by Nancy Warren
He loved her slowly, at a less harried pace than they’d yet managed, filling himself with her sounds, her tastes, her scents. She gave herself over completely to the moment, to the sensation. She was the most utterly sensual woman he’d ever known.
He fell asleep curled around her, his hand on her breast so he could feel the heavy beat of her heart against his palm.
Chapter Nine
Rachel wasn’t a morning person, but there was something about waking up to Jack kissing his way down her spine that added a definite lift to the morning doldrums.
“Morning,” she said lazily, stretching as his mouth did delicious things to her.
His reply was indistinct, but she could work it out in context.
When he flipped her to her back, she was more than ready.
“Ssh,” she said when he banged his elbow against the wall. “I don’t want Chloe to hear.”
“It’s a bit like having a child in the next room. Which is truer than you might think.”
“Be nice to her. She’s going through a hard time.”
“When you know her better, you’ll understand that drama is as necessary to Chloe as Perrier Jouët.”
Why did he keep saying these things to her? When you know her better? As if that was going to happen. A week or two from now, some Lufthansa flight attendant would be with Jack, writhing under the buzz of the living room vibrator, lathered up in lemon-scented massage oil. And she’d be topping her special blinis with caviar for the next scheduled function at Hart House. Did he think she was one of those women-if there were such women-who wanted to hear lies and platitudes?
She might have called him on it, but he was deep inside her body, and when he moved he nudged her G-spot, she couldn’t possibly think of anything at all.
Afterward, she ran her hands idly down his back while they caught their breath, her head on his chest. “I feel so good I never want to move.”
He played with her hair, and without pausing said, “Then don’t.”
She’d had enough of this. Now that she could think, it was time to put an end to this nonsense.
“Are you suggesting I should stay in this bed for the rest of my natural life?”
“Don’t be daft.” He shifted her and raised himself onto an elbow so he could look at her. “But you could stay with me forever.”
Her heart stuttered, which irritated her. “Yeah,” she said, rolling her eyes à la sophisticated woman of the world.
He didn’t respond à la sophisticated man of the world, but stayed where he was. She felt he was struggling to say something, and finally he did.
“I love you, Rachel,” he said, looking deep into her eyes, his hand touching her shoulder as though he couldn’t bear not to touch her.
“Oh, give me a break,” she snapped.
He blinked, and his hand fell away. “I beg your pardon?”
“I am not one of those women who needs love words. I’ve always known what this is and I accept it. Please don’t piss me off with a load of false sentiment. It only cheapens this relationship.”
He seemed genuinely puzzled. “I’m not entirely sure what you mean. You think love cheapens sex?”
“I think false declarations take away from the basic honesty of what this relationship is.”
His gaze sharpened. “And what is it exactly?”
“A purely physical, mutually beneficial convenience.”
Outside, she heard traffic, the low vroom of an airplane. Church bells from a distance.
“So, you don’t love me?”
There was a pause. Her heart beat so hard it hurt. “No.”
He touched her breast lightly, softly. “Your heart is completely untouched?”
Her swallow sounded loud in the sudden quiet. “Yes.”
“I see.”
“Oh, don’t give me that brave, wounded bullshit. Every guy I’ve ever known wants exactly what you’ve got. Sex”-she gave a tiny, smug smile-“lots of sex, with no strings attached.”
Instead of laughing, or stomping off, or engaging in any remotely predictable behavior, he traced her cheek with one finger. His eyes were serious and understanding. “I’ve never known a woman who yearns for love more than you do, and is more terrified of it.”
She leapt off the bed and her laugh was harsh and sudden. “I don’t have time for this. I need to-”
She found herself cut off as he flipped her to the bed so fast her back hit the mattress before she remembered moving.
He was on top of her, not pinning her exactly, but forcing her to make a big deal of it if she wanted to move. She didn’t feel like making a big deal about it. She wished she were clothed, though, and that her heart wasn’t beating quite so fast. It made her feel vulnerable and a little foolish.
“I don’t need love,” she said, staring up at him. “I don’t want it.”
“I’ve seen you around your sister and George, you know, and even around Arthur and Meg.”
“And when have I ever given any indication that I want what they have? That I want to be so besotted, so blinded by emotion that I lose my common sense?”
“Oh,” he said, “your words do a fine job of portraying what a cynic you are, but your eyes give you away.”
She rolled those eyes now, to give him a good idea what she thought of his notion.
“I thought at first it was irritation I was witnessing, but it’s not, is it?”
“You tell me. You seem to have the keys to my inner thoughts and feelings after knowing me for one week.”
“It’s jealousy.”
Fury, hot and molten, spurted within her. She shoved at his shoulder, so he moved away, letting her up.
“I’ve been married. I couldn’t be less jealous. It’s pity you witnessed. Pity for anyone fool enough to fall in love knowing that the chances of disaster outweigh any hope of lasting happiness by about two to one.”
