Burning Obsession

by Carole Mortimer

  ‘What a coincidence, so am I.’ He moved to open the door for her.

  ‘You are?’ she gasped. ‘But why?’

  Jordan gave her a look of open disgust. ‘I’m going to see my father-in-law. A natural courtesy, I would have thought.’

  Kelly allowed him to take her elbow and guide her out of the hotel and into the waiting limousine. ‘I wouldn’t have thought that relationship counted,’ she said stubbornly.

  Jordan relaxed back against the cream leather upholstery, his hair even darker against the light colour. ‘Maybe it doesn’t,’ he lit a cheroot with lazy enjoyment, the familiar aroma soon filling the car. They were a special blend, made exclusively for Jordan, and Kelly found she had missed their smell.

  Jordan had always liked to smoke one of these cheroots after they had made love, when they would relax in bed together, and Jordan would tell her about his day. Then they would make love again before dozing off into a contented sleep.

  ‘Your father is still a friend of mine,’ he continued. ‘And was long before I met and married you.’

  ‘Yes,’ she acknowledged jerkily. ‘I’d forgotten. I’m sorry.’

  He gave a haughty inclination of his head. ‘I realise you’re distressed,’ he accepted. ‘How did the accident happen?’

  Kelly swallowed hard, instantly reliving that split-second crunch of metal upon metal, the front of their Rolls-Royce almost caved in completely on her father’s side. The young couple in the other car had been unhurt, Kelly had received only cuts and bruises, and her father had been unconscious ever since.

  She shrugged now. ‘It was just one of those things, no one’s fault.’

  ‘And you?’ Jordan looked at her closely. ‘You weren’t hurt?’

  ‘No.’

  The hospital told me you were admitted for two days.’

  Her eyes flashed. ‘They had no right—’

  ‘They had every right, damn you!’ He stubbed out the half-smoked cheroot with savage movements. ‘I have the right to know about the health of my wife!’

  Kelly sat stiffly at him side. ‘How did you know about the accident?’

  ‘I was in the States on business, and a friend of mine wired me the news.’

  ‘A friend?’ she probed.

  Jordan gave a humourless smile. ‘I do have one or two, you know.’

  ‘Yes, I do know,’ she said tightly ‘I just wondered if I knew them too.’

  ‘Ian Smythe,’ he supplied tersely.

  ‘Ian!’ Her face lit up with pleasure. ‘Does he still work for you?’ Ian had been Jordan’s personal assistant five years ago, and Kelly had always liked him.

  Jordan scowled. ‘No. He works for himself.’

  ‘He does?’ she asked interestedly.

  ‘Mm.’ Jordan’s mouth twisted with derision. ‘He very sensibly married Anthony Miles’ only daughter.’

  Anthony Miles had been a big industrialist, very rich, who had died suddenly of a heart attack just over a year ago. ‘Ian is married to Laura Miles?’ Kelly asked dazedly.

  He nodded. ‘He has been for a few years now.’

  ‘Then I’m sure it wasn’t “sensibly” done at all,’ she defended indignantly. ‘Ian wouldn’t marry for any other reason than that he was in love.’

  ‘Love!’ Jordan scorned. ‘Laura is attractive enough, in a sweet way, but I wouldn’t want her for my wife.’

  ‘But then she isn’t, is she?’

  ‘Thank God!’

  ‘Are they happy together?’

  He shrugged. ‘They seem to be.’

  ‘Then that’s all that matters.’

  ‘Not really,’ he drawled. ‘We seemed to be happy, but you still walked out on me.’

  ‘And you know why,’ Kelly said tightly.

  ‘It was my child too! But you didn’t see me walking out on my responsibilities—’

  ‘Responsibilities!’ she cut in shrilly. ‘You call our child a responsibility?’ she demanded angrily.

  ‘In a way—’

  ‘What way?’ Kelly was furiously angry. ‘Because you didn’t want it? Because it was a nuisance to you? Because—’

  ‘Shut up!’ he ordered through gritted teeth. ‘Shut up if you value your life.’

