by Penny Jordan
Against all her expectations—and Keira suspected Jay’s as well—his desire for her, far from burning itself out, had actually increased.
When he had to be away from her on business, his return often resulted in him breaking his rule of not having sex in his office, such was the intensity of his physical desire for her.
His physical desire for her, Keira reminded herself sadly. Because that was all he felt for her. Physical desire.
There had been pleasure beyond any pleasure she could ever have imagined between them, but for her—hand in hand with that pleasure, measuring it step by step and now finally outweighing it—there had also been terrible pain. It was a pain that came not just from knowing that Jay would never return her feelings, but increasingly from her own unexpected and dangerous feelings of mingled guilt and pain about her past. Guilt because she had withheld the truth about it from Jay, and pain because she could never be her true self with him—because she couldn’t ever know the kind of security that came from being accepted as she was.
The reality was that she was living not just one lie but several, and that could not go on. It was destroying her. She lived in fear of letting slip to Jay in the heat of their intimacy the fact that she loved him. She lived in fear of the ultimate ending of their relationship when he grew tired of her. And yet at the same time a part of her longed for the peace of mind that would come from knowing she would no longer need to lie by default.
She couldn’t bear the thought of the rejection and contempt she would see in his eyes once he knew the truth about her. And she would see them. She knew that. She hadn’t forgotten his attitude towards her when they had first met and he had mistakenly believed that she was the kind of woman willing to offer her body in return for material benefits.
Like mother, like daughter. How often had she heard those words from her great-aunt? They were branded into her—a curse that she carried with her, and a fear that would always haunt her.
She had given in to her own longing to be Jay’s lover believing his desire for her would burn itself out in a matter of days—no more than a couple of weeks at most. She had judged that that was something she could survive for the sake of the pleasure it would give her and the memories she would have. But now it had been three months, and with each passing day her longing for what she could not have was growing stronger. Soon it would overwhelm her. Before that happened she had to leave.
Her work on the houses was finished. Jay had been away in Mumbai for the last three days, and in his absence she had forced herself to think about her own situation and to make the decision she knew she must make for her own sake.
Her bags were packed and her ticket for her flight home bought. In just over an hour’s time she would be leaving for the airport in the taxi she had already booked. All she had to do was write the letter she had to leave for Jay, telling him that she had completed the work he had commissioned her to do, that she had enjoyed their time together, but that it was time for her to return to London and her own life and career.
He would soon find someone new to replace her in his bed.
* * *
Jay looked out of the window of his private yet as it touched down on the runway. He had no idea why he had felt this compulsion to conclude his business in Mumbai ahead of schedule. It wasn’t, after all, the first time he had been apart from Keira during their relationship. His absences had served to increase their desire for one another, and his returns had brought new heights of pleasure for them both. Keira had never reacted to his absence with sulks or demands—nor had she ever indicated that she had missed him, or would have liked to have gone with him. There was no logical reason for him to feel this almost driven urgency to get back to her. She would be there, waiting to welcome him with the sensual eagerness of her body for his possession and her open delight in the pleasure he gave her.
She was the ideal bed partner: sensual and spirited, taking and giving pleasure in equal measure. It had surprised him how much, given the fact that she had been so inexperienced, and yet her acceptance of his terms for their relationship and its lack of any commitment had allowed him to let down his guard with her and show her his passion for her, safe in the knowledge that she came to him out of her own desire for him rather than any desire for what he could give her.
Maybe that was why he continued to want her so intensely long after he had expected to have had his fill of her.
He no longer read the Kama Sutra to her because now they had created their own personal repertoire of intimate plea-
sures—pleasures she had taken eagerly and adapted inventively to her own needs and to his, making them special and personal by the way she had put her own mark on them.
And on him?
Jay frowned. His thoughts were fast-tracking down a route that was becoming all too familiar. No commitment, he had said, and he had meant it. He still meant it.
His car was waiting for him. He preferred to drive himself. He removed his suit jacket, throwing it into the back of the car along with his laptop and his case.
He had seen Bas whilst he had been in Mumbai, and the art director was pressuring him to set up an interview with Keira. The advertising was booked for the launch of the development, and he had seen the photographs of the interiors and understood why the agency he had hired to market the development had been so enthusiastic about its success.
Keira had excelled his remit and produced something that was iconically stylish in concept and yet at the same time extremely liveable. Looking at the photographs, he had caught himself wondering what she might do with his London apartment, had even mentally visualised her living there in it with him. He pressed his foot down on the accelerator. In his pocket was a leather case from one of Mumbai’s most exclusive jewellers, containing a pair of antique diamond wrist-cuffs. He had known the moment he had seen them that Keira would love them. They were unique. Just like her.
