Read Online Marriage: To Claim His Twins by Penny Jordan - Free Book Online

travel pack of toothbrush and toothpaste to refresh her mouth. Now all she really wanted to do was lie down in a dark room, but of course that was impossible.
    â€˜You and I will occupy the other two rooms, of course,’ Sander was saying. ‘I expect that you will wish to have the room closest to the boys?’
    â€˜I could have shared a room with them,’ was Ruby’s response. Because sharing with the boys would surely prevent any more of those unwanted memories from surfacing? ‘There was no need for you to book three rooms.’
    â€˜If I had only booked two the hotel would have assumed you would be sharing my bed, not sleeping with the twins,’ was Sander’s response.
    Immediately another image flashed through her head: two naked bodies entwined on a large bed, the man’s hands holding and caressing the woman, whilst her head was thrown back in wild ecstasy. Sander’s hands and her head. Heat filled her body. Her own mental images were making her panic. What she was experiencing was probably caused by the same kind of thing that caused the victims of dreadful trauma to have flashbacks they couldn’t control, she told herself. They meant nothing other than that Sander’s unexpected and unwanted reappearance in her life was causing her to remember the event that had had such a dramatic effect on her life.
    To her relief the twins, who had been inspecting the suite, came rushing into the sitting room. Harry ran over to her to inform her, ‘Guess what? There’s a TV in our bedroom, and—’
    â€˜A TV which will remain switched off whilst you are in bed,’ Ruby told him firmly, relieved to be able to return to the familiar role of motherhood. ‘You know the rules.’ She was very strict about limiting the boys’ television viewing, preferring them to make their own entertainment.
    Sander’s comment about the rooms had penetrated her mind and was still lodged there—a small, unnerving time bomb of a comment that was having an effect on her that was out of all proportion to its reality. Thesound of Sander saying ‘my bed’ had made her heart jerk around inside her chest as though it was on a string—and why? She had no desire to share that bed with him; he meant nothing to her now. It was merely the result of only ever having had one sexual partner and being sexually inexperienced. It had left her reacting to a man saying the words ‘my bed’ as though she were a teenager, blushing at every mention of anything remotely connected to sex, Ruby derided herself.
    â€˜I thought we’d use the rest of the afternoon to get the boys kitted out with the clothes they’ll need for the island. We can walk to Harrods from here, or get a cab if you wish.’
    The last thing Ruby felt like doing was shopping, but she was determined not to show any weakness. Sander would only accuse of being a bad mother if she did.
    Hopefully she might see a chemist, where she could get something for her headache. It had been so long since she had last had one of these debilitating attacks that she didn’t have anything she could take for it. Determinedly trying to ignore her continuing feeling of nausea, she nodded her head, and then winced as the pain increased.
    â€˜The boys will need summer clothes,’ Sander told her. ‘Even in March the temperature on the island can be as high as twenty-two degrees centigrade, and it rises to well over thirty in the summer.’
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    Two hours later Ruby was battling between angry frustration at the way in which Sander had overruled all herattempts to minimise the amount of money he was spending by choosing the cheapest items she could find and a mother’s natural pride in her sons, who had drawn smiles of approval from the assistants with their appearance in their new clothes: smart, boyish separates from the summer ranges that had just come in, and in which Ruby had to admit they