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Despite her ashen face, the dark torment in her eyes, he smiled at her, slowly shaking his head, one brow drifting up towards his hairline. He pulled her back against his body and enfolded her with loving arms. The unresolved question of whether she and his brother had been more than good friends could wait
‘How can you possibly be sure of that, sweetheart? After only one week! It’s a nice thought, but I’m afraid it’s got to be something you ate!’
For a time she allowed herself the luxury of being held, waiting for her heartbeats to slow down to normal, for her aching head to stop whirling with stupid regrets. They’d discussed starting a family and decided there was no reason to wait. They both wanted children. Which was going to make what she had to tell him so much worse.
When she finally placed her hands against the powerful muscles of his chest and eased herself away from the haven of his embrace, she felt calm. Empty. She was about to tell him something he probably wouldn’t want to live with, to kill his love, which was the most precious thing she had. She had to do it quickly and cleanly. The agony was too great to be prolonged.
‘It’s true, Jed. I did the test this morning.’ She saw the look of disbelief on his face and knew he was about to tell her she’d got it wrong, misread the instructions. She forestalled him quickly, her voice thin because of the effort it took to control it. ‘By my calculations, almost three months.’
And then she watched as his eyes froze over. ‘Three months ago I hadn’t met you, and the first time we had sex was on our wedding night,’ he stated grimly, his lips thin and bloodless. ‘So perhaps you’d like to tell me, my dear wife, who it was who fathered the child you’re carrying?’
His cold sarcasm hurt her more than anything that had ever happened to her in her entire life. She could have handled anger, insults, even physical violence—anything that sprang from powerful emotional trauma. This icy sarcasm, almost amounting to cynical indifference, was worse than if he’d stabbed a rusty blade into her heart.
What she had feared had happened. He had already gone away from her emotionally, relegating the magic of their lovemaking to mere having sex.
And he was waiting for her answer, his eyes dark and bleak, his mouth tight against his teeth. She gathered up the last vestiges of her strength, exhaled a shuddering sigh.
‘Sam.’
CHAPTER TWO
HE STRODE away, his shoulders hard and high and rigid. Elena couldn’t move. Her feet felt as if they’d been welded to the cool marble floor tiles, and her arms were wrapped tightly around her quivering body.
Only when she heard the sound of the car he’d hired to bring them from the airport was she shocked into movement. Her flying feet scattered rugs as she ran to the front of the house, tugging open the sturdy front door, racing through the courtyard and out onto the stony track.
He couldn’t leave her like this, run out on her, with nothing said, nothing explained—never mind resolved! But the cloud of dust, the noise of the rapidly receding engine told her that he could. And had.
Her first instinct was to get her own car out of the barn and follow him. But he would hate that. Even if she caught up with him nothing would be achieved. He had taken what he obviously felt he needed; time alone to sort his head out.
If only he had given her enough time to explain, to tell him the whole truth. He would still be hurting... But not this much.
Pushing her fist against her teeth, to stop herself throwing her head back and howling her pain to the burning bowl of the sky, she ran to a rocky outcrop, uncaring of the sharp edges cutting into the soles of her bare feet, and watched until the cloud of dust disappeared on the valley floor. Then walked slowly back to the house, defeated, wretched.
Jed would come back in his own good time, and all she could do was wait. But for the first time ever she could find no comfort in her beautiful home, the symbol of her fabulous success. Lovingly recreated from what had been little more than a near derelict shell, her home, her gardens, her slice of Andalucian mountainside, had previously reinforced her belief in herself, in the financial and emotional independence she’d made for herself.
As she’d confided in Sam, on what had turned out to be his last night in Spain, ‘When I left my husband ten years ago and came out to Cadiz, I had nothing—not even my self-respect, because Liam had taken that away. I worked in bars and lived in a miserable oneroom flat and took to writing in what spare time I had as a way of forgetting. Luckily, it paid off, and what had begun as therapy became my whole existence.’
