by Penny Jordan
She could see the way Jake’s mouth curled fastidiously with disdain, the way he stepped back from her, almost as though he believed she actually contaminated the air between them, as though he couldn’t bear to be anywhere near her.
‘He’s married,’ he told her harshly. ‘He’s coming over on business and decided to combine it with a holiday. He’s bringing his wife and children with him. His wife wanted to see the place where he grew up.’
Children... Ritchie Lucas had children... Just for a moment she was so overwhelmed by bitterness and pain that she almost cried out, and then thankfully the agony faded, and with it the red mist of fury which had momentarily possessed her.
‘Nothing’s changed, has it?’ she heard Jake saying in angry disgust. ‘You still want him...still love him.’
He was about to say something else, but Rosie didn’t let him.
She was suddenly possessed by an anger, a rage so intense that it overcame her fear of him, her awareness of his contempt and dislike, everything but her need to strike out against him, to make him suffer as she was suffering...to refute...
It boiled and raged inside her, demanding an outlet, refusing to be suppressed any longer. She was literally shaking with the force of it when she opened her mouth and told him wildly. ‘Love him...? I loathe him...hate him... I’ve always hated him—always.’
She was shaking violently now, barely aware of the small, frantic voice inside urging her to be more cautious, but suddenly she needed to vent her emotions, her bitterness, to tell Jake Lucas how she felt, how she hurt.
It was as though the injustice of his accusation, coming on top of all that she was already suffering, had driven everything but her need to defend herself from it out of her mind.
‘How could I love him after what he did to me? The way he forced himself on me...the way he ruined my life...?’
She was crying now, raising her hand to dash the tears away impatiently as the rage continued to burn through her, fuelling the hot outburst of everything she had kept locked inside herself for so long.
‘Ritchie forced himself on you...?’
The sharp question sliced through her hysteria, shocking her into silence.
She was shivering, ice-cold with shock and reaction, Rosie realised shakily, as the icy disbelief in Jake Lucas’s voice cut through the heat of her emotional outburst.
‘Are you trying to claim that Ritchie raped you?’ he demanded acidly. ‘Because if so...’
Nausea clawed at her stomach. She had to stretch out an arm towards the wall of the house to support herself and yet, despite the terror, the fear rising up inside her, despite the vivid image etched on her brain of the way this man had stood and watched her as she lay rigid on his aunt and uncle’s bed, her still only youthfully developed breasts partly revealed to him, her body numb with panic and shock but her brain, her emotions rawly vulnerable to the contempt, the disgust with which he was regarding her, Rosie suddenly knew that if she backed down now, if she allowed him to use her vulnerability and pain against her so that he could reject the truth, she would suffer for that weakness for the rest of her life. She had made that mistake once; she wasn’t going to make it a second time.
Curling her fingers into the window sill, she willed herself to be strong, to stand up for herself. She was a woman now, not a child.
‘Because if so what?’ she challenged him bitterly. ‘You’d be more than happy to stand up in court and call me a liar...’ Her mouth trembled, but grimly she fought for control. ‘Maybe Ritchie didn’t knock me unconscious and drag me upstairs...and of course, to a man like you, that is what rape constitutes, isn’t it...’
‘You were drunk,’ Jake interrupted her flatly. He had gone pale beneath his tan, she noticed, and his eyes, the eyes she had always thought of as being so cold and unemotional, were blazing with heat.
Somehow this sign that he was, after all, capable of betraying himself with human emotion instead of making her afraid that he might lose his temper actually strengthened her determination to stand up for herself.
‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘Because my drink had been spiked... Deliberately, as I discovered later.’ Her mouth twisted a little. ‘By my so-called friends with the connivance of your cousin.’ Her head lifted proudly as she tilted it back so that she could look directly at him. ‘Apparently your cousin thought that it was high time I learned what life...what sex was all about...’ Distaste shadowed her eyes as she looked away from him. ‘So, yes, I was drunk... Mercifully... But not so much that I didn’t know what was happening—’
‘Just enough to ensure that you didn’t do anything to stop it, is that what you’re saying?’
The harshness of his voice made Rosie’s skin burn.
‘If Ritchie did, as you claim, force you...then why the hell didn’t you say something at the time?’
‘To whom?’ Rosie demanded. ‘You’d already shown me how people were likely to react,’ she told him bitterly. ‘All I wanted to do was to forget that it had ever happened. So, you see, if you’ve come here to warn me to keep away from your cousin because he’s married you needn’t have worried. Like you, he’s the last person I want anywhere near me.’
She heard his indrawn breath, but didn’t bother to look at him. Suddenly she felt weak and drained, her anger dissipated by her explosion of temper. She felt sick inside and very close to tears, confused and shaken by her own reaction but, most of all, desperately wishing she had not allowed him to provoke her into that verbal outburst.
What good had it done? It was obvious he didn’t believe her, but then she had always known that he wouldn’t. No, it had been for her own benefit that she had given in to her driven need to tell him the truth, not his.
