I was nervous as I unloaded the supermarket bags from my car and walked to Jack’s door. This would be the first time I’d seen him since the night of our kiss, a thing he seemed to have been able to instantly dismiss, but which had stayed with me, in graphic detail, for every waking moment since.
He opened the door with an easy smile and an apology. ‘Hi, Emma,’ he greeted, his lips curling gently as he said my name. He took the bags from my hands and set them down on the hall floor. ‘Sorry, I’m just talking to someone on Skype, leave those bags and go on through to the kitchen, I won’t be a minute.’
I nodded my compliance as he ducked back into the room he had commissioned as an office.
‘Hi, sweetheart, I’m back. Sorry about that.’ I felt a lance run through me. It started at my back and pierced straight through my heart, clipping several other vital organs on its way. I put my hand out to the wood-panelled wall to steady myself. I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, really I wasn’t, but as Jack hadn’t closed the door properly behind him it was almost impossible not to hear his next words.
‘No, it was just someone at the door… no, just a friend. Now what were you saying?’ I snatched up the supermarket bags and virtually ran into the kitchen. What was I doing here? I thought, dumping the carriers down on the kitchen table with enough force I was certain to have broken every egg in the carton I’d just bought.
I had read all sorts of stupid hidden meanings into Jack’s invitation today. I’d been so sure that he’d invented this whole crazy cookery ruse as an excuse to spend one more day with me. And now, when I got here he was on the internet sweet-talking some nameless woman on the other side of the world. And it was crushingly obvious that whoever she was, he cared about her; that much was clear by the warm and loving tone of his voice when he spoke to her. I’d heard traces of that sometimes when he spoke to me, fleeting glimpses of intimacy, enough to recognise it when it was directed at someone else. So why was I still standing in his kitchen like some pathetic idiot, wearing my brand new jeans and white shirt (not too try-hard, didn’t want him thinking I’d overdressed for the occasion), just waiting for him to say goodbye to one woman and then pay some attention to me? I didn’t deserve to be treated like this. Not again, not by anyone, and certainly not by him.
Caroline’s warning rang like a grim reminder in my head. Well, she needn’t have worried; romance hadn’t been on Jack’s mind at all when he’d asked me to come here today. Apparently, the only reason I was here was to cook his bloody dinner. He’d even directed me straight into the kitchen! I should just go, I thought, already heading back into the hall. Jack was still talking on his computer and with luck I could ease open the front door and make a dash for my car before he even noticed I had gone. I took a step further into the shadowy hall.
‘I’ve missed you too, honey. It’s been far too long this time, but only another five days.’
The woman talking to him on his laptop screen said something which I couldn’t make out, and Jack responded with a low rumbling laugh. ‘Of course I will,’ he promised. I had to get out of there before he started intimately discussing the reunion they were both no doubt eagerly awaiting. I took a step and the old oak board beneath my foot creaked noisily, giving away my presence. Jack’s head spun around.
‘Everything okay, Emma?’ he asked, his eyes warm and gentle as he turned away from the screen to look at me. Masochistically I tried to see beyond the breadth of him to catch a glimpse of the woman who made him look and sound so full of tender affection. I could see nothing at all except a mass of pale gold hair. A blonde, that figures.
I realised he was still waiting for a response as I stood in his hall like a cartoon character pantomiming someone stealthily trying to tiptoe away, which actually was precisely what I was doing.
‘Yes, fine,’ I said, flustered by having been caught. There was no chance now to make an unobserved exit. ‘I was just… just… getting the shopping,’ I improvised wildly, hoping he hadn’t noticed that the bags I was referring to were already in the kitchen. ‘I have to put some things in the fridge.’
‘Okay,’ he said with a slightly bemused smile. Perhaps my voice hadn’t sounded as natural as I would have liked. ‘I’m just saying goodbye here, I’ll be with you in a moment.’
I knew a dismissal when I heard one. I walked back to the kitchen biting my lip until it actually hurt. What do I do now, stay or go? If I ran out of his house, like some pathetic heartbroken heroine, Jack would instantly know how badly I had misread everything about our entire relationship. He’d just been the Good Samaritan who had happened to be in the fallout zone when my world had crumbled apart. I was the one who had mistaken responsibility, friendship and concern for a deep and lasting emotional connection tying us together. It wasn’t Jack who couldn’t see the difference between a fleeting physical attraction and something so much more. That was all me.
