The Yuletide Engagement & A Yuletide Seduction

by Carole Mortimer

  She was on fire, offered no protest when, hindered by its presence, Gabe pulled the jumper up over her head and discarded it completely. Her gaze was shy as she looked up at him and he looked at her with such pleasurable intensity.

  “You’re beautiful, Jane,” he murmured huskily. “But then, I always knew you would be!” he groaned before his head lowered, his mouth capturing hers with fierce intensity, passion flaring uncontrollably now, carrying them both on a tide that was going to be impossible to stop.

  Not that Jane had any thought of bringing this to an end. She wanted Gabe as badly as he appeared to want her. She had never known such need, such desire, trembling with anticipation, knowing—

  “Oh, Janie, Janie!” Gabe groaned as he buried his face in the warmth of her neck, breathing in deeply of her perfume. “If you only knew how I’ve wanted this, how long I’ve needed to hold and kiss you like this.” His arms tightened about her as his lips travelled the length of her throat.

  Jane felt cold. Icy.

  Janie…

  He had called her Janie. Only her father had ever called her by that pet name.

  It could be coincidence, of course, Gabe’s own arousal making him unaware of what he had just said.

  Or just carelessness…?

  Gabe tensed beside her, suddenly seeming to become aware of the way she had moved as far away from him as she was able on the confines of the sofa, slowly lifting his head so that he could look down at her, his expression—wary!

  She wasn’t mistaken.

  It wasn’t coincidence!

  She moistened suddenly dry lips. “How long, Gabe?” she demanded coldly.

  He frowned. “How long…?” he repeated, that wariness having increased.

  She nodded, more certain with every second that passed that she wasn’t mistaken in the conclusion she had just come to. “How long have you known exactly who I am?” she said plainly.

  Because he did know.

  She was sure now that he did.

  So why hadn’t he told her that days ago…?

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “HOW long have you known, Gabe?” she repeated in a steady voice, fully clothed again now, standing across the room looking over to where Gabe still sat on the couch.

  He drew in a ragged breath, running agitated fingers through the darkness of his hair. “I—”

  “Don’t even attempt to avoid answering me, Gabe,” she warned harshly. “We both know—now—that you realise I was once Janette Smythe-Roberts!”

  How long had he known? she asked herself again. And why hadn’t he said so as soon as he made the discovery?

  She literally went cold at the only explanation she could think of!

  “You still are Janette Smythe-Roberts, damn it!” he rasped, standing up himself now, instantly dwarfing what had already seemed to her to be a space too small to hold them both.

  She felt sick, had perhaps cherished some small hope inside her that he really didn’t know. But his words confirmed that he did!

  “Don’t come near me.” Jane cringed away from him as he would have reached out and touched her. “You still haven’t told me exactly how long you’ve known,” she prompted woodenly.

  Or what he was going to do about it! He hadn’t been behaving like a man still out to wreak vengeance, but perhaps making her want him was his way of exacting retribution…?

  Gabe gave a weary sigh, shrugging wide shoulders. “I realised who you were about thirty seconds after I came into the kitchen with Felicity last week,” he admitted quietly.

  Jane drew in a shaky breath, her arms wrapped about herself protectively. “That long? How on earth—?”

  “Your hair may be a different colour, Jane,” he rasped. “And your face has taken on a certain maturity it didn’t once have. But it’s still the same face I remember,” he added huskily. “A face I’ll never forget.”

  She shook her head disbelievingly. “But I never even saw you face to face until last week—”

  “But I saw you,” Gabe cut in firmly. “We were never actually introduced to each other, but I saw you at a party one evening with your husband.”

  Her husband. Gabe’s wife’s lover. The man Jennifer had left him for.

  She sighed. “I don’t remember that evening.” She shook her head; a lot of the time before the accident was a blank to her, her misery as Paul’s wife already well established.