  There was such a dangerous glitter in his eyes that Kelly instantly went quiet. Dry sobs racked her body. Jordan had just told her more than adequately his true opinion of the baby she had loved so much, and she hated him anew for his cruelty.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he finally said in a calmer voice. ‘We never were able to converse reasonably about the subject. They found nothing wrong with you after the accident?’ he returned to their conversation of a few minutes ago.

  ‘I was only in for observation, just a standard thing.’

  He dismissed the chauffeur when they reached the hospital, and Kelly felt very small and vulnerable next to Jordan as he guided her to her father’s room. She had forgotten how protected she had always felt with him, how fragile he had always made her feel. And after the last few days of trauma it was nice to let him take charge, to lean on him a little.

  Her father lay pale against the pillows, a sterile white dressing on his forehead, the thin tube in his arm feeding him the necessary fluid for his body.

  ‘He looks better than he did,’ Kelly told Jordan. ‘He did have electrodes on his chest attached to this huge machine, and instead of that little dressing on his temple he had a huge bandage around his head.’ She shivered as she remembered her first sight of him after the accident. ‘I thought he was dying,’ she revealed huskily.

  ‘The doctor told me that they’re hopeful of a complete recovery,’ Jordan told her gently.

  ‘They told me that too.’ She sat down in her usual chair beside her father, taking his hand into her own. ‘I usually talk to him for a while. I know it sounds silly, but I think it helps.’

  ‘I’m sure it does.’ Jordan stood at the foot of the bed. ‘You go right ahead, I’m going to see if I can talk to the doctor.’

  Kelly hardly noticed his departure, her attention all on her father. She had first started talking to him hoping that the sound of her voice would jog something in his memory, break this deadlock. She talked about everything and nothing. So far there hadn’t even been the flicker of an eyelid, but the doctor had told her constant talking on her part certainly couldn’t do her father any harm, and it could do him a lot of good.

  Today she had something new to talk about. She told him of Jordan’s arrival here, of how he had unexpectedly booked into her hotel. That was another thing she had to ask Jordan about, what he had been doing in her suite. She had been too angry to think of asking him that earlier.

  ‘No change,’ Jordan reported when he came back. ‘He’s slowly coming out of it, but it could take a few more days.’ He pulled up a chair and sat beside her.

  Kelly nodded. ‘Thank you. Jordan, earlier, at the hotel, what were you doing in my suite?’

  ‘Our suite,’ he corrected unhurriedly.

  She gave him a sharp look. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘It means, my dear Kelly, that you are in fact staying in my suite. When you booked in as my wife you were automatically put in the suite I rent all year round.’

  She gasped. ‘I’m in your suite?’

  ‘Correct,’ his mouth twisted tauntingly. ‘You don’t like that, do you?’

  ‘No,’ she agreed tightly. ‘I had no idea… I’ll get another suite when I get back.’

  Jordan’s eyes became palely grey. ‘You’ll do no such thing.’

  ‘I—’

  ‘You’ll stay put, Kelly,’ he told her grimly. ‘How do you think it will look if I’m in one suite and my wife is in another?’

  ‘Since I’m your estranged wife I would have thought it would look perfectly normal.’

  ‘You’ll stay put,’ Jordan repeated tautly.

  ‘No—’

  ‘Yes! Don’t be so damned ridiculous. I’m not about to claim my conjugal rights, so you
have no need to worry on that score. Besides, we’ll rarely be there at the same time.’

  ‘We won’t? Her cheeks were still flaming from his reference to ‘conjugal’ rights.

  ‘No. The doctor thinks that your method of talking to your father is what’s helping him. So I propose we take it in turns to sit and talk to him.’

  ‘You have no need to do that, Jordan.’ She looked down at her father. ‘I realise how busy you must be, how important your work is to you. There’s no reason for you to—’ she broke off as he roughly grasped her chin, forcing her to turn and look at him.

  ‘There’s a damned good reason,’ he snapped angrily. ‘You!’

  ‘Me?’ Her eyes widened.

  ‘Have you taken a good look at yourself lately?’ His gaze ran slowly over the gauntness of her body. ‘I bet in denims and a shirt it’s hard to tell what bloody sex you are!’

  Kelly put up a selfconscious hand to her hair. ‘I know I’ve lost weight—’

  ‘Lost weight!’ he scorned. ‘You’re skeletal! Look at you, girl, you’re all eyes.’

