Jack turned her way, his gaze alighting on her legs. He stared for a second, then blinked as if coming out of a trance, and sucked in a breath. “Steph’s probably running late. She always used to complain about her workload.”
Finally, the receptionist showed them through. Stephanie was seated behind a contemporary expanse of glass and steel that passed for a desk. She didn’t bother to stand to greet them. Stunning in a lavender suit and dove-gray blouse, she rolled back her ergonomic chair and sensuously crossed her legs, exposing a length of slender nylon-clad thigh.
She obviously wanted to show Jack what he was missing. Melanie felt invisible in her functional navy suit and suddenly wished she hadn’t been so practical.
“Take a seat.” Stephanie indicated the steel-and-leather guest chairs. Melanie perched stiffly on the edge of one, while Jack remained standing, hands clasped behind his back.
“To what do I owe this pleasure?” Stephanie asked in a tone that left no doubt their visit was anything but.
“I want to clarify something.” Jack looked down and shifted his feet.
He looked guilty before he even opened his mouth. Why was this so difficult for him? After all, he was only setting the record straight.
“I’m afraid I wasn’t entirely honest with you in Barbados,” he continued.
Stephanie shifted position and her perfect lips quirked. “Jack Summers not telling the truth? Now there’s a first.”
“I implied Melanie and I were having a relationship.”
Melanie closed her eyes and took a steadying breath. Just say it, Jack.
“That’s not true. I used her name to make you take the breakup seriously.”
“Why lie?” Stephanie fired back.
The challenge seemed to galvanize Jack. He rested his hands on the desk and leaned forward. “Because you’d have argued incessantly until you changed my mind, Steph.”
For long seconds, the two of them stared each other down. Melanie dared not move as tension thrummed in the air.
Eventually, Stephanie drew a delicate breath and looked away. “You’re right.”
“You might even have persuaded me to go ahead with the wedding, and we’d have lived to regret it.”
Stephanie smiled slowly. “Yes. I can be very persuasive, can’t I?” From her sensual smile, her thoughts had clearly wandered on to personal memories of her time with Jack. Focusing back on the room, she glanced from Jack to Melanie and back. “So that’s it? That’s all you’ve got to say?”
Jack nodded and stepped back. The tension in Melanie’s shoulders eased.
Stephanie held up a French-manicured finger. “One question puzzles me.” She pointed at Melanie. “Why her? If you were using your imagination to make up a lover, surely you could have come up with someone a little more exciting.”
The insult rankled, especially as Stephanie had just voiced Melanie’s own thoughts. Both women looked at Jack and he shrugged, seeming bewildered. “No idea. Her name just came to mind.”
Stephanie drummed her nails on her blotter and the expression on her face sent a tingle of warning up Melanie’s spine. “If there’s nothing between you, why are you here as a couple? Look at you. Crazy as it sounds, there’s chemistry between you.”
Chemistry! Melanie gulped and tried to come up with a retort, but words deserted her. Stephanie stood and pointed at the door. “You made your bed, metaphorically and physically, Jack Summers. I suggest you lie in it and stop whining.”
“But there’s nothing between us.” Melanie tried a last-ditch plea as Stephanie strode to the door and held it open.
As Melanie stood, Jack put his hand on her back and eased her forward. He bent and whispered in her ear, “Give it up.”
“But you’ve got to believe us.” Melanie could hardly draw enough air to force out the words.
Stephanie cast an accusing glance at Jack’s hand on Melanie’s back. “I see through lies. I’m a solicitor. It goes with the territory.”
A rush of despair washed through Melanie as Jack pushed her out onto the pavement.
“That was a spectacular failure,” he said, grimacing.
“How did it go so wrong?” Melanie sagged against the wall, her hand to her heart.
“There’s chemistry between us, though. Did you know that?” He waggled his eyebrows in a way that was so out of character it looked ridiculous.
Because she could either laugh or cry, and bursting into tears wasn’t an option, Melanie gave a small breathless laugh. Jack’s eyes crinkled at the corners and he chuckled. The knot of tension inside her loosened and she found herself laughing properly.
He angled his head and gave her a crooked smile. “As we’re obviously a lost cause and the whole town will soon know it, can I buy you lunch?”
“Why not?” Feeling lightheaded, Melanie concentrated on breathing slowly as Jack led her towards the Lamb and Lion pub across the road.
“Let’s refrain from discussing our relationship problems over lunch.” Jack grinned and, holding open the pub door, placed his hand lightly on her back. Acutely aware of the pressure of his palm, she glanced around to check if anyone was watching them. As they walked through the bar and found a seat in a snug corner, no one gave them a second look.
The Stephanie problem faded from Melanie’s thoughts as they talked. Jack related the trials and tribulations of converting the old Edwardian manor house into his hotel. She wished she’d been there to share the excitement. For an hour, the world stood still. Melanie couldn’t remember the last time she had felt this carefree and relaxed.
