“Don’t touch me! I’m not one of your possessions, Zeke.”

Marianne continued. “I’m your wife.”

“Dead right you’re my wife,” Zeke grated slowly. “So why don’t you start acting like it?”

“You arrogant—”

“You’re my wife, I’m your husband, so what’s got into you all of a sudden?”

Before she could answer, he had taken her mouth in a kiss that immediately ignited a response deep in the core of her. He only had to touch her and she melted for him. But she had to resist him, she had to make him understand….

HELEN BROOKS lives in Northamptonshire, England, and is married with three children. As she is a committed Christian, busy housewife and mother, her spare time is at a premium, but her hobbies include reading, swimming, gardening and walking her two energetic, inquisitive and very endearing young dogs. Her long-cherished aspiration to write became a reality when she put pen to paper on reaching the age of forty, and sent the result off to Harlequin Mills & Boon.

Look out for The Irresistible Tycoon

by Helen Brooks (#2256)

A Whirlwind Marriage
Helen Brooks

MILLS & BOON

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Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER ONE

ZEKE BUCHANAN glanced at his wife as he rose from the breakfast table, but although Marianne was aware of his gaze she didn’t raise her head from her contemplation of the contents of her coffee cup, not even when he stopped just behind her and rested his hands on her slender shoulders as he said, ‘You haven’t forgotten the Mortons are coming at seven?’

No, she hadn’t forgotten the Mortons. She steeled herself to show no reaction, either in her body or her voice, when she replied coolly, ‘No, of course not. Everything’s in order.’

‘Good.’ There was a moment’s hesitation, and then he bent and placed a swift kiss on the top of her blond head. ‘I probably won’t be home much before seven myself. I’m flying up to Stoke this morning to look at an old factory site I’m interested in, but I should be back by mid-afternoon if you need me.’

If I need you? Of course I need you, but that’s a concept that’s alien to you, isn’t it? She didn’t trust the bitterness not to show if she spoke, so she merely nodded without turning her head to look at him.

‘Goodbye, Marianne.’

His voice was cold now, and she replied in like vein when she said, ‘Goodbye, Zeke.’

And then the breakfast room door had shut behind him and she was alone. She sat absolutely still for a full minute, willing herself not to give way to the tears that were always threatening these days, and then she rose very slowly and walked across to the huge, south-facing window which took up most of one wall.

The vista beyond the glass was a breathtaking aerial view of half of London, or so it seemed. The penthouse, at the top of a high-rise block of luxury flats, had been tailormade for Zeke long before he had met her, more than two years ago. It was the last word in opulent living, from the massive drawing room regally decorated in blue and gold to the sumptuous master bedroom and its decadent en suite bathroom, which was black and silver and mirrored from floor to ceiling. And Marianne hated it. She loathed it.

She knew one of Zeke’s old girlfriends—a very successful and glamorous redhead by the exotic name of Liliana de Giraud, who was the interior designer to the rich and famous—had designed the penthouse, and once she had discovered that some twelve months ago her dislike of the brazen bachelor pad had turned to revulsion.

She had lost count of how many times she had asked Zeke to come with her to look at different properties—some apartments, some houses—but always he had fobbed her off with ‘tomorrow’. But tomorrow had never come.

She relaxed against the window for a moment, her forehead pressed against the cold glass, and then she straightened abruptly, drawing her shoulders back military-style and lifting her small chin determinedly.

None of that! she told herself silently. You’re not going to give in to the urge to run and hide. They were going through a bad patch, but that didn’t mean she had to fold under the pressure. She would come through this; she would. She had coped with the shock of her mother’s sudden death four years ago—she would cope with this. But, oh… She bit her lip hard. What she would give to talk to her mother now, just to be able to tell someone all of it. She felt she would go mad sometimes, cut off from the world in this ivory tower Zeke had created.

And then, as though in answer to the silent desperate plea, the telephone rang. Marianne let it ring until the answer-machine cut in. The only people who rang these days were Zeke, one or other of their social circle, or business acquaintances, and she didn’t feel like talking to any of those.

‘Hi, Marianne. Long time no talkie! This is Pat—Patricia—in case you haven’t guessed, and as I’m up in town for a day or two I thought I’d—’

Pat’s voice was cut off as Marianne lifted the receiver and said breathlessly, ‘Pat? Oh, Pat. It’s so lovely to hear your voice.’

