Marriage Without Love by Penny Jordan

Author:Penny Jordan [Jordan, Penny]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2012-01-24T23:43:49+00:00

Mrs Johnson was looking after Nicky, and already she was fretting to get back to him. Ever since his accident she worried whenever she was away from him, and Kieron had already rebuked her once for fussing over him.

She had been bitterly angry, resenting his assumption that he had an equal right to say what was best for Nicky, and now her stomach lurched protestingly as she realised that marriage to him had given him that right.

She wandered away, deep in thought, not realising until he caught her arm that Matt had been following her. He looked thin and unhappy, and she was consumed with guilt at not letting him know what was happening.

'I couldn't believe it,' he reproached her. 'Briony, what am I going to do without you? No one listens to me but you.'

She almost laughed out loud at his childish self- absorption, realising with new clarity that his appeal had been similar to Nicky's, only far weaker, and that it had been his dependence upon her which had relaxed her barriers, as though she had known instinctively that he would never represent the same threat to her defences that Kieron did.

'I miss you so much, Briony,' he mumbled. 'I wanted to talk to you. I don't know what to do. Should I take Mary back?'

If he had to ask her he couldn't be very sure of his feelings, Briony thought in exasperation. She was just about to tell him that he would have to make his own decisions, when a dark shadow loomed, and she glanced up to find Kieron bearing down on them, his face grim and unsmiling.

'Briony is my wife now,' he told Matt angrily, grasping her wrist painfully tightly. 'Just remember that. And as for you,' he grated to Briony as Matt shrank back, 'what the hell do you think you're playing at? I haven't gone to all this trouble to convince everyone that we're a pair of deliriously happy reunited lovers just to have you sabotage everything by letting that idiot weep all over you!'

The intensity of his anger shocked her into silence.

'Matt and I are old friends,' she protested when she had found her voice. 'No one would ever think that. . . .'

'You were lovers?' Kieron grated. 'You'd be surprised. I thought you were myself, until I found out you were virtually untouched. . . .'

'Like the Sleeping Beauty awaiting the Prince's kiss?' Briony flung at him. 'Is that what you think, Kieron? That you only have to touch me and I'll waken up? I'm sorry to have to disappoint you. I'm frozen all the way through.'

'You melted the other night,' he reminded her softly, watching her eyes so that there was no way she could conceal her shock wave of reaction.

'I didn't know what I was doing,' she countered bravely. 'Nicky's accident . . . the shock. . . .'

'Yes, I know all about that,' he agreed harshly. 'You don't need to put into words that you wouldn't have let me within fifty miles of you if your defences hadn't been cracked wide open.

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