by Kim Lawrence
Turning towards him, everything in her taut with trepidation, Caroline was utterly dismayed by the desolate and savagely bleak expression she saw written across his remarkably striking features.
‘I—I don’t know who you are any more, Jack. I don’t know enough about you to assume anything.’
The intoxicating scent of leather from his jacket—an expensive, almost earthy smell—mingled with the palpable heat from his body and made a devastating ambush on Caroline’s already acutely charged senses. The clock on the kitchen wall ticked with hypnotic precision, lulling her into a kind of frozen suspended animation, and outside somewhere a car door slammed.
When Jack’s hands locked fiercely onto her upper arms she dizzily registered the unmitigating bite of them with a soft, surprised groan. Then his mouth descended upon hers in a hot, punishing kiss that seemed to be governed by equal parts rage and desire, and Caroline was shockingly reminded that pain and pleasure could be as intimately and destroyingly intertwined as love and hate.
Her heart was thumping so crazily inside her chest that all the blood seemed to drain from her body, leaving her like a limp rag doll in his arms. That was until she came to her senses, felt the tenor of the kiss change into something even more dangerous, something even more potentially explosive, and became terrifyingly aware that every honed-to-perfection muscle and granite-like inch of his devastating body was pressed as intimately close to hers as a body could be, making them virtually inseparable.
Grappling with the urgent need to set herself free, as well as to stay right where she was and accept the earth-shattering consequences that contact with him wrought throughout her body, Caroline shoved against the implacable hardness of his chest and abruptly disengaged from his tormenting embrace.
‘No!’
The terror in her voice was unrecognisable to her.
Having no choice but to let her go, Jack smiled tauntingly against the back of his hand. He had started to wipe away her taste, as though it was somehow beneath him to bear it. Her eyes stinging with outraged, furious tears, and her mouth quivering defencelessly as she fought the frighteningly potent seductive allure of him, Caroline was shocked at how powerfully and treacherously the old magnetic attraction had asserted itself between them.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ she demanded, moving nervously across the room to the door. ‘Get out of my house and don’t come back! Do you hear me? I want you to go! I want you to go right now and never come back!’
‘Still think you’re too good for me…don’t you, baby?’
The smirk on his lips and the derision in his eyes made Caroline feel quite wretched. But beneath the drowning sensation of despair that washed over her she couldn’t believe that he could even utter such a calumny with the smallest grain of conviction. She had never, ever felt that Jack wasn’t good enough for her, and she had certainly never treated him like that either. He was quite unfairly getting her mixed up with her father—his fury towards Charles Tremayne blinding him to the truth of her own feelings towards him.
‘I’ve never thought I was too good for you! You’re twisting things around so that you can heap more blame on me…so that you can make me the brunt of all your old bad feeling towards my dad!’ Catching the corner of the door, Caroline pushed it deliberately wide. ‘I only invited you in because of plain good manners, but I should have listened to my better instincts and left you standing there! I’ve had a long day, and now I just want to be on my own and have some peace. Please go, Jack. Just go.’
It was hard to get his feet to move. In those melting, feverish seconds when once again Jack had tasted the irresistible soft satin of the most lustfully sweet pair of lips he had ever kissed all his passion, all his urgent, relentless, destroying need for the woman in his arms, had been furiously and frighteningly rekindled. So much so that Jack really didn’t know what to do next. To incite some urgently needed self-preservation he ruthlessly reminded himself of what she had so callously destroyed, and as that old hatred towards her helpfully resurfaced, and made another painful score across his heart, he was finally able to move.
‘I’m going, Caroline, don’t worry.’
Unable to resist stopping in front of her before going out through the door, Jack deliberately took his time examining the wild rose colour that had flared so arrestingly in her cheeks. ‘Living alone must be quite a challenge for you. I’d say that you’ve definitely been without a man too long, sweetheart. I’d certainly put my last dollar on it that that superior doctor friend of yours can’t effect the same shamelessly undone expression you’re wearing right now with his kisses. Am I right?’
When she didn’t reply, but glanced away from him instead with a resentful, hurt look in her eyes, Jack laughed softly.
‘Don’t fret…I’m certain we’ll be seeing each other around again quite soon…of that I’ve no doubt.’
‘Why? I should have thought that you’d want to go out of your way to avoid me.’
‘What? And deprive you of the beautiful memory of me and our happy times together for ever?’
‘You don’t have to be so cruel’
‘Yes, sweetheart…I do.’ Smiling arrogantly, Jack scathingly angled his jaw. ‘It helps remind me of your own cruelty towards me.’
As he turned to go, Caroline couldn’t resist asking one final question. ‘You still didn’t tell me why you came back here. I think you could at least have the decency to tell me that much.’
His mocking expression unchanging, Jack shrugged. ‘I bought my parents’ old house—the one that got repossessed…remember?’
Caroline experienced a heartfelt jolt. ‘I remember.’ He’d been enraged about that. She remembered the savage look on his face when he ‘d told her about it the same night it happened…unhappily recollected that there had been tears in his dazzling blue eyes as he’d told her and how it had shocked her to witness them. It was then that he’d asserted his intention of leaving this ‘Godforsaken place’ to make his name and fortune. When he came back, his mother would never be afraid to hold her head up in this ‘ignorant, small-minded town’ again.
