by Metsy Hingle
After being snagged by Jane and a group of bankers standing directly behind Liza, Jacques nodded at something that was said without even having heard and then he excused himself. He started to cut in on Liza’s conversation with a silver-haired matron named Mrs. Aber-something-or-other, whom he’d met earlier, when the other woman asked, “And how is Jack? Still as handsome as ever I bet?”
“He’s too handsome for his own good if you ask me. But he’s fine,” Liza replied, her voice growing soft and warm. “We’re going to pick out our Christmas tree tomorrow.”
Jacques froze. Ice skidded down his spine.
“It’s been ages since I’ve seen him. Why don’t the two of you come by for lunch.”
“We’d love to. Maybe after the holidays,” Liza said. “With the gala so close and Christmas next week, things are a little crazy.”
Jealousy and anger whipped through him, striking him equal blows. He shoved his hands into his pockets to keep from grabbing her. “Liza,” he said, his voice cold, clipped. “Are you ready to go yet?”
She spun around; her face paled as she looked at him. “I,..yes.” She turned back to the other woman. “Good night, Mrs. Abernathy. Thank you for coming.”
“Anytime, dear. Give Jack a hug for me.”
He followed her to the foyer in silence. Careful not to touch her, afraid of what he would do if he did, Jacques helped Liza on with her coat. Opening the car door for her, he slammed it closed hard enough to cause several heads to turn. He didn’t care. He couldn’t care.
He slapped the stick into gear and sent the car speeding down the driveway, causing the wheels to squeal on the icy road. He drove in silence, too angry to speak to her, to even look at her.
Jack. There really was another man and his name was Jack. Jealousy grabbed him by the throat and wouldn’t let go. Jacques wrapped his fingers around the steering wheel, anger building inside him.
He turned the car onto the icy road that led back to the city, taking the curve too fast. Liza screamed as the car slid off the road. Jacques held on to the wheel and worked the brakes, bringing the car to a sudden halt less than a foot from the trunk of a large tree.
“Have you lost your mind?” Liza cried out as she stared at the tree in front of them. Her eyes were wide and frightened, her face deathly white.
“Maybe I have,” he told her angrily. “It would not be the first time I have gone crazy because of you.”
“Because of me?” she repeated, shocked. Her hands curled into fists. “You bastard! You’re blaming me? You could have killed us both.”
Too blinded by his own swirling emotions, he didn’t see the fist coming. She caught him on the jaw with a right hook. Fury, pain exploded. Jacques grabbed her wrists, dragged her to him. “Who is he, Liza? Who in the hell is Jack?”
Seven
“Tell me,” Jacques demanded.
Liza’s body tensed and she jerked her wrists free of his grasp. Aided by the dim light from the car panels and the sliver of moonlight through the window, Jacques watched her face, saw her struggle to even her breathing, to bring her temper under control. Within moments, she had her cool, tidy expression back in place. The fact that she could do this so easily when his own emotions were scattered and raw only infuriated him more. “Dammit, Liza. Tell me who the hell Jack is.”
“You don’t know him.”
Jealousy and pain ripped through him again as he heard that soft note creep back into her voice. A tortured cry, more animal than human, escaped his lips as the black mist of rage enveloped him. His control snapped. Jacques grabbed her by the shoulders, dug his fingers into the thick wool of her coat. “Look at me, dammit. Tell me who he is and what he is to you.”
She looked at him out of those cool green eyes. “He’s someone I love very much.”
Her words were a blow, more effective than any punch. Jacques nearly doubled over at the pain that sliced through him. “You are lying.”
“No, I’m not. It’s true, Jacques. I love him.”
Temper torched, whipped through him like a hungry blaze. He tightened his fingers on her shoulders. He wanted to shake her, make her admit she wasn’t telling the truth. He shoved her away from him instead. Furious, hurting, he punched the dashboard of the car. Pain shot up his arm, a powerful, mind-bending pain that caused him a wealth of hurt, but it didn’t come close to the hurt inside him. He lifted his fist, ready to go another round with the dashboard. Anything to blot out the ache he was feeling inside.
