by Robyn Donald
‘Unless you want to fight your way through reporters from all three television stations as well as the newspapers, you’d better let me provide you with an escort,’ he said caustically.
‘I wouldn’t let you provide me with toothpaste,’ she flashed back.
‘What about ecstasy?’ he asked, not attempting to mute the cruelty in his words. ‘I can provide you with that any time you want it.’
More agony lanced through her, so ferocious she thought she might collapse. She clung to the door handle, exerting her last shreds of strength to open it. ‘It means nothing,’ she returned, trying for an indifferent tone and managing, she hoped, detachment.
But he hadn’t finished with her. ‘It meant something to me.’
‘That I’m a good lay?’ she goaded, intent only on stopping this any way she could so that she could leave before her dreams splintered messily and noisily all around her.
Coldly he retorted, ‘When you decide to give up such cheap indulgences as self-pity and put your pride in your pocket, I’ll be here.’
‘I wouldn’t come to you if you were my only chance of life,’ she ground out, making the mistake of turning her head.
He gave her an ironic bow, carrying off the old-fashioned courtesy with style, then walked over to where she clung to the handle, removed her fingers from it and opened the door. The man she’d never recognise again was coming along the corridor.
‘When Mrs Connor has packed, see that she gets to the Regent without anyone seeing her,’ Jake said indifferently.
Without looking at either man, Aline walked out of the room, out of his life and into a future so empty she couldn’t bear to think about it.
‘You’ve got another tooth!’
Emma smiled at her, exposing two small grains of rice on her lower gum and one on her upper.
‘Soon you’ll be able to bite,’ Aline said, dropping a kiss on the floss of baby hair.
‘She can already,’ Hope told her grimly.
Emma wriggled and beamed before deciding to go to sleep, resting her heavy little head confidingly against Aline’s breast.
‘You’re looking more and more like death with each week that goes past,’ Hope remarked. ‘Why don’t you go and get everything straightened out?’
Aline shook her head. To her astonishment she’d confided her emotional turmoil to Keir’s worried wife almost a month after she’d stormed out of Jake’s life. None of her other friends would have understood like Hope, who’d had to fight her own demons of mistrust and disillusionment on her way to her radiant, enviable happiness with Keir.
‘You’re so obstinate,’ Hope said crossly. ‘All right, waste away like a Victorian virgin. For heaven’s sake, it was an entirely natural assumption on his part! You’d have thought the same if the situation had been reversed.’
‘I know.’
‘You’re in love with him.’
Aline opened her mouth to deny it, then nodded abruptly.
Her hostess looked at her. ‘And you’re eating your heart out for him.’
Aline nodded again.
Hope snorted. ‘So why—?’
‘He doesn’t love me. He never did, never made any pretence at it.’
‘He must feel something for you!’
Aline said abruptly, ‘He thought I’d seduced him to divert him from investigating the Trust. He more or less held me prisoner on the island while he had my house searched for anything incriminating—’
Jerked from her doze by the misery in Aline’s voice, Emma lifted her head and looked up worriedly. ‘It’s all right, darling,’ Aline soothed, cuddling her close. She closed her eyes, inhaling the sweet scent of baby flesh and skin.
Trenchantly Hope said, ‘He couldn’t take his eyes off you at Emma’s christening, and I don’t think he’s a man who lies. He’s certainly established your innocence very conclusively.’
‘It helped that poor old Tony Hudson remembered he’d signed that wretched cheque as well as me,’ Aline said briefly. ‘The moment I left Peter he rang Tony and told him he’d just heard of a brilliant investment opportunity, but there was a time limit so Tony had to come in right then and sign a cheque.’ She kissed Emma’s fat little starfish hand. ‘And Tony didn’t look at the amount; he said he never did.’
‘Did Peter deliberately pick a fight with you so that you wouldn’t look too?’
Aline dropped another kiss on Emma’s satin cheek. ‘He knew I wouldn’t sign a blank cheque otherwise,’ she said dryly, wincing at the way Peter had played on her feelings for Michael to make her so angry she’d neglected her usual precautions. ‘But dragging Tony in made the whole set-up too obvious.’
