Unexpected Pleasures (8 page)

She was still trembling, but she had stopped crying...stopped talking.

* * *

E
XHAUSTED
,
R
OSIE
LAY
against Jake’s chest. She could feel the heavy, slightly uneven thud of his heartbeat, smell the special personal scent of his body warmth. Instinctively she nestled closer to him, comforted by it.

She had got it wrong, Jake had told her. He had never blamed her, never felt contemptuous of her, and instinctively she had known that he was telling her the truth.

With that knowledge, with that barrier between them removed, had come an overwhelming need to talk about the past, to let the emotions she had kept dammed up inside her spill out.

Now she felt drained and shaky, light-bodied and empty, cleansed of all her corrosive, bitter memories. She lay in his arms, too weak to move, her physical actions still governed by her emotional needs, and the strongest of all those was her need to be close to him, to just lie here and be held by him, safe, protected, comforted, her pain shared and understood.

She closed her eyes sleepily and then opened them reluctantly as Jake said her name, lifting her head to look at him.

He watched her sombrely, and then lifted his hand to gently move her hair off her face, tucking it behind her ear.

Abruptly she remembered the way he had kissed her outside the Simpsons’ house, and automatically her glance slid to his mouth, her own lips parting, her lungs expanding as she had to gulp in air.

No one else had ever kissed her like that, made her feel like that, made her forget everything but the sweet intensity of the pleasure curling slowly through her.

Jake bent his head and her heart started to hammer frantically fast.

Was he going to kiss her again? Would it feel the same this time? Would she...?

She touched her lips nervously with her tongue, wetting their dryness, her body tensing as she heard the way he said her name.

Somewhere within her a stern voice warned her that she was being deliberately, dangerously provocative, but she didn’t want to listen to it. She wanted him to kiss her, she recognised with a fierce lurch of her heart. She wanted him to hold her, to touch her, to...

Impulsively she reached out and touched him, placing her palm against his jaw. Her breathing quickened with the sudden sensual awareness that flooded her.

‘Rosie.’

His voice sounded different as he said her name, thickened, slurred. He turned his head so that his lips touched her palm, caressing it.

A deep shudder went through her, her eyes unwittingly imploring as she reached up towards him.

‘Rosie...’

He had intended to protest, to stop her, to explain to her that what was happening to her was just an automatic physical reaction to the emotional turmoil she had just experienced, but instead, as she reached up to him and he felt her breath against his mouth, he ignored what conscience told him he should do and instead stroked her parted lips with his tongue, tasting the richness of the wine she had drunk, feeling the way her mouth and then her whole body quivered openly in response to him, feeling the way his
own
body responded as though galvanized by a surge of sensation he was totally powerless to control.

He heard the soft murmur she made in her throat as he kissed her, felt the soft, vulnerable warmth of her body as she pressed closer to him, and knew that she was not really aware of what she was doing.

His hands touched her face, exploring its delicacy, tracing the shape of her ear, the line of her neck, feeling her shudder violently beneath his touch, and was helpless to prevent himself from deepening his kiss in response to that shudder, tasting her with his tongue, feeling her brief, hesitant shock before she melted against him, opening her mouth fully to him, her hands moving urgently over his back, so obviously impatient with his shirt and the barrier it made between her touch and his flesh that he tugged it out of the way himself, whispering against her mouth how much he wanted her to touch him, and how much he wanted to touch her.

Jake wanted to touch her... Rosie tensed and opened her eyes.

Her hands were pressed flat against the hard, warm flesh of his back, her mouth was soft and swollen from his kiss—the kiss she had silently implored him to give her.

She was trembling violently, aware of so many conflicting emotions that she could scarcely make sense of what she was feeling.

‘Touch me,’ Jake had told her, and then he had told her as well how much he wanted to touch her.

Now he was holding her, his mouth gently caressing her throat, his hands...

She shuddered as she realised how close his hands were to her breasts. All she had to do was to move very slightly and then he would be touching them.

Would the fingertips which had traced the bones of her face so delicately and sensuously arouse the same pleasure within her if they touched her breasts?

Her body’s response to her thoughts made her catch her breath in shock as she felt the fierce pulse of desire that arced through her.

‘Rosie...what is it? What’s wrong?’

