Wife For a Day

‘Ronan!’

‘Cover yourself up.’ It sounded thick and raw.

‘What?’

‘I said cover yourself up!’

It was only when his hands came out, closing on the front of the mint-green robe and yanking the two sides of it together, that she realised how her unthinking movement in leaping to her feet had wrenched at the already insecurely fastened garment, pulling it apart. Her neck and shoulders, the soft curves of her breasts were exposed to his darkened gaze, the creamy skin flushed, like her face, with a mixture of confusion and tension.

‘You may have distracted me that way last night,’ Ronan grated. ‘But not this time.’

‘And I may have let you paw me then,’ Lily flung back, pulling away from him as violently as she could while still preserving some small degree of modesty. ‘But never again!’

The memory of the feel of those beautifully shaped hands on her skin, on all the intimate pleasure spots on her body made her feel nauseous, and she struggled to erase all the hurt and distress from her voice, thankful to hear it sound as cold and brittle as she could wish.

‘Last night you didn’t call it pawing,’ Ronan told her with a cruel smile. ‘Last night you wanted all I could give you. You begged…’

‘Last night I believed that we were married!’

‘So you did.’ Ronan nodded coldly. ‘And that’s the real bottom line in all this, isn’t it, my darling?’

His tone took the words to a point a million miles away from an endearment.

‘So, do you really want to know why I married you?’

No! Lily’s heart pleaded with her to say it. To declare that, no, she didn’t want to know anything about it. Didn’t want to hear a word he had to say.

If she had had any hope of salvation earlier, when she had run after him, it had died a slow and painful death. If any such illusion had bolstered her up, giving her the determination to jump up on the bonnet of the Mercedes, then there was none left now. It had all evaporated like mist before the sun, leaving her weak and defenceless, vulnerable to anything he might choose to throw at her.

But rationally she had to know. She couldn’t accept it as the truth unless she heard it from his own mouth. And so, in spite of herself, and against the pleading protests of her wounded heart, she found herself nodding, forming a whispered, ‘Yes,’ with parched lips.

There was no way he could tell her the truth. Not when she looked at him with those big golden eyes, seeming for all the world like a wounded fawn trapped by the hounds and totally at the end of its tether. Silently he cursed her missing brother, wishing with all his heart that he could get his hands around Davey Cornwell’s throat and press hard.

But he had to say something. Something monstrous enough to make her let him go and stop her coming after him—for her own sake as much as for his own.

‘It was the only way you would let me near you,’ he said, so carelessly that for the space of a couple of heartbeats Lily didn’t quite register exactly what he meant. ‘And I wanted you so much that I was quite prepared…’

He never completed the sentence. Without even forming a rational thought, Lily lifted her hand and lashed out violently. The crack of her palm making painful contact with his cheek sounded disturbingly loud and brutal, its echoes seeming to linger in the sudden silence that followed.

Ronan swallowed hard, just once, then directed that fiendish smile straight into her blazing eyes.

‘I told you you wouldn’t like the answer.’

‘You bastard!’ It was low, fiercely controlled, filled with all the malevolence she could summon up.

Just for a second a flare of something dangerous in his eyes made her fearful of retribution, but then abruptly he seemed to recollect himself, and shook his head slightly.

‘I think I deserved that,’ he said, with a shocking calmness that rocked her sense of reality. ‘Do you feel better now?’

‘I could hardly feel any worse!’

At this moment she couldn’t even see why she had ever loved him, or convinced herself that she did. Because surely she must have been bitterly mistaken, totally self-deceiving. Surely she could never have cared for a man like this.

But the Ronan she had met and fallen in love with hadn’t been like this.

No!

Ruthlessly she crushed down the weak thought, refusing to let it take root in her mind. The Ronan she had believed herself in love with and the fiend who now stood before her were one and the same man. To think anything else was to weaken herself, to give him a chance to hurt her all over again. ‘Get out, Ronan,’ she said, and was glad to hear that her voice was as coolly controlled as his own. He could be in no doubt as to the strength of her conviction.

And to judge by his expression he knew only too well that she meant what she said.

‘Get out and don’t come back.’

‘If you remember, that was what I had planned in the first place. You were the one who dragged me back.’

‘Well, I’d rather die than do any such thing now. All I want is to see the back of you, once and for all.’

‘Which suits me fine. Goodbye, Lily, I wish I could say it’s been fun.’

He sketched a small, mocking bow before turning on his heel.

Mutely Lily watched him go, past knowing what she felt, torn between relief and bitter despair. He was almost at the door when he paused and slowly turned back.

‘You were right, of course, darling. I am a bastard. But perhaps you should ask yourself how I came to be that way.’

‘I don’t care! I don’t want to know—I don’t want to know anything about you! For one thing, how would I be able to tell what was the truth and what was lies?’

‘The truth.’ It was a harshly cynical laugh, totally devoid of humour. ‘Oh, yes, the truth. Well, Lily my love, if you want the whole truth it’s not me you should come to. You see, that question you were so upset about is only one small part of things. If you want to know the whole story then you really should ask your brother—if he’ll tell you. Now this time I really am going.’

And this time she let him go. She had to. There was nothing else that she could do.

As she stood and watched him walk away, saw him climb into his car and start the engine with a roar that spoke of a mood far removed from his usual calm control, the clock in the hallway struck the hour again.

Lily dug her teeth down hard into her bottom lip, refusing to let the tears fall until Ronan was out of sight.

It was twelve o’clock. At this time yesterday she had stood on the steps of the church, smiling and happy, her brand-new husband at her side. She had been his wife for just twenty-four hours and now it was all over.

High above her head, the sun was shining in the clear blue sky. It was a perfect spring day. A perfect day on which to start what should have been a perfect married life. Instead it was the day that marked the end of her marriage before it had even begun.

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