by Helen Brooks
Had she been waiting for history to repeat itself? Miriam asked herself sickly. No; no, she hadn’t. She was sure she hadn’t. Jay was twisting things, that was all. But the thought still niggled as she went to the door, opening it and intending to call down the stairs for Jay to come up.
But he wasn’t downstairs with Clara. He was leaning against the wall opposite the door, his hands in his trouser pockets and his tawny eyes narrowed. His big black leather jacket and black jeans made his flagrant masculinity even more threatening than usual and her heart flipped at the sight of him. ‘I—I thought you were talking to Clara,’ she said inanely, taken off her guard.
‘The pit bull?’ he murmured pleasantly. ‘I saw no point in prolonging a conversation with her when she clearly wanted to rip my throat out.’
‘Clara’s a very good friend,’ Miriam said defensively.
‘I’m sure people said that about Attila the Hun and Ivan the Terrible but I wouldn’t have been interested in getting to know them either.’ His eyes narrowed still more. ‘Aren’t you going to invite me in?’
‘Of course.’ She stood aside for him to enter as though she didn’t hate the fact he was invading her private domain, closing the door and watching him as he glanced round the high-ceilinged room.
‘Cosy.’
It could have been patronising but even though she wanted to find fault with him Miriam knew he was being genuine. ‘I think so,’ she said quietly.
‘A little nest with a bird’s-eye view,’ he added, strolling over to the window and gazing out over the vista of rooftops and buildings touched with the morning sunshine. ‘How often do you sit and lose yourself in that expanse of sky?’
He knew her too well. Crisply, she said, ‘When time permits.’
He turned, shrugging off his leather jacket and throwing it over the back of the sofa. ‘I can smell coffee,’ he hinted, glancing at the remaining croissants. ‘Are those going begging?’
She could do nothing else but invite him to sit down, which he did with alacrity. Miriam busied herself fixing some fresh coffee and putting out more preserves to go with the croissants, trying not to think about how good he looked. He was wearing a pale lilac shirt tucked into his jeans, open-necked and with the sleeves partly rolled up. Narrow-waisted and lean-hipped, with broad shoulders, he looked like every young maiden’s dream—probably their mother’s dream too, she thought wryly. She could remember too many occasions when every woman in the room had been fluttering around his orbit. Thinking about it now, there had been too many dinner parties, too many functions and social gatherings where she’d had to smile and chat and pretend she didn’t notice some female or other turning inside out to get Jay’s attention.
‘I hope I didn’t interrupt your breakfast with the pit bull,’ Jay said mildly as she placed the fresh pot of coffee on the small bistro table before sitting down on the other chair.
‘Her name is Clara.’ She fixed him with stern eyes. ‘And like I said, she’s a good friend.’
‘I’m glad,’ he said softly, all amusement gone. ‘I didn’t like to think of you existing with strangers.’
It was expedient to ignore the note in his voice; she didn’t like what the tender quality did to her resolve to stay distant and aloof. Pouring them both a cup of coffee, she said flatly, ‘What is it you need to talk to me about?’ as she handed Jay’s to him.
‘Us.’
Her cup rattled on her saucer and she quickly put it down. ‘I thought we did that last night.’
‘We did. In part. But Rome wasn’t built in a day.’
‘Meaning?’
‘I’ve finally got it through my obviously thick skull that what I thought was a great marriage wasn’t,’ Jay said very calmly. ‘You’re a bundle of contradictions and secrets, Miriam, but I’m willing to persevere with you.’
‘Thank you so much,’ she bit back sarcastically.
‘It’s a pleasure.’ He grinned unrepentantly. ‘The rewards will be worth it in the end.’ He’d devoured two croissants; now he reached for a third. ‘I think I’ll call in for breakfast more often, by the way—these are superb.’
‘Jay, we’re getting a divorce. That doesn’t usually mean a couple breakfast together,’ she said more calmly than she was feeling.
One eyebrow slanted provocatively. ‘No? Perhaps they should. Anyway, who says we’re getting a divorce?’
