Falling for her Convenient Husband. Jessica Steele
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she had filled out a little, had curves in the right places, and had developed a sense of style that suited her.
She took her seat and noticed Nathan Mallory seated some way away. She had done nothing either about an annulment or a divorce from him. And since she had not received any papers to sign from him, she could only assume that—although he was now more than financially able to support a wife—there could not be anyone in particular in his life.
After striving to concentrate on what the present speaker was talking about—‘Strategy and Vision’—she was glad when they broke for refreshments. She told Chris she was going outside for some air, and made haste before Ross Dawson should waylay her.
It was a beautiful day, sunny and too lovely to be stuck indoors. She strolled out into the adjacent park and felt as near content as at any time in her life. She ambled on, in no hurry, pausing to bend and read the inscription on a monument in tribute to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who had apparently brought the new sport of skiing to the attention of the world by skiing over the mountain from Davos to Arosa.
No mean feat, she was thinking, when a well remembered voice at the back of her asked, ‘Enjoying your freedom?’
She straightened, but knew who it was before she turned around and found herself looking up—straight into the cool grey eyes of Nathan Mallory. ‘I didn’t know you’d be here!’ she exclaimed without thinking.
‘Otherwise you’d have kept away?’
Phelix hesitated, then knew that she did not want Nathan to form an impression that she was as dishonest as her father. It took an effort, but she managed to get herself back together. ‘I still feel dreadful when I think of our last meeting.’ She did not avoid his question. She knew he would never forget their wedding day and its outcome either. ‘You’ve done so well since then,’ she hurried on.
He could have said that it was no thanks to the Bradburys, but by dint of sheer night-and-day labour he and his father had managed to turn their nose-diving company around and into the huge thriving concern that it was today. What he did say was, ‘You haven’t done so badly either, from what I hear.’ He did not comment on the physical change in her, but it was there in his eyes. ‘Shall we stretch our legs?’ he suggested.
She felt nervous of him suddenly. But he had never done her the least harm; the reverse, if anything. She remembered the way he had stayed with her that awful storm-ridden night when she had been so terrified.
It was not an overly large park, and as she stepped away from the monument Nathan matched his step to hers and they strolled the kind of a horse-shoe-shaped path.
‘You heard I studied law?’ she asked, feeling in the need to say something.
‘I’m acquainted with Henry Scott,’ Nathan replied. ‘I bump into him from time to time at various business or fundraising functions. I knew he worked at Bradburys, and asked him once if he knew how you were getting on. He’s very fond of you.’
‘Henry’s a darling. I doubt I’d have got through my exams without his help.’
‘From what he said, I’m sure you would.’ Nathan looked down at her. ‘You’ve changed,’ he remarked.
She knew it was for the better. ‘I needed to! When I look back—’
‘Don’t,’ Nathan cut in. ‘Never look back.’
She shrugged. ‘You’re right, of course.’
‘So tell me about this new Phelix Bradbury.’
‘There’s not a lot to tell,’ she replied. ‘I worked hard—and here I am.’
‘And that covers the last eight years?’ he queried sceptically.
He halted, and she halted with him, and all at once they were facing each other, looking into each other’s eyes. Her heart suddenly started to go all fluttery, so that she had to turn from him to get herself together. She supposed she had always known that this, ‘the day of reckoning,’ would come.
She took a deep breath as she recognised that day was here. ‘What you’re really asking,’ she began as they started to stroll on again, ‘is what was the real reason my father wanted me married and single again with all speed?’ She was amazed that, when she was feeling all sort of disturbed inside somehow, her voice should come out sounding so even.
‘It would be a good place to begin,’ Nathan murmured.
He was owed. Owed more than that she just tell him about herself. And he, she realised, wanted the lot. ‘I’m sure you’ve guessed most of it,’ she commented. She glanced over to him, and caught the slight nod of his head.
‘I was too desperate in my need to save the company to look for hidden angles in your father’s offer. But as I started to take on board that I’d been had, I began to probe deeper. And, while I still didn’t know “what”, it didn’t take a genius to realise—too late,’ he inserted, ‘that there had to be some other reason why your father wanted you in and out of a marriage in five minutes.’
That ‘too late’ made her wince. But she was honest enough to know that it was justified. ‘You were quicker at picking that up than me,’ she remarked, remembering how it had been that night. ‘That’s why you let my father believe an—er—annulment was out of the question, wasn’t it?’
‘It was the first time I’d seen him with you. It was pretty obvious from the way he spoke of and to you that an annulment was more important to him than simply doing a father’s duty and watching out for you. His prime concern, clearly, was that annulment.’ Nathan shrugged. ‘As enraged as I was, the question just begged to be asked—if he was so uncaring, why was he going to such extraordinary lengths to help his daughter gain ten percent of her inheritance.’
‘You knew that there must be some other reason?’
‘By then every last scrap of my trust in the man had gone. It didn’t take long for me to see that, shark that he is, there had to be something in it for him.’
It should, she supposed, have upset her to hear her father referred to as a shark, but what Nathan Mallory was saying was no more than the truth. My word, was he telling the truth! ‘There was,’ she had to agree. Now that she was in possession of the true facts of her grandfather’s will, she was totally unable to defend her father. And since the man she had married had been the one to have suffered most, she did not see how—or why for that matter—she should try to defend her father’s atrocious actions either. ‘There was something in it for him,’ she confessed quietly. ‘Something he had no chance to claim should I stay married.’
Nathan looked down at her as they ambled along. ‘You’re not going to leave it there, I hope?’ he enquired evenly.
For a few seconds Phelix struggled with a sense of disloyalty to her father. But he had long since forfeited any right to her loyalty. And Nathan was owed! ‘My father had plans that would never come to fruition if that annulment did not take place,’ she said at last. ‘But you’d realised that, hadn’t you?’
‘Sensed, more than knew,’ Nathan replied, but asked sharply, ‘Did you know in advance—?’
‘No!’ she protested hotly, not wanting to be tarred by the same disreputable brush as her father. ‘I didn’t so much as suspect…I’d not the smallest idea. I was still totally in the dark the next morning, when Henry Scott came to the house with some paperwork he needed to go through with my father. When my father was hung up with some business on the phone, I made Henry some coffee. Grace, our housekeeper, wasn’t back,’ Phelix vividly recalled.
‘She’d had the previous night off—she’d been to the theatre.’
‘You remember that!’
‘I have forgotten absolutely nothing about that night!’ Nathan said grimly.
Her heart did a peculiar kind of flutter. She had lain in her bed.