by Maggie Cox
‘No. These days I paint purely for my own satisfaction, but not for public viewing.’
‘Why not?’
Characteristically blunt, Jack levelled his clear blue gaze on Caroline’s startled face with no remorse whatsoever.
‘I can be freer if I only have myself to please. I make art because I take pleasure in it…not because I want other people’s opinions about it.’
‘You used to want to make it your full-time career’
‘Well, now I have this shop—and I teach too. That’s quite enough to be going on with.’
She was prickly and defensive, yet she still painted—even if it was just for her own satisfaction—and apparently did lots of other things as well. Clearly what had happened had not quelled her drive in any way…neither had the fact that their romance had so abruptly come to an end. The thought did not sit easy in Jack’s already disturbed gut.
‘What do you teach?’ he asked reluctantly.
‘Arts and crafts. Are there any more questions? I have to get on.’
Jack frowned at the distinct coolness in her voice. ‘I didn’t expect to find you still living here,’ he commented, changing tack.
‘I moved to London for a while, but then my father died and left me the house. When I came home to sort things out I decided to stay here. I love the sea…it’s always had a pull for me.’
Caroline hadn’t meant to tell him so much. It had just sort of come out, due to nerves. Because here she was, having not seen this man in what felt like a lifetime, and there he stood, frighteningly mature and handsome in his casually expensive clothes, the body inside them clearly having had the benefit of not just good genes but good nutrition and exercise too, judging by the strongly athletic build of him. His appearance was a far cry from the lean and hungry energetic youth she had fallen in love with, who’d had a burning desire to break the bonds of his less than advantageous background and make both his fortune and a name for himself. But, with his disturbing blue eyes searing her like living flame, it seemed to Caroline that his dangerous attraction was even more potent than ever. Why else would she be standing in front of him privately shivering hard with longing?
‘So…is there a husband somewhere on the scene?’ he asked, looking as though he couldn’t care less if there was.
She could ask him the same question. Are you married Jack? And if you are…why have you come back here to haunt me? Once the question entered her mind Caroline found it hard to let it go. She had a dangerous fascination in knowing the answer.
‘No…How about you? Did you ever marry?’
Her voice shook with nerves as she gave in to her own helpless curiosity.
‘I’m divorced. So…neither of us is a success in the marriage stakes…surprise, surprise.’
A knot of unbearable misery twisted inside Caroline’s stomach.
‘Why are you doing this, Jack? You already told me that you hate making small talk. You don’t need to come in here and rake over old coals when the past is better left alone…don’t you think?’
His face grew briefly dark, and the bitter tension that rolled towards her hit Caroline like an icy wave. She knew immediately what he was thinking. He’d made a bad mistake coming into her shop and making contact again, and now he was sorely regretting it. There was not one thing he’d missed about her…not one. Watching him walk to the door, she saw Jack shrug, and before pulling it open he considered her with a supercilious and definitely mocking smile.
‘Your father died, then? Forgive me if I can’t bring myself to offer my condolences.’
Without another word, he left her alone.
The large Victorian house that her father had left to her in his will, which for the past five years had been Caroline’s permanent home, failed to inspire her usual pleasure as she entered the airy hallway with its chequered floor and polished chiffonier. All of a sudden it didn’t feel like home, because her normal ability to experience delight in things had been severely suppressed by Jack’s cruel parting remark when he’d left her shop.
Not that she could entirely blame him for not being sorry to hear of her father’s death.
Charles Tremayne had disliked Jack on sight, calling him a ‘sly little upstart’ who only wanted to elevate himself by association with Caroline because she was a doctor’s daughter and came from a different class. For different read better.
Her father’s unapologetic snobbery and prejudice had made Caroline feel intensely ashamed. They might have been more comfortably off than Jack and his mother, but that hadn’t given them the right to feel superior in any way. Right from the start Caroline had quickly seen that Jack was smart and industrious, as well as devastatingly good-looking. And he might have appeared as a bit of a cocky, brash youth to outsiders, but to her he had displayed a tenderness that had sometimes made her weep for joy. Having grown up with a father whose affection towards his only child had been sparing, Caroline had found Jack’s loving like a salve to her starved-for-love soul. Once experienced…nothing else would do.
Sighing with deep unhappiness, Caroline dragged herself into the kitchen. With her mind constantly drifting back to the past, like a wary onlooker positioned on the edge of a dormant volcano, she prepared a baked potato and a small salad for her dinner. Eating it in the large, formal dining room a little while later, she stared at the dark emerald drapes at the imposing Victorian windows and asked herself what she was doing, still rattling around in this big old house on her own after five years? Why had she rebuffed every bit of interested male attention that had come her way, as if she didn’t deserve to find happiness with a man who loved her? She knew the answer to that one.
