A Marriage to Remember by Carole Mortimer

Author:Carole Mortimer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 1997-09-01T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

IT WAS dark when Maggi woke up. The bedside clock showed it was after midnight, and it took her several disorientated seconds to realise that the heavy weight across her breasts was in fact an arm. Adam’s arm. One of his legs was also draped across both of her legs.

Almost as if, even in sleep, he was ensuring that she wouldn’t escape him…!

Quite when—or how—she had fallen asleep in his arms she didn’t know; she had been utterly convinced she would never be able to do so in such close proximity to him. But somehow emotional exhaustion had been stronger than her desire to be free of Adam, and she had slept.

Emotional exhaustion…! Her father—

‘I telephoned the hospital a short time ago.’ Adam spoke softly in the darkness. ‘Your father’s condition is still stable and your mother is asleep. They advised that you delay going back in until later this morning.’

How had he known she was awake, let alone what she was thinking? As far as she was aware, she hadn’t so much as moved a muscle. How had Adam ever known? He just had…

‘I’m going back now.’

‘I told them that,’ Adam assured her dryly. ‘We’ll leave shortly.’

‘I told you—’

‘Stop arguing, woman,’ he cut in wearily. ‘You never used to be so damned cantankerous! Believe it or not, I’ve always been very fond of your father, I have great respect for him. And that being the case, I intend going back to the hospital anyway. With you or without you,’ he added as she would have spoken again.

Once again she hadn’t the strength to argue. Adam could do what he liked—he usually did anyway!—and so would she. Except that his arm still lay across her breasts, his leg over both of hers… In fact, he was too damned close altogether!

He moved in the semi-darkness; a light was on in the hallway outside her slightly open bedroom door, showing him leaning up on one elbow as he looked down at her. Closer still!

‘You’re so beautiful, Magdalena,’ he told her, his hand moving to caress the silky darkness of her hair.

His voice was seductive in its softness, and Maggi felt that familiar fluidity in her body, that melting sensation in every bone. Her mouth tightened as she looked up at him. ‘I am now—’

‘You were always beautiful, damn it!’ he rasped harshly, his hand tightening briefly in her hair. ‘The way I thought about you, felt about you, that never changed, Magdalena. You’re the one who changed!’

‘I didn’t have any choice about it.’

‘Yes, you did, damn you.’ He was angry now. ‘You could have stayed my little blackbird, continued to fly—’

‘I couldn’t even walk, let alone fly!’ she returned as furiously, stung by his use of that name. ‘Blackbird’ was an endearment only used between them during their most intimate moments.

He rose up darkly in front of her. ‘I think your father was wrong three years ago,’ he ground out savagely, both hands grasping her shoulders now. ‘I should have stayed around, shaken you out of this self-pity that seems to have become such a part of you.

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