by Penny Jordan
‘And that, I suppose, is why you went to Sofia,’ said Shelley sarcastically, thinking that she could anticipate where the conversation was heading. ‘Nice try, Jaime, but it won’t work. I know the truth.’
‘Like hell you do!’ The words seemed to explode from his throat, ‘And the reason I went to see Sofia was to try and find out exactly what it was she had said to my wife to turn her from a loving, happy bride into a cold block of ice. And now I know…That’s why I went to Lisbon in the first place. I’m not a complete fool, Shelley; I knew Sofia had to have said something to upset you, and if you weren’t going to tell me about it then she was. That was what I was doing in that hotel with her.’
‘And for that you needed a private room,’ she countered bitterly.
She watched Jaime’s mouth compress and felt a tiny frisson of fear start up inside her. This wasn’t going the way she had expected at all. She had anticipated contrition, coaxing, apologies and excuses, not this raging, barely controlled anger that seemed to burn up the air between them.
‘Sofia’s father just happens to own that hotel. She has a suite there; she lives there, Shelley. Now, you and I are going to sit down and talk.’
She didn’t want to talk to him, she didn’t want to hear anything that might weaken her defences even further. All right, so he was angry, and his anger made his explanations plausible, but how could she trust him; how could she trust anything he said?
Again, almost as though he had read her mind he said harshly, ‘If you had trusted me in the first place none of this need have happened, but you don’t, do you? You won’t let yourself trust anyone. Well, that’s your loss. I can’t force you to give me your trust, but I can force you to sit down and listen to what I’m going to tell you.’
‘I don’t want to hear whatever it is you have to say, Jaime.’ She turned her back on him and stared unseeingly at the half-closed shutters, hoping that he would read the determination in her stance and leave. If he didn’t…nervously she contemplated the practicality of escaping via her balcony, reluctantly dismissing it as unfeasible. Even as a child she had never had a head for heights, and the balcony was two storeys up. To jump from it was to invite death, and even to escape from Jaime she wasn’t prepared to go to those lengths.
‘Maybe not, but listen to it you will.’
He had himself under control now, his voice icy cold, or at least it seemed so, until he burst out furiously, ‘Have you any idea what you’ve put me through this last week? Shelley, why the hell didn’t you tell me what Sofia had said?’
‘That she was your mistress? That you married me because you wanted the villa and its lands? And if I had told you, what would have happened? You would have denied it, and I…’ She shook her head, unable to go on.
Shockingly, the ice was gone from Jaime’s voice now, and she could hear the bitter rage reverberating through every harsh word as he said hoarsely, ‘How dare you do this to me, Shelley? How dare you listen to and believe Sofia’s lies? Love is a two-way thing, surely? Do you really have so little belief in me…so little trust that you think I would betray either you or your father like that—the woman I love—a man I have looked up to and revered for as long as I’ve known him? Is that really how you see me? If so, it’s no wonder you were so reluctant to marry me. I thought we had something precious and rare, something we could build a future on. I thought I understood the reasons for your hesitancy, but I was wrong wasn’t I? I didn’t know you at all. You didn’t want to love me, did you? You resented it, just as you resented me, so much so that you leapt at the first excuse to start mistrusting me!’
His attack had the advantage of surprise. Whatever she had expected, it was not this. Protestations perhaps, but protestations allied to soft words, coaxing caresses, pleas that she try to understand. He was right: she did not know him. This raging, furious anger was something quite different, something that she felt totally unable to contend with, something which, impossibly, seemed to spring from some deep well of pain and anguish.
These were the words of a man very deeply in love with a woman who had hurt him almost beyond bearing. The truth came home to her, and she could only stare at him in wild-eyed shock.
‘Have you any idea what you’ve done?’ he demanded in a husky voice. ‘Less than a week ago in church you and I exchanged certain vows that tie us together for life, Shelley—I knew you were uncertain—hesitant, frightened even, but if I had known that you were capable of misjudging me like this…’ He drew in a deep breath, his face oddly hollow and gaunt. ‘A woman who cannot trust me is not my idea of a woman I can love.’ He moved towards her and the light from the bathroom fell sharply across his face, revealing its taut bone structure and the dark flush of colour burning into his skin.
