‘Well, anyway, he’s coming to dinner this evening too,’ her mother announced almost challengingly—a challenge Cassandra was only too happy to meet!
‘Why?’ she prompted softly.
‘I’ve just—’
‘Why, Mother?’ she repeated firmly, easily meeting her mother’s searching gaze.
‘Bethany!’ her mother finally realised. ‘She was here earlier when we were discussing…! Joy has a perfect right to ask whom she wants to give her away,’ she said in defence of her youngest daughter.
‘It wasn’t so long ago Joy was chasing after Jonas for quite another reason,’ Cassandra reminded her drily, perfectly aware that when Jonas had first returned to England her sister had been very attracted to him indeed. But while Jonas hadn’t seemed averse to having Joy reacquaint him with London he hadn’t been interested in anything more than that from her, Joy had told her disappointedly one day. Cassandra had been most embarrassed by the whole incident; she had been sure Jonas was secretly laughing at them all for her sister’s obvious ambitions where he was concerned. Joy’s engagement to Colin was a relatively new thing, and Cassandra just hoped it was for the right reasons; Colin was nowhere near as ‘primitively exciting’ as Joy had claimed she thought Jonas was! Still, that was Joy’s problem, not hers. Her problems were much more pressing than that.
‘And if she had succeeded it might just have been the answer for all of us,’ her mother snapped angrily.
Cassandra looked at her mother closely. ‘And just what do you mean by that remark?’
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ her mother said with impatient dismissal—although she wasn’t quite meeting Cassandra’s gaze, she noticed with a frown. Did her mother know more than she was prepared to say…?
‘It would have been the perfect arrangement if we could have kept the company in the family,’ her mother continued briskly. ‘As it is, Jonas could eventually marry anybody, and then where will we all be?’ She frowned.
Exactly where they were now, Cassandra would have thought. Unless her mother did know something…
‘Don’t start being difficult about this, Cassandra,’ her mother told her shortly. ‘The decision has been made, and nothing you say will make any difference.’
‘But do you have to ask him now?’ She frowned. ‘What’s the urgency?’
‘There is no urgency,’ her mother shrugged. ‘We just thought it would be a nice gesture, what with the time of year and everything.’
A time of year when Jonas was much less likely to refuse, Cassandra realised ruefully, her own hands tied for very much the same reason. ‘Mother—’
‘Do stop calling me Mother in that disapproving way of yours,’ she was told impatiently. ‘Either Mummy, or Marguerite, if you prefer, but Mother makes me sound like some matriarchal monster!’
Her mother was tense and agitated, she could see. Admittedly, she also having been widowed, the last year had been as difficult for her mother as it had for her, but at the same time her mother had seemed to be coping, her life continuing to run in its usually smooth way. What had happened to change that? Unless her mother did know something. Colin was Jonas’s assistant, so he would know all about the audit Jonas had ordered. Maybe that was why—
‘Mr Chorley, madam,’ the butler came into the room to announce after knocking quietly.
‘Thank you, Jenkins,’ she accepted vaguely. ‘Show him in, will you?’ She turned to Cassandra once they were alone again. ‘Just drop this for now, Cassandra,’ she hissed impatiently. ‘It’s absolutely none of Godfrey’s business.’
‘I would have thought Godfrey was the more obvious choice to give Joy away,’ she began reasoningly. ‘He—’
‘He’s a family friend, nothing more,’ her mother snapped. ‘Even if he would like to be more than that. Especially as he would like to be more than that.’ She was becoming agitated once again. ‘Cassandra, Jonas is very important to all our lives, so please just stop being difficult where he’s concerned!’ she pleaded anxiously.
Cassandra was prevented from saying anything more on the subject by Godfrey’s arrival, quickly followed by Joy and Colin joining them. As it could only be a matter of minutes before Jonas arrived too she quickly made her excuses!
But she was so preoccupied when she finally met Simeon at the restaurant that she couldn’t have been much company for him. Not that he complained; they didn’t have that sort of relationship—Simeon was more like a brother to her than anything else, despite what the rest of the family might think to the contrary.
