by Anne Mather
Jack’s dizziness receded on a wave of disbelief. Anger gave strength to legs which only moments before had felt weak and uncertain. Striding back to the table, he caught her shoulder and swung her round to face him, uncaring of the look of apprehension in her eyes.
‘Yesterday?’ he exclaimed. ‘Karen came here yesterday?’ His heart was pounding in his chest but he ignored it. He hit his forehead with the palm of his hand. ‘So that’s what last night’s little charade was all about!’
‘Not necessarily.’ Rachel pulled away from him. ‘Anyway, you’re my husband. Why shouldn’t I sleep with you if I want to?’
Jack shook his head, unwilling to go into that right now. ‘So go on,’ he urged her harshly. ‘What did she say?’
‘Karen?’
‘No, the cat’s mother,’ he snarled. ‘Who else?’
Rachel straightened her spine. ‘What do you think she said?’
Jack sucked in a frustrated breath. ‘Don’t do this, Rachel. I’m not in the mood to humour you.’
Rachel seemed to recover a little of her bravado. ‘Oooh, I’m scared,’ she mocked, only to break off with a gasp of pain when he manacled her wrist with hard, unyielding fingers. ‘You’re hurting me.’
‘Believe me, this is nothing to what I’d like to do to you,’ he told her harshly. ‘Come on, Rachel. Spill!’
‘Why don’t you ask her if you’re so interested?’ she protested.
‘Perhaps I will. But right now I’m asking you.’
Without warning, he took her wrist behind her back, jerking her towards him. Caught off balance, she couldn’t prevent herself from reaching for him, her fingertips registering the heat beneath his shirt, the hard contours of his chest brushing the sudden arousal of her breasts.
God, for a moment she was stunned by her reaction, incapable of answering him for fear of showing how disturbed by his nearness she was. It convinced her that last night had been a massive mistake on her part. She’d stupidly believed she could seduce Jack without getting emotionally involved with him again, but she’d been wrong. Even though she’d avoided his kisses, knowing what his mouth could do to hers, already her body was betraying her, recognising his, responding to his, urging her to lean into him and give in to the wild abandonment of the senses she’d known the night before.
‘Rachel!’
His harsh voice aroused her from the sensual pit she was digging for herself, and she tried to focus on what he’d asked her. But with his warm breath playing over her face and the male odour of his hot skin rising to fill her lungs with his scent, it was incredibly difficult to concentrate.
Definitely against her better judgement, her hand opened and her palm spread against his chest. She could feel his heart beating—thundering actually—against her fingers, and she guessed with a feeling of triumph that he was remembering last night, too.
‘Jack…’ she murmured, not really knowing what she was inviting, but unable to keep the yearning note out of her voice.
Jack swore. ‘Don’t go there, Rachel,’he warned, but already his eyes were dark with emotion, his lips only inches from hers.
He was going to kiss her, she thought, briefly blind to anything but her own needs. And why not? Why shouldn’t she take what she wanted without considering the consequences? Other people did. Why shouldn’t she?
‘Rachel!’
Once again, Jack’s saying her name brought an unwilling awareness of what she was doing, and she realised she’d been mistaken when she’d thought Jack was as aroused as she was. He was angry, that was all. Angry and frustrated. Well, she could play that game, too.
‘Let go of me, Jack,’ she said sharply, as if moments before she hadn’t been practically begging for it. But Jack wasn’t fooled.
‘Not until you tell me what she said,’ he grated. ‘I want to know: did she tell you we were having an affair?’
Rachel heaved a sigh, giving in. ‘You know she did,’ she said wearily. ‘But don’t worry. It wasn’t exactly news to me. I’ve known about your dirty little secret for some time.’
Jack stared down at her with disbelieving eyes. ‘What do you mean, you knew?’
Rachel was tired of this. Grinding her heel into his toe, she got the advantage and pulled herself away from him. ‘I’m not a complete fool, Jack,’ she said, as he winced in pain. ‘You’re not quite as clever as you thought you were.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘And that means what, exactly?’
