by Robyn Donald
Jacinta thought she understood. ‘And that’s why you fought it, because you hated losing control. I suppose that’s how you felt with Aura.’
He shook his head. ‘No, that’s what frightened me,’ he admitted. ‘I thought I loved her, yet there was simply no comparison. I couldn’t analyse the emotions you caused—they were too bloody fresh and painful and overwhelming, and they scared the hell out of me.’
She blinked. ‘I kept telling myself that attraction wasn’t the same as falling in love,’ she confessed shakily. ‘I didn’t believe in love at first sight, therefore it had to be sex.’
‘Idiots, both of us. I knew I had no right to make love to you; I’d done to Gerard exactly what Aura did to me.’ He smiled without humour, self-condemning. ‘My cowardice and refusal to accept that I’d actually fallen in love with you persuaded me to drive you away. But I had no intention of losing sight of you.’
She looked out across the harbour. A small plane newly escaped from the pull of gravity soared into the east and headed away. ‘I know,’ she said.
‘I learned,’ he said in a clipped, tight voice, ‘that the small amount of honour I’d salvaged was no recompense for the agony of not knowing where you were, of sleeping each night in an empty bed that seemed scented by your body. So I set my bloodhound on your track, and went to see Gerard. And when I found you again, you turned me down.’
‘I love you too much to be second-best,’ she said quietly. ‘But, oh, it was the most enormous temptation, and I don’t know how long I’d have held out.’
‘Good,’ he said with a satisfaction that swung perilously close to arrogance. ‘And you were right, of course. I needed to see Aura again.’
Jacinta understood. She said, ‘And now you’re sure.’
‘Not about you. I need to know,’ he said, his voice thickened and uneven, ‘whether you’ll marry me.’ His smile twisted. ‘My life isn’t worth much without you. I go through the motions but I don’t seem to be actually alive. When you left me, Jacinta, you took the sun with you.’
And then the smile vanished, to be replaced by a hard line. ‘Oh, what the hell?’ he said unsteadily. ‘I can’t even fool myself any longer. I need you so intensely, so passionately, that I have no defences. That’s what infuriated me and scared me when I saw you in Fiji. I’d been burnt once—I had no intention of letting myself fall in thraldom to another belle dame sans merci.’
‘Is that what Aura is? A beautiful, merciless woman?’
‘No,’ he said on a harsh breath. ‘And neither are you. It was a shoddy little piece of self-deception on my part. Jacinta—’
With troubled eyes she interrupted. ‘What about the woman who was in Fiji with you?’
‘She’s a good friend who needed tune off to get over a situation she’d found herself in. We weren’t lovers.’
Jacinta believed him, but she had to probe further. ‘Gerard pointed out a woman in Ponsonby one day—’
‘We broke up after I came back from that trip,’ he said, his gaze holding hers. ‘We’d been lovers for over a year, but I was never in love with her, nor she with me. After Fiji I knew it had come to an end. I hated leaving you there—I wanted to snatch you up and somehow make everything right for you, but I couldn’t.’
‘Nobody could,’ she said soberly. ‘We had to get through it together, Mum and I. In the end she died a lot sooner than we thought she would.’
‘I didn’t see the death notice. I was going to write.’
‘I only put it in the local paper.’
He gave a short, unamused laugh. ‘And then you turned up as Gerard’s fiancée, and from that first night at Waitapu I knew just how much trouble I was in. You said you’d never tasted champagne, and I wanted to be the one who introduced you to all the things you’d never known.’
Jacinta said, ‘You hid it very well!’
His smile was sardonic and self-derisory. ‘Did I? I thought I was very easy to read. What really got me worried was that for days at a time it was perilously easy to forget all about Gerard.’
‘But sometimes you remembered,’ she said softly, recalling the times when he’d ‘gone away’, changing from the Paul she’d been falling in love with to a distant, grimmer man.
‘Then I’d look at you and think, She’s nothing like Aura.’ His mouth hardened into a straight line. ‘In fact, that’s one of the reasons I first fell in love with you. You are her exact opposite.’
