by Maggie Cox
A muscle twitched beneath Nicholas’s eye. Caroline could tell he was having some difficulty in keeping his temper in check. Her stomach sank like a stone.
‘You mean Fitzgerald, don’t you? I can’t believe that you’d be so foolish as to pin all your hopes on a happy union with that despicable man! He’s already hurt you beyond repair, Caroline…please don’t make the same mistake twice!’
Swallowing down her embarrassment and disappointment that her friend should display such vehement emotion towards the idea of her having a relationship with Jack, Caroline resolved to draw a line under the discussion for good.
‘I’m sorry you feel so strongly about it, Nicholas, but I know what I’m doing…I know what I want. And it doesn’t matter if it should turn out that Jack doesn’t want the same thing. I still love him.’ She flushed pink. ‘I’ll probably always love him, if you want to know the truth. The question is now…do you still want us to be friends, or will my confession make things too awkward on your part for our friendship to continue?’
Examining his menu, her companion looked at it in secret horror. It was not his cup of tea at all! In fact he wished he’d never suggested coming here in the first place. He wished it even more vehemently since things had definitely not gone the way he’d privately hoped that they would!
‘I would be a liar if I told you I wasn’t upset by your admission of love for this man, Caroline…But frankly I’d be completely shooting myself in the foot if I told you I wanted our friendship to come to an end because of it. If I am truly the friend I have always felt myself to be towards you, then all I can really want is your happiness, my dear. So we will leave things at that, shall we? Now I suppose we’d better order some food. What shall we have? I think I might just have to call over the waitress to help us make a choice…’
Jack was pacing…his expensive Italian hand-made shoes all but wearing a chasm in the plush hotel carpet. He wanted to see Caroline, and the need was like a forest fire raging. But when she’d left him yesterday there had been a resolve and determination in her bewitching dark eyes and in her voice that Jack had never witnessed before. She was clearly hell-bent on making a new life that didn’t include him in any way. When she’d told him she had plans, and then refused to elaborate on what they were, he’d been truly worried that she was going to leave town without telling him. But then, when he’d calmed himself down, he’d thought, What can she do? She’s got a house and a business to take care of…she can’t just take off and not tell anyone…can she?
Continuing to pace, Jack thought about his confrontation earlier in the day with Nicholas Brandon and wanted to throw something. There were plenty of pretty objets d’art in his luxurious hotel suite that would double up as missiles, but again Jack remembered his blood pressure. It wouldn’t do him any good getting riled up about that pathetic little weasel. He valued his health far too much these days, he realized, to jeopardise it over such an insignificant excuse for a human being as Brandon. Just as long as he kept away from Caroline Jack would be happy.
He let loose a ripe curse at the idea that he might not, then scraped his fingers irritably through dark hair that had already borne the brunt of his impatience. ‘Get a grip, Fitzgerald…you know what you have to do.’
For a moment his gut burned at the memory of what Caroline had told him about her father and how he’d treated her that fateful night she’d told him about her pregnancy. If he could have turned back the clock Jack would have been there for her, protecting her, persuading her to come away with him and start a new life. Instead Jack had chosen to blame her, instead of supporting her, and then he’d left. She’d been just seventeen years old, for heaven’s sake! A young, innocent girl and everyone around her had let her down… But Jack had let her down the most.
Impatient to do what he should have done yesterday, when Caroline had walked out of his hotel room—an action he’d hesitated over far too long because of his fears of a destroying and negative outcome—Jack stopped wearing a hole in the carpet, grabbed his leather jacket and headed out of the door into the corridor, and towards the lift.
Driving his car down the high street on his way to Caroline’s place, he almost screeched to a halt when he saw her come out of the Mexican restaurant with its newly painted signage swinging from a bracket overhead. She was being followed out by none other than the famous doctor himself, his hand possessively at her back as they started to walk away beneath the illumination of the streetlights.
An indescribable wave of jealousy and rage snatched the breath from Jack’s lungs—his immediate instinct was to park the car and chase after them, and give Nicholas Brandon the comeuppance he richly deserved. What was she doing out with him? he thought savagely. Caroline was his…didn’t she know that?