After he’d found out about the termination, Jack’s fury at her had known no bounds. His passionate, enraged words, eloquently expressing what he thought of her, had slashed deep wounds in her heart that would probably never heal. He had made her feel like a murderer…as if she had made the decision to terminate her pregnancy on a mere casual whim. He had had no idea of the guilt, shame, or total devastation Caroline had felt when, at her father’s bullying instigation, she had gone through with the deed. He had had no notion of the terrible scene her father had caused when he’d found out about the pregnancy, or the dreadful names he’d called her for sleeping with Jack. Events like that left an indelible imprint on a person that was hard to relinquish. Caroline had found it almost impossible to forgive herself for what had happened, and because of her guilt had subconsciously put up barriers where other men were concerned.
‘Oh, Jack’ she said out loud as her fork clattered back down to her plate, her meal still left largely untouched. ‘Why did you have to come back? I’ve made a life for myself since you went away…Maybe I’m not the successful artist that once upon a time I thought I could be, but I’ve been happy in my own way with the shop and my teaching. Why did you have to come back and spoil that? Why couldn’t you just let the memory of you die in me for good?’
CHAPTER THREE
HAVING had negotiations with the architect who was overseeing the renovation and redesign of the house, Jack left the hotel where he was staying the next morning and went for a long walk along the seafront. Dressed in black sweats with a matching fleece, he tried to quash the need to run that arose inside him—to pound the pavements as he was used to doing every day back in Manhattan, where he lived and worked—because since his heart attack the doctors had advised him to ‘kick back a little’ and not push so hard with the exercise regime he’d devised for himself.
Resenting their advice like hell, Jack nevertheless had to satisfy himself with a brisk walk rather than a run, and as the surprisingly cold autumnal air bit into his hollowed-out cheekbones he found himself recalling his parting words to Caroline yesterday. It had been a stupid and childish response to have a cruel dig at her about her father’s death, he decided. No matter how vehement his dislike for Charles Tremayne and the appalling way he’d treated Jack back then—as if he was nothing less than pond-scum—Caroline h
ad no doubt loved her father, and missed him not being around.
It surprised him that he should seriously be considering giving her an apology. If he had an ounce of sense he’d leave things be and not try to see her again. But Jack never had been able to do the sensible thing around Caroline. How else had she wound up pregnant with his baby at just seventeen? The pavement seemed to loom dizzyingly closer for a second as he remembered how much he had loved her, how crazy for her he had been from the moment he’d seen her. She should have been off-limits to him right from the start—and would have been if her dark eyes hadn’t gazed at him with equally desperate longing at their very first meeting.
Increasing his stride without thinking—his heart maintaining a steady, reassuring rhythm as he did so—Jack made himself concentrate on the exercise. He knew he was getting fitter by the day. The heart attack—though disturbing and a cause for concern—had thankfully not been life-threatening. It had, though, been a warning that he couldn’t afford to treat his body’s innate need for rest and relaxation with the near contempt with which he’d treated it previously.
‘You’re not some battery-powered machine, Jack Fitzgerald…a battery runs out and you replace it with another one. The body doesn’t work like that. You can’t work flat out seven days a week, getting by with the minimum of sleep indefinitely, without it exacting some kind of price on your health.’
His doctor had been right, of course. But after Jack’s marriage had started to come apart at the seams—and Anna had naturally sought solace elsewhere—Jack had preferred to spend his time at work and take his chances with the toll on his health. To his mind it had been infinitely easier than going home to a luxurious penthouse apartment and having the empty rooms that were mockingly bereft of his wife’s presence chillingly remind him that this was one arena in which he patently didn’t excel…
Slowing to a stop, he ran a hand across the thin film of sweat clinging to his brow and returned to the knowingly dangerous idea of making contact with Caroline to apologise for his rudeness of yesterday. She might not have wanted to have his baby all those years ago, and he could never forgive her for what she’d done, but there was no need to stoop to the condescending level of her father and treat her with anything less than civility. After all…she was nothing to him now. What could it hurt to merely drop by her shop and say sorry for his ill-mannered passing quip?
She didn’t have a head for heights at the best of times. Now, on a ladder reaching up to the topmost shelf in the back room where she kept her stock, searching for that box of material odds and ends that she’d promised to Sadie, Caroline sighed with relief when she found it, only too eager to get back down the ladder and onto terra firma again.
But as she drew the large box towards her chest to balance it her foot missed the next rung it had been groping for and she felt herself literally crash to the floor. Releasing a shocked yelp, she landed unceremoniously on her backside at the foot of the ladder, the box of material scraps spilling out everywhere. Cursing her bad luck, Caroline groaned out loud in pain and frustration—because she could already feel the bruises forming on her most tender spot.
Hearing the jangle of the bell above the shop door at that exact moment, she rolled her eyes heavenwards. ‘Great timing, Caroline,’ she muttered. Pushing away the colourful kaleidoscope of debris that covered her, she attempted to rise to her feet. Everything hurt. The place on her body that didn’t hadn’t been invented.
Hobbling to the door, and at the same time trying to smooth back her dishevelled hair as she went out into the shop, she was totally unprepared for the sight of Jack, leaning against the counter examining a box of crayons as though they were the most fascinating thing on earth. He straightened when he saw her, and Caroline saw the grooves on his handsome forehead crease in a frown that was unexpectedly concerned.
