The Deserving Mistress

by Carole Mortimer

  He arched dark brows. ‘May, do you really think you’re in any position at this point to attach conditions?’ he muttered impatiently.

  The passenger door to the car stood open; Jude was obviously much bigger and stronger than she was, perfectly capable of pushing her inside the vehicle whether she wanted to go or not, in fact. And yet she somehow didn’t think he would do that…

  Her mouth set stubbornly. ‘You agree not to discuss April Robine, or I don’t get in the car.’

  He gave a frustrated sigh. ‘All right,’ he snapped harshly. ‘Just get in, will you?’ he added wearily.

  May gave him a long considering look before turning to get inside the passenger side of car, determined not to talk to him at all unless she absolutely had to—they had both said too much already this evening.

  Luckily, Jude seemed disinclined to talk, either, driving in stony silence, the journey seeming to take twice as long to May because of the obvious tension between the two of them.

  But what else could Jude have expected? He was treading on ground he had no business trespassing on.

  Even if he had realised April Robine’s connection to her family, a little voice taunted her.

  Yes, even then. Because it was family business, concerned the four women involved, and no one else. No matter what Jude might think to the contrary.

  ‘Thank you,’ she told him stiltedly once he had parked the car in the farmyard some time later.

  Jude turned off the engine before turning in his seat to look at her. ‘Very politely said, May,’ he said dryly. ‘But which part of the evening are you thanking me for—the meal, or the company? Because, to my knowledge, you didn’t enjoy either one!’ he added hardly.

  ‘Nevertheless, thank you,’ May insisted distantly before turning to open the door and get out of the car without a second glance.

  But instead of going straight into the farmhouse she walked over to barn where the last of the newly delivered ewes and lambs were being kept for the moment, switching on the low light over the door as she went in. She had already noted the lights on in the farmhouse when they’d arrived, knew that her two sisters and their fiancés were probably still up, and unwilling for the moment to go inside and face them all. Especially as they would probably all be filled with curiosity concerning her evening out with Jude.

  An evening that had been a disaster from start to finish, she readily acknowledged as she dropped down onto one of the bales of hay, burying her face in her hands in total despair.

  What was she going to do?

  What could she do, when, despite May’s request for her not to do so, at any moment April Robine herself could come to the farm and reveal her identity to January and March? And if the other woman did that, what were January and March going to make of May’s duplicity all these years?

  ‘May…?’

  She looked up defensively at the sound of Jude’s voice in the semi-darkness, the first indication she had had that he’d followed her into the barn rather than driving straight off after she’d got out of the car.

  ‘What do you want?’ she demanded, hastily wiping the tears from her cheeks as he advanced into the barn.

  Jude drew in a harsh breath. ‘Why haven’t you gone into the farmhouse?’

  She gave a humourless smile. ‘Why do you think?’

  He moved forward, coming to sit beside her on the bale of hay. ‘I meant what I said earlier. About it being time someone was there for you for a change,’ he explained abruptly at her questioning look. ‘I’ll be there for you. If you’ll let me.’

  May gave him a quizzical look. Exactly what did he mean by that remark?

  Whatever he meant, she knew she couldn’t accept his offer, had to deal with this alone. As she had since her father had died.

  ‘Maybe there is a way in which you can help me, Jude,’ she said slowly.

  He tilted his head to one side. ‘Yes?’

  She straightened determinedly. ‘Buy the farm. Immediately.’

  He sat back as if she had struck him. ‘Buy the farm…? But—’

  ‘Immediately,’ she repeated as the idea began to grow and take shape in her mind. ‘January and March can be married in London; both Will and Max are based there anyway. And—’

  ‘And what about you?’ Jude cut in harshly. ‘What are you going to do? Accept David Melton’s offer, after all?’

