by Kim Lawrence
‘The truth is I’m more into body language.’ Especially when the body in question was as lush and perfectly formed as hers. ‘Words can lie...whereas there are some things that you can’t hide....’
Her head came up with a guilty jerk. ‘I’m not trying to hide anything.’ The moment the words left her lips she knew silence would have been more convincing.
‘For instance, your pupils have expanded so much there is just a thin ring of colour left.’ Her eyes were the purest green he had ever seen flecked with tiny pinpoints of swirling gold. ‘You really are a very good kisser.’
So long as his observations did not drop below neck level she could deal. ‘Kissing is not hard.’ It was the knowing when not to that was hard. ‘It’s a...a...reflex,’ she flung back.
His ebony brows lifted. ‘I’ve never heard it called that before.’
Hating the smugness in his voice, she snapped. ‘You think you know body language? Well, study this,’ she invited, pointing to her own face, pale now and set into a cold mask. ‘I was ill in that room because I saw you and was reminded of an episode in my life I’m not too proud of, in fact I’m deeply ashamed of.’
‘That’s your problem, not mine.’ Shame and guilt were not to his mind something to be yelled about. They were things you lived with; they were the price you paid for mistakes.
Angel drew in a deep shuddering breath and revealed the ultimate unforgivable crime that she laid at his door. ‘You turned me into the other woman.’ Her voice dropped to an emotional whisper as she realised. ‘You turned me into the person I never wanted to be—my mother!’
Alex’s jaw clenched but his anger almost immediately faded. He was very good at reading body language but it did not require his talent to interpret the expression in her emerald eyes as shock.
So Angel had mother issues? That was not his problem, and he had no interest in helping her work her way through them. He refused to recognise an uncharacteristic urge to draw out more details, an urge that directly contradicted his determined lack of interest.
Six years, Angel, but you got there in the end. How could she not have seen it before? ‘Madre di Dio!’ she mocked softly, then gave a little laugh.
The throaty exclamation distracted him. ‘Italian?’
She blinked as it took her a few moments to return from wherever she had gone. ‘Half.’ She didn’t elaborate. It seemed, Angel thought grimly, that she had done too much show and tell already!
Economy of detail was something Alex appreciated in his lovers, actively encouraged, but even he liked a whole sentence.
Well, at least the Latin connection explained the golden glowing looks, and possibly the temper too, though if he said so she would probably not waste the opportunity to accuse him of generalising.
‘I’ve heard of people rewriting history but this is the first time I’ve seen it firsthand. You’re acting as though you were some passive victim. The way I recall it you were an equal and active participant, so the outraged-virgin act is a bit over the top.’ Although amazingly she retained the ability to blush like one—the colour that washed over her cheeks deepened the pale gold of her skin with a rosy sheen. ‘This can’t be the first time you’ve bumped into an old one-night stand?’
Her eyes slid from his as she swallowed the insult, though she doubted he had intended it as such. He wasn’t making a moral judgement. That was just who he thought she was. It was easier to let him continue to hold that opinion than tell him the truth.
What would be his reaction, she wondered, if she came out with, ‘You’re the only man I’ve ever slept with’? She almost laughed at the image of his imagined incredulity. Or worse, he might ask her the question she’d asked herself a thousand times—why him?
How could she begin to explain to him something she didn’t even understand herself?
She made herself look at him and felt her insides shudder as their eyes connected. ‘One like you.’
In case he decided to construe her comment as a compliment she added coldly, ‘One who made me feel...cheap.’ Feeling this was an admission too far, she dodged his gaze and missed the expression that flickered across his lean face. When she raised her eyes his face was stone. ‘I may just be a model, which clearly in your eyes makes me a pill-popping bimbo—’ she took a deep breath and made a conscious effort to control her indignation ‘—but I don’t sleep with married men!’
Her shrill accusations might not have touched him but this last quiet comment did. ‘I’m not married now.’
Was that meant to make her feel better? Or was it a lie to get her into bed? Angel told herself she didn’t want to know; all she wanted was to get out of here and away from him.
‘Now, why doesn’t that surprise me?’ she drawled. ‘I really hope she took you for a lot of money...’ His bank balance was probably the only vulnerable area he had, she thought bitterly.
‘She’s dead.’
The blunt pronouncement drew a gasp from Angel, who immediately felt like a total bitch. So this was what it felt like to have the rug pulled out from under your feet.
During the ensuing silence the mortified colour flew to her cheeks and then receded. What was she meant to say that didn’t sound trite and insincere?
‘Oh!’
Before she had said anything more the uniformed employee who had brought her the chair reappeared, this time carrying a tray with a cafetière and coffee cups, and at a nod from Alex he placed it on the table.
The young man spoke in Greek and Alex Arlov responded in the same language.
Questions flying around in her head, Angel watched as he poured the coffee and pushed one her way without asking. Had he loved his wife?
His expression wasn’t giving any clues and in her book a man who loved his wife was not unfaithful. But that’s just me, the idealist, she thought with a wry grimace.
‘Do you want sugar?’
