The Pleasure King's Bride Read Free

caravan, a mobile trailer home she could take with her if she felt the need to move at a moment’s notice. On the other hand, many people enjoyed the sense of a nomadic life that a caravan allowed. Not everyone wanted to put down roots in one place. Impossible to really know Christabel’s truth until she chose to reveal it herself.
    It wasn’t the done thing to pry into the background of people who came to work in the Australian outback. There could be many reasons for dropping out of more sophisticated centres of civilisation. It might be as simple as a wish for a change of lifestyle, a need for space, a desire to experience something different... in which case they usually told you so. But there were those who stayed silent, wanting to shed what they’d left behind...and that was their personal and private business, to be respected as such.
    Christabel projected the first attitude but gave out so little of her past, Jared had concluded she wanted to shut the door on it. What had been tantalising, and intensely frustrating to him, was her stance of keeping everyone, including him, at arm’s length, as though she couldn’t bring herself to trust a close relationship, however much she might want it.
    And she did want it with him.
    Jared’s fingers curled more tightly around the driving wheel as triumphant excitement coursed through him. At last he’d broken through her resistance. She’d given in. Though why now...he shook his head. It didn’t matter.
    Perhaps it was the realisation that her fear—whatever its cause—was unfounded with him. If so, all the better. He didn’t want fear to play any part in their relationship. He’d sort that out soon enough, now he had the chance to get close to her, closer than he ever had before in five long months of laying subtle siege to her defences.
    Christabel...
    He smiled on a wave of sheer exhilaration as he rolled the lovely lilt of her name through his mind...a name he’d thought might haunt him all his days, accompanied by a vision of eyes that glittered like gold in moments of fierce emotion and darkened to a simmering, sensual amber in moments of pleasure.
    A woman with the heart of a tiger, he’d often thought, imagining her stretched out on his bed, lazily slumbrous, yet with those eyes inviting dangerous play, her satin-smooth olive skin gleaming, the rich abundance of her glorious long hair spreading silkily across pillows, the soft, perfect femininity of her body calling to everything male in him, a beautiful exotic mystery.
    A haunting name, a haunting image...and all this time it had seemed the reality of her might remain forever elusive.
    No more.
    Tonight she would be within his reach.
    Tonight...
    It took considerable effort to bank down the passion she stirred in him and concentrate on practical details. Even his fingers were tingling as he activated the car phone and pressed his home number.
    “Vikki here,” came the familiar sing-song voice.
    “Visitors for dinner, Vikki. Christabel Valdez and her daughter.” It gave him intense pleasure to say that.
    “Ah! So you win. I said to your mother, Jared will win. He does not know how to lose, that boy. He keeps at it until he wins.”
    He laughed. Vikki Chan had been with the family all his life, cook and housekeeper to his widowed grandfather, staying on to maintain the old Picard home for his mother after Angus Picard’s death. It wasn’t the least bit surprising she knew of his interest in Christabel. Jared suspected she knew everything that went on in Broome from her many long-established grapevines. Besides, his mother was in the habit of confiding worries to her.
    “I’m about to pick up the ice-cream her daughter likes,” he informed. “I also promised Alicia honey prawns...”
    “No problem. I shall call and have the best green prawns delivered. Also more fish. Is fish all right for your Christabel?”
    His Christabel...he hoped. ‘‘I’m sure it will be perfect. They’ll be arriving