her was the one steadying factor in her life—he was a rock she could rely on when all else failed.

A type of panic began to set in. She could not bear the thought that he might one day cut her out of his life. For ever. She’d be lost without him. Yet if he wasn’t in love with her any more, then it was bound to happen one day...

Maybe he isn’t still madly in love with me, she amended in desperation. But he does care about me.

Just as she cared about him. Deeply. He’d touched something in her from that first day at kindergarten, when she’d spied him in a corner crying his heart out. All during their school days she’d felt compelled to look after him, for he’d been such a sweetie. And such a hopeless nerd of a boy!

Around sixteen, he’d shot up suddenly—all gangly legs, long, greasy hair and pimples. Talk about unattractive! By their last year at school he’d improved somewhat in looks, but by then he’d become shy and awkward around girls. One day she’d overheard several of his so-called mates taunting him over his lack of success with the opposite sex. They’d called him cruel names and made him look small.

Bianca had felt sorry for him, so sorry that she’d decided to sacrifice her own virginity for the sake of his. It was the least she could do, she’d felt, for her very best friend.

Oddly enough, she still could not think of that night without being besieged by the most confused feelings. He’d been absolutely hopeless at it. And it had hurt like hell. Yet, for all that, she’d been unbearably moved by the experience—had had to battle hard not to cry afterwards. There had been something so incredibly sweet about his appalling nerves, not to mention the look on his face.

Bianca tried to blot out the disturbing memory as she launched herself up from the sofa and raced after Adam down the hallway.

Of course there’d been something incredibly sweet about it, she dismissed with irritable impatience. Adam was an incredibly sweet person. Thank God. And as such, he could not keep saying no to her once she pointed out how much the truth would distress her mother. He liked her mother, almost as much as her mother liked him.

Bianca made it into his bedroom just in time to see him slam the en suite bathroom’s door shut. She heard the lock snap into place, followed by the sound of the shower being turned on full.

Pummelling on the door didn’t seem like a good idea, so she decided to wait patiently for his return. Meanwhile she picked up the clothes he’d strewn around the room in his anger.

Bianca shook her head in disbelief as she hung up his shirt and trousers. Messiness was as unlike him as his outburst of anger. The adult Adam was a quiet, coolly controlled individual—a highly intelligent but rather reserved man who liked order and tidiness. He was a maths lecturer at Sydney University, and his chief hobby was working out mathematically based systems for winning money at the races.

With some success apparently, since he was now driving a new BMW. His salary alone would not have provided that, and his family had no more money than hers.

She was tucking a sock into each shoe when the bathroom door was wrenched open. A cloud of steam emerged first, through which strode Adam, swathed from neck to ankle in his favourite red towelling robe which was as huge as it was thick.

Amazingly cold grey eyes settled on her as he sashed it tightly around his waist. ‘That won’t work either,’ he said brusquely.

‘What?’

‘Picking up after me. Sweet-talking’s a waste of time too. You’ve overstepped the mark, Bianca, and I’m not going to save your butt this time. Your mother will probably live for donkey’s years and I’m not going to be permanently saddled with the ridiculous role of pretending to be your long-suffering husband.’

‘R-ridiculous!’ she spluttered. ‘Long-suffering?’

A coating of dry amusement brought a gleam to his steely gaze. ‘You don’t honestly think any sane man would want to be your real husband, do you? Only a fool or a masochist would volunteer for that job.’

Bianca blinked her shock. This was her sweet Adam talking to her like this? And looking at her like that?

‘You look surprised, darling,’ he went on with chilling indifference as he casually raked his hands through his wet dark hair. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve believed all that rubbish my sister’s been feeding you all these years about my still being in love with you?’

Bianca’s mouth fell inelegantly open. Adam’s laugh scraped down her spine like chalk on a blackboard.

‘Michelle’s such a romantic,’ he said, his voice as cynically amused as his eyes. ‘I admit I had the most awful crush on you all through school. I even clung to my warped passion through our university days. But I finally outgrew it—for which I have you to thank, Bianca.

‘You really made me see the truth that night you turned twenty-one. I was wasting my time wanting you. So I turned my futile fantasies from fiction to fact with another female later that evening, and frankly I haven’t looked back since.’

