A Marriage Betrayed. Emma Darcy

darkly demanding eyes.

      “I was in San Francisco most of the time....”

      “So! You did go with the American!” he threw at her. “Yes...I can hear it in your voice. Damn you for the conniving cheat you are!”

      “I’m not a cheat!” she hurled back at him in fierce resentment.

      “You think you can get to me again? After what you’ve done?”

      She hadn’t done anything! Except use the key that had brought her into this room. However, before she could expostulate, his hand lifted and curled around her cheek. Kristy flinched away from the touch but it was an ineffectual movement. He tilted her chin up, bent his head, and his mouth crashed onto hers.

      The shock of it left her momentarily defenceless. His hand slid into her hair entangling itself in the thick tresses and binding her to him as forcefully as the arm that scooped her body hard against his. Then an explosion of sensation robbed her of any thought of resistance.

      His mouth possessed hers in a frenzy of passion, igniting a response that rushed into being, spreading through her like wildfire, an uncontrollable force, taking her over, thrumming to a beat of its own. Heat pulsed from him, suffusing her entire body, exciting an almost excruciating awareness of hard flesh and muscle imprinting themselves on her. His kiss plundered and destroyed her previous knowledge of what a kiss could be, arousing a compulsive need to cast all limits aside and plummet into more and more enticing levels of melding together.

      The break came as swiftly and as shockingly as the enforced connection. He tore his mouth from hers. His hands encircled her upper arms, holding her away from him as he stepped back. Dazed by the abrupt withdrawal and still helplessly churning with the sensations he’d stirred, Kristy looked at him in blank incomprehension.

      His dark eyes glittered with malevolent triumph. “You see?” he said, removing his grasp, lifting his hands away as though the touch of her was distasteful to him. “I feel nothing for you. Absolutely nothing.”

      It was a barefaced lie.

      He was not unaffected by her, nor what had passed between them. His breathing was visibly faster and even as he swung on his heel and turned his back to her, Kristy was recalling all too acutely the burgeoning of his erection, proving he had been physically moved. Besides, how could such passion be generated out of nothing?

      Though that raised the thorny question of how could she have been so deeply affected when ostensibly there was nothing between them but a misunderstanding. Worse, a case of mistaken identity! A painful flush scorched up her neck and burnt her cheeks. He had been abusing another woman, while here she was, deeply shaken by a vulnerability she couldn’t explain.

      Nevertheless, explanations were in order. In very fast order, too, given the volatile nature of feelings running riot here. She had to correct his conviction she was someone he had known before. That was at the heart of this whole wretched mix-up.

      “The reason there is nothing is because there was nothing in the first place,” Kristy said shakily.

      He whirled around, his face contorted with furious resentment. His eyes stabbed black daggers at her. “Don’t make a fool of yourself by stating the obvious.”

      Still hopelessly unsettled by the turbulence he’d aroused, Kristy couldn’t stop her own temper from flaring. “You’re deliberately trying to provoke me!”

      He did not deny it. He made no reply at all but his eyes kept accusing her of dark, nameless crimes.

      Kristy struggled to get herself under control. “What has happened is quite simple,” she stated once again, determined to make him listen, no matter what he said. “You see...”

      “I know what has happened,” he cut in emphatically.

      Kristy let the interruption fly past her. “...you’re making a mistake about me. You think I’m someone else....”

      He gave a cynical laugh.

      “I’m not the same woman who...”

      “No. Most decidedly not. As far as I’m concerned, you’ve been dead for the last two years. I wish you were. It would be better if you were dead.”

      Kristy almost stamped her foot in frustration at his refusal to listen. “Will you give me one chance...”

      “Absolutely not,” he bit out with venom. “No more chances. You don’t deserve any chances.”

      They were talking at cross-purposes. Trying to explain the true situation was obviously a futile exercise. His mind was set on one idea and he wasn’t in the mood to listen to her.

      “Fine,” Kristy agreed with some asperity. Since he was not open to reason, it was best for her to give up and walk away. “Please excuse me. I’m going back to my room.”

      He waved a disdainful dismissal. “Do that.”

      “And locking the door.” So he couldn’t storm after her.

      “Good!” He looked satisfied.

      “I’m leaving Paris tomorrow.” That gave him a deadline if he could calm down enough to hear her side of this crazy business.

      “Excellent!”

      Kristy burned over his intransigence. “I’m never coming back,” she declared.

      That should finish it for him, she thought. He could consider her dead forever. For some reason, that hurt deep down inside her, but she steadfastly buried the hurt. If it was what he wanted, this meeting with him definitely had no future. Best for her to forget it had ever happened.

      His eyes narrowed suspiciously, as though he didn’t believe her. “What do you want from me?” he demanded.

      Kristy’s chin lifted in proud rejection of him and all that might have come of this encounter if he could have accepted that things were different to what he thought they were. “Nothing!” she declared in snapping defiance of his suspicions about her. “Absolutely nothing!”

      Having delivered the most affirmative exit line she could think of, she swung on her heel and strode for the interconnecting door. She had her hand on the knob, ready to sweep the door shut behind her when his voice cracked out again in harsh command.

      “wait!”

      She’d had enough. She’d done her best. He wouldn’t listen. He was only upsetting her further and further. So she did not wait. She did not so much as glance back at him. With her head held high, she marched into the suite she had been given and swiftly shut the door on him. One firm twist of the treacherous key and the lock clicked into place.

      And that, thought Kristy, was that!

      CHAPTER FOUR

      KRISTY steamed up and down the luxurious sitting room, totally unaware and unappreciative of her rich and elegant surroundings. Her mind was in a ferment. What an aggravating man! What a positively infuriating man! Interfering with her life just because he thought she was someone else, turning her inside out with his confusing words and actions, making her feel things she had never felt before!

      It wasn’t fair!

      He wasn’t fair!

      None of what had happened since she had arrived here in this damnable hotel was fair!

      Kristy felt like picking up things and throwing them. Her gaze balefully targeted the vase of roses. But he would not have ordered them. He hated the woman he thought she was. No, the vase of red roses was the hotel management’s idea to help the resolution of a delicate situation. Except it wasn’t delicate! It was downright hopeless!

      Why did they all think she was someone else?

      Why?

      Kristy marched into the marble bathroom and examined her reflection in the mirror there. It was a most uncomfortable feeling to think there was someone else