The Virgin Bride (The Australians) (9 page)

Jason could not complain about the logic in that. ‘Fair enough. Do you have any clothes suitable for golf with you? You can't play in a dress.'

‘Will shorts and T-shirt do?'

‘Fine. What about on your feet? You can't wear sandals. They'll slip.'

‘I have some sandshoes.'

‘They'll do. For now. But if you like the game I'll buy you some proper golf shoes.'

‘I can afford to buy my own shoes,' she said, then hurried off to dress, leaving Jason to throw a rueful look after her. What a contradiction in terms she was sometimes! Wanting to be an old-fashioned wife to him, yet at the same maintaining a very modern financial independence.

Jason wasn't sure if he liked either, which was perverse. What was not to like?

Emma was a bit quiet on the drive to the golf course, her face turned away from him. She might have been admiring the scenery—the view of the blue Pacific beyond the emerald-green fairways
was
spectacular—but he had a feeling her mind was a million miles away.

‘Is there anything wrong, darling?' he asked softly, after he'd parked the car and she was still sitting there, totally unaware that they'd come to a standstill and he'd turned off the engine. Her head jerked round, a stiff smile hiding whatever emotion she'd swiftly wiped from her face.

‘No. Not really. It was just thinking…we have to go back tomorrow, and I…I can't say I want to.'

Jason sighed with relief. So
that
was it! She didn't want their honeymoon to end. An understandable reaction, but nothing to worry about. For a moment there…

He reached out to lay a gentle hand against her cheek. ‘I know how you feel,' he murmured. ‘It would
be lovely to stay here for ever, wouldn't it? Just you and me and no one else.'

Her hand came up to cover his and she leant her cheek into his palm. ‘Yes,' she said simply, and looked deep into his eyes, her smile soft and full of tenderness. Jason's body immediately began to ache for her again.

‘Time for golf, I think,' he said, and abruptly withdrew his hand, turning his head away.

Teaching Emma to play golf was a welcome distraction. So was her aptitude for the game. ‘You're going to be a handy little player with some practice,' he complimented her when they were well into the second nine.

‘But I've lost nearly all of your balls!' she wailed. ‘Two in the ocean and three in that awful lake back there!' And she pointed angrily at the wide water hazard now behind them, her face still flushed with frustration. Stubborn by nature, she'd been determined to hit over it and not around, and three times her ball had gone to a watery grave.

‘There are worse things in the world, Emma,' he commiserated, ‘than lost balls. I still have two left; one for you and one for me.'

She stared at him, then burst out laughing. Only then did he realise what he'd said, and he grinned. ‘Yes…well, shall we call it a day and go home?'

‘No fear! I'm determined to finish. And to get better.'

‘You're darned good for a beginner already.'

Her surprised pleasure touched him. Hadn't anyone ever told her how good she was at anything before?

‘Really?' she asked.

‘Really.'

‘I suppose I've always been pretty good at doing things with my hands.'

‘Mmm. So I've noticed,' he murmured.

Her blush was instantaneous, her gaze skittering away from his. Jason could not help but smile. When her eyes returned to his, he was surprised to see they carried a slight frown. Her mouth opened to say something, then shut again.

‘What?' he queried.

More colour, but this time she held his gaze and spoke. ‘You once told me I shouldn't be scared to tell you anything…or ask you anything… About sex, that is.'

Jason tried not to look surprised, or alarmed. ‘That's right.'

‘What you said just now about my being good with my hands… I've been thinking… I mean… Oh, dear, this is difficult.' And she glanced around to see if anyone was nearby. There wasn't, the back nine of the course almost deserted at this late hour in the afternoon.

Jason waited patiently for her to get over her embarrassment and continue.

She bit her bottom lip and refused to look at him, instead finding a target for her eyes somewhere on the grass before going on in halting whispers. ‘I've been
wondering…why you haven't asked me…to…um…do
more
…in bed.'

‘More?' Jason repeated a little numbly while his heart raced. ‘What, exactly, do you mean?' he asked.

Her eyes swung to his, glittering now within their bright pink setting. She'd never looked so embarrassed, or so incredibly desirable. ‘Oh, Jason, please don't make me spell it out. You must know what I mean. You're an experienced lover. And, while I'm not, I
have
read all those magazine articles which go on about the things men most like in bed. There's one especially, which crops up all the time. I've been wondering why you haven't asked me to do…that. You said I was to always ask for things I wanted. Why haven't you? Wouldn't you like me to…to do that to you?'

