Dangerous Ground (Harlequin Presents, December 118)

by Alison Kelly

  She nodded, hating how bored he sounded. Even the kiss he gave her lacked his usual attention and enthusiasm.

  ‘Night, babe,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  Jacqui watched him go until he had vanished beyond the hedge of the tennis court, then slid the glass door shut and closed the curtains. Silent, scalding tears slipped down her face.

  What she’d most feared was becoming a reality. It was coming to an end. A loud cry ripped from her throat as a more terrifying thought gripped her…Perhaps Flanagan thought it was already over…

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  AS JACQUI had expected, the photographs turned out to be brilliant. What she hadn’t expected, after the way they’d parted company the previous evening, was the manner in which Flanagan had swept her into his arms the moment she’d opened the door, or the wonderful, erotic love they’d made until the early hours of the morning.

  Yet, after more than twenty-four hours of tearfully preparing herself for his announcement that their no-promises affair had reached its end, her elation at discovering that she was a certifiable pessimist thrilled her!

  Now, with soft morning sun filtering into her room, she lovingly ran her hands over the sleeping body of the man who graced her bed. She wasn’t sure how long the reprieve would last, but she wasn’t going to torture herself by analysing his every word and action.

  She gasped when her hand was entrapped at the same instant as a sleepily sexy male gaze locked with hers.

  ‘I didn’t intend to stay all night,’ he said, dragging his free hand through the length of her unsecured hair. ‘But I’m glad I did.’

  She smiled and lowered herself on to his chest. ‘Me too, Flanagan.’

  Their kiss started out as languidly as the sun drifted through the bedroom window, but its heat rose far more rapidly, filling the air with muted moans and whispered endearments which made sense only to them. Eager hands and lips fed the fires of their need, until further attempts to forestall the natural culmination of their passion would have been as useless as trying to halt the dawn.

  Except on the first occasion, their lovemaking had never been silent, but when Flanagan rose quickly from the bed, and with no thought of afterplay headed to the bathroom, Jacqui feared that this time she’d gone too far. Dammit! She wasn’t sure whether she’d told him she loved him or not!

  Cooking breakfast, she tried desperately to forget what she’d felt and recall exactly what she’d said…aloud, but to no avail. The only thing she was certain of was that Flanagan hadn’t said he loved her!

  He was brooding and distracted when he joined her in the kitchen, and she forced false gaiety into her voice. ‘Hi, ready for breakfast?’

  ‘There’s something I want to discuss first,’ he said grimly.

  ‘Sounds ominous. How many guesses do I get?’ She’d get through this on banter, she told herself.

  ‘I’ve decided I’m not going to use the photographs of you in the book.’

  ‘But…but you agreed they were good. Exactly what you wanted.’

  ‘I changed my mind.’

  ‘Oh? Well.’ She smiled. ‘I guess I can stand to shoot them again.

  ‘You don’t understand, Jacqui,’ he said. ‘I don’t want you in the book. Your modelling assignment is finished. I’m freeing you of all obligations to me, and vice versa.’

  Pain scorched her soul, and she had to grip on to the sink to avoid buckling to the ground. Oh, God, why hadn’t she been able to keep her big, stupid mouth shut? If she’d kept her deepest feelings from him she might at least have had his friendship—if not his passion—until the end of the assignment. But he was so determined to end their involvement that even that wasn’t a possibility.

  The thought of absolute, cold-turkey withdrawal from Flanagan terrified her. She couldn’t do it. He couldn’t do it to her. She wouldn’t let him!

  ‘You can’t do that Flanagan; we have a contract!’

  ‘I’m going to tear it up.’

  ‘The hell you are!’ she raged. ‘I’ll…I’ll sue you for every cent you have if you so much as try it!’ She ignored his surprised expression, driven on by her churning emotions. ‘Our physical relationship might have been open-ended, but our business one wasn’t! You might think non-commitment is the be-all and end-all of things, but I don’t! You’ve got financial and legal obligations to me, Flanagan,’ she roared. ‘And—’

  The foul, four-letter expletive from Flanagan cut off her tirade mid-stream, but his sneering look of disgust as he stormed to the door upset her far more.

