by Maggie Cox
Ailsa’s throat swelled. ‘Of course I don’t mind. I’m sure it’s been a great help to her to have you there’
‘Is Papa still with you?’ Saskia asked.
Picking up on the longing in the childish tones, Ailsa sensed her stomach clench tight. ‘Yes, he’s still here, sweetheart. He’s had to stay with me because the snow is so bad that he can’t make it back to the airport. That’s why he hasn’t been able to return to Copenhagen yet.’
‘You haven’t been fighting?’
The question was like a thunderbolt, arrowing down out of the sky, exploding shards of electricity at her feet. ‘Why do you ask that?’
At the other end of the line there was a brief pause, followed by a lengthy sigh. ‘It’s just that whenever you talk about Papa you get sad, and whenever he talks about you he sounds angry. I hope you don’t get in a fight. It’s nearly Christmas and I want you both to be happy.’
‘Darling, I—we’re neither of us unhappy, I promise you. And nor will we get in a fight.’ Biting back the near-overwhelming urge to cry, Ailsa started in surprise when at the very moment Jake came in through the back door.
Having already divested himself of his outdoor clothing, he clapped his hands together to warm them and threw her a disarming grin. His cheeks were ruddy from the biting winter wind and his eyes mirrored the electric blue of a cloudless summer sky. A second lightning strike exploded through her insides.
‘Mummy, are you still there?’
‘Of course I am, darling. Papa is back from his walk. Do you want to say hello?’
‘Yes, please!’
‘It’s Saskia,’ she said quietly, her hand over the phone’s mouthpiece.
Jake was at her side in an instant, and all but snatched the receiver from her. ‘Is that you, baby?’ she heard him ask huskily, and knew she didn’t imagine the slight break caused by emotion in his meltingly rich voice.
CHAPTER EIGHT
UNABLE to keep the hurt and anxiety from her tone after they’d both completed their conversations with Saskia, Ailsa tackled Jake about the worrying comment their daughter had made expressing her concern that they might ‘get in a fight’.
‘Why would she say something like that?’ she demanded, hugging her arms round the hip length, black angora sweater she’d matched with leggings. ‘She said that you sound angry when you talk about me.’
‘She’s never mentioned that to me before.’ His expression was immediately guarded, she noticed, almost drawn, as if this was an added complication he didn’t want to discuss. ‘If I’ve ever sounded angry it was probably because I was tired or stressing over something at work. I’ve certainly never been aware that I’ve conveyed anger towards you in her presence.’
‘Well, Saskia is a very intuitive child. I’m sure she wouldn’t have imagined it.’ Her fingers were trembling a little as they brushed her hair back from her face, and beneath her ribs Ailsa’s heart was galloping. ‘She also said that I sound sad whenever I talk about you.’
His lips twisted ironically. ‘Now, there’s a surprise.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m sure the thought of me doesn’t exactly fill you with joy. You must have plenty of regrets about how things worked out. In truth, apart from giving you Saskia, I must be the biggest mistake you ever made! All you ever wanted was a family, you told me once … but I even managed to screw that up for you.’
His tone was savage, his expression bleak. Shock eddied through her as though she’d stumbled into a ravine. She was dizzy with fear that the situation would only deteriorate if she didn’t find a way of rescuing it somehow. The need to talk things out had never been more urgent.
She swallowed hard. ‘I’ve never seen being with you as a mistake … ever. How could you believe such a crazy thing? And you didn’t screw anything up either. Was it your fault that that man was over the limit that night? Of course it wasn’t! Look, Jake … whatever personal hurts or damaging beliefs we’re carrying around about each other, don’t you think it’s time we aired them so that we can let them go and move on? It was a dreadful thing to lose our baby, but does that mean we should stop fully living? Stay static in some kind of frozen animation for the rest of our lives and never enjoy happiness again? I don’t think so. Besides … we have a daughter to think about as well as ourselves. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough of grief and sadness. I want to find a better way. I certainly don’t want our daughter growing up thinking that all we’ve done since the accident is blame each other for everything going wrong. That would be a horrible legacy.’