‘Hi, I’m sorry, that was really rude of me,’ he said, walking in with the apology already falling from his lips. He bent down and lightly kissed my cheek. That was new. I stiffened, but I don’t think he noticed for he was already crossing the kitchen and heading for the kettle.
‘Coffee?’
I opened my mouth to say, ‘No thanks, I can’t stay’, and instead heard my voice replying, ‘Yes please, black, no sugar.’
As the water boiled Jack crossed to the table and looked down at the two over-stuffed carrier bags. ‘I didn’t think you would actually bring all the ingredients with you.’
He looked so calm and unfazed. Moving so easily from his lover to his dumb English friend that something inside me tightened and twisted uncomfortably.
‘Well, that was why you invited me here today, Jack, wasn’t it? You asked me to cook for you, isn’t that what this is all about?’
He looked at me carefully, and I found my gaze drawn to his lower lip, and the way he had drawn it in, considering my question. It was a physical effort to wrench my gaze away from his mouth. Jack looked confused, and it wasn’t an expression I was used to seeing on him.
‘Is something wrong, Emma?’
‘No,’ I lied, looking him straight in the eye. ‘Why do you ask?’
He looked uncomfortable and wrong-footed, yet another new look for him.
‘You seem… prickly.’
I forced a tight smile past my unwilling lips. ‘No. Just keen to get going.’ Jack’s eyebrows rose at my words. ‘With the cooking,’ I amended.
I knew he didn’t believe me, but I really didn’t care. I was going to go through with this silly little charade and not let him see just how much more I had thought this day was meant to be about. All I had left was my pride, and I wasn’t prepared to lose that too.
He made the coffees while I made a great pretence of readying the ingredients I had brought, lining them up along one side of the kitchen table, as though I was preparing to be filmed for a television cook show.
‘Do you need me to do anything?’ he asked, as I hunted for bowls and utensils in the cupboards of his kitchen. I remembered seeing most of what I needed when I had cooked our steak dinner. I closed my eyes briefly on the memory. So much had happened since then, and none of it good. I carried what I needed back to the table and directed him to the other side of the room. If I was going to get through this at all, I needed far more distance between us. In fact the width of the kitchen was still nowhere wide enough. Well, in another five days there’d be an entire ocean between us. And then he’d be with her, whoever she was.
‘It’s best you stand well clear,’ I advised, pouring flour recklessly on to the scales and momentarily disappearing behind a small white cloud. ‘I’m a pretty messy cook. You should really have asked Caroline here to do this instead of me.’
‘I didn’t want Caroline here. I wanted you,’ he answered, his voice low. It was just that sort of talk that had led me so hopelessly down the wrong track I had taken.
I cracked an egg into a cup so viciously that I was never going to be able to fish out the pieces of broken shell that had gone in with it. I discarded it and reached for another one.
‘Emma,’ Jack said, crossing back across his kitchen and sliding his fingers around my forearm. ‘Will you please just tell me what is bothering you.’
There was that look in his eyes which I had always thought meant so much more than it actually did. I was finally getting wise. It was about time.
‘Why should anything be bothering me, Jack? You tell me,’ I challenged, carrying on with my cooking as though he had never interrupted me. ‘So, the oil has to be really hot,’ I said, pouring a generous amount in the bottom of a roasting dish and opening the Aga door.
‘You seemed fine on the phone the other day,’ Jack said ponderingly.
‘So hot it actually has to be smoking,’ I continued, turning back to the kitchen table and picking up a wooden spoon.
‘It sounded like you wanted to see me again,’ he continued, sounding a little embarrassed.
‘Beat in the eggs and milk,’ I said tightly, dropping both ingredients into the flour.
‘And I certainly didn’t make it a secret that I really wanted to see you again before I left,’ he confessed.
‘Then beat it,’ I said through clenched teeth. My hand wielding the spoon moved furiously around the bowl, slopping batter mix over the table. I hadn’t lied; I was an atrociously messy cook.
