by Maggie Cox
He’d needed time to assimilate everything that had happened. By now, she must hate his guts…
Stepping out of the luxurious hotel room shower and winding a generous white bathtowel around his spare, taut midsection, Jack paused to examine his sombre reflection as he passed the large bathroom mirror. To say he didn’t like what he saw would be massive understatement.
When he looked into his own glacial blue eyes in the harshly delineated planes and angles of his sculpted, lean face, Jack despised the fear and control he saw reflected there. Fear that had been generated by driving his body almost into the ground, with his ruthless ambition to rise above his poor beginnings, and that had shockingly culminated in a heart attack. A ‘warning shot’, if you like, that had told him he had to either lessen that suicidal drive of his to a more reasonable degree or pay the consequences. And a rigid control that meant he hardly ever allowed himself to experience tender or loving feelings towards anybody. A control that had dictated he walk away from the one woman who did stir strong feelings inside him because he still believed she couldn’t be trusted.
Giving vent to a ripe expletive as he reached for the can of shaving foam on the marble ledge beside the mirror, Jack glanced up and frowned as he heard a knock at the door. Crossing the thickly carpeted bedroom in his bare feet, and walking out into the luxurious sitting room that made up his suite of rooms, Jack pulled open the door with hardly any curiosity at all. He’d ordered coffee and brandy to be brought up to his suite in about half an hour but obviously his order had arrived a little early. However, the way he was feeling, Jack could do with a strong drink sooner rather than later, to help dull the pain of unwanted thoughts that were right now driving him crazy. He wasn’t supposed to drink, given what had happened to him, but hell…he’d never been attracted to alcohol the way some of his equally driven business associates were. A little brandy wouldn’t hurt.
‘Caroline!’
He was honestly stunned to see her there.
‘Hello, Jack…this is for the other night.’
Before he could glean what she meant, Caroline had raised her hand and delivered a stinging, resounding slap hard across his face…
CHAPTER TEN
SHE HADN’Tgone to Jack’s hotel with the express intention of slapping his face. But the minute that Caroline had been confronted by his disturbing presence, and the expression that was far too relaxed for her liking crossing his handsome features, she’d realised how powerfully close her emotions were to the surface.
She’d soared to the highest of heights in the past week, just thinking about their lovemaking, and sunk to the lowest of lows as well, when she’d continued not to hear from him. Finally, unable to wait a minute longer to set the record straight once and for all, and tell Jack exactly what she thought of him, Caroline had decided she wasn’t going to waste another second…let alone another day on thoughts of the callous, unforgiving man who was causing her such grief. The man who had walked out on her when she was at her most scared and vulnerable seventeen years ago and had then exhibited the same despicable behaviour again just days ago! And what was more…Caroline was going to spare him nothing when she told him so to his face!
Rubbing his stinging jaw with a wry smirk, Jack stepped back from the door.
‘I guess you could say that I deserved that. Well…why don’t you come on in, Caroline? My guess is that you have a lot more that you want to say to me than that…Am I right?’
‘No.’ The blood rushed to her head with such emotive force that Caroline’s balance was momentarily at risk. ‘You’re wrong. I’ve suddenly decided that I’m not going to waste another word or even another breath on you, Jack! Because you know what? You’re not worth it!’
About to turn around and leave, she was shocked by the powerful grip that Jack used on her wrist, to practically haul her into the room. ‘What do you think you’re—?’
‘You’re not going anywhere until we’ve talked.’
The door slammed shut. His hard jaw like immovable granite, he glared at her, openly daring her to defy him.
Shaking off his hold on her wrist, Caroline pushed her hair behind her ears and scowled. ‘Bit late in the day for talking, isn’t it, Jack?’ she remarked scathingly. ‘As I recall…it’s not exactly your forte, is it? Either talking about feelings or doing the decent thing!’