‘What are you going to do with it? You’re not going to move back there, are you?’ Her voice almost dropped to a crushed whisper at the very idea, and she thought wildly that she’d have to move away, or even go abroad herself…anything but live in the same small town as Jack Fitzgerald again!
As if sensing her panic, Jack studied her with a deliberate taunt in his fierce blue gaze. ‘You’re just going to have to wait and see, Caroline…just like everybody else in this town.’
It was when he got back to his hotel suite, his body as restless as someone high on amphetamines from their charged encounter, unable to do anything but pace the floor for several minutes until he’d calmed himself down, that Jack reluctantly recalled the fear and panic he had witnessed on Caroline’s beautiful face.
He didn’t want to feel the slightest grain of compassion for her obvious distress. He didn’t want to remember that she’d trembled like a leaf in his arms when he’d kissed her so savagely—probably scaring her half out of her wits as well as making him almost crazy with desire. But she’d looked so good…more than he’d been able to bear…and smelled so divine. She was a fully matured woman now, not a young, innocent schoolgirl, and she was even lovelier than ever.
Briefly touching his fingers beneath the bridge of his nose, Jack sucked in a deep ragged breath at the taunting waft of her perfume that clung to his skin. Dear God! Why did this have to happen to him after all these years, when he’d spent a lifetime trying to forget her? Why now, when he’d established himself as a man of means, when he could go anywhere, do anything, be with practically any woman he wanted? Why was it that the only woman he craved beyond any good reason was Caroline Tremayne? It was like having an addiction to dynamite. And he didn’t doubt that pursuing her in any way would cause his whole life to blow up in his face.
Dropping down onto the bed and shrugging off his
leather jacket, Jack impatiently undid the first three buttons on his black shirt, as if their being closed was choking him, and sat for long minutes just staring off into space, his hand against his chest, beyond furious that he should have to consider the effect of the stress he was suffering on his heart.
Why was it that she hadn’t married? Impatiently considering the possible reasons, Jack could have crawled out of his own skin at not knowing the answer. Why was it that she wasn’t even living with someone, didn’t have a man in her life on a regular basis? Of course she might well have been married and it just hadn’t worked out. Whatever. The mere idea that she was single now was enough to conjure up all kinds of impossible dangerous fantasies in his head.
It would have been so much easier for both of them if they’d been involved with someone else, he realised. Jack had a strict code of conduct about fidelity. Even when Anna had been playing around he hadn’t retaliated by taking a lover outside of their marriage himself, and he wouldn’t have persuaded Caroline to cheat on her husband if she had had one…no matter how badly he yearned to have her in his bed again…His father had destroyed his mother with his heartless philandering. His cheating and drinking and lying had driven her to resort to ‘medication’ to numb her pain. Even as a young boy, Jack had realised that.
‘For God’s sake! The past is dead and buried…just leave it alone, why can’t you?’
Pushing to his feet, he walked across the room and, moving the velvet drape at the window aside, stared out at the quiet empty street below—the silence only broken by the sound of the ocean in the distance. Why had he been so compelled to return to this place? There was no salvation for him here…no one except the seller of the house he had bought for too high a price because he wanted it so badly to be glad that he’d returned to the town he was born in.
No…his coming home was nothing like he’d once envisaged it would be. The sooner he finished overseeing the renovations on the house the sooner he could leave, return to the life and work that had brought him an undoubted measure of success in the world…an undoubted measure of the respect he’d so badly craved as a young man. He should think about that and stop driving himself mad with thoughts of what he couldn’t have and definitely shouldn’t want if he knew what was good for him. And he was damn sure that when he did leave Caroline Tremayne would mourn his going about as much as she’d grieve over some unknown stranger leaving town…
Like a naughty child who’d been warned about staying away from a place that might potentially bring her harm, Caroline walked surreptitiously down the little cul-de-sac where Jack and his mother had lived all those years ago, glancing guiltily from side to side as if Jack might appear at any second and demand to know what she was doing there. Truth to tell, she didn’t really know what she was doing there herself. But Jack’s telling her that he was having his old home renovated had feverishly sparked Caroline’s curiosity, and instead of driving to open up the shop—as she should have been doing—here she was, creeping about like some kind of private detective hoping to get an illicit compromising picture of somebody’s wife or husband cheating on their spouse.
Automatically she touched her chilled fingers to her mouth and imagined she could still feel the lingering aftermath from his blisteringly hot kiss of yesterday. The fevered recollection of that kiss in every detail had dominated Caroline’s dreams last night. Even though she knew all Jack had wanted to do was punish her in some way for what had happened in the past, it hadn’t relegated her near-erotic dream to a nightmare, as it should have done. No—her body had thrashed around in bed, tormented by the memory of his touch as though it would never know peace or rest again.
