The Flawed Marriage. PENNY JORDAN

get back until the early hours.’

      It was very peaceful, listening to the gradually deepening sounds of Paul’s breathing, going over what she had just learned. Poor Paul! The accident must have been a traumatic experience for him; doubly so because his mother had been with him at the time. And what of her? How she must have suffered, Amber reflected, especially if she had been driving. She must ask Joel how seriously damaged Paul’s leg was. Slowly her own eyes started to close, and when dawn finally tinged the sky Amber herself was too deeply asleep to see it.

      The warm male fingers on her shoulder felt vaguely familiar. Submerged in dreams, she murmured Rob’s name, rubbing her face against the male hand, a slight smile curving the soft warmth of her mouth.

      ‘Darling…’ The word left her lips of a faint sigh, her eyes opening, golden with happiness and love, trust in the shyly provocative manner in which she raised her face for Rob’s kiss.

      Only there was no Rob any longer, but the knowledge came too late to stop the swift downward descent of a dark male head, predatory lips capturing the softness of her own in a kiss that tingled warmly right through her body to her toes, bringing it fully alive for the first time in months.

      Joel’s hands gripped the slenderness of her body beneath her arms, and hauled her effortlessly out of the chair.

      ‘Well, well!’

      Fully awake, Amber saw the dangerous glitter in the grey eyes she had previously thought of as cold. Now they were hot, burning with an anger that threatened to destroy everything in its path.

      ‘And just who is Rob?’

      ‘He was my fiancé.’ When she had told him about her accident and her mother’s remarriage, Amber had omitted to mention Rob and their now defunct engagement.

      ‘Rob?’ The razor-sharp word warned her that she was treading treacherous ground.

      ‘We were engaged,’ she told him. ‘He’s a doctor, but he wants to specialise, and specialists can’t afford invalid wives.’

      ‘So he ditched you?’ he asked crisply.

      Stung, Amber retorted, ‘What makes you think that?’

      ‘If he hadn’t, you wouldn’t be dreaming about him the way you were. Don’t ever mistake me for another man again, Amber, and just to make sure you won’t…’

      She could feel the palms of his hands resting against the gentle swell of her breasts and her heart started to thunder in panic, but there was no avoiding those punishing lips, bent on exacting revenge for her mistake, and teaching her that he was most definitely not Rob. Rob had never kissed her like this, with a cool skill that demanded contempt, but which instead brought from her trembling lips a response that astounded her in its intensity. She tried to pull away, and felt her bathsheet begin to slip, her face crimsoning as she realised that Joel was gazing with frank enjoyment as the swelling femininity of her breasts.

      ‘I take it there’s no chance of a reconciliation with this Rob?’ he questioned softly as Amber secured her towel.

      She shook her head.

      ‘No, and even if there was I wouldn’t want one.’

      ‘You’re after bigger game now, is that it? A struggling physician is no longer your beau ideal?’

      In his bed Paul stirred, and Joel frowned. ‘I came to tell you it’s nearly eight. Let Paul sleep on this morning. I want to talk to you before I leave for Kendal.’

      ‘I’ll be downstairs in half an hour,’ she promised curtly.

      In her own room, dressing in the same clothes she had worn the previous day she tried not to remember how she had felt when Joel kissed her. Since Rob had left her she had been driven by one ambition and one only: to recover her old mobility and then confront him with all that he had thrown away when he had turned his back on her love because she was no longer the whole, unharmed girl she had been before this accident.

      This compulsion had been the only thing that had kept her going; the only reason she had even considered Joel Sinclair’s outrageous suggestion, and yet now she was experiencing another emotion—compassion for Paul, a child who was obviously suffering as much as she was herself. poor little boy. Why wasn’t his mother with him?

      Perhaps if she stopped dawdling in her room and went down for breakfast she might find out, she told herself briskly. In the bright morning light her clothes looked dowdy and dull, and just for a moment she regretted the new, pretty things she had bought for the holiday she and Rob had planned, but that moment was swiftly banished, and the fierce light of battle entered her eyes as she remembered how Joel Sinclair had looked at her and kissed her. She wanted the twenty-five thousand pounds he was offering her badly enough to accept his proposition, but she fully intended to make it absolutely clear to him that their marriage would be a business arrangement only, a big step along the road to achieving her ultimate goal; although he was not to know that. The way in which she intended to spend the money he paid her was nothing to do with Joel Sinclair.

      She found him in a large, beautifully modernised kitchen with dark oak units and a mellow tiled floor. To Amber’s amazement he was standing by a hob frying bacon, the rich aroma filling the room. Nearby coffee percolated, and the table had been set for breakfast, with grapefruit in two bowls and cereal in the third.

      ‘What’s the matter?’ Joel enquired in amusement when she came to an abrupt halt just inside the door. ‘Surprised to discover I know how to fend for myself? It’s one of the first rules of survival, although I admit I’m no Cordon Bleu. Besides, a father bringing up a child alone needs to know at least the rudiments of running a home. I’m fortunate in having Mrs Downs, but in the eyes of divorce judges, housekeepers aren’t particularly adequate substitutes for mothers, which is why I need to furnish myself with a wife—albeit on a temporary basis. Hungry?’ he asked, indicating the pan of sizzling bacon and reaching across for some large brown eggs. On the point of shaking her head, Amber suddenly changed her mind. She had had next to nothing to eat yesterday, or for several days come to that, and the bacon did smell tantalisingly appetising.

      ‘A little,’ she admitted, surprised that she had lowered her guard for long enough to make the admission. ‘Shall I wake Paul?’

      ‘No, let him sleep. It will be easier for us to talk without him here. You can see what a dangerously vulnerable emotional state he’s in—a result of a combination of things; his accident and losing his mother mainly.’

      It was significant that Joel put Paul’s accident first, Amber thought. He was too hard a man to fully appreciate the effect losing his mother would have on a small child—or to admit perhaps that he might himself be in some way to blame for Paul’s vulnerability.

      ‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘He seems to have similar injuries to mine.’

      ‘Which is one of the reasons I put the proposal I did to you.’

      ‘I guessed,’ Amber supplied wryly. ‘Have the doctors given you any indication as to how bad it will be?’

      Joel shrugged. ‘They’re reluctant to commit themselves at this stage—understandably. Paul’s case is complicated by the fact that at the same time as he received his injuries he underwent severe emotional trauma. I’ve already said that he was with his mother at the time. What I didn’t tell you—couldn’t tell you while he was there—was that she was on her way to see her lover and intended to leave Paul with her friend for the afternoon. They say those most closely involved are always the last to know—a cliché, but true in my case. I had no idea. Oh, I knew there was something, Teri had made that much perfectly plain—I even suspected there were… diversions, but not that one of them was serious enough to make her put her child’s life at risk so that she could be with her lover. He was an American working on the North Sea oilrigs whom she met while he was on holiday here. As the son of a Texan oil millionaire he had a super-abundance of the quality that appeals most to Teri in men—money—a trait she apparently shares with you,’ he added cynically. ‘Which is one of the reasons