* * *
It was time for her to leave. She could put the letter on Jay’s desk on her way out. Keira picked up her bag and reached for the handle of her trolley case.
Her bedroom door opened.
She swung round, the colour leaving her face as she saw Jay standing in the doorway, looking from her to the case and then back again.
His curt, ‘What’s going on?’ didn’t do anything to steady her nerves.
Keira knew that her voice was trembling as she told him unsteadily, ‘My work here is finished...’
‘Your work may be finished, but what about us?’
This was so much worse than she had expected. She must stay focused and be practical, not give in to her longing to beg him to make her stay.
‘I have to earn my living, Jay.’
So he had been right all along. It had all been an elaborate set-up—a trick to bring him to this point. A sickening rush of bitter anger seized him. But it wasn’t strong enough to stop him giving in and telling her harshly, ‘Don’t worry. I’ll make it worth your while to stay. How much did you have in mind? Ten thousand a month?’
Keira couldn’t speak or move. The ferocity of her pain gripped her. It was no good telling herself that she had known what he really thought of her, and that she had no one to blame but herself for the humiliation and anguish she was now suffering. She was, after all, her mother’s daughter—wasn’t she?
‘Not enough? Well, how about if I throw this in as a sweetener?’
Jay reached into his jacket pocket and removed the jeweller’s box, which he threw onto the chair close to where Keira was standing.
‘Go ahead and open it,’ he told her.
Keira felt as though her heart was shrivelling inside her chest, as if she was, in all the ways that really mattered, going through a form of emotional death. It was pointless reminding herself that she had known she would suffer. Knowing had not prepared her for the reality of that
pain.
‘I’m not for sale, Jay,’ she told him. She felt leached of life and hope, her voice mirroring her feelings and recording her sense of emptiness and loss.
‘No?’
‘No.’
She thought that he was physically going to stop her from going. And to her shame a part of her actually hoped that he might, despite what he had just said and done. But, although he started to move towards her, he stopped short of reaching her.
She had to walk so close to him that she could almost feel and hear the angry thud of his heartbeat. That same heartbeat she had felt so many times against her own body, and wishing that it might match the love that filled her own heart for him.
Well, she knew now how impossible that was. All Jay wanted was to buy her for as long as he wanted her. That knowledge made her feel acutely sick.
* * *
The day she returned home Keira checked her accounts online and found that a very large sum of money indeed had been paid into her business account. Far more than was due to her from Jay on completion of the contract.
Keira emailed him, pointing out his error, and received an email in return saying that the extra was ‘for services rendered’. It would not be accepted if it was returned as he always paid his dues.
After she had finished crying Keira made out a cheque for the extra amount and gave it to a charity that helped rescue young women from prostitution, informing them that the money was a gift from Jay.
It was over. It should never have existed in the first place. But now it was over and she had to find a way to get on with her life.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
SHE JUST HOPED that her potential client kept their appointment, Keira thought as she walked through the entrance of the expensive and very exclusive boutique hotel suggested by the client as a meeting place. Far too exclusive and discreet to have anything as commercial as a foyer, its entrance hall was more like the entrance to a private home.
An elegantly dressed woman wearing what Keira suspected might be Chanel greeted her and suggested that she might like to wait in a private sitting room, overlooking their equally private garden.
The hotel had been designed by a very well-known design team and showed all their hallmark touches. Keira was impressed and envious.
It had been six weeks since she had left India, and each one of them had felt like its own special version of hell.
Things had to get better. She had to get better. And she had to get over Jay. She had to stop loving him and wanting him. She had to.
‘Hello, Keira.’
Jay! She stood up, and then had to sit down again as her legs refused to support her.
He looked thinner, with lines running from his nose to his mouth that were surely new—unless they were a trick of the light.
‘I apologise for tricking you into coming here, but I couldn’t think of any other way to get you to see me.’ He put down the briefcase he was carrying. ‘I’ve brought some press cuttings to show you, just in case you haven’t already seen them. Your work on the houses has attracted rave reviews.’
‘I’m glad the development has been a success.’ How wooden and stilted her voice sounded—nothing like the voice in which she had told him of the pleasure he was giving her, the pleasure she had wanted him to go on giving her when they had been in bed together. The pain breaking inside her was unbearable, but it had to be borne. She could not escape from it.
‘I owe you an apology.’
Could this really be Jay, actually sounding almost humble, actually attempting to be a penitent? Or was she simply imagining it?
‘I’ve missed you, Keira.’
Now she knew she was imagining things.
Never in a hundred lifetimes would the Jay she knew have admitted to missing her.
He was looking at her patiently, waiting for her to say something.
‘If you are trying to say that you want me back—’ she began, only to have him shake his head.
