Sharon Kendrik - Long-Distance Marriage

Why, one of them—a famous cover girl—had actually turned up at his office and begged him not to go through with the marriage, within full earshot of his secretary, who had rather indiscreetly told Alessandra about it afterwards. And you didn’t get that kind of devotion from that kind of stunner if you weren’t physically involved with them, surely?

‘But that means that you were... that you didn’t...’ She fumbled around, searching for a delicate way to say it, but failed. ‘For two whole years?’ she yelled eventually.

‘I think what you’re trying to say—’ he began teasingly.

‘Don’t you dare patronise me!’

He shook his dark head. ‘I wouldn’t dream of patronising you. I was putting into words what you seemed reluctant to—merely confirming that I was celibate for two years before I met you.’

She threw him a look as she slithered out of her black silk dress. She hurled the wretched outfit against the wall and quickly wrapped her towelling robe around her. ‘I don’t believe you!’

He shrugged, a humourless kind of smile curving his mouth as he turned to drop his shorts and socks into the washing basket, so that he stood before her proudly and unashamedly naked. ‘That, of course, is your privilege, Alessandra.’

He said it with the finality of someone who was closing a subject they hadn’t particularly wanted opened in the first place, but Alessandra wasn’t giving up that easily.

‘You must admit it is a little implausible,’ she said.

‘Oh? You think that while you spent the first twenty-four years of your life as a virgin, and so were obviously celibate, it’s impossible for a man to be, too?’

Alessandra picked up her hairbrush and dragged it through her thick, shoulder-length hair which was so darkly brown that in some lights, like now, it looked almost black. ‘Some men, perhaps,’ she said deliberately.

‘But not me?’ he guessed correctly.

She nodded, reluctant to drop the subject, still angry at the ease with which he had seduced her after virtually accusing her of infidelity with Andrew! But also because, she realised, Cameron was speaking much more openly than was usual for him. And, because he was a man who was cautious about showing his true feelings, she wanted him to continue. ‘No, not you,’ she agreed with some defiance.

‘Perhaps you’d care to elaborate?’ he suggested silkily.

Alessandra hugged her robe to her chest, her breasts suddenly tingling beneath the thick cloth—and only because the brute had slid his eyes over them in a proprietorial and caressing stare! ‘Just that you are a man with certain—appetites,’ she began delicately, furious when he threw back his dark head and began to laugh.

‘Certain “appetites”?’ he repeated. ‘Goodness me, Alessandra, what a gloriously archaic turn of phrase! Perhaps you should have termed it “carnal desires”—that’s even more expressive, isn’t it?’

‘Well, if you want me to put it crudely—’

‘Oh, I do. I most certainly do.’

‘You like sex, don’t you, Cameron?’ she told him bluntly. ‘Lots and lots and lots of it!’

‘I don’t just like it,’ he said softly. ‘I love it And so do you, sweetheart. You may have been a late starter, Alessandra, but you sure took to it in a big way. I’ve never met a woman who gets as easily turned on as you do.’

‘And I’ve never met a man who would rip his wife’s clothes off and throw her to the floor and make her...make her...’

‘Tremble ecstatically in his arms?’ he put in with sardonic humour, but then he saw her mouth begin to tremble and he was by her side in an instant, enfolding her in the strong, warm circle of his arms as she began to shake with emotion.

‘Sweetheart, sweetheart,’ he pleaded. ‘Don’t get upset. Please. I shouldn’t have done it. You’re right I’m a brute. A selfish, arrogant and unthinking brute. But I love you.’

‘No, you’re not!’ she raged. ‘And I love you too! I just don’t understand why you...why you...’

He sat down on the bed and gently drew her down beside him. ‘I don’t understand myself,’ he told her softly. ‘You bring out something in me that no woman has ever done before and sometimes I’m not sure that I like it very much.’

He sighed as she stared at him with confused eyes. ‘All damned week long I’ve been aching for you. I didn’t want to be away from you. I’d planned my homecoming to the last detail, how it would be.’

‘But you came home early,’ she protested. ‘And didn’t tell me.’

‘I wanted to surprise you.’

‘But I rang the airline, and they confirmed that you were still booked on the later flight.’

‘I didn’t use the ticket.’

‘But then, how—?’

‘I bought myself a plane,’ he said, and then gave a little shrug as though he realised how unbelievable his statement must sound. Like a little boy saying that he’d bought a toy car.

Alessandra stared at him in disbelief. ‘You’ve done what?’

‘It’s a small Lear jet,’ he added, though he might have been speaking in Chinese for all that Alessandra understood. ‘So it’s just as capable of crossing the Atlantic as it is of taking me up to Manchester.’

Her dark eyes were still like saucers. ‘Cameron—why?’

‘Why not?’

‘Because people don’t just go around buying planes.’

‘Some do. I do. We do,’ he corrected. ‘We can afford it.’

‘But—’

He shook his dark head firmly. ‘No buts. It matters to me that I don’t see very much of you. My factory is in Manchester. Your job is in London. You won’t change—’

‘Don’t make it sound as though it’s something as insignificant as me forgetting to put the milk bottles out!’ she objected with a slight frown. ‘Why should I change? My job happens to be very important to me!’

‘Yes, Alessandra, I know. You’ve made that abundantly clear to me.’

‘But of course you, as the man, expect me, as the woman, to just up sticks and move to Manchester, just like that?’

‘It’s not exactly the back of beyond, you know. And we do have advertising agencies up north.’

She shook her head. ‘But none where I’d be given the same kind of variety and responsibility that I have at Holloway’s. Andrew has hinted that the joint managing directorship might be mine next year. I’ve worked hard for my promotion, Cameron.’ She turned wide dark eyes up at him in appeal. ‘Please don’t ask me to throw it all away,’ she finished quietly, not sure of what she would say if he insisted.

‘I’m not.’

‘Because this is the woman you fell in love with,’ she told him, stabbing her finger emphatically against her breastbone, the dark fire from her eyes challenging him to dare to deny it. ‘Me! The career woman. Not someone who would cave in just because of love—’

‘Just?’ He fixed her with a questioning look.

‘I want that promotion,’ she said stubbornly, but her stubbornness was born out of fear. Fear that if she changed too much, that if she allowed Cameron to simply slot her into his life as easily as a peg into a hole, he would no longer love her.

‘And you shall have your promotion if Andrew chooses to give it to you—because I shan’t try to stop you. My only stipulation is that he stops calling you “honey”!’ And he gave her the careless smile which had first so captivated her. ‘Darling, don’t let’s fight. That’s the main reason why I bought the plane. It’s supposed to make our lives easier. This way I won’t have the bother and the wait and the inconvenience of scheduled flights—can come and go as the fancy takes me.’

‘And always expect me to be waiting for you like the good little wife?’ she queried, knowing that she was spoiling his news but some insecure demon inside her spurring her on.