by Penny Jordan
Wearily she closed her eyes, a feeling of helpless despair and resentment washing over her.
Glancing across at her, Jake frowned. Even now, in the intimacy of his car, she still had this ability to withdraw from him, to distance herself from him.
Pain twisted unsparingly inside him. Fifteen—sixteen years and nothing had changed. She still had the ability to get under his skin, to touch emotions and needs that no one else had ever come even close to touching.
She hated him, of course. He had always known that. He had seen it in her eyes the night he found her in bed with Ritchie and he had seen it in them on every occasion they had met since.
Until this afternoon.
This afternoon she hadn’t looked at him with hatred.
She hadn’t looked at him with love, either, he reminded himself.
* * *
HE HAD BEEN twenty-three, almost twenty-four, when he’d first realised he loved her, and he had been revolted by that knowledge. She had been just sixteen, still a schoolgirl, a child, and with none of the precocious sexuality of some other girls of her age.
She had been innocent, unknowing...uncaring of the effect she was having on him.
He had fought against what he felt with all the power of his intellect and intelligence. He was a man, she was a child; his feelings were a malicious joke played on him by capricious fate, a form of sickness, madness...a danger both to him and to her.
They would pass. They had to pass. He could not
really be in love with a sixteen-year-old child who barely knew he existed, who was closer to his irresponsible cousin in age than himself. All he had to do was to ignore them, to ignore her, and eventually they would go away without harming either of them.
And then he had found her in bed with Ritchie. It had been a neighbour of his aunt and uncle’s who had alerted him by telephone to Ritchie’s illicit party.
He had arrived there to find the living-room full of drunken teenagers, rock music blaring out so loud he suspected that, sober, their eardrums could not have withstood it.
Unable to find Ritchie, he had automatically gone upstairs, searching his cousin’s bedroom first, only alerted to the fact that someone was in his aunt and uncle’s by the light shining beneath the door.
Ritchie had been standing beside the bed, fully dressed, when he walked in, but Rosie...
He gripped hold of the steering-wheel as the echoes of the emotions he had felt then surged through him.
She had been lying motionless in the bed, sated by his cousin’s lovemaking, he had thought, her clothes in disarray. He couldn’t remember actually moving across to the bed, only the look on her face as she turned and saw him.
The savage jealousy which had possessed him had sickened him. If she had wanted so desperately to experiment with sex, what the hell had made her choose his cousin? he had wanted to ask her...
Why hadn’t she come to him?
But he had already known the answer, of course. She barely even knew that he existed. She probably believed herself to be in love with his cousin and, knowing that Ritchie was shortly leaving the country, that she was unlikely ever to see him again, she had wanted to consummate that love.
Later he was glad that the width of the bed had separated him from Ritchie, otherwise, he suspected, he might not have been able to control the savage murderous impulse which had possessed him.
That he had been jealous—blindingly, achingly, tormentedly jealous—of his cousin had been one thing and bad enough; that he should have physically wanted to punish him, to destroy him almost, because of that jealousy had been another.
He remembered the terrified white-faced look Rosie had given him once she had pulled her clothes on; then he had thought it was that she had recognised what he had been feeling... Now...
He glanced at her. Her eyes were open now, but she was looking away from him, out of the window.
To discover that she had not gone willingly with Ritchie as he had believed, to hear her say that her drink had been deliberately spiked, that his cousin had deliberately planned to hurt and humiliate her...to hear her accuse him of being a part of the reason why she had said nothing...nothing...of what had happened...had made no complaint...no protest...
And this afternoon he had seen in her face confirmation, if he had needed it, of just exactly what she did feel about his cousin.
Why had he been so blind? Why hadn’t he realised then...?
Why hadn’t he questioned events more deeply? Why, out of his love for her, had he not somehow known what she had chosen to keep hidden from him...from everyone...?
When she had needed him most, when she might have turned to him as a confidant and a friend, through his own behaviour he had caused her instead to turn away from him, to believe that he despised, condemned her.
Even if he had not loved her he could never have done that. She had been a child...a baby still.
But she had not been a child the day he had gone to see if there had been any repercussions from her relationship with his feckless cousin. Then she had been all woman, cold, distant, remote, while her eyes blazed her defiance and bitterness.
He had thought then that she had somehow blamed him because Ritchie had gone, never coming close to realising what she was really feeling.
But he knew now!
His face hardened as he turned into the private road that led to the small, exclusive development of houses of which his own was one.
Rosie, turning her head to protest again that she had no wish to go home with him nor to listen to anything he might want to say, saw his expression and, shocked by the harshness of it, instead said nothing.
She was still suffering the effects of her run-in with Ritchie, she told herself shakily, as Jake brought his car to a halt on the brick-set drive to his house.
The house, although modern, was built on traditional lines, and like its neighbors was set in a mature wooded landscape, so that the warmth of its brick façade blended comfortably with its green backdrop.