Her questions flustered him almost as much as they were flustering her. ‘I…well…yes, of course I would. But I didn't think you'd want to. I mean…women usually only do that when they…er…um…'

‘When they're madly in love with their partner?' she finished for him.

‘I guess so,' he agreed uncomfortably, although he'd been going to say when they'd been having sex a little longer than a week.

‘What about wives? Wouldn't wives generally do it for their husbands?'

‘Emma, I don't feel comfortable with this conversation.'

‘Why not?'

He was beginning to get irritated.
Why not?
Because it smacked of the same thing as her wanting to unpack his clothes and iron his shirts and bring him breakfast in bed. He didn't want her thinking she
had
to do things like that, just because she was married to him. Fellatio was not part of her job description as his wife!

‘Did Adele do it?' she demanded to know.

Hell, what was he going to say to that?

‘Not often,' he mumbled.

‘Did you like it when she did?'

Hell on earth!
‘Yes,'
he bit out.

‘Then I want to do it too,' she said stubbornly. ‘I want to do everything you like. Do you understand me, Jason? I want to.'

He understood, only too well. And, while it pained him, he knew he'd be too weak to say no.

Besides, he thought with a bitterly ironic twist on what she'd said earlier, how did he know she wouldn't enjoy it, if he didn't let her try?

J
ASON
woke to an empty bed. Light was filtering in through the curtains, but it felt early. Rolling over, he picked up his watch from the bedside table and looked at the time. Only ten past five.

He glanced around, looking for Emma. The
en suite
bathroom door was wide open. She wasn't in there. Possibly she'd gone to the toilet in the main bathroom, so as not to wake him. That was the sort of sweet thing Emma would do.

The memory of her last night, however, did not conjure up thoughts of sweetness so much, but the most incredible passion. She'd been shy at first, though clearly determined. Any worry Jason had had over how he might react to such an intimacy was soon obliterated. He'd been so turned on he'd ended up demanding all she had to give. And more!

He hoped he hadn't shocked her.

She hadn't seemed shocked. She'd curled up to him afterwards like a cat who'd licked up all the cream, a purring, contented cat. Yet now she was gone from the bed, when she should have been still beside him, sleeping the sleep of the sated.

Throwing back the covers, Jason walked, nude, out into the living room. A pre-dawn glow was shining through the open glass doors and onto the blue carpet, the rectangle of light broken only by the figure on the
balcony. Emma was standing there, leaning against the railing, watching the sun rise, wearing his navy silk bathrobe.

His mouth was creasing into a relieved smile when, suddenly, her head dropped into her hands and her shoulders began to shake.

Appalled, Jason rushed across the room and wrenched open the glass door. With a strangled sob, she whirled, and he saw the devastation in her face. The utter, utter devastation.

‘My God, Emma,' he cried. ‘What is it? What's wrong?'

‘Oh, Jason!' She was shaking her head and crying at the same time.

He came forward and took her in his arms, oblivious of the cool dawn air pricking his skin into goose bumps. ‘Tell me,' he insisted.

‘I don't know how to,' she choked out, and buried her face into his chest.

He put a finger under her wobbly chin and lifted it so that she had to look him straight in the eye, even though hers were flooded.

‘You must tell me what's wrong, Emma. You can't cry like this without telling me what's the matter.'

‘It…it's Dean,' she confessed, bravely blinking back the tears. ‘He's back.'

His hands dropped away from her face as though stung. ‘Back? What do you mean, back? You mean in Tindley?'

She nodded, her eyes wide and frightened.

Confusion warred with apprehension within Jason. ‘How could you possibly know that?' he asked. ‘Did
someone ring here during the night? Did you ring someone in Tindley?'

She shook her head. ‘No.'

‘Then make sense, damn you,' he snapped, and she flinched. He hadn't meant to swear at her, but God in heaven, he was only human. His worst nightmare was happening and he couldn't even get a handle on it.

‘He…he came back the day of the wedding,' she said on a raw whisper, fear still in her face.

Jason was staggered. ‘On the day of our wedding? When? Where? Where did you see him?'

‘Please, let's go inside. I don't want to discuss this out here.' And she bolted from the balcony into the living room. He followed, slamming the glass door shut behind him.

‘You
saw
him, didn't you?' he flung at her, and she flinched again. Oh, yes, she'd seen him, he suddenly realised. Nothing short of a personal visit could have rattled her like this.

And then the penny dropped, and a chill rippled through him.

‘You don't have to say anything,' he said coldly. ‘I get the picture. He showed up at your place just before the wedding. That's why you were late at the church. So what did he want? As if I don't know!'

