‘Don’t be ridiculous, Jonas.’ It was her turn to snap now, facing him unflinchingly. ‘And why do you persist in calling him a puppy? He’s older than me, not some adolescent. And as he’s my assistant,’ she hurried on as she saw the storm clouds increase at her defence of Simeon, ‘I would have been perfectly justified in my need to see him.’
‘And did you need to see him this afternoon?’ Jonas’s mouth twisted derisively.
Coming from any other man this behaviour could be thought to be that of a jealous lover, but from Jonas it was obviously intended as yet another insult to emphasise what he already believed of her.
Cassandra ignored it, knowing that to allow herself to become as angry as he was certainly wasn’t the answer; besides, she was desperately trying to come up with a way of answering him without making his anger worse! Once she had told him it was his father she had been to see this afternoon, and not Simeon, then the whole truth of her visit would have to come out. And, angry as Jonas already was, that wouldn’t achieve anything. Would she be wiser telling him it had been Simeon she had been to see, bear the wrath that would follow that, and then talk to him about the things his father had told her when he was in a more reasonable frame of mind? If Jonas ever was in a more reasonable frame of mind!
‘What sort of mother are you, anyway?’ Jonas attacked before she could make any reply, reaching out to shake her, taking the matter completely out of her control as he threw the next accusation at her. ‘Dumping your child at your mother’s while you sneak off to meet some man—’
‘I didn’t sneak off to meet some man,’ she returned heatedly, stung by both the aspersions he was casting on her ability to be a good mother to Bethany and this obsession he seemed to have of there being a relationship between her and Simeon.
Jonas’s hands bit painfully into her upper arms, his harshly hewn features only inches away from her now as he glowered down at her. ‘How long has this affair with your assistant been going on anyway?’ he demanded viciously.
‘I told you—’
‘Even while Charles was alive?’ he continued remorselessly. ‘Did you deceive your much older husband even then with your young lover?’ he accused disgustedly.
‘Don’t judge me as having the same standards as your mother—’ She broke off as soon as she realised what she had said, staring up at Jonas now with widely apprehensive eyes, her face gone deathly white.
Jonas was very still, a nerve pulsing in his tightly clenched jaw, his eyes dark, his hands falling slowly back to his sides as he released his grip on her arms. ‘What did you say?’ he said softly.
Dangerously softly.
Oh, God…!
CHAPTER NINE
CASSANDRA hadn’t meant—hadn’t wanted—So much for biding her time, talking to Jonas about the past in a way that would rationalise it all. She shouldn’t have allowed herself to react to that taunt about her cheating on Charles during their marriage, because that was all it had been—a vicious taunt on Jonas’s part because he was furiously angry with her for disappearing in that way without telling him where she was going.
The expression in Jonas’s eyes had gone dead now, icily, coldly dead, as he moved away from her, his face harshly forbidding. Cassandra felt a shiver of apprehension down her spine. If she had thought him arrogantly cruel in the past, she now realised how wrong she had been; Jonas looked capable of ripping her to pieces with a few well-chosen words at this moment!
She put a hand out towards him, not daring actually to touch him, sure he would snap completely if she did that. ‘Jonas—’
‘You went to see my father,’ he stated flatly, ignoring that beseeching hand she held out to him.
Cassandra swallowed hard, knowing she had handled this all wrong—oh, so very wrong! ‘Yes,’ she acknowledged with simple honesty, her arm falling back against her side, her hands trembling slightly.
‘After I specifically asked you not to do—’
‘You told me, Jonas,’ she corrected gently. ‘You never ask for anything.’ Some of the colour returned to her cheeks as she remembered that he had asked when they were making love; he had pleaded with her then, as she had pleaded with him. But the man who had made love to her was as far removed from this man as fire from ice. Although fire melted ice… Not this time, she knew; Jonas was too chillingly furious right now to be melted by anything she did or said! And thinking about the time they had made love wasn’t going to help her now!
Jonas scowled darkly. ‘You knew I didn’t want you to go there,’ he grated accusingly.
