THE MOMENT HER lips touched his Jack had to fight the torrent of need that roared through him. It took all his strength to let her take the lead and not crush her to him. He didn’t want to overwhelm her with his intensity. He didn’t want to frighten her with his hunger. He wanted her to remain right here, where she belonged—in his arms.
His hunger was all about him and he wanted this kiss to be all about her—he wanted to give her everything she needed, everything she craved. He wanted their kiss to tempt, to tease and to tantalise her on every level.
He didn’t want the kiss ever to stop. He wanted it to whet her appetite—for him, for them. He wanted it to challenge her belief that they couldn’t be fixed.
She pressed in closer and a groan broke from him. ‘You’re killing me.’
She laughed, her breath feathering across his lips. ‘And here I was thinking I was kissing you.’
He grazed his teeth across the sensitive skin of her neck, just below her ear, and she melted against him. ‘Jack...’ His name left her on a whisper, filling him with vigour and a lethal patience.
He kissed a slow path down her throat, revelling in the taste of her and the satin glide of her skin. He moulded her to him—one hand in the small of her back, the other between her shoulderblades. Slipping his lower hand beneath the soft material of her shirt, he lightly raked his fingernails across her bare skin as he kissed his way up the other side of her throat.
She gasped and shivered and pressed herself all the more firmly against him. He wanted to give her so much pleasure it would blot everything else from her mind—the pain he’d caused her, the mistakes they’d made five years ago.
He wanted her filled—body and soul—with the promise of their future. A future he had utter faith in.
He moved his lips back to hers, pressing light kisses at the corners of her mouth, wanting to drive her wild with wanting. Her hands slid up through his hair to hold him still, and his heart pounded until he thought it might burst. She slanted her mouth over his—all open-mouthed heat and wild need—and Jack couldn’t contain himself any longer. It was like coming home. It was like being welcomed home.
Fireworks of celebration exploded behind the backs of his eyes. He crushed her to him, wanting the line between where she started and he ended to blur until they became one.
* * *
Caro wrapped her arms around Jack’s neck and held on for dear life as the maelstrom of desire they’d always ignited in each other rocked through her, lifting her off her feet and hurtling her along with a speed that would have stolen her breath if Jack hadn’t already done so. It should frighten her, except she knew Jack would keep her safe. He would never let any harm come to her.
To feel him, to taste him again, alternately soothed and electrified her. It was so familiar, and yet so dark and dangerous. An utter contradiction. Kissing Jack was like every risk she’d ever taken rolled into one—and it was like every warm blanket she’d ever pulled about herself. Kissing Jack was like being flung out of her mind and body at the same time. It was heady and wild.
And it was frightening too—what if she never found herself again? She didn’t want to lose herself. Not completely. Not for all time. If she made love with Jack now where would she ever find the strength to be true to herself? How would she be able to resist all that he would ask of her? She would try to become everything he wanted—needed—and in the process she’d become something neither one of them would recognise.
And then she would have nothing.
Half sobbing, she reefed herself out of his arms. Backing up a couple of steps, she leaned against the car to try and catch her breath. Jack closed his eyes and bent at the waist to draw in great lungfuls of air. She forced her gaze away from him, tried to stamp down on the regrets rising through her, tried to ignore her body’s insistent demand for release.
An hour of heaven was not worth another five years of hell.
She started when two arms slammed either side of her on the car, trapping her within their circle. ‘You are the most divine woman I have ever met.’
And he was the most divine man she’d ever met—but she wasn’t going to say that out loud. She hitched up her chin. ‘That could be a sign that you need to get out more.’
He stared down at her, and she didn’t know what he saw in her face, but it left her feeling naked.
One corner of his mouth hooked up. ‘You never were a pushover.’
Could’ve fooled her.
‘We need to talk, Caro.’
‘About the fact we’re still attracted to each other?’ What was the point of that?
‘We could start there.’
She shook her head. ‘I can’t see there’s much we can do about it.’
