She turned from the window and, scooping up her bag and cardigan in case the light breeze grew cold later, opened the door just as he was climbing the stairs to her floor.
‘Nice to know how eager you are to see me,’ he said with a teasing light in his dark eyes.
She gave him a quelling look. ‘Actually,’ she said in a lowered tone, ‘my neighbour is a nurse currently on night duty. Your car made enough noise without you ringing the doorbell as well.’
He led the way to the car and waited until they were on their way before he spoke again. ‘I’ve spoken again to Raymond about the ceremony.’
‘Oh?’
‘Apparently he’s got another wedding to do but I can’t help feeling he’s relieved he doesn’t have to be a party to this setup.’
‘I guess he’s right in a way when you think about it,’ she said. ‘We’re not exactly doing this for the right reasons. Marriage is meant to be for life.’
‘What a pity your mother didn’t share your view,’ Jasper said with a curl of his lip.
He felt her stiffen as if the mention of her mother upset her and, flicking a quick glance her way, felt his chest tighten again when he saw what those small white teeth were doing to her bottom lip.
‘Sorry,’ he said after a lengthy pause.
‘It’s fine,’ she said, looking down at her hands. ‘I understand how you feel about my mother. I really do.’
‘Have you seen her lately?’ he asked, frowning at the way she was twirling her engagement ring almost agitatedly.
‘No…’
He waited for a three-or-four beat silence to pass before he said, ‘I would prefer it if she didn’t come to the wedding.’
‘I understand…’ she said. ‘She wasn’t invited to my wedding to Myles either.’
There was another little silence.
‘He’s a creep, Hayley,’ he said. ‘A first class honours creep who was using you.’
‘So what does that make you then?’
He drew his lips together tightly. ‘I’m not using you.’
‘Yes you are. That little kiss routine the other day was part of it. You think you can sweet talk me into not taking half your assets when our marriage is over, but it won’t work. I hate you and I don’t see that anything you can do, including buying me an outrageously expensive ring to butter me up, is going to change that.’
He shifted the gears with unnecessary force and overtook a stream of cars with a roar of the engine. ‘You think that’s why I bought you that ring?’
‘Isn’t it?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘The truth is I took one look at the ring Lederman had given you and thought what a rotten cheapskate he was. I might not be marrying you for the best reasons in the world, but I thought you at least deserved real diamonds.’
Hayley turned away so he couldn’t see the colour flooding her cheeks. ‘It was a real diamond,’ she said, but she knew her voice lacked conviction.
He snorted again. ‘Sure it was.’
She turned and looked out of the window rather than face his derision. ‘I’d rather have a fake diamond from a man who loved me than a whole bunch of real ones from a man who doesn’t,’ she said.
‘Myles loved the prospect of getting his hands on your money, not you,’ Jasper said. ‘At least I haven’t lied to you about my feelings. I feel the same way about you I always have.’ Now isn’t that the truth? he thought to himself. Desire hot and strong was keeping him awake at night just as it had done ever since she’d sprouted a chest and a kissable pout all those years ago.
She curled her lip. ‘Oh, please, spare me another bludgeoning blow to my ego.’
He let out a very rude swear word. ‘I’d like to do more than bludgeon your ego, young lady,’ he muttered.
‘You put one hand on me and I’ll make you pay for it,’ she threatened.
He threw her a stinging look. ‘I’m already paying for it, sweetheart.’
Hayley didn’t bother asking him what he meant. She wasn’t sure she really wanted to know. She sat back stiffly in her seat and waited in silence for the journey to be over.
CHAPTER SIX
THE COUNTRY PROPERTY Jasper turned into some time later was accessed by a long winding gravel driveway lined on both sides with tall poplar trees, their bright new spring growth shivering in the fresh breeze.
The homestead at the end of the driveway was a colonial sandstone building with a sprawling cottage garden that seemed to fill every available space, the sweet scent of alyssum and early blooming roses filling the air as soon as Hayley stepped out of the car.