‘Is it? You only had to pick up the phone any day to hear it, Annie,’ Pat said with a chuckle to soften the admonishment.

Marianne blinked and then found herself smiling. The same old straightforward Pat. It was her friend’s habit of plain speaking that had got under Zeke’s skin even before he had met Pat, and the two had never hit it off. Pat was right, though; she should have contacted her before this, Marianne told herself silently. But with all that was happening between Zeke and herself she had felt—ridiculously, perhaps—that it would be a betrayal of her husband. She didn’t feel like that any more. Not since last night.

‘You’re in town?’ Marianne said now. ‘Can we meet up for lunch or something?’

‘Great. Do you want me to come round to the apartment?’ Pat asked briskly.

Marianne glanced round the suffocatingly exquisite interior and shut her eyes tightly for a second before she said, ‘No, we’ll eat out. My treat. There’s a great little French place a few blocks away: Rochelle’s, in St Martin’s Street. I’ll meet you there at twelve if that’s okay?’

‘Terrific. See you then. And, Annie—?’

‘Yes?’ she asked carefully.

‘Are you all right?’

Marianne took a deep breath and said quietly, ‘No, no I’m not all right, Pat.’

‘Didn’t think you were. Twelve, then.’ And in characteristic fashion the phone went dead.

Oh, Pat. Marianne replaced the receiver and stood staring at the telephone for some moments as a great flood of relief and expectation swept through her. She hadn’t realised just how much she needed Pat’s down-to-earth common sense and no-frills approach to life until this very second, but now she couldn’t wait to see her.

She glanced at the small gold wristwatch Zeke had given her for her twenty-first birthday, a few months after she had married him. Eight o’clock. Four hours to go. But suddenly the day which had stretched endlessly in front of her just minutes before had been transformed.

A long, hot soak in the bath. Marianne nodded to the thought, and, leaving the breakfast table just as it was, walked through to one of the two guest bedrooms which both had their own en suites.

She rarely used the master bedroom’s en suite—even though it boasted an Olympian Jacuzzi bath—unless Zeke was around, and then she only did it to avoid yet another row. She couldn’t quite explain it, but the flamboyant, lavish black-and-silver bathroom always seemed to emphasise everything that was wrong in their marriage and just how far they had grown apart in two years.

She was still in her silk nightie and négligé, and now she discarded the flimsy wisps of material on the floor as she ran herself a bath liberally doused with expensive oils.

Once in the warm, silky water she lay back with a soft sigh, and for the first time in months allowed her mind to drift back to how it had been when she had first told Pat about Zeke. In spite of the direness of her present situation a small smile played round her mouth as she recalled Pat’s words.

‘And all this has happened in the eight weeks I’ve been in Canada?’ Pat’s voice had been distinctly miffed. ‘But nothing ever happens in Bridgeton, Annie.’

‘What can I say?’ She’d been smiling as she’d taken in her friend’s woebegone face. ‘He came, he saw, he conquered. Zeke’s like that.’

‘And he’s rich and good-looking?’ It had been almost a wail. ‘Tell me he’s got a brother, please.’

‘Oh, Pat.’ She had been openly laughing, but as she’d stared into the pretty face of her best friend—the girl she’d grown up with and who lived just a few hundred yards away—she’d admitted to a secret feeling of amazement herself.

That Zeke Buchanan, millionaire property developer and entrepreneur extraordinaire, should have fallen in love with her was something fairy tales were made of. And it had all happened so quickly.

She’d glanced down at the enormous cluster of diamonds on the third finger of her left hand and felt the same giddy rush of excitement as when Zeke had placed it there seven days before.

A whirlwind romance. Everyone, everyone was talking about it—the whole village had been agog that a girl from their little backwater should have caught a big fish from the capital. But she had. He loved her and she loved him, more than life itself.

She’d raised misty eyes to Pat’s fascinated face as her friend had said, ‘I want to hear every little morsel, all right? From the first time you laid eyes on him until he put that great whopper of a ring on your finger. Everything, mind! There was little old me thinking I was having a good time in Canada when instead it was all happening at home! I can’t believe it. I really can’t believe it. That’ll teach me to go camping in the mountains for weeks on end—the most I saw was a moose and the rear end of a bear.’

‘But you did have a good time?’

