by Anne Mather
The pen rolled out of her reach. A small frown creased her brow as she lifted her gaze back to his. ‘I can’t quite work him out. Sometimes I think he wants to talk to me about his past…I mean really talk. You know, tell me every detail. But then he seems to close up and back off as if I’ve come too close.’
‘It’s a difficult time when a parent passes away,’ Howard said. ‘I remember when my father died how hard it was. I was torn between wanting to talk and needing to stay silent in case I couldn’t handle the emotion.’
Ashleigh chewed her bottom lip for a moment. ‘I could be wrong, but I can’t help feeling he isn’t exactly grieving his father’s passing.’
‘Oh?’ Howard frowned. ‘You mean they didn’t get on or something?’
‘I don’t know…but why else would he be practically giving away everything his father left him?’
Howard let out a breath. ‘I guess it wouldn’t hurt to listen to him if he ever decides he wants to tell you about it. What harm could it do? You never know, you might come to see him in a totally new light.’
Ashleigh gave him a small wan smile by way of response. She didn’t want to see Jake Marriott in a new light.
She didn’t want to see Jake Marriott at all.
It wasn’t safe.
‘Come on!’ Mia urged Ashleigh on the cross-training machine at the local gym early the next morning. ‘Use those legs now, up and down, up and down.’
Ashleigh grimaced against the iron weight of her thighs and continued, sweat pouring off her reddened face and pooling between her breasts. ‘I thought this was supposed to fun,’ she gasped in between steps.
‘It is once you get fit,’ Mia said, springing on to the treadmill alongside.
Ashleigh watched in silent envy as her trim and toned sister deftly punched in the directions on the treadmill and began running at a speed she’d thought only greyhounds could manage.
‘You make me sick,’ she said with mock sourness as she clung to the moving handles of the machine, her palms slippery and her legs feeling like dead pieces of wood.
Mia gave her a sweet smile as she continued running. ‘It’s your fault for fibbing to Jake about going to the gym regularly.’
‘Yeah, don’t remind me.’
‘Anyway, I think it’s a great idea for you to get some exercise,’ Mia said without even puffing. ‘You’re so busy juggling work and Lachlan that you don’t get any time on your own. You know how much Mum and Dad love to mind him for you so there’s no excuse. The gym is a great place to switch off.’
Ashleigh looked at the sea of sweaty bodies around her and seriously wondered if her sister was completely nuts. Loud music was thumping, a row of televisions were transmitting several versions of early morning news shows, and a muscle-bound personal trainer who looked as if he’d been fed steroids from birth was adding to the cacophony of noise by shouting out instructions to a middle-aged man with a paunch, in tones just like a drill sergeant at Boot Camp.
‘I can’t believe people get addicted to this,’ she said with a pointed look at her sister.
Mia grinned. ‘It’s also a great place to meet people.’ She glanced at a tall, exceptionally handsome man who was doing bench presses on the other side of the room. ‘Not a bad sight for this time of the morning, is it?’
Ashleigh couldn’t help thinking that Jake’s muscles as he’d dug the garden the previous day were much more defined than the man in question; however, she had to accede that her sister was right. There were certainly worse things to be looking at first thing in the morning.
‘How long do I have to do this for?’ she asked after a few more excruciating minutes of physical torture.
‘Five more minutes and then we’ll do some stomach crunches,’ Mia informed her cheerily.
Ashleigh slid a narrow-eyed glance her sister’s way. ‘How many?’
‘Three hundred a day should do it,’ Mia said determinedly. ‘You’re not overweight, just under-toned.’
‘Three hundred?’ Ashleigh groaned.
‘Come on,’ Mia said and, jumping off the treadmill, pulled over a floor mat near the mirrored wall. ‘Down on the floor and let’s get started.’
