Page 18 of Passionate Scandal

‘Is there something you’ve not told us?’ Madeline quizzed her stepsister when at last she’d talked her into stopping for coffee in one of the many small bistros scattered around London. ‘Like—the premature pattering of tiny feet for instance?’

‘Maddie!’ Nina was shocked. She even went bright red with embarrassment. ‘Charles hasn’t—wouldn’t—couldn’t…’

‘All right,’ Madeline let her off the hook, ‘I was only teasing. But brides don’t usually spend a whole afternoon drooling over baby cribs and teddy bears.’

‘Charles…’ The Cupid’s bow mouth quivered, and Madeline felt ashamed of herself. ‘Charles wants our wedding-day to be absolutely perfect. He said he wants me to walk down the aisle in my gown of white with no hypocrisy to mar my day. My day, Maddie,’ she sighed out dreamily, and went off into a world of her own while Madeline remembered another time and another place where a very different man had said those selfsame things to her. She, of course, being what she had been then, had scoffed at such silly, outmoded ideals. And now? she wondered thoughtfully. She would still scoff, she decided. When a man and a woman loved and desired each other, intended to bless that love with marriage vows, Madeline saw no reason to hold back on the rest just because of some old-fashioned custom which said the bride must be a virgin to wear white. Anyway, she’d intended to marry in pink—blush-pink—virgin or not. So what use would Dominic’s grand gesture have been then? No one at the wedding would have thought him honourable to the last seeing his bride come to him dressed in pink! But then, she mused drily, by the time it actually came to ordering her wedding-gown, the two families would probably have manoeuvred her into changing her mind and wearing white instead. Just as they’d manoeuvred their whole relationship along the lines they’d wanted it to take.

And there, she recognised, was the real problem that had haunted her during her stormy relationship with Dominic. She had never been really sure whether he hadn’t just been jostled along on everyone else’s enthusiasm. The fact that he had always managed to draw back from making love to her had only added to her fear that maybe he was only marrying her because everyone else seemed to think it perfect—and because she seemed to amuse him. And even that had palled in the end. In the end, Dominic hadn’t found her funny at all.

CHAPTER SIX

MADELINE appeared in the entrance to one of London’s most exclusive dining clubs, too busy trying to hide the sudden bout of anxiety that had attacked her to notice the way every male present in the grand foyer turned to stare at her in open appreciation.

She was wearing a knee-length gown of aquamarine silk. Little more than a drape of fabric which crossed smoothly over her breast then fastened at her waist with two aquamarine-studded buttons, it really was a more daring dress than she would normally have worn. But she’d wanted to shock, show Dominic in some crazy twisted way just what he had turned down four years ago. Because she knew—without vanity—that the woman she had developed into by far outstripped the child with whom he had once considered himself to be in love.

Acquiring what her mother called mirror awareness had taught her to be self-aware—and how therefore to make the best of what she had.

So the dress accentuated the long curving grace of her slender legs, moved with the sensual sway of her body, skimming her breasts in a deep cutting V which gave tantalising glimpses of her shadowed cleavage, and hugging her narrow waist before draping itself almost lovingly around her rounded hips and long silken thighs.

Her hair had been left loose for a change, brushed until the dark waves gleamed and crackled around her shoulders, then lifted away from her temples by two sparkling combs. Her make-up, severely plain as always, was just a simple touch of dusky grey-blue to her lids, and a raspberry-coloured lipstick that made the onlooker yearn to lick it off. Possessing eyelashes so long dark and naturally curling made it difficult for others to believe they were actually her own. So she rarely put herself out to further accentuate them.

But they were real enough. As Dominic Stanton well remembered as he stood, momentarily stunned into stillness by the vision she presented, hovering by the entrance. And even as her gaze settled on him and he watched those same lashes flutter downwards to hide whatever thoughts were going through her mind, his senses were being jolted by the exquisite memory of what those long lashes had felt like brushing against his skin when he kissed her.

Madeline took in a controlled breath of air and smiled a cool greeting as he approached. Her heart was bumping, her hands trembling a little, but she hid her nervousness by turning to hand over her jacket to the hovering maître d’, the smile she sent him blinding out any hint of tension in her.

‘Still slaying them with your smile, I see,’ Dominic drawled as he came up beside her, his mocking gaze following the maître d’ as he hurried away, flushing.

Madeline turned slowly back to face him, her own expression under tight control.

He looked fantastic. His dinner suit was conventional black, his shirt just plain white, bow-tie slim and black. Nothing extravagant about him, yet through it all he exuded the natural magnetism which made him Dominic Stanton, the compelling person he was, the dynamic businessman he was. A hard man to ignore at any time, he hadn’t changed in that direction in four years, she decided. His hair was still as dark and sleek as it had always been, and cut in that neat, short, conventional style he had favoured then. His face was still handsome, strong-boned, smooth-lined—but perhaps in a harder kind of way—his body still that perfect male frame of tightly packed muscle and long strong bones. He would be thirty-two years old now—going on thirty-three, and showed four years more cynicism in the curve of his slightly smiling mouth.

But other than that, he was still the only man she had ever met who could make her senses pulse in awareness.

‘Madeline,’ he murmured. ‘You look beautiful.’

Simply said, and all the more disturbing for it.

‘Thank you,’ she replied in a quiet, flat little voice that gave nothing away of what she was experiencing inside. Meeting him under cover of darkness had disturbed her deeply. And at the bank she had been too concerned for Vicky’s feelings to allow herself the indulgence of studying him in the better light. But seeing him here, with nothing else to do other than absorb every single detail of him, made her want to turn and run from the turmoil of response he was creating inside her.

He took her arm. And in sheer instinctive response to his touch, she started, pulling free of his grasp before she’d realised what she had done. Dominic frowned, his mouth hardening as he glanced sharply at her. Then, determinedly, he took hold of her arm again, watching narrowly as she had to quell the urge to pull away from him a second time.

‘We did a lot of things to hurt each other four years ago, Madeline,’ he said grimly. ‘But I don’t recall ever giving you cause to flinch at my touch.’

; He didn’t? But then, Dominic was misunderstanding the reason why she pulled away. Which perhaps was better for her.

‘Then I apologise for the—unnecessary reaction,’ she murmured, ‘you’ll have to put it down to nervous anticipation,’ using the truth to cloak itself.

A dark brow lifted at that. ‘Did I catch a hint of acid on that smooth tongue just then?’ he drawled.

He really was the most beautiful man, she thought with a sudden sense of overwhelming loss. ‘You could have done,’ she acknowledged, holding his mocking gaze with one of her own, ‘but I do hope not.’

Her drawl seemed to irritate him further because his fingers tightened on her arm as he turned her abruptly towards the wide curving staircase which led up to the club’s exclusive dining-room. ‘So calm,’ he mocked as they climbed the stairs side by side. ‘So exquisitely beautiful, so very sophisticated. You know,’ he said quietly, ‘I was prepared to find you changed. Four years is a long time after all. But I never once considered the possibility that you would give in to Dee’s ambition to turn you into one of her kind.’

‘So you don’t approve,’ she concluded, though the derision she’d picked up in his tone rankled. She had, after all, only acquired what he himself had accused her of lacking badly.

He shrugged. ‘In some ways the transformation is both delightful and rather challenging, but…’