‘What have you done to yourself?’
It wasn’t fair that he of all people should walk in the door and catch her at her most vulnerable. Someone up there in the cosmos was having a big joke at her expense. If that wasn’t bad enough, Caroline knew she must look dreadful too. Apart from nearly doing herself some serious damage falling off the ladder, she was wearing a pair of jeans that were just on the uncomfortable side of tight, and a smock-type Indian print blouse she was convinced she looked fat in but that she’d worn anyway because it was roomy.
She’d been in the middle of cleaning the stockroom when she’d remembered the box of material scraps she’d promised Sadie for her butterfly collage. Knowing it was dusty work, she’d thought it best to change into clothing that she didn’t care about. Now, with her hair shaken loose from the bold pink scrunchie that had kept it on top of her head, and practically every bone in her body screaming in silent protest from her undignified tumble, all Caroline wanted to do was to be left alone to entertain her humiliation in private. What she expressly didn’t want was to be under the despising scrutiny of a man who clearly thought she wasn’t fit to be in the same room as him—never mind be spoken to.
‘I’m all right. I accidentally fell off a ladder, that’s all.’
With her hand shaking, Caroline tried in vain to push her hair back from her face, but the stubborn silky strands spilled heedlessly back across her cheeks again.
‘You fell off a ladder?’
Before she could do anything to stop him, Jack had walked commandingly over to her and clamped his hand down firmly on her shoulder. His blue eyes were as intense as she’d ever seen them as they blazed down at her.
‘Are you hurt? You look like you’re in shock…What the hell were you doing up a ladder on your own?’
The question was so surprising that Caroline’s lips couldn’t help twitching into a perverse grin. ‘What do you mean? Since when does a person need an escort to go up a ladder? That’s taking it too far, if you ask me!’
‘I don’t think this is any time for joking,’ he said seriously, wiping the smile off her face with his chilly reprimand. ‘You’d better come and sit down. Do you have anything for shock?’
A double vodka might do the trick if she had any, Caroline reflected in sudden panic. Still holding onto her shoulder—the heat from his hand was making her feel almost delirious—Jack guided her to a nearby straight-backed chair with a floral seat-pad and gently but commandingly pushed her down into it. Just when she didn’t think she could cope with his painful concern for her welfare one second longer, without it making her dissolve into sorrowful, angry tears, he stood in front of her with his arms folded, regarding her with all the forceful presence of a commander in the SAS towards a member of his team who had badly let him down.
The thought would almost have made Caroline smile if it hadn’t been for the sober reminder to herself that he would never in a million years want her on his team.
Glancing tentatively up at the harsh jaw—that was distinctly unshaven this morning and made him look almost dangerously unpredictable—and seeing his expression of searing inscrutability made Caroline literally squirm in her seat.
‘I asked you if you had anything for shock?’ he repeated.
She shook her head, knowing that it wasn’t just because he was standing and she was sitting that he had a distinct psychological advantage.
‘I don’t believe in taking medicine unless I really have to. I’ve got some Rescue Remedy in my bag, but that’s about all.’
‘Rescue remedy?’
‘It’s a flower remedy…very good when you’ve been upset.’ Caroline’s stomach lurched as Jack surveyed her with an almost tangible sceptical air.
‘You’d rather take some dubious alternative remedy over an orthodox one and your father was a doctor?’
‘I do have a mind of my own, you know.’
As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Caroline painfully recalled caving in to the pressure from her dictatorial father to have the termination she’d had…despite her vehement protest that she didn’t want to, that she loved her baby and she loved her baby’s father
. It hadn’t helped her having a mind of her own then—not when her father had crushed her insistence with all the rough and pitiless force of a sledgehammer.
Painfully, she swallowed down the inevitable, almost unbearable twist of loss and grief inside her and attempted to rise up from the chair. She had to make Jack leave, and leave now! What was he doing here anyway? Surely he had better things to do than visit a woman who aroused nothing but contempt in him?
It bothered Jack greatly that he’d witnessed such disturbing vulnerability in her soft dark eyes. Let her show him indifference, or even tell him to go to hell, but dear God don’t let her look as though she was suffering the torments of the damned.
It frankly astounded him that the idea of Caroline being in pain still had the power to bring out the protector in him…even after what she’d done. He told himself to take a swift reality check and get the hell out of her shop and her life for good. Just because the sight of her still had the power to stir explicit male fantasies in him—her snug, faded jeans emphasised that her figure had lost none of its charms and had inevitably become even more womanly and alluring than ever—it didn’t mean that he should stay around any longer than was sensible. He’d already been burned by her. He didn’t intend to be burned again.
‘You need a little more reliable help than a flower remedy, in my opinion. Don’t you have the common sense to keep a first aid kit here?’ Jack asked impatiently, irked because he felt more affected by her presence than he wanted to be.
‘I do, but it’s only got bandages and plasters in it. Please don’t give it another thought. I’m fine, really.’