She started to turn away from him and then stopped as she heard him saying harshly. ‘If what you’re saying is true—’
If! The anger reignited inside her. She turned her head and looked at him, her mouth curling with a passable imitation of his own disdain.
‘If? How can it be, when you were there? When you saw everything. When you have already decided that I was just a cheap little tramp who—’
‘I never thought that...’
His denial took her by surprise. She stared at him, her expression momentarily unguarded and vulnerable.
‘But you...’
Grimly Rosie compressed her lips, biting back the words she had been about to say.
‘It doesn’t matter now,’ she told him distantly. ‘It was all a long time ago...’
‘So long ago that you’ve forgotten all about it, is that it?’
Rosie tried not to shiver as she heard the sarcasm in his voice.
‘Of course,’ she lied bleakly. ‘After all, it’s hardly the kind of thing I’d want to remember, is it?’
CHAPTER FOUR
‘WHAT DO YOU mean, you’re not going? Of course you are. The Simpsons are some of Mum and Dad’s oldest friends,’ Chrissie said firmly.
Rosie tried to hold on to her temper. Chrissie’s pregnancy seemed to be making her bossier than ever, or was it simply that with her outburst to Jake Lucas she had somehow lost a little of her protective coating...her control? Rosie wondered uneasily.
She had noticed a disturbing tendency recently for her emotions to swing far more violently from one extreme to the other. She was constantly tense and on edge, looking over her shoulder, half expecting to find Jake Lucas watching her disapprovingly.
She cringed to think of that awful confrontation she had had with him. Why had she told him about Ritchie? What had she hoped to achieve? What had she expected him to do? Apologise... Show regret, remorse, guilt? He hadn’t even believed her. He had made that plain enough.
‘Rosie...’ Guiltily she realised that Chrissie was still talking to her.
‘The Simpsons’ lunch party... You’v
e got to go... I can’t, because we’re spending that weekend with Greg’s mother.’
‘Chrissie-’
‘You’re going,’ Chrissie told her firmly. ‘Or are you trying to tell me that you’ve got some hot date? That you’re sneaking off to spend the weekend romantically tête-à-tête with someone special?’
Rosie knew when she was beaten. Though she could have pleaded work, she told herself later in the week when she surveyed her desk tiredly.
She had heard nothing from Ian Davies and she knew better than to telephone him, but she had plenty of other work to keep her busy. There had been a spate of burglaries in the area, necessitating house calls on her clients, while she helped them to fill in their claim forms.
It was a time-consuming and non-profit-making task, but she was glad to be kept busy. It kept her mind off Jake Lucas. Or at least it should have done.
Instead of relieving her tension and enabling her to put the past firmly behind her, her furious outburst against his cousin only seemed to have reactivated her pain and despair.
Would she have felt any different if he had believed her?
She frowned. No, of course she wouldn’t. She didn’t need absolution from him. And anyway, how could he believe her when doing so would mean having to admit that he had misjudged her? No, she didn’t need his understanding, his acceptance. She didn’t need anything from him, she told herself fiercely as she bent her head over her paperwork.
* * *
‘AND SO I said to him, well, if you don’t tell her, then I’m going to have to, whether she’s your sister or not... I’m not having her telling me how to bring up my children...’
‘Rosie...I am glad you could make it.’
A little guiltily, Rosie returned Louise Simpson’s warm hug.
‘Thank goodness the good weather has held, although Jim isn’t too pleased. He’s worried about people trampling on his precious lawn,’ Louise told Rosie ruefully.
The Simpsons’ garden party was an annual event which normally Rosie enjoyed, but Jake Lucas had made her feel so hypersensitive that she felt reluctant to go anywhere, just in case she might run into either him or his cousin. Not that Ritchie was likely to be here, she reassured herself. As far as she could remember the Simpsons, like her own parents, had never been particularly friendly with his.
Taking comfort from this reassuring thought, she followed her hostess out into the sunny garden, and then froze as almost the first sound she heard was a child’s voice with an unmistakable Australian accent. Panic hit her immediately.
Quickly she turned away, heading in the opposite direction, thankfully merging herself with a group of people around their host.
She stayed there as long as she could, determinedly asking Jim questions about his precious roses long after everyone else’s interest had quite obviously faded.
‘Better get back to my duties as barman,’ Jim told her. ‘You haven’t got a drink, Rosie. Come with me and I’ll get you something.’
She would have preferred to stay where she was, separated from most of the other guests by the rose-hung pergola which was Jim’s pride and joy, but Jim already had his hand on her arm and she couldn’t refuse.
The bar had been set up on the large, paved area just outside the house. Several large groups of people were congregated around it.
One of the Simpsons’ grandsons had taken over as barman, but was now quite obviously pleased to be relieved of his duties and set free to enjoy himself with his friends.
He was a shy boy of around seventeen, who blushed fiercely as Rosie said hello to him.
‘The lad’s got a bit of a crush on you,’ Jim told her with a chuckle as his grandson disappeared. ‘Can’t say I blame him, mind...if I was twenty years younger...’
