by Penny Jordan
‘Jessica, listen to me. You can’t stay there, the joist isn’t strong enough. I’m going to lie down here and reach out to you. I want you to wriggle as far forward as you can.’
Jessica measured the distance between them in disbelief—no matter how much both of them stretched out, they couldn’t bridge it.
‘No,’ she whispered croakily. ‘No, it’s too much of a risk.’
‘All of life is a risk. Trust me, Jess. Trust me. I promise I won’t let you fall.’
Trust me…All of a sudden hot, salty tears began to flood her eyes. What had she got to lose? If she fell, if she died…what was her life anyway, without him?
‘Watch me, Jess,’ he told her quietly. ‘Watch me, and I’ll tell you when.’
Her throat had gone dry and sore. Painfully she watched as he lay down on the floor and stretched out towards her.
‘What I want you to do is to wriggle as far forward as you can, and then when I say jump…’
He couldn’t mean it! But he did…‘Trust me,’ he had said, but why should he put his own life at risk to save hers? Why should he give her so much when she had given him so little?
‘Now, Jess…Now!’
Fear thrilled through her, but his command couldn’t be ignored. She edged as far forward as she could, fighting to ignore the dreadful slow swaying of her precarious perch.
‘Now…jump! Jump!’
Closing her eyes, she levered herself off her small platform. The sensation of falling…was sickening…She opened her eyes just as Daniel grabbed hold of her, hauling her unceremoniously on to the landing beside him.
The relief of it affected them both.
‘What the hell were you doing up there?’ Daniel demanded roughly, almost shaking her, while the tears poured down her face and she stammered huskily,
‘I came to apologise. You weren’t here…and…I fell.’ She gave a deep shudder, and suddenly realised that he had stopped shaking her, but that he was still holding her. She tried to move away from him and immediately his hold tightened.
‘Oh, no, you don’t. Why did you want to apologise?’
So he was determined to extract his pound of flesh. Well, she could scarcely blame him.
All her carefully prepared speeches had gone completely out of her mind. She looked at him, and whispered huskily, ‘Ma told me…about you taking over the bank. I realised Emma had lied to me. I just don’t know what to say.’
She bit her lip and turned her head.
There was silence, and then he said softly, ‘You could always try telling me that you love me.’
Her head snapped round, her eyes widening with anguish. ‘Please, don’t,’ she begged, thinking he was deliberately taunting her. ‘I know it’s what I deserve, but I don’t think I can…’ and then to her horror fresh tears started to fall.
‘Say it!’ he insisted.
Through her pain she stared at him, and knew there was no escape.
‘I love you.’
Again there was silence, and then he told her quietly, ‘And I love you, too.’
‘Don’t,’ she whispered brokenly, unable to bear the pain of his mockery.
‘Don’t what?’ he mocked her, but his voice was rough and slightly unsteady. The way he was looking at her transfixed her, flooding her with a shock of hope.
‘What is it you don’t want me to do, Jess? Don’t love you? Don’t ache for you? Don’t need you? Tell me how I can stop. Oh God, Jessica!’
And then he was kissing her, urgently, desperately almost, and her senses, starved of the intimacy of him, flooded her with their tumultuous response to him. She clung to him, kissing him back, opening herself to him, murmuring soft words of longing deep in her throat.
When he eventually released her, half laughing and half crying, she said the only thing that seemed to matter.
‘Daniel, I love you so much. Can you forgive me? I was so wrong, so stupid…’
‘We both made mistakes,’ he told her gently. ‘When I walked into the hall and saw you clinging to that joist, realised your danger…If I’d thought your lack of trust in me had killed my love—if I’d thought that, well, I very quickly realised how wrong I was, and I knew then that I’d rather go through that rejection a hundred times than see you die. And besides, it wasn’t entirely your fault…I could have made you listen, explained. I should have told you earlier that I knew your father, but after what you said about not trusting people who knew your parents…’ He gave a brief shrug. ‘I was already committed…knew I loved you. I told myself I’d tell you the truth once I’d won your trust—’
‘Mother told me everything,’ Jessica interpolated. ‘I should never have listened to Emma.’