  ‘Of course not,’ she dismissed impatiently. ‘That would defeat the whole object—’

  ‘Because getting away from April, as quickly and as far as possible, is the object,’ Jude finished disgustedly, turning to grasp the tops of May’s arms. ‘May, didn’t you listen to anything I said to you earlier? Can’t you see that my buying the farm under these conditions, with the sole intention of taking your sisters and yourself away from here, isn’t going to solve a thing?’ He shook her slightly. ‘April is here now. She’s real. And nothing you can do or say is going to change that.’

  May shook her head determinedly. ‘Once she realises that I meant what I said earlier, she’ll go away again. Back to America—’

  ‘And what did you say to her that would make her do that?’ Jude frowned.

  Her chin rose defiantly. ‘The truth, that January and March believe she’s dead—’

  ‘I saw the look on April’s face earlier today, May,’ Jude cut in insistently. ‘April is longing to see January and March. Wants, as she already has with you, to see the women they have become—’

  ‘She has no right!’ May cried agitatedly, standing up abruptly, uncaring as she hurt her arms wrenching out of Jude’s grasp.

  He grimaced. ‘Obviously April believes she does. Look, May, I can’t even begin to understand what happened here over twenty years ago, but—’

  ‘She left us, walked out on the three of us when we were only babies; I, for one, don’t need to know any more than that,’ May assured him scathingly.

  ‘She walked out on your father, too, May,’ Jude said quietly.

  ‘And it almost killed him,’ she acknowledged harshly. ‘I know, because I watched what her desertion did to him. He never married again, you know—’

  ‘Neither has April,’ he pointed out softly.

  She shook her head. ‘I’m not interested in what she has or hasn’t done. Don’t you see? This is all your fault, Jude,’ she turned on him accusingly. ‘None of this would have happened if you had never come here and brought her with you—’ Her words were cut off abruptly as Jude stood up to pull her forcefully against him, his mouth coming fiercely down on hers.

  It was a kiss that May, after the first few seconds of struggle, returned just as fiercely as emotions quickly spiralled out of control.

  Here, now, nothing else mattered but the fiery passion that blazed so strongly between them, May returning kiss for kiss, caress for caress, her hands against the naked warmth of his chest as she shed first his jacket and then his shirt.

  Jude’s mouth was warm against the arched column of her neck, teeth gently biting her earlobes before his tongue moved moistly to the dark hollows that shadowed the base of her throat, discarding her jacket to pull the zip to her dress slowly down the length of her spine.

  The hay was warm and soft beneath them as they lay down upon it, Jude half lying across her as his lips returned to possess hers.

  May gasped her pleasure as Jude’s hand moved to cup her breast, feeling his touch through the silky material of her bra, the nipple already pert and aroused, Jude’s tongue searching the heated moisture of her mouth.

  She wanted him, how she wanted him. All of him.

  Her back arched instinctively as Jude’s lips moved to the naked pertness of her breasts, paying homage to each as he kissed their arousal, tongue laving the rosy tips as pleasure rippled uncontrollably through every particle of May’s being, his hand moving softly across the flat planes of her stomach to the lace panties beneath.

  Her fingers convulsed fiercely in the darkness of his hair as she held him to her, wanting him never t
o stop, wanting this pleasure never to end.

  Heat began in the centre of her body, deep inside her, rising quickly as it pervaded all of her body, on fire now as the hitherto unknown sensations caused her body to arch and then fall down, down, down…

  ‘It’s all right, May.’ Jude suddenly cradled her fiercely into the hardness of his body. ‘It’s all right,’ he soothed as the spasms continued to rack her fevered body.

  Reality came back with the force of a blow as May realised exactly what had just happened between them, what she had allowed to happen.

  It wasn’t ‘all right’.

  How could it be, when she was so deeply in love with this man…?

  Jude felt May moving emotionally and mentally away from him even as he continued to hold her physically close to him.

  He hadn’t meant for this to happen, hadn’t intended—

  Of course he hadn’t intended for any of this to happen, but he could already feel the way May was putting her barriers back in place, even higher now that she knew he was capable of breaching them even beyond her imagining.