“You had a rotten marriage, Rachel. It happens. It happens all the time to clever, successful people who you would think would choose wisely. But for every bad marriage there’s a good one, one that makes you keep believing. I think Max and George have every chance of happiness. You can see that, too, that’s what’s making you sick with jealousy.”
“That’s an awful thing to say. I love my sister. I’m not jealous of her.”
“She has something you want. Worse, you know it’s within your reach.” He reached out his arm to illustrate his point. “And that makes you crazy with fear.”
She snorted. “Make up your mind. Am I jealous, afraid, or yearning? Pick one.”
“You, my darling, are all three.”
“I can’t figure you out. Why are you doing this?” She shook her head. “Of all people, you are the last one I would have dreamed would play the love card.”
“It’s not a card, darling, and this isn’t a game. I think I’ve finally found the woman I was always certain I’d meet. It was a bit of a surprise that she turned out to be you, but there it is.”
She straightened, tossed back her hair. “So what are you saying? You want to marry me?”
He looked at her for a long time. “And what if I am?”
Her skin started to prickle all over, as though she were breaking out in hives.
“If you believe in love and marriage so much, then why did George and Max both warn me that you’re a womanizer? Why are you always in the wedding party but never the one getting married?”
“Because I never found the right woman.” He rested back on his elbows. “I wouldn’t keep turning up in wedding parties if I didn’t believe in and respect the institution, now would I?”
“I don’t know. Wouldn’t you?”
“No. Give me credit for some integrity.”
“So you’re saying that in all this time you’ve never met a woman you wanted to marry?”
“I always believed that I’d meet a girl one day, and I’d know. Pow. There’d be some cosmic bang, sparks would shower the air, and I’d know that she was the one.
”
“You mean you’re a total romantic?” She was horrified. She felt she’d been led astray somehow, lied to in the most basic way, but of course he’d never lied. She’d merely assumed that his lengthy bachelordom meant one thing when, in fact, it meant another.
He grimaced. “It sounds a bit soft when you put it that way, but yes, I suppose I am. In the last couple of years, I admit, I began to feel that it wouldn’t happen after all.”
She almost dreaded what would come next, but still had to ask. “And?”
His smile was tender, and uncomfortably intimate. “And then I met you.”
“I don’t recall seeing sparks flying, or a cosmic shake-up when we met.”
“If you’d had a potato hit you in the balls, believe me you’d have felt a cosmic shake-up, and seen stars.”
She grinned, as he’d meant her to, and the atmosphere lightened a little. But she also felt utterly confused and vaguely wronged. “I don’t know what to say.”
He turned his head, regarding her. “At the risk of sounding ridiculous, can I ask if you felt anything at all?”
“When we first met?”
“Mmm.”
She thought back to the first moments when he’d come across her, irritable and twitchy in the kitchen. The sense she’d had of instant attraction. Not more. Surely not more. “I felt attracted to you,” she admitted.
He flopped back onto the bed so he was staring up at the ceiling. “You never think, when you read about meeting the one person who was meant for you, that it might be a one-sided affair. Nobody ever warns you that you might feel love at first sight while the other person thinks, ‘What a wally.’”
“Since I don’t know what a wally is, I certainly never thought of you that way. Like I said, I was…attracted.”
“You don’t sound very happy about it.”
“I wasn’t. At the time. Very inconvenient. I felt like I’d been kicked around by life, and then Maxine had manipulated me into coming to England to work on, of all things, a wedding. I admit I was pretty down, and Max is a relentless do-gooder when she thinks she knows best for a person. Which is far too often.”
“So your sister encouraged you to have it off with me?”
“No. She hated the idea. She thought I’d be too vulnerable, that I might end up hurt again.”
“And you knew different?”
Did she? Had she? It was so difficult now to look back to a week ago and recognize anything she’d felt. “I don’t know. I don’t even know what I thought or felt except that you made me feel excited about something and a holiday affair seemed uncomplicated. Easy.”
“Easy because you could walk away at the end of it with a few good memories?”
“Don’t make it sound so…I don’t know, so…”
“Cynical?”
“But I’m not cynical. I’m practical.”
“You, my dear, are terrified of love.”
“Oh, just get over it.”
“I hope I don’t have to. I believe that you and I may have found that rare and amazing thing. True love, the kind that lasts.”
She scratched her leg. Maybe the hives weren’t visible, but she could feel them, beneath the skin. Emotional hives. Great. She’d invented a new mental illness.
Chapter Ten
“Can we please talk about something else?”
He should have kept his mouth shut. He’d known she wasn’t ready. Now all he could think about was that he loved her and she either didn’t love him back or couldn’t admit to loving him.
For a number of reasons, he hoped the latter was true.
He could conquer her fear, he was certain. Indifference was impossible to contemplate. Surely, after all this time, he ought to be able to tell when a woman really cared?
Or was he projecting his own feelings onto her?
He had so little personal experience of being in love that he was out of his depth. All he knew was that instead of having Rachel throw herself onto his chest and whisper those magic words of love back to him, as he’d more than half hoped she would, she was lying beside him, stiff as a board, staring up at the ceiling, in the same posture he was in.
