Long-Distance Marriage Read online

  ‘I’m telling you how I felt,’ he said, ‘You wanted to know.’

  ‘Go on,’ she said in a small voice, thinking that maybe it had been a good thing that they’d never delved too deeply into their feelings before. She felt as though they’d opened up Pandora’s box and were regretting it by the second!

  ‘Yes, it was irrational,’ he continued. ‘But I told you—something about you makes me act without reason, without thought. I started to imagine Andrew making love to you—’

  ‘That’s absolutely ridiculous!’ she scoffed.

  ‘Is it? Are you telling me that he wouldn’t like to?’

  ‘I wouldn’t like to, Cameron—that’s the difference!’

  ‘And I found myself,’ he went on, as though she hadn’t spoken, ‘wanting to tear the clothes from your body—’

  ‘Which you did—’

  ‘And to take you right there and then.’

  ‘Which you also did!’

  ‘And for which I’ve apologised—for the sentiment, at least, if not for the act itself. And isn’t it about time that you stopped being hypocritical and admitted that it was exciting and that it turned you on? Or are you denying that, Alessandra?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, I’m not denying it. It’s just that... that...’ Her voice tailed off.

  ‘That what?’ he prompted softly.

  ‘It just wasn’t very—loving, that’s all,’ she sighed, looking up into the intense eyes which were now a soft, smoky grey.

  ‘Sometimes sex isn’t loving,’ he told her gently. ‘And sometimes it isn’t meant to be. If you like, I can show you just how loving it can be.’ And he began to massage the small of her back rhythmically.

  She wanted to wriggle with pleasure, to relax into it, to make the slow walk down whichever sensual path he planned to take her. But two capitulations in one evening would be too big a dent in her pride.

  ‘I have work in the morning,’ she said stubbornly.

  “So do I.’

  ‘And I need a shower,’ she reminded him pointedly.

  ‘So do I,’ he murmured with a smile as he drew her to her feet. He slowly untied her robe, slipped his hands inside and cupped her naked, peaking breasts.

  ‘Cameron...’ she objected on a shuddering gasp as he bent his dark head to take one aching tip into his mouth.

  ‘What?’ he murmured softly, his breath warm against her skin. ‘What is it, my darling?’

  She couldn’t remember. ‘Oh, Cameron...

  CHAPTER THREE

  CAMERON spent most of the night making up for the week he had been away. He made love to Alessandra over and over again. Almost as though...as though he was asserting his sexual mastery over her. As though he was trying to imprint himself on her mind, to prove to her that he was the only man for her.

  He doesn’t have to prove anything, was Alessandra’s last, drowsy thought before she fell into a dreamless sleep.

  She stretched like a cat as she awoke to the most pleasurable feeling imaginable. She was half-asleep and warm, and delectable sensations began to fizzle over her skin. Cameron’s hands were on her breasts, circling each one in turn, inciting the tips into pointy little peaks which ached like crazy.

  ‘Oh,’ she sighed disappointedly as he moved his hand away, then almost purred with pleasure as he trickled it slowly and enticingly down over her flat stomach until he’d found where she ached for him most.

  ‘Mmm,’ he said with pleasure, and slowly began to kiss her.

  ‘Mmm,’ she echoed as her fingers trailed down to capture his rock-hard arousal, only then to move her hand away reluctantly as she remembered the time.

  ‘Don’t stop,’ he urged huskily.

  He was speaking to the converted. ‘But it’s late,’ she murmured on a half-hearted protest

  ‘Do you want to get up?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, we won’t, then,’ he whispered, and she gave a gasp of pleasure as he entered her.

  The alarm rang and rang.

  They ignored it

  All Alessandra was conscious of was Cameron thrusting harder and deeper inside her as he kissed her until the sweet, shuddering spasms racked her body once more.

  She awoke later with a start and left him still sleeping while she hurriedly showered and then grabbed the first things which came to hand in the wardrobe. She clasped the clothes in her arms and turned to look at him.

