SARA WOOD - Scarlet Lady

‘I know! I’m sorry! I really am!’ she wailed.

Was that it? Had his pride been wounded because his wife was under suspicion? Ginny wondered if he’d had to defend her to his tough old grandfather, apologising for the dreadful publicity. And Leo was hurt. She could see that now; there was pain in his eyes and the lines that ran to the corners of his mouth.

Hesitantly she took a step or two forwards till she was an inch away from him. The depth of his anguish reached out to her heart and she longed to throw herself into his arms, to comfort him—herself too. To feel the strength of him encircling her, protecting her. Even a fighter had to take a rest and she’d been battling for too long.

‘I hate that side of it!’ she said fervently. ‘You have to believe that—’

‘But will you stop taking one assignment after another without giving yourself a decent break?’ he demanded.

The question arrested her. Standing so close to him, her wan face uplifted, her famous tawny eyes wide with wonder, she knew that she wanted to. At that moment she’d had enough, and her job had evolved into a love-hate affair. But it had been her dream since she was tiny to be one of the top models in the world. She’d only just reached that status. Could she give it up and admit that she couldn’t take the heat?

‘I’ve never backed down. Never given up,’ she explained slowly.

Although there was a brief softening of his bleak mouth, he made no reply to her comment. Her troubled eyes searched his. He was scowling, pushing back the dark lick of hair that flopped onto his forehead, and she felt a rush of deep affection at the familiar gesture.

Her long neck arched as she gracefully raised her arms and rested them lightly on his shoulders, which relaxed an inch, and she realised he’d been tensing, waiting for her decision. Hug me, she pleaded with her eyes.

But his arms remained at his sides, his fists clenched in anger. ‘Do it. For me.’

Ginny’s heart fluttered at the stark request. Knowing Leo as she did, it was obvious that he was too proud to beg. All he could do was issue orders. It made her soften with loving empathy, because he couldn’t let go and neither could she. However much they had loved one another, there had always been a thin barrier between them, built by their childhood years of repression. And neither of them had ever dared to let their feelings fly.

But he had to understand what her life would be like without a career. ‘Modelling is all I’ve ever known,’ she whispered. The alternative horrified her, made her sick to the stomach, which was churning even now at the thought of abandoning her individuality and dedicating herself to the Brandon family’s needs and expectations.

‘I ask you again. Will you stop? It’s killing you, Ginny,’ he said gravely. ‘I married a woman with more flesh on her bones. A woman who had time to dance in the moonlight on the daisy lawn.’

It had been the night of their engagement. She remembered that occasion with a deep ache in her heart. ‘Oh, Leo!’ she breathed helplessly. ‘It can be like that again—’ She stopped, overwhelmed, tears forming in her soft eyes.

At last, he reached for her. His arms came around her and she sank weakly against his beautiful body with a groan of relief. The magic was still there, she thought, resting her head on his shoulder, her mouth nuzzling his throat above the soft collar of his casual blue shirt.

‘Can it, I wonder?’ he murmured against her scalp.

The warmth of his words washed over her silky white-blonde hair and sent shivers down her back. The sensuality between them burned into her, tightening the skin on her body and melding them together. It had been so long. Months. Suddenly she needed him, needed the hard, physical release of sex.

‘I know it can,’ she whispered, kissing his throat. And she pressed her palm against his heart, giving a shudder of delight when she found that its beat was bumping erratically against her hand.

‘When I married you,’ he growled, breathing harshly into her ear, ‘you were full of hopes for the future. Don’t deny that we planned children—’

‘That was before your family told me what obligations there were for the heir of Castlestowel And...’ She stifled a whimper of hunger. Leo’s hand was slipping slowly down her slender back towards her hip. ‘I—I didn’t know my career would take off so ferociously!’ she mumbled, trying to concentrate on her explanation. ‘I had no idea I’d be jetting around the world.

‘I feel tired of it all now,’ she admitted. He didn’t know what she’d been through. Perhaps if she told him... ‘Shortly before the trial,’ she said, lifting her heartshaped face up to his, ‘I did sixteen shows in six days—’

‘You didn’t have to.’ He wasn’t looking at her. His eyes were hooded again but she thought that they were fixed on her cleavage, visible above the V of her jacket. The cleavage was almost her signature. Unusual in a top model, she had breasts. And the designers always provided her with clothes that featured them.

Leo had loved that once. He’d feasted his eyes on her photographs and reached for her with a possessive triumph because she was there, beside him, and she was his wife. Who belonged to nobody but him. A shiver ran through her body when she remembered how he’d growled one night after making love to her, ‘I’ll kill any man who takes you from me!’

She watched him lick his lips and warmth flooded her loins. A feeling of devastating relief came with it because they would, could, must make up—now, before the dreaded tea with Arabella.

‘If I’d pulled out of the shows, I would have gone mad, just sitting at home and thinking of the trial while you were up at Castlestowe,’ she said in a low and husky voice. ‘And everyone would have thought I was hiding because I was guilty and ashamed. I had to brazen it out, don’t you see? OK, it wasn’t easy. It, half wrecked me. I had early make-up calls and fittings every one of those days. There were twenty-five TV crews backstage at Dior for starters. But...’

Leo’s firm hands pushed her back a little. ‘But?’ he asked with a frown.

‘It was exciting—is exciting,’ she admitted. ‘My adrenaline runs when I’m working. Besides, I don’t have a choice any more. I have to work if I’m to pay the legal costs. Being a wife and mother is a vocation,’ she said gently. ‘I want children, yes, but... not if it means living in remote Scotland with no neighbours for miles and miles. That’s what you want, isn’t it? Maybe when I’m older and I’m ready to settle down—’

‘I feel so angry, Ginny.’

They were both breathing in a heavy rhythm. Her breasts rose and fell against his hard, lean chest. Grim-faced, he detached one hand and slid it between them, undoing the lowest pearl button.

Maybe this is the way, she thought hazily. They’d get close, be united again. Another button slid free. Control was slipping from her grasp. The need and the hunger for Leo—to share his body, to be comforted by its closeness—was overriding everything else.

‘Give me a little time to earn the money for the costs,’ she croaked as his hand brushed her naked skin beneath the jacket. Desire filled his face. Desire for her. With Leo, she could face anything. Debt, relentless, grinding hours of work, public shame—anything. ‘I’ll be less preoccupied from now on. It was only the terrible pressure of the trial that caused the problems between us,’ she said, not too convincingly. ‘Now that’s over—’

‘You’ll be working twice as hard to keep bankruptcy at bay.’ Leo appeared to be engrossed in the tantalisingly slow process of working the last cluster of pearls through the buttonhole. The jacket swung free, exposing the swell of her breasts. Leo’s lips parted and he whispered in a slow breath of anticipation. ‘Beautiful. I’d forgotten how beautiful.’