  But it was beyond his own imagining, too. How could he ever have known? He had never thought…

  May’s response to him, his to her, was a complete revelation to him, too, completely beyond any other experience he had ever known. Even now, when he could feel her drawing away from him, he wanted her. And not just physically…

  ‘Let me go, Jude,’ she rasped coldly.

  He drew in a ragged breath, making no move to comply. ‘May—’

  ‘I said let me go.’ Her voice was like ice now, although she made no move to push him away from her, acquiescent but removed as she lay lifeless in his arms.

  There was no need for her to push him away, Jude knowing her withdrawal from him was already complete, no matter how close in proximity they might still be physically.

  And they were close, their near-naked bodies still entwined, Jude able to feel the slender length of her against him from shoulder to thigh, the dark silkiness of her hair against his face.

  But in reality she might as well have been a million miles away.

  And it shouldn’t be like this. What they had just shared, their completely uninhibited response to each other, was something to explore further, not deny.

  As May was denying it, even now sitting up to straighten her dress, her face deliberately turned away from his in the dim light given off by the low bulb overhead.

  ‘May, I’m not going to leave this here,’ he assured her determinedly even as he pulled on his shirt and buttoned it with slightly unsteady fingers.

  ‘Leave what here, Jude?’ She seemed to have recovered slightly, her voice scathing now. ‘We’ve had a little romp in the hay, that’s all—’

  ‘No, it is not all, damn it!’ he rasped furiously, eyes glittering with the emotion as he turned to look at her. ‘Just now—what happened between us—’ He drew in a deep breath, choosing his words carefully. ‘That isn’t usual, May.’

  ‘Sexual desire isn’t usual?’ she returned mockingly, standing up to move away from him. ‘You have straw in your hair,’ she added derisively.

  ‘So do you,’ he dismissed impatiently, moving to stand beside her. ‘May, that wasn’t just sexual desire—’

  ‘Of course it was,’ she insisted waspishly. ‘Admittedly, it went a little too far, but that’s probably because emotions were running high anyway—’

  ‘Stop it, May!’ he rasped harshly, his hands once again grasping her arms as he held her immobile in front of him. ‘I can’t say I’m any happier about this revelation than you appear to be, but—’

  ‘Revelation?’ she repeated scathingly, green eyes hard as she looked up at him unflinchingly. ‘As far as I’m concerned, the only revelation that took place here tonight was that I’m not as immune to physical attraction as I thought I was.’ She gave a shrug. ‘I’ll know better another time,’ she added hardly.

  Jude looked down at her with narrowed eyes, his gaze searching on the shadows of her face, finding nothing but cold dismissal in her expression, green eyes deliberately unreadable.

  His hands dropped away from her arms. ‘That’s all this was to you—physical attraction?’

  ‘What else?’ she scorned dryly. ‘We seem to have been sending sparks off each other, in one way or another, since we first met. Tonight, what just happened, was just a natural outlet for those sparks.’ She shook her head, her smile self-derisive. ‘It was better than hitting each other, I suppose!’

  Jude looked at her frustratedly now. Did she really believe what she was saying? Or was she just as disturbed by their reaction to each other as he was, but chose to belittle its importance rather than confront it? Because he couldn’t believe, from what he knew of May, from what he had come to know of her whole family, that she had ever behaved in this abandoned way with any man before him.

  Or was it just that he wanted to believe that she hadn’t…?

  Why the hell would he want to believe that?

  He had been involved with quite a lot of women during his thirty-seven years, and he had never expected any of them to be untouched, a virgin, so why should he imagine that May was? Why should he want her to be?

  Because he did.

  That was the only answer he could give himself for the moment. The only answer he could accept for the moment. Because, loath as he was to admit it, he was more disturbed by his response to May, by her response to him, than she appeared to be.

  He needed to get away from here—far away from May—to try and work out for himself exactly what all this meant.

