The Man at Key West (13 page)

But she was discovering that her body was having the last word at the moment. His hands and lips were possessing her in no uncertain manner and her treacherous body was yielding joyously to his demands. His potent masculine attraction was more than she could cope with, and she tried to wriggle out of his arms ... unsuccessfully.

‘Darling,’ he murmured thickly, ‘don’t be afraid of me. We shall be married and then everything will be wonderful.’

Sue had almost been giving in to his demands when the word ‘married’ struck her like an east wind. He was marrying her because he could not have her any other way. Flung from such high emotional heights, she almost gave the game away by telling him the truth of why she had agreed to marry him when a voice accompanied a tapping on the door.

‘Jay?’ Gloria trilled. ‘Have you seen Sue?’

Jay released her reluctantly. ‘Come in,’ he said heavily. ‘Sue’s here.’

Gloria came in, to look from one to the other in surprise. Then she said blankly, ‘Have I interrupted something?’

Sue’s face, flushed from Jay’s kisses, deepened in colour. It was Jay who spoke, with his arm still around her.

‘No,’ he answered, regaining his good humour with a smile in which his eyes twinkled devilishly.
‘
I can’t say I would have welcomed the interruption had it been tomorrow night. Thanks for inviting Sue to spend the night here. She wouldn’t have come had I invited her.’

Gloria chuckled. ‘Perhaps she had her reasons,’ she began, and went on quickly. ‘I want her to help me with my hair for tomorrow.’

Jay, still keeping an arm around Sue’s waist, gave one look at the smooth black glossy hair and
t
he band around Gloria’s forehead.

‘Your hair looks fine to me,’ he said. ‘It’s that perishing band around your forehead that makes you look like an Indian squaw. I hope you aren’t going to the wedding like that.’

Gloria chuckled. ‘You’ll have to wait and see, won’t you—and I’m not marrying you. I’m marrying Lee.’

Jay growled, ‘Just as well. You wouldn’t get away with it with me. That smudged make-up you’re wearing makes me think of the dead. I’d wipe that off for a start.’

Gloria’s eyes widened, but she was not angry. ‘Real hunk of man, aren’t you?’ she grinned
. ‘I
’m glad Lee isn’t like you.’

Jay raised a provocative dark brow. ‘No?’ he answered. ‘I would have thought a little firecracker like you would need someone like myself to keep you in order. I give your marriage six months.’

But by now Gloria was not amused. ‘How do you make that out?’ she demanded.

Jay laughed with a flash of white teeth. ‘Because a man has to be a man to keep a marriage going. That’s the reason why so many of them fail—no respect.’

‘Really?’ Gloria put her hands on her hips. ‘I hope you know what you’re letting yourself in for, Sue. See you when this ... paragon of manhood releases you from his paws!’

Jay looked at Sue when Gloria had flounced out and they both began to laugh uncontrollably. Presently Jay became sober as he began to kiss her again. He was the first to draw away.

‘See you in the morning,’ he said. ‘Gloria was babbling something earlier on just after I arrived about it being unlucky to see your intended on the morning before the wedding, so Lee and I are going to drive into town early to meet you at the office at noon. Gloria will drive you
both in her new car.’

Gloria sat at her dressing table slowly combing her long black hair when Sue entered the room.

‘Glad you’ve come,’ she said with a smile. ‘I want you to help me to plait my hair for tomorrow. My
h
ands are shaking already, so I don’t know what they’ll be like in the morning. I want it done in thin plaits from the scalp all over my head in order to crimp my hair and to give it body.’

‘Body?’ Sue echoed with open-mouthed astonishment ‘You mean it’s going to stand out all over your head again for your wedding? Do you think you should?’

Gloria said impatiently, ‘Well, that’s me, isn’t it? I’m me. I haven’t exactly been invited to a Royal wedding. As a matter of fact I prefer darker clothes. I find them more severe, more striking. I really wanted black for my wedding. I usually wear punts most of the time and I only went into a dress because it’s so warm here. Back home in Chicago I’m all pants and frizzy hair. I feel undressed in any other gear.’

