Trust in Summer Madness

by Carole Mortimer

  Yes, it had, now that she thought about it. Could Chris possibly have known of Jarrett’s return before last night? His father was a member of the local Council, maybe he had mentioned Jarrett’s possible return to his son. It was a strong possibility, the two men were very close. Poor Chris, it must have been hard to keep the confidence to himself, especially knowing of her past relationship with the man as he did. He must have been very worried. He still appeared to be, which was silly after the way she had reassured him last night.

  He didn’t exactly seem in a bad temper when she saw him later that morning, more preoccupied, and the work load was very heavy, not allowing time for conversation.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Ginny accused with eagerness as Sian pulled on her jacket in preparation for leaving for lunch.

  She looked up, her hazel eyes puzzled. ‘Tell you what?’

  Ginny looked scandalised by her lack of comprehension. ‘About meeting Jarrett King last night.’

  ‘Oh, that.’ Sian looked away.

  ‘Oh, that!’ the other girl echoed impatiently. ‘Chris is all bitter and twisted about it, and you dismiss it as if it were nothing!’

  ‘It was nothing,’ Sian insisted coolly. ‘And I’m sure you’ve misunderstood Chris’s reaction—he understood perfectly about Jarrett.’

  ‘One of the pet owners mentioned to him that he’d seen the three of you talking last night, and Chris was very cutting. He’s jealous,’ Ginny said incredulously.

  ‘He has no need to be.’

  ‘Doesn’t he?’ Ginny gave her a strange look.

  ‘No,’ Sian sighed her impatience.

  Ginny’s dark brows rose. ‘Then why is Jarrett King here?’ she asked softly. ‘I doubt he’s come to ask Chris for his professional opinion about anything,’ she added derisively.

  Sian turned with a start as the bell rang over the door as it opened, looking straight into amused green eyes. Jarrett seemed enormous in the small reception area.

  ‘Ladies,’ he drawled in greeting, the green of his shirt a perfect match for his emerald eyes, the cream trousers moulded against the lean length of his legs.

  ‘Mr King,’ Ginny greeted enthusiastically.

  Jarrett looked coolly at Sian, forcing her to make the introductions, if resentfully.

  ‘I’m Chris’s sister,’ Ginny added with a grin. ‘And he isn’t at all pleased by your return to Swannell.’

  ‘Indeed?’ Jarrett seemed amused, his husky voice charming the other woman.

  ‘But we don’t all feel that way,’ Ginny continued eagerly.

  ‘Thank you.’ Jarrett’s slow warm smile was designed to attract her—and it succeeded, much to Sian’s disgust. ‘I’ve come to steal Sian away for a few hours,’ he added softly.

  ‘Go ahead,’ Ginny nodded. ‘She was just leaving anyway.’

  ‘Sian?’ he quirked dark blond brows at her.

  Aware of Ginny’s avid interest, she nodded distantly. ‘I can spare you a few minutes.’

  ‘I was thinking more in the direction of lunch.’ He opened the door for her to exit.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ she refused once they were out of the surgery and standing on the busy pavement.

  Jarrett’s eyes narrowed to green slits, power emanating from his lean body. ‘Why not?’ he probed softly.

  ‘In case you’ve forgotten,’ a false smile curved her lips, knowing that Jarrett never forgot anything. She was conscious of the curious stares they were attracting; this was a small town, and most of the people rushing by them were acquainted with one or both of them. ‘I’m engaged to be married.’

  ‘Does that mean you don’t have to eat?’ he taunted.

  ‘I always have my lunch at home.’

  ‘Always?’

  ‘Yes!’ she snapped.

  ‘In that case, perhaps I could save you the walk and drive you home?’ he offered smoothly.

  ‘I—Yes, okay,’ she accepted, seeing his face sharpen with suspicion. And well it might! She intended taking this opportunity to talk to him about Bethany. ‘Thank you,’ she nodded distantly.

  He opened the passenger door to the Porsche; the powerful car was blatantly parked in a no-parking area. Sian climbed inside, finding the intimacy of the interior quite overwhelming once he had got in beside her.

  Jarrett drove the car without effort, turning to smile at her. ‘We would have been eating in a public restaurant, you know, not my hotel room.’

  ‘I’m aware of that.’ She refused to even look at him.