Unable to answer him, she wrapped herself around him, clinging shakily to him, half exalted by what she was feeling and half afraid, but not challenging the extraordinariness of what was happening, or the fact that it should be
this
man who was causing her to feel like this, to experience desire and need, to suddenly know that behind the fear and self-loathing of herself as a woman lay a sensuality that was strong and powerful enough to sweep aside and overcome all the trauma of the past if she let it.

‘Rosie...’

She felt Jake hold her, move her, as though he were going to push her gently away from him, but, as his hands slid against the silk of her dress and came into contact with the soft fullness of her breasts, he went very still.

Rosie tensed as well, scarcely daring to move, to breathe...unable to initiate the touch her senses suddenly craved, but longing, aching for him to touch her, to gently remove the barrier of her dress and the silk bra she was wearing beneath it and to caress her breasts with the same care and tenderness with which he had touched her face...to make her feel whole again...clean again, to let her experience a man’s desire and to express her own.

And yet, when he did as she had wished, she was suddenly overcome with tension and panic, freezing with a cold fear which could not be dispelled by the warm touch of his hands against her body.

‘Rosie...it’s all right...it’s all right...’

As she heard his voice, heard its reassurance and steadiness, felt him gently release her, the band of fear imprisoning her snapped.

‘No...please...don’t stop...I want...’

The husky, stammered words pierced him like darts of acid fire as Jake watched her...loving her...wanting her...knowing that, in her emotionally wrought state, she
believed
she wanted him...knowing that he had no right to take advantage of her confusion, and knowing, as she raised her mouth to his and started to kiss him, that there was no way he was going to be able to resist her...to stop...

This time when he caressed her breasts the icy coldness of fear had gone, and in its place was a sensation so achingly sensuous and pleasurable that it was Rosie herself who arched her body up towards him, her hands holding his head, her fingers sliding fiercely into his hair, her head dropping back against the damask fabric of the settee as gently, watchfully at first, and then, as he realised that the sensation of his mouth caressing her nipples had not frightened or distressed her, finally giving in to his own passionate need to express his desire for her, he suckled on the hard points of flesh until the needle-sharp darts of sensation that pierced her made her cry out frantically in shocked pleasure.

Drugged with arousal and need, Rosie moved closer to him, and then abruptly she realised what she was doing, and what could happen if she didn’t stop.

Jake felt her tension, her withdrawal, and lifted his head to look at her. Her eyes had gone blank with shock and panic.

Had his touch, his caress...his love reminded her of Ritchie? Disgust and pain welled up inside him.

‘Rosie, please...’

He had been about to beg her to forgive him, but Rosie misinterpreted the anguish in his voice and shook her head before he could finish, her eyes still registering the intensity of her emotions.

‘No... No... I can’t,’ she told him. ‘I couldn’t go through that again...I couldn’t endure killing another baby...’

Rosie was barely aware of what she was saying, driven by the weight of her pain and guilt, by the knowledge of how easily she had forgotten the past...forgotten what had happened... She was sickened by how easy it would have been for her to give in to that ache still pulsing through her and to encourage Jake to make love fully to her.

How
could
she have forgotten what happened with Ritchie...the baby she had conceived, the panic and anger she had felt, the guilt and pain when she had lost it, the way that loss had haunted her, shadowing her life?

She was so wrapped up in her own thoughts, so shocked by her own lack of control, by the speed with which her physical desire had overwhelmed everything else, obliterating all that she ought to have felt, that she was completely unaware of what she had said and what she had revealed until she heard Jake demanding harshly, ‘What baby? What are you saying? You told me...’

Realising what she had done, what she had betrayed, Rosie focused on Jake’s face.

The panic that hit her was so intense, so strong, that it was like an icy tide physically engulfing her, swallowing her up and dragging her down into a dark, roaring void.

She came out of it slowly and reluctantly, not wanting to remember what happened, accepting the glass of wine Jake was giving her, distantly aware of his tension, but withdrawing from it.

She felt thirsty, her throat and mouth dry, but when she asked Jake for another glass of wine he frowned slightly, pausing before pouring it for her.

She drank it greedily, needing its warmth, its numbing benevolence, frowning uncertainly as she glanced down at her body and realised that, although her dress was fastened, she wasn’t wearing a bra beneath it.

Her nipples pulsed and ached, openly erect beneath the silk.

She suddenly felt overwhelmed by a desire to close her eyes and go to sleep. She yawned and then yawned again, ignoring the sharp urgency in Jake’s voice.

‘I’m tired,’ she told him petulantly. ‘I want to go to bed.’