‘One…two…three…four…five…’
When Ashleigh arrived at Jake’s house later that morning the temperature had risen to the late thirties and the air was thick and cloying with humidity. A clutch of angry, bruised-looking clouds was already gathering on the western horizon as if in protest at the unseasonable heat.
She couldn’t see Jake’s car or any sign of him about the house or garden so she let herself in and closed the door with a sigh of relief as the coolness of the dark interior passed over her like a chilled breath of air.
She lost track of time as she went to work in the second of the two formal sitting rooms, this one smaller but no less jam-packed. She ran her hand over a Regency rosewood and brass-inlaid dwarf side cabinet in silent awe. The cabinet had a frieze drawer and a pleated cupboard door decorated with a brass grille and was on sabre supports. She knew it would fetch a fabulous price at auction and the very fact that Howard had it in his possession would lift his profile considerably.
Her gaze shifted to a George III mahogany cabinet, and then to a Victorian walnut credenza which was inlaid and gilt metal-mounted, the lugged serpentine top above a panelled cupboard door and flanked by glazed serpentine doors.
The scent of old wood stirred her nostrils as she took photo after photo, edging her body around the cluttered furniture to show each piece off to best advantage.
During her time working with Howard she had seen many wonderful pieces, had visited many stately homes and purchased deceased estates, but nothing in her experience came anywhere near what was in Jake’s father’s house. She’d completed enough courses by correspondence to recognise a genuine antique when she saw it and this house was practically filled floor to ceiling with them, most of them bordering on priceless.
It only begged the question why someone had collected such expensive showpieces when he’d clearly had no intention of ever showing them off. They were cheek by jowl in an old neglected house that needed more than a lick of paint on the outside and a great deal of it inside as well.
From the unfaded splendour of the furniture she could only assume the blinds at the windows had nearly always been kept down. She couldn’t help thinking what sort of life Jake must have had as a young child in this mausoleum-like house. She couldn’t imagine her little son lasting even a full minute without touching or breaking something valuable. She looked at a Prattware cat and wondered if Jake had ever broken anything in the boisterousness of youth. Lachlan had recently accidentally toppled over a vase at Howard’s house and Marguerite Caule had torn strips off him, reducing him to tears even though the vase hadn’t even been so much as chipped.
She gave an inward shudder and left the room.
The closed door of what used to be Jake’s bedroom was three doors away down the hall. She looked at it for a long moment, wondering what secrets he kept locked there. She walked slowly towards the door, each of her footsteps making the floorboards creak as if they were warning her not to go any further. Jake had forbidden her to go in, telling her he kept it locked at all times, but she wouldn’t be human or indeed even female if she didn’t try the handle just the once…
It opened without a sound.
She stared at the open space before her for at least half a minute until the overwhelming temptation finally sent her feet forward, one after the other, until she was inside, the door as her hand left it, shifting soundlessly to a half-open position behind her.
It wasn’t as dark as the rest of the rooms in the house. The blinds were not pulled all the way down and, although the sky outside was cloudy, enough light still came through for her to see the narrow single bed along one wall. Compared to the rest of the furniture in the house, Jake’s bedroom was furnished roughly, almost cheaply. There was nothing of any significant value, that she could see. The wardrob
e was little more than a chipboard affair and the chest of drawers not much better. There was a single mirror on the wall above the chest of drawers but it was cracked and crooked as if someone had bumped against it heavily but not bothered to straighten it again.
The bed was lumpy and looked uncomfortable, the ugly brown chenille spread bald in spots. The walls looked pockmarked, bits of poster glue still visible, although there was not a poster or photograph in sight. Again she thought of her childhood home with the walls covered with loving happy memories. Jake’s childhood house was stripped of any such sentimentality. She had asked him once when they lived together to show her a photo of himself as a child but he’d told her he hadn’t bothered bringing any overseas with him. She had accepted his answer as reasonable and had thought nothing more about it. But now, in the aching emptiness of this room, she couldn’t help wondering if anyone had ever taken one of him and cherished it the way her parents cherished the ones they had collected over the years.