‘I thought I had.’ Pat’s face had been comical. ‘But compared to you… So, come on, spill the beans.’

‘There isn’t really much to tell.’ They had been standing on the doorstep of her father’s rambling old house, and she had drawn Pat into the hall before leading the way through to the large country kitchen at the back of the aged property. There she had said, ‘Zeke came to have a look at that land on the outskirts of the village, Farnon’s Farm, that’s been designated for housing and a new school and so on. He was driving through the main street—in his Ferrari,’ she’d added as she turned round from putting the kettle on and dimpled at Pat, who’d given an envious groan, ‘when he saw me leaving the village shop.’

‘And?’

Marianne had turned back to fix the coffee tray and Pat had grabbed hold of her arms as she’d said, ‘Leave the flipping coffee, for goodness’ sake, Annie, and tell me!’ determinedly pushing her down in one of the straight-backed chairs placed neatly round the huge old kitchen table.

‘And he stopped and introduced himself and we chatted for a while, and then he asked me out to dinner that night,’ Marianne had said matter-of-factly, clasping her hands together in her lap. ‘And then we just started seeing each other.’

And she had been transported into another realm, another dimension, a place where even the most ordinary, mundane aspects of living took on a thrilling quality because Zeke loved her.

‘You jammy, jammy thing.’ Pat had exhaled very slowly. ‘But I have to say if anyone deserves a decent break it’s you, Annie. There’s not many girls with your intelligence and looks that would have given up the chance of university and spreading their wings to keep house for their father, not to mention taking on the job as general dogsbody at the surgery.’

‘It’s not like that. I enjoy what I do,’ Marianne had responded quickly as she’d stood up to make the coffee.

‘Hmph!’ The exclamation had said it all.

The two girls had been bosom friends from when they could toddle, and the fact that they were both only children and their birthdays were just days apart had meant they had tackled all the important childhood milestones together.

Nursery school, big school, youth club—the two of them had braved each one hand in hand, and Pat, more than anyone else in the world, knew how hard it had been when Marianne’s beloved mother had died horribly suddenly of a brain haemorrhage just as Marianne had been set to leave for university two years before.

Josh Kirby, Marianne’s father, had been devastated, and she had had to bear the added weight of seeing her normally cool and composed doctor father go to pieces on top of her own consuming grief.

Marianne’s mother had been receptionist, secretary and—as Pat had pointed out—general dogsbody in Josh’s small but busy surgery, which was situated in the front of their house, and Marianne had known what she had to do within days of her mother’s passing.

She had put all thoughts of university on hold and made things as normal and easy as she could for her grief-stricken father, stepping quietly and efficiently into her mother’s shoes both domestically and in the surgery. And she had had her reward over the next twenty-four months as she’d watched her father’s pain and anguish diminish and he’d slowly come to terms with his loss.

Marianne hadn’t regretted her decision to stay, not for a minute—a second—but it had been hard sometimes when she’d heard Pat and other members of their set talking about all they’d done and seen when they came home for the holidays, whilst she’d been stuck in Bridgeton where the most exciting thing that happened was Ned Riley getting drunk on a Friday night and dancing his way home.

But then Zeke had happened. Zeke Buchanan, with his jet-black hair and smoky grey eyes that had had the power to melt her with just one glance.

Marianne shivered suddenly, reaching forward and turning on the hot tap although the water wasn’t really cool—the chill came from within rather than from without. Once the water was steaming, and as hot as she could stand it, she relaxed again, and almost immediately she was back in Bridgeton in that long hot summer of two years before.

‘I hope he knows how lucky he is, your Zeke.’ Pat had smiled at her and she’d smiled back. ‘You’re one in a million, and I don’t just mean your looks either. You’re nice inside, Annie, where it really counts.’

‘You couldn’t be just a tiny bit prejudiced, could you?’

She remembered she’d laughed softly before she’d said, passing Pat a mug of steaming coffee, ‘And you will be my bridesmaid?’

‘Just try and stop me.’ Pat had wrinkled her small snub nose appreciatively as she’d drawn in the heady aroma of rich coffee beans. ‘Have you set a date yet?’

She’d taken a deep breath. She hadn’t been sure of how Pat would react to the news. ‘The second Saturday in October.’

‘Next year, you mean.’

‘This year.’

