‘You don’t believe a word I say,’ she accused, her voice shaky. He thought she was a scheming liar. It hurt. It shouldn’t, because she ought to be used to it, but it did. Unbearably.
Her eyes filled with tears. If he didn’t leave this room, right now, she’d go to pieces, and her pride wouldn’t let that happen twice in one day. Just as her pride hadn’t let her try to make contact of any kind with him after he’d ended their marriage by walking out.
‘Just tell me what it’s all about,’ he suggested tiredly. Suddenly he felt drained. He didn’t want to argue with her, to have to play it her way and coax and cajole her into explaining herself. He wanted out.
Bella saw bored indifference, heard it in his voice, and anger stirred again, deep, deep inside her. ‘How can I, when I don’t know?’ she said through gritted teeth. She saw him shrug, turn away, and knew she wanted to feel relief because he was on his way out but, perversely, didn’t.
She wanted to beg him to stay, to stop accusing her of something she hadn’t done, talk to her, just talk to her, treat her like an intelligent human being for once.
‘Well, don’t say I didn’t give you the opportunity,’ he said tonelessly. ‘I can’t force you to tell me why you set this up, and quite frankly I don’t want to put myself to that kind of trouble. If you’ve blown the opportunity to tell me your reasons you’ve only yourself to blame.
‘I’ll be leaving at first light, and you won’t be going with me. Even getting to the nearest farmhouse and a telephone won’t be a picnic, and I’ll make better headway on my own. Let me know if you want me to arrange transport to get you out of here.’
Closing the door behind him, he clattered down the staircase. No way could he spend the night tossing and turning in a bed only a few feet away from hers, with only a partition wall separating them.
Seeing her again had brought needs he’d subjugated for twelve arid months bludgeoning back to life. He was only flesh and blood!
Hell! Here he was, Jake Fox, subject of enough articles in the financial press to fill a ten-ton container, having made his first paper million on the money markets before he was twenty-two and now, at thirty-four years of age, the head of his own worldwide insurance company—yet he was totally unable to handle this woman and what she did to him, take her dubious machinations in his stride.
But hadn’t she always made a sucker out of him?
Tossing an armload of dry logs on the embers, he sank into a chair, almost welcoming the hypnotic howl of the wind, the insistent memories that now could not be denied...
The very first time he’d set eyes on her...
The first time he set eyes on her she was wearing a gold satin beaded shift that shimmered when she moved. And how she moved!
Clutching an unwanted, untouched glass of white wine in his hand, he couldn’t find words to describe what he was seeing—the sinuous grace, the endless legs, the softly seductive curves of hip and breast. The sheer poetry as her head turned slowly on the perfection of the long and fragile stern of her neck. The strange, fabulous eyes meeting his briefly across the room, holding for a moment—almost as if the contact puzzled her—before she turned back to her companion.
He was holding his breath, he discovered. He hadn’t wanted to come to this party. But he hadn’t not wanted to, either—just killing time until his dinner date.
‘Eyes off, buddy!’ Alex muttered at his side. ‘The lady’s taken.’
‘Sorry?’ Jake’s brows met. He’d bumped into Alex Griffith in the City, just as he’d emerged from his Lombard Street head office, his mind still on his recent successful Far Eastern acquisition trip.
Friends since schooldays, they kept in touch more—as now—by luck than arrangement.
‘Have dinner?’ Alex had suggested.
Jake had shaken his head in regret, they had a lot of catching up to do. ‘Sorry. I promised to feed Kitty at The Dorchester. She’s thinking of applying for a teaching post in Chester. Wants my advice.’
‘Not boyfriend trouble this time?’ Alex’s tawny eyes had crinkled at the corners and Jake had grinned.
‘Happily not, it would seem. Though I’m not counting my chickens. Something like that could be behind the sudden need to move to the sticks.’