Miriam chose her words carefully. ‘I don’t want us to be enemies any more than you do, but I’m serious about this, Jay.’
‘And you think I’m not?’ The tawny eyes took on the texture of hard amber. ‘Then you know me as little as I apparently knew you.’
She stared at him. She would never win in a war of words—his mind was too quick, too agile, too altogether intimidating for any opponent who was foolish enough to take Jay Carter on. Without knowing it, she used a weapon that sliced through his composure like a knife through butter. Quietly, she said, ‘I don’t know what to say to you. I only know how I feel. I can’t be your wife any more and survive, Jay.’ Her words rang with honesty. ‘If anything remains of the love you said you felt for me, you’ll let me go.’
He stood up, a muscle clenching in his square jaw and his voice as low as hers had been when he said, ‘If anything remains? Hell, Miriam, you’ve really got no idea, have you? Can’t you just for one minute stop thinking of yourself as the betrayed victim and allow yourself to imagine what I might be feeling? My only crime is loving you. That’s it. And for that I’ve been hung, drawn and quartered.’
‘Don’t—don’t do this.’
‘What? Love you?’ He pulled her up and into his arms, kissing her hard.
She knew she ought to object, to fight him, to pull away. She knew it in her head but her heart and body were saying something else. She’d missed him so much—for ten long months she had tried to pretend she hated him, but all along she’d known she was fooling herself. Jay was the only man she had ever loved and would ever love. She didn’t want it to be that way—in fact, she would give everything she possessed for it to be different—but that was the way she was made. A one-man woman. And the man was Jay.
‘I—I can’t…’
He kissed the words from her lips, his tongue rippling along her teeth and then taking the sweetness of her mouth. Almost immediately the kiss changed in tempo, his mouth moving with more pressure over hers, parting her lips, demanding she respond to him.
Miriam felt the little needles of pleasure his kisses had always induced, tiny electric currents she knew from experience would increase and increase until she was helpless and mindless under his sexual expertise. As a throbbing heat began to creep through her body she tried to pull away but he merely shifted his position in response to the halfhearted attempt, holding her more firmly and kissing her again and again, his lips creating shudders of desire.
His hands moved to cup her breasts through the thin material of her vest top, his voice husky against her lips as he murmured, ‘You aren’t wearing a bra…’
The pads of his thumbs traced an erotic circle round her nipples, bringing the tips into hard peaks, and Miriam moaned; she couldn’t help it. Her body aching from the sexual tension of months, she knew she wanted him to make love to her properly. She needed him, she thought raggedly, sucking in a shaky breath as his mouth left hers and moved to her throat and then the swell of her small breasts above the vest top. He was the only man she would ever love and she was only human…
When his hands moved down to her waist and the kisses became lighter she didn’t realise at first what was happening. It was only when he raised his head and stepped back slightly, still holding her, that she understood he had stopped his lovemaking. Trembling, she stared at him. The hard, handsome face was showing the faintest trace of colour across his chiselled cheekbones but apart from that he was totally controlled.
She didn’t ask him why he had stopped. She didn’t have to. Jay provided the answer when he said softly, ‘We’re not going down that route for now; I don’t
intend to give you any more ammunition to use against me.’
‘What?’ She continued to stare at him, her eyes cloudy with desire and her hands clenched at her sides to prevent herself reaching for him.
‘It would be so easy to take you to bed this minute.’ He took another step away from her, turning and sitting down at the table again, his long legs stretched out in front of him as he surveyed her broodingly. ‘But it would be a temporary thing, wouldn’t it? And afterwards you’d tell yourself I used sex as a weapon to get you back, to control you or any of the other crimes laid at my door. You see, I’m beginning to understand the way your mind works, my love.’
She wanted to come back at him with an acidic retort to put him in his place but all she could manage was to say weakly, ‘You flatter yourself if you think it would be easy to take me to bed, Jay. I’ve absolutely no intention of sleeping with you again.’
A faintly sardonic expression curled the firm mouth. ‘I could shatter that argument to smithereens in moments and we both know it.’
