Summer Sins: Bedded, or Wedded? / Willingly Bedded, Forcibly Wedded / The Mediterranean Billionaire's Blackmail Bargain. Julia James
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away.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘I’VE got a booking for you at an insurance company.’
The temp agency girl’s voice was brisk and businesslike. Lissa forced herself to concentrate. It was punishingly hard. For a start she was tired—but that was nothing new. Her late nights at the casino always left her tired. She should be grateful, though, that she still had a job there. She had so very nearly lost it.
But what was new, horribly, bleakly new, was this sense of the world having had all the colour drained out of it. Everything was grey.
Only one single place had colour in it—only one place was bathed in radiant, luminous light. Her memory of that evening—that precious, unforgettable evening which shone like a jewel in the secret, private place she kept it.
Yet it was a jewel with facets that were razor sharp, piercing her with pain whenever she permitted herself to remember that night.
But she had made the right decision—the only decision. There was nothing else she could have done.
Even as she told herself that, a small, treacherous voice would whisper in her inner ear.
You could have had one night … one hour … that, at least, you could have had …
But she knew she could not have done that. Knew that if she had succumbed to that exquisite temptation, the pain she felt now would be nothing in comparison. One night, one hour in his bed, would have only created a longing in her for more that she could never assuage.
He was not for her. He couldn’t be. She had duties and obligations elsewhere. Commitments.
And more, so much more than that—she had love. Love and responsibility and care. She couldn’t abandon them. Not for a night, not for an hour, not for a minute.
But it was hard—however much she reminded herself that it was impossible to indulge her desire for the man who had, out of nowhere, suddenly transformed her life. She knew she had to forget him but the longing could not be suppressed. Only repressed. Shut down tightly into the box of ‘might have beens.’
Well, there were a lot of ‘might have beens’ in her life. And they had all ended with that hideous, bloody mess of twisted metal and broken bodies.
Except her body.
Guilt, survivor guilt, seared through her. As she stood up from the chair in the agency, her legs strong and healthy, her body strong and healthy, she felt guilt go through her. Guilt and resolution.
Keep going—keep going. Work, by day and by night, work and earn and save.
But would she ever have enough?
Into her mind, the treacherous thought came again.
If only Armand.
But it had been days now, days after days, and nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Hope had drained out of her. Just as colour had drained out of her life.
She got to her feet, ready to set out for the insurance company’s offices. At least temping gave her higher rates than permanent work, and it was flexible enough for her needs—like the days she had to get to the hospital.
Guilt stabbed her, as it always did whenever she fell into self-pity or resentment. She had no right whatsoever to either emotion.
She had walked out of the crash without a scratch.
In her mind’s eye formed, as it always did, the image that haunted her, tormented her. The hospital chapel, the two cold, still bodies.
And one more body, still alive, but broken, still broken.
Pain choked her. And guilt. Not just guilt for having walked out of the crash that had destroyed so much, but guilt now for wanting even more from life than what she already had.
Wanting Xavier Lauran.
Whom she could never have.
Xavier sat at his desk, his eyes resting on the unopened e-mail on his screen. It was from Armand. His expression tightened. He did not want to open the e-mail. Did not want to read it. He didn’t want to think about Armand, and most of all he did not want to think about the woman his brother wanted to marry.
Not thinking about Lissa Stevens was essential. He had spent every day since that night at the hotel not thinking about her. He had spent every night battling not to remember her.
A bitter smile twisted his mouth. The saying was true—the road to hell was paved with good intentions. He’d had only good intentions when he’d made the decision to check out the woman Armand had talked about wanting to marry. His only thought then had been to save his brother from a disaster that, on past performance, was a real risk. But his good intentions had turned on him.
At some point he knew, with that cool, rational brain that he’d used to live his life by, he would have to think about Lissa Stephens. He would have to come to terms with the disaster that had befallen not his brother but himself. He had fallen, head first, into a pit of his own making. A pit he could not escape but which he had to find a way of dealing with.
Just how he was going to deal with it, however, was at the moment completely beyond him. His eyes shadowed. He had wanted Lissa Stephens that fateful night with an intensity that had shocked him as much as it had enthralled him—and he still wanted her. Wanted her more than ever. She was a presence he could not rid himself of, a memory he could not burn out of his mind. Though he refused to let himself think of her, that did not mean she was not there.
He wanted her.
He wanted her, and he did not care that she worked in a casino, did not care that he still did not know whether she was or was not fit to marry his brother, did not care if she was going to marry his brother.
It did not stop him wanting her.
What was he going to do? How could he meet her again, on Armand’s arm, and know that she was never going to be his?
The thought tormented him, the harsh, brutal knowledge that she was forbidden to him. Never before in his life had any woman he’d wanted been forbidden to him. He had never looked at married women, and none who were unmarried, with whom he’d decided to embark on a liaison, had ever turned him down. Why should they have? He had always been able to have the women he wanted. It had never been an issue, never been something he’d thought deeply about, never had cause to. He’d selected women from the many available to him with the same rationale he brought to bear on everything in his life. She would be beautiful, chic, well educated, well-bred, an habituée of the circles in which he moved. She would be experienced in the art of love, and she would want exactly what he wanted—a sensual, suitable sexual and social partner who would fit the space in his life which he allocated for that purpose. And when the affair lost its flavour, as it always did at some point, then she would agree with him that it was time to part, without rancour or regret.
But now he had been given a poisoned chalice by fate.
I desire my brother’s bride …
With tight, heavy emotion he clicked on Armand’s e-mail. His eyes scanned the words rapidly. It was just about his upcoming business schedule in the USA. Nothing about marriage plans.
Why not?
The question hung in Xavier’s focus. Why had Armand gone so quiet on a topic he’d written so enthusiastically about only a short time ago? Xavier’s mouth tightened. Was Armand’s reticence now because he did not trust his brother not to interfere, even though he’d asked him not to? Did he suspect that being despatched to the Middle East and America had been a deliberate ploy on his part?
A heavy rasp escaped Xavier. What did it matter? From now on he was out of it—he had to keep a very, very long distance from Armand and his plans to marry Lissa Stephens. It was the only safe thing to do—the only rational thing.
Lissa