by Penny Jordan
Of course he had already been aware of Harold’s dishonesty—after all, he had spent a large part of the last year investigating his affairs—but knowing it and proving it were two very different things, and now, thanks to Heaven, he was well on the way to having that proof. He knew about the trickery Harold had used to carefully conceal the money he had made via a complex network of interlinking off-shore companies—carefully, but not carefully enough, Jon acknowledged jubilantly.
Soon he would have written evidence of just where Harold’s assets were, evidence his sister could put before a judge, but Jon cynically acknowledged that once Harold knew just what they had discovered he would never allow Louisa’s maintenance petition to get to court. If he did then the whole of his business empire could be destroyed.
No, Louisa should find that she got a much fairer divorce settlement from her ex-husband now, and with it the return of her family furniture, Jon decided grimly as he reached for a towel and quickly dried off his body before pulling on a towelling robe.
Was Heaven awake yet? There was only one way to find out…
* * *
Jon! Where had he slept last night after he had undressed her? This bed, her bed, was certainly big enough for both of them. Heaven wriggled uncertainly beneath the duvet. Had they spent the night together? Had Jon…? She gave a small gasp as the bedroom door was pushed open and the subject of her wantonly sensual thoughts came in carrying a tray with two mugs of tea, and her clothes.
‘I put these in the washer for you last night,’ he began prosaically as he put her clothes down on a chair several yards away from the bed.
‘My clothes…?’
Hard though she tried to suppress it, Heaven could feel her blush starting to deepen, and then, unable to keep the suspicion to herself any longer, burst out, ‘Last night did we…did you…?’
The hot-faced look she cast in the direction of the opposite side of the double bed made Jon want to smile as he realised what was going through her mind.
She thought he might have done more than remove her clothing, did she? Well, in some respects he almost wished he had, although if he had…
‘Don’t you know…can’t you remember?’ he teased her, watching with enjoyment as her eyes rounded with uncertainty. In her consternation Heaven forgot to hang onto the duvet, which started to slither away from her body immediately she released it, causing Jon, who was just in the act of placing her mug of tea on the table at her side of the bed, to react swiftly and with gentlemanly concern to retrieve the errant duvet for her.
It was mere misfortune, of course, that he should fail in his mission to spare Heaven’s blushes and protect her modesty, missing the recalcitrant duvet by millimetres—so few millimetres, in fact, that the tips of his fingers actually brushed against the soft warmth of Heaven’s breast.
It was the effect of the cool air against her body that was causing her nipples to pout so provocatively, Heaven tried to reassure herself, and their wanton stiffness had nothing whatsoever—could have nothing whatsoever—to do with Jon’s proximity, nor his touch.
‘You can’t remember, can you?’ she heard him accusing her as he sat down on the bed next to her.
Heaven gave a small gulp, not so much because of her near-nakedness, or even because the towelling robe he was wearing was, so it seemed to her, very precariously tied at the waist—so precariously in fact that she suspected that all it would take for it to fall open completely would be for…
Hastily she averted her eyes and her hot face from the interesting darkly shadowed area just below his firmly flat belly. No, it was neither of those two things that was responsible for her agitation. What was causing it was her awareness that she could not remember whether or not she and Jon had spent the night together. What she did know, though, was that she did not find the idea that they might have unbelievable—or unappealing.
‘So you think I might have taken advantage of your sleeping state and spent the night here in bed with you, do you?’ he was asking her.
Heaven rallied enough to remind him, ‘You took my clothes off.’
‘Mmm… A purely altruistic action, I can assure you, and done merely so that you could have clean clothes to wear this morning.’
‘Oh…’
Jon cocked an eyebrow and smiled encouragingly at her.
‘Could that have been an “Oh” of apology…or even one of disappointment?’ he asked her teasingly.
