CHAPTER THREE

      ‘I‘M GOING to have to find somewhere to stay overnight,’ Marnie sighed, still irritated because she had been so stupid as to not check the times of the return shuttle back to London. A couple of hours of Guy’s company was all she ever allowed herself at one swallow. The mere idea of spending a whole evening in his proximity was enough to make her voice sound pettish as she added, ‘And I’m hungry; I missed my lunch today and you—’ ‘

      ‘Do be quiet, Marnie,’ Guy cut in, sending her a look of such flat derision that her cheeks actually flushed at it. ‘You know as well as I do that I will have made any necessary arrangements. I am nothing if not competent, Marnie—nothing if not that...’

      She glared at him balefully, hating him with her eyes for his ever-present sarcasm. Oh, yes, she agreed, Guy was competent, all right. So competent, in fact, that it had taken her almost a year to find out that he was cheating on her with another woman. And she would not have found out then if Jamie hadn’t opened his mouth over something he’d thought completely innocent at the time.

      Jamie. She shivered suddenly. God, how Guy hated her brother for that bit of indiscretion. He had vowed once never to forgive him. Just as she had vowed never to forgive Guy.

      ‘Cold?’ he murmured, noting the small shiver.

      ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘Just...’ Her lips closed over what she had been going to say, and she turned her face away from him with a small non-committal shrug. She could feel the sharpness of his gaze on her and tensed slightly, waiting for him to prompt her into finishing the sentence. The silence between them grew fraught, shortening her breathing and making her heart beat faster. There was so much bitterness between them, so much dissension, she didn’t know whether she could actually go through with this.

      ‘Easy, Marnie...’ Guy’s hand reached out to cover her own, and it was only as the warm brown fingers closed gently over hers that she realised she was sitting with her hands locked into a white-knuckled clench. ‘It cannot be this bad, surely?’ he murmured huskily.

      Oh, yes, it could, she thought silently. I hate you and you hate Jamie and Jamie hates himself. It couldn’t be much worse! ‘Guy,’ she began tentatively, ‘about Jamie...’

      ‘No.’ He removed his hand, and at the same time removed the caring expression from his face. And Marnie felt her heart sink as he leaned back and closed his eyes, effectively shutting her out. It was an old habit of his, and one she knew well. If Guy wished to defer a discussion he simply gave you no room to speak. On a soft sigh, she subsided, accepting that it was no use her trying to force the issue. Even if she tried, he would completely ignore her. It was the way of the man, hard, stubborn, despotic to a certain extent. He played at life by his own set of rules and principles and never allowed anyone to dictate to him.

      Besides his undeniably fantastic looks, Guy was a brilliant businessman, a wildly exciting athlete and a dynamic lover. True to his Latin blood, he possessed charm in abundance, arrogance by the ton, energy enough to satisfy six women, and money enough to keep them all in luxury while he did so.

      It was that same surfeit of money in the family which gave him the means to indulge his second most favourite passion: that for racing cars. It was a passion that had taken him all over the world to race, living the kind of life that automatically went along with it, his striking good looks and innate charm making sexual conquests so easy for him that by the time he met her Guy had grown cynical beyond belief about the opposite sex.

      He had just passed his thirty-fourth birthday by then, and retired from racing on a blaze of glory by winning his second world championship crown, to take up the reins of business from his father ‘so the old man can go and tend to his roses,’ as Guy so drolly liked to put it.

      Papa Frabosa...a small frown pulled at her smooth brow. It was ages since she’d seen him. And not because of her break-up with his son, she reminded herself grimly. No, not even that had been able to break the loving bond she and Roberto had forged during her short foray into their lives. But he liked to keep to his Berkshire home these days, since the small stroke several months ago, and Marnie had refused to so much as set foot on the estate since she’d left Guy. The place resurrected too many painful memories.

      Opening her mouth to ask him about how his father was, she turned her head to look at him—and immediately forgot all about Roberto Frabosa when she found herself gazing at Guy’s lean, dark profile.

      Such a beautiful man, she observed with an ache. A man with everything going for him. Too much for her to cope with. That dynamic character of his needed far more stimulation than an ordinary little artist girl had been able to offer him. She was at least ten years too young for him, ten years behind him in experience—a lesson she had learned the hard way, and had no desire to repeat even though she knew without a single doubt that if she said to him right now, and with no prior warning, that she wanted to be his wife again, Guy would take her back without question. He loved her in his own way, with passion and with spirit. But not in the way she needed to be loved—faithfully. His need to supplement his physical desires with other women had driven a stake so deeply into her heart that the wound still bled profusely—four years on.

      He didn’t know, of course, just how deeply he had hurt her. He only knew the small amount she had allowed him to know—and to be fair to him he had never forgiven himself for hurting her that much. His sense of remorse and the knowledge that he had no defence for his behaviour had kept him coming back to her throughout the years in the bleak hope that she might one day learn to forgive him and perhaps take him back. He was a Catholic by religion, and, although they had not married in the Catholic faith, and their divorce had been quite legal, Guy had never accepted it as so. ‘One life, one wife’ was his motto, and she was it. Guy had refused to melt out of her life, and with his usual stubbornness had refused to let her do the melting. So they’d gone on over the years, sharing a strange kind of relationship that hovered somewhere between very close friends and bitter adversaries. He lived in hope that one day she might find it in her to forgive him, and she lived in the hope that one day she would force him to accept that she would not—which was why she did all the bitter biting, and he allowed her to get away with it.

      A penance, he’d described it once. A penance for his sins, like the four years they had spent apart. He quite readily accepted it all as deserved. ‘You’ll forgive me one day, Marnie,’ he told her once when one of his many seduction scenes had been foiled—by the skin of her chattering teeth! ‘I will allow you some more time—but not much more,’ he’d warned. ‘Because time is slowly running out for both of us. Papa wants to hold his grandson in