by Penny Jordan
With a bitterness that was directed as much against herself as it was against him, she stared at him in incredulity and said, ‘Are you actually trying to tell me you think you’ve fallen in love with me on the strength of a couple of meetings?’
If she hadn’t been so angry she might have been amazed at the way he flushed so darkly.
‘Improbable, I know.’ His voice was harsh and faintly self-derisory, his grimace wry. ‘But true none the less. I’m not an impressionable boy, Sara; I admit that falling in love with you wasn’t exactly something I anticipated—if I gave it any thought at all I’d begun to assume that it was simply something that wasn’t going to happen to me. And to be honest, I didn’t regret it. I’ve seen too much of what ‘love’ can do to relish the thought of it in my own life, but fate, it seems, had other ideas. The feelings I have for you aren’t easy to explain or define, but I know myself well enough to know that they are genuine.’ He leaned forward and cupped her chin before she could move out of the way, holding her so that she was forced to meet his eyes.
‘And you feel something for me, too,’ he finished softly.
Fear kicked painfully in her stomach. ‘I don’t. I don’t feel anything for you,’ she lied frantically, trying to pull free of him, but his hand slid round to the back of her neck, holding her immobile.
‘I love Rick…’ she protested. ‘I always have and I always will.’
‘You love a dead man,’ said Jonas bitingly, ‘A memory, Sara, a man who can’t hold you in his arms any more…can’t make your body tremble with wanting…’
‘Stop it! Stop it; I don’t want to hear any more!’
‘Why?’ he demanded fiercely. ‘Because it’s true? You’re clinging to your dead lover because you’re afraid to let yourself feel any emotion. You don’t love him, not the way I define love. You’re clinging to a safe image, because you’re too afraid to face the real world.’
‘No…no… you’re wrong.’ She almost sobbed the words, her throat tight with panic and pain.
‘No? Then what’s your explanation for this…this feeling there is between us—and don’t bother trying to deny that there is something…?’
She felt herself flush beneath the burning glitter of his eyes, not cold but hot, and bitterly angry.
‘Sex,’ she told him defensively through a raw throat; ‘it’s just sex.’
She knew instantly she had made a bad mistake. A smile twisted his mouth, the glitter in his eyes intensifying as he bent his head towards her, his fingers sliding into her hair to cup and caress her head, his mouth moving silkily over hers, generating a heat which forced her to suppress a moan of arousal in her throat.
His hand left her arm and slid to her breast, the intensity of her physical response to him shocking and shaming to her.
It seemed an aeon of time before he let her go, his lips lingering on the swollen contours of hers, caressing and tasting her with a slow and deliberate languor that she found nearly as dangerously overwhelming as his earlier ardour.
For the first time in her life she was aware of the intensity of a man’s desire and the urgency of his arousal. Just one word, just a look, in fact, would be enough to take her from his study to the intimacy of the bed he had mentioned to her earlier, and, shamingly, there was still a small part of her that wantonly ached for that intimacy, that yearned to know the satin smoothness of his naked skin, the erotic play of his hands on her body, his mouth… She shuddered violently and opened her eyes to see the hot glitter of triumph in his.
‘So it’s just sex, is it?’
She had to destroy that masculine triumph, to hurt him the way he was hurting her by trying to make her forget Rick.
‘Yes,’ she told him fiercely, ‘that’s all it is.’ Recklessly she threw back her head and stared into his eyes. ‘I’ll go to bed with you, if that’s what you want, Jonas, but I don’t love you.’
For a moment she held her breath, stupefied by her own recklessness. She watched as his eyes hardened, his mouth compressing with open cruelty.
‘So you’ll go to bed with me, will you? Why? So that you can relieve the frustration of loving a dead man? Oh no, Sara,’ he told her with soft venom. ‘There’s no way I’m playing that game. Sorry to disappoint you,’ he added, subjecting her to an insultingly sexual inspection that told her he was both aware of and unmoved by her arousal. ‘I’m afraid you’re just going to have to burn,’ he taunted her. ‘I’ll take you home now,’ he added coolly. ‘Think of me tonight when you’re all alone in your cold little bed.’
