Two-Timing Love

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‘I’ll just put him in his pram,’ he muttered, scowling across the room at her, then disappeared.

Well, at least he had managed to get a pram, Jenny told herself, a thought which did nothing to lessen the anger and indignation trembling within her as she marched off to her own room and began impatiently removing her clothes. There had actually been an element of accusation in that scowling look he had flung her—as though she were in some way at fault!

Trying to calm herself, she slipped into a housecoat and picked up her clothes. She needed a shower, she decided, if only to give her time to compose herself before confronting that…that…

‘So this is where you’re hiding,’ observed Jamie, strolling into the room unannounced and right up to her. ‘And what the hell was that about just now?’ he demanded, gazing down at her from coldly assessing eyes.

‘Get out of here!’ she exploded, taking an involuntary step back from him and finding the backs of her legs trapped against the bed.

‘Not until you’ve explained what that ill-mannered performance of yours was all about.’

‘Ill-mannered! You’ve got a nerve!’ she croaked indignantly. ‘The agreement was that the two of us would interview any prospective nannies!’

‘At the time, if I rightly remember, you were all for my doing it alone,’ he retorted, flinging himself down on the bed and gazing up at her accusingly.

‘That’s hardly the point,’ hissed Jenny, glowering down at him. ‘How do you imagine Clare’s going to feel when she hears you’ve roped in one of your…your floozies to look after her child?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ he drawled, his eyes narrowing angrily as he propped himself up on his elbows.

‘For God’s sake, Jamie, don’t you think it’s about time you grew up and started taking life seriously?’

‘Oh—now we’re back to how irresponsible I am, are we?’ he said, his tone ominously quiet. ‘Exactly what is it that makes you think you have some God-given right to be my judge and jury, Jenny? I think it’s time you were reminded of a few facts.’

‘I don’t need reminding of anything. All I—’

‘You’re eight years my junior—the kid sister of one of my closest friends. It probably seems to you that I’ve been around for as long as you can remember…but the fact is that you don’t know me any more than I know you. You seem to be stuck in some sort of time-warp, repeating all the dire warnings the village biddies used to trot out when I was still a kid—’

‘That’s not fair!’

‘No—it isn’t,’ he snapped. ‘Yes, I was a tearaway as a kid, and yes, I have had possibly more than my fair share of women—but I can assure you, Jenny, not one of them is a floozie—’

‘I’m sorry,’ she cut in hastily, shame staining her cheeks. ‘I had no right to say that…it’s just that I feel so responsible for Jonathan.’

‘And you think I don’t?’

Jenny opened her mouth to protest, then clamped it firmly shut. There was no way she was going to allow herself to be manoeuvred into accepting Mandy as a nanny, simply because she felt guilty over referring to her as a floozie.

‘Yes—well, that resounding silence manages to speak volumes,’ he noted sarcastically. ‘The point that seems to have escaped you—though mercifully not the rest of the village dears—is that I am now a fully fledged adult and perfectly able to take on the responsibilities that go with that status, should the need arise.’

He rose from the bed and for an instant Jenny was convinced he was about to stride from the room in disgust. Then he turned and grasped her without warning by the shoulders.

‘Tell me, Jenny, does it make you feel safer, kidding yourself I’m still an irresponsible tearaway?’ he asked softly. ‘Was I so irresponsible when I refused the very considerable charms you once offered me?’

‘I wondered how long it would be before you dragged that up again!’ she spat, struggling dementedly to free herself.

‘I keep referring to it because it was something of a milestone in my life,’ he replied, the tightening of his arms rendering her struggles ineffectual. ‘I readily admit that twenty-seven is a little late to be reaching mental maturity—but that was the night I finally grew up.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ she croaked, a tiny part of her stalling against the seeming inevitability of his kissing her while the rest of her tensed in breathless expectation of it.

‘It’s supposed to mean that even irresponsible Jamie had enough sense to realise that the consequences of deflowering a nineteen-year-old ingénue might be more than he could handle.’

‘You wouldn’t have been deflowering me—as you so gallantly put it!’ she lied, goaded by a sense of helpless outrage.

