“You adulterous witch!”
In the months before she’d left him she had seen him angry, but nothing like this. During the more than a year since they had seen each other, he had changed, aged, grown more bitter. Now, anger raged between them like a forest fire, scorching everything in its path. He jerked off his coat and hung it up, his powerful body tense with suppressed emotion.
“I could kill you for what you’ve done to me,” he said when he turned to face her.
Silence stretched between them like a taut rubber band. Kelly walked on unsure legs to the cookstove and picked up the graniteware pot. Automatically she took a clean mug from the hook and poured coffee into it as well as into her own.
“How did you know I was here?”
“I’ve known every move you’ve made since a month before you left Portland.” He sat down at the table.
The smell of the coffee made Kelly feel sick but she sipped it anyway. “It’s nice to know I’ve been spied on,” she said coolly.
“It took a while, but I found you,” he said without looking at her.
“What took you so long? I’ve been here almost three weeks.”
He drew in a harsh breath and moved restlessly, his dark eyes probing hers. “I had plans to make. Company responsibilities to delegate to others.”
Kelly looked up, startled. She had no idea what to say to him. She looked down at his hands cradling his cup. They were pale and cold.
“Say something,” he ordered. “Why do you think I left my business, Boston, my family and friends? Because . . . if you can’t live in my world, I’ll live in yours!”
Kelly stared at him without understanding, her lashes flickering up and down over her blue eyes. “You’re not staying here! I don’t want you here!” she blurted out.
He set his cup down and reached across the table to grab her wrist. “Why did you walk out on me without a word?” Kelly tried to pull her wrist free, but his fingers tightened. “Answer me!” he roared.
“I left you a note. It was more than you deserved.”
“Katherine found your rings and credit cards in your room just before I was expecting an important guest. Why did you do it?” She could feel the tremor in the fingers that gripped her wrist.
“I explained in the note.”
“Note? What note? I haven’t heard one word from you in fourteen months and two days! Don’t you think you owed it to me to tell me you were leaving?”
Kelly’s temper flared. “I said I left you a note! Your sister, the keeper of the family’s snobbish honor, probably snatched it to keep it from contaminating her precious brother. Don’t you dare call me a liar, Jonathan Winslow Templeton the Third!” she said with a sneer. “I’ve got the starch back in my backbone and I’ll never cower under anyone’s glare again!”
Jonathan drew in a deep breath. “I never intended to make you cower. I hated it when you moved around the house like a ghost. Why didn’t you talk to me, tell me what was wrong?”
Kelly looked up at him in disbelief. They hadn’t talked during those last few months they’d lived together. They had spoken the same language, but they’d never communicated, except in bed. He wouldn’t have understood how she felt, wouldn’t understand now. She’d been his toy, a possession to set in the corner and take out and play with when the mood struck. From the day she walked into that luxurious nightmare she had not been allowed to be herself, only a shell of what the Templetons wanted her to be. Well, thank God, she’d gotten out of it. She would never go back!
“You could have called and told me where you were,” he insisted after a moment, releasing her arm.
“There was nothing to say. I didn’t need you. I can take care of myself.”
“Nothing to say?” He leaned toward her, suppressed rage expressed in the flare of his nostrils and the tightness of his mouth. “You’re my wife!”
“You should have thought of that before you allowed your sister to relegate me to the position of live-in whore.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I was never your wife. I never measured up to the Templetons,” Kelly flared. “Why did you marry me?” she demanded.
Silence fell between them while his eyes moved from her face to the open neck of her shirt and down over the curves of her breasts. He bent over the table and stared deliberately before bringing his eyes up to hers.
“I think you know why.” His voice was slurred, charged with emotion. “Don’t tell me you didn’t enjoy our sex life, because I know you did.”
“So that’s why!” She shuddered and looked away. “Sex! You should have propositioned me. You might have gotten what you wanted without marrying me.”
“Shut up! I won’t stand for that kind of talk from you.” His head jerked up in pain and rage and his dark eyes blazed with anger.
“You won’t stand for . . .” Kelly choked on her anger. “The biggest mistake of my life was marrying you, Jonathan Winslow Templeton the Third!”
“Damn it! Stop calling me that!” he thundered and banged his fist down on the table.
Kelly bit back her intended reply and fought down the impulse to slap him. Not trusting herself to sit opposite him, she got up and went to lean against the fireplace mantel. Absently she opened the door of the clock case and started the pendulum of the clock swinging.
Jonathan sat at the end of the table and surveyed the room. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking as he regarded the worn couch, the blue and black cookstove, the metal, mail-order kitchen cabinets.
“Why did you stop calling me Jack?” He asked the question quietly. For a fleeting moment Kelly thought she heard pain in his voice, but she dismissed the thought.
“You were no longer Jack when we got to Boston,” she said flatly.
“What do you mean? I was the same person.”
“You were not!” Anger and resentment flared again.
“I’m tired of arguing,” he said. “I’m hungry. What’s there to eat?”
“You can eat at the lodge where you’ll sleep,” she snapped.
