Marriage on the Rebound. Michelle Reid

Piers’ deceit.

      ‘Do you think you’ll have time to pick something suitable out for me to wear tomorrow?’ she asked Jemma now, dragging her mind away from the only moment since this had all begun when she had been in real danger of breaking free from this numbing shock she was hiding behind.

      Rafe had stopped her; he had bodily lifted her off the kitchen chair and marched her into his study, then dumped her down in front of a PC, switched it on and shoved a handwritten twenty-page document in front of her. ‘You can type, can’t you?’ He’d mocked her look of bewilderment. ‘So—type. I need it by lunchtime.’

      ‘Yes, of course I will.’ Jemma’s voice seemed to reach her from some totally alien place outside her muddled thought patterns. ‘But I wish you’d take a little time out to think about this before doing it,’ she added worriedly. ‘You could be jumping straight out of the frying pan into the fire—have you thought of that?’

      Of course she had. When Rafe gave her the chance to think for herself, that was. And that had definitely not been yesterday, when he’d heaped piles of work on her, she recalled ruefully.

      But thinking didn’t help. Nothing helped. She simply did not care what happened to her. So, ‘I love him,’ she claimed, the reality of the words meaning nothing to her any more. ‘He’s what I want. Don’t spoil it for me, Jemma.’

      ‘All right.’ Jemma’s sigh was long-suffering but her manner softened a little when she added, ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

      Jemma’s choice was a Mondi suit in the severely tailored style that particular design house had made its own in recent years. The skirt was daringly short and needleslim, and the matching jacket moulded Shaan’s slender figure to low on her hips and was fastened with gold military buttons to match the military braiding around the sleeve-cuffs and the collar. There was no blouse. The fitted style of the jacket left no room for a blouse, and the shortness of the skirt seemed to add an alarming length to her slender legs, which were encased in the sheerest white silk.

      ‘Too short?’ she asked Jemma pensively, giving a self-conscious tug at the skirt-hem.

      ‘Are you joking?’ Jemma scoffed, standing beside Shaan to view the finished product in the full-length mirror. ‘Rafe’ll need holding back when he sees you in this. You look fabulous, Shaan,’ she added softly. ‘Utterly stunning.’

      But Shaan didn’t feel stunning. She felt as if she was looking at a total stranger. As if that girl, with the big brown empty eyes and jet-black hair swept sleekly away from her face into a silken knot on the crown of her head, was someone else entirely.

      In fact the only thing she did recognise, which said it really was herself standing there, was the fine gold chain around her throat, with its heart-shaped locket suspended from it, which held photographs of her parents’ beloved faces.

      Cold fingers tremored up to gently touch the familiar locket, and suddenly tears were flooding to blur out the reflection.

      ‘Why the tears?’

      With a small start she blinked the moisture away, long lashes flickering down and upwards as she brought her gaze into focus on Jemma’s grave face in the mirror.

      ‘I thought brides were allowed to be weepy,’ she parried.

      ‘Sure,’ Jemma agreed. ‘They’re even allowed to look all pale and tantalisingly ethereal.’ Her voice was loaded with mockery. ‘All you have to do now is smile and I might even begin to believe that you really want this.’

      ‘Don’t,’ Shaan pleaded hoarsely, hooding her too revealing eyes. ‘Don’t probe, Jemma. I don’t think I’m up to it right now.’

      ‘Why?’ her best friend demanded. ‘Because you know deep down inside that this—marriage, for want of a better word for it,’ she tossed off tartly, ‘won’t stand up to scrutiny?’

      Shaan’s heart fluttered in her breast—the first sign she’d had for days that life actually still existed inside her—as a moment’s desperation welled up.

      Her lashes flickered again, and a brief glimpse of that desperation revealed itself to Jemma. On a gasp, she spun Shaan around to give her a small shake. ‘For goodness’ sake!’ she said fiercely. ‘What the hell is really going on here?’

      The bedroom door opened, and as if Rafe could actually sense that Shaan’s courage was beginning to fail her he walked arrogantly into the room, his silver-hard gaze flashing from one tense female face to the other.

      Shaan went hot, then cold, staring at him through a hazy mist which wasn’t entirely due to her lingering tears. Rafe was wearing a simple dark business suit over a plain white shirt and dark silk tie. Nothing special. Yet there was something about him—the red rose he wore in his lapel maybe—which seemed to make a statement of possession in itself, that trapped the air in her lungs and sent a prickling sense of awareness tripping though her.

      ‘Shaan, you look beautiful,’ he murmured brusquely. ‘Shall we go?’

      Like a woman in a trance, she nodded mutely and walked obediently towards him, feeling Jemma’s silent, pleading, helpless protest following behind her in urgent waves but unable to stop herself.

      In a few mad days, Rafe had made himself so indispensable to her that she could deny him nothing. He was the rock she clung to in the storm-wrecked destruction that had taken place inside her.

      As if he knew it, he took her hand as soon as she was in reach, drawing it firmly into the crook of his arm and holding it there with his own hand.

      There, you’re safe now, the gesture seemed to say, and she lifted her bruised eyes to his and smiled—albeit weakly, but it was a smile.

      She didn’t hear the soft gasp her friend uttered when she saw that smile, nor did she see the hard look of triumph Rafe sent Jemma, because she had already lowered her head and was lost in that hazy world of nothing, relying totally on this man beside her for her very survival.

      It was a brief civil ceremony—a relief to Shaan, who didn’t think she could have coped with anything more. Her aunt and uncle were there. They hugged and kissed her and told her to be happy, but she saw the look in their eyes and knew they were still suffering a similar shock to herself over what had happened.

      Jemma was more direct. She took hold of her friend’s shoulders and made her look directly at her, taking her chance while Rafe stood across the room talking grimly to a man he had briefly introduced as, ‘Saul, my second in command.’

      ‘Anything,’ Jemma said urgently. ‘If for any reason you need me for anything—you just call and I’ll come. Understand?’

      Shaan nodded, her eyes huge and dark and empty in her pale face. ‘Thank you.’ She leaned forward to brush a kiss across Jemma’s warm cheek. ‘Please don’t worry about me, Jem,’ she pleaded as she drew away again. ‘Rafe will look after me.’

      ‘Will he?’ Jemma’s sceptical gaze lifted to take in the man in question. ‘He better had, or the Danvers family will have me to contend with.’

      Shaan managed to smile at that, recognising the threat for what it was—a weak one, since Jemma was in no position to do the Danvers family any harm. But the meaning was clear—Jemma was not fooled. She was puzzled, but not fooled, and she considered the Danvers family had done enough to her friend without hurting her any more.

      There was no wedding breakfast. Rafe rushed her straight into a waiting limousine the moment they left the register office. He said it was because they had a plane to catch, but Shaan had to wonder if he was rushing her away because he knew their deception would not hold up to any real scrutiny.

      And the irritating press didn’t help. Their flashbulbs had been exploding in their faces from the moment they had stepped out of Rafe’s house, and hadn’t stopped since. By the time the chauffeur-driven limousine sped away from the kerb, Shaan was wilting with fatigue, the act of playing the blissful bride having drained her to the very dregs.