He looked like a man perilously close to the end of his self-control, a man capable of whatever violence he felt necessary for the release of his feelings, and inwardly Shelley shivered, appalled by what she had done.
Now, when it was too late, she wondered how she could ever have been so stupid as to put any credence on what Sofia had told her. Even if she couldn’t believe that Jaime loved her, she had known surely that he did love and venerate her father. She could see now that she had dealt his pride a blow that would demand payment.
Her eyes fell before the bitterness in his, and in a husky voice she said slowly, ‘I couldn’t bear thinking that you didn’t want me, that you…’
He made a sound in his throat, the thick feral sound of a hunting animal intent on his prey.
Suddenly she felt cold, her skin chilled and still damp beneath her towel.
‘Oh, I want you all right—even if I may not want to—and that isn’t the only thing you were wrong about,’ he added bitterly. He moved again, coming closer towards her, and panic flared through her veins as she saw the expression in his eyes.
His anger seemed to have burned away the outer veneer of civilisation, leaving only the inner, primitive man. She had never seen him like this, nor expected to. He was looking at her with a mingling of hunger and rage that made her shiver tensely. He was dangerous, menacing almost, a man violently close to the edge of control.
‘I never intended to sell the villa to Sofia’s father,’ he told her bitingly, ‘and if you’d stayed long enough to face me yourself, instead of running away like a little coward, I could have told you so. Sofia lied to you, Shelley.’
‘She showed me the contract.’ Stubbornly she tried to vindicate herself. ‘Your signature was on it.’
‘My signature was on a contract that relates to a completely different business deal I have with her father. You may remember I did mention it to you.’ Now his voice was ice, cutting through her arguments with ruthless intensity. ‘Did you read this contract?’
Angrily Shelley shook her head. ‘How could I? It was in Portuguese.’
‘Exactly.’
Triumph covered the ice in silk, and through the darkness she was acutely conscious of the tense rise and fall of his chest. Beneath the sophisticated covering of his clothes, he was as primitively male as the predator she had likened him to earlier, and just as dangerous. More so because, unlike the jungle animal, Jaime could think and reason.
Fear panicked her into silence, and her mind was wrestling furiously with what he had said.
The full enormity of what she had done yawned sickeningly in front of her, and just for a second her eyes met his in acute vulnerability. Quickly she veiled them, hiding her expression from him, clinging on to logic and reality. Hadn’t she, after all, known it might come to this? That he might seek to confuse and beguile her into believing him; that he might storm her senses and force her to abandon both logic and reason?
But she hadn’t thought to see him do so with words. Rather, she had expected his attack to be a sensually physical one, an appeal to her vulnerable heart and weak desire for him.
Desperately she tried to retain her balance, summoning everything she had to help her maintain her front of indifference.
‘If what you say is true, then Sofia lied to me. Is that what you’re saying? Why should she lie, Jaime?’
She saw the look that crossed his face, and shuddered slightly. ‘Because she hates me,’ he told her evenly. ‘Sofia once wanted me not just as her lover, but also as her husband. As I have told you before, we have rather a strict code of morals in this part of the world. Sofia has made herself notorious with her numerous lovers and affairs. Where once she was happy to shock the conventional, now she wants their acceptance.’
‘And by marrying you she could gain that acceptance.’
‘Yes. Sofia tricked you, Shelley. She tricked you as easily as she might have taken sweets from a child. I could have brought Senhor Armandes here with me tonight. I could have asked him to translate this so-called contract to you. I could have asked him to confirm that it was at my suggestion that your father left you the villa—but what would be the point? You made your choice a week ago. You preferred not to believe that I might be innocent…that there might be some explanation other than the one Sofia gave you. And why? Because you wanted to believe her. You wanted an excuse to run from me.’
