Getting through to him when his mind was made up was impossible. She remembered now exactly when that fact of life had finally hit home...
Bella let herself into the Docklands apartment and thanked heaven for the central heating. The late-January evening was bitterly cold.
She removed her suit jacket and kicked off her shoes. And smiled. She’d been doing a lot of that just lately—smiling. Ever since Guy had made that proposition, given her existence a meaning that had been strangely absent during the two years and one month of her largely solitary marriage, she’d been feeling euphoric.
Dear, darling Guy!
They’d been heavily involved all day, and she felt pleasantly tired and thankful that she wasn’t hungry because she had nothing in. Life had been too hectic since Guy had put forward his tempting offer to spare time for boring things like food shopping!
Deciding to listen to music, open a bottle of wine and come down from the high she now seemed permanently on, before getting an early night, she frowned as the phone in the living room shrilled out.
But it could be Guy. She lifted the receiver expectantly and Jake said, ‘I’m at Heathrow. Can you fetch me, or shall I hire a car?’
He sounded desperately tired. ‘I’m on my way,’ she said quickly, her brows drawing together. He never flew in unexpectedly; he always let her know when he’d be home. She hoped there was nothing wrong.
‘You work too hard,’ she chided when she eventually drove them from the airport car park. He looked exhausted. ‘Is there anything wrong?’
‘Nothing that a few days of your home cooking and tender ministrations won’t cure!’ For a moment the teasing, sultry note was back in his voice, the slow smile he turned on her wiping the exhaustion from his face for a fleeting fraction of time.
Bella bit down on her lower lip, and concentrated fiercely on her driving. Now wasn’t the right time to tell him she wouldn’t be around. She could hardly let Guy down at this early stage of their renewed relationship.
Questions about his latest business trip elicited perfunctory answers, but the gist was that it had been highly satisfactory so she stopped asking and told herself he had obviously worked himself to a near standstill. She enquired instead, ‘Are you hungry?’
‘Ravenous.’
‘Then we’ll find a restaurant; I’m low on provisions. OK?’
‘Fine. Somewhere low-key. Food, then bed. With you. Those are my priorities.’
Something in his voice told her that food came a very definite second on his list of two. Her whole body quivered. Their lovemaking was always spectacular, but his first night home after an absence that often stretched to weeks was sublime.
Without thinking—although later she was to wonder if it had been an unconscious wish to push the truth under his nose—she chose the small Italian restaurant in Canning Town where Guy had given her lunch and put his proposition to her. He often ate there, mostly in the evenings. His wife was again on a protracted visit to her parents, and as head of a thriving advertising agency he worked his socks off and couldn’t face having to make himself a meal.
Not smart, the tiny restaurant was warm and friendly, the aroma of cooking appetising. They chose simply—pasta with spicy vegetables and a carafe of gutsy red wine.
Jake ate as if he were starving, as if he needed the wholesome, hot food, and the light was back in his eyes as he took her hand across the table and told her, ‘I’ve missed you, Bel. Know something? You get more beautiful every time I see you. And know something else? I think I’ve made a decision—’
‘Ah—the lovely Bella!’ Whatever Jake had been about to tell her was cut short by the theatrical emergence of the proprietor from the kitchen. Carlo, Guy had introduced him over lunch that day. He had shiny black hair and a very big smile, and a tea-towel tied around his ample waist, tucked into his trousers at the back.
‘You come again! My good friend Guy brings often new customers—people who want no frills, just good Italian food, home cooked. I tell him he has good taste—especially in his choice of so beautiful a companion!’
Bella felt something happen to her spine. Something like an army of ants scurrying up and down wearing needles of ice on their feet! Big on friendliness Carlo might be, but he was lamentably short on tact. He was seemingly oblivious to the black hostility in Jake’s eyes as he beamingly asked, ‘Is everything OK? Dolce, maybe?’
