by Penny Jordan
Mrs Jensen sighed again. ‘Yes, I know, poor boy. He adored her…’
‘And she preferred Andrew.’
Mrs Jensen looked surprised. ‘Good heavens, what on earth gave you that idea, Joel was always her favourite. I remember when he was a baby she used to spend hours playing with him. Andrew was his father’s son, but Joel was hers. Of course she knew that she would never be allowed to keep them if she and Gerald divorced. In those days divorce wasn’t like it is today, and although she never discussed it with him I could see how torn she was; Nico or the children. Then Gerald sent the boys off to school when Andrew was ten and Joel eight. I think it was from then that she started to distance herself from Joel, knowing that she was going to leave.’
‘But Joel was twenty before his parents were divorced?’ Cassie protested.
Mrs Jensen looked extremely unhappy. ‘Even though Gerald didn’t really love her, Miranda was his wife; when she told him she wanted a divorce he was bitterly angry. She came to me in a dreadful state.’ The older woman bit her lip. ‘There was a bruise on her face. She told me she fell as she left the house, but I’ve always believed that Gerald hit her. If she hadn’t been so overwrought I doubt she’d have told me as much as she did, but she was so distressed that it all came out. Gerald had threatened to deny that Joel was his child if she tried to get a divorce.’
She saw Cassie pale and nodded grimly. ‘Yes you can imagine what that did to Miranda. “I only wish he was Nico’s,” she told me, “and even though he isn’t, Nico would welcome him as his son, but I can’t do that to him, I can’t let him grow up eternally wondering who his father is, I can’t do it Mary.”’
‘So she stayed with her husband until Joel discovered about Nico and his father was forced to face up to the situation?’ Cassie said quietly.
‘So she stayed,’ Mary Jensen agreed quietly. ‘Sacrificing her own happiness for Joel’s peace of mind, and for her pains earning his hatred.’
Tears stung Cassie’s eyes. She longed to go to Joel and tell him what she had just heard, but she knew that even if she could persuade him to listen he wouldn’t believe her, and yet if he was able to believe it, it would ease so much of the burden of pain he carried around with him.
Why should she care about his pain Cassie asked herself as she walked back to the house. What had he ever done to earn her compassion, her…concern? Nothing. She was becoming too involved with him; and that involvement was all on her side. He didn’t care a single jot about her. He was just using her, and she would do well to bear that fact in mind.
CHAPTER FIVE
JOEL had been gone for three days, and Cassie, in his absence, had run the full gamut of emotions from anger through to exhausted depression. She shivered as she contemplated the cold vastness of the large kitchen, wishing that she knew how to activate the central heating system. The weather had suddenly turned cold and the few clothes Joel had brought her from her flat did not include anything warm enough for the present low temperatures.
The only bright spot in her life was the new game she was working on. Her own emotional responsiveness to Joel and the resentment it sparked off inside her had made her bubble with ideas, rather in the same way that her temper simmered just below the boiling mark, she thought wryly as she plugged in the coffee machine and started to make herself a drink.
The few supplies Joel had got in were running low, so she would have to walk to the village to get some more. It struck her, almost immediately that she had next to no money with her. Fortunately she did have her cheque book, but did the village possess a bank?
Another visit to Mary Jensen was called for. Mary had rung her the previous day inviting her to call anyway. It seemed that she had found her some help for the house.
Cassie had now fully explored her new home. It had been decorated with excellent taste and a verve that was still as fresh today as it had been when Joel’s mother had decorated it, so that very little needed to be done apart from organising a thorough cleaning of the carpets and curtains and a freshening up of the paintwork.
The kitchen was the only room that needed much attention. In Cassie’s view it needed completely reorganising, new units, new equipment, everything, but she wanted to talk to Joel before she involved herself in anything so drastic. After all, she would only be staying here a matter of months; it wasn’t really her home, only a temporary habitation. A sense of acute desolation enveloped her. Already the house had come to mean something to her. It reached out and warmed her in a way that her own flat had never done. Not normally given to emotional reactions Cassie was acutely aware of the lingering warmth of Joel’s mother in almost every room. She could sense the sympathy and vibrancy of the other woman’s personality almost as a physical reality, a comforting sensation of not being completely alone.