‘Really?’ he drawled, cocking a suggestive eyebrow.
She found it hard to stamp down on the laugh that rose through her. In the back of her mind the salsa teacher’s voice sounded: You will flirt!
‘Not going to happen, Jack.’
He raised that eyebrow higher.
She shook her head, but it was harder than it should have been. ‘An hour of pleasure is not worth a lifetime of regrets.’
He leaned in closer. ‘I can make it last longer than an hour.’
God forgive her, but her breath hitched at the promise lacing his words.
‘Do you really think we’d have been able to stop if we’d been at your flat or in my hotel room rather than in a car park?’
She didn’t know the answer to that, and she had no intention of finding out. ‘I never thought I’d say this, but I’m glad this happened in a public place.’
He reached out and brushed his thumb across her over-sensitised lips. It was all she could do not to moan and touch her tongue to him.
‘You still want me.’
‘With every atom of my body,’ she agreed.
His eyes darkened and his breathing grew shallow at her admission.
‘But I am not a mindless body controlled by impulse. I possess a brain, and that brain is telling me not to just walk away from this, Jack, but to run.’
‘You’re frightened.’
‘You should be too! You didn’t emerge unscathed the last time we did this.’
He made as if to cradle her cheek, but she snapped upright.
‘You’re crowding me.’
He immediately dropped his arms and moved back. She paced the length of the car before coming back to stand in front of him.
‘We have no future together, and I cannot do some kind of final fling with you. I’ve worked too hard to get over you to risk undoing all my hard work now.’
He stared at her for a long moment. ‘I beg to differ with you on one point, Caro.’
She folded her arms and tapped a foot. ‘Really?’
‘I believe we could have a future together.’
Her arms slackened. Her jaw dropped. ‘You can’t be serious.’
His eyes grew keen and bright. ‘I’ve never been more serious about anything in my life.’
Fear, raw and primal, scrabbled through her, drawing her chest tight.
‘What makes you—’ he leant down so they were eye to eye ‘—so certain we don’t have a future?’
‘Our past!’ she snapped. He was being ridiculous! Nostalgia was making him sentimental.
‘We can learn from the mistakes of our past.’
‘Or we could simply repeat them.’
He shook his head. ‘I’m smarter now. I know what it is I really want—and that’s you.’
No! She wouldn’t believe him. She couldn’t. ‘What about children.’
‘I don’t care if we have children or not.’
How long would that last? ‘I don’t believe you.’ This time she moved in close, invading his personal space. ‘I think you want children as much as you ever did.’
His eyes flashed. ‘I want you more.’
She stepped back. She wouldn’t be able to live with him making that kind of sacrifice.
‘Does nothing of what I say make any impact on you?’ he demanded, his voice ragged.
She swung away and closed her eyes against the pain cramping her chest. ‘Jack, for the last five years you’ve held me solely responsible for the breakdown of our marriage. In the last eight days you’ve been confronted with your own culpability. I understand your sense of guilt, I understand your desire to make amends and to try and put things right, but...’ She turned, gripping the tops of her arms tightly. ‘We cannot be put to rights. There’s no longer any “we” that can be salvaged.’
Her words seemed to beat at him like blows and each of them left her feeling bruised and shaken.
He seized her by the shoulders, his face pale though his eyes blazed. ‘I love you, Caro. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?’
Yearning yawned through her. To have...
No!
She hardened her heart and shook her head. ‘I don’t wish to be cruel, Jack, but no, I’m afraid it doesn’t.’
Turning grey, he let her go, his shoulders slumping as if she’d just run him through with a sword. She had to bite her lip to stifle the cry that rose up through her.
Why had he ever come back to London?
Why hadn’t he simply sent the divorce papers through the post?
She’d rather he’d continued to blame her—hate her—than put him through this kind of emotional torment.
She had to leave before she did something stupid, like hurl herself into his arms and say sorry, tell him she loved him too. Love wasn’t enough. It never had been. It was better they face that now than another twelve months down the track.