‘And of course it was stupid of Peter to be tracked down with millions of dollars in his bank account,’ Hope said, adding doggedly, ‘Did I tell you that Jake asked me to make sure you were all right?’
‘Bad conscience,’ Aline said succinctly, shifting on the wide wicker lounger beneath the big magnolia tree. Sunlight slid through the big, glossy leaves to dapple them in coins of gold.
Glowing like a summer goddess, Hope narrowed her amber eyes. ‘It was more than that—he was really concerned about you.’ Her scrutiny turned shrewd. ‘I thought you were still angry, but you’re not, are you? You’re scared.’
Aline had spent too many dark hours going over every word Jake had said to her, every tiny expression, every smile and frown. Pale now, and resigned, she said, ‘This isn’t about love, Hope—it’s about surrender. He wants me to admit that I can’t resist him.’
‘Then,’ Hope said quietly, ‘you’re going to have to decide whether or not you’ll give him that surrender.’
She ignored Aline’s muttered, ‘Never!’
‘You know, he sounds jealous,’ she said thoughtfully.
‘Jealous! Jake!’ Aline snorted.
‘Look at it logically.’ Hope picked up a glass of orange juice and sipped at it, frowning as she stared at the sun-dazzled lawn and flowerbeds. ‘I’ll bet he’s jealous of Michael.’
‘He’s too confident to be jealous of anyone.’
Hope looked at her. ‘Men are vulnerable too.’
‘Jake?’ Aline said again with a hard little laugh. ‘When we made love, he thought I was implicated in Peter’s schemes. He wasn’t vulnerable.’
‘It sounds as though he couldn’t help himself, which makes him vulnerable too.’ Hope leaned forward to say persuasively, ‘Think about it, Aline. You’ve got two choices: you can ignore whatever it is between you, or you can do something about it. Isn’t it worth sinking your pride for? Or are you going to let your fear and that bewildering inferiority complex block your chance at happiness?’
‘You make it seem simple, but it’s not. So I go to him; we start an affair. Oh, yes, that’s what it will be,’ as Hope rolled her eyes heavenwards. Aline looked down at the child sleeping in her arms. ‘And then it will fall apart.’
‘I didn’t know Michael,’ Hope said trenchantly, ‘but I think you’re making a big mistake assuming Jake is like him. Jake might be proud and tough and hard, but he’s also honest.’ She hesitated, then said, ‘Keir likes him and trusts him.’
‘And because Keir likes him he has to be perfect?’ Aline’s smile robbed the words of any sting.
‘I’d trust him too. Whereas I don’t think you trust anyone, not even yourself. You’ve got so much to offer—you’re extremely intelligent and able, you dress like a dream, and you’re a brilliant friend. Perhaps just a bit old-fashioned.’
‘What?’
Hope grinned at her. ‘Nowadays,’ she said, ‘women go out and get their men.’ She looked down at Emma, sound asleep, and smiled tenderly. ‘Try it, Aline. Believe me, love’s worth any amount of sacrificed pride.’
Aline lifted a hand to the launch she’d hired to bring her across and set off up the hill, overnight bag in hand. She’d asked the boatman to drop her off on the other side of the island from Jake’s bach; now, bag in hand, she clambered up the gully.
After two sleepless nights she was setting out on the biggest gamble in her life, and if Jake sent her away she’d never be the same again.
At least she’d have tried, she thought with sudden passion. She broke off a sprig of kanuka as she passed the trees and sniffed the leaves, remembering the tone of his voice when he’d referred to the underlying sweetness beneath the astringency. Her stomach clenched.
‘You can’t go back,’ she said aloud, tucking the sprig into her buttonhole.
The path down the hill was dry and rocky; she negotiated it carefully, so tense that when a cicada called shrilly she stumbled, and had to grab a vine to stop herself from falling.
At the bottom she glanced across at the grassy patch where the helicopter had landed, the thick lawn and the headlands protecting the shimmering waters of the bay. Slowly, pulses hammering, stomach tightened into a knot, she walked across the grass and around the side of the house.