“I met you a week ago,” she said, sounding aggrieved.
“Look, I don’t say it makes sense. Only that it is.”
“I thought this would be easy, uncomplicated.”
“Do you want easy and uncomplicated?”
“Yes!”
“I’m sorry I offended you. I didn’t mean to. But I think you’re going to have to begin thinking of this in a new light.”
“They warned me that you were the love ’em and leave ’ em type. Which happens to be exactly what I’m looking for right now.”
“If you pass up what we have, you’re more of a coward than I believed.”
“Okay, I can’t do this right now. I simply cannot do this.” She rolled out of bed and unzipped her overnight case, dragging out the jeans and sweater she’d brought.
He leapt off the bed and followed her. “Look, forget I said that. You’re not a coward. I’m a complete and total git. Where are you going?”
“Home.” Irritation sluiced through her system. “No. Not home. Back to the castle where I will stay in my kitchen hiding behind the ashes whenever any Prince Charming comes near.”
“But you’ve barely seen Notting Hill. And I want to take you for afternoon tea at the Ritz. You’ll love it.”
He was stalking up to her, naked, when she reminded him, “Chloe is here. She needs you.”
“Rachel.”
“Let me go now. I’ll call you.”
For a long time he stared at her, his eyes full of concern. “All right. I’ll get dressed and drive you back to Hart House.”
“No. I’ll take a cab to the station and get a train.”
She was so panicked she barely knew herself. She knew she wasn’t being rational, or fair, or remotely mature, but the urge to flee was so strong she couldn’t resist it.
She was dressed in seconds and within five minutes had brushed her teeth, dragged a brush through her hair and stuffed the tangle of curls into a clip, swiped lip gloss over her passion-swollen mouth, and flicked the mascara brush over her lashes.
When she returned to the bedroom, he wasn’t there.
She packed her dress and Maxine’s pashmina into her case and left the room.
She found Jack in the kitchen with his sister. Chloe wore the most gorgeous silk robe and looked like a movie star from the twenties. Rachel almost expected her to light up a cigarette on a long holder.
Jack wore a look on his face that tore at her heart. And that made her furious. They’d only known each other a week. This was ridiculous, unfair, manipulative. She was a recently divorced, unemployed mess. She didn’t have the mental or physical energy for a complicated love life.
“Have some coffee,” Chloe said. She was messing around with a French press and it was obvious that somebody else usually made her coffee.
“No. Thank you.” She looked at Jack. “If you could just call me a cab?”
“I’ll drive you to the station.”
“You should spend some time with your sister.” She paused, feeling like a total, miserable bitch. “All right. Maybe you could drive me to the station.”
They were no sooner pulling out of his parking garage than he said, “Rachel, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to put you off.”
“No. It’s me who is sorry. I didn’t expect, I didn’t know…” She heaved a sigh and tried again. “I would really like for you not to think I am a total loser.”
He sent her a wry grin. “I’d like you not to think the same about me.”
She laughed. “Agreed.”
“How long do I have?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“When’s your return ticket home?”
“Oh. It’s open. I can stay up to twelve weeks, I think.”
“Well, that’s not so bad. I’ve got some time to convince you to stay.”
/> She looked at him, truly curious. “So if I said right now, yes, let’s get married…”
“I’d be driving straight back so I could cancel all my appointments tomorrow and we’d get married.”
“How can you be so sure? No one’s ever wanted me like this.”
He sent her a look that melted her heart. “Maybe no one’s ever loved you enough.”
Wow. There was a zinger. As much as it hurt to admit it, she thought he was right. “I’ve failed so much in the last year. I don’t have much faith in my own judgment.”
“Never mind. I’m not going anywhere. We’ll take it as slowly as you like.” He turned to her in alarm. “You won’t stop shagging me, will you?”
She glanced at him, all crisp and clean and gorgeous, not a big overblown mess like she was. “I may be stupid, but I’m not crazy.”
He pulled into the station. “You know, if I didn’t have Chloe waiting at home, I’d drive you down in spite of your protests.”
“I know you would. But the train’s fun for me. And-”
“Yes, all right. You need some time.”
He’d stopped the car at a drop-off point by the taxi rank. Now he got out and retrieved her bag. He stood before her and she saw this tall, gorgeous, successful Londoner who loved her. Or at least who believed he did enough to say so.
Suddenly, she threw her arms around him and kissed him like there was no tomorrow. “I had a really wonderful time. Thank you for last night. Thank you for everything.”
“I’ll ring you.”
“And be nice to Chloe.”
“I’m always much nicer to Chloe than she deserves.”
Rachel chuckled. “She’s lucky to have you.”
He gave her a quizzical glance.
“No, really. She is. And”-she took a deep breath-“thank you. For loving me.”
“My pleasure.”
Chapter Eleven
“You’re back early,” said Max when Rachel finally tracked her sister down in the long gallery.
“Jack’s sister Chloe showed up.”
“Ah, yes, the bride. Definitely puts a cramp in the affair to have little sis hanging around.”