  The duvet had dropped to the floor and his bronzed, naked body lay outlined against the snowy backdrop of the rumpled sheets. Like a Greek god, she thought fleetingly—if any Greek god had ever had hair which was as black as the night and narrow, beautiful eyes which were a stormy combination of grey and blue.

  She shot him a vaguely resentful glance as she went into the sitting room to get dressed. His earlier remark had been just so much baloney. Of course he didn’t have to get up for work. He owned the wretched company, didn’t he? And yet she was still creeping around so as not to wake him! Because he’s jet-lagged, she told herself, softening as she remembered the dark smudges which had shadowed his eyes. And because he drives himself too hard.

  There wasn’t even time for a cup of coffee, she realised, glancing at her watch in horror to discover that it was almost ten o’clock. She hadn’t been so late in years! In fact, she’d never been late before! Not at Holloway’s.

  And she had a client meeting at ten o’clock, she remembered, on a silent groan.

  After that, things went from bad to worse.

  She stepped out of the building into torrential rain; she’d left her brolly upstairs and she simply didn’t have time to run up and get it. And if she did she might wake Cameron, and if she woke him there was no saying how much later he might make her...

  She tried to catch a taxi to the office, but the rain was teeming down so heavily that everyone else in London had obviously had the same idea. There wasn’t an available cab in sight, and while she waited a van drove so close to the kerb that it splashed cold, dirty rainwater all over her pale cream suit.

  Eventually, giving up the taxi idea as a bad job, she took the tube. Inside the train it was hopelessly hot and crowded, and she spent the entire journey wedged between a man whose paper brushed black newsprint all over her jacket, and a woman who breathed right into her face, and who had obviously eaten about eight cloves of garlic the previous evening!

  Bedraggled, cold, tired and bad-tempered, she eventually arrived at Holloway’s and, ignoring the lift, sneaked up the back stairs to her office, intending to salvage what she could of her appearance before meeting her client. She was due to meet with the biscuit manufacturer who had been so keen on her last advertising campaign. She prayed that Andrew would have entertained him downstairs in his office in her absence, but her prayers were not to be answered.

  She was so keen to get into the sanctuary of her office that she didn’t notice her secretary’s frantic hand movements, and Alessandra pushed the door open to discover Andrew sitting behind her desk with the client in front of him!

  At the sound of the door opening, they both looked up and Andrew stared at her as if she were something that the cat had brought in.

  Which was exactly how she felt!

  John Edwards, the client, merely gave a couple of astonished blinks as he surveyed her and Alessandra realised just how different she must look from the last time they’d met, when she had been presented with the gold award for the best advertising campaign of the year—selling his biscuits! Then she’d been clad in a sophisticated emerald silken sheath of a dress, bought by Cameron to match her engagement ring.

  Alessandra ran a hand through her dishevelled hair and decided that sheer effrontery was the only thing which would see her through.

  ‘Good morning, John!’ she said brightly. ‘Morning, Andrew!’

  ‘Busy night?’ queried Andrew sardonically.

  She gave him the benefit of a dazzling smile which they both knew was totally forced. ‘Crazy morning, unfortunately—the traf
fic’s hell!’

  ‘I managed to make it in on time,’ responded Andrew acidly.

  ‘Well, we both know that efficiency is your middle name, don’t we?’ she queried sweetly, but deep down she was angry with him. Why on earth should he be all prickly because, for once in her life, she happened to be late? After all, this was the man who’d sent her off to go and buy a dress on the company, and one morning’s lateness in three years was a pretty good record by anyone’s reasoning!

  No, she knew very well the real reason why Andrew was so irritated. Because he knew it had been Cameron who had caused her lateness. It was basic and petty male jealousy, and he ought to be ashamed of himself. For the first time, Alessandra began to wonder what it would be like working for someone who didn’t have a crush on her.

  She put her briefcase down on the floor and turned to them. ‘Have you both had coffee? No? Then let me ring for some—do you mind waiting downstairs for me?’

