Lovestorm (Harlequin Treasury 1990's)

by Jennifer Taylor

  Helen tried to push his hand away from her mouth but Jacob merely captured her hands in his and held them behind her back, curving her closer against the hard strength of his body while he smiled down into her angry face. ‘You wanted my kisses just now, Helen. You wanted anything and everything I was prepared to offer you and we both know that, the same as we both know it’s just a matter of time before we repeat that very enjoyable experience.’ His fingers took another lazy, sensuously disturbing journey across her mouth before he let her go and turned to walk away.

  Helen drew herself up, hating him for his arrogance, for the fact that he knew how she had felt. ‘There won’t be any repeat, Jacob. I won’t let you get close enough for that!’

  He stopped to look back, big and indolently at ease, his dark hair falling rakishly across his brow, his mouth slightly swollen as hers must be from those long, drugging kisses. ‘I’m prepared to wait to disprove that, Helen, for however long it takes.’ He shrugged lightly. ‘I have waited a long time already so it won’t worry me. But one day in the not too distant future you will admit that you want me and what I can offer you.’

  ‘Never! Never, Jacob!’ She shouted the denial aloud but he didn’t bother answering as he disappeared inside the house. Helen sat down abruptly on the chair, clenching her hands against a sudden wild panic. He was wrong! She didn’t want him and never would. What had just happened had been some sort of fluke. She was tired, her nerves stretched to their limits with all the strain she’d been under recently, and Jacob was experienced with women; he knew how to draw a response from them. But now she knew how dangerous he could be she would never make the mistake of allowing him to get so close again!

  * * *

  The sun was an orange ball in a cloudless blue sky. Helen adjusted the back of the sun-lounger as she sat up to rub more sunscreen into her skin. In the three days since they had arrived in Nassau the weather seemed to have got hotter and hotter. Even Rita-May, the local woman Jacob employed on a daily basis to clean and shop, had admitted that the heat was starting to affect her too that morning.

  ‘You need to take care, Helen. Don’t stay out in this sun too long. It would be foolish with your skin.’

  Helen glanced round at the sound of that familiar deep voice, feeling her heart giving that strange little leap it had started doing each time Jacob appeared recently. Was it just nerves causing this strange reaction? She imagined so, and with just cause.

  Although they had maintained a civilised veneer of harmony during the past three days as they had swum and sailed the small yacht Jacob kept moored off shore close to the bungalow, Helen had the feeling that it had been merely a brief cessation of hostilities in the battle they were waging. That first night lay between them, not forgotten but merely pushed to the background for now until Jacob chose to mention it again. He had developed a way of watching her which told her he was biding his time, confident that what he had predicted would come true, and although she told herself that the dangers of her making such a mistake again were negligible, it still made her feel on edge and far more aware of him than she wanted to be.

  Now she forced a note of indifference to her voice, refusing to let him guess how she felt. ‘Don’t worry, Jacob. I’m well able to look after myself without you having to concern yourself about me.’

  He stepped down off the veranda and came across the sand to where she was lying on the lounger, stopping just a few feet away as he subjected her to an intent scrutiny which made her shift self-consciously on the cushions. In a slow, deliberately thorough sweep, his eyes traced the curves of her slender body in the clinging one-piece black costume before coming back to rest on her face.

  Helen tried to hold his gaze, her face colouring when she saw the light in his blue eyes. Silently but clearly Jacob was letting her know that he enjoyed looking at her in the revealing outfit and Helen wasn’t proof against that no matter how hard she tried!

  ‘I am your husband, Helen, so naturally I’m concerned about your welfare.’

  She glared up at him as she drew the lightweight wrap around her. ‘How touching! I could almost believe you mean that!’

  ‘Of course I mean it. My main concern for some time now has been your well-being, Helen.’

  His words sparked her anger. ‘Your main concern has been getting what you want, Jacob! And it made no difference who suffered so long as you achieved that.’

