The Millionaire's Marriage Page 5

  “I want your help,” she said feebly. The trouble was, she wanted a whole lot more than that, and being near him again—having him so close that she could smell his aftershave and the special scent of his skin and his hair, and the soap he used in the shower.. .oh, they filled her senses so thoroughly, she could barely think straight.

  She wasn’t completely stupid, though. She’d seen the way he’d sidled out of bed when he’d found her cuddled up next to him during the night. Heavens, he hadn’t been able to get away from her fast enough! And when he’d returned, the way he’d hunched his back toward her and yanked the sheet up around his shoulders had told her plainly enough that he could hardly wait to have the bed to himself again. How would they ever keep up appear ances if they were flung together all day while they acted as tour guides for her parents?

  “But don’t you find it hard on your marriage, with your wife away so much of the time?” her father was asking,

  when Gabriella finally pulled herself together enough to return to the dining room with the apricot torte dessert.

  It was precisely the kind of question she dreaded, and almost enough to make her flee to the kitchen again.

  Max, however, didn’t turn a hair. “Gabriella wanted to pursue a career. I didn’t see it as my right to interfere with that.”

  “But you’re her husband!” Her father gave the table a gentle but emphatic thump that set the ice in the water goblets to chiming like little bells.

  “Her husband, yes, but not her keeper, Zoltan.”

  “It would not do for me. In my day, being a wife was all the career a woman could want.”

  Feeling obliged to contribute something to the discus sion, Gabriella set the torte on the table and, resting her hand on Max’s shoulder in a splendid display of marital unity, said, “Times have changed, Father. And things are different in North America.”

  “Different, perhaps, but not, I think, better. You belong exactly where you stand right now—at your husband’s side.”

  “It’s a long commute from Rome or Tokyo to Vancouver, Zoltan,” Max said lightly. “The camera loves Gabriella, and a certain amount of separation comes with the territory when a man finds himself married toa model as much in demand as my wife’s become.” He turned a disgracefully angelic look Gabriella’s way. “Isn’t that right, my love?”

  “Yes,” she murmured. “Absolutely.”

  “And then there’s her age to think about,” he went on. “She’s not getting any younger and this is definitely a young woman’s game. She might as well make the most of it before her looks start to go.”

  Oh, the rogue! It was all she could do not to pushhis

  face into his dessert! “I’m only just twenty-four, for heaven’s sake!”

  “Is that what you’re telling people these days?” He smiled at her benignly, before switching his attention back to her father. “Ah well, even you must agree that it’s the quality of time spent together that counts, Zoltan.”

  “Those terrible newspapers say you live apart because you cannot live together,’.’ her mother put in, finally giv ing voice to the one area of her marriage Gabriella most dreaded having to explain.

  As if he felt the tremor that passed over her, Max cov ered Gabriella’s hand with his and gave it a squeeze. “Which is precisely why they’re terrible, Maria. They thrive on sensationalism, not truth.”

  “Even so, how can there be babies, if...?”

  “I’m’ sure Gabriella will have babies,” he said smoothly. “In time.”

  What he didn’t say was that, if she did, they wouldn’t be his. He’d made it abundantly clear he wasn’t interested in fathering children with her. “I’d throw a party, except there’s nothing in any of this to celebrate,” he’d said bit terly, when she confessed she’d been mistaken about the pregnancy. “Kids deserve parents committed to some thing a bit more compelling than the fact that one felt obligated to marry’ the other. There won’t be any more such mistakes, Gabriella.” . .

  • He’d made sure that there weren’t. Whenever he came to her bed after that, he brought a condom with him.

  “Don’t wait too long,’ ‘..‘ her. mother said wistfully. “Zoltan and I are no longer young, and I would so love to hold a grandchild in my.arms before I die.”

  Gabriella knew that the quaver in her mother’s voice and the pain in her eyes meant she was remembering the son ‘who’d died during the revolution,’ and it was all she

  could do not to cry out, I’ll give you a grandchild, Mama, I will! A little boy called Stefan, just like my brother!