‘And when you first got here today, you looked happy.’
‘Add the rest of the milk,’ I said, waiting for him to reach the conclusion he was inexorably heading towards. There goes any last chance of salvaging my pride.
‘But when I saw you in the hall just now, you looked…’ His voice trailed away as comprehension dawned like a sunrise in his eyes.
Hurt. Humiliated. Embarrassed. Take your pick, I thought.
‘The person I was talking to—’
‘Is absolutely no concern of mine,’ I completed his sentence.
He ignored my interruption. ‘Is my daughter.’
More batter slopped alarmingly out of the bowl. Very gently he reached across and took it from my hands. A wise decision.
‘Your daughter?’ My voice was an incredulous croak. ‘Your daughter? You have a daughter?’ I queried, as though I might possibly have misunderstood what he was telling me.
He nodded slowly. ‘I have.’
‘But… how… why… You’ve never said anything about her.’ My words sounded more like an accusation than anything else.
‘No, I haven’t. Very few people know of her existence, and that’s just the way we’d like it to stay. In fact, until just three years ago, I didn’t know she existed myself.’
All anger drained from me then, as though a plug had been pulled. ‘What do you mean? How’s that possible? How old is she?’
‘She’s ten years old, and her name is Carly.’
Ten. She had to be Sheridan’s daughter, she just had to be. Jack astutely read the question in my eyes without the need for words.
‘Sheridan was newly pregnant with her when she slept with my best friend. Maybe she knew about it, maybe she didn’t. I’ve never been entirely clear on that one. But she wanted me out of her life so completely, with no ties and connections to hold us, that she never told me about her.’
The spoon fell from my fingers and clattered noisily on to the table top, adding further to the mess I had made. ‘Jack, that’s horrible. How could she do that?’
He shrugged, but I could still see how it had hurt him.
‘But you’re her father. How could anyone hope to keep something like that a secret? Didn’t you guess when the baby was born?’
‘I didn’t even know there was a baby,’ Jack said bitterly. ‘We had the world’s fastest divorce and then she simply disappeared for the next nine months.’
‘But then what happened? When she came back with a baby, you must have guessed then?’
His next words shocked me, and explained an awful lot about Jack’s mistrust and aversion to marriage and commitment. ‘She never came back with the baby.’
‘What?’
‘She left her with her sister to raise. Her sister lives on a farm and has two kids of her own, one is almost the same age as Carly. They’re more like twin sisters than cousins.’
I shook my head at how unbelievably cruel Sheridan had been, not just to Jack but to her own daughter. But when I voiced those words, Jack disagreed.
‘Believe me, she did the kid a favour. Her sister is totally different from Sheridan. She’s warm and loving and caring. She’s a great mom. Carly adores her, and her cousins are like her siblings.’
‘But still…’ I said, grappling to get my head around the enormity of it all. ‘So how did you find out about her?’
‘From Sheridan,’ he said, and there was a twist to his lips as he said her name. ‘She was between husbands, short of cash and her sister’s farm was in danger of being repossessed by the bank. She needed me – or rather my money – to bail them out. So she had no option but to tell me about the child.’
‘Oh my God, Jack,’ I said, reaching for one of the kitchen chairs and sitting down, totally shaken.
‘What am I supposed to do with this, by the way?’ he asked, still holding on to the bowl of batter.
‘Pour it over the sausages in the pan,’ I answered distractedly.
While he did as I had instructed, I tried to get my head around the complexity of Jack’s life. This was the responsibility he had spoken of back home. This was the commitment he had to someone. And it was one hell of a big one.
With the pan returned to the Aga, Jack turned back to me.
‘So what happened when you found out about Carly? Did you apply for custody?’
Jack shook his head sadly. ‘How could I? She was seven years old and her aunt and uncle were the only parents she had ever known. She’d been with them her entire life. How could I pull her away from them, or her cousins? How could I tear her whole world apart like that?’
I felt a lump like a burning hot coal lodge in my throat. I knew I’d been right in instinctively hating his ex-wife. I just hadn’t known there were so many valid reasons for doing so.
‘Susan and Mike – Sheridan’s sister and brother-in-law – have been really great. They’ve let me come into Carly’s life and over the last three years we’ve built up a really good relationship.’