It hurt, but she couldn’t let him see that. As the beautiful face of the woman he’d loved and lost flashed into her mind she said, ‘Very much so.’
He laughed, a cynical sound with no humour. ‘Don’t put yourself down, Jacinta. On the night of the party I realised that you had the same passionate allure as Aura, and I thought, I’ve done it again.’
‘I’m not—’
‘You looked just like that picture Laurence Perry said you reminded him of—Leighton’s Flaming June. When I saw the print I understood exactly what he saw—a luscious, totally, splendidly over-the-top woman reeking with lazy, seductive sensuousness. I wanted to drag you off to bed away from everyone else—and I despised myself for wanting you so much.’
‘Paul, I know those colours look good on me, but—’
‘Every man at that party was slavering at the jaws,’ he said. Blue fire heated his eyes. ‘Although I’m possessive I can control it, but that night I was eaten up with jealousy and desire and disgusted anger with myself.’
‘So that’s why you were so cold.’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you make love to Meriam Anderson?’ she demanded fiercely.
He lifted his head. ‘No. I didn’t want to, and even if I had, I don’t use women to appease a meaningless hunger.’
Jacinta was ashamed, but she said, ‘She gave the impression that you were together, and you did nothing to change it.’
‘I was running scared. I wanted you out of my life and as far away from me as possible, but I knew I couldn’t throw you out because I’d promised bloody Gerard.’ His voice hardened. ‘I didn’t know what to do, so I used Meriam in that way.’
She laughed softly. ‘I thought you were so rational, so level-headed.’
‘I used to think so too, but cowardice makes fools of us all. I didn’t want to make love to you—I knew it would only complicate things—but when you touched me that night nothing could have stopped me. I’d starved for you, become obsessed with you, and at that moment I’d have killed to get you into my bed.’
Chills ran down her spine, pulled her skin taut. ‘I know,’ she said slowly. ‘I knew it was dangerous, but—I was like you.’
‘Then I drove you away.’ His fingers drummed a few seconds on the steering wheel, fell still. In silence they watched a huge plane swoop low over the city before landing at the airport some miles away.
Without looking at her, Paul said roughly, ‘And when I found you again I thought that everything would be all right, that you’d fall into my arms and we’d be happy together. But you refused to have anything to do with me, and I walked out in a monumental temper. I had to go overseas for ten days, and when I came back I hoped you’d be at Waitapu, waiting for me. It took me quite a while to realise that you weren’t going to give in. So I wangled an invitation to the launching of Flint and Aura’s new wine.’
‘Were they pleased to see you?’ she asked.
‘I think so.’
He leaned over and took her hands in his big, warm clasp, pulling them up to lie over his heart. ‘We might become friends again,’ he said with a calm detachment that was belied by the thundering pulse beneath her palm. ‘And if we do I’ll be glad, because I’ve missed them both. But you—I more than miss you. I ache for you at night and I get up and walk the beach, remembering the night we made love, and the way you tasted, sweet and tempting and mysterious, and the ache turns into a hard, hot hunger that drives me insane.’
‘Oh, yes,’ she said, and was drawn into the warm security of his arms. ‘Like losin
g half of myself, like dying slowly by inches, like walking alone through a world of grey emptiness...’
‘Never again,’ he said, and the words were a vow. ‘Never again, my heart, my glorious, summer girl, I swear.’
CHAPTER TEN
JACINTA McALPINE slid into the slip dress of gold satin and surveyed herself in the mirror. Her hair, caught up into a demure knot at the back of her head, glowed in the light of the lamp.
She looked good, she thought, allowing herself a slightly immodest satisfaction. A year ago she’d never have worn a dress like this. It revealed an awful lot of skin.
But then a year ago she’d only been married for six months and she’d still found it difficult to see herself through Paul’s eyes. Now she knew she looked good in the vivid, tawny sunset hues that made the most of her hair and eyes and colouring. And the happiness of being loved had given her grace at last; it was quite some time since the last time she’d tripped.
She grinned wickedly at the framed print tucked behind the door. Flaming June, indeed!
