The Pleasure King's Bride (3 page)

“And
I
the judge of what
I
want,” came the sharp retort.

“It could be worth your while...”

“No,” she cut in firmly. “I am self-employed. I like it that way. Now, if you’re not interested in purchasing...”

“I’ll take the lot.”

That startled her. But after the initial shocked flash of disbelief came a hard-eyed challenge. “It will not buy you anything but this jewellery, Mr. King.”

“I didn’t imagine it would, Miss...?”

Her mouth visibly thinned, wanting to hold it back from him, but her own intelligence told her it was too easily learnt from others here. “Valdez,” she answered tersely.

He fished out his wallet. “How much?”

She noted down the prices as she wrapped each piece in individual sheets of tissue paper, then added up the total and showed him so he could check it himself.

As he paid her, he also handed her a business card. “I am seriously interested in your talent as a designer,” he pressed quietly. “Please...think it over. Check my credentials. My contact numbers are on that card.”

“Thank you,” she said stiffly and gave him nothing more than the plastic bag in which she’d placed the tissue packets.

Having been comprehensively dismissed, he knew nothing would be gained by staying, but he left determined to seek her out again if she didn’t come to him.

Two weeks he gave her, more than enough time to check him out and consider the possibilities and advantages in the situation. Not the slightest nibble of interest from her. Nothing.

He
did the pursuing and every meeting he managed was fraught with tension, her determination not to form any connection with him conflicting with the pull of an attraction she struggled to deny. It took a month of persistent angling and negotiation to get her to agree to submit designs that he could buy from her as he wished. Even then she kept her involvement with him strictly professional, continually blocking any encroachment on her private life.

Dancing with her at Nathan’s wedding...the intense pleasure of finally holding her in his arms, though not nearly as intimately as he wanted, her hands pressing a resistance to full body contact.

“Are you enjoying your visit to King’s Eden?”

She smiled, relaxing but still maintaining a wary distance. “Very much. It is what one might call a revelation. A world unto itself.”

For once, her beautiful face was lit with fascinating animation as she listed her impressions of what she’d seen and felt throughout this outback experience. The flow of glowingly positive comments fuelled Jared’s hope that she could be drawn into his life, could be happy belonging to it.

“And now you’ve met all my family,” he prompted, wanting some hint of how she felt about them.

An enigmatic smile. “Yes. Your mother must be very proud of her three sons. And pleased with Nathan’s marriage.”

It was more an objective observation than a personal comment, frustrating Jared’s purpose again. “What of your own family, Christabel?”

A slight twist to her smile. “I do not belong to anyone but my daughter.” A gleam of warning in her eyes. “It suits me that way.”

“You could have brought her with you this weekend.” In fact, it was strange she had not, given how watchful and protective she was of the child.

A slight shake of her head. “The family she is staying with is safe. I know them from the markets. Good people. Long-time local residents of Broome.”

“So you
wanted
to come alone.”

A mocking gleam. “I simply wanted my curiosity satisfied, Jared. Don’t make any more of it than that.”

“And is your curiosity...completely satisfied?” he challenged, acutely aware of his own burning need for all she withheld from him.

She shrugged. “How can I fully know a legend I haven’t lived? The Kings of the Kimberly...a hundred years of building what you have here and in Broome. I cannot expect to grasp more than a glimmering of what it comprehends.”

The evasive answer pushed him into asking, “Do you find the idea of long roots inhibiting?’’

She raised her eyebrows. “Have you found it inhibiting?”

“No.”

“It is very much part of you, isn’t it?” More a statement than a question.

“Yes.”

“So you should stay happy with your life.”

The wry resignation in her voice stirred a deep well of frustration. Why was she keeping herself separate from him? Why couldn’t she let the attraction between them follow its natural course?

“Is anyone completely happy without a partner to share their life with?’’ he demanded tersely, nodding to the bride and groom dancing together, just a few metres away from them. “Look at Miranda. Look at Nathan.
That is happiness,
Christabel! Can you not imagine that... want that... for yourself?’’

He caught a glimpse of raw yearning on her face as she looked at his brother and the woman he had just married. For several moments an air of sadness hovered around her. Then she turned her gaze back to him and her eyes were flat, hard. “I’ve been married, Jared. My husband is dead but I still live with him. I will always live with him.”

