One Night to Wedding Vows (Wedlocked!) by Kim Lawrence

Author:Kim Lawrence [Lawrence, Kim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin Presents
Published: 2016-02-29T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

Three months later

LARA GAVE HERSELF over completely to the explosion of sensation as it hit, savouring the sweet release from devouring hunger.

Still breathing hard, she forced her lids apart as Raoul rolled off her and lay next to her.

‘Oh, wow, that was—’

‘Just sex.’

The words had pretty much the same effect as a bucket of cold water; they usually did.

She hid her hurt in sarcasm. ‘And there was me thinking it was the start of something special, but I’m terribly grateful that you keep reminding me, because you’re so irresistible I might not be able to stop myself falling in love with you.’

Raoul didn’t react. He just levered himself out of bed in one fluid motion and began to collect the clothes he had dropped on the floor when he had not quite made it out of the door earlier.

‘As you’re a god among men...a—’

‘Cut it out, Lara.’

She smiled and added sourly, ‘Unfortunately no sense of humour, so that’s it, I’m afraid. I’d never fall in love with a man who can’t laugh at my jokes.’ Or for that matter a man she knew every woman he encountered imagined naked. To marry that sort of man you’d need either impregnable self-confidence or a lack of imagination.

‘I could never love a woman who—’ He looked into the clear green eyes laughing up at him and his half-smile vanished.

There was nothing else to add. He could never love a woman. Love had almost destroyed him once; love was never going to enter into this or any other relationship he had.

He had been uneasy about the sense of connection he sometimes felt until he realised this was down to the fact that, since Lucy, his time with women had been counted in nights whereas he had been sharing a bed and his body with Lara for three months. Another three and she would vanish from his life.

Lara sensed his withdrawal. He did that so often—the sudden mood change, the broody silences—she’d stopped reacting to it.

‘You’ve lost a button,’ she said, watching him fasten his shirt and thinking he’d need a sense of humour or a stiff drink when she finally told him her news.

He dragged back his dark hair with an impatient hand. ‘It doesn’t matter. I’m late.’

She smiled. Late was good; late was a legitimate excuse for not telling him.

‘So, Friday...?’ She managed to say it as if not seeing him for four days were no big deal, but the truth was she missed him—or, as Raoul would have no doubt explained, she missed the sex.

The first twenty-four hours of their married life had pretty much set the pattern of the days and nights to come: he would leave on Sunday evening or Monday morning and come back Thursday or Friday.

Lara recognised she was pretty much the classic mistress, just with a ring and the social recognition that went with that. Social recognition meant she got treated with respect, which in turn meant she could have lunched out every day, had she chosen to, and was regularly asked to lend her name to any number of charities and good causes.

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