His manners, at least, were very different from his cousin’s, Rosie acknowledged, as Jake opened the car door for her and waited courteously for her to get out. Where Ritchie had terrified her with his physical strength and brutality, Jake intimidated her with his watchful distancing of himself from her, with the contempt she had believed he had always felt for her.
She had been conscious of that watchful distance even before he had found her with Ritchie, nervously wondering what it was she had done wrong that made him focus on her like that. She had been in awe of him even before that night, she admitted as she waited for him to unlock his front door.
But she wasn’t in awe of him any more. Why should she be? And she wasn’t going to allow him to intimidate and browbeat her into retracting what she had said about Ritchie.
The house had a good-sized rectangular hallway, immaculately decorated and furnished, but bare of any signs of being lived in.
There was no evidence of any family clutter, no pictures, no flowers, none of the things which, in Rosie’s view, went to make a home.
As though he had read her mind, Jake turned his head and said wryly, ‘Sterile, isn’t it? That’s partly because I’m away so much in Greece, and partly because Mrs Lindow, who comes in to clean for me once a week, says she “can’t be doing with clutter and flowers making a mess all over the place”.’
‘I can see her point,’ Rosie responded tactfully.
‘But you’d have them anyway...mess notwithstanding.’
His comment startled her. She looked up at him, confused by the expression in his eyes, but still unwilling to admit how often she did buy flowers, simply for the pleasure that seeing and smelling them gave her, and then kept them even when their petals had actually started to fall, reluctant to condemn them to the dustbin until the very la
st one had died.
‘I thought we’d be more comfortable in the sitting-room,’ she heard Jake saying as he opened one of the doors off the hallway and waited for her to precede him into the room.
Like the hall, it was immaculately decorated and furnished, and like the hall it too was somehow too perfect and sterile, apart from the huge Knole settee in front of the fire.
‘It belonged to my grandmother,’ Jake told her, watching her study it. ‘The designer who organised the décor here for me wanted to throw it out, but I wouldn’t let her. Instead we compromised and had it recovered, although in some ways I still prefer the original scuffed velvet...’
‘It looks very comfortable,’ Rosie responded inanely.
Why was he treating her like this, almost...almost gently, as though he was concerned...afraid for her...?
‘It is,’ he assured her. ‘Try it...’
Without ever having intended to do so, Rosie discovered that she was sitting down on the settee and being dwarfed by the depth and comfort of it.
She heard Jake laugh. ‘You look like a little girl on her best behaviour at her grandmother’s Sunday tea party,’ he told her.
Rosie flushed because that was exactly how she had been feeling, uncomfortably aware of the elegance of the settee’s silk covering and the fact that her lack of height meant that when she sat back in it her feet could not comfortably reach the ground.
‘You can’t sit on it like that,’ Jake told her. ‘Take off your shoes and make yourself comfortable.’
‘Oh, no...I couldn’t...the fabric...’
‘The fabric is only fabric,’ Jake told her wryly. ‘Possessions are never more important than people. We’ve got a lot to talk about, Rosie. Would you like something to eat? You missed the buffet at the Simpsons’.’
Rosie shook her head, knowing that, despite the fact that she had eaten nothing since her breakfast, she was far too on edge to do so now.
‘A drink then...tea...coffee...?’
Why didn’t he just get on with it? Rosie wondered grimly. Was he deliberately playing on her tension, trying to gain the upper hand so that when the crunch came...?
She shook her head.
‘Well, I’m going to have something,’ she heard him say. ‘I shan’t be a minute.’
He was barely that, returning just as she had finally decided she couldn’t stand the excruciating agony of either sitting with her back ramrod-straight or being unable to bend her knees and had admitted that he was right and that the only way she was going to be able to sit comfortably on the settee was if she removed her shoes and curled up on it.
She was just doing this when he walked in, carrying a bottle of wine and two glasses.
When he filled them both and offered one to her, she shook her head.
‘It’s only wine,’ he told her mildly. Instantly her face was suffused with colour, as she wondered if he was deliberately taunting her with what she had told him about her drink being spiked the night of the party. She couldn’t tell him that alcohol was something she never touched. It would make her look too weak and vulnerable.
Instead, reluctantly, she accepted the glass from him. The dark red liquid glowed richly in its plain glass, the only touch of colour in the otherwise neutral room. When she held the glass in her hand, the liquid almost seemed to warm her flesh through it.
She took a sip, surprised to discover how much she liked the warm, fruity taste.
It was only wine, she reminded herself, and only one glass, and then, as Jake seated himself at the other end of the settee and turned to face her, she took another nervous sip.
This was it. This was the moment when he challenged her, demanding that she retract what she had said about Ritchie.
‘Rosie...the night of the party—’
‘I don’t care what you say to me...how much pressure you put on me, I’m not going to change what I said,’ she told him fiercely. ‘What I told you was the truth.’
‘Yes, I know...’
