Mistresses: Bound with Gold / Bought with Emeralds. Sandra Marton
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pregnant. He acted like it wasn’t even important. He just shrugged and suggested I tell Chris as soon as possible, so I did, and instead of rowing about it we talked and talked for hours, and admitted that we had both behaved immaturely and I cried and…’ she almost managed a blush ‘…we ended up in bed.
‘Oh, Regan, you should have heard what he said! He said that he’d been miserable without me and mad with jealousy when I turned to Jay, that’s why he’d been so nasty! He said that he’d been forced to face up to the fact he hadn’t been fair to me or to Jay. He said he’d have kidnapped me at the altar rather than let Jay have me!’
The idea of Joshua being humiliated in front of two hundred guests had a certain vicious appeal, thought Regan, even if it would have been partly at his own instigation!
She stuffed herself with fattening pastries as she masochistically encouraged Carolyn to happily twitter on, gleaning the fact that Joshua and Ryan were still staying at Palm Cove and that Hazel had conscripted a biddable niece of Alice’s to be her letter-writer. Carolyn herself had made the trip down to her Auckland couturier in the WadeCo helicopter, and she gave Regan a nervous rash when she let slip that she had shared it with Joshua, who was expecting to stay overnight in the city and resume permanent residence in a matter of days.
As she departed, basking in her own happiness, Carolyn gave Regan a hand-addressed silver-gilt wedding invitation.
‘Chris says you have to come,’ she told her gaily. ‘He told me to deliver it to you personally and tell you that he’ll have something to say if you try to refuse!’
Regan gave her a sharp look, but Carolyn seemed to be unaware of any ulterior meaning to her words. The Wade brothers seemed to have a pretty similar line in ambiguous threats, thought Regan savagely as she closed the door and immediately picked up the telephone receiver and slammed it back on the hook. No more avoiding life!
It immediately began to ring, and she snatched it up with a belligerent snarl.
A startled silence. ‘Hello…uh…is that Regan?’
She sucked in a wild breath. ‘Yes, who is this?’
‘Derek…You know—Derek Clarke.’
‘Oh.’ Her heart flip-flopped in her chest. ‘Do you want Cleo? She’s not here—’
‘No, actually, I wanted to talk to you. A really weird thing just happened to me…’
Regan felt like snapping that a lot of weird things probably happened to sleaze-bags like himself.
‘Oh, what was that?’ she asked with immense restraint.
‘Well…it’s this guy I sometimes arrange dates for—he just sent me an e-mail to say he wants me to set him up with someone called Eve tonight…’
The furious roaring in Regan’s ears made it difficult to hear him as he went on, ‘So of course I immediately zapped him with the fact that I don’t know any women called Eve and—this is the weird part—he comes back on my instant message system with your name. I told him that he had to be mistaken, because I knew you weren’t much of a swinger, but he wasn’t interested in anyone else. He was real insistent that it had to be you and only you. He said all he wanted me to do was give you the message that Adam needs to meet you at the same time and place. No other name or specifics—just Adam—and he said, to quote him exactly here: “Tell Eve she can name her own terms.” So I thought, what the hell! I’ve got nothing to lose by asking—’
‘I’ll do it!’
‘After all, you can’t very well slap my face over the—What did you say?’
Regan firmed up her quavering voice. ‘I said, I’ll do it. E-mail him back and tell Adam that he’s got a deal!’
The marble foyer on the fourteenth floor was as coldly stark as Regan remembered it, and the deep-set door just as intimidating, but this time when she rang the bell Regan didn’t hesitate.
She might be crazy to take this chance, but she would be insane not to! Joshua had approached her through a neutral intermediary in a way that gave her the option of accepting or refusing to meet him. In the circumstances, she supposed that using Derek might be considered an implicit threat, but Regan didn’t see it that way. She viewed the offer through the optimistic eyes of love. Trying to duplicate the exact conditions of their first meeting might be Joshua’s oblique way of saying that he wanted them to start afresh, to rewrite their history together. It would be typical of that sophisticated, ironic sense of humour, tinged with unexpected mischief, with which she had fallen in love!
He had said Adam needed to see Eve, and that she could name her own terms—that didn’t sound like someone aggressively seeking revenge. It sounded alluringly close to begging. Perhaps, for once in his life, Joshua was willing to entrust someone with a second chance…
She might be walking into a trap, but if there was any prospect, however small, of any kind of future relationship with the man she loved, Regan owed it to herself to find out.
As she waited for the doorbell to be answered she didn’t allow herself any romantic fantasies. Now that he was an unencumbered bachelor again, it was highly likely that Joshua might just be on the prowl for some no-holdsbarred, guilt-free sex from an occasional mistress…
Well, she hadn’t found much security as a wife, thought Regan defiantly, maybe she’d be better off as a rich man’s mistress!
She had her smile all ready for the man who opened the door.
‘Hello, Pierre.’
‘Mam’selle Regan!’ His turtle-mouth gaped open and shut.
‘Actually, it’s Eve,’ she teased. ‘Do I have to produce a card this time—or are you just going to invite me in?’
‘Mam’selle!’ His voice crackled with reproach and she laughed, a soft, clear, lilting sound, tinged with excitement, that stole into the apartment ahead of her. Instead of responding, Pierre looked back over his shoulder, and Regan, impatient with the delay, took the opportunity to slip under his arm and stroll inside.
‘Uh, mam’selle, you must wait to be announced—’ Pierre let go of the door and darted across her path.
She laughed again. ‘Oh, you mean you’re not going to tell me he’s delayed in some business meeting somewhere and ply me your fantastic canapés while I wait?’
He frowned. ‘Really, Mam’selle R—Eve—I think you should let me—’
He was interrupted by a deep voice floating up around the glass-brick stairwell.
‘Who is it, Pierre?
Joshua came springing casually up the steps in shirtsleeves and the grey trousers of a suit, glancing over what looked like an architectural plan in his hand. When he looked up from what he was reading and caught sight of Regan he froze in mid-step. His face was unguarded for a split second during which Regan saw a shock of incredulity tauten the skin across the bones of his skull.
‘Regan?’
She looked from his wary face to Pierre’s uncharacteristically deadpan expression and it hit her, then, with humiliating force: both men were so stunned to see her that it was evident her arrival was totally unexpected.
That e-mail hadn’t been an invitation, or a trap—because Joshua had obviously never sent it! And Regan had been so eager to believe that he wanted to see her again that she had never entertained the idea that it might have a cruel joke perpetrated by someone else entirely!
Oh, God!
Her confidence smashed into a million tiny pieces as Joshua’s gaze dipped, his eyes suddenly narrowing with predatory sharpness as he recognised the combination of classic black sheath, black stockings and gold-heeled evening sandals. Even the bag she was carrying was the same one she had