  His mouth thinned. ‘Perhaps you should go inside now,’ he rasped dismissively, bending down to retrieve his jacket, shaking the straw from it before putting it back on. ‘No doubt your sisters have seen the car outside and are wondering what’s happened to us both,’ he added ruefully, having been completely aware of the interest shown earlier by Will, Max and the two younger Calendar sisters in the two of them spending the evening together. But, like May, he had chosen not to satisfy that curiosity. How much longer he would be able to continue doing that, he had no idea.

  May nodded abruptly. ‘I—would rather you didn’t come in with me,’ she told him huskily, her face now slightly pale in the semi-darkness.

  He gave a humourless smile. ‘I hadn’t imagined that I would,’ he conceded dryly, that smile turning to a scowl as he lifted a hand and May instantly flinched away from him. ‘I was only going to remove the straw from your hair,’ he rasped harshly.

  ‘Oh.’ Colour heightened her cheeks now. ‘Sorry,’ she muttered, no longer meeting his gaze.

  Jude frowned grimly as he concentrated on removing the straw from the darkness of her hair, his movements deliberately businesslike, all the time knowing that one movement of encouragement on May’s part, even the slightest relenting in her stony expression, and he would sweep her back into his arms. And this time he wouldn’t be able to let her go.

  But it was as if she sensed that, stepping sharply away from him as soon as all of the hay had been removed from her hair, turning away from him as she picked up her own discarded jacket.

  He couldn’t let her go like this.

  But what choice did he have? He still had no idea himself what was going on between himself and May. Only that something was. And it was a ‘something’ he didn’t want in his life.

  Which left them precisely where?

  Nowhere, he realised heavily.

  But he didn’t want to be ‘nowhere’ with May, wanted— What did he want? Until he knew that, until he completely understood his own feelings of wanting her but at the same time needing to push her away from him, he had no choice but to let May go.

  Even if that meant that her barriers against him would be so much higher the next time the two of them met?

  Even then, he told himself firmly. Maybe it would even be better, for both of them, if her barriers were so high he didn’t stand a chance of crossing them. Ever.

  ‘I�
�ll walk you back to your car,’ she told him stiltedly as she walked towards the door.

  His mouth twisted grimly. ‘Making sure I’ve left the premises this time?’

  May shrugged. ‘I doubt anyone could make you do anything you didn’t want to do!’

  This woman could, Jude realised with shocking clarity. Even now he wanted to draw her back into his arms, to kiss her until they were both senseless.

  Again…

  ‘No, they couldn’t,’ he confirmed abruptly at the same time as he inwardly acknowledged his reluctance to go, to leave this woman.

  Which was exactly the reason he had to go. Now!

  ‘Would you tell Max that I’ll call him tomorrow?’ he said abruptly.

  May nodded distantly. ‘I’ll tell him.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he accepted tersely before getting back inside the car to start the engine, raise a hand in brief farewell and drive away.

  Don’t look back, Jude, he told himself firmly. This woman meant trouble for him. With a capital T.

  Don’t look back!

  His glance moved to the driving mirror as if drawn by a magnet, May still standing in the farmyard exactly where he had left her, moonlight showing her in stark relief, her face white against the darkness of her hair.

  His Nemesis…?

  All his adult life he had gone where he wanted, done what he wanted, enjoying brief, meaningless relationships with women if they happened to present themselves.

  Now the thought of not being with May, the possibility of not seeing her again, had shattered into a million pieces all his carefully constructed life of no ties, no commitments.

  The question was: what was he going to do about it?

  If anything…

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ‘THAT was Jude,’ Max informed May as he strolled back into the barn where she was placing eggs in trays.

  ‘Oh?’ May kept her voice deliberately light, at the same time as her heart began to beat more rapidly in her chest.

  May had assumed, when March had called over to Max as he’d helped her with the egg-collecting that he had a telephone call, that it might be Jude; it was still too early in the day for anyone but a close friend to have rung.