His kid sister brought as much dedication to her social life as she did to her chosen profession. And more often than not Jake was landed with the job of picking up the pieces. Looking out for Kitty was something he’d got used to. What else were brothers for—especially as there were no parents around to sort out the crises she seemed to thrive on?
‘Tomorrow? Lunch?’
‘Flying out to Dubai.’
‘Tell you what,’ Alex had shot a glance at his watch. ‘I’m due at this cocktail thrash around now. Duty thing—know how it is? Daren’t miss it, or I’d suggest a quiet drink. Why not keep me company?’
So here he was, almost wishing he’d not tagged along, until his attention had been riveted by the raven-haired beauty in the shimmering dress. He couldn’t take his eyes away.
‘Who is she?’
The face of La Donna.’ Alex hadn’t had to ask who Jake was talking about. ‘Shock to the system, what? I’ve met her once or twice. Got myself introduced during an interval at Covent Garden. But no dice. If I thought I stood a chance I’d be in there, trying my luck—along with the rest of the male population!’
Jake ignored that, dismissed it as an irrelevance, although it was to come back and haunt him time after time. ‘The face of what?’ The question was spiked with urgency, a tinge of irritation.
‘Where’ve you been the last couple of years, buddy? No, don’t tell me—too busy plotting how to make your company’s next billion to read the glossies or watch the hoardings!’
Then as if he sensed the brooding intensity in the dark eyes that suddenly flicked his way, Alex cut the banter and volunteered, ‘Appropriately, her name’s Bella. Bella Harcourt, supermodel. She was picked to be the face of La Donna—cosmetics and stuff. Since then her career’s taken off in a big way. And the guy she’s with is head of the agency which handles the La Donna account Guy Maclaine—a big name in advertising circles. He took her under his wing from the outset.’
‘And?’
‘And into his bed. Rumour has it he’s going for his second divorce, and that the answer to every man’s sexual fantasies will be Mrs Guy Maclaine the third.’
Over Jake’s dead body!
His eyes narrowed, intent, Jake watched the way she smiled at Maclaine, never moving from his side, her sinuous body curving into the shelter of his like a delicate vine seeking support.
Maclaine was a big brute, with the kind of near-ugly looks some women might find attractive. She obviously did. But if he could do it, he’d take her away from him.
He had never felt like this before. The assault on his emotions, the upheaval going on in his normally rational mind, would have rocked him on his heels had he not surrendered himself to the inevitability of what was happening here.
Without false modesty he knew he was what his mother would have called ‘eligible’. Neither repellent nor in his dotage, and going places in the dangerously unstable world of high finance, beautiful women came with the territory. They came and they went; he didn’t have time for a committed relationship and was always careful to point that out. But this—this was something very different...
He picked his moment, shouldering his way through the knots of brightly partying people just as Maclaine was politely allowing himself to be cornered by a red-haired, red-taloned woman of questionable sobriety.
‘Jake Fox,’ he introduced himself, catching a flicker of uncertainty in those strangely fabulous eyes, an automatic withdrawal. ‘Single, solvent, law-abiding.’
He could have added ‘besotted’, but didn’t. And wouldn’t—not until he’d come to terms with it himself, with this new and terrifyingly exciting experience. But he wasn’t going to waste time on preliminaries either.
‘I’m givin
g my sister dinner tonight; I would very much like you to join us. The Dorchester. If you need reassurance that I am neither a seducer or a white-slaver, then Alex Griffith—whom I believe you’ve met—can vouch for my integrity.’
He angled his shoulders, effectively screening her from the rest of the party-goers, consciously staking his claim to her undivided attention. And watched as a million glittering lights danced in her eyes, her lush mouth quirking as she tilted her head back on her long, long neck.
His heart thumped violently. If she told him to get lost he’d have to try another tack, pursue her until she gave in out of sheer exhaustion!
The smile she had been trying to swallow defeated her, and she laughed. It was a ripple of perfection amongst the babble and shriek going on around them.