Dutifully Rosie smiled, refusing an alcoholic drink and asking for something cool and soft instead.
As she waited for him to pour it for her, she felt a sharp prickle of sensation at the base of her neck, a conviction that someone was watching her. Automatically she responded to it, turning her head to glance over her shoulder, and then she froze.
She was being watched, by Ritchie Lucas. She recognized him immediately, even though, unlike his cousin, his physical appearance had changed considerably in the fifteen years since she had last seen him.
At school, Ritchie had been considered good-looking by some of the girls, although personally she had never found his rather beefy blond-haired looks in the least attractive. To Rosie there had always been something slightly coarse and uncontrolled about the way he looked which, she had subconsciously felt, reflected his personality, so that she had always felt repelled by him. Which was no doubt why he had decided to pick on her as a victim of his callous cruelty.
Now that coarseness was very much more obvious, his skin burned a reddish brown by the Australian sun, his blond hair now more gingerish and very obviously receding. He had put on weight and, to judge from his physical appearance, was not particularly keen on exercise. He was holding a can of beer, and as she looked at him he raised it towards her, acknowledging her presence, grinning at her, ignoring the faintly anxious glance the small dark woman at his side was giving him. Was she his wife? And those two boys with her, were they his sons? Jake Lucas was standing with them, and Rosie shivered, quickly putting down her glass, her drink untouched.
She couldn’t stay here now.
‘Rosie, are you all right?’ she heard Jim asking her in some concern.
‘Yes... Yes... I’m fine... It’s just that I’ve remembered a phone-call I should have made...’
She was gabbling, she recognised, her manner causing Jim’s concern to increase as she desperately tried to find an excuse to escape.
‘Business? Well, feel free to use the phone in the study. You know where it is.’
Her face burning with a mixture of guilt and anxiety, Rosie headed for the house. If she were lucky, she would be able to make her escape without anyone even noticing she had gone. She would have to phone Louise later, of course, and apologise for leaving without saying goodbye to her.
Feverishly planning what she must do, Rosie opened the French window and stepped into the cool darkness of the house.
The noise of the party receded, muted by the glass doors.
Thank goodness she had arrived a little late and had not parked on the drive, where she might have been blocked in by other cars.
She could hear voices in the kitchen, where Louise and her helpers were preparing to serve the buffet.
Feeling almost like a criminal, she held her breath and waited, hoping that no one would come into the sitting-room or see her leaving.
Her heart was beating too fast and unevenly—her body’s physical reaction to her mental panic.
She started to walk across the room to the door which led into the hall. It would have been easier to go back outside and walk round the side of the house to the front, where her car was parked, but she was terrified of doing so in case she saw the Lucases again.
She was halfway across the room when she heard the French window open. Immediately she froze.
‘Rosie... Not going yet, are you?’
Her heart lurched with fear. Ritchie Lucas. Had he seen her come inside and deliberately followed her, or was it simply a coincidence?
She heard him laugh. She had always disliked his laugh. He had laughed that night when she had tried to make him stop.
‘Well, now, you sure have turned out fair dinkum, haven’t you? A real beaut... I always did have a yen for you, you know, Rosie...’
He was, if not drunk, then certainly very close to it, Rosie recognised fastidiously as she watched him swaying slightly on his feet. He was sweating heavily, and she could smell the sour, rank scent of his body.
She wanted to turn away from him, to open the door and run,
and yet at the same time she was terrified of taking her eyes off him, terrified of breaking that visual contact, clinging to it as though in doing so she was actually somehow physically keeping him at bay.
She was paralysed with fear, she recognised numbly; like an animal trapped in the beam of a car’s headlights, she simply could not move, was too afraid to move in case in doing so she somehow brought about the very thing she most dreaded.
‘Little Rosie... Who knows what might have happened between us if I’d stayed around?’
Sickly Rosie watched as he lurched towards her.
Run...run, a voice inside her screamed frantically, but she was incapable of obeying it.
He had reached her now, was stretching out his hand to touch her, the same hand which had once torn at her clothes, clawed at her skin, forced her hands behind her back while he had laughed at her efforts to escape.
She felt the panic building up inside her, and knew that everything she was feeling was clearly written on her face: the fear, the anxiety, the revulsion...
‘You’re not wearing a wedding ring... Good on you. Marriage is a mug’s game. Gets you landed with a nagging wife and a parcel of brats. You and I could have fun together, Rosie...’
Fun... Rosie felt herself gag as her stomach heaved. He was so close to her now that she couldn’t understand how he couldn’t see the revulsion on her face.
‘Rosie...there you are, darling...’
Her head snapped back in shock as Jake walked into the room.
Darling... Jake had called her darling... What...?
At any other time she might almost have been cynically amused by the way Ritchie gave way to his cousin, stepping back from her as Jake stepped forward, moving aside so that Jake could stand next to her.
‘I just came inside to cool down,’ she heard Ritchie blustering. ‘Didn’t realise you and Rosie here had something going, Jake...’
‘Naomi’s worried about Adam. She thinks he’s got a temperature. She wants to go back to the hotel.’