Unexpected Pleasures (10 page)

He was wearing a suit, dark grey, with an immaculate white cotton shirt and a discreet silk tie. He didn’t look like the man who had held her and touched her, who had stroked her and kissed her...who had made her body ache and burn. This was the old Jake—the formidable, austere, disapproving Jake who had haunted her.

She stood still, panic and dread flaring inside her, her expression unknowingly betraying what she was feeling so that Jake cursed under his breath.

He had promised himself that he would take things slowly, that he would use this opportunity fate had so unexpectedly given him to put their relationship on a fresh footing. He had told himself that now that he knew the reasons why she had always held him at a distance and rebuffed him he could surely find a way of slowly overcoming them.

Logically he knew that just because he now knew what had caused her aversion to him that did not mean that anything would change, but emotionally his heart had cried out that surely it was impossible to love someone so much and for so long and for that love not to be returned. Sexually she was responsive to him. To him... Not to his cousin, not to anyone else... To him.

Now, as he saw the panic in her eyes and sensed how tempted she was to turn round and run, he reached out to her, shocked by the icy-cold tension of her skin.

‘Your sister’s here,’ he told her.

‘Chrissie...’

She had flinched when he touched her, but she hadn’t pulled away.

‘She arrived in a bit of a state,’ he added, watching her. ‘I gather the two of you had a bit of an upset...’

The dazed, frantic look was leaving her eyes now, the pupil no longer dilating quite so painfully.

Why
was it that, when she
knew
it was the most dangerous thing she could allow, she was letting him touch her...hold her? Rosie wondered bleakly. It wasn’t just because the touch of his hand on her arm was warming, soothing. Soothing... That wasn’t what the rapid acceleration of her heartbeat was telling her.

‘You’re cold. Let’s go inside.’

Numbly she let him take charge, calmly ushering her inside.

She tensed on the threshold to the sitting-room, her eyes going instinctively and betrayingly to the Knole settee.

If Jake was aware of what she was doing, he gave no sign of it. Instead he was smiling at Chrissie, who was sitting on the edge of one of the fireside chairs, her expression strained and nervous.

‘Rosie...I’m sorry about...about what happened earlier,’ Chrissie began, before Rosie could speak.

‘Jake...Jake has explained to me that he had asked you not to say anything until he’d completed the negotiations for selling his share of the marina business. He told me that you’d wanted to tell me, and that you had intended to do so this last weekend.’ She made a wry face. ‘I suppose I didn’t help, bursting out with our news about the baby the other Friday, not giving you a chance to get a word in edgeways. I suppose I did rather over-react this morning. I should have realised you wouldn’t deliberately keep something like this from me. It was just...just that I felt so hurt hearing it from someone else...’

‘I know,’ Rosie told her contritely. The pain gripping her stomach muscles was beginning to ease. She had Jake to thank for Chrissie’s calmer mood, she recognised, and for shouldering the blame for keeping their ‘news’ from her.

‘I
am
pleased for you...of course,’ Chrissie continued, ‘and I
do
understand why you both felt that you had to make your relationship public in view of what happened on Sunday. As Jake said, the last thing any of us would want is for people to start speculating that the two of you might be having some sordid secret affair.’

She got up and walked across to Rosie, hugging her.

‘I’m sorry, Rosie,’ she told her in a muffled voice. ‘I was rotten to you earlier. I came round here intending to tell Jake what I thought of the pair of you, and instead he made me see how difficult I was making things for you...’

Rosie didn’t say anything. She couldn’t. Every word Chrissie said to her was increasing her guilt tenfold.

It was left to Jake to take hold of her hand and draw her closer to him, close enough for him to place his arm around her waist, holding her against the warmth of his body, causing nervous, fluttery sensations of quicksilver apprehension to race through her.

‘We do understand, don’t we, darling?’

As he spoke he turned to look at her, his free hand gently brushing her hair back off her face and lingering against her skin just long enough to make her nerve-endings prickle sensitively and her mouth feel as though it had started to swell slightly, as she remembered how she had felt when he kissed her.

He was looking at her mouth now, she recognised. Looking at it...and lowering his head as though... He couldn’t possibly be going to kiss her, surely? Not in front of Chrissie? Not when they both knew...?

‘Rosie...’

Her mouth quivered as she felt the warmth of his breath against her sensitive skin. Her eyes were already closing, her body turning in towards his, her hands pressed flat against his chest.

He kissed her gently, lingeringly, and the ache of need that pulsed inside her was so keen and sharp that for an instant she almost forgot that Chrissie
was
there, so great was her need to cling to him and return his kiss, to feel his mouth harden with passion, to feel his body...

