Gypsy. Carole Mortimer

‘but if you don’t release me there are one or two glasses in here that I could use instead of the cup.’

      Lyon looked at her sceptically, and then with grudging admiration as he saw she was in earnest, slowly released her arm. ‘You little hell-cat,’ he murmured in fascination.

      She didn’t show any emotion for the name he had once called her at more intimate moments in their past relationship. ‘Ricky preferred to think of me as fiery.’ She felt an inner satisfaction as Lyon’s mouth tightened at the mention of her intimacy with his brother. ‘I prefer to think of it as an aversion to being pushed around.’ Shay stepped back from him. ‘I won’t be requiring any dinner,’ she informed him coolly. ‘Perhaps you could have Jenny wake me when we get to England?’

      Tawny eyes narrowed. ‘You intend sleeping for the next eight hours?’

      Shay shrugged narrow shoulders. ‘Why not?’

      ‘I thought we could talk, become reacquainted,’ he grated.

      ‘Reacquainted, Lyon?’ Her smile was one of genuine amusement. ‘Were we ever acquainted?’

      His mouth tightened at her mockery. ‘We were lovers, damn it!’

      ‘Is that what you would call it?’ she scorned. ‘After being married to, and in love with, Ricky, I have a much different name for what we once were. Now if you’ll excuse me, I don’t wish to be disturbed.’ She walked past him into the bedroom, closing the door on his rage at being dismissed so autocratically, knowing he wouldn’t disturb her, that he was too angry to follow her.

      Now that she was alone, away from those all-seeing tawny eyes, she didn’t have to keep up the pretense any more, sitting down heavily on the bed, wrapping her arms about herself as she shuddered with reaction.

      Oh Ricky, she silently cried, why aren’t you here to take care of me, to love me! Twenty-eight was too young to die, especially when he had so much to live for.

      She knew her husband would have enjoyed this verbal sparring with Lyon, that he had reveled in their animosity, the clash of characters between the two brothers only becoming so heatedly intense after she and Ricky were married. They were all aware of that, the relationship between herself and Lyon no secret from the rest of the family. Ricky had never been angry about her and Lyon, only angry for her. Especially after reading Scarlet Lover.

      She had written the manuscript during the days once Ricky had gone to work, hadn’t told him about it, embarrassed at her own imagination, only allowing him to read it after it was completed. She had known the exact moment he reached page one hundred and twenty-three, had watched him anxiously, her breathing becoming constricted at how still he had suddenly become.

      He was sitting cross-legged on their bed, the manuscript spread out in front of him, looking up at her with pained eyes. ‘Leon de Coursey—’

      ‘I’ll change it.’ She ran to him, stricken. ‘I won’t send it to a publisher. It’s only rubbish, anyway,’ she dismissed. ‘It was just something for me to do while you were—’

      ‘It isn’t rubbish, you will send it to a publisher, and you won’t change a thing,’ Ricky told her intensely, his laughing blue eyes unusually serious. He cupped her face in his hands. ‘That was what it was like between you and Lyon?’

      ‘Lyon?’ she hedged unconvincingly. ‘I don’t—’

      ‘Darling, we’ve never lied to each other,’ he encouraged gently. ‘What we have together is—fantastic. What you had with Lyon, if de Coursey is him— and I believe he is—was something else entirely. It was primitive, savage—’

      ‘Yes, it was both of those things,’ she acknowledged bitterly. ‘We seemed to bring out those qualities in each other. But it was also destructive.’

      ‘It’s all right, darling,’ Ricky took her in his arms, holding her trembling body close against his arms, beginning to kiss her, the manuscript, and Leon de Coursey, or Lyon—the two had become confused in her mind by this time!—were forgotten in the heat of their passionate exchange.

      But the next day Ricky had parcelled up the manuscript and sent it to a reputable publisher, and now the heated historical romances of Shay Flanagan were almost history themselves.

      Just as her relationship with Lyon was also history, a painful part of her history she had tried to put behind her.

      DAMN IT, what was she doing in there! Lyon shook with the rage of being instructed what to do as if he were one of the help. No one had ever, ever, spoken to him that way before! And all it had achieved was to make him want Shay more than ever.

      More than anything he was curious about page one hundred and twenty-three of her book. Was Leon de Coursey the hero of her book or the villain? Knowing how Shay felt about him, de Coursey was the blackest villain there had ever been!

      God, she had grown incredibly beautiful the last three years, he could feel his thighs tightening just at the thought of her. Had she undressed now that she was alone in the bedroom, was she naked even now, lying between those brown silk sheets, moving sensuously in her sleep as she always used to?

      He had been haunted by those sounds she used to make as she slept, had woken up in a sweat more than once after imagining her there beside him, only to know the agonising disappointment of pent up desire when he found he was once again alone, that Shay now shared his brother Ricky’s bed, giving him all the passion she had once so freely given him.

      He had never forgotten the look on Ricky’s face when he had first been introduced to Shay; his younger brother had looked as if it were Christmas and New Year all rolled into one, with Shay the glittering angel on top of the tree. To her credit Shay hadn’t looked at him the same way for several months, but finally it had come. Lyon could still feel the pain in his gut at knowing she was no longer his.

      ‘Lyon?’

      He turned sharply, scowling. ‘What is it, Jenny?’ he asked tersely.

      She smiled engagingly. ‘I wondered if there were anything I could do for you?’

      He remembered other times he had received completely different offers from this beautiful woman, occasions when he hadn’t been averse to her providing him with the physical relief he needed, even on the bed in the adjoining room once. ‘A whisky,’ he requested harshly, ignoring how hurt she looked at his coldness. ‘And just keep them coming until we land.’ He was going to need to be numb from the feet up to cope with knowing Shay was only feet away from him after imagining every woman in his bed was her for the last five years.

      ‘And Mrs Falconer, can I get her anything?’ Jenny recovered quickly from his snub.

      ‘Nothing,’ he bit out, staring broodingly at the closed door to the bedroom.

      He was still staring broodingly at the door, Shay on the other side of it, when they touched down at Heathrow Airport hours later.

      HE HAD been drinking. She had known it the moment she came out of the bedroom to join him to leave the plane. Lyon wasn’t offensive, didn’t look or act drunk, but she knew he was one of those people who became more controlled after consuming alcohol, the tawny eyes narrowed, his mouth a compressed line of tension.

      She spared him only a brief glance before turning to the mirror to put the hat back on her recently brushed hair, several tendrils having escaped as she lay sleepless on the bed. She had known she wouldn’t really be able to sleep, hadn’t slept without medical help since Ricky disappeared, but the thought of spending all that time alone with Lyon was abhorrent to her. But as she lay on the bed she had almost been able to feel his eyes burning her flesh through the closed door, and she clung to the sanctuary of the bedroom, preferring to save her energy—and emotional strength—for the ordeal of returning to Falconer House.

      ‘We can leave now, if you’re ready.’ Lyon watched her gloweringly.

      She pulled the black lace of her hat down over her face before turning