She stood up, her eyes widening in shock as she felt the room sway around her. The two extra glasses of wine she had insisted on having were making her head swim, confusing her thoughts. She yawned again, and closed her eyes.

Jake caught her as she staggered. By the time he had placed her carefully on the settee she was already deeply asleep.

And drunk? On three glasses of wine? A heavy, rich red wine, and she had not had anything to eat, he reminded himself. Add to that the emotional turmoil she had been through, and perhaps it was not surprising that her body and her mind wanted to find escape in sleep.

He ought to take her home, but he couldn’t let her go until she had explained that frantic, pleading statement she had made to him.

Had
she conceived Ritchie’s child? When he had gone to ask her she had told him coldly that she had not conceived. But then, given what he knew now, was it likely that she would have told him anything else?

He bent grimly over her, picking her up.

Luckily Mrs Lindow always kept the spare beds made up. She could spend the night in one of them and then tomorrow they could talk.

Whether she had conceived Ritchie’s child or not made no difference to the way he felt about her, to his love for her.

But if she had... He flinched as he recognised what such an event must have done to her...on top of all that she was already suffering.

There was no point in trying to wake her now. As he carried her towards the door he paused and looked down into her sleeping face, brushing his mouth
gently against hers.

‘I love you, Rosie,’ he whispered against her lips and, even though he knew she could not have heard him, her mouth seemed to soften into a slight smile.

An omen for the future?

CHAPTER SIX

B
ECAUSE
HE
WAS
determined there
was
going to be a future for them, Jake acknowledged as he carried her upstairs and carefully laid her down on the bed in the guest bedroom before removing her dress and then going to get one of his shirts to put on her before he pulled the duvet up over her.

She was so deeply asleep that she had barely stirred while he undressed her, and now he stood beside the bed, looking down at her.

It was just as well that she had called a halt to their lovemaking. He knew well enough that the passion and intensity of her response to him had been caused not so much by any personal desire for him, but by the release of all her pent-up emotions.

He would take things slowly with her, give her all the time and space she needed to feel comfortable with him. And if at the end of that she still rejected him... Love could not be forced, he reminded himself, and nor would he want to do so. But if he could keep her close to him, showed her that she could trust him...

He bent and touched her face gently, unable to resist the temptation to do so, and then, straightening his back, he went downstairs.

In the sitting-room Rosie’s empty glass was on the floor beside the sofa and with it, almost tucked beneath the sofa, was her bra.

He picked it up and took it upstairs, placing it with her other clothes, remembering the way she had responded to him when he had kissed her breasts, the eager feminine response her body had given him. It wasn’t just her physical response he wanted, though. It was her love as well.

* * *

R
OSIE
WOKE
UP
RELUCTANTLY
, conscious of the dryness of her mouth, of the unfamiliar deepness of her sleep, of the way her head ached.

She moved it slightly on the pillow, frowning as she realised she was not in her own bed.

Immediately she remembered what had happened, her face flushing with mortification as she remembered the way she had cast aside all her normal restraint, all her self-control...the things she had said...the things she had done... Most especially the things she had
done
... Her face burned hotly as she shuddered in mute self-disgust.

It must have been the wine. That and the shock of seeing Ritchie...of discovering that Jake Lucas had not disliked and despised her.

Shock did odd things to people.

Including inciting them to physical desire... She pushed the thought aside, throwing back the duvet and then tensing as she realised what she was wearing...or rather what she wasn’t wearing.

Jake must have undressed her before putting her to bed...undressed her and then wrapped her in one of his own shirts.

Beneath its fine cotton covering she could see the flushed areolae of her breasts. They had looked like that last night after Jake had kissed them. A tight ball of angry guilt exploded inside her.

How
could
she have behaved like that, let such a thing happen—
wanted
such a thing to happen, and to the extent that, if she had not suddenly remembered the danger that lay in having sex with someone without taking precautions against conception, this morning she could well have been waking up in Jake’s bed, not this one... In Jake’s bed...perhaps even in Jake’s arms...?

The feeling that swept over her appalled her. What was happening to her? Twenty-four hours ago, the last man she could ever have imagined as her lover had been Jake Lucas, and now... She didn’t want him as a lover now either, she told herself fiercely. All she wanted to do was to get up, get dressed and get away from here as quickly as she possibly could, so that she could forget that the whole thing had happened.