  His face darkened as he came the last few feet to stand towering over where she was lying. In contrast to how Helen was dressed he was wearing an elegant lightweight suit in an expensive pale grey fabric with a white shirt and a grey and burgundy silk tie, and he looked every inch the tough, ruthless business tycoon as he stood there and stared down at her so coldly.

  ‘You have never suffered at my hand, Helen. Let’s get that straight.’

  ‘No? Then what do you call the loss of my family’s business and home? Do you imagine it was pleasant watching my father making himself ill going through the agony of that, Jacob? And it was all your doing.’

  He sat down abruptly on the lounger, trapping her with his body so that she couldn’t get away. ‘I had nothing whatsoever to do with any of it, Helen. Nothing!’

  ‘How can you say that? You drove my father to near bankruptcy because you wanted to take away everything we had, punish us for the “wrongs” we had done you!’

  He stopped her when she tried to wriggle away, his fingers biting into the soft flesh of her upper arms as he held her, while he stared into her angry face with an anger equal to if not greater than her own. ‘Is that what your father told you? Well?’ He shook her hard, sending the heavy weight of red hair spilling from beneath the straw sun hat she was wearing. It tumbled over her shoulders, a fiery contrast to her ivory skin, but Helen made no attempt to push it back, too caught up with the moment and what Jacob was saying.

  ‘No one told me anything, Jacob,’ she spat venomously back. ‘No one needed to. I added it all up for myself and worked out what had gone on!’

  ‘Did you, indeed?’ He laughed harshly in a way which made the hair on the back of Helen’s neck rise. Suddenly she felt afraid of the anger she had aroused in him, afraid of what other emotions it might unleash as well.

  ‘Jacob, I—’

  He cut her off as though she hadn’t spoken, his fingers holding her so hard that Helen winced from the pressure, yet she knew that he was unaware of it. ‘You saw what you wanted to and made the deductions you chose to make because you were biased. What do you imagine I did, Helen? Do you honestly believe that I found some way to drive your family’s thriving business into the ground? Do you really think that I was so concerned with doing that, to gain possession of some small firm, when I had a multi-million-pound company to run?’ He shook his head, a lock of dark hair falling over his forehead, black and glittering in the hot sun. His skin had been tanned when they had arrived in Nassau and with the heat of the past few days his tan had deepened to a mahogany hue. He looked almost savage sitting there with those brilliant blue eyes glittering, his hard-boned face set. It wasn’t difficult to imagine Jacob in the guise of one of the pirates who centuries before had made the Bahamas their hunting ground. Even in that sort of rough company Jacob could have held his own and come out on top, Helen suddenly thought. It wasn’t a comforting realisation.

  ‘Grow up, Helen. See things for what they really are, not what you try to make them.’

  She shook the disquieting thoughts aside. ‘Meaning what?’

  ‘Simply that the fact is that your father was on the verge of placing the business into the hands of the receiver when he approached me to see if I would help.’

  The flat statement almost took her breath away. ‘What? Did you really say what I think you did?’

  Jacob smiled tightly, his expression never softening. ‘Yes.’

  ‘And do you really imagine that I would believe such a trumped-up tale?’ She tried to inject scorn into her voice, but knew she hadn’t been successful when Jacob
smiled again with a shade more warmth. It made her feel deeply uneasy, as though he knew things she didn’t.

  ‘There’s nothing trumped-up about it. The business was on its uppers when I became involved at the request of your father. The bank had already recalled its loan to the firm but there was no way it could be met. The firm had been trading at a substantial loss for several years by then and there was nothing left. Even the mortgage your father raised on the house hadn’t been enough to cover a fraction of it.’

  ‘Mortgage? Oh, but—but that can’t be right! I had no idea—Father didn’t...’ She trailed off, watching helplessly as Jacob nodded.

  ‘It’s the truth. I imagine your father didn’t tell you because he wanted to shield you from the hard facts for as long as he could, but it’s all true, Helen. Every word I’ve told you.’