  She turned to John. ‘John, I have some absolutely amazing ideas for the new campaign—but before I present them to you I’d rather like to...’ She looked up and down her mud-and rain-splattered pale suit and gave him a rueful shrug. ‘Clean up a little—that’s if you don’t mind?’ She grinned and John Edwards grinned back.

  ‘Of course I don’t mind,’ he said jovially, rising to his feet, a twinkle in his eye. ‘Come on, Andrew—let’s leave the lady in peace.’

  On the way out of the door Andrew hung back just for long enough to hiss in her ear, ‘I take it you had a heavy night with loverboy?’

  ‘He’s my husband, actually,’ she corrected. Her smile would have turned most people to stone, but not Andrew. ‘And I don’t intend discussing him with you,’ she said on a saccharine note, and then, raising her voice slightly, said, ‘Give me ten minutes, gentlemen, and I’ll join you downstairs.’

  Still seething with indignation about Andrew’s attitude, she locked the door behind them and walked over to her large desk. In the bottom drawer she found the spare bra, knickers, T-shirt, sweater and cotton trousers she always kept there in case of an emergency like this, and hung them over the back of a chair so that the creases would fall out.

  She was lucky that her office came equipped with its own luxury ensuite bathroom, and also lucky that she was the kind of woman who could shower and wash her hair in two minutes flat!

  She went into the shower cubicle and turned the tap on, standing in the hot, scented steam. And for a few moments she forgot all about her client; forgot all about the undercurrent of aggression which Andrew had displayed when she’d turned up late. She even forgot about last night’s admittedly passionate but nonetheless disturbing little scene.

  Instead her mind played tricks with her, so that when she closed her eyes she could remember as vividly as if it were yesterday just how she’d felt when she’d first met Cameron Calder...

  Alessandra’s upbringing was unconventional. Her mother was Italian, and had arrived in England at the age of seventeen to study art. At college she had fallen in love with another student, had become pregnant by him, and been disowned by her parents. And although the young lovers had married before Alessandra was born the family rift was never healed. Alessandra was an only child for the first seven years of her life, while her father attempted to establish a reputation for himself as a painter.

  He never quite managed it. He eked out a living as a part-time teacher and Alessandra’s mother never picked up a paintbrush again but went on to have five more children. To Alessandra, it was a shocking waste of talent. Her mother seemed to be always pregnant or breast-feeding, the house in messy chaos all around them.

  Alessandra felt the outsider; her meticulous nature was so different from that of her parents’. She felt light years removed from her younger brothers and sister, and she hated the poverty they lived in with a passion.

  It was a perfect lesson in what she didn’t want out of life, and so, when she was growing up, she repressed the artistic side of her nature which she had inherited. Instead, she worked like a Trojan, and gained a very passable degree in economics.

  And along with her hard work came a determination that she was never going to submerge her individuality into marriage and motherhood, the way her own mother had done... Very early on she decided that for some women, like her, marriage could be nothing more than a honeyed trap...

  With all the fervency of youth Alessandra took this vow to the extreme. Unwittingly she developed a shell which was supposed to rebuff men, but which, unfortunately, seemed to have just the opposite effect. All through college she was plagued by members of the opposite sex who found her aloofness an irresistible challenge, even if it hadn’t been teamed with dark, silken hair and eyes the colour of rich dark chocolate...

  When she left college she decided that she wanted to use her artistic talents as well as her business acumen, and so she answered Andrew Holloway’s advertisement. His was only a fledgling organisation, but Andrew was offering her the irresistible temptation of handling both the financial and the artistic side of the business and the possibility of a future directorship.

  Holloway’s expansion was rapid and their reputation grew and grew. Soon they moved into a much larger building and were employing twenty people.

  Alessandra went into work one morning to see an extra appointment squeezed into her book for before lunch and she called through to Janice, her secretary.

  ‘I can’t possibly fit in another appointment, Janice, you know that.’

  Janice gave her a funny look. ‘Have you seen who it is?’

