Maggie Cox - Red-Hot Seduction - The Sins of Sebastian Rey-Defoe / A Taste of Sin / Driving Her Crazy

Mari clamped her lips together. She was pretty sick of having her nose rubbed in it. It wasn’t as if she needed reminding she had set in motion the events that had led her to this place and this moment. ‘Are you going to bring that up often? Just so that I know.’

‘You’re right.’ Anger was a waste of energy and an indulgence; he needed to take a less negative approach. ‘I’m not in the best of moods.’

Astonished by the admission, Mari didn’t say anything.

‘After a long absence, my parents have made the news.’

The story dug up from years back by an enterprising hack told of another bride left standing at the altar. His father had been the groom, his mother the ‘other’ woman, and his father had jilted his new bride just as Seb had done.

The only downside to this story from a journalistic point of view had been that the woman left at the altar had not gone on to lead a tragic life, but instead had been inconveniently happy combining a career as a respected trauma doctor with marriage and four children.

‘Today might be better if you remind yourself that a marriage of convenience is a hell of a lot better than one of inconvenience, and there are a lot of those out there,’ he mused, fighting the impulse to grab the damned bag off her as she staggered awkwardly down a step. All she had to do was ask, but she didn’t, and with a bloody-minded stubbornness she made it to the poky communal hallway where she paused.

He correctly interpreted her hesitation. ‘There were no reporters outside when I arrived.’

Still she hesitated, raising herself up on tiptoe to peer through the dusty pane of glass high up on the door.

‘Are you sure?’ If she was seen leaving complete with luggage and Seb, she could only imagine how they would spin it. Ironically nothing could be as strange, or crazy, as the truth!

With a grunt of irritation he snatched the bag from her and strode out through the door.

Left with little choice Mari followed him, relieved that no one jumped out of the shadows wielding a camera. He walked straight to the car parked by the kerb. It was an enormous four-wheel drive with blacked-out windows.

‘You’re driving?’

‘I like driving, unless you want to?’

She shook her head.

‘So what did your brother think of our arrangement?’ Being a brother himself, his opinion of a man who allowed his sister to fight his battles was not positive.

‘I don’t ask my brother’s approval for my decisions.’

Neatly dodged, he thought, observing her neat, peachy behind as she bent, ignoring the passenger door and getting into the back seat.

‘Aren’t you going to ask me where we’re going?’

She had been about to, but she responded to a perverse impulse and said instead, ‘One register office is much the same as any other.’

She saw his eyes narrow in the rear-view mirror. ‘Life is going to be a lot easier if you lose the victim act,’ he drawled.

Not replying, she turned her head and looked out of the window.

‘The silent treatment works for me. It’s peaceful, but I’ve never known a woman who can keep it buttoned for more than five minutes.’

Mari clamped her lips over a retort and contented herself with slinging him a fulminating look of dislike in the rear-view mirror.

‘Fifteen, I’m impressed,’ Seb admitted as he drew up in front of a red-brick building.

She ignored him and looked up at the building. ‘So this is it, then?’

He glanced over his shoulder. ‘We’re five minutes early. I can drive around the block once more if you like?’ he suggested, fighting the impulse to apologise.

It was convenient, but had he realised that the office was situated on a road where most shop windows were either boarded up or smashed, he would have added a few miles to their journey.

Mari shook her head and took a deep breath. Not waiting for him to come around and open the door, she flung herself out, gasping, ‘No, I’m fine.’

She had actually never been this far from fine in her life!

Seb came to join her. ‘It’s probably better inside.’

It was actually much worse, but Mari barely noticed. It wasn’t the place that made her heart feel like a stone; it was exchanging words that were meant to mean something. She felt a hypocrite saying them—making a mockery of something that she considered sacred left a bad taste in her mouth.

Mari felt like a cheat.

As they walked through the swing doors, Seb pulled Mari out of the way of a boisterous crowd. At the centre of the laughing group was a bride whose white minidress did nothing to disguise her large pregnancy bump and a groom who didn’t look as if he had started shaving yet.

Mari turned her head for one last look as the loud group left the building.

‘They looked so happy.’

Seb didn’t know if it was the wistful look on her face when she said it, or the fact he had fully expected her to make some catty remark about the other woman giving birth before she got to exchange vows, but as they headed towards the ceremony room Seb found himself wishing he had bought her some flowers.

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE MOMENT MARI got out of the car, even though it was almost midnight, the Spanish summer heat hit her. She focused on the physical impressions and tried not to think beyond them to the lump of apprehension she was carrying around like a stone in her chest for the entire journey.

It was utterly still; the air was heavy and stickily oppressive. For the last mile or so they had driven through what seemed to be a pine forest, and warm air carried the green smell of the trees.

She got out her mobile and texted goodnight to her brother.

‘I imagine he is much as he was the past ten times you texted him.’ While Seb was exploiting the sisterly devotion, her inability to see that she was being used by her brother was really beginning to irritate him. So was her frigid, tight-lipped silence.

She had not said anything the entire journey; not to him anyway—she had been charm itself to the steward on the flight. The boy had been positively salivating. ‘And you’ve proved your point. Some women can keep quiet.’

He had hardly said a word the entire way, so now he broke his moody silence to criticise her!

‘If you’d spoken to me I’d have replied. And texting my brother, that’s called caring,’ she snapped back, choosing not to inform him that the texting exercise had been pretty one-sided.

He turned his head briefly to scan her profile in the darkness. ‘Would he be grateful if he knew what you’ve done for him?’

‘You’re the one who is paying for his treatment. This was my choice.’

‘So why didn’t you tell him?’

‘Mark has got enough on his plate without feeling responsible... What’s that meant to mean?’ she asked in response to his harsh laugh.

‘Is it a happy place, this little fantasy world you inhabit?’

Mari shot a look of simmering dislike at his patrician profile. ‘I wouldn’t expect you to understand.’

‘Try me.’

Taken unawares by the unexpected offer, Mari found herself answering, ‘I love him. He’s my brother.’ She could have left it there but for some reason she heard herself say, ‘I know he’s not perfect but he’s not had an easy life, rejected by his mother.’

‘Is that the way you feel about it—rejected?’

Too close to the truth. She ignored his interruption.

‘Two foster homes that didn’t work out, and the children’s home—’

‘Weren’t you in those same places?’

She shook her head. ‘You don’t understand—he was there because of me. He would have been adopted straight away when we were babies if they had allowed us to be split up, but they didn’t.’