Emerald Mistress Read Free Page A

such horrible things about her? Was she trying to amuse Luke? Once or twice she had heard Alice being cruelly sarcastic and funny at the expense of others, but had put it down to immaturity since the girl was six years her junior.
    ‘Alice,’ Luke chided, in an inexcusably indulgent tone.
    ‘“My name is Porky Pie and I am so boring. I talk about recipes and am so desperate to be liked that I am a total pathetic doormat to everyone around me,”’ Alice proclaimed, mimicking Harriet’s burr well enough for her shaken victim to wince and turn even paler as she moved forward hurriedly to reveal herpresence before anything more could be said. ‘Would you prefer a slice of my chocolate cake or another shag, babes?’
    ‘Do you need to ask? Open those beautiful legs…’
    Harriet’s own lower limbs set like lead beneath her. Her stomach churned like a whirlpool while she stared across the spacious stretch of polished wood flooring in utter disbelief. Luke was lying back on the bed stark naked and he was pulling her equally naked half-sister down on top of him! Giggling with carefree abandon, her pale blonde silky hair rippling across her slim tanned shoulders, Alice moved straight into a much more intimate pose with the ease of habit and confidence.
    ‘I love your dainty little boobs…’ Luke groaned with pleasure, stretching up greedy hands to the pert mounds jutting over him as Alice arched her spine with taunting sexiness.
    Harriet was frozen to the spot in sheer shock at the graphic scene before her. ‘Not like mine…’ she heard herself say flatly, and out loud, her own voice sounding curiously detached and lifeless to her ears.
    The lovers froze with an immediacy that might have been comic in other circumstances. Luke reared up off the pillows.
‘Harriet?’
    ‘How long have you been seeing each other?’ Harriet enquired with revulsion, her hands knottinginto fists as she physically forced herself not to avert her gaze from their intimacy.
    Alice detached from Luke with unhurried grace and angled a bright look of defiance at Harriet, her brown eyes sparkling, her beautiful face expressing unashamed challenge. ‘Months. He can’t get enough of me, in bed or out of it. I’m sorry you had to find out this way. But that’s life, and it’s tough on all of us. I haven’t enjoyed sneaking around like I’m doing something to be ashamed of.’
    Striving to pull on his trousers with something less than his normal assurance, Luke harshly told Alice to keep quiet. Harriet recoiled from that pitying intervention from her fiancé. Only he wasn’t her fiancé any more, she told herself starkly. When he had slept with her sister he had made a joke of their engagement. Rigid with the effort of self-control required to keep her emotions from betraying her, she turned round in a stilted movement and walked straight back out of the apartment.
    She couldn’t catch her breath at first. She felt like someone had locked her in a little black box and deprived her of oxygen. She was fighting off the urge to panic and scream. Her mind kept on feverishly replaying what she had seen, what she had heard and been told. The words and the images were like serrated knives, twisting ever deeper inside her. Thepain was unbelievable, for she had adored Luke for what felt like half of her adult life. She could not imagine living without him. She could not bear the knowledge that he had made love to her sister, had laughed and listened to Alice’s degrading comments. What had happened to loyalty and decency?
    What had happened to the dislike that Luke and Alice had been so keen to parade previously, their snide comments about each other? Luke had called Alice a spoilt little princess and had scorned her life of carefree self-indulgence. Alice had often referred to Luke as a pompous prat. Had that supposed animosity only been put on for Harriet’s benefit?
    When Harriet had first met Luke at university she had been his mate when