  ‘It’s always the money with you lot, isn’t it? Geez, you’re all the same! I wonder how much goddamn older I have to get before I wise up to the fact for once and for all?’

  ‘Flan—’

  ‘Stuff it, Jacqui! There’s nothing more you can say in this lifetime that I’m interested in hearing!’ In one vicious motion he slid open the glass door. ‘I’ll see you in court!’

  His words seemed to reverberate with the glass as the door was dragged closed behind him.

  No, you won’t, Flanagan, she thought, making no effort even to remain standing much less to stem the tears streaming down her face. It was only a bluff. Even if I could afford to sue I wouldn’t.

  Two days later, as she loaded the washing machine and came across one of Flanagan’s T-shirts, Jacqui again found herself fighting tears. Grasping the shirt to her breast, she inhaled the scent of him, wondering how long it would be before painful memories metamorphosed into the happy ones Caro had said they’d become.

  Caro had tried hard to convince Jacqui that she was only imagining herself in love with Flanagan, but from where Jacqui stood her sister’s theory—that real love was never one-sided—wasn’t any more reliable than all the other platitudes. Whoever said that crying made you feel better were the world’s biggest liars. Though they took the title only marginally ahead of the idiots who’d come up with, ‘You’ll feel better after a good night’s sleep,’ and, ‘It’s better to have loved and lost’ et cetera!

  They’re all lies! Jacqui thought, willing herself to anger in an effort to ward off more tears. I’ve practically cried myself to dehydration and I still feel lousy! I can’t get even a good hour’s sleep because memories of him keep torturing my mind and body! And I’d give my right arm along with every internal organ to have never loved at all!

  But, she told herself, mopping her eyes on his shirt, she wasn’t crying because she wanted Flanagan back. No. She was crying because she was sick of being miserable and didn’t want to love him any more. She wanted to stop feeling the way she did about him. She wanted to stop wondering if he was missing her or even thinking of her. If Flanagan didn’t want her, why should she have to suffer being in love with him? What was the point of this agonising emptiness that enveloped her?

  The worst thing about the pain of her heartbreak was that it touched every aspect of her life, contaminating things which hadn’t even been a part of her time with Flanagan.

  She couldn’t laugh at Phil’s jokes any more, or enjoy watching her niece and nephew cavort in the pool. She couldn’t even feel relief, much less happiness, over Caro’s announcement that the house had to be sold because Phil had received a promotion interstate and they’d need their half of the money to re-establish themselves. Even knowing that her own share would cover all but a few thousand of her father’s outstanding debt wasn’t sufficient to activate Jacqui’s enthusiasm.

  ‘Dammit, Flanagan!’ she wailed. ‘I could kill you for what you’ve done to me!’ She looked at the tear-wet shirt she held, then hurled it across the room. ‘And I’ll be damned if I’ll wash your rotten clothes!’

  At least now she could get angry, she reasoned. That was a good sign. Dumping the rest of her things into the machine, she viciously switched it on. If anger was the only alternative to the aching loneliness she’d experienced over the last few days then she was going to stay angry! Really angry! And if, as her well-intentioned brother-in-law had cla
imed, time healed all wounds, then he’d better be able to tell her exactly what time! Because, as of now, she had no intention of being late!

  Draped only in a towel, Patric picked up all the newspapers lying beneath the letter box in the front door and padded back down the hall into the kitchen. Gritting his teeth, he opened the blind and, after blinking in violent protest at the sun’s morning brightness, he cast his blurry vision towards the empty Jack Daniels bottles lining the breakfast bar. He groaned. Eight.

  God, he hoped he’d only averaged one a day. Of course, considering the hangover he was suffering, one an hour was a distinct possibility. Pouring himself a strong cup of percolated coffee, he counted the newspapers to collaborate his estimate. Five newspapers—a five-day drunk. Five days without Jacqui.