  “You looked beautiful that night,” Gabe recalled softly. “You were wearing a brown dress, the same colour as your eyes, little make-up that I could see—but then, you don’t need make-up to enhance your beauty. And your hair—! I had never seen hair quite that colour before, or that long; it reached down to your waist like a curtain of gold! I didn’t need to be introduced to you to remember you, Jane—you stood out in that crowd like a golden light in darkness!”

  Her mouth twisted scornfully. “Please stop waxing lyrical about me, Gabe; I was very unhappy at that time; I probably didn’t even want to be there. I no longer loved my husband but felt trapped in the marriage—”

  “Until he walked out of it!”

  “Until Paul walked out of it,” she acknowledged shakily. “To be with your wife,” she added hardly.

  Gabe shrugged. “So the fairy story goes,” he said dryly.

  Jane gave him a sharp look. “There was no fairy-tale ending to that particular story—for any of us! And you’ve been playing with me for the last twelve days—”

  “To what end?” he challenged harshly.

  “I have no idea.” She sighed wearily. “I presume for the same reason you tried to find me after the accident.” She shrugged.

  “The same reason. But not the one you think! And I backed off then when I heard the rumour that you had lost your baby,” he rasped.

  “Did you?” she said heavily, no longer looking at him but staring sightlessly at her music centre. The CD had long since finished playing. But neither of them had noticed that fact; they’d been too engrossed in each other at the time. Which brought her back to Gabe’s kisses and caresses. Was he still trying to make someone pay for what happened three years ago? “Then you know that if anyone was a victim of my husband’s relationship with your wife, Gabe,” she bit out evenly, “it was my unborn baby!”

  “Jane—”

  “I told you not to come near me!” she flared as he made a move towards her, her eyes flashing in warning. “What did you think when you met me again last week, Gabe?” She looked at him challengingly. “Did you see I had nothing left to lose and decide to hurt me in another way?”

  He became suddenly still. “What way?”

  “You tell me!” She smiled humourlessly. “Those conversations we had about Janette Smythe-Roberts.” She shook her head disgustedly. “You were playing with me all the time!” she realised self-derisively. And all the time she had thought she was the one not being completely honest!

  “I was trying to get you to defend yourself!” Gabe returned impatiently. “But you didn’t do it,” he added disappointedly.

  “Didn’t defend myself against being thought a cold-blooded, manipulative gold-digger? Someone who would take money from my parents and leave them almost penniless?” Jane looked at him scathingly. “As I told you once before, Gabe, you sweep through people’s lives, uncaring of the chaos and pain you leave behind you—”

  “That isn’t true!” His hands were clenched angrily.

  “Perhaps uncaring is the wrong word to use,” she conceded disgustedly. “You’re simply unaware of it! Which is perhaps even worse. What do you think happens to people when you’ve stepped in and bought their company, possibly their life’s work, out from under them? Do you think they simply shrug their shoulders and start all over again?” she challenged.

  “It’s business, Jane—”

  “So my father said when he tried to explain your behaviour to me!” she scorned. “But I call it something else completely!”

  Gabe drew in a harsh breath. “Let’s not lose sight of
the real villain here, Jane,” he rasped. “And it wasn’t me!”

  Paul… It always came back to Paul. And with thoughts of Paul came ones of Gabe’s wife Jennifer…

  “If you’re going to blame Paul for this then let’s include your wife in it too,” Jane said with distaste. “Who do you think he was trying to impress with his gambling and high living?”

  Gabe became suddenly still. “I accept Jennifer’s blame—”

  “Do you?” Jane gave another mirthless smile. “She was beautiful, immoral, utterly uncaring of anyone but herself. She knew of my pregnancy, too, because Paul had told her, but it made no difference when she decided she wanted my husband—”

  “Jennifer couldn’t have children herself,” Gabe put in softly. “She’d had tests. She was infertile. Pregnant women represented a threat to her.”

  Jane felt the momentary sadness that she would for any woman unable to have children of her own. But it was only momentary where Jennifer Vaughan was concerned. “That didn’t give her the right to entice away the husbands of those women!”