Deep down inside herself, Shelley felt a burgeoning sense of horror. There was a kernel of truth in what Jaime was saying. And now, horribly, she could see how unfair and prejudiced she had been. She wanted to cry out to him that he didn’t understand. That her vulnerability had come from her own lack of faith in her ability to attract him, from her own insecurity, her fear that he could not really love her and that one day, when it was too late, he would discover this for himself.
She wanted to tell him, but as she looked into his face and saw the bitter anger there, she couldn’t find the words.
‘What happened, Shelley? Did you wake up that morning and discover that you didn’t want to marry me after all? That I might be acceptable to you as a lover, but that you didn’t want to take the risk of marriage, of being my wife?’
As she looked up at him, Shelley felt as though something magical had died, and that, moreover, she had killed it herself. It was no good trying to tell Jaime the truth. If he had loved her, she had killed that love with her lack of faith and her thoughtless cruelty.
If their positions had been reversed how would she have felt? Betrayed, totally and utterly.
‘I should have known right from the start that something like this would happen, but it’s not every day that a man finds the human embodiment of all his private fantasies walking into his life. It’s apt to have a powerfully destructive effect on one’s logic. And you were the embodiment of all my fantasies, Shelley.’
He turned his head and she saw the hectic colour staining his skin. In the half light his eyes glittered febrilely, his body gripped by a fierce tension.
‘You’ve driven me half out of my mind, made me feel and want things I never knew myself capable of experiencing, but I was living in a fantasy world, wasn’t I? The woman I loved simply didn’t exist. I suppose I should have known. No woman of your race and lifestyle could remain virginal unless she was emotionally frigid. I dare say I’m not the first man whose life you’ve destroyed.’
Listening to him, Shelley was filled with a sense of desolation and waste. All too clearly now she could see that Sofia had been lying; using and manipulating her. No wonder Jaime was so furiously, so bitterly angry with her. It was no good trying to talk to him. He didn’t want to listen. All she could do was wait until his rage burned out. She wanted to apologise, to protest that her guilt was one of loving him too much, not too little, but she knew that he wouldn’t listen. How could she explain the years with her grandmother, the sense of inadequacy that had motivated her? How could she tell him that she had run from him in fear—fear of ultimately losing him? That she had chosen to shut herself off from the pain of that loss sooner rather than later?
His taunt about her emotional frigidity hurt, as he had meant it to, but she knew it wasn’t true. She only had to look at him to go weak with longing, to ache to reach out to him.
She moved backwards, turning her head away, so that he wouldn’t see what she was feeling, and as though somehow her movement infuriated him he reached towards her, his voice thick with bitterness.
‘Don’t turn away from me, damn you!’
His hands gripped her arms, and she tensed automatically before struggling to break free. That it was Jaime who held her was forgotten in the age-old fear of woman held prisoner in the arms of a dangerously angry man. As she struggled Jaime closed the distance between them, forcefully subduing her. One last desperate movement of her body brought it into harsh contact with his. As his hands moved to constrain her she felt the protection of her towel start to slide away from her.
Up until that moment she had forgotten her state of undress, but now, dismayingly, she was abruptly aware of it. She dared not move. Only the pressure of Jaime’s body against hers, the painful grip of his hand on her waist held the towel in place. If he let her go…if he moved…
Her mouth dry with tension she fought to control the panicky thudding of her heart.
‘It’s all right. I’m not going to touch you.’
There was bitterness as well as rejection in his voice, and Shelley knew overwhelmingly that he meant what he said. ‘I don’t want a woman I have to take by force, Shelley, whatever you might think.’
What she was thinking was that beneath her towel, her body was suddenly frighteningly aware of him. In those seconds during which he had sought to subdue her, she had been reminded unbearably of the night in her bedroom, and her senses, ignoring totally the purpose of his touch against her now, had responded to those memories with shocking force. If she closed her eyes she could all too easily picture the breadth of his chest, smell the scent of his skin, taste the aroused salt texture of it on her mouth.
