by Penny Jordan
When had Jake taken hold of her arm in that proprietorial, possessive manner? Rosie wondered numbly, as she watched Ritchie turn back to the French window in obedience at his cousin’s words.
She had started to tremble, small tremors of shock shaking her body. She tried to control them, knowing that Jake must be able to feel them, but the more she tensed her muscles, the more intense her shuddering became.
She knew what Jake must be thinking, of course, why he had laid claim to a relationship between them that never had and never could exist. No doubt he thought she had deliberately encouraged Ritchie to come in here after her... No doubt he thought she had deliberately planned the whole thing.
She turned towards him, intending to pull her arm free, but before she could do so the inner door opened and Louise came in, coming to an abrupt and obviously startled halt at the sight of them.
‘Jake...Rosie...’
‘We were just about to leave, Louise,’ Rosie heard him saying. ‘Rosie isn’t feeling too well... Too much sun...’
Rosie could see the surprise and the speculation in Louise’s eyes. Her heart sank. Louise had a kind heart, but she was also a terrible gossip, and Rosie could see quite plainly the interpretation she was putting on finding them together, Jake’s hand resting so possessively on her arm, silently laying claim to an intimacy between them which did not in reality exist. And yet she seemed unable to drag herself free as Jake led her towards the open door and through it.
She was still trembling, still physically reacting to what had happened and to her shock, she comforted herself for her lack of will-power and for letting Jake take the initiative.
‘You can let go of me now,’ she told him stiffly. ‘There’s no need to march me off the premises like some kind of criminal. Whether you believe it or not, the last thing I want...the last person I want to be with is your precious cousin, so if you think I’m—’
‘So I saw.’
Rosie stiffened at his curt tone. ‘If you’re trying to be sarcastic—’ she began, but Jake shook his head.
‘Now you’re the one who’s jumping to conclusions,’ he told her quietly.
When she stared at him, he explained grimly, ‘I saw your face, Rosie. I saw the way you were looking at him. No one, but no one, could fake that kind of reaction.’
Was he actually saying that he believed her? That he didn’t think she had deliberately enticed Ritchie to follow her? Rosie couldn’t believe it. Shock made her sway slightly on her feet, so that Jake’s grip on her arm immediately tightened. She heard him curse and then say under his breath, almost pleadingly,
‘Don’t go and faint on me, Rosie. Not here...’
Faint...? What did he think she was? Rosie wondered belligerently. Of course she wasn’t going to faint.
‘I am not going to faint,’ she told him, gritting out each word with separate emphasis.
‘I’m glad to her it,’ Jake told her cordially. ‘But as well as not fainting, do you think you could possibly start walking?’
‘You don’t have to hold on to me,’ Rosie told him fiercely. ‘Or to see me off the premises. My car is this way,’ she added as Jake ignored her.
‘And mine is this way.’
Rosie stared at him and then started to protest.
‘I’m not letting you drive,’ Jake overruled her. ‘Not in the state you’re in...’
‘What state?’ Rosie protested. ‘I’m not in any kind of state...’
Abruptly Jake stopped walking, turning her round to face him.
‘No?’ he said grimly. ‘What is it, then? Malaria? That’s the only physical cause I know of for someone shaking the way you’re doing.’
‘I am not shaking,’ Rosie denied, but her face had started to burn with reaction and awareness of the fact that she was lying and that he knew it.
‘You might as well give up, Rosie,’ he told her. ‘I am not letting you drive home, even if that means physically carrying you to my car. I wonder if Louise is watching us,’ he added speculatively.
Rosie couldn’t help it. Immediately she looked anxiously towards the house, and then realised that he was deliberately baiting her.
‘Why did you do that?’ she demanded shakily.
‘Do what?’
She gritted her teeth. ‘Why did you tell Louise we were leaving together as if...as though...?’
‘As though what?’ Jake prompted her.
Rosie shook her head, suddenly overcome with reaction. She didn’t have the energy to argue with Jake right now, or to demand an explanation of why he had implied to Louise that they were a couple, using that deliberately intimate ‘we’...nor why he had indicated the same thing to Ritchie, either.
‘Come on...let’s go...’
Too drained to argue, she turned mutely to follow him, and then tensed as he slipped his arm round her, pulling her firmly, protectively almost, against his body, as though he knew how weak and vulnerable she was feeling.
Instinct urged her to pull away, but obeying that instinct was too far outside the capabilities of her shock-exhausted muscles.
It was easier simply to stay where she was, to let him guide her towards his parked car.
She was muzzily pondering on why it should feel so comforting to be held so securely against him when she loathed and disliked him so much, when he suddenly stopped walking and cursed briefly under his breath. She lifted her head automatically to look at him, forgetting how close to him she already was.
‘It’s Ritchie and Naomi,’ he told her. ‘They’ve seen us and they’re heading this way.’