Simeon had turned up at her London salon one day three years ago, short and dark-haired, at twenty-six nevertheless managing to look perpetually boyish, with no qualifications except a wonderful eye for colour and design, a fact he had proved only too well when on that very first occasion he had told her her displays were all wrong and offered to do them for her! The difference he had made in a very short time had convinced her she should employ him. It was a decision she had never regretted—although not even Simeon’s obvious talents could alter the fact that her business was in deep financial trouble. She wasn’t even sure she would be able to continue to employ him after the expense of putting out the spring collection!
But because Cassandra was so caught up in her own thoughts she cut the evening short, driving herself home again, wondering when she would be able to see Jonas again to finish their conversation. She certainly hadn’t been expecting him to be waiting for her when she got home!
But she would know that dark green Jaguar anywhere, and she glanced warily over at the house as she locked her own car before going inside. Obviously Jonas had decided they should finish this conversation tonight!
Jean looked at her with raised brows as she entered the house. ‘Mr Hunter is in the sitting-room,’ she said ruefully; obviously she hadn’t had any choice about letting him wait in there for Cassandra to come home!
‘Thanks, Jean.’ Cassandra squeezed her arm reassuringly, leaving her bag on the hall table to go through to the sitting-room, straightening her back defensively as she entered.
Jonas stood beside the unlit fireplace, watching her with narrowed eyes as she came in and quietly closed the door behind her. ‘Where the hell have you been?’ he rasped accusingly.
She gasped at his direct attack. ‘I don’t think that’s any of your—’
‘You knew damn well I had assumed you would be at your mother’s this evening,’ he bit out impatiently.
She shook her head. ‘I didn’t say I would be,’ she reasoned, the two of them facing each other like adversaries across the width of the fireplace.
The perfectly tailored black dinner-suit and snowy white shirt Jonas wore did little to hide the fact that these trappings of civilisation were merely that—a veneer of sophistication that did little to hide the contempt he felt for the polite conventions that meant he had to dress this way to go to dinner at her mother’s house.
‘No, you didn’t say that,’ he accepted harshly. ‘But you knew I thought it anyway.’
What he thought and what was actually fact were two entirely different things! ‘What do you want, Jonas?’ she sighed wearily.
‘I wanted to finish our earlier conversation,’ he ground out impatiently. ‘But now I want to know where you were and who you were with this evening.’
Cassandra frowned. ‘I don’t think that’s any of your business,’ she repeated, this time actually being allowed to finish the statement!
‘Young Grey, I suppose,’ he grated, his gaze narrowed on her speculatively. ‘Oh, yes, Cassandra, I’ve heard the rumours of your affair with him.’ His mouth twisted contemptuously.
‘My what?’ she gasped incredulously. ‘I’m not having an affair with Simeon!’ she protested irritably. ‘He and I are friends—’
‘You go out together,’ Jonas accused.
‘Well—yes,’ she acknowledged, colour entering her cheeks. ‘But as friends. Not that I can see what it has to do with you anyway—’
�
��You’re my brother’s widow, the mother of my niece, of course it interests me what men you have in your life—’
‘I don’t have “men” in my life,’ Cassandra protested heatedly. ‘Only Simeon. And he—’
“‘Only Simeon”,’ Jonas echoed tauntingly. ‘What is it, Cassandra? Is he no danger because his tastes don’t run to women?’
‘Simeon has a normal interest in women as far as I know,’ she defended, indignant on his behalf; just because Simeon was involved in the fashion business didn’t mean he was automatically homosexual.
‘As far as you know,’ Jonas repeated softly, moving in that stealthy way of his now, suddenly standing very close to her. ‘Hasn’t he tried to make love to you yet?’ he challenged.
She swallowed hard, her cheeks feeling very warm now. ‘Of course he hasn’t!’ she snapped, wishing he wouldn’t stand so close to her; she was starting to feel very hot indeed, all over!