‘This year?’ Pat had jerked up straighter, shooting coffee all over her white top, chosen specifically to show off her deep Canadian tan. ‘But that’s only—’

‘Six weeks away. Yes, I know.’ She had forced a smile. Everyone, everyone had behaved as though she was planning to do something immoral rather than marry the man she loved. ‘Zeke doesn’t want to wait and neither do I. He can afford to pay to have everything brought swiftly together. He’s booked the reception at this wonderful London hotel, and the cars and the flowers and everything. And the church in the village is free, so…’

‘But your dress. My dress?’

‘That’s no problem. Zeke’s on first-name terms with several designers, and one of them—’ she’d mentioned a name that had brought Pat’s green eyes opening wider ‘—has just finished a special collection for a show in Paris all to do with weddings. One of the dresses—oh, Pat, you ought to see it—is just gorgeous, and he’s agreed to do your dress, too. So you see, everything is sorted.’

Pat’s lips had still been agape and she’d suddenly become aware of it, shutting her mouth with a little snap as she’d leant back in her seat with her eyes glued on Marianne’s face. ‘And you are sure, you’re absolutely sure this is what you want?’ she’d asked slowly.

‘Absolutely.’

‘I hate to be the original wet blanket, but have you considered that little phrase, “Marry in haste, repent at leisure”?’ Pat had asked almost apologetically.

‘No need.’ Her voice had been firm. ‘I’ve never been more sure about anything in my life than I am about marrying Zeke.’

Marianne sat up straight suddenly, swishing the water into a foamy wave that sloshed over the side of the bath onto the ankle-deep carpeting below. And she had been sure, one hundred per cent sure, that she and Zeke were going to be blissfully content and happy ever after, she told herself, wrapping a massive fluffy bath sheet round her sarong-style and padding through to the master bedroom.

Once seated at her dressing table, she glanced at the row of costly perfume bottles and the set of mother-of-pearl jewellery boxes dripping with expensive items of jewellery without really seeing them, her mind winging back in time again.

She had repeated that conversation with Pat to Zeke word for word when he’d arrived to take her out to dinner later the same day.

Since the first afternoon they had met Zeke had insisted on driving down from London to her home village on the outskirts of Tunbridge Wells every evening, claiming that the thirty-plus miles from his offices in Lewisham barely gave the Ferrari time for a workout.

And she hadn’t tried to dissuade him too hard, she admitted to herself now, in spite of worrying about him dashing backwards and forwards each day. She had needed to see him every evening, to feel his strong arms about her, his lips on hers. He had been like a drug, a sensual, handsome, powerful and wildly intoxicating drug. He still was. Although now she understood that the very thing you craved above all else could carry a crushing price with it.

She should have known, from his reaction when she had innocently prattled on about Pat, that a serpent was rearing its head in her Garden of Eden.

‘So, our bridesmaid tried to warn you off me?’ Zeke had asked with dry amusement, his smoky grey eyes creasing at the edges as he’d smiled at her briefly before concentrating on the country road along which they’d been travelling. ‘I’ll have to have a word with her some time.’

There had been something, the slightest inflexion in his deep voice, that had suggested he wasn’t quite so amused by Pat’s cautionary advice as he’d seemed to be, and Marianne had glanced at the hard, handsome profile for a moment before she’d said, ‘She didn’t mean anything by it, Zeke. Pat’s just a little protective of me, I guess, since Mum died.’

‘She doesn’t need to be,’ he had answered lightly, but still with the slight edge to his voice. ‘I’m all the protection you need.’

She didn’t need any protection—she was more than capable of taking care of herself!

The words had hovered on her lips but she’d bitten them back—probably a grave mistake in hindsight, she thought now—but she’d been unwilling to spoil the lovely summer evening by prolonging what had suddenly become an awkward conversation. Their first awkward conversation.

‘Pat will see how it is the moment she meets you,’ she had said instead, as she listened to the voice of love telling her he had raced down from London after a hectic, long day—he was always at his office by seven in the morning—and she couldn’t expect him not to be a little tetchy now and again. And perhaps she’d been unwise to repeat the conversation with Pat. But she’d thought he’d laugh at the ridiculous notion that their love could waver, like she had. Still, men viewed these things differently, especially strong, decisive, capable men like Zeke.