His male ego was colossal, she thought bitterly. Unfortunately in this case she couldn’t afford to challenge him and put it to the test because the last minutes had proved she couldn’t trust herself where Jay was concerned. It was humiliating but it appeared she couldn’t match him in the self-control game. And this was just a game to Jay, she told herself. He had never had the experience of a woman leaving him before. Before he had met her the boot had always been on the other foot. Jay had been the typical love-’em-and-leave-’em male animal, as he himself had admitted.
‘Sex is only one ingredient in a successful marriage,’ she said flatly, turning from the lazer-sharp gaze and pouring herself more coffee for something to do to break the cycle of desire that still held her in its grip.
‘My sentiment exactly. Arguably the one that knits everything else together but, as we have no problem in that area, it’s a moot point,’ Jay said calmly. ‘It’s everything else we need to work on.’
She swallowed the coffee hot and black, not the way she normally drank it but she needed the caffeine boost. When she raised her head and looked at him again he was watching her, the golden eyes unreadable. Her heart lurched drunkenly. He was so handsome, she thought despairingly. So self-assured and together.
She had never meant to fall in love with him; for a little while after they’d met she’d told herself what she was feeling was a temporary attraction, something that would burn itself out very quickly simply because it was so intense. She had known a man like Jay was not for her but at the beginning she’d convinced herself he was interested in a brief, light-hearted romance, no strings attached, as he had been with his other women in the past. And then one day after they’d been seeing each other for a few weeks he had told her he loved her, that what he felt was no passing fancy but the real thing. A forever commitment. She’d thrown herself into his arms and said she felt the same and that had been that. Before she had known it she was walking down the aisle in a frothy creation, orange blossom entwined in her hair and her mother crying happy tears.
Thoughts of her mother caused the suspicion which had been niggling at the back of her mind for the last days to surface. ‘Have you been speaking to my mother recently by any chance?’ It seemed strange Jay had chosen the very week she’d told her mother she was going to set the divorce in motion to contact her.
For a long moment he studied her face. ‘We talk often.’
That didn’t surprise her. Far from there being any mother-in-law problems in their marriage, Jay and her mother had had some sort of mutual-admiration society going from day one, Miriam thought acidly. ‘I see.’
‘What do you see, my formidable little wife?’ Jay drawled mockingly, a faint smile twisting his lips.
‘She told you I was going to ask for a divorce.’
‘Did she?’ He settled himself more comfortably on the chair and took another croissant.
‘Well, didn’t she?’ He could do the calm, cool and collected thing better than anyone she knew and it had always had the power to get under her skin.
His expression changed and when she looked into his eyes they were no longer amused. ‘Why ask me when you’ve already made up your mind?’ he said, spreading blackcurrant preserve on the pastry. ‘You won’t believe me if I answer contrary to what you’ve decided, I know that.’
It was irritating how often he was right. ‘It must be nice to know everything about everyone,’ Miriam said in a staccato voice.
He refused to get annoyed. ‘It is.’ He finished the croissant, licking his fingers appreciatively.
Miriam’s eyes followed the action and something hot and pleasurable flickered in the core of her. She remembered the times his mouth had pleasured her to the point of oblivion and shivered. Her voice sharp, she said, ‘I don’t want to be rude but I’ve got masses to do today. If you’ve said all you intended to say…’
‘I haven’t even begun to get started.’ He gave the crooked grin that was so familiar to her. ‘But we’ve all day to talk.’
‘All day?’ she echoed before pulling herself together. ‘Jay, I don’t know why you came here this morning and what you’re thinking but, like I said, I’m busy this weekend.’
He had reached her and pulled her into his arms seemingly in one fluid movement, kissing her until she was breathless. ‘I’m your husband, Miriam. We haven’t seen each other before last night for months. Surely you can spare a few hours to discuss issues that will affect the rest of our lives?’
She could never think when he was touching her. Jerking herself free, she muttered, ‘What will it take to convince you it’s over?’
‘You spending some time with me like I said last night.’
She stared at him. ‘I told you I won’t come back to live at the apartment.’
‘And I told you I’m quite happy to live here with you.’
