Wife By Contract, Mistress By Demand Read online

  ‘Go right in, he’s expecting you.’ Stacy smiled as Gabriella entered the outer office.

  Gabriella entered Rufus’s office shyly, expecting to find Rufus behind the desk, but instead he came out of the adjoining bathroom, stripped to the waist as he dried himself after freshening up.

  Her eyes widened as she took in the broad width of his tanned shoulders and tapered waist, the tarnished blond hair slightly damp, too.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m going to put some clothes on.’ He gave a rueful smile as he saw her wary gaze, taking a clean shirt from behind the door and slipping it on, buttoning it but not bothering to tuck it into his denims.

  Gabriella hadn’t exactly been worried, as she knew that the physical attraction they had for each other was too strong to bother her any more. At the same time she was sure that simply falling into each other’s arms and making love wasn’t going to help to sort this mess out—it hadn’t in the past. In fact, it appeared to be what had happened in Majorca that had started all the misunderstandings between them!

  Rufus felt as nervous as Gabriella looked, eyeing her ruefully. ‘Do you want to sit down? Or—fine.’ He nodded as she sat down on the sofa at the back of his office.

  He had never felt so nervous in his life, as he knew that everything depended on this conversation with Gabriella, and that without her his life was going to be more empty than it had ever been. Barren.

  ‘You said you were going to talk if I would listen,’ she reminded him huskily.

  Yes, he had, and no matter what it cost his natural reserve, his deep-felt self-preservation, he had to tell Gabriella exactly how he felt about her. And why. Otherwise he was going to lose her for good. And that was just unacceptable.

  He went down on his knees beside her, not touching her, but able to feel the warmth of her, smell her perfume. Just breathe in being close to her again.

  ‘Gabriella, I didn’t leave you yesterday morning because I wanted to—’

  ‘Why else would you have gone?’ she interrupted scornfully, still able to feel that sense of desolation she had known at finding him gone when she’d woken up in his bed. ‘Not another emergency, surely?’ she derided.

  ‘Of a kind.’ He nodded, his expression grim, his eyes having gone hard. ‘I lay awake just holding you after you fell asleep on Wednesday evening. Unable to sleep myself. Thinking. And thinking. Somewhere around three o’clock in the morning I knew I had to go and find Toby—’

  ‘You told me that in your—note,’ she reminded dryly.

  He nodded. ‘But not why, I realized once I was on the plane to Los Angeles, which was why I began telephoning you so frantically once I was free of the airport. Gabriella, I went to find Toby to tell him that if he ever came near you again I would beat him to a pulp!’ Rufus bit out harshly. ‘Needless to say—’ his mouth twisted with distaste ‘—Toby has decided to stay on in America indefinitely! As for my “note”, as you call it—’

  ‘Just a minute,’ Gabriella halted him, aware she wasn’t exactly sitting and listening as Rufus had asked her to do, but having too many questions of her own now to remain silent. ‘Why would you tell Toby that?’

  Rufus stood up forcefully, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. ‘Because the bastard tried to rape you four months ago!’ He was breathing heavily in his agitation.

  Gabriella’s eyes widened. ‘You believe me about that now?’

  ‘Gabriella, I’ve held you, I’ve loved you, touched you in the most intimate way, all the time with you proclaiming you hate me, and yet you’ve never shrunk from me in revulsion in the way you do with Toby.’ Rufus shook his head.

  There was a very good reason for that, she thought. She happened to be deeply in love with Rufus…

  Rufus scowled. ‘I finally realized, on Wednesday night after you gave yourself to me so freely, that there was no other explanation than the one you had given me. And if I had known about it then I wouldn’t have been as forbearing as my father, I can assure you,’ he added grimly.

  Gabriella swallowed hard, finding it difficult to take all of this in. ‘I thought you went to see Toby because you didn’t believe me—’

  ‘You mentioned my note, Gabriella,’ Rufus rasped. ‘I wrote it to “My darling Gabriella”,’ he reminded her intensely. ‘I signed it “Yours, Rufus”—because I am yours, Gabriella. For what it’s worth,’ he added. ‘I’m all yours. I always will be,’ he said gruffly.

  ‘But you want a divorce.’ She frowned her confusion.