Bianca was stung to the quick by his words. And by the images they evoked. ‘You mean I wasted my guilt on you that night?’ she burst out angrily. ‘There I was, thinking I’d broken your heart, when in truth you were off...you were off...’ She huffed and puffed to stop herself saying the crudity which had sprung onto the tip of her tongue.

‘I was off making some other more grateful girl happy?’ he suggested sarcastically.

‘Who was it?’ she demanded to know, her mind racing along with her heart. ‘Not that awful Tracy. My God, she’d sleep with anyone, that trollop!’

‘Thank you for the compliment, darling. But, no, it wasn’t Tracy. It was Laura.’

Laura!

Bianca was speechless. Laura had not been one of their group. She’d been a friend of a friend of a friend, who’d somehow been at her party by accident. Thirty if she was a day, but an absolutely stunning blonde with an absolutely stunning figure.

‘I don’t believe you!’ she choked out, hurt beyond belief by this almost ancient betrayal of his so-called love for her.

‘Don’t you? Poor Bianca.’ His smile was not at all sweet. ‘Has someone stolen your lollipop, darling? Won’t naughty Adam play the game any more?’

Her mouth returned to its earlier goldfish imitation.

Adam reached out and flicked her chin upwards, so her teeth snapped together. His eyes were narrowed and cruel-looking. He was nothing at all like the Adam she knew and loved.

‘I suggest you toddle off now, sweetheart, and make up a new story to tell your mother. I’m sure you can come up with one, being such an inventive and imaginative little minx. If you’re really stuck, you could always try the truth!’

Bianca’s startled tongue-tiedness didn’t last for long, and was quickly replaced by indignant and sceptical outrage. ‘I don’t believe any of this! Have you been drinking? Did you lose all your money at the races? This isn’t like you at all, Adam.’

He gripped her shoulders and pushed her down into a sitting position on the end of the bed. ‘Yes, I’ve been drinking,’ he agreed in a steely tone. ‘And, yes, I did lose a good deal at the races today, which didn’t please me at all. But you’re quite wrong when you think this isn’t like me. It is. It’s the new me.’

‘The new you?’ she repeated blankly.

‘I’ve been too soft with you for too long, Bianca. It’s done your character no good. No good at all. You think you can do as you please where I’m concerned. You think you can run rings around me. Well, you can’t anymore, sweetness. I’m awake to you now. Actually, I have been for ages, but it didn’t suit me to make a stand. It does now.’

‘Why now?’ she threw back up at him, feeling suddenly angry. How dared he let her think he loved her all this time when he didn’t?

‘Because I’ve met someone,’ he said. ‘Someone I intend asking to marry me. Hard to do that when I’m pretending to be married to someone else, don’t you think?’

Bianca felt her world go slightly out of kilter for a moment. Adam had fallen in love? He was going to get married?

Her heart squeezed tight. Her stomach flipped over. ‘I don’t believe you!’

He straightened, laughing. ‘You do seem to be having trouble with believing me today. Tell me what you don’t believe.’

She levered herself to her feet, shaken to find that her legs felt like jelly. ‘I don’t believe you’ve met someone. You haven’t brought a girl home here once this last month. You’re just making her up.’

But at the back of her mind Bianca was remembering all those nights Adam hadn’t come home lately. She’d presumed he was sleeping over in his room at the university, which he sometimes did. Now she saw there could be a very different explanation for his many absences.

He laughed again. ‘You’re really grasping at straws, you know that? The reason I didn’t bring Sophie here was because I wanted our relationship to last. What chance did I have with any of my other girlfriends after they’d met you as my flatmate?

‘They always took one look at you and were instantly jealous and suspicious. Nothing I could ever say would convince them our friendship was purely platonic. They were all convinced we were secret lovers. An impression you deliberately seemed to foster, I might add.’

‘I did not!’ she denied hotly. But underneath she knew she had. She’d never felt any of those bimbos were good enough for Adam. She’d only been protecting him by getting rid of them.

‘You never wanted me, Bianca,’ he swept on, a cold rage settling into his eyes. ‘But you didn’t want anyone else to have me either. You’ve been a very greedy little girl. And very selfish. It’s time you stopped thinking of no one but yourself.’