“He’s dead, Christabel. Dead is dead,” he countered harshly, unable to stop himself, feeling her vibrant vitality, the pulsing sexuality that aroused his so strongly.

“Believe me...” Her eyes bitterly derided his claim, “...you would not want to live in his shadow.”

He didn’t believe her.

She wasn’t a woman in grief.

He’d witnessed his mother’s grief after his father’s death. Christabel Valdez did not want her husband back. She wanted
him,
and be damned if he’d be driven away by a shadow.

Jared wiped the few remaining bits of shaving cream from his face and grimaced at the hard ruthlessness in the eyes reflected in the mirror. He’d been thinking,
Nothing was going to come between him and Christabel Valdez tonight!
But, of course, she would have her daughter with her, the daughter of the man she’d married.

He’d used the child.

Christabel may very well use her, too.

But he did have Vikki Chan on his side.

He smiled as he tossed the towel aside and picked up the bottle of cologne—Platinum Egoiste by Chanel. He might as well use every bit of ammunition he had in this war, because war it was. And he was sick to death of fighting shadows. He wanted hands-on combat. Action.

His body stirred in anticipation.

Vikki was right.

He
would
keep at it until he won.

Christabel
parked her four-wheel drive Cherokee at the end of the street that ran parallel to the old Picard property. There was no road in front of it, nothing to disturb the view it commanded over Roebuck Bay. The house itself was considered a historic landmark, built by Captain Trevor Picard in 1919, the owner of forty pearling luggers—so she’d read in the museum records.

This was where Jared lived.

He was in there waiting for her.

Christabel’s fingers stayed tightly curled around the steering wheel as she tried to steady her nerves. Ever since she’d accepted his invitation she’d been defying all the things she’d forbidden herself, wanting what he wanted, wanting to show him she did. She was twenty-seven years old and she’d never had a lover, only a husband who’d only ever cared about his own pleasure, never hers. She was sure Jared would be different.

“Is this it, Mummy?”

“Yes.” This was definitely
it,
Christabel decided as she answered her daughter.

“Then why aren’t we getting out?”

“Getting out now,” she answered.

Alighting from the driver’s seat and rounding the Cherokee to the passenger side, Christabel found her gaze drawn to the house where Jared chose to live. It was a big, solid old place. Other people with the accumulated wealth of the King Picard family might have torn it down and built something grander, more modern and impressive, and it would have meant nothing but a symbol of wealth.

Like the majestic old homestead she’d seen at King’s Eden, this house seemed to stand for endurance, for something lasting beyond any one person’s life and death.

It had been caringly maintained—the building, the garden. Caring... every where she looked... the precise paintwork on the house, the neatly trimmed bougainvillea, the lustrous clumps of ferns and tropical foliage... and the sharp realisation came that what was in front of her stood for things she could never share with Jared and what she was setting out to do was wrong.

Too wrong to go on with.

She shouldn’t have accepted this invitation, shouldn’t be here. Jared King was too good a man to be used and left, as though he was not worth more than a strictly lustful affair. Maybe that would be enough for him...but what if it wasn’t?

She stopped by the passenger door. Alicia was making an impatient face at her through the window. Should she get back in the Cherokee and drive away? How could she explain that to her daughter—such bad manners? Impossible. Yet to go ahead, dressed as she was...it was a tease, a deliberate sexual tease, meant to signal her willingness to end the torment of wanting. Jared would notice.

And she’d burn with embarrassment at the rampant wantonness that had led her into presenting such a provocative invitation to satisfy every physical desire they’d stirred in each other.

Alicia knocked on the window. “Come on, Mummy.”

She’d have to minimise the effect. Somehow. And leave as soon as she decently could. It had been wrong to give in to this... this raging temptation. She must never do it again. It wasn’t fair to him. He was wasting his time with her, time better spent looking for a woman who could embrace all that his life meant to him.

Best to break the connection after tonight. Or limit it more than she already had, make Jared understand it was not to be. Maybe she could lead into that this evening.

