The Society Wife Read Online Free PDF Page A

stairs, melting out of the shadows like something from a dream.
    Slowly she came down the last couple of steps and stood in front of him, shaking her head. ‘I don’t,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I don’t have the guts to kill it. What shall I do?’
    He shrugged. ‘Sometimes you just have to accept that there’s nothing you can do.’
    â€˜But that’s—’
    â€˜Life,’ he said flatly. ‘That’s—’
    But he didn’t finish, because at that moment the dusk was shattered by two loud explosions that detonated a chain of nightmarish images and sent an instant tide of adrenaline crashing through him. He saw her start violently, her head snapping round to the window, her eyes wide with shock. Pure instinct took over. Without thinking he reached for her, pulling her into his body, against his crashing heart as he shouldered open the door behind him and dragged her into the room beyond.
    The next moment the sky beyond the two tall, arched Gothic windows was lit up with showers of glittering stars.
    Fireworks. It was fireworks. Not bombs and mortars. Relief hit him, followed a heartbeat later by another sensation; less welcome, but every bit as powerful as he became aware of the feel of her breasts beneath the silk of her dress, crushed against his chest. As another volley of blasts split the sky she pulled away from him, laughing shakily.
    And then she looked around her at the hexagonal room, with its pale grey walls and its arched windows and the bed with the carved wooden posts at its centre, and suddenly she wasn’t laughing any more.
    â€˜Yours?’ she whispered.
    He nodded briefly. Over the years he’d lent Tom more money than either of them bothered to keep track of. The tower was atoken return for his investment. ‘It’s where I come when I want to be alone.’
    Their gazes locked. Time hitched, hanging suspended. Her full lips were parted, her breathing was rapid and her grey eyes shone with shimmering colour from the fire works that exploded above them. Then she blinked and looked away.
    â€˜Oh. I see, I’m sorry—I’ll go.’
    She moved towards the door, but he got there first, slamming it shut and standing with his shoulders against it.
    â€˜Tonight I don’t want to be alone.’

CHAPTER THREE
    A DRENALINE was pulsing through Tristan, making the beat of his heart hard and painful. It vibrated through his whole body as the explosions continued outside—audacious reminders of the things he had travelled around half the world to forget.
    In the grainy, blurred light Lily’s luminous beauty had an ethereal quality. Her eyes were still fixed on his, and as he gazed into them he felt the panic recede a little, washed away by the warm, anaesthetising tide of desire. Rationality slipped away, like sand through his fingers. For a moment he battled to hold onto it, to anchor himself back in the world of reason, but then she moved forward so she was standing right in front of him and he could see the spiked shadows cast by her lashes on the high arc of her cheekbone and feel the whispering sigh of her breath on his skin as she exhaled shakily.
    â€˜I don’t want to be alone, either,’ she said in a low voice. ‘But I don’t want to go back to the party.’
    Slowly, almost reluctantly, he reached out and touched the gleaming curve of her bare shoulder with his fingertip. He felt her jerk slightly beneath his touch, as if it had burned her, and an answering jolt of sharp, clenching desire shot through him.
    With deliberate slowness he bent his head, inhaling her scent as he brought his lips down to her shoulder. ‘You don’t like parties?’
    â€˜I don’t like crowds. I prefer…’ she breathed, then gave asoft, shivering gasp as his mouth brushed her skin ‘…privacy. I don’t like being looked at.’
    â€˜You’re in the wrong job,’