  She blinked back the tears. ‘I haven’t felt like eating the last few days.’

  His hand left her chin to rest lightly on the side of her father’s bed, drawing attention to the lean strength of his fingers, the fine mat of hair on the back of his hand and wrist. ‘This has been going on a damned sight longer than the four days your father has been ill. And you never used to be tearful like this either. That’s the third time in a matter of minutes that you’ve started to cry.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she sniffed inelegantly.

  ‘Don’t be—it’s a damn sight healthier than the ice you were encased in the last time I saw you.’

  Kelly’s hold on her father’s hand tightened. She was so defenceless without her father’s support, making her realise how much she had come to depend on him since leaving Jordan. She would, in all probability, never have left Jordan if it hadn’t been for her father’s strength, would have stayed with Jordan knowing of his other women. Her father hadn’t liked the fact that she had wanted to leave Jordan, had begged her to reconsider, but in the end had accepted her decision. He had never asked for her reasons, and she had never volunteered them.

  ‘I wasn’t encased in ice, I’d just come to my senses, emerged from the stupid dream I’d had of us living happily ever after. How childish you must have found me, Jordan,’ she added lightly.

  His expression was bleak. ‘I found you—enchanting. You were like a breath of fresh spring air after having been in a smoke-filled room.’

  ‘You mean I was naïve,’ she scorned dryly.

  His grey-eyed gaze ripped into her. ‘I mean you were enchanting,’ he repeated tautly.

  She drew a ragged breath. ‘Well, I’m sure you’ve met plenty of other women you’ve found just as—enchanting. Janet, for instance.’

  ‘Janet is my secretary, nothing more.’

  ‘Maybe you just don’t think of it that way, maybe you just consider sleeping with your secretary as part of her usual duties,’ she said with remembered bitterness. ‘I suppose it’s easier if it’s all treated in a businesslike manner.’

  ‘You suppose what’s easier?’ Jordan bit out.

  ‘You know very well what I mean. How many—secretaries have you had since we parted?’

  He was frowning darkly. ‘What are you implying?’

  ‘How many, Jordan?’

  ‘I’ve had three secretaries—’

  ‘Only three?’ she taunted. ‘You do surprise me.’

  ‘Kelly!’ he warned angrily.

  ‘Were they all blondes?’

  Jordan frowned. ‘Blondes?’

  ‘Well, you’re one of those men who prefer blondes.’

  ‘Then why did I marry you?’ He looked pointedly at her black hair.

  ‘I’ve thought of that myself, and I think you must have just had a temporary lapse. Anyway, that’s all past history,’ she dismissed curtly. ‘Do you want to stay here now or do you want me to?’

  ‘We were in the middle of a conversation,’ he told her grimly. ‘Neither of us is going anywhere until it’s finished.’

  ‘As far as I’m concerned we were finished years ago. Now are you going or staying?’

  ‘I’m staying.’

  Kelly stood up. ‘Then I’m going.’ She bent to kiss her father gently on the cheek.

  Jordan stood up too. ‘Don’t think this conversation is over, it’s far from that, but we’ll continue it at a more—convenient time.’ His last words were in the form of a warning.

  Her head went back challengingly. ‘I’ll look forward to it. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.’

  ‘Kelly…’ he stopped her as she reached the door.

  ‘Yes?’ She turned to look at him, her breath catching in her throat at his blatant masculinity, the sexual magnetism he emitted without any visible effort on his part. He was thirty-nine now, and Kelly didn’t doubt that he would still be lean and attractive in twenty or thirty years’ time.

  ‘Didn’t you forget something?’ he asked softly.

  She looked down at her handbag, the only thing she had brought with her. ‘No, I don’t think so,’ she frowned.

  ‘I happen to think that you did.’ He came slowly towards her, a look of determination in his face.

  Kelly started to back away, not liking that look at all. There was a definite air of threat about him. ‘Wh-what do you want?’

  ‘What do you think?’ he drawled, reaching out and pulling her slowly into his arms.

  ‘No…’ she had time to cry before his mouth claimed hers.