‘But that’s not true,’ she wailed, hating this new Adam and the way he was making her feel. ‘I was thinking of my mother when I told her...what I told her.’ Tears filled her eyes, tears of temper more than distress. ‘You have no right to say these rotten things to me. You’re being so hateful!’

‘The truth often hurts.’

The truth, she thought savagely. The truth was that her Adam was going to marry someone else! Just the thought of it was like a dagger in her heart. God knows why. She didn’t want to marry him herself. She didn’t want to marry any man.

Marriage, in Bianca’s opinion, would be a living death for someone like her. She was just like her father in that respect, craving change and excitement all the time. She didn’t like the idea of settling down and having children any more than he had.

Her dad had married in the throes of a whirlwind passion, then spent the next twenty years finding satisfaction outside of the marital bed. Bianca suspected she might be just as fickle. There hadn’t been a male yet to hold her sexual interest beyond six months. She suspected none ever would.

‘So who is this Sophie you’re going to marry?’ she demanded to know.

‘Oh, no, you don’t,’ Adam retorted with a dry chuckle. ‘I’m going to keep her well away from you, Madam Mischief-Maker.’

‘Where do you sleep with her?’

‘None of your business. Do I ask you where you copulate with your latest boyfriend?’

‘You can, if you like. But Derek and I have parted company. He was beginning to bore me.’

‘Gee whiz, what happened? Didn’t you fall asleep straight afterwards one night? Were you actually forced to make conversation with Mr Macho-Man?’

Bianca could feel a smile begin to tug at her lips. It was a good description for Derek, who was a professional weight-lifter with more muscles than mental capacity. ‘Something like that,’ she said.

Their eyes met, and that old camaraderie which had sustained their friendship all these years struggled to the surface. She’d always been able to tell Adam pretty much anything. And she’d never been able to shock him. He’d always listened and always given her sound advice, but never condemned. He was still her best friend, she realised, her heart squeezing tight as a wry smile began to play around his mouth.

Instinctively she reached out to place an intimate hand on his arm. ‘Sophie doesn’t have to know, Adam,’ she said pleadingly. ‘Mum will soon be gone, back to Scotland. Please...I don’t want to spoil her trip by telling her the truth just yet. I promise I’ll write to her after she’s gone back and make up something to get you permanently off the hook.’

She held her breath as he simply stared at her.

Please say yes, she was silently willing him. Please...

His sigh was weary as he removed her hand from his arm. ‘You never know when to give up, do you? Now let me make this quite clear. I am not going to play happy husband for you and your mother. I am not going to let you sleep in my bed while she’s here, unless I’m not in it. I am not going to be at your beck and call, or dance to any tune you might choose to play.’

Bianca’s dismay was only exceeded by her. panic. ‘But whatever am I going to tell her?’

‘Tell her whatever story you fancy, Bianca, only make it convincing. You have a choice: either telling the truth, or inventing a temporary separation or impending divorce. Believe me when I tell you I have somewhere I can lay my head for the duration of that fortnight, so you don’t have to worry your pretty little head about where I’ll sleep.’

Bianca glared at him while he shepherded her out of his bedroom. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get dressed. I’m going out.’ And he firmly closed and locked his door.

CHAPTER THREE

ADAM closed his eyes as he leant against the door.

God damn Bianca for making him lie like that!

He had no intention of asking Sophie to marry him. Hell, he’d only just met the girl the previous week.

He also hadn’t been going to go out tonight. He was tired after his unsuccessful foray at the races. He would have liked nothing better than to settle down in front of the TV with his feet up and have Bianca dish him up one of her interesting meals.

She was a fantastic cook, and spoiled him whenever he was at home in that regard. It was one of the plusses among the many negatives in having her around.

But he’d be blowed if he’d stay at home tonight now! He’d have to sleep over at the penthouse, he supposed, even though it would still smell of paint. He didn’t have a date with Sophie, as Bianca would undoubtedly conclude. But he wished he had.