She gave a ruefully acknowledging movement at that. ‘But I didn’t at any time say that I wouldn’t go,’ she reminded him. In fact, she had carefully changed the subject that day so that she couldn’t be pushed into agreeing to something she knew she couldn’t do; she had known she had to see Peter.
‘No,’ Jonas accepted hardly, ‘you didn’t do that.’ His mouth twisted. ‘So now you consider yourself an expert on the family history—my family history!’ he taunted, although his cheeks were flushed in agitation.
Cassandra drew in a deep breath, choosing her words carefully this time, not wanting to exacerbate the situation any more. If that were possible. ‘I merely asked your father—’
‘And he merely told you!’ Jonas accused, glaring. ‘If you had wanted to know anything about my past then you should have damn well asked me!’
She raised dark brows. ‘And you would have told me?’ she prompted in quiet scepticism, doing her best to remain calm in the face of his fury—even if she was actually quaking in her shoes at the expectation of the explosion she was sure was still to come. Thank God the knocking of her knees was hidden beneath the length of her skirt!
‘A damn sight less biased version, yes!’ he nodded curtly.
She drew in a ragged breath. ‘Your father has his own memories of what happened—’
‘They aren’t the same as mine!’ Jonas flared gratingly.
‘Of course they aren’t.’ She attempted to soothe the situation. ‘You were a child, and Claire was your mother.’ She shrugged.
‘I did not imagine the way I remember my mother!’ he scorned dismissively.
‘I’m not saying you did, Jonas, I just—Let’s look at today for an example,’ she reasoned determinedly. ‘In your eyes I “dumped” my child on my mother for the afternoon while I “went off” to meet someone. In Bethany’s eyes I took her to visit her grandmother, where she was thoroughly spoilt all afternoon—and then had the added treat of being driven home by her favourite man! The adult and child’s point of view, Jonas, and so completely different.’ Cassandra looked at him challengingly, wondering how he was going to defend his child’s view of his mother’s actions without at the same time admitting he had been wrong to attack her in the way he had over Bethany; no doubt he would manage it somehow!
‘That was different—’
‘Not at all.’ Cassandra insisted. ‘Your father told me about his marriage to your mother from the side of the unhappy husband, you judged me this afternoon from the point of view of the outraged fiancé; not so very different after all.’ She raised her brows pointedly. ‘The truth lies somewhere in the middle, I would think.’ Which still left Claire Hunter as a sad excuse for a mother, as far as Cassandra was concerned; what other sort of mother could possibly have tried to poison her child against his father and brother?
Jonas looked at her with narrowed eyes. ‘What exactly did my father tell you about his marriage to my mother?’
Careful, Cassandra, she warned herself again; Jonas was obviously very sensitive where his mother was concerned. ‘From what I can tell they were unsuited—’
‘Unsuited!’ Jonas scorned disgustedly. ‘My father kept thrusting the virtues of his saintly Kathleen down my mother’s throat until she choked on her damned perfection!’
Cassandra had already guessed some of that, had realised Peter should never have remarried at all when he still loved his first wife the way he did, that it m
ust have been an almost impossible situation for Claire to have married into. But at the same time the answer to the problem surely hadn’t been to turn her son against his own family and take a string of lovers for herself. The fact that she had done the latter explained why Jonas had reacted so violently after they made love when he had thought she had been thinking of Charles! Jonas might not be willing to accept the fact, but his mother’s behaviour had coloured all of his life.
And, as she had already pointed out to Jonas, the truth of the past surely lay somewhere in between the memories he and Peter had of it.
She nodded. ‘I’m sure they would be among the first to admit they made a mistake—’
‘My father, admit he made a mistake?’ Jonas derided harshly. ‘You obviously don’t know him very well.’
She didn’t pretend to know Peter well; their conversation today had been the longest and most intimate they had ever shared. But what she did know after talking to him today, no matter what had or hadn’t happened in the past, was that Peter loved his youngest son as much as he had loved Charles, that the strain that had existed in their relationship had caused him a lot of pain over the years, a pain perhaps Jonas couldn’t fully understand because he had never been a father himself.