‘Which is out of the question.’
‘So we date.’ He smiled, a dangerous smile. ‘I court you all over again. Lovely old-fashioned word that, don’t you think? Court? But this time we talk, really talk, about anything and everything. No hiding, no secrets, no pretending. However unfair or ugly or unreasonable it is, I want to know what you’re thinking and you have the right to hear what I’m thinking.’
Fear, the sort of primeval, cold-terror kind, gripped Miriam. Trying to hide the emotion which was as invasive as it was illogical, she attempted sarcasm. ‘I think you know exactly what I think of you, Jay. It’s why we separated.’
He didn’t react. Coolly, he said, ‘OK, we’ll take it as read you think I’m the kind of slimeball who’d betray his wife just months after they’d married. But let me ask one thing, and remember we’re speaking truth here, however it hurts. Did you ever expect our marriage to last, deep down?’
Involuntarily her eyes dropped to her hands, which were twisted together, fingers entwined. By a conscious act of will she made herself relax her fingers one by one and, still with her head bent, she said, ‘I thought I did when we got married.’
‘And now?’
Painfully, she made herself say it. ‘Now I’m not sure.’
‘Because?’
Could she give him the honesty he demanded? After a long moment she raised her head and looked into the golden eyes. ‘Because now I’m beginning to realise that all along I knew it was too good to last. You’re handsome and wealthy and successful and I’m…’ She shrugged; she could only take this truth thing so far. ‘I’m not like the sort of woman you used to date.’
She’d surprised him, she could read it in the tough face. After a moment, he said, ‘You’re head and shoulders above the women I’ve known before; I’ve always told you that.’
Yes, he had, but believing it was something else. ‘Jay, I’m ordinary.’ When he went to speak, she held up her hand. ‘No, let me finish. I’m ordinary, I accept that and I don’t mind. You’re…’ She floundered, not knowing how she could make him see without baring her soul. ‘If I’d met
someone like—’ she searched for a nice, nine-to-five kind of man, someone they both knew ‘—Jayne’s husband, it would have been different.’
‘Guy?’ He stared at her, nonplussed. ‘Why? What’s he got that I haven’t?’
‘It’s not what Guy’s got—just the opposite. Don’t get me wrong,’ she added hastily, ‘I think he’s lovely and perfect for your sister, but when he walks into a room no one notices. Other women, I mean. He hasn’t got…oh, I don’t know. Charisma, I suppose.’ And toe-curling sex-appeal and a hundred other attributes besides, starting with jet-black hair and tawny eyes with the longest lashes she’d ever seen on anyone, and finishing in a perfectly honed, lean, muscled body that would win prizes in any competition.
Those same eyes had now narrowed into golden slits of light. ‘You’re saying I set out to make myself noticed by other women?’
‘No.’ She wasn’t. Throwing caution to the wind, she said quietly, ‘Jay, you must know you’re one of the most handsome men on the planet; you don’t need to try and get yourself noticed, women fall over themselves for you to notice them.’ Women like Belinda Poppins, for instance.
‘Let me get this straight,’ he said calmly. Too calmly. ‘You’re saying our marriage is over because of the way I look?’
Over-simplification but partly true none the less. ‘Of course not,’ she denied ineffectually. ‘Not just that. You’re handsome and rich and…’ She shrugged. And irresistible.
‘I can’t help the way I look, Miriam.’
‘No, I know that.’
‘And I’ve worked my butt off to get where I am today.’
She nodded. ‘I know that too.’ He was angry, furious. So much for speaking the truth.
She didn’t say the words out loud but she might just as well have. She watched as he read her thoughts in the uncanny way he often had and, as comprehension dawned, Jay smiled wryly. ‘OK,’ he drawled lazily as the iron self-control kicked in. ‘I think that one comes under the heading of unfair and unreasonable but you could say I asked for it and the rule still holds. The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. So…’ He surveyed her indolently for a moment. ‘Other than disfigure myself, lose all I’ve worked for and end up on the breadline and generally become a bum, how do you see this being reconciled?’