Substitute Bride by Margaret Pargeter Read Free Book Online Page A

the next he had caught her up, like a hurricane. In an instant she was over his knee, his hand descending without mercy on the seat of her pants, while she screamed with temper and pain.
    'Let me go, you great brute, or I'll call the police!'
    He was deaf. The hand continued to rise and fall with renewed vigour. 'I'll stop when you agree to talk,' he snapped harshly, ignoring her wild threats.
    He meant it as wel! Emma groaned aloud, choking.
    Hadn't Blanche told her he spent a lot of time in isolated, uncivilised places? She had been right about the veneer, too.
    Rick Conway's easygoing drawl was only skin-deep. The cruel savagery underneath it was being transmitted only too clearly through the force of his hand.
    Tears were running down Emma's cheeks before she gave in. 'Please stop!' she begged, the hardness of his thighs pressing against her small breasts arousing a sensation almost as hard to bear as the pain he was inflicting on her delicately rounded posterior.
    'Had enough?' he enquired laconicaly.
    She nodded, blindly, in abject humiliation. 'I hate you!'
    she cried, as he released her.
    'That's neither here nor there.'
    As she stood up she felt dizzy and hurt all over. 'You can go to… No!' she shrieked, as his hand shot out to grab her again.
    Pausing, he snapped, 'Then spil the beans. I'm not interested in where you'd like to see me.'
    Emma was. She could have kiled him! The horrible dizziness persisted, so she scarcely knew what she was saying. It took away any strength she had left to fight him.
    'Where is she, Emma?'
    'She's in Paris,' Emma hiccupped, feeling it had been torn out of her, but that was all she was going to say. She lifted huge, tear-drenched eyes to meet his, daring him to ask more.
    'With?'
    'With…?' Emma tried her best to look blank.
    'Out with it!' The hard bones of his jaw and chin tightened. 'I want answers, Emma, not evasion—or else!'
    The implications of that couldn't have been clearer. As it was she might not be able to sit down for days. More tears ran, she couldn't seem to stop them, but there was no pity in Rick's hard, unrelenting face. All the same, she did try to make one last effort on behalf of the girl who had always treated her as something less than human. 'I won't,' she gasped, 'I can't tell you!'
    'Yes, you can.' He grasped her hair, this time, having some difficulty in getting his hands through the thickness of it, but succeeding painfuly.
    'Oh…' she moaned, hating him so much yet unable to retaliate. There was one way she could be revenged, but she was reluctant to take it. It took a second cruel tug on her hair to make her decide furiously that Rick deserved to be hurt, as much as he was hurting her. Fury and fright, momentarily eliminating discretion, she sobbed, 'She's with Rex!'
    'Ah…' it was a long-drawn-out sigh of cold anger. For a second he stood so still Emma shuddered. 'So I was right to cut short my visit down under. The little bitch! I'd like to…'
    Emma tried to close her ears to what he said next, but even if she had managed to do so completely it would have been obvious from his expression that Blanche had burnt her boats in every direction, so far as he was concerned.
    Anxiously she sought for something to say that might make him feel better, but could anything soothe a man in such circumstances?
    'Blanche didn't mean you to know anything about it,' was the best she could manage. 'I'm sure she didn't mean to hurt you.'
    'Is that supposed to help?' he snarled.
    Emma spread her hands, her face pale. 'What more can I say?'
    'I expect you knew what was going on?' he attacked her again, his voice harsh and grating. 'You must have known you were fighting a losing battle over Rex Oliver. You knew what might easily happen, yet you never thought to warn me.'
    'Would you have listened?' she whispered, aghast at his twisted interpretation of things.
    'If you hadn't been so busy trying to hang on to Oliver by the skin of your teeth, you might have had time to