There were no loving memories in this house.
The thought slipped into her head and once it took hold she couldn’t erase it. The painful truth of it seemed to be seeping towards her, like a nasty stain that had been hidden for a long time but was now finally coming through the cracked paint on the walls to taint her with its dark shameful secret.
Jake had been abused by his father.
Her stomach clenched in anguish as the puzzle began to fall into sickening place. It all made sense now. No wonder he was getting rid of everything to do with his father. And no wonder he had never wanted children of his own.
Oh, Jake! Why didn’t you tell me?
She looked again at the askew mirror on the wall and her stomach gave another painful lurch. Was that blood smeared in one corner?
Her eyes fell away from its mottled secrets and went to the chest of drawers beneath it. Almost of its own volition, her hand began to reach for the first drawer. She knew it was contravening Jake’s rule but she had to find out what she could about his background. It was like a compulsion, an addiction she just had to feed, if only for the one time.
The drawer slid uneasily from its tracks as if it too was advising her against prying as the floorboards had seemed to do earlier, the scrape of rough-edged timber sounding like fingernails being dragged down the length of a chalk board.
She suppressed a tiny shiver and looked down at the odd socks tumbled in a heap, no two seemed to match or were even tucked together in the hope of being considered a pair. There was a bundle of underwear that looked faded and worn and a few unironed handkerchiefs not even folded.
The second drawer had a few old T-shirts, none of them ironed, only one or two folded haphazardly. A sweater was stuffed to one side, one of its exposed elbows showing a gaping hole.
Jeans were in the third drawer, only two pairs, both of them ragged and torn. She couldn’t help a tiny smile. Both her sisters insisted on buying torn and ragged jeans; it was the fashion and they paid dearly for it, insisting they would die if anyone saw them in anything else.
She pushed against the drawer to shut it but it snagged and wouldn’t close properly. She gave it another little shove but it refused to budge. She bent down and peered into the space between the second and third drawers but it was hard to see in the half light. She straightened and tugged the drawer right out of the chest in order to reinsert it, to check if anything was stuck behind.
A small package fell to the floor at her feet and, carefully sliding the drawer back into place, she bent down to retrieve it…
CHAPTER SIX
IT WAS an envelope, the edges well-worn as if it had been handled too many times. Ashleigh opened the flap and drew out the small wad of photographs it contained, her breath stalling in her throat as the first one appeared.
It was Jake as a small toddler and he looked exactly like Lachlan at the same age.
‘I thought I told you this room was out of bounds.’
Ashleigh spun around so quickly she dropped the photographs, each of them fluttering to the floor around her quaking legs and feet.
‘I…I…’ She gave up on trying to apologise, knowing it was going to be impossible to get the words past the choking lump in her throat.
Jake moved into the room and she watched in a shocked silence as he retrieved the scattered photographs off the floor, slipping them back inside the old envelope and putting them to one side.
‘There is nothing of value in this room.’ He gave the room a sweeping scathing glance before his eyes turned back to hers. ‘I told you before.’
She moistened her mouth, shifting from foot to foot, knowing he had every right to be angry with her for stepping across the boundary he had set down.
‘You always were the curious little cat, weren’t you?’ he said, stepping towards her.
Ashleigh felt her breath hitch as he stopped just in front of her, not quite touching but close enough for her to feel the warmth of his body. It came towards her in waves, carrying with it the subtle scent of his essential maleness, his lemon-scented aftershave unable to totally disguise the fact that he’d been physically active at some point that morning. It was an intoxicating smell, suggestive of full-blooded male in his prime, testosterone pumped and charged, ready for action.
‘The door…it wasn’t locked…’
‘It usually is, but I decided to trust you,’ he said. ‘But it seems I can no longer do so.’
She didn’t know what to make of his expression. She didn’t think he was angry with her but there was a hint of something indefinable in his gaze that unnerved her all the same.
