Just For a Night
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Miranda Lee
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CHAPTER ONE
‘I DON’T want you to go.’
Marina looked up from her suitcase and shook her head at the sulky expression on her fiancé’s face.
‘Please don’t start that again, Shane. I have to go. Surely you can see that?’
‘No, I can’t,’ he snapped. ‘It’s only three weeks till the wedding and here you are swanning off to the other side of the world on some wild-goose chase. There’s no guarantee that your bone marrow will save that little girl’s life. You’re probably just getting their hopes up for nothing.’
‘Firstly, I will only be away a week at the most,’ Marina pointed out, impatience only a breath away. ‘Secondly, I happen to be a near perfect match. Not only in blood, but in tissue type. Do you know how rare that is?’
‘I’m sure you’ll tell me,’ he said sourly. ‘You’re the smart one around here.’
Marina frowned at his tone of voice, and at the indication behind his words. This was a side to Shane she’d never seen before.
There again, she considered slowly, she’d never crossed him before. After her mother’s death a couple of months ago she’d been more than happy to accept the warm hand of friendship and support Shane had offered, more than happy to have someone there to make all the funeral arrangements and give her a shoulder to cry on. Her usually decisive and strong-willed character had failed her entirely during that grief-stricken time. Shane had been strong when she’d felt weak, kind and thoughtful when that was what she’d needed most.
That his kindness had ended up in his bed had probably been inevitable. He was an attractive man and she was, after all, so terribly lonely. Her satisfaction with his lovemaking had not been quite so inevitable, given her uninspiring sexual history. The pleasure he’d given her had stunned her, so much so that she’d believed herself in love at last. When he’d asked her to marry him a month ago, she’d said yes.
Now she stared at him. His face was not so handsome as he scowled at her. His eyes not so kind, either. They were cold and angry.
‘I had no idea how much you resented my being a teacher,’ she said, covering her distress behind a cool tone. ‘If you imagine I think you’re in any way inferior to me because you work with your hands, then I don’t.’
Shane had been her mother’s right-hand man in the riding and dressage school she’d run on the outskirts of Sydney. Although a high school drop-out, Shane was far from dumb. When Marina’s mother had hired him a good few years back, the then twenty-five-year-old had known everything there was to know about matters equestrian. He’d got along with Marina’s mother like a house on fire because they had a passion in common: the passion for horses.
Marina quite liked horses, and she’d learnt to ride adequately enough, but she’d never been obsessed by the showjumping scene, as her mother and Shane were. She’d always quite liked Shane too, but he’d been standoffish in her presence—till her mother’s illness and death had changed the status quo between them.
After they’d become engaged, Marina had told Shane that the school and the horses were his to do with whatever he liked.
She wondered now if he loved the school and horses more than he loved her.
Or if he loved her at all…
‘Maybe our getting married is not such a good idea,’ she said quietly. ‘We did rush into it a bit.’
He was around the bed and taking her in his arms before she could say boo. But his hard, hungry kisses left her cold. Shane stopped after a while and held her at arm’s length. This time his expression was full of apology and remorse.
‘You’re angry with me,’ he said. ‘And you’ve every right to be. I was being bloody selfish. Of course you have to go. Of course. It’s just that I’m going to miss you terribly, sweetheart.’ He released her arms to cup her chin and lift her mouth for him to kiss again. Softly this time. And sweetly.
Marina had to admit to a moment of melting. These new sexual responses of hers could be very disarming. And perhaps not always in her best interests, came the astonishing realisation.
‘I’m really going to miss this beautiful mouth of yours,’ Shane murmured. ‘There again, everything about you is so beautiful. Your eyes. Your skin. Your hair. Your breasts.’ His hands lifted to stroke them through her shirt and she was dismayed at the way they responded, as though they weren’t connected with her brain.
‘I’ve always wanted you, Marina,’ he insisted, with a thickened quality to his voice. ‘From the first moment I saw you. But your mother warned me right from the start that I could look, but not touch. Her little princess was not for the likes of me.’
Marina was not really surprised by this news. Her mother had been a very contradictory person. British-born and bred, she’d apparently defied her wealthy, upper-crust parents to run off to Australia with a colonial stablehand. She’d been told never to darken their doorstep again. Which she hadn’t.
Her bitterness over their attitude had been such that she’d never spoken of her English ancestors to her daughter, and had forbidden Marina to ever seek them out.
One would have thought she’d bring up Marina to despise this kind of snobbery and hypocrisy. And she had, in a way. But at the same time, perversely, she’d tried to turn her only daughter into a right little madam, with all the associated refinements and manners. Marina had been given ballet lessons, piano lessons and speech and drama lessons, not to mention the obligatory riding and dressage lessons.
It hadn’t really worked. Marina might look an elegant twenty-five-year-old lady on the surface, and she could hold her own in any company, but she was still Australian through and through—with a stubborn streak a mile long, an instinctive irreverence for authority and a pragmatic no-nonsense attitude to life.
