Eldorado

by Yvonne Whittal

  'Why—why mine in particular?' asked Gina, not caring if she looked as bewildered as she felt.

  'Did you think I wouldn't guess that Lilian had had something to do with that mysterious illness you developed that night when we dined at Vittorio's?' he mocked her derisively. 'I'd seen her leaving the ladies' room a couple of minutes before you came out, and one look at your face had told me that something unpleasant had occurred between the two of you. Then there was that time when she came here to the house to deliver my tie, and she no doubt tried to insinuate that we were having an affair. When I found her waiting at the Supreme Court that day, I thought it a good opportunity to cut my ties with her completely, and when I arrived home that evening you had gone.'

  Gina's heart lifted considerably, but now it was her turn to explain. 'I was waiting outside the Supreme Court for you that day. I was hoping we could have lunch together, and I was anxious for us to—to have that discussion you mentioned in the note I found on the bedside cupboard that morning. I couldn't wait for us to sort out the mess we were in, but when I saw you coming out of the building with Lilian I—I'm afraid I thought the worst.' She stared at him anxiously, unaware that the coldness of the night was stealing into her bones, and that she was shivering. 'Jarvis… about Eldorado. You couldn't possibly have meant that it—it means nothing to you without—without me, could you?'

  The air was almost crackling with tension between them during the ensuing silence. A nerve twitched in his jaw, but other than that Jarvis's face remained shuttered and withdrawn as he reached across the bed and offered her his towelling robe. 'Wrap up, or you'll catch your death in that flimsy thing you're wearing.'

  'I don't want to wrap up, and I don't care if I catch my death!' she cried in exasperation, thrusting his robe aside, and not caring that she had begun to shake uncontrollably beneath her nightdress as she knelt on the bed and stared at him with an anguished plea in her green eyes. 'Jarvis, I've got to know!'

  An agonising silence prevailed, making her feel as if she were hovering precariously on the edge of a steep and dangerous cliff, and an eternity seemed to pass before his mouth twisted in a derisive smile. 'I suspect my fate was sealed almost six years ago when a freckle-faced kid with pigtails fell out of a tree and into my arms.'

  Incredulous joy, sharp and sweet, surged through her with every pounding beat of her heart, but the barrier he had erected was still there between them as if he feared that he might be hurt should he tear it down.

  'Why didn't you tell me?' she asked unsteadily.

  'I didn't know it myself, and when I began to suspect it, I found I was having difficulty coming to terms with the knowledge that I could feel that way about you.' He smiled twistedly, directing his mockery at himself. 'I don't know if you realise it, but it's quite a shock to a man's system when he finds himself confronted with something he'd never believed in before.'

  'Oh, Jarvis!' Tears filled her eyes and collected like drops of sparkling dew on her dark lashes before they spilled down her cheeks. 'I've been through a hell of a time trying to sort myself out, but I realised I had to come back to you to tell you that I love you despite everything, and that I was determined to make you love me a little. I was going to leave the farm first thing in the morning, but I received a call from Harold Ashton earlier this evening to tell me that you'd asked him to start divorce proceedings, and that precipitated my return to Eldorado. I would rather fight Lilian to the bitter end to get you, but I wasn't going to let you give up your right to your home.'

  'What damn fools we are!' he groaned, reaching out a hand to brush the tears from her cheeks with tender fingers. 'It was when you fell down the stairs and lost the baby that I finally faced up to the fact that I cared enough to want you to be the mother of my children, but I'd treated you so badly in the past that my conscience wouldn't let me come near you until I'd found a way of convincing you that my feelings were sincere, and that was why I moved into this room,' he explained, answering the question which had tormented her during those long, empty weeks after her accident. 'It also took these three weeks without you to make me realise, once and for all, that you meant a hell of a lot more to me than this house, and that I'd gladly give up Eldorado in the hope of retrieving what I'd begun to think I'd lost. I'm still prepared to go through with the divorce if it will convince you of my feelings for you.'

  He would do it too! Gina could see it in his eyes, and in the determined set of his strong, relentless jaw. He would relinquish his rightful inheritance to prove the strength of his love for her, but she shook her head and gripped his wrist with trembling fingers to press her quivering lips against his palm in a brief, tender kiss. 'You don't have to do that, my darling.'

  'Come here,' he ordered throatily, pulling her shivering body towards him, and lifting the blankets invitingly for her to slide into bed beside him.

  This was heaven, Gina decided when he held her tightly in his arms and willed some warmth into her body with his own. This was where she belonged, and she was never going to leave again. She clung to him, breathing in the familiar male smell of him, and she buried her face briefly against the hollow of his shoulder before she raised her eager lips to his. They kissed tenderly, but tenderness exploded into a mutual hunger that left them both shaken and breathless with the force of their emotions.

  'God knows, I've so much to atone for,' he murmured into her fragrant hair when she moved unashamedly closer to his hard, male body and entangled her legs with his. 'When I saw you at my mother's funeral I knew that I had to see you again, but immediately afterwards I was enlightened as to the contents of her will. I was so furious that I think I went a little crazy, and it was exactly as you once said. I had a notion that you might have had a crush on me when you were a teenager and, taking that into consideration, I decided it would be the easiest thing on earth to make you fall in love with me. I knew you wouldn't marry me any other way, and I cold-bloodedly chose to marry you if that was the only way I could inherit Eldorado, but things didn't quite work out the way I'd planned.'

  'Would you have continued with the pretence if I hadn't overheard your conversation with Harold Ashton on our wedding day?' she questioned him, finding no pain now in remembering.