I sighed and gave a shaky smile, thankful there was a happy ending to this story. ‘So she knows she’s yours?’
He nodded and there was a look on his face that I didn’t initially recognise. Then I realised what it was, paternal pride. ‘She’s a great kid. She and her cousins come out to the ranch and stay for a few days each month. They love the place. It’s never going to be an ideal situation, but we make it work.’
I reached across the sticky table for Jack’s hand. ‘She’s lucky to have you as her dad,’ I said solemnly. He looked slightly embarrassed, but still pleased at my words.
‘Let’s go for a walk,’ he suggested suddenly. ‘The beach is lovely at this time of day and I think we could both use the fresh air.’ He nodded in the direction of the stove. ‘Can we leave this?’ I nodded. ‘Then let’s go,’ he said, getting to his feet and pulling me from my chair.
We walked right to the end of the cove, and he kept hold of my hand the entire way. I kept looking up at him as we walked, seeing him through new and wiser eyes. I felt touched that he trusted me enough to share his secret with me.
‘So perhaps now you can see why I’ve steered clear of relationships, unless they were casual or undemanding, since my divorce?’ he asked.
I looked up at him, trying to commit everything about him to memory. It was a film I would want to replay a great many times in the months to come, when it was all I had left of him and our unique time together. So I took care to drink everything in, from the way the wind gently lifted the thick black strands of hair from his forehead, to the way his eyes crinkled at the edges when he smiled. I felt something slowly begin to tear inside me; he was going to be almost impossible to forget.
‘I’ve learned to be more careful now in my choices. It’s much easier when everyone wants exactly the same thing. That way no one gets emotionally attached… and no one gets hurt.’
It sounded like a cold and empty existence to me and I think he must have seen that in my eyes. ‘But that’s not your way, is it, Emma, not at all?’ I was startled to have the conversation directed at me and was wondering how to respond as he continued, ‘Even after everything that’s happened with you and Richard, you still believe in finding that happy-ever-after ending, don’t you?’
He wasn’t mocking me, or even trying to be deliberately cruel; he couldn’t know how hard it was to hear that he and I were at polar opposite ends of the earth when it came to relationships.
‘Well,’ I said slowly, ‘my faith in its existence has been tested lately, that’s true enough.’ I swallowed past the small and unexpected lump in my throat. ‘But I’d like to believe that someday… there’d be someone’ – you, a voice in my head screamed out – ‘who could make me a believer again.’
He nodded his head, as though he’d received a doctor’s prognosis, which wasn’t great news, but not entirely unexpected. ‘The ring, the chapel, the wedding… you still want all that?’ It wasn’t so much a question, more of a statement.
I was going to deny it, but why bother? We both knew it was the truth. ‘I guess I’m just an old-fashioned girl, at heart.’
He gave a gentle smile and steered me to the flight of steps leading back to his cottage. I was pretty sure there’d been a test hidden in our conversation, and I was equally sure I’d just failed it.
He climbed the stone steps ahead of me. ‘Watch out on these,’ he warned, ‘they can get a little slippery. Just stay close to me.’
‘I’m right behind you,’ I said, wondering why the words sounded so familiar and significant and then I remembered the first time he had said them to me; it was on the night of the accident, when he’d been pushing me away from the exploding car. I opened my mouth to remind him, and then suddenly my foot slipped on the worn and crumbling step and I began to fall. I scrabbled for a handhold on the surface of the wall but there was nothing to grip on to. Jack spun around, his face horrified. His hand reached out to grab me, but it was too late. This time he couldn’t save me, and I flew backwards off the steps, landing with a breath-stealing thump on not just the sand, but on something sharp and hard that was hidden beneath its soft surface.
‘Emma!’ Jack cried out, jumping from the steps and rushing to my side. ‘Are you okay?’
I gave a sound which was supposed to be a laugh but which sounded perilously like I was about to cry. I’m not a baby, but it really hurt.
‘Are you hurt?’
‘Just my pride,’ I lied. There was no way I was going to say anything about the rock or whatever it was that my bum had connected with so painfully. He held out his hand and pulled me to my feet. I tried to turn my wince of pain into a rueful grin. I don’t think he was fooled.