Abruptly she surfaced from her dangerous fantasy, her face flushed with guilty heat.

Mercifully Jake wasn’t watching her, and had turned away from her as he released her, but Chrissie was. And, as they looked at one another, Rosie recognised the message in her sister’s eyes.

Chrissie knew that she loved him. She
loved
him! The shock seemed to go on forever, seeping into her slowly, briefly numbing her, and then receding, allowing the space it had left behind to be filled with the raw acid burn of her terrified panic.

‘Look, I’d better be going,’ she heard Chrissie saying but, as she turned automatically to go with her, Jake stopped her.

‘I’ll see you out,’ he told Chrissie.

‘I’m sorry I made such a fuss,’ Chrissie apologised to her, giving her another hug. ‘This baby is playing havoc with my hormones, I’m afraid... Still,’ she grinned at Jake, ‘if you and Rosie don’t waste too much time, he or she could have a cousin to grow up with.’

She wanted to leave, to get away right now, to go somewhere where she could be alone to examine her pain in private...somewhere where she could lock herself away so no one else could see or suspect what was happening to her.

How
could
she be in love with Jake? Rosie asked herself helplessly as she watched him escort Chrissie to her car and knew that it was impossible for her to follow her.

She and Jake were supposed to be in love;
she
was in love...what woman in love would rush away from her lover, refusing the opportunity to share a few minutes’ privacy with him? Especially after the way Jake had kissed her...a kiss which Chrissie had very obviously interpreted as a restrained expression of his desire for her.

But
she
didn’t want Jake to desire her. She didn’t want him to touch her, kiss her, arouse her, expose her to the newly discovered dangers of her love for him.

No wonder he made her feel so on edge, so nervous... Had some part of her known all along...felt all along? Was
that
why she had reacted so intensely to him all those years ago? Had something in her recognised it even then?

She heard Chrissie drive away.

Panic exploded inside her.

She didn’t want to be on her own here with Jake.

But it was too late now to try to escape. She heard the front door open and then close again, and her fear increased.

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘I
DIDN
’
T
REALISE
YOUR
sister was expecting another child.’

Rosie didn’t look round as she heard Jake come into the room—she didn’t dare; but as she heard the quiet calmness of his voice her panic was stoked by a sudden flare of anger.

He was taking things so calmly, so easily. Didn’t he have
any
idea of what it was doing to her...of what
he
was doing to her?

As he studied her rigid back, Jake’s heart sank. She didn’t want to be here with him, he knew that. It hurt him, knowing how much she wanted to get away from him, but he clamped down on his desire to make things easier for her, to open the door and let her walk through it.

Deep inside him there was a growing awareness that there was another and far more important door that was locked and barred, holding her imprisoned behind it.

Was he deluding himself in believing that he might be able to help her find its key and set herself free?

There was such a lot of pain locked up inside her, such a burden of anguish and unhappiness. He had heard it in her voice the night she had told him she had conceived Ritchie’s child, had seen it in her eyes just now when Chrissie had mentioned her own pregnancy.

He was a man and could only guess at how it felt to be a woman; he was afraid of being clumsy and careless, adding to what she was suffering rather than taking away from it, but he also knew that he could not stand by and watch her suffer the way she was doing right now.

It angered him on her behalf that no one else had seen that suffering. Were they all blind, those who purported to care about her, or was it that his love for her made him extra specially perceptive of her feelings? Or was it that she had let down her guard more with him than she ever had with anyone else?

He took a deep breath, knowing that however gently he led up to it nothing was going to make it any easier for either of them.

‘Rosie,’ he said quietly. ‘There’s something we need to discuss.’

Rosie heard him, but made no response. Jake paused and, when she made no movement other than to stiffen her already eloquently taut, rejecting back, he cursed under his breath and continued as gently as he could, aching to reach out and touch her, to hold her, to protect her, but knowing that he must not do so.

‘The other night you told me that you had conceived Ritchie’s child... What happened to that baby?’

Rosie felt the shock like the sudden impact of something so cold that it almost burned. She wasn’t prepared for this...hadn’t guessed...hadn’t imagined. She had thought he wanted to discuss their supposed relationship, not...

Who did he think he was? What was he trying to do to her? Hadn’t he hurt her enough...more than enough over the years? What right did he have to pry into this, the most painful and private part of her life...her heart?

She felt the pain burn up inside her, the anger...the guilt...the bitterness.

