by Robyn Donald
Astonished, Jacinta stared at him. His mouth shaped a cynical smile. ‘So I wrote you off as just another woman who preferred another man. And then you turned up as Gerard’s fiancée. I could have broken his neck when he told me your name.’
Jacinta said shakily, ‘I don’t believe this.’
‘Why? You must know the effect you have on men.’
Stunned, she shook her head, and he said, ‘When I reminded you that Dean was engaged, I wasn’t thinking of Brenda. It was far more primitive than that. I was eaten up with jealousy. I had no reason to disbelieve Gerard, and to me it seemed that you were flirting with Dean, with Harry Moore, even with Laurence.’
She stared at him. ‘I was being friendly,’ she retorted scathingly.
A mocking smile—humourless, hard—twisted his mouth. ‘And I wasn’t being reasonable,’ he said, his amusement directed at himself. ‘I thought—Damn it, she flirts with everyone else, why not with me? You let Dean touch you—you laughed when he tickled your foot—but every time I laid a finger on you you leapt away as though I was poison.’
In a quiet, uneven voice Jacinta said, ‘I was afraid. Of myself. Of the way I felt.’
‘So,’ he said grimly, ‘was I. I realised very early after you came to Waitapu that I was in too deep; the only honourable thing to do was to pull away, and I tried. I travelled—God, I left the country every chance I could—but I couldn’t stay away from Waitapu. And that first physical attraction was supported and strengthened when I found that you were intelligent and funny and easy to talk to, that I liked just being with you, that I longed for the end of the day when I could come home and talk to you.’
Jacinta’s hands tightened into knots in her lap. His voice was steady, almost thoughtful, but although she understood the words and sentences, she couldn’t believe them.
‘And then,’ he said, rawness roughening his tone, ‘I made love to you, and it was the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me. Were you a virgin, Jacinta?’
Her knuckles ached as her grip tightened. ‘Yes,’ she said almost inaudibly.
He made a smothered sound and she looked up, to see the strong features compressed in what looked suspiciously like pain. ‘I didn’t know,’ he said, mastering his expression so swiftly she thought she must be mistaken. ‘Afterwards I realised that you were so surprised—so—so innocent—and I wondered. But you ran away and I couldn’t find you. Do you know what you did to me?’
She refused to meet his eyes. ‘I had to go.’
‘Because I drove you away? Because I didn’t believe you when you told me Gerard had lied?’
‘Partly.’ Her throat was dry and parched, as though she’d been without water for days
Paul walked across to the window and looked out at the roses on the edge of the terrace. The sun streamed in, gilding his profile. Blinking as she stole a swift glance, Jacinta’s heart tightened within her chest. He looked tired, she thought anxiously, that dynamic power dimmed.
‘When I turned up at Gerard’s temporary lodgings in Massachusetts the week after you left—and the gods must be laughing at this—he was not particularly glad to see me. I’d arrived at an awkward time.’
Jacinta shivered.
‘He was in bed with a woman,’ Paul finished, swinging to look at her, sitting there with the merciless light of the sun illuminating her every feature.
She said in a bewildered voice, ‘Who?’
‘An American. When she’d gone he admitted—very reluctantly—that he’d lied when he’d claimed to be engaged to you. He thought he was in love with you, and he was certain that if I thought so too I’d keep well away from you. He was wrong on both counts. Apparently he’s really fallen in love this time, and he wants to marry her.’
Explosively, Jacinta said, ‘I’ll kill him—does he have any idea of what he did?’
Just caused weeks of misery and pain!
Grimly, Paul said, ‘If he didn’t before, he does now, believe me. I was not tactful.’ He came and sat down beside her, taking her cold hands in his warm clasp. ‘Jacinta,’ he said, his voice deep and caressing, his eyes bluer than the sky at midday, ‘come back to Waitapu with me. I’ve missed you so much that I can’t even eat without remembering you. You took all the colour from my life when you fled. Bring it back.’
He meant it, she could tell, and he was totally confident that she would come.
‘I can’t,’ she said quietly.