‘Oh, Jason, please don't be like that! Oh, God, this was what I was afraid of all this week. How you would react.'

‘You should have told me, Emma.'

‘When? When could I have told you without spoiling our wedding, and then our honeymoon? I wanted
to give us a chance to start right. I didn't want you to…to…'

‘To what? To know you were thinking of Ratchitt every time I made love to you? To worry that you might have married me just because you thought it was the right thing to do, or because you didn't have the guts to call the wedding off at the last moment? You haven't done me any favours, Emma, marrying me when your heart is breaking over another man. Which reminds me, just who
were
you going down on last night? Me, or Ratchitt?'

Her hand cracked across his face with such suddenness and such force that he reeled backwards, staring at her as his hand came up to gingerly touch his stinging cheek. Her look of indignant outrage might have convinced someone else, but not him, not when his stomach was reeling at the thought of the way her eyes had always closed last night, every time she'd taken him into her mouth.

‘How dare you say that to me?' she exclaimed, her voice shaking. ‘I chose to marry
you
, not Dean. What I told you in the car after the wedding was the truth. Yes, Dean came and asked me not to marry you but to marry him instead. I said no. I chose you, Jason. I did what you told me to do. Made the decision not to choose a partner who was wrong for me. When Dean came back after all this time, I began to see him as I'd never seen him before. He swaggered in, all macho selfishness, explaining nothing, caring about nobody but himself. It didn't bother him that he might be spoiling our wedding day. He was simply intent
on grabbing what he wanted with no thought for anyone else but himself.'

‘And did he?'

‘Did he what?'

‘Grab you?'

‘Yes, he grabbed me. And he kissed me. He even told me he still loved me.'

‘Did you believe him?'

‘As you said, if he really loved me he'd have come back sooner. Dean arrogantly thought I'd still be waiting for him. He thought I'd still be in love with him.'

‘And are you, Emma?'

‘I don't know, Jason. I honestly don't know. All I can say is I'm not blind to him any more. And I don't want to marry him any more. I'm not sorry I married you. Not for a moment.'

A few seconds' elation was soon replaced by what Emma had left unsaid. She might not want to marry Ratchitt, but that didn't mean she didn't still want him. Jason could not get out of his mind the way her mouth had been totally devoid of lipstick at their wedding. That had taken a lot of kissing.

‘Did you like it when Ratchitt kissed you?' he asked, sounding quite calm. But inside he was churning.

She could not meet his eyes, and he knew the truth.

Jason wanted to kill them both. ‘So what was the outcome? What did he say to you when you knocked him back again? And I want the truth, Emma. No prevarications, and no watered-down words. What, exactly, did he say?'

‘He…he said I was welcome to marry you, but that
one day we would be together, and nothing and nobody could stop that, certainly not some stupid fool of a husband I didn't even love.'

‘Really? And how did he know that you didn't love me? Could it be because of the way you kissed him back?'

She went bright red. ‘I didn't mean to, Jason. It was like I was in shock, or on auto-pilot, or hypnotised. When he pulled me into his arms, for one mad moment it was just like it used to be. I forgot…everything. By the time I woke up to reality, he was smiling smugly down at me. I…I wiped my mouth so many times after he was gone, you've no idea. I can assure you, Jason, that when you kissed me in the church that day, I…I liked it just as much.'

‘Good God, am I supposed to be grateful for that?' He was shaking his head at her, fearing that he'd been right all along. She'd spent her entire honeymoon thinking of Ratchitt, trying her heart out to be a good wife, but wondering in the back of her mind if it might have been better with him.

His sigh carried defeat. ‘I don't know what to say to you.'

‘Tell me you you're glad I chose to marry you. Tell me you care about me. Tell me you trust me!'

‘Hard for a husband to trust his wife when she's in love with another man, don't you think?'

‘You knew that when you married me.'

Jason's mouth curled into a bitter little smile. ‘True. I thought I could handle it when he was a mythical person. A memory. It's slightly different now that
he's a real live man living in our town and vowing he won't rest till he seduces my wife!'

‘He won't succeed in that, Jason.'

‘Oh? Pardon me if I don't feel too confident of that. From what I've heard, Ratchitt would run rings around Casanova himself in the lovemaking department.'

‘I wouldn't know about that,' she muttered.

‘But you'd like to, wouldn't you?' he accused nastily, jealousy a festering sore in his heart. ‘I'll bet you wished you hadn't been Miss Purity a year ago. I'll bet you wish you'd let him do what he wanted back then.'

