Rebel's Bargain (10 page)

‘That’s precisely what I am. Your husband.’ His eyes narrowed assessingly.

‘In name only.’

She watched Orsino’s jaw tighten, cords of tension roping his neck.

‘You think I’d leave
any
woman to that bastard’s mercy?’

Something shifted inside. ‘So you’d have done that for any woman.’

‘Yes.’ He paused. ‘But when I saw it was you …’ His stare bored into her, igniting heat to counteract the chill that held her body in stasis. Flames licked her belly, her breasts, her heart.

‘Yes?’

She didn’t want to know. She really didn’t want to know. They’d agreed there was no relationship,
no future for them. Just sexual pleasure. But some yearning part of her leaned closer.

‘When I saw it was you I wanted to kill him.’

His
WORDS HUNG
in the still air. Orsino couldn’t even bring himself to regret giving so much away. Not when her eyes looked like windows to a soul in torment.

Gingerly he lifted his hand and rubbed his collarbone, almost grateful for the hard throb of pain filling his body. But it wasn’t enough to distract him from her.

‘Poppy?’

He’d stunned her. He read it in her slack jaw and staring eyes. He recalled her sheltered upbringing, her years in a cloistered boarding school for girls that catered to the flowers of Britain’s aristocracy. She’d probably never seen so much as a punch thrown in her life, much less real bloodlust.

For that’s what he’d felt when that lowlife had lunged at Poppy. He’d wanted to pound the guy’s head into the floor so hard he’d never get up again.

Or maybe she was shocked not just at the violence, but at his need to protect
her.

Slowly Orsino flexed his fingers and pain screamed up his arm.

Poppy wasn’t the only one in shock. His visceral response to the sight of her in danger overrode everything he thought he knew about the pair of them.

He told himself he’d react the same way if any woman had been in that situation. It was true, but he knew with a certainty that punched a hole through his belly that he wouldn’t have
felt
the same. As if someone had taken a hunting knife to his guts and yanked them from his body.

How could he feel that away about a woman who was going to walk out of his life soon?

He didn’t want her as his wife. Not after her betrayal, yet still something bound them. Something more profound than sex.

Suddenly Orsino felt wearier than he had since he’d hauled Michael out of the ice. He slumped, the adrenaline finally wearing off enough for his body to feel the full extent of his pain.

‘Orsino!’

She was there beside him, her hands warm and soft on his bare skin. He groaned. How could he feel pain and arousal at the same time?

Dimly he acknowledged either was better than grappling with the conundrum that was Poppy and her place in his world. He’d think about that later. Much later.

‘You need a doctor. I’ll call one now.’

‘No!’ His hand closed around her wrist. ‘Not
tonight. Tomorrow’s soon enough. For now I just want to rest.’

‘But what if—?’

‘Please, Poppy. Don’t fuss. I’m bruised and sore but that’s all.’ His grip loosened, his fingers threading through hers.

Still she looked worried; her teeth sank into her bottom lip and her brow puckered.

‘If you want something to do you can help me into bed.’ Suddenly he felt a hundred years old, each movement an exercise in exquisite agony. ‘I’ll even let you share with me.’

He waggled his eyebrows in an approximation of a leer and was rewarded with a huff of laughter. It was the best thing he’d heard all day.

‘Not even you could think about sex right now.’

Orsino let his gaze drop to the creamy swell of her breasts above the low neckline of her dress. Was it still called a neckline when it skimmed the plump flesh just a fraction above her nipples?

His mouth twisted in a smile that stretched his bruised lip. He groaned again and was rewarded with a light caress along his neck and shoulder.

‘I approve of the dress. Take it off.’

‘Soon.’ He looked up, surprised. ‘But only because the designer would have my hide if I damaged it.’

Ten minutes later Orsino lay naked in bed. Poppy lay beside him, demurely covered in a T-shirt of his that hung down her thighs.

He didn’t know whether to be annoyed or thankful that she’d refused to leave him to go upstairs to get her own clothes. But he wouldn’t have missed the sight of her in his T-shirt for anything. Plain grey cotton had never looked so alluring.

Yet even dosed with painkillers he didn’t have the strength left to do more than wrap her close, revelling in the waft of her breath warm across his chest, the weight of her head on his shoulder and one slim leg tangled with his.

It must be the medication but he felt he could happily stay like this for ever.