‘I can assure you I’d not have been so damned gallant had I known you were experienced at the time,’ he muttered, drawing back slightly from her with a rueful laugh. ‘I used up more self-control that night than I ever knew I possessed.’

Jenny felt her pulse-rate shift into a higher, almost painful gear. ‘Now you really are being gallant,’ she managed and was appalled to hear a note of wistfulness in her slightly breathless words. ‘You swatted me aside with about as much thought as you’d have given to an irritating fly.’

‘If you say so,’ he stated in oddly clipped tones, pulling her heavily against him. ‘Who am I to argue with someone who knows me as thoroughly as you do? And who cares anyway?’

There was a heated turbulence in his kiss that contrasted oddly with the cool carelessness of his words; and, as that heat permeated and possessed her, she felt its swift destruction of those self-protective layers built up so painstakingly over the years.

Yet, even as her lips and body were responding with eager spontaneity to the urgent surge of passion in his, she was unable to silence the doom-laden voice within her warning that she was as besotted with this infuriatingly exciting man now as she had ever been.

CHAPTER THREE

JAMIE’S initial reaction was that he thought Jenny was joking—a joke he found it impossible to share, judging by the sudden wariness diluting the soft somnolence of passion in his eyes. Then he drew back from her, wariness hardening to disbelief as he gazed down at her sprawled beneath him on the bed.

“‘No” is what you should have been saying a good five minutes ago—not now,’ he rasped, rolling away from her and dragging himself upright. ‘And, to be brutally frank, some men would regard themselves justified in considering you to have been cutting it dangerously fine even five minutes ago.’

As he rose from the bed Jenny drew the gaping robe back over her exposed breasts, her badly shaking hands an indication of an inner turmoil that made speech impossible. She sat up, hugging her arms to her in a desperate attempt to rid herself of the still tingling imprint of his hands on her body and the intoxicating heat of him still burning along the length of her. And, as the terrible hunger raged on unabated within her, she found herself dazedly trying to recall what words she had used in that barely conscious moment when she had acted contrary to her every desire and had denied both herself and him.

‘Jamie—where are you going?’ she protested automatically as, with an exclamation of disgust, he turned from her and strode from the room.

‘This is all I need!’ she wailed softly to herself, clutching her head as though willing it to start functioning once more.

When her head eventually obliged, it was to present her with the observation that the only way peace could be restored to her life would be for Jamie to be out of it entirely—a comfortless observation, given the presence of Jonathan in their lives.

But she certainly couldn’t leave things hanging in the air as they now were, she told herself dejectedly, rising from the bed and making her way to the sitting-room.

He was pouring himself a drink as she entered.

‘Jamie—I’d like to apologise,’ she began, then broke off, distracted by the fact that his hands, pouring the drink, were no more steady than her own. ‘I…you took me completely by surprise,’ she added disjointedly and silently cursed herself for not having had the wits to have worked out what she was going to say to him.

Without even casting a glance in her direction, he moved to one of the armchairs and sat down, sprawling untidily on it as he gazed moodily into his glass.

‘What you actually mean is that you took yourself by surprise,’ he retorted sharply, cold speculation in his eyes as they rose to hers. ‘Which mucked up your plans for revenge somewhat.’

‘Revenge?’ croaked Jenny.

‘Wasn’t that your intention—to string me along and then give me a taste of what you considered to be my own medicine?’ he enquired frigidly. ‘Too bad your body put up such a struggle against co-operating with your vengeful little mind.’

‘For heaven’s sake, Jamie—what are you saying? How could you possibly think I’d stoop that low?’

‘How indeed?’ he muttered eventually, plainly a little thrown by the sincerity of her indignation. ‘OK—perhaps you’d care to explain yourself,’ he added harshly, returning to his morose contemplation of the contents of his glass.

Jenny walked over to the chair opposite his and sat down gingerly on its edge, wondering what on earth she could possibly say. The truth was something she had yet to examine, she thought frantically; and even if she had, the chances were it was the last thing she would ever want to confide in Jamie.

‘Hell, you almost had me convinced I was wrong in thinking your motive was revenge!’ he exploded through her panicking thoughts.