“Jacques!” Liza grabbed his fist before he could use it again. “Stop it! Look what you’ve done to yourself. You’re bleeding.”
“I am bleeding inside, damn you.” He had believed her three years ago when she had told him she loved him.. That she would always love him. Only he hadn’t realized until now just how much that had meant to him, how much he had counted on her always loving him. It wasn’t fair. He had nothing to offer her—not love or even himself. But he wanted, no, he needed to know that she still loved him.
“I don’t think it’s broken. But of all the idiotic things to do.” She fumbled in her bag, pulled out a handkerchief and started to wrap his bleeding knuckles. “This isn’t even your car. What are you going to tell them at the rental agency when they see that dent—”
“I do not care about the car or the rental company.” He snatched the fingers trying to minister to him. “I do not believe you, Liza. I will not believe you. You are lying. You cannot love him. You said you would always love me.” Frantic, Jacques grabbed the labels of her coat and pulled her to him. “Tell me you are lying, Liza. Tell me you do not love this Jack.”
Her bottom lip quivered. “But I do love him,” she whispered.
Jacques squeezed his eyes shut as emotions ripped through him with the force and fury of a blizzard. When he opened them again, all he could see was the brilliant green of her eyes. He would not, could not let her go. Cursing her, cursing himself, he yanked her even closer, bringing her face to within inches of his own. Angry, he said, “Tell me, Liza. Does your Jack turn your blood to fire the way I do?”
When she didn’t answer, he gave her a little shake. “Does he?” he demanded.
“No.”
Too angry and aching to even enjoy that triumphant tidbit, he continued to push her. “And when he kisses you, does he make you feel the way I do? Does he make you feel like this?”
“Jacques, don’t—”
But he cut off her protest with his mouth. He captured her trembling lips, taking them, ravishing them in an angry, punishing kiss, refusing to believe he could feel so much and she so little. He plundered, he took, he demanded a response from her.
When he felt her tremble, heard the moan deep in her throat, satisfaction surged through him. And then he could no longer think, he could only feel as the ice gave way to flame. Then it was Liza who was demanding. Liza was the one who was curling her fists in his hair, grinding her mouth against his.
Tongues stroked, twined, in a frenzied duel that left neither of them the victor. When her teeth came down sharply on his lower lip, Jacques shuddered and repeated the maneuver on her.
He was dimly aware of the hum of the car’s engine, of the flakes of snow splattering against the windshield. But the fire that had started to burn inside him when he had first seen her again five weeks ago had him in its grip. He had to have, he had to feel himself buried inside her sweet warmth. He had to know that she was his, just as she had been his three years ago.
Dizzy with need, he jerked his mouth free and began to work on unfastening her seat belt. There would be no waiting for the comfort of a bed. He couldn’t wait that long. He had waited three years too long already. His fingers trembled as he continued to fumble with the seat belt’s latch. “I knew you could not love him,” he told her, triumphant.
“What?” Liza asked, her voice husky with arousal.
“I knew you did not love this Jack, that you still loved me,” he told her as he finally released the seat belt. He started to re
ach for her.
Liza caught his bruised hand. “No, Jacques. Wait.”
“But, Liza—”
“No. Don’t. Please.”
The alarm in her voice, the sudden stillness of her body had him yanking his gaze up to her face. Desire died. The blood in his veins turned to ice when he saw what he had done. That beautiful delicate mouth of hers was swollen. A drop of blood trickled at one corner, an ugly red stain against the soft white of her skin. “Chérie, I am sorry.” He started to press his finger to the bruised flesh. “I never meant to—”
She flinched, strained away from his touch. He stared at her face, the evidence of his brutality. He swore, first in French, then in English. He buried his head in his hands as he remembered another woman’s tear-stained face, another woman’s swollen mouth. And he remembered the black hatred that had consumed him, that had him dragging his father away from the serving maid and shoving him up against a wall.