She pulled herself up to her full height. ‘I’ll see myself home.’
He stiffened. ‘Get in the car, Caro. I will take you home.’
Her hands clenched. ‘I am not a child who can be ordered about or cajoled. I have a free will, which I’m choosing to assert now. I would much prefer to see myself home.’ She tried to pull in a steadying breath. ‘But thank you for the offer.’
He stared at her, shoved his hands in his pockets. ‘Right.’
She moistened her lips. ‘I think it’d be for the best if we didn’t see each other again.’
His head jerked up. ‘The snuffbox—’
‘Is lost forever, I expect.’
‘I haven’t given up hope.’
She had.
‘At nine o’clock on Friday morning—’ the day after tomorrow ‘—I’ll be informing my boss that I’ve lost the snuffbox and I will tender my resignation.’
The pulse in his jaw jumped, but he didn’t say a word.
‘I’d like you to send me a bill for your time and expenses, though I suspect you won’t.’
‘You suspect right.’
‘I’ll sign the divorce papers and have them sent to your lawyer.’
She couldn’t say any more. Her throat ached too much from saying the word divorce—it lodged there like a block of solid wood, its hard edges pressing into her with such ferocity it made her vision blur.
She spun away and made for the exit. ‘Goodbye, Jack.’
The letters on the car park exit sign blurred, but she kept her focus trained on their neon glow rather than the throb at her temples or the pain pressing down on her chest. It took all her strength to remain upright and to place one foot in front of the other.
This was for the best. She could never trust Jack again. She could never be certain that the next time she failed to measure up to his expectations he wouldn’t just walk away again. And she wouldn’t be able to bear that.
She hadn’t made him happy five years ago. Oh, they’d had great sex—there was no denying that—but a solid marriage needed stronger glue than great sex. She and Jack...they didn’t have that glue.
The sunshine made her blink when she finally arrived outside. She scowled at it. How dared the day be so...summery?
She caught the tube home. Please, please, please, don’t be one of those people who cry on the train. She couldn’t bear the mortification of that.
She might not be able to turn the pain off, but she could try and corral her thoughts. She recited the alphabet silently until she reached her stop. On wooden legs, she turned in at Jean-Pierre’s bakery.
He spun with a smile that faded when he took in her expression. ‘Ma cherie.’ He shook his head. ‘Not a good day?’
‘Dreadful, dreadful day,’ she agreed tonelessly. ‘The worst.’ She gestured to his counter full of cakes. ‘I’m looking for something that will make me feel better.’
Sugar wasn’t the answer. They both knew that. But she blessed his tact in remaining silent on the subject. He packed her up an assortment. She trudged upstairs to her flat and sat at the table. She stared at the cakes for several long minutes—a chocolate éclair, a strawberry tart, a vanilla slice and a tiny lemon meringue pie.
She couldn’t dredge up the slightest enthusiasm for a single one of them.
The longer she stared at them the more her eyes stung. A lump lodged in her throat. Shaking her head, she lifted the chocolate éclair to her lips and bit into it. She chewed and with a superhuman effort swallowed. She set the éclair back down. Its dark brown icing gleamed the exact same colour as Jack’s hair—
Slamming a halt to those thoughts, she picked up the lemon meringue pie, bit into it, chewed and swallowed. She did the same with the strawberry tart and then the vanilla slice. With each bite the lump in her throat subsided. It lodged in her chest instead, where it became a hard, bitter ache.
She stared at the delicacies, each with a dainty bite taken out of them, and pushed the cake box away to rest her head on her hands.
* * *
Jack started when he realised darkness had begun creeping across the floor of his hotel room. He barely remembered returning here earlier in the afternoon, but the stiffness in his muscles told him he’d been sitting in this chair for hours.
He glanced across to the window. The grey twilight on the other side of the glass complemented the greyness stretching through him.
He closed his eyes. Every fibre of his being ached to go and find Caro and change her mind—to fight harder for her—but...