It had taken this…this catalyst of pain and anger to reveal to her the true intensity of her own feelings for him, to make her acknowledge that where there was love and desire such as she felt for him, there was no room for pride or fear. Shockingly, even now, when she knew that she had killed anything he might feel for her, she still wanted him. Still ached and ached for him.
She felt him move away from her, his hand leaving her waist, his body heat replaced by the cool night air. Her eyelids lifted, her senses helplessly in the grip of her physical desire. Without knowing she did so, she took a step towards him, the towel falling in soft folds around her feet.
Somewhere in the darkness of the room, she heard an agonisingly harsh breath drawn into tortured lungs and didn’t know if it was Jaime’s or her own. She tried to move, her feet tangling in the folds of her towel, her voice shaking with need as she cried out Jaime’s name.
He caught her as she fell, his hands careful only to touch lightly on her skin, his arms rigidly outstretched to keep her off his body. Even so, her breath leapt in her throat, her body wantonly overthrowing the control of her mind and listening instead to the eager yearnings of her heart.
‘Make love to me, Jaime.’
Even as the words trembled from her lips she couldn’t believe she had uttered them. Neither, apparently, could Jaime. She could feel the tension emanating from him, feel it in the suddenly increased pressure of his fingers against her skin, but he made no attempt to draw her closer, nor gave any acknowledgement of her whispered request.
Desperation made her bold, and she pulled away from his constraining fingers and pressed herself against his body before he could stop her. She felt him shudder—once, and then his body went completely still.
‘What the hell is this, Shelley?’
He sounded angry, and her heart dropped. Suddenly she felt chilled and foolish. What on earth had she expected? That he would be overwhelmed by desire for her?
Ashamed of her own wantonness, she pulled away from him, shocked by the sudden pressure of his arms as they fastened round her.
‘Oh, no, you don’t!’ Now his voice was thick and husky, his expression hidden from her. He moved, and she felt the unmis
takable surge of his arousal against her.
‘What did you expect?’ His raw words betrayed his knowledge of her shock. ‘I’m a man, Shelley, and this time you’ve pushed me too far.’
He bent his head and her protest was lost beneath the fierce pressure of his mouth. He had kissed her before, but never like this, never with this hot raging need that bruised her lips, forcing them to part to admit the thrusting pressure of his tongue.
Locked against his body, Shelley felt herself shudder. A thousand reasons why she shouldn’t be here with him like this seethed in her brain, but her body wilfully refused to acknowledge them; her arms reached up and locked round his neck, and when Jaime lifted his mouth from hers to stare down at her with blank, shuttered eyes she pressed herself eagerly against him, pleading for him not to leave her.
‘What is it? Does rejecting me turn you on, Shelley, is that it? Does it make you eager for my lovemaking?’ His hands roamed her body, burning trails of fire against her skin, blocking out the bitterness of what he was saying, making her so fluidly responsive to him that they didn’t even matter.
‘I want you, Jaime.’ She whispered the words against his mouth, interspersing them with kisses, teasing its hard shuttered lines with the tip of her tongue. ‘And you want me too,’ she murmured when her teasing tongue could elicit no response. She started to move her hand down his body, and felt him clench all the muscles in mute protest. But there was nothing he could do about his physical arousal, and when she touched him she felt a small flare of triumph at the sensation of his hard, hot flesh beneath her fingertips.
‘You asked for this—you know that, don’t you?’ The rough anger in his voice should have frightened her. Instead, as he picked her up and carried her over to her bed, all she felt was a fierce thrill of excitement. ‘God knows I ought to resist.’ He said it like a man driven to the edge of his control and beyond it, and despite the darkness, Shelley knew that as he stripped off his clothes he was looking at her.
The sound he smothered against her throat as he came down beside her sounded more like a curse than an admission of desire. But there was desire in the way his hands roamed over her body and fierce need in the hunger of his mouth against her skin.