Susan Fox - Reclaiming His Wife

She wasn’t sure if he had sat down or if he had gone back out of the room because she couldn’t hear him moving around and she felt too relaxed to open her eyes and look. There was no sound but the crackling of logs on the fire, the soft pup-pup of bubbles dispersing in the foam and a strange kind of fizzing she was straining her ears to identify.

Something cool and smooth skimmed her leg, and she gasped, drawing it up sharply, her eyes flying open to the realisation of Jared standing there above her, that it was the cool base of a crystal glass flute he had been trailing along her leg.

‘Champagne?’ she beamed, surprised.

‘I never travel without it.’

He had changed, she noticed, into a soft black shirt and black corduroys, an image, which, with his black hair and those glittering black eyes rocked her with its sexual impact.

‘You’re decadent,’ she accused in a voice that faltered, reaching up and taking the glass from him.

‘If you mean in the sense of being self-indulgent, then I can only admit to being entirely guilty of that,’ he accepted. ‘But if you mean in the sense that I’m morally corrupt, then no man could apologise for dispensing with his highest principles around you, Taylor.’

What did he mean by that exactly?

Guardedly, with loose strands curling damply against her face, she watched him retrieve his own glass from the mantelpiece then, with one easy stretch of his body, pick up the book he had been reading earlier and cross to the settee.

Was he, she wondered, in some way alluding to last night? Was he, like her, and in spite of everything he had said, somehow regretting what had happened?

Refusing to think about that, she savoured the champagne, considering, as she twisted the slim stem of the glass how ridiculous it seemed sipping the most expensive wine from what looked like incredibly valuable crystal while lying in a battered tin tub!

‘Why the Madonna smile?’

That deep voice sliced through her reverie, bringing her head round.

He was sitting with his book lying open on the palm of his hand, one long leg lying across the other, those thoughtful eyes watching her as a Roman emperor would have watched his naked and favourite slave girl, as though she amused and entertained him.

‘What were you thinking of?’

Head tilting, Taylor surveyed the leaping fire through the carved perfection of the crystal, noting the way the one filled and impregnated every last fine sculpted contour of the other.

‘Incongruities,’ she murmured, taking another sip.

‘Such as?’

‘This.’ She held up her glass. ‘And this.’ A toss of her chin indicated the bathtub. ‘You and I.’

‘You and—’ She couldn’t look at him sitting there with the book, still open, but transferred to his lap now. His left arm was stretched across the back of the settee. ‘What are you saying? That we’re that much of a mismatch? Out of harmony with one another? Incompatible?’ When she didn’t answer, but just went on sipping her champagne, he said, ‘There is one way, my love, where you and I certainly aren’t incompatible, and if you’re determined to make that sort of rash remark then I’ll just have to—’

She was both relieved—and surprised—when the phone on the little round table beside the settee started to ring. Just how they got on in bed was something of which she certainly didn’t need reminding!

It was a business call, she deduced almost immediately, discarding her glass on the other low table she just managed to reach behind her, before lying back and listening to the deep sensuality of his voice.

‘No, it’s switched off,’ he was saying, obviously referring to his mobile phone. ‘No, I shan’t be dealing with it. I’ve left Steve Shaunessy in charge.’

His second in command. A big Irishman, Taylor remembered from the days when she had played hostess to Jared’s business colleagues and their wives. Steve was clever, astute. Trustworthy. She hadn’t forgotten, either, the sympathy she had seen in the man’s eyes when he had looked at her sometimes, and had been sure that he was thinking what she had guessed they must all have been thinking—everyone who knew, that was—that she was only a young and callow substitute who Jared had married in place of someone else.

‘Get Steve to deal with it,’ he went on, with no mention that he was on leave, with whom, or how long he intended to be away, which only emphasised that, as head of a thriving company, he was answerable to no one.

He was speaking to a woman—probably his secretary— Taylor decided, simply from that certain tone he always used with the opposite sex. Just like everything else about him, his voice had the most profound effect on women. And Taylor Adams was no exception, she thought, resenting the way that, even now, when her spirits had plummeted just from remembering how she had felt during their marriage, when she had felt betrayed and second best, those deep tones were arousing her, grazing over her senses the way his shirt would graze her naked body, or his chest hair rasp against the sudden aching tightness of her breasts…

‘No. Don’t call me here again.’

Catching that impatient, dismissive note in his voice, mentally she shook herself out of her dangerous reverie before the phone clattered back onto its rest.

‘Enjoying yourself?’

She tensed, hearing his book snap closed.

‘It’s heaven,’ she lied, staring up at the rather jaded emulsion of the ceiling, trying not to sound as though something had been wrenched out of her gut just from imagining him with another woman, pretending to herself that she didn’t care, so that with even more feigned brightness she was adding, ‘The Victorians certainly had some things right.’

He made a cynical sound down his nostrils. ‘Yes—if you had servants to lug in all the water—fill the darn thing for you.’

He had a point there, she thought, silently sympathising with their plight.

A light movement of her shoulder disturbed the water, revealing the proud taut curvature of her breasts. ‘I could go along with that.’

He gave a soft, almost humourless chuckle. ‘As a Victorian? I don’t think so. Times were pretty harsh—especially for a woman. I’m afraid your talents as a make-up artist, dearest, would probably never have seen the light of day. In fact your hopes of any sort of a career would almost certainly have had to be shelved in favour of housekeeping. And you would have had all my children, Taylor, and liked it, with very little say in the matter.’

Damp tendrils framed her face as she studied him through the dark fringes of her lashes. Was he deliberately trying to provoke her into a response?

‘There was always abstinence,’ she reminded him pointedly, just in case he was, and saw one thick eyebrow arch in silent scepticism. ‘Or would you,’ she challenged, feeling antagonistic without any substantial reason, ‘have exercised your legal right and beaten me if I’d said no?’

He seemed to consider this with some amusement for a moment. ‘That would have been my prerogative.’ His gaze, sliding over the caramel silk of her hair was suddenly burning with a dark intensity, conveying an overtly sensual message that matched the fevered heat beneath her skin. With slow and candid appreciation those febrile eyes roamed over the defiant tilt of her pointed chin, touching on her wet shoulders before coming to rest on her small and gleaming breasts. ‘I don’t think though,’ he breathed, his voice suddenly low and husky, ‘that any flaying of that tender flesh would ever have been necessary. I don’t think there ever was or will be a time when either of us could have said—or could say—no. Which is why you’re a fool if you imagine you can deny either of us, Taylor. Nature has a way of mocking us—and all the more for our efforts to contradict her, darling.’