‘The apartment you leased in Plymouth? The one you said you needed for entertaining clients? I know you take her there.’
Jack felt his stomach hollow. He had taken Karen to the riverside apartment, he remembered, but not to have sex with her. It had been while she was working for George Thomas. The company had just leased the furnished apartment, and Jack had needed someone to do an inventory of its contents for their records, and to make a note of what else was needed to make it habitable for clients.
George had offered Karen—mainly, Jack guessed, because it had been a job that she couldn’t screw up. He’d driven her to the apartment himself, introduced her to the concierge so he’d know her presence was legitimate, showed her around and left. End of story.
It had been weeks later that he’d been foolish enough to invite her to have dinner with him one evening when he was feeling low. He certainly hadn’t taken her to the apartment on that occasion. But God knew what she’d told Rachel about it. Remembering what had happened that evening, he felt cold. He’d obviously given her the perfect opportunity to lie about it.
‘I don’t take anyone there,’ he said now, knowing she wasn’t going to believe him. ‘The apartment is corporate property. Ask George Thomas if you don’t believe me.’
‘So you’ve never stayed there?’
Jack baulked. ‘Okay, I’ve stayed there. On a couple of occasions. But I’ve been alone.’
Rachel shook her head. ‘If you say so.’
‘I do say so, dammit.’ Jack could feel his head getting light and he struggled to keep himself grounded. ‘For God’s sake, Rachel, whatever that woman’s told you, we have not been having an affair!’
‘So how do you account for the fact that she’s going to have your baby?’
Jack rocked back on his heels. ‘What did you say?’
‘I think you heard me.’ Despite the accusation, Rachel couldn’t quite meet his eyes, and once again she turned to the table and used the tongs to give the bowl of salad a quick turnover. Then, when the silence was beginning to scrape against her nerves, she went on jerkily, ‘I really think you should eat something, Jack. Mrs Grady’s gone to a lot of trouble, and she’ll be so disappointed—’
‘To hell with Mrs Grady!’
Jack had been standing staring at her for the last few minutes, watching as she made a play of checking the food. He was trying to remain calm, but his mind was racing quicker than his pulse on this occasion. He’d thought he’d heard it all, but he hadn’t even been close.
However, it wasn’t just the shock of hearing Rachel tell him that Karen was pregnant with his baby that stunned him. It wasn’t true. It was the ramifications of Rachel’s actions that left him feeling weak and sick to his stomach. Rachel hadn’t seduced him, he realised, because she’d wanted to sleep with him. She hadn’t even been desperate for a man. And to be honest, she hadn’t actually slept with him. As soon as he’d performed to her satisfaction she’d found somewhere else to spend the night.
‘Why are you looking at me like that?’
The revulsion he was feeling must have shown in his face. The sense of disgust, of betrayal at being used and discarded, must have communicated itself to her—because she’d left what she was doing and was now facing him again.
Jack’s lips curled. ‘Do you need to ask?’
‘What?’ She was defensive. ‘You didn’t think Karen would tell me she was expecting a baby? Oh, yes, she was very proud of it. How could you, Jack? How could you let her come here and ask me to give you a divorce?
’
‘That’s crap and you know it,’ he snapped. ‘If Karen’s pregnant, it’s nothing to do with me. But don’t think I don’t know what you’re trying to do now. You’re trying to divert me from what you did last night. You didn’t seduce me because you wanted me,’ he persisted when she would have interrupted him. ‘You didn’t even seduce me because you wanted sex. You believed that woman’s lies and you decided to teach me a lesson. And if, in the process, you got pregnant, you were prepared to risk that just to gain the upper hand.’
CHAPTER FIVE
THE BROWN ENVELOPE, with the words ‘Private and Confidential’ printed on it in bold letters, was lying on Jack’s desk when he arrived at the office.
He guessed Harry, who always sorted the post, had put it there because of its personal connotations. In the normal way, all the mail was delivered to his personal assistant. Myrna opened the letters, dealt with those she could, and put the rest aside for his attention.