  The coffee was bitter, but no more so than the knowledge that he’d fallen hopelessly in love while arrogantly thinking himself immune to such emotions. Now, though, he recognised that that had been his problem all along—thinking that his previous experience with Angel made him immune to Jacqui. The fact was that only real love had the power to immunise you against repeated outbreaks, and what he’d felt for Angel didn’t even make a dent in the feelings he had for Jacqui.

  Beautiful, sexy, funny, lovable Jacqui. Hell, he was still having trouble reconciling the image of what he’d believed her to be with the words she’d spoken the other morning, and the more he tried to the more it hurt. Dammit, he felt as if she’d totally gutted him. Sighing, he topped up his coffee-cup, but overfilled it as the sight of the countless photographs scattered across the floor of the studio caught his attention.

  They represented both the posed and the candid shots he’d taken of her; he assumed that at some stage during the last alcohol-blurred few days he must have flung them from one end of the room to the other. In many ways he was only sorry that he hadn’t burned them, because, sober, such sacrilege was beyond him. There was no doubt that they represented the best work he’d ever produced, but it was the content not the quality that made destroying them impossible.

  Giving in to what he could only describe as a previously deep-seated masochistic streak, he started into the room and, setting the cup on the coffee-table, began picking them up one by one.

  The unidentifiable anger he’d felt while developing the film had confused him at first, and it hadn’t been until he’d awoken in Jacqui’s bed the next morning that he’d recognised it for what it was: jealousy—a fiercely irrational wave of jealousy at the thought of sharing any part of her with other men, even only visually.

  He’d told himself that he was being stupid, but, standing beneath the hot spray of her shower, he had been forced to admit the truth. He loved Jacqui. Totally and irrevocably.

  He should probably have been grateful that he hadn’t had the chance to make a complete idiot of himself and tell her. Except now, looking at her beautiful face smiling at him in glorious gut-wrenching detail from the close-up he held, he didn’t feel grateful. He felt…well, he felt loved! Which only went to show that he was so far gone that he was imagining that a photograph of someone else could mirror his own feelings! He was a good photographer, but not even his old man had been that good!

  Suddenly he reached for another photograph of Jacqui, then another and another. In a frenzy of hope he jumped up and snatched one of his father’s portfolios from the floor-toceiling shelves and frantically fingered his way through it until he found a close-up shot of her done by Wade for Risque.

  Still too afraid to believe what his eyes and gut were telling him, and suspicious of the soft-focus effect his father had used, he grabbed a more recently dated album, flipping hastily through it until he found what he was looking for—a clear, full-face blow-up of Jacqui. Holding his breath, he compared it to the shots he’d taken.

  A raucous cheer broke from his throat as he leapt at the only conclusion that would satisfy him. He knew that he was grinning from ear to ear as he raced in to dress; he only prayed that on this occasion the camera hadn’t lied!

  Jacqui drove straight into the garage, hit the brake with more force than was necessary, and switched off the engine. Thank God she was home! she thought, releasing her seatbelt. She loathed the evening rush hour almost as much as she loathed snooty-nosed public servants and gossiping, opinionated hairdressers! And today had been wall to wall with all of them!

  She picked up her handbag and the paper bag containing tonight’s dinner and added another item to her list of loathsome things—fresh-faced schoolkids who worked in fast food drive-throughs and said, ‘Enjoy your meal; have a nice evening!’

  Because she knew that she wouldn’t enjoy her meal or have a nice evening! Because these days everything she ate tasted like battery acid and tonight was going to be every bit as rotten and miserable as the last four—

  ‘Jacqui!’

  The excited shout coincided with her car door being wrenched open and herself being hauled from behind the wheel and entrapped against a hard male body. Fear made her heart pound at ten times its normal rate—fear that she was hallucinating and only imagining the sight, scent, sound and strength of Flanagan, as she’d done countless times during the last four lonely nights.

  She lowered her eyelids against burning tears, telling herself that she was imagining his presence in the garage and that when she opened them again she’d be alone. Pain and panic rose at the thought, yet she opened her eyes none the less.

  She wasn’t hallucinating! Flanagan was here—in her garage!