  ‘What?’ Rufus queried disbelievingly.

  She nodded. ‘You had David Brewster draw up the papers while you were in New York; that’s the reason he wanted you to contact him when you got back—’

  ‘Just a minute.’ Rufus stopped her, at last beginning to see a possible reason for the change in her that day. He had expected to have dinner with her and she had deliberately avoided doing so by going out with friends, avoiding him completely after that, until he had thought he was going insane with wanting her, with wanting just a word or a smile from her. ‘I didn’t have David Brewster draw up those papers—’

  ‘Well, I certainly didn’t!’ she protested, the colour coming back into her cheeks in her agitation. ‘Besides, I spoke to David Brewster, and he told me that Mr Gresham had asked him to draw up the divorce papers—’

  ‘But did he say which Mr Gresham he was talking about?’ Rufus cut in softly.

  Gabriella frowned her puzzlement. ‘I don’t understand—’

  ‘It was my father, Gabriella,’ Rufus told her patiently. ‘He was the one who asked David Brewster to have those papers drawn up. Don’t ask me why, but he did. It certainly wasn’t me.’ He moved to clasp her hands in his. ‘Gabriella, I don’t want a divorce, not now, not in six months’ time, not ever!’

  She was totally confused now; she had no idea either why James should have asked David Brewster to do such a thing. But Rufus had to be telling her the truth about that, and she knew she only had to make a single telephone call in order to know if he was lying. Besides, why should he?

  She looked up at Rufus guardedly now. ‘What do you want, Rufus?’ she asked huskily.

  He drew in a ragged breath, his hands tightening about hers until he saw her wince slightly. But this was too important for him to make a mistake now!

  ‘I want you, Gabriella,’ he told her softly. ‘Forget my father’s will. Forget the past. Forget everything but now. I love and want you so much now that if you leave me I’m just going to keep pestering you and pestering you, spend all my days haunting Gabriella’s, my nights haunting wherever you go to live, until eventually you’ll feel so sorry for me you have to come back to me!’

  Gabriella gave a choked laugh. ‘I could never feel sorry for you, Rufus,’ she assured him ruefully. ‘You’re far too big, and strong, and—and self-contained, for me to ever feel sorry for you!’

  He gave a shake of his head. ‘Without you I’m none of those things. And I haven’t been self-contained, as you call it, for some time. Since the afternoon of our wedding, if you must know. God, Gabriella, that afternoon—!’ He closed his eyes briefly as he recalled the living flame of her in his arms that afternoon. ‘You completed me that afternoon, Gabriella.’ He gazed down at her intently. ‘Filled me, engulfed me, made me absolutely yours.’ He shook his head. ‘I’ve been fighting for my emotional freedom ever since!’

  ‘You filled and engulfed me, too, Rufus,’ she told him huskily. ‘But—’Gabriella moistened dry lips ‘—I was a virgin that day, Rufus. I—I left so suddenly because I didn’t want you to know that,’ she admitted ruefully. ‘I couldn’t bear your ridicule if you should realize that.’

  Rufus closed his eyes, remembering Gabriella that afternoon, the way she had given herself to him so completely.

  All these months—years—he had been mocking her, and he had been her first lover, after all. What a fool he was!

  ‘You took me to the apartment where you take your mistresses!’ she reminded him frowning
ly.

  ‘No, I only let you go on thinking that.’ He grimaced self-derisively. ‘I really do only use that apartment if I’m delayed in town on business.’

  Gabriella looked at him searchingly, seeing only truth and honesty in that candid green gaze. ‘But you knew what I thought, and yet you let me go on thinking—’

  ‘Gabriella, I never said that I ever wanted to fall in love with you,’ he rebuked gently. ‘Look at it from my point of view. Please! Angela, Holly’s mother, married me for what she could get in a divorce settlement. I thought your mother had married my father for his money. I thought you set out to seduce me in Majorca for the same reason—’

  ‘I was in love with you!’ she cut in protestingly. ‘I loved you so much I ached with wanting you to love me in return! I’ve always loved you, Rufus. Always…’ she repeated softly.

  ‘Oh, God…!’ Rufus choked. Now that he loved her, and ached for her to love him in return, he could see what he must have done to her five years ago.

