The Parenti Marriage. Penny Jordan

      ‘Seven.’ Well, nearly seven. But there hadn’t been a party to celebrate her November birthday that year—just as there hadn’t been the year before either. A picture slid remorselessly into her head: coffins, two of them, one for her mother and one for the baby brother who had been buried with her, his coffin heaped with white flowers. And the house she had returned to with her father, filled with the agonising silence of his grief and her own guilt. She had longed so much for her father to hold her and tell her that it wasn’t her fault, but instead he had turned away from her, and she’d known he did blame her, just as she blamed herself. They had never talked about what had happened. Instead he had let her great-aunt take her away because he couldn’t bear the sight of her.

      Seven! A thought, a fleeting memory of himself at that age, hazy and shadowed: his mother laughing as she stroked a smear of dirt from his cheek, how as that child he had felt his love for her and his happiness because she was there spill out of him to mix with the sunshine.

      Saul felt the sour taste of his own revulsion against whatever it was that allowed children to be deprived of the love of their parents. He had been eighteen and he had found it hard enough to cope, even though by then he had thought himself independent and adult.

      More memories were surging through the barriers Giselle wanted to put up against them. The other children at the new school she had gone to when her great-aunt had taken her in, feeling sorry for her because she didn’t have parents. They had meant to be kind, of course, but then they hadn’t known the truth.

      In her desperation to close the door on those memories, Giselle made a small agonised sound of protest. She wished desperately that her car was here. If it had been she could have stepped past him and got into it and escaped, putting an end to her present humiliation.

      Saul, hearing that sound and recognising the pain it contained—a pain he himself had felt and knew—heard himself saying before he could stop himself, ‘I lost my parents when I was eighteen. You think at that age that everyone is immortal.’

      Silently they looked at one another.

      What was he doing? Saul derided himself. This wasn’t the sort of conversation he had with anyone, never mind a woman who rubbed him up the wrong way and whom he’d already decided he didn’t particularly like. It had been that word orphaned that had done it. Seven years old and taken in by a great-aunt she now had to help support. That explained the cheap suit, Saul reflected.

      She’d implied that there wasn’t currently a man in her life, but she must have had lovers. She might not be his type, but he’d be lying to himself if he didn’t admit that physically she had the kind of looks that turned male heads, and that mix of stitched-up coldness allied to the suppressed passion that flashed in her eyes when she couldn’t quite control it would have plenty of members of his sex keen to pursue her.

      Fire and ice—that was what she was. How many lovers had she had? he wondered, the question sneaking up on him before he could stop it. Two? Three? Certainly no more than could be counted on the fingers of one hand, he suspected. What was he thinking? Whatever it was he must stop now—must not allow it to get hold and take root.

      ‘What happened to your parents? Mine died carrying out aid work at the site of an earthquake, when a huge aftershock destroyed the building they were in.’

      Giselle’s muscles clenched—both against what he was saying and against the shock of his question.

      ‘After my parents’ death I wanted to talk about it, but no one would let me. I suppose they thought it would be too…’ he stopped.

      ‘Too painful for you.’ Giselle supplied, her voice cracking slightly, like an unhealed scab over a still raw wound.

      What had been a hostile confrontation between them had somehow or other veered sharply into something else and somewhere else—a territory that was both familiar to her and yet at the same time unexplored by her. Because she was too afraid? Because it hurt too much?

      She spoke slowly at first, the effort of speaking about something so deeply traumatic and personal making her throat feel raw.

      ‘My mother and…and my baby brother were killed in a road accident. My father died from a heart attack eleven months after the accident.’

      ‘I’m sorry.’ He was, Saul recognised. Sorry for the child she had been, sorry for her loss, sorry he had asked now that he knew the full extent of the tragedy.

      ‘Life is so fragile,’ Giselle heard herself telling him. ‘My baby brother was only six months old.’ She shuddered. “I can’t imagine how parents must feel when they lose a child—especially one so young—or how they cope with the responsibility of protecting such vulnerability. I’d never have a second’s peace. I could never…I would never want that responsibility.’

      There was a finality in her words that found an echo within him.

      She had said too much, revealed and betrayed too much, Giselle recognised. Not that she had told him everything. She would never and could never tell anyone everything. Some things were so painful, so shocking and so dark that they could never be shared—had to be kept hidden away from everyone. She could just imagine how people would treat her if they knew the truth, how suspicious of her they would be—and with good reason. No, she could never speak openly about her guilt or her fear. They were burdens she must carry alone.

      But she must not dwell on the past, but instead live in the present, with her duty to her great-aunt. Determinedly she focused her thoughts on the issue that had led to this unexpected and far too intimate conversation, telling Saul, ‘If you want to cancel the secondment now that you have the answer to your question…’

      She wanted him to cancel the secondment, Saul recognised, ignoring the fact that he had wanted to cancel it himself as he let his male drive to win take over.

      ‘You wouldn’t have been my choice. However, I don’t have the time to interview other applicants. Of course if you want to withdraw…’ He let the offer hang there.

      ‘You already know that I can’t,’ Giselle said stiffly. Saul shrugged.

      ‘I doubt that either of us is happy with the situation, but for different reasons it seems that we shall have to endure it and make the best of it.’

      Giselle exhaled. Talking about her past had drained her emotionally and physically, and now she felt dreadfully weak and shaky—but there was still something she needed to know.

      ‘My car—’ she began, and then stopped when she realised how thin and thready her voice sounded. She was perilously close to the limits of her self-control, she knew. Her head was beginning to ache from the stress of their confrontation. Her lips felt dry. She moistened them with the tip of her tongue.

      Saul watched the telltale movement of her tonguetip, his gaze sliding unwillingly down to the small movement of her throat as she swallowed. Her upswept hair revealed the length of her neck and the neat shape of her ears. Mauve shadows lay beneath her eyes like small bruises; her face was drained of any other colour. Something inside him ached and twisted, an emotion he didn’t recognise giving birth to an impulse to reach out and touch her, hold her.

      Hold her? Why?

      Why? He was a man, wasn’t he? And the way she had just drawn attention to her own mouth had had its obvious effect on his body. That was why he felt impelled to touch her. Right now, if he leaned forward and pressed his thumb to that special place behind her ear, if he stroked his fingertips the length of her throat, if he ran his tongue over the soft pillows of flesh that were her lips, he could make her pale skin flush softly with the warmth of arousal. He could make the pulse beat in her throat with desire for him. He could make those green eyes darken to jade and the breath shudder from her lungs. Saul took a step towards her.

      Immediately Giselle stepped back from him, with a gasp of sound that brought him back to reality. What the hell was the matter with him? Saul castigated himself. The last thing he felt for her was desire, and the second last thing he wanted was her desire for him. Stepping back from her,