‘Ready, darling?’ Paul came through from the bedroom, stopping just inside the door. ‘You look like high summer,’ he said, eyes kindling.
‘We both look very glamorous,’ she told him, adjusting his black bow tie with a languorous finger. ‘Evening clothes do something electric to your hair and eyes,’ she said softly, tracing very lightly the contours of his mouth. ‘And yes, I’m ready.’
He laughed deeply, catching her hand and kissing the palm before his other hand emerged from behind his back, a ribbon of fire running through his fingers. ‘Not quite ready, not yet. Turn around,’ he said.
The stones were gorgeous, in a modern setting of gold that enhanced their magnificent colour. Paul put the necklace around her throat and did up the clasp.
‘Paul, you spoil me. They’re so beautiful—thank you. What are they?’ Jacinta leaned back into the warm solidity of him as she surveyed their images in the mirror. Strong and lithe and safe, she thought dreamily; he was the rock-solid base for her life, because the dynamic power and intensity, the spice of danger, were leashed firmly by his mastery of himself and his emotions.
‘Padparadscha sapphires,’ he said, his hands coming to rest on her shoulders. ‘It’s a Singhalese word meaning lotus blossom. Did you know that “jacinth” was the word used for the colour orange until oranges came on the scene in the Middle Ages?’
‘No,’ she said, shivering as he slid his hands beneath her breasts. They tingled, subtly expanding, and through the gold silk she saw the nipples bud.
‘That’s what your name means. It’s the Spanish form of the Greek word for hyacinth.’
‘Hyacinth?’ She turned her head. ‘Really? I’ve never seen an orange hyacinth. I have seen hyacinths the colour of your eyes, though.’
‘Perhaps there used to be orange hyacinths in ancient Greece,’ he murmured, his serene expression belying the glitter of his eyes. ‘The stones suit you—they look like flames around that elegant throat.’
Because she needed to think, she pulled his hands down to her waist and held them still. ‘I got a phone call from America today.’
‘America?’ He’d bent to kiss the pale skin of her shoulder, but now his head came up.
‘Yes.’ She met his eyes in the mirror, hers shimmering with gold. ‘It was the editor I sent the manuscript to. Paul, they want to publish it!’
‘I knew it,’ he said triumphantly. ‘I knew you’d get there one day. When?’
‘Some months after the baby’s born, I imagine,’ she said sweetly.
He went very still. ‘I didn’t know we were pregnant,’ he said eventually in a neutral voice.
‘Neither did I until today. Do you mind?’
His arms tightened around her. In a voice she’d never heard him use before, he said, ‘When I look at you I see everything there is—in this world and the next—for me to love. Even delighted doesn’t exactly describe how I feel. Thrilled—ecstatic—no, exalted probably describes it best.’
He turned her and kissed her, gently and then with increasing ardour, so that she gasped and yielded, some dim part of her brain remembering to be grateful that she hadn’t yet put on lipstick.
And then she didn’t think for a long time. Eighteen months of marriage had proved entirely wrong the old adage that familiarity bred contempt. Jacinta still shivered with anticipation whenever she saw her husband, and their lovemaking was sweet and fiercely tender and heated, a wild, rapturous joining of bodies and souls.
‘How do you feel?’ he asked later, when she was stroking colour onto her slightly tender lips
‘Great. Shall we tell anyone or keep it a secret?’
He laughed. ‘Darling, we’ll do whatever you want to, although isn’t there some female Mafia that knows exactly when a woman is pregnant?’
She put the lipstick down and gave him a saucy grin. ‘Let’s see if Aura realises.’
He dropped a kiss on her head. ‘I love you so much,’ he said, his voice steady and sure and vibrant. ‘You’ve gathered all the sunlight in the world into yourself and surrounded me with it.’
Jacinta sighed and whispered, ‘If Aura and Flint weren’t celebrating their gold medal wine I’d suggest we stay home. But one day soon we’ll want their help to celebrate a book, so we’d better go. Afterwards...’
Hand in hand, they went out and into their future.
ISBN: 9781408984598
A Forbidden Desire
© Robyn Donald 1997
First Published in Great Britain in 1999
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