His head came up. For a terrifying moment she saw the Viking in his eyes, determined, possessive, ruthless. With lips that barely moved, in a voice so silkily soft she had to strain to hear it, he asked, ‘Why?’
‘I can’t live with you when you’re still in love with another woman.’
Sheer male satisfaction gleamed in his eyes. ‘So you do love me,’ he said, his smile tight and feral.
Wrenching her hands free, she folded them again in her lap and said in a dead voice, ‘Yes, I love you. I wouldn’t have slept with you if I hadn’t loved you. But it’s no use. You might not think you’re still in love with Aura, but since she left you no woman’s ever got close to you.’
‘You have,’ he said curtly, his eyes watchful, almost calculating.
Colour fired her skin. Almost she wavered, but a gritty, uncompromising stubbornness urged her on ‘Am I the first woman you’ve made love to since she left you?’
His brows drew together. ‘No. I am not, however, still in love with Aura.’
She wanted to believe him so much that the wanting ate into her heart Her determination almost wavered, almost let her take the easy path. But she couldn’t rid herself of the memory of his face when he’d seen the woman he’d once been engaged to on that scrap of video film.
Whatever emotions he still felt for Aura had not been resolved. Jacinta had lived, she thought with sudden blinding clarity, a second-hand life. Instead of striking out on her own she’d fulfilled her mother’s thwarted ambitions, and although she didn’t regret that, she was not going to take second-best for love. She wanted Paul intensely, but she wanted all of him, not the hand-me-down love he offered.
If she surrendered to her own driving needs without that commitment from him, her love would eventually degenerate into an angry passion diluted by resentful yearning.
The stark moment of insight gave her the strength to continue. ‘Do you ever talk to her when you see her at parties and social occasions?’
‘No.’
She thought that was going to be his sole answer, but he got up and walked across the room, his shoulders set, his spine straight as a steel rod. At the window he swung around and looked at her. His voice was cool, detached, glacial. ‘I haven’t spoken to either of them since the day Aura told me she wasn’t marrying me.’
Jacinta waited. He remained silent, so eventually she said huskily, ‘Her husband was your best friend, yet you haven’t said a word to him for five years. Even if you aren’t in love with her—and I think you are—she still controls your life.’
‘What the hell do you mean by that?’ he asked, each word falling distinctly into the still air.
She wouldn’t retreat. ‘Would you be happy if she walked into this room right now?’
As the rigidity of his expression gave her the answer a hope—so fragile she hadn’t been aware of its existence—died.
To have heaven offered to her and be forced to turn it down...
Stiffly he said, ‘No.’
At least he didn’t try to explain or excuse his response. ‘Paul, it won’t work.’
Fury glittered, dangerous as lightning, in the blue of his eyes. ‘What do you want?’ he demanded. ‘I love you, but I’m not going to—’
She had to interrupt before he broke her heart. ‘It won’t work,’ she repeated, unable to think of anything else to say. ‘I’m sorry.’
He didn’t beg, but then she didn’t expect him to. ‘In that case,’ he said with dangerous calmness, ‘there’s nothing I can do.’
Jacinta sat
still, her urgent heart shouting, Give in, give in.
With a cold-blooded calculation, Paul said, ‘I assume you’re not pregnant.’
‘I’m not.’
‘Good. And you don’t need to run away from me; I won’t be bothering you again.’
Surprisingly enough, she coped.
Work helped. She lost more weight, but she forced herself to make friends, to go out, to ignore the ravening physical hunger that tore at her, and the even more insidious need to hold Paul close, to hear his voice, to see him.
But she never managed to banish him entirely from her mind, and several times she almost gave up and went back to Waitapu to see if he still wanted her. Each time an instinct stronger than need warned her that she wasn’t able to compromise so drastically. For her, it seemed, it had to be all or nothing.
