Married By Christmas Read online

  ‘Snakes and ladders?’ she suggested lightly.

  ‘Yes...’ he answered slowly. ‘Although my sister always said I cheated when we played as children; I used to go up the snakes and down the ladders!’

  Lilli laughed again. Either the man really was funny, or else the wine was taking effect; either way, this was the most fun she had had in a long time. ‘I used to do that too,’ she confided, lightly touching his arm, instantly feeling the steely strength beneath his jacket. ‘And there’s no way we can play if we both cheat!’

  ‘True,’ he agreed, suddenly very close, his face mere inches away from hers now. ‘You know, Just Lilli, there’s one game I have an idea we’re both good at—and at which neither of us cheats!’ His voice was mesmerisingly low now, his aftershave faintly elusive, but at the same time completely masculine. ‘What do you say to the two of us—?’

  ‘Patrick!’ A feminine voice, slightly raised with impatience, interrupted him. ‘Why aren’t you at the party?’

  He held Lilli’s eyes for several seconds longer, a promise in his own, lightly squeezing her hand as it still rested on his arm, before turning to face the source of that feminine impatience. ‘Because I prefer to be here,’ he answered firmly. ‘And, luckily for me, so does Lilli.’

  ‘Lilli...?’ The woman sounded startled now.

  So much so that Lilli finally turned to look at her too. Geraldine Simms! She looked far from pleased to see the two of them sitting so close together, Patrick’s hand still resting slightly possessively on Lilli’s.

  Lilli looked coldly at the other woman. ‘Geraldine,’ she greeted her hardly.

  ‘I didn’t realise you were here,’ Geraldine said faintly.

  She could easily have guessed that! ‘Sally Walker telephoned me earlier and persuaded me to come with her.’ Lilli finished abruptly, ‘Wonderful party,’ her sarcasm barely veiled.

  ‘So wonderful Lilli and I were just about to leave.’ Patrick stood up, lightly pulling Lilli to her feet beside him, his arm moving about the slenderness of her waist now. ‘Weren’t we,’ he prompted.

  As far as Lilli was aware—no, but it did seem like an excellent idea.

  She turned her head slightly to give Geraldine a triumphant look. ‘Yes, we were just about to leave,’ she agreed brightly.

  ‘But—’ Geraldine looked flustered, not at all her usually confident self. ‘Patrick, you can’t leave!’ She looked at him beseechingly, not at all certain of herself—or him.

  His arm tightened about Lilli’s waist. ‘Watch me,’ he stated determinedly.

  ‘But—’ Geraldine wrung her hands together. ‘Patrick, I threw this party partly for you—’

  ‘I hate parties, you know that.’ There was a hard edge to his voice that hadn’t been there when he’d flirted with Lilli. ‘I’ll come back tomorrow when all of this is over. In the meantime, I intend booking into a hotel for the night. Unless Lilli has any other ideas?’ he added, looking at her with raised brows.

  ‘Just Lilli’ had realised, from the conversation between these two, that the original plan must have been for Patrick to spend the night here. And, considering Geraldine’s intimacy with the man she had been draped over in the other room, that was no mean feat in itself; what did this woman do, line them up in relays? Whatever, Patrick had obviously decided he would rather spend the night with her, though the house she shared in Mayfair with her father was not the place for her to take him; she felt hurt and betrayed, but not that hurt and betrayed!

  ‘A hotel sounds fine,’ she accepted with bravado, green eyes challenging as she looked across the room at Geraldine.

  The other woman’s stare relaxed slightly as she met that challenge. ‘Lilli, don’t do something you’ll regret,’ she cautioned gently.

  Geraldine knew she had seen the two of them together, knew why she was doing this! All the better; there was no satisfaction in revenge if the person targeted was unaware of it...!

  Lilli turned slightly into Patrick’s body, resting her head against the hardness of his chest. ‘I’m sure Patrick will make sure I don’t regret a thing,’ she said huskily.

  ‘Lilli—’

  ‘Gerry, just butt out, will you?’ Patrick told her impatiently. ‘Go and find your ageing lover and leave Lilli and me to get on with our lives. I’m not a monster intent on seducing an innocent, and you aren’t the girl’s mother, for goodness’ sake,’ he added disgustedly.