Jonas’s hand came up to cup one side of her heated face, his eyes narrowed on her widely distressed ones. ‘Why don’t I believe you?’ he murmured softly. ‘Possibly because of the passion I see here.’ His thumb-pad moved caressingly close to her wide golden eyes. ‘And the promise I can feel here.’ That thumb moved over her bottom lip now. ‘And the desire that pulses here.’ His hand moved down to the hollows of her throat, gently caressing still. ‘I was right about this dress, Cassandra,’ he told her softly, looking down at her body sheathed in the gold-coloured gown. ‘You do look like a high priestess in it.’
He was standing so close to her now that Cassandra could feel the heat of his body, and the touch of that marauding hand was doing strange things to her limbs; she was having difficulty standing up! She swayed slightly towards him, and as she did so she saw the light of triumph in his eyes, starting to pull back as she did so.
But it was too late; Jonas had already thrust her away from him, looking at her coldly now. ‘No,’ he rasped harshly, ‘I don’t believe you at all, Cassandra.’ He looked at her contemptuously. ‘You and Charles must have made a great pair, he so self-centred and you so glad to give him what he wanted as long as you got what you wanted in return!’
‘Get out,’ Cassandra choked. ‘Get out of my house.’ It was still hers—just!
Jonas’s mouth twisted. ‘Quite like old times!’ He taunted, reminding her of the fact that she had thrown him out the first time he had come here too. ‘Oh, I’m going, Cassandra, don’t worry. I had wanted to talk to you again before I left for the States in the morning but—’
‘You’re going to America tomorrow?’ Cassandra gasped incredulously; he had given no indication of that earlier today.
His eyes narrowed. ‘Is there some problem with that?’
‘Well, no… But—’
‘Good,’ he accepted with brisk dismissal. ‘We can talk again when I get back.’
Cassandra hurried after him as he strode over to the door. ‘But—’
‘Yes, Cassandra?’ He turned so sharply that she almost walked into him. She looked up into the hard coldness of his face, shivering slightly at the cruelty she could see there; he knew exactly what he was doing, was well aware of how worried she was about the conversation they had had earlier. Damn him!
‘Nothing,’ she told him through gritted teeth. ‘It can wait until you get back.’
His mouth twisted into a humourless smile. ‘It will have to—won’t it…?’
Cassandra stood alone in the sitting-room long after he had gone, shivering in spite of the warmth of the house. And while she was upset about Jonas’s cruel determination not to finish their earlier conversation she was more disturbed by the way she had seemed to respond to him, no matter how briefly…
* * *
Jonas was in New York all of the following week, and the longer he was away, the more agitated Cassandra became. She desperately needed to know what he had found out during that company audit. And despite the need to keep her own flagging business going, having to complete her spring designs before the New Year, it was her work that suffered the most with the upset of waiting for Jonas’s return. So much so that when Bethany was invited out by her grandmother on the Sunday for a visit to the zoo Cassandra telephoned Simeon and asked if he would mind coming over to the house and working with her there for the day.
A working Sunday lunch, the remnants of their picnic-style meal still on the small coffee-table over by the armchair, their half-empty wine glasses left untouched, the fire glowing warm and inviting—it all looked extremely warm and cosy, Cassandra realised ruefully as she straightened to rub a soothing hand over her aching nape, where she had been bent over the sketches all afternoon.
Which was exactly the conclusion Jonas drew too, she realised with extreme irritation, when he arrived a short time later!
After waiting a week to see him, her nerves strung out to breaking-point, when the moment did finally arrive, it was, she was sure, after their conversation concerning Simeon a week ago, in what Jonas considered a compromising situation; there was no mistaking the harsh criticism in that hard black gaze as it raked over her with merciless judgement!
If she had known he was back, perhaps she wouldn’t have invited Simeon here today. And then perhaps she would! This was her home, she could behave as she liked in the privacy of it. Jonas was the intruder here.
When she had heard Jean answer the ring of the doorbell, closely followed by Bethany’s excited chatter, Cassandra had known that work was over for the day, shooting Simeon a rueful smile as he came to the same conclusion and began to gather the things together that they had spread over the floor so that they could work more easily.