  ‘I fell in love with you the moment I set eyes on you,’ Gabriella continued huskily. ‘I never set out to trap you that day; I only wanted you because I loved you, and wanted to be with you, wanted you to love me in the way I loved you.’

  Rufus was white now, lines of strain beside his eyes and mouth. ‘And instead I mocked and scorned you until you hated me,’ he agonized achingly. ‘You were amazing that day, Gabriella. More, so much more, than I had expected. I daren’t make love to you, because I knew that I would be lost if I did. And so I set out to make you hate me, instead.’

  ‘I think you succeeded for a while, too.’ She nodded. ‘It certainly stopped me ever wanting to love anyone else, let alone become involved in a physical relationship!’

  ‘God, Gabriella, no wonder the thought of marrying me five years later filled you with such horror!’ he muttered.

  But it hadn’t. Not really. Because underneath it all she had still been in love with him. As she was still.

  ‘Rufus,’ she began softly. ‘I only said it was partly because of our time together in Majorca that I haven’t been involved with anyone else,’ she reminded lightly. ‘Do you really love me not knowing why my mother needed that hundred thousand pounds? Knowing that I borrowed money from James, too? Thirty thousand pounds, as it happens. Do you love me not knowing the answer to those things?’

  ‘I would love you, Gabriella, even if you really were the money-grabber I’ve so often accused you of being—damn it, I did fall in love with you believing that!’ he admitted ruefully.

  He must have done, because she still hadn’t told him about her mother, and why Heather had needed that money James had so willingly given her. Or why she herself had needed thirty thousand pounds a year ago. And he had believed her about Toby with no proof whatsoever except what she had told him, and what he had come to realize from loving her.

  She nodded. ‘Then I think you should know that I still love you. That I’ve always loved you and I always will. And that’s the real reason why I could never become involved with anyone else this last five years,’ she added with certainty, only just realizing that herself.

  Rufus stared at her as if he couldn’t believe what she was saying.

  He continued to stare at her, until Gabriella couldn’t stand it any more, and launched herself into his arms as she had so often longed to do.

  ‘I love you, Rufus,’ she choked. ‘I love you!’

  ‘But—but you said you were leaving me,’ he finally managed to gasp, at the same time holding her so tightly against him she could barely breathe.

  ‘Because I love you,’ she insisted.

  Rufus shook his head dazedly. ‘That makes no damn sense to me whatsoever,’ he mused incredulously. ‘But as long as you love me, as long as you’ll stay with me, I don’t care if anything else ever makes sense again!’

  Gabriella gave a choked laugh, that laugh fading as Rufus began to kiss her.

  Heaven.

  Being in Rufus’s arms, feeling the unconditional love he felt for her, was absolute heaven.

  ‘Marry me, Gabriella,’ he urged as he lifted his mouth from hers to kiss the hollows of her cheeks, the dark shadows beneath her eyes.

  ‘We’re already married, silly.’ She laughed softly as she nestled against his chest.

  Rufus shook his head. ‘I want to marry you properly, Gabriella. I want us to have a blessing in a church, to say our vows and mean them, to know that we’re doing so because we love each other.’

  She gazed up at him with her wonderful violet-coloured eyes. ‘If that’s really what you want.’ She nodded.

  ‘More than anything,’ he assured her huskily, cradling each side of her face as he looked down at her intently. ‘You are the most important thing in my life, Gabriella. Without you I’m only half—a quarter!—alive.’ He gave a self-disgusted shake of his head. ‘I don’t know how I’ve lived the last five years without you. If it’s any consolation, no other woman has ever meant anything to me. How the hell could they after that afternoon in Majorca?’ He groaned.

  ‘But—’ she frowned ‘—you didn’t—only I—’

  ‘Yes—and you spoilt me for any other woman,’ he assured her fiercely. ‘And how I hated you for it!’

  ‘I would never have guessed!’ she teased, kissing the hard line of his jaw.

  He gave a self-derisive smile at her teasing. ‘You’re pleased about that, aren’t you?’ he guessed ruefully.

  ‘Absolutely,’ she acknowledged unhesitantly. ‘Why should I have been the only one to suffer?’

