Substitute Bride

‘Let’s start with the pitfalls of attraction to another man,’ he murmured tauntingly. ‘You’re so young and impressionable. What will you do, Bea, when you find yourself uncontrollably attracted to somebody else, as I’m sure you will?’

The way he had drawled the words ‘somebody else’ left her in no doubt of his meaning. That hoarse, smoky baritone was so blatantly suggestive that she could have slapped his face. How could he humiliate her like this, especially when he thought she was about to marry Sam? And why did he have to degrade her so pitilessly by gloating over her reaction to him? Didn’t he have any compassion at all? And how could she still feel this treacherous yearning for him, when she resented him so much?

Suddenly Laura lost her temper, and her anger with herself was transformed into fury with James. Breaking free of his hold, she stepped back a pace and glared at him.

‘You pompous brute!’ she shouted and then paused, struggling incoherently for speech. She couldn’t tell him the truth—that she despised him for his prejudice towards Bea and for the insulting way he was playing sexual games with her. But she could, and would, tell him what she thought of his own attitudes and values! Who was he to lay down the law to her when his own love life was nothing to be proud of?

She took a deep breath and her words came out in an angry torrent. ‘I may be young, but I’m not stupid. And where has your precious wisdom and experience got you? Just tell me that! You must be at least thirty-five years old, but you’re not happily married, are you? So what use was all your caution to you? If you ask me, the best thing you can do in relationships is to trust your instincts, close your eyes and jump! All right, you might get hurt, you might even hurt somebody else. But at least you’ll be alive and feeling and breathing and knowing what it means to be in love, not just playing it safe. In my opinion, you’re the one who’s naïve if you think you can get a guarantee of happiness just by refusing to take any risks!’

Her own vehemence astonished her, and she tried to tell herself that she was only expressing Bea’s philosophy of life, but that didn’t seem to explain why her outburst had left her so agitated. She saw that James was staring at her with mild amazement and she folded her arms around her body and took deep, calming breaths. Too late, she realised how heated she had been and a pang of guilt went through her.

‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said all that,’ she muttered. ‘I’m a guest in your house and it was very rude. Please forgive me.’

He shrugged, as if her outburst hadn’t troubled him in the least. Her stinging attack on his own way of life seemed to have left him completely unmoved. The faint, flickering smile on his lips didn’t waver for an instant as he returned her gaze. Then he spoke in a measured tone, as if he were thinking aloud.

‘There’s just one thing that puzzles me about you, Beatrice. You virtually admitted to me earlier that you weren’t in love with Sam and that you were only concerned with security, and yet you’ve just treated me to a passionate outburst in favour of falling in love and taking risks in relationships. Isn’t that rather a contradiction? Can you explain it to me?’

Laura’s mouth opened and closed as if she were a stranded goldfish. Yes, it was a contradiction, although she probably could explain it if she simply told the truth. All she had to say was a few, simple sentences. Bea is in love with Sam, but I’m not. I care about security, but she doesn’t. She believes in taking risks, but I don’t. When I was shouting so passionately about love, I was simply being her mouthpiece, saying what she’d say if she were here. Or was I? Is it possible that I really believe all that stuff about risk-taking myself deep down? She stared at James with a stricken expression, appalled by this moment of self-discovery.

‘The truth is that there are times when I don’t even know what I want myself,’ she muttered, dropping her eyes. ‘Times when I don’t even know who I really am.’

She found that he was towering over her again and that his hand was lifting her chin, forcing her to look at him, forcing her to see the strange, fierce expression in his tawny eyes. His thumb touched her cheekbone, caressing the skin in a slow whorl as he looked down at her.

‘Then I think you ought to find out before you get married next week,’ he said hoarsely. ‘Don’t you?’

Every nerve in her body seemed to jangle as she felt anew that hot, unwelcome thrill of physical attraction towards him. It would be easy, fatally easy to let herself sway forward against him and find herself caught in his crushing embrace. The silence between them lengthened and she felt almost certain that James was experiencing the same aching, primitive sense of need that was disturbing her so profoundly. But she felt equally certain that this was nothing but a game to him. Angrily she jerked herself free of his touch.

‘Look, what’s it got to do with you?’ she demanded.

He caught her by the wrist, swinging her back to face him.

‘Plenty,’ he snapped. ‘I like Sam a lot and I don’t want him being made unhappy by some twitty little girl in ridiculous clothes who doesn’t even know what she wants.’

‘Ridiculous clothes?’ echoed Laura incredulously, glancing down at Bea’s long striped cardigan. ‘Oh, so that’s what this is about, is it? It’s just blind, simple prejudice. You disapprove of me because I’m a model, don’t you?’

‘That’s ridiculous! If I disapprove of you, it’s because I suspect you’re unstable and likely to skip out of this marriage at the first sign of difficulty.’

All Laura’s old insecurities came rushing back and she felt the blood surge into her cheeks in a burning rush.

‘You’re only saying that because of the background I come from!’ she shouted accusingly. ‘Just because I grew up in foster homes, you don’t think I can sustain a stable marriage.’

‘That’s utter rubbish! I wasn’t even thinking about that!’