Sara’s emotions were too close to the surface to allow any degree of self-control. Shaking with a mixture of longing and hatred, she said thickly, ‘My bed isn’t cold, and I won’t be alone, Jonas. Rick lives on in my mind and my heart, even if he isn’t with me in the flesh.’
For a moment she thought he might actually strike her. She could see his muscles tense under his savage attempt at self-control, and as he threw open the door and strode out into the hall without a word to her, she almost wished he had hit her. On a wave of sickening self-knowledge, she recognised that part of her had actually, even if it was only for a second, wanted his physical abuse of her, because in hitting her, in giving way to the emotions she had deliberately aroused in him, he would have given her a genuine reason to resent and despise him. As it was, as he drove her home in an icy cold silence, the person she despised was herself.
Luckily Vanessa and Sam were too engrossed in one another to express anything more than concern at her excuse that she had returned early because of a headache. It was only when Sara was alone in bed that she was able to examine in more detail the improbability of Jonas actually being in love with her, and the intensity of her own fear that he should be. Fear sprang from an inner admission of one’s own vulnerability; she knew that. She shivered. If she was vulnerable to Jonas, it was only sexually. Sexually he could arouse her, but that didn’t mean she loved him or wanted his love. She didn’t.
It seemed incredible that she could have aroused such deep feelings in him in such a short space of time. She and Rick had fallen in love slowly and gradually, gently almost. And yet she knew Jonas hadn’t been lying to her. The truth had been there in his eyes, his feelings laid bare for her to read. For the first time it struck her how hard it must have been for a man of his stamp to openly admit his feelings for her. Or had it simply never struck him that they might not be reciprocated? It would be typical of his arrogance, Sara told herself, finding release for her guilt in the thought.
CHAPTER SIX
FOR three days they saw nothing of either Jonas or Vanessa, and Sara told herself that she was glad that Jonas had decided to accept the fact that she just wasn’t interested in him.
A spell of thundery weather kept her out of the garden, but there was still plenty to do inside the house. However, Sara was not so sure now that she should be the one to choose its new décor, and when she was alone with Sam one afternoon, she decided to raise the subject with him.
‘We haven’t seen much of Vanessa lately,’ she commented, and watched him scowl.
‘I told her to stay away.’ He looked up in time to catch the shock in Sara’s eyes, and moved restlessly in his chair. ‘It’s no use, Sara,’ he told her. ‘What can I possibly offer a woman? My legs will never be as they were; I’m going to have to spend a considerable amount of my life in this chair; I’ve got a six-year-old daughter and all the emotional baggage that comes from having a committed relationship. If Vanessa was less sensitive, less easily hurt…’
‘She wouldn’t be the woman you love,’ Sara said quietly. ‘And you do love her, don’t you, Sam?’
‘Too much to tie her down to the sort of life she’d have with me. Financially I’m comfortably off, I know, but I can’t offer her anything that compares with what Jonas gives her.’
‘No, but you can give her something she wants far more. She loves you,’ Sara told him. ‘If I wasn’t sure that you loved her I’d agree with what you’re doing,
but you do love her. And if it’s me you’re worrying about, then don’t,’ she added crisply. ‘I can soon bring my secretarial training up to date and get a job…’
‘You’ll always have a home with me, Sara,’ Sam interrupted roughly. ‘And Vanessa knows that. If I could be sure that she wasn’t acting out of some misguided sense of pity…’ he burst out emotionally, his face muscles tense and compressed. ‘She offered to drive me in to Dorchester for my hospital check up tomorrow, but I told her you’d take me…’
Hesitating only for a moment, Sara said coolly, ‘Then you’d better telephone her and tell her that you’ve changed your mind, because I can’t. I’ve got a date of my own that I can’t break, tomorrow afternoon.’