Wishing that she had found him a little more clothed than he was currently so that they would be more on an equal footing, as it were, Caroline felt her legs treacherously shaking as he trained his cynical glance upon her hot, indignant face.
‘And who are you to talk about doing the “decent thing”, Caroline?’
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Jack wished that his seemingly innate ability to wound her was not quite so lethally accurate. The colour seemed to seep away from her face before his very eyes, and she actually swayed a little. Her hand moved shakily down over her hip, and Jack’s gaze was helplessly ensnared by the way the black velvet material of her trouser suit so sexily encased her gorgeous figure. The brightness of her hair glowed like living sunshine, and was an arresting contrast to the dramatic severity of the black. Even in the middle of the most excruciating tension between them he couldn’t help but be aroused by her beauty.
‘You are such a bastard.’
Her words…so softly yet devastatingly spoken…were like hammer-blows to Jack’s soul. To counteract his escalating misery, he deliberately let loose a slow but savage smile.
‘What? You think you’re the first person to label me with that tag? So sorry to have to disappoint you.’
‘And you’re proud of that?’ Caroline swallowed across the stinging pain inside her throat as though it were a landscape filled with cacti. ‘I feel sorry for you…always having to appear so hard, so tough. You may have achieved everything you’ve ever wanted, but I’d stake my house on it that it hasn’t made you happy. Bitterness can eat you up, you know. You have a cold, unforgiving heart, Jack, and the way I see it now…I’ve probably had a lucky escape, haven’t I?’
Hands on his hips, Jack briefly glanced down at the carpet, as if trying to restrain the temper she seemed hell-bent on rousing. When he regarded Caroline again, the steely blue eyes that couldn’t help but command attention reminded her of a hard frost that hadn’t thawed all winter, and her blood actually ran cold.
‘Why didn’t you come and tell me you’d decided on having a termination, Caroline? Why didn’t you talk it over with me instead of just going ahead and doing it? I was the baby’s father…didn’t you think I should have any say in the matter at all?’
For a long, distraught moment everything inside Caroline seemed to shudder violently. Staring at him with undeniable agony in her dark gaze, she was forced to remember the distressing and frightening circumstances that had led her to check in to that soulless, aloof private hospital in London, where they had removed the growing foetus inside her as coldly and dispassionately as if she’d been having a mole or adhesion taken away.
‘Of course I believed you had the right to have a say! And, contrary to what you might think, I wanted to keep the baby…that’s why I told my father that I was pregnant. If there had been a way to keep it don’t you think I would have? But he—he just went crazy when I told him.’
She smiled nervously, to try and calm her quivering lips, but the smile slid off her face as easily as a raindrop sliding down a windowpane. Checking behind her, Caroline saw a Queen-Anne-style armchair covered in a pattern of cream and pink rosebuds and gratefully sank down into it. Her legs were shaking so hard that she felt as if she’d been ploughed into by a rhinoceros. Knowing that she had Jack’s full undivided attention, as she’d never had it before, she took a painful swallow and tried desperately to pluck out a coherent strand of thought from the black cloud of hurtful memory that was pressing in on her with such unforgiving force.
‘People thought he was marvelous, you know…how kind, how understanding. Well…he was like that with his
patients and his friends…but not me. My mother died giving birth to me…did I ever tell you that?’ Her dark eyes glistening, Caroline looked straight at Jack.
‘No.’ He folded his arms across his chest—the movement drawing her attention to the tight, mouthwatering curve of his biceps—and his dispassionate expression contained neither warmth or understanding.
Ignoring his blatant lack of encouragement or support, Caroline pressed determinedly on. ‘I think he blamed me because he lost her. In fact I know he did. It was no secret. She was so beautiful, and they were so in love. Then I came along and put an end to their happiness together…Anyway, when I told Dad that I was pregnant he completely lost his reason. Actually…’ She grimaced and linked her hands nervously together in her lap. ‘That’s a bit of an understatement, if you want to know the truth. His anger just escalated into something—something quite ugly. He hit me hard, and knocked me to the ground.’