She’d known he was as resilient and tough as they came; he’d had to be with the background he had come from. Abandoned by his single parent mother when he was just a few months old, he had spent most of his childhood in and out of foster homes, with two attempts at adoption failing. But he’d had a brilliant mind and an even more formidable will, and at the age of eighteen—armed with four grade A A-levels—he had decided to put himself through university, studying every day and working every night and weekend to pay his way.

Three years later he had emerged into the world again with a first-class degree, and after two years of working all hours of the day and night he had earnt himself enough capital to start his own business.

That had been the start of a spectacularly swift climb to wealth and power which had made him—at the age of thirty-five—one of the richest men in his field.

Wise investments, shrewd business deals, ruthless takeovers and a reputation that he wasn’t someone to mess with had assured him of a place at the very top of the tree, and if she hadn’t seen the real Zeke—the tender, ardent lover and fascinating intellectual—he would have scared her to death.

But all she’d known at their first meeting, in the village street on a sunny July afternoon full of the scents of summer, was that the most amazing, magnetic man she had ever met wanted to take her out to dinner. And, at direct variance with her shy, reserved, gentle nature, she had answered eagerly in the affirmative. And so it had begun.

The sudden jarring call of the telephone cut in on her thoughts, and more out of habit than anything she rose and padded through to the breakfast room, where the answer-machine was situated.

‘Marianne?’ It was Zeke’s voice, impatient and slightly irritated. ‘Pick up the phone.’

Her hand was actually halfway to the receiver when she stopped herself. Why did she always do what he said? she asked herself as her stomach lurched and trembled. She was a full-grown woman with a mind of her own. She didn’t have to pick up the phone if she didn’t want to.

‘Marianne?’ The deep dark voice was definitely terse now, and she pictured him in her mind’s eye, frowning at the inoffensive plastic that had dared to thwart him. ‘Hell, I haven’t got time for this. Are you in the bath or something? Look, I just wanted to check you’ve remembered to order that pâté Gerald Morton likes so much, the one from Harrods. I was going to remind you last night, but with all that happened—’ He stopped abruptly. ‘Anyway, get them to send some round if you haven’t done so already.’

She waited for a word of goodbye, something, anything, but there was just the sound of the receiver being replaced.

‘Damn Gerald Morton’s pâté.’ It was soft at first, and then she said it louder, her voice shaking, ‘Damn the rotten pâté!’ Their marriage was falling apart and he was worrying about a dinner party!

Purposefully now, she walked through to the beautiful drawing room to stand in front of the ornate fireplace above which hung their huge wedding portrait.

She ignored the young, glowing-faced girl on Zeke’s arm and stared instead at the tall dark figure of her husband, at the midnight-black hair cut severely short, which just emphasised his rugged appeal tenfold when added to the harsh, handsome face, the jawline square and uncompromising.

But it was his eyes that had first enchanted her that day two years ago. Grey, and of a warm smoky quality, they had floored her. Absolutely floored her. They still did.

When she had looked into his eyes during the early days of their relationship it hadn’t mattered that they came from vastly different worlds. Zeke from a rags-to-riches background and a childhood devoid of love and stability, and she from a steady, non-eventful middle-class upbringing full of love and family values.

She had been only twenty when she’d met Zeke and had been sexually unawakened; he had had relationships with women from the age of sixteen and had been a cynical and worldly-wise thirty-five.

He hadn’t kissed her until their second date, however, the evening after the first day they’d met. But when he had drawn her into his arms in the intimate shadows inside her garden gate she had known why the fumbling attentions of her previous boyfriends had merely irritated and slightly disgusted her.

The subtle, spicy flavour of his aftershave, the hard lean body and devastating male sensuality had shaken her to her roots. By the time the kiss had finished she’d been trembling with passion and excitement, her heartbeat thudding in her ears and the blood rushing through her veins like hot mulled wine.

‘You’re special, Marianne.’ Zeke had pulled her closer into him as he had spoken, wrapping his arms around her as if to bind her to him. ‘Very, very special.’

She hadn’t been able to speak, she’d barely been able to stand, and when his mouth had taken hers again in a kiss that was powerful and hungry she’d responded wildly, knowing she hadn’t really been alive until that moment.

She had known by the end of that first week that she loved him and that she couldn’t live without him, the intensity of her love as frightening as it was thrilling.

The bath sheet slipped a little and she caught it to her, her eyes never leaving the cool, handsome face of her husband.