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  ‘FLANAGAN!’ she screamed. ‘Get out of my garage! Get out of my face! Get out of my life!’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No! What do you mean no?’ she demanded, trying to shove his immoveable bulk away. ‘It’s my garage and my life!’

  ‘And your face.’ Her traitorous heart flipped as two large male hands lifted to her face and grazed her cheekbones in an achingly familiar fashion. ‘Your beautiful, honest, open, loving face.’ He smiled. ‘And that, my beautiful, furious lady, is what I want to talk about.’

  ‘Forget it, Flanagan!’ she said, shaking her head. ‘To quote you, “there’s nothing more you can say in this lifetime that I’m interested in hearing”!’

  ‘I was wrong. I made a mistake—’

  ‘Me too!’ she told him. ‘And I’m not about to make another. Let me go!’

  ‘I can’t,’ he whispered, his eyes closing as if a terrible pain was tearing at him. ‘Oh, Jacqui, I can’t I need you.’ He stepped closer, pinning her between the warmth of his body and the cool enamel of her car. Her mind told her to resist, but her heart was at the mercy of the strained, tired, but utterly dear face bending to hers.

  ‘Oh, God,’ he muttered, with a desperation she identified with. ‘I’ve missed you…’

  Please, Lord, she prayed, let him be real. Let this be real. Otherwise you might as well let me die now.

  God’s response was quick but confusing. For when moist male lips met hers her pulse reacted so violently that for an instant Jacqui thought she was in the throes of a fatal heart attack. But, after the initial desperation of the kiss had waned into a slow, gentle mating of tongues and nibbling of lips, she was convinced that she’d skipped death yet still reached heaven.

  With Flanagan’s hands eagerly reacquainting themselves with her body, physical bliss freed her from the mental anguish of the last few days. Weaving her fingers into his thick, collar-length hair, she sighingly surrendered to the dictates of her emotions.

  Patric welcomed her kisses with a hunger only a starving man could have understood. He’d deprived himself of her sustenance for five long days, believing that man-made liquid could cure his hunger, now he knew that only the warm, womanly flesh pressing against him could fill his emptiness.

  And such were his feelings for this woman that he doubted if he would ever have enough of her. Her kisses had the power to squeeze tears from his soul, yet at the same time lift him to the heights of ecstasy. He wanted her with the feroc
ity of an out-of-control bushfire, yet he wanted her with the gentle softness of her infant nephew he’d so recently held.

  The groan that broke from his throat was a mixture of frustration and confusion. He felt as though he was being torn apart by two equally strong forces—the rough power of passion and the tender lure of love; for while his body was impatient to have access to the heated female one in his arms his heart was equally anxious to share itself with Jacqui.

  When the need for oxygen finally separated them they were both trembling with desire, but Patric decided to gamble with his heart.

  ‘Honey,’ he said roughly, ‘we’ve got to talk.’

  Jacqui told herself not to read too much into what his presence here meant. It was no easy order, considering that she was a victim of kiss-impaired breathing and an intoxicating dose of hope and, just possibly, a complete emotional breakdown. Focusing on the toes of his trainers, she nodded.

  His hand slipped under her hair to her chin, then pulled back as if burned. ‘You’ve had your hair cut!’

  His tone was enough to jerk her head up and at the same time make her wish that she’d never heard the word scissors. Cutting her hair had been a mistake! A pathetically symbolic attempt to sever all ties with her modelling career and get on with her life. Now, as Flanagan whimsically ran the fingers of both his hands through its new shoulder length, she cursed herself for not waiting one more day.

  ‘I like it,’ he said softly.

  ‘You…you do?’

  ‘How could I not?’ He touched her cheek. ‘It’s your hair.’ He barely gave her time to digest what he’d said before adding, ‘But dammit, honey, it doesn’t take all day to cut a person’s hair, even when it’s as long as yours was! I’ve been here nearly nine hours waiting for you! You’ve had me worried sick.’

  ‘It shows, Flanagan,’ she said, gazing up at his harried but endearingly handsome face. ‘You look like hell.’