A night in bed with Sophie would blot Bianca out of his mind for a few hours at least. Sophie was everything Bianca wasn’t. Tall and curvy, with long blonde hair, wide hips and breasts like melons. He’d learnt from Laura many years ago never to date a girl who reminded him in any way of the heartless creature who’d told him she felt nothing when she looked at him. Generally he confined himself to bedding busty blondes, with the occasional redhead thrown in for variety. Brunettes never stood a chance.

Sophie was a minor actress, sleeping her way up in the world with gay abandon. He’d met her last Saturday night at the new Darling Harbour Casino, where she was working as a croupier between bit roles in movies. No doubt she’d thought he was a real high-roller, laying thousand-dollar bets. Which he was, he supposed.

Gambling had always paid off for Adam, because he approached it with a cool head and mathematical skill. Bianca would be stunned at how much money it had brought him over the years...if he ever chose to tell her. She thought he confined his gambling to the races. She also thought he lost more than he won.

Racing was all very well, in small doses, but the really big money was to be made in the casinos. Unfortunately, he had to keep changing venues, because management soon spotted professional gamblers, and had a dim view of clients capable of counting cards or who used other systems which could regularly beat the house.

Bianca had no idea of his weekend trips interstate, to the casinos in Melbourne, Hobart, Adelaide and even Pert, nor of the elegant, sophisticated and very accommodating women who threw themselves at him on those occasions. It stroked his ego to note that they had no trouble with ‘spark’ when they looked at him, as Bianca did. Hell, they fairly went up in flames when he touched them.

Fortunately, the opening of a new casino in Sydney had brought him a much closer venue—for gambling and otherwise. The night he’d met Sophie, he’d been trying one of his newer systems on the blackjack table, though his concentration had been shot to pieces. He’d been thinking about Bianca spending the weekend up the coast at some sleazy motel with darling Derek. She hadn’t been bored with him seven days ago. Far from it!

Sophie had given him the eye as she’d dealt him the cards, so his bruised ego had taken her home to her place after she finished up. He hadn’t given Bianca a single thought till he’d woken the next morning to brown eyes instead of blue, and blonde hair instead of black.

Swearing at the memory, Adam levered himself away from the door, throwing off his robe as he strode over to his built-in wardrobe.

He began to agonise, as he dragged on some clothes, about whether he’d ever marry.

Probably not, came the savagely rueful acceptance. He’d only ever wanted one girl as his wife and the mother of his children. How could he settle for second-best?

No, he’d be having one-night stands with blonde bimbos when he was eighty—paid for, by then— and dreaming of what might have been, if only he hadn’t been such a useless schmuck at eighteen!

He glanced down at the old jeans he’d automatically pulled on and thought of all the swanky clothes he’d recently installed in the penthouse instead of the boot of his car—the ones he wore in his secret life as gambler and lover extraordinaire. The Italian suits. The tuxedos. The black silk pyjamas and dressing gowns.

He shook his head at himself, for he knew that that life wasn’t real. It would one day come to an end. It was a game. Thankfully a prosperous game, while his wits and courage were up to it, but still essentially a game—to be played as a boost to his ego and bank balance as well as a much needed diversion from the distress real life kept bringing him.

Real life was outside this door, waiting for him, waiting to try to change his mind about being her pretend husband.

He would have to be strong. Already he was feeling guilty. Already he was weakening. Tempting thoughts began infiltrating his brain. Maybe he would enjoy the pretence? Maybe he could lie there at night beside her and fantasise? Maybe she’d be so grateful to him that she’d let him...?

His teeth clenched down hard in his jaw. He didn’t want her bloody gratitude. He wanted what she willingly gave those other guys. He wanted her passion and her desire. He wanted her sexy little body, naked and panting beneath him, begging him to go on, desperate for him...

Adam swore as he became hotly aware that his fantasy had swiftly transferred to a hard, aching reality. He dragged a sloppy Joe down over his thudding heart and vowed not to weaken one iota.

Even if she got down on her hands and knees before him, he would not budge an inch.

A darkly ironic smile creased his mouth as he shoved his feet into battered trainers.

Let’s not go too far, Adam, came the wicked thought. Bianca on her hands and knees was a perverse and powerfully persuasive prospect. Too bad it would never come about. He would give anything to have her at his mercy. Anything!