‘Thank you.’ It was a breath of sound in the darkness. ‘For what you did. For stopping him.’

‘You did quite a job of stopping him yourself.’ Orsino refused to dwell on what might have happened. ‘That was some move you made. Where did you learn it?’

‘Self-defence classes.’

‘I’m glad you never had to use what you learned before now.’

His hand drifted over the curve of her waist. But instead of supple softness Poppy was rigid beneath his touch.

She’d been on edge ever since that scene in the ballroom. Despite her quick thinking in dealing with her attacker, she’d worn the glazed look of someone in shock.

His stomach curdled. ‘You haven’t needed any self-defence moves before, have you?’

The silence stretched into a yawning chasm. Orsino felt her quiver.

‘Poppy?’ He tried to see her face but she turned into his shoulder, her breathing uneven against his flesh.

‘It wouldn’t have done much good. I was just a kid. I don’t think I’d have been a match for him.’

‘Him?’ Orsino’s grip hardened and he forced himself to relax, lifting his hand to stroke her hair, though his insides roiled in churning frenzy.

A shuddering sigh broke from her.

‘My father.’

His belly turned into a lump of frigid metal. ‘He beat you?’ Orsino could barely form the words. His hand stilled, caught in her long tresses.

‘Usually my mother. But if I got in the way …’ She shrugged. ‘That’s why she sent me away to school, to keep me safe. She sold off her jewellery and the last of her inheritance from her parents to fund my boarding school.’

‘I—’ He swallowed, searching for words that just wouldn’t come. He pulled her closer. The rapid thump of her heart revealed how much the memory cost her.

‘But why?’ He knew there were violent men in the world. Hell, he’d helped establish shelters for their victims. Yet he couldn’t get his head around the fact Poppy was a victim, too.

‘Because he was a vicious bully?’ Shakily she
laughed, the wretched sound tearing strips from his heart.

‘My mother always made excuses, saying, “If only you’d known him in the old days”. Apparently things changed when he lost the family money through bad investments. He kept the estate, just, but not the money. That’s when he took to drink. And when he drank he got angry and took it out on her.’

‘And you.’ His body vibrated in a surge of furious energy that had no outlet. The thought of her defenceless and battered skewered him with a razor-sharp blade.

‘Only a couple of times.’

‘A couple of times too many.’

‘Oh, Orsino.’ He felt the spill of dampness from her lashes like a brand on his skin.

He wasn’t good with tears. He’d never been adept at dealing with feelings or offering comfort. He’d tried when her mother died but Poppy had turned away, closing in on herself, rejecting him. An ice-cold hand squeezed his innards at the memory.

Clumsily Orsino patted at her head, wishing he could ease the hurt he felt in her tightly held body.

‘Is that why you took up modelling so young?’ Given her intelligence he’d been surprised she hadn’t finished school.

She nodded against his shoulder. ‘I wanted to be independent as soon as I could.’ Her voice was husky with the tears she held in check. ‘That was
my goal from as early as I could remember. Earn money to make a new home for myself and my mother. Away from him.’

‘But she stayed with him.’

‘She loved him. Despite it all, she still cared. But she promised me …’

‘What?’ Orsino bent his head to hear. Poppy’s voice was a mere drift of sound.

‘She promised that one day she’d leave him. When I broke into the big time and had enough to support her. We had such plans.’ Her voice wobbled with pain. ‘The fun we’d have together. Just simple things, you know, but special to us. Those dreams kept me going. I’d always promised myself I’d make it up to her for all she’d been through.’

Orsino’s heart dived at the throb of anguish in her scratchy voice.

‘But she didn’t leave him,’ Orsino said. Poppy had already been a rising star when he’d met her, yet she’d lived alone.

‘No. He was diagnosed with a terminal illness just when I thought I’d convinced her to come away. She stayed—said he needed her.’ The pain and incredulity in Poppy’s voice told their own tale.

Orsino knew the rest. Her father had died just before their whirlwind wedding then in a brutal blow Poppy’s mother had outlived her husband by a mere few months.

He digested what Poppy had just shared.

He’d known she was distraught when her mother
died. That had been obvious even to a man who’d never known a parent’s love, whose mother was a vague memory and whose father was too caught up in business and his own pleasure to connect with his children.

Poppy’s grief had been beyond his understanding, though he’d tried. How he’d tried.

Now, discovering this bond between mother and daughter made her anguish more understandable. He wished he’d tried even harder.

