Jacqueline Baird - Paper Marriages

The fact that Tina Jenson was still with him simply confirmed Solo’s guilt in Penny’s eyes. He was a ruthless, devious bastard, and she had had a lucky escape.

‘That is a very secretive smile,’ Solo prompted. ‘Care to share the joke?’

‘It was nothing,’ Penny said, and in that moment she realised Solo was nothing to her, and she smiled with genuine relief.

‘I don’t want to waste any more of your valuable time. My lawyer informs me you own half my home. How, he wasn’t quite clear.’ She could not resist the dig and cast a swift glance up at him beneath the thick fringe of her lashes. She still did not understand why her father would have done such a thing, but he had, and she had to deal with the consequences.

‘Strictly legitimate, I can assure you,’ Solo informed her coldly.

‘Yes, so I understand, and that is why I am here.’ She lowered her eyes. ‘I want you to buy me out or agree to put the house on the open market,’ Penny stated simply.

She knew Solo had not developed the land he had bought from her father, apparently losing interest in the project. When Veronica was alive she had never stopped telling Penny that it was all her fault.

Penny had had no answer to her stepmother’s accusations—well, none she’d wanted to tell her—and instead Penny had suffered in silence. While Solo Maffeiano had vanished from their lives and, as far as she knew, the acreage he had bought was rented out to adjoining farmers.

‘My, my, you actually want to sell your home?’ His sarcastic tone cut into her musings, and she glanced back up into his dark, sardonic face. ‘And I have first refusal.’ A slow smile twisted his hard mouth and chilled her to the bone. ‘What an interesting scenario, and surprising. I seem to remember you were very attached to the ancestral pile. What has changed?’

‘Apparently you own half,’ she said scathingly. ‘And I wouldn’t share so much as a minute with you, given a choice. Therefore I have no alternative. The inheritance tax has to be paid, and I don’t have the money.’ He knew all this; he was just trying to make her squirm. ‘But you know all this. Mr Simpson spoke to you.’

‘I do, but I wanted to hear it from your own sweet lips,’ Solo said with cold derision.

Penny studied his hard face with bitter eyes. What he really meant was he wanted to humiliate her. Because she had had the temerity to dump him, and he was not averse to a little revenge. ‘Yes, well, you have now, so can I have your answer?’ she snapped back.

‘No. I’ll need to think about it, and it will take me rather more than a minute ,’ he drawled sarcastically. ‘In the meantime you can tell me what you have been doing the last few years.’

He was supposed to be in a hurry—it didn’t sound like it, Penny thought, simmering with resentment. And she wished he would go and sit down. He was too close and towering over her like some dark avenging angel. It was giving her a crick in the neck simply to look at him, and, fixing her gaze to a spot on his left shoulder, she began a catalogue of her life to date.

‘I went to university for three years, got my degree. Then I secured a job at the British Library to start last September. I was going to share a house with Jane. But I never got the chance because Daddy and Veronica were killed in a rail crash. They had spent the summer in France as usual, and ironically the crash was when they were nearly home, only a few miles outside of London. So now of course I look after my brother full-time.’ She saw no reason to tell him about her new career as a writer of educational books for children. The less he knew about her, the better.

‘So where is James now?’ Solo queried lightly.

‘Jane’s parents, the Reverend Turner and his wife, with their older daughter Patricia who is visiting from America with her son, kindly offered to take him with them on holiday. It is the first time we have been apart since our loss.’

She did not add that the vicar and his wife, who were like honorary grandparents to James, had had to talk her into it. Mrs Turner ran the playgroup James attended and he knew them very well. Penny had only agreed after Mrs Turner had pointed out James would enjoy the holiday, plus Patricia’s son would be there for him to play with. Nor did she notice the gleam of satisfaction in Solo’s cold eyes as he turned his back to her.

‘I was sorry to hear of your parents’ death. I was in South America at the time and could not attend the funeral.’ Solo straightened something on his desk and turned and leant against it.

Watching him leaning negligently against the desk, with a bit of space between them, Penny could almost convince herself this was a normal conversation.

‘Thank you for the wreath,’ she said quietly, remembering how surprised she had been at the funeral to discover Solo Maffeiano had sent flowers. Because after she had split up with him, as far as she knew, her dad and Veronica had never seen him again.

‘My pleasure, your father was a decent man.’

He was to you! she wanted to snipe. Because even after seeing it in black and white she still had difficulty believing her father would have sold him half the house without telling Penny. But antagonising Solo would get her nowhere. Be civil, and get out as quick as you can, she told herself, so instead she agreed.

‘Yes, he was, and I still miss him. But James and I are pulling through, and of course Brownie is an enormous help.’

‘And what happened to the blond-haired Adonis?’ He slanted a glance at her ringless fingers. ‘Simon, wasn’t it?’ The question was asked so casually Penny answered without thinking.

‘The last Jane heard he was in Africa teaching English.’ She smiled fondly, thinking of Simon. ‘But Simon is not much of a letter writer, he could just as easily be living on Mars!’

‘And this does not worry you?’ Solo said smoothly, his heavy lids and thick lashes almost hiding his eyes.

‘No, not at all.’ Then suddenly Penny realised what she was revealing.

‘Ah, the fickleness of women. Why am I not surprised?’ he opined cynically, straightening up and taking a step towards her. ‘You haven’t changed after all.’

As clear as day, the conversation Solo had had with Tina Jenson rang in her ears. She remembered the humiliation, the heartbreak she had felt at the time, still felt, if she was honest. He had some nerve… Talk about the pot calling the kettle… Anger sparked in her eyes as she flung back her head and looked up at him. ‘Ah, but I have. I am no longer the little innocent I was at eighteen.’

‘I can see that.’ Hard grey eyes captured hers in a look of stark cynicism. ‘So now young Simon appears to have had his fill of you, and can’t help you, you come to me,’ he drawled in ruthless mockery. ‘Perhaps you and I should explore the possibilities.’

Penny cringed inside, but she could not blame Solo. She had deliberately given him the impression that Simon was her lover, so it was no good being shocked when he believed it, but it still did not prevent her speaking her mind.

‘That is a disgusting thing to say.’ she snapped.

‘But true,’ Solo voiced and, with a lightning speed, his hands grasped her by her upper arms and hauled her hard against his long body. ‘Once there was something between us.’ His dark head swooped, and before she knew what was happening he had covered her mouth with his own in a brutally demeaning kiss.

Penny wriggled furiously, her hands trapped between their bodies, but as the kiss went on she felt herself weakening, old, familiar feelings flooding through her. His hard mouth gentled on hers. His hand slipped to cup the back of her head, while his other hand swept around and up her spine, holding her firmly against his long, lean length. The familiar, masculine scent of him teased her nostrils, and the warmth of his body enveloped her in a seductive cocoon of sensations she had never quite been able to forget.