She stopped in the middle of the lounge and turned to look at him. She had her shoes in one hand, her pearls in the other and her face was shadowed with weariness.
‘Alex, this is no time—’
‘Sit down, Tattie,’ he ordered, and came across to her with two tall glasses in his hands.
‘What’s this?’ she queried as he handed her one.
‘Something long, cool and delicious for someone who has partied as vigorously as you have. Don’t worry, I’m not planning to make you drunk and seduce you.’ He looked down at her wide eyes and slightly apprehensive expression.
Tattie took the glass from him, drank deeply as if she was very thirsty, then in a stiff little voice recounted her conversation with his mistress. And she sat down abruptly.
Alex lounged against a pillar and merely twisted his glass in his hands. ‘What she told you is not an accurate representation of the events.’
Tattie went to wave her hand and realised she was still clutching her pearls. She put them down carefully. ‘It doesn’t matter one way or the other to me, Alex.’
‘I would have thought it might in the light of how we go on, Tattie. You did say you wanted to discuss that with me.’
‘Well. Yes. But…’ She trailed off, looking almost ashen with weariness and strain now. ‘I can’t think straight.’
He took his time. He sipped his drink then he said quietly, ‘My suggestion is that we stop fooling around and get this marriage off the ground.’
Tattie’s mouth fell open as she sorted through this. ‘Fooling…?’ she said incredulously, picking on perhaps the least startling aspect of his advice.
‘Or whatever you like to call it.’ He looked briefly quizzical.
‘You know what I like to call it, Alex.’
He lifted an eyebrow at her. ‘You also gave me to understand that you knew what you were getting into, Tattie. But, for what it’s worth, your suggestion of a year’s grace was a good one. At least we know now that we can get along pretty well.’ His mouth quirked. ‘We don’t appear to have any habits that drive each other up the wall.’ He looked at her with a question in his eyes.
‘That’s…assuming we were brother and sister, Alex. Lovers could be a different matter.’
He put his glass down on a beautiful, inlaid pedestal table and came over to her. She stared up at him wide-eyed as he removed her glass from her fingers then drew her to her feet.
‘My dear Tattie,’ he murmured with his hands resting lightly on her shoulders and his gaze summing her up from head to toe, ‘I feel quite sure that it could only enhance our relationship to become lovers. Trust me.’
His fingers slipped from her shoulder to trace the line where his pearls would have lain and, despite her tiredness and confusion, she couldn’t help the reaction that came to her again, that trembling sensation any close contact with him brought to the surface.
‘But sleep on it,’ he suggested.
‘I…’ She bit her lip.
‘I’m off on a tour of the pearl farms early tomorrow,’ he continued. ‘I’ll be away for a few days. So you’ll be able to do more than sleep on it.’ He kissed her lightly on the top of her head. ‘I thought, after that, we could spend a little while at Beaufort. I have some ideas for it.’
Sheer blackmail!
Tattie sat up, saw it was nine o’clock in the morning and clutched her head as the blackmail thought raced through her mind.
Tired as she’d been, sleep had been difficult, and when she’d achieved it weird dreams populated by Leonie Falconer resembling some sort of smug sun goddess had plagued her. So why had she woken up with blackmail on her mind?
Because apart from her mother only Alex knew how close to her heart Beaufort especially was. How could he not? True, she’d been fascinated by the cultured-pearl side of his business—she would have loved to be visiting the farms with him—but it was his cattle stations and how he handled them that she had attempted to absorb like blotting paper. All for the purpose of applying that knowledge to Beaufort and Carnarvon should she ever have to run them on her own.
But, more than that, perhaps only Alex guessed that twelve months had not been long enough for her to have the confidence to run them on her own and that was why he’d applied the sheer blackmail of promising her some of his time at Beaufort and mentioning the ideas he had for the station. What else could she think?
‘You could ask yourself why he wants to stay married to you, Tatiana,’ she murmured, and lay back with a sigh.
Had the impossible, the wonderful, the dream within a dream that she hadn’t dared to allow herself to dream, come true? Had her husband finally fallen in love with her? Or had the time come to amalgamate her inheritance with his into one big cattle operation, something that had not happened to date?
Why, she pondered gloomily, did that seem much more likely?
And she answered herself tartly, he made her feel like a kid, not—apart from one fleeting moment yesterday and she wasn’t even sure about that—a woman he found desirable. It was as simple as that.
On the other hand—she sat up again, struck by a new thought—why had he divested himself of his mistress? Because of a growing but hidden attraction to her—or so she would have no ammunition with which to continue the stalemate or base a decision to leave him on?
Her bedside phone rang. She stared at it, then lifted it reluctantly.
‘Hello?’
‘Tattie?’ her mother-in-law said down the line in a slightly overwrought way. ‘My dear, that was the best party I’ve ever given and all thanks to you!’
Tattie frowned. ‘No way, Irina. I didn’t do anything; you did it all.’
‘But you were there, you were so lovely, and the whole world could see that you and Alex are perfect for each other—I just wanted to tell you! Perhaps next year,’ she added, ‘we will have a little addition to the family to celebrate? Tattie…’ There was a slightly awkward pause down the line—an indication of a bull being taken by the horns as it turned out. ‘Are there any problems in that direction? Because I have the best gynaecologist in the country, the most understanding, most gentle, most kind, and he has performed miracles for several of my friends’ daughters.’
This time Tattie grimaced, then drew a deep breath. ‘Irina…’ But she couldn’t do it. She simply couldn’t dent her mother-in-law’s enthusiasm and her old-fashioned belief that her arranged marriage concept had worked blissfully—although it did cross her mind to say, Perhaps you should have found a Greek girl for Alex. A girl who would understand these things and know where her duty lies…
She cleared her throat. ‘Uh—Irina, no, no problems that I know of, but this is between Alex and me, I feel…I really feel, don’t you?’
There was silence, then, ‘My dear, forgive me,’ Irina said a little tremulously down the line. ‘Of course it is. It’s just that I have such a longing for grandchildren and, sadly, I’m not getting any younger.’
‘Irina…’ What to say? Tattie thought desperately, because in every other respect Irina had been a lovely mother-in-law. Nor was she getting any younger, and she was also plagued by a troublesome hip, but kept putting off a hip replacement because of her fear of hospitals and operations.
She was saved by Irina herself, who said bravely, with less tremolo, ‘I promise not to mention these things again, Tattie. I just… Last night…seeing you and Alex…I got carried away. Forgive me?’
‘Of course,’ Tattie said warmly. ‘Tell you what, why don’t we have