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His hand left her chin to rest lightly on the side of her father’s bed, drawing attention to the lean strength of his fingers, the fine mat of hair on the back of his hand and wrist. ‘This has been going on a damned sight longer than the four days your father has been ill. And you never used to be tearful like this either. That’s the third time in a matter of minutes that you’ve started to cry.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she sniffed inelegantly.
‘Don’t be—it’s a damn sight healthier than the ice you were encased in the last time I saw you.’
Kelly’s hold on her father’s hand tightened. She was so defenceless without her father’s support, making her realise how much she had come to depend on him since leaving Jordan. She would, in all probability, never have left Jordan if it hadn’t been for her father’s strength, would have stayed with Jordan knowing of his other women. Her father hadn’t liked the fact that she had wanted to leave Jordan, had begged her to reconsider, but in the end had accepted her decision. He had never asked for her reasons, and she had never volunteered them.
‘I wasn’t encased in ice, I’d just come to my senses, emerged from the stupid dream I’d had of us living happily ever after. How childish you must have found me, Jordan,’ she added lightly.
His expression was bleak. ‘I found you—enchanting. You were like a breath of fresh spring air after having been in a smoke-filled room.’
‘You mean I was naïve,’ she scorned dryly.
His grey-eyed gaze ripped into her. ‘I mean you were enchanting,’ he repeated tautly.
She drew a ragged breath. ‘Well, I’m sure you’ve met plenty of other women you’ve found just as—enchanting. Janet, for instance.’
‘Janet is my secretary, nothing more.’
‘Maybe you just don’t think of it that way, maybe you just consider sleeping with your secretary as part of her usual duties,’ she said with remembered bitterness. ‘I suppose it’s easier if it’s all treated in a businesslike manner.’
‘You suppose what’s easier?’ Jordan bit out.
‘You know very well what I mean. How many—secretaries have you had since we parted?’
He was frowning darkly. ‘What are you implying?’
‘How many, Jordan?’
‘I’ve had three secretaries——’
‘Only three?’ she taunted. ‘You do surprise me.’
‘Kelly!’ he warned angrily.
‘Were they all blondes?’
Jordan frowned. ‘Blondes?’
‘Well, you’re one of those men who prefer blondes.’
‘Then why did I marry you?’ He looked pointedly at her black hair.
‘I’ve thought of that myself, and I think you must have just had a temporary lapse. Anyway, that’s all past history,’ she dismissed curtly. ‘Do you want to stay here now or do you want me to?’
‘We were in the middle of a conversation,’ he told her grimly. ‘Neither of us is going anywhere until it’s finished.’
‘As far as I’m concerned we were finished years ago. Now are you going or staying?’
‘I’m staying.’
Kelly stood up. ‘Then I’m going.’ She bent to kiss her father gently on the cheek.
Jordan stood up too. ‘Don’t think this conversation is over, it’s far from that, but we’ll continue it at a more—convenient time.’ His last words were in the form of a warning.
Her head went back challengingly. ‘I’ll look forward to it. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.’
‘Kelly …’ he stopped her as she reached the door.
‘Yes?’ She turned to look at him, her breath catching in her throat at his blatant masculinity, the sexual magnetism he emitted without any visible effort on his part. He was thirty-nine now, and Kelly didn’t doubt that he would still be lean and attractive in twenty or thirty years’ time.
‘Didn’t you forget something?’ he asked softly.
She looked down at her handbag, the only thing she had brought with her. ‘No, I don’t think so,’ she frowned.
‘I happen to think that you did.’ He came slowly towards her, a look of determination in his face.
Kelly started to back away, not liking that look at all. There was a definite air of threat about him. ‘Wh-what do you want?’
‘What do you think?’ he drawled, reaching out and pulling her slowly into his arms.
‘No …’ she had time to cry before his mouth claimed hers.
It was as if she were fainting, everything starting to spin, the only reality Jordan and the firm strength of his body. He crushed her to him, every bone in her body seeming to snap with the fierceness of him. His mouth ravaged hers into submission, kissing her like a man in a desert must grasp at a glass of sparklingly clear water.