‘Wow!’ She looked around with wonder. ‘What a beautiful place. Why on earth do they want to sell it?’
She received her answer as soon as the front door of the homestead opened to reveal a grey-haired woman in her early seventies standing behind a wheelchair where a man a few years older was sitting, his right arm lying uselessly across his lap.
Jasper took her hand and, giving her fingers a quick squeeze, said in a low tone, ‘Don’t forget, you’re madly in love with me, right?’
She gave him a tight smile. ‘Right.’
Mrs Henderson stepped from the verandah and took Hayley’s hand. ‘You must be the lovely fiancée Jasper has been telling us all about. My name is Pearl and this is my husband, Jim.’
‘I’m very pleased to meet you both,’ Hayley said, and reached to shake Jim’s left hand to spare him the embarrassment of trying to lift his damaged one.
Jim Henderson mumbled something inaudible, his stroke-ravaged body tearing at Hayley’s heartstrings. She leaned down to his level and asked him to repeat it, this time managing to make out what he’d said.
Pearl Henderson gave an approving smile and ushered them all indoors. ‘I’ve made scones,’ she announced. ‘I thought we could have a cup of tea before Jasper shows you around the property.’
‘That would be lovely,’ Hayley said, breathing in the fresh fragrance of furniture polish as they went indoors.
The house was beautifully maintained, the furniture looking as if it had watched over several generations of Hendersons. Even the rugs on the timber floors bore the imprint of thousands of footsteps over the passage of time.
‘This is such a beautiful home,’ she said as Pearl Henderson handed her a cup and saucer. ‘You must be feeling very sad to be leaving it.’
A shadow passed over Pearl’s face as she pushed the milk and sugar closer so Jasper and her husband could reach it. ‘It’s time to move on,’ she said. ‘Jim’s stroke has made things difficult to manage the outside work. We lost our only son a few years ago…otherwise he would have carried on the tradition. There have been Hendersons on this property for six generations.’
‘I’m so sorry…’ Hayley said, feeling the couple’s pain like a silent presence in the room.
Pearl forced a smile to her lips as she passed the scones around. ‘Of course, we’re delighted now that Jasper is going to buy it,’ she said. ‘We weren’t going to sell it to just anyone. I don’t want our home bulldozed down to make way for shoebox town houses.’
Hayley did her best to keep her eyes from straying in Jasper’s direction. What had he told the Hendersons? she wondered. He surely hadn’t lied to them in order to secure the property? What would he want with several thousand acres of land unless to redevelop it to make the sort of money he normally made on such transactions? That was after all why he wanted his father’s property Crickglades, which wasn’t even a quarter of the size of this one.
‘When he told us he was looking for somewhere to spend his weekends once he got married we reconsidered,’ Pearl continued. ‘This place is crying out for a young family to make it come alive again.’
Hayley very nearly choked on a crumb of scone and quickly gulped at her tea to disguise it.
‘It’s very good of you both to give me first offer,’ Jasper said. ‘I fell in love with this place the first time I saw it.’
Jim gave him a lopsided smile and mu
mbled something Hayley understood to be approval.
‘Will you run cattle or sheep, do you think?’ Pearl asked as she passed the home-made raspberry jam to him. ‘We sold all our livestock a few months back, but with the spring growth it seems a shame to have it go to waste.’
‘I’ll appoint a manager to sort it out,’ Jasper said, generously spreading a scone with the thick jam. ‘I don’t know much about farming, but I’m willing to learn.’
Hayley couldn’t wait for morning tea to be over so she could go outside and challenge him. Willing to learn indeed!
Pearl began to clear the tea things a short time later. ‘Why don’t you take Hayley outside and show her the river walk?’ she suggested. ‘It’s lovely at this time of year with the willows sprouting their new growth. When you get back we can finalise the details of the sale. Jim and I have the paperwork ready. We met with the lawyer the other day.’
