by Sara Craven
She pointed to the bags. ‘Are those my clothes from Harborne?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘They’re mine from Danborough Gate.’
He looked past her to the bed made up with its pristine white linen and coverlet.
‘How very pure,’ he commented sardonically. ‘Trying to regress back to virginity, darling?’ His smile widened. ‘I doubt that’s possible, even if you wanted to.
‘And only one pillow,’ he added softly. ‘Now, that is real togetherness.’ He walked over to the fitted wardrobe and opened the door, revealing the empty hanging-rail.
‘I’ll take the right-hand side,’ he said. ‘Unless you have any objections.’
‘Objections?’ Marin’s voice was shaking. ‘Of course I have objections. What is this? What the hell do you think you’re doing here?’
‘Moving in,’ he said, laconically. ‘Mi casa, su casa stuff.’ He glanced round him. ‘It’s all pretty compact, admittedly, but that means less room for you to run and hide, which is a distinct advantage. And even better,’ he added softly. ‘We’ll be completely alone together, just as if we were on honeymoon.’
She stared at him, shock sending her pulses crazy. ‘What—what are you talking about?’
‘Marriage, of course,’ he said. ‘But the real thing this time, Marin. We really are going to stop pretending, my sweet, just as you claimed you wanted.’
‘But it’s over.’ The words were almost a wail. ‘We’re getting divorced. We agreed.’
‘Ah, the divorce,’ he said softly. He was removing suits and shirts from the carrier and hanging them up. ‘That isn’t going to happen—at least, not yet.’
‘You said you wouldn’t fight it,’ she accused, her voice rising. ‘Oh God, I should have known I couldn’t trust you.’
‘Your battle is with the legal system, darling,’ Jake retorted. ‘You see, we haven’t been together long enough to qualify for divorce. The law requires us to have been married for a whole year, and as you know we’ve never really been married at all, not in the strict sense of the word.
‘Which,’ he added, almost casually, ‘is something I intend to put right without delay.’
He sent her another swift smile. ‘However, when the year is up, we can talk again about divorce—if you still want to. But I reserve the right to try and persuade you to change your mind in the meantime.’
She lifted her chin. ‘Presumably,’ she said coldly. ‘This is a joke?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t be more serious.’
‘It’s revenge, then.’ Her breathing quickened. ‘Because I made it clear I don’t want you, my homecoming has to be ruined.’
‘It’s not that, either,’ he said. His glance was faintly sardonic. ‘And I think the level of our mutual desire has yet to be established.
‘Ah,’ he went on as the doorbell sounded. ‘That should be dinner arriving: steaks, salad, cheese, fruit and some good Bordeaux. Shall we toss a coin to decide who’s in charge of the grill?’
‘That won’t be necessary.’ Marin told him defiantly. ‘I’m having pizza.’
He shrugged. ‘Then I’ll cook for myself. It’s no hardship.’
He went into the hall and Marin followed, watching him receive a wicker hamper and hand over a generous tip before she hurriedly escaped to the living room.
She was standing by the window, her arms folded across her rigid body, when Jake rejoined her. He’d discarded his jacket and tie and unbuttoned his waistcoat, and his shirt was open at the throat.
He looked totally relaxed, whereas she felt as if she was strung up on wires.
‘Feel this is safer territory than the bedroom?’ he asked. His gaze travelled to the comfortably cushioned sofa. ‘I wouldn’t count on it.’ He slanted a lazy grin at her. ‘As you, my sweet, would have soon discovered if I’d been allowed to date you—court you, as I originally planned. And you have a nice, soft hearthrug too. Excellent.’
‘Please,’ Marin said unsteadily. ‘Please don’t do this—say these things. Don’t make matters worse than they already are. Just leave.’
‘Well, I considered it,’ he said slowly. ‘When we lost our baby and you behaved as if the only link between us had been cut, and you didn’t want me anywhere near you ever again, not even to grieve with you. It occurred to me then that maybe I should do the decent thing and go. Get out of your life, if that was all that would make you happy.
‘Only then I started thinking very selfishly about how unhappy it would make me. That maybe I didn’t want to be air-brushed out of the picture. To have my marriage junked before it had even begun.’
He had the gall to smile at her again. ‘After all, I needed something to keep me at home in the evenings, and stamp collecting has never appealed, so you seemed the obvious answer.’
‘This,’ Marin said shakily, ‘is no laughing matter.’
‘No,’ he said with sudden, aching bitterness. ‘But then, we haven’t really laughed for a long time, have we? Not since that one, solitary night we spent together. We laughed then, kissed, touched. And you lay in my arms and held me as if you would never let me go. I felt as if I’d been shown paradise.
