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Other later memories intruded and she struggled fiercely to close them out…only it didn’t work. She had lied to him when she had told him that she wasn’t expecting his child. Of course she had lied. He had given her no other choice. And ironically, in the end, that lie hadn’t made any difference. A few months later, she had had a miscarriage. Nature’s way, the doctor had said bracingly. For a long time afterwards she had suspected that, had she enjoyed proper medical attention during those crucial early weeks of pregnancy, the outcome might have been very different. She had grieved deeply for that loss, but she had grieved alone.
Grant had said it was for the best, quite unable to understand how she could possibly have wanted the baby after Jake had married Liz. But she had wanted that baby. She had wanted that baby more than she had ever wanted anything either then or since. Slowly she sank back to the present, raising chilled hands to her tear-wet face. Without realising it, she drifted slowly into sleep.
It was pitch-dark when she awoke, freezing cold and stiff. Stumbling up on woozy legs, she fumbled for the light switch. No light came on. The scullery light was equally unresponsive.
‘You idiot,’ she muttered, realising what the problem was. The electricity was off. Indeed, she hadn’t been thinking clearly when she had impulsively planned her stay here.
Luckily her grandmother had been a very methodical woman. The torch still hung above the fridge. Kitty’s watch told her it was nearly ten. It was too late to drive off in search of a hotel. There was food in the car, probably coal or wood in the fuel shed, and she could bring a mattress downstairs to sleep by the fire. She emptied the car and then parked it in the barn out of sight.
With damp matches, she needed perseverance to light a fire. Once she had a promising glow in the grate, she lit the bottled gas cooker and put a now defrosted dish of lasagne into the oven. That done, she located candles in an upper cupboard and switched on the water below the sink. There she came unexpectedly on an unopened bottle of sherry.
By midnight she was sitting cross-legged on top of her makeshift bed, washing back her lasagne with a glass of sherry. Grant would have cringed in fastidious horror from the sight, she conceded ruefully. Already her anger with him was fading. Grant couldn’t help being self-centred, possessive and manipulative.
Eight years ago she had hurled herself into Grant’s arms in a London hotel suite. A frightened and lost teenager, she had been perilously close to a nervous breakdown. The responsibility must have horrified him, but Grant hadn’t been the star of a dozen box-office hits on the strength of looks alone. He had hidden his feelings well. If Grant had rejected her, she would have thrown herself in the Thames. She had had too many rejections to bear one more.
His greatest pleasure had been the successful stage-management of her career. Grant loved to play God. He had made her over from outside in before sending her to drama school in New York. That first year had been a chaotic whirl of new experiences and some truly terrifying ordeals.
The fire was making her uncomfortably warm. Getting up, she removed a silk nightshirt from her case and undressed, ruefully wondering how long it would take her to get to sleep. Insomnia had been her most pressing problem of late. Ironically, it was also what was responsible for the short story she had written and had published in a magazine the previous year. She had sat up scribbling until exhaustion had taken its toll.
As she poured herself another sherry, she tried to concentrate on the intricate plot of the thriller she was planning. It shouldn’t have been difficult. She had been dreaming about the book for months, impatient to sit down and write without distractions.
A faint noise jerked her head up from her notepad. Her eyes dilated, a stifled gasp of fear fleeing her lips. A large dark shape had filled the scullery doorway.
‘I don’t believe this.’ Jake strode into the flickering shadows of mingled fire and candlelight. He towered over Kitty like a dark avenging angel. ‘I could see the light from the road. I thought someone had broken in.’
Behind her breastbone, her heart was still involved in terrified palpitations. ‘How did you get in? The doors are both bolted!’
‘There probably isn’t a catch on a window in this entire house that’s secure. I climbed in through the scullery window,’ he supplied grimly.
‘You can go out by the front door. I’m feeling even less hospitable than I felt this afternoon,’ she flared. ‘You frightened me out of my wits!’
‘Be glad it was me and not a real intruder. God, you can’t be planning to stay here tonight!’ Taking in the evidence around him, he glowered down at her. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Why don’t you go down the road and ask all your other neighbours what they’re doing in their houses after midnight?’ she returned angrily. ‘You’ve got no right to walk in here.’
He bent his dark, arrogant head to avoid the shade on the central light above. ‘I had no idea that you were here,’ he growled. ‘No idea at all.’