  ‘Half the problem, hmm?’ he taunted throatily. ‘You never used to mind being seen in public with me,’ he added harshly.

  Her gaze remained fixedly ahead. ‘That was a long time ago, and I—Where are you going?’ she gasped as he missed the turning to her home.

  ‘Never give me an advantage of any kind, Sian,’ he told her grimly, his hair gleaming golden in the summer sunshine.

  ‘A-advantage?’

  ‘By getting in the car you gave me control over our destination. If I had my way I would drive away from here and never turn back. Oh, don’t worry,’ he mocked her shocked expression, ‘I’m not going to do that. I want you willingly—or not at all.’

  Sian had gone very white, no longer able to contain even a vestige of the icy control she had been treating him with, her eyes wide with panic.

  Jarrett was slowing the Porsche down now, turning down the road that went towards the river. ‘Don’t look like that, Sian,’ he chided gently. ‘It can be no surprise to you why I’m here in Swannell.’

  ‘I—The hotel and shopping centre…’ she swallowed convulsively, terrified of the familiar warmth of desire in his eyes.

  ‘Damn the hotel and shopping centre,’ he dismissed arrogantly. ‘I came back for you, Sian. Only for you.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ‘I STILL want you, Sian.’

  As soon as Jarrett had stopped the car she had got out, moving as far away from him as possible and standing at the river’s edge.

  She had believed she had imagined Jarrett’s words in the car, that he couldn’t possibly have come back to Swannell to see her. But the savage intensity in his face as she turned to look at him now made her recoil in fear. ‘No!’ she cried as his hands came out towards her. ‘Don’t touch me!’ she cringed.

  He drew in a harsh breath, his hands dropping slowly to his sides. ‘Don’t look at me like that!’ he rasped, his eyes bleak.

  ‘Then don’t say these things to me!’ She moved jerkily away from him to walk along the embankment, stopping as she saw where her legs had unwittingly taken her. She came to an abrupt halt, staring in numbed fascination at the huge willow tree, its weeping branches giving refuge beneath their coolness.

  She couldn’t move as Jarrett stepped close into the back of her, his hands coming to rest possessively on her hips as he pulled her close to him, his face buried in the red sheen of her hair as he breathed warmly against her temple. ‘Our place, Sian,’ he said throatily. ‘Come with me there now, darling.’ He moved to stand in front of her. ‘Come with me and—’

  ‘No!’ She stepped away from him, her eyes wide and shocked. ‘How dare you talk to me like that?’

  His eyes blazed down at her, his face contorted with fury. ‘I dare because I have no intention of letting you marry Christopher Newman!’

  ‘You have no intention?’ she scorned shrilly, her body stiff with outrage. ‘After three years you think your wants and needs matter to me?’

  ‘They’d damn well better,’ he ground out. ‘I can’t let you marry him, Sian,’ his voice lowered persuasively. ‘It would kill me to see you married to another man.’

  ‘You should have thought of that before,’ she choked, seeing the fire burning in his eyes, knowing he meant every word. ‘Before you chose Nina Marshall over me.’

  His face darkened. ‘How many times do I have to tell you she meant nothing to me?’

  ‘You don’t,’ she said wearily. ‘Just leave me alone now. I marry
Chris in a month’s time, so just stay away from me.’

  ‘I can’t. And you know damn well I can’t!’

  ‘You have done all this time—’

  ‘Because it was what you wanted—’

  ‘It’s what I still want!’ she told him heatedly.

  ‘You belong to me!’ Jarrett bit out fiercely.

  ‘I’m marrying Chris!’

  He slowly shook his head. ‘You gave yourself to me beneath that willow tree, Sian. And you’ll stay mine! I told you, I came back for you. I’ve had the Swannell Chronicle,’ he named the local newspaper, ‘sent to me ever since I left. I saw the announcement of your engagement three months ago, just before my uncle died, and I got here as soon as I could.’

  ‘You honestly expect me to believe that the announcement of my engagement to Chris was enough to make you leave New York and come here?’ she derided.

  ‘I didn’t just leave, Sian,’ he told her grimly. ‘If it had just been me I would have been here months ago. But I’m transferring the whole company over here. No easy feat, believe me. That’s the reason I was almost too late to stop this wedding, the arrangements to transfer the company took longer than I expected.’

  ‘You are too late,’ she said firmly. ‘The moment I found out about you and Nina it was too late. Three years is too long to wait to come back and apologise.’ Her sarcasm was barely concealed.