‘You were!’ cried Laura, her voice rising and growing more rapid. ‘I know you were! You think I’m not good enough for Sam, don’t you? Your family is rich and respectable and important and nobody ever gets divorced in it, so you don’t think I’m good enough to be allowed in the door, do you?’

James glared at her.

‘I didn’t say that!’ he retorted in exasperation. ‘Anyway, who said my family never got divorced? Sam’s father Adrian is divorced, I’m divorced, and the only reason my sister Wendy isn’t divorced is because she never bothered to marry any of her lovers.’

Laura felt an odd prickling sensation that was a mixture of pain and relief at the news that James was divorced. For some ridiculous reason it hurt her to know that he had ever been married, and yet she couldn’t help feeling absurdly glad that the marriage was definitely over. And then she saw the grim twist to his lips, the harsh etching of the lines around his mouth—was it over for him?

‘Are you divorced? Why?’

‘That’s none of your damned business! It’s irrelevant anyway, and I don’t know why I even mentioned it. It happened years ago and I’ll never be fool enough to get married again. I was simply making the point that—’

‘Oh, I see!’ she interrupted. ‘You’re disillusioned with marriage, so you have to try and turn everyone else off it too. What right do you have to tell me that I’m frivolous and selfish and that I’ll skip out at the first sign of difficulty? You know nothing about me!’

His face darkened.

‘I know you’re planning to marry Sam for financial security and I know there’s a hell of a lot more to marriage than that. If you think a big house in Sandy Bay is going to make you happy, little girl, you’ve got a lot of growing up to do!’

‘Don’t you “little girl” me!’ shouted Laura. ‘If you think that because you’ve bought us a house you can be the power broker in our marriage, well, you can forget it! We don’t need your house and we won’t take it. I’ll tell Sam to refuse it. We’ll buy our own damned house.’

‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous! It’s nothing to do with my trying to be a “power broker” in your marriage, as you put it. You’ve got a perfect right to own that house, you and Sam.’

Laura was momentarily sidetracked. As an accountant she sensed an interesting complication. When she spoke again, her voice was quieter.

‘What do you mean? You’re the one paying for it, aren’t you?’

‘Yes,’ growled James. ‘But only because of the way my father’s will was left. You see, Sam’s father has never had any sense handling money, it runs through his fingers like water, so my father left his share of the estate to me, as well as my own. He knew if my brother Adrian got hold of it he’d squander it before his kids ever saw it.’

‘Whereas you—’ prompted Laura.

James heaved an exasperated sigh and ran his fingers through his black hair so that it stood up in wild disorder.

‘Whereas I’m the sensible, responsible one,’ he said bitterly. ‘The one that pays off mortgages and tends the stock and budgets for the taxes and gets the rest of the family out of trouble when they blunder into it. Somebody has to be reliable or they would all come adrift. My father knew I’d take care of Sam and the others, so he left everything in my hands.’

That sounds just like me, thought Laura with an unwilling twinge of sympathy. She remembered how earnestly she had argued with the welfare worker when she was twenty-one to convince her that she could provide a home for Bea on her salary as a first-year accountant. And how much she had sacrificed to keep her promise to her dying mother that she would take care of her sister. All those lost opportunities for dates and parties and good times flashed before her eyes, but she felt not so much virtuous as utterly fed up. If James had gone through the same thing with his family, she pitied him! Even if he was a callous, manipulative womaniser, nobody deserved to be Mr Fixit all the time.

‘Don’t you ever get sick of being the sensible one?’ she burst out.

‘Yes,’ said James grimly.

‘What would you have liked to do if you hadn’t had to be the person that everybody else relied on?’ she asked curiously.

His eyes narrowed and he seemed to be looking at something far away.

‘I would have gone up to the Great Barrier Reef for at least a year and been a beachcomber,’ he replied without hesitation. ‘It would have been great to go surfing or riding horses along those long white beaches and lie around under the palm trees for a year or so. Mind you, I probably would have got sick of it after that. I suspect I’m the hard-working, ambitious type deep down. Still, it would have been fun.’

‘It’s not very different from what I would have done,’ murmured Laura half to herself. ‘I would have loved to go off to Queensland and spend months hiking through the rainforests and collecting wildflowers without ever having to worry about going to work and being responsible.’

James cast her a frowning, baffled look.

‘Then why didn’t you just do it?’ he asked. ‘You studied horticulture, didn’t you, at least for a while? And from what you’ve told me, it doesn’t sound as if there was any strongly developed work ethic standing in your way.’

Laura felt as if a chill had invaded the room. Why did she keep forgetting who she was supposed to be? Of course, James was right. If her sister had wanted to travel around and hike through rainforests, she would simply have done it. Whereas good, old, boring, sensible Laura wouldn’t dream of doing anything so rash. Just as she wouldn’t dream of flinging aside caution and plunging headlong into a torrid affair with James.

A sudden blaze of rebellion ignited inside her. If only I thought it was me personally that he wanted, instead of any woman who comes near him! she thought despairingly. Or if only Bea and I hadn’t deceived him like this and he didn’t think I was a scheming gold-digger! I wish, I wish…Then she caught the implacable glint of hostility in his tawny eyes and she heaved a faint, defeated sigh. What was the point of wishing? It was all useless. The best thing she could do was to avoid him as much as possible and pray for a miracle to get her out of this mess.