‘I don’t pretend to,’ she acknowledged gently. ‘I do know he wished things were different between the two of you—’
‘Is that why he once denied even being my father?’ Jonas challenged with distaste.
Cassandra frowned. And then she remembered what Peter had said about the custody case over Jonas, how Claire had been the one to tell the court Peter wasn’t Jonas’s father, in an effort to win the case for herself. Surely the other woman hadn’t twisted that around to make it look as if Peter was denying his own son? There had been no reason to tell Jonas anything about that at all, except as a means of justifying her own actions at some future date. What sort of mother was Claire Hunter?
‘And yet he was the one to get custody of you, Jonas,’ Cassandra pointed out softly, knowing by the paleness of Jonas’s cheeks that he was well aware of how unusual it was for a father to attain custody of a child, let alone a father who had supposedly denied even being the father!
‘Yes,’ he admitted harshly now. ‘Once it was proved to him that he had to be my father, then there was no way he was going to let me go and live with my mother!’ He shook his head. ‘He may seem like a harmless, lonely old man now, Cassandra, but he wasn’t then,’ he remembered bitterly. ‘He didn’t want me, but he wasn’t about to let my mother have me either!’
‘That doesn’t explain why she more or less ignored your existence for the next few years,’ Cassandra pointed out gently.
‘My father made it virtually impossible for her to see me,’ he defended harshly.
Claire Hunter had such a lot to answer for! ‘Did you ever talk to your father about any of this, Jonas?’ she prompted with a frown.
‘Talk to him?’ Jonas began to pace the room. ‘What was the point of that? Then I would just have to listen to the same lies you did today,’ he scorned. ‘How gullible you are, Cassandra; I would never have believed it of you!’
No, because it was easier for him to believe all women were as fickle as that girl Lucy had been. Except his mother, of course, when in actual fact it had been his mother who had really formed his early distrust of a woman’s honesty. If he hadn’t already been influenced by her behaviour then he probably wouldn’t have reacted with such emotional violence to Lucy’s betrayal, would have taken it all as part of life’s disappointments, of growing up. Not that Jonas could see that. Perhaps he never would…
Cassandra knew that she didn’t even want to meet Claire Hunter, wasn’t sure she would be able to contain her anger at what the other woman had deliberately and maliciously done to her son in an effort to hit out at his father and brother.
‘Not gullible, Jonas,’ she denied sadly. ‘I just perhaps have more of an open mind on the subject than you do.’
His mouth thinned. ‘We’re never going to agree on that subject, so we may as well forget about it,’ he dismissed harshly. ‘What else did he tell you?’ His gaze had narrowed on her speculatively. ‘I can’t believe he stopped there.’
She didn’t have to tell him about Charles being the one to transfer Hunter and Kyle funds; in fact she knew she should avoid it at all costs just now. But it couldn’t wait until after the wedding; it had to be before then, all secrets between them—on her side at least!—out in the open. She wouldn’t become yet another woman to have deceived him, no matter what he might believe to the contrary. There had to be time in the next four days to tell him the truth about that. There had to be!
She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue, instantly noticing the way Jonas’s eyes darkened at the movement, her eyes widening at this obvious reaction. He hadn’t so much as attempted to touch her in an intimate way since they made love on Christmas Day, had meant it when he told her he wouldn’t make love to her again, and yet from his reaction to her now he certainly wasn’t as immune to her physically as he wanted her to believe he was. It was a start. She was desperate enough to grasp at any straw!
‘What’s the matter, Cassandra?’ Jonas derided hardly as she continued to hesitate. ‘Can’t you even talk about the fact that your precious Charles wasn’t so damned perfect after all, that he wasn’t above poaching his own brother’s girlfriend?’
‘I never believed he was,’ she said quietly. Never that! ‘Your father told me about Lucy,’ she acknowledged dully.
His mouth twisted. ‘Not such a paragon after all, hmm?’ he scorned. ‘It would appear Charles always had a weakness for girls young enough to be his daughter; Lucy was only twenty to his thirty-six!’