‘No, that isn’t what I’m trying to say,’ he told her crisply.
The hopes she had tried to pretend she didn’t have crashed in on her. Why, why, why had she let herself hope so stupidly? Because she was a fool and she loved him, that was why.
‘What I’m trying to say is that what I thought I wanted from life is not what I want at all. I’ve changed, Keira. You have changed me. From being a man who didn’t want to commit to a woman at any price, I’ve become a man who would give every penny he possessed for the chance to make a commitment to one very special woman. And that woman is you. I’ve come to ask if you will give me a chance to show you how special what we’ve already shared is, and how much more special it can be. I want you—not just in my bed, Keira, but in my life, as my partner, my love, my one and only for all time. I want you to marry me.’
It was a dream. It had to be. This could not be Jay standing here saying these things to her. But it was.
‘You can’t mean it,’ was all she could say.
‘I do mean it. Perhaps the blow to my head that concussed me brought me to my senses—I don’t know. I only know that when I came round in hospital all I wanted was to have you there with me.’
‘Hospital? You’ve been hurt?’
Jay shrugged dismissively.
‘A minor car collision—nothing serious. I was driving too fast, trying to escape the demons who were telling me I had just ruined my life, having driven away the one thing that made it worth living.’
The bitter-sweetness of it all tore at Keira’s heart. Would it be so very wrong to allow herself the joy of playing make-believe for a few precious minutes before she told him the truth and had to watch him recoil from her? Why not? She had nothing left to lose, after all.
‘If you’re trying to tell me you love me...’ she suggested, with great daring.
‘Yes?’
‘It might be easier to convince me if you showed me instead.’
It was just a game, just make-believe. And that was the reason, the only reason, she was able to make such a pro-
vocative appeal.
‘Like this, you mean?’
He had crossed the room in a few strides to take her in his arms.
‘You’ll never know how much I’ve missed you,’ he told her emotionally, before he kissed her.
This was heaven and hell all rolled into one—pleasure and pain, joy and guilt—and she could not bear to relinquish either Jay or her make-believe dream that somehow there could be a happy-ever-after for them. But she knew that she must. She could not live a lie. She could not and would not deceive him a second time.
‘I love you, Keira. I never thought I’d ever want to say those words to any woman, but now not only do I want to say them to you, I want to go on saying them, and not just saying them but living them. I want to hear you saying them to me. Is there any chance that you might do that, do you think?’
‘I do love you, Jay.’ It was the truth, after all.
His kiss was so sweet and tender, so loving and giving— so very precious when she knew it could be their last.
‘I recently opened a letter thanking me for my substantial gift. I take it that donating money to a charity that aids prostitutes was your way of underlining my offence, firstly in misjudging you and secondly in thinking I could buy you?’
It would be easy to be a coward and agree, but her conscience wouldn’t let her. She took a deep breath and stepped out of the protection of his arms, fixing her gaze on the wall and not on Jay.
‘Actually, I donated your money to that particular charity because of my mother. She was a prostitute, you see, and a drug addict.’
Silence.
‘She’s dead now. She died when I was twelve. Like mother, like daughter—that’s what the great-aunt who took me in after her death used t
o say to me. It’s what people think, isn’t it? I feared at one stage that I could grow to be like her myself. She often said to me herself that I would.’
Still silence.
‘You’re shocked, of course. And disgusted. People are—it’s only natural. What kind of responsible parent would want their child playing with a child whose mother sold her body to buy drugs? Certainly the parents of the children I was at school with didn’t, and who could blame them? And what kind of man would want to take the risk of having a relationship with a woman whose mother had sex with men for money? You won’t want me now, Jay. I know that. You have a responsibility, after all, to your name and to your position.’
‘Was that why you stayed a virgin? Because of your mother?’
His question surprised her into looking at him. The silver-grey gaze was filled with something that looked close to pity. Pity? Shouldn’t he be regarding her with contempt?
‘Yes.’
‘Tell me about it.’
Keira wanted to refuse, but somehow she discovered that instead she was telling him how she had felt—the pain of her childhood with its conflicting and confusing feelings, the love for her mother that had sometimes been more like anger and sometimes filled with despair.
‘Once I was old enough to understand, I hated what she did,’ she told him. ‘And sometimes I hated her too, for being what she was. As I grew up we would quarrel about it. During one of our quarrels I told her that I was ashamed of her, and that I would never let myself end up like her. I probably hurt her, although I couldn’t see that at the time. She laughed at me and told me that I wouldn’t have a choice. She said that since I was her daughter I had inherited her promiscuous nature and that sooner or later, as she put it, some lad would come along and I’d open my legs for him. She said it would be expected of me, and that—like her—I’d love the wrong kind of men for the wrong kind of reasons.’