  “I agree.” Gabe sighed heavily. “But it’s an inescapable fact that that’s exactly what she did. With dire results in your particular case.”

  Jane stared at him as she fully registered all that he had just said. “Are you telling me that that wasn’t the first time Jennifer had done something like that?” It seemed incredible, but that was exactly what it sounded like he was saying!

  He ran a weary hand across his brow. “Jennifer was a very troubled woman. The fact that she couldn’t have children—”

  “I asked you a question, Gabe,” Jane cut in tautly.

  He looked at her steadily. “I believe I’ve already told you that Jennifer was much more interested in other women’s husbands than she was in her own—”

  “But pregnant women in particular?” Jane persisted.

  “Yes!” he acknowledged harshly, turning away. “To Jennifer there was nothing more beautiful than a pregnant woman. To her they seemed to glow. More importantly, they carried life inside them. A pregnant woman became the ultimate in beauty to her.”

  “That’s ridiculous!” Jane snapped. “Most pregnant women don’t feel that way at all. Oh, there’s a certain magic in creating life, in feeling that life growing inside you,” she remembered emotionally. “But for the most part you feel nauseous, and in the beginning it’s a nausea that never seems to stop. And, added to that, you feel fat and unattractive—”

  “Pregnant women aren’t fat,” Gabe cut in softly. “They’re blossoming.”

  “That’s a word only used by people who aren’t pregnant,” Jane put in dismissively. “Believe me, most of us just feel fat!” And that feeling hadn’t been helped, in her case, by the fact that Paul had obviously found her condition most unattractive!

  “Maybe,” Gabe conceded with a sigh. “But to a woman who has never been pregnant, and who never can be, that isn’t how pregnancy appears at all. Oh, I’m not excusing Jennifer’s behaviour—”

  “I hope not,” Jane told him tightly. “Because it isn’t a good enough excuse as far as I’m concerned!” She had lost her baby—the only good thing to come out of her marriage—because her husband had left her for Jennifer Vaughan, and the two of them had subsequently died together in a car crash. There was no excuse for that!

  “It isn’t a good enough excuse for any woman,” Gabe accepted heavily. “But it’s what Jennifer did.”

  “Then why didn’t you leave her?” Jane frowned. “Why did you stay with her, and in doing so condone her behaviour?”

  A nerve pulsed in his tightly clenched jaw. “I didn’t condone it, Jane. I would never condone such behaviour. But I thought that by staying with her I could—” He shook his head. “I don’t believe in divorce, Jane,” he told her abruptly. “And neither did Jennifer,” he added softly.

  She became suddenly still, her frown deepening. Jennifer didn’t believe in divorce…? “But she left you…”

  Gabe sighed. “No. She didn’t.”

  “But—”

  “I know that’s what Paul told you three years ago, and it’s what everyone else thought at the time too, but I can assure you, Jennifer was not leaving me.” He shook his head. “There were so many times I wished she would,” he admitted harshly. “But I was her safety net, the let-out when any of her little affairs became too serious. As Paul did…”

  Jane was having trouble absorbing all of this now. Was Gabe really saying what she thought he was?

  Paul had said he was leaving her, that he and Jennifer were going to be together.

  “Are you telling me—?” She ran her tongue over suddenly dry lips. “Are you saying that Paul and Jennifer weren’t going away together?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying.” Gabe nodded grimly. “Jennifer was furious the day of the accident. Paul had telephoned her to say he’d left you, and now he expected her to do the same to me. She met him that day only so that she could tell him what a fool he was, that she had no intention of leaving me, that he had better hurry home and make it up with his wife before she decided his leaving had been the best thing that ever happened to her! Her words, Jane, not mine,” Gabe told her bleakly.

  But it had already been too late for Paul to do that. She might not already have realised that Paul’s leaving “had been the best thing that ever happened to her”, but Paul had been in too deeply in other ways to backtrack on his decision. As her father’s assistant, he had stolen money from the company, and in doing so had brought that company almost to the point of ruin.