‘He what?’
‘He made me have the abortion, Jack. He couldn’t stand the shame of it, he said.’
Jack’s stomach plummeted violently, as though he’d just been pushed off the top of a skyscraper. This wasn’t happening…she wasn’t saying what she was saying…it couldn’t be real… He didn’t doubt that her father had gone crazy when he’d heard that his seventeen-year-old daughter was pregnant…and by a boy whose very existence he despised…but if Jack had thought for one second that the man—a doctor, for God’s sake!—would coerce his own flesh and blood into having an abortion, then he wouldn’t have been so quick to judge the woman he loved and punish her even further by walking away for good. Now Jack realised that they should have faced her father together. It was unthinkable that he’d let her confront him alone.
‘Maybe he hoped that the shock of his attack might make me lose the baby…or—or maybe he didn’t think at all. He was simply too furious with me. I’d shamed him, he said. I’d let him down and made him look like a fool. He said didn’t I know that boys like you didn’t stick around after they’d had their fun? I was no better than a—than a whore and a slut and I’d throw away every chance of a decent marriage if I didn’t get rid of the baby. He told me I had no choice but to do what he said. He left me alone then, and went to make a phone call. The next morning he drove me to London and it was done.’
When her haltingly voiced explanation was over, Caroline leaned back in the chair—the beautiful and elegant piece of furniture that lent such a contrasting civility to her painfully sordid revelation—and briefly shut her eyes. There were no words to describe either the psychological pain of having her own father assault her or the physical hurt that she’d endured—both from the attack and afterwards the abortion. Now, having told Jack the truth behind her actions all those years ago, Caroline was emotionally and physically drained of everything. She just prayed he wouldn’t be expecting her to get up and go anywhere for the next ten minutes at least, because it was doubtful whether her legs would have the strength required to enable her to stand, let alone walk.
‘Sweet heaven, Caroline! Why didn’t you tell me all this before?’
His senses reeling in protest at what he had just heard, Jack made his feet stay rooted to the floor as he watched her wearily close her eyes again—as if she didn’t know what else to do after such a revelation. Everything that was decent and good inside him clamoured for him to go to her…haul her into his arms, keep her safe and never let her go. But now that he realised for the first time in seventeen years that it was he who had betrayed Caroline—by not staying around to find out the truth before packing his bags and heading off to a completely different continent never to look back—Jack couldn’t do it.
He’d condemned her. He’d relinquished all right to comfort her when he’d walked out on her to ruthlessly pursue his dream of wealth and status—to fight his own demons of poverty and shame and command respect from the world instead of disdain. Well, he’d achieved his ambition in spades, and it still hadn’t filled the yawning chasm inside him that craved something much less tangible yet infinitely more valuable. Something that he’d allowed his single-minded ambition to override…no doubt to his detriment. Caroline’s house was safe. She could easily stake it on her bet that his wealth hadn’t made him happy and she’d be absolutely right.
Jack remembered the night she had come to him and told him that she’d had the abortion. He hadn’t seen her for two days—her father had slammed the door in his face when he’d gone to their house to ask after her whereabouts, and Jack had been beside himself with worry. His stomach muscles gripped with a vengeance as he suddenly recalled the pain and sorrow in her beautiful dark eyes when he’d finally seen her…but more than that…the vivid purple bruise on the side of her delicate jaw. Caroline had told him that it was nothing, that she’d accidentally walked into a door when she’d been hurrying and not looking where she was going. For that read…running away from her father to avoid further mistreatment?
The thought was akin to a nuclear meltdown inside Jack. Automatically, his hands clenched into fists at his side. That cruel bastard. If he was here now Jack would willingly do time in prison for what he would do to him in recompense…
Opening her eyes, Caroline pushed her fingers through her hair and softly sighed.