  It was as if she were fainting, everything starting to spin, the only reality Jordan and the firm strength of his body. He crushed her to him, every bone in her body seeming to snap with the fierceness of him. His mouth ravaged hers into submission, kissing her like a man in a desert must grasp at a glass of sparklingly clear water.

  Kelly’s hands clung to his shoulders, her body bent like a reed to the hard demand of his. It was like she remembered it being, the mad excitement that made her quiver, the inability to do anything other than kiss him back, standing on tiptoe to more than meet the response he demanded.

  Suddenly his mouth gentled on hers, tasting her lips as if they were nectar, holding her head immobile by his hands in the silky softness of her hair, finding the sensitive nerve in her nape, groaning his satisfaction as she trembled against him. Jordan knew her body better than she knew it herself, knew everything that gave her pleasure—and he hadn’t forgotten a single thing!

  Kelly’s sensibility returned to her with effort, and she wrenched away from him, breathing heavily as she gazed up at him with wide apprehensive eyes.

  His hair was ruffled, a slight flush to his hard cheeks. ‘You’ll have to get some more meat on you before I do that again,’ he drawled, straightening his tie. ‘It’s like holding a sack of bones in my arms.’

  Her eyes burned with a fierce anger. ‘Then don’t hold me! I would prefer for you never to touch me again.’

  ‘Can’t be done, I’m afraid,’ Jordan told her calmly. ‘You see, I like touching you, kissing you, I always did.’

  ‘Me, and a hundred other women!’

  His mouth twisted. ‘There don’t happen to be a hundred other women here at the moment.’

  ‘Then wait until you get back to the hotel and pay Janet a visit!’ She closed the door decisively behind her as she left.

  ‘Ah, Mrs Lord,’ the young Sister who had been helping with the care of Kelly’s father smiled at her as they met in the corridor. ‘Your father is improving all the time.’

  ‘Yes,’ Kelly gave a jerky smile. ‘Jordan—my husband is with him now.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ the smile the other woman gave indicated that she had already met Jordan—and liked what she had seen. ‘You must be relieved that you were at last able to contact him so that he could come home and be with you.’

  So that was the story Jordan had given them! ‘Yes.�
� There was no point in disputing what he had told them.

  ‘He’s in with your father now, you said?’

  ‘Yes,’ Kelly confirmed.

  ‘I’ll take him in a cup of tea, shall I?’

  ‘He would like that. Thank you.’ Kelly gave a tight smile. Yes, Jordan would like that very much. This young Sister, Sister A. Fellows it said on her plastic name-plate, was a honey-blonde, and her uniform showed what a perfect figure she had, her legs long and shapely. Just Jordan’s type. It seemed to be that wherever she went there were women who were just his type!

  Sister Fellows patted the smooth style of her hair. ‘I’ll see to it now. Perhaps I’ll see you later, Mrs Lord.’

  But Kelly could tell the other woman was already thinking of her next meeting with Jordan. ‘Perhaps,’ she agreed tightly, walking away with hurried steps.

  She had plenty of time to think when she got back to the hotel, plenty of time to think of the way Jordan had just kissed her. To say she had been surprised by the move was putting it mildly, it had been absolutely the last thing she had expected to happen.

  Remembering the way she wouldn’t even let him touch her after losing the baby, she found it all the harder to accept that she had gone into his arms just now as if it hadn’t been five years since it had last happened.

  She could still remember the last kiss Jordan had given her, his anger and utter frustration. Her father had duly arrived for dinner the night she had got home from hospital, and his shock on seeing her had been quite understandable.

  ‘It’s terrible, terrible,’ he kept muttering, obviously deeply upset.

  ‘Yes,’ Jordan had finally put a stop to this, ‘but there’ll be other babies, in time.’

  ‘No!’ Kelly cried. ‘No more. Not ever.’

  ‘The doctor said there was no reason why you shouldn’t be able to have another baby in a year or so.’

  ‘Damn what the doctor said!’ she said shrilly. ‘I meant I don’t want any more.’

  ‘Of course you do,’ Jordan chided, doing his best to keep his temper with her. ‘You’ve always wanted children.’

  ‘Not yours,’ she spat at him. ‘I don’t want any more children by you!’

  ‘Kelly—’