The wine had been flowing freely on that dark February evening, and she’d lighted a fire in the great stone-hooded hearth, because the evenings were chilly in the hills. Sam’s mood had been strangely reflective, almost sombre, the atmosphere—that of long-standing easy friendship—conducive to soul-baring.
‘And now, because my books took off in a big way, I have everything. A successful career and pride in my work, a beautiful home in a lovely part of the world, a wonderful circle of friends—more financial security than I ever dreamed of having. Everything except a child, and sometimes that hurts. I guess I hear my biological clock chiming out yet another passing hour. But as I have no intention of ever marrying again...’
She shrugged wryly, sipping her wine to deaden the ache of her empty womb, her empty arms. Liam had adamantly refused to contemplate fatherhood. He’d wanted a glamorous wife on his arm, not a worn-out rag of a woman, stuck at home tied to a bunch of grizzling kids.
‘We have a lot in common, you and L’ Sam levered himself out of the comfy leather-upholstered armchair on the opposite side of the crackling log fire and opened the last of the three bottles of wine he’d brought when he’d invited himself for supper earlier. ‘You want a child, but you can’t stomach the idea of a husband to go with it—once badly bitten and all that.’ He withdrew the cork with a satisfying plop, and although Elena knew she’d already had more than was wise, she allowed him to refill her glass.
Over the two years he’d been coming to this corner of Spain, to snatch a few days’ relaxation between assignments for one of the more erudite broadsheets, he had become her dear friend. There was something driven about him that she could relate to, and nothing remotely sexual so she was doubly comfortable with him.
She smiled at him with affection. Too right, she didn’t want or need a husband. Never again—the one she’d had had turned out to be a disaster.
Sam kicked a log back into place with a booted foot and stood staring into the flames, his glass loosely held in his hands. ‘I’m dead against marriage, too, but for different reasons. With my dodgy lifestyle, it’s not on. Besides—and I wouldn’t admit this to just anyone—I’ve a fairly low sex drive. Unlike my brother.’
Jed. Sam often talked about him. He lived in the family home, somewhere old and impressive in the shires, and headed the family business—gobbling up any opposition, sitting on a fat portfolio. And now, it appeared, he was a womaniser too.
But Sam was telling her, ‘Since his late teens he’s always had women making a play for him—nubile, dewy-eyed daughters of the landed gentry, women who lunch, tough career cookies, the lot. But, to give him his due, he’s picky and very discreet. Mind you, he’ll marry some day, to get an heir. He wouldn’t want the family business to die out with him. But not me. All my emotional, mental and physical energies go into my job. I only feel properly alive when facing danger, grabbing photographs and copy from volatile situations.’
Elena hated it when he talked like that; it made her feel edgy. She watched him drain his glass, heard him say, ‘Like you, the only regret I have is knowing how unlikely I am to ever have a child of my own. To my way of thinking, passing on one’s genes is the only type of immortality any of us can ever hope for.’ He turned to watch her then, his lean, wiry frame tense. ‘There is an answer, though, for both of us. I’d be more than happy to offer myself as a donor. I can think of no other woman better to carry my child. I’d make no demands, other than the right to visit with you both when possible. Never interfere. Think about it.’
He put his empty glass on a side table and bent to kiss her lightly on the forehead. ‘You would never have to lose your freedom and independence to a husband; you wouldn’t have to go through the messy business of sleeping around to get the child you’re beginning to crave. No risk of nasty diseases! And I’d get my single claim to immortality.’ He smiled into her. shell-shocked eyes. ‘Sleep on it, why don’t you? I’ll call you in the morning. If you want to go for it, we can get straight back to London and start things moving. There’s a private clinic headed by a professor of gynaecology who owes me a favour—it’s useful, sometimes, to have friends in high places! Night, Elena—I’ll let myself out.’
At first she’d dismissed his idea as utterly preposterous, but the longer she’d sat over the dying embers the more deeply she’d thought about it, and the less outlandish it had become.