  Jarrett’s mouth tightened. ‘I have nothing to apologise for.’

  ‘Nina—’

  ‘God, when will you believe that what you saw was just a last evening of fun—’

  ‘Oh, you consider marriage to me would have stopped all your fun?’ she said harshly.

  ‘No, I don’t mean that at all,’ he sighed his impatience with her. ‘Stop twisting things to fit in with what you want to believe,’ he snapped.

  ‘I saw you, Jarrett.’

  ‘You saw one kiss, damn it! One kiss,’ he repeated heatedly. ‘On a stag night.’

  She turned away. ‘It was the kisses I didn’t see that bothered me the most,’ she bit out tightly.

  ‘There were none!’

  ‘No?’ she said bitterly, knowing that he lied to her.

  ‘No! Oh, to hell with this,’ he dismissed disgustedly, coming determinedly towards her. ‘I can’t reach you with words.’

  Sian saw the fiery intent in his eyes, and she backed away from it. Jarrett let her go, slowly advancing, and suddenly she knew why, as the branches of the willow brushed against her face. ‘No…!’ she cried as she realised his intention.

  ‘Yes,’ he groaned, pushing her remorselessly beneath the willow’s sheltering branches, a world strangely apart, tiny shafts of sunlight penetrating the gloom as the branches moved gently in the breeze. ‘God, yes, Sian!’ His body was suddenly hard against hers as he gathered her into his arms, just holding her lightly for several minutes, neither of them speaking, their hearts beating in a tattoo of unison. ‘Feel how my body responds to you,’ he moaned as his thighs surged into hers. ‘Only you have ever had this instantaneous effect on me.’

  ‘Me, and every other woman you’ve slept with!’ Her voice came out as a whisper, it somehow seemed like sacrilege to break the enchanting peace beneath the willow with harsh, loud words.

  ‘Only ever you, Sian.’ He was kissing her throat now, all the way to where the vee of her brown blouse met over her breasts. ‘All the others had to work at it. With you I’ve only ever had to look at you.’

  ‘How embarrassing for you!’ She tried to hold on to her sanity as she felt him begin to unbutton her blouse and slip it off her shoulder, his warm probing lips tasting every inch of the flesh he exposed.

  ‘It can be, at times,’ his voice rumbled low in his chest.

  ‘And how many “others” have there been while you were in America?’ she taunted to hide the rapidly rising heat of her body, the wildfire excitement she had thought never to know again.

  ‘None,’ he rasped abruptly. ‘And you never did tell me if Newman is your lover.’ He was looking down at her now, a curious stillness surrounding them as he waited for her answer. ‘Sian!’ he finally prompted in an agonised voice.

  She couldn’t believe him about the women in America, she knew his demanding sensuality too well to imagine him going without a woman for three days, let alone three years! ‘He isn’t,’ she told him calmly. ‘But—’

  ‘God, Sian!’ he shuddered against her as his arms tightened convulsively.

  ‘But I enjoy his lovemaking,’ she finished in a tight voice, gasping as Jarrett crushed her to him, feeling as if her ribs would break from the pressure. ‘Jarrett, you’re hurting me!’ she groaned, feeling faint with pain.

  The tension about her ribs at once lessened, although his breathing was still harsh. ‘As you are deliberately hurting me! Whatever he does to you it isn’t making love. I’ve already explained to you that—’

  ‘Only you can make love to me,’ she mocked. ‘You overestimate yourself, Jarrett.’

  ‘And you didn’t learn anything from the car journey just now,’ his mouth was twisted, the glitter of his eyes discernible as she became accustomed to the darkness. ‘I warned you not to give me any advantage, Sian,’ he taunted, ‘or I would take it. Being here, alone with me like this, is more than an advantage, it’s a gift!’ His teeth gleamed whitely as he smiled.

  It was dangerous, she realised that now. Her position was precarious; Jarrett’s strength, as she knew from experience, was ten times more than hers—a fact he took advantage of as he unbalanced her enough to send her falling softly on to the ground, quickly following her, the lean length of his body pinning her to the mossy floor.