Kelly’s hands clung to his shoulders, her body bent like a reed to the hard demand of his. It was like she remembered it being, the mad excitement that made her quiver, the inability to do anything other than kiss him back, standing on tiptoe to more than meet the response he demanded.
Suddenly his mouth gentled on hers, tasting her lips as if they were nectar, holding her head immobile by his hands in the silky softness of her hair, finding the sensitive nerve in her nape, groaning his satisfaction as she trembled against him. Jordan knew her body better than she knew it herself, knew everything that gave her pleasure—and he hadn’t forgotten a single thing!
Kelly’s sensibility returned to her with effort, and she wrenched away from him, breathing heavily as she gazed up at him with wide apprehensive eyes.
His hair was ruffled, a slight flush to his hard cheeks. ‘You’ll have to get some more meat on you before I do that again,’ he drawled, straightening his tie. ‘It’s like holding a sack of bones in my arms.’
Her eyes burned with a fierce anger. ‘Then don’t hold me! I would prefer for you never to touch me again.’
‘Can’t be done, I’m afraid,’ Jordan told her calmly. ‘You see, I like touching you, kissing you, I always did.’
‘Me, and a hundred other women!’
His mouth twisted. ‘There don’t happen to be a hundred other women here at the moment.’
‘Then wait until you get back to the hotel and pay Janet a visit!’ She closed the door decisively behind her as she left.
‘Ah, Mrs Lord,’ the young Sister who had been helping with the care of Kelly’s father smiled at her as they met in the corridor. ‘Your father is improving all the time.’
‘Yes,’ Kelly gave a jerky smile. ‘Jordan—my husband is with him now.’
‘Ah yes,’ the smile the other woman gave indicated that she had already met Jordan—and liked what she had seen. ‘You must be relieved that you were at last able to contact him so that he could come home and be with you.’
So that was the story Jordan had given them! ‘Yes.’ There was no point in disputing what he had told them.
‘He’s in with your father now, you said?’
‘Yes,’ Kelly confirmed.
‘I’ll take him in a cup of tea, shall I?’
‘He would like that. Thank you.’ Kelly gave a tight smile. Yes, Jordan would like that very much. This young Sister, Sister A. Fellows it said on her plastic name-plate, was a honey-blonde, and her uniform showed what a perfect figure she had, her legs long and shapely. Just Jordan’s type. It seemed to be that wherever she went there were women who were just his type!
Sister Fellows patted the smooth style of her hair. ‘I’ll see to it now. Perhaps I’ll see you later, Mrs Lord.’
But Kelly could tell the other woman was already thinking of her next meeting with Jordan. ‘Perhaps,’ she agreed tightly, walking away with hurried steps.
She had plenty of time to think when she got back to the hotel, plenty of time to think of the way Jordan had just kissed her. To say she had been surprised by the move was putting it mildly, it had been absolutely the last thing she had expected to happen.
Remembering the way she wouldn’t even let him touch her after losing the baby, she found it all the harder to accept that she had gone into his arms just now as if it hadn’t been five years since it had last happened.
She could still remember the last kiss Jordan had given her, his anger and utter frustration. Her father had duly arrived for dinner the night she had got home from hospital, and his shock on seeing her had been quite understandable.
‘It’s terrible, terrible,’ he kept muttering, obviously deeply upset.
‘Yes,’ Jordan had finally put a stop to this, ‘but there’ll be other babies, in time.’
‘No!’ Kelly cried. ‘No more. Not ever.’
‘The doctor said there was no reason why you shouldn’t be able to have another baby in a year or so.’
‘Damn what the doctor said!’ she said shrilly. ‘I meant I don’t want any more.’
‘Of course you do,’ Jordan chided, doing his best to keep his temper with her. ‘You’ve always wanted children.’
‘Not yours,’ she spat at him. ‘I don’t want any more children by you!’
‘Kelly——’
‘Keep out of this, David,’ Jordan ordered tautly. ‘This is between my wife and myself.’ His narrowed eyes fixed on Kelly. ‘Are you saying you don’t want to sleep with me any more?’