Quashing the urge to follow them as swiftly as the urge had arisen, Jack decided to bide his time instead and follow her home. He didn’t allow himself to consider for one moment that she might be going home with the doctor. If that was her intention, then he would simply have to act to prevent it.
Thankfully his instincts turned out to be right. Nicholas dropped Caroline outside her front door, briefly kissed her goodbye on the side of her cheek…much to Jack’s pain…then got into his car and drove away again.
As she put her key into the lock, Jack left the driver’s seat of his own car, slammed the door shut behind him and hurried up the drive.
‘Caroline,’ he breathed behind her.
‘Jack!’ Swinging round, her key left in the lock, she knew her dark eyes registered her surprise and confusion. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I had to see you.’
‘Why?’
‘I’m not talking out here. Open the door and let’s go inside.’
‘But you—’
‘Open the damn door, Caroline!’
Turning the key in the lock himself, Jack pushed open the door and dragged Caroline in behind him. Kicking it shut with the heel of his shoe, he let his heated gaze scan her indignant countenance, feeling no small amount of desire scorching through his blood. God, she was so beautiful! How could he have walked out on her as he had? Jack hardly knew the man who had done that.
‘You had to see me about what?’
As she backed up against the wall, a puzzled angry frown appeared between Caroline’s smooth dark blonde brows.
‘For someone who despises me you seem to be extraordinarily attached to following me around!’
‘Never mind that. What were you doing out with that creep Nicholas Brandon?’
They weren’t the words that Jack had wanted to say first, but somehow they’d got in the way of his real intent and acted like an incendiary going off in his face. He saw the splinters from the explosion make her shiver, and clearly registered the hurt and disappointment in her shocked glance.
‘You are unbelievable—do you know that? What business is it of yours who I go out to dinner with? My life is my own, and I don’t have to answer to you, Jack Fitzgerald!’
‘Do you like him?’ he demanded. ‘Are you in love with him?’ He could hardly bear to hear her answer.
Caroline stared at him as if hardly computing the question.
Driven way past any ability to be patient—and that particular commodity had always been in short supply in his case—Jack grabbed her by the shoulders and impelled her roughly against his chest. ‘Answer me, goddammit!’
Her soft dark eyes focused with extraordinary concentration on his face, and Jack saw her bewitchingly pretty top lip quiver a little before she finally spoke. ‘No, Jack…I don’t love him. There’s only one man I’ve always loved, and I think you know who that is.’
Her words blew like a warm, gentle wind through his embittered soul and made his heart expand with a joyful lightness the like of which he’d never experienced before. Jack let go of the breath that had tightened so painfully inside his chest and sighed deeply. Tenderly brushing back the ravishing golden hair from her impossibly soft brow, he gazed deeply i
nto the enchanting dark eyes that had haunted his dreams all these years, everything inside him hurting at the sight of the tears that had helplessly misted over them.
‘How the hell did I ever live without you?’ he grated, just before fastening his hungry, needy mouth to hers.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THERE was such unbounded joy rippling through Caroline’s veins at Jack’s possessive embrace that she suddenly believed it was possible to fly without wings.
Did he mean the words he had just uttered so passionately? His ravenous kiss told her that he most certainly did. The tears that had glazed her eyes trickled softly down her face and into her mouth as Jack’s lips melded with hers, his hot silky tongue and dark masculinity tasting like home and heaven at the same time. With his hands expressively showing her how enamoured he was with her curves, it became very clear to Caroline that there was no going back from this point on.
Grinding his hips demandingly into hers, Jack trapped her body against the wall and she willingly surrendered to the seductive opiate of his invading heat. The hotly intense sparks that had been simmering undimmed beneath the hurt and hostility that they had each succumbed to in their turn burst into irresistible flame as their need for each other shattered all bounds of strained politeness. Jack’s broad hard chest imprisoned Caroline’s breasts as his kiss enraptured her completely, and she worked her hands down between their bodies and mindlessly, hungrily, unfastened the zip of his jeans embedded in soft blue denim. There was no hesitation in the act…no doubt…she simply had to…they had to…
Pulling her skirt up around her hips as if of the same mind, Jack roughly pushed Caroline’s rose-coloured panties down her shivering legs, then inserted himself smoothly inside her, employing a long upwards stroke of voracious male possession.
