The Contract by Marsh, Nicola (read aloud books .txt) 📕

would let it. Instead, after seeing this house, she had some idea of why he suppressed his feelings. How could anyone live in a mausoleum like this and express any normal emotion? He didn’t know how.

“She’s amazing all right. I just wish there was something I could do.” His brow furrowed and she yearned to reach up and smooth it.

Her heart ached with empathy. “Just be there for her. And if she has any last requests, do your best. That’s what she would want.”

Steve looked away and she wondered about his sudden evasiveness. He’d been acting strangely since they had entered his grandmother’s bedroom but then who could blame him? He had to watch the only woman he loved dying before his eyes and if anyone could understand what that did to a person, she could.

“I’m trying. Believe me, I’m trying.”

He looked like he wanted to say more but seemed to bite back the words. She wondered if it had been the mention of children that had him on edge; she’d noticed the assumed blankness that descended when his grandmother had mentioned it, followed by that vehement head shake. They still hadn’t spoken about it. What would he think of her secret cravings for a brood of youngsters to fill her life with love and laughter? And more importantly, her need for a normal love-filled marriage before she would even consider bringing a child into this world?

By his impenetrable expression as he squared his shoulders for the upcoming meeting with his mother, she had a fair idea. Their marriage was business, as he reminded her on a daily basis. He didn’t have room in his well-ordered life to love anyone and she’d be well served to remember it.

“Ready to meet Mother?”

Amber nodded. So what if she felt like she was about to face a firing squad? She’d done worse...like walk down the aisle and marry a man whom she hardly knew. And then expected him to love her.

Compared to that, meeting the salubrious Mrs. Rockwell would be easy.

Seven

Amber closed her eyes and leaned back as the plane taxied down the runway and took off. Drained would only begin to describe how she felt after afternoon tea with Georgia Rockwell; try pummelled, browbeaten, interrogated and thoroughly chewed up and spat out.

From the first minute the designer-clad woman had laid eyes on her, she’d turned up her pert nose and kept it there, treating her new daughter-in-law like an unwanted disease.

Sure, Georgia had appeared polished and refined from the top of her French chignon to the soles of her imported stilettos, but her calculated barbs had struck home on several occasions, leaving Amber feeling like a voodoo doll stabbed by a million pins. If she’d thought Steve had hang-ups, she’d been wrong. She should give him a medal for turning out as well as he had, considering his mother.

“Do you want something to eat?” Steve’s solicitous tone only served to rile her further. She wanted to rant and rave against the injustice of having to face that woman.

Her eyes flew open and she fixed him with a glare, blaming her rolling stomach on unresolved tension rather than lack of food. “I’m not hungry.”

“How about a drink then? Looks like you need one.”

“No thanks to you.”

“Hey. What did I do?” He tried to look innocent and failed miserably. Besides, with that striking face and eyes that could pierce her to her soul, she seriously doubted Steve Rockwell had ever looked innocent in his entire life.

“You could have warned me.” Though a little voice inside her head told her otherwise; nothing could have prepared her for the harridan that passed as Steve’s mother.

“I did. You didn’t listen.”

“She almost ate me alive.”

Amber squirmed at the recollection of her mother-in-law’s disgusted expression when she’d spied her toe ring and said, “What is that thing?”

Her subconscious, like a devil prodding her with his pitchfork, had tempted her to lift her top and show off her navel ring too, but she’d succumbed to decorum and ignored it.

“Don’t worry about her. I don’t.” He accepted two glasses of wine from a stewardess and handed her one. “Here. This should hit the spot.”

Amber took a sip, enjoying the refreshing crispness of the Barossa grapes she’d quickly grown accustomed to. The wine was one of the perks of being a Rockwell; she’d rarely flown before and travelling business class had been a novelty she could get used to. Steve had opened her eyes to a world of luxury she’d never dreamed about, let alone thought she could have one day. A pity she couldn’t have the one thing she wanted, his heart.

“We don’t really know much about each other, do we?”

She noted the sudden tensing of his shoulders, the downward turn of his lips and for the hundredth time, wondered why she couldn’t hold her tongue.

“What’s there to know?” He turned to face her, the action drawing attention to his broad chest, clearly defined in one of the pale blue business shirts he favoured.

“Well, how you feel about kids, for starters?”

There, she’d said it, the one thing that had been niggling since this afternoon. If she was completely honest with herself, she’d been wondering about it since she’d first agreed to his hare-brained scheme of becoming his wife.

He drained the remainder of his wine before speaking. “I want a child.” He spoke with all the conviction of a man sentenced to hanging. In fact, with his voice devoid of emotion, he sounded like he would rather choose a noose than a bassinet and diapers.

“Try to curb your enthusiasm.”

She picked up the in-flight magazine and flicked the pages, not really seeing anything beyond a few pictures, trying to control her growing disappointment. What had she expected?