‘And I should have realised what a vindictive little soul she is, and been a little more careful in telling her that there was no place for her in my life and that I loved you. I should have realised she’d try to make trouble between us, especially after she gatecrashed my meeting with your father and overheard me telling him I was worried about the fact that I hadn’t been able to tell you about my take-over of the bank, and that I didn’t want my take-over as chairman officially announced until I’d had a chance to tell you about it. I was going to tell you that evening…had been screwing up my courage to tell you—’
‘That money I threw at you,’ Jessica interrupted unhappily. ‘That was awful of me. There isn’t any excuse. I was so unhappy.’
‘Mmm…and you still owe me one piece,’ he teased her, adding thoughtfully, ‘Maybe you should give me a kiss instead.’
‘Suppose I were to buy back the other twenty-nine pieces from you?’Jessica suggested instead.
He pretended to consider it. ‘At what rate?’
‘Mmm…A thousand per cent—one kiss at a thousand per cent for each of the twenty-nine pieces.’
‘Twenty-nine thousand kisses? I don’t know…how about twenty-nine thousand nights spent in my arms instead?’ he murmured. ‘Twenty-nine thousand…of course, you’d have to marry me. Now that I’m the chairman of such a respectable institution as Collingwood’s I have my reputation to consider, you realise.’
‘Twenty-nine thousand nights?’ Jessica pretended to consider.
‘In my arms,’ he reminded her. ‘Of course, if you’re not sure you could meet such a long commitment, I could always…’
He was kissing her throat as he spoke, the words muffled against her skin.
‘You could always what?’ Jessica prompted huskily, trying to ignore this blatant seduction.
‘I could always find some way of making the terms more acceptable.’
‘In what way?’
He was still kissing her, his teeth nibbling provocatively at her vulnerable flesh, making her quiver outwardly as well as inwardly. ‘Perhaps a small demonstration.’ His hands were shaping her body, and she made a soft yearning sound deep in her throat, her fingers curling round his wrist, holding his hand against her breast while she moved her lips eagerly along his jaw, seeking his mouth.
‘Never again,’ he told her rawly, meeting the eager pressure of her kiss, ‘never again are we going to let anything come between us.’
‘Never,’ Jessica answered. ‘Never!’
* * * * *
Now, read on for a tantalizing excerpt of Dani Collins’ next book,
CLAIMING HIS CHRISTMAS WIFE
After their marriage ends in heartbreak, Travis never wants to see Imogen again. But to avoid a scandal they must agree to a temporary reconciliation—leaving Travis tempted to reclaim his wife…for good!
Read on for a glimpse of
CLAIMING HIS CHRISTMAS WIFE
CHAPTER ONE
“MR. TRAVIS SANDERS?”
“YES,” he confirmed shortly, willing the woman to hurry to the point. His PA had interrupted a high-level meeting with this “extremely important” call. “What is this about?”
“Imogen Gantry. She’s your wife?”
Memory washed through him in a rush of heat and hunge
r. He tensed against it and glanced around, lowering his voice. That broken teacup had been swept firmly under the rug four years ago.
“We’re divorced. Are you a reporter?”
“I’m trying to locate her next of kin. I’m at…” She mentioned the name of one of New York’s most beleaguered public hospitals.
Whatever old anger had sent him soaring at the mention of his ex-wife exploded in a percussive flash. He was blind. Falling. Wind whistling in his ears. Air moving too fast for him to catch a gulp.
“What happened?” he managed to grit out. He was dimly aware his eyes were closed, but she was right there in front of him, laughing. Her green eyes glimmered with mischief. Her hair was a halo of flames licking at her snowy complexion. She swerved her lashes to cut him a glance. So enchantingly beautiful. Gaze clouding with arousal. Sparking with anger. Looking so wounded and vulnerable that last time he’d seen her, his heart still dipped thinking of it.