‘Well, now that you’ve established that I’m not a gang of bikers in search of a new clubhouse, you are free to go.’ Pointedly she sipped at her drink.
Long fingers coiled round the bottle. He gave it a cursory inspection, his mouth hardening. He straightened, sending her a savage look. ‘You’ve picked up some bad habits since you left home.’
‘You’ll be relieved to know that one of them isn’t inviting strange men to join me for a drink. Now will you get out of here?’ Her voice rose steeply on the demand.
Jake lowered himself smoothly down into the chair at the foot of the mattress and crossed one booted ankle across his knee, stretching back in a relaxed pose that set her teeth on edge.
Incensed she got up on her knees. ‘Did you hear what I said?’
The firelight glistened on the magenta silk shirt that came no lower than her shapely thighs, the thin fabric moulding the tip-tilted swell of her breasts. As she registered where those dark, intent eyes were resting without apology, her face burned. She sat back again, alarm bells ringing in her head.
‘What are you doing here?’ he asked again.
A sinuous, silk-clad shoulder shifted. ‘Maybe I’m too lazy to shift to a hotel.’
‘I’d have thought that comfort would have persuaded you to choose more suitable accommodation.’ Cool, shrewd eyes studied her unreadably. ‘What are you planning on doing now that you’re out of The Rothmans?’
‘If I’m out, I’m out by choice,’ she snapped, flicked on the raw by his choice of words.
‘As I understand it, Maxwell told you that if he had anything to do with it you wouldn’t work ever again,’ Jake reminded her with a calm that mocked her own loss of temper.
Her chin came up in a defensive thrust. ‘I wanted some time off. I haven’t had many holidays since you last saw me.’
‘This is a peculiar location for a holiday.’
‘Each to their own.’ It was none of his business that she would be leaving again in the morning.
‘Why the beat-up car?’ he enquired idly.
She gave him a superior glance. ‘It’s camouflage. That’s all.’
‘As camouflage it’s a little excessive.’
‘Maybe I’m broke,’ she parried with sarcastic bite. ‘And this is the only place that I’ve got to go. Bring on the violins.’
The aggressive gleam in her eyes challenged him, letting him see just how much she resented his questions. His level gaze narrowed, faint colour aligning his hard cheekbones. As she had meant to, she had embarrassed him with her nonsensical response. For of course it was ridiculous. She had to resist a cringingly uncouth urge to tell him exactly what she was worth.
He rested his dark head back. ‘It isn’t healthy to drown your sorrows alone,’ he drawled softly.
She arched a brow. ‘I do unhealthy things all the time. They’re usually the most fun.’
He loosed his breath audibly. ‘Heaven sounds pretty painful at this time of night, Kitty. Does Maxwell know where you are?’
‘He knew I was heading north.’
‘I assume that you have split up with him.’
She let sherry moisten her throat. ‘You’re free to assume whatever you like. Grant and I have this unbreakable rule. We don’t discuss each other with anybody. That’s one of the reasons why there’s so much rubbish in the papers. What can’t be got through a legitimate interview is invented.’
‘You don’t say. Was the extraordinary revelation of the separate bedrooms made up?’ Jake prompted silkily. ‘Taking out the obvious exaggerations—I mean, I can’t believe that you entertained his women, but I can believe that you bought his ties—well, in short it’s obvious that the affair’s been dead on his side for a very long time. So why were you still in residence?’
She stroked a forefinger over the open-weave blanket she was sitting on. ‘So you read the papers. I suppose it was too much to hope that you wouldn’t try to satisfy your curiosity at source.’
‘Fascination would be a more apt tag for my feelings. Some of the bits relating to Maxwell were quite hilariously entertaining. But there were other parts next door to tragic,’ he murmured bleakly. ‘If he’s finally chucked you out the door, he’s done you a favour.’
‘What would you know about it?’ she exploded. ‘You know nothing about my life with Grant. Nothing!’
He stared steadily back at her. ‘You can’t tell me that you’ve been happy with a man who’s been running round with other women ever since you met him.’
Her delicate profile tensed. She gazed into the fire. All over again she was hearing Grant’s raging and bitter accusations of ingratitude. She had turned down the surprise part he had offered her in his film, reiterating her ambition to become a writer. His fury had been perfectly understandable. He had taught her, encouraged her, pushed her hard when she would have dropped back. Everything she was today, she owed to him.