She turned round, her eyes glittering with a mixture of tears and emotion, her voice raw as she choked out, ‘What do you think happened? I killed it...I killed it...’

As he heard the agony in her voice Jake felt his scalp tauten and muscles tense. He could see what she was going through, hear it, feel it, taste it almost, on the emotion-laden air that enveloped her.

Instinctively he wanted to comfort her, to help her, to take away from her the appalling burden of her pain and guilt. She had been a child, that was all, a child whose only guilt had been her own innocence, and yet she was punishing herself as though she had been an adult.

‘Rosie. Rosie...you mustn’t blame yourself. It wasn’t your fault, you were only a child. I know it must have hurt, having to take the decision to have your pregnancy terminated, but—’

He saw the colour leave her face, her mouth twisting in a bitter, corrosive smile.

‘But what? I did the right thing? Of course, you
would
think that, wouldn’t you? How like a man...’ She started to laugh, her voice sharp-edged with a hysteria that sent anxiety arcing through him. ‘Well, it wasn’t like that.
I
wasn’t the one who made the decision. Life...fate...my baby—the baby I’d told constantly since I knew I was carrying it that I hated—was the one who did that...’

Rosie saw from his face that he didn’t understand what she was saying.

‘I miscarried,’ she told him harshly. ‘I lost the baby by accident. It knew, you see. It knew it wasn’t loved.’

Silently Jake watched the tears pouring down her face, cursing himself for his crassness, his stupidity, his lack of insight. Why on earth hadn’t he guessed...realised...? He
loved
her. He should have sensed...known...

For all these years she had contained the pain that was now spilling out from her, years when he could have reached out to her, could have—
should
have been there to help her...to hold her...even if it could only have been as a friend.

Why
hadn’t
he realised, that day he had gone to see her, to check if there had been any
repercussions
as he had so clinically put it, that she was lying to him, that she was afraid...that she was alone and facing a trauma which would blight her whole life?

If he had not been so wrapped up in his own feelings, his own jealousy, his blind, prejudiced belief that she thought herself to be in love with Ritchie, might he not with his supposed maturity have seen that she was concealing something, that she was afraid?

Couldn’t he have found a way to encourage her to confide in him, to lean on him...to draw support from him?

She could have had her baby. He would have gladly provided her with all the support she might have needed...all the love. Given the chance, he would have married her and loved them both, but he had turned his back on her, left her to suffer...

‘My baby died because I didn’t want it. I killed it by denying it my love...but I did love it...’

He couldn’t stand any more.

He crossed the space that divided them, taking her in his arms, ignoring her attempts to push him away, wrapping his arms around her so tightly that she couldn’t move, holding her, rocking her, telling her that she wasn’t to blame, that these things happened...that of course she had loved her baby and that of course he or she had known that.

‘If anyone is to blame it must be me,’ he told her.

Rosie stiffened. ‘You...’

She had stopped crying now, but she was still trembling. Her body felt weak and cold, hollow and empty, drained. She felt much as she had done after her miscarriage, she recognised light-headedly, as though there was an empty space inside her which had previously been filled but, whereas with her miscarriage she had ached with pain over that emptiness, with this one there was a sense of release, of relief.

She tried to concentrate on what Jake was saying. How could it be
his
fault?

‘That day when I came to see you...I should have guessed...should have seen—’

‘But there wasn’t anything to see,’ Rosie told him. ‘I—’

Jake shook his head.

‘I didn’t mean that kind of “seeing”, Rosie...I meant...’ He stopped abruptly, causing her to frown up at him.

‘What?’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he told her. ‘What
does
matter is you, and the way you’ve blamed yourself...suffered... You were very young, Rosie. Perhaps your body simply wasn’t fully ready for motherhood.’

Rosie ducked her head. He was only reiterating what they had told her at the hospital. Then she had felt too much guilt, too much anguish to listen to them, but now logically she knew that both they and he were probably right.

That didn’t lessen her sorrow, though. Her sorrow... Not her guilt...not that agonising, clawing mixture of anger and misery which she had been suffering so frequently and intensely recently; that, she recognised, had gone, leaving behind it a kinder, gentler emotion.

Had that change been brought about simply by the act of talking about what had happened, by giving vent to her emotions, by being able for the first time to actually acknowledge what had happened...what she had felt...by acknowledging the right of her child to have a proper place in her past and her memories, instead of being hidden away, his or her existence denied?

Jake was still holding her. She tried to move away discreetly but, far from relaxing, his arms actually seemed to tighten a little more securely around her.