Once she had made her coffee Cassie made her way to the small library she had made her work base. Her new game involved a series of complicated moves which ultimately would lead to an appropriately happy-ever-after ending to the romantic chase nature of the game. She felt it would have considerable appeal for women, and already was beginning to feel quite excited about its potential.
It was only when she was working that she was fully able to blot out those moments in Joel’s arms; to dismiss the spine-tingling sensations his touch had aroused in her and the knowledge that she had wanted him to go on, to make love to her as though he did actually desire her. It was a humiliating thought to admit. Long, long ago she had forced herself to see herself as she really was, unclouded by the mists of wishful thinking; she was a plain, dull girl, with an excellent brain who did not have the looks or the personality to attract men. She had already decided that this was their loss rather than hers; that if they preferred sugary sweetness then so be it; she wasn’t going to waste tears over that fact, but suddenly she found herself longing as never before for the glamour she realised she had been denied in her early teens.
Joel had brought her spare pair of glasses which were even more unflattering than the ones he had broken. Their heaviness seemed to crush the fragile bone structure of Cassie’s face, although when she glanced in the mirror all she saw was a too pale, too small face that seemed to have no colour or prettiness to it whatsoever.
Had Joel’s girlfriend had a change of heart, she wondered—losing her concentration as the unwanted thought intruded. But then what did it matter if she had not. Joel had made it clear that there were others more than willing to step into the shoes she had vacated, and Cassie had no difficulty in believing that.
Were they as aware of his contempt of their sex as she was she pondered, or did their own self-confidence in their attractiveness blunt their awareness of the finely tuned contempt she had seen so clearly?
What would Joel do, she wondered, if she were to contact the Press, to tell them what he had done. She looked at the ‘phone and was just reaching for it when she remembered his warning. He was right; she would lose all her own credibility if she made public the truth, and she couldn’t afford to take that risk. She was involved in a highly competitive field, of which at the moment she was the leader, but there was an eager pack behind her, all of whom would be only too willing to take her place were she to falter.
Sighing she turned her attention back to her game. She was growing colder and colder, and she almost yielded to the temptation to ring Joel up and ask him how she could start the central heating. Pride made her stop. She could just picture Joel’s expression were she to telephone him. No doubt he was used to women ringing him on all manner of pretexts and with his male logic he would assume she was simply another. Dimly she sensed a streak of cruelty in him that would exploit any weakness he fond in her, purely because she was female. Her weakness was her unexpected reaction to him; the sexual chemistry he sparked off inside her body that made her aware of herself; her desires and needs, in a way she had never known before. He would subjugate her if he could, by whatever means he could, Cassie acknowledged. The need to do so was a legacy left b
y what he considered his mother’s betrayal. Sighing she resigned herself to the increasing coldness, until she remembered the immersion heater that warmed the water. A hot bath would warm her chilled body, and then perhaps a brisk walk down to the vicarage. Mrs Jensen might know something about the intricacies of the central heating system, whose control panel totally baffled Cassie.
She was just drying herself when she heard the sound of a car outside. Unable to see who it was through the opaque window of her bathroom, she hurriedly pulled on a robe, and opened the bathroom door, hurrying through her bedroom.
Her hair was damp at the ends where it had escaped from her shower cap, and had started to curl slightly, her skin flushed from the heat of the water, but Cassie was oblivious to these things, having forgotten in her haste to put on her glasses.
The first thing she felt as she tugged open the door was a plunging sense of disappointment. The second was astonishment, because it wasn’t Joel standing outside the door as she had hoped, but Peter Williams.
Without her glasses Cassie could not make out his expression and so was unaware of his narrowed, startled assessment of her as he took in the slender length of her legs beneath the hem of her robe, the attractive disorder of her hair, and the warm flush colouring her skin.