  ‘But how did the business get in such a state? It used to be a thriving concern, one of the oldest and most respected electrical manufacturing companies in the country. Are you telling me that you had nothing to do with its downfall, that you did nothing to ruin it? I don’t believe that!’

  ‘I am. If the business failed it was none of my doing.’ He shrugged. ‘Lack of foresight, poor management, just plain basic economics were the contributing factors. To keep any firm healthy one always has to be looking ahead for new ideas, a fresh approach to set it ahead of any competition. And you need to trim costs ruthlessly. Your father did none of those things and the consequence was that the company was running at a huge loss for years before I became involved.’

  ‘But why would Father turn to you? It’s crazy! There must have been someone else he could have gone to?’ Helen hadn’t intended that to sound like a deliberate insult but that was how Jacob took it, she knew, as he got up and stared coldly at her.

  ‘I imagine because he knew I was the one person who would take the risk of getting involved. Not many others would have agreed to take on a business which was riddled with debt and tried to retain as many as possible of the staff.’

  Because Helen felt somehow guilty at her unwitting slight she took a defensive stand. ‘So what you are saying is that you were our salvation rather than the cause of our downfall?’ She laughed softly as she gathered the silky waves of hair into a coil and pinned it back on top of her head. ‘That’s hard to believe!’

  Jacob’s eyes were hard as blue glass. ‘Then I suggest you set your mind to it, Helen. If I hadn’t stepped in then your father would have lost the lot and been declared bankrupt into the bargain because there was no way that he could cover the massive personal debts he had accrued by then.

  ‘The money I paid for the business and the house plus its contents was just sufficient to clear them although, as you know, there wasn’t anything over to keep you both in the manner to which you were accustomed.’ He smiled coldly. ‘To put it bluntly, sweet, I was the only one prepared to help when you needed it most.’

  ‘But why?’ She came to her feet in a rush. ‘What motive did you have for such remarkable generosity, Jacob?’

  He ignored her sarcasm, merely glancing at his watch before looking back at her flushed face. ‘I had my reasons. Several good ones. However, I don’t have time to discuss them now. I have an appointment downtown in half an hour’s time so you must excuse me.’

  He walked back inside the house and after a few minutes Helen heard a car engine and the sound of a car driving off down the road. She sank down on to the lounger and stared blankly out to sea as she went back over everything Jacob had just told her, trying to make sense of it.

  Edward Sinclair had approached Jacob and asked him to take over control of the business, willingly sold him the house to clear their debts! It added a whole new dimension to what had happened if she could believe it, but why should Jacob lie when she could easily find out the truth? But yet why had he done it? If the firm had been in such a sorry state by then Jacob could have waited and bought it from the receivers rather than paying out the small fortune it must have cost to keep it running. As he’d said, Hunt Electronics had been well established by then, a huge international concern which hadn’t needed either the Sinclair name nor its debts. So why had Jacob agreed when her father approached him?

  It was all very puzzling and oddly disturbing in a way, as though by finding the answer to it Helen would find the answer to so many other puzzles as well. If she found out what Jacob’s reasons had been, then would she also find a way to pay him back? But for what? If Jacob hadn’t driven her father to near bankruptcy, what was he guilty of? She had hated him for so long, yet suddenly the basis for all that hatred seemed to be slipping away and Helen felt afraid.

  If she couldn’t think of Jacob as her enemy, then how should she think of him?

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE day dragged past, morning drifting into afternoon while Helen was barely aware of the time passing. The puzzles seemed to whirl inside her head until it throbbed with them but she could find no answers or solutions. Only Jacob knew why he had done such a thing, yet she wasn’t sure she wanted him to explain now. Somehow the answers seemed fraught with danger although she couldn’t explain why she should feel that way.

  When Rita-May stopped in the lounge before she left, it took an effort for Helen to give her her full attention. ‘Did you want me?’

  Rita-May looked worriedly towards the window where storm clouds were gathering low on the horizon. ‘I was just wondering how long Mr Hunt would be.’