Heaven gave him a wrathful look but before she could denounce him with the words clamouring for utterance on her tongue he neatly cut the ground away from her by telling her softly, ‘Not that I wasn’t tempted…very tempted. You’ve got a very sexy body… And a delicious little mole just here,’ he told her, finding with dismaying accuracy despite the duvet the spot on her hip bone where she did indeed have a small mole.
‘A very kissable mole,’ he whispered, leaning closer to her.
Heaven couldn’t help it. Instinctively, as he moved closer to her she moved closer to him. With his lips only a breath away from hers Jon told her huskily, ‘No, I didn’t sleep with you, and if I had… If I had, you may be sure that you most certainly would have remembered it…’
‘Remembered…’ Heaven whispered shakily.
‘Mmm…’ Jon agreed. ‘You would. Because I would have made love to you so thoroughly, so…so sensually…starting like this…’
Heaven had been about to speak but it was too late; Jon was already cupping her face with both hands, pressing slow, mouthwateringly delicious kisses against her mouth. The kind of kisses that made her reach out and wrap her own arms around him to hold him closer.
‘Mmm…and then what would you have done?’ Heaven asked him dizzily.
‘Then I would have done this, and you’d certainly have remembered it,’ he told her, sweeping her hair to one side and stringing a line of toe-curling little nibbles all the way down her throat and along her shoulder, bringing her whole body out in a rash of responsive goosebumps as he did so.
Heaven gave a small moan of sheer delight, unwittingly digging her nails into the flesh of his arms, but he didn’t mind the pain.
‘Oh-h-h…’ she gasped as he trailed a row of kisses all the way down the inside of her arm to her wrist, planting one in her palm before he closed her fingers over it and carried that hand to his own body, placing it right where his heart was thumping with heavy irregularity.
‘And then…what would you have done?’ Heaven pressed him, opening eyes heavy with desire and arousal to focus on him.
Jon felt his heart skip a full half a dozen beats. Just that look in her eyes alone, never mind the softer tempting fullness of her naked breasts, was enough to make him want…
‘Then I’d have told you that this isn’t a game and I want you so much that I ache like hell for you,’ he told her rawly, the emotion in his voice and in his eyes making Heaven catch her breath…
‘I want you too,’ she admitted bravely as she held out her arms to him.
Very gently he reached out and cupped her breasts and then equally gently leaned forward and started to kiss her.
Heaven gave a soft moan low in her throat as she felt Jon rubbing the pads of his thumbs over and over her sensitive nipples, her whole body writhing in sensual pleasure as she opened her mouth to the deep, pulsing thrust of his tongue.
When he released her mouth to capture one of her nipples and draw it tenderly into his mouth she could feel the soft sensuality of his body hair and the sleek hardness of the muscles that lay beneath his skin.
She wanted to explore every inch of him, to touch and taste all of him, but she hadn’t realised she had said so out loud until Jon buried his face between her breasts and groaned, ‘Oh, God, Heaven, have you any idea just what you’re doing to me?’
‘I know what you’re doing to me,’ Heaven responded bravely.
His robe had fallen completely open. Fascinated, torn between her natural feminine shyness and her equally instinctive female awe and curiosity,
she studied him, unable to resist the temptation to reach out and run her fingertips down the hard length of his erection.
‘Heaven,’ she heard him protest in a satisfactorily guttural moan of mingled torment and pleasure.
‘What’s wrong?’ she teased him. ‘Don’t you like me doing that?’
‘Don’t I like it?’ Jon groaned, and closed his eyes. ‘You wait,’ he warned her. ‘I’ll get my own back.
‘You can’t know how often I’ve thought about you,’ he told her more seriously as he shrugged off the robe and took her back into his arms, kissing her mouth gently at first and then with increasing passion as he felt her respond to him.
‘When you never got in touch with me after…after everything, I thought that you mustn’t have been interested,’ Heaven admitted hesitantly.
Jon immediately shook his head.