He rested his head in his hands. The look on her face when he’d told her he loved her... He’d wanted to see joy, hope, delight. He’d wanted her to throw her arms around his neck and tell him she loved him too.
Instead...
He dropped his head back to the headrest of his chair. Instead she’d stared at him with a kind of stricken horror that had made his heart shrivel.
He understood now how out of character it had been for Caro to fall in love with him so quickly six and a half years ago. How out of character it had been for her to marry him after knowing him for only four months. By nature Caro was a careful person, but she’d loved him back then. She’d trusted him completely, and when he’d left he’d not only broken her heart, he’d broken faith with her, he’d made her doubt her own judgment.
He should have fought for her five years ago!
He’d misinterpreted her reserve as meaning she didn’t love him. Instead of challenging her, though, he’d run away. Like a coward.
He’d blown it. He’d get no second chance with her. She’d never let him close again, regardless of the promises he made her.
What promises have you made? What exactly have you offered her?
He frowned at the gathering darkness. With a curse, he leapt to his feet and switched on the lamp before reaching for his laptop. There were no promises he could make that Caro would believe, but he had promised to do all he could to retrieve that damn snuffbox. That was one thing he could do for her.
Settling earphones over his head, he tuned in to the listening devices he’d placed in the house in Mayfair earlier in the week. Give me something!
Two hours later he pulled the earphones from his head and flung them to the desk.
Eureka!
He backed up the files in three different locations, emailed them to each of his email accounts, burnt them to a CD and loaded them on to a thumb drive as a final precaution. Next he researched the government’s National Archive. Forty minutes later he tossed both the CD and the thumb drive into his satchel. Throwing the bag over his shoulder, he set off on foot for Mayfair.
* * *
‘Mr Jack,’ Paul boomed when he opened the door. ‘It’s very good to see you.’
That wasn’t what the treacherous snake in the grass would be saying in ten minutes’ time.
‘Jack?’ Barbara appeared in the doorway of the drawing room. ‘Is Caro with you?’
‘No.’
He might have misjudged Barbara—just as Caro had said—but she was still as treacherous as Paul in her own way. Though at least now he understood her.
Barbara moved more fully into the foyer, a frown marring the china doll perfection of her face. ‘Is everything all right, darling? Is Caro all right?’
‘Caro is fine, as far as I know.’ And he meant to keep it that way. ‘But everything is far from all right. I need the two of you to listen to something. Do you have a CD player?’
Barbara swept an arm towards the drawing room and directed him across to the far wall, where a stereo system perched on an antique credenza.
‘Don’t go, Paul,’ Jack added, not turning around but sensing the older man’s intention to withdraw. ‘I want you to hear this too.’
He put the disc into the player, surreptitiously retrieving one of his listening devices as he did so. He’d retrieve them all before he left this evening. He pressed the play button.
‘You might want to sit,’ he said, gesturing to the sofas.
Barbara and Paul both remained standing.
‘This necklace didn’t come from Roland, Paul, and we both know it.’
As her voice emerged from the speakers, Barbara sank down into the nearest chair with a gasp, her hand fluttering up to her throat.
‘There’s only one person who could possibly be responsible for this, and that’s Caro.’
A short pause followed, and then Paul’s voice emerged from the speakers. ‘Yes.’
Jack could almost see the older man’s nod as he agreed with Barbara.
‘I don’t want to do this any more, Paul. I want Caro to know the truth.’
‘We can’t! We promised her father! And there’s your mother to think of. You could never afford her medical bills on your own.’
Jack reached over and switched the CD player off. ‘I could let it keep running, but we all know what it says.’
Barbara lifted her head and swallowed. ‘I’m glad the truth will come out now.’
And yet only a couple of hours ago she’d submitted to Paul’s bullying.
‘Are you utterly faithless?’ Paul shot at her.
His words were angry, but everything about him had slumped, as if he were caving in on himself.