  'I don't think I was still pretending at that stage, and that was where my problems started,' he admitted roughly, his arms tightening convulsively about her slim, yielding body. 'My feelings had become involved in a way which I couldn't and wouldn't accept, and when you confronted me with what you'd discovered I felt guilty as well as angry at the knowledge that I couldn't deny the fact that I had married you to inherit this house.'

  'I was hurt and humiliated, and I know I said a few horrible and regrettable things to you on our wedding night,' she admitted, cringing inwardly at the memory of what had passed between them in that hotel suite.

  'I deserved every one of them.' Jarvis laughed shortly, but there was no mirth in the sound. 'I'd treated you abominably, and I should have left you in peace, but something inside me made me use the physical side of our marriage in an attempt to break through that mental barrier you'd erected between us. That didn't work so well either. You drifted further away from me during the weeks and months that followed, and I finally withdrew myself from you completely when you had that accident and my conscience became a punishing factor.' His warm mouth brushed against her eyes and her cheeks before it settled on her lips in a lingering kiss which had the effect of a healing balm. 'I don't mind admitting that it scared the hell out of me when I arrived home three weeks ago and found your letter on the desk in the study,' he continued. 'My first reaction was to drive out to the farm to bring you back by force, if necessary, but that was purely a selfish reaction. I had to give you time to yourself, I owed it to you, and I had to do some thinking of my own. I had to get my priorities in order and, when I finally admitted to myself that you had become the pulse of my existence, I knew there was only one way I could possibly win you back. I had to approach you with honesty, but before I c
ould do that, I had to get rid of that intolerable barrier between us.'

  'Eldorado,' she murmured with a trace of bitterness in her voice which she could not disguise.

  'Yes, Eldorado,' he repeated grimly, his hands stroking her absently as if to make himself believe that she was actually there with him and not just a figment of his imagination, and her pulse rate quickened with the familiar longing. 'I must admit that my mother was quite a remarkable old woman,' he added mockingly. 'I think she must have known me better than I'd imagined, and it's obvious that she must have seen something in you to make her believe that we were meant for each other.'

  'Obviously,' Gina agreed, no longer listening to him, and growing impatient beneath the intimacy of his absent caresses. 'Don't you think this single bed is slightly on the uncomfortable side for two?'

  She felt his heartbeat quicken beneath her hand. 'Is that an invitation, Gina?'

  'We can't possibly share this bed,' she defended herself crossly when an embarrassing warmth flooded her cheeks, 'and if you think I'm going to spend the night alone in that enormous bed across the passage, then you're mistaken!'

  Jarvis was shaking with silent laughter, but it finally passed his lips in a low, throaty rumble when he lifted her out of his bed as if she weighed nothing at all and carried her across the passage into the master bedroom. He kicked the door shut behind them, and found his way towards the bed in darkness. His laughter became a groan of pleasure when she trailed the tip of her exploratory tongue along his collarbone and nipped at his smooth skin with her teeth, and it was her own hands rather than his that lifted the lacy straps of her nightdress off her shoulders so that it slithered down her body to lie on the floor.

  The weeks of separation had sharpened their hunger for each other, and they fell across the bed, their naked bodies clinging, and the urgency in the touch of their lips and hands igniting a fire that threatened to consume them. The knowledge that Jarvis loved her had given Gina a sense of freedom she had never experienced before, and she rejoiced in it, her legs entwining with his as she gave herself to him for the first time with no fear of humiliation or embarrassment. They had never made love like this before, with a desire to give as much as they were receiving, and she would have wished this magical moment to last for ever, but their need was too intense to prolong the ultimate pleasure they sought in each other.

  The heavy thudding of their hearts seemed to fill the silent darkness in the aftermath of their lovemaking, and several minutes elapsed before Jarvis raised himself on one elbow to rest his damp forehead against Gina's.

  'Sweetheart… '

  'Yes, my darling?' she questioned on a sigh, ecstatically happy and drowsily content for the first time in their marriage.

  'I love you.'

  Gina felt her heart lurch with a happiness almost too painful to bear. She knew how difficult it had been for Jarvis to say the words she had longed to hear. They were a direct contradiction of his earlier beliefs, but he had said them all the same—because it was the truth, and because he was afraid she might still harbour a few doubts about him. It hurt to encounter this uncertainty in the man she loved. He had always been so confident, and sometimes ruthless in his beliefs, and she could not bear to think of him in any other way.

  'I know,' she whispered tenderly, drawing him down into her arms until his dark head rested heavily against her breast. 'I know you love me, and you know that I love you, Jarvis. I always have, and I always will. I tried very hard to put you out of my mind and my heart during the two years before we met again at your mother's funeral, but I never quite succeeded, and that was mainly why I tried to avoid becoming involved with you again. I knew I wouldn't forget you so easily a second time, but in the end you won, and that was why it hurt so much when I discovered the reason for our marriage.' She felt him move against her and she combed her fingers lightly through his hair in an attempt to soothe him. 'I think the worst part of it all was knowing I was capable of competing against a woman like Lilian, but I knew I couldn't compete against Eldorado.'

  Jarvis moved his rough cheek against her breast as if he could no longer tolerate the memory of it all and, when his warm mouth found hers in the darkness, it seemed to shut out everything except the happiness they now shared. They clung to each other with a renewed hunger, and Gina could not suppress the feeling that they were like two people released from a prison erected by Evelyn Cain's foolish, loving fears. This would be a new beginning for them, and the breeze outside seemed to penetrate the walls to whisper throughout the house as if Evelyn in her heavenly home had uttered a contented, triumphant sigh.

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  Unnamed