  “I’ve often wondered if it was an accident,” Gabe murmured softly, as if partly reading her thoughts.

  Jane looked at him dazedly. Not an accident? What was he saying, suggesting? But hadn’t she just told herself there had been no way back for Paul, that he had already burnt his bridges, both professionally and privately? But could he have thought that there was no reason to carry on? No, she wouldn’t believe that! Paul had been too selfish, too self-motivated, to take his own and Jennifer’s lives.

  “It’s something we’ll never know the answer to,” Gabe continued gently. “Probably something best not known.”

  Jane agreed with him. That sort of soul-searching could do neither of them any good. No matter what the reason for doing so…

  “Love is a very strange emotion,” she said dully. “It appears to grow and exist for people who really don’t deserve it.” And Jennifer Vaughan certainly hadn’t deserved Gabe’s, or any other man’s, love. And yet who but a man in love could ever have thought her the “perfection” he had once called her?

  “Death is rather final,” Gabe muttered. “But you’re still well rid of Paul Granger!”

  “I’ve never—” She shook her head. “We’re getting away from the point here—”

  “Maybe I caught that from you.” Gabe attempted to tease, although he couldn’t even bring himself to smile, let alone encourage her to do so. “What is the point here, Jane? You tell me.” He shook his head. “Because I’ve certainly lost it!”

  For the main part, so had she! Except that Gabe had known exactly who she was for the last twelve days. And for reasons of his own he had chosen to keep that fact to himself!

  She looked at him coldly. “The point is that for me the past is as dead and buried as Paul himself is. Why do you think I’ve been asking you to go away for the last twelve days? Because you remind me of a time I would rather forget,” she told him bluntly.

  Gabe looked pale now. “I didn’t imagine what happened between us a short time ago—”

  “It’s been a long time for me, Gabe,” she said scornfully. “My marriage may have been a mistake, but despite all that I’m still a normal woman, with normal desires, and you—”

  “Just happened to be here!” he finished disgustedly. “Is that it, Jane?”

  No, that wasn’t it! She had met plenty of other men over the last three years, much more suitable men, men just as handsome as he was, just as int
erested in a relationship with her. And she hadn’t responded to any of them, hadn’t allowed any of them as close to her as this man had got in a matter of days.

  But to find the reason for that she would have to delve into her own emotions. And she had already done enough of that where Gabriel Vaughan was concerned.

  “That just about sums it up, yes!” she confirmed hardly. “It probably has something to do with the time of year, too,” she added insultingly. “Let’s face it, no one likes to be on their own at Christmas!”

  And strangely, despite the fact that this Christmas was actually going to be no different from the last three she had spent with her parents, she had a feeling she was going to feel very much alone…

  What had Gabe done to her? What was it that she felt towards him? Because it was no longer that mixture of fear and apprehension she had felt before.

  Gabe gave a pained wince at her deliberate bluntness. “I had better make myself scarce, then, hadn’t I?” He picked up his jacket, but didn’t put it on. “That way you still have time to meet someone else before the big day!”

  Although his words hurt—as they were meant to do!—Jane offered no defence. Nor did she try to stop him as he walked out of the door, closing it softly behind him.

  There would have been no point in stopping him. They had said all that needed to be said. Probably more than needed to be said!

  And she still had no idea why Gabe had pursued her so relentlessly for the last twelve days. She felt he had offered no real explanation for such extraordinary behaviour when he had known all the time she was Janette Smythe-Roberts.

  Two things she did know only too clearly, though.

  One; Gabe must have loved his wife very much; he must have done to have tolerated her behaviour. Secondly—and this was against all that she had tried to do for herself for the last three years—she didn’t need to delve into her own emotions to find out why she had responded to Gabe in the way that she had. She had known the answer to that question as soon as he had closed the door behind him…