by Penny Jordan
Even though she had been expecting them, his words still took her by surprise, shocking her into a paralysis of despair from which she emerged only enough to murmur brokenly, ‘But Stuart and James?’
‘Oh, yes, you’ve done your work well on those two, too well. I can’t take the risk of what it might do to them if they never see you again, but neither can I endure having you in this house any longer. They’re old enough to understand that marriages don’t always work out, after all this isn’t the first time they’ve experienced divorce. I won’t stop them from seeing you if that’s what they want, but I won’t have you under my roof any longer, Jessica. By this time tomorrow I want you out, do you understand?’ He looked more angry than she had ever seen him before.
Somehow she managed to stagger back to her own room, her life in ruins. He had not even given her an opportunity to defend herself, to explain.
* * *
SHE DIDN’T SLEEP. How could she? Her mind went over and over that dreadful scene with Lyle, desperately wishing she had been allowed to explain things, and yet her heart knowing that Lyle had not wanted to hear any explanations. He had wanted to get rid of her.
After breakfast he took her on one side and reiterated, ‘I want you out of here just as quickly as possible, please. I’ll tell the boys, and I’ll be in touch with you to make arrangements for the divorce, and for you to see Stuart and James, if that’s what you wish. Please don’t say anything to them, I prefer to explain the situation to them myself.’
‘So that you can blame me, I suppose,’ Jessica flung at him bitterly. ‘If only you’d listened, I…’
‘You would what? Have told me that your brother-in-law lied when he said you were using our marriage to test out your pet theories? Well?’
How could she explain to him in this mood why she had said that to David? And how odd that he seemed more angry about what was surely only a minor issue than others which to her were far more important.
‘Was that why you made love with me?’ he demanded harshly. ‘As part of an experiment? You’ll have to let me know how I rated or will I be able to read about it for myself?’
He came towards her, so angry that for a moment Jessica thought he was going to hit her, and she fell back automatically, watching the rage die from his face, and contempt take its place.
‘Oh, for God’s sake, I’m not going to touch you,’ he told her bitterly. ‘I doubt that I could now, even if I wanted to. Why, why did you do it?’ he demanded thickly. ‘Was it because I told you I no longer wanted to make love? Did you find that a challenge you couldn’t resist? Was…’ He broke off, his mouth snapping shut, and Jessica realised sickly that he was so angry because she had hurt his pride, because he thought she had used him callously and cold-bloodedly. But it was too late to tell him the truth now, too late and of too little importance. He didn’t want her in his life any more, in any capacity—he had made that more than clear.
Her flat was let on a monthly tenancy, and for the first week of their separation she lived in a small hotel while waiting for her tenants to quit. Divorce was out of the question in view of the short life of their marriage, but she had received a very curt letter from Lyle telling her that although he no longer wished to see her, both boys did and that with her agreement it could be arranged that they would spend their weekends with her.
Jessica was not under any delusion that he did this for her sake—it was only for the sake of the boys themselves that he was allowing her to see them. She swallowed hard. She missed them badly already, and wondered how they had taken her absence. Did they think that she, like their mother, had rejected them?
She longed to ring and speak to them, but pride would not let her. She would not allow Lyle to accuse her of trying to influence the boys behind his back. She had even refused to speak to Justine on the phone, not wanting to make any explanations or excuses to his sister that might conflict with anything Lyle himself might have to say.
The only good thing that had happened was that Andrea was now out of hospital. Jessica had kept from her the news of their separation, not wanting to cause her sister further anxiety, and had given as an excuse for asking her not to ring her the fib that the phone was out of order. Fortunately Andrea was too caught up in her own affairs to query the danger of a doctor’s phone being in this state.
The first weekend she was alone she spent moving back into her flat which she had let furnished. That night, for the first time since Lyle had told her to leave, she slept for two whole hours at a stretch without waking up.
On Sunday morning when the phone rang, she sat staring at the receiver for several seconds before picking it up. Somehow she had known it would be Lyle, and when he asked if the boys could spend the day with her she agreed abruptly.
‘I’ll bring them round at eleven and collect them again at six.’ His voice was so cold that any thoughts she might have had about trying to explain to him died at birth.
She saw his car arrive from her sitting-room window, but didn’t go down, simply watching as he directed the boys into the hall and waited as they pressed her intercom bell.
As she activated the internal locking system to let them in Jessica saw him drive away. The dull ache her misery had become over the last few days sharpened acutely, reminding her of all she had lost.
Both boys looked subdued. Her flat was too small for them really, and although it was pleasant enough to go outside, the neatly manicured lawns surrounding the apartments did not tempt one to run about and play on them.
All afternoon Jessica avoided any topic of conversation which might lead to Lyle and the reasons behind the breakdown of their marriage, but half an hour before their father was due to pick them up, Stuart, who had been withdrawn and quiet, flung himself into her arms crying bitterly.
‘Why can’t you come back with us?’ he demanded miserably. ‘We miss you. It’s horrid at home without you. Why did you leave us, Jessica?’
How on earth could she explain to them without involving their father?