It felt good being held like this by him, her body supported by his, surrounded by its warmth, its protection, his heartbeat soothing the frantic pace of her own. In her dreams she had imagined being held like this, she recognised, had craved this kind of male comfort and warmth, had longed for someone who would hold her, listen to her, understand her...love her...

Immediately she tensed. Jake did
not
love her. He felt compassion for her, and a certain amount of guilt, but he did not love her.

And she was not a child, not a teenager any longer, even if the emotions she had been reliving...venting in his arms had belonged to that era of her life. She was a woman, an adult, and it was time that she put the past behind her, accepted that there was no going back and altering it, accepted that her perceptions of it were coloured by the emotions she had felt then, by the immaturity which had been a part of her then.

She had believed that Jake despised her, condemned her for what she had done, but she had learned now that he had done no such thing. Couldn’t she just as easily have allowed her guilt over her miscarriage to be equally biased and destructive? She would never forget her child, never cease regretting that she had lost it, but somehow now that loss was easier to accept, that pain easier to endure now that she shared it with someone else.

For years she had focused all her antipathy and bitterness on Jake; she must not make the mistake now of forcing him to become some kind of emotional support system for her, especially not when she knew that she loved him.

Right now he felt responsible for her...and responsive to her? It would be dangerously easy to use those feelings and to try to convince them both that they could become something else.

Some deep-seated feminine instinct told her that it would be the easiest thing in the world right now to increase Jake’s awareness of her, to trade on his obvious compassion for her. All it would take was for her to lift her head, to look at him...to look at his mouth...

She felt the tremor of her own body and acknowledged, with a small pang of shock for her previous lack of awareness, how very strong her physical and emotional responses would be once they were aroused, how very, very much she wanted right now to make love with Jake.

To set the final seal upon the past and free herself completely from it? Or because she loved him...because a part of her was ready to use the smallest excuse it could find to encourage him to want her?

It wouldn’t be all that difficult; physically he was responsive to her, aware of her...physically he desired her.

She wasn’t sure how she knew that, but she did know it, sensed it, felt it, and in a female way was proud because of it.

But to encourage that desire, to take it and make use of it, would ultimately damage them both, but most especially her. She wasn’t strong enough for a relationship which would be based on such a dangerously destructive mixture of compassion and desire on his part, and love and need on hers.

No, if there were ever to be that kind of intimate relationship in her life, then it must be based on emotions that were equally balanced. And besides, to allow...to encourage Jake to make love to her when she knew how widely different their reasons for making love would be would be to cheat and deceive him.

Jake heard her sigh, and felt her lift herself away from him. This time when she pressed firmly against his chest, silently demanding that he release her, he complied.

‘I’m sorry,’ she told him shakily.

‘Don’t be,’ he responded. ‘There’s no need.’

He had released her fully now. She was just about to step back from him and turn away when he said softly, ‘Rosie...’

‘Yes?’

She looked up at him and then tensed as she saw the way he was looking back at her, at her mouth...just as she had so recently imagined he might do.

Quickly she turned on her heel, terrified of giving in to her need to fling herself back into his arms and whisper to him how much she wanted him...loved him.

‘I...I must go...’

Jake saw her to her car, and then stood watching her until she had driven out of sight.

The phone was ringing as Rosie let herself into her house. She dropped her bag and ran to answer it, a small thrill of disappointment stabbing through her when she realised it wasn’t Jake but Chrissie.

‘Rosie...I’ve had a wonderful idea,’ Chrissie announced. ‘Why don’t you have your engagement party here in the garden? There’s masses of room. We could hire a marquee.’

An engagement party. Rosie’s heart sank, but she couldn’t summon the energy to dampen Chrissie’s enthusiasm, nor to destroy the olive branch she knew her sister was extending to her.

‘It sounds a marvellous idea,’ she fibbed weakly. ‘But I’m not sure what Jake’s plans are...’

Promising Chrissie that she would discuss the party with him, she replaced the receiver.

Chrissie was
her
sister, she reminded herself, and it was unfair of her to shift the responsibility for persuading her to drop her plans for an engagement party on to Jake’s shoulders, but he seemed to have the knack of dealing with her sister. Chrissie listened to him and obviously respected his judgement, while she had always considered Rosie to be her ‘little sister’ and still tended to treat her accordingly.

An engagement party... Wistfully Rosie tried not to dwell on how different things would be if she and Jake really were planning to marry...if he really did love her.

Enough of that, she told herself firmly. She had plenty of other things to think about, such as work. It was too late to return to the office now, but she had plenty of paperwork she could do here at home.