‘Faithless?’ Jack found himself shouting. ‘What about the faith you should’ve been keeping with Caro? She loves the two of you! She considers you her family. And this is how you treat her?’
Barbara wasn’t a woman easily given to tears, but she looked close to them now. He sensed her regret was genuine. And, considering the bribery Roland had used to sway her, he could almost forgive her. Almost.
He shoved his shoulders back. ‘Shall I share the conclusions I’ve come to?’
Barbara spread her hands in a please continue gesture. Paul said nothing, but his back had bowed and he’d lost his colour.
‘Sit, Paul,’ Jack ordered.
The other man’s head lifted. ‘I’m the butler, Mr Jack. The butler doesn’t—’
‘Can it! You lost all rights to butler etiquette the moment you started this nasty little game.’
Without another word, Paul sat. Jack stared at them both, trying to swallow back the fury coursing through him.
‘Before he died, Caro’s father made the two of you promise to sabotage Caro’s job at Richardson’s in an attempt to have her fired—so you could force her hand and have her finally take over the administration of that damn trust.’
Barbara hesitated, and then nodded. ‘He thought that by making her the sole beneficiary of his will it would soften her attitude towards both him and the trust.’
‘And of course the two of you were to do everything you could to encourage that softening?’
She winced and nodded.
‘I also know that if you succeeded, you were both to be rewarded.’
Barbara’s head came up.
‘I suspect your mother’s hospital bills and her care were to be guaranteed if you succeeded.’ He named the medical facility where Barbara’s mother resided. ‘I know the kind of care she needs, and I know how much that costs.’
She shot to her feet, visibly shaken. ‘How do you know about that?’
‘I’m a private investigator. I’m trained to follow a lead.’
He’d found out Barbara’s mother’s name and had tracked her to a private medical clinic in Northumberland. A phone call had confirmed that she had a severe dissociative personality disorder and needed round-the-clock psychological monitoring. She was receiving the very best of care. The fees, however, were astronomical.
Barbara sat again, brushing her hand across her eyes. ‘I can’t even visit her. It upsets her too much. Making sure she gets the best of care is the one thing I can do.’
He couldn’t imagine how difficult that must be. ‘I’m sorry about your mother, Barbara.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Roland blackmailed you?’
She glanced up and gave a strained shrug. ‘In a way, I suppose. But you see I did love him. Ours wasn’t a wild, romantic relationship, but... I wanted him to be happy. It didn’t really seem too much to ask of Caro, to administer that wretched trust, but...’
‘But?’
She lifted her head. ‘But, regardless of what the rest of us think or want, Caro has a right to make her own decisions in respect to her life.’
His heart thumped. ‘I couldn’t agree more.’ He just wished she’d made the decision to include him in her life. Pushing that thought aside, he turned to Paul. ‘What I don’t understand is why you’d agree to Roland’s games. I thought you cared about Caro?’
‘I do!’
Nobody spoke for several long moments.
‘He just loved Caro’s mother more,’ Barbara finally said, breaking the silence that had descended.
Jack fell into a seat then too. Paul? In love with Caro’s mother?
‘I went too far.’ Paul rested his head in his hands. ‘What are you going to do, Mr Jack?’ he asked.
If Caro didn’t care about these two so much he’d throw them to the wolves. But she did care about them.
It occurred to him then that his idea of family had been utterly unrealistic—a complete fantasy. Family, it appeared, was about accepting others’ foibles and eccentricities. It was about taking into account and appreciating their weaknesses as much as their strengths.
He leaned towards the other two. ‘Okay, listen carefully. This is what we’re going to do...’
* * *
Caro was brushing her teeth on Friday morning when Jack’s knock sounded on her door.
She knew it was Jack. She refused to contemplate too closely how she knew that, though.
She rinsed her mouth and considered not answering.
‘Caro? I have the snuffbox.’