He’d quickly learned it was a lie, but that didn’t make any of this easier to accept.
Gone? He couldn’t make it fit in his head. He had told her he never wanted to see her again, but discovered he had secretly believed he would.
From far away, he heard the woman say, “She collapsed on the street. She’s feverish and unconscious. Do you know of any medication we should be aware of? She’s awaiting treatment, but—”
“She’s not dead?”
He heard how that sounded, as if that was the outcome he would have preferred, but leave it to Imogen to set him up to believe one thing, contort his emotions to unbearable degrees, then send him flying in another direction. That betraying, manipulative—if he could get his hands on her, he’d kill her himself.
“And she was taken to that hospital? Why?”
“I believe we were closest. She doesn’t seem to have a phone and yours is the only name I’ve been able to find in her bag. We need guidance on treatment and insurance. Are you able to provide that?”
“Contact her father.” He walked back toward the door to his office, saying to his PA behind her desk, “Look up Imogen Gantry’s father. He’s in publishing. Maybe starts with a W. William?” He hadn’t met the man, only heard her mention him once or twice. Hell, they’d only been married fifteen minutes. He knew next to nothing about her.
“Wallace Gantry?” His PA turned her screen. “He appears to have died a few months ago.” She pointed to the obit notice that said he was predeceased by his wife and eldest daughter, survived by his youngest daughter, Imogen.
Perfect.
He knew better than to let himself get sucked back into her orbit, but what else could he say except, “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
* * *
Imogen remembered sitting down on the curb. It hadn’t been a nice, rain-washed boulevard of freshly mown grass beneath century-old elms with a stripe of sidewalk, then an empty canvas of manicured lawn to her mother’s rose garden, ending at the wide stairs to the double-door entrance of her childhood home.
No, it had been a freezing, filthy inner-city curb where the piles of snow had turned to a layer of lumpy muck atop a century’s worth of chewing gum and other disgusting things. The damp chill on the air hadn’t squelched any of the terrible smells coming off the grate at her feet. She shouldn’t have touched the post she had braced herself against and she had thought a car would likely run over her legs as she sank down. At the very least, one would drown her with a tsunami of melt from the puddles.
She hadn’t cared. The side of her head had felt like it was twice as big as the rest. Her ear, plugged and aching, had begun screaming so loud the sound had been trying to come out her mouth.
She had tried to pretend she didn’t have an ear infection because those were for children. Her sister had got them, not her. She hadn’t gone swimming recently. She hadn’t known how it could have happened, but there she’d been like a damned toddler, nearly fainting with the agony of it, dizzy and hot and sick.
She’d had to sit down before she fell down. A fever was nature’s way of killing a virus, so why hadn’t this run its course? And who passed out from such a silly thing, anyway?
Her vision had dimmed at the edges, though. She had felt so awful she hadn’t cared that the wet snow had been soaking through her clothes. Her only thought had been, This is how I die. She’d been okay with it. Her father would have loved this for her, dying like a dog in the gutter a week before Christmas. Even Travis would probably conclude that she had got what she deserved. If he ever found out, which he wouldn’t.
It had been a relief to succumb. Fighting was hard, especially when it was a losing battle. Giving up was so much easier. Why had she never tried it before?
So, she had died.
Now she was in—well, this probably wasn’t heaven, not that she expected to get in there. It might be hell. She felt pretty lousy. Her body ached and her sore ear felt full of water. The other one was hypersensitive to the rustle of clothing and a distant conversation that bounced painfully inside her skull. Her mouth was so dry she couldn’t swallow. She tried to form words and all she could manage was a whimper of misery.
Something lifted off her arm, a warm weight she hadn’t recognized was there until it was gone, leaving her with a profound sense of loss. She heard footsteps, then a male voice.
“She’s waking up.”
She knew that voice. Her eyes prickled and the air she’d been breathing so easily became dense and hard to pull in. Her chest grew compressed with dread and guilt. She couldn’t move, but inwardly she shrank.