His quiet words silenced her. She stared at him and then took a hasty, tense gulp of her wine, grateful for the warmth that spilled through her from it, driving out the icy fingers clutching apprehensively at her muscles.
‘You... You believe me...’
He nodded his head and she felt a huge surge of emotion rush through her. She took another gulp of wine.
‘You believe me now, but you wouldn’t have believed me then...’
She saw the look on his face and deep within her something splintered sharply, painfully.
‘You wouldn’t,’ she repeated, denying what she had seen in his eyes.
He bowed his head.
‘I saw the way you looked...the disgust...the contempt...’
She watched as he twisted his glass in his hands. There was something different about him now, as though...as though the distance he had always placed between them had somehow gone.
‘Those were for me,’ he told her in a low voice. ‘Not for you. I did think you’d gone with Ritchie willingly, though. I thought you believed you were in love with him.’
Rosie shuddered. ‘I hated him even then. He was always making fun of me...taunting me because I didn’t...’ She ducked her head uncomfortably.
‘Because you were a virgin,’ Jake supplied for her.
She couldn’t speak, her emotions too raw and painfully close to the surface to allow her to. She nodded instead, taking another sip of wine, hoping it would steady her.
When Jake had brought her here to talk, the last thing she had expected was that they would be having such an extraordinarily intimate conversation...that he would accept so readily, so easily what she had to say...that he would say, and mean it, that he believed her.
She felt dizzy with the unexpectedness of it, light-headed...light-hearted almost, as though some huge weight had been lifted from her.
‘I felt so ashamed...so...so guilty and afraid...’
‘The guilt was Ritchie’s.’ He paused as he looked at her, and then added in a low voice, ‘And the shame mine.’
‘It’s all a long time ago...and none of it matters now,’ Rosie told him jerkily.
What on earth was she saying? Of course it mattered. She had never forgotten what had happened...his disgust...his contempt... Only he had just said that they had never been directed at her, but at himself.
‘This afternoon...were you leaving the party because you’d seen Ritchie?’
His abrupt switch from the past to the present caught her off guard.
‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘I saw you both...’ She bit her lip when she realised what she had admitted, and realised from the bleak look he gave her that he had recognised all that she had not said.
‘I suppose I deserved that,’ he told her. ‘I’m sorry if Ritchie upset or frightened you.’
‘Well, at least he didn’t remember...about the party. He was very drunk that night.’
‘But not too drunk to rape you.’
The harshness of his voice startled her, making her body go tense.
‘I can understand why you want to protect Naomi,’ she told him. ‘But I’m no threat to Ritchie’s marriage.’ She gave him a small, bitter smile. ‘Far from it. Your Draconian measures this afternoon to keep me away from him really weren’t necessary. He’s the last man I’d want in my life, even if he wasn’t married...’
She drank her wine quickly.
‘I wish you hadn’t said what you did in front of him, implying that you and I... If it gets round and people start to gossip... I know it isn’t supposed to matter these days, that a woman is as entitled as a man to enjoy her sexuality—’ She knew her face was burning, but she was determined to say what she felt must be said.
‘But you don’t want anyone thinking that you’re enjoying yours
with me, is that what you’re trying to say?’ he interrupted.
He sounded angry now, more like the Jake she knew, his voice harsh and tense.
‘This is a small town,’ she told him uncomfortably, ‘where people sometimes still make old-fashioned judgements. If it weren’t for the business... I—’
‘You’d what?’ he demanded. ‘Be quite happy for people to think that you and I are lovers?’
He moved towards her and automatically she jerked back from him, her skin burning red beneath the cynicism in his eyes.
‘It isn’t that,’ she protested automatically. ‘It isn’t you...’
Helplessly she saw the way he tensed, pouncing on her words.
‘Not me,’ he repeated softly. She saw him breathe in, awareness glinting in his eyes as he asked her quietly, ‘Tell me something, Rosie. How many men...how many lovers have there been since my cousin raped you?’
To her horror, Rosie felt her whole body start to tremble. She could feel the emotion welling up inside her, the tears clogging her throat, the pain, the panic, the grief, all burning through her in a relentless, unstoppable tide.
‘None... None... I didn’t... I couldn’t... There wasn’t—’
‘Rosie... Rosie...’
Almost before she could even blink Jake had covered the distance between them, taking her gently in his arms, removing the now empty glass from her hand, holding her as tenderly and carefully as though she were merely a child...a baby...
A baby...
The sound of anguish she made was smothered against his shirt, the tears she hadn’t realised she was crying soaking through the cloth.
She tried to stop, to pull away, to regain control of herself and her emotions, but Jake wouldn’t let her. Instead he was talking to her, crooning almost, soft, reassuring words, telling her that it was all right for her to cry, that it was all right for her to show him her pain, to share her anguish and bitterness.
Distantly she heard the small warning voice that urged her to think, to stop, to cease this act of idiotic self-betrayal with a man whom she had always thought of as her enemy.
And yet who better to share what she was feeling with? Who could understand more...know more?