‘I don’t blame you for anything.’
‘No? Then why would you be angry with me? Why did you go back to your own bed in the middle of the night? That looks very much like you weren’t happy about something. Was it something I said? First you make love to me—then you shun me.’
‘I didn’t shun you.’
Jake looked distinctly uncomfortable. As if he might walk out at any second. In her mind, Ailsa implored him to stay. In the next instant the tension that emanated from his whole being seemed to dissipate—just as if he’d overcome his resistance for a deeper conversation and was now resigned to at least some discussion on the matter.
‘It wasn’t about anything you’ve done or said, Ailsa … I want you to know that. If I blame anyone for the situation between us it’s myself, and if it’s distressing Saskia because she’s picking up vibes that I’m holding on to some kind of anger about the past then clearly we have to do something about it … I have to do something about it … I agree.’
The silence that followed Jake’s surprising remark prickled with assorted tensions. He might have agreed they had to reconcile the past in some way, but Ailsa easily sensed the wealth of pain behind his words and the feeling that he was struggling to get a grip on it. She realised she would have to steer the ship.
‘Jake? We’d run into problems in our marriage long before the accident. Let’s be honest about that. That’s probably why you’re still angry. We never got to the bottom of our unhappiness then and we’re still avoiding the issue now. The accident just brought things to a horrible head.’
‘You’re right.’ His glittering gaze held her in a trance for several electrifying seconds before she reminded herself to breathe again. ‘You know what I think part of the problem was?’
Ailsa stared. ‘Tell me.’
‘I put work before my family. I worked hard not for more money, position or acclaim, but because I craved my father’s love and approval above all else. I never felt like I’d ever really had it … even as a child. He was a tough man to get close to. The hoops I’d put myself through to even win a smile from him you wouldn’t believe! I’m afraid I got so blinded by the need to win his regard that I thought that if I worked harder, became more important to the success of the business than anyone else, then that would help me reach my goal. When you used to try and get me to talk about things, to tell you how I was feeling … I resisted at every opportunity. Even though I sensed the tension between us getting worse, I somehow convinced myself that things weren’t really as bad as I imagined … I told myself that I could carry on behaving like some … some driven automaton and everything would still turn out all right. My father was a workaholic and I adopted the same soul-destroying pattern.
‘Why couldn’t I see it? Why couldn’t I see that my obsession was hurting my family? Hurting us, Ailsa? I loved you so much. Except I didn’t really demonstrate that to you, did I? Even when you found out you were pregnant with our son I still didn’t take the time to get closer to you … except in bed, of course. I’m so sorry. I behaved like the classic emotionless macho male and I want you to know that I’m not proud of it.’
Ailsa was so overcome by what he’d said that she didn’t know how to respond. Her body had no such dilemma. Unbidden, a purely primal desire for him to take her to bed drowned out any other thought or feeling. In all the years she had known him Jake had never spoken to her so frankly an
d honestly about his feelings. Suddenly the behaviour he’d exhibited during the dying days of their marriage—even before the accident—made so much sense. Having been raised without the love or approval or a parent herself, it wasn’t hard for her to understand why Jake had been so constantly driven to win his father’s regard. He was right. Jacob Larsen had been a good man, but he had definitely kept up a shield in front of his emotions.
How she wished that Jake had really been able to understand the depth of her love … had realised how it might have helped him. It probably wouldn’t have healed his sense of hurt around his father, but it might have gone some way to helping him make peace with it and letting him concentrate on the people in his life he meant the world to instead. A wave of heat suffused Ailsa at the spine-tingling memory of the candlelit passion they’d shared last night. But, as compelling as the idea of making love was, she didn’t want to bring their frank conversation to an end just yet.