Bianca spun round from the kitchen sink when she heard Adam’s bedroom door bang. Oh, dear. He still sounded very angry. What to do? How best to approach him?

Appeal to his sense of compassion, she decided, and raced out to head him off before he could leave. The sight of him dressed in old clothes distracted her for a second.

‘Oh!’ she exclaimed. ‘So you’re not taking the soon-to-be fiancée out tonight?’ she asked tartly, and immediately bit her bottom lip. Wrong tack, you fool.

‘We’re staying in,’ he drawled. ‘Watching videos and searching for the meaning of life.’

Bianca was taken aback by his sarcasm. He really was in a filthy mood. Perhaps she should leave appealing to his compassion till tomorrow.

But what if he didn’t come home tomorrow? He was staying away from the flat more and more these days—obviously at this Sophie’s place.

‘Adam, when can we talk about this further?’ she asked, in her most apologetic and reasonable tone. ‘I know you’re angry with me, and I’m sorry. I should have told you before this.’

‘You shouldn’t have done it at all!’

‘Yes, you’re right. I’m sorry.’

‘Bianca, saying sorry is not always enough.’

Bianca could feel mutiny brewing inside her heart. Why was he being so damned difficult about this? Was she asking so much? Two miserable weeks of pretending to be her husband and then he was off the hook to marry this...this Sophie creature.

‘You always said I could count on you,’ she pointed out rather sulkily.

‘You can. In things that count.’

She pouted her displeasure. ‘I would do it for you.’

‘Do what?’

‘Pretend to be your wife.’

‘Really? That’s an interesting thought. But I don’t need a pretend wife. I’m going to have a real one.’

Bianca still hadn’t come to terms with that. Still, there was a many a slip twixt the engagement and the altar. If this Sophie was anything like his previous girlfriends he’d soon be bored to death with her. None of those bimbos had had enough brains to boil water.

‘So what do you expect me to tell Mum?’ she asked defiantly.

He shrugged. ‘That’s your problem.’

‘I’m not going to tell her I lied, Adam.’

‘Heaven forbid. Tell you what, though. I’ll stay away the whole fortnight. You tell your mum we’re having a trial separation. Then, later, you can write and say that it didn’t work out and we’re divorced.’

‘She’ll be very upset.’

‘Only if you are. Tell her that it was an amicable parting and that we’re still good friends. That’s the best I can do.’

Bianca pressed her lips tightly together to stop herself from saying what she thought of him and his so-called friendship. When the chips were down, it had proved about as strong as his so-called love! ‘Is that your final word on the matter?’

‘It is.’

‘Then to hell with you, Adam Marsden. You’re not the man I thought you were. As soon as Mum goes home to Scotland, I’ll be finding somewhere else to live.’

His sudden stillness raised one last grain of hope in her breast. She could have sworn regret flashed momentarily in his eyes. But then they cooled perceptively and her heart sank.

‘I think that would be best for all concerned, Bianca,’ he said, with casual indifference.

All of a sudden she wanted to cry. Or to scream. Or both. Instead, she gave him an icy glare. ‘I will never ask you for another thing. Not as long as I live. I will have trouble even speaking to you!’

His face hardened. ‘Good.’

‘I had no idea you were such a bastard! To think I once believed you loved me!’

The cruellest little smile pulled at his mouth. ‘The things we have to live with,’ came his sarcastic remark.

Bianca could only stare at him. ‘I don’t know you at all, do I? You’ve become a stranger!’

‘A stranger?’ he repeated idly. ‘Yes, you could be right.’

And, with that devil’s smile still playing on his lips, he picked up his car keys from where he always left them in the ashtray on the coffee-table and walked out on her.

CHAPTER FOUR

BIANCA was as good as her word. She didn’t ask Adam for another thing all week. Neither did she speak to him.

Hard to, when he wasn’t these.

He’d come back briefly on the Sunday evening, collected some clothes, told her curtly he’d be staying elsewhere for the following three weeks and departed again.

It turned out to be the loneliest, most wretched week Bianca had ever spent in her life. She missed Adam terribly. OK, so they hadn’t been living in each other’s pockets lately, but he was usually there a few nights a week, and always on a Sunday afternoon. She liked having him around to talk to and cook for. He gave her life purpose, especially now she’d given Derek the flick.