‘Goodness, are you all right?’ An elderly couple who had been taking an early evening walk on the beach had rushed over to lend their assistance. It really was beyond embarrassing.
‘I’m fine,’ I lied once again, somehow managing a more genuine-looking smile for the anxious newcomers.
‘Do you need us to call for help?’ asked the woman, already pulling a mobile phone from her pocket.
‘No, no, no. I’m just a bit winded, that’s all. Please don’t worry about me,’ I reassured her.
‘We’ll be fine, thank you,’ Jack reiterated, and the couple seemed to accept our word and headed back down the beach. Jack waited until they could no longer hear us before turning to me. ‘What have you done, and how bad is it?’
‘I’m fine. I was more shocked than anything.’
‘Emma Marshall, don’t lie to me. I’m the guy who pulled you out of a car wreck; I know when you’re hurt or not.’
There was no point in lying. He was going to find out in a minute when he saw me limp up the steps. ‘I think there was a rock or something where I landed on the sand.’
Jack looked at the damp sand which, embarrassingly, still held a perfect impression of my behind. He kicked the area with the toe of his boot and revealed a large sharp jagged stone buried a few centimetres beneath the surface.
‘Shit,’ he muttered. He turned to look at the rear of my jeans. ‘How bad is it, are you bleeding?’
‘No, of course not. I’ve got enough natural padding back there to cushion the blow.’
He didn’t smile as I had hoped.
‘Bruised?’
I shrugged. ‘Probably.’
‘Show me.’
‘No,’ I said, horrified. He raised his eyebrows as though he was daring me to challenge him. ‘This is just a kinky attempt of yours to see my arse, isn’t it?’ That did make him smile. ‘Look, let’s get back to the house and let me have a look at it, before we start deciding who else should be allowed a peek.’
My progress up the steps was slow, but I adamantly refused his offer to carry me. I think he only let me get away with that for fear that holding me in his arms might actually hurt me even more. Of all the areas to have injured in my fall off the steps, why couldn’t I have twisted an ankle or sprained a wrist like any sensible person, why did it have to have been my bum? Eventually we reached the warmth of his kitchen and he shut the door firmly behind him.
‘Okay, Emma,’ he said, having watched me limp painfully across the tiled floor. ‘That’s enough. Are you going to show me your fanny now or not?’
Despite the throbbing pain from my rear end, I burst out laughing. ‘No, Jack, I’m not. And I really have to warn you that that word has a totally different meaning over here, and asking a question like that is likely to get you either slapped or arrested, possibly both.’
He looked a little taken aback, but quickly recovered. ‘If you’re not going to show me—’
‘Which I’m not,’ I completed.
‘Then at least go and have a hot shower. It’ll help to take the sting away and bring out the bruise. There’s a full-length mirror in there, so you’ll be able to assess the damage.’
‘You seem obsessed with getting me undressed,’ I said flippantly, and then ruined my sassy answer by blushing as I said it. ‘But if it makes you happy I’ll have a shower and check out what I’ve done, just as long as we’re clear that I’m the only one who gets a look. Okay?’
‘Okay,’ he reluctantly agreed. ‘I’ll make us some tea while you shower. You’ll find clean towels in the cupboard at the top of the stairs.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, and hobbled out of the kitchen.
On a scale of one to ten, my bruise scored about an eleven. I winced as I eased down my jeans and lacy briefs and surveyed the damage, looking over my shoulder into the mirror at the bluish-purple discolouration. It was roughly the size of a saucer and covered most of one buttock and inched on to my lower back. And despite what Jack had said, I didn’t think I needed that shower to bring it out, it was doing that quite well all by itself. Nevertheless, I dropped my shirt and bra on to the rest of my clothes on the floor and turned on the dial inside the cubicle. I winced as the hot jets ran over the damaged skin, but after the initial sting, it began to feel a little more comfortable. There was a rack inside the double-size shower, and I couldn’t resist taking a small handful of the shower gel, which smelled so reminiscently of Jack, and smoothing it over my naked body. I closed my eyes and let the water fall on to my head, losing myself in an x-rated daydream where I wasn’t alone in the steamy closet, and that he was behind me, his strong fingers running along my slippery limbs, his mouth claiming mine beneath the cascading water.