‘I’m sorry too, Jake. If you’d shared some of this with me back then we might have been able to deal with things better. In any case, I’m not exactly the innocent party. You suggested that perhaps I was too young to get married early on. Maybe you were right … not because I didn’t genuinely love you or want to be with you, but because I too was looking for the love and the sense of belonging that I didn’t have in my childhood and I projected all that need onto you. It was probably a heavy burden.
‘It wasn’t your job to make me happy or to give me a sense of worth, but when you worked late night after night, weekend after weekend, I told myself it was because I wasn’t enough of a woman for you … that I must be lacking in some of the qualities a man needed in a wife because if I had them then you would be home more. The trouble was I had no real sense of myself as a worthwhile person at all, and you working all the time didn’t help lessen that. I thought marriage was the answer for me because I was afraid to be alone. Yet I’d spent most of my life until I met you on my own! I’ve realised I’m perhaps more resilient than I believed. Starting the craft business and taking care of Saskia has shown me that.’ Her lips formed a shy smile. ‘I don’t regret the time I spent with you Jake … even the sad and difficult days. I don’t regret it one bit. I want you to know that.’
The statement didn’t seem to reassure him. His steady gaze was definitely troubled. ‘So where does all this leave us?’ he asked.
‘Well … at least we’re being real with each other at last, don’t you think? By the time you leave here at least you’ll know that we’ve been honest with each other … that we’re both dedicated to making the future different … to making it better.’
With another shaky smile she turned away, her aim to fill the kettle and make tea for her and coffee for Jake—anything to take her mind off the provocative track of getting close to him where it seemed disturbingly to want to linger.
What Ailsa wasn’t prepared for was for Jake to step up behind her and draw her body firmly back against his. Had he somehow read her mind? The sensation of steely male warmth behind her made her insides melt. Lifting her hair off the back of her neck, he pressed his lips against the place he’d exposed, and although they were chilled from his winter stroll, the heat they injected into her bloodstream was near volcanic.
‘What are you—?’ The rest of her question helplessly died away as he laid his hand over her breast and cupped it.
‘It might not fix anything or put everything right … but I can’t help how I feel and right now I want you,’ he breathed, the volatile words emitted on a throaty rasp as he slid his other hand inside the waistband of her leggings and then down—right down inside her cotton panties. ‘I want you so bad I can hardly think about anything else …’
The answering gasp Ailsa emitted turned into a ragged whimper. Her whole body trembling with mindless need, she turned in his arms and the ravenous collision of mouths, teeth and tongues that followed turned the bones in her legs to running rapids that seriously threatened to unbalance her.
‘I think what we need is a nice soft bed … don’t you?’
She’d barely uttered, ‘Mmm …’ before Jake scooped her up in his arms as though she weighed not much more than one of the bundles of fabric she kept in her workroom and headed out into the hallway. She hung on with her arms round his neck, dropping incendiary little kisses onto his face and mouth as they travelled, even onto his indomitable chin with its sexy little cleft.
His intent burning gaze held hers all the way up the stairs to the guest bedroom. By the time he laid her down on the bed, with the ochre and scarlet silk eiderdown that she had crafted over a period of several months during a dry spell in her work, Ailsa was so consumed by longing and desire that her awareness of anything else but Jake simply dissolved … became utterly unimportant.
Staring up at him as he straddled her, she felt her focus intensify. Such deliberate examination at close quarters re-acquainted her intimately with the features she had fallen in love with all those years ago. It didn’t matter that time and tragedy had left their mark on them. Nothing could detract from the beauty of the precisely carved face and the blue eyes that were a sunlit lake one minute and a sultry moonlit night the next. Then there was the strongly defined nose that on a less handsome man might not be seen as an attribute but on Jake was simply absolutely right. But it was his mouth that she fixated on, because with a frisson of delicious anticipation she intimately knew the kind of immeasurable delights it could bestow …
In the otherwise silent room, Ailsa was suddenly very much aware of her own heightened breathing. They didn’t talk … Words could come later, but for now their bodies would do the talking instead.