In the end all she could do was hug Stuart tightly, her own tears damping his dark hair as she tried to find a way to explain the impossible.
‘Is it because you don’t love us any more?’ he demanded fiercely at last, pulling away from her and dashing a grubby fist against his eyes.
‘No, of course not. I still love you both very, very much,’ Jessica reassured him.
‘Is it because you don’t love Dad, then?’
She had left the window open because of the heat, and Jessica was never more glad to hear the familiar sound of Lyle’s car. It hurt dreadfully to send them down to their father, and ignore their pleas to go home with them, but what else could she do? And yet she couldn’t find it in her heart to blame Lyle. It would be as difficult for him to explain the situation to them as it was for her.
* * *
THE SECOND WEEK of their separation dragged past as painfully as the first. Sleeping and eating were both impossible in her keyed-up state and she knew she was losing weight. Both her skin and hair seemed to have lost their healthy lustre, and the only good thing that had come out of the whole thing was that she had managed to do some work on her book. It was only when she was working that she was able to stop thinking about Lyle—sometimes for almost half an hour at a time, but like all pain killers, work was only effective for so long.
On the Friday she forced herself to go out shopping to buy some food for the weekend, in anticipation of the boys’ visit. The phone was ringing as she walked into her flat and she dropped her shopping racing across to pick up the receiver.
‘Jessica?’
Even the sound of Lyle’s voice was enough to start her heart pounding crazily.
‘Yes?’
‘I’d like to come round and see you, tonight if possible. We have things to discuss.’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll be round about seven, then. Susan is going to look after the boys.’
No mention of bringing them round to
see her over the weekend, Jessica noted, her whole body gripped by pain as she acknowledged to herself that he might be coming round to tell her that he no longer wanted them to see her. Stuart had been badly upset the previous weekend, and in all fairness they were his children and not hers.
Lyle arrived shortly before seven and although she had been waiting for this moment all day, now that he was here Jessica felt unable to cope with seeing him.
Even so she let him in, standing back so that he could precede her into the small sitting-room.
She offered him a drink and watched him shake his head, his mouth compressing, his voice harsh as he said, ‘No, thanks.’
He wouldn’t sit down, going instead to stand in front of the window, with his back to her, his hands jammed into the pockets of his jeans. His whole body betrayed his tension, and Jessica could easily imagine how difficult it was for him to see her when he despised her so much.
‘Why have you come to see me, Lyle?’ she asked him unevenly when several seconds had gone by without his saying a word. ‘Is it about the boys? Stuart was dreadfully upset last weekend.’ Her voice expressed her own pain, and he swung round, looking at her with hard eyes, his voice grim, as he said curtly, ‘I’ve decided to send them to boarding-school once the holidays are over. It seems the best solution all round.’ He saw her anguished expression and smiled mirthlessly. ‘You should have thought about that before, Jessica.’
His bitterness stung, making her want to lash out and hurt him as he had hurt her.
‘Just as you should have thought about them instead of giving all your love to Heather,’ she retaliated bitterly.
‘All my love?’ He laughed harshly. ‘My God, where did you get that idea? I stopped loving Heather, if I ever did, when I realised how different she was from my foolish adolescent image of her. And besides, you’re a fine one to talk. What about Chalmers?’
Driven to the point of explosion Jessica told him fiercely, ‘For the last time, David means nothing to me and never has done. I loathe him and always have done. That’s why I told him I was marrying you as an experiment. I wanted to get it through that impenetrable ego of his just how little he meant to me.’
‘Then you didn’t marry me simply to use our relationship as the basis for an experiment?’
‘No, of course not. I am human, you know, Lyle,’ she cried out, painfully tormented by his cross-questioning and not able to see what benefit it could be to either of them now. ‘I married you for the reason I gave you at the time. It did briefly cross my mind that in entering into such a marriage I would be in an ideal position to see how justified I was in claiming that a marriage could be successful and long-standing without being based on romantic love, but that wasn’t the reason I married you.
‘Why have you come to see me?’ she demanded wearily. ‘I really am very tired, and so far you haven’t said anything that you couldn’t have said over the telephone. I do wish, though, that you wouldn’t send the boys to boarding-school.’
‘There’s only one way I can avoid doing that.’
He had his back to her again, but his face was visible to her in profile and she watched in bemused misery as a tiny muscle flickered betrayingly against his jaw.
‘How?’
‘If you agree to come back.’
It was the very last thing she had expected to hear; and she could hardly take in the fact that after the way he had demanded that she leave, Lyle was now asking her to come back.
She had always known that he loved the boys, of course, but she had not realised to what extent, and she felt both pain and compassion for him as she stared at his rigid back.
‘Well, Jessica, what is it to be? Will you come back? If you do I’m prepared to overlook everything that’s happened, the fact that I discovered you in Chalmers’ arms…and you were, despite what you say about your feelings towards him.’
Suddenly something inside her snapped, releasing a flood of bitter emotion.