The noise of the bathroom door opening made me jump so much that the bottle of gel slipped from my fingers and clattered noisily on to the cast-iron tray.
‘Are you okay?’ Jack called through the door’s opening.
‘Don’t come in,’ I cried out in panic, instinctively trying to cover myself. ‘I’m naked.’
I heard his small chuckle. ‘I always find that best for showering.’
I dropped the hands that were ineffectively trying to shield my breasts from view. ‘Very funny.’
‘How are your injured bits?’
‘Colourful,’ I replied, ‘but the shower is definitely helping.’ It was completely unsettling to be having this conversation with him while totally nude, and only a metre or so away.
‘I’ve brought something to help.’
My hands instinctively flew back up to cover me, but the small gap through which he was talking didn’t widen. Just his hand came into view, as he placed first a tall bottle of lotion of some kind and then a steaming cup of tea on to the tiled floor.
‘If you need help with the cream…’
‘I have a lousy sense of direction, but I think I can find my own backside,’ I joked.
‘Okay then, see you downstairs.’ I heard his footsteps disappearing down the wooden floored hallway. He hadn’t even attempted to come in. It was respectful, courteous and completely honourable of him. It was also somewhat disappointing.
The tea was reviving and welcome, and despite a rather pungent initial aroma, the lotion Jack had left was noticeably soothing as I rubbed it over the injured skin. I borrowed a comb to smooth the tangles out of my hair, and as I cleared a circle in the steamy mirror, I saw that only my waterproof mascara remained from the make-up I had so carefully applied before leaving home. I gave a small shrug and bent to retrieve my clothing. If the prospect of my undressed body hadn’t been sufficient to entice him, then what hope had there been for a little eyeshadow and lip gloss?
He was waiting patiently for me at the bottom of the stairs, and as I descended the treads I saw he was carefully studying my gait for a limp. Thankfully I was much more mobile after my shower.
‘You seem to be moving easier.’
I nodded. ‘I’m fine. It really is just a bruise, albeit a horrendously big one.’
He looked worried at my words. ‘I’m so sorry. I should have gone behind you on those steps.’
‘Then I’d have taken us both down,’ I reasoned. I sniffed the air, smelling something burned and charred.
‘We killed the toad,’ Jack declared solemnly.
I laughed at his words, and noticed for the first time how dark the hall had become. At some point while I’d been in the bathroom, the grey clouds which had been gathering all afternoon had turned into a thick grey blanket covering the sky. It was raining hard.
‘It’s not your fault I fell. It’s mine. I should have listened to your warning.’
‘I don’t think you’re very good at following orders,’ he said ruefully. ‘Now I’m going to be haunted for months by nightmares of what dreadful injury you were concealing from me.’
‘Oh, for goodness sake—’ I exclaimed, suddenly turning my back on him. ‘You’re not going to rest until you see it, are you? Go on then, look, if that’s what it takes to satisfy you that I’m not mortally wounded.’ I pulled my shirt free of my jeans and undid the top fastening on my waistband. ‘But I have to warn you… it’s not pretty.’
The hall was silent except for the falling rain battering against the windows and the soft purr of my zip. I didn’t need to do more than lower the waistband of the jeans a few centimetres for the bruise to be visible.
I heard his sharp indrawn hiss of breath as the dark discoloured skin came into view. I was showing far less than I did when wearing a bikini on the beach, but there was something very intimate in holding up the back of my shirt and pulling down the jeans to allow him to study my exposed body.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he repeated, his voice much huskier than before. I felt a small tug on the waistband as his hand took hold of the fabric and inched it lower, until the denim no longer covered me. I felt his fingers move slowly from the garment and brush against the undamaged skin of my lower back, and then dip lower and run against the top seam of my lacy briefs.