Truly, she didn’t know what she’d ever seen in that big lug. He had a great body to look at and touch, but this time—amazingly—she’d wanted more. She’d wanted a boyfriend with brains as well as brawn.

Adam had been so right about dear Derek’s lack of grey matter. This had come home to her during their drive up to Foster last Saturday. Four hours had never seemed so long. She’d been bored to tears before they’d even arrived at the beachside town.

Derek had not been pleased when she’d told him she wanted separate rooms. She hadn’t actually been to bed with him as yet, and he’d no doubt been expecting a real orgy that weekend. Still, it hadn’t been long before he’d started talking about some other girl he’d met down at the gym that week. Clearly, his girlfriends were just interchangeable sex objects.

A bit like your boyfriends, darling, came that horrid voice which had seemed to keep popping into her head ever since her fight with Adam. It told her all sorts of things she didn’t want to hear about herself. Like how shallow she was. And how selfish.

Which she obviously was! Otherwise she would have been happy that Adam had fallen in love and was going to get married. Instead, she resented the thought. She certainly resented this Sophie. More than resented her. She hated her. And she didn’t even know the girl.

Depression began to set in as each day dragged by. November was a fairly slow month in the section of the accountancy firm where she was currently employed. Her job description as ‘taxation consultant’ sounded far grander than the actual work she did—giving tax advice to clients and preparing their tax returns.

She’d have to find herself a new job soon. This one paid well, but it was as boring as anything. She’d only stuck at it because she owed Adam money. There were far too many moments during each day when her mind was not occupied, and then she would begin thinking of what she was going to tell her mother about her supposed marriage to Adam.

Night-times were worse. It took her ages to fall asleep, her thoughts going round and round. She started taking extra aerobics classes at the gym every evening, working herself so hard she should have slept like a log every night.

Instead, she tossed and turned, guilt warring with irritation.

Irritation was definitely winning by Wednesday night.

If only Adam had been co-operative, she started thinking furiously. If only he hadn’t fallen in love with that stupid Sophie. If only he was still in love with me!

By Thursday night her conscience took over again. She was being shallow and selfish, thinking of no one but herself. She should never have lied to her mother in the first place. Lying was never a good idea. Honesty was indeed the best policy.

By the time she fell asleep on the Thursday night, Bianca had decided to ring Adam at the university the next morning, beg his forgiveness and promise to tell her mother the truth if only he’d come home to live.

Friday dawned to the sound of the telephone ringing in the flat, and she jumped out of bed, certain it was Adam. After all, a friendship such as theirs could not be destroyed so easily. He was probably feeling as guilty as she was, she thought as she raced to answer, her heart pounding as she snatched up the receiver.

‘Hello? Is that you, Adam?’ Even as she said the words she knew she was wrong. For the beeps on the line told her this was a long-distance call.

“Fraid not, lass,’ a male voice said, with a Scottish accent. ‘If that’s Bianca, this is your Uncle Steward.’

‘Uncle Stewart?’ Her heart squeezed tight. Something had gone wrong with her mother. She wasn’t coming. She was dying!

All the blood drained from her face and she slumped against the telephone table. ‘Oh, God,’ she groaned. ‘What’s happened?’

‘Now don’t jump to conclusions, lass. Your mother’s fine. She’s just taken an earlier flight. It arrives around five this afternoon, not on Saturday. Is that OK? Can you meet it?’

‘Yes, of course!’ Bianca exclaimed, relief making her feel better than she had all week. ‘But why did she do that?’

‘A friend was able to upgrade her to business class on that flight for no extra money, so it seemed silly not to take it.’

‘I’ll say.’

‘I won’t keep you, lass. This is costing me a fortune. Look after your mother.’

‘I will, Uncle Stewart. And thanks so much for helping with her fare.’

‘No trouble. She deserves it. Bye for now.’

‘Bye.’

Bianca hung up, feeling excited yet slightly sick. Her mother’s imminent arrival brought home to her the fact that there was one thing less advisable than lying to her mum, and that was owning up to lying to her.