He’d talked about her craving for a child, and he was right. Sometimes, the need to hold her own baby in her arms was an actual physical pain, a deep, regretful sorrow that wouldn’t go away. And when that happened—with increasing regularity—everything she had achieved for herself seemed suddenly worthless.
She would never marry again, and the thought of sleeping around in order to get pregnant was deeply repugnant. And she liked and respected Sam Nolan, didn’t she? Admired him. The child who carried his genes would be blessed.
When he called the following morning her answer was an affirmative.
She’d made the necessary trip to the London clinic with Sam, never once imagining that almost six weeks later she would be at his funeral. Deeply saddened by the loss of a talented young life to a stray sniper’s bullet in a war-torn East African state, and more than devastated because only that morning after a month of hope, she’d discovered that his idea hadn’t worked. Sam hadn’t achieved his claim to immortality and she would never have a child to hold and love.
She’d met Jed at that simple, heart-wrenching ceremony, and from that moment on everything had changed. For both of them.
It was dark when Jed finally returned. Elena, pacing the courtyard, heard the sound of the approaching car and panicked.
Would he view her pregnancy differently when he learned how the baby had been conceived? Would he believe she and his younger brother had never been lovers? Accept the fact that they had been merely good friends who’d found themselves in a similar frustrating situation and had gone for a rational solution?
The dim outside lights were on—soft golden light reflecting from the surrounding whitened stone walls of her sprawling home, tendrils of soft mist trailing gently around terracotta planters burgeoning with foliage and sweetly scented flowers.
The silence when the engine cut out was immense, the night air sultry. Perspiration beaded her face as she waited, tension tying her in knots. She had to make him listen to her, believe her. Surely their love for each other entitled her to a fair hearing?
He appeared at last in the arched doorway to the courtyard, his big body taut, very still. The softly diffused lights, black shadows and trails of mist made him look desperately forbidding. Elena grasped the back of one of the cast-iron two-seaters that flanked the outdoor table. Her spine felt as if it had turned to water; she needed some support.
‘Where were you?’ she asked thickly as the minutes of fraught silence ticked away. He didn’t appear to be in any hurry to break the ice. Someone had to do it.
‘Seville.’ The short answer was clipped. But at least he began to walk over the cobbles towards her. ‘As you know, Nolan’s are to acquire a retail outlet in Seville. I was due to meet our architect in a fortnight’s time, to decide which of two suitable properties to go for.’ He stopped, feet away from her, almost as if, she thought hysterically, the air surrounding her might contaminate him. ‘For reasons I’m sure you’ll understand, I thought today might be as good as any to get back in harness.’
Elena flinched. They’d planned on a three-week honeymoon, here at her home, Las Rocas, then to spend a week in Seville together to meet with the architect and explore the lovely city. Plainly, the honeymoon was over. But after her bombshell what else could she have expected?
She made a small, one-handed gesture towards him, her throat thick with sudden tears. But if he noticed the way she reached out to him he didn’t respond, and she let her hand drop defeatedly back to her side and said raggedly, ‘Can we talk?’
‘Of course.’ The dip of his head was coldly polite. ‘But inside. It’s been a long day.’
He moved towards the house and Elena followed, pushing her long straight hair back from her face with a decidedly shaky hand. She could have borne his rage, his recriminations, far more easily. At least then she would have known what was going on inside his head, could have reassured him, told it as it was, asked him to try to understand.
She hadn’t met him, much less fallen in love with him, when she’d made the decision to be artificially impregnated—for reasons that had seemed right and sane and reasonable then. He was an intelligent, compassionate man. Surely he would understand how she had felt at the time?
Striding straight to the kitchen, Jed reached for the bottle of Scotch tucked away in one of the cupboards, unscrewed the cap and poured a more than generous measure for himself.