I sucked in a mouthful of air as though I was drowning, and heard the roughened raggedness of his own breathing. He paused, and I knew he was waiting for me to stop him. I did nothing. His fingertips ran just beneath the light elastic at the top of my underwear, following a path around my hip bone, lingering to stroke the sharp contour and then moving around on to the softer skin of my lower abdomen. I looked down at the strong fingers slowly circling and caressing my flesh. I leaned my entire weight back against him and heard him groan softly. Very slowly he turned me around. His eyes were heavy as his mouth lowered to my lips and his tongue searched for, and found, mine in a rush of desire that swept me along like a tidal wave. The kiss was so overwhelming and intense that I was numb to the pain of the pressure of the banister rail behind me, and then the wall as we stumbled back against it. His body pressed powerfully against me as his kiss took me with him through a blazing inferno which scorched and branded me as his.
I was flying, falling, lost, my only anchor to this world were the lips devouring mine and the strong shoulders on to which my hands were fastened, gripping and holding him against me. His lips released me and moved to the column of my throat, searing the skin I willingly offered with a blazing trail of kisses. I murmured his name, my hands journeying from his shoulders into his thick dark hair, finally knowing the feel of it between my fingers. He raised a hand and pushed the shirt from my neck, allowing him access to the sensitive skin of my shoulder. The thin strap of my bra was eased aside as he gently bit the delicate flesh and my knees literally felt incapable of holding me up a moment longer. I didn’t think that they’d have to. But I was wrong.
The fall in temperature happened so quickly, I didn’t even see it coming, and at first I didn’t register the climate change. The fire storm became an ice blizzard, as Jack slowly froze and then determinedly levered himself away from me, bracing his arms against the wall on either side of me. The dying embers of passion were still blazing in his eyes, but when I leaned forward, lips parted, inviting him to claim them again, he moved further away. The swirling clouds of desire began to clear and I looked up at him in confusion.
‘Jack?’ I asked hesitantly.
In reply he just shook his head. ‘I can’t do this.’
No bucket of ice-cold water could have been as effective as those words were at putting out the fire. But I still didn’t know why he’d said them. My eyes spoke the question my throat was suddenly too constricted to ask.
‘Don’t…’ Jack said hoarsely. ‘We can’t…’ For a writer he was being far from articulate. ‘This is all wrong.’ I got the meaning of that one all right.
‘Why? Why is it wrong?’ I had found my voice, even if it was a shaky parody of itself.
He ran his hand distractedly through his hair, following the same pathway my own fingers had taken only moments earlier. ‘You know why.’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t.’
He sighed and pushed away from the wall, staring out the window at the falling rain; that’s when I knew I had lost him, when he wouldn’t even look at me as he spoke.
‘I can’t do this with you.’
‘Can’t, or don’t want to?’
In answer he swivelled back to face me, grabbing my hand and laying it against his chest, letting me feel the thundering pounding of his heart beneath my palm. ‘Does that feel as though I don’t want to?’
I shook my head again, aware that my eyes were beginning to fill with tears, and not ashamed to let him see them.
‘Then why? Is it Sheridan? Is she the reason?’
He looked genuinely shocked and also slightly horrified at my suggestion.
‘What? No, of course not. Why would you even think that?’
This wasn’t the time or the place for that one. ‘Jack, why then? Why are you pushing me away? Surely you know by now that I want this?’ I threw my last piece of pride down at his feet.
‘That’s why I have to stop it.’
I was broken and confused and he was making no sense.
‘I want you, Emma,’ he admitted, his voice raw, ‘more than I’ve ever wanted anyone else in my entire life.’ His declaration should have filled me with joy, if only it hadn’t been delivered in such a dire and terrible way. ‘But what I said the other night on the bridge hasn’t changed… and nor have I.’
‘Don’t I have any say in this? What about what I want?’
‘I know what you want,’ he replied, and despite everything I still felt my cheeks ignite at the implications. He looked back at the rain.
‘You want someone who will be there for you. Someone who can commit. Someone who isn’t about to disappear to the other side of the world. Someone who isn’t me.’ His voice deepened as he went on, ‘You have to know that stopping this now is the last thing I want to do. I can’t even look at you without wanting to sweep you into my arms and carry you up those stairs to my bed. But I can’t be that much of a bastard. I’m stopping for you, not me.’
‘You don’t know what the hell I want…’ I said bitterly, hands shaking as I zipped up my clothing, ‘… or what I need.’
‘Whatever it is, it’s not me.’