  Lilli looked at the other woman with pure venom in her eyes; she had never disliked anyone as much as she did Geraldine Simms at that moment. ‘Yes, Geraldine,’ she said flatly. ‘Please go back to your lover; I’m sure he must be wondering where you are.’

  ‘We’ll go out the back way,’ Patrick suggested lightly. ‘Unless you want to fight your way out through the chaos?’

  ‘No, the back way is fine.’ Her coat didn’t matter any more; no doubt it would be returned to her in time!

  ‘Patrick!’ Geraldine had crossed the room to stop them at the door, a restraining hand on Patrick’s arm now. ‘I realise you’re angry with me right now, but please don’t—’

  ‘I’m not angry with you, Gerry,’ he cut in contemptuously. ‘No one has any ties on you; they never had!’ His face was cold as he looked down at her.

  ‘This isn’t important just now,’ the beautiful redhead dismissed impatiently. ‘Anyone but Lilli, Patrick,’ she groaned.

  So the woman did have a conscience, after all! Unless, of course, she just didn’t want Lilli, in particular, walking off with one of her men...? In the circumstances, that was probably closer to the truth.

  ‘Please don’t worry on my account, Geraldine.’ Lilli deliberately used the other woman’s full name. The two of them had never been particularly close in the past, although Lilli did usually call her Gerry; but after this evening she hoped they would never meet again. ‘I know exactly what I’m doing,’ she affirmed.

  Geraldine looked at Lilli searchingly for several long seconds. ‘I don’t think you do.’ She shook her head slowly. ‘And I’m absolutely positive you don’t, Patrick,’ she added firmly. ‘Lilli is—’

  ‘Could we leave now, Patrick?’ Lilli turned to him, open flirtation in the dark green of her eyes. ‘Before I decide snakes and ladders is preferable!’

  He looked at her admiringly. ‘We’re leaving, Gerry,’ he told the other woman decisively. ‘Now.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Now, Gerry,’ he insisted, opening the back door for Lilli to precede him. ‘Enjoy your party,’ he called over his shoulder, his arm once more about Lilli’s waist as they stepped out into the cold December evening.

  The blast of icy cold air was like a slap on the face, and Lilli could feel her head swimming from the amount of champagne and wine she had drunk during the evening. In fact, she suddenly felt decidedly light-headed.

  ‘Steady.’ Patrick’s arm tightened about her waist as he held her beside him. ‘My car is just over here. Don’t you have a coat?’ He frowned as she shivered from the cold while he unlocked the doors of his sleek black sports car.

  She suddenly couldn’t remember whether she had a coat or not. In fact, she was having trouble putting two thoughts together inside her head!

  She gave a laugh as he opened the car door for her to get in, showing a long expanse of shapely leg as she dropped down into the low passenger seat. ‘I’m sure you’ll help me to get warm once we reach the hotel,’ she told him seductively.

  His mouth quirked. ‘I’ll do my best, Just Lilli,’ he assured her, the promise in his voice unmistakable.

  Lilli leant her head back against the seat as he closed her door to move around the car and get in behind the wheel. What was she doing here...? Oh, yes, she was getting away from Geraldine and him!

  ‘Any preference on hotels?’ Patrick glanced at her as he turned on the ignition.

  Hotels? Why were they going to a hotel...? Oh, yes...this man was going to make love to her.

  She shook her head, instantly wishin
g she hadn’t as it began to spin once again. ‘You choose,’ she said weakly.

  She wasn’t actually going to be sick, was she?

  God, she hoped not. Although she had no idea where they were going as Patrick turned the car out onto the road. And at that moment she didn’t care either. Nothing mattered at the moment. Not her. Not him. Not Geraldine Simms!

  ‘All right?’ Patrick reached out to squeeze her hand reassuringly.

  She didn’t think she would ever be ‘all right’ again. She had felt as if her world had shattered three months ago; tonight it felt as if it had ended completely.

  ‘Fine,’ she answered as if from a long way away. ‘Just take me somewhere private and make love to me.’

  ‘Oh, I intend to, Just Lilli. I intend to.’