Along with the memory, his father’s angry words came flashing back to him....
“You think you’re so much better than me,” his father had said.
“I am better than you. That’s why I’m leaving.” One more day, Jacques told himself. Just one more day. After his mother’s funeral, he would leave his father and this cursed house forever.
“Go ahead, turn your back on me, on your heritage. Leave. But it will not change who you are, what you are. You will still be Jacques Gaston. My son. The spawn of my seed. That’s right, my boy. It is my seed that’s given you that handsome face and strong body that the ladies like so much. And it is my seed that has given you the darkness in your soul.”
Releasing his grip on his father’s shirt, Jacques watched the other man slide to the floor. “I may look like you, but I am nothing like you. I will never be like you.”
Etienne Gaston laughed. He looked up at Jacques from where he lay sprawled on the floor. “You think not?” He wiped the blood from his mouth and smiled. “Take a look at yourself. Barely sixteen years old, but you’ve already got the Gaston temper. Your mother’s mollycoddling may have suppressed the darkness inside you for a while, but even she could not stamp it out. Nothing can. It is still there, my boy. Mark my words. It is as much a part of you as I am.”
Jacques wrenched himself from the past. His father had been right. The darkness was a part of him, just as his father had said it would be. Just as he had always known it would be. How many times had he felt it, tasted its bite in the throes of temper? Hadn’t he witnessed it just now in his rage with Liza? How could anything but the ugly darkness inside him have caused him to be so brutal, such a savage, with Liza?
He looked up at her again. The shock and disgust in those green eyes tore at him, making him feel like the beast he was. “God, Liza. I am sorry. So sorry.” He scrubbed a hand over his face.
Chagrined by her wanton behavior, Liza barely registered Jacques’s words. She turned away from him and made an effort to steady her breathing. She’d lost it. Completely. What hope did she have now of convincing him he meant nothing to her? Why would he believe her after she’d behaved like some sex-starved female, going up like dry timber to flame with nothing more than a kiss?
“Your mouth. Your beautiful mouth.” He started to touch her, then pulled his hand back. “I swear I never meant to hurt you.”
Still shaken by her own actions, Liza flicked her tongue to the corner of her mouth, touched the tender spot with her fingertip. She flushed at the tiny smear of blood. Shame washed through her as she thought of her brazen response, the way she had practically attacked him.
“I am sorry,” he told her again.
Angry with herself, with him, she snapped, “Forget it. It’s nothing. We both lost our tempers and went a little crazy. I’d like to forget it even happened.”
“But I cannot forget. How can I? How can you? I behaved like a savage.”
And so had she. Liza wanted to cringe. “You proved your point, didn’t you?” she said, her voice clipped, too angry with herself to recognize the extent of his torment. “You wanted to prove to me what an expert lover you are. To have me admit that there has never been anyone else like you. Well, I admit it, Jacques. No one has ever made me feel the way you do. I doubt that anyone else ever will again. Are you satisfied now? Does it make you happy to know what an unforgettable lover you are? Does it?”
“Liza—”
Jacques turned at the sudden flash of light at the car’s window, then swore at the tap that followed with a deep voice saying, “State police.”
Jacques pressed a button and the window on his side of the car slid down, letting in a blast of cold air and a flurry of snowflakes.
“You folks having car problems?” the state trooper asked, his gaze traveling from Jacques to Liza and back again.
“No, Officer. We just took that last curve a little too fast,” Jacques replied.
The trooper’s gaze scanned the inside of the car and stopped on Jacques’ battered hand.
“I’m afraid we got knocked around a little bit,” Liza explained.
“Better put your seat belts on and take it slow. Weatherman’s predicting another six inches of snow before morning.”
“Thank you. We will,” Liza said.
Tipping his head, the officer turned and went back to his own vehicle.
Moments later Jacques eased the car back out onto the road. In the interior of the car, only the swish of windshield wipers broke the dark silence, but the air was ripe with charged emotions and things that had been left unsaid.