What had possessed her to break down in front of him like that...to tell him things she had never imagined she would ever share with anyone, to reveal to him emotions, fears, needs so private that she had thought she would never be able to express them to anyone?

And yet strangely it had been easy sharing them with Jake...
He
had made it easy.

Until that moment when she had remembered, realised what she was doing, and she had cried out to him her fear of conceiving another child that she might lose.

She closed her eyes, trying to blot out her memory of the look on his face.

Where was he now? Downstairs waiting for her to put in an appearance...so that he could question her?

Anxiously she looked towards the door and realised that her clothes were on a chair several feet away from the bed, neatly folded with a note propped up against them. The note read,

Had to go out for an hour. Made fresh coffee at 10.00 am. Aspirins in cupboard if needed.

Fresh coffee... She closed her eyes; she could almost smell it...taste its hot, reviving flavour. As for the aspirins... She grimaced to herself before swinging her feet on to the floor and then wincing as her head pounded painfully.

Her bedroom had its own bathroom, well equipped with everything that she might need, including a new toothbrush. Jake’s Mrs Lindow did her job very well, even if she didn’t like fresh flowers, Rosie admitted. A hot shower, followed by a final cold rinse that made her skin tingle and the breath lock in her throat, helped to bring her properly round from her deep sleep, a much deeper sleep than she ever seemed to enjoy in her own home.

The silk dress was remarkably uncreased, although Rosie grimaced a little at having to put on clothes she had already worn.

She also felt acutely aware of the fact that the dress was quite obviously not the kind of thing she would have worn for her normal daytime activities. It looked what it was, she decided fretfully as she hurriedly brushed her hair. A ‘going somewhere’ dress, totally unsuitable for something like yesterday’s party, and totally unsuitable for a Monday morning.

If only her car were outside and she could simply drive home. As it was she would have to ring for a taxi and hope that it arrived before Jake did.

The thought of seeing him, of knowing what he was thinking...remembering...made her shudder with self-loathing.

How could she have been so undisciplined, so uncontrolled?

She had been under a lot of stress recently, both from her work and from far more personal emotions. Look at the way she had reacted to Chrissie’s announcement about the baby.

The baby... She tensed abruptly, forgetting her desire to escape before Jake returned.

She had told
Jake
about her baby. Or as good as. How
could
she have done that?
Why
had she done it?

The rest of the evening, the fact that she had both wanted and encouraged Jake to make love to her, and the uneasy fear-cum-anger those memories had been causing her, suddenly faded to nothing. They were nothing in comparison to her final, her
unbelievable
act of self-betrayal in telling Jake about her baby.

She closed her eyes, remembering the sharp incredulity in his voice as he questioned her, the deep anger in his eyes. She could recall them so clearly that she was forced to marvel at the brain’s apparent ability to function independently of its owner’s befuddled state.

She
had
to get away from here and fast, she told herself in panic.

She had to get away from Jake and to keep away.

She hurried downstairs and into the kitchen, glancing tensely at the clock on the wall as she looked around for a telephone and a directory.

Half-past ten. She couldn’t have woken up much after Jake had gone. She had half an hour before he came back.

If she was lucky she might just be able to get away.

She saw a telephone mounted on the wall, but couldn’t see any directory with it. The rich smell of the coffee distracted her, and she was looking longingly towards it, tempted to pour herself some, when without warning the back door opened.

She tensed immediately, her body feeling as though the blood was draining quickly from it as she went cold with shock, only it wasn’t Jake who came in, it was his cousin’s wife, and with her was an older woman whom Rosie knew vaguely. She was approximately the same age as her own mother, and Rosie seemed to remember that she had been very friendly with Ritchie’s parents when they lived locally.

Both women came to an abrupt halt as they saw Rosie. Naomi Lucas spoke first, her thin, tanned face relaxing a little, the smile she gave Rosie genuinely warm and friendly as she apologised quickly for startling her.

‘Jake gave me a key and told me to come and go as I pleased. Helen is taking me shopping, and I asked her if we could stop off on the way to warn Jake that Ritchie and the boys are likely to descend on him.’ She pulled a slight face and Rosie recognised the tension behind her smile.

‘Ritchie isn’t very good with children. Jake is much better. Australian men, or at least the more traditional of them, don’t always take easily to the responsibilities of parenthood.’