  Lilli sat back with her eyes closed, wishing at that moment for total oblivion, not just a few hours in Patrick Devlin’s arms...

  CHAPTER TWO

  ‘YOUR jacket.’ The garment was thrown over the back of a dining-room chair.

  Lilli didn’t move, didn’t even raise her head. She wasn’t sure that she could!

  She had been sitting here at the dining-table for the last hour, just drinking strong, unsweetened black coffee; the smell of food on the serving plates sitting on the side board had made her feel nauseous, so she had asked for them to be taken away. There was no one else here to eat it, anyway. At least, there hadn’t been...

  ‘Did you hear what I said?’

  ‘I heard you!’ She winced as the sound of her own voice made the thumping in her head even louder. ‘I heard you,’ she repeated softly, her voice almost a whisper now. But it still sounded too loud for her sensitive ears!

  ‘Well?’

  He wasn’t going to leave it at that. She should have known that he wouldn’t. But all she really wanted to do, now that her head had at least stopped spinning, was to crawl into bed and sleep for twenty-four hours.

  Fat chance!

  ‘Lilli!’ The impatience deepened in his voice.

  At last she raised her head from where it had been resting in her hands as she stared down into her coffee cup, pushing back the dark thickness of her hair to look up at him with studied determination.

  ‘My God, Lilli!’ her father gasped disbelievingly. ‘You look terrible!’

  ‘Thank you!’ Her smile was merely a caricature of one, even her facial muscles seeming to hurt.

  She knew exactly how she looked, had recoiled from her own reflection in the mirror earlier this morning. Her eyes were a dull green, bruises from lack of sleep visible beneath them, her face chalk-white. Her tangled hair she had managed to smooth into some sort of order with her fingers, but the overall impression, she knew, was not good. It wasn’t helped by the fact that she still had on the revealing red dress she had worn to the party the night before. A fact Grimes, the family butler, had definitely noted when she’d arrived back here by taxi an hour ago!

  But if her father thought she looked bad now he should have seen her a couple of hours ago, when she’d first woken up; then she hadn’t even been wearing the red dress! And the rich baritone voice of Patrick Devlin had been coming from the bathroom as he’d sung while he took a shower...!

  Her father dropped down heavily into the chair opposite her. ‘What were you thinking of, Lilli?’ He looked at her searchingly. ‘Or were you just not thinking at all?’ he added with regret.

  He knew; she could tell by the expression in his eyes that he did. Of course he knew; Geraldine would have told him!

  Because her father had been the man at Geraldine Simms’ side last night, the gorgeous man that Sally had referred to so interestedly, the man Geraldine had been draped over so intimately, her ‘ageing lover’, as Patrick had called him.

  ‘Were you?’ Lilli challenged insultingly. ‘Yes, I saw you last night,’ she scorned as a guarded look came over her father’s handsome face. ‘With Geraldine Simms,’ she continued accusingly, so angry she didn’t care about the pounding in her head at that moment. ‘But I suppose you call her Gerry.’ Her top lip curled back contemptuously. ‘All her intimate friends do!’

  He drew in a harshly controlling breath. ‘And is that why you did what you did?’ he asked flatly. ‘Went off with a man you had only just met? A man you obviously spent the night with,’ he added as he looked pointedly at her dress.

  ‘And what about you?’ Lilli accused emotionally. ‘I don’t need to ask where you spent the night. Or with whom!’ She was furiously angry, but at the same time tears of pain glistened in her eyes.

  Her father reached out to touch her hand, but she drew back as if she had been burnt ‘You don’t understand, Lilli,’ he told her in a hurt voice. ‘You—’

  ‘Oh, I understand only too well.’ She stood up so suddenly, her chair fell over behind her with a loud clatter, but neither of them took any notice of it as their green eyes locked. ‘You spent last night in the bed of a woman everyone knows to be a man-eating flirt, a woman who has been involved with numerous men since her brief marriage—and equally quick divorce!—five years ago. And with my mother, your wife, barely cold in her grave!’ She glared across the table at him, her breathing shallow and erratic in her agitation, her hands clenched into fists at her sides.