But Grant had still failed to give her the one thing that she really wanted from him. And that wasn’t the adrenalin thrill of public recognition, the use of his luxurious homes or even the thousand and one costly gifts he continually pressed on her. It was a father’s love she had wanted, not what that same father could give her in material terms.
Suddenly tears flooded her shadowed eyes. Perhaps it wasn’t her father’s fault, perhaps it was hers. There had to be some element lacking in her. The people she loved never loved her back. Grant had pulled the same rug from under her feet all over again.
‘Kitty—’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, go away and leave me alone!’ she gasped, despising her self-pitying mood. ‘You’ve had your superior little say and now you can get out!’
With a sound of impatience he folded forward, settling down on the edge of the mattress to slant an arm round her hunched-up figure. ‘I didn’t intend to sound superior—’
‘Didn’t you?’ she interrupted accusingly.
He sighed. ‘God knows I don’t receive any satisfaction from seeing you like this. I just don’t think you should be on your own right now.’
The weight and warmth of his arm had shocked her into defensive rigidity, but as he plucked her glass away her overbright eyes flamed. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’
‘I believe you’ve had enough.’ Long fingers speedily enclosed her wrist, preventing her from retrieving the glass. ‘Booze will only make you more depressed.’
At his peremptory bidding her hand had automatically withdrawn again. It infuriated her to appreciate that the habit of doing as Jake told her could have survived the years to exercise that influence. ‘Two small glasses of sherry isn’t boozing and I’m not depressed,’ she rebutted stridently.
‘No?’ he queried.
‘No! I’ve just had a rough couple of days.’
As he belatedly released her wrist he balanced his other hand on her shoulder. His touch remained, branding her sensitive skin. Bemusedly stilled by his disturbing nearness, she felt her breath tickle in her throat, her mind a sluggish mass of half-formed thoughts. As she glanced up, dimly wondering what was the matter with her, she connected with black-lashed golden eyes and a sliding sensation pulled at the pit of her stomach. Silence buzzed, broken only by the crackle of the fire. The pink tip of her tongue delved out to moisten the dryness of her lower lip.
Jake groaned, muttered something ferocious under his breath. His dark, hard features clenched, his glittering gaze burning over her upturned face. Something stronger and older and infinitely more powerful than she was held her utterly still as long fingers twined into her hair and his dark head bent.
His hand settled impatiently on her spine, tipping her back. His mouth parted hers with a hot, hard urgency that sent sensation coursing through her in wild, primitive response. His tongue thrust a demanding passage between her lips and her head spun. He was above her and then he lowered his long, hard-boned frame, his unmistakable maleness as he shuddered against her yielding curves, making her blood race and throb through her veins in delight. Suddenly her arms were closing round him in collusion and acceptance.
As he slid on to his side, he carried her with him. He continued to hungrily probe her mouth, his hand curving over her breast to invoke an electrifying excitement that dragged a sharp little cry unawares from her throat.
The old mantel clock high above wheezed and rang out a tinny stroke of one. Instantly both of them froze. Jake lifted away without warning, sinking back on his heels, his breathing thick and fast as he studied her with smouldering charcoal eyes.
Sitting up, Kitty gave herself a faint shake, smoothing down the rumpled shirt, abysmally conscious of the betraying peaks of her breasts and the shocking unsteadiness of her hands. Yet, even flushed and tumbled, she managed to look like an exotic little cat, grooming herself with controlled cool.
‘The line you’re looking for is, “God, what have I done?”’ Never had Kitty’s ready tongue come more welcomely to her rescue than in that intense, lacerating silence.
‘Why the hell did you have to come back?’ he demanded with a raw, unexpected violence that made her flinch, flat savagery in his eyes.
An antipathy as potent as the passion they had shared had sprung up with equal suddenness.
‘I should keep this from Paula. Women are notoriously unforgiving creatures,’ Kitty hissed back at him.
Colour seared his blunt cheekbones, accentuating eyes still brilliant with unsettled emotions. ‘I was actually worried about you,’ he derided with a curled lip.
‘And just think, you don’t even have a teeny glass of sherry to use as an excuse for your lapse.’ She ignored the arrow of pain that that stinging taunt drove into her own heart.
He went white. ‘You poisonous little bitch,’ he bit out. ‘If you think that I’ve ever forgotten that night, you’re wrong. It’s never left me.’