‘Oh, that’s very generous of you,’ she told him in a strained high voice, ‘but tell me this, Lyle, are you also able to overlook the fact that I’ve fallen in love with you? Because I’m afraid that I have, and if you can’t…’
She turned her back on him, knowing that he must leave now, that he would not want her back, living under the same roof with him now that she had told him the truth.
The shock of having his hands descend on her shoulders and turn her very ungently to face him, gripping her arms tightly as he looked down into her eyes, made the room swing dizzily around her.
Colour burned under his skin, his eyes so dark that they looked more black than blue. He was sweating slightly, his voice a hoarse cry of disbelief as he demanded rawly, ‘What are you saying, Jessica?’
She wasn’t going to back down now. Stubbornly refusing to give in to her own anguish, she said huskily, ‘I’m saying that if I come back to live with you, it must be without any pretence between us, Lyle. I love you. I admit love is an emotion I never expected to feel, hardly believed actually existed between adults. I’d convinced myself during my research and from my own observation of life that what we call love is more often merely physical lust, and as such doesn’t stand up to the test of time, but now I know I was wrong. I’m not asking you to love me in return—I know that’s impossible. But if I come back it must be in the knowledge that you are aware of my feelings. I can’t live a lie any longer.’
‘Neither can I.’ The harshness had gone from his voice, leaving it faintly raw as though he had scraped his throat. ‘I didn’t come here to ask you to come back because of the boys at all,’ he told her huskily. ‘I came because I couldn’t endure another day without you. You’ll never know how bitterly I’ve regretted giving in to my jealousy of Chalmers. I wanted you to deny that he meant anything to you, and I have done ever since that night we first made love. I knew then how important you were to me, but I tried to resist it. I told myself it was him you wanted not me, that you were just using me as a substitute.’
‘I can’t believe this,’ Jessica whispered, staring at him. ‘I can’t believe you love me.’
‘Can’t you?’ He made a thick, impassioned sound of anguish in his throat and then said, ‘Then what the hell am I supposed to call this?’ With such suppressed violence that Jessica actually shivered in response to it, he almost jerked off her feet as he took her in his arms.
She could feel him trembling, feel the emotion building up inside him, as he kissed her with a starving passion.
It could have been seconds or hours before he released her, her body so light and empty that she almost fell.
‘And if you dare to call that lust, or anger, I think I shall probably kill you,’ Lyle told her softly. ‘Jessica, Jessica…’ He took her back in his arms, kissing her eyelids, probing the trembling outline of her mouth with his thumb until she gasped and shivered with desire, turning her face up to his and abandoning herself to the heat of his mouth.
This time he released her slowly, savouring the sweetness of her mouth as he did so.
‘You’ll never know what it’s cost me in sleepless nights to come here today,’ he told her softly. ‘I’ve been rejected once by a woman I thought I loved, and I still bear the scars, but I knew today that life without you was so meaningless, that whatever pain I risked was nothing compared with the misery my life would be without you in it.’
As she listened to him Jessica realised what an effort it had been for him it to come to her, having endured, as he had just said, one traumatic rejection from Heather.
If she had needed confirmation that he genuinely loved her she had just received it. To get her back he had been prepared to humble himself completely, to take her back on any terms, just as she would have gone back.
‘We’ve been very lucky, you and I,’ he murmured into her hair. ‘To have been given this chance to love one another, especially in view of the inauspicious way in which we met.’
‘Mmm, it does pose a problem, though,’ Jessica m
used, closing her eyes and moving closer to the hard outline of his body, ‘at least as far as my book’s concerned. Was love the cause of our marriage or the result of it? Were we attracted to one another when we first met to such an extent that we both found excuses to go through with the marriage, or did it grow after we were married?’
His mouth silenced her, taking hers in a sensually demanding kiss. When he eventually raised his head to smile down into her flushed face he asked softly, ‘Does it really matter?’
Jessica shook her head. ‘Not in the least. What does matter is that there is love.’
‘Is now and always will be,’ Lyle affirmed, adding as his lips caressed her skin, ‘you do realise that Justine is really going to be full of herself now, don’t you?’
But it seemed he wasn’t expecting an answer, because his mouth was already taking the breath from her own, telling her in a way more satisfactory than any words the truth of what he had already said: that there was love and always would be.
* * * * *
Now, read on for a tantalizing excerpt of USA Today bestselling author Carol Marinelli’s next book,
BOUND BY THE SULTAN’S BABY
The second in her Billionaires & One-Night Heirs trilogy!
Sultan Alim spent one forbidden night with Gabi—when he encounters her again, she refuses to name her child’s father. Alim will seduce the truth out of Gabi, even if he has to lure her under false pretenses. Alim knows he craves her, but does he desire her as his mistress or bride?
Read on to get a glimpse of
BOUND BY THE SULTAN’S BABY
CHAPTER ONE
GABI DERAMO HAD never been a bridesmaid, let alone a bride.
However, weddings were her life and she thought about them during most of the minutes of her day.
From way back she had lived and breathed weddings.
Gabi was a dreamer.
As a little girl, her dolls would regularly be lined up in a bridal procession. Once, to her mother’s fury, Gabi had poured two whole bags of sugar and one of flour over them to create a winter wedding effect.