A Wish and a Wedding Read Free

crucial turning point in life—on the cusp of adolescence, when all those core conflicts began to emerge. Any person of heart might find her actions understandable, even forgivable.
    Not Haddo.
    She had trusted him completely. Now he might as well have pushed her out of the Beech Baron minus her parachute.
    â€œYou can’t possibly stay here, Tori.”
    If that wasn’t rejection, what was? She was diminished in his eyes, in her own eyes. Beyond consolation. What she had previously thought, she discovered to her great shame, was simply not true.
    Except for the odd thing. And there was no getting away from it. Despite how he was acting—as if she had been attempting to rape him—there had been those brief moments when it was he who had handled her yielding body like the most ardent of lovers. It was his mouth that had covered hers so hungrily, his tongue that had lapped hers, his divine sex that had slammed into the delta of her throbbing body, as though desperate to plunge into her.
    I didn’t imagine it! It had happened. Those were the moments that would be burned into her memory.
    And why not? Those moments had shaped her.
    Â 
    Afterwards, with her name, her fortune, her beauty—which was to prove more problematic than anything else—and her social entrée, her relationship with Haddo had still played thedominant role in her life. And not only because he would control the purse strings until she was twenty-five. Despite how much she told herself she loathed him, everyone and everything paled before Haddo. He was the quintessential magnificent male. She had as good as convinced herself she couldn’t stand the sight of him, but her whole being yearned for what had been.
    Even when her mind shut down on him, her body remembered. The terrible pity of it then was that she had been fool enough to believe she could bring a ravishing pleasure to them both. How could she have been so wrong? Surely what she had so strongly desired Haddo had too? How else was she to interpret the way he had been with her that special day? She’d been sixteen: a grown-up, a child no longer. And she had been lovely. Everyone had told her so. Except her mother, of course, who was never happy with her, no matter how she looked or what she did. But her mother, Livinia, hadn’t been there for her birthday.
    Liv’s hectic social life—Victoria wasn’t supposed to call her Mum or Mother—centred around Sydney and Melbourne. Liv was way out of her element on Mallarinka. No one in the extended Rushford family liked her anyway, though for the most part they did their best to hide it. All except Pip, who had a long, measuring stare and could be amazingly direct.
    Victoria questioned herself constantly about what had happened. Was she certain of the way Haddo had looked up at her as she’d descended the central staircase in her beautiful emerald-green party dress? It had exactly matched her cat’s eyes. Yes, she was. She would even swear to it in a court of law if she had to. Not that anyone would ask her to. She hadn’t just invented what she saw in his eyes. They had sizzled over her with the blue intensity of a flame.
    So, for the record, she hadn’t imagined it. She had been tracking men’s glances since she had turned fourteen—maybe since even earlier, when Liv had made the horrendous mistake of remarrying. Men were such lustful creatures. No wonderGreat-Aunt Bea had never married—never had a steady relationship, for that matter, according to Pip, who had been very hotly desired herself. And hadn’t she, Victoria, been the unfortunate recipient of many obsidian glances from her stepfather, Barry? Barry’s slimy manner had impelled her to maintain a strict physical distance between them. Though she’d acted just this side of contemptuous with him, privately she had been fearful of the little dark urges towards her she’d read in his predatory