Fancy, of course, adored him, wriggling with delight when he scratched in exactly the right place behind her ears. Well, the dog was female, Lauren thought with a queer twist in her heart. Acquaintance made, he stood up in a lithe movement, tall and strong against the green of the garden, and looked around him with an expressionless face.
Lauren scanned the bold, autocratic bone structure, skin tingling as though she’d brushed up against an electric fence. ‘If we are married—if the ceremony was legal—what can we do?’
‘Annulment on the grounds of non-consummation being out of the question,’ he said curtly, ‘I presume it will mean divorce.’
A pang of—bitterness?—ripped through her. Trying to regain some sense of control, she dragged in a deep breath and led the way down to the beach. She bent sideways to take off her sandals and dropped them on the grassy bank beneath one of the huge pohutukawa trees. ‘Surely it will be invalid everywhere but Sant’Rosa?’
Despising the pleading note in her voice, she clamped her mouth on more words. When Guy didn’t answer she swung around to face him.
He said coolly, ‘A marriage contracted legally in one country is usually legal in any other, unless it’s polygamous. Even underage marriages are not necessarily invalid.’
Lauren concentrated on relaxing her taut muscles as she walked beside him along the sand, pleasantly warm beneath the soles of her feet. A gull soared up in front of them with a shriek that sounded too much like derisive laughter.
‘Thanks for warning me,’ she said slowly.
Fancy pushed into her, offering comfort for an emotion she’d never understand—one even Lauren didn’t recognise.
Guy’s face was a handsome mask over his thoughts. ‘If anyone contacts you, simply refuse to comment.’ He waited before adding with exquisite suavity, ‘You needn’t, of course, be concerned that I plan to claim any marital rights.’
Colour scorched along her cheekbones. ‘I’m not,’ she said shortly. ‘Why didn’t Josef tell us it might be valid?’
Guy’s mouth thinned. ‘If you remember, he warned us that it might be valid only on Sant’Rosa. But what else was he to do? He’s a good bureaucrat—even with his world falling to pieces around him, he wouldn’t send you to another country without papers.’
Lauren’s teeth savaged her lower lip for a second. Faced with the horror of war, Josef had done what he could to save her from a similar fate.
She said on a sigh, ‘If you wanted to make me feel like a heel, you’ve succeeded. Is he all right?’
‘As all right as a man can be who has lost his oldest son,’ he said brusquely.
Lauren’s eyes filled with sudden tears. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again, groping for a handkerchief to wipe her eyes and blow her nose. ‘Against that, I haven’t got much to complain about.’
‘Not a lot.’ His tone was so dry it could have soaked up a minor lake or two. ‘It’s not a disaster, Lauren; inconvenient, certainly, and with the prospect of some rather fulsome and irritating publicity if it gets out, but nothing to panic about.’
Head held high, Lauren said, ‘Of course. But I don’t consider myself married to you!’
‘That,’ he said calmly, ‘is entirely mutual. On reflection, our charming idyll on Valanu was rash, but hindsight is always wiser than foresight.’ He turned and examined the house, a sprawling white place mellow with many years of love and care. ‘If the ceremony turns out to be legal, I’ll contact you so that we can apply to whatever court has the power to have the marriage dissolved.’
‘Thank you,’ she said automatically.
Still with his gaze on the house, he said, ‘You have a very indulgent employer. Does he allow all his executives to take their holidays in his private hideaway?’
How did he know that Marc was her employer?
Then she realised what he was implying.
Cool distaste coloured her tone. ‘You’ll have to ask him that.’
‘I assume your fear of the media is in case your lover hears about your indiscretion on Valanu,’ he said, his pleasant tone failing to hide the steely edge in the words.
‘What?’
He said contemptuously, ‘Don’t lie to me. I know you are his mistress, since even before he married his lovely New Zealander.’
One of the first things Marc taught her was that losing her temper put her at an immediate disadvantage. With his advice in mind, Lauren had kept her cool when facing down unfriendly meetings, rejecting sexual harassment and dealing with carpet sellers in Middle Eastern markets.
Pain clawed her so sharply that she lost control. ‘My life is none of your business,’ she said in a voice that should have turned the ground beneath them to permafrost.
Black brows climbed just enough to indicate Guy’s total and scornful disbelief. ‘When you invited me into your bed and your arms, it became my business,’ he said silkily.
Stabbed by a searing mixture of anguish and outrage, she said thinly, ‘That was an—an aberration.’
He laughed. ‘A very pleasurable one for me,’ he drawled.
‘I am not Marc Corbett’s mistress,’ she ground out.
‘It is an old-fashioned term, I agree. Do you prefer lover?’
Her lips tightened. ‘Neither.’ Trying to regain control of the situation, she went on, ‘Before I decide what to do, I’ll consult my solicitor. He might be able to find out something yours hasn’t.’
Guy stopped and looked down at her, narrowed golden eyes uncompromising in the stark framework of his face. ‘Get this straight,’ he said flatly. ‘You don’t decide—we’re in this together.’
Her mouth dried. ‘I didn’t mean that I’d make a unilateral decision.’
After a pause he said abruptly, ‘Tell me about your relationship with Marc Corbett.’
Guy watched the familiar blankness shut down her expression. When her tongue stole out to wet her lips, he had to rein in the lash of desire that cut through him.
She said quietly, ‘I don’t know whether I can trust you.’
Cold fury stirred beneath the desire. ‘I can’t, of course, force your confidence.’
She glanced up, pale eyes glinting and intelligent. After a long moment she said abruptly, ‘He saved my life.’
Astonishment replaced his anger. Whatever he’d expected to hear, it wasn’t that. ‘How?’
Muscles moved beneath the silken skin of her throat as she swallowed. ‘Just after I graduated from university I developed leukaemia.’
His blood ran cold. ‘Go on.’
‘I needed a bone marrow transplant, but they couldn’t find one to suit.’ She spoke dispassionately, as though it had happened to some other woman. ‘In the end we discovered that Marc was a perfect match. If he hadn’t been, I’d have died.’
The ugly clutch of fear fading, Guy said slowly, ‘I see.’ It was outrageous, unbelievable that this lovely, vital woman had been threatened by death.
Lauren stopped to pick up a shell. Keeping her gaze on its pearly sheen and intricate spirals, she said, ‘After that, I hero-worshipped him a bit.’
‘I can understand that.’ The crispness of his tone hid, he hoped, the questions seething through his mind.
How had her doctors found that Marc Corbett was a bone marrow