  Alessandra glanced down at the name in her diary. ‘Cameron Calder,’ she said, looking up, a question in her dark eyes.

  ‘Exactly!’ beamed Janice triumphantly, and paused as if waiting for an answer. ‘Of Calder Incorporated.’

  ‘So?’ asked Alessandra crisply.

  Janice blinked at her in total amazement ‘Don’t tell me you haven’t heard of him?’

  ‘I’ve heard of the company, naturally. Canned foods, based in Manchester, with outlets all over Europe; am I right?’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘He’s looking for a new advertising agency; am I right?’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  Alessandra frowned. Janice was usually so efficient. ‘I am far too busy to see a new client today. And you know that doing good business is impossible if one of the parties is rushed.’

  ‘But he’s—’

  ‘Janice,’ interrupted Alessandra, kindly but firmly, her patience beginning to evaporate. ‘Please call him and reschedule the appointment. If he’s desperate to see me, I have two free slots in the morning.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Janice on a dramatic and disbelieving sigh.

  Alessandra thought no more about it, until five minutes to twelve when her last client of the morning had just left, and Janice came into the office with a sheepish expression on her face. ‘About Mr Calder,’ she began.

  Alessandra looked up from her notepad, her mind chock-full of ideas. ‘Who?’ she asked absently.

  ‘Of Calder Incorporated.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘He won’t cancel.’

  ‘Won’t?’ queried Alessandra. ‘What do you mean he won’t?’

  ‘He says he’s flying to New York tonight, and wants to see you first.’

  Alessandra bristled. ‘Just who the hell does he think he is?’

  Janice gulped. ‘Well, he is in this month’s Tipstock magazine in an article entitled “Marriageable Millionaires”.’

  ‘Oh, yuk!’ Alessandra shuddered with feeling. ‘I can’t imagine anything worse than having yourself plastered all over a magazine, especially in a piece like that!’

  ‘But he’s—’

  ‘Janice, I don’t care if he’s the flaming King of Siam! I will not be ordered around by someone I’ve never even met. And when he arrives you can tell him that the appointment will have to be rescheduled. He sounds just like the kind of posturing, egotistical executive I despis
e—’

  ‘It seems that working with you is certainly going to be provocative,’ came a deep voice, and Alessandra looked up immediately to be confronted by the sight of a man standing in the doorway of her office. ‘Wouldn’t you say?’

  Ironically, the very first thing she noticed about him was not his height, or the breadth of his shoulders, or the long, clean line of his limbs. Nor even the overwhelming sense of restrained power, of muscle and sinew and pure strength lying beneath the sleek, sophisticated exterior of his beautifully cut Italian suit and immaculate silk shirt. It wasn’t even the perfect symmetry of his features, the sensual fullness of his mouth or the dark disarray of his hair which made her sit up and take notice—though all these things were mightily impressive.

  No. It was something else. Something which eluded her for a moment. Something about the steely blue-grey blaze of his eyes.

  And then she had it. Behind the mocking laughter, she saw a coolness, a distance, an enigmatic aloofness that she had seen before.

  Time and time again in the mirror.

  Alessandra instinctively sensed danger. She started to rise from her seat but, infuriatingly, he seemed to have taken complete control of the situation.

  ‘Thank you, Janice,’ he said smoothly, with a devastating but dismissive smile, and Alessandra watched in disbelief as her secretary glided obediently out. Just who was in charge around here? she thought indignantly.

  He held his hand out to her. ‘Cameron Calder,’ he said.

  For one mad moment she actually thought of rebuffing him, so great was her sense of impending... not doom, exactly, but something lingering in the air. Some threat to her equilibrium. Some indefinable danger. As she looked at him Alessandra knew, with an overwhelming certainty, that she wanted Cameron Calder as she had never wanted any man in her life before.

  She put her hand into his, and, as if governed by some preordained force, they both looked down. He held her hand in a mockery of a handshake, but his grip was warm and firm and she watched in disbelief as her fingers relaxed within the confines of his palm, as though they had found a permanent home and were happy there.