‘I was just checking…’ she said lamely.
He gave a little snort of cynicism. ‘I just bet you were.’
‘I was!’ she insisted. ‘Was it my fault you left the door unlocked?’
‘You didn’t have to search through my things,’ he pointed out.
‘You haven’t lived in this house for something like eighteen years,’ she said. ‘I’m surprised anything of yours is still here.’
He gave her an unreadable look. ‘Quite frankly, so am I.’
She frowned at his words, her brain grappling with why his father had left things as they were. The room looked as if Jake had walked out of it all those years ago and yet it seemed as if nothing had been removed or changed since.
‘Maybe he missed you,’ she offered into the lengthy silence.
Jake’s dark eyes hardened as they pinned hers. ‘Yes, I suppose he did.’
She ached to ask why but the expression on his face warned her against it. Anger had suddenly tightened his jaw, sent fire to his eyes and tension to his hands as they fisted by his sides.
She couldn’t hold his look. She turned and found herself looking at her own reflection in the cracked mirror on the wall. It was like looking at a stranger. Her blue eyes looked wild and agitated, her hair falling from the neat knot she had tied it in that morning, her cheeks flushed, her mouth trembling slightly.
She could see him just behind her. If she stepped back even half a step she would come into contact with the hard warmth of his very male body. Her workout in the gym that morning made her aware of her body in a way she had not been in years. She felt every used muscle, every single contraction reminding her of how she used to feel in his arms. Making love with Jake had been just like a heavy workout. He had been demanding and daring, taking her to the very limits of consciousness time after time until she hadn’t known what was right and decent any more.
She met his eyes in the mirror and suppressed an inward shudder of reaction. Would she ever be able to look at him without feeling a rush of desire so strong it threatened to overturn every moral principle she had been taught to cling to?
She sucked in a breath as his hands came down on her shoulders, his eyes still locked on hers in the mirror. She did her best to control her reaction but the feel of his long fingers on her bare skin melted her resolve. She positively ached for him to slowly and sensually slide his hands down the le
ngth of her arms as he used to do, his fingers curling around the tender bones of her wrists in a hold that brooked no resistance. She wondered if he knew how he still affected her, that her heart was already racing at the solid presence of him standing so close behind her, the knowledge that in the past his hardened maleness, thick with desire, would be preparing to plunge between her legs and send every trace of gasping air out of her lungs.
‘Y-you’re touching me…’ Her voice came out not much more than a croak.
‘Mmm, so I am.’ His hands moved slowly down her arms, his eyes never once leaving hers.
She moistened her parched lips when his fingers finally encircled her wrists, her breathing becoming ragged and uneven. ‘Y-you’re breaking the rules, Jake.’
‘I know.’ He gave her a lazy smile as his thumbs began a sensual stroking of the undersides of her wrists. ‘But you broke my one and only rule and now I shall have to think of a suitable penalty.’
She wasn’t sure if it was she who turned in his arms or if he turned her to face him, but suddenly she wasn’t looking at his reflection in the mirror any more but into his darker than night gaze as it burned down into hers.
His body was too close.
She could feel the denim seam of the waistband of his jeans against her, and when his hands drew her even closer her stomach came into contact with his unmistakable arousal. No one else could make her feel this way. Her body remembered and hungered for what it had missed for so long.
When his mouth came down over hers a tiny involuntary whimper of pleasure escaped her already parted lips, and as his tongue began an arrogant and determined search for hers she gave no resistance but curled hers around his in a provocative dance which spoke of mutual blood-boiling desire.
Ashleigh vaguely registered the dart of lightning that suddenly lit the room and the distant sound of thunder, the low grumble not unlike the sounds coming from Jake’s throat as he took the kiss even further, his body grinding against hers. She wound her arms around his neck, her fingers burrowing into his thick dark silky hair, her breasts tight with need as they were crushed against his chest.