Jonathan’s answer was to take off his boots. For the first time he seemed to notice the water created by the melted snow he had tracked in. He set the boots against the wall, beneath his coat, and went to the cabinet to unroll a length of paper toweling. He squatted down, blotted away the puddles, and threw the damp toweling into the fire.
Kelly gazed into the blaze, her head resting on her arm on the mantel. His arm went about her waist and he pulled her back against him. She stood rigid as she felt his hot lips against the cool skin on the back of her neck. The swift, panic-beat of her heart echoed the deep thud of his.
“Go away!” The gasping sound came from her as if she were suffocating. “I don’t want you!” She waited tensely for him to release her.
She cried out in pain as he took hold of the hair at the back of her head and jerked her around to face him. She tried to move her head in protest, but couldn’t avoid the lips that swooped down on hers. His kiss was an outright act of possession, a blistering insult. He ground her mouth beneath his own in reckless disregard, his teeth crushing her lips. She wanted to fight him off, hit him with her fists, scratch him with her nails, but some instinct warned her that to react in such a way would only arouse his temper more. Instead she kept perfectly still, her lips compressed. Slowly his lips softened. When she didn’t respond, he lifted his head.
“Open your mouth!” he said harshly, his eyes blazing with anger. She froze, recoiling from his violence.
She was so close she could see the changes the last year had made in his face. There was an extra leanness in the planes of his cheeks, and new lines about his eyes. The bitterness reflected there struck her so forceably that she flinched.
“Is he a good lover?” he said through clenched teeth. “Does he satisfy you?” His hands moved to her shoulders and gripped them tightly.
Incredulous, she stared at him. “You . . . ! Mike isn’t my lover!”
�
��I’m not a fool. I saw the way he looked at you!” His face contorted savagely, his jaw held in a vise. “Do you think I’ve forgotten the note he sent you on our wedding day, or the number of times you’ve mentioned his name?” He was shaking her shoulders, his fingers hurting.
Kelly stared at him, eyes wide in her flushed face. “I hardly mentioned him or Marty to you after . . . those first few weeks.”
“I should have counted the number of times I heard you say . . . Mike did this . . . or that. We did this . . . or that, meaning you and him! You even talked about this place in your sleep.”
She was taken aback, and lowered her lashes, trying to think. “What if I did? This is my home. Look around, Jonathan. It may not have marble floors and crystal chandeliers, but it’s home and it’s mine!”
“Ours!” he corrected.
“Mine!” she said stubbornly. “And I don’t want you here.”
“Ours!” he said again.
“Go away!” she hissed and tried to jerk away, but he held her immobile. “You’ve no right to come here.”
His lips curled back from his straight white teeth in a hard sneer. “That’s where you’re wrong. I have three rights. One, my wife is here and I’m going to live with her. Two, when we were married you signed your portion of this property over to me to handle for you. And three . . . I have paid six years of back taxes on this property and that gives me the right to live here. It also gives me the right to say who will live here with me!”
“I don’t believe you!” she gasped. “You wouldn’t . . .”
“It depends on you, little wife. It depends on you.”
CHAPTER FOUR
FOR A MOMENT Kelly couldn’t move. She felt his eyes probe fiercely all the way down to her legs that were suddenly cold and shaking, although her face burned as though with a fever. He released her shoulders and she turned and walked slowly into her bedroom, closing the door behind her.
She stared at the stranger looking back at her from the mirror over her dressing table. She stood there for a moment, trembling, accepting that Jonathan was here and that he intended to stay. He was the Jonathan of Boston dressed differently.
“Oh, help,” she muttered and looked away from the pale face and vacant eyes. What did he mean about her signing the property over to him? She had signed papers so he could handle the probate of her father’s will, the clearing of the title, and the paying of the inheritance tax. Could he force Mike and Marty from the only home they had ever known? He couldn’t! The three of them had put all the money they could scrape together into fixing up this place. By working hard, they could make a living here. “No!” she said aloud and wished she had the courage to pick up the chair and smash something! What was she going to do? They’d worked so hard! Tears sprang into her eyes and she blinked them away. She felt so . . . betrayed!
She was standing in the middle of the room, seeing nothing, her mind whirling in an eddy of bewilderment, when the door opened behind her.
“No,” she said hoarsely before she turned to face him. “No,” she said again. Her blue eyes were strained and over-bright. “You’re not staying here, Jonathan. Go up to the lodge. One of us will be leaving in the morning.”
He came into the room carrying the two heavy suitcases and stood looking around. The door to the small bathroom was open and he headed for it. He had to angle the bags through the narrow door to reach the other bedroom.
Kelly followed him through the bathroom and stood in the doorway. “You don’t take no for an answer, do you, Jonathan? I said I don’t want you here.”
“I don’t think you’ve given this much thought, Kelly. I didn’t want to tell you I have the controlling interest here. I was perfectly willing to let things stand as they were, but you forced me to use that lever. Now you can either tell your friends that they have thirty days to clear out of here, and I’ll give them that long, or you can face the fact that I’m here to live with you as your husband and make the best of the situation.”
