Carole Mortimer - Return Engagement

Wolf moved now, crossing the room with soundless footsteps, to stand only inches in front of her, his very proximity intimidating—as it was meant to be. ‘And what would you know about that, Cyn?’ he scorned forcefully. ‘What the hell did you ever know—or care!—about the way I felt?’

That was unfair—totally unfair. For a few weeks, a few precious weeks that had affected the rest of Cyn’s life, she had thought she knew this man—and his emotions—very well. The fact that that belief had been proved incorrect couldn’t take that away from her. And she was sure—dammit, she knew —that Wolf wasn’t in love with Rebecca! So why was he marrying her? Why had he never married Barbara, as she had thought he eventually would?

Cyn looked up at Wolf now, a sheen of tears blurring her vision of him, blunting all the sharp edges and angles to his face, briefly giving him the appearance of the man she had known all those years ago, a man who, although confident of himself and his own abilities, certainly hadn’t been possessed of the hard arrogance this almost-stranger portrayed.

And then she blinked, erasing the tears—and that erroneous impression of Wolf being at all the approachable man she had once known. Before her stood a man whose face was lined with bitterness, a sharp dissatisfaction about the thin line of his once sensual mouth, his eyes no longer like liquid gold but hard and unyielding. Perhaps he had always been this way, and she had just been too infatuated to realise?

No! She couldn’t, wouldn’t, believe that, because that would make a mockery of all she had once felt for him. And it had been so important in her life.

She drew herself up defensively. ‘We aren’t discussing me, Wolf,’ she told him briskly. ‘Why are you marrying Rebecca?’ She looked at him intently.

His mouth twisted, his hands thrust into his trouser pockets now, his suit jacket pushed back carelessly, revealing the flatness of his stomach beneath the fitted waistcoat. Wolf had always been slim, but now he was whipcord so, muscles rippling beneath taut skin. ‘Why do you think I’m marrying her?’ he returned softly, his mouth twisted mockingly.

Cyn was about to dismiss her right to ‘think’ anything about his relationship with Rebecca, and then she stopped, remembering Wolf’s easy familiarity with Gerald Harcourt, the obvious friendship between the two men. And she knew exactly why Wolf was marrying the young girl, and also why Rebecca had agreed to marry him.

‘A business arrangement,’ she said with obvious disgust. ‘My God, Wolf,’ she looked at him pityingly, ‘what happened to you?’ She shook her head dazedly.

His eyes were icy slits. ‘Happened to me?’ he repeated with cold menace.

Cyn stared at him as if she had never seen him before—as, indeed, she was sure she never had known this man. ‘Is this what you’ve become, Wolf, a hard-nosed businessman like Alex—?’

‘Leave Alex out of this!’ Wolf cut in harshly, no longer relaxed, his hands clenched into fists at his sides now. ‘He’s dead.’

She knew his brother was dead, had still been in Wolf’s life when the helicopter Alex had liked to fly himself, to get him to and from business meetings all over the country, had crashed in fog over the Cumbrian mountains, killing both Alex and his assistant instantly. But just because Alex had died it didn’t alter the fact that Wolf had hated the cut-and-thrust of Alex’s business world as he built up the family empire, that it had made Wolf shudder just to think of being involved in that world himself. And now, it appeared, he wasn’t just involved in it; he had become more of a cold-hearted bastard than Alex had ever been!

‘You can’t marry Rebecca because it makes good business sense, Wolf—’

‘Who says I can’t? You?’ he challenged scornfully. ‘You bailed out of my life at the first sign that things might be tough for a while, so don’t—’

‘That isn’t true!’ Cyn gasped incredulously. ‘I didn’t have any choice. You—’

‘Yes?’ he grated viciously. ‘I what? Wouldn’t be able to give you the attention you wanted after Alex died so suddenly?’ he dismissed contemptuously. ‘I thought you’d understand how it had to be.’ He shook his head disgustedly. ‘But you didn’t leave me with that erroneous belief for long, did you! Oh, no, you decided then was the perfect time to tell me you were seeing Collins again.’ His eyes glittered now with remembered anger at the disclosure. ‘If you ever stopped seeing him,’ he added harshly.

‘And just what do you mean by that?’ she demanded, heated colour darkening her cheeks.

Wolf made a dismissive movement with his hands. ‘You were involved with Collins before I met you. We were—close, ourselves, only a few weeks; it’s only natural to assume that— ‘

‘I was continuing to see Roger at the same time I was telling you I loved you!’ she finished accusingly, her eyes gleaming deeply violet. ‘Credit me with a few more morals than you had yourself, Wolf,’ she scorned with distaste.

His eyes narrowed to amber slits. ‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning—’ Cyn broke off with a heavy sigh. She wasn’t in the least disconcerted by the obvious danger of his chilling anger—at least, not much!—it was just that she couldn’t see the point, now of all times, of raking up the painful events of the past. ‘It doesn’t matter.’ She shook her head dismissively.

‘Obviously it does.’ His eyes were still narrowed. ‘Otherwise you wouldn’t have made the remark at all.’ His hands moved to grasp the tops of her arms as he held her securely in front of him.

Not that he needed to have bothered to have held her so tightly; her legs had gone too weak, at the first touch of his hands, to support her moving away!

‘Tell me what you meant, Cyn,’ he said abruptly. ‘I’m not leaving here until you do.’

She gazed up at him with pained eyes. God, she had once loved this man so much, had been willing to do anything for him—except the one thing he had demanded of her, she remembered heavily. Roger had tried to warn her, when she first went out with Wolf, had told her that people of Wolf Thornton’s class lived by a different set of rules from them. Only she had been too much in love, even then, to want to listen to those warnings. It had been a reluctance she had paid for a long time after Wolf was completely out of her life!

He was so close to her now, the warmth of his breath gently stirring the wispy blond fringe of hair on her forehead, the smell of his aftershave, a light woodsy smell, along with that masculine smell that was pure Wolf, filling her senses, making further thought impossible for the moment.

Or resistance, as she felt herself being slowly drawn towards the hard strength of his chest, the long length of his legs already pressed against hers.

‘Cyn...!’ he groaned low in his throat, the sound almost primeval, his arms moving about her now like steel bands as he drew her into the seductive warmth of his body.

It was as if the years since Wolf last held her like this had never been, her lips parting instinctively for the depth of his kiss, the onslaught fierce and demanding, his lips grinding down on hers, his hands roving restlessly down the length of her spine before coming to rest possessively against her hips, holding her against the taut arousal of his own body.

Wolf wanted her! As much as he ever had, Cyn realised dazedly. But even as she knew the truth of that she felt her own quivering response to the now languid caress of his lips against hers, tasting her, the tip of his tongue brailling every centimetre of her lips before dipping fleetingly into the hot, moist cavern beneath. Again. And again. Those flickering caresses were driving her into a frenzy of need for something deeper, her legs felt weak as she clung to the broad strength of his shoulders, her fingers unknowingly digging into the hard flesh there.