The Marriage Demand. PENNY JORDAN
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sucked in a sharp breath full of shock and anguish. She could feel her scalp beneath the length of her honey-streaked thick mane of hair beginning to prickle with anxiety. When she had first come to Hatton Nash had teased her about her hair, believing at first that its honey-gold strands had been created by artifice rather than nature. A summer spent at Hatton had soon convinced him of his error. Her hair colouring, like her densely blue eyes, had been inherited from the Danish father she had never met, who had drowned whilst on honeymoon with her mother, trying to save the life of a young child.
Once she was old enough to consider such things, Faith had become convinced that the heart condition which had ultimately killed her mother had begun then, and that it had somehow been caused by her mother’s grief at the loss of her young husband. Faith acknowledged that there was no scientific evidence to back up her feelings, but, as she had good and bitter cause to know, some things in life went beyond logic and science.
‘What are you doing here?’ she challenged Nash fiercely. No matter what he might believe, she was not—she had not—
Automatically she gave a tiny shake of her head as she tried to break free of the dangerous treadmill of her thoughts, and yet, despite her outward rejection of what she knew he was thinking, inwardly she was already being tormented by her memories. It was here, in this room, that she had first met Philip Hatton, Nash’s godfather, and here too that she had last seen him as he lay slumped in his chair, semi-paralysed by the stroke which had ultimately led to his death.
Faith flinched visibly as the nightmare terror of her ten-year-old memories threatened to resurface and swamp her.
‘You heard your boss.’
Faith froze as she listened to the deliberately challenging way in which Nash underlined the word ‘boss’. Whilst she might have the self-control to stop herself from reacting verbally to Nash’s taunt, there was nothing she could do to stop the instinctive and betraying reaction of her body, as her eyes darkened and shadowed with the pain of further remembrances.
At fifteen a girl was supposed to be too young to know the meaning of real love—wasn’t she? Too young to suffer anything other than a painful adolescent crush to be gently laughed over in her adulthood.
‘As a trustee of my late godfather’s estate, it was my decision to gift Hatton to the Ferndown Foundation. After all, I know how beneficial it is for a child—from any background—to be in this kind of environment.’
He started to frown, looking away from Faith as he did so, the hard angry glaze she had been so aware of in his eyes fading to a rare shadowy uncertainty.
He had thought he was prepared for this moment, this meeting, that he would have himself and his reactions totally under control. But the shock of seeing the fifteen-year-old girl he still remembered so vividly transformed into the woman she had become—a woman it was obvious was very much admired and desired, by Robert Ferndown and no doubt many other gullible fools as well—was causing a reaction—a feeling—within him that was threatening the defences he had assured himself were impenetrable.
To have to admit, if only to himself, to suffering such an uncharacteristic attack of uncertainty irritated him, rasping against wounds he had believed were totally healed. He had, he knew, gained a reputation during the last decade, not just for being a formidable business opponent, but also for remaining resolutely unattached.
He closed his eyes momentarily as he fought against the anger flooding over him and drowning out rationality. He had waited a long time for this—for life, for fate, to deliver Faith into his hands. And now that it had…
He took a deep breath and asked softly, ‘Did you really expect to get away with it, Faith? Did you really believe that Nemesis would not exact a fair and just payment from you?’
He gave a wolverine smile that was no smile at all but a cold, savage snarl of warning, reminding Faith of just how easily he could hurt her, tear into the fragile fabric of the life she had created for herself.
‘Have you told Ferndown just what you are and what you did?’ he demanded savagely, causing Faith to drag air painfully into her lungs.
‘No, of course you haven’t.’ Nash answered his own question, his voice full of biting contempt. ‘If you had there’s no way the Foundation would have employed you, despite Ferndown’s obvious “admiration” for you. Did you sleep with him before he gave you the job, or did you make him wait until afterwards?’
The sound Faith made was more one of pain than shock—a tight, mewling, almost piteous cry—but Nash refused to respond to it.
‘Have you told him?’ he demanded.
Unable to lie, but unable to speak either, Faith shook her head. The triumph she could see in Nash’s eyes confirmed every single one of her growing fears.
Giving her another of those feral, intimidating smiles that made her shake in her shoes but made her equally determined that she was not going to give in to his manipulative method of tormenting her, Nash agreed smoothly, ‘No, of course you haven’t—from what I’ve heard from your besotted boss it seems that you managed to omit certain crucial facts from the CV you submitted to the Foundation.’
Faith knew exactly what he meant. Her throat dry with tension, she fought with all her emotional strength not to show him how afraid she now was.
‘They had no relevance,’ she insisted.
‘No relevance? The fact that you only just escaped a custodial sentence; the fact that you were responsible for a man’s death? Oh, no, you’re staying right there,’ Nash rasped as Faith, her self-control finally breaking, turned on her heel and tried to leave.
The shock of his fingers biting into the soft flesh of her upper arm caused her to cry out and demand frantically, ‘Don’t touch me.’
‘Don’t touch you?’ Nash repeated. ‘That’s not what you used to say to me, is it, Faith? You used to plead with me to touch you…beg me…’
A low, tortured sound escaped Faith’s trembling lips. ‘I was fifteen—a child.’ She tried to defend herself. ‘I didn’t know what I was saying—what I was doing…’
‘Liar,’ Nash contradicted her savagely, his free hand lifting to constrain her head and hold it so that she couldn’t avoid meeting his eyes.
The sensation of Nash’s lean fingers on her throat evoked a storm of reaction and remembrance. Her whole body started to shudder—not with fear, Faith recognised in shock, but with a heedless, wanton, inexplicable surge of feeling she had thought she had left behind her years ago.
How often that summer she had first seen Nash had she ached to have him touch her, want her? How many, many times had she fantasised then about him holding her captive like this? Imagining the brush of his fingers against her skin, picturing the feral glitter in his eyes as his gaze searched her face, his body hard with wanting her.
She shuddered again, acknowledging the naïvety of her long-ago teenage self. She had believed herself in love with Nash and had felt for him all the intense passion of that love, wanting to give herself to him totally and completely, longing for him, aching for him with all the ardour and innocence of youth.
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he had dismissed once, when she had been attempting to tell him how she felt and what she wanted.
‘Then show me,’ she had responded boldly, adding frantically, ‘Kiss me, Nash.’
Nash froze in disbelief as he heard the words Faith had unwittingly whispered aloud, repeating her own thoughts. Kiss her? What kind of game was she trying to play? He started to move his hand away from her throat, but as he did so Faith turned her head, her lips grazing against his fingers.
Faith gasped as she felt the warm texture of Nash’s flesh against her unguarded lips. She heard the low sound he made deep in his throat, felt him close the small gap that separated them, his body hard and undeniably male against the shocked softness of hers. His hand was pressed into