She was also a chip off the old block when it came to defying parents, because when she’d gone to England on a backpacking holiday a couple of years previously she had tried to look up the maternal side of her family—her mother’s maiden name being on her birth certificate—only to find that there were more Binghams in England than you could poke a stick at.
Without more information to narrow the field, or money to hire an investigator, finding the right Binghams would have been like looking for a needle in a haystack. Since she had never been all that curious about the English side to her family—they sounded horrible snobs to her—she’d given up the search without another qualm.
Shane’s comment reminded her that she would be in England again soon. And this time she did have some money. Her mother’s estate had been larger than she’d envisaged. It seemed she’d been a very astute businesswoman over the years. Now that Marina could not hurt her mother with a more in-depth search, she might just see if she could find her grandparents, plus any possible aunts, uncles and cousins.
And maybe she wouldn’t.
They’d never searched for her, had they? Why should she care a whit for them? They’d probably only upset her by not wanting to have anything to do with her.
No, she would abandon that idea entirely. Best to let sleeping dogs lie.
‘I never thought you’d look twice at me,’ Shane was saying, ‘with your private school education and your looks. But you did, didn’t you, princess? And now…now you’re mine.’ He bent to back his claim with a long and very intimate kiss. It did set her heart a-thudding, but it was not what she wanted at that moment. All she wanted was to be left alone. Her head was absolutely whirling.
‘Come back as quickly as you can,’ he urged. ‘Don’t stay over there a moment longer than necessary.’
Marina didn’t know what to say. She felt very confused. A couple of weeks ago she had not been able to wait to marry Shane. Now, suddenly, those heady feelings of being madly in love seemed to have disappeared and her thoughts were very disturbing.
Surely Shane could not be just marrying her for the horses. Surely he loved her. And surely she loved him back. Hadn’t she quivered under his touch only last night? Hadn’t she cried out with pleasure?
Her mental toing and froing led nowhere, but the urge to get away from Shane remained acute. The urge to get away all round was becoming even stronger.
The trip to London, which had loomed in her mind as something of a trial, now took on a different perspective. It became a welcome escape, a time away from Shane during which she could think more clearly. By the time she returned, hopefully, she would know what to do.
It would not be too late to break her engagement even then. It wasn’t as though they were going to have a big church wedding, only a simple ceremony in her mother’s prized rose garden, with a celebrant and a few close friends attending.
This had been Shane’s wish, not Marina’s. She’d always wanted a traditional wedding, but Shane had argued the unsuitability of a big celebration so soon after her mother’s death. She recalled Shane had also said it would be a waste of money—money better spent on the plans he had for building new stables and buying new horses.
Money figured a lot in Shane’s arguments, Marina was beginning to realise.
When the phone call had come from the children’s hospital, asking her if she could fly to London as soon as possible to be a bone marrow donor, Shane’s first concern had been how much money it would cost and who was going to pay. He hadn’t shut up about it till a follow-up letter had arrived, explaining Marina would not be out of pocket in any way whatsoever.
Shane still hadn’t been happy about her going.
But in this case Marina had remained adamant, her natural tendency to stubbornness rising up through the uncharacteristic submissiveness which had been plaguing her. This had nothing to do with them as a couple and everything to do with herself as a decent and caring human being. She was prepared to go even if she had to pay for it all herself. How could she not, when a little girl’s life was at stake?
Her name was Rebecca, and she was only seven. An orphan, God love her, but with a wonderful great-uncle, it seemed. An earl, no less. And rich as Croesus, thank heavens.
He’d sent a first-class return ticket for Marina, plus a written assurance that he would be personally responsible for all her expenses. His gratitude knew no bounds. He claimed he would be in her debt for the rest of his life.
Marina smiled as she thought of the letter and its incredibly formal-sounding expressions. The man was British aristocracy through and through, all right. But rather sweet, she conceded. For a blue-blood.
‘Ahh, you’re smiling,’ Shane said, and bent to peck her on the lips. ‘I must be forgiven.’
Marina could not trust herself to speak. She twisted out of Shane’s arms and busied herself shutting and locking her suitcase. ‘We’ll have to leave for the airport shortly,’ she said. ‘If you’re still going to drive me, that is?’
‘Why wouldn’t I drive you?’ he said expansively. ‘Don’t be so sensitive, sweetheart.’ He scooped the suitcase off the bed and placed his spare arm around her shoulders.
‘I know why you’re so touchy,’ he said, hugging her to his side. ‘You’re just jumpy about the flight. And about your hospital stay at the other end. I’ll say this for you, Marina, you’re damned brave, volunteering to have needles poked in you like that. I know I wouldn’t do it. Not for a perfect stranger.’
Marina frowned. She didn’t think of herself as particularly brave. She’d been assured the procedure was not painful, though there might be some discomfort in her hip for a couple of days.
It dawned on her then that Shane was a very selfish man. Selfish and ambitious and stingy.
Marina fingered her engagement ring all the way from Bringelly to the airport at Mascot. Half a dozen times she contemplated taking it off and giving it back. But she didn’t. And, in the end, she boarded the plane still an engaged woman.