Work had begun on the old Victorian semi-detached dwelling with a vengeance, she saw. Besides the huge digger outside, and the crew of workmen going in and out of the front door with wheelbarrows full of bricks and mortar, or busily occupied up scaffolding, a well-dressed man in a beige raincoat and with a bright yellow hard-hat on his head consulted drawings with another man dressed in jeans and sweatshirt with a well-known sports logo on it.
It looked like a huge and pretty serious undertaking, and Caroline could only stand there in wonderment that Jack had made his passionate promise come true…made his fortune and been able to come home and buy the old place where he and his mother had lived their sometimes hand-to-mouth existence.
It hurt her deeply to remember his despair over their lack of money, but even then Caroline had known that Jack would turn his family’s fortunes around. He’d always had a Herculean determination to rise above any adversity and turn a disaster into a triumph. It was just too bad and too tragic that his mother had not lived to enjoy the fruits of her son’s labour…
But why? Why had he wanted to buy the house and do it up? As far as Caroline knew, he didn’t have any family left around there to keep in touch with, and most of his memories of their little town were hardly the kind he would look back on with fondness—so what had driven him to commit to such a strange undertaking?
Telling herself that her curiosity was bound to be left unsatisfied, because relations between them were hardly conducive to exchanging secrets, Caroline turned to walk back the way she’d come. Right now she should just be getting on with her life and enjoying the results of her own personal success. Jack might imagine she’d failed somehow by not making art her full-time career, and he might see her working in the shop and teaching as a poor substitute—but Caroline knew better. She had the best of both worlds. She could still enjoy her painting without earning her living by it, and working in the shop and teaching arts and crafts at the school helped her enthuse and assist others in making their own art.
There was nothing in that arena she should feel remotely ashamed or regretful about. She should certainly not allow her hostile ex-boyfriend to make her feel bad about the way her life had turned out.
Jack was just walking round from what was now a flattened and decimated garden, in preparation for the spectacular transformation that he and his designer had in mind for it, when he stopped, his stomach jolting at the sight of Caroline, walking away down the street on the opposite side of the house. What the…? Before he could check his own rash decision, he removed the hard hat the foreman of the site had given him, threw it down amongst some rubble, and ran to catch up with the raincoat-clad figure down the street.
‘Were you looking for me?’ he asked huskily, planting himself in front of her so that she was forced to stop.
Digging her hands into her coat pockets, Caroline felt her astonished glance trapped as thoroughly as a rabbit in a snare. She was wearing her hair loose today, and it flowed over her shoulders in healthy and shiny golden curls that, coupled with her shapely figure were already attracting the inevitable wolf-whistles from some of the men on the site.
Glancing round at the direction they came from with a frown, Jack soon had them silenced with an icy admonishment from a reproving blue glare.
‘No…I mean, I was—I was just…’
It was no use. How could she act nonchalant when last night’s combustible kiss was clearly in their minds as their heated glances locked?
She had been drawn here as inevitably as moths drew near bright light.
Struggling to maintain her rapidly diminishing composure, Caroline tried to move around him, but Jack touched her coat-sleeve to waylay her.
‘I suppose you came to take a look at the house? I’m having some major work done, as you can see.’
Caroline found it near impossible to tear her too-starving gaze from Jack’s compelling and mesmerising visage, but she gave the house a cursory once-over anyway—thoroughly embarrassed and ashamed at being caught out showing an interest in his project. An interest that might lead him to believe she still felt something for him after all these years.
The thought electrified her. She should know well enough by now to give him a wide berth—not deliberately put herself in the vicinity of wherever he happened to be! Hadn’t they hurt each other enoug
h without coming back for more?
‘It always was a beautiful old building,’ she commented, her face flushing hotly when he continued to examine her with the kind of searing intensity reserved for objects of impossible fascination.
‘Beautiful, but dilapidated. There never was any money to maintain it back then.’
‘Well, I’m sure you’ll more than restore it to its former glory.’ About to smile, Caroline nervously withdrew the gesture and told herself it was time to go. ‘I’m on my way to work and I’m already late,’ she explained lifting her shoulders in an apologetic shrug.
Jack helplessly focused in on her lips. She had a mouth that teased and provoked even when she didn’t mean it to. A throb of languorous heat radiated straight to his groin. Apart from idle curiosity he had no idea what had prompted her to come and look at the house this morning—especially after their passionate clash yesterday—but her appearance told him that she was finding it as difficult to remain immune from him as he was to her.
Amid Jack’s undeniable flare of satisfaction at the idea, he knew deep down that their dangerous attraction for one another could only lead to the kind of trouble he should be hell-bent on avoiding…
CHAPTER SIX
‘DO YOU take a lunch-break?’ he found himself asking, before the thought had even fully formed in his brain. Her brown eyes visibly widening in surprise, he heard her release a long slow breath.
‘If I can spare the time…why?’
Why, indeed? Jack was asking himself as he listened in on his own suggestion with increasing incredulity at the lack of wisdom it contained. Just what in God’s name did he think he was doing by making it clear that he wanted to see her again? He scrubbed his hand round his jaw, as if he was all but contemplating flying a plane and then turning off the engine mid-flight and letting himself plummet to the ground, to crash, burn and die.