‘In view of your condition, I won’t ask you to join me.’ He swallowed half the golden liquid, then pulled a chair away from the chunky pine table and sat, long legs outstretched, the fingertips of one hand drumming against the grainy wooden top, his dark head tilted slightly in insolent enquiry. ‘So talk. I’m listening. Or would you rather I set the conversational ball rolling?’
His voice was so cold, almost as cold as his eyes. They reached deep inside her and froze her soul. Shakily she pulled a chair out for herself and sat on the edge, not opposite him, but further down the table so he would have to turn to look at her.
He didn’t, and she was as glad as she could be under these impossibly hateful circumstances. She didn’t want to see the frozen indifference of his eyes, not when they had once looked at her with so much love.
She shuddered suddenly, convulsively, knotting her hands together in her lap. Briefly, her eyes flicked round the farmhouse kitchen—heavy copper pans gleaming against the white-painted stone walls, the great stone chimney breast, gleaming terracotta floor tiles and carved, polished wood dressers, the pots of scented geraniums on the broad windowsills.
She’d always loved this room, and this last week, in Pilar’s absence, she and Jed had made their meals here together. Chopping vegetables and fresh herbs from the garden, washing fruit. Talking, laughing together, sometimes catching each other’s eyes, understanding the need, the love, reaching for each other, the meal in the making forgotten...
It didn’t seem possible that all the love and laughter, that magical feeling of closeness had gone. She wouldn’t let herself even think that it would never come back. Yet his attitude had erected a mountain between them. She didn’t know if she was strong enough to climb it.
She had to try, though. It was imperative. She flicked her tongue over her dry lips as she struggled to find the words. The right words. Words that would help him understand. But he said impatiently, ‘As you seem to have been struck dumb, I’ll do the talking.’ He swallowed what was left of his whisky and swung round on his chair, looking at her now from narrowed, unforgiving eyes. ‘I’ve thought about our distasteful situation and reached certain non-negotiable decisions. We stay married,’ he stated grimly, then reached for the bottle and poured another shot into his glass.
Something tore at Elena’s heart, a savage little pain. ‘You considered divorce?’ After what they’d been to each other she could hardly believe it. Would he hate himself for even thinking about it once he knew the truth? Would she be able to forget how he’d considered cutting her right out of his life without giving her the opportunity to explain herself?
‘Naturally. What else did you expect?’ He wasn’t looking at her now, but staring at his glass as he twisted it around between his fingers, watching the way the liquid caught the light and fractured it. ‘Under the circumstances it was the first thing I thought of. However, for two reasons, I decided against it. The first Catherine, my mother. She likes you.’ The very tone of his voice told her he couldn’t now imagine why. ‘Our marriage was the only thing that lightened her grief over Sam’s death. A divorce, so soon, would be rather more than she could be expected to bear.
‘The second reason for keeping the marriage going is my brother’s unborn child. I don’t blame Sam for any of this. He died without knowing he’d made you pregnant. So, for my brother’s sake, we stay married. I intend to take a full part in his child’s upbringing. Call it a duty of care. Sam tended to mock me for being the dutiful son, but perhaps, wherever he is, he’ll be thankful for it now.’
For a moment his eyes were drenched with the pain of grief, and Elena’s heart bled for him. She wanted to reach out to him, to comfort him, to tell him that everything could be all right if he’d let it be, if he’d listen to her and try to understand.
She was halfway out of her seat, on her way to him, but the quelling darkness of his expression put her back again, his voice cutting as he told her, ‘We will put up a good front, for the sake of my mother and the child when he or she arrives. But, that apart, I want as little as possible to do with you. We’ll return to the UK in three weeks’ time, as arranged, and I’ll get out of your hair as much as I can—visit the overseas branches. You can make the excuse that travelling doesn’t agree with pregnancy.’
He pushed away from the table and rinsed his glass out at the deep stone sink, upturning it on the drainer, and Elena choked back a sob.
Every word he’d uttered had strengthened the wall between them, making it impossible to breach. Whatever she said to him now, whether he believed her or not, those words—the brutal ending of their marriage in all but name—would never be forgotten.