His breath felt coolly pleasant against her hot skin. He was smiling at her, she recognised with an odd, frantic skipped beat of her heart, his eyes suddenly soft and warm.
‘Rosie...’
He had never said her name like that before, and she was startled to discover how different it sounded when he did.
She looked enquiringly at him, her brain, her emotions, her responses still not fully recovered from the fear Ritchie had caused her to feel.
Jake bent his head towards hers; his free hand cupped her face, his skin cool and firm against the nervous heat of hers.
She looked at him questioningly, and then froze as she realised what he was going to do.
It was too late to avert her face and push him away. He was holding her too closely, the arm which had felt so protective and comforting now imprisoning her against him.
Anger took the place of her earlier numb shock. She opened her mouth to demand that he release her.
‘Rosie...’
She felt rather than heard him say her name, through the movement of his mouth against her own, her body automatically stiffening in furious reaction at his kiss, her eyes wide open and brilliantly angry; but he ignored the outraged message of her body language, sliding his hand along her jaw, stroking her hair back off her face in a slow, deliberately caressing movement, and all the time he kept on kissing her, moving his mouth lingeringly over her own, caressing her tightly closed lips with gentle deliberation, ignoring the rigid rejection of her body. He was kissing her with a mixture of tenderness and determination that was completely unfamiliar to her, his mouth stroking over her own again and again until it was impossible for her to keep her lips rigid any longer.
She felt them start to tremble, and so, obviously, did he, because the movement of his mouth stilled for a second and lifted from hers, his thumb stroking gently against her lips, applying just enough pressure to make them part slightly.
Rosie glared angrily up at him, letting him know that, while physically he might be able to dominate her, he could not control her mentally.
His eyes were open too. She saw the way they glinted between his lowered lashes as he looked first into her eyes and then down at her mouth, as though to remind her th
at, despite her mental and emotional dislike and rejection of him, physically she had not been able to do so, and not because of any use of brute force.
He was still looking at her mouth, and an exquisite thrill of horror ran through her as she realised he was going to kiss her again.
‘No.’ Her denial of him was an anguished, shaken whisper.
‘Still not gone yet, Jake?’
‘We were just leaving, Ritchie.’
Ritchie!
Rosie could feel the tension gripping her spine, enclosing it with ice-cold fingers of dread. Without being aware of it, she moved closer to Jake, only realising what she was doing when she felt his arm move slightly to accommodate her, and recognised with a tiny dart of disbelief that she had pressed herself so close to him that she could actually feel his heartbeat and the solid strength of the bones and muscles that underlaid his flesh. Was she really seeking protection from her fear of Ritchie with Jake?
‘Ritchie, the boys are tired and hungry.’
Rosie could hear the irritation in Ritchie’s Australian wife’s voice.
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Naomi, stop nagging, will you?’
The obvious lack of love or respect in Ritchie’s voice made Rosie wince. Even without knowing her, Rosie felt sorry for his wife.
She could just imagine how she would have felt had she been the recipient of that kind of comment, spoken in front of a stranger from a man who professed to love her, and not just in front of her, a stranger, but in front of their children as well.
She could feel Jake starting to release her, and for one blind, panicky moment she actually wanted to hold on to him, to beg him not to let her go, not while Ritchie was still here, and then she realised that he was reaching round her to open the passenger door of his car for her. Gratefully she got in, her legs unsteady, her face flushing, as she inadvertently caught a glimpse of the leering expression on Ritchie’s face.
‘Looks like you made the right decision, mate,’ she heard Ritchie saying to his cousin. ‘Seems to me that a fella can have a hell of a lot more fun single than married.’
Rosie saw the nervous, half pleading look his wife gave him and her pity for her increased. She obviously loved him, Rosie acknowledged compassionately. And that love quite obviously made her very vulnerable. Even the two boys seemed slightly nervous of their father and yet, as Rosie watched them walk away, she saw that, young as they were, they were already beginning to adopt their father’s bullying and contemptuous attitude towards their mother.
‘Poor woman...’
She spoke the words out loud without realising that Jake could hear them.
‘Yes,’ he agreed tersely as he slid into the driver’s seat of his car and closed his door. ‘Ritchie treats her abominably, and she’s terrified of losing him. Part of the reason she wanted this trip to England was because she hoped that it would give them time alone together as a family. Apparently when they’re at home Ritchie prefers to spend his time with his mates.’
The obvious disapproval in his voice made Rosie turn her head to look at him, a small frown pleating her forehead.
In the past she had thought there was little to choose between Ritchie and Jake; they were related by blood and, it seemed, shared a common attitude towards sex. Of the two of them she had disliked Jake more than Ritchie because Jake had been the one to more openly show his contempt of her and to condemn her. Now Jake’s reaction to Ritchie’s treatment of his wife confused her.
‘Naomi is very vulnerable where her relationship with her husband is concerned. Ritchie’s obvious interest in you won’t help her.’
Rosie stared at him.