‘Yes, I do, in a way,' she confessed, totally blowing him away. ‘But not in the way you think. Look, you've always wanted to know about my relationship with Dean. Maybe it's time I told you.'

‘Maybe it is!'

‘All right, then,' she snapped, green eyes flashing. ‘But not till you've put something on. I can't stand here talking to you when you're in the nude. It's too…distracting.'

Jason didn't know whether to feel flattered or furious. Arching his eyebrows, he strode down to the bathroom where he wrapped a blue bathsheet around his hips. ‘This do?' he asked caustically on returning.

‘A bit better,' she said agitatedly, and walked over into the compact U-shaped kitchen. ‘I think I'll make us some coffee while I talk.'

‘Do that,' he bit out, and climbed up on one of the kitchen stools at the small breakfast bar.

She didn't say anything till the electric kettle was
on, and the mugs were all ready, then she turned to face him across the counter.

‘I first became infatuated with Dean when I was twelve and he was seventeen. I was in my first year at high school, and he was in his last. Practically every girl in school was mad about him. He was just so sexy-looking and so…oh, I don't know. Dangerous, I guess. He did things other people didn't dare to do. He was always being hauled up in front of the principal. He was labelled a troublemaker, but back then he just seemed exciting. As the years went by he seemed even more exciting, and highly unattainable. He went off to Sydney for ages, then came back riding a motorbike. You know the type. He had an earring in one ear, a tattoo on his arm. He wore tight jeans and a sinful-looking black leather jacket.'

Jason could not believe Emma could have been taken in by such superficial garbage! Till he thought of his relationship with Adele. When had he ever done more than scrape the surface of her personality? He'd been attracted to the glamorous façade, and her animal sensuality. How could he blame Emma for finding Ratchitt attractive when
he'd
been guilty of a similarly shallow infatuation?

But couldn't she see that was all it was? Not love, but the combination of misguided hero-worship and sexual attraction.

A dangerous combination, though. He did concede that.

‘But it wasn't just what he looked like,' she went on. ‘He had a way of focusing his attention on you sometimes which made you feel so…desirable. And
he used to say things. Sneaky little compliments whispered in your ear which made you feel wickedly sexy. Not just to me, of course. He said things like that to any female he fancied. I used to watch him with other girls and ache to have him ask me out. But I didn't think I was his type. Oh, he would flirt with me sometimes, but that was as far as it went. When he finally asked me out, I nearly died. I just couldn't handle it. I lost my head over him. I admit it.'

‘Not enough to sleep with him, though?' Jason pointed out testily. He had to say something to bring this paragon of rampant sexuality and charismatic machismo down to size!

Emma sighed. ‘You have no idea how hard that was.'

Jason had a pretty good idea how hard it had been for Ratchitt, if Emma had been as responsive to him as she'd been this past week. Not that he had any sympathy for Dean Ratchitt. Hopefully, some day soon, some jealous husband or boyfriend would do the world a favour and castrate the creep!

‘I know you think I didn't sleep with Dean because of my old-fashioned stance about sex before marriage,' she elaborated, ‘but that had nothing to do with it. Oh, yes, Aunt Ivy did bring me up to think that way, but that's not the real reason I held out. I wanted to go to bed with him like mad. But I was afraid if I did, he'd lose interest in me, as he always lost interest in every female he slept with. I thought keeping him dangling was my only chance to get him to marry me. Which was what I wanted at the time.'

Jason thought he did well to sit there and listen to
his wife tell him of the extraordinary lengths she'd gone to to get Ratchitt to marry her.

‘Is that why you didn't sleep with me?' he couldn't resist asking, his voice scornful. ‘Because you were afraid I wouldn't marry you if you did?' He didn't imagine that for a moment. He didn't rate such measures.

Strangely, she looked guilty as hell. ‘No. I…I stupidly believed that if I hadn't let Dean make love to me this side of marriage, then no way was I going to let someone who…who…'

‘Whom you didn't love,' he sneered.

‘Oh, that sounds terrible! And it's not how I feel now. I mean…'

‘Don't go saying you love me, Emma,' he snapped, ‘just because you think you've hurt my feelings! Let's go on as we began, for pity's sake, and not pretend. We went into this marriage with our heads firmly screwed on. Don't let a week of sex confuse you. Not that it wasn't fantastic sex. I have to give credit where credit is due, Emma. How you kept your virginity with Ratchitt is a damned miracle. I just hope that now you don't have any virginity to protect you, your resistance to him finds a new reason.'