Tall, Dark... Collection

Completely, it seemed, and Hebe turned so Nick couldn’t see the embarrassment flooding her cheeks. But she felt happier knowing it was only the legal details of their marriage that Nick’s lawyers were dealing with, but now she had nothing to distract her thoughts from slipping back to her parents’ odd reaction earlier.

That conversation at her parents’ house hadn’t gone at all as she had expected. She had thought to get Jacob Gardner’s name from Nick, but not the response she had from her parents.

‘I guess that was probably the intention,’ Nick drawled knowingly.

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ she snapped resentfully. He was far too astute for comfort, this man she was marrying…

‘No?’He quirked dark, sceptical brows over questioning blue eyes. ‘Your parents obviously know of your involvement with Jacob Gardner, and they would rather I didn’t know about it too—is that what all the mystery is about?’

‘I have never been involved with a man called Jacob Gardner!’ she protested heatedly. ‘I had never even heard his name until you mentioned it!’

‘Oh, please, Hebe—your parents had,’ he said quietly. ‘So you must have told them!’

She’d realized her parents knew the name, but she had no idea how.

Neither did she understand how Nick had jumped to the conclusion that she had known Jacob Gardner in that way. A man who Nick himself said had been quite old when he died.

She shook her head. ‘I have no idea why you should think I was ever involved with him!’

‘It’s quite simple—logical, really, if you think about it.’ Nick shrugged, his expression grim. ‘Andrew Southern painted that portrait. A portrait that was in Jacob Gardner’s possession when he died. In the portrait you’re wearing an engagement ring. Emeralds and diamonds, as I recall,’ he added hardly. ‘Which is why you didn’t get emeralds and diamonds from me!’

Hebe had noticed the ring, of course. She just hadn’t realised that Nick had…

‘I’m not asking you for emeralds and diamonds!’ she came back tartly.

‘Just as well,’ Nick rasped dismissively, knowing that the thought of Hebe wearing any man’s ring but his filled him with jealous fury. She was his, damn it. His!

But that ring on her finger in the portrait, the fact that Jacob Gardner had owned the portrait, and Hebe’s mother’s reaction to the man’s name—it was enough to convince him that what he had suspected all along was, in fact, true. Hebe had to have been engaged to Jacob Gardner when she’d had an affair with Andrew Southern!

And the thought of her involved with either man was enough to fill him with a blinding rage!

‘You were engaged to Jacob Gardner and you had an affair with Andrew Southern. Just admit it, and then get past it,’ he rasped furiously, his hands tight on the steering wheel.

‘Let me see if I’ve got this right?’ Hebe turned to him, frowning. ‘I was engaged to Jacob Gardner—an obviously wealthy man if he could commission an Andrew Southern portrait of me—and then when I met Andrew Southern I changed my allegiance to him—probably because I discovered he was the wealthier of the two men?’ she prompted. ‘And when my relationship with both men didn’t work out I obviously set out to entrap the owner of the Cavendish Galleries instead! Tell me if I’ve got any of that wrong, Nick?’ she prompted with impatient anger.

No, that sounded about right to him!

He was so angry he wanted to hate her, and yet all he could think about was making love to her instead.

‘Where are we going?’ Hebe prompted frowningly, as she realised they weren’t heading in the direction of her flat.

‘My apartment.’ Nick tersely confirmed her suspicions.

She swallowed hard, not liking his mood at all. It was too dark and dangerous for her to feel in the least comfortable with him in the privacy of his apartment. This conversation about Andrew Southern and Jacob Gardner had made him seem almost a stranger.

Which, she accepted resignedly, was precisely what he still was!

‘Why?’ she prompted softly.

Nick shot her a brief, sardonic sideways glance. ‘Maybe I just want to be alone with my fiancée for a while?’

Hebe drew in a ragged breath, knowing exactly what that meant; and Nick making love to her in anger was not something she wanted. ‘I don’t think so, Nick.’

‘Why the hell not?’ he bit out roughly.

‘You don’t need me to tell you that,’ she said quietly.

He inhaled and exhaled noisily before answering her. ‘I’m not going to hurt you, Hebe,’ he finally murmured, self-derisively.

Maybe not physically—after all, he had the baby’s welfare to think of!—but emotionally this man would rip her to shreds.

But he didn’t need to be in the privacy of his apartment to do that. He could do it with just a glance!

‘The opposite, in fact,’ he added huskily. ‘I’m going to make love to you until you cry out for mercy!’

Hebe knew he could do it too, and there was a melting warmth inside her just at the thought of making love with him again. ‘I would rather just go straight home, Nick,’ she told him determinedly.

His mouth thinned. ‘Am I not to get to spend any time alone with you today?’

‘We’re alone now,’ she pointed out ruefully. ‘We just don’t seem to be communicating too well!’

‘We communicate better when we’re in bed together, I agree!’ he rasped.

Which was exactly where Nick wanted to be right now—in bed with Hebe, breathing in her perfume, touching her, caressing her, feeling her response to him as he buried himself deep in the engulfing warmth of her body.

He ached with wanting her!

In fact, he couldn’t ever remember wanting any woman as much as he wanted Hebe. All the time. Able to think of nothing but her when they were apart. Just wanting to kiss and caress her when they were together.

It was like a heated madness, one from which he could find no respite even in sleep. Lying awake most of the previous night as he thought only of the time when he would be with Hebe again.

He had fallen in love with her, he had finally admitted that to himself some time around dawn this morning.

Fallen in love with a woman whose motives he still couldn’t trust.

Madness.

But it was a madness that he knew he could do nothing about. He loved Hebe. And even if she hadn’t been expecting his baby he knew that he would still have had to make her his own—that he couldn’t bear the thought of any other man near her, let alone sharing the intimacies that they had together.

Although he was still unsure why, even though Hebe might have wanted to confirm that Jacob Gardner had still owned the portrait when he died, she had done so in front of her parents.

Despite the explanation he had just given for the other men being in Hebe’s life, and the fact that she must have talked to her parents about Jacob Gardner, at least in the past, it just didn’t add up for her to involve her parents in that way…

Oh, to hell with it! He was giving himself a headache just thinking about it. Obviously Hebe had been involved with both men, and that was an end to it.

‘Hebe…?’ he prompted tersely at her continued silence.

‘What do you want me to say?’ she came back wearily, her head resting back on her seat.