‘With Jonas?’ her brother grinned teasingly at her. ‘Aha, I thought you weren’t as immune as you’ve been claiming! Vanessa will be over the moon; she’s convinced that you’re the ideal girl for him. She says she’s never seen him get in such a state over any woman before.’
She had made up her fictitious date on the spur of the moment, determined to give Vanessa an opportunity to convince Sam that her feelings were genuine, but she was appalled that Sam should leap to the conclusion that her supposed date must be with Jonas.
However, her brother was frowning again, his movements as he levered himself out of his chair and walked haltingly over to the French windows, jerky with tension and frustration. ‘I can’t just ring her up like that and tell her I’ve changed my mind,’ he protested. ‘Besides,’ he added roughly, ‘whatever she may or may not feel for me, everything I’ve already said holds good. She might think she cares for me now, but she knows nothing about living with the reality of a man who’s half crippled.’
‘Maybe not, but what makes you feel you have the right to deny her the chance to discover if she can live with that reality?’ asked Sara coolly. ‘You’re not being fair to her, Sam,’ she told her brother. ‘If the situation was reversed, would you still love her?’
His immediate, ‘Of course,’ made him grimace faintly and look at Sara with lifted eyebrows. ‘Okay, I get your message, Sara, but the point is…’
‘The point is that you’re letting your pride blind you to the fact that you could be hurting Vanessa more by rejecting her than you ever could by marrying her—I take it it is marriage that’s in your mind, and not…’
‘For God’s sake, of course it is!’ exploded Sam roughly. ‘Just what do you take me for, Sara? She’s already had enough bad knocks from life without me adding another. She isn’t secure enough in herself to feel happy in a relationship she couldn’t feel was permanent.’
‘No, she isn’t,’ Sara agreed. ‘Go and telephone her, Sam,’ she begged her brother. ‘Tell her you’ve changed your mind and that you’d like her to pick you up after all. Let her make her own decisions about whether or not she can adapt to your way of life—don’t make them for her.’
Holding her breath she watched as her brother sat down and reached for the telephone. He knew the number off by heart, she recognised, watching him punch in the numbers. Vanessa must have answered the phone; Sam’s voice was distinctly husky as he said her name. Quietly moving out of earshot, Sara left him to it.
* * *
That he hadn’t been entirely successful was obvious the next day when Vanessa drew up outside in her car.
She looked pale, her mouth tight with pain and tension, and although she longed to reassure her, Sara felt she could not interfere further. Carly came rushing down from her room to greet their visitor, flinging herself enthusiastically into her arms.
‘Vanessa’s got some teddies just like mine,’ she confided to her aunt. ‘And she’s going to let me see them…’
‘Not today though, I’m afraid.’ Vanessa smiled wanly. ‘Today I’m taking your daddy to the hospital.’
Watching from the sidelines, Sara saw that Vanessa made no attempt to help Sam into the car, refraining from doing anything that would have brought her in physical contact with him, and yet despite Vanessa’s aloofness, she was aware of how much the other girl was suffering.
All women who loved were open to the same pain, all of her sex sharing a deep in-bred awareness of just how devastating it could be, Sara thought. It was an awareness that was seldom mentioned or talked about, but it was there. She had loved once and known that pain when tragedy wrenched Rick away from her. And that was why she was determined never to fall in love again.
Determined? She stopped with one foot on the stairs. It wasn’t by an effort of will that she couldn’t fall in love, it was because she still loved Rick. Wasn’t it?
When Sam and Vanessa returned from the hospital, both of them seemed in much happier spirits. Sam asked Sara if she would mind babysitting Carly for him so that he could take Vanessa out to dinner.
Observing their happiness as they drove away together several hours later, Sara told herself that it wasn’t envy that made her own heart heavy with pain. How could she envy Sam and Vanessa what she had sworn she could never experience again?
It was late when they got back, and over supper Sara couldn’t help noticing how often they exchanged brief glances and touches. As soon as she decently could she excused herself, fibbing that she was feeling tired.