‘Nothing.’ Jake’s reply was terse, his eyes hard as when they were alone again, he turned them on Bella’s suddenly white face, raking them over her features as if he was trying to read what was going on in her mind. ‘You come here often? You and Maclaine?’
‘No, of course not.’ The Italian had made it sound that way, but she’d only been here that one time. She twisted her napkin in her fingers. She was going to have to tell him now, and he wouldn’t be pleased! In the past, whenever she’d mentioned Guy’s name, Jake had changed the subject. He must have guessed, or heard, something about their former relationship. He was very possessive. ‘I had lunch here with him. Once.’
It was then, precisely then, that he withdrew from her—quite possibly from their marriage. It was the beginning of the end, although she didn’t know that then. She saw suspicion in his eyes, and did her best to counter it.
‘I need to do something with my life, Jake. Can’t you see that? Guy’s offered me work; I’ve taken it.’
‘Is that what you call it?’
Was he referring to her former modelling career? She knew he’d been happy when she’d given it up. As he’d said at the time, only half-jokingly, she suspected, he didn’t like every Tom, Dick and Harry lusting after his much photographed wife.
Or did he mean something much darker?
‘Jake, listen—’ Her voice shook with the intensity of her need to make him hear her out, understand. ‘This job, it’s—’
‘Leave it.’ He was slapping banknotes down to cover the bill. ‘If you want to work, go ahead. I wouldn’t dream of asking you not to. If being my wife isn’t “doing something with your life” then who am I to argue?’
He sounded indifferent.
He slept in the spare room that night, exhaustion his thin excuse. And over the following months he spent even more time away, and, when home with her, carefully avoided any mention of her job. And she, in turn, closed in on herself. Lack of communication became almost an art form...
Now the aroma of fresh coffee teased her nostrils as she walked through the kitchen. She ignored it, just as she made herself ignore the weakening effects of the past traumatic hours.
She’d used every last bit of her former expertise when she’d made herself up to match the clothes Evie’s skulduggery had forced her to wear, carefully hiding her pallor and the lines of strain around her eyes. She needed confidence, control; she couldn’t emerge from this nightmare with her self-respect intact without both held firmly in her hands.
She could hear him moving around in the living room. She took a deep breath, forced a serene expression and walked through.
Her eyes immediately went to him, lingering, drinking him in, as if her brain had no say in the matter. Changed into loose black denims topped by a rib-hugging black cashmere sweater, he should have looked menacing, intimidating. But he didn’t. He looked heart-twistingly sexy.
She only had to look at him to experience the scorching, ravaging flames of desire, feel them wreaking their fiery onslaught through every tingling cell in her body. She dragged in a shuddery breath and prayed her inner turmoil didn’t show.
He returned her riveted gaze with a slow, brooding appraisal, black eyes indolently skimming every line of her tautly held body as if he were stripping away the unlikely, elegant garments to the warm, suddenly trembling flesh beneath. And the air in the cosy little room became wildly over-heated, sizzling with churning sexual awareness.
Until he spoke, his cool, sardonic tone cutting through the atmosphere, one dark brow lifting upwards. ‘I see you brought your designer labels
along. Perfect choice for a winter break in the wilds of Wales.’
His sarcasm chilled her. ‘Evie made a furtive last-minute substitution.’ He wouldn’t believe her. He wouldn’t believe her if she said roses had thorns. And the twist of his long mouth told her she was correct in that assumption.
‘You’re slipping, Bella.’ Glittering black eyes taunted her cruelly. ‘You used to be such a good liar. Through three years of marriage you had me believing you were a faithful wife.’
Now, surely, was the time to put that right, to tell him that the fault was his, that she would never have left him if he had given her what she most needed, to explain exactly what that was.
‘We need to discuss this,’ she told him, her black-lashed, water-clear eyes huge with entreaty.
But he shook his head, frowning sharply. ‘There’s nothing to discuss—except how we’re going to get through the next few days. It is Christmas, remember?’
He bent to tend the fledgling fire, and Bella swallowed the lump in her throat. Nothing to discuss. Their past, present and future relationship was too unimportant to waste breath on.