‘You make me—oh, God—you make me crazy, Jack…’ She moaned into his mouth, stunned by the ferocity of heat that radiated like a blaze inside her.
Her arms wrapped around his neck as his thrusts became more concentrated, then deliberately stopped. He held himself inside her for long, arousing and inflammatory seconds, so that their united pleasure in each other seemed to magnify into an even more achingly deep bliss. Her breath left her body in another deeply affected low-voiced groan.
‘Say my name again, Caroline,’ Jack taunted against her ravaged lips, his mouth sliding across her face to her earlobe, then down her neck, finally latching in turn onto her tightly budded nipples inside the black velvet top that he so impatiently shoved aside. ‘Say my name so that I can hear it’s me you want and no one else.’
‘Oh, Jack…it’s only ever been you! There never has been anybody else for me…I swear.’
Jack briefly thought about all the wrong turns he’d made personally…the women he’d convinced himself he’d enjoyed—including his ex-wife Anna. None of them had ever produced the uncontained feeling of rapture and untrammelled excitement inside him that Caroline did. Even when he’d been busy blaming her for denying him their child Jack had known underneath it all that he’d never stopped loving her…that in fact it was impossible for him to do such a thing. He was now convinced that there were some relationships that absolutely had to be—no matter how far apart the couple concerned had been, or for how long.
Jack knew for sure that he would love Caroline for ever. How else could he explain the almost instantaneous and soaring heartfelt longing that he’d experienced from the very first moment he’d seen her? It had never just been about lust. Jack believed in love at first sight because it had happened to him. Even while he’d so hot-headedly and foolishly denied himself her presence in his life these past seventeen years a secret fever had burned inside him daily—for Caroline.
Now Jack waited until she melted in his arms, and he was the passionate, willing recipient of a heat that was like no other—her soft, rasping sighs turning him on almost to the point of pain, the velvet-textured skin brushing so arousingly up against his own a sensation he never wanted to be free of. Then and only then did he allow himself to drive home his own insatiable need for her.
Shaken by the depth of his release, Jack kissed Caroline tenderly on her eyelids, her nose, her mouth, holding her face in his hands and examining her flushed beautiful features with a particularly warm, satisfied smile of undisguised male pride.
‘You are everything a man could want in a woman and more…you know that?’
‘It took you long enough to realise it, Jack.’ She raised one finely arched blonde eyebrow, and her soft laughter was infectious.
She was so happy. Her elation flowed through her veins like delightful burgundy wine, flooding all the shadowed places inside her with light and love, and waking up her senses to a world of joy again. Safe in the arms of the man she adored, now there was no doubt in her mind that for both of them their togetherness was for all the right reasons.
‘I know…but I was a stupid, self-righteous fool who got his comeuppance by consigning myself to endure seventeen long years without you. I didn’t only punish you, angel…I punished myself too.’
There was a deeply etched furrow between Jack’s dark brows that made Caroline want to kiss every frown he’d ever had away, and bring him so much love and laughter that he’d never need to employ that gesture again.
What was she waiting for? She might as well start now. Gently, she pressed her lips to the place where that remorseful furrow resided.
‘I love you, Jack,’ she told him, her heart lifting when an uninhibited smile of pleased satisfaction curved his highly kissable lips.
‘I hardly deserve you to…But, however long I live,’ Jack began huskily, ‘it won’t be nearly long enough to show you how much I love you, Caroline…and that’s a fact.’
‘Then we have a great deal of loving ahead of us, wouldn’t you say? Let’s go up to bed, shall we? I’m anxious not to waste any more time.’
Her dark eyes only demonstrating the barest hint of shyness, Caroline began to rearrange her clothing and, taking his lead from her, Jack did likewise. Then she took him by the hand and went upstairs with him to her bedroom, just as she intended to do every night for the rest of their lives.