‘I couldn’t get in touch because no one knew where to find you. I contacted your parents but they refused to tell me where you were. Then I thought about it and reasoned that anyone connected with…with what had happened would be the last person you’d want to see…’
‘I did feel a bit like that,’ Heaven admitted, ducking her head so that he couldn’t see the anxiety in her eyes as she added, ‘And I felt…well, people do say there’s no smoke without a fire and—’
‘Stop right there,’ Jon warned her sternly. ‘Other people may have made the mistake of believing Harold’s lies, but I never did,’ he announced grimly. ‘I never did, Heaven,’ he repeated, cupping her face and holding it so that she was forced to meet the look in his eyes. ‘I never did and I never could…’
Heaven couldn’t hide it. His words made her eyes fill with emotional tears which she couldn’t disguise from him. Gently he wiped them away and then bent his head and licked the last traces of moisture from her skin. The erotic sensation of his tongue moving against her damp skin sent a tell-tale shudder of reaction jolting through Heaven’s body.
‘Jon,’ she whispered shakily as she clung to him, no longer shy of letting him see the effect he was having on her or her need for him.
‘I know,’ he whispered back. ‘I know.’
And then he was laying her down on the bed and removing the duvet, caressing every inch of her skin, kissing the small mole on her hip as he had intimated he had wanted to do, but Heaven wasn’t sure if it was the sensation of his mouth against her mole or the fact that as he kissed it his hand was resting on her belly, covering her sex, that was making her tremble so wildly.
‘What’s wrong?’ he teased her huskily as his hand slid between her legs and he started to caress her with the same gentle explorative intimacy with which she had touched him earlier. ‘Don’t you like it?’
But Heaven didn’t need to make any response; Jon already knew what her answer was and his own body, his own arousal, his own emotions were reacting chaotically to the feel and warmth of her.
He bent his head and Heaven gave a shocked gasp of pleasure as she felt his mouth caressing the most intimate part of her, his tongue stroking, seeking, questing.
Unable to bear the erotic sensuality of the sensation he was giving her, she called out protestingly to him, her sharp, high cry smothered by the fierce pressure of his mouth on hers, instinctively sensing and satisfying her need for that intimacy, and just as instinctively satisfying her need for the powerful, sensually fulfilling thrust of his body within her own.
It was like poetry, a perfect dawn and even more perfect sunset, every good sensation and feeling you could ever experience or imagine experiencing, to feel the harmony that their bodies were creating together, to share the upward gravity-free surge towards the ecstatic moment of release, to lie dazed and replete in one another’s arms.
‘That was heaven,’ Jon whispered gruffly to her. Heaven started to giggle and then Jon, realising what he had said, joined in.
‘Heaven…’ he began, but she suddenly tensed.
‘I can hear a car outside,’ she told him anxiously. ‘You don’t think…?’
‘Wait here,’ he cautioned her, reaching for his robe and pulling it on as he walked towards the door.
Whoever it was who’d arrived was ringing noisily on the doorbell, and Heaven shivered as she listened to the piercing, demanding sound.
‘Wait here,’ Jon had told her, but if they had been pursued by Harold there was no way she was going to be discovered huddled vulnerably in bed.
Picking up the clean clothes Jon had brought her, she headed for the bathroom, firmly locking the door behind her once she was inside. At least the brisk sound of the shower drowned out whatever might be happening downstairs. The women of the family who had originally built and lived in the peel tower would not have been so fortunate, she acknowledged, unable to stop herself wondering how many times they had huddled together in silent terror at the top of the tower whilst downstairs their menfolk repelled the border reivers who had come to attack them and steal away their cattle.
It had been a very thoughtful gesture on Jon’s part to wash and dry her clothes for her, Heaven reflected as she quickly dried herself and then pulled on her clean clothes. By the looks of it, he had even had an attempt at ironing her dress.
She flushed a little as she slipped on her lacy briefs. They were a pair that Janet had given her as part of a surprise ‘cheer you up’ present and as such rather more skimpy and provocative than the ones she normally wore, hardly large enough to cover the palm of Jon’s hand, never mind…
Hastily she reached for her dress. Her mind might be overrun with anxious fears, but her body was still clinging to the faintly languorous feeling of voluptuous satisfaction and completion that Jon’s lovemaking had given it.
