One Night in the Orient Read online

  He was silent, then said unevenly, “Well, thank God for that.”

  She took a deep breath and with desperate courage—or foolhardiness—said shakily, “I’m just—just finding it very difficult. You’ve not shown—I mean, I knew you wanted me—but that’s not—what you’re talking about is love.”

  And held her breath.

  Whatever, knowing what Nick felt for her had to be better than this horrible no-man’s-land she’d been enduring.

  He tensed, and the seconds ticked by, and then he said in a taut, driven voice, “Yes. It has to be love.”

  Her breath sighed out. “It’s about time,” she told him fiercely. “I’ve loved you for years and years—”

  Nick choked back a laugh, deep and male and hugely satisfied, then said, “You love me? Are you sure?”

  Siena didn’t hesitate. Her heart in her words, she told him, “I’ve loved you ever since I was old enough to know what love is. I just didn’t realise it. I loved you when we made love together that first time—”

  He said, “It was the first time for you, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes,” she said simply.

  He shook his head and accused, “You let me believe you’d had other experience.”

  “Would you have made love to me if I hadn’t?”

  His jaw hardened. “Probably not. Although—how the hell do I know? I wish I’d known.”

  “I don’t think it would have made any difference,” she said quietly.

  “I must have hurt you so much when I walked out.”

  “Yes,” she said simply.

  His arms tightened again. Locked in that fierce grip, Siena knew with a sure, radiant joy that her yearning heart had reached its goal. In Nick’s arms she was home.

  He said, “So you chose someone safe, someone you didn’t love, someone who couldn’t hurt you?”

  “Yes. Until you charged in like some buccaneer and carried me off to Hong Kong. And I—” She turned her face into his shoulder and corrected herself. “No, we made love.”

  Quietly he said, “And you had an orgasm for the first time.”

  “It wasn’t that—or not just that.” She looked up at him, her eyes searching out the hard line of his jaw, the fierce framework that would keep him handsome all his life. “I wondered that too—and accused myself of being shallow, thinking it was too soon to know.” She stopped, then went on more strongly, “But it isn’t too soon because I’ve always loved you. I just had to let myself accept it.”

  He said with a quiet intensity that removed any last shred of doubt from her mind, “My very dear heart.”

  He stopped, and she felt his chest lift against her. Incredulously, she realised the hope she’d cherished was springing into full-blown bloom.

  And then, at last, he kissed her.

  Later, when they’d arrived back at the house, he poured champagne. “To us,” he said, handing her a glass. “And to our future.”

  She laughed up at him, and said, “Shouldn’t we be toasting Gemma and Adrian? If it hadn’t been for them I wouldn’t have gone to Hong Kong with you and we might never have known—might have spent our lives looking for someone.”

  Nick made a sound remarkably like a snort. “It would have happened,” he told her. “I might have been too thick-headed to understand what I felt for you, but I’d have got there in the end.”

  She smiled a little shakily at him. Before she could say anything he added in an entirely different voice, hard and flat, “I knew I had to do something when I caught sight of that damned ring on your finger.”

  Siena stared at him, saw the naked truth in his face. “Do something?” she asked uncertainly.

  “I felt as though someone had stolen the only thing that mattered to me. It was almost obscene that you should be wearing another man’s ring. The thought of you making love with him made me want to go out and lay waste to the world.”

  Nick had always been so controlled, so self-reliant, she found it difficult to imagine him capable of such extravagant emotion.

  Yet she was convinced. He said tautly, “It also made me afraid.”

  “Afraid?” she asked, not believing him.

  His mouth twisted. “In the house I grew up in it was downright dangerous to show your feelings.”

  “Your father?” she asked slowly, almost afraid to probe any further.

  “Yes. He was a despot.”

  He walked across to the window and looked outside, yet Siena doubted if he saw anything in the moon-glossed garden. Chilled, rubbing her upper arms nervously, she didn’t prompt; she waited, knowing that this was the key to Nick, the reason control was so important to him.

  Without turning his head he said, “My father didn’t physically abuse my mother, or me, but he used our emotions to control every aspect of our lives. I was his weapon against her; when he was angry with her I was the one who suffered, so she was very careful not to do anything that would make him angry. We never knew what would set him off, so I grew up controlling every outward expression of emotion. By the time my mother left him she was a nervous wreck, which is how he got custody. Then she recovered, I went to live with her, and he committed suicide. His death was a relief to both of us.”

  Horrified, Siena said, “I understand.”

  “I hope you don’t.” A steely note in his words revealed just how much he wasn’t telling her. “I asked her once why she’d stayed with him. She said she loved him. And she told me—probably out of misplaced loyalty—that he’d loved me. That’s when I decided, I suppose, that love wasn’t worth it.”

  Still in that cool, judicial tone he went on, “Seeing your father with you and Gemma, with your mother, convinced me my father was the one at fault—not my mother, not me. But I still didn’t understand love. And then five years ago I came back from overseas and met you again, and you were utterly enchanting and I couldn’t resist you.”

  “And you resented me,” she said, almost afraid to say the words she knew had to be spoken.

  He turned then. “Not you—never you! I did resent the fact that I couldn’t control my feelings for you.”

  Siena went across and looped her arms around his big frame. He was rigid, as though this explanation of his feelings was costing him far more than she could understand.

  After a moment he relaxed, and looked down at her with a lopsided smile. “You were fearless and independent and funny, and I wanted you so desperately it scared the wits out of me. I knew what I should do—leave you alone. It was a huge blow to my self-esteem to find I couldn’t. I found myself becoming possessive, and that rang alarm bells. But I still couldn’t do the decent thing and walk away. And then we made love, and it was something I’d never expected—a complete giving of myself. I wanted all of you, for ever. So I played the coward.”