‘Peter!’
Her evident astonishment made him frown in irritation.
‘Don’t sound so surprised,’ he advised her bitterly. ‘Remember, until a handful of days ago, we were engaged.’
‘You got my letter?’
‘Only after I’d read about the wedding in the papers,’ he told her bitterly. ‘Cassie, what’s happened? My parents couldn’t believe it and neither could I. I thought you hated Howard, or was that just a double game you were playing, lulling us into a false sense of security while all the time…’
The expression on her face checked him, and he suppressed the remainder of what he had been going to say with an effort. He had never particularly wanted to marry her, but his father had been insistent, and yet when he discovered that Joel Howard had snatched her from beneath his nose, he had felt acutely resentful. Howard was welcome to her he had told his father savagely, when the latter had berated him for letting her slip through their fingers, and yet now, seeing her looking so unexpectedly feminine and vulnerable his pulse rate quickened, his rage against Joel Howard deepening. Shallow minded at the best of times, it took him only seconds to persuade himself that he had genuinely cared about Cassie and that Joel Howard had robbed him of a much-desired bride as well as a potential fortune.
‘Aren’t you going to ask me in?’ His eyes assessed the soft curves of Cassie’s breasts beneath the towelling robe. He had always considered her a frigid little thing, but suddenly he wasn’t so sure.
‘Why did you do it, Cass?’ he asked softly when Cassie had led him into the library.
Almost, Cassie was tempted to tell him the truth, and then she remembered what Joel had said about his father’s plans for her company. She had never deceived herself about Peter’s feelings for her or hers for him, but she had expected both he and his father to stick by their word that she would remain in charge of Cassietronics.
‘It just happened,’ she murmured vaguely, her forehead furrowing as she asked slowly, ‘Peter, if we had married, what would have happened to Cassietronics if I had had a child?’
Peter frowned, obviously not following her train of thought. ‘Dad had all that sorted out, Cassie. He had hand-picked one of his best men, Andrew Kershaw, to run Cassietronics for you. Neither of us wanted you to have to cope with the double burden of being a wife and mother and struggling to run the company as well.’
It sounded so reasonable and well meaning, but Cassie wasn’t deceived, Joel had been right, she thought wryly. Even though she couldn’t see Peter’s expression she could sense his restlessness.
‘How did it just happen, Cass?’ he persisted. Dark colour stormed up over his skin as a possibility suddenly struck him. ‘Did he seduce you?’ he demanded hoarsely. ‘Is that what happened, Cass? Did he put you in a position where he felt you had to marry him?’
Peter was half right, Cassie thought; Joel certainly had put her in a position where she couldn’t refuse him, but not by seducing her. She could just make out the angry colour darkening Peter’s normally pale skin and wondered a little at it, before caution urged her not to let him leave without setting the record straight. It would not do her reputation in the business world any good if Peter started spreading the rumour that Joel had seduced her, and something told her that he probably would.
‘Don’t be silly, Peter,’ she responded coolly. ‘I’m not some Victorian virgin you know. No woman in the nineteen-eighties needs to marry simply because she’s lost her virginity.’
‘But you did sleep with him before you were married?’ he almost snarled, his vehemence surprising her. ‘All the time I was playing the good little fiancé, letting you hold me off with all that coy coldness, you were sneaking into his bed, is that it?’
His reaction was not at all what Cassie had expected. Half amused she assimilated the information that Peter, simply because he now believed that she and Joel had been lovers, had persuaded himself that he too had wanted her, when she knew that he had not.
‘I don’t want to talk about it any more,’ she told him crisply, ‘Joel and I are married, Peter. I’m sorry if you don’t think I played fair with you…’
‘Played fair—you were engaged to me dammit!’ he swore at her coming towards her. ‘I suppose Howard put you up to that. He knew how desperately…’ He broke off plainly angry with himself for saying too much.