Jack studied the envelope for a few moments before picking it up. He’d guessed what it was, and he couldn’t prevent the sudden acceleration of his pulse. It was all very well assuring himself that the heart specialist he’d seen almost three weeks ago had been of the opinion that overwork, stress, and his unhealthy lifestyle were the most likely cause of the symptoms Jack was suffering. Assurances didn’t help him to sleep at night, or convince him that the tests the specialist had arranged were simply to ease his mind.
It was over a week since he’d been admitted to the private clinic in Plymouth and subjected to an intensive examination of his heart. An exercise cardiogram hadn’t satisfied the cardiologist, and so an intravenous line had been inserted into one of the blood vessels in his groin and a kind of dye had been injected that showed up on an X-ray machine.
It had all been slightly unreal and slightly embarrassing, and he’d wished like hell there’d been someone that he could confide his anxieties to. But since the row he and Rachel had had the afternoon after they’d had sex they weren’t even speaking to one another. He knew she was unlikely to apologise; she didn’t think she’d done anything wrong. And he didn’t see why he should have to beg her to believe Karen Johnson meant nothing to him. Dammit, what kind of a lech did she think he was?
They were at an impasse, and one that wasn’t helped by his current preoccupation with his health. He hated the feeling of not being in command of his body, resented like mad the knowledge that he’d given doctors and specialists the right to take control of his life. He might even have found it in his heart to forgive Rachel if he hadn’t felt so bloody scared.
Deciding there was no point in delaying the inevitable any longer, he picked up the envelope and used the silver letter opener Rachel had given him to slit the flap. Then, with the tips of his fingers, he pulled out the official report.
It was from a private clinic. The name of the clinic was printed neatly across the top. ‘Cairns Gynaecological Consultancy’ it announced, just above the heading that read, ‘Result of Examination (Pregnancy)’.
‘What the—’
Jack swore, staring at the sheet in front of him with disbelieving eyes. The report stated that an examination had been carried out three days ago on Ms Karen Johnson. The result was positive. According to the gynaecologist who’d signed the report, Ms Johnson was approximately sixteen weeks into term.
Sixteen weeks!
Jack flung the report down upon his desk as if it had burned him. Then he snatched it up again, scanning the heading for an address or telephone number. Both were there, indicating that the clinic which had performed the test was in Torquay. Evidently Karen had had her condition authenticated to prove she was telling the truth.
But it wasn’t his child!
Jack blew out a shaky breath, feeling the familiar threads of dizziness weaving in and out of his consciousness as he struggled to make sense of what Karen was trying to do. Destroy his marriage, certainly. That went without saying. But surely she knew she couldn’t get away with this?
They had not had an affair. He hadn’t even slept with her. The only reason he hadn’t reported her harassment to the authorities before was because he’d felt some gratitude towards her. The night he’d taken her out to dinner had been the night he’d had his first serious attack of dizziness. But had the fact that he’d passed out on her doorstep anything to do with this?
He’d been experiencing odd symptoms for some time—bouts of breathlessness and an accelerating heartbeat that he’d put down to the hectic pace of his work. Since he and Rachel had stopped sleeping together—stopped doing anything together, he conceded grimly—he’d begun spending more and more time at the office. He exercised little, probably ate all the wrong food, and generally lived a life that was governed by stress.
But passing out on Karen’s doorstep had been his wakeup call. He’d come round to find himself lying on her sofa, his jacket discarded, his tie loosened, and feeling like the biggest fool in the world.
Of course he’d pretended it was because he’d had too much to drink, but Karen must have known he’d barely touched the wine he’d ordered to have with dinner. That was when fear had become his constant companion, and he’d have said anything to hide how he really felt.
Taking him at his word, Karen had insisted he spend the night on the sofa. He wasn’t fit to drive, she’d said, and short of telling her the truth Jack had had no argument to offer. It was only now that he wondered if her proposal had been less than innocent. Had she already had this scenario in mind? Had she guessed he was unlikely to ask her out again?