She had definitely gone to hell.
A lighter, quicker footstep came toward her. She opened her eyes, winced at the brightness, then squinted at a tastefully sterile room in placid colors that could have been the one her father had occupied the last months of his life. A private hospital room. For an ear infection? Seriously? Just give her the pink stuff and send her on her way.
“I—” I can’t afford this, she tried to say.
“Don’t try to talk yet,” the kindly nurse said. Her smile was stark white and reassuring against her dark brown skin. She took up Imogen’s wrist to check her pulse, the nurse’s hand soft and warm. Motherly. She checked her temperature and said, “Much better.”
All the while, Imogen could almost but not quite see him in her periphery. She was afraid to turn her head on the pillow and look right at him. It was going to hurt and she just didn’t have it in her yet.
“How am I here?” she managed to whisper.
“Water?” The nurse used a bendy straw, the kind Imogen had never been allowed to use because they were too common. A gimmick.
She got two gulps down her parched throat before the nurse said, “Easy now. Let me tell the doctor you’re awake, then we’ll give you more and maybe something to eat.”
“How long…?”
“You came in yesterday.”
A day and a half in a place like this? When her bank balance was already a zombie apocalypse running rivers of red?
The nurse walked out, sending a smile toward the specter on the other side of the bed.
Imogen closed her eyes again. So childish. She was that and many more things that were bad. Maybe her father was right and she was, simply and irrevocably, bad.
A shoe scuffed beside the bed. She felt him looming over her. Heard him sigh as though he knew she was avoiding him the only way she could.
“Why are you here?” she asked, voice still husky. She wanted to squirm. In her most secretive dreams, this meeting happened on neutral turf. Maybe a coffee shop or somewhere with a pretty view. She would have had a cashier’s check in hand to pay him back every cent she’d been awarded in their divorce settlement—money she knew he felt she’d conned out of him. Somehow, in her fantasy, she found the words to explain why she’d taken it and he had, if not forgiven her, at least not despised her any longer.
Maybe his feelings toward her weren’t that bad. He was here, wasn’t he? Maybe he cared a little. Had he been wo
rried for her?
She heard a zipper, which made her open her eyes out of curiosity—
Oh, no.
“You went through my things?” She clamped her eyes shut against the small red change purse that had belonged to her mother. It held Imogen’s valuables—her driver’s license, her debit card, her room key, the only photo she had of her with her sister and mother, and the marriage certificate stating Travis Sanders was her husband.
“The nurse was looking for your next of kin.” Oh, this man had a way with disdain. It dripped from a voice which was otherwise deep and warm with an intriguing hint of Southern charm.
She was a connoisseur of disparaging tones, having experienced a lot of them in her lifetime. Neighbors. Teachers. Daddy dearest. Inured as she ought to be, this man cut into her with scalpel-like precision with his few indifferent words.
He didn’t care if he was the only person left in this world whom she had any connection to. He found his brief association with her abhorrent when he thought about her at all.
“It’s my only other piece of identification.”
“Birth certificate?” he suggested.
Burned after an argument with her father ages ago. So childish.
She wanted to throw her arm over her eyes and continue hiding, but her limbs were deadweights and the small twitch of trying to lift her arm made her aware of the tube sticking out of it.
She looked at the IV, the ceiling, him.
Oh, it hurt so badly. He had somehow improved on perfection, handsome features having grown sharper and more arrogantly powerful. He was clean-shaven, not ruggedly stubbled and human-looking the way she remembered him when she dared revisit their shared past—hair rumpled by her fingers, chest naked and hot as he pressed her into the sheets.
Whatever warmth she had ever seen in him had been iced over and hardened. He wore a tailored three-piece suit in charcoal with a tie in frosted gray. His mouth, capable of a sideways grin, was held in a short, stern firmness. Flat gray eyes took in what must appear like soggy laundry dumped out of the washer before it had even been through the rinse cycle. That’s about how appealing she felt. While he was…