  But there was a limit to how far she’d take the duplic ity. Being near him again left her convinced there’d never be any other man for her but Max, and she would not make promises she knew she couldn’t keep.

  “I don’t know that I can do this after all,” she told him, once her parents, worn out from the long journey, had made an early night of it. “Two weeks of pretending, of telling lies... Max, it’s turning out to be so much harder than I thought it would be, and we still have thirteen days to go!”

  They were in the kitchen again, and she was putting away the last of the dishes they’d used at dinner. The kitchen seemed to be the place they always did the most talking, perhaps because it was the least intimate room in the penthouse and so the one least likely to stir up point less longings.

  Not that Max suffered from any of them, as his next comment proved. “Time was that lying came so easily to you, you never gave it a second thought,” he said, stand ing in the open doorway to the terrace and looking out at the brightly lit city skyline. “Guess you’re a bit out of practice, my dear.”

  For a moment, she stared at him. At the white dress shirt lying smoothly across his big shoulders, at the sun- dark nape of his neck and his thick, black hair, and the long elegant line of his spine.

  Just so had she first come across him: from behind, in the garden at her parents’ home in Budapest. She’d known before he turned around and she saw his face that he’d be more beautiful than any man she’d ever met. Had recog nized, within five minutes of looking into his blue, blue

  eyes, that she was in love with him and would remain so for the rest of her life.

  Silly, girlish notions that had no bearing on the way things were today! Swallowing the tears which seemed never to be far from the surface where he was concerned, she said bitterly, “Perhaps because I no longer need to lie in order to find acceptance from the people around me.”

  ,He spared her a brief, backward glance. “Has it been worth it, Gabriella—all the fame and fortune you’ve won? Have they been worth the price you’ve paid for them?”

  “What price? I had nothing to lose to begin with.”

  “You had a husband and a marriage, things you once claimed you wanted more than anything else on earth.”

  “Those I still have.”

  “In name only.”

  She dried the last of the hand-washed wineglasses— slender, lovely things, delicately crafted. “That was your choice, Max. I was prepared to stay and try to make our marriage work.”

  His laugh told her what he thought of that reply. “You were gone within six months. I’d hardly call that hanging in over the long haul!”

  “And you did nothing to stop me.”

  “Would you have stayed, if I’d tried?”

  “No,” she said, fighting to keep her voice steady be cause, by then, she was losing the battle with the tears which blurred her vision and turned the wineglass she still held into an iridescent bubble. “Because you didn’t want me. You’ve never wanted me.”

  He’d always hated it when she cried and more than once had accused her of turning on the waterworks as a means of getting her own way. If he realized she was crying now, he’d say something cruel like, Save the tears

  for someone who cares. Or worse, No, I never did. Isn’t it nice that we at last agree on something?

  Determined not to give him the satisfaction, she swiped at her eyes with a
corner of the tea towel and, in doing so, knocked the wineglass out of her hand. It hit the gran ite counter with a brutal crash.

  “Oh!”

  The sound of splintering crystal, almost musical com pared to her wail of dismay, brought Max spinning around to see what had happened. Bending her head to hide her misery, she began scooping the fragments into a tidy heap and found that the stem of the glass, still intact, had snapped cleanly off the bowl. Such a pity!

  “Watch what you’re doing!” He crossed the kitchen floor in rapid strides and pulled her hands away from the debris. “For Pete’s sake, Gabriella, you’re dripping blood all over everything.”

  Amazed, she stared at the thin line of scarlet beads forming along the side of her finger. How was it possible that she’d sustained such a wound, yet felt no pain? And if. one part of her could remain numb to injury, why couldn’t another? Why did the raging ache in her heart keep getting worse?

  Unable to face the answer, she took what was left of the bowl of the glass and tried placing it on top of the severed stem. ‘Perhaps if I keep all the pieces, it can be put back together again. I know they do marvelous things these days to repair broken treasures.”