Sue laughed
. ‘I
’m beginning to see your point, but will Lee?’

Gloria gave a careless shrug. ‘He fell for my image, which is the real me, so he knows what to
e
xpect.’ She sighed and began to use her comb again. ‘Tell you what—I envy you your Jay. He’s the tough caveman type ... a real man with no messing about. He’s exciting, and does he know how to charm.’

Sue did not answer. Her one wish at the moment was that the next day was over so that she could net down to the business of getting her father out of whatever trouble he and Connie were in.

She had not expected to sleep very well that night, but to her surprise she slept right through till nine o’clock the next morning. Awakening from a deep sleep, she had looked bemusedly around the strange room, realised that she was in Jay’s villa and that this was her wedding day.

Her stomach began to churn immediately she left her bed to take a bath. The sun was streaming in to herald another beautiful day. A leisurely bath in scented water refreshed her and she was getting into a wrap when Jay’s man, Tom, tapped on her door with a note from Jay, and coffee.

‘Darling,’ Jay had written in his masculine scrawl, ‘I shall see you in town as arranged. Gloria will bring you and I shall be going with Lee to avoid seeing you. Gloria insists on this, so I guess we can go along with them.’

Sue looked at the array of feminine garments she had set out on the bed and found herself cursing the day that her father had met Connie. None of this would have happened. She would not have met Jay, who had turned her life upside down. Alternatively she found herself loving him and hating him, and as for Connie, surely she deserved all that was coming to her if she was in deep trouble, she thought with despair.

She was sitting with her face in her hands when someone put a hand on her shoulder. It was Gloria in a negligee with her hair still in the plaits she had put in the night before.

‘What’s the matter, Sue? Don’t tell me you’re having second thoughts about marrying Jay?’ she said cheerfully.

Sue lifted her face and managed a smile. ‘You seem to be sure enough of your Lee. No qualms? No last-minute second thoughts?’

Gloria found a space on the bed between the
a
rray of clothes and sat down.

‘The way I see it is that Lee wants me and I want him,’ she explained simply. ‘We need each other. We could live together without marriage, but that’s a confession of final defeat before we start. It would mean that we don’t care for each other deeply enough to risk marriage. Besides, that way the girl is the loser every time.’

‘I suppose you’re right,’ Sue conceded, thinking that there was more behind Gloria’s astonishing hair-do than one would-suppose. ‘Do you want me to help you with your hair?’

Gloria laughed, ‘Goodness, no! I just undo the plaits and brush it out in ripples. Then I smudge my make-up in light and dark contrast, a pale foundation with dark pencil or shadow around the eyes. Do you want any help?’

Sue shook her head. ‘Are you going away directly you’re married?’ she asked, to take her mind off Jay and any possible temptation to confide in Gloria.

‘Yes. We’re going to Barbados. How about you?’

‘Jay didn’t say. It was so sudden, you see.’

Sue never did remember much about the ceremony except that Jay looked heartbreakingly handsome in a cream linen suit cut to perfection across his wide shoulders and tapering hips. His white smile in the smooth mahogany of his face jerked her heart when he put the ring on her finger. It was Gloria who saved the day for Sue, w
i
th her s
t
artlingly matt pale face and frizzy hair with the uneven fringe across her forehead.

Lee in a pale grey suit looked sublimely happy and saw nothing out of place with his bride.

After a wedding lunch at a hotel nearby Jay and
Sue went with Gloria and Lee to the airport to see m them off. Then came the time which Sue had been dreading—the time when she and Jay would be m alone. She had no choice but to go back with him A to his villa, but once there he would hear of the real reason why she had married him ... to save her father from worry and to get him out of a situation which she was sure was none of his own making.

