Two-Week Wife. Miranda Lee
but that it was the love a girl felt for a big brother or a best friend. She was sorry, but if he couldn’t accept that, then perhaps it would be better if he stayed out of her life.
She’d been right, of course. It would have been better if he’d stayed out of her life.
But he hadn’t. He just couldn’t. He remained her best friend, lending a fairly broad shoulder for her to cry on occasionally, and money when she was desperate enough to ask; Bianca had been brought up by her Scottish mother to ‘neither a borrower, nor a lender be’.
‘Don’t be silly.’ She pouted at him. She had pouting lips to go with that equally pouting bottom. ‘I don’t do things like that any more. I know I’m far too small to play with the really big boys.’
Only on the soccer field, he thought testily. It didn’t stop her playing with the really big boys in the bedroom. And the bigger the better, from what he could gather.
‘I wouldn’t put anything past you, Bianca,’ he ground out as he slopped some much needed whisky into his glass.
‘You make me sound so...so...’
‘Crazy?’ he suggested bitingly. ‘Irresponsible? Impulsive?’ She was all of those things. Not to mention warm, wacky, wild and wonderful, he added to himself on a silent groan.
Lifting the glass to his lips, he downed a good gulp of straight Johnny Walker. It burnt a fiery path down his throat and into his knotted stomach.
Bianca’s beautiful lips pursed further, her blue eyes narrowing, giving her an exotic, oriental look. This was enhanced by her high cheekbones, and the way her long black hair was pulled back tightly from her face. Adam had often fantasised about her being his own private geisha girl, especially when she wore the colourful red and white flowered kimono dressing-gown he’d given her last Christmas.
Bloody stupid fantasy, he thought ruefully. Bianca was as far removed from a geisha girl as any female could get!
‘Just because you don’t know how to have fun, Adam,’ she tossed at him with haughty disdain.
He snorted and strode across the sable-coloured carpet, flopping down into his favourite brown leather armchair. ‘Is that what you think you’re doing when you keep changing direction in your life at the drop of a hat?’ he threw up at her. ‘Was it fun you were having when you came to me last year, stony broke and without a roof over your head? Was it fun earlier this year, after that loser of a boyfriend dumped you? Do you really find it fun having others pick up your pieces?’
‘I do not expect you or anyone else to pick up my pieces,’ she huffed and puffed. ‘And I’ll have you know that I’m the one who usually dumps my “losers of boyfriends,” not the other way around.’
‘At least we agree on one thing,’ he said drily. ‘They’ve all been bums so far.’
‘Maybe,’ she countered blithely. ‘But they all had very nice bums, those bums.’
‘You’d know, I suppose.’ He quaffed back half the whisky, congratulating himself on the offhandedness of his reply—especially when the image of his Bianca being intimate with any part of another man’s anatomy nearly killed him. ‘But we have digressed. Back to your present little problem. Out with it, Bianca. I’m not in the mood for any of your female manoeuvrings tonight.’
‘All right, then, you meanie. I was just trying to tell you nicely, to make you understand that I had no idea this would eventuate. When the situation first arose, I didn’t have to involve you personally at all, but something unexpected has happened and now I have no alternative.’
Adam didn’t have a clue as to what she was talking about. But he feared he would. Soon. Only too well.
Bianca sat down on the sofa-end nearest his chair and leant towards him with the most heartwarmingly pleading look on her lovely face. ‘Please don’t be mad at me, Adam,’ she said, in a voice which would have melted concrete.
For a split second Adam felt himself begin to go to mush, before cold, hard reality had him getting a firm handle on his ongoing weakness for this incorrigible creature. She was going to use him again, as she had used him for years.
No more, he vowed staunchly. No more!
‘Out with it, Bianca,’ he snapped. ‘No more bull. Just give me the facts, and I’ll decide if I’m going to be involved or not.’
Her startled eyes betrayed surprise at his hard stance. She straightened her spine, then rocked her shoulders slightly from side to side in the characteristic gesture which usually preceded defiance or outright rebellion. Her chin shot up. Her eyes flashed and her mouth tightened. ‘There’s no need to take that tone.’
‘I’ll best be the judge of that, thank you. Now just spit it out, woman!’
‘Very well. It’s to do with my mother.’
‘What about your mother?’ Adam frowned. Bianca’s mum was a widow and had gone back to Scotland to live several years before. She’d been very lonely after her husband had been killed in a drag-racing accident.
Bianca was her only child and not much company once she’d finished university and had started flitting round the world on never-ending backpacking holidays. She only returned long enough to pick up a few months’ work, thereby saving up enough to be off again.
Mrs Peterson had several brothers and sisters back in Scotland, so it had made sense for her to return to her homeland. Then, six months ago in May, she’d been diagnosed with breast cancer.
‘Is she worse?’ he asked worriedly. ‘Do you need some more money to go and see her again?’
‘No to both those questions. Which is just as well. I haven’t finished paying you back for the last ticket to Edinburgh you bought me.’
True, he thought ruefully. Which was the only reason she’d stayed in one job and one place for so long. No doubt as soon as her debt was paid she’d be off again on some new adventure, trekking through the Himalayas or skiing down the mountain slopes of St Moritz.
‘No, Mum’s much better,’ Bianca was saying. ‘And there’s every chance that the cancer won’t come back.’
‘Then what’s the problem? I don’t understand.’ ‘She’s coming out here for a fortnight’s visit, that’s what. Her plane touches down next Saturday afternoon—a week from today. Her brothers and sisters all pitched in and bought her a return flight to Sydney.’
‘Well, what’s the problem in that? You should be thrilled. Oh, I see...you want her to stay here. That’s no trouble, Bianca. I don’t mind. I’m hardly here these days anyway, and there are two beds in your room, aren’t there?’
‘That’s the problem,’ she muttered.
Adam blinked his confusion. ‘The beds in your room are a problem?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Because Mum won’t be expecting me to occupy one, that’s why.’
‘You’ve lost me, Bianca.’
Her sigh was expressive. ‘It’s like this, Adam. Mum thinks we’re married. Naturally she’ll be expecting me to be sleeping in your bed. And she’ll also expect you to be around a bit more than you have been lately. God knows what you’ve been up to. If I didn’t know better I’d think you were avoiding me.’
‘She...thinks...we’re...married,’ he repeated slowly, his eyes narrowing with each word.
‘Don’t look at me like that, Adam. I didn’t mean any harm. Honestly. But when I was over there in May she looked so darned ill. Try to understand ...I thought she was going to die!
‘I knew she’d always wanted to see me settled—preferably with you—so I told her what would make her happy. I said we were engaged and going to be married.