  For all that she tried to control herself, her words came out on a sob and the infernal tears broke loose and rolled off the end of her nose. Oh, what a mess she must look, and how repelled he must be at the sight of her!

  Oddly, though, his voice was full of something other than the contempt she expected. It was warm and rather

  kind. “I’m afraid it’d take a miracle, honey. This thing’s past repair. Let’s just sweep the whole mess into the gar bage can and forget it.”

  “But it’s one of twelve we received as a wedding gift, Max,” she whimpered. “Now the set’s incomplete.”

  “Well, that’s a shame, but you ought to know by now there are some things that can’t be mended, no matter how much you wish they could be.”

  “Sort of like us, when you think about it,” she said wistfully. “We’re supposed to be a couple, but we’re not. There’s no bond to hold us together.”

  Dear heaven, where was her pride? She sounded as plaintive as a tragedy queen about to breathe her last!

  Of course, he noticed. “Let’s not turn ‘a minor accident into a melodrama!” he said, hurriedly putting the safety of the kitchen counter between them as if he feared she might fling herself at his feet and beg him to toss her a crumb of affection.

  If nothing else, his unsympathetic about-face snapped her out of the well of self-pity she’d been about to drown in. She grabbed a tissue from the box on the shelf next to the telephone desk, folded it around her finger in a makeshift bandage, then took another and used it to sweep the shards of glass into the waste bin. “You’re absolutely right, for once. Some things are broken beyond repair.”

  Including our marriage, and the sooner I face up to that, the better off I’ll be!

  He was watching her, his expression inscrutable. “If it were my business to begin with, I’d tell you you look like hell. You sure you’re feeling okay?”

  It took some effort, but she managed to brush off his concern with an airy, “Now who’s making something out of nothing?”

  “i’m not talking about your finger,” he said, coming

  back to where she stood and tilting up her chin so that she had no choice but to return his steady gaze. “It’s the rest of you that has me wondering. Do you get enough rest?”

  “Since you mention it, as a rule, yes. But the last few weeks, and the last couple of days in particular, have been stressful. Contrary to what you might choose to think, I don’t enjoy deceiving my parents.”

  “Then why not tell them the truth and have done with it?”

  “Oh, Max, you already know why!” She sighed and massaged her temples wearily. “You can’t have missed how much they’ve aged in the last two years, especially my father. Divorce goes against everything he and my mother believe in, and it would kill him to learn our mar riage is a failure. It would be different if they lived on our doorstep and could see for themselves that life goes on even when a couple breaks up, but they’re half a world away geographically, and belong to a different era. They don’t understand the modern way of doing things and I don’t have it in me to destroy their illusions. What’s the harm in letting them think our marriage is strong like theirs?”

  “Plenty, if it has you tied up in knots like this.”

  “It’s just a headache. I get them sometimes when I’m under pressure.”

  Turning her around, he began kneading the tense mus cles in her shoulders. The warmth of his touch, the strength of his fingers probing her flesh to seek out and relieve each sore spot, left her sagging. She leaned both hands on the counter. Her neck drooped, unable to support the weight of her head. Her legs turned to jelly.

  She was wearing a low-backed dress held up by a halter strap. He pressed his thumbs lightly over each exposed

  vertebra. His breath a caress at her ear, he asked, “Is this helping?”

  His magician’s touch was draining her, leaving her weak as a ldtten. She could barely summon the energy to say, “More than you can.. .begin to imagine.”

  Methodically, his thumbs traveled lower. She heard the subdued purr of her zipper opening. Felt his palms radi ating from her spine to encompass her ribs in soothing, ever-widening circles, until his fingertips almost brushed the sides of her breasts.

  Soothing? Oh, who was she deceiving this time? Electrifying was what it was. Thrilling. The most sensu ous, drugging delight she’d ever known!