Taking a deep breath to calm the inner flood of agitation, she opened the door and released Alicia from her seat belt, glad she had her daughter to come between her and Jared and determined now not to accept any offer of a bed for Alicia when eight o’clock came. No time alone with him. She couldn’t risk it.

“Big trees, aren’t they, Mummy?” Alicia commented, looking up at them as Christabel lifted her out of the vehicle.

“Older than any others in Broome, I’d imagine,” she replied, struggling for an air of normality as she, too, looked up at them.

The native gum trees had been planted in a row along this side of the house, just within the white picket fence that surrounded the property. The width of their huge white and grey trunks and the spread of the branches testified to the number of years they had stood, while undoubtedly other such trees had been cut down in the past to provide building materials for the township. They were also a testament to a family who looked after what they had, who valued deep roots, who were given to
long-term commitment
as naturally as they breathed.

“I like this place,” Alicia declared, happily taking Christabel’s hand for the walk around to the front gate.

Her little face beamed excited anticipation and excess energy poured into an occasional skip to her step, making Christabel smile over the uninhibited pleasure being so naturally expressed. Alicia looked very cute in a lime green shift she’d selected herself from a hanging rack at the markets, and simple little sandals with seashells sewn on the straps. To Christabel’s mind, it was much better for her daughter not to be a designer-clad little miss, filled with a pompous sense of her own importance.

She wished her own appearance was as artless, acutely aware that the cotton-knit weave of her dress clung to her curves before flaring into a flirty little skirt that ended mid-thigh. It was definitely a sexy garment, sleeveless, its low round neckline dipping to the swell of her breasts. She wore no bra and only a minimal G-string, not wanting to break the slinky feel of the soft fabric. Its dark red colour hid the nakedness underneath, but the obvious shape of her breasts and the smooth line of hip and thigh suggested it.

Despite the heat, she had left her hair down, readily touchable, rippling around her shoulders in a loose fall to her waist. Her bare feet were slipped into black strappy sandals, easily slipped out of, as well. On a black leather thong around her neck hung a copper sun disk, split in two and joined by a crescent moon from which dangled uneven strings of triangles—all in copper, which had swirls of dark red through its polished surface. It was her own design and she liked the elemental nature of it.

She had been feeling very elemental as she had chosen what to wear
...and not wear.
It was what she had wanted to feel, a woman meeting a man, intent on revelling in the most basic level there was between them. Totally pagan and primitive, she’d told herself on a wave of mad exultation, indulging the wicked sense of throwing all caution to the winds and having what she wanted, regardless of consequences.

It was only too easy to fool herself into believing she had a right to this. The right of a woman. Being a mother should not mean she had to suppress her own sexuality, and she had never wanted a man as much as she wanted Jared King.

“Looks like a storm coming, Mummy.”

Jolted from her intense inner reverie, Christabel looked out over Roebuck Bay. Black clouds were looming ominously above the horizon. No romantic moonrise tonight, she thought wryly. Not that she’d come for romance. In fact, a quick tropical storm was more in keeping with the kind of relationship she’d envisaged with Jared...a storm that would blow over and just be a part of the past when she moved on.

Could it be so?

Was she worrying needlessly?

Or would it leave wreckage in its wake?

“We’d better get inside before it starts,” she said, quickening her pace, aware of how swiftly storms swept in here.

“Can we watch it from the veranda?’’ Alicia asked eagerly, always fascinated by the lightning show that usually preceded the deluge of heavy rain. She’d seen quite a lot of it this summer, although it wasn’t called summer here. It was simply the wet season and the rest of the year was the dry. The lightning was always spectacular, and Alicia found it more exciting than frightening.

“I guess so,” she answered, reasoning Jared would want to please her daughter, given his ready offer of honey prawns and chocolate chip ice-cream.

They arrived at the front gate. Christabel reached over it to work the catch on the other side. To her frustration, it seemed to be stuck. She released Alicia’s hand to give herself leverage for a stronger tug, even while thinking this physical obstacle was a sign she was trespassing where she shouldn’t go. The gate didn’t want to let her in. It was protecting the people it was built to protect.

“I’ll open it for you!”

She looked up to see Jared emerging from the veranda, already descending the steps to the path leading to the gate.

“It’s probably stuck, not having been opened since the fence was last painted,” he explained, striding towards her. “We mostly use the side entrance.”