Liza huddled into her seat, not sure whether to be grateful or disappointed that there were no more innuendos, no more blatant or subtle attempts on Jacques’s part to seduce her.
It was just as well, she decided. Now that she’d had a chance to rein in her own emotions, she realized just how upset Jacques had been with himself over his loss of temper. The torment she sensed in him wrenched at her heart, battering her resistance as nothing else could. She didn’t need him to tell her that the savage kiss they had shared had triggered some painful memory for him from the past. The utter shock on his face, the self-revulsion she’d heard in his voice when he’d cursed himself, had told her that for him the incident was somehow tied to the darkness he saw in himself.
Twenty minutes later when Jacques pulled the Mercedes into the slot next to her car in the parking garage, he cut the engine. He turned to her, his amber eyes solemn, his mouth giving no hint of the smile that usually came so easily. “I realize I have given you no reason to trust me, especially after the way I behaved earlier. But I wish you would consider staying at the apartment tonight. I do not like the idea of you driving home in this snow,” he continued. “There are many rooms, and I give you my promise that if you stay, you will have nothing to fear from me.”
The pain and self-reproach in his voice tore at her. “I’m not afraid of you, Jacques.”
“Then you should be. Look what I did to you.” He stared at her mouth a moment before looking away. “I am sorry, Liza. I never meant to hurt you.”
“You didn’t hurt me, Jacques. You couldn’t hurt me or any woman—not intentionally. How could you? You love women. All women,” she added, trying to use humor to lighten his mood. From his dark expression, she surmised it hadn’t worked. “It’s just not in your nature to do anything to deliberately hurt me or any woman.”
“That’s what I have always told myself. Tonight my actions proved otherwise. God, you must hate me. I hate myself for the way I behaved.” He rubbed the heels of his hands against his eyes.
Liza caught his hands, forced him to look at her again. She skimmed her fingers over his scraped knuckles. “I don’t hate you, Jacques. I could never hate you.”
Emotion darkened his eyes, turning them a deep gold. “Then tell me what it is you do feel for me, Liza.” When she didn’t respond, his fingers tightened around hers. He searched her face. “Tell me, Liza. Please.”
“I love you,” she admitted. What would be the point
in lying about it when her body had betrayed her feelings to him already?
He squeezed his eyes shut a moment, and Liza felt the shudder that went through him. When he looked at her again, his eyes shimmered with heat. “I have dreamed of hearing you say those words to me again. Even when I told myself I hated you for leaving me, I still wanted you. There has never been anyone else like you. I have missed you so much, ma chérie.”
“I’ve missed you, too.”
“I need you, Liza.”
The words made her heart sing. How many times had she longed to hear him tell her that he needed her, that he loved her. No, she corrected herself. He hadn’t said he loved her. At least not yet. But surely he would.
Drawing her to him, Jacques murmured something in French and kissed her slowly, lovingly. He planted kisses on her eyes, her cheeks, her mouth. Tender kisses, gentle kisses, each one slower, softer than the one before. It was as though he was trying to wipe out any memory of the kiss he’d taken in anger. Liza leaned into him, giving in to the dizzying pleasure of being in his arms.
“Ah, Liza.” His breathing grew ragged as he continued to make love to her with his mouth. “We have wasted so much time you and I. Let us not waste any more.”
No. She didn’t want to waste any more time, either. She had wasted three years too long already. Three years when they could have, should have, been together. She would tell him the truth. That he was a father. That they had a son. “Jacques, I...we need to talk.”
Groaning, he set her away from him and drew in a deep breath. “We will talk back at the apartment. As much as I want you, I am not going to make love to you in the front seat of a car.” He started the car engine.
“Wh-where are you going?”
“Back to the apartment.”
“But I can’t. I mean, I have to go home,” she told him.
Jacques frowned. “Why? You can stay with me at the apartment tonight. ”Tomorrow we will go to your place and get some of your things.”