Some time later, in the warm, sated afterglow of their lovemaking, Caroline traced the slender scar on Jack’s bare chest tentatively with the tips of her fingers.
Aware of the tension that he suddenly transmitted, Caroline couldn’t deny her own underlying unease as she prepared herself to confront him about it. But they had shared the most intimate of intimacies, and if they couldn’t share this too then what hope for deepening the trust between them? Glancing up into the handsome face that was both sensitive and troubled now that he had let his guard down, Caroline knew that it was definitely time to get bone-crushingly honest about things.
‘Tell me about this, Jack,’ she urged, her voice deliberately lowered. ‘I need to know.’
She didn’t want to exert any pressure, but learning the truth was essential. He sighed, but he didn’t push her away or get defensive, as she’d secretly feared he might.
‘Six months ago I had a heart attack,’ he began, and Caroline hardly dared breathe as she listened intently. ‘I’d be a fool if I didn’t see it as some kind of serious catalyst for change.’
Absently Jack slid his hand down the side of Caroline’s slender bare arm.
‘It was entirely self-created. I pushed myself way too hard for far too long. I got rich…but truthfully I derived very little pleasure from the money I made. I discovered to my great shock that there isn’t enough wealth and public acclaim in the world to wipe the slate clean of a bitter past. That part was down to me. I was still that angry, self-righteous youth who baulked at the cards fate had dealt him…who despised being poor. I wanted to show the world that I could rise above anything it cared to throw at me, and in some respects you could say I did. I certainly achieved what I set out to achieve financially…but there was still a gaping hole inside of me the size of the Grand Canyon. Now I know that I should have sta
yed with you after what happened, instead of using it as a bitter excuse to flee the country. I could have made my fortune anywhere, but I suppose I wanted to get as far away as possible from my past as I could. I’m so sorry, my angel.’
Urging her towards him so that she lay across his chest, Jack kissed her gently on the mouth, his blue eyes blazing at her with profound remorse and love.
Swallowing down the lump inside her throat, Caroline caught his hand and kissed it. ‘I know you didn’t really mean to hurt me, Jack. I told you—I have no more resentment whatever…none. Why don’t we just let what happened in the past stay in the past, hmm? Today is a new day…a new future. Now, tell me about your heart. I want to know the truth, Jack. Are you in any danger still? How can I help?’
Staring up into her concerned brown eyes, Jack felt a wave of warmth permeate his entire being. He had to acknowledge it after all this time—God had been good to him. He was still alive, still curious about life, and now he was blessed with the love of the woman he’d thought he had lost for good and had miraculously been reunited with.
‘The doctors told me that if I ease my workload and take better care of myself, then I have a damn good chance of living to be old. I’m pretty fit, and still young. Who knows how long I might live if I have the love of a good woman too?’ He grinned, and was about to bestow a long, loving, much more leisurely kiss on Caroline’s too delectable lips when she deliberately held back and considered him intently.
‘Why did you come back here, Jack?’ she asked thoughtfully. ‘What made you buy your mother’s old house and decide to do it up?’
The grin banished, Jack’s expression became perfectly serious. ‘About a year ago I contacted an estate agency in town to express my interest in the house, should it ever come up for sale. I suppose I had some crazy half-baked notion that one day I might come back and fix it up…just for my own satisfaction. It haunted me, losing that house…it definitely haunted my mother. I just somehow needed to heal my hurt at it being repossessed all those years ago. Anyway, at the time of enquiring the guy who owned it had no intention of selling. But about a month before I had the heart attack the estate agents rang me to tell me that he had put it on the market. He was moving abroad to Spain and was looking for a quick sale. I bought it there and then. After I got sick, I saw my buying it as some kind of sign that I was meant to go home. I can’t explain it…it was just a feeling that came over me. I thought you were long gone…married to some frightfully posh ambitious young doctor in the home counties. But secretly I hoped beyond hope that you might still live here. If you hadn’t I would have eventually found you anyway. I’m certain of that.’