There was nothing left to say. I had laid my feelings out as plainly as I knew. And he’d turned me down. ‘I have to go,’ I said, hoping, even at this final moment, he might protest or try to stop me.
He turned away from the window and nodded. This couldn’t be it, could it? After everything that had happened between us, was this how it was really going to end?
I pushed past him and flung open the door. The rain was pounding the ground with a ferocity that stung my skin as I ran down the drive to my car. Stop me, call me back, I silently pleaded as I ran past his own car. Do something, do anything, don’t let me go. But he never intervened, never moved at all from his position in the open doorway. I flung open my car door, grateful I’d left my bag and keys inside it earlier. I paused for just one last long look at him. Our eyes locked. He didn’t disguise the pain and regret in his, but he also didn’t move.
I got into the driver’s seat, slammed the door and reversed out on to the road faster and more recklessly than I should have done. My falling tears and the pouring rain, which the wipers were struggling to control, were a double hazard. I was lucky not to meet any other vehicles as I drove erratically away from him. I wasn’t concentrating enough to be behind the wheel, and two miles outside Trentwell I snapped on the indicator and pulled over to the side of the road. I stared sightlessly through the curtain of rain falling on the windscreen, seeing nothing except his face, his eyes. I couldn’t leave it this way. I’d never even told him how I really felt about him. Would that have changed things? Would it have made a difference? Was I really going to be able to live the rest of my life without knowing the answer?
I furiously wiped the tears from my eyes with the back of my hand and turned the ignition key. The engine roared into life. Performing an illegal U-turn in the empty road, I headed back to his house. I didn’t have a plan in mind, there were no clever or wise words that might make him change his mind. I was working on nothing here except a primitive instinct that was pulling me back towards him, as surely as though an invisible cord was stretched between us, compelling me to return.
The light was fading fast as night and the rain washed the last rays of daylight away. I drove mindlessly through the downpour, never stopping to consider how I would feel if, or when, he turned me away once again. By the time his driveway came into sight my heart was pounding as though I had run the last few miles, instead of driven them. This was it. My final chance.
It was a miracle that we didn’t crash into each other. It was his reactions that must have prevented an accident, not mine. All I knew was that as I turned on to his property I was suddenly dazzled by the bright intensity of two headlights bearing down on me as he sped down his drive. I slammed on the brakes as he swerved abruptly to one side, coming to a halt half on the lawn beside the driveway. The pouring rain kept obscuring my vision, which meant I saw Jack throw open his door and begin to walk towards me in a series of disjointed snapshots, as the wipers swept across my screen. His eyes were locked on to mine as he strode through the sheeting rain, his shirt plastered to his arms and body like a second skin. My hand fumbled for the door handle and I virtually tumbled out of the car as I made my way to him, pulled by a force more powerful than gravity. Tears were probably still running down my face, but they were lost among the raindrops. I covered the last metres between us at a run and he caught me, his arms capturing me and lifting me up against him. My legs left the ground and curled around him as he walked blindly back to the house. His lips never left mine as he carried me, eliminating the need for words and speaking their own language, which my own fluently answered. Nothing else existed for me in those moments; I couldn’t feel the rain or the cold, my world had become just this man, his arms holding me against him, his tongue matching mine and the hardness of his body pressing intimately against me.
He stopped just once as we reached the front door, which in his haste he hadn’t bothered to close properly. I liked the urgency that implied. He took his mouth from mine just long enough to look into my eyes as he gave me one last, totally unnecessary, chance to change my mind. ‘Are you sure? Because once we go in, I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop. There won’t be any going back, Emma.’
He got his answer as my mouth returned to his, my hands tightening on the back of his neck as he kicked open the door. My fingers were already undoing the buttons on his shirt as we climbed the stairs, pulling the wet fabric from his muscled shoulders as he carried me into his room. He lowered me gently on to the mattress as I reached hungrily for his belt. He was naked before I was. He took more time tugging my own wet clothing from me, savouring each moment before I impatiently pulled him towards me.
It was unlike anything I had ever known or experienced before. I cried out when he entered me, unaware that tears were falling as he took me somewhere I hadn’t even known existed. He called out my name as his body shuddered in orgasm, filling me and completing me. I came right behind him.