  For that was what hurt the most about all this. After a long illness, her mother had died three months ago—and now her father was intimately involved with one of the biggest flirts in London!

  It was an insult to her mother’s memory. It was—it was—God, the pain last night of seeing her father with another woman—with that woman in particular!—had been almost more than she could bear.

  Her father looked as if she had physically hit him, his face as pale as her own, the likeness between them even more noticeable during those seconds. Lilli had always been so proud of her father, had adored him as a child, admired him as an adult, had always loved the fact that she looked so much like him, her hair as dark as his.

  Now she wished she looked like anyone else but him—because at this particular moment she hated him!

  ‘You’re right, Father, I don’t understand,’ she told him coldly as she rose and walked away from him. ‘But then, I don’t think I particularly want to.’

  ‘Lilli, did you spend the night with Patrick Devlin?’

  She stopped at the door, her back still towards him. Then, swallowing hard, she turned to face him, her head held back defiantly. ‘Yes, I did,’ she told him starkly.

  He frowned. ‘You went to bed with him?’

  Lilli stared at her parent woodenly. She had woken up in a hotel bedroom this morning, wearing only her lace panties, with Patrick Devlin singing in the adjoining bathroom as he took a shower, the other side of the double bed showing signs of someone having slept there, the pillow indented, the sheet tangled; so it was probably a fair assumption that she had been to bed with him!

  But the real truth of the matter was she didn’t actually remember, couldn’t recall anything of the night before from the moment she had closed her eyes in the car—and even some of the events before that were a bit hazy!

  Her mouth tightened stubbornly. ‘What if I did? I’m over twenty-one.’ Just! ‘And a free agent.’ Definitely that, since the end of her engagement. She had barely been out of the house during the last six months—which was the reason the champagne and wine she’d drunk last night had hit her so strongly, she was sure. At least, that was what she had told herself this morning when she’d finally managed to open her eyes and face the day. ‘Who was I hurting?’ she added challengingly.

  Her father gave a weary sigh, shaking his head. ‘Well, I believe the intention was to hurt me. But the person you’ve hurt the most is yourself. Lilli, do you have any idea who Patrick Devlin is?’

  Why should she? As her father had already said, she had only met the man last night. And her nonsensical conversation with Patrick in the kitchen had told her nothing about him, except that he had a sense of humour. But then, she had told him nothing about herself
either, was ‘Just Lilli’ as far as he was concerned. She never expected to see or hear from him again!

  ‘I only wanted to go to bed with him, not hear his life story!’ she scorned dismissively.

  Her father drew a harsh breath. ‘Perhaps if you had done the latter, and not the former, this conversation wouldn’t be taking place. In fact, I’m sure it wouldn’t,’ he rasped abruptly. ‘You really don’t have any idea who he is?’

  ‘Why do you keep harping on about the man?’ She snapped her impatience. ‘He isn’t important—’

  ‘Oh, but he is,’ her father cut in softly.

  ‘Not to me.’ She gave a firm shake of her head, wincing as she did so.

  She just wanted to forget about Patrick Devlin. Last night she had behaved completely out of character, mostly because, as her father had guessed, she wanted to hit out at him. But also at Geraldine Simms. Well, she had done that—more than done that if her father’s reaction was anything to go by!—and now she just wanted to forget it had ever happened. She couldn’t even remember half of last night’s events, so it shouldn’t be that hard to do!

  ‘Oh, yes, Lilli, he is important to you too.’ Her father nodded grimly. ‘Patrick Devlin is the Chairman of Paradise Bank.’

  She thought back to the man she had met last night in Geraldine Simms’ kitchen—she couldn’t count this morning; she had left the hotel before he’d stopped singing and emerged from the bathroom! She remembered a tall, handsome man, with slightly overlong dark hair, and laughter in his deep grey eyes. He hadn’t looked anything like a banker.

  She shrugged. ‘So? Is he married, with a dozen children; is that the problem?’ Although if he were he must have a very understanding wife, to have gone off to a party on his own and then have felt no compunction about staying out all night. No...somehow she didn’t think he was married.

  Her father gave a sigh at the mockery in her tone. ‘Okay, let’s leave that part alone for a while. Do you know what else he is, Lilli?’