Jon. A delicious little tremor of pleasure ran delicately across her skin. There could be no doubts from the way he had made love to her and responded to her just how much he had wanted her, desired her, but wanting and loving were not necessarily the same thing, she reminded herself starkly as she unlocked the bathroom door and paused uncertainly, trying to gauge the silence. Had whoever it was gone…or…?
Heaven tensed as the bedroom door opened, but to her relief it was only Jon.
‘Has he…? Was it…?’ Heaven paused and moistened her dry lips.
Jon started to shake his head, but Heaven had guessed the truth from the severity of his expression.
‘It was someone after me, wasn’t it?’ she insisted.
When Jon nodded, she bit her lip nervously, before asking, ‘Was it Harold…?’ He shook his head, a small smile starting to curl his mouth as he told her, ‘No, Harold wasn’t on the doorstep. Apparently he isn’t feeling very well. It’s all right, Heaven,’ he reassured her, walking over to her and taking her in his arms, tucking her head under his chin as he wrapped his arms tightly round her.
‘There were two men looking for you, yes—contacts of Harold’s who work in Glasgow and whom he’d asked to try and locate you, but fortunately, seem to have convinced them that I came up here alone. Harold had told them that you’d left the house with me and they wanted to know if I knew where you were…’
‘Couldn’t Harold have asked you that over the telephone?’ Heaven asked him uneasily. ‘Why send people to your home?’
‘I think Harold decided that a personal visit might help to reinforce the urgency of his need to discover your whereabouts,’ Jon told her gravely, choosing not to add to her anxiety by revealing to her the warning he had been given about the potential consequences if he had been tempted to either help or conceal her.
‘What…what did you tell them about…about me?’ Heaven asked him quietly.
‘I told them that from what you’d said to me I rather suspected that you might have decided to fly out to Australia to join your family for Christmas,’ he told her.
Heaven’s eyes widened in admiration as she tilted her head back to look at him.
‘Did they believe you?’
‘For the time being, but Harold’s bound to check,’ he warned her, �
�which means that there’s no way it would be safe for you to return to London, not until—well, not for the next few days.’
‘Not until what?’ Heaven pressed him.
Jon released her and walked over to the bedroom window. He was very fortunate in that the situation of the peel tower meant that it was impossible for anyone to conceal either a man or a car close enough at hand to be able to spy on the house. He felt sure that his unwanted visitors had accepted his story that he had no real idea where Heaven was, but sooner or later Harold would discover that she hadn’t flown out to Australia and that neither had she returned home, and once he did, but hopefully before then, Jon would have gathered together all the information he needed to force his exbrother-in-law’s hand.
He looked out of the window, briefly studying the peaceful snow-covered hills and the clear winter blue of the cloudless sky. So very different from the storm clouds looming on the horizon of his life and the lives of those closest to him. The acrimony of his sister’s divorce had affected his parents as well as Louisa herself, and his two nieces had also suffered, although thankfully their father had played a very distant role in their short lives. And as for what Harold had done to Heaven…
He looked back across the room and walked towards her, taking both her hands in his, holding them in a close and protective warm clasp as he told her what he had already found out and what he planned to do.
‘You’re going to do that… Will it work? Is it safe?’ Heaven said nervously.
‘I am going to do it, yes, it will work, and no, it probably isn’t the safest thing I’ve ever done,’ Jon admitted wryly. ‘But I have to do it—for Louisa’s sake; I’m just sorry that you had to be dragged into it. But without you I doubt that I would ever have got that vitally important bit of information about Harold’s plans to cheat the Americans.’
‘Tiffany might have told you,’ Heaven demurred, but Jon shook his head decisively.
‘No, I doubt it; you have the gift of bringing people close to you. Your natural warmth, your ability to give love encourages them to feel safe with you, to confide in you…’