‘Only then, in the morning, I was suddenly a pariah—an outcast—and our perfect night just a ghastly mistake committed because you were drunk—unbalanced—under the illusion I was someone else.
‘Any excuse would do, it seemed. Any bloody stupid reason to deny that you’d been my woman in every blessed, wonderful way there was. That we belonged to each other and we always would.’
The blue gaze was suddenly fierce. ‘And that’s why I’m not leaving, Marin. Because I want her back—the sweet, wild, generous girl who came into my arms and gave herself so completely that I told myself it had to be the love I’d hoped and prayed for.’
He took a deep, uneven breath. ‘Because I want you, my darling—rich or poor, sick or well—for the rest of my life. I want us to make a home together, and in spite of this recent sadness, have a family one day. I want the right to say to people, “I don’t think you’ve met my wife”.’
He stopped. ‘Oh God, sweetheart, you’re crying; that’s the last thing I intended to happen.’ He came to her, drawing her over to the sofa and sitting beside her. ‘Is it really so impossible for you to find some happiness with me? Is that what you’re trying to say?’
Marin choked back a sob. ‘Jake, you don’t mean it. You can’t.’ She looked down at the hands clasping hers. ‘You don’t want to be married to anyone. You never have, and the only reason you’re saying these things now is probably because you’re feeling sorry for me again—and, if so, I—I can’t bear it.’
‘Sorry for you?’ There was incredulity in his voice. ‘What in hell are you talking about?’
‘I’m talking about me,’ she said raggedly. ‘Me—making a complete fool of myself over you at Queens Barton and everyone seeing and laughing at me.
‘Me—throwing myself at you in the bedroom that night, although I realised—your whole attitude said—that you didn’t want me.’
‘Marin.’ His voice was infinitely gentle. ‘What happened between us was totally down to me, because I couldn’t resist kissing you—touching you—even though I’d been trying so hard to behave well for once.
‘Because I wanted a life with you, darling, not an affair. I wanted us to make love to each other because we were in love. Mutually. Irrevocably.’
He gave an uneven laugh. ‘As it was, I’d been watching you all evening. Waiting for the moment when I could ask you to dance—have a legitimate excuse to hold you, if only for a few minutes. But you said no. Something I told myself I would have to get used to.
‘So do you know what I was doing just before you asked me to fix your zip? I was having a cold shower—reminding myself in a pretty basic way that sex was definitely not on the agenda, even if you were spending another night only a few yards away from me.’
He paused. ‘And what do you mean, people were laughing at you? Because I
understood I was the weekend’s chief object of derision.’
‘It was Diana,’ she said in a low voice. ‘She saw me the next morning and guessed what had happened. Said vile, horrible things. Told me she knew you weren’t really involved with me, but that I’d obviously started to believe it, and—and to want you. And that, when you realised, you’d taken pity on me.’
‘And you believed her?’ His tone was incredulous.
She bent her head. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Because I knew that what she said was true. That you’d never been going to touch me until I begged you.’
‘Christ,’ he said softly. ‘She really is the ultimate bitch. With her unerring instinct for the jugular, she told me everyone was enjoying watching me trail around after you like a beaten dog. That I’d made myself a total laughing stock.’
She stared at him, lips parted in shock. ‘What did you say to her?’
Jake produced a handkerchief and blotted the remaining tears from her face. He said ruefully, ‘Well, I could hardly deny it, either, sweetheart. So, I thanked her for her interest, said we would always be grateful to her for bringing us together but that we would quite understand if she felt unable to attend the wedding.’
She swallowed. ‘You said that?’
He said with feeling, ‘Believe me, that was the easy part. Convincing you that my ultimate intentions were completely honourable turned out to be something else again.’
She looked down at the floor. ‘But you only asked me to marry you because I was pregnant.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘That just moved everything forward by a few months. Besides, I didn’t think you’d agree on any other terms. And if I’d told you the truth—that I’d always intended marriage, and the baby was a bonus—would you have believed me? Be honest.’
She swallowed. ‘Probably not.’
‘That’s what I thought.’ His tone was wry. ‘After all, you’d made it more than clear that our night together had been some kind of horrifying aberration. And then you vanished without a word.’
He shook his head. ‘But I never considered Diana as a reason for your change towards me. I blamed myself entirely, because there’d been times that night when I’d almost forgotten it was your first time with a man, and I was left wondering if I’d asked too much—disgusted you in some way.’
His mouth twisted. ‘A nightmare that seemed totally confirmed when you told me you wanted us to sleep apart after the wedding.’
‘Because I thought you didn’t love me,’ Marin said in a low voice. ‘I couldn’t forget what Diana had said. I was terrified you’d be having sex with me out of duty, or worse still pity. Or that I might end up—pleading again. I decided it was better to be alone. Then at least I’d have some pride left.’