‘You weren’t ready to listen,’ she told him in answer to his impassioned question. ‘You were always so sure you were right about everything, and you were so hungry to get away from here and make your mark on the world. I told myself after you’d left that it was probably for the best. Me having a baby would only have made you feel obliged to stay, and I know you’d never wanted that. But you know what, Jack? Just for the record…my father didn’t just look down on you. Until a few years before his death I was a great disappointment to him too. I wouldn’t let him mould me like he wanted to. I wouldn’t aspire to the things he thought I should aspire to. But we reached a kind of unspoken accord after a while, and he didn’t try to interfere in my life any more. He left me the house and some money in his will—to try and make amends, I’m sure.’
‘It’s a wonder you can even bear to live in it!’ Jack remarked with bitterness, a wealth of regret and a soul-deep sorrow crowding his chest so strongly that he barely knew how to ease it. All he could think was that he’d possibly made the worst decision of his life when he’d walked out so callously on Caroline. He believed her father to have been a cruel bastard, but perhaps the truth in Jack’s case was that it took one to know one?
‘I told myself that if my mother had lived she would have wanted me to have the house too. Anyway…every child loves their parents, don’t they? All a child really wants is their love and approval, and they’ll forgive even violence against them to get it. I forgave my father everything the day he died. He acted like he did because he was hurting…because he’d lost my mother. Only hurt people hit out at others.’
‘Your compassion is a credit to you, Caroline…but I’ll tell you for the life of me I can’t understand it.’
‘Well…’
Feeling as if he’d judged her again, and found her completely lacking in any universally accepted common sense, Caroline forced herself to think about leaving. She couldn’t sit here in this chair for ever, and she couldn’t make the wrong between her and Jack right again just because her heart ached to do just that. Now she really had to show her quality, and demonstrate just how strong she really was. Strong enough to make her life a success without him. Strong enough to put what they had once so joyfully shared down to experience and move on. Undoubtedly she was a talented, capable woman, and she would show the world that no matter what happened—no one else would ever knock her down, or put her down again.
‘We all have our own ways of looking at things, don’t we? Even though it might seem skewed to others. I won’t keep you any longer. I’d best just get going.’
‘No…wait!’
Panic made Jack’s blue eyes glitter and his hard jaw tighten even more. She couldn’t just walk in here, deliver such
a gut-wrenching bombshell and then go. He wouldn’t let her. He’d been a fool, an idiot, selfish and self-seeking even…But what Caroline had revealed to him had rocked his world harder than an earthquake.
‘Why, Jack? What for?’ She pushed to her feet, her pale cheeks reddening a little. ‘Five days ago you knocked at my house in the middle of the night, asked me not to turn you out into the cold, made love to me…then left while I was asleep. I woke up to a dying fire and an empty space beside me. There was no hint why. When I examined all the possible reasons, I concluded that you were getting your own back on me, and no doubt you were. You amply illustrated that I wasn’t even deserving of the most basic respect. I only came here to tell you that I refuse to be blamed for what happened any longer. And I refuse to spend the rest of my days carrying the burden of that blame and letting it spoil my life! I have plans, Jack…plans that might take me only God knows where…and now I just want to go home and get on with them. I’ll see myself out.’
As she reached the door Jack stared at her stiff back and tried desperately to command the words that were rapidly backing up in his brain, practically tripping over each other. He knew what he should say…what he longed to be able to say…But he already sensed her moving away from him in more ways than one, and he wouldn’t expose his needs to possible derision…even though he no doubt richly deserved it.
‘What do you mean, you’ve got “plans”?’ he demanded, his frustration peppering the words with anger. ‘Do they include that doctor friend of yours? The one who’s old enough to be your father?’
Slowly Caroline turned around, for once her expression unreadable. ‘You mean Nicholas?’ She sighed.
Even the man’s name had the power to practically unhinge Jack. He’d seen the way he’d looked at Caroline that night when they’d been having dinner together at his hotel. The man’s glance had been nothing less than predatory…‘platonic’, indeed!
