Read Online Her Christmas Fantasy & The Winter Bride by Lynne Graham, Penny Jordan - Free Book Online Page B

that…’
    Lisa floundered, her face flushing betrayingly as he invited helpfully, ‘So that what?’
    â€˜So that people would think that you and I…that you had bought those clothes for me and that you and I were lovers,’ she told him fiercely.
    â€˜But surely anyone who really knows you…a prospective fiancé, an established lover, for instance…would automatically know that it was impossible for us to be lovers?’ he pointed out to her.
    â€˜Henry and I are not lovers.’
    Lisa bit her lip in vexation. Now what on earth had prompted her to tell him that? It was hardly the sort of thing she would normally discuss with someone who was virtually a stranger.
    Again the dark eyebrows rose—both of them this time—his response to her admission almost brutally comprehensive as he asked her crisply, ‘You’re not? Then what on earth were you doing thinking of getting engaged to him?’
    Lisa opened her mouth but the words she wanted to say simply wouldn’t come. How could she say them now? How could she tell him, I loved him, when she knew irrevocably and blindingly that it simply wasn’t true, that it had possibly and shamingly never been true and that, just as shamingly, she had somehow managed to delude herself that it might be and to convince herself that she and Henry had a future together?
    In the end she had to settle for a stiff and totally unconvincing, ‘It seemed a good idea at the time. We had a lot in common. We were both ready to settle down, to commit ourselves. To—’ She stopped speaking as the sound of his laughter suddenly filled the car, drowning out the sound of her own voice.
    He had a very full, deep, rich-bodied and very male laugh, she acknowledged—a very…a very…a very sensual, sexy sort of laugh…if you cared for that sort of thing…and of course she didn’t, she reminded herself firmly.
    â€˜Why are you laughing?’ she demanded angrily, her cheeks flying hot banners of scorching colour as she turned in her seat to glare furiously at him. ‘It isn’t…there isn’t anything to laugh at…’
    â€˜No, there isn’t,’ he agreed soberly. ‘You’re right… By rights I— How old are you? What century are you living in? “We had a lot in common. We were both ready to settle down…”’ he mimicked her. ‘Even if that was true, which it quite patently is not—in fact, I doubt I’ve ever seen a couple more obviously totally unsuited to one another—I have never heard of a less convincing reason for wanting to get married.
    â€˜Why haven’t you been to bed with him?’ he demanded, the unexpectedness of the question shocking her, taking her breath away.
    â€˜I don’t think that’s any of your business,’ she told him primly.
    â€˜Which one of you was it who didn’t want to—you or him?’
    Lisa gasped, outraged. ‘Not everyone has…has a high sex drive…or wants a…a relationship that’s based on…on physical lust,’ she told him angrily. ‘And just because…’
    Whilst they had been talking Oliver had been driving, and now unexpectedly he turned off the main road and in between two stone pillars into what was obviously the drive to a private house—a very long drive, Lisa noted, before turning towards him and demanding, ‘What are you doing? Where are you taking me? This isn’t a garage.’
    â€˜No, it isn’t,’ he agreed calmly. ‘It’s my home.’
    â€˜Your home? But—’
    â€˜Calm down,’ Oliver advised her drily. ‘Look, it’s gone one in the morning, Christmas morning,’ he emphasised. ‘This isn’t London; the nearest large petrol station is on the motorway, nearly thirty miles away, if it’s open—and personally what I think you need right now more than anything