  ‘I’ve dreamt about this, Sian,’ he spoke against the parted moistness of her mouth. ‘Fantasised about it. Every night for three years I’ve dreamt of holding you in my arms again,’ he groaned, ‘longed to find release in your body, to—’

  ‘No more, Jarrett!’ she moaned in a pained voice, knowing she could no more stand his seduction with words than she could the intimacy of his body moving against hers.

  ‘No, no more words,’ he agreed throatily. ‘Let’s just feel, Sian. Touch me, darling, the way you used to. And once I’ve made love to you again you’ll be mine.’

  Being with him like this beneath the willow brought back the memory of too many shared intimacies for her to fight what she really wanted to do, and her caresses were as sure and pleasure-giving as his were as she smoothed the shirt from the steely strength of his shoulders, sighing her satisfaction as she felt each muscle and sinew react to her touch.

  As his mouth met with hers she felt as if she had come home after a long journey, knew that the heated gentleness of his lips devouring hers wiped out the last three years as if they had only been minutes, everyone and everything forgotten as she once again knew the sureness of his hands loving her body. Her breasts flowered beneath his hands, the nipples hard and sensitive to his every touch, pleasure shuddering through her body as his mouth suckled the throbbing swell before it moved slowly down, down…

  He removed her clothes with slow thoroughness, gazing down at the silky cream of her flesh in the flickering sunlight. ‘You’ve matured, Sian,’ he spoke throatily. ‘Your body has smoothed out, your breasts are larger, and your thighs…! God, you’re even more beautiful, Sian,’ he kissed her stomach with slow loving care, moving down to the silkiness of her thighs, finding the centre of her passion as he eased the ache to a burst of fire, allowing her no respite from his practised caresses until she shuddered beneath him in a spasm of uncontrollable sensation that left her weak and gasping.

  ‘Oh, Sian,’ he groaned. ‘Nothing between us has changed. Nothing!’ He quickly removed the rest of his clothes, his body covering hers as their thighs met, making Sian long for the rhythm of passion to explode between them, to be joined with him, to leave them spiralling down the tunnel of ecstatic spasms that all lovers share as they know that moment of exquisite death before the mindless pleasure, as wave afte
r wave of burning desire ripped through the body.

  Jarrett was heavy above her, his breath coming in short strangled gasps as he waited for her to be completely ready for him, weak with the same longing. ‘Three years,’ he murmured wonderingly. ‘Three long lonely years, when I was sure my memories of being with you like this must have become exaggerated in my mind. Instead it’s more, so much more. Oh, let me love you, Sian, let me love you completely!’

  Sian heard what he was saying, and it all came back to her, all the pain, the disillusionment of loving a man like this. She couldn’t go through it again!

  Jarrett tasted the tears on her cheeks as his lips slowly caressed her face, and he raised his head with a frown. ‘Tears…?’ His tone was puzzled. ‘Darling—’

  ‘Get away from me,’ she ordered in a cold voice, her eyes dull with pain, knowing this had to stop—now!

  ‘Sian—’

  She pushed him away and pulled on her clothes, her face averted as she felt him search the rigid coldness of her expression. Her mouth twisted in self-disgust.

  Jarrett drew in a ragged breath, pale and dazed by the scorching passion they had just shared, the hand he held out to her falling unheeded to his side. ‘Sian, I love you,’ he told her in a voice choked with emotion.

  Her head snapped round in fury. ‘You don’t know the meaning of the word! If you did you would never have—have tried to make love to me,’ she swallowed convulsively, burying her face in her hands as she cried softly.

  Jarrett moved away from her, pulling on his own discarded clothing with decisive movements. ‘I wanted to make love to you, Sian,’ he rasped coldly. ‘And you were enjoying it.’

  ‘Yes, damn you!’ she choked, glaring at him. ‘I came with you to talk about Bethany, instead I—I almost let you make love to me.’

  ‘Bethany?’ His expression sharpened. He was fully dressed now, only the flush to his lean cheeks and the untidy blondness of his hair betraying the fact that he was still deeply disturbed by their lovemaking. ‘What does she have to do with us?’

  Sian smoothed her skirt over her thighs, her hands shaking slightly, her body still pulsating from the first complete passion she had known since Jarrett had gone away. She was full of self-disgust at what she had done, full of self-recriminations, of confusion. God, what was she going to do? Jarrett had destroyed all her pride in herself, had shown her all too easily how susceptible she was to the instincts of her body, the dictates of her brain not meaning a thing when Jarrett so much as touched her.