‘Your father needed my company?’ Cassie supplied directly. ‘Yes, I’m afraid he did.’
Once she was free of this fake marriage to Joel she was going to take every precaution she could to ensure the security of Cassietronics she thought bitterly. She had learned her lesson well.
‘Leave him, Cass,’ Peter blurted out, ‘leave him and come to me, you must know how much I want you.’
Almost Cassie burst into hysterical laughter, but she stopped herself just in time.
‘Peter…’
He had crossed the space dividing them and was standing beside her. He glanced downwards and saw the game she was working on.
‘A new project?’
Cassie damped down an instinctive reaction to shield her work from his prying eyes.
‘Maybe,’ she agreed carelessly. ‘It’s too soon to know yet.’
Once again, Peter’s face darkened. ‘So not only does he get my intended wife, he gets success handed to him on a plate as well,’ he said thickly. ‘Well he damn well owes me this…’
Before Cassie could stop him he had gripped her arms, jerking her against his body and holding her there with a force she hadn’t thought he could exhibit.
Panic flared inside her and she arched back, but instead of deterring him, her panic seemed to have the opposite effect. ‘So there is fire beneath all that ice,’ he breathed against her skin, his mouth unpleasantly moist as it plundered the arch of her throat.
As she tried to get away from him she felt the belt of her robe slip. As she reached automatically to secure it Peter slid hard fingers into her hair, his eyes caught by the gaping lapel of her robe.
Another moment and he would be touching her breast, Cassie thought sickly, and that was something she could not endure. She would have had to endure it if they had married, she reminded herself, wondering how it was she had lived so many years and known so little about herself. Before meeting Joel Howard she would have described herself as sexually cold, but now… She shuddered deeply, almost gagging as she felt Peter’s breath fan her lips. She was too frozen to resist him, her brain and body locked and incapable of responding to her instinctive demand for escape.
‘Cassie…’
‘What the hell’s going on here?’
Peter released her the instant he heard Joel’s voice, turning to face the other man.
Cassie’s hand went to the lapel of her robe. She was shivering now with a mixture of fear and relief. Joel looked furiously angry, his navy-blue eyes scorching her with singeing contempt. He could not surely believe she had actively participated in Peter’s lovemaking, but apparently he did.
Peter obviously thought so to, because he drawled tauntingly, ‘I should have thought it was obvious, Howard. After all Cassie might be your wife, but she and I were engaged…’ He turned to smile at Cassie. ‘I thought you said he wasn’t due back, darling,’ he murmured, stunning her with his capacity for deceit. ‘Pity, I was just beginning to enjoy myself.’
‘Out,’ Joel grated. ‘Now, before I forget I’m supposed to be civilised and break your neck.’
Cassie wasn’t surprised when Peter headed for the door. Joel stood to one side as he walked through it. In total silence Cassie heard the front door slam, the silence thickening and stretching until her nerves were coiled like fine wires as Peter started his car and then drove away.
‘A very chivalrous lover, you have,’ Joel sneered when Peter had gone, ‘leaving you to face the wrath of your husband alone… What were you doing down here?’ he added. ‘Weren’t the bedrooms good enough for you?’
‘Peter had only just arrived,’ Cassie told him automatically, not realising how betraying the words sounded until Joel walked towards her. Even without her glasses she was aware of the taut ferocity of his movements. She wanted to turn and run but pride would not let her.
‘So you are capable of looking like a woman after all,’ Joel said softly as he reached her. He stretched out and brushed his fingers through her hair and Cassie felt her scalp prickle in response. ‘And of behaving like one? Perhaps it’s time I found out.’
Cassie’s automatic denial was lost beneath the angry pressure of his mouth; branding her as though she were his possession she thought numbly as his fingers dug into her arms. His kiss was brutal, almost painfully so and yet some part of her reacted fiercely to the bruising pressure, a well of wild responsiveness rushing up inside her. Her lips parted instinctively, her eyelids heavy with arousal as she tried to focus on the dark blur of Joel’s face.