It was only later in the evening that the potential consequences of their failure to convince Stephanie not to spread nasty gossip hit home.
Melanie fetched her old journal from her bedside table and cradled the shiny gray binding in her hand, letting it fall open at a random page. She scanned the words, reliving the pain and humiliation from five years ago, when she and Ryan had been shunned by her mother and father and the people she had once called friends.
Closing the book with a snap, she clutched it tightly and went to the door of Ryan’s bedroom. He looked so small in the big bed. The scars on his neck from the accident had faded but were still visible above the collar of his pajamas; the scars on his soul were invisible to everyone but her. She would never be able to forgive Jack if Stephanie said anything nasty that got back to Ryan and made her little boy unhappy again.
* * *
Melanie was down on her knees in the hotel dining room, with an old stain-removing recipe of her grandmother’s in a plastic bowl, dabbing at a nasty mark on the carpet.
Her first warning she had a visitor was a booming female voice—the sort of voice that belonged to a woman who wanted everyone in the room to stop and listen to her.
The receptionist appeared at the dining-room door and gave a strained smile. “Visitor for you, Melanie.”
Melanie stood and wiped her hands on a paper towel. “I’ve got nobody booked in.”
A statuesque woman clad in primrose silk the same shade as her hair appeared in the doorway. “I don’t need an appointment.” She strode past the receptionist and held out a bejeweled hand. “Am I addressing Melanie Marshall?” She shook hands with a surprisingly tight grip. “I’m Imelda Summers. We need to talk, Mrs. Marshall.”
A flash of shock tightened Melanie’s stomach. “Jack’s mother?”
The woman cocked an eyebrow and appraised her. “You have it in one. No
w the office is the best place to talk, I think. This way.” She marched out of the dining room as though she owned the place.
Melanie smoothed her hair and brushed out the creases in her dress. A visit from Jack’s mother couldn’t be good, especially while he was twenty miles away meeting with potential clients.
Melanie halted in the office doorway and watched Mrs. Summers prowl around, scanning the furniture in much the same way Stephanie had. Melanie sincerely hoped Mrs. Summers’s thoughts weren’t following the same direction as Stephanie’s. “Jack’s not here, I’m afraid,” she said.
“Perfect. We’ll have a girl’s chat. Sit down.” She beckoned Melanie over to one of the guest chairs and, once she’d ordered coffee and closed the door, joined her. “I expect you know why I’m here?”
“I have an idea, but you might have been misled.”
“Misled about what? About Jack walking out on his fiancée two days before his wedding because he claimed to be in love with you? Are you telling me that didn’t happen?”
“Well, yes, it happened. But Jack made a mistake.”
“You’re absolutely right he made a mistake. Three years wasted.” She sighed and rose to walk to the window. “I had high hopes for Stephanie and Jack, you know. I thought there were finally going to be grandchildren in my future. Then Jack fell at the final fence. He’s just like his father. No staying power. Now we’ve got to start again with you.”
“Me!” Melanie’s indignant response was partially drowned out by a knock on the door, which was probably a good thing.
Mrs. Summers swept elegantly across to the door and carried the coffee tray back to the table herself. “Don’t want any prying ears,” she whispered conspiratorially as she poured two coffees and added cream. She handed a cup to Melanie, pursed her lips and stared thoughtfully into the distance. “We need a plan of action.”
“To stop the gossip, you mean?”
“Gossip?” The woman flapped a hand. “Forget the gossip, dear. Nobody will give a fig once you’re family.”
“Family!”
“Am I not making myself clear? You seem a decent enough girl, and at this stage in the game I’ll take whatever I can get. We need to persuade Jack to marry you.”
“Oh, no.” Melanie shot out of her seat like a jack-in-a-box. Coffee spilled down the side of her dress, but she hardly cared. “I’m not marrying anyone.”
“Why ever not? You’re not still married, are you?”
“No. I’m a widow.”
“Well, good…although I’m sorry for your loss, of course. I assume it happened a few years ago?”
Melanie stared at the other woman, nonplussed. She’d read about people spluttering with indignation, but she’d never known quite what it meant until this moment, when she couldn’t untie her tongue to form a coherent sentence. Unable to think of anything else to do, she walked to the door and put her hand on the handle. “I’d like you to leave. You need to discuss this with Jack, not me.”
Mrs. Summers drew herself up in her chair and her friendly demeanor hardened. “I hope you’re not going to fight me on this. If you love Jack, for heaven’s sake, why don’t you want to marry him?”
Melanie ground her teeth and then forced herself to relax. “I don’t love Jack.”
“You don’t love him, yet you’ve been sleeping with him? Perhaps Stephanie was right about you.”
“I’m not—” Melanie paused and lowered her voice before all the staff heard her denial. “I’m not sleeping with Jack.”