Tom, his man, was not waiting for them at the boat to take them across. Jay helped her in, with the intention of taking her across himself. As much as she had been able Sue had avoided his eyes, but now in the boat she looked at him surreptitiously beneath her eyelashes.

His strong brown hands were casually relaxed on the wheel of the craft as though he was sure of what he was doing. He turned to give her a brief smile as they neared the jetty.

‘Welcome home, Mrs
.
Denver,’ he drawled. ‘May I say I hope you’ll be very happy?’

He ran the boat in expertly to the jetty and flung the rope ashore to tie it up. The next moment he had scooped her up into his arms and was striding with her in the direction of his villa.

She protested, ‘You don’t have to carry me all the way there in order to take me over the threshold.’

Her arms were clasped around his neck and she had put her head on his wide shoulder so that she would not have to look at him. His nearness was undermining all her resolutions to be done with him as quickly as possible, for it had occurred to her that there was no place to run away from him on this island of
his.

‘What I have I hold,’ he answered softly, dangerously. Then he muttered something about the admirable Tom, his man, as they entered the villa through the open doorway which his manservant had left open for them.

To Sue’s surprise and dismay he went on carrying her to the bedrooms and entered his own room before setting her down on her feet.

Sue blinked in dismay and looked around at the king-size bed.

‘You don’t waste much time, do you?’ she said stiffly, evading his eyes.

‘We are married,’ he reminded her coolly. Then slowly he took the narrow scarf from around her tawny hair.

Sue looked up at him and swallowed nervously. ‘Aren’t we going on honeymoon?’ she asked warily.

This was nothing like how she had imagined it. It had never occurred to her that Jay would bring her back to his island home. He had mentioned New York when talking about their honeymoon and she had visualised them having a serious conversation while on the plane. By the time they reached their destination it would be perfectly clear to him that she had married him for a purpose and they would have gone on from there.

‘Tomorrow,’ he replied coolly, then slipped off her little jacket.

‘You mean...’ Sue stepped backwards, her eyes wide with dismay. ‘Oh no...’

‘Sue!’

But Sue was running from the villa as fast as her shaky legs would carry her. She ran blindly for some time, and it was only when she turned her foot over that a searing pain in her ankle brought her whimpering to the ground. How long she sat there she never knew. But she did have time for deep thought.

Her ring, for instance. How had Jay known the size? There was the question of her birth certificate, also, essential before Jay could procure a marriage licence. Only her father could have provided the particulars. Sue rubbed her injured ankle.

‘Do you mind telling me why you ran away just now?’ a deep voice said coolly, and Jay dropped down beside her on the grass.

Sue refused to look at him and went on massaging her ankle. He reached out to push her hand away and felt the slight swelling.

‘So you’ve ricked your ankle. I’m sorry if it hurts, but at least it stops you from running any farther,’ he said, slowly massaging the ligament. ‘What scared you?’

‘Nothing. You had everything planned out nicely, didn’t you?’ she shot at him.

‘Of course I did. I meant to have you...’

‘And I never meant to marry you,’ she said fiercely. ‘You only married me because you couldn’t have me any other way!’

He leaned back on an arm and Stared out across the water with narrowed eyes, and she missed his soothing touch.

‘I’m not denying that there’s some truth in that, but no woman has ever made the impact on me that you did. When you skimmed by that day I knew you spelt trouble for me.’

‘That goes for me, too. Why didn’t you leave me alone?’

‘And let you get raped by that lifeguard worm? Is that what you want now?’ With one angry' movement he had her lying on her back and he was bending over her. ‘Is it rough treatment you want?—because if it is I can give it to you.’

Sue tried struggling with all her might, but he pinned back her arms above her head.

‘You don’t have to remind me what an arrogant pig you are. You haven’t been able to take me up to now,’ she cried in anger.

‘Don’t challenge me—and don’t pretend that you wouldn’t have liked me making love to you. Your kisses gave you away, my sweet Sue.’