Bianca knew then that she just couldn’t do it. She was going to stick to her marriage story, which meant it was better if Adam stayed right away. So there would be no phone call to the university, no begging for forgiveness. She would just have to make up some plausible story to explain Adam’s absence.

Perhaps she could say the university had sent him on an unexpected mission to deepest, darkest Africa, to teach calculus to underprivileged pygmies!

Five-fifteen that afternoon found Bianca parking her car in the international terminal car park, feeling more than a little flustered. She’d had no trouble getting time off from work, but her old rusted-out heap of a car had decided not to start after sitting in the hot November sun all day, and she’d had to ring the Road Service Company to come and get it going.

Luckily, the problem had only been dirty points, and she was soon on her way. But time had been lost, peak hour had arrived and it had taken her much longer to get from the office in Crows Nest through the harbour tunnel and out to busy Mascot. Her watch said twenty past five by the time she made it inside the blessedly air-conditioned terminal building.

A check of the overhead screens showed the flight had landed pretty well on time, ten minutes earlier. Bianca hurried along to Gate B, still feeling hot and bothered, and very grateful that it would be a while before her mother got through Customs.

A quick trip to the Ladies’ revived her melting make-up and limp hair, which she secured high on her head in a shiny blue scrunchie. Her mother always complained she never made the most of her looks, so she’d made a special effort to look pretty today, wearing one of the few feminine outfits she owned—a flowing skirt and matching blouse in a flowery print of blues and mauves.

Bianca gnawed at her bottom lip as she washed her hands, hoping the old friendship ring Adam had given her once long ago would pass as a wedding ring. She was not the owner of much jewellery, and it was the best she could rustle up at the last minute. At least it was fairly plain and made of gold.

Taking a deep, gathering breath, Bianca smiled at herself in the mirror and told herself to be natural, or her mother would know something was up. May Peterson had a nose for lies, and liars.

Bianca was shocked on her return to Gate B to see her mother already there, frowning as she looked around the milling crowd for a familiar face. It seemed business class passengers were shunted through Customs a darned sight faster than the economy section in which Bianca usually travelled.

Mrs Peterson spotted her daughter and tears swiftly replaced the worry in her eyes. Bianca felt her own eyes flood as she hurried forward and threw her arms around the only person in the world who truly loved and understood her.

Till this week, she’d thought Adam did as well. But she’d been wrong about that. The thought hurt her more than she liked to admit, even to herself.

The hug was long and touchingly silent. The two women embraced tightly, no words necessary. Or perhaps neither was capable of speaking for a few moments. Finally, Bianca drew back to look her mother over.

‘God, you look good!’ she exclaimed.

And she did. Nothing at all like the frail, wan woman who’d been lying in that hospital bed last May. There was flesh on her bones, colour in her face and that old sparkle in her pretty blue eyes. For a woman of fifty who’d been battling cancer all year, she looked bloody marvellous!

Bianca stood there, a silly grin on her face as she thanked God for the miracle He’d obviously performed in answer to her many prayers. Yet, down deep in her heart, she still feared that the battle was not yet over, the fight not yet completely won. As such, she was not going to say or do anything to cause her mother extra stress.

Her mum believed Adam was her adoring, loving husband, and Bianca was going to make sure she continued to think that till she was well out of the woods.

‘Where’s Adam?’ May asked straight away. ‘Parking the car?’

Bianca swallowed, smiled, then started on her newest invention. ‘Actually, no, he couldn’t be here with me, Mum. Your surprise visit has unfortunately coincided with a series of conferences in America Adam simply had to attend. He was wretchedly disappointed, but this trip was very important to his career at the university.’

‘Oh, what a shame,’ her Mum sighed. ‘And I was so looking forward to seeing him again. I do so love that boy. I always knew he was the right one for you, Bianca. I’m just so glad that you finally realised it too. Still, maybe you and he can come over to Scotland some time in the near future. I’d love the rest of the family to meet him.’

‘Er...yes, of course, Mum.’ Bianca could not trust herself to say any more. Resentment that Adam had put her in this awkward position had begun to sizzle inside her again. She also bitterly resented the thought that she would have to lie like this for a whole fortnight while he was off having fun with his new lady love and not giving her a second thought!

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