  ‘Why, indeed?’ he acknowledged dryly. ‘Where would you like to go for our honeymoon?’

  ‘Majorca?’ she came back mischievously.

  Rufus laughed at her intended irony. ‘I may not let you out of the villa for a month!’

  ‘I may not let you out of the villa for a month!’ she assured him huskily.

  Rufus laughed again. ‘Sounds good to me!’

  ‘And me.’ She nodded before moving back slightly. ‘But there are still some things I need to tell you, Rufus—’

  ‘I don’t need to know.’ He gave a decisive shake of his head. ‘Whatever was between my father and your mother was their business, not mine.’ And it really wasn’t, he finally acknowledged. His own marriage to Angela had been one thing, but his father’s marriage to Heather had been something else. As Gabriella was something—someone—else.

  Completely.

  ‘I wasn’t actually talking about that.’ Gabriella gave a slight smile. ‘Although you do need to know why my mother—’

  ‘Why do I?’ Rufus reasoned. ‘Whatever Heather’s reason, I’m sure it was a good one. My father couldn’t have loved her in the way he did if she hadn’t been the woman he thought she was,’ he added with absolute conviction.

  Gabriella looked up at him wonderingly. ‘You really have changed, haven’t you…?’

  He nodded grimly. ‘I watched Jen, the wife of my manager in New York, sit by his bedside until he died. And I knew then that I had let my own prejudices and disillusionment rob me of so many things in life. I wish now I had got to know your mother better. And there is no way, absolutely no way, I am ever going to let you go out of my life, Gabriella,’ he assured her as his arms tightened about her. ‘No separation. No divorce. Just fifty or sixty years of being married to you, of seeing you every day, of loving you every day—’

  ‘Of having children together,’ Gabriella put in softly.

  His expression softened. ‘Only if that’s what you want, Gabriella.’ The thought of this gloriously beautiful woman pregnant with his child was enough to stop his breath, but he only wanted that if she did. He only wanted whatever Gabriella wanted for the whole of their future life together.

  She swallowed hard, her eyes dark as she looked up at him. ‘I’m pregnant, Rufus,’ she revealed huskily. ‘That’s why I was leaving you.’

  He stared down at her in stupefied silence, definitely having stopped breathing. Gabriella was pregnant
? But—

  ‘About four weeks, I think.’ She nodded as if in answer to his unasked question. ‘It happened that afternoon at your apartment after we were married, probably,’ she added ruefully.

  She hadn’t been able to believe it herself when, getting out of Rufus’s bed yesterday morning, she had instantly swayed and sat down again, at the same time remembering a couple of other instances when she had felt slightly light-headed in the last two weeks, occasions she had just put down to the emotion of the situation she found herself in.

  But sitting there yesterday morning, thinking of the weeks since she and Rufus were married, she had realized that she hadn’t had a period since they were married, so her first stop on the way into Gresham’s yesterday had been to a chemist, where she had bought a pregnancy-testing kit.

  Positive.

  Her emotions had been mixed. Joy, that she was expecting Rufus’s baby. Fear, as she knew that he was likely to accuse her of becoming pregnant on purpose in order to trap him. Her only solution had seemed to be to leave him. Even if by doing so Rufus lost Gresham’s.

  Rufus moved his hand down to cradle her abdomen. His baby. Their baby. Gabriella’s baby.

  He could hardly believe it!

  ‘Are you okay about that?’ he prompted anxiously.

  ‘Oh, very,’ she assured him with certainty. ‘It’s more than I ever dreamt of, more than I ever hoped! Oh, yes, Rufus, I’m very happy about this baby!’

  ‘Then so am I!’ He held her tightly in his arms as he began to kiss her, knowing that she was his whole world, that he couldn’t go on another day without her.

  ‘How do you think Holly will feel about having a little brother or sister?’ Gabriella prompted minutes later.

  Rufus gave a rueful smile. ‘My daughter has already informed me that if I don’t keep you as her mother she is going to be most unhappy with me!’

  Gabriella laughed. ‘And we don’t want that, do we?’

  ‘It’s your happiness that concerns me, Gabriella,’ he assured her firmly. ‘That consumes me. God, I have so many things to make up for that—’ He broke off as Gabriella put silencing fingers on his lips.