‘I have news for you,’ he said. ‘There isn’t much room for pride when you love someone.’
‘I know that.’ She was silent for a moment. ‘On our wedding night, I went to your bedroom to find you, to tell you I’d changed my mind about sleeping with you. But you weren’t there.’ She hesitated again. ‘I probably have no right to ask, but where did you go?’
‘Not very far,’ he said. ‘Just back to the kitchen, sitting in the dark, making the intimate acquaintance of a bottle of scotch and wondering how I would ever cope with the hell of loneliness I’d made for myself. How I was going to live without even the hope of an occasional cuddle.’
She swallowed. ‘Jake, darling, I don’t have any illusions about myself. I know the kind of girls that you’ve spent time with in the past, and I’m not one of them.’
He cupped her face in his hands, looking down into her eyes with such tenderness that her heart skipped a beat.
‘My sweet, the need to kiss you—make love to you—is nearly driving me crazy. So let me make a few things clear while I can still think straight.
‘You said earlier that I never wanted to be married. That’s not true, but I had a hard act to follow. My parents fell in love when they met, and they were lovers all through their life together—something that embarrassed the hell out of me during adolescence.
‘But later, when I grew up and acquired some sense, I realised I wanted what they had and nothing less would do.’
He added quietly, ‘Ma’s a terrific woman, but when Dad died it was as if a light inside her had been switched off.
‘But I never found anyone who came near turning on that same light for me—in fact, I’d pretty much given up hope, until I walked into the company flat looking for Lynne and found you instead, wearing nothing but a bloody towel, and spitting at me like an angry cat.’
Her lips parted in a silent gasp. ‘Are you saying you fell in love with me then?’
‘At the time,’ Jake said carefully, ‘I was rather more interested in figuring if I could get you out of that towel and purring like a kitten instead. It was only later, at the reception, that I realised what was really happening to me, when I told Diana we found each other and knew it was the absolute truth.’
He shook his head. ‘God, you were so amazing that evening, smiling at complete strangers and talking to them, trying your hardest not to seem shy, behaving as if being with me was what you really wanted. I spent my time longing to pick you up in my arms and keep you safe and loved for ever.’
He added flatly, ‘I didn’t want to accept Graham’s invitation down to Queens Barton because I knew it meant all kinds of trouble. But I decided the chance of a couple of days with you was too good to miss. That I could spend them at least trying to get you to like me a little better.
‘I thought, too, on the way home I’d take you to Harborne. I wanted to see you there—the girl I loved, in the house I loved. Our future home.’
Marin’s eyes widened. ‘That was the detour you mentioned?’
He nodded. ‘I’d already told my mother her prayers had been answered and I’d found my future wife, and I knew she’d be dying to meet you.’ He paused. ‘Only then I behaved like an impatient, sex-mad idiot and wrecked everything for us. Told myself I’d forfeited any chance of persuading you to fall in love with me in return. That instead I’d given you every cause to hate me.’
‘All the time we were apart,’ she whispered, ‘I never stopped thinking about you—wanting you. But I daren’t call it love. And I told myself that the best way to cure myself was to make sure I never saw you again. That eventually, somehow, I’d forget.’
‘God, what a pair of fools we’ve been,’ Jake said huskily. ‘And I might still be stumbling round like a zombie, telling myself that my life was over, but for our female relations.’
‘What do you mean?’ His arm was round her now and she was nestling against him, feeling the warmth of him permeating her entire being, driving out the bleak chill within her. Filling her with a new radiance.
‘Your mother.’ He kissed her forehead. ‘Telling me in every phone call to Portugal that you were missing me.
‘My mother.’ He kissed the tip of her nose. ‘Saying she’d seen the way you looked at me sometimes when you thought no one was watching.
‘And, of course, Lynne.’ His mouth brushed hers, gently and sweetly. ‘Who argued from the first that I wasn’t that bloody irresistible, and as you didn’t believe in casual sex you’d never have given yourself unless it meant something to you too.
‘Small foundations for hope, perhaps, but I was desperate. And it made me realise there was no way I was going to give up on you or our marriage. That I’d fight and go on fighting until all hope was gone.’
Marin slid her arms round his neck, feeling the race of his heartbeat against hers.
‘But now the war’s over.’ She smiled up at him, all barriers swept away, her eyes shining with new-found confidence and the glorious, brimming delight of being free to offer him her entire self. To take him as her husband at last. ‘So why, my darling, don’t we make love instead?’
Jake got to his feet, the blue eyes caressing her hungrily as he lifted her up into his arms.
He said softly,
‘I thought you’d never ask.’ And carried her away to where their bed waited.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-7590-8
HIS UNTAMED INNOCENT
First North American Publication 2010.
Copyright © 2010 by Sara Craven
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