If she’d set her heart on helping her mother how difficult it must have been to face her sudden death—all those dreams destroyed.

He smoothed Poppy’s back in long strokes with a hand that trembled. If he’d been able to comfort her better when she lost her mother would she have shunned him as she had?

Would she have sought solace in the arms of another man? A pain that had no physical explanation punctured his chest.

Had his own inadequacy pushed her away?

It went against everything Orsino believed about himself even to consider it. Yet he couldn’t dislodge the kernel of disturbing thought from his brain.

Orsino was used to thinking himself invincible. But those hours facing death in the ice had torn away that comfortable lie. He was as human as the next man.

Was he also fatally flawed?

From the age of seven Orsino had hidden what
passed for his feelings behind a facade of charm and smiles. No, it had been earlier than that. Had he ever felt secure enough, loved enough, to be honest about emotions?

His features screwed up in a grimace.

What was the point of revisiting the past? It was done and dusted, the damage too late to fix.

Yet he had to know more.

‘You never told me. We were married but you never said a word.’ Another case of her shutting him out?

‘We were married for just four months! Besides, we didn’t talk about our families. I never met most of yours. Just Lucca.’

‘We’re not a close family.’ Now there was an understatement.

‘Anyway, my father was dead. There didn’t seem any point talking about it.’

Her words didn’t ring true. Once Orsino might have been convinced, but he’d spent the past five years learning to work with people, often people under incredible stress. He’d learned a little about reading emotion.

‘No point telling your husband how badly you were hurting?’ He’d bet everything he had she only shared now because the shock of tonight’s attack had thrown her off balance.

Poppy stiffened under his slow caress. He felt her blink against his skin.

‘There never seemed to be a right moment to
dredge up the past. And what good would it have done?’

Orsino thought about that, remembering their volatile courtship. Neither had been hanging out for a life partner. But they’d been swept off their feet in a rush of passion that had them alternately insatiable in each other’s arms and backing off, wary of the intensity of what they felt.

At least in his case it had been like that. Till he’d realised he wanted Poppy not just in his bed but in his life and went after her, determined not to let her slip through his fingers.

A quick marriage had been his way of ensuring she was his. He’d needed her so badly even his cynicism about marriage and families had crumbled when it meant having Poppy.

Fat lot of good that had done him when she decided to betray him with Mischa.

Mischa. Orsino gritted his teeth.

No. Not now. Mischa’s involvement in this advertising project was for later.

Orsino’s ‘simple’ arrangement with Poppy—sex with no ties and no regrets—was becoming far more complex than he’d thought possible.

Mischa and the outside world could wait.

‘Or maybe you had no intention of ever letting me into that part of your life.’ He’d be damned if he shouldered all the guilt for what had gone wrong.

He’d tried to be there for her when her mother died but Poppy had turned her back in spectacular
fashion. Who could blame him for leaving on his climbing trip when she’d virtually shoved him out the door?

Poppy made to roll away but his grip tightened.

‘Why, Poppy? Didn’t I deserve your trust?’ Orsino’s voice grated against something raw inside. Something he now realised had never healed, not since the day he’d come home to find she’d been with another man.

Part of him, the macho take-it-on-the-chin-and-hide-your-feelings part, writhed and screamed that he should even ask. The other part, too long silent, had to know, even if it gutted him.

Poppy’s hand splayed wide on his chest and Orsino closed his eyes, revelling in the magic of her touch even now, when he felt half dead.

‘Would you have wanted to know?’ she asked finally.

‘Of course!’ How could she even ask?

‘There’s no
of course
about it. You never talked about feelings, Orsino. You said you needed me. That you
wanted
me. That life would be so good together. But I was never sure …’

‘What?’ He moved, trying to see her face in the gloom, but she tilted her head away.

‘It doesn’t matter. Go to sleep. You need rest.’

Orsino ground his teeth. Was there ever a more infuriating woman? The feel of her body against his was like a glimpse of paradise and the tentative truce they’d declared should have made life
easy, yet she insisted on being difficult. Did she do it deliberately?

‘You really think I’m going to sleep now you’ve left me hanging like that? Spit it out. What weren’t you sure about?’

‘As if you don’t know.’ Her breath shuddered against his skin. ‘I never knew whether you loved me.’ Her voice was defiant, yet behind the bravado he heard it tremble.