“You’re inhuman! You don’t care about anything except what you want. You think you can come here and order me to accept you in my home and make you welcome. I was never made to feel welcome in your home! Do you have any idea how I felt after the first few weeks? Like a nonentity, an invisible person.”
His dark brows drew a heavy line over his eyes. “There was no reason for you to feel that way. I gave you everything I could think of that—”
“Gave! Gave! You gave me everything except yourself, your time!” she shouted.
“You’re hysterical. You didn’t like my way of life and made no effort to fit into it. I’m here to show you that I can fit into your way of life.”
“Then what?”
“Then we’ll pick up where we left off.”
“You’re out of your mind! I’ll never go back there! Never! You’re not a human being. You’re a computer, programmed to give orders and take what you want without regard to ordinary people like me and Marty and Mike. You’ve no feelings as simple as love, fear, longing for something, working for it. Everything you have has been served up to you on a silver platter. What do you know about people like me?” She clung to the door frame, rage making her weak. “You don’t understand me. You never understood why I married you!”
“I understood a lot more than you realize.” Jonathan’s eyes had not left her face. “I understand you were unhappy in Boston and you’re happy here. I understand that’s why you left me, and not because you didn’t love me.”
“You’ve got to be the most conceited man alive!” She laughed in hollow irony. “You don’t love a man who hides you away and takes you out occasionally, and watches you like a hawk to see you don’t disgrace him. You don’t love a man who barks at you and keeps you running to do his bidding like a nervous dog. Most of all, you don’t love a man who keeps you in his home where the only communication you have is in the night . . . in the dark . . . when he isn’t reminded that you’re a simple girl with red blood . . . and not . . . blue!”
During this outpouring of harsh words Jonathan stood quietly. Only his eyes moved, becoming bright with inner rage. His face remained shuttered.
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” She could tell he was angry, but his voice remained calm.
“So you could discuss what was to be done about me with your sister? So you could take all my feelings out and hold them up for ridicule? Give me credit for a little more brains than that.”
“Now you’re being stupid,” he said without looking at her. He lifted one of his suitcases up onto the bed, opened it, and began laying out stacks of socks and underwear. “Couldn’t you have let me know you were safe?” He turned abruptly to look at her. “Do you have any idea of the anguish you put me through when you just disappeared? I had detectives searching everywhere I could think of.”
“How did you find me?”
“I resorted to bribery. I corrupted an employee of the Social Security Department and, when your employer paid your tax into the treasury, I got his name.”
“That’s against the law!”
“I didn’t give it a thought.” He was staring at her pale, subdued profile. “You look older.”
“I am older. A hundred years older.”
“And you’re different.”
“After what I’ve been through, how could I possibly remain the same?” she flung at him bitterly.
Rage flashed in his eyes, darkened his face, and hardened the lines of his mouth. He moved so fast she had no time to slip back through the doorway. His hands gripped her shoulders.
“Do you think you’re the only one who suffered? You’ve driven me crazy, wondering where you were, who you were with, and what was happening to you.”
She tried to strike his hands away. “Don’t touch me.”
“I don’t care what you want! I want to touch you. I want to feel every inch of you against me and I will! Do you understand, Kelly? We’re man and wife for as long as we live. The only thing that will change
that fact is . . . death! And I’m mighty tempted to kill you for what you’ve put me through.”
She believed him and was terrified, but determined not to show it. “Have you worked out your method, or just dreamed about it?”
“When I get my hands on you, murder is the last thing I’m thinking of,” he said harshly and crushed her to him.
She pushed at his chest as he drew her closer. “Let me go! I said I don’t want you to touch me. I hate it!”
“Then you’ll learn to love it again, because I’ll touch you when and where I want to!”
Instinctively, she felt he was about to lose control, but desperately and recklessly she goaded him. Words fell out of her in a torrent, blatant lies, out of place, wrong, jarring.
“Mike is my lover! I want him, not you. I’m divorcing you and going to him. I’m crazy about him and I sleep with him every night and I’ll sleep with him . . . tonight and tomorrow night. Find yourself another woman, Jonathan. I don’t want you!”
“Damn you!” he muttered. His hands encircled her upper arms and her eyes darkened as they hardened into bands. His face was like carved granite, hard and bitter. Kelly closed her eyes, sure he was going to hit her. Instead his hands slipped up around her neck and closed about her throat. She gasped, trying to pull away, but his mouth came down on hers, savagely, relentlessly, prying her lips apart, grinding his teeth against her mouth. The thumbs beneath her chin and the fingers behind her head kept her immobile beneath his consuming mouth. She moaned at the pain he was inflicting on her and struggled so violently that their bodies swayed and crashed against the wall.
He moved too fast for her. He dragged her to the bed, pushed her down, and fell on her. Winded, they lay there, breathing hard. His dark head shut out the overhead light and his mouth burned, delved, bruised her own, forcing her to surrender her lips. His hands moved possessively over her. During the struggle, her shirt had become unbuttoned and his fingers slid inside to find the high, warm swell of her breast.
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