‘I’d love to see the river walk,’ Hayley said, springing out of her chair and grabbing at Jasper’s hand.
She waited until they were out of earshot and view of the house before she lambasted him. ‘How could you lie to those poor old people?’ She put her hands on her hips and mimicked him. ‘I’m willing to learn about farming. You unfeeling selfish bastard. How could you?’
‘I’m not lying,’ he said evenly. ‘I am interested in learning a bit about farming.’
‘Since when?’ she asked.
‘I thought it might be interesting to diversify my financial interests.’
‘You’re a property developer. You wouldn’t know a cow or a sheep if you bumped into one,’ she said. ‘I know what you’re up to and I won’t be a part of it. You’re going to buy this place under false pretences and then chop it up and develop it.’
‘You’re entitled to your opinion, but I can assure you that’s not what I intend to do,’ he said, walking towards the sinuous curve of the river in the distance.
Hayley had to trot to keep up. ‘I hope you’re not lying to me, Jasper,’ she puffed. ‘I would hate to think I was helping to deceive the Hendersons.’
He stopped to look down at her, an ironic smile tilting his mouth sideways. ‘But you are helping to deceive them, baby girl,’ he said. ‘You’re pretending to be in love with me and doing a damn fine job of it too.’
Hayley started to move away, but he snagged her arm and pulled her back to face him. She met his eyes, her stomach giving a little kick of excitement as his hands slid down her arms, his long, strong fingers encircling her wrists.
She suddenly felt exposed and vulnerable under his dark, intense scrutiny. She wondered if he had somehow guessed her real feelings, the feelings she was trying to hide from herself, let alone him. She had been fighting it for days, the attraction she’d thought had died twelve years ago with his cold dismissal, but instead it had leapt back into vibrant life, threatening to take over her common sense all over again.
He was standing so close she could smell his skin and the lemony notes of his aftershave that clung to it lightly. She could feel the pull of his pelvis as if he had a magnet attached to his belt that was luring her into intimate contact with him. She felt herself tilting towards him, her legs swaying as if they had a mind of their own.
‘W-what are you doing?’ she croaked as his head started to come down.
‘I’m going to kiss you.’
‘I t-told you not to touch me.’ Damn! she thought. That hadn’t sounded half as strident as she’d intended.
‘I know you did but Jim and Pearl could be watching from the house,’ he said.
She stared at his mouth, her heart leaping at the thought of feeling his lips and tongue playing with hers. ‘It’s a long way to the house. They couldn’t possibly see us from here…you don’t have to kiss me…’
‘Perhaps not, but I thought I might do so all the same.’
‘I—I don’t want you to kiss me unless it’s absolutely necessary.’
‘Oh, it’s necessary, all right,’ he said, brushing her lips with his in a light-as-air movement that set her mouth tingling. ‘It’s absolutely necessary.’
Hayley sighed as he swooped back down and covered her mouth with his, his tongue driving through the shield of her lips in search of hers. Her lower body jumped in response, her breasts swelling against his chest as he used one hand on the small of her back to bring her closer. She felt the intoxicating heat of his erection and marvelled that his blood had surged so quickly in reaction to her closeness. It gave her a sense of feminine power that her body was exciting to him, especially when he had spurned her clumsy adolescent advances all those years ago.
The skin of his jaw rasped her face as he deepened the kiss with an urgency that thrilled her. She felt her lips swelling beneath the demanding pressure of his, her whole body quivering to feel more and more of his touch. The dew of arousal budded between her legs, her tail bone tilting in delight as his fingers explored each small knob of her vertebrae. She pushed herself closer, her achingly empty heated core searching for his thickness to fill it with throbbing, exhilarating life.
His tongue swept the cavern of her mouth once more, flicking against hers in a provocative caress that fuelled her need of him like a match to a live gas outlet. The combustion of his touch as his hands moved to her breasts to cup them sent her over the edge of reason and control.
