Suddenly, she was feeling the rain from that day over five years ago beating down from a leaden sky, plastering her water-darkened hair to her head, much longer then than the shoulder-blade length she favoured now.
The soaked strands kept getting in her eyes, though with her head down against the driving force of the cloudburst all she could see were people’s feet and the standing water on the pavement increasing in depth with each passing moment.
It had taken seconds for the thin linen jacket she was wearing to become totally saturated, her bare legs below the denim skirt she was wearing were slick with rain and her feet in wedge sandals squelched as she avoided another lethal umbrella that was being wielded like a shield. Any trace of make-up was a mere memory, and she gave up brushing away the droplets trembling on the ends of her long curling eyelashes before falling into her eyes.
It had seemed like such a good idea when she’d been sitting waiting for Rupert to come out of his weekly appointment with his oncologist, less so now. But when the page of the glossy magazine she had picked up had opened on an advert for the opening of the new London branch of the famous Parisian chocolatier that Rupert, with his sweet tooth, adored, it had seemed like something nice to do for the man to whom she owed so much.
Rupert, the man who legally at least she was married to, had called their arrangement symbiotic when he had offered her an escape route from the seemingly endless nightmare she had fallen into after her father’s death, but to her it often seemed more like a one-sided deal.
She wasn’t even sure that this mysterious debt Rupert had claimed he owed her father existed, though the men’s friendship certainly had. Her father had been a man with a lot of friends; he’d been funny, articulate, generous to a fault and he’d thrown legendary parties—of course he’d had friends. Only for the most part, they’d turned out to be the variety that had disappeared when it had become public knowledge after his death that, despite his lifestyle, there had been no money left, just debts.
His death was the only thing that had kept the bailiffs temporarily away from the door of the lovely home she was living in that was mortgaged up to the hilt. The staff had not been paid for two months, though selling her jewellery had dealt with that issue, and everything else would have to be sold too: the fleet of cars in the garage; her father’s share in the racehorse that never won anything but cost a bomb in trainers, stables and veterinary bills.
She’d been poor before, that was not a problem for Marisa, but what had been a nightmare was the money that the lawyers said her father owed, and not all the debts, she’d soon learnt, were owed to legitimate sources. Some, the ones whose sinister representatives Marisa had come home from the funeral to find sitting uninvited in her living room, were not inclined to stand in line to be paid a fraction of what they were owed.
They’d wanted their money right then, all of it, and the dark consequences they’d hinted at should she not come up with the goods had been chilling enough, though not as much as the stomach-curdling suggestion that she could reduce the debt by being nice to important friends of their clients.
She had still been shaking with reaction to the crude suggestion when Rupert had arrived. He’d sat her down, poured her a stiff brandy and had teased the story out of her. It was then that he’d shared his own shocking news, explaining not just his medical diagnosis, but that his disease was terminal. He considered it a private matter, he didn’t want her sympathy, and wasn’t afraid to die—he was ready.
What he didn’t want, he’d told her, was to die alone, and he’d been alone ever since the death of the love of his life, a man whose funeral Rupert hadn’t even been able to attend because his long-time lover had had a wife and family who didn’t know, or didn’t want to know, that he had been gay.
Marriage to Marisa, he’d said, would make everything so much easier legally after he died—she’d actually be helping him. And, for some reason he’d refused to disclose, he’d owed it to her father to ensure she was safe. Marisa, ignoring the voice of conscience in the back of her mind, had let herself believe him. Grief-stricken, desperate and so very alone, she’d agreed.
They had married in a civil ceremony a week later. There had been no honeymoon but they’d shared a bottle of champagne, and that had been the first time Rupert had told her upfront, to her acute embarrassment, that it would be fine with him if she wanted a life outside their marriage. If she had friends, male friends, he’d added, in case she hadn’t got his drift.
She had got it, but, as she had informed him there and then, that wouldn’t be an issue for her and she had meant it. She had never been a particularly physical person and she had always avoided intimacy of that nature. What she’d been looking for in a relationship was what she had always craved: safety and stability.
School friends had always envied Marisa her adventurous lifestyle, not knowing about the unpaid bills that her father had cheerfully binned whenever the drawer he’d shoved them into had got full, never dreaming that their friend, who got to mingle with famous people and order her dinner from room service in five-star hotels, instead longed for the security of their boring lives.
Ironically she now had the dreamt-of security, although this had never been the way she had visualised it coming about, and up to a point it had worked. But to her, at least, it was becoming more obvious with each passing day that there was nothing equal about her and Rupert’s deal, and there was a certain irony in the fact that her attempt to assuage her guilt in a small way had set in motion a sequence of events that would lead to her act of betrayal. And no matter that Rupert had virtually given his blessing to her taking lovers, for Marisa, what she had done remained a betrayal.
Waiting until Rupert was taking his afternoon nap she had set off to purchase his surprise treat, taking the shortcut through the park because it was such a lovely afternoon—or at least it had been, until the heavens opened and the rain came pelting down!
She was just wondering whether there was any point getting a taxi when she sidestepped a puddle and walked full pelt into a person—or it could have been a steel wall; the amount of give was about the same—the impact driving the air from her lungs in a sharp gasp as she bounced off him, very nearly losing her balance.
Grappling with the distracting sensation of hardness and warmth left by the moment of contact while trying to keep her balance, she was saved the embarrassment and pain of landing on her bottom in a puddle by a pair of large hands that shot out, spanning her waist and quite literally putting her back on her feet.
‘I’m so, so sorry...’ She began tilting her chin to look up...a long way, as it turned out, but as she finally made it to the face of the man who still had his hands on her waist she promptly forgot what she was going to say, the clutching sensation in the pit of her stomach giving way to a shallow gasp of shock.
She now knew why it had felt as though she were walking into a wall. Everything about the stranger was hard. He was lean, broad-shouldered and several inches over six feet; the long drovers raincoat he wore open over a suit and tie did not disguise the muscular athleticism of his body.
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If the physical impact had snatched her breath away, the impact as her gaze collided with the dark heavy-lidded eyes of the stranger made her heart almost stop beating, the raw masculinity he projected like nothing she had ever encountered before in her twenty-one years. Strange, scary sensations were zigzagging through her body, as though her nervous system had just received a million-volt hit.
It was the weirdest sensation. The noise of other people, the busy traffic, the storm raging overhead were all still there but they receded into the background. Instead, her world had contracted into the space, the air molecules between her and this man... There was just this extraordinary man, and he really was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen in her life!
She knew she was staring at him but she couldn’t stop. His strong-jawed oval face was all sculpted cheekbones, carved planes and intriguing angles, and the skin stretched over bones of perfect striking symmetry was a deep vibrant bronzed gold. Looking at his firm, sensually moulded mouth sent her core temperature up several painful degrees—it was a sinful miracle.
The thick brows above his eyes lifted and she couldn’t help noticing that they were as black as the curling lashes that framed his deep-set dark, quizzical eyes.
‘Are you all right?’
He had an almost accent—it was there somewhere in the perfect diction and the deep, smooth drawl. There was a smile and something else in his eyes that was as lushly velvet as his voice.
It was the something else that intensified the violent quivering in the pit of her stomach.
She lifted a hand to push the hair from her cheek, the rain-soaked strands tangling in her slim fingers while beneath the film of moisture her face felt hot.