Marriage on the Rebound
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‘Too short?’ she asked Jemma pensively, giving a self-conscious tug at the skirt-hem.
‘Are you joking?’ Jemma scoffed, standing beside Shaan to view the finished product in the full-length mirror. ‘Rafe’ll need holding back when he sees you in this. You look fabulous, Shaan,’ she added softly. ‘Utterly stunning.’
But Shaan didn’t feel stunning. She felt as if she was looking at a total stranger. As if that girl, with the big brown empty eyes and jet-black hair swept sleekly away from her face into a silken knot on the crown of her head, was someone else entirely.
In fact the only thing she did recognise, which said it really was herself standing there, was the fine gold chain around her throat, with its heart-shaped locket suspended from it, which held photographs of her parents’ beloved faces.
Cold fingers tremored up to gently touch the familiar locket, and suddenly tears were flooding to blur out the reflection.
‘Why the tears?’
With a small start she blinked the moisture away, long lashes flickering down and upwards as she brought her gaze into focus on Jemma’s grave face in the mirror.
‘I thought brides were allowed to be weepy,’ she parried.
‘Sure,’ Jemma agreed. ‘They’re even allowed to look all pale and tantalisingly ethereal.’ Her voice was loaded with mockery. ‘All you have to do now is smile and I might even begin to believe that you really want this.’
‘Don’t,’ Shaan pleaded hoarsely, hooding her too revealing eyes. ‘Don’t probe, Jemma. I don’t think I’m up to it right now.’
‘Why?’ her best friend demanded. ‘Because you know deep down inside that this—marriage, for want of a better word for it,’ she tossed off tartly, ‘won’t stand up to scrutiny?’
Shaan’s heart fluttered in her breast—the first sign she’d had for days that life actually still existed inside her—as a moment’s desperation welled up.
Her lashes flickered again, and a brief glimpse of that desperation revealed itself to Jemma. On a gasp, she spun Shaan around to give her a small shake. ‘For goodness’ sake!’ she said fiercely. ‘What the hell is really going on here?’
The bedroom door opened, and as if Rafe could actually sense that Shaan’s courage was beginning to fail her he walked arrogantly into the room, his silver-hard gaze flashing from one tense female face to the other.
Shaan went hot, then cold, staring at him through a hazy mist which wasn’t entirely due to her lingering tears. Rafe was wearing a simple dark business suit over a plain white shirt and dark silk tie. Nothing special. Yet there was something about him—the red rose he wore in his lapel maybe—which seemed to make a statement of possession in itself, that trapped the air in her lungs and sent a prickling sense of awareness tripping though her.
‘Shaan, you look beautiful,’ he murmured brusquely. ‘Shall we go?’
Like a woman in a trance, she nodded mutely and walked obediently towards him, feeling Jemma’s silent, pleading, helpless protest following behind her in urgent waves but unable to stop herself.
In a few mad days, Rafe had made himself so indispensable to her that she could deny him nothing. He was the rock she clung to in the storm-wrecked destruction that had taken place inside her.
As if he knew it, he took her hand as soon as she was in reach, drawing it firmly into the crook of his arm and holding it there with his own hand.
There, you’re safe now, the gesture seemed to say, and she lifted her bruised eyes to his and smiled—albeit weakly, but it was a smile.
She didn’t hear the soft gasp her friend uttered when she saw that smile, nor did she see the hard look of triumph Rafe sent Jemma, because she had already lowered her head and was lost in that hazy world of nothing, relying totally on this man beside her for her very survival.
It was a brief civil ceremony—a relief to Shaan, who didn’t think she could have coped with anything more. Her aunt and uncle were there. They hugged and kissed her and told her to be happy, but she saw the look in their eyes and knew they were still suffering a similar shock to herself over what had happened.
Jemma was more direct. She took hold of her friend’s shoulders and made her look directly at her, taking her chance while Rafe stood across the room talking grimly to a man he had briefly introduced as, ‘Saul, my second in command.’
‘Anything,’ Jemma said urgently. ‘If for any reason you need me for anything—you just call and I’ll come. Understand?’
Shaan nodded, her eyes huge and dark and empty in her pale face. ‘Thank you.’ She leaned forward to brush a kiss across Jemma’s warm cheek. ‘Please don’t worry about me, Jem,’ she pleaded as she drew away again. ‘Rafe will look after me.’
‘Will he?’ Jemma’s sceptical gaze lifted to take in the man in question. ‘He better had, or the Danvers family will have me to contend with.’
Shaan managed to smile at that, recognising the threat for what it was—a weak one, since Jemma was in no position to do the Danvers family any harm. But the meaning was clear—Jemma was not fooled. She was puzzled, but not fooled, and she considered the Danvers family had done enough to her friend without hurting her any more.
There was no wedding breakfast. Rafe rushed her straight into a waiting limousine the moment they left the register office. He said it was because they had a plane to catch, but Shaan had to wonder if he was rushing her away because he knew their deception would not hold up to any real scrutiny.
And the irritating press didn’t help. Their flashbulbs had been exploding in their faces from the moment they had stepped out of Rafe’s house, and hadn’t stopped since. By the time the chauffeur-driven limousine sped away from the kerb, Shaan was wilting with fatigue, the act of playing the blissful bride having drained her to the very dregs.
‘All right?’ Rafe enquired, his hand covering her cold ones where they lay together on her lap.
She nodded, sighing as she leaned back into the soft, squashy leather seat. ‘Will our picture be splashed all over the papers again tomorrow?’ Her tone alone said she didn’t relish the idea.