His white shirt was unbuttoned, flapping open as he walked, revealing black curls nestled on his darkly tanned chest and a fine line of hair arrowing down, disappearing below the belt line of white shorts. Snug, sexy shorts, leaving most of his muscular legs bare.

His flagrant maleness caught the breath in Christabel’s throat. She barely had wits enough to withdraw her hand and stand back from the gate for him to work the catch free for her. The urge to simply feast her eyes on him was so strong, it was difficult to think of anything else.

His thick dark hair looked soft and springy, newly washed. He had neat ears for a man, tucked close to his head. His jaw was shiny-smooth. She picked up a tantalising scent, something sharper than fresh sea air, intriguingly attractive, multi-layered in essence. Very Jared, offering sensory pleasure.

“There!” He beamed a triumphant grin at them as he swung the gate wide.

“Thank you,” Alicia piped up, minding her manners.

“You’re welcome,” he returned, waving them forward, his eyes gathering a gleam of more personal triumph as his gaze travelled from her daughter to Christabel herself.

“Lucky you arrived before the storm,” he remarked. “I was about to close the shutters on the veranda.”

“We like storms,” Alicia informed him.

“Well, in that case, we’ll leave the shutters open unless the rain starts coming in.”

Happy with this indulgence, Alicia skipped ahead along the path. Christabel waited for Jared to shut the gate behind them, inwardly churning over what he had to be thinking, given the overt provocation of her dress. She couldn’t bring herself to walk ahead, knowing she would feel him watching the free movement of her buttocks with every step she took. It wouldn’t be so bad, walking with him.

His shoulder muscles bunched as he realigned the catch and fastened it. Her own tautly strung nerves thrummed with the tension coming from him, causing her stomach to contract and sending little quivers down her thighs. Yet when he turned to her it was with a warm, welcoming smile, aimed at relaxing any fears she might have over accepting his invitation.

“I like the pendant you’re wearing. Very eyecatching,” he remarked.

“It goes with the dress,” she answered before she could catch the words back.

To her intense relief his gaze didn’t wander downwards. His eyes twinkled appreciation straight into hers. “Once again you demonstrate your talent for the perfect touch.”

“I’m a long way from perfect, Jared,” she blurted out, guiltily conscious of raising expectations she didn’t know if she could meet or not. Would he want more from her than having his desire sated? Was it just a physical craving for him?

“You gave me the kind of showcase I wanted for our pearls, Christabel. Your designs are now on display in Hong Kong, exciting far more interest in the trade than a showing of our wholesale product.”

A rush of pleasure eased her sense of guilt. “Then I’ve given you something of value for all the time you’ve spent on me.”

He frowned quizzically. “I do want more.”

The quiet tone carried a wealth of suggestion, tapping straight into the pulsing core of why she’d come, why he’d invited her. He wanted more and so did she, and it had nothing to do with pearls and professional business. She stared at him, feeling the gathering ache of need he stirred, wishing it could be appeased, wondering if the risk would be worth taking.

“It must mean something to you, as well,” Jared went on, “knowing your creative vision has excited such interest?”

It was on the tip of her tongue to say,
I
only did it for you,
but that was far too revealing a truth. “I simply enjoy designing, Jared. What you do with my work...that’s your business. It doesn’t relate to me any more.”

“But you could make a real name for yourself,” he pointed out.

A kick of alarm hit her heart. “You didn’t use my name, did you?”

His frown deepened. “No. As per our agreement, the jewellery was simply labelled Designs by Picard. But I do feel very strongly that you should get recognition, Christabel.”

She shook her head, the anxious moment receding at his reassurance. “I truly don’t want that.”

“Why not?”

Because they’ll find me through you.
But she couldn’t say that. Dragging him into her dilemma wouldn’t solve anything. “I’m happier this way.”

“You could make a very substantial career.”

“I don’t need a career. What I need is to be free, Jared. Can you understand that?’’ A kind of desperate panic welled up in her, forcing an explanation that warned him where she stood. “Not to be tied down. Not to be owned. Not to have my life ordered by others. So don’t count on more from me. Don’t ever count on more. I’ve tried to tell you....”