Mrs. Summers frowned as if Melanie had addressed her in a foreign language. Then her expression cleared and she smiled. “That’s lovely. Young people have such loose morals these days. It’s refreshing to discover some still wait for marriage before they become intimate.”
Melanie sagged against the door and jammed a hand through her hair. Whatever she said, Jack’s mother only heard what she wanted to hear.
“Jack doesn’t like to tell people this, but I own twenty-five percent of his hotel.” Mrs. Summers looked around with pride. “It certainly turned out to be a wise investment. Jack’s done wonders with the place.” She stood and straightened her pearls. “You’ll come to our family dinner on Sunday. They’re all dying to meet you.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. Jack will bring you so you don’t need directions.” Mrs. Summers glided elegantly towards the door and put a restraining hand on Melanie’s arm as she pulled the door open. “As a shareholder, I have some say in staffing decisions, dear. Don’t let me down. I’d hate to see you lose your job when you’ve been such an asset to the business.”
Then she was through the door and gone with a flourish of yellow silk and a waft of something expensive.
Melanie stared after her, feeling as though she’d been run down by a designer steamroller. What had just happened? Had Jack’s mother really blackmailed her into attending a Summers family dinner by threatening her job?
Melanie closed her eyes and banged her head against the door. As far as possible, she’d kept her private life separate from work. She didn’t want Ryan to get attached to anyone in case the past caught up with them and they had to move on. Now she’d have to introduce him to Jack and his family.
* * *
As dusk fell, Jack snapped on the table lamp on the writing desk in his living room and opened Melanie’s personnel file. He couldn’t help a quick glance at the windows to make sure no one was watching. Although he had every right to check the personnel files of his staff, he still felt uncomfortable. Probably because if Melanie knew what he was doing, she’d be furious.
Since his faux pas over the wedding, he’d spent more time with Melanie and he’d got to know her better. She didn’t suffer fools gladly. Unfortunately, he had a nasty suspicion she now thought he was a bit of a fool. The assumption was completely wrong, of course, but she was not going to be easily won over. In fact, she seemed oblivious to his charms. He would have to work very hard to get back in her good books.
He flipped through her file, checking her past employment history. She’d joined his hotel staff a little over two months ago. Prior to that, she’d done various management jobs in the tourist industry. Up until five years ago, she’d been a receptionist and then practice manager for a doctors’ surgery in Kent, where she’d worked for seven years after she left school. What had happened to make her change careers?
During the job interview, he vaguely remembered her telling him she’d lost her husband five years ago. He jotted the name and number of the doctors’ surgery on a pad and put the note in his pocket. Maybe they would be able to give him more information.
He flipped over a page, and found a small headshot of her clipped inside the folder’s back cover. He tugged the photo free and held it under the light. The picture was a few years old, but she hadn’t changed much. Maybe she now had a few worry lines, but if she’d lost her husband that was understandable.
Her beautiful hair hung loose around her shoulders, longer than she wore it now, and gleaming with chestnut highlights. Her eyes—sometimes hazel, sometimes green depending on the light—were a rich mossy green in the photo. Why hadn’t he noticed how pretty she was when he first met her?
A knock on his front door dragged him out of his reverie. He sidled up to the living room window and took a peek at his visitor. Melanie stood there, arms wrapped around her ribs, glancing furtively over her shoulder.
Bloody hell! What was she doing here now? He checked his
watch. It was almost ten. Shouldn’t she be at home with her son? He raced across the room and jammed the papers back into her personnel file then looked around for a hiding place for the folder. For lack of anywhere better, he pushed it under the sofa seat and piled cushions on top so she didn’t sit there.
Another knock sounded on the door, louder this time. “Hold on. I’m coming.” Jack took a last look around the room, pulled the door open and smiled.
She pushed straight past him and moved into the shadows. “Jeepers, you took your time. I thought someone would see me.”
“Would that be such a terrible thing?” he asked, slightly miffed. “Surely being associated with me isn’t that awful?”
“That’s not the point and you know it.” She moved farther into the room and glanced around. A flash of alarm shot through Jack as her perusal focused on the sofa. When she turned back to him, he released his breath. “You certainly opened a can of worms when you made your rash comment to Stephanie about loving me.”
“I’m aware of that. Is there one worm in particular you’re referring to?”
Melanie paced away and to his horror dropped down on the sofa. Most of the cushions he’d carefully arranged a moment earlier bounced onto the floor. Distractedly, she picked one up and hugged it. “Your mother came to see me today. Not that I’m calling your mother a worm.”
“Oh, hell.” His mother could certainly exhibit wormlike qualities when she wanted to. “What has she heard?”
“The full story. Sounds as though she’s been talking to Stephanie.”
“Was she angry?”
“Not angry, exactly—”
“Hang on a tick.” Jack strode through to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of Pinot Grigio. He needed fortification before he discussed his mother. “Want a glass of wine?” he shouted through to the living room.
“I don’t drink.”
“What, never?” Jack asked as he walked back to join her.
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