Modern Romance Collection: July Books 5 - 8. Natalie Anderson
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with a deep sense of relief. She didn’t want to emulate the women she had met today. ‘Is that an executive decision?’
He arched a haughty brow. ‘You have a problem with that?’
She gave a tiny smile. ‘I’ll let you know when I have a problem.’ She responded to the touch of his hand on her elbow, skipping a little to keep up with his long-legged pace. ‘Obviously I can’t offend the Queen.’
He gave a laugh. ‘She has the hide of a rhino.’
‘I will see the stylist.’
He stopped and swung her around to face him.
‘I’ll just ignore what he says.’
The annoyance slowly faded from his face and he laughed.
‘It’s called diplomacy, Seb. You should try it.’
He placed his hands on her shoulders and leaned in closer, his breath warm on the cool skin of her face. ‘You offering to give me lessons, cara?’
She shivered and raised herself onto her toes and his mouth brushed across her wavering lips. ‘Sometimes,’ she whispered, ‘the direct approach is better.’
She went limp as the hunger in his kiss drove the breath from her body.
He stroked her face and felt the tensions of the day slip away. ‘You really are a very beautiful woman, Sabrina.’ She sighed and turned her face into his hand. ‘I’ve never believed that it is possible to maintain any sort of friendship with a woman after an affair is over, but we just might.’
Her half-closed eyes snapped open and she stepped back abruptly, leaving him holding empty air. What the hell had just happened?
‘What’s wrong?’
She gave an inarticulate little growl of fury and stuck out her chin, glaring at him, dark eyes glowing with angry contempt as the words fell from her lips in an angry rush. His comment had pierced the protective shell of a core of pain she hadn’t known was there until now.
‘That you have to ask that says it all! I’m not a woman you’re having an affair with. I’m your wife.’ In the act of turning her back on him she swung back and shook her head. ‘Has it ever occurred to you that you were never friends with those women afterwards because you were never friends before?’
An expression of seething frustration on his face, he watched her stalk away, her head high, her narrow back eloquently rigid. Any inclination he had to follow her faded when she stopped twenty feet or so away and paused to fling over her shoulder, ‘And, for the record, neither are we!’
UNREASONABLE DIDN’T EVEN begin to cover her attitude, he decided as he paced up and down his study, pausing only to take a mouthful of the brandy that he held.
He had held out hope for the future and she had thrown it back in his face; she had acted as though he had insulted her!
And hadn’t he?
Pushing away the suggestion, he nursed his sense of injustice along with the brandy as the level of one rose higher, the other sank lower, until the glass was empty.
He stopped pacing and sat staring morosely at the wall; as the minutes ticked away his anger slipped away. When there was a knock on the door, it opened before he responded.
Sabrina took a deep breath. It had taken her half an hour to work up the courage to do this. Half an hour after a lot of angry tears to reach the point where she had asked herself why she was angry.
She was angry because the future he saw, even the best-scenario future, was not the one she dreamed of. She couldn’t force him to love her and she couldn’t punch him for not loving her.
Rather than be angry and bitter about what she couldn’t have, she should do what he had said and enjoy what they did have while it lasted.
‘I overreacted. Sebastian, I don’t want to sleep alone.’
She held her breath as he got to his feet. It seemed to take a long time and even longer for him to cross the room to her.
‘Neither do I.’ With a groan he dragged her to him, kissing her with a rough, hungry intensity that drove the breath from her lungs and the strength from her legs. As her knees sagged he picked her up and carried her over to the sofa.
She knew it was only sex he was giving her but when she closed her eyes his tender response felt like love. When he moved inside her it felt as though they were truly one, not just physically, but in every way.
He took her to a place within herself that she hadn’t known existed; she lost a sense of where she began and he ended. The sadness, deep and profound, came afterwards, when he held her tenderly, because she knew that Sebastian was not feeling what she did. He gave her his body but she would never touch his soul.
* * *
‘The ladies are in the Small Salon.’
Sabrina smiled in response to the gentle reminder from her assistant and thought, I can’t wait, but carried on moving papers around her desk.
She stopped and asked herself for the first time that day—what am I doing?
Beyond the obvious, which was waiting for Sebastian to return. They had spent an entire week together before he had left for a week.
She had tried to fill the hours, telling herself that she had to build a life that didn’t revolve around a husband who most likely forgot she existed the moment he walked out of the room, and one day in the future when she was in the room.
Live in the moment, Brina!
Great advice, but really tough to follow through with.
Work of a sort had saved her: the timing of the approach from the university hospital, asking her to help to fill the vacancy for a head of the new Alzheimer’s research unit they were keen to establish, had been perfect.
As well as using her contacts in London to line up someone for the post, Sabrina had surreptitiously channelled some funding their way too and acted suitably surprised when the dean of the faculty had remarked on their good fortune.
‘The ladies?’
Sabrina, who realised she had been sitting there with her eyes closed, opened them and looked from the pencil she had just snapped in half to her assistant. She painted on a smile.
‘Oh, yes, the ladies. And I use the term loosely.’
Rachel struggled to hide her smile.
* * *
Sabrina paused outside the open door of the room where her new friends were gathered and glanced in the mirror, smoothing down her already smooth hair.
The half a dozen women inside apparently represented the cream of society. One lunch had conformed her suspicions that she had nothing whatever in common with them and she despised them almost as much as she knew they despised her.
‘I heard that he was seen going into her hotel suite at one in the morning.’
The low murmur of laughter made Sabrina pause in the act of entering the salon.
‘Do you suppose she knows?’
Sabrina pressed a hand to her stomach and told herself to breathe.
‘Why would she care?’
She had no problem placing this speaker with a face. Sabrina could imagine the malice and contempt in the pale eyes as the woman gave a dramatic pause before concluding, ‘She’s got exactly what she wanted...a crown.’
A crown...the irony drew a tiny grunt of reaction from the listening Sabrina. She smoothed a hand across the fair hair twisted away from her face in a shiny chignon, almost feeling the symbolic