‘And if I don’t agree to this—this farce!’ She struggled to her feet, but had to support herself against the table. ‘I want you to listen to my point of view. I want you to hear what really happened. I have that right.’
‘You have no rights!’ He flung down the towel he’d been drying his hands on, the first sign of a real emotion directed at her since his return showing through. ‘And you brought this “farce” on yourself. You married me while knowing you could be pregnant by my brother,’ he castigated harshly. ‘Why? Because you didn’t fancy single parenthood? One brother was lost to you so you might as well settle on the other? He might not live such a dangerously fascinating, swashbuckling type of life, might not be as pretty to look at, but he’d do? Marry me and hope fantastic sex would make me overlook everything else.’
He turned away, as if he couldn’t bear to look at her. ‘Well, you were wrong. It didn’t. You’re good in bed, I’ll give you that. But not that good. In any case, I can get fantastic sex whenever I want. No strings, no messy secrets, no regrets.’
That hurt. If he’d ripped her heart out of her body with his bare hands it couldn’t have hurt more.
Pain took her by the throat and shook her, making speech impossible. But she had, somehow, to make him understand, to begin the process of partially exonerating herself, for both their sakes. Distrust of her was turning him into a man she didn’t know.
‘When we first met, I truly believed...’ Her voice, difficult to push past the constriction in her throat, faltered and died as she remembered the way he’d approached her after the graveside ceremony. ‘You must be Elena Keele; Sam often spoke about you. Don’t go away.’ He had touched her black-gloved hand briefly, and warmth had momentarily displaced the aching sorrow in his eyes. ‘Come back to the house. I think your company would be a comfort to my mother. And to me. Through Sam, I already feel I know you.’
And so it had begun.
Aware that he was watching her struggle for words, the straight line of his mouth twisted to one side, sardonically interested in her fumbling attempts to excuse the inexcusable, she went scarlet and told him roughly, ‘I thought I wasn’t pregnant. I started a period on the morning of Sam’s funeral.’ It had been sketchy, and of very short duration, but she’d put that down to the shock of learning of her friend’s death, the rush to get a flight to London, hire a car and drive out to his home village to pay her last respects.
The next had been equally slight, but it hadn’t crossed her mind that she might be carrying Sam’s child. She’d been back in Spain for two weeks then, regretfully leaving Jed in England. They’d spent two weeks getting to know each other, learning to accept the unbelievable fact of love at first sight. But she’d had a deadline to meet, and if they were to be married as soon as possible—which they had both known almost from that first moment of meeting—Jed had a lot of business ends to tie up, too.
The love, the magic, the precious feeling of being born for each other couldn’t have disappeared so completely. Surely it couldn’t?
She approached him with more determination. He had to hear her out. ‘Jed—Sam and I—’
‘Spare me!’ he cut across her, his eyes derisive. ‘I don’t want to hear the sordid details.’ He headed for the door, his footsteps ringing firmly on the tiled floor. ‘And I’m sure you’ll understand if I don’t believe a word you say. Why keep a testing kit around if you were so certain your affair with my brother hadn’t left you with any music to face? Why use it at all?’
‘Because I’d begun to feel nauseous in the morning! I believed pregnancy was out of the question, but did the test just to make doubly sure!’ she shot back at him, her temper rising. How could a man who’d said he’d love her till the day he died refuse to properly hear her side of the story, refuse point-blank to believe a word she said?
Her shoulders rigid, she bunched her hands into fists at her sides and told him, her voice grinding out the slow words, ‘Sam and I were never lovers.’
‘No? One-night stand, was it? Don’t try to tell me he forced himself on you. Sam wasn’t like that. It was more likely to be the other way around. From my experience during this last week your appetite for sex is pretty well insatiable.’
Bitterness was stamped all over his harsh features, and it held his spine in a rigid line as he walked out of the room. In that moment she hated him.