And of course she knew it was Christmas; she didn’t need reminding.
It had become such a very special time of year for her, more than ordinarily so. Their whirlwind romance, followed by a Christmas Eve wedding. The first few days of their rapturous honeymoon spent in a quiet, rambling sixteenth-century inn tucked away in the Cotswolds. All the festive trimmings—roaring log fires, red-berried holly, even a light flurry of snow. Carol-singers, young voices crystal-clear in the frosty air, sparkly days and long nights filled with love and laughter. And talking.
Oh, how she’d talked, spilling out hopes she had never shared with anyone before. Hopes that had never been fulfilled.
‘Yes, I remember,’ she answered him, her voice flat. Over the past year anguish had been a constant companion. She’d thought she had learned to live with it, learned to cope. Clearly, she hadn’t. ‘I’ll go and pour us some of that coffee.’
It was suddenly an effort to speak. The pain of disappointment hit her. She had so hoped, expected—yes, actually and foolishly expected...
‘I’ll do it. Stay here, get warm.’ He was out of the room before she could argue. Not that she had the energy to argue about anything.
Slowly she moved to the fire and held her hands out to the warmth of the flames.
Reaction to this morning’s hare-brained escapade was setting in. That was why she had been air-headed enough to imagine, for one single moment, that somehow they could work things out, that he did still care for her a little.
She didn’t realise she’d been swaying on her feet until Jake thrust the tray he’d carried through down on a side table, put long-fingered hands on her shoulders and pressured her down onto the fireside chair.
Not that he needed to exert much pressure. Her legs felt as if they were made of water. He reached for the tray and placed it on her knees.
‘Eat. Drink. I don’t want you collapsing on me. I’ve no way of summoning medical aid, don’t forget.’
Barely focusing, her eyes registered a china beaker of steaming coffee and a plate of lavishly buttered hot toast. His cool command made sense. Always the practical one, always able to find reasons why he couldn’t give her what she craved.
She drank the coffee and forced down some of the toast, and managed a dull little, ‘Thank you. I needed that.’
Jake removed the tray and said tersely, ‘Too right, you did. You’ve actually got some colour back in your face that hasn’t come out of a pot.’
Her cheeks, smooth as a rose petal, had a touch of pink beneath the translucent surface, and her lips had lost that worrying bluish tinge—formerly apparent in the whiteness around the coral lipstick she had so carefully painted on. He took up an unknowingly dominant stance in front of the hearth, breathed deeply and tried to make himself relax.
They were stuck out here, and there was no way he was going to spend Christmas in an ill-tempered, explosive atmosphere.
‘I’ve a suggestion to make.’ A stab of something fierce and hot knifed through him as her eyes winged up and locked with his. She had piled the silky mass of her black hair elegantly on the top of her head. The purity of the line from the crown of her head to the angle of her jaw, to the slender length of her neck, was sheer poetry. It made him ache.
He clenched his hands in the pockets of his jeans. And tried again. ‘I suggest we try to make the best of the situation.’ Suddenly it was vitally important to him that she agree to a truce. He cleared his throat and continued with a careful lack of inflection. ‘We’re stuck here. Whether we like it or not. In my opinion, it wouldn’t make a whole heap of sense to spend Christmas glowering at each other from opposite ends of the room.’
The clear luminosity of her eyes cut to his soul. She looked as though she was hanging on every word, like a child who was waiting to hear the details of a long-awaited treat. Despite the veneer of elegant sophistication those expressive eyes made her look so trusting, so innocent.
Yet she was light years away from innocence, he reminded himself with a brutality he suddenly felt was very necessary.
‘So why don’t we forget the past for a couple of days, call a truce and behave like rational adults?’
He knew he’d sounded harsher than he’d meant to, and instantly regretted it as he watched her head droop, those eyes not intent on him now, but on the long-fingered hands that lay clasped in her lap.