Angel, who hadn’t been aware she’d been stirring the coffee, put the spoon down with a clatter in the saucer and shook her head. ‘No, I don’t take it.’
He had slept around, but she supposed that some men did and some women put up with infidelity or didn’t know. It was weird to her— Actually, no, it was utterly abhorrent, but marriage meant different things to different people.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know about your wife or I wouldn’t have said...what I did.’ Then, aware that her comment might come across as hypocritical, she added, ‘Even if it is true.’
Had the poor woman lived her life in ignorant bliss, or turned a blind eye, or had she known and cared and suffered the humiliation...? Angel didn’t know which scenario was worse.
She tore her eyes from his handsome patrician profile and thought how hellish it must be to be married to a man that other women lusted after. That was one hell she was never going to know about.
Marriage to any man was not on the cards for her. These days, when it was easy to live together—and even easier to drift apart—it seemed to Angel that desire to raise a family was one of the main reasons that couples made their relationship official.
For her there would be no more children. There had been a time when the knowledge had made her sad...angry...filled with a ‘why me?’ self-pity, but now she had reached a stage of why not me? She had accepted it, and could not imagine a man or a circumstance that would make her walk down the aisle.
She had not discounted the possibility in the future of a man, someone nice who Jasmine liked, someone who didn’t make any demands. She could live without head-banging sex but a hug would be nice, and stability. She could remember craving boring stability when she was a child and envying her friends who had complained about the boredom of the things she had longed for.
The expressions scudding like clouds across her face made him wonder what thoughts were responsible for putting that pensive look in her eyes. Then, catc
hing himself wondering, he experienced a flash of irritation.
It seemed a good moment to remind himself that he wanted to bed her, not know how her mind worked.
‘I seem to have put a damper on the conversation.’
Her green eyes lifted from the contemplation of the untouched swirling liquid. ‘Sorry if I’m not amusing you.’ Presumably, she brooded, he was one of those men who expected women to tie themselves into knots being interesting and amusing. ‘And we were not having a conversation.’ Her eyes lowered towards her coffee and lifted again suddenly. It was as if her resolve not to show any interest broke at the last moment. ‘Was it... Your wife... Did she... Did it happen recently?’
‘No, it didn’t.’
When he offered no further information Angel took a sip of the coffee and looked at him over the rim of her cup. ‘It must be hard bringing up children alone...?’ she murmured, trying hard not to look like someone who had a stake in his response.
Was Jasmine an only child or did she have half siblings? The brother or sister that Angel had always felt vaguely guilty for not supplying. Siblings looked out for one another when things got tough. If she vanished... Angel gave herself a sharp internal shake. Nothing was going to happen to her, and if it did she had things organised. But a father had not featured in those arrangements.
Of course, if it turned out he had his own family he might not be interested in pursuing a relationship with Jasmine anyway. His loss, though from a selfish point of view it would make life simpler. She felt a stab of guilt. This wasn’t about simple, this was about what was best for Jasmine, and if that involved allowing her father to be part of her life she would move heaven and earth to make it happen. He was right; she was no innocent victim. If she hadn’t thrown herself at him the way she had none of this would have happened.
She pressed her fingers to her temples. Her head felt as if it would explode with all the unanswered questions swirling round in it, and there were not going to be any of the answers she wanted until she told him.
‘We didn’t have any children.’
They had planned to have a family but not immediately. Of course, it had seemed as if they would have all the time in the world, then all too soon they had had none. A blessing, Emma, struggling to come to terms with the rapid progress of her illness, had said, but as her denial had turned to deep depression she had become angry and blamed him for... Well, pretty much everything, until it had reached the point when she had turned her head to the wall when he walked into the room.
The doctors had sympathised and called it transference. His wife, they said, was transferring all the guilt she felt for concealing her illness when they married onto to him, and as they had predicted the phase passed. But to his way of thinking what followed was harder. Emma had been consumed with guilt. The precious time they’d had left together had been dominated by it.
Angel lowered her eyes but not before he glimpsed the moisture lingering there and her expression. He reacted to the sympathy he loathed using a tried-and-tested method to kill off the pity that made his skin crawl.
‘Turn down the empathy, Angel. I’m not a candidate for a sympathy shag,’ he drawled.
Her appalled eyes flew to his face, suddenly minus their emotional moisture. ‘You are a candidate for a kick,’ she retorted, adding in a conversational tone, ‘You really can be vile.’ She was almost immediately hit by a wave of remorse, so added, ‘I am genuinely sorry about your wife.’
‘But I’m vile—a rodent, yes, I get that.’ The tension vanishing from his manner along with her sympathy, he produced a mocking grin. ‘I’m enjoying living down to your expectations of me. Relax,’ he advised, ‘I do not require a shoulder to cry on.’ Though a warm breast to lay his head against would not be rejected. The one in question rose and fell revealing a glitter of something shiny in the deep valley.
‘I was not about to offer one.’ Offering anything to the only man you had ever fantasised about lying naked beneath was something to be actively avoided. She swallowed hard and dropped her gaze, wishing she had not thought about being naked. ‘And I have no expectations.’