  She felt his breath in her hair and then, astoundingly, his lips, warm and damp, at her ear. His kiss, soft as a snowflake, deadly as an earthquake, thundered to the inner depths of her soul.

  What began as a moan of pure pleasure evolved into a drawn-out murmuring of his name. “M.. .a. .

  She should have kept her mouth shut. The sound of her voice jarring the outer silence broke whatever spell he’d been weaving. The kiss ended. Abruptly, he removed his hands, drew up her zipper and stepped away. “Ten minutes in the hot tub would do you more good than this,” he said harshly.

  Of course, she knew ahead of time that the question was pointless, but she asked it anyway. “Will you join me?”

  Already halfway to the front hail, he flung his reply over his shoulder. “No, thanks. I brought work home and should get to it. Hope you sleep better tonight.”

  How dare he offer her a glimpse of paradise, then, when she was almost fainting with longing, snatch it away again? Waspish with disappointment, she snapped.

  “There’ll be a better chance of that if you wear pajamas to bed.”

  That stopped his flying exit! “How do you know I didn’t last night?” he said.

  “Your torso wasn’t covered when I woke up this morn ing—not by the bed linen, and not by anything else.”

  “Why, shame on you, Gabriella!” he chided. “Were you spying on me while I slept?”

  “Spying, my left foot! I’m not blind, Max, and a man your size is pretty hard to miss.”

  She should have been more specific and said A man with shoulders the size of yours is hard to miss, because he turned to her, a grin inching over his face, and she knew exactly what he was referring to when he said, “I’m going to take that as a compliment, my dear.”

  She refused to blush and she refused to look away. Instead, determined to have the last word for a change and pay him back for his earlier remark about her age, she said, “You’d be a lot better off going on a diet. I can’t say I paid too much attention, but it looked to me as if you’re running to fat.”

  Considering she had yet to set eyes on a more gor geously put-together specimen than Max Logan—in every respect!—her parting shot was nothing less than a bald- faced lie. And the way his laughter followed her as she fled past him and scuttled up the stairs told her he knew it as well as she did.

  Once inside the bedroom, she collapsed into a chair, her heart pitter-pattering
like an overwound toy. With care and a lot of luck, she might make it safely through the next thirteen days. But the nights?

  Dear Lord, the nights were a different matter altogether!

  CHAPTER FOUR

  TI next several days passed uneventfully enough. She took her parents sight-seeing and shopping, and was glad when they confessed they’d find traveling further afield too exhausting. In truth, she preferred a less-hectic pace herself and was content to spend quiet hours alone with them.

  It was a happy, serene time, full of sunlight and laugh ter. And most of all, of love. It flowed over and around (3abriella from every quarter—except for the space oc casionally occupied by her husband. His little corner ex uded pure, malevolent mischief!

  Then, on the Thursday, he phoned just as she was cleaning up the kitchen after serving her parents a late breakfast. “Check the society column in today’s news- - paper,” he said shortly, obviously so put out by whatever it contained that he felt disinclined to preface the order with anything as civil as “Good morning.” “Your arrival in town hasn’t gone unnoticed. Better be prepared for the rest of the media to horn in on the fact. My assistant’s already fielding calls at the office.”

  “Interviews go with the territory in my profession,” Gabriella replied breezily. “I’ve grown quite accustomed to handling them.”

  “No doubt. But how comfortable are you going to be if someone shoves a microphone in your face and asks if there’s any truth to the rumors that our marriage is in trouble? From the way you coped the other night when your mother aired the same question, it’s my guess you’ll

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  have a tough time coming up with any sort of convincing answer. Where are your mom and dad, by the way? Not listening in, I hope?”

  “No, Max,” she informed him, matching his sarcasm and then some. “It would never occur to them to eaves drop on a private conversation. They’re far too well bred. If you must know, my father’s in the pool, and my mother’s being a good wife and watching to make sure he doesn’t overdo it. As for your other concern, should a reporter approach me and want details of my relationship with you, I’ll say what I always say—that my private life isn’t open for discussion.”