But it had not marked him as it had marked her. He had had a wife, a child and now he was back inside another relationship. Where were his scars? They didn’t exist. Her head bent, silk-fine hair shimmering forward to hide her pinched profile. Dear heaven, why hadn’t she felt physically ill when he had touched her?
‘Go away,’ she whispered.
‘That is an invitation I don’t need.’ The door thudded on his exit.
She didn’t hear a car start up. But then she hadn’t heard one arriving. He must have walked up from the road, planning to take the intruder by surprise. Last of the macho heroes! Her bitter humour was short-lived. How could she respond to Jake when she couldn’t respond to other men? Admittedly the latter situation had risen very rarely to be tested. Jake had burnt her so badly that she had shrunk from putting her hand in the fire again. Was that why she had stayed with Grant for so long? Had she been sheltering her own inadequacy? Was it really fair of her to have accused her father of using her?
When she had moved into the town house, it had never occurred to her that the world would assume she was Grant’s mistress. She had honestly believed that, once she was presentable, Grant would be prepared to acknowledge their relationship openly. But Grant would never own up to fatherhood. He was extremely sensitive about his age, even more self-aware of his pin-up status. That he was closer to the half-century mark than forty was almost as big a secret as his possession of a twenty-five-year-old daughter.
And Kitty had become his defensive shield against persistent women. Kitty, though he had vehemently denied the accusation, was his excuse when one of his light-hearted affairs became too heavy. For so long all her energy had gone into her career. If she had been in no hurry to test herself out as an unattached woman, a large part of it had been lack of interest and the suspicion that she was frigid.
Frigid, she echoed dismally, shamed heat slinking through her in waves. Neither repulsion nor inhibition had attacked her in Jake’s arms. Was she some kind of masochist? Where had that absolutely terrifying response come from? In all this time she had never forgotten the humiliation and shame that Jake’s rejection had once taught her, forever afterwards making her repress her sexuality. She had feared an involvement with another man. She had to face that truth now.
Feeling intensely vulnerable, she curled up in a tight ball. Jake had hurt her savagely and those wounds were still raw. Drowsiness was overcoming her heavily. He was right, she allowed on her last coherent thought, I am depressed.
* * *
The aroma of coffee was in the air when she awakened. China rattled and she came bolt upright, clutching a quilt she didn’t remember bringing downstairs. Her mattress had moved during the night as well. It was now several feet away from the fire. But what made those puzzling developments absolutely unimportant was the sight of Jake emerging from the scullery bearing two cups.
‘What on earth…?’ she began incredulously.
‘I was worried about you. I came back.’ He set one of the cups down beside her on the floor and straightened lithely again to carry his own to his hard-set mouth.
Dark stubble shadowed his strong jawline. A half-unbuttoned shirt revealed a strip of tawny skin and a crisp sprinkling of black chest hair. Never had she been more achingly, agonisingly conscious of his disruptive sexuality. Some natural barrier had tumbled down since last night. Her pulses were racing in an atmosphere that suddenly felt unbearably claustrophobic.
‘What time is it?’ Disorientated, she had to say it twice to get it out and she studied the quilt, not even sure what day of the week it was.
‘Half-eight.’
She pushed a hand through her hair. ‘What’s going on?’
‘You were sleeping like the dead when I came back,’ he asserted abrasively.
‘Is there something wrong with sleeping in the middle of the night?’ she muttered, seeking the cup with a blind hand. Her mouth was dry as a bone.
He released his breath in a sudden hiss. ‘You should have woken up when I came back. You didn’t. You obviously carried on drinking after I left.’
That did penetrate her mental fog. Her head flew up. ‘I what?’
‘You heard me. You were dead to the world.’ Fierce anger laced each harsh syllable.
‘Why don’t you take your assumptions somewhere where they’ll be less offensive?’ she snapped, equally angry. ‘I didn’t have anything more to drink!’
A dubious dark brow elevated. ‘No?’
She flung him an infuriated stare. ‘No!’ she repeated. ‘Do you have any idea how long it is since I had a decent night’s sleep? I was exhausted last night. I fell asleep within minutes of your departure.’
Dark eyes aimed a derisive and renewed challenge. ‘You can still be grateful that I did come back. You left the candles burning. Didn’t you realise that the electricity was only switched off at the meter? You didn’t even put a guard up on that fire,’ he informed her grimly. ‘This house has wood partition walls. You’re fortunate it wasn’t your funeral pyre last night!’