This was yet another deliberate taunt to wound, Cassandra knew, because she had forced him to talk of his mother in a way he couldn’t accept. But the fact that she knew that didn’t make his gibe hurt any the less, and she felt herself flinch at the barb.
She was disappointed in Charles’s behaviour all those years ago, she couldn’t pretend she wasn’t, but it all happened long before she had a relationship with Charles. And the truth about Charles was ‘something in between’ too; he wasn’t perfect, as she and Peter knew only too well, despite what Jonas believed to the contrary! He had simply been human, with human failings.
She drew in a ragged breath. ‘Despite what you might like to think, Jonas,’ she told him steadily, ‘Charles and I understood each other.’
‘He wanted me to be his best man at your wedding, you know,’ Jonas scorned dismissively.
‘Yes, I did know,’ she acknowledged quietly. ‘We obviously discussed it before Charles asked you.’
Jonas nodded abruptly. ‘As olive-branches went, it was like a slap in the face!’
Cassandra could see, with hindsight, that perhaps it might have seemed that way to Jonas, and yet she believed in her own mind that Charles—insensitive again, but that was his only sin, she was sure—hadn’t meant it that way, that he had genuinely thought, if Jonas had accepted, that the family might at last become reunited. Although he might perhaps have chosen a better, less painful way to have invited Jonas back into the family!
‘Talking of weddings…’ Jonas looked pointedly at his wristwatch. ‘We’re due at the church ourselves in just over an hour. Do you know if Joy and Colin have remembered the rehearsal? I didn’t have a chance to discuss it with Colin earlier today.’
Cassandra knew that he was deliberately changing the subject, that he had decided he didn’t want to discuss any more of this just now. She didn’t feel up to battling her way through any more confrontational conversations herself just now, but at the same time she knew their conversation was far from over…
She gave a rueful grimace. ‘Joy is looking forward to it, I know!’ As Joy and Colin were their two witnesses it was essential they be at the rehearsal this evening.
Jonas laughed softly. ‘I’m sure she is. You and your sister aren’t very
much alike, are you?’ he drawled.
Cassandra looked at him sharply. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
He arched dark brows at her defensive reaction. ‘It wasn’t meant as a criticism,’ he murmured mockingly—implying the opposite!
Just exactly what had he meant by the remark? It was true, she and Joy weren’t alike; in fact they were completely unalike; Joy, for one thing, would never have allowed herself to be blackmailed into this situation in the first place! Joy would simply have told Jonas what he could do with his threats, and damn the outcome.
Not for the first time, Cassandra wished she had her sister’s self-absorbed determination. If she had she might not have been so vulnerable to Jonas’s demands. Had Jonas realised that? Was that why she had been the one he had chosen to pressurise into marriage? He said it was because of Bethany too, but she couldn’t help wondering now how true that was…!
Her eyes blazed deeply golden as she glared at him. ‘The same could be said of you and Charles!’ Her remark was deliberately provoking, and she knew by the narrowing of his eyes to steely slits, and the way his mouth tightened into a thin line, that her barb had also hit home. ‘I’ll meet you at the church, shall I?’ she added brightly, her eyes deceptively innocent.
Jonas looked at her consideringly for a moment. ‘Maybe not so different from Joy after all…’ he murmured hardly. ‘And Jean is preparing an early dinner for us here,’ he added. ‘So we can go to the church together later.’
Cassandra was stung that he had once again taken over her home, although at the same time she realised it was something she was going to have to get used to once she and Jonas were married. Not that they intended staying on in this house for long after they were married; Jonas had tersely informed her that he was willing to make do for the moment, would use the room next to hers that Charles had used as a dressing-room, but that one of the first things they were going to do in the New Year was look for a house of their own.
It was going to be a wrench for Cassandra to leave here, and Bethany had known no other home, but even putting the way Jonas felt about Charles to one side—if that were possible!—then moving into the house of your wife’s first husband wasn’t an ideal arrangement at the best of times.
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