His mouth felt unpleasantly dry, and he got up and went into the adjoining bathroom to fill a glass with water from the tap. Staring at his reflection in the mirror above the hand basin, he wasn’t surprised to see he looked haggard. He felt haggard, dammit. But when he’d slammed down the phone on Karen’s outrageous claim two weeks ago he’d never expected she’d try anything like this.
She wasn’t pregnant. Since she’d taken the test two days ago Rachel had hardly been able to think of anything else, but whatever way she looked at the cartridge, the desired coloured dot didn’t pop up in the window.
She’d been convinced she was pregnant. After the night she and Jack had spent together she’d been sure the claim she’d made to Karen Johnson would no longer be a lie. It had always happened before. That was one of the reasons why she’d turned Jack away when he’d attempted to resume a normal relationship after her last miscarriage. That and the fact that she’d felt so devastated, so inadequate as a woman. And totally incapable of doing anything that might risk her getting pregnant again.
But now she had risked it, and it hadn’t worked. Well, not after one night, anyway. And she couldn’t be absolutely sure she’d got pregnant the first time she and Jack had made love. In the early stages of their relationship, as Jack had said, they hadn’t been able to keep their hands off one another.
She shivered. What now? She’d been thinking about nothing else, but was she really going to risk Jack’s rejecting her just to prove a point? Jack had already guessed what she’d attempted and he despised her for it.
So what was she going to do? She was finding it incredibly difficult to concentrate on anything, and the fact that Jack hadn’t broached the subject again surely proved that what she’d suspected all along was true. He was involved with the other woman.
Right now she was in her studio, where she usually spent her time, trying to devise the artwork for her latest commission, Benjie’s Big Day. She’d been the illustrator for the Benjie books for two years, ever since the author had started writing them, and until now she’d always found an escape from her problems in her work. But not today.
A sound alerted her to the fact that she was no longer alone, and, turning, she expected to find Mrs Grady behind her, offering tea or a cool drink. But it wasn’t Mrs Grady. Her husband was leaning against the arched frame of the door, a look of undisguised weariness on his face.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said,
her surprise at seeing him there making her forget they weren’t talking to one another. Then, because he looked so hollow-eyed and drawn, she added warily, ‘Are you all right?’
Jack made a disparaging sound. ‘Is that your way of telling me I look rough?’
‘No.’ Rachel defended herself automatically. ‘You do look—tired.’ She waited a beat. ‘Obviously you’re not getting enough sleep.’
‘Like you care,’ he said tightly.
Rachel stiffened. ‘If you choose to spend your nights screwing your mistress, why should I be expected to care?’
‘I don’t spend my nights screwing anyone,’ he corrected her, enunciating his words carefully so there could be no mistake, but Rachel only gave him a scornful look.
‘Then how else is Karen pregnant?’ she demanded, and he sighed.
‘I’ve told you, that has nothing to do with me—’
‘You would say that,’ she countered. ‘What’s the matter? Conscience troubling you?’
Jack was too exhausted to argue. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘as a matter of fact I’ve not been feeling so good. That’s why I’m home at—’he glanced at his watch ‘—at four o’clock in the afternoon.’
Rachel felt an instinctive twinge of anxiety. She couldn’t help it. But she determinedly squashed it and turned back to her painting. ‘Ask Mrs Grady if she has any aspirin,’ she said, striving for indifference. ‘As I say, you’ll probably feel better if you get to bed at a reasonable hour for once.’
Jack had to acknowledge that was a fair point. Lately he’d reverted to spending more and more time at his desk, despite the warnings he’d been given. But, hell, he wasn’t welcome at home, and the company apartment was bloody lonely. In his present condition he’d rather have the company of the office cleaner than spend the whole evening on his own.
Considering his words before speaking, he said, ‘I don’t think aspirin’s going to do it somehow.’ He gave a wry grimace and turned away. ‘But thanks for your concern, Rachel. It means a lot.’