As her lover sat astride her, he jettisoned his sweater and tee shirt, then leant forward to tug her angora jumper over her head. As soon as he’d got rid of it he lowered his dark blond head to draw an aching rigid nipple into his mouth through the filmy gauze and cotton of her bra. The pleasure was so intense, the force of it far beyond mere words, that tears welled in her eyes. She couldn’t begin to express how much she’d missed him. Over the years since they’d separated, when the thought of him caught her unawares—for instance when she was out shopping or working at her crafts or cleaning the house—it would instigate a deep ache of longing in the pit of her stomach that made her want to weep a veritable ocean of tears. Now, everything inside her burned for his possession.
Freeing her tingling breasts completely from her bra, Jake turned his attention to the rest of her clothing, and Ailsa luxuriated in the feeling of his hands moving impatiently over her skin. When she was naked beneath him, she eagerly wove her slender arms round his strongly corded neck as their lips hungrily met for another scalding kiss.
His senses were consumed with an awareness of everything about her that he’d loved and missed … the unique seductive scent of her body that was an aphrodisiac above all others, the beautiful long hair that resembled spun silk as it splayed out in chestnut waves on the pillow behind her, the almond-shaped amber eyes that needed no makeup in order for them to be sexy or appealing because they already had those attributes in abundance. Even the sight of the tiny mole behind her earlobe aroused his passion.
Jake had never fantasised about an ideal type when it came to women. He’d never preferred blondes over brunettes or vice versa, or tall and slim over shorter and more diminutive. Ticking boxes had never come into it. But if the idea of the perfect woman had ever unconsciously entered his daydreams, then surely Ailsa was it?
The fire in his loins reaching a near inferno of longing, he started to ease himself inside her. Unable to hold back the need to be closer, he pressed deep, then deeper still. It was as if his entire body became the living beating heart that throbbed so passionately in his chest. Ailsa’s softly arousing moans filled the air and Jake filled his hands with her small pert breasts, before drawing them into his mouth and then running his tongue over the firm satin buds at their tip. Outside it might be the dead of winter, but here in this soft warm bed it w
as a sultry Indian summer.
The lithe shapely body beneath him stilled suddenly. The incandescent amber gaze darkened. The hot silken purse that enveloped him clenched him tight again and again. ‘Jake …’ She whispered his name as though caught up in a spell, then drew him down to her again, buried her face in the hollow between his neck and shoulder.
The stunning thought that he must have done something good he wasn’t aware of to be rewarded with the pleasure of loving this incredible woman again crept up on him. The fresh realisation that she was the mother of his precious child hit him squarely in his gut, awakening almost primal feelings of possession and pride. This was Ailsa … the woman who’d stirred a wealth of passionate emotion in him he’d hardly known he possessed almost on sight … the woman who might have borne him a son if only—
He wasn’t quick enough to cut off the tide of pain and fury that accompanied the agonising memory. The power of it caught him on the raw and he thrust inside her so deep that his volatile feelings spilled over into his passion, his body jolting helplessly, as though swept away by a furious current. In that drowning moment he surrendered all desire for control, simply let the force that carried him take him straight to the dizzying heart of its power. The feral cry that poured straight from his lungs when he got there was like a savage shout of pain. What shocked Jake even more was that as he cried out boiling tears submerged his eyes.
Breathing hard, he lowered his head, desperately trying to recover some composure, turning his face away from Ailsa so she wouldn’t see the evidence of his distress. But the consoling gentle hand on his forearm and the deep sigh that made the tiny hairs covering his skin immediately stand to attention told him that she did see.
‘What’s wrong? Jake, tell me please.’
He didn’t answer straight away. Still breathing hard, he lifted his body from hers. Moving to the side of the bed, he leaned over to reach for his discarded jeans. Delving into a back pocket, he removed his calf leather wallet. Hesitating for only a moment, he extricated the grainy black and white print he kept in one of the sections and handed it to her.