Summer dragged wearily on; she still enjoyed the shop, liked the two women she shared the house with, stoically endured the slow process of making some sort of life for herself. As autumn swept in, with mellow days and cooler nights and a blessed reduction of humidity, she finished her manuscript and began to doggedly edit and rewrite
Once she saw an article in the newspaper raving over the introduction of a new wine; it was not normally something that would have interested her, but the name ‘Aura’ sprang out and snared her attention. Angry with herself for wilfully adding to her pain, she read about the superb red which was already a classic, grown some forty miles north of Auckland. It had been released with an enormous amount of fanfare—orchestrated by the vintner’s wife, Aura Jansen. The wine writer was obviously in love with the woman as well as the wine.
‘Join the gang,’ Jacinta said viciously.
There was a photograph. Even in the newspaper shot the woman’s beauty shone forth, warm and ripe and—loved, Jacinta thought as her gaze went from Aura Jansen to the man beside her.
She sucked in a deep breath. This fiercely dominating man had been Paul’s best friend. Not handsome, no, far from it, yet Flint Jansen’s starkly hewn buccaneer’s face drew the eye.
As she threw the newspaper out she thought that it said a lot about Paul’s personality. He looked a golden man, one of fortune’s darlings, yet beneath that handsome ex-tenor was a wild streak, buttressed by force of personality and a formidable will that could break bones.
And hearts, she thought.
Oh, it would be so easy to take what he offered.
And her will was every bit as strong as his, because she couldn’t do it, couldn’t surrender herself and her life to a man who valued her only as second-best.
A couple of days later a sudden foretaste of winter whipped a cold southerly wind through the city, accompanied by swift showers that brought with them the acrid scent of long-dry roads and pavements. As it was Jacinta’s turn to buy the groceries, she was carrying two large bags from the bus when she tripped in a puddle and skidded onto her knee, dropping one bag.
Muttering maledictions, she dragged herself up and stumbled on her way. With the malice of fate the plastic bag, weakened by its collision with the wet pavement, waited until she was halfway up the front steps before it burst.
Furious, she raced up and dumped what she’d been able to save by the door, then set off to pick up the cauliflower that had bounced all the way down. It didn’t surprise her in the least when she slipped on the last step and landed in a puddle put there expressly for that purpose.
The cauliflower was there before her, lying in the muddy water with its florets buried. She’d probably have to disinfect it before it was fit to eat.
‘Oh, hell!’ Jacinta spluttered.
Two hard hands grabbed her shoulders and with a swift, smooth movement hauled her upright. Confounded, she stared into eyes the clear, fierce blue of a summer sky.
And realised Just how much she’d been lying to herself since she’d last seen him. To her horror and astonishment, she began to cry.
‘You’ve hurt yourself,’ Paul said harshly. ‘Where? Your ankle? Your knee? Jacinta, stop that and tell me where it hurts!’
‘I’m not hurt,’ she sobbed. ‘Not physically, damn you! How dare you come here and—’
‘We have to talk. Do you want me to carry you up the steps?’
‘No!’ She pushed him away.
Instantly she felt bereft, her addiction fed and intensified by the few moments spent hugged against his hard body. She turned, but remembered the cauliflower and stooped to retrieve it. With jangling nerves and an odd emptiness in her stomach, she led the way into the house, walking straight past the rest of the groceries.
Paul scooped them up, and followed her down the chilly hall and into the kitchen. As soon as he’d dumped the bags onto the bench he turned and surveyed her.
‘Good,’ he said, ‘I’m not the only one who’s suffered. Will you come back with me to Waitapu?’
Tears ached in her throat and behind her eyes. Swallowing, she shook her head.
His smile was sharp and brutal as a bayonet. ‘Yet you love me.’
It was useless trying to deny it. She nodded and went to put the cauliflower, still dripping with water from the puddle and probably inedible, into the sink.
‘I went to see Aura and Flint,’ Paul said casually. The vegetable fell from her nerveless fingers and thudded onto stainless steel. Jacinta stared at it without seeing it, her whole attention on the man who stood behind her. ‘Why?’ she asked in a thin voice.
‘Because I decided you could be right.’
God, she was an idiot. ‘I know I am,’ she muttered.