She fumbled between them for the zipper on his jeans, her fingers relishing in the spring of his engorged flesh as she finally freed him. She heard him groan deep in the back of his throat, but he did nothing to stop her as she explored him with a touch at first tentative, then increasingly bold as she felt his tightly reined in response. He felt like satin-wrapped steel under the soft pads of her fingertips, the sticky moistness at the tip bringing her gaze down to look at him in awe. He was much bigger than she’d expected, and uncut, which made him seem all the more primal and dangerous.
‘You’re going to have stop doing that, right now,’ he said on a harshly indrawn breath. ‘Otherwise I won’t be held responsible for my actions.’
She kept stroking him, but he snatched at her hand, his fingers around hers almost painfully tight as they pulled her off him.
‘No, Hayley,’ he said, breathing hard. ‘This is taking things way too far.’
Hayley felt her face fire up and mentally kicked herself for revealing how much he affected her.
She gave her head a little toss. ‘If you think you can kiss me whenever you like you need to realise I can do the same to you. That’s fair, isn’t it?’
‘Kissing is one thing but stimulating me to—’
‘You could have stopped me earlier,’ she cut him off. ‘Why didn’t you?’
He looked down at her for several pulsing seconds, his expression like a mask. ‘God knows,’ he said and, turning away, began to stride towards the river.
Hayley let out a painful sigh and followed a few paces behind, her legs dragging against the weight of the long grass.
She caught up to him a short time later and came to stand beside him as he looked out over the river to the blue-tinged hills beyond.
‘Are you really going to keep this place?’ she asked.
He glanced at her briefly. ‘You don’t think I’d look good in a pair of moleskins and elastic-sided work boots?’
‘I don’t know. Can you ride a horse?’
‘No, but I can ride a quad bike. At least they don’t bite and kick.’
‘But they can still be dangerous,’ she said. ‘Several people have been killed on the land using them.’
‘Well, if I am you can collect my life insurance. That should set you up for life.’
‘Don’t joke about stuff like that,’ she said, frowning at him in reproach.
His dark eyes came back to hers. ‘Why? Would you miss fighting with me?’
Hayley wanted to say she’d miss everything about him: the melted chocolate of his eyes, his teasing smile, his electric touch and his too tempting mouth and body.
‘May
be,’ she acceded, beginning to walk back the way they had come.
She felt his shoulder brush against hers and tried to move further away, but she almost lost her footing on the uneven ground.
‘Careful,’ he said and steadied her.
She looked up at him. ‘We’ve always fought, though, haven’t we?’ she said. ‘From the first moment we met we were at each other’s throats.’
‘Yeah, pretty much, I guess.’
‘Why do you think that was?’ she asked.
His mouth tilted into a teasing grin. ‘Well for one thing you could have written and proofread the textbook on being spoilt.’
She gave him a thump on the arm. ‘And you were a surly teenager who thought it was beneath you to speak to a little kid five years younger.’
‘It seemed a big gap back then, didn’t it?’ he commented as they wandered on. ‘I mean, you were fourteen and I was nineteen when my father married your mother. That’s a whole different ball game from now. I’m thirty-three and you’re twenty-eight. Those five years have shrunk a lot.’
They walked a few more paces in silence. Hayley watched as Jasper absently snapped off a strand of long grass and threaded it through his fingers. His expression was clouded, as if he was thinking about his parent’s divorce and how her mother Eva had ruined so many lives. There was a shadow of something in his dark eyes as they looked into the distance. He reminded her of a lone wolf on a mountain top, surveying his territory.
He suddenly turned and looked down at her. ‘Have you ever wondered who your father was?’ he asked.
Hayley shifted her gaze so he wouldn’t see how ashamed she was of her background. She had longed to find out in the early years, but after her mother had hinted the one she suspected was responsible was now behind bars serving time for a serious crime she had left the subject well alone. ‘No…’ she answered.
Willingly Bedded, Forcibly Wedded Page 6