‘Ritchie’s interest in me? But—’
‘He followed you into the Simpsons’ house,’ Jake told her coolly. ‘And Naomi saw him do so. If I hadn’t intervened...’
Was that why he had held her, kissed her...implied that they were lovers...not to protect her from Ritchie’s unwanted attentions, but to protect Ritchie’s wife from the pain her husband was causing her?
A pain she hadn’t known she was capable of feeling unfolded achingly inside her. Her fingers curled tightly into her palms, nails pressed against her skin to prevent her crying out with the intensity of it. If they hadn’t been travelling at some speed she would have been tempted to wrench open the door and fling herself bodily out of the car.
She frowned as she suddenly realised that they weren’t travelling in the direction of her home.
‘This isn’t the way to where I live,’ she protested.
‘No,’ Jake agreed calmly, pausing for a few seconds before adding, ‘I’m taking you home with me. We need to talk.’
‘To talk?’ Rosie stared at him, infuriated by his high-handedness. ‘What about?’
The look Jake gave her made her toes curl in nervous self-protection.
‘The past...’ he told her shockingly. ‘And the future...’
CHAPTER FIVE
THE PAST! ROSIE TREMBLED. What was he planning to do? Grill her so relentlessly that she broke down and retracted the statements she had made about what had really happened with Ritchie?
She had already seen in his face how little he had enjoyed hearing the truth. She knew how much it must have infuriated him, hurt his pride.
And it wasn’t just for the sake of his pride that he would want her to retract, either.
She had read into his comments about Ritchie’s marriage a none too subtle warning off. Did he really think after what she had told him that she would want anything...anything to do with his precious cousin?
He must do, otherwise why the charade about pretending they were a couple? Why that kiss?
That kiss... Her heart started to thump unevenly. Against her will, an unfamiliar mixture of languor and sensuality spilled slowly through her.
She had received other kisses, and yet she could not remember a single one of them affecting her as his had done.
There had been a new dimension to it, an awareness within her of an aching sadness and pain, as though she had suddenly become aware that there could be something in a man’s kiss that could stir her so deeply that she was helpless to resist it.
But she had to resist it. She had to remember just who Jake Lucas was, and just what the situation between them really was. That hadn’t changed just because she had lost her temper and challenged his perception of past events.
He had not followed her into the Simpsons’ house to protect her, as she had initially so naïvely imagined. He had followed her to protect his cousin’s marriage.
From her?
She was the last person who wanted to threaten it. As far as she was concerned, she would have much preferred Ritchie to stay where he was in Australia.
At least he seemed to have no memory of what had happened between them. Thank God, but then, remembering how much he had had to drink, it was perhaps not as surprising that he should have forgotten, as she had once thought.
She remembered how terrified she had been all those years ago, dreading hearing that he had been boasting about what had happened, and then how stunned, how disbelieving, when it first began to dawn on her that he couldn’t even remember the incident.
She had been glad, of course, but at the same time bitterly resentful that something which should have had such a devastating effect on her and her whole life had had so little effect on his.
For him there had been no guilt, no pain, no suffering, and certainly no remorse.
From what she had seen of him today, she doubted that he was capable of feeling any of those emotions, and for the first time she was thankful that the child she had conceived had been spared the discovery of what his or her father was.
No child should have to suffer that kind of burden; she could see already the effect he was having on his own children.
/> She shivered suddenly in reaction to what she was thinking. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Jake’s head turn in her direction as though he had seen that small physical betrayal.
His terse, ‘Almost there,’ might almost have indicated concern coming from any other man.
But he had already shown her how little concern he had for her, how little respect for her reputation. To have kissed her like that where anyone could have seen them, to have verbally implied that they were lovers.
These might be the 1990s, couples might live together openly and easily without feeling it necessary to marry, believing that their emotional commitment to one another was the only bond they needed. But this was a very small market town where, while mothers and grandmothers might say bravely to their friends that of course they would never dream of pressuring their child to marry simply for the sake of convention and that children were far better off being brought up by two adults who loved them rather than by a married couple who stayed together out of duty, they still admitted privately to their closest friends that, old-fashioned though it made them, they would dearly love to have seen their son or daughter married, preferably before they presented them with their much-loved grandchildren. Rosie knew that, while her parents would never question the way she chose to live her life, they would still, deep in their hearts, be hurt by any gossip linking her name with Jake’s in a way that suggested they were lovers with a physically intimate relationship that they had no plans to make permanent.
And then of course there were her clients. Many of them were her own age and some even younger, and she knew they would not be in the least concerned about what she did in her private life. But when she had taken over from her father she had taken on his clients, many of whom had expressed doubts as to her ability to fill her father’s shoes, and their attitude, she suspected, would be confirmed once any gossip reached their ears. In their eyes a woman involved in a sexual relationship with a man outside marriage was not his equal, involved in a mutual partnership, but something very different. She would lose status and respect in their eyes... And their business as well?