His voice penetrated the thick wood of her door. She stared at it, and then flew across to fling it open. ‘If you’re teasing me, Jack, I’ll—’
He held out the snuffbox, and for a moment all she could do was stare at it.
‘Oh!’
She could barely believe it. Maybe...maybe disaster could be averted after all.
With fingers that trembled she took it from him, hardly daring to believe this was the very same snuffbox she’d lost. She took Jack’s arm and pulled him into the flat, and then ran to get her eyeglass. She examined it in minute detail.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Making sure it’s authentic and not a replica.’
‘Well...?’ he asked when she set the eyeglass to the table.
She wanted to dance on the spot. ‘It’s the very same snuffbox I lost last week.’
She wanted to hug him, but remembered what had happened the last time she’d let her elation overcome her reserve. She pressed a hand to her chest to try and calm the pounding of her heart.
‘You’ve saved the day—just as you promised you would. How? How did you do it?’
He shuffled his feet and darted a glance towards the kitchen. ‘Is that coffee I smell?’
She suddenly realised he was wearing the same clothes she’d last seen him in, and that he needed a shave. She padded into the kitchen and poured them a mug of coffee each. She set his mug to the table.
‘Have a seat.’
With a groan, he unhooked his satchel from his shoulder and dropped it to the floor, before planting himself in a chair and bringing the mug to his lips. ‘Thank you.’
She frowned at him. ‘Have you had any sleep in the last two days?’
He made an impatient movement with his hand. ‘It’s no matter. I can sleep on the plane.’
He was returning to Australia today? An ache started up inside her.
It’s for the best.
Except the misery he was trying to hide beat at her like a living, breathing thing.
She sipped coffee in an attempt to fortify herself. ‘How did you find the snuffbox? Who had it?’
‘It was all a comedy of errors, believe it or not, and frankly you needn’t have hired me in the first place.’
She frowned. ‘What are you talking about?’
He eyed her over the rim of his mug. ‘You have an army of cleaners coming in to the Mayfair house twice a week, yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘It appears that when Barbara made her midnight raid on the safe she dropped the snuffbox on the stairs.’
So why hadn’t she or Paul found it?
‘The next day the maid dusting the staircase found it and placed it in the sideboard in the dining room. She thought it was some kind of fancy spice pot, or something along those lines.’
‘And therefore thought it belonged with the dining ware?’
‘Of course she forgot to mention to anyone what she’d done.’
She gaped at him. ‘So it was never Barbara? Oh, I should burn in brimstone forever for thinking such a shocking thing of her!’
His lips pressed together in a thin tight line.
‘It’s such a simple explanation! But...how did you find all of this out?’
‘I rang the cleaning service you use, spoke to the woman in charge and asked her to check with the staff.’
Amazingly simple—and yet...
‘I’d never have thought of that. I did right in hiring you, Jack.’ She swallowed. ‘You’ve saved the day and I can’t thank you enough.’
‘I’m glad I could help.’
He rose and her heart started to burn.
‘It’s time I was going.’ He barely looked at her. ‘Goodbye, Caro.’
She couldn’t make her legs work to walk him to the door. It closed behind him and she had to blink hard for several moments and concentrate on her breathing.
Last night’s cake box still sat on the table. Seizing it, she strode into the kitchen and tossed it into the bin. Sugar wasn’t the answer. Nothing but time would ease the pain scoring through her now.
She limped back to the table and picked up the snuffbox, clasped it to her chest. ‘Thank you, Jack,’ she whispered to the silent room. ‘Thank you.’
She went to turn away—it was time for her to dress for work—when something black and silver under the table caught her attention. She reached down and picked it up. A CD. Had she dropped it? Or had Jack?
It wasn’t labelled. With a shrug, she slotted it into her CD player. If it belonged to Jack she’d post it to him in Australia. She glanced at the case again, but it gave no clue.
And then two voices sounded from the speakers and her mug froze halfway to her mouth.
‘I don’t want to do this any more, Paul. I want Caro to know the truth.’
‘We can’t! We promised her father!’