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So she was always at the mercy of elements outside her control? No, she wasn’t, she told herself fiercely. She would conclude this insanity before it went any further, and to reinforce that necessity she reminded herself painfully of the baby she had wanted to bring into the world in spite of his wishes. Then she had been infinitely less desirable. Jake had wanted neither her nor any child she might have been carrying. It was some minutes before she registered that Jake was taking a long time to join her.
‘Jake!’ Her call echoed hollowly in the dark hall.
She heard his steps a moment later. He strode down to her and tossed the bag casually into her hands. ‘I’d forgotten what the view was like up there.’
The dark flush along his cheekbones, the rawness of his voice told its own story. There was no view to admire from that room. He was as over-sensitive to their surroundings as she had been.
‘I want to talk to you about what happened then,’ he imparted tautly.
‘What is there to talk about?’ There were years of training in the deprecating movement of her slim shoulder. ‘We both made a mistake.’
His jawline clenched hard. ‘It wasn’t a mistake on my part.’
‘At least you’ve become that honest with the passage of time.’
‘Damn you, Kitty,’ he said savagely. ‘You’re deliberately twisting my words.’
‘Possibly because I don’t want to discuss pre-history. The prospect makes me feel slightly tacky,’ she replied coldly.
Dark eyes rested on her inscrutably. ‘When you feel the need to shoot these world-weary lines, you really ought to aim them at someone who didn’t know you when you were a child.’
Her colour heightened. She swung on her heel, her knees maddeningly wobbly. ‘It’s almost dark, Jake, and I’m tired.’
‘Until I tell you why I married Liz, what happened eight years ago will still lie between us,’ he bit out impatiently. ‘Now are you going to make this easy or are you determined to make it difficult?’
She turned back to him. A band of steel tension was enclosing her pounding temples. ‘I’m a dinosaur where forgiveness is concerned,’ she whispered tightly. ‘I’ve only got one question for you. Did you ever love her?’
Hooded dark eyes held hers unflinchingly. ‘No.’
He hadn’t lied and she was weak enough still to wish he had. She wasn’t vain. He could easily have fallen in love with a more outgoing and mature girl than she had been then. ‘So you got what you deserved,’ she condemned very low.
‘Liz got what I deserved,’ he contradicted harshly. ‘I should never have married her.’
A stifled laugh fell from her lips. ‘I don’t know, Jake. From where I stand you made a pretty cut-and-dried decision. You saw a chance and you took it and there was no way you were going to let me get in your path.’
His lean features hardened. ‘Exactly what are you saying?’
‘If you didn’t marry her for love, you married her for money, and if it didn’t work out too well, you’ve only got yourself to thank for it,’ she said bitterly.
‘Is that what you believe?’ Although the demand was ominously quiet, the icy rage in his stare struck out at her in a chilling blast. He gazed at her with generations of bred-in-the-bone hauteur. ‘Of course I should make allowances for you, Kitty. Selling yourself at nineteen to the highest bidder wasn’t evidence of a more delicate frame of mind. Maxwell doesn’t appear to have done much to raise the tone of those mercenary little brain cells.’
‘How dare you talk to me like that?’
His dark head spun to the ajar front door. ‘I heard a car.’
She swept past him, shaking with indignation. Bob Creighton appeared in the path of his car headlights and treated them both to a speculative scrutiny.
‘I didn’t realise you were still up here until I saw the car. Don’t worry, I’ll lock up.’ The amused grin on his florid face brought heat to Kitty’s skin even in the icy air.
She thanked him woodenly. ‘Any time, Miss Colgan,’ he breezed as she stepped into Jake’s car.
Jake took his time about joining her. Indifferent to the cold, he lingered in the scant shelter of the porticoed entrance. Their gruelling exchange of words had left her raw and shaking. Jake, on the other hand, was coolly capable of trading casual conversation with the estate manager. Had he been attempting to deny her accusation? Or insidiously suggesting that at heart there was very little difference between them? His opinion of her was no higher.
When he swung in beside her, she couldn’t help saying tartly, ‘What was he grinning at?’
‘Take your choice. It was either the movie queen exit or he was wondering what we were doing in the dark. I wouldn’t be too hard on him,’ he drawled. ‘His suspicions weren’t too far off beam.’
She pressed a moist palm to her throbbing brow. ‘I don’t want people talking about us—’
‘There has to be an us to talk about,’ he cut in coldly. ‘And I really don’t think that there is.’
Illogically, that hurt. It was what she ought to want to hear, what her sane mind wanted to tell him. Any relationship between them now would be utter madness. Yet still it hurt. She felt as if once again she had been tried and found wanting. His withdrawal filled her with a demeaning sense of rejection and a panicky sense of loss. Yet she had brought it on herself. she knew that. A sharp pang of anguish currented through her, wounding wherever it touched.
He drew up outside the cottage, his dark features impassive. ‘It’s going to snow again and you could well be drifted in up here. I assume you’re well stocked up with food and fuel?’
‘I can look after myself.’
‘If you need help, ask for it. I can’t see you defrosting frozen pipes in your four-inch heels and your designer raincoat,’ he said drily.
Kitty couldn’t get out of the car quickly enough. ‘I can manage.’
‘I wish I could believe that, but your track record for managing by yourself hasn’t been too good in the last eight years,’ he countered bleakly.
She slammed into the cottage. Behind the door her whole body slumped. She stumbled through to the scullery to dissolve a couple of pain-killers. Her headache abated steadily. An hour later she built up the fire again and sat down at her typewriter with driven resolution. What had she achieved in two weeks? One miserable chapter. The next opened on a blazing row between two complete strangers and she was just in the mood to attack that difficult scene with the spirit it required.
Late evening, she massaged her aching spine and surveyed the fat pile of manuscript paper with dulled satisfaction. She was in the bath when the insistent ring of the phone penetrated her thoughts. A frantic rush to answer it earned her only the frustrating click as the caller rang off. You thought it might be him, you flew down those stairs. Her own weakness tortured her.
Lying in bed with the radio for company, she reached a decision she would have been prouder to have reached a week ago. She would leave tomorrow. She would sell Lower Ridge. She would even sell the estate. There would be no ties left here then and no excuse ever to return. She had stopped bolstering up her pride with empty pretences.
The choices Jake had made at twenty-two had not killed her love for him. For too long she had sheathed her emotions in a forcing house of bitterness. And now the walls of her castle were falling down. Her black and white view of the past had blurred into disturbing grey shades.
An adoring and willing teenage girl could be an overpowering temptation to a virile young man. Jake had not deliberately set out to use and discard her. Fate had given them opportunity and mutual attraction had plunged them both into what followed. Afterwards, Jake had made an astonishingly clumsy attempt to deal with the situation, but ravaged by his conscience he had been out of his depth.
Had he already been planning on a rich wife? Jake had a bone-deep strength that could be uncommonly hard, and strength was frequently partnered by a composite degree of ruthlessness. He had always been fiercely loyal to his fa
mily. He had filled the gaps that his father had refused to fill. Even at seventeen Kitty had recognised his instinctive protectiveness towards his mother while she had fought to maintain a long-dead marriage. When the crash came, his sisters and his mother must have clung to him like drowning swimmers. Dear God, did she now start to excuse him for marrying Liz to rescue the family fortunes?
Kitty tasted the full force of her own weakness. If there was a defence to be made for Jake, she was pathetically keen to build up the case. A faint creak somewhere beyond the bedroom lifted her head. Frowning, she turned down the radio. When the door swung wide without any warning whatsoever, her heart leapt into her mouth. There was a split second of terror before she realised incredulously that it was Jake surveying her from the threshold.