  He paused, then said, as though the words were wrenched from him, “It was hell to be forced to accept that I have enough of my father in me to develop that urge to control.”

  “I don’t believe for a moment that you’re anything like your father!” Siena said indignantly. “Clearly there was something very mixed-up in him.”

  “I was concerned enough to discuss him with a friend—a psychiatrist. He felt my father must have lacked confidence that my mother would stay with him, so he used whatever weapons he had to make sure she couldn’t leave. Instead, he drove her into a breakdown. When I went to live with her he had nothing, no way of controlling either of us. So he killed himself.”

  “Do you blame yourself for that?”

  She held her breath until he answered. “I did at first. When she applied for custody I was asked by the social agency which parent I wanted to live with. I told them I wanted to live with my mother. Killing himself might have been a last-ditch attempt to gain sympathy; I don’t know. Perhaps he just hoped she’d suffer some sort of remorse for the rest of her life.”

  “It’s a miracle you grew up so—so stable,” she said unevenly.

  “You can thank my mother and you
r parents—but mainly your father—for that. He showed me that a man can love without wanting to dominate.” He looked at her with a naked longing. “That primitive instinct to keep my woman close might be hardwired into me, but I know the link between you and your family will never be broken.”

  Something tightened around her heart. “You’re included too, Nick—you’re already part of the family.”

  She longed to be in his arms, to hold him close, but she sensed that this was not a time for that.

  Instead she said, “On your own terms, of course. But when we forge new links the old ones are …” She searched for the right words to explain what she meant, eventually settling on, “They’re not weakened. The new ones might become stronger, but the old ones are still there—like the link between you and your mother when your father had custody.”

  His smile twisted. “I might have enough of my father in me to periodically try and assert an authority I have no right to claim, but I can control my feelings, and I love you.” He stopped, then said unevenly, “I’ve never said that to anyone else, and I’m glad I waited until I could mean it.”

  Tears filled her eyes, and he caught her to him, holding her with such gentleness her heart melted.

  In a muffled voice she demanded, “What took you so long? You must have guessed that I loved you five years ago.”

  “I tried to make you hate me. Even in London I couldn’t see that you’d ever forgive me for what I did to you.”

  “Oh,” she said, on a long sigh of understanding.

  He nodded. “But I think I always hoped. In Hong Kong I discovered that the world was far more vivid and bright, full of delight just because you were with me. And now I know that without you there will be no colour for me, no peace, no satisfaction in my life.”

  “Exactly,” she said quietly, lifting her arms to cup his face. Her fingers tingled against the rough silk that was his beard. “From now on it’s us, Nick.”

  Blue eyes met green, and clung, and this time there was no challenge, nothing but trust.

  Yet still Nick didn’t kiss her. As though making a vow, his voice very deep and sure, he said, “And, because I’m aware of this tendency to come over all primitive where you’re concerned, I won’t allow it to wreck our lives. You and your family are close, but I understand your love for them isn’t taking anything away from what we—you and I—have. I don’t want to own you.”

  He held her away from him and smiled down at her, his expression open so that she could read the trust and the love there.

  “You wouldn’t let me, anyway,” he said.

  They kissed, and with complete faith she surrendered the last bastion of her heart to him, confident he’d keep his word.

  “Siena. Darling, wake up.”

  Siena woke to her husband’s quiet voice. Automatically her hand went to her stomach. “Mmm?” she murmured, then gasped as the muscle beneath her palm tightened and a wave of tension gripped her.

  “I think it’s time,” she said when it eased.

  “You’ve been making odd little noises for about half an hour,” Nick told her.

  The telephone shrilled. He gave a muted laugh and lifted it. “Yes,” he said. “I’m taking her to the hospital right away.” His gaze lingered on his wife’s face as he listened. “OK, I’ll do that.”

  He put the phone down. “Gemma sends her love,” he told his wife, scooping her up and setting her on her feet with infinite tenderness. “And I have to let her know as soon as I can after the baby is born.”

  An hour and a half later he looked down into the face of the tiny boy in his arms and said thoughtfully, “Next time—if there is a next time—you’re going to spend the last week in the nursing home. Both the midwife and obstetrician said the second baby tends to arrive more quickly.”

  Siena laughed. Waves of tiredness swept over her, but she was filled with exhilaration, the kind of soul-deep happiness she’d almost grown accustomed to in the past couple of years. “There will be a next time,” she said confidently. “But not straight away—and this birth was so easy I’m sure I can have our next baby at home.”

  The baby started to whimper and Nick looked concerned. “Do you think he’s afraid?”

  “No,” she reassured him. “How can he be? You’re holding him. You’re his father and he already knows your voice.”

  Nick sat down in the chair beside the bed and held the precious bundle up against his shoulder, competently stroking the tiny back until their son’s whimpering stopped.

  His father said, “I think he’s missing you. When he gets used to us we’ll take him to Hong Kong, shall we? We won’t tell him it’s the place where we found out we loved each other until he’s grown up, but it will always be special to me because of that.”

  She smiled mistily at him. “I’d love that. It’s very special to me too.”

  A few moments later the door opened, then hastily closed again. Neither new parent heard it; they were too busy kissing—carefully, so as to keep their child in the warm circle of their arms.

  All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.

  All Rights Reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Enterprises II BV/S.à.r.l. The text of this publication or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, storage in an information retrieval system, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the prior consent of the publisher in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  ® and TM are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.

  First published in Great Britain 2011

  by Mills & Boon, an imprint of Harlequin (UK) Limited,

  Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR

  © Robyn Donald 2011

  ISBN: 978-1-408-92603-1

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Excerpt

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Copyright