  Helen forced a smile; the longer Jacob took, the better as far as she was concerned. It gave her more time to come to terms with what he had told her and decide how to handle it, but of course she couldn’t tell Rita-May that. ‘I’m not sure. He had some business to attend to. If there’s a problem, maybe I can help?’

  The woman shook her head, the gold hoop earrings she wore swinging back and forth. ‘No problem. I just don’t like the look of those clouds. There’s a storm coming and you’ll be here by yourself once I leave.’

  ‘I’m sure he won’t be much longer.’ Helen stood up and walked over to the window, only then becoming aware of the mass of dark clouds which had started to blot out the sun. The wind had risen, whirling the sand into drifts along the beach and whipping frothy white-capped waves into shore. Although the bungalow was less than half an hour’s drive from downtown Nassau, with its huge banking and commercial centre, it was the only property along this stretch of road. If Jacob didn’t get back before the storm broke then she could find herself stranded alone once Rita-May left, but she really couldn’t expect the woman to stay with her when she had her own family to see to.

  She turned back with a reassuring smile. ‘I shall be fine. The storm can’t be that bad otherwise there would have been a warning posted.’

  Rita-May rolled expressive dark eyes. ‘They sure don’t always get it right! But if you’re sure you don’t want me to stay...’ She glanced towards the door, obviously eager to be on her way.

  ‘Of course not. Off you go. I hope you make it home before the storm arrives.’ Helen followed her into the hall and waved her off before closing the door with a heavy sigh. She glanced at her watch, surprised to see just how late it was. She’d been so caught up in her thoughts that she’d been unaware of the time passing. It was really time she got showered and changed. She wanted to look good tonight, cool and poised. It would give a much needed boost to her confidence. Doubting beliefs she’d held for so long now was unsettling, but until she had a lot more answers then she couldn’t risk allowing Jacob to know how she felt!

  It took only seconds to strip off her clothes and step into the shower. Helen adjusted the temperature until the water ran coolly over her, sighing in appreciation. The impending storm had turned the air uncomfortably humid and it was a relief to wash the stickiness away.

  Finally refreshed by the lengthy shower, she switched the water off and wrapped a towel around herself to walk back through to the bedroom, then gasped at the scene beyond the bedroom window. The black clouds were almost dire
ctly overhead now, filling the room with an odd purplish gloom. Even as she watched, the storm rolled closer, the wind bending the palm trees surrounding the bungalow almost double with its force. When the blast hit the French windows they flew open, sending the curtains billowing crazily so that a small Tiffany lamp on a nearby table fell to the floor and smashed.

  Helen ran to the window, carefully avoiding the jagged pieces, and struggled to close it, but it took several attempts to fasten it securely. She caught her breath for a moment. She had never felt wind like that before, so strong that it was an actual physical force which needed to be fought against. It took the sound of glass shattering elsewhere in the house to rouse her to the fact that she must do something to curtail the damage the storm might cause.

  Grabbing jeans and T-shirt from the closet, Helen struggled into them then ran from room to room closing windows, but it soon became obvious that the wind would find them a fragile barrier. What she needed to do was close the shutters as further protection.

  Opening the door was easy; the wind ripped it out of her hands and sent it crashing against the wall. Helen grimaced as she saw the huge gouge it had made in the plaster but there was little she could do about it. Clutching at whatever handholds she could find, she battled her way outside and was instantly drenched as the heavens opened to send a deluge of water down from the black sky.

  Cursing her bad luck and anything else which seemed appropriate, she struggled along the front of the house and tried to latch the shutters across the windows, but it was almost impossible with the wind tearing them out of her hands all the time.

  ‘What the hell are you doing out here?’

  When strong hands caught her by the shoulders and a voice boomed in her ear she nearly shot out of her skin. She half turned then staggered back under the force of the wind, and would have fallen if Jacob hadn’t steadied her, his eyes dark with anger as he studied her sodden hair and clothing. Helen had no idea what he was annoyed about. After all, it was his property she was trying to secure!