The Millionaire's Marriage. Catherine Spencer

on the windowsill.

      On a shelf at the very back of the storage room, she discovered the large, silver-framed formal portrait of her and Max on their wedding day. Surprised and grateful that he hadn’t tossed it in the garbage, she’d dusted it off and set it on a side table in the living room, next to two small framed photographs she’d thought to bring with her, of her parents and the brother who’d died six years before she was born.

      A fringed shawl she’d found in a bazaar in Indonesia lay draped across the back of one of the couches, its bronze and gold threadwork glowing like fire against the oyster-white upholstery. Flower arrangements blazed with color on the writing desk and sofa table, and filled the empty hearth.

      She’d placed slender ivory tapers in the heavy Swarovski candlesticks on the dining room table. The antique sterling coffee service bequeathed to her by her great-aunt Zsuzsanna shone splendidly on the sideboard in whose top drawers lay the freshly ironed hand-worked linens.

      Upstairs, the guest room and adjoining bathroom were prepared, with lavender sachets hanging in the closet, a vase of roses on the dresser, soaps and lotions arranged on the marble deck of the soaker tub. Monogrammed towels hung ready for use, the mirrors sparkled. Crisp percale linens covered the bed—that same bed where she’d found Max on their first night as husband and wife in North America.

      She’d have thought the enormous emotional toll entailed in facing that room would have inured her to entering the other; the one in which she’d slept—and wept—for nearly six months before she’d found the courage to walk away from her loveless marriage. Yet, with the cool mauve light of dusk pooling around her, she found herself hesitating outside the door of the master suite, a clammy dew of apprehension pebbling her skin.

      She was disgusted with herself. In view of everything she’d achieved since her marriage had fallen apart, how foolish of her now to fear four walls! Things could not hurt her. Only people had the power to do that—and even then, only if she let them.

      Surely she’d laid those old ghosts to rest? And surely…surely…safeguarding her heart was a lesson she’d learned well since the last time Max had trampled all over it?

      Still, she quaked inwardly as she pushed at the heavy door. It swung open in smooth, expensive silence, just as it used to do when, a lifetime ago, he’d paid those brief, late-night visits to her bed.

      Inside the room, filmy floor-length curtains billowed in the evening breeze at the tall open windows. Avoiding the hulking mass of the bed itself, her gaze flitted instead from the bench at its foot where one of Max’s ties and a paperback mystery lay, to a pair of his shoes sprawled crookedly next to a chair, and from there to a navy golf shirt and three wooden golf tees tossed carelessly on top of a chest of drawers.

      It was a man’s room; a room so devoid of a feminine presence that it might never have accommodated a bride. And yet the ghosts of yesterday sprang out at her from every corner, clamoring to be acknowledged.

      Her first night there, she’d bathed in scented water, put on the gauzy peignoir trimmed with French lace that was part of her trousseau, sprayed a little perfume at her wrists and throat, and brushed her pale blond hair to satin smoothness against her shoulders. And waited for Max.

      The sky had grown pearly with a new dawn before she’d finally accepted that he was not going to join her. And so, silly creature that she’d been then, she’d gone looking for him. And found him spread-eagled on the bed in the room across the hall, sleeping soundly with a sheet half covering him from the waist down.

      For the longest time, she’d simply looked at him, bewitched all over again by his masculine beauty. Such skin, polished to bronze, such perfect symmetry of form, such sleek, honed strength!

      Oh, how she’d ached to be enfolded in his arms, to be possessed by him! How she’d longed to feel his mouth on hers, claiming her soul; to hear his voice at her ear, hoarse with passion!

      Driven by hunger and need and hope, she’d traced her fingertip along the curve of his eyebrow, smoothed her hand lightly over his dark hair. Made bold by the fact that he didn’t stir, she’d bent down to lay her mouth on his when, suddenly, his eyes had shot open.

      Instantly awake, suspicious, annoyed, he’d growled, “What the devil do you think you’re doing?”

      “Isn’t it obvious?” she’d whispered, hoping the warmth of her lips against his would ignite an answering fire in him.

      Instead, he’d turned his face away so that her kiss missed its mark and landed on his cheek.

      “Don’t,” she’d begged. “Please don’t turn away from me. I need you, Max.”

      She might as well have appealed to a slab of stone for all the response she evoked. Ignoring her completely, he’d continued staring at the wall, and even all these months later, she grew hot with embarrassment at what had followed.

      She’d pulled back the sheet and touched him—tentatively at first—beginning at his shoulders and continuing the length of his torso until she found the sleep-warm flesh between his thighs.

      “It doesn’t prove a thing, you know,” he’d informed her with quiet fury when, despite himself, he’d grown hard against her hand. “It’s a purely reflexive response—any woman could bring it about.”

      “But I’m not just any woman, Max. I’m your wife,” she’d reminded him. “And I love you. Please let me show you how much.”

      And before he had time to realize her intention, she’d let her mouth slide over the muscled planes of his chest to his belly and then, with a daring born wholly of desperation, closed her lips softly over the silken tip of his manhood.

      His breathing had quickened. He’d knotted his fingers in her hair and tried unsuccessfully to stifle a groan. Sensing victory, she’d slipped out of his hold and the peignoir in one swift move, and aligned her naked body, inch for inch, against his.

      She’d seen the corded tension in his neck, tasted the film of sweat on his upper lip when he’d grudgingly let her turn his face to meet hers and succumbed to the sweeping caress of her tongue over the seam of his mouth.

      She’d known a glorious tremor of expectation when, unable to hold out any longer, he’d hauled her to sit astride him and braced her so that, with the merest surge of his hips, he was buried inside her, tight and powerful. She’d felt the muscled flex of his abdomen, the steely strength of his thighs. Seen the rapid rise and fall of his chest.

      He’d spanned her waist, framed the curve of her hips, drawn a line from her navel to her pubic bone, and then farther still, until he found the one tiny spot in her body most vulnerable to his measured seduction.

      Sensation had engulfed her and left her body vibrating, from the tips of her toes to her scalp. Such pleasure! Such exquisite torture! She’d yearned toward him, wanting to prolong the delight only he could bring, but encroaching passion had slammed down with such vengeance that neither of them had been able to withstand it.

      Caught in a maelstrom of emotion sharpened to dazzling brilliance by the spasms ravaging her body, she’d sensed her eyes growing heavy, slumberous almost. But his had remained wide open. Unblinking. Unmoved. As though to say, You might wreak havoc with my body, but you’ll never sway my heart or mind.

      “Satisfied?” he’d said, when it was over. And, with that brief, indifferent question, managed to degrade their union to something so cheap and unlovely that she’d cringed.

      Twenty-four months should have been time enough to lessen the hurt. A sensible woman would have forgotten it altogether. But she’d never been sensible where Max was concerned and if the tears scalding her cheeks now weren’t proof enough of that, the dull, cold emptiness inside where once she’d known warmth and life and passion, should have been.

      What would it take, she wondered, to cure her of Max Logan and heal the scars inflicted by her marriage? Would there ever come a time that she’d learn to love another man as she still loved him—and if so, would she love more wisely the next time?