And when she had married him she had given him all of herself—body, soul and spirit—withholding nothing. Fool, fool, fool.

Pat was waiting for her when Marianne walked into the elegant and tranquil confines of Rochelle’s, and she was glad she had thought to ring in advance and reserve a table for two in her name. Or rather Zeke’s name, she thought a trifle bitterly. The magic name that opened myriad doors.

‘Annie!’ Pat bounced to her feet, her thick brown curls bobbing as she waved enthusiastically, as though the restaurant was crowded and busy instead of being virtually empty. In another half an hour, though, that would all change, and by one o’clock every table would be occupied. But for now it was blessedly quiet and private.

‘Oh, Pat, it’s so good to see you,’ Marianne breathed as the two exchanged a bear hug.

‘And you.’ Pat grinned at her as they sat down, and then, as the waiter appeared at their side like a rabbit out of a hat, she said, ‘You still drinking the same? Dry martini, wasn’t it?’

‘I prefer a glass of wine these days.’ She didn’t add that Zeke had educated her on good wines until now she could hold her own with the best wine waiter. ‘Red is your preference, isn’t it?’

Pat nodded. ‘Not much changes,’ she said with a wry grimace.

Oh, if only that were true. Marianne selected a superior bottle of wine that she knew from experience was soft and mellow with a warm oak flavour, and then, once the two girls were alone again, she said softly, ‘You look terrific, Pat.’

‘So do you.’ Pat’s pretty, pert face was unusually soft as she surveyed Marianne’s slender, finely boned figure and beautiful heart-shaped face, the huge cornflower-blue eyes, small straight nose and full mouth framed by a mass of luxuriant silver-blonde hair that hung in silky waves to below Marianne’s shoulderblades. ‘But you’re too thin, if you don’t mind me saying so, and with you that means you’re worrying or unhappy about something. You’ve never eaten for comfort like me, have you?’

Marianne shook her head slowly. You never got any pussy-footing around with Pat, and after all the sycophantic boot-lickers that tried to attach themselves to Zeke’s brilliant black star, her friend’s frankness was refreshing to say the least.

‘So, what gives?’ Pat asked gently.

The return of the wine waiter delayed Marianne’s answer somewhat, but once they were sitting with an enormous glass of red wine and an embossed menu in front of each of them, Marianne said without any preamble, ‘It’s all such a mess, Pat—me, Zeke, everything. I thought…I thought it was going to be so different. I knew his work was a big part of his life, and that’s all right, it is really, but he doesn’t seem to understand that I need something to do. I can’t just be content with keeping house and lunches with the wives of his friends and shopping afternoons and organising dinner parties and so on. I’m not made like that.’

‘Nor me,’ Pat said with a shudder.

‘He’s expected all the compromise to be on my side. I’ve had to fit completely into his world, and he hasn’t made the slightest attempt to fit into mine. He doesn’t want me to work, says I don’t need to, and even when I tried to set up some voluntary work at the local hospital he made it so difficult I finished up letting it go. The apartment…I feel it’s a prison, I hate it, and he promised before we got married that we’d leave there as soon as we found somewhere more suitable for bringing up a family.’

‘A family?’ Pat queried carefully.

Marianne stared at her miserably. ‘It just hasn’t happened,’ she said quietly. ‘The first twelve months it didn’t matter, but then I started to worry, so we went for tests and everything’s fine, apparently, but still no baby. And this constant city life, it’s stifling me, Pat. Choking me.’

‘Have you told him all this?’ said Pat, watching her closely.

Marianne nodded. ‘But he has an answer for everything, he’s that sort of man, and I always end up feeling in the wrong. The doctor at the hospital…he thought I wasn’t getting pregnant because I was stressed, and when he said that it was more reason for Zeke to say he doesn’t want me to do anything outside the home. I tried to tell him it was because I was being locked away from the outside I was stressed, but he wouldn’t accept it.’

‘Because he didn’t want to,’ Pat said astutely. She’d had a taste of Zeke Buchanan’s single-mindedness when he had all but shut her out of Marianne’s life once they were married.

‘I still love him, Pat.’ Marianne was staring down into her glass as she spoke and missed Pat’s green eyes narrowing shrewdly on her unhappy face. ‘But then last night we had a terrible row.’