It was on the tip of Rosie’s tongue to point out that Ritchie was not an Australian but British, but she caught back the words, reminding herself that Naomi was Ritchie’s wife and obviously loved him, while she disliked him and felt antagonistic towards him.

The friendliness of Naomi’s manner surprised her a little, as the previous day she had felt that the other woman was regarding her with some hostility.

Feeling both uncomfortable and vulnerable, and all too aware of the speculative glances Naomi’s companion was giving her, Rosie was just wondering how on earth she could make some rational explanation for her presence here in Jake’s kitchen when Naomi smiled at her again and said warmly, ‘I hadn’t realised yesterday that you and Jake were together... I’m sorry if I seemed a bit offhand. I guess Jake would have got round to introducing us officially sooner or later. We’ve only just arrived here, after all. Is Jake going to be long?’

Rosie could neither move nor speak. The shock of what Naomi had just said had robbed her of the ability to do either.

She had known yesterday, of course, that Jake’s behaviour was bound to give rise to some speculation and gossip, but this morning she had told herself firmly that if she ignored it and just pretended nothing had happened then everyone else was bound to follow suit. But now, with those casual, friendly words, Naomi had unsuspectingly, but very, very definitely, made that completely impossible.

She could see Helen Steadings—she had just managed to recall the woman’s name—looking speculatively at her and taking in the significance of the silk dress she had been wearing yesterday afternoon and was still wearing this morning, and Rosie felt her face start to burn painfully and betrayingly.

She might just as well have stood in the town square and told everyone that she had spent the night with Jake, she recognised bleakly as she saw Helen Steadings’s speculation turn to certainty.

To Naomi it might not be important that she and Jake had spent the night together, and Rosie knew rationally that these days there was nothing unusual in a couple of her and Jake’s age having a sexual relationship if they chose to do so, but Helen Steadings knew, as well as Rosie did herself, that Rosie was simply not in the habit of having that kind of relationship. Her heart sank as she recognised the interested curiosity in Helen
Steadings’s scrutiny of her. It was not even as though she could come up with any logical or reasonable excuse to explain away her presence in Jake’s house in Jake’s absence, something strong enough to refute
Naomi’s innocent assumption that they were established lovers, and anyway, Rosie acknowledged sickly, it was too late for that now.

The time for that had been immediately after Naomi had started to speak, not now, far too many telling seconds later.

‘Well, I guess there’s no need for us to wait for Jake now,’ Naomi was saying cheerfully. ‘You must both come over to the hotel and have dinner with us. Jake can—’

‘Jake can what?’

Rosie’s stomach muscles cramped involuntarily as she heard Jake’s voice and realised that she had been so caught up in her dismay that she hadn’t heard him returning.

Neither, it seemed, had Naomi, because she turned round quickly, smiling at him, exclaiming, ‘Jake...I didn’t hear you come in...I was just saying to Rosie that the two of you must come and have dinner with us... I called to warn you that Ritchie is in charge of the boys and that they might all descend on you.’

It was instinct rather than habit that made Rosie step back into the shadow of the kitchen’s large dresser. If she could have disappeared altogether she would have been only too happy to do so, she acknowledged miserably.

‘Why didn’t you tell us about Rosie?’ she heard Naomi demanding teasingly. ‘I had no idea until yesterday that the two of you...’

Rosie thought she had successfully stifled the small moan of protest she could feel rising in her throat, but Jake had obviously heard it because he lifted his head and stared straight at her.

His eyes looked different this morning, silver rather than grey, alive with a warmth she had never seen in them before... It must be for Naomi, she decided wretchedly. It certainly couldn’t have been caused by her. Her stomach trembled nauseously as she remembered the previous evening.

How on earth,
why
on earth, had she got herself involved in such an appalling situation? Thank God her parents were away. Hopefully the gossip might have died down before they returned. Chrissie would hear it, though-Chrissie! What on earth was she going to say to her sister?

Chrissie was bound to demand to know what was going on, why
she
had not been told anything about Rosie’s supposed relationship with Jake Lucas. Outwardly she might not show it, but inwardly she would be hurt by what she would perceive as Rosie’s secretiveness.

And yet Rosie knew that she could
not
tell her the truth, that not even to her own sister could she betray her own lack of self-control, of self-respect.

It had been Chrissie who, when she was a teenager, had sternly pointed out to her what boys thought about girls who had no respect for themselves. An old-fashioned view now, perhaps, but one which Rosie suspected her sister still held.