She had never hated anyone before, not even Liam. She had despised him, but never hated him. The savage emotion consumed her. She paced the terracotta tiles, her arms wrapped around her slender body, holding herself together in case she should explode with the hot rage that flared and flamed inside her.
How dared he treat her as if she were trash? Accuse her of such monstrous things? And where had the man she loved more than her life disappeared to? Had he ever really existed, or had he been mere wishfulfilment, a figment of her imagination? The man who had just walked out on her was a cold-hearted, arrogant, egotistical monster!
He could forget his ‘non-negotiable’ decision of a sham marriage. She would accept no part of it Did he think he had a God-given right to dish out orders, arrogantly decide how she would live out the rest of her life?
Did he really think she would stay legally tied to a man who thought so badly of her? Did he imagine, for one moment, that she’d unquestioningly suffer the misery such a vile arrangement would bring her?
As far as she was concerned their marriage was over in every way there was. She had no intention of returning to England with him, living a lie. She was perfectly capable of looking after her child on her own—that had been the original intention, after all.
Her child did not need a father figure, especially one as all-fired intransigent, bloody-minded and arrogant as Jed Nolan!
First thing in the morning she would tell him to pack his bags, get out of her home. She never wanted to have to see him again.
CHAPTER THREE
SHE didn’t get the opportunity to ask him to leave. He’d already done it.
The sun had only just begun to gild the flanks of the rugged hills with new-day light when she left her solitary bed and dragged herself downstairs after a monumentally miserable and sleepless night.
Which bedroom Jed had used she had no idea, and didn’t care, she told herself as she secured the belt of the robe she’d thrown on more tightly around her narrow waist. As soon as he surfaced she would ask him to leave, announce that she’d be in touch, through her solicitor, some time in the future. Let him know that he wasn’t the only one who could make decisions and hurl them around like concrete slabs.
If he wasn’t prepared to listen to her, to believe her, then their relationship wasn’t worth keeping—certainly not the acrimonious, desolately empty relationship he had in mind. Better by far to make a clean break.
Making for the kitchen for the coffee she suddenly dramatically needed, she saw his note the moment she pushed open the door. A scrap of paper on the polished pine table top. It didn’t say a lot, just a scrawl of distinctive black handwriting. ‘I’ll be in Seville for the next three weeks. I’ll collect you for our return journey.’
The hell you will! Elena scrunched the paper up and hurled it at the wall. Frustrated by his disappearance, before she could tell him she had no intention of meekly tugging her forelock and submitting to his orders, she felt her blood pressure hit the roof.
She didn’t even know which hotel he’d be using in Seville. She couldn’t get in touch and remind him that she was perfectly capable of making the decisions that would affect the rest of her life, that no way would she be returning to England, simpering and smiling and pretending to be deliriously happy. No way!
Hot tears flooded her eyes. Had she been secretly hoping that Jed would have come to his senses this morning, found enough trust in her to believe her story? If so, she’d been a fool. Well, no more.
She’d just have to sit out the next three weeks with the rage festering away inside her, and—Suddenly the now all too familiar morning sickness struck, and twenty wretched minutes later she was standing under a warm shower, patting her still flat tummy and murmuring wryly, ‘You’re certainly giving Mummy a hard time, Troublebunch!’
Even as the tender smile curved her lips her eyes filled with tears again. Tears for Sam, who would never know he’d left a child behind, for herself, and for Jed, who had lost something wonderful that could never be retrieved.
Warm needles of water washed the tears away, and she dried herself, wrapped her long hair in a towel, dressed in cotton shorts and a halter-neck top and told herself they were the last tears she would shed for any of them.
Life went on.
She had her child to look forward to, and she would love it to distraction and give him or her the happiest life any child could want Now that she was marginally calmer she could see that, in a way, it was a blessing that Jed had taken off. That action alone told her that he’d never truly loved her. If he had. he’d have trusted her, believed her, asked for more details. It had also saved her from a demeaning slanging match, from allowing all her hurt to pour out and hit him right between the eyes.
