Read Online A Whirlwind Marriage by Helen Brooks - Free Book Online Page B

home each evening to the brittle palace he’d installed her in. He was to be her everything; nothing else was supposed to exist for her. She was glad now they hadn’t had children.
    The thought shocked her, causing her to glance up from under her thick eyelashes at the grim, handsome profile as they walked towards the wine bar.
    Every time she had had her period she had thought it was the end of the world for a while; she had been so desperately eager to have a part of him growing inside her, filling her belly with their love. But it would have been wrong, very wrong. All that would have happened was that another label would have been attached to her—‘Mother of his children’. Wife and mother of his children. And the real Marianne, the Marianne that had died a little more with each month of their marriage, would have been buriedso deep she would never have clawed her way out of the abyss. And yet he had loved the real Marianne at first…hadn’t he? She wasn’t sure about even that now.
    Oh, Zeke, Zeke. She found she was crying inside, although her eyes were dry. How had they come to this?
    ‘Are you eating properly?’
    ‘What?’
    His deep voice brought her out of the dark morass of her thoughts, and now he repeated gruffly, as he glanced down at her white fragile face, ‘I said, are you eating properly? You look thinner.’
    Now he mentioned it there were signs of strain about his eyes and mouth, Marianne thought suddenly as she wrenched her gaze away from his, and the skin was drawn tight over his cheekbones. ‘I’m eating enough,’ she said flatly, part of her crying out, Don’t let him be nice. I can cope with this if he isn’t nice.
    ‘This is crazy, Marianne. You know that, don’t you?’
    ‘Here’s the wine bar,’ she said hurriedly, ignoring the fact that he had stopped to face her as she all but ran the few feet to the steps that led down to the cellar bar.
    She thought she heard him swear but she wasn’t sure, and then she had negotiated the steps and was aware of Zeke just behind her as she entered the arched doorway into warmth and light and noise.
    They found a small table for two in a corner of the bustling bar, and Marianne watched Zeke as he walked across to get their drinks. He looked every inch the assured man about town, she thought, aware—with a kind of painful pride that was terribly misplaced in the circumstances—of more than one pair of female eyes following his progress. Assured and vital and strong, with a sort of dark power about him that was dangerously attractive. Ithad certainly attracted Liliana de Giraud anyway, she reminded herself tensely.
    He got served immediately, despite the others already waiting—he was that sort of man—and returned to her with a bottle of red wine and two large glasses. ‘I’ve ordered a table for two in their bistro upstairs,’ he said shortly as he sat down beside her. ‘In about half an hour.’
    ‘I don’t want anything to eat,’ she protested quickly.
    ‘Then you can watch me eat, can’t you?’ He raised his eyes from the wine he was pouring and she was shocked at the piercingly cold light in the grey orbs.
    ‘Look, Zeke, I agreed to have a talk with you, that’s all.’ Marianne frowned at him, refusing to be intimidated.
    He shrugged lazily as he handed her the glass of wine. ‘A talk, a glass of wine, a meal—what’s the odds?’ he drawled with irritating insolence.
    ‘A wife, a mistress on the side? Yes, I get your drift,’ Marianne said cuttingly.
    ‘For crying out loud!’ The calm contemptuousness vanished and he sat up straight, almost knocking over his glass of wine. ‘Liliana is not my mistress. She’s temporarily employed by me, that’s all, whatever you call it.’
    ‘I call it adultery,’ Marianne said as calmly as she could through the swirling of her stomach. ‘And so did her ex when he called me the other night.’
    ‘Her ex?’ Zeke stared at her, his dark brows drawn together in a ferocious