He held his breath, expecting the retaliation of total non-compliance or, at best, the silent withdrawal that had tainted the last year of their marriage. Though he, too, had been guilty in that respect, he recognised now.
‘Sounds like sense to me, too.’ Bella did her best to sound like the rational adult he’d suggested she try to be. The spiky lump in her throat was her own fault. Stupid of her to have thought, at first, that he was trying to tell her that they should use this time to try to resurrect their marriage, work on their shattered relationship, talk things out.
But his harshly impatient suggestion that they forget the past, just for a day or so, had knocked that fantasy on the head.
He wanted to forget that they’d ever meant anything to each other. She had no option but to play it his way, and she knew that if she were to survive the next few days without making a shameful fool of herself she would have to convince her stupid heart that their separation was the first step in rectifying a bad mistake. Perhaps even steel herself to mention divorce.
She got to her feet, and challenged him. ‘I won’t glower, if you won’t. And, to make it easier, shall we dress the tree? There’s one in the kitchen, in case you hadn’t noticed.’
‘I could hardly have failed, since I almost poked my eye out on the darned thing a couple of times.’
She hadn’t left out a single thing when she’d made her minute arrangements for the ‘surprise’ reunion! Jake stamped on the thought. No past, no recriminations, simply a polite coexistence—on the surface, anyway. He was working on it. He had to. It had been his idea, hadn’t it? He’d do anything to make the next few days as amicable as they could be. Polite formality was definitely the only safe atmosphere to aim for.
He would do anything to avoid any attempts on her part to affect a reconciliation. That had to be why she’d set this up. And she had enough witchery at her command to make him follow his heart, ignore the sullied past and resume their marriage.
He would fight to the last breath to avoid putting himself through that kind of hell again.
‘I’ll carry it through; you decide where you think it would look best.’
In the end they both agreed the tree would look perfect in the alcove at the side of the inglenook.
‘Out of the way of any flying sparks,’ Jake approved. ‘Shall you hang the bits and bobs, or shall I?’
‘Why don’t we do it together?’ Immediately the question was out she regretted it. It sounded pushy. Togetherness was something that had been
missing from their relationship for a long time now. No chance of finding it again either. He didn’t want to find it so they wouldn’t. What Jake wanted, Jake got.
‘One of us has to fix lunch,’ he told her, smoothly glossing over her mistake. ‘Breakfast, for me, was a non-event, and yours—two bites of toast just now—doesn’t count. I’ll forage in the kitchen while you deck the tree.’
It wasn’t cowardice, he told himself grimly as he jerked the fridge door open and glared at the brimming contents. He needed to keep things cool, polite—if only superficially. It was the only way he could get through this without his emotions ending up in chaos.
He pulled a slab of cold roasted beef from the well-stocked shelves and began to slice at it for sandwiches. He had nothing to fear, he reminded himself. Not a damn thing. He had the protection of her past infidelities, hadn’t he? Not to mention the reinforcement of her latest devious behaviour—the setting up of this farce.
Jake eyed the mound of meat he’d hacked with grim hostility. The slices were distinctly uneven, ragged, as if someone had set about the cold roast with an axe. And he wondered why he had to keep reminding himself of the reasons for keeping her at arm’s length.
After what she’d done to him, to their marriage, he would have thought his heart would have grown a protective shell a mile thick, the reasons for keeping her at a firm distance permanently engraved on his brain.
He shouldn’t have to work on it.
It shouldn’t have to be so hard!
If he allowed her back into his life he would deserve all he got. Heartbreak. Forever wondering if she was sneaking off to be with Maclaine whenever his back was turned. He couldn’t face the pain of that again.
CHAPTER SEVEN
AT FIRST Bella had been all fumbling thumbs and deep and nervy embarrassment at having left herself wide open to that rebuff. Play the game—for a game it surely was—as if they were mere acquaintances, politely resigned to spending time together; that was the way Jake wanted it. So that was the way he’d get it, she’d told herself firmly. She would demonstrate that she could play the game as well as he. Better, even!
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