The Parenti Marriage. Penny Jordan
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that it was almost half past two in the morning, but sleep was impossible. How could she possibly sleep after what had happened? She had no idea why Saul had kissed her. She could only presume it had been his way of punishing her. He had been so angry when she had dared to suggest that he might have tried to trick her.
What had he expected her to do? He had made it plain that he didn’t want her seconded to him. He had even said that he would be waiting for her to prove herself not up to the job so that he could demand a replacement for her. Under such circumstances surely anyone would need to be suspicious in order to protect themselves.
In fact for all she knew her suspicions were correct, and his anger could have been because she had not fallen into the trap he had set for her. Had he kissed her as a way of trying to force her to leave? If only she could do just that. If only she could ask, even beg her employers to send someone else to Saul in her place.
She’d picked up a newspaper on her way home, in the desperate hope that by some miracle she might find a job advertised in it that would offer her a means of escape. She had even gone online to check out some job search websites, but the reality was that nobody was hiring in the current climate—and, much as she hated to admit it, the increased salary Saul Parenti was paying her meant that it would be impossible for her to find another job in London that would pay her as much.
As much as she loathed the blow her pride would suffer every day she had to step across the threshold of the Parenti Organisation, and despite her suspicions that Saul was doing everything he could to manipulate her into leaving, the debt she owed her great-aunt was such that she would just have to bear it. Without her great-aunt…Giselle dreaded to think what would have happened to her if her elderly relative had not stepped in and offered her a home, a safe haven. She had been so kind to her—shielding her, protecting her—but Giselle had caught the small fragments of adult conversations that had dropped to whispers, and then shaken heads and knowing looks when those adults had realised that she was there. She had known they were talking about her, known too of their suspicions about her. As a child she’d had nightmares, dreaming of ghostly voices reaching out to accuse her, and ghostly hands reaching out to drag her down into the darkness.
It had never been discussed between them, but Giselle knew that her great-aunt knew about the secret that could never be spoken. How could she not know when it had been the direct cause of her mother and baby brother’s deaths and the indirect cause of her father’s? She didn’t know the exact details, though—that Giselle had deliberately disobeyed her mother, that she had let go of the pram, pulling back onto the pavement and then watching as the pram’s momentum had carried it and her baby brother, and then her mother, who had clutched desperately at the pram’s handle, straight under the front wheels of a lorry.
She would never sleep now. She was too afraid of the memories that would surface if she did. She must not go down that dark and tormenting road. She already knew where it led, and the horrors that waited for her at its end.
If only her life could be different. If only right here, right now, there were comforting, loving male arms waiting to enfold her—a strong male chest for her to lean on, and the protection of a man who understood and forgave all that there was to understand and forgive and still went on loving her.
If only there was a man in her life—a lover—whose desire for her and hers for him could prevent her from suffering the sharp pangs of aching sexual need she had felt earlier in Saul’s arms, when her body had been on fire with the intensity of what he had aroused within her.
But there wasn’t. There never would be; there never could be. The kind of man she wanted to love, the kind of lover she wanted to share such intimacy with, would be the kind of man who carried in his genes a need for the traditional things in life: a relationship, commitment, children.
Children! A shudder galvanised her body. She could not, must not ever have a child. And equally she could not and must not ever put a man she might love in a position where loving her back would mean that he would be deprived of his own right to be a parent.
The wilder shores of sexual promiscuity and the supposed ‘fun’ they afforded were not for her. Even if her own nature had not inclined her against them, Giselle suspected that her upbringing by her great-aunt would have done so.
Until now—until Saul Parenti—she had been free to believe that her sexuality was under her own control, and that there was no danger whatsoever of her physical desire for a man making her want to break the rules she had set for herself.
Until now.
Those few minutes in Saul’s arms, with her senses hungering beneath Saul’s kiss, her flesh clamouring for Saul’s touch, had changed everything. Like a genie let out of a bottle by a person who did not believe such things could exist, she was now having to deal with something that she had believed could never happen.
How was it possible for her of all people to feel such an uncontrollable flood tide of physical desire for a man she actively disliked? It went against everything she knew and understood about herself. Or rather everything she had thought she knew and understood about the person she wanted to be. Inside her head she could see once again the small family group: the mother, preoccupied, tense and impatient, the baby—the good child—sleeping in the pram, whilst she—the bad child—disobeyed her mother’s instructions, ignoring them to give in to her inner need to follow her own instincts. As a result of that two members of that trio had died whilst she, the third, had survived.
Since then she had worked unceasingly to be ‘good’ and to make amends, but now, thanks to Saul, she was being forced to accept that the wilful, reckless side of her nature had not been banished at all.
Nothing could be returned to what it had been before Saul’s fierce kiss had ripped from her the protection of her own delusion to show her the raw, physical reality of her desire for him.
How had it happened, when she had always been so careful and so controlled? She didn’t know. What she did know, though, was that trying to deny its existence would be pointless—as pointless as trying to hold back the tide. It had seared its reality into her senses and sealed itself there with the pain of its white-hot heat. Perhaps this was her punishment for the past? The agonising price she must pay for what she had done? To be tormented by a need that would never be satisfied.
She might not know why she was being forced to endure the agony of physical desire for a man she disliked, and whom she knew disliked her, but what she did know was that Saul must never discover her weakness. He must never know that she wanted him, that the desire he aroused in her was overwhelming—and, most humiliating of all, that it was unique in her own experience and felt for him alone.
Like love.
The treacherous thought slid into her mind, to be instantly and frantically denied.
No! What she felt for Saul was nothing like love at all. It was merely physical—physical and nothing else.
Her only comfort was that Saul did not desire her with an equally irrational and overwhelming hunger. Because if he did…But, no—she must not go there.
Her eyes were dry and gritty from lack of sleep and suppressed emotion, and Giselle warned herself that she must try and get some sleep. It was now gone four o’clock in the morning, and she would have to be at her desk for nine—or risk the consequences to her pride. Taking time off because she couldn’t bear to face Saul was not an option she was willing to allow herself.
Broodingly Saul stood staring out of his window and watched Giselle as she entered the building. He should not have kissed her. He wished fiercely that he had not done so. Kissing her had breached his own moral barriers against that kind of intimacy with someone he employed—and, even more disturbingly, deep down inside himself he knew that it had also breached his emotional defences. So why make the hole she had driven through those defences even bigger by spending time he should be giving to other things—far more important things—not only thinking about what had happened but actively dwelling on it?
Because he needed to dwell on it—to focus on it and come up with a plan to deal with it and its potential consequences.