‘You have an intriguingly novel approach, Mr Fox! Direct, but not explicitly offensive. Tell me, does it always work?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve never tried it before.’ He grinned—probably fatuously, he thought. Her voice was as beautiful as she was. ‘And it’s Jake. And you’re gorgeous. And dinner—you will join us?’
She gave no direct answer. ‘You’ve been watching me. Since you arrived with Alex you’ve been watching me.’
A simple statement of fact. Yet it made his heart lilt. Apart from that brief moment when their eyes had locked she had, to all appearances, concentrated all her attention on Maclaine. But appearances were deceptive, because she’d been aware of him, aware of the way he’d been watching her, mesmerised. Aware. Of him. Maclaine might be her lover, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t cut him out!
‘Guilty. But, looking the way you do, you must take the blame.’
Suddenly her poise fell away. Her head drooped forward and soft tendrils of the artfully piled lustrous, midnight-dark hair gently moved against the pale, fragile neck, awakening in him a deep, atavistic desire to protect.
It was then he knew. Knew without a shadow of doubt that he wanted to possess this woman in every way there was. Take her, hold her, care for her. Make her his, and only his.
Marry her.
If marriage had ever crossed his mind it had been as something to be thought about some time in the distant future. When the future was safe, secure. When he was sure—sure that what he had to offer was solid and firm, couldn’t be blown away by the cruel winds of chance that destroyed home and family in their backlash. As he had seen his home and family virtually destroyed by his father’s obsessive and disastrously unsuccessful gambling on the world money markets.
But she had driven all that caution out of his head.
‘You will join us.’ He made it a statement, as if there could be no question about the way their relationship would begin and develop. He didn’t know he’d been holding his breath until she suddenly raised her head, the brilliance of her eyes, her smile, stunning him.
‘You’ve made me an offer I can’t refuse.’ Mischief silvered her eyes with dancing starlight. ‘I’m dying to meet your sister!’
Then, just as quickly, her smile faded and her eyes became thoughtful, as if she was wondering what it was that had made her accept his invitation. With a minimal shrug of exquisite shoulders she turned to murmur her excuses to Maclaine, and Jake knew then—precisely then—that she was his...
Bella and Kitty had got along famously; dinner had been an unqualified success. Even if Bella had given her attention almost exclusively to the younger girl he had been content to watch and wait, knowing by the heightened colour that had glowed along her perfect cheekbones, the way she’d immediately veiled her eyes if they encountered his, that she’d been just as aware of the sizzling sexual tension as he was.
Leaving her at the mews apartment she’d shared with her younger sister, he had taken her acceptance of his offer to give her lunch the next day for granted. He’d rescheduled his Dubai meetings and had set out to win what he’d already considered his.
They’d been married eight weeks later. He had claimed the woman he’d been born to love, promising to keep her unto him until death did them part...
So much for promises, for dreams. Pain pushed at him. He pushed it away. He’d already spent too long on the rack of jealousy, so why prolong the agony? His face set, he raked out the dying embers and went slowly upstairs. - Tomorrow couldn’t come soon enough.
Still sleepless, Bella heard his feet on the uncarpeted stairs and stared into the darkness, wide-eyed, holding her breath.
But the footsteps passed her door, and she curled herself on her side and cried herself to sleep. Because she had wanted him to come to her, to make love to her for one last time, to give her a final memory she could live with.
The memory she did have, of the single, blistering word he’d used before turning on his heels and walking out on her and Guy, was too demeaning to live with.
CHAPTER FIVE
BELLA came awake to the distinctive aroma of freshly brewing coffee wafting up from the kitchen directly beneath her bedroom.
The window was heavily curtained, so she had no way of knowing if the late winter dawn had broken, but one thing she did know: Jake was getting ready to leave. Without her.
She wasn’t going to stay here on her own!
Jumping out of bed, shivering in the chilly air, she scrambled into the warm leggings and sweater she’d worn the day before and pushed her feet into her sturdy walking shoes, panic making her heartbeat very fast.