She raised her head then, and the stark misery in the azure blue eyes took Pat’s breath away. But before she could say anything the waiter was at their side for their lunch order, and once he had gone Marianne changed the subject, insisting on hearing all Pat’s news, and how she was progressing in her job as surgery nurse at the local veterinary practice in Bridgeton.

It was as they finished their first course it happened. Pat had just eaten the last mouthful of her avocado and prawn cocktail—one of Rochelle’s specialities—and had leant forward across the table, saying quietly, ‘Annie, have you told your father how things are?’ when she became aware her friend’s eyes were transfixed at a point over her shoulder.

‘Oh, Pat.’ It was the merest thread of a whisper, but as Pat made to turn in her chair Marianne said urgently, ‘No, don’t turn round, whatever you do, and talk—talk about anything, quickly.’

Pat had always been the person you could most depend on to rise to any emergency, and as she obediently began to prattle about one of the veterinary surgery’s most amusing patients, Marianne forced her eyes away from the little party who had just come into the restaurant and on to the perplexed face of her friend. But on the perimeter of her vision she saw a tall, dark figure stop abruptly and then, as an obliging waiter showed the party to their seats, leave the others and start to make his way across towards them. He had seen her.

‘Marianne?’ Pat’s voice was cut off as though by a knife as Zeke’s deep drawl sounded just behind her. ‘You didn’t tell me you had a luncheon date.’

‘Hallo, Zeke.’ Marianne was amazed to find her voice was perfectly calm and composed. ‘Pat only phoned me this morning to tell me she was in town so I didn’t know.’

Pat had turned in her seat by this time, and as cool grey eyes met bright green Zeke smiled coldly, before he said, ‘Pat, I didn’t know it was you. How are you?’

‘I’m fine, Zeke.’ Pat had never been one for flowery effusion, but even so it was succinct in the extreme.

‘I’m sure you are.’ It was neither condemnatory or approving, and Zeke’s grey eyes took on all the warmth of cold granite as he nodded in abrupt dismissal of the other woman before turning to Marianne again. ‘I’ll see you later,’ he said smoothly. ‘Did you get my message before you left?’

‘Your…?’ And then she remembered. Gerald Morton’s pâté! ‘Yes, Zeke,’ she said steadily. ‘I got your message.’

He looked impossibly handsome as he stood there, his ebony hair sleek and shining and immaculate and the big, lean body clothed in a beautifully cut suit that couldn’t disguise the leashed strength of the hard, masculine frame. Deep grooves splayed out from either side of his straight nose to his mouth, a mouth which very rarely smiled except with mocking amusement, and the uncompromisingly severe quality of his dark good looks was tantalisingly at odds with the sensual knowledge in the darkly lashed grey eyes.

And he was a sensuous lover, lustful and imaginative, but with a sensitivity and tenderness to his lovemaking that made her—even with all that was wrong between them—ache to be in his arms whenever they were alone.

‘Excuse me. This is a business lunch and there’s plenty to get through.’ There was a message in the cool, even tone that was for Marianne alone, but she merely stared back at him, her eyes steady and her small chin uplifted.

And then he turned, walking back to his table without another word and without glancing their way again.

This time Marianne didn’t stop Pat when her friend turned round and made a swift, but thorough assessment of Zeke’s companions. The two men Pat glanced over, but the green eyes stopped on the fourth figure at the table, who was engaging Zeke in animated conversation and totally ignoring their colleagues, and remained there for a full thirty seconds before Pat settled herself back in her seat.

Marianne answered the question Pat was too tactful to ask. ‘She’s Liliana de Giraud,’ she said flatly. ‘You might have heard of her? She’s the hottest interior designer around.’

Why, oh, why hadn’t she considered the possibility that Zeke might come here for lunch? She knew it was his favourite eating place in the lunch hour when he was entertaining clients and such, but he had said he was going to fly to Stoke and wouldn’t be back until mid-afternoon. Had that been a lie? Had he been intending to take Liliana out for lunch all along?

‘She’s full of herself.’ Pat’s down-to-earth evaluation was spoken scathingly.

‘That’s because she’s very pleased with life at the moment,’ Marianne said painfully. ‘Zeke has just acquired her services for a massive development deal that will provide luxury homes for the élite in one of the best parts of London. Apparently he was very fortunate to get her.’

‘Oh, yes?’