‘In one thing only,’ he amended swiftly. ‘I proved that I’m certainly no longer in love with Aura, but you were right in that I needed to see her.’
Hope blew faintly on Jacinta’s dreams, warming the embers. Jumpy, her pulses racing, she turned and began to pick up the groceries from the faded bench that had been someone’s idea of high kitchen fashion in the seventies and stack them into the pantry.
‘Leave those alone, for heaven’s sake.’
A voice from the door enquired, ‘Jacinta, is everything all right?’
‘Yes, no problems,’ Jacinta said swiftly.
‘Oh. OK.’ The owner of the house retreated down the hall.
Paul said curtly, ‘I have to see you alone. Come for a drive with me.’
She couldn’t think, could barely breathe—so completely focused on the man behind her that she sensed his movements and stiffened even before his hand fastened onto her arm and he swung her to face him.
‘You look like a ghost,’ he said, his voice deepening into concern.
Ignoring her resistance, he pulled her into his arms, surrounding her with warmth and strength and the wonderful male scent of him.
‘Darling,’ he muttered, a note she’d never heard before in his voice. ‘What have I done to you? How can I convince you that I love you more than I ever loved Aura, who has turned out to be a very nice woman—’
It was that last comment that fanned the embers of hope into a small flame. Startled, she lifted her face and asked incredulously, ‘A nice woman?’
His eyes were blue and fierce, lit by a tiny glint of humour. ‘Yes,’ he said seriously, his mouth ironic. ‘A very nice woman. Oh, marriage and happiness has made her even more beautiful, but that sultry glamour that ensnared me before no longer has any power over me. I looked at her, and although I enjoyed her beauty I felt nothing but interest and a wry sort of friendship You were right I’d managed to convince myself that I’d buried my heart along with our engagement. Oh, not consciously, and in a way I’m glad it happened—’
‘Why?’ she repeated, back on the roller-coaster again.
‘Because I might have given in earlier to my desire for a settled family life and children, and got married.’
Her heart lurched. He was looking at her with naked intensity, the good humour and confidence stripped from him to reveal the man beneath, a man consumed by his emotions.
At that moment she believed. ‘Then I’m glad
too,’ she whispered, losing herself in the vivid clarity of his gaze. He bent his head, but from down the hallway came the sound of more footsteps. Paul said something curt and crisp beneath his breath and let Jacinta go.
‘Let’s go,’ he said grimly. ‘We can’t talk here.’
Jacinta nodded, and went with him. The showers had stopped coming, and to the west the sky was a clear, sparkling blue beneath an arch of cloud. Jacinta looked at the neighbour’s dahlias, glowing in colours so hot they almost hurt the eyes, set bravely against the dark hedge.
Once in the car Paul said, ‘We can go back to my flat.’
For some reason she didn’t want to. She said, ‘No, let’s go up One Tree Hill.’
He gave her an ironic glance, but drove there, winding up the side of the small extinct volcano until they reached the car park at the summit. Neither said anything on the way, nor did they speak until Paul had switched off the ignition and they’d both gazed for a short time at the panorama below, city and seascape, small volcanic domes and parks. Up on the grassy hill, they were separated from the everyday bustle and hurry.
Paul said, ‘I began to fall in love with you the first time I saw you at Waitapu.’
‘You despised me,’ she said indignantly.
‘Not as much as I despised myself for wanting the woman who was using Gerard.’
She flinched, and he said swiftly, ‘I couldn’t keep on believing that.’
‘But you accused me of it after we’d spent the night together.’
Paul turned his head to look at her. She glowered back. His handsome face was taut, his eyes very bright and piercing as they held hers.
‘I was running away,’ he said, choosing his words carefully, ‘behaving like a coward. By then I couldn’t believe Gerard, but I knew that whatever I felt for you wasn’t something I could control. Right from the start I was in a fight I couldn’t win; half of me was trying to convince myself that you were just looking for security, the other, clearer-eyed, half insisted that the honesty I saw in your eyes was the truth. But that I was falling in love—so much that I no longer cared whether you were engaged to him—no, I wouldn’t face that.’