‘But some curiosity.’ The speculation was pretty much proved when she couldn’t meet his eyes. ‘Don’t feel bad. Everyone wants to ask. Few do—death is one of those subjects that people tiptoe around. Emma died of MS, an aggressive form she had been ill with for some time.’
Angel could only marvel that he could sound so detached while revealing this tragic sequence of events. For all the emotion he was displaying he could have been recounting the story of a stranger’s life.
‘It was lucky we had no children.’ He sketched a sardonic smile. ‘Now your turn...?’
She got that he rejected sympathy—hard not to—but she felt it anyway, a strong surge of empathy that she couldn’t repress. She would have felt the same for anyone in his situation; the difference was she hadn’t spent the past six years hating anyone. Not to do so, even briefly, felt odd...uncomfortable, and required some major mental readjustment.
‘One.’ She couldn’t pretend that Jasmine didn’t exist.
He stiffened. ‘In most countries that is all a person can have at one time.’ The joke, it seemed, was on him. Why the hell hadn’t she just told him she was married up front?
Why didn’t you consider the possibility, Alex?
Her bewildered-sounding response cut across his inner dialogue. ‘One...?’
‘You’re not wearing a ring,’ he clenched out, feeling cheated.
Anchoring her hair against a sudden flurry of wind, she followed the direction of his gaze and drew the hand down to look at it, turning it over as she blew away the errant raven strands that immediately plastered themselves across her face. She was of the school of thought that said less was more when it came to jewellery and she rarely wore rings when working. Her hand went to her neck where she wore her father’s signet ring on a chain. Her brother had inherited a Scottish estate complete with castle, and she, being a woman, had got only the ring. She didn’t resent it half as much as her brother felt guilty about it.
‘Why should I...?’ She stopped as the penny dropped. ‘God, not a husband! I have a child, a daughter.’
This was only slightly less astonishing to him than her having a husband. His eyes went to the fingers that were rubbing the chain she wore around her neck. Through her fingers he recognised the disc he had initially taken for a pendant nestled between her breasts as a ring.
‘You have a baby?’ His eyes drifted down her slim body and he felt a kick of lust that made his strong-boned features clench.
Hard not to recognise this as the perfect opportunity to speak. So why aren’t you, Angel?
We have a baby. It didn’t matter how hard she tried, Angel couldn’t visualise his reaction to this bombshell.
‘She’s hardly a baby.’ Her expression softened. Jasmine had been a lovely baby, though it might have been easier to enjoy her loveliness if she had ever slept. The first eighteen months had passed in a blur of sleep deprivation.
‘But she must be young, and you’re a single parent...?’ Did the ring have some significance? A token from the father?
Angel instantly prickled with antagonism; her chin went up. She was pretty secure when it came to her parenting skills, able to shrug off and smile her way through well-meaning advice, but when the source of the criticism was the absent father of her daughter it turned out she couldn’t.
‘Yes, I am, and I really don’t think my childcare arrangements are your concern,’ she tossed back, realising as she spoke that this situation might change very soon. When he knew he might think that he should have a say. The idea appalled her.
Blinking at the level of belligerence in her attitude, he made a pacifying gesture with his hands. Her eyes followed the gesture—he had lovely hands.
‘I am hardly an expe
rt on the subject.’
He watched as her hunched shoulders flattened. He could almost feel her willing the tension away. Her tense smile was a clear effort and she avoided his eyes. ‘That doesn’t stop most people offering advice.’
‘Is her father involved?’
Angel couldn’t look at him. Lucky thing she was sitting down because her knees were shaking. ‘No.’
‘I imagine it can’t be easy...?’
He imagined right, but Angel would not have it any other way. The sleepless nights were more than compensated for in a million other ways. ‘I make it work.’
‘I’m sure you do.’
Again, she couldn’t take his comment at face value. ‘And no, I’m not naive enough to think a single working parent can have it all, but I don’t want it all.’
From this defiant statement he read that she wanted it but couldn’t have it. The idea that the father was unavailable, most likely married, seemed a real contender. Funny how some women were drawn to unavailable men.... Was she one of them?
‘We all want some things more than others.’ And at that moment all he wanted, wanted so much he could taste it, was this provoking, dark-haired, green-eyed witch. His innate ability to distance himself from a situation had failed him completely—he wanted her under him, he wanted to be inside her and he knew he wasn’t going to have a moment’s peace until he had achieved this desire.
The expression in his eyes stopped her asking what it was he wanted more than other things. The expression in his blue eyes was explicit enough to cause a head-on collision between a fist of some unidentifiable emotion and her solar plexus.
She got to her feet. ‘Well, thanks for the coffee and the little chat but I’m fine now.’
‘I’ll walk you back to your bungalow.’
A cold fist of fear tightened in her belly as Angel realised that she wanted to say yes. When she recognised how much she wanted to say yes the fist tightened even more.
She tossed back her hair and made her voice cold. ‘That will be quite unnecessary and I’m not going back to my bungalow. I’m going back to the party.’ A room full of people no longer seemed a bad thing; she didn’t want to be alone with her thoughts.