‘Of course the fact that they were lovers for a while five years ago might have swayed her agreement, added to which she still wants him…badly.’ Marianne’s voice was expressionless, with a flatness that spoke of deep hurt. ‘She had made that very clear to me several times when we’ve met socially.’

‘This was the cause of that row last night?’ Pat asked in sudden understanding.

Marianne nodded with a brittle smile. ‘Zeke thinks I’m being over-emotional,’ she said evenly. And this from the man who didn’t like her dancing with another male—even one of his friends—and who objected if he thought she was spending too long in conversation with any one man at the various social functions they attended.

‘And you’re sure you’re not?’ Pat probed gently.

Marianne’s lovely deep blue eyes took on a bleakness that was an answer in itself. ‘Oh, I’m sure, Pat,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m not the jealous type—’ unlike Zeke ‘—but Liliana has gone to great pains to let me know how much she hates me. Never in front of Zeke, of course, she’s all sweetness and light when he’s around, but she wants him back and she doesn’t care what she does to get him. She’s the master of innuendo and acid jibes coated in sugar towards her own sex, but the men just can’t see it. I don’t know one woman who is comfortable with her.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ Pat said drily.

In the first heady days of her marriage she hadn’t been threatened by Liliana de Giraud’s manoeuvrings, in fact she had even felt sorry for the other woman and had tentatively offered her the hand of friendship before Liliana’s covert hostility had made her aware she was likely to get it bitten off. So much for magnanimity, Marianne thought wretchedly, allowing herself one glance across the room and then wishing she hadn’t as she saw Zeke and Liliana’s heads close together. She had been innocent, far, far too innocent, when she had married Zeke.

She forced herself to eat all of her lunch with every appearance of enjoyment, and although she didn’t glance over at the other table again her heightened senses made her aware of each time Liliana looked their way.

By unspoken mutual consent she and Pat lingered over their liqueur coffees—Marianne hadn’t relished the thought of passing Zeke’s table on their way out—and so it was that Zeke left first. She acknowledged his raised hand of farewell with a nod and a cool smile, and then tensed as she saw Liliana reach up and speak in Zeke’s ear before beginning to make her way over.

‘Liliana’s coming.’

It was all she managed to say to Pat before the redhead came within earshot, and then in the next moment she was engulfed in a cloud of expensive, sultry perfume as Liliana bent to brush her cheek with cool lips, gushing, ‘Sweetie, how lovely to see you. We didn’t know you’d be lunching with your little friend today.’

‘Hallo, Liliana.’ Marianne was eternally grateful for the fortifying effects of the excellent meal—not to mention the wine and liqueur coffee—as she looked up into the redhead’s ice-blue eyes. ‘This is Pat, by the way. Pat, Liliana.’

The ‘little friend’ didn’t smile, neither did she bother to speak as she inclined her head, but the green eyes narrowed with such naked feline coldness that it actually seemed to take Liliana aback a little. She wasn’t used to such overt honesty.

‘I must dash.’ Liliana turned back to Marianne, her exquisitely creamy skin—which went with her vibrant hair—flushed from the effect of Pat’s scrutiny. ‘Zeke and I have heaps to discuss. We’re going to be tied up for days on this project, so you’ll have to be brave in doing without him, sweetie.’

‘Will I?’ Marianne called on all her father’s stoical, imperturbable genes and her mother’s poised, self-possessed ones as she smiled with a serenity she was far from feeling and said, ‘I’ll have to make sure we spoil each other when we’re together, then, won’t I, Liliana?’

The cruel, self-assured smile that had been hovering on the red-painted lips vanished for a second before it was immediately brought back into play, and Liliana slanted her almost colourless, opaque blue eyes at the two women as she said, ‘I mustn’t keep him waiting; patience has never been one of Zeke’s attributes,’ in a way that suggested the redhead was only too knowledgeable about the man in question.

‘What a truly horrible woman,’ Pat murmured as they watched the slim, elegant figure weave her way out of the restaurant. ‘She wants a good slap, if you ask me.’

‘Probably.’ The down-to-earth comment brought a reluctant smile to Marianne’s lips. ‘But she’s incredibly good at what she does and she knows it.’

‘I just bet she is.’ Pat’s sober words had a dual meaning, and the two women stared at each other in perfect understanding for a long moment before Marianne caught the young waiter’s eye and gestured that she wanted the bill.

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