The door burst open and Bethany rushed in to tell her all about the animals she had seen, Cassandra not realising for several minutes of Bethany’s chatter that a man had followed her to stand in the doorway—a man who surveyed the intimacy of the scene he had walked in on with a calculating narrowing of his coal-black eyes! By the time Cassandra had realised it was Jonas who had brought Bethany home, and not Joy and Colin as her mother had told her it probably would be, Jonas had already made his assessment of the situation he had interrupted, and was looking at her with accusing contempt.
To make matters worse, Simeon had seen that narrow-eyed look too, glancing uncomfortably at Cassandra as he tried to gauge her reaction to the other man’s obvious anger at finding them here together. Cassandra could have screamed at how guilty Simeon suddenly looked, at the way he was acting like a man ‘caught in the act’, his movements agitated now as he hastened to clear away.
God, so much for her having told Jonas his accusations concerning Simeon and herself were false ones; even she was starting to feel guilty, and she had nothing to feel guilty about!
She slowly released Bethany as her daughter paused for breath in her narrative, standing up herself now, very aware, in the face of Jonas’s neat appearance in fitted black trousers and cobalt-blue sweater, of her own dishevelled appearance. Her denims and jumper were far from new, and she had a habit, when she was working, of pushing her hair haphazardly back from her face; from the expression on Jonas’s face as he took in her appearance as she stood up he was imagining someone else’s fingers completely having caressed the dark cascade of her ebony hair!
‘Jonas,’ she greeted him much more lightly than she felt. ‘I didn’t realise you were back.’ The last was as much an accusation as a statement; he must know she had been wanting to speak to him all week!
‘Obviously,’ he rasped with an acknowledging inclination of his head, giving Simeon a cold glare.
Cassandra sighed wearily as she saw how worried the younger man was looking now. ‘It’s very kind of you to have brought Bethany home for me,’ she added dismissively, ‘although I had been expecting Joy and Colin to do that.’ And she was curious to know at what juncture during the day Jonas had joined her family so that he had been in a position to bring Bethany home at all. God knew what construction Joy would put on that little fact!
Jonas
shrugged unconcernedly, strolling further into the room, completely in command of the situation—even though he must know Cassandra’s feelings towards him were ambivalent to say the least. ‘I went to your mother’s to see Colin about something, and when I realised Joy and Colin have an appointment to see the vicar later this evening, obviously concerning the wedding arrangements, it seemed only logical I should be the one to drive Bethany home,’ he explained.
Logical. Methodical. Calculated. Cold! All of those adequately described this man.
Cassandra gave an involuntary shiver, stiffening her shoulders in what she knew was a defensive way. ‘Well, it was very nice of you to do so—’
‘I’ve invited Uncle Jonas to stay for tea,’ Bethany piped up happily, her hand sliding conspiratorially into her uncle’s as she smiled up at him adoringly.
Cassandra looked down at her daughter in dismay. In the past she had always found pleasure in the fact that her daughter was so outgoing; Bethany’s friends from school seeming endless, a constant stream of them coming to the house for tea since Bethany had started at the school in September. But Jonas was hardly a schoolfriend of Bethany’s, and Cassandra couldn’t exactly say she was pleased at this deepening closeness between the two of them. Since Jonas was only a distant, nominal male in her daughter’s life, Cassandra could cope with his occasional visits, but she knew he must have returned from the States some time over the weekend—and one of the first things he seemed to have done was spend time with Bethany. And Cassandra didn’t like it, not one little bit.
‘Unless we’re too late…?’ Jonas looked pointedly at the debris left on the table from the snack lunch Cassandra and Simeon had enjoyed together earlier. And which, Cassandra was sure he realised, had to have been there some time; the bread was starting to curl up at the edges, for goodness’ sake! He was just being bloody-minded again.
‘I’ll have Jean clear that away.’ She rang for the other woman, Jean knowing from experience that she had to just leave Cassandra when she was working, which was why she hadn’t cleared away earlier. Cassandra turned to Simeon. ‘Would you like to join us for tea too?’ Even as she made the request he met the pleading in her eyes with apology—and request it certainly was; she didn’t want to be left alone here with the rapier-tongued Jonas. Not that she could blame Simeon for his defection; given the choice she would have joined him and fled too!
Hunter's Moon & Bedded for Revenge Page 4