In fact, she had never felt less like sleep. She was buoyed up by a restless nervy energy that she couldn’t seem to dispel. It seemed a long time before she finally heard Vanessa leave. Had Vanessa and her brother been making love?
A shudder of sensation gripped her body, her frantic attempts to summon the protection of Rick’s familiar features vanquished by their refusal to form. Instead it was Jonas who filled her thoughts and senses, his mental image tormenting her until she was forced to bury her head beneath her pillows in an attempt to push his intrusive image away.
As the week wore on, Sara found that her mood of nervous tension didn’t abate. Whenever she tried to calm herself by thinking of Rick, Jonas’s strong features came between her and her memories of her dead love.
Illogically, it was Jonas she blamed for her inability to remember Rick in exact detail. She was alternately torn between the feeling that she never wanted to see him again and the burning need to do so, so that she could demand that he stop torturing her.
On the Friday evening she babysat for Carly once again, allowing Vanessa and Sam to go out together.
The thundery weather, which had grown oppressive, drove her to bed early with the beginnings of a bad headache. The tablets she took beforehand ensured that she fell asleep almost immediately, but the physical intensity of her dreams woke her abruptly within an hour of going to bed.
Her dream had been so real that it was minutes after she had come awake before she realised that she was alone in her own bed, that Jonas was not beside her. Jonas… Even though she was alone her body burned, her skin scorched with heat.
Her dream had been so real that even now she could hardly comprehend that Jonas wasn’t there with her, that that touch against her skin had not been his but merely part of her dream.
With returning consciousness came the awareness of how much her body ached. Pressing her hands to her breasts, she felt their hard arousal, her throat suddenly thickening with uncryable tears.
Her headache was even worse than it had been before, its pounding mirroring the heavy thud of her pulses. With a tormented cry she got out of bed and pulled on her wrap, going over to her open casement window.
Outside the night air was hot and still with the tension that presages a thunderstorm. After the thunder would come the relief of rain to freshen the air and release the tension. But there seemed to be no escape for her own tension.
This hectic, almost frantic desire to abandon herself to the physical act of sex was unfamiliar to her. And yet surely she must have experienced this same driving need with Rick? After all, they hadn’t been lovers…and she had loved him. The fact that she was young and still a virgin had made him very protective and tender towards her, never permitting them to get in a situatio
n that offered too much temptation.
Perhaps it was because she was older that she felt this burning need—or perhaps it was fuelled by the fact that Rick was now lost to her for ever.
As she looked out of her window, she saw a light go on in one of Jonas’s greenhouses, and instinctively she withdrew from sight, even though she knew it would be impossible for anyone to see her. Vanessa had said earlier in the week that Jonas was away seeing customers, but now he must be back.
An unwelcome quiver of sensation tormented her skin, raising goosebumps and making her shiver. Why had she dreamed about Jonas—and in such an explicitly sexual way?
Feeling her skin burn once more, she stumbled back to her bed, telling herself that it must have been something to do with the drug she had taken for her headache.
Overnight it rained, the crash of thunder waking Sara briefly in the early hours. When she finally woke it was with the instinctive sensation of having overslept. Quickly showering and dressing, she went downstairs, checking on the threshold of the kitchen when she saw Vanessa deep in conversation with Sam.
‘Morning, sleepyhead,’ Sam teased, grinning at her. ‘Want some coffee?’
‘At least a gallon,’ Sara confirmed wryly. ‘Did you have a good time last night?’
She turned round just in time to see the look her brother and Vanessa exchanged, and was instantly pierced by the most illogical and painful jealousy.
‘You could say so,’ Sam drawled, fighting to keep the excitement out of his voice and not succeeding at all. ‘We’re engaged,’ he added proudly, lifting Vanessa’s hand to his mouth in a gesture so tender and loving that Sara felt her throat almost close up.
‘I hope you don’t expect me to be surprised,’ she managed to say, going forward to hug Vanessa and then kiss her brother.