‘Jordan, I don’t think——’
‘Stay out of this, David!’ he was told fiercely. ‘If you don’t like the conversation then go and wait for us in the lounge.’
‘Yes, do that, Daddy.’ Kelly’s defiant gaze hadn’t left Jordan, the naked fury in his face.
‘Jordan——’
‘Just leave us for a while, David,’ Jordan had told him, and with extreme reluctance he had finally done so. ‘Now,’ Jordan once more turned to her, ‘just say what you have to say and let’s have this out in the open.’
‘I’m leaving you,’ she told him calmly. ‘Tonight. Right now. I’m going home with my father.’
‘And you think I’ll let you do that?’
‘I know you can’t stop me,’ she said coldly.
‘Like hell I can’t!’ His chair went back with a clatter as he stood up from the dining-room table, pulling her to her feet too. ‘There’s always been one way I can reach you.’ His mouth came ruthlessly down on hers.
Kelly had stoood like ice as he devoured her with a restless hunger, trying his damnedest to evoke a response in her. But she hadn’t given him one, had been revolted by his touch as she thought of him kissing Angela Divine in exactly the same way.
Finally he pulled back, thrusting her away from him with a moan of self-disgust. ‘So you can’t even kiss me now,’ he sneered. ‘Okay, go with your father, and when you come to your senses give me a call. I’ll come and bring you back to me, where you belong.’
‘I belong to no one,’ she snapped icily. ‘Especially you. I hate you!’
‘And God knows that at this moment I hate you too!’ Jordan slammed out of the room, and seconds later out of the house too, the silence deafening after his departure.
Her father had tried to persuade her to leave it for a few days, to give herself time, but she had refused, packing a suitcase and leaving with him before Jordan returned.
Maybe Jordan’s question this afternoon about why she had never gone back to him had been referring to that scene. He had left the door open for her it she ever wanted to go to him. But she hadn’t even thought about it, had travelled with her father on business, had been his hostess in his Hampshire home. Going back to Jordan had never occurred to her.
Then why had it occurred to her now?
Kelly was sitting with her father when he woke up late the next afternoon. She had been talking to him as usual, had been telling him of her confusion about Jordan.
Jordan had been right, they saw little of each other, and when they did meet he was always coolly polite, almost as if that incident in this very room had never happened.
It was as she was telling her father this that his eyelids had begun to flicker, his lips to move slightly. When his eyelids suddenly opened Kelly almost burst into hysterical sobs, pressing the button by the bed to bring the doctor to the room.
She stood up, smiling down tremulously at her father. ‘Daddy?’ she said huskily, her tears choking in her throat. ‘Daddy, it’s Kelly.’
‘Hello, darling,’ he spoke as if he hadn’t been unconscious for the last five days, as if he had just woken up from an afternoon nap. ‘What time is it?’
She looked at her watch. ‘Four o’clock in the afternoon. How do you feel?’
‘Well, I’ve got a headache,’ he grimaced. ‘And I’m thirsty.’
‘A good sign.’ The doctor who was in charge of her father’s case entered the room, a tall, loose-limbed man of indiscriminate age. His face was young, but his hair was sparse and streaked with grey.
‘Good afternoon, Doctor,’ Kelly’s father greeted politely. ‘Where’s that son-on-law of mine?’
‘You remember him being here, Daddy?’ Kelly said excitedly.
He turned puzzled eyes on her. ‘No, I can’t say that I do. But it follows that if you’re here then so is Jordan. I’m sorry I interrupted your holiday, darling.’
She frowned. ‘But, Daddy——’
‘Could I examine your father alone, Mrs Lord?’ the doctor interrupted. ‘You can talk to him in a few minutes. Perhaps you would like to telephone your husband while you’re waiting.’
‘Oh yes, yes, of course.’ She squeezed her father’s hand. ‘I won’t be long, Daddy.’
The telephone at the hotel suite was answered by Janet Amery. ‘Mrs Lord?’ she acknowledged. ‘Yes, Mr Lord is right here,’ she said in answer to her query.
