The Hostage Bride by Kate Walker

Author:Kate Walker
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2001-05-29T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

“YOU can go home today.’

Just like that.

Was it possible? Or was he just cruelly playing with her emotions as a cat might toy with a mouse before finally delivering the deathblow?

‘Do you mean that?’

‘Mean it?’

Rico looked stunned that she had even had the temerity to ask.

‘Of course I mean it. Why would I say it if I meant something else?’

It still didn’t seem real. She couldn’t imagine why, having gone to the trouble of capturing her, keeping her here, he was going to let her go so easily and so quickly.

Rico had turned away to the worktop and was pulling open a drawer, taking out knives and forks.

‘You can leave as soon as you like. You’d better eat something first; then you can go home.’

Go home.

Last night that statement would have sounded like the most wonderful words in all the world, but somehow today they felt like the last straw. It was like being slapped hard in the face when she was already down so that she didn’t know what to think.

She only knew that memory after memory was piling up inside her head, destroying any pleasure she might take in the prospect of going home and making her feel desolate and despairing.

Go home to what? To the mess that her father had created of his life and see him arrested for embezzlement? To watch her mother, already weak and ill, grow worse as a result of the shock?

And what about herself? What did the future hold for her? No Edward, no marriage—no Rico.

Hot bitter tears welled in her eyes, blurring her vision, and she couldn’t bear the thought that Rico might see them. Pushing back her chair with an ugly scraping sound on the floor, she got clumsily to her feet and headed for the door.

‘Felicity!’

Rico’s voice was sharp and reproving.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’

‘To get ready,’ Felicity muttered, keeping her head stubbornly averted. ‘You said I could go.’

Yes, he’d said she could go—but did she have to make it quite so plain that she couldn’t wait to get out of here? That she was desperate to turn her back and leave?

But what else had he expected? He’d be every kind of a fool to believe that her behaviour was motivated by anything other than just a physical passion that had taken her as much by surprise as it had him. He’d been stunned by the way he’d wanted her—still wanted her, his body tightening simply at the memory of the hours they had spent in bed—but lust was all it was. How could there be anything more in a relationship with a woman who had been going to marry one man at the start of the day and had ended up in another’s bed less than twenty-four hours later?

And yet somehow he couldn’t just watch her walk out on him like this.

‘You can’t…’

Madre de Dios, what was wrong with him? Was he actually going to plead with her to stay? Hastily he readjusted his tone.

‘You haven’t eaten.

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