There was no time for refinements, even the most basic ones such as bathing, or brushing her hair. She wouldn’t put it past him to be walking out of here right now, creeping out, because he wouldn’t want her to wake and come racing after him! He had certainly made it perfectly clear that he didn’t want her tagging along, under any circumstances. He didn’t want her anywhere near him.
Well, he couldn’t force her to stay. So she’d dog his footsteps every inch of the way, and if he didn’t like it he could lump it!
Already breathless from her haste, she flew down the stairs and arrived in the kitchen with a clatter. The room was filled with clear bright light and the enticing fragrance of coffee. Jake, wearing the bulky sweater and warm dark cords he’d had on yesterday, was staring out of the window.
‘No need to break your neck. Nobody’s going anywhere,’ he said drily.
He turned from the window, his mouth curling. But it wasn’t a smile, Bella saw. That tight-lipped grimace could easily have developed into a full-blown snarl if he’d let it; she didn’t have to be an expert in facial expressions to recognise that. But it didn’t stop her wretched body responding to him as if the reaction had been programmed in, right from the day of her birth.
He hadn’t shaved, and the darkness of his tough jawline was more than the mere affectation of designer stubble. It made him look more dangerous, more forbiddingly exciting than ever before. And what was he talking about? Why had he altered his plans?
Answering her unspoken questions, he narrowed his eyes and drawled softly, ‘You even have the weather on your side. So how did you manage that? Magic?’
He turned abruptly away, bunching his hands in the pockets of his trousers, staring bleakly through the window at the winter wasteland.
Pushing past the hurtful contempt of his words, Bella made sudden sense of what he was implying and went to stand beside him at the window, careful not to brush against him—because touching him would be her undoing, she knew dam well it would.
Stealthy snow had fallen silently in the night, blown into drifts by the howling wind. Drifts of the glittering, pure white stuff were piled up against the sturdy cottage to the height of the window-frame. Imprisoning them here together. Evie and Kitty couldn’t have hoped for a better result!
‘There’s coffee in the pot.’ He stepped back quickly, away from her. She could sense the tension in his hard body, hear it in his dark, gravelly voice.
She was right; he couldn’t bear her to be anywhere near him. Finding her with Guy on that fateful night had made her physically repulsive to him. Yet t
here had been moments when she’d hoped...
‘We’re going to have to try to live with this impossible situation.’
She could hear him moving about, and she could detect resignation in his voice now. A toneless monotone that told her quite plainly that being forced to endure her undiluted company was not something he was wildly excited about.
She could have done without his earlier sarcastic implication that she’d magicked up a snowstorm to keep him here. Very much against his will. She didn’t know which hurt the most, bitter sarcasm or bleak resignation, but she wasn’t going to give him a clue to the way he was tearing her to pieces.
Turning reluctantly to face him, her eyes went wide. He was shrugging into his sheepskin coat, already turning up the collar against the bitter weather outside.
He was going to try his level best to get out of here, preferring to take his chances in the arctic wilderness out there rather than spend another moment with her. He was leaving her stranded, walking out on her, dismissing her from his life all over again!
She knew he didn’t love her, or trust her. But she hadn’t realised just how much he hated her.
‘Where are you going?’ Her voice sounded tinny, frantic even, and her face had gone red. She could feel heat creeping all over her skin. She had sounded like a nagging wife, but she couldn’t help it She didn’t want him walking out on her. Not again.
‘Don’t worry. You and the weather have me neatly trapped.’ His voice sounded as cold as the snow on the mountain tops. ‘Though what you hope to achieve is beyond me, particularly since you refuse to be honest enough to tell me.’
Bella narrowed her eyes into slits and glared right back at him, her temper rising rapidly now. How could you hate a person yet want him with a force that was pretty near overwhelming? Were love and hate really the different sides of the same coin, as people said?
The Faithful Wife Page 5