He lay in the hammock on the deck, long body so relaxed that at first she thought he was asleep. Her heart jumped nervously, then swelled. As she climbed the several steps she caught a flash of fire beneath the heavy eyelids and realised that he was watching her.
He didn’t move.
Senses unbearably taut, she walked towards him. The shade of the overhang swallowed her up and for a moment she stood still as her eyes adjusted.
‘Hello, Jake,’ she said, so relieved when the words came out sounding normal that she couldn’t say any more, just dumped the bag on the deck.
‘Aline.’ He lifted his lashes and surveyed her with golden eyes as cold and predatory as those of a hunting lion. ‘To what do I owe the honour of this visit?’
‘You told me,’ Aline said deliberately, her voice not quite shutting out the jerky thudding of her pulse, ‘that if I wanted you I’d have to put my pride in my pocket and come to you.’ She spread out her hands. ‘So here I am.’
Jake gave an enigmatic smile and linked his hands behind his head. ‘I don’t see much evidence of abandoned pride,’ he said coolly. ‘Your head’s still held high, there’s still a faintly bored expression on that lovely, patrician face.’
Bored? That wasn’t boredom, that was terror. But she didn’t blame him for wanting his pound of flesh. ‘Oh, the pride has been suitably disciplined,’ she told him. ‘Along with everything else.’
His gaze skimmed her bare throat, came to rest on the rapid beat of her pulse at the base. ‘Everything?’
‘Yes,’ she said evenly. ‘My memories are safely locked in the past where they belong; I’ve given up using them as a security blanket.’
His glance sharpened, but to her surprise he accepted her statement at face value. ‘So what do you want?’
‘You.’
Jake’s lashes drooped. ‘For how long?’ he enquired cynically.
‘For as long as you want me.’
‘And if I said I didn’t want marriage?’
She shrugged, although his question hurt. ‘Who’s talking about marriage?’
With swift, prowling grace he swung up out of the hammock and came towards her. Stripped of all pretence, all defences, Aline met his smouldering topaz gaze, hearing nothing but the thudding of her heart in her ears.
He reached out and touched her cheek with a careless knuckle before using a fingertip to trace the outline of her mouth. ‘I’m talking marriage,’ he said with silky precision.
Fire raced from his finger, sparking and crackling through her in fierce, glorious ravishment. Aline closed her eyes and said hoarsely, ‘You don’t have to buy me with promises of marriage; you’ve got what you wanted.’
‘Which is?’
She took a jagged breath. More than anything she wanted to run away, but she said sturdily, ‘You wanted surrender. Well, I’m here.’
‘So you are,’ he said softly, smiling. ‘And are you going to give me everything I want from you—without conditions, without thought for the future, without memories of the past, without control and shields and inhibition?’
She whitened at the very real determination she read in his hard, handsome face, heard in his deep, autocratic voice, but said calmly, ‘Yes. If that’s what you want.’
‘It is very much what I want.’ His hand cupped her cheek in an oddly gentle caress and his mouth twisted. ‘But is it what you want, Aline? Because I want more than surrender. I want you to want it too—to long passionately for it, to desire it with a heat and hunger that makes everything else seem unimportant.’
Instinctive rejection darkened her eyes. Jake smiled, and the hand along her cheek slid to the back of her neck, anchoring in her hair. Exerting just enough pressure to tilt her head back so that she was looking into his face, he said in a raw voice, ‘I want you to jettison that control you’ve worked so hard to achieve.’
His hard gaze stripped the skin from her, exposing her shrinking inner self to his flaying scrutiny. She closed her eyes against him.
Cold and merciless as steel, he said, ‘So why did you come here, Aline? Am I going to be another Keir—a convenient outlet for your sexual urges, but eminently disposable?’
‘Let me go,’ she said clearly.
He kissed her, but released her before she could respond to the lightburst of energy his kiss summoned.
Without looking at him she walked across to the railing and looked down at the green grass and pale, warm sand to the serene waters of the bay. Stiffly, she said, ‘Keir and I slept together once. It meant nothing to either of us.’
‘Only once?’ Jake said coolly.
‘Only once.’ Keir had been kind, but definitely unimpressed, making it quite obvious that he didn’t want to repeat the experiment. Even now, after she’d made her peace with both Keir and Hope, she still cringed at the woman she’d been then.
‘Why? Mutual convenience?’
She looked down at her hands, saw with detachment that they were clenched into small, serviceable fists. ‘A silly mistake by both of us. What else do you want?’ she demanded hoarsely. ‘Blood?’
He said evenly, ‘Something much worse—I want the truth. You’ve lied to yourself and to me all the time we’ve known each other. If we’re to have any chance of any sort of relationship we need to stop hiding behind lies.’
Aline had to force the words out. ‘What lies?’
‘That this—force—between us is just sex.’ When she swung around it was to see him watching her with a taut, mirthless smile. ‘There’s no escape; at least admit that you’re committed to me.’
Silence, while the blood drummed in her ears and the sea shivered against the sand.
Jake said harshly, ‘Just as I am to you.’
Trapped by love, by a shattering sense of her own inferiority as a woman, and torn between disclosure and guarding herself from pain, she hesitated. Fight for him, she commanded. What have you got to lose? Yet her tone was bitterly resigned as she said, ‘I’ve already told you that you’ve won, if that’s what you want.’
‘Superficial surrender?’ Cool and unsparing, his words cut into her. ‘It’ll do for the time being, but it’s not enough, Aline.’
She snatched a glance at him, quivering at the dark dominance of his face.
He said, ‘Why did you take one look and decide you wanted nothing to do with me?’
Dry-mouthed, with her nerves stretched unbearably, she said, ‘Because I could see that you’d demand—everything.’ Silence echoed around her. She stumbled on, ‘And I—I had nothing to give.’
‘Why?’
When she didn’t answer he said tonelessly, ‘Because your heart was still buried with your husband?’
‘No!’ she shouted. She chewed on the side of her lip. Each word came out slow and heavy as she said, ‘I did love him. I loved him very much, and I thought he loved me. He was the first man to know what I was like, and yet he seemed to love me.’
There was a short silence. She sensed she’d surprised him, but when he spoke his voice was level and disbelieving. ‘What are you l
ike, Aline?’
‘You said it yourself,’ she returned unevenly. ‘Controlled, focused and aloof. Excellent executive material, but with very little to offer as a woman. Or as a daughter.’
‘But Connor saw through that mask to the woman beneath.’
She shrugged, made uneasy by a note in his voice. Dismissively she said, ‘It’s not a mask, Jake. It’s the real person.’
‘So why did you come here?’ he asked in a tone that blew away her composure and left her naked and unprotected in front of him.
‘Because I want you,’ she said in a defeated voice.
‘You can do better than that,’ he said implacably.
She whirled suddenly, cheeks red with rage, eyes glittering. ‘All right then,’ she said, forcing her voice into some semblance of steadiness. ‘I am empty without you. I miss you every minute of the day and all the nights. I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, I can’t even clean my teeth without thinking of you! The thought of never seeing you again terrifies me. Is that enough for you? Is that what you want to hear?’
Not a muscle moved in his face or his big body; he examined her for long, humming seconds, before saying harshly, ‘It’ll have to do. I want the woman who made love to me with such passion and heart-wrenching abandon that I can’t get her out of my mind—the woman who makes me laugh, who cuddles babies with a tenderness that twists my heart, who is honest and direct and kind beneath that glossy armour.’
She almost cried with relief, but managed to say carefully, ‘I’m—glad.’
Jake crossed the deck in two long strides and pulled her into his arms, holding her so close that every line of his body was imprinted on her, so close she could hear his breathing, feel it, smell him, and taste his hunger.
Her own need began to surge through her like fire across oiled water, like sunlight pouring over the edge of the world, heating her cold skin and warming her heart, melting her body so that it responded with open eagerness when he kissed her and picked her up and carried her back to the hammock.
This time there was no finesse, no studied skill, no patience. They tore off their clothes and came together in passion and greed and an urgent, consuming fever. Within moments Aline felt